ifo me ity EX LIBRIS W. H. BEVERIDGE Collegii Magnae Aulae Universitatis Oxoniensis Socii 1^02 Ma&istri THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF DR. SAMUEL BUTLER. VOL. I. THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF DR. SAMUEL BUTLER, HEAD-MASTER OF SHREWSBURY SCHOOL 17981836, AND AFTERWARDS BISHOP OF LICHFIELD IN SO FAR AS THEY ILLUSTRATE THE SCHOLASTIC, RELIGIOUS, AND SOCIAL LIFE OF ENGLAND, 17901840. BY HIS GRANDSON, SAMUEL BUTLER, AUTHOR OF "EREVVHON," "THE TRAPANESE ORIGIN OF THE ODYSSEY," ETC. VOL. I. JAN. 30, 1774 MARCH I, 1831. LONDON : JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET. 1896. Printed by Hazel], Watson, & Viney, Ld., London and Aylesbury. PREFACE. THE following work was begun in 1889, and was completed in its original form by the summer of 1894. I was then so generally advised that it was too long that in the summer and autumn of 1895 I reduced it by about a third, and left it with Mr. Murray in November 1895. The length of time during which the work has been in progress must be accounted for firstly by the great bulk of the correspondence that came into my hands, and the difficulty of finding the due dates of many undated letters. Moreover I was deflected from it by the pressure put upon me to write my book Ex Voto, on the Sacro Monte of Varallo, and by some researches into the topography and authorship of the Odyssey, the fascination of which I found it impossible to resist. To these delightful studies hardly, however, to myself more delightful than J;hose which I am now leaving I hope immediately to return. When my sisters, Mrs. G. L. Bridges and Miss Butler, presented me with almost all Dr. Butler's papers, I did not at first realise the importance of keeping the collection as far as possible together, and gave away some few to 20GG641 vi PREFACE. friends as autographs. Some of the drafts, again, I found so much cancelled and rewritten that I thought it better to copy the final state of the draft and destroy the original. I also destroyed, with the approval of the authorities of the British Museum (but never without this), any letters the preservation of which might cause pain without serving any useful purpose, or again, which were deemed not worth the acceptance of the Museum. The rest I gave to the British Museum, and left those in charge of the National Collection to decide what letters should be made accessible to the public, and what should be, at any rate for the present, kept back. I may say here, therefore, that all letters or documents given in my book are in the British Museum, unless it is stated otherwise at the head of the letter. It may save readers the trouble of hunting in the index if I give the numbers of the volumes for which they should write if they desire to see the original of any given letter, or to search for any letters they may hope to find. The volumes are numbered as follows : VOL. ADDITIONAL MSS. L, 1764-1813 . . 34583 II., 18141819 . . . 345 g 4 III., 1820 March 1825 .... 34585 IV., April 1825 end of 1827 . . . 34586 V., 18281830 . .... 34587 VI., 18311833. . . . VII, 1834-1835 . . . - ... 34590 IX., 1837 June 3oth, 1838 . . . 3459I PREFACE. vii ADDITIONAL VOL. MSS. X., July 1838 December i6th, 1839, 1' scriptions, Verses in Latin, Greek, and English . . 3459 2 XL, Two Letter-books, 18181828 . . 34593 XII., A third Letter-book, and Dr. Butler's Episcopal Letters .... 34594 XIII., Dr. Butler's Exercises when at Rugby . 34595 XIV., Review of Parson's Adversaria, etc., 1817 34596 XV., A Commonplace Book, dated 1816 . 34597 XVI., Journals of Foreign Tours . . - 34598 N.B. In every case "Additional MSS." must be on the ticket. Very few letters reached me from other sources than the one I have indicated above. I should, however, thank Bishop Barry (as representing the family of the Rev. T. S. Hughes), the Rev. Walter Scott, son of the late Dean of Rochester, the Rev. J. Irvine of Colchester, and J. Willis Clark, Esq., for the loan of letters, some of which will follow in due order of date. The reader is requested to bear in mind that this work is intended to show the scholarship and the philology of the time, so far as they have come before me in Dr. Butler's papers. I am aware that much of the philology will be held to be of no present interest ; its interest, however, as showing the state of this science at the beginning of the century, seems, at any rate to myself, considerable. As regards letters connected neither with scholarship nor education, I have selected them almost exclusively on the ground of their livingness and the interest attaching to the personality of the writer. If the personality has attracted me, as in the case of Dr. VI 11 PREFACE. James, Mr. Tillbrook, Baron Merian, and half a score of men and women whose names are now utterly unknown, I have given letters, though they contained little or nothing about either scholarship or education. I have to express my thanks to Professor J. E. B. Mayor for much assistance given me in the course of my work. The account of Dr. Butler given in the second volume of his invaluable edition of Baker's History of St. John's is so full as regards quotations from Dr. Butler's works, that I have been left free to pass these over much more briefly than I should other- wise have done, and to devote my space principally to MS. documents, the existence of which was probably as unknown to Professor Mayor as it was to myself until they fell into my hands. I have also to thank Mr. Prebendary Moss, the present Head-Master of Shrewsbury School, for the warm interest he has shown in the work and its progress, though I should perhaps state that he has only actually seen a small part of it. I would also express my sense of deep obligation to Mr. John Murray, who has read the sheets with great care, and called my attention to many slips, omissions, and inadvertencies, besides supplying me with informa- tion which I could not otherwise have obtained. As regards the accentuation of Greek words, I believe I may say that when the reader finds the accents omitted or wrong, if he will be good enough to turn to the original MS., he will find that I have followed it faithfully. At first I found it irresistible occasionally to add an accent, or to correct one ; but before long I was advised that PREFACE. JX it would be a sounder course in a work that aims at being historical to let the accents, for better or worse, stand as I found them. I could not bring myself, however, to take out those I had put in, or to vitiate the few that I had corrected ; Dr. Butler in his drafts has generally omitted them, but when he gives them he always does so correctly. Lastly, I would caution the reader against confusing the three Dr. Butlers who have all been eminent as school- masters. They are : 1. Dr. Samuel Butler, Head-Master of Shrewsbury, 17981836. 2. Dr. George Butler, Head-Master of Harrow, 1805 1829. 3. Dr. H. Montagu Butler, Head-Master of Harrow, Christmas 1859 1885, and present Master of Trinity College, Cambridge. The two Dr. Butlers of Harrow were father and son, but there was no relationship between them and Dr. Samuel Butler. SAMUEL BUTLER. February 25^, 1896. P.S. Since writing the foregoing I have heard with very great regret of the death of my cousin Archdeacon Lloyd, more than once referred to in the following pages as though he were still living. March yd, 1896. CONTENTS OF VOL. I. PAGE INTRODUCTION . . [l] CHAPTER I. FAMILY HISTORY ... I CHAPTER II. SCHOOL AND COLLEGE 8 Captain Don. School Life at Rugby. Career at St. John's College, Cambridge. -Letters from Dr. James, December roth, 1793, September jih, 1794. Engagement to Miss Harriet Apthorp. Letters from Dr. James, December 27th, 1796, January 23rd, 1797. Letter from S. T. Coleridge. First Published Work. Mr. Butler commissioned by the University to edit ^Eschylus. CHAPTER III. THE RUGBY CURRICULUM . 24 Installation at Shrewsbury. Dr. James's Letters of Advice detailing the Rugby System under his Head-Mastership. CHAPTER IV. FIRST YEARS AT SHREWSBURY . .40 Appointment of Mr. Jeudwine as Second Master. The Relations between him and Mr. Butler. Hostile Reception at Shrewsbury? Candidature for the Head- Mastership of Rugby. CHAPTER V. HUGHES, PORSON, BLOMFIELD . . . 52 Thomas Smart Hughes. Death of Person. Publication of First Volume of ^schylus. Blomfield's Reviews in the Edinburgh Revieiv. Quarrel between Butler and Blomfield. Character of Person. Butler's Letter to the Rev. C. J. Blomfield, B.A. xii CONTENTS. CHAPTER VI. PAGE INSTALLATION SERMON LUCIEN BUONAPARTE . 63 The Doctor's Degree. Correspondence, December i6th, 1810 February 4th, 1811. The Installation Sermon. Correspondence, August i;th, 1811 December 5th, 1811. Translation of Prince Lucien Buonaparte's Charlemagne. Correspondence, February i8th, 1812 December 28th, 1812. Notes taken after a Visit to Prince Lucien Buonaparte. Difficulties about the School Chapel. CHAPTER VII. GEOGRAPHY OWEN PARFITT 84 The Geography. Correspondence, January 29th, 1813 October 2Oth, 1813. -The Mystery of Owen Parfitt. Correspondence, June i8th, 1814 October 20th, 1814. CHAPTER VIII. CORRESPONDENCE, JANUARY 29TH, 1815 MAY 28TH, 1816 103 CHAPTER IX. WATERLOO, I8l6 BARON MERIAN . . . . I 16 Extracts from Diary, with a Visit to the Field of Waterloo, July 1816. Correspondence, November 2nd, 1816 June 3Oth, 1817. CHAPTER X. THE FORTUNATE YOUTH HUGHES'S INSCRIPTIONS 133 The Fortunate Youth. Correspondence on this Subject, October 29th, 1817 December 24th, 1817. Correspondence, October 3ist, 1817 June gth, 1818, with Review of Person's Adversaria. Paper on some Greek Inscriptions that appear in Hughes's Travels in Sicily, etc. CHAPTER XI. EPIDEMIC OF TURBULENCE 156 Disturbances within the School. Dr. Butler's two Circulars to Parents. Correspondence, November 3Oth, 1818 May I7th, 1819. CONTENTS. xiii CHAPTER XII. PAGE FIRST VISIT TO ITALY 1 66 Tour in Switzerland and North Italy. Correspondence, August 5th, 1819 July loth, 1820. CHAPTER XIII. THE LETTERS TO HENRY BROUGHAM, ESQ., M.P. . 1 94 Correspondence, September aoth, 1820 December i6th, 1820. Appointment to the Archdeaconry of Derby. Correspondence, January 1st, 1821 December 3rd, 1821. CHAPTER XIV. UNIVERSITY REFORM 2IO Two Pamphlets signed " Eubulus." Correspondence, January 3Oth, 1822 June i6th, 1822. CHAPTER XV. VISIT TO ROME 226 Third Foreign Tour. Correspondence, August I2th, 1822 November 3Oth, 1822. -Praxis on the Latin Prepositions. CHAPTER XVI. AN ARDUOUS UNDERTAKING 245 The School Lawsuit. Correspondence, January 4th, 1823 July 3rd, 1823. Kennedy takes the Person Prize whilst still at School. His Rema/ks upon the Shrewsbury System. Correspondence, August i;th, 1823 April igth, 1824. CHAPTER XVII. CORRESPONDENCE, MAY I3TH, 1824 DECEMBER 1824 . . 265 xiv CONTENTS. CHAPTER XVIII. PAGE CORRESPONDENCE CHARGE LAWSUIT . . . 275 Correspondence, February i8th, 1825 April l8th, 1825. Extract from a Charge delivered June 22nd and 23rd, 1825, at Derby and Chesterfield. Correspondence and Progress of the School Lawsuit, August 28th, 1825 December isth, 1825. CHAPTER XIX. CORRESPONDENCE CHARGE CORRESPONDENCE . 293 Correspondence, December (?), 1825 June I5th, 1826. Extracts from a Charge on the Education of the Poorer Classes delivered at Derby and Chesterfield, June I5th and i6th, 1826. Correspond- ence, June 1 6th and I7th, 1826. Vote of Thanks from the Trustees, October 1826. CHAPTER XX. THE CLERICAL SOCIETY 315 Correspondence, September I3th, 1826 February isth, 1827. Conclusion of the School Lawsuit. Correspondence, April or May, 1827 December I4th, 1827. CHAPTER XXI. CORRESPONDENCE THE " BEEF ROW " FOURTH FOREIGN TOUR . 340 Correspondence, January 3rd, 1828 March 3(Ao/ia&js, COT? TroXu/ia^s by which is implied that a great love of learning is necessary to make a man a scholar. But when was Dr. Butler ^iXo/xa^s ? Not during the many years in which I slept in the same room with him at Rugby fishing and novel- and play-reading at that period employing by far the greater portion of his time. Then how did he get through the business of his class, or ' form,' as we called it at Rugby ? How were his exercises composed ? How were his lessons construed and parsed ? I will tell you how all this was performed. ' Fetch me half a sheet of paper,' he would say to myself, or to any other boy much lower in the school than himself, at the hour of awaking in the morning ; when, taking some novel or play-book from under his pillow, which he had been reading over-night, and 1790-1 SCHOOLFELLOWS. 1 1 using it as a desk, he would write off the best exercise of the day, and ' play (i.e. a holiday) for Butler'' would be often heard throughout the schools. Then his lessons : ' Where is the place?' he would say to his neighbour, on joining his form ten minutes before a Greek play was to be read. Perhaps half a dozen words might be looked out in his lexicon, when the Greek book would be shut and one more to his mind brought forth from his pocket. If ' called up,' however, there was no mistake. Now how this was done is quite beyond my comprehension. I have once or twice seen a hound distinguish himself greatly the first day he entered the field; I have observed the intuitive knowledge some persons have displayed of what is called the run of a fox Tom Smith of the Craven and the Cheltenham tailor for examples but never before or since have I heard of this Butlerian road to knowledge, if such an expression may be allowed me. . . . That Dr. Butler (having perfected by study what he may be said to have attained by inspiration) has arrived at the honours he enjoys, must be grateful to every one who wishes to see talent and merit rewarded ; and I am happy to hear that his health is restored, so as to afford the prospect of lengthened years ; but were his lordship not quite so liberal in his opinions on some points, he would be more valuable as a bishop in my eyes." The substance of the foregoing is repeated without alteration in an article by the same writer which appeared in Eraser's Magazine for August 1842 ; but Dr. Butler being now dead he continued : " Alas, there are no pictures without shades. Butler was most unpopular in the school. In fact, partly because he was the son of a small shopkeeper in the small but beautiful village of Kenilworth, and at Rugby as a foundation boy, and partly on account of his churlish temper, we in the same boarding-house voted him nothing better than a snob, and the meanness of his personal appearance gave a colour to our proceedings. Never would he offer to do us a verse or two, or construe us over ; but he would sit with his elbow on his knee, and his face resting on one hand and a book in the other, and never open his mouth. My brother was near him in school, but I seldom heard them exchange a word ; and it will be remembered a good deal of the boy appeared in the man. When he first commenced schoolmaster he thrashed his boys so much as to injure the school, and nothing but his high literary reputation would have re-established its good name. He, however, wisely profited by the hint given him by parents that their children were not to be 1 2 SCHOOL AND COLLEGE. [Cn. II. made the victims of his spleen. The quern Jupiter odit pedagogum fecit was at this time verified ; for the Master of Shrewsbury was then hated as much as he was afterwards liked by the generality of his pupils, his conduct towards them having undergone a great change." The evil that men do does not live after them more surely than a good deal of evil which they never either did or wanted to do. I see that Mr. Apperley has wisely printed V 4 4 i < s 4 si 1 * 1 vS \ i N * <' ^ * 1 1 i > ^ '* I ^ ^ I $ H* ^ v ^ ^ Nfc T 4 ^ M. r* rl i 1* J ^ l x t^< ? f ^ l k^ ^ ^\ A v(. ^ N^ Vsi * j ^NS . \ x^ ^> > ^ V ^ *N j < 5 \ v vt Hj^ . A X o 5 V i fix q ^ K i r> 1792 1797-] SUCCESS AT CAMBRIDGE. 13 earlier part of his college career, so that he was saved from being seriously pinched by want of money. From the few notes already referred to as written in 1838, I find he was elected to the only Rugby exhibition vacant in 1791, and was thus enabled to enter himself at Oxford. " By accidental introduction to Dr. Parr," he continues, " I was removed from Christ Church, Oxford, where a day had been fixed by my intended tutor (Mr. Smith, after- wards Dean) for my admission, to St. John's College, Cambridge a circumstance which I then thought very hard." He entered as a sizar, but in January 1792, at the commencement of his second term, changed his gown. From Professor Mayor's well-known edition of Baker's History of St. John's, I find Mr. Butler was Browne Medallist, Latin Ode 1792-3, and Greek Ode 1794. He was Craven Scholar 1793, defeating S. T. Coleridge, Keate, afterwards Head-Master of Eton, and Bethel, afterwards Bishop of Bangor. He graduated as fourth senior optime in 1796, and took the first Chancellor's medal in the same year. He was first Members' Prizeman 1797 and 1798, and was elected Platt Fellow of St. John's, April 3rd, 1797. I can find space for only two from among the several letters written by Dr. James while Mr. Butler was still an undergraduate : (Original in Rugby School Library.) " RUGBY, December loth, 1793. "DEAR BUTTER, I told you I had bought one hundred pounds in the 5 per cents stock, such part of which I should make over for ever to Rugby parish, for the support of this organ that is, such part of a hundred pounds as the overplus of the subscription I might raise should amount to. Now I expect something handsome from Abraham Caldecott in the East Indies, from whom I cannot yet hear perhaps may not hear these nine months to come therefore, as I wish to increase 14 SCHOOL AND COLLEGE. [Ca II. this organ fund as much as I can (finding expenses of singing books, music books for organist, teaching the charity boys, etc., to be now necessary attendants of the organ), I wish to continue to receive the half-guinea subscription of any new Rugby boy that may come to the University before next summer. I never proposed anything to them before ; this is not heavy. I have now no Library subscription, and you know we have here no farewell presents ; whereas the Master of Eton, you will find, by the custom of the place, receives a present of three, five, ten, twenty, etc., guineas (according to circumstances) from every boy that leaves his school in the upper part and not being on the foundation. I have nothing, nor wish anything more than to leave this little memorial of my mastership. You now see my views. Any overgrown rich man, as Hopwood, etc., may give a guinea. I suppose you settled with Mr. W. Hill." (Original in Rugby School Library.) " RUGBY, September Jth, 1 794. " MY DEAR BUTLER, I received your friendly and satisfactory letter yesterday, on the 6th, though yours was dated on the 3rd. However, Mr. Ingles was fixed on by the trustees last Thursday at a previous meeting, and he will be elected master next Tuesday, the gth. He is an excellent scholar of my own standing in King's nearly a very good man indeed, and very fit for the office. He saved very little at Macclesfield, and seems to me still to pant after glory. " I received also yesterday your very elegant address to me, which is as good Latin as can be penned. I am very proud of it, and I went to dine immediately with Mr. Grimes, and we both love you exceedingly for the benevolent and kind motive that led you to collect so many subjects for me in such exact order; and we both agree that you deserved just as much for the good heart that conducted you to this work, as for the good head that produced it. " Have you chanced to stumble on any verse subjects ? "Nothing will make me more happy than to see you on the 1 8th, and we shall have a delightful time together as long as you can stay. " I am, my dear Butler, your obliged and affectionate friend, " T. JAMES. "Mrs. James's situation will make no difference, nor cause us inconvenience, in respect of your visit. I thank you." On January 3th, 1812.] " DEAR SIR, I am sorry to inform you that on my arrival here I found Scholefield had just been elected. " I cannot find out with certainty who were considered second, but am afraid I was not. Dr. Jowett certainly voted for Price ; but the rest did not think him even second. " Three causes contributed principally to my failure : first, doing two copies of Alcaics ; secondly, all my verse translations assuming an appearance of paraphrases ; and lastly, the difficulty they had in reading my compositions, and the want of stops and capital letters, which seemed a mark of culpable negligence. " However, though defeated and disappointed, I am not dis- heartened, and am pursuing a course of reading for the Greek Ode, of which I hope I have some chance. Price reads eighteen hours a day, and said before the scholarship was vacant that he would with pleasure give up the health of all his life, if he could but get one of these scholarships. " I had very fine travelling from Shrewsbury hither. Betwixt Birmingham and Coventry, I apprehended a man who had run off from a public-house leaving his score unpaid. I spied him under a holly bush, jumped off the coach, ran him over two or three large fields, and at last caught him and held him till his pursuers came up, and then returned to the coach with an honest conscience as having contributed my mite towards effecting the ends of justice. " I staid Sunday at Leicester, where I heard the celebrated Robinson preach on the very topic I most wished faith and works, and he said any one who thought any works or any human performances could have the least effect towards his salvation was instigated by the devil. "Towards the close he manifested some strong Calvinistic symptoms. " At Leicester on Saturday night I got shaved, and when I gave the man twopence he thanked me, but as I was going out he ran after me and said, ' I think, sir, you have made a mistake ; it is only a penny.' I bade him keep the remainder, on which he broke out in a fervour of gratitude. I saw a newspaper there for nothing. The only objection was that it was in a cellar, and all the time I was shaving there were some blackguard discontented stocking-weavers abusing the ministry. " At Birmingham I met with some French officers on parole, whom I found very instructive and entertaining companions ; at the same time they were atheists and profligates, possessed of very little sense of religion or virtue. " I dined with them and played at billiards. They did nothing 78 INSTALLA TION SERMON LUCIEN BUONAPARTE. [Cn. VI. but crack their jokes on the waiter, and laugh at him. They were astonished at seeing him affect the dress and manners of a gentleman. " We are here in a turbulent state. On Friday some men who were drunk knocked up the grass on the grass plots, making horrible outcries, and on Saturday a party at Downes's broke out drunk at three in the morning, smashed all the lamps, broke open Rushworth's door, pulled him out of bed, and fired a pistol. Another row on Sunday night. Downes is confined to chapel and gates, but the offenders are of other colleges, chiefly Trinity. " If you will be kind enough to look over my odes before I send them in I will send them to you, and shall be very much obliged if you will solely mark the mediocrities. " I play moderately at whist, billiards, and ball. Nothing can be done here without immense reading. Give my very best respects to Mrs. Butler, the Miss Butlers, and Tom. " I remain, dear sir, your affectionate pupil, "M. LAWSON." To Monk, March 25th, 1812, Dr. Butler writes : ***** " My fourth volume is dreadfully heavy upon my hands ; the trouble of fragments, of revising the scholia, of making an index rerum and an index auctorum to all Stanley's notes, of digesting the mass of materials into a preface, with a life of yEschylus and some criticisms on his works the weight of all this oppresses me, and though I have made and am making some progress with it, I fear it will not be finished till the year 1815. The Per see is printed, but my mind sickens under these indexes. I have also to digest near a thousand references which I have made to passages in which ^schylus is quoted by the ancient writers, and ignorance of which was one of the many (Aoer dans les journaux les articles favorables. II serait bon de faire insurer dans une de vos gazettes libres 1'article suivant : " ' Le poeme de Charlemagne, dont. 1'impression e"tait deTendue sous le regime imperiale, a paru bien imprime" a Paris, mais les feuilles publiques de Paris refusent d'inse"rer la copie des journaux anglais favorables a ce poeme et s'empressent de prodiguer les injures a 1'ouvrage et a 1'auteur. Cette conduite n'est elle pas encore plus dshonorante pour le pouvoir que le refus d'imprimer ? Heureuse Angleterre ! il n'y a de lois que chez toi. II est remarquable que la Henriade a &6 publiee chez nous pendant la persecution de 1'auteur, et que Charlemagne, imprime dans les memes circonstances, est accueilli a Londres comme il le merite et couvert d'injures a Paris ! . . . Mais quelques feuilles de Paris ne font pas 1'opinion de la France ; et 1'ouvrage et 1'auteur sont au dessus de ces folliculaires esclaves.' "Re"digez cela comme il vous paraitra convenable. Je vous embrasserai en Juin : Madame vous dit mille choses. " Votre t. cher ami et eleve, "LuciEN BONAPARTE." To M. CH. BOYER. [April 10th ?20th ? 1815.] " M. C., J'ai regu ce matin 1'exemplaire frangais de Charle- magne. " Je ne puis pas vous exprimer comment je suis etonne" de ce que vous venez de m'annoncer a la fin de votre lettre. Si cela soit vrai, nous ne devons pas compter sur une seconde Edition ni de 1'original ni de la traduction en Angleterre, tels seront les preventions de tout le monde centre le Prince de Canino. Pour moi je ne vois rien de de>aisonable qu'il se soit reconcilie" avec son frere, mais il faut vous avouer que je suis bien surpris qu'un homme d une telle grandeur d'ame, apres avoir renonce" aux affaires 1815.] CORRESPONDENCE. 105 publiques, s'y mele encore. Neanmoins je suis bien persuade" que ses vertus et son me*rite sont beaucoup au dessus de mes louanges, et je lui conserve une amide" zele"e et tres fidele. Mais il me sera impossible a dessiller les yeux des prevenus, qui seront en ce cas, je vous 1'avoue, presque tout le monde ici ; sans doute je souffrirai moi-meme pour la partie que j'ai pris, mais patience, je suis anglais, et je ne saurai point abandonner mes amis lorsqu'ils ne s'abandonnent eux-memes. Re"pe"tez done au Prince, je vous en prie, mes assurances d'une amitie bien respectueuse et sincere, et croyez que je suis avec beaucoup d'estime " Votre, etc., " S. BUTLER." The foregoing of course refers to Prince Lucien Buonaparte's reconciliation with the Emperor Napoleon. FROM E. JACKSON, ESQ. (A FORMER PUPIL). "BURY ST. EDMUNDS, April 2ist, 1815. ***** "Cambridge now is horribly stupid, not a gown to be seen. The fever still continues. The only remaining undergraduate at St. John's had it when I was there on Saturday, and was scarcely expected to survive. It is also at Trinity, where a few of the men have been rather rebellious. The other Colleges are without a tenant, save perhaps one or two port-drinking fellows. Lawson, of course you know, carries the medal to Magdalene. He probably will be a Wrangler, since he never passes a day without doing something considerable in mathematics. The Latin Ode he also professes to write for, and most probably the Greek, without he quarrels with that most unfortunate of subjects, the restoration of Louis. All this I learnt from a letter of his to Ned Hughes. ***** " The papers for the University Scholarship are not yet, I hear, looked over. Pennington, a freshman of King's, and Hare, an old opponent of Lawson's, are the two favourites. Downward professes to do nothing, but at present reads nearly as much as any one of his compeers. Irton professes to do nothing and does nothing. Matthews * is little more than a mad, infatuated politician ; he reads the papers all day long, to furnish him with matter of abuse towards the Regent and his Ministers for the evening. George Yate, an old pupil of yours, is at Queens' the most staunch, the most devoted, the most inveterate Simeonite in the University, and S is as great a beast as ever. Here ends the Shrewsbury catalogue. * See letter of February igth, 1833, and later letters. ED, 106 CORRESPONDENCE. [Cn. VIII. " Of course you have seen the decree which prevents us from returning to Cambridge till May 2oth. Not anticipating any- thing of this sort, Hughes and I returned on Thursday. He remained, but I was compelled to retreat immediately. I am now in Bury, and have procured very good private lodgings ; if you know the town, at Winn's, a very gay toyshop in Abbeygate Street. Hughes, I expect, rejoins me to-morrow. You perceive we are becoming more and more intimate, and I sincerely hope we shall continue to do so. Do not be so long before you write to me again. I promise not to be so tardy an answer in future. I am afraid, however, Tom Hughes is too great a monopoliser of your affections. I hope I need not be jealous, but I confess I fear. Mrs. Butler, I hope, is well ; it is quite a pleasure to me even to write the name, so many kindnesses have I received from the original, and so many grateful associations arise from the remembrance of it. I have very often indeed, with an Euclid or a Wood before me, detected my truant thoughts revisiting my old haunts in the school gardens and re-enjoying their old scenes of happiness. But all the time I lose by such reveries be assured I lay to your charge. With kind remembrances to all my friends in Shrewsbury, believe me " Yours most affectionately, " E. JACKSON." FROM THE REV. FRANCIS HODGSON. "April zyd, 1815. " I was sick when I heard of Lucien's adherence, and thought of ' Je te desavoue.' Thank Heaven, mi cartsstme, foolishness of conduct is not faithlessness of, or to, principle. Oh, what a fall is here if it be true ! ***** " As to Bonaparte and the Allies ' Three blue beans in one blue bladder, rattle rattle beans, rattle rattle bladder.' See Lord C - 's speeches." The first of these two extracts leaves little doubt that Lucien had used the words there quoted to his brother. FROM MARMADUKE LAWSON, ESQ. (Original destroyed by me. ED.) "YARMOUTH, May \2th, 1815. " DEAR SIR, Although my mind at present (as you may suppose with a man far advanced in Newton) is entirely set on 1 8 1 5 . ] CORRESPONDENCE. 1 07 things above, yet I cannot neglect the less celestial duty of thanking you for your kind advice, as on other occasions, so more particularly on this last. As to Newton, I fear I shall never be under much obligation to him, for any honour I may attain, though I give him due credit for undeceiving the vanity of those men who imagined that this little earth, like a great prince, kept the sun and stars as butler and livery servants, when in fact she has only one little link-girl, the moon, to show us our way home on an evening, and she only does half duty. In fluxions, how- ever, and algebra I have great hopes, though I cannot help smiling at J. Wood's raptures on the consummate symmetry of the hyperbola, and of impossible roots which always go, like partridges, in pairs. " They made me pay income tax for my scholarship, and much of the money had been lying at low rate in Mortlock's hands, so I only got about forty pounds. This, as you would say, is most Pittiable. Having just received my salary I am bound to speak well of the author of it, but the name is an insurmountable obstacle. " Cambridge will now feel her dependence on the University. Hudson received for many weeks ten shillingsworth of letters per day about the fever. Besides scarce any admissions for next year ; only six in the last six weeks at Trinity, against thirty last year. Hildyard will have another chance of a Bell. Thirlwall is the first who ever migrated to a more honourable but less lucrative scholarship. This is rather singular, as Price and Owen were Bell's Scholars. Hildyard did some excellent exercises and was first of all, and some as bad. " Yarmouth has been ruined by the peace. Shopkeepers say that no one buys anything but necessaries, and lament the depression of the farmers, who were the best customers and paid best while they had the pence. The change in affairs, however, may do good. I am astonished at reading every day the news- paper of that day last year. All seems a mockery. Kings turned out for mere sport, like bag foxes. All trades surfer, but particularly innkeepers, for no farmers stay to dine as before. The best trade now seems that of Hangman. The one at York has just retired after nine years' duty commuted from sheep- stealing ; he has amassed nine hundred pounds in his professional capacity, and is to receive the fair hand of a respectable trades- man's daughter. " I never ride here the horses are all broken-kneed by young midshipmen who know nothing about the matter. I expect my own mare to meet me at Cambridge. I travelled here with a noted character, Amos Todd of Acton near Bury. He is the man who wrote his name and abode on a taxed cart in such a way that he was near being indicted for a libel on Parliament. He wrote ' A most odd act on a taxed cart,' hereby complying 108 CORRESPONDENCE. [Cn. VIII. with the act which requires that every letter of the name and residence shall be inscribed on the vehicle. He was a very curious fellow, but abominably mercantile. He wanted to know what line I was in, and compared Lord Wellington exposing himself unnecessarily in battle to a grocer who, though im- mensely rich, will keep coming behind the counter among his apprentices. ... I am near the church, the only one in Yarmouth, which contains twenty-five thousand souls. This is indeed for one man a pretty good cure of souls, which word ' cure ' implies that they are all diseased, and thus confirms the Church's doctrine of original sin. I see of course three or four funerals daily, and about one marriage. Opposite me is an hospital for seamen, who breakfast at seven, dine at twelve, tea and supper at seven, and yet I am shocked to say are most impious people ; and so are all sailors. To prove this, a vessel was lately wrecked here, all the crew of which would have been saved, but they, thinking it over, ran to the spirit room, and twelve were found literally dead drunk I mean they died drunk. Yet if, as the ancients held, it is dangerous for a pious man to go on board with impious, we shall have to wait some time before we can be safe in travelling abroad. Scholefield at Simeon's offended many of his hearers by telling them this fever was a judgement on Cambridge for its wickedness. " My exercises, I hear, were criticised in the Antijacobin, how I cannot tell ; I did not suppose a work privately circulated would have been noticed. After all I fear the Vice-Chancellor's bias to Eton, as he was second master there. Their style is peculiar." FROM A PARENT (A LADY). "Midsummer, 1815. " MY DEAR FRIEND, In consequence of my having omitted to send to the post on Thursday, I did not receive the unpleasant intelligence conveyed in your letter till yesterday (Friday evening). I am truly distressed to hear that Eliab has been concerned in such a terrible transaction. I sent for him immediately after I received your letter, and desired him to tell me the truth, which he did directly, without attempting to conceal any part of his conduct, and I found he had last week told his brother and sisters the same account, therefore I have reason to suppose he has not deceived me. This sad business took place a few weeks before the vacation. Eliab says V , H , and himself went to the cellar door, and he believes it was V who proposed taking the wine, but that he was the first who began with his knife to cut the spar of the door ; the others helped him, but finding they could not accomplish their purpose, P fetched a saw and finished cutting it ; the boys then scrambled in, and Eliab first got out a bottle which lay within his reach, i8is-] REJOICINGS AFTER WATERLOO. 1 09 but most of the wine was at a considerable distance from the door, so H invented a long stick with a hook to it to get it out. There were very few bottles that any boy could reach excepting H , who was left-handed, and nearly all the wine was taken out by him. H told the other boys it never could be found out. All the boys helped to drink the wine and rum, and Eliab says they are constantly in the habit of doing things as bad as this, and therefore they did not think it worse taking wine than taking other things. He does not know that more than seven boys went to the cellar, but as he was not always with them, and they fetched it at different times, he does not know. Their names are . . . He thinks the latter did not take any wine, but only helped to saw the door. All the boys knew of the transaction ; Eliab says he is sure he is not more to blame than the rest, and that when the windows were broken the bigger boys ordered the little ones to break them, and, if they refused, said they would beat them. He says no boy dare tell of another or the rest would nearly kill him. I believe I have now told you all he said on this subject, and I know you will advise me what is best to be done with him. I think his share in the transaction cannot have proceeded from a propensity to drinking, for though I offer him wine daily he never will drink it. If you do not think it right that Eliab should return to Shrewsbury you will let me know immediately, because I know a clergyman who takes a few pupils, and who would, to oblige me, take him, but I shall leave it to you to judge for me what is best for him. Accept my kind regards, and excuse a letter written in hurry and agitation." FROM DR. Du GARD TO DR. BUTLER, WHO WAS AT BARMOUTH FOR THE HOLIDAYS, re THE REJOICINGS AFTER WATERLOO. (Original in Shrewsbury Museum.) "July, 1815. " DEAR SIR, Your fireworks went off by coach from the Lion on Monday morning, and Burrey would send the rocket sticks. Our big days exceed all description. There could not be less than thirty thousand to forty thousand spectators to see Lord Hill enter the town. - I conjecture the procession must have reached two miles foot and horse ; no less than five thousand horses were in town; stalls and beds were at a great price. The dinner tickets sold for thirty shillings and upwards, or ten shillings premium, such was the enthusiasm to dine in the same room with Lord Hill. " To drink tea in the Quarry there could not be less than twenty thousand to twenty-five thousand : immense tin canisters, capable of holding all your children, were the tea-pots ; seven 110 CORRESPONDENCE. [Cn. VIII. hundred pound weight of cake was cut up and distributed in baskets, with many barrels of ale. Near three thousand people were dined besides in the public-houses, on good roast mutton, new potatoes, etc., etc., three pints of ale each and a paper of tobacco. There were no drunken people about, and all were satisfied with the dinner. The gentlemen's dinner was good : a cold collation and hot venison ; turtle and turbot in profusion. The ball-room crammed so that you could not move till they divided, and part went below into the dinner-room at the Lion. There was then a crowded ball in each room and three long sets of dancers. Every one was delighted with Lord Hill, and his attentions were universal. In the Quarry he was near being crushed to death by the press upon him, and he literally ran away across the field up to Mr. Rocke's garden the people hunting him like a hare to shake hands with him, or touch the skirt of his coat ; one poor woman kissed the button on his coat and went away very much satisfied. The presentation of the box took place on the terrace at Mr. Rocke's : the Mayor, Aldermen, and Corporation, with the ladies, formed a crescent, the open part towards an immense concourse of people in the Quarry below. The applause on his Lordship's entrance was beyond anything I ever heard, and his reply to Loxdale's speech on delivering the box was delivered very gentlemanly and well, but the thing which amused all was his returning thanks on the top of the wall to the Quarry assembly (which he did neatly, feelingly, and off-hand) for their support at the election.* Give my kind regards to all." From a letter signed J. Sheepshanks, and dated June 3Oth, 1815, as also from Mr. Hodgson's letter here given, it is clear that Dr. Butler contemplated applying for the head-mastership of Leeds Grammar School, then vacant. I have often heard my father say that Dr. Butler had fully made up his mind to leave Shrewsbury, but that, as he was on the point of doing so, the school suddenly filled in 1816, after which date the only difficulty was that of finding accommodation. FROM THE REV. FRANCIS HODGSON. " BRADDEN, July 2T,rd, 1815. " MY DEAR FRIEND, In the most rapid haste I write to ask you what this means ? Out of Herefordshire I hear that you are * Lord Hill was M.P. for Shrewsbury till he was raised to the Peerage in 1814. Ep. 1815.] MR. TILLBROOK. Ill about to leave Shrewsbury, and for Yorkshire. Of course this means for Leeds School, of which I thought and have ever regretted not being a candidate. For heaven's sake, if so, remember me, and let me step into your shoes at Shrewsbury, or turn out that horrid what's his name, and associate me with you there. Sir, ' the Hotspur and the Douglas ' (I cannot help this gross vanity; for heaven's sake again, forgive it) would be ' confident against the world in arms.' " Never more affectionately, more seriously, more rapidly, or more foolishly, " Yours, " FRANCIS HODGSON. " Pray write by return of post without fail. " Of course I shall be secret on the Herefordshire report, which perhaps after all is most absurd. Heaven help you." Mr. Tillbrook, many of whose letters will be given in due order of date, must have been a great letter-writer, but it is to be feared that no other series of letters from his pen has been preserved save those now in the British Museum among Dr. Butler's papers. Of all Dr. Butler's friends there was none to whom he was more cordially attached, and I can hardly doubt that, if asked who was the most fascinating companion, who, if I may say so, the most Shakespearian man whose path had ever crossed his own, he would have at once named Mr. Tillbrook. By the kindness of his son Major Philip Tillbrook, I am able to furnish the following brief outline of his life. He was born at Bury St. Edmunds, April i6th, 1784, and educated at the free school in that town. He went thence to Cambridge, where he entered at Peterhouse, of which College he became both Tutor and Bursar. In May 1829 he was presente"d to the College living of Freckenham ; on December i$th in the same year he married Frances, daughter of the late John Ayling, Esq., of Tillington in the county of Sussex, by whom he had two sons, Major Philip Tillbrook, Standard-Bearer of Her Majesty's Body Guard, the Rev. William John Tillbrook of Strath-Tay Parsonage, I 1 2 CORRESPONDENCE. [Cn. VIII. Perthshire, and one daughter, Mrs. Frederick Inman of Bath. He died on May 2Oth, 1835. The only work catalogued under his name at the British Museum is Historical and Critical Remarks upon the Modern Hexametrists, and upon Mr. Southey's Vision of Judgement (Cambridge, 1822). It consists of eighty-four pages, that abound with quaint and elegant scholarship. He appears to have been a universal favourite at Cambridge. " I have not yet seen old Tillbrook," says one correspondent, " but we shall ere long have a laugh together ; he is a queer old rogue ; he limps like Vulcan, and raises inextinguish- able laughter among the immortals. His hair has fallen off and bared his open front, which shines like Hesperus. . . . He never sees me without uttering imprecations on my head for defrauding him of a beefsteak which he says I have long promised him." FROM THE REV. S. TILLBROOK. "PETERHOUSE COLLEGE, February ^th, 1816. " MY DEAR DOCTOR, All the parties concerned in the future prospects of young A feel infinitely obliged to you for the very kind manner in which you have listened to our petition. " But unless your good rules, like those of grammar, admit of occasional exceptions, our labour is poured out in vain, and our longing young protege will never drink at the fountains of Helicon. Alas ! he is more than sixteen, for his birthday fell the 1 2th of last September; nevertheless he is less than sixteen in stature indeed he is not equal to the common race of fourteen- or fifteen-year-olds. It is reckoned a pleasant thing to kill Time ; dare you not for once become a tempicide ? Though neither you nor I have any right to break Priscian's pate, or to transgress the laws of the land, yet for once we may crack the hour-glass of our old enemy, and transgress laws of our own enacting. If this were not so, self-lawgivers would furnish fetters and manacles for themselves, and stand in perilous similitude of certain folks alluded to by Master Ovid's speaking nut-tree. " Let me then beseech you by all the endearing ties of hie h Do you remember his exclamation ? Vide Nursery Stories, Vol. I., p. 20 : ' Fi, fo, fum, I smell the blood of an Englishman.' Now could you not as a mythologist and Grecian undertake to prove that this said giant was one of the Titans, and therefore might be Prometheus, who, according to the comparative testimony of historians, may be anybody ? Again, in the exclamation ' Fi, fo, fum,' you might trace the use of the digamma. Is not this succession of syllables as pleasant as ea la la or TTO. TTO. TTOL, or any other of choric systems ? ' Heigho ! ' 1 26 CORRESPONDENCE. [Cn. IX. is certainly a corruption of iw, and why should not Fi, fo, fum be something else ? Accept my challenge to produce more nonsense in a page than I have done in this, and you may expect a better supply than this soon, for I am reading the Latin Facetice Laus Asini, Laus Stultitice, etc. " Your most devoted friend, "S. T." FROM THE REV. T. S. HUGHES. (Original in University Library, Cambridge. ED.) "March iSt/t, 1817. * * * * * "The Fellows of Trinity are all like a hive of bees when a wasp has got in among them. Old Saint Ramsden holds the living of Chesterton and requires them to present him to one of the best in their gift, without his vacating the former. This they are unwilling to do, so he has thrown them into the visitors' hands, and from certain circumstances will probably gain his point. You must know that Chesterton fell when Mansell was made Bishop, and so may, for that presentation, be considered a Crown living." FROM DR. BURNEY. "RECTORY HOUSE, DEPTFORD, April i$th, 1817. " MY DEAR DR. BUTLER, Do not suppose me insensible to your great and continued kindness; I was unwilling to return thanks till I had found time to look over your volume, and well and amply have I been repaid for my delay. " Your work has been long and laborious, and I congratulate you very heartily on your arrival at its termination. When I consider, indeed, the length of your task, and the difficulties by which you were chained down, independently of your ^Eschylean difficulties, I cannot but think that the time you have devoted to this author has been well spent, and has been crowned with success. "When your fourth volume arrived from Mr. Evans, I was fighting against or bearing with an attack of the gout. After its leisurely departure I was obliged to give my time and thoughts to various occupations which I had neglected during my illness. It was not till Easter approached that I could fairly buckle on my armour, and attack my friendly foe friendly, indeed, I may term him, for never was a lance broken with so little hostility. " As for my Tentamen, allow me to advise you not to waste many lines on it ; it was merely an experiment to see how far the generality of choruses might be reduced to antispastics, but by 1817.] CORRESPONDENCE. no means as presenting a system for others to follow. During its printing, I must observe, I was troubled with a complaint in my eyes which then left a variety of blunders in the printing, and particularly in the longs and shorts, on some of which the critics, hie et illic, have lavished a few loose shots. " When I am to have the pleasure of seeing you I know not, but whenever fortune may be so much in good-humour as to indulge me, I shall exclaim, ' Numero meliore lapillo.' " FROM THE REV. S. TILLBROOK. "CAMBRIDGE, April 2isf, 1817. " DEAR DOCTOR, Do not imagine that you are to offend my sympathies and associations and to caricature Ivy Cottage by an uncouth hieroglyphical libel with impunity ; horribili sectare flagello says one of the Greek poets, so take care of yourself, Doctor Birch ! Flumina amo sylvasque, and alder-trees and banks and other picturesque objects, and pray don't you? As to your questions I respond as followeth. "Black ingratitude in one pupil and desertion in three more have left me ^"140 poorer than I expected to be at this time last year. I am glad that better feelings have left you ^300 richer. Audaces Fortuna juvat ; but I being a meek-spirited, modest man, clothed with the sevenfold surtout of pride, obstinacy, and indomitable independence, am slighted, and always have been by that fickle rotatory Goddess. Sans interest, sans patron, sans everything that makes a man no-man, I left my cradle to swagger through the wilderness of life, gathering crab-apples by the way, and munching them on the thorn-stuffed stool of repentance. But not to depress your tender heart, which I am happy to find was only cracked, not broken (and therefore, like ice, will bear the better till it thaws), I will be silent on my own woes. " I should like much to pass through Shrewsbury on my way to the north I suppose you will be at home till June 2oth ? If I come, I will approach like Apollo, cum cithara carminibusque. I will be a Tibicen. Oh for the liberty of the mountain boy, the frisky mutton of the fields, the roving tyrant of the seas, or any other poetical type of freedom ! " My dog Pepper is as playful as a piper so much so that I am inclined to think (being a disciple of Pythagoras) he formerly filled that station in some of the Roman palaces. He greets your dog, the noble Rolla to wit. He has rendered the College great service by clearing the buttery and kitchen of rats. I have thought of turning him into the House of Commons soon, where he would play the very devil. The other day he went with me to the public library in search of dog-Latin, which he found in great abundance ; when the librarian entered Pepper set up a 128 CORRESPONDENCE. [CH. IX. barking, and treated some of the ancient authors with great contempt. . . . " Farewell, amico stimatissimo ; commend me to your good and kind household. . . . "P.S. Young A -- 's progress is very pleasant for all the parties therein concerned. " Two days ago I was seanced by one of the philosophers of the Spurzheim and Gall school ; what, think you, were the lead- ing characteristics of my thick skull ? Pride and obstinacy, organs full and distinct wit and imagination superabundant benevo- lence unlimited poverty undeserved friendship strong and last- ing of morality and religion a smattering of true scholarship a vacuum of nonsense a plenty FROM THE REV. S. TILLBROOK. "CAMBRIDGE, May 2$tfi, 1817. " Do you know what has befallen St. Peter's old house ? Who could believe it ? An unknown person has given to the Master and Fellows of this college no less a sum than ^20,000. Ah ! twenty thousand pounds sterling ! And down upon the nail. The history of this affair is veiled in as much mystery as the Eleusinian rites were ; all I know is that I began the adventure at the risk of being made a fool of and of losing my expenses to town, but I will give you an outline of the business. " Ten days ago our Master received an anonymous letter, the contents of which appeared partly like an extract from a will and partly like a copy of instructions from a secret agent. The paper began thus : " ' I give and bequeath to etc., etc., and their successors the sum of to found scholarships and fellowships, without preference to school or county. . . . The residue of my bequest, i.e. the annual income from such residue, I give to the Master and Fellows for their full and entire disposal,' etc. " On the other side of the paper was this : ' Provided the College accept this offer a handsome present will be made to it, but the name of the donor must not be inquired into, and an agent must be sent to receive the money.' " This was treated by all except Smyth and myself as a hoax. The Master did not answer the letter. I requested him to allow me. He did so. I wrote a rara epistola, threatening vengeance upon the pate of any one who dared to quiz the Petersians. This brought a reply stating that there was no hoax, that if any one would take the trouble of a visit to town he would be referred to a most respectable agent, and the money would be paid if the letters were shown as credentials. No one but myself would stir, and I was called a fool for my pains, but ever obstinate as a brute, off I went inquired for the reference offered found 1 8 1 7-] CORRESPONDENCE. 1 29 parties highly respectable agent told me that he had the money and would pay it to the College Bursar. I sent off for the Master from Cambridge, and for Veasey from Bath. Bridge was in town. In two days the regulations were drawn up to found four scholar- ships of ^50 a year each, to be held till M.A. degree; also two fellowships of ^125 a year, each to be vacated by marriage or preferment, or by any permanent income above ^250 per annum the residuary interest at the full and entire disposal of Master and Fellows for ever. Two days after this the money was paid, and now stands in bank stock in the name of the Master and Fellows of Peterhouse ! Thus ended my adventure, and thus commences a new era in the prosperity of our most antient foundation. . . . " P.S. Hughes is as unsettled as a pauper with a pass. He knows not what to do or where to go. He ought to be shut up in your school library and flogged till he had finished his Travels." The buildings which were paid for with part of this curious bequest bear the initials of the Master, F. B., and of Mr. Tillbrook, S. T. These may yet be seen. The donor I find from Gunning's Reminiscences proved afterwards to be the Rev. Francis Gisborne, formerly a fellow of Peter- house. FROM THE SAME. " CAMBRIDGE, June $th, 1817. " Mine Hostess of the Garter when she respondeth to Sir John Falstaff doth not use the saying of ' Tilley Valley, Sir John,' but she sayeth ' Filley Falley.' But you ask me for the etymo- logy. I will endeavour to make it out, for I am not deep in letters, yet am I ingenious or inventive, wherefore I say that mine hostess lispeth and from ' Fiddle Faddle ' has arrived at ' Filley Falley.' Theobald, nor Steevens, nor Johnson, could have derived this better, and I contend that, in future editions, instead of ' Tilley Valley ' it be said ' Filley Falley,' and that a note be appended showing how easily T and F are mistaken in either Roman or Italian characters. " Your friend Dr. Parr has been here. I met him at Em- manuel, and was introduced to him as your friend by T. Hughes. The old boy shook me by the hand, and then again for your sake, and mentioned you in such laudatory terms that you must have blushed had you been present. I smoked five pipes and VOL. I. O 1 30 CORRESPONDENCE. [Cn. IX. played three rubbers with him, and a cheerful day we had but I should prefer a trio of the three Sams. " I wish you were here to-day ; we have a feast, a symposium in honour of our noble friend Ignoramus. I believe his bounty will not stop at the ^20,000. There is a talk now of his buying livings for his fellowships. I wish I could come within reach of him. I would try and angle out of him a few of his golden fish, to furnish Ivy Cottage with. " What stay do you make at Barmouth ? I suppose one may trace you by Greek inscriptions, mottoes, etc., on windows, the bark of trees, on the sands and elsewhere. I am reading your notes on ^Eschylus with more pleasure than you can imagine. ' I can construe but do not entirely see the construction of the following passage, in a chorus in the Seven Chiefs : Apa/covras u>s TIS TKva>i> {iTrepSeSoiKe Xe^ewv Svcrcwaropas Travrpo/Lio? TreXctas. Now' [word for word, and expletive for expletive] 'what a d d lot of genitive cases are here gotten together ! ' I have quoted the above from one of my pupils." FROM BARON MERIAN. "PARIS, June loth, 1817. " DEAR SIR, Item, a remarkable instance of book-learning : Johnson did not know what a rake is, and had recourse to the Edda instead of asking his farmer ! See his first note to Corio- lanus, and his islandic dog. This puts me in mind of a cele- brated professor who used to quote Aristotle in testimony of a most hazardous assertion, viz. that hens lay eggs. Not long ago I read as follows : Ha-mrd^ova-iv. Note, ' Solebant enim veterum, scias, pueruli patrem invocantes voce quadam uti quae pappa sonum referebat.' " There's another doctification in the notes to Coriolanus, about ' quarry.' Why, ' quarry ' is nothing in the world but curee. I am surprised that your commentators titubate about such common things. " Steevens is very often evidently in the wrong. He may be a very learned man; non moror ; but as for judgement, he has none or little. I venture to say that he does not understand Shakespeare, whose immortal flights are at least sixty thousand stadia above Steevens' capacity. The commentator of a poet, dear sir, needs to be a bit of a poet; atqui ergo ... I don't know who wrote the note on Brutus' speech ' He is grown too proud to be so valiant.' That note is wrong too ; Brutus says Coriolanus's pride is excessive, on account of his being or because he feels himself so valiant. See the answer of Sicinius. " You ought to draw your sword, my dear friend, and not suffer such inexactnesses to pass. Better no explanations than false ones. Remember the Byzantines, and let not the glorious 1 8 1 7.] CORRESPONDENCE. I 3 I flames of your unrivalled bard be drowned in the sentina of muddy commentation. " Now I stay for your commands concerning the books ; if you would give me leave I would present ^Eschylus to the Emperor. . . . " P.S. I am now reading again Shakespeare, and shall send you, if you think it worth the while, a few remarks. " Set some of your boys about S/avica. Believe me that there is no complete linguistica unless a man be able to compare those three large rivers, issuing most likely from one source ; viz. the river German, comprehending English, Danish, and the river Slavon, comprising Russian, Bohemian, Polish, etc., and the river Welsh (Galica pars), comprehending Latin, French, Spanish, etc. Thousands of Indian and Persian words are German. What Englishman knows what ' bale ' is (Coriol., I.) ? The Russian will tell you presently it is pain, suffering, evil. And so in innumer- able instances. " Ohe, jam satis esf, et plus quam satis. It is an odd thing in me to fight with Englishmen about their language. But you will excuse me, if you consider my great veneration for, and conse- quently application to, your immortal poet, and that I speak not from a vain notion of understanding English better, but from a consciousness of knowing German and French perfectly, unto which then your English resembled much more than now. So you find in Ariel's song a burden which is by no means an onus, but a true French bourdon. ***** " As Cato cried ' Carthago delenda,' so I cry ' Slavica discenda ' ! Do select one or two of your pupils for that purpose. I am confident the event and fruit will astonish. Take a tripod, knock off one leg ; there's our linguistic without Slav. We are and shall be out, and lame, and purblind, in ninety-nine thousand gram- matical questions, as long as we remain ignorant of that third essence, sure indeed quite as essential as the other two. Your own opinion confirms this. I think it possible to get up to the very elements of language ; general construction or articulation is evidentest in Greek : aw, Iw, iw, oa>, v, /Sew, /3iw, /3cxo, /?u'w (all verbs), and so on." To BARON MERIAN. "June 30/A, 1817. " First to business, my dear Baron, and then to criticism. You will greatly oblige me by retaining the English books, which you can so perfectly understand and enjoy, for your own use. I should feel proud indeed if you would undertake to present the ^Eschylus for me to your magnanimous Emperor. Dare I venture a simple Latin inscription, without adulatory epithets and 132 CORRESPONDENCE. [Cn. IX. flourishing superlatives ? If so, and if you approve of it, get some plume (for to write the following in the first leaf : ALEXANDRO RUSSORUM IMPERATORI MAGNAXIMO INVICTO CLEMENTI LIBERTATIS EUROP^E.E ADSERTORI AC VINDICI LITERARUM ATQUE ARTIUM HUMANIORUM FAUTORI ATQUE PATRONO RKGIIS OMNIBUS VIRTUTIBUS UBERRIME ORNATO ..ESCHYLUM POETAM NOBILEM CIVEM BONUM MILITEM HAUD INSTRENUUM OMNI OBSERVANTIA ATQUE OBSEQUIO COMMENDAT SAMUEL BUTLER S.T.P. REGIME SCHOL^E SALOPIENSIS APUD BRITANNOS ARCHIDIDASCALUS. A.S. MDCCCXVII. You may add before the day of the year, if you like, the day of the month upon which your Emperor for the second time entered Paris. " I am not sure whether I sent you my Installation Sermon preached at Cambridge before H.R.H. the Duke of Gloucester, our Chancellor. If I did not, tell me in your next. " Now for criticism. You are, I perceive, a better English scholar than the generality of my countrymen, and your observa- tions upon the commentators are very just ; but we laugh at them here too. Of all editions of Shakespeare, Pope's is the worst. Theobald's, whom Pope attacks so severely in the Dunciad, is very superior to it, and is indeed a respectable edi- tion. Johnson frequently misunderstood Shakespeare. Steevens was far better versed in the ancient lore and contemporary writers of the Elizabethan age, but you justly appreciate him. Malone's is much the best single edition, but is now very difficult to obtain, and there are some good recent variorum editions, one of which you found in the chest. The preface to Shakespeare by Johnson is inimitable. About ' quarry ' you are clearly right. Your explana- tion of ' He's grown too proud,' etc., is certainly quite right. It is curious that a great many Persian words are English, but they come, I suspect, through the German. Welsh is nearly all Hebrew and Greek, but the names for all the conveniences and luxuries of life are not Welsh ; they are Celtic, or English celtified. This is curious, and at once shows the antiquity of the language and the barbarism of the people." CHAPTER X. THE FORTUNATE YOUTH HUGHES'S INSCRIPTIONS. The Fortunate Youth. Correspondence on this Subject, October 29th, 1817 December 24th, 1817. Correspondence, October 3ist, 1817 June gth, 1818, with Review of Person's Adversaria. Paper on some Greek Inscriptions that appear in Hughes's Travels in Sicily, etc. WITH regard to the extraordinary imposture referred to in the heading of this chapter, I would say what I can in extenuation of the offender, and in explana- tion of the gullibility of the public. It appears from a letter written by Mr. Cawston, senior, August 5th, 1817, that his son, the so-called Fortunate Youth, had been desperately ill for some weeks during July, and at the beginning of August he was still unable to go back to school. This illness, which I suppose we ought to accept as genuine, may have affected his brain. I have made inquiries about him from those who remember him, and have found he was generally liked, while the tenor of whatever few allusions to him I have found among the letters of Mr. Sheepshanks and other schoolfellows is kindly. The Rev. F. E. Gretton, in his Memory's Harkback* says -of him : " He was a big boy when I was a little one, was among the senior lads, and held his own in point of scholarship.t He was * Richard Bentley, 1889, p. 31. f In a letter to Dr. Butler dated April 25th, 1826, Cawston gives his place in the school as third, Frank Matthews being head boy, and Andrew Lawson second. 133 134 THE FORTUNATE YOUTH. [CH. X. a good-natured easy-going fellow, much given to sham out of school, that he might devour novels and romances and fruit. He called himself Augustus C , but it oozed out that his real name was Abraham ; but woe betide us small boys if we ventured so to address him ! " As for the credulity of the public, it must be remembered that a very few months previously every one had believed that Mr. Tillbrook was being hoaxed but Peterhouse got the 20,000 and the laugh had gone against the incredulous, who accordingly resolved not to be sceptical next time, hoax or no hoax. The idea, moreover, of a young man of prepossessing manners coming unexpectedly into an enormous fortune is one that appeals readily to those who lead the public on domestic matters more surely than any others can do I mean mothers with marriageable daughters. Nine mothers out of ten will swallow with avidity any romantic story about a lad of eighteen, which they would not even listen to about an elderly married man with a wife and a family of grown-up children. Wildly improbable again as Cawston's story was, it was hardly more improbable than that a well-conducted, popular, and promising boy of eighteen should have the technical skill to fabricate, and the effrontery to propound and persist for many weeks in, such an astounding false- hood. Lastly, an uncle, by instantly accepting the boy's tale and placing ; 1,200 at his disposal, gave him money enough to fling about in the eyes of the public, and make it clear that he had a considerable sum actually in hand. Cawston was no longer at Shrewsbury, and Dr. Butler had no responsibility in connection with him, but when the story reached him as a matter of common report he accepted it. No doubt he was set off his guard, by having already found Cawston in possession of more money than a boy commonly has. I find from a letter of December 2 1st, 1817, which will follow in order of date, that Dr. i8i7.] THE GENERAL CREDULITY EXPLAINED. 135 Butler had more than once remonstrated with the boy's father about the quantity of money he appeared able to command. This is confirmed by the account of Cavvston given in Gunning's Reminiscences, Vol. II., p. 305.* Mr. Gunning writes : " When at a subsequent period Dr. Butler was writing to the young man's father, and expressing his entire satisfaction at the progress and general good conduct of his son, he also remarked that being allowed so much for pocket money might eventually be injurious to him, for that when he had asked one of his scholars a few days previously, to procure him change for a ^10 note, young Cawston had offered to change it for him; besides which he had learned on inquiry that he always had abundance of money." From the Hon. H. G. Bennet's letter of November (?), 1817, it seems that the incident above recorded occurred some time previously to Cawston's leaving school, and it was most probably the occasion that led Dr. Butler to send all parents his circular of May 3rd, 1816, in regard to the pocket money they should allow their sons. It must be remembered also that the imposture was not set on foot till after Cawston had left Dr. Butler's care. Had he gone back to Shrewsbury after his illness at Edinburgh he would (as he probably very well knew) have been cross- questioned and detected at once ; as it was Dr. Butler never saw him after June 1817. Mr. Gunning's account of Cawston is as follows : " His story was that on his return to school after the previous vacation he had met with an old man in the stage coach ; that they had had mtich conversation, but as they had upon most points differed so much in opinion, they seemed to part with no friendly feeling for one another. He further stated that, soon after he was settled at school, he had received a note from his travelling companion (who was residing in the neighbour- hood) requesting he would call upon him ; that he had found him living in very humble style, but that he had told him * London, George Bell, and Cambridge, Charles Wootton, 1854. 136 THE FORTUNATE YOUTH. [Cn. X. he was possessed of enormous wealth, and had been for many years looking out for some person to make his heir ; and he further added that he had been so much pleased with the spirited and independent manner in which young Cawstonhad maintained his opinions as to become desirous of a more intimate acquaint- ance with him. The old man then gave him a general invitation to his house ; but he had requested their interviews should for a time remain private. When paying him a subsequent visit he found his patron very ill, and believing that he should not recover he had made him a deed of gift of his whole fortune, with an earnest request that it should not be divulged to any person till the following January, as in the early part of 1818, he said, there would be no further occasion for secrecy. Soon after this the old man died, he said. " The Fortunate Youth (for by that title after a time he became everywhere known) expressed a desire that his good fortune should not be generally mentioned, as he had given a solemn promise that the iron chest in which the deed of gift had been deposited, as also many other important documents, should not be opened until the period stated, nor was he at liberty to divulge where his eccentric old patron had deposited it. He, however, expressed a desire to his father that he should lose no time in making him and his family independent ; and that he wished to state his views to Mr. Weatherley, a solicitor at Newmarket, of great eminence, and who was closely connected with all the nobility and gentry resident in that neighbourhood. "So clear did the young man's statement appear, that although the circumstances seemed very mysterious, Mr. Weatherley did not doubt the fact, and in all his intentions his client seemed to be guided by the most disinterested feelings. Mr. Weatherley took directions for his will and agreed to be his executor. " There is no doubt but that the want of ready money would have puzzled this young impostor, had not an uncle requested him to make use of twelve hundred pounds, which he said was lying in his banker's hands at Bury. " He entered his brother a Fellow Commoner at Emmanuel, stating at the time that his reason for deciding on that college was that the Master's wife (Mrs. Cory) was sister to Mrs. Butler of Shrewsbury, by whom he had been most kindly treated. ***** " I was afterwards informed by the Master of Emmanuel that young Cawston had accompanied his brother to Cambridge ; that he had been extremely pleased with his manner and address, and that he seemed to have much general knowledge and was a great connoisseur in paintings. When looking at the Fitzwilliam paintings, he remarked that some of them were pretty good, but that he had a far more valuable collection at his palace in Spain. Dr. Procter also told me that when Weatherley was asked one i8iy.] GUNNING'S ACCOUNT OF CAWSTON. 137 day whether his client's rent-roll equalled that of the Duke of Rutland, his reply was that he had more than double the amount. " Weatherley was instructed to be on the look out for a house calculated for a nobleman's residence ; and his client also expressed his intention of purchasing such boroughs as offered themselves, his opinion being that the possession of parliamentary influence was the sure road to honour and distinction in this country. " Among other statements, he said that the Empress of Russia was indebted to his benefactor one hundred thousand pounds, and that she paid annually six thousand pounds interest ; that on the King of Spain he had immense claims ; that his most valuable estates were in that country, but that he had also property in Germany and Italy. To give an air of truth to these incredible statements, he said that his mysterious benefactor had been a diamond merchant. "Nothing could exceed the romance of his story, nor the ingenious stratagems he devised to keep up the delusion. Tradesmen of all classes solicited the honour of serving him. This perhaps is not so much to be wondered at, but that bankers should contend for his account is rather a startling fact. " Mr. Weatherley suggested that the first thing requisite to be done was to make him a ward of the Court of Chancery, for which purpose two very eminent lawyers were employed ; he also recommended that a treaty should be entered into for the purchase of Houghton Hall, in the County of Norfolk, which had been for some time in the market, and would be a very suitable residence for him when he came into possession of his wealth. " Upon one occasion a draft to a large amount was picked up ; when it was restored to him he affected great vexation at his carelessness, saying it was so very material that his money trans- actions should he kept as secret as possible. He was frequently heard to express a hope that he should never become so avaricious as his benefactor must have been. He further applied to Government to take and bear the arms of Devereux ; and the Heralds' College was actually waiting for information as to what branch of the house of Devereux his patron belonged, when the bubble burst and he fell a sacrifice to his apparent security. " Dining with his friends one day, he spoke of the expected arrival of some Sicilian wines from his estates at Mount Etna. When they arrived he requested a few gentlemen to dine with him, that they might give their opinion as to which quality it would be most advisable to encourage ; he also talked much when they met on the advantages that would be derived from the improved cultivation of the Sicilian grape. On one of the bottles being opened a gentleman strongly suspected he saw a familiar name of a London wine-merchant on the cork, which he managed to get into his possession. He then wrote to the 138 THE FORTUNATE YOUTH. [Cn. X. wine-merchant respecting his dealings with young Cawston, and received for answer that his son-in-law, who had been employed for many years in the Sicilian vintage, had written to Mr. Cawston strongly recommending a trial of his excellent Sicilian wines, and that a supply had accordingly been sent him. " Eyes that had so long been closed now began to open. The papers teemed with suspicions, and in a few days a caution was inserted against the fortunate youth, who was spoken of as an impostor." The Morning Chronicle of December I ith, 1817, seems to have given the first public expression of distrust. This was replied to in a Cambridge paper of the following day, in a manner that shows Cawston to have still had warm defenders. " The delusion," continues Mr. Gunning, " lasted between two and three months, at the sacrifice of about sixteen hundred pounds. It was very evident that Cawston's object could not have been altogether for pecuniary gain, for he might have availed himself of thousands that were offered him. His repeated refusal and his expressed desire not to launch into any heavy expenditure previous to taking possession of his countless wealth, which, according to his statement, was on a near approach, encouraged the cheat." Mr. Gunning concludes by saying : " The deceptions practised on his family were very cruel and must have been deeply felt. A gentleman conversing with a farmer who resided in Mr. Cawston's neighbourhood, asked him whether the disappointment, added to his son's misconduct, had not materially altered him ; to which he replied that to him the only perceptible change was, his taking his brandy and water stronger than he had before accustomed himself to." CORRESPONDENCE ABOUT THE FORTUNATE YOUTH, OCTOBER 29TH, 1817 DECEMBER 24., 1817. FROM THE REV. T. S. HUGHES. "CAMBRIDGE, October 2gth, 1817. " MY DEAR FRIEND, Old Till talks much of the nodes cozn&gue deum of Shrewsbury. I hope this wonderfully fortunate boy will think of you, his old and good master, in his strange and good i8i7.] CAWSTOWS LETTER TO DR. BUTLER. 139 fortune. What an extraordinary incident ! I never heard of that rich old man in Shrewsbury, and it seems no one else ever did. What a fool and an ass to leave such a mint of money to one boy ! Why did he not augment the revenues of Shrewsbury School with a part, or found at least a hundred almshouses ? " FROM MR. ABRAHAM CAWSTON. (From a copy in the handwriting of Mrs. Butler.) " CHIPPENHAM, October $ist, 1817. " MY DEAR SIR, A daily expectation of visiting Shrewsbury on business with a mortgage of mine in the neighbourhood has alone prevented my giving you the earliest intelligence of an event 'in which your constant kindness warrants that you would take due interest. In fact I have some thoughts of purchasing an estate near Shrewsbury, as one has been offered on what my lawyer considers highly advantageous terms. The newspaper reports are equally destitute of foundation, truth, and probability. The real fact has not yet transpired, beyond the lawyers, etc., and my own immediate family, the full explanation of which I leave for a personal conference. My foreign property is immense, and my English very considerably above even that arrant jade Report, who for once is under par. My unfunded English property amounted to more than half a million at my friend's death, besides innumerable mortgages, etc. Perhaps my inconsiderate and volatile conduct when under your charge will admit of some palliation from the consideration that this enormous fortune has been hanging, like the fruit of Tantalus, at my very lips for upwards of two years, though compelled by interest and honour to conceal my expectations. " Every one knows the nature of a rich man's promise. Had I been disappointed, in case of a premature disclosure, what excuse could I possibly have offered to the public ? How could I have indemnified my friends for raising false hopes which must have inevitably ended in their ruin. Conceive, sir, the weight of con- cealment upon a young mind ardent and impetuous, and perhaps you will not be so much surprised at my having plunged myself into dissipatio"h, as the only refuge from thought and anxiety. Hence that vacillating turn of mind, that false pride, that indecision of conduct, which I fear too much distinguished me at Shrewsbury. I am thus anxious to palliate my conduct because I covet your esteem and regard more than that of any man breathing. This from me is no flattery or blarney, but the genuine tribute of attachment and respect. I have laid the whole circumstances before you. I shall leave it to your judgement whether I might or ought not to go abroad in a few months. At the same time 140 THE FORTUNATE YOUTH. [Cn. X. I wish to consult you on two or three points upon which the direction of my future life entirely depends. With feelings of the deepest gratitude and respect, believe me ever your most sincere and attached pupil, " ABM. CAWSTON. " I do not mean it as a compliment when I entreat you to use my means and interest to the utmost, if anything in which I can possibly be serviceable occurs. You know me too well to be offended at my begging that in case any sum of money would be at all at any time convenient, no other person may be consulted but myself. I shall be happy to furnish you with it at a day's warning to any amount, and in fact shall by no means leave England comfortably unless you allow me to show my gratitude for my past favour in a manner adequate to my present situation. Present my respects to Mrs. and Miss Butler. May I take the liberty to request you will tell Andrew Lawson I shall, if in health, see him soon, and also Leicester. " Dr. and Mrs. Cory, etc., were this morning in perfect health. I have a Hanoverian residing with me, who undertakes to teach me Spanish, French, and German without any other assistance. He also professes to be a correct classical scholar." FROM THE HON. H. G. BENNET. [UPPER GROSVENOR STREET. Letter not dated, probably November, 1817.] " MY DEAR SIR, I thank you very much for the trouble you have taken in sending me so detailed an account of your acquaint- ance with young Cawston.* I fear your own kindness of heart and want of all guile has made you judge too favourably of him ; from all I can hear, and I have the best authority, the whole story is a fabrication ; there never was either gift or giver, and he never had any acquaintance with any one who either gave or bequeathed to him one penny. All he has is the money advanced to him by his dupes. "I was the more curious to learn from you what you knew of this singular person, from the use he made of your name, and the abuse he indulged in of your school. He said that you were some time back so struck with his great command of money (as his acquaintance with the gentleman began a year and a half prior to the publication of his fortune by the testator's death), that you wrote to his father requesting him to cease supplying him with such large sums, as it would ruin the boy and his companions too. ***** " I can explain no part of these phenomena but by one solution is he insane ? Here I learn that he could not sleep alone, and * No draft of the account here referred to was found by me. ED. CORRESPONDENCE. 141 that a nurse and servant were with him all night. You know perhaps that he had a typhus fever ; is it possible that his mind has never recovered its assaults ? " Of course a prevailing fantasy would carry all before it, and all would be brought to aid in its accomplishment. Why should there be delusions strong enough to make the King forget the living and hold converse with the dead, and yet not strong enough to make another fancy himself heir to untold millions ? " I shall thank you to answer me as to the fact he has urged about his possession of money. I, as you may imagine, never fail to speak of you as you merit, which I am happy to find all the world concurs in." To MR. J. CAWSTON. [KENILWORTH, December 2ist or 22nd, 1817.] " DEAR SIR, I have received your letter on a subject too painful for me to recur to without deep concern. Any accounts that your son may have given you of his transactions with Messrs. Rock, Loxdale, & Coupland at Shrewsbury, I am sure are utterly destitute of foundation, but I am lost in amazement that on hearing such marvellous stories you never took the trouble to write to me to ascertain the truth. Messrs. Rock & Loxdale are my bankers, and from what passed between us not long before I left Shrewsbury, I am convinced in my own mind that your son never had any pecuniary transactions with them, but I have written to Mrs. Butler to make the necessary inquiries, and to send me word. I shall be at Emmanuel Lodge from January ist to January loth, and will in the course of that time contrive to come over to Chippenham. I shall also very much like to have half an hour's conversation with Mr. Weatherley. " I cannot avoid feeling great surprise at your inquiring whether your son spent much money at school, because I am sure that once, and I believe twice, I thought it necessary to write to you a letter of remonstrance on this very subject, owing to the profuse supply of money which he always appeared to have. How he got it, if you did not give it him, heaven knows. " There is no George Inn at Shrewsbury ; I believe there is a very small pot-house of that name. The principal inns are the Lion, Talbot, Raven, and Raven and Bell. " I had with great pains secured for your son an exhibition of ;6o a year, and considered him as likely to make his way extremely well at College. Are you aware that, after his supposed accession to his immense property, I advised him from time to time to be on his guard against persons who might probably wish to make a prey of him, and recommended him to place himself under the care of some able and highly respectable man at the University ? The last letter I wrote to him must, I suppose, now 142 THE FORTUNATE YOUTH. [Cn. X. lie in the dead-letter office, and is much to the same purport as those preceding. I wrote but two or three days before his departure in consequence of a message I received from him through one of his schoolfellows. I have too much reason to think, from some facts which I have heard lately, that this un- paralleled and disgraceful imposition has been in preparation a long time, and am anxious to see you that I may endeavour to develop my opinion. I shall write to you from Cambridge that I may fix a day for seeing you, and am, " Dear Sir, your obedient and faithful servant, "S. BUTLER. " I am much surprised that so serious an engagement should have taken place between your son and a young lady at Shrewsbury with your sanction, and without the slightest inquiry or com- munication made to me on the subject" FROM DR. CORY, MASTER OF EMMANUEL. "December 24th, 1817. ***** " I am sorry to add that all is over with Cawston. I received a letter last night from Mr. William Cawston, full of the distress in which all the family were involved by his brother's unaccount- able conduct, and informing me that he left London a short time ago for Paris, where he remained two days, and thence proceeded towards Spain, leaving no address nor any means of tracing him. All the references which he had left with his solicitor were dis- honoured, and there was no trace of any property whatever except what his brother-in-law had advanced him without solicitation." I doubt whether Cawston went to Spain. If he did he must have soon left for Italy, whence he wrote to Mr. Weatherley in the early days of January 1818. Mr. Weatherley, writing on the loth, says he had received a letter from Cawston on the preceding day, and that he was then in Italy ; " he speaks," says Mr. Weatherley, " of the events of the last few months as a delirium, but still writes as impressed with the idea of his having a large property. He does not state any particulars, and leaves everything relating to him as great a mystery as ever." Cawston's father, writing April 3Vto-iov fa/vos BovKtmov rptaxaSi xpaTwv A/uviov Kai Evytra NtKaperou (rwapeoroviTcov /cat TCOV vttov aj/aTi^eatrtv TO 8ov\iKOV avrwv Kopa&iov Soxri^av icpov TO) SepaTri, Trapa/Aetvao-av KpaTtovi /cat EvytTa, ews av ^V vtwv it is probable that their sons were arrived at manhood, and we may suppose their consent is here inserted in order to prevent any claim on their part as heirs, after the decease of their parents. In this and the preceding inscription we have the Ionic dative SepaTrt, and here also the Ionic form avaTifeao-iv. The adverb aveyxX^Tos, which would be more naturally inserted after 7rapa/*vao-av, here is left to the conclusion of the sentence, possibly having been forgotten either by the writer of the inscrip- tion or the stone-cutter in its proper place. "5. AP^OVTOS IIaTp(j)i/09 p.r)vos HX&.OU 1 TrevrfKaiSeKarr) HapOeva A.6r]vo8v ApoTrtvou Mcywvos 2 K /XT; Trpoa-rjKovra prjOevi p.r)tiev 5 TTJV ava.&o~w iroiovfj-evr], etc. " l The month Elthius [Note unfinished. ED.] " 2 The son's name and his father's are mentioned. " 3 The name of the slave is omitted. " 4 Here is a great difference in the mode of dedication. The slave is here dedicated at once to the god, without any inter- vening service. " 5 ' Free from all claims of every kind.' By which I under- stand his absolute and immediate dedication to the god. " 6. MTJVOS AXoXxofieviou TrcvTfKaLOfKar^ K^to-oScopa KpaTwvos 7rapovro9 avrrj TOU TraTpos KpaTtovos a^irjo-t 1 TTJV IOIOLV oovXrjv Eva/xeptSa tepav TOV SepaTTiSos, etc. i8i8.] HUGHES'S INSCRIPTIONS. 155 " l Here is the word a^uyo-i, by which we may understand that the slave is absolutely given up and dismissed from the service of the owner to that of the deity which was probably a sort of free servitude, if such an expression may be used. " 7. Apxovros Anrycovos /xrpos IIpooTaTTjpiou TrevrocatSe/caT^ M<.?7/uvov 1 Kat T^Aejuaxis Eu/3ouAou avaTiOeaa-iv 2 TO. iSia SouXt/ca Kopacrta AAefavSpov Kat av/xaorav tepas TU> Sepaim p.rj9vi p.r)0ev 3 Trpocn/Kovcras, 4 Trapa/u^vao-as 5 8e MiAon KCU Tr/Ae/m^iSt, CKarcpat? CMS av a)criv aveyxA^Tws TT^V ava^etriv 7rotov)u,cvat, 6 etc. " The dedications are made either on the i5th or 3oth. " l The name is corrupt. " 2 Note the Ionic form. " 3 This expression seems inserted in a more qualified sense in this than in the preceding. Their services are contingent to the deity, after the death of their mistresses ; and the words /j.T]OevL fj.f]6ev Trpocnjxovo-as seem inserted to bar all other claims. " * The original has Trpoo-^Koucra. " 5 Observe the usual corruption of H for El. " 6 The original has e/carepots and TTOLOV/J-CVOL, and seems cut by a more ignorant artist than any of the preceding. " 8. . . . paStov . . . ucrios . . . cri/Atov KO.I TlapOcva TTJV tStav SouAav Epyaaiav eAev^epav tepav 2 TO> SapaTrei irapa/xeivao-av Hapdfva ews av 77 aveyxATyrcos p-rj irpocrr)KOV(ra.v fj.r)0evi prjOfv TTJV avaOetrw, etc. " 1 a<^iao-t [Note unfinished. ED.] " 2 fXcvOepav upav. The slave here seems manumitted, yet dedicated ; but the priests, who were not slaves, were also dedicated to the god. But then Trapa/^etrao-av ? Can this mean that the manumission was not to take place at the death of Parthena, or that the dedication to the god was not to take place at that time ? " CHAPTER XI. EPIDEMIC OF TURBULENCE. Disturbances within the School. Dr. Butler's two Circulars to Parents. Correspondence, November 3Oth, 1818 May I7th, 1819. IN 1818 there was an epidemic of serious turbulence in almost all the leading schools of England, with (to quote Dr. Butler's words in a letter dated April 3rd, 1819) " one real and one ostensible exception." At Shrewsbury insubordination began by the boys eating more than they wanted, and then complaining that they had not had enough ; they got up fights in the town ; they very nearly killed a farmer's pigs, in what they called a boar hunt, and intimidated the farmer himself so greatly that when brought into the school by Dr. Butler, and asked to identify the offenders, " he was either unwilling or afraid to do so " ; an insulting placard was posted up in the hall threatening Dr. Butler with personal violence ; the painted glass in the school library was broken by stones of considerable size, evidently thrown by big boys ; the glass in the Doctor's library had been also broken ; other acts of insubordination occurred which made it necessary to expel three boys and dismiss a fourth. Dr. Butler therefore sent a circular to the parents of all his boys, desiring them to examine their sons and see whether they could find any reasonable ground of complaint, in which case they were to let him know. He concluded by saying : " You will hear your son's account and give it what credit you 156 i8i8.] INSUBORDINATION. 157 think fit ; but it is my particular request that no boy may return to me who is not duly sensible of what he owes to me and to his parents, and who will not promise to them and to me a cheerful submission to such rules as I may think necessary for the general improvement and discipline of the school." In a second circular, dated December loth, 1818, and sent with every boy on his going home for the holidays, Dr. Butler writes : " I have also remarked this half-year that the boys have been in the habit of receiving baskets of game and poultry from their friends. This I consider a very pernicious indulgence. They have three plentiful meals here every day, at which they are under no limitation ; and whenever any parents are so kind as to send me a basket of game, some is always sent to their sons, and frequently part is dressed for the other boys in their turn. Under these circumstances I cannot but consider supplies of game, or hams, or any similar provisions sent to the boys them- selves, as highly prejudicial, tempting them to form junketing parties at low houses, and exciting to other irregularities. I have therefore to request that where such practices have begun they may be discontinued, and that nothing may be sent them beyond fruit or cakes. " It has come to my knowledge that some of the upper boys, with whose turbulent conduct I have great reason to be dissatis- fied, are diligently instilling insubordination into the minds of those younger boys whom they think likely to receive their instructions. I have resolved on removing every such upper boy whom I know of from my school this Christmas, though, for obvious reasons, I have never mentioned this to them ; and I earnestly entreat every parent to whom I do not think it necessary to recommend his son's removal, to examine him most closely upon this subject, and impress him with the great im- portance of regular and orderly conduct and subordination, and of the impossibility of my showing any lenity or indulgence to a contrary behaviour." This was much the most serious and protracted case of disaffection with which Dr. Butler had to cope during the whole term of his head-mastership, not excepting the better- known " beef row " of 1 829. CORRESPONDENCE. [Cn. XI. CORRESPONDENCE, NOVEMBER SOTH, 1818 MAY I7TH, 1819. FROM DR. KEATE, HEAD-MASTER OF ETON. (Original at Eton.) "ETON, November yoth, 1818. "SiR, I have received your letter of the 27th this morning, and am very sorry to perceive that the contagion of rebellion has reached your school also. I am sorry too to be thought to have sufficient experience to be referred to as an authority on these occasions. I beg leave, however, to assure you that I am very ready to give my opinion. " The best answer I can return to your question, indeed the only one which I think I ought to give, is, that it has not been my practice either to rescind or to mitigate a sentence of expul- sion. I was requested to do it upon one occasion some years ago, and I have been importuned in the same manner in six out of the seven late unfortunate instances, but I have uniformly resisted, thinking my public duty paramount to every considera- tion of private feeling." FROM DR. GABELL, HEAD-MASTER OF WINCHESTER. (Original at Winchester.) 11 December is/, 1818. " MY DEAR SIR, You ask me if it is usual in cases of declared expulsion to change the sentence into dismission, or even revoke it altogether : I never heard of such a practice, nor do I recollect a single instance of it. " You ask me also if the master is not bound to be inflexible, etc. This question I would rather not answer in general terms, but I recollect no case which justified in my opinion the reversal of such a sentence, when once passed. No man could be more importuned than I was on a similar occasion, after our unfortu- nate disturbance last spring, but I thought it my duty to resist all importunity. " You have heard probably of the proceedings at Eton and at the Charterhouse, but perhaps you do not know that the Military College at Sandhurst has been in rebellion. The boys drew up in battle array against the professors. " It is not unlikely that I shall be in Warwickshire during the Christmas vacation, and I hope we shall meet." i8i8.] CORRESPONDENCE. 1 59 FROM THE HON. CECIL JENKINSON, AFTERWARDS LORD LIVERPOOL. " PITCHFORD HALL, December $th, 1818. "Mv DEAR SIR, I am extremely flattered by your attention to my feelings, as expressed to my friend Mr. H. Owen and others, respecting the late disagreeable occurrences in your school, and very happy that what I said to them was sufficiently noted to be repeated to you. To say the truth, but that I always fear putting myself forward, I should have troubled you with a letter as soon as I had read the statement which, as parent to one of your pupils, you sent to Mr. Corfield. " Believe me, sir, that no one sees with more anxiety than I do the conduct of those to whom public education in this country is entrusted ; on it in a great measure depends the production of those talents which, fostered and matured in this soil of rational liberty, make England a beacon and example to every other nation of the civilised world. " But that I fear and dislike to flatter you, I might say that your talents as head-master of a public school deserved a better field of exertion than Shrewsbury ; but you have shown, even on this comparatively unproductive soil, how much these talents could effect, and it would, I conceive, be most unjust and illiberal on the part of those who from property and residence observe this, not to render every assistance in our power, or to pay every tribute which is due to them. " Believe me, dear Sir, with these sentiments most sincerely " Your obedient humble servant, "CECIL JENKINSON." FROM THE REV. C. J. BLOMFIELD, AFTERWARDS ARCHDEACON OF COLCHESTER, AND BISHOP, FIRST OF CHESTER, AND THEN OF LONDON. " CHESTERFORD, ESSEX, December a,th, 1818. " MY DEAR SIR, I have directed my publisher, Mr. Mawman, to send you a xopy of my Agamemnon^ which is just published. I trust that, although I have often been compelled to dissent from your opinions, you will not find anything offensive. At the same time I am free to confess that, had an opportunity been afforded me, I should have expressed two or three things rather differently, but I beg you to bear in mind that the text and notes were printed a twelvemonth ago. In the preface I could not avoid alluding to the question about Casaubon and Stanley. I hope you will think that 1 have not done so in an improper manner. 160 CORRESPONDENCE. [Cn. XI. My own opinion on the subject remains the same. I beg you will present my respects to Mrs. Butler and the young ladies, " And believe me, my dear Sir, " Yours very sincerely, " C. J. BLOMFIELD. "P.S. I entirely agree with you in your explanation of Hughes's inscriptions, with one or two trifling exceptions. I have no doubt but that in the last HAPAMONON is the name of the slave." The name appears in inscription No. 5, and not in "the last." To THE REV. C. J. BLOMFIELD, CHESTERFORD. "SHREWSBURY, December 6th, 1818. " MY DEAR SIR, Before I receive your kind present I can- not but wish to assure you that nothing which I may find in it can make any alteration in those sentiments of friendship and respect which I entertain for you. The past is past ; TO. /*/ Trporc- TvxOai eao-o/xev, but I trust that each of us can add a-^^evoi -n-fp, in one sense only, and that a different one from the meaning of Achilles a sense of mutual regret that it ever took place. " When I receive your Agamemnon I shall run over it as fast as ever I can, reserving a closer study of it for a more convenient opportunity. I have no doubt that you will often find occasion to differ from me, and that I shall often find occasion to differ from myself. I am glad to have the opportunity of telling you that the whole plan of my publication was devised contrary to my most strenuous exertions, by a literary friend now no more,* who had great theological and more than moderate classical attainments, but who wanted judgement and taste. Hence arose those divisions and subdivisions which, having been adopted in the first volume, I could never afterwards get rid of. I was wrong to yield, and yet I can hardly blame myself. What could a young man not two-and-twenty, and wholly unused to the press, say against a ripe and practised scholar of nearly seventy especially when he had a tender interest at stake ? True, I became emancipated in the course of the work, but the first volume had given a fatal cast to the whole, and from the first I saw no remedy but a re-publi- cation with my own text and selected notes. Whenever I under- take that work I shall, in the preface, say of your labours what, under any circumstances, I should have thought it justice to say. " I have no copy of Hughes's inscriptions, and could see them but cursorily, having been constantly interrupted while writing * Dr. Apthorp, to whose daughter Dr. Butler was then engaged, i8i8.] RECONCILIATION WITH BLOM FIELD. 161 my few remarks upon them. I have not the least recollection of the passage, but think it highly probable you are right in the name. The verb 7rapa//,ei/o>, if I recollect, occurs so frequently in the inscriptions that I suppose in my hasty perusal of them I was misled by it. I cannot get at a single book till after Christmas, my library being yet unfinished. I have had a stirring half-year since I wrote to you. Luctantes ventos tempes- tatesque sonoras. I hope I chain them as well as their old master in Virgil. It has, however, completely put a stop to my book on metres, which must be delayed half a year. " If you see Hughes, that dAAorrpoo-aAAos now at St. John's, now at Trinity Hall, now at Emmanuel, and at present at some Cambridge fen curacy, you may ask him to show you a sketch of mine on Dodona.* " Last night I had a letter from Dr. Parr, in which he says he has heard from you again, from which I infer that you are in correspondence with him. I wish more that you were in his company; you could and would appreciate him. There are many who cannot and many who will not understand him. I venerate him, and if you knew him as I do, I think you would feel as I do. Mrs. Butler and my daughters beg their kind remembrances. " Believe me, my dear Sir, yours very sincerely, "S. BUTLER." So ended this long and bitter quarrel. The only breeze that ever afterwards occurred between the two men arose out of a little affair of which my kind and illustrious old friend the late Rev. Richard Shilleto told me as having happened when he was a boy at Shrewsbury School. Blomfield had then become Bishop of Chester and was paying a visit to Dr. Butler. He of course attended morning chapel with the boys, and was much scandalised at seeing Dr. Butler, towards the close of the service, begin to cut his pencjl so as to be ready for marking and correct- ing exercises. Dr. Butler of course promised faithfully that he would never cut his pencil in chapel any more, and, let us hope, kept his promise. * Slip of the pen for Delphi. See in British Museum among Dr. Butler's papers, Additional MSS., 34584, letters to E. D. Clarke, April 4th, April 23rd, 1816. I know of no memo of Dr. Butler's on Dodona. ED. VOL. I. 1 1 1 62 CORRESPONDENCE. [Cn. XI. FROM THE REV. S. TILLBROOK. "December "jth, 1818. " MY DEAR DOCTOR, I hope by this time that Heaven is quiet, and that you have expelled the Titans and all their rebellious crew. I have spoken to our youth Smith on the bursting subject. He seems very ready to accept the situation, and on comparing his strength with that of your present assistant feels no great horror at the thoughts of treading in his shoes, though he would avoid his steps. " I have seen your honest letter which has been circulated among the parents of your pupils. It seems to me that you have been too indulgent to the appetites of the young rogues. Who could ever hope to satisfy the real or fancied cravings of a hungry schoolboy ? I remember a schoolfellow of mine who after dinner drew the wick of a mould candle through his teeth, and ate the cold tallow afterwards. Upon this he piled up eight raw turnips and twelve large cooking apples. Besides these, he cracked nuts during a walk of four miles from the wood where he had gathered them, and then at night ate toasted cheese, and drank a joram of treacle, or ate it so crumbed with bread that the spoon stood erect in it. What do you think of that Master Apicius ? " I must dish up this hasty pudding." To A TRADESMAN IN SHREWSBURY. " SCHOOLS, Monday, December "jth, 1818. " SIR, Great pains were taken by me to appreciate the damages among the boys. I publicly declared my intention of exempting Mr. Jeudwine's boarders and the day scholars if they should be proved by their respective head boys to have no concern in the general mischief. No attempt to exculpate them was made that day. The next day the head boy of the day scholars said that only one was concerned. I then declared that only one should pay. Another was then named. I said that one, or two, or even three, should pay individually, but that as I knew many of my own boys and many of Mr. Jeudwine's were equally innocent, and yet were included in the general estimate of damage (towards which even my own son contributed, though to my knowledge perfectly innocent), if more were concerned all should pay. I left the head boy of the boarders and the head boy of the day scholars to settle it, and they agreed that more were concerned." i8i8.] CORRESPONDENCE. 163 To A PARENT. "SHREWSBURY, December tyth, 1818. " DEAR SIR, When I sent you my first circular I think I told you that your son had been misled at first, but that he had subsequently behaved very well. I wish I could confirm that opinion, but I am persuaded that he has not a proper sense of his duty to me, nor of my unwearied exertions for the moral and intellectual improvement of all the boys under my care. As it is of great consequence that there should be a frank and cordial understanding between the master and the head boy, who is obliged on many occasions to be in official communication with him, and to possess his confidence in many things, I think it right to request that he may not return to me. " I have the pleasure to send him to you a very elegant and accomplished scholar, and whether you send him to Trinity College at once or place him with a private tutor for the ensuing half-year it will make but little difference to him. I might perhaps in justice to myself have sent him to you a week ago, if not earlier, but I resolved that I would keep him if possible to the end of the half-year, that he may leave me, if not with all the satisfaction I hoped to have felt, at least without any mark of disgrace to himself. I heartily wish him well, and have little doubt that he will distinguish himself at college." FROM THE MASTER OF ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE. (Original in Cambridge University Library.) " ST. JOHN'S, December iSth, 1818. " MY DEAR DR. BUTLER, Every member of the University interested in the support of discipline must feel thankful to you for the firmness with which you have resisted the turbulence and self-will of foolish and presumptuous boys. Children nowa- days very early imbibe most pernicious notions, if not from their parents and relations, at least from the spirit of the times. I approve heartily of every point in your proceedings, and doubt not your school will stand as high in reputation for the due subordination and modesty of the scholars, as it does for their improvement in Jearning. " I wish it may be consistent with your feelings either to give me the names of those whom you have advised to leave the school or to withhold the usual certificate of admission to St. John's. We have a very numerous, and, I am happy to say, a most respectable and orderly set of young men. I could not knowingly introduce any sowers of sedition among them. They have no rights here, but are under obligation to submit to the statutes, and such regulations as the Master and seniors may see necessary." 1 64 CORRESPONDENCE. [Cn. XI. To DR. ROBERT W. DARWIN. "SHREWSBURY, February ^th, 1819. " MY DEAR SIR, I shall have great pleasure in sending my little boy to you on Sunday. I have requested Mrs. Butler to suspend the fulfilment of her promise to you made this morning. Every boy has one under and one good upper blanket, and a good quilt, which, if not new, is always double-lined. This has been the allowance ever since I have kept house, and care is always taken that, when an upper blanket becomes at all worn, it shall be removed and a new one put in its place. The same quantity of blankets, and the same quality as near as it is possible to get them, are on every bed in my own and in the adjoining house. What is the rule for one must be the rule for all, and I shall immediately get an additional blanket for every bed, if after this statement you think it necessary or even desirable. It is my anxious wish always to attend to real complaints, but not to gratify boys in foolish whims and prejudices, and I cannot help thinking that some such exist or have lately arisen among them on the subject you mention. You shall judge from what I am about to state. Immediately on Drew's arrival he put his hands on one of the beds (I think that of your son Charles*) and pronounced it 'as damp as muck.' It had in fact been certainly for two and I think for three days constantly before a large kitchen fire. When I consider that the complaint of Erasmus is the very first that I have received in twenty years upon the subject, and couple it with the other fact I have mentioned, I cannot help thinking that the boys have got some whim into their heads on the occasion. Last night indeed was a particularly cold night, and might perhaps be more felt than another, especi- ally after boys have just returned to school from domestic indulgences, but it was not so cold as many have been in other winters when I have had no complaint. You see how much I rely on the friendly interest I know you to take in what passes here, and I must trespass on it still further while I make it my particular request that you will not answer this note till you have seen Erasmus, and questioned him a little ; if you think it desirable that an addition should be made to the boys' blankets after what you hear from him, you cannot do me so great a kindness as by recommending that measure, and they will im- mediately be put on every bed in my two houses, if they can be procured at once in this town. Otherwise I must wait till a sufficient number can be got, as what is done for one must certainly be done for all." * I need hardly say that Charles Darwin of world-wide fame as author of the Origin of Species, etc., etc., is here alluded to. ED. i8ig.] CORRESPONDENCE. 165 FROM BARON MERIAN. " April gth, 1819. ***** "My feelings on your account can never be altered; a long war and a suspicious peace passed and pass away before them without leaving the smallest impression; but let them preserve their beneficent nature in its perfect purity, and may you frequently ask 'Why does he not write?' never 'Why does he write?' " Your rooms, my dear friend, are ready. You can, on going and on returning, alight and stay nowhere (unless you wish to incur a capital forfeiture) except at my humble cottage, which is situated Chaussee d'Antin, Rue St. Lazare, No. 56. Order your postilion to drive directly thither at any time of the day or night, et ccetera linque mihi. " And I shall not only creta sed minio notare the end of June 1819. " Yours most sincerely, " M." To THE OVERSEER OF THE SHREWSBURY FACTORY. "May ijth, 1819. "SiR, I have received information of an intention of some of the boys belonging to your factory to attack my pupils on their way to the water, either this or some following evening. I think the information is correct, but in my opinion it would be better not to take public notice of it, as the plan may go by. I suppose the scheme has been suggested by the election politics, in which I take no part beyond perhaps giving my vote to Mr. Corbet, perhaps not voting at all. If you think proper to commission a couple of your workmen whom you can trust to keep a look out from six to eight, or perhaps a little after, in the evening during the election, I shall be very willing to give them a reasonable compensation when the election is over, and I shall also caution my boys not to commence provocation, but shall not state that I have heard there has been any design of attacking them, which it is better that they should not know. "I remain, Sir, "Your very obedient servant, "S. BUTLER." CHAPTER XII. FIRST VISIT TO ITALY. Tour in Switzerland and North Italy. Correspondence, August 5th, 1819 July loth, 1820. THE following extracts from Dr. Butler's diary of his second foreign trip are as many as my space will permit : " June 2$rd, 1819. Wednesday evening, 6 p.m. Left London from the White Bear in Piccadilly; paid 3 i8s. for fare from London to Paris, including passage from Dover to Calais and 1 2S. for luggage. Arrived at Dover at seven on Thursday morning ; not much troubled at the custom-house ; embarked at half-past ten, and arrived at Calais about a quarter before one, having had a short but rough passage of about two hours and forty minutes. Hotel Meurice ; comfortable table-cThote at four, and a good bed- room. Went to bed early, slept well and comfortably, without any bugs. ***** " At ten left Calais with tolerably agreeable companions ; dined at six at Montreuil-sur-Mer upon a plentiful but not well-dressed dinner at four francs each. Tea and coffee at midnight at Abbeville (Tete de Bceuf ; twenty-five sous each, and half a franc at dinner and three or four sous at supper). Breakfast at ten at Beauvais (the ficu), exceeding in dirt and filth all that I ever saw in France, except at Mezieres ; reached Paris on Saturday the *26th, excessively tired. The diligence is not in itself a disagree- able conveyance, going at a regular pace of six miles an hour and being hung very easy and roomy enough for six persons and there are no stoppages at ale-houses. But the journey from Calais to Paris in hot weather is very fatiguing. " Sunday, 27 th. Dined with the Baron Merian in a private apartment au Cadran Bleu rainy day, no stirring out. ***** " June 2<)th. Weather still unfavourable. The Baron has engaged a caliche for me at six francs a day, and a very respect- 166 1819.] A SWITCHBACK RAILWAY. l6/ able and well-recommended servant at ten francs per day, finding himself. "June $oth. Passports signed at the Prefecture, where I was obliged to attend in person ; then by the British Ambassador, the French Minister for Foreign Affairs, the Austrian Ambassador, the Swiss and Sardinian Ministers. Dined at the garden of Tivoli and went down the Montagnes Russes in a car with the Baron. The car is a kind of chair like a gig body on four low wheels a man pushes you to the edge of the precipice and lets you loose. The car descends nearly perpendicularly some distance and acquires a great velocity, which is ultimately retarded by the gradual rise of the end of the course. I did not find it very pleasant or very disagreeable except where the car has to pass under an artificial grotto, the roof of which when you are above it in the course of the descent seems to threaten inevitable destruction by being too low for the heads of those who are to pass under it, but on arriving it is a few inches higher than the traveller and permits him to pass with perfect safety. The whole amusement seems very childish much more so are the swings and what they call the chars aertennes, which consist of a number of little boats with sails to them, fixed to the end of revolving poles." After saying that Paris was left at 3 and Fontainebleau reached at 8.45 (i.e. about eight miles an hour), the writer continues with a description of the cMteau, from which I take the following : " In a small apartment, a kind of cabinet to the King's bed- chamber plainly fitted up, there stands a round wooden table made I believe of cherry or some very ordinary wood, and about three feet in diameter. Its intrinsic value may be four or five francs, but at that table and in that chamber Napoleon signed his abdication of the empire of France. It is a little notched on the edges by a penknife, whether by his own or not I could not learn." Whether the table is still there or no I cannot say. The next day the journey was made to St. Florentin, about seventy-eight miles in eleven hours, i.e. about seven miles an hour. Leaving St. Florentin at four in the morning of July 3rd, Dr. Butler reached Tonnerre at seven and went on thence to Montbard. 1 68 FIRST VISIT TO ITALY. [Cn. XII. " At Montbard the mountains begin which are of an uninterest- ing kind, being low, tedious, and unpicturesque ; they continue for many leagues, but at length, on having climbed the summit of the mountain which overhangs the Vale of Suzon, and bears the same name, the horizon being excessively clear, what were my feelings on discovering in the W.S.W. the majestic pyramid of Mont Blanc ! This was at twenty minutes before seven in the evening. I was then six leagues from Dijon, and therefore about seventy, i.e. more than two hundred miles, from Mont Blanc. The horizon being excessively clear, I could see the immense extent of the Jura Mountains distinctly in a pale blue line ; above them, but at a much greater height, and so exceedingly faint as not to be distinguished by an eye unpractised in mountain scenery, ran a line which marked the Alps, and very distinctly in the W.S.W. the pyramid of Mont Blanc raised its eternal snows into the cloudless blue of the horizon. My feelings I cannot express. I gasped yet hardly dared to breathe as I viewed for the first time this monarch of the mountains. I seemed to fancy the genius seated on his stupendous throne far above his aspiring brethren, and in his solitary might defying the universe. I was so overcome by my feelings that I was almost bereft of my faculties, and would not for worlds have spoken after my first exclamation, till I found some relief in a gush of tears. With pain I tore myself from contemplating for the first time, ' at distance dimly seen ' (though I felt as if I had sent my soul and eyes after it), this sublime spectacle. " The descent into the Vale of Suzon is exquisitely beautiful ; the road is good, and everything that rock, wood, and mountain can contribute are here united to form this exquisitely secluded spot. It is five leagues long, from fifty to a hundred and fifty yards broad, and inhabited by a simple and contented race, who support themselves by their flocks and herds." The journey made was a hundred and eight miles in fifteen hours, or a trifle more than seven miles an hour. On Sunday, July 4th, Poligny was reached in nine hours from Dijon. " The country becomes less pleasing till we approach Champag- nole, where the first pine woods begin. The excessive dark and sombrous green of these trees, their formal shape and want of branches, all tend to make them unpicturesque, while at the same time the novelty of their appearance is such as to give them a kind of interest. ***** "Noirmont and Dole, along which I passed, are the highest 1819.] THE ALPS AT SUNSET. 169 points of the Jura, but after I got to Avalley the scene was most truly magnificent. The road, as level as a bowling-green, runs under enormous precipices of the Jura, many hundred feet in height and quite perpendicular. These are for the most part covered with pines, but where there is no fissure in the rock the naked and perpendicular precipice above is sublimely terrific, and these feelings are not a little enhanced by the traveller's recollecting that he is hanging, as it were, in mid air on the very brink of a precipice still more frightful, and without the least protection. The road, however, is wide and very good, but the prodigious height at least 3,000 feet above the level of the sea can only be estimated by casting a look into the valley beneath. The whole scenery, the pine-clad rocks, the green and smiling valley, the herds which graze it and which are scarce distinguishable by the eye, the chalets of the shepherds, and, above all, the everlasting variety of the rocks and distant mountains, are all delightful, but how shall I express my feelings when on a sudden turn in the road the whole panorama of the higher Alps presented itself to my view ! I saw all their summits piercing the very heavens and clad with everlasting snows for the distance of a hundred and fifty miles, from Mont Cenis along St. Bernard to the Simplon. Mont St. Gothard was wrapt in angry storms, which swept along the rest of the Alps to the east. Towering above them all rose Mont Blanc in solitary majesty. It was exactly the same hour as when I first saw this king of mountains from Mont Suzon, then two hundred miles distant. I am now within seventy, and the distance does not appear above fifteen or twenty miles, so clear is the atmosphere. Above the highest Alps floated an immense mass of thick clouds, which in about half an hour began to assume a singular colour. As the sun declined (and it sets in these southern regions about a quarter before eight) the clouds which were no longer lighted by his rays assumed a very lovely sea-green colour ; those which were partially lighted appeared of a yellowish green, and those huge masses which still received his rays became of a bright flame colour. The lower Alps soon began to be indistinct ; the snow-clad region was still visible ; soon it also became less clear, but Mont Blanc assumed an indescribable tint, a kind of rosy purple. The twilight here is short. The descent of the Jura is no less than twelve miles, all descent, but so easy that a carriage need not lock more than a hundred yards, though the postilion by way of precaution locked mine through the whole descent, and the wheel was almost red-hot when we arrived at Gex. I walked nine of these miles. My mind and heart were too full to sit still, and I found some relief by exhaust- ing my feelings through exercise. " I reached Gex at nine, and was obliged to drive hard to get from thence to Geneva before the gates were shut. The night was hea> enly : the moon was so bright that I could plainly 170 FIRST VISIT TO ITALY. [Cn. XII. distinguish all the lower Alps near Geneva, which lay absolutely under my feet ; when I first caught the panorama of the Alps from the summit of the Jura, I could even see the city with my naked eye, though more than twenty miles distant, and distinguish the houses very plainly with the telescope. It was quite dark at nine o'clock, when I arrived at Gex. From thence I drove through Ferney (Voltaire's abode) to Geneva. The night was heavenly : the full moon shone brightly on the Alps. The comet was conspicuous over the Jura, with a train of considerable length, like a falling sky-rocket. The evening star was shining with a splen- dour almost equal to the moon over the mountains of Voirons, and the north-west was in a continual blaze with the flashes of sheet lightning. I arrived at Geneva just as the gates were about to be shut, and though at a good hotel (the Balance) it is so full that I have been most miserably lodged this evening. ***** "I left Geneva at half-past seven and reached Lausanne at half-past five, having been ten hours in going eleven leagues. . . . On sending to a tailor for stuff for a waistcoat, I found all his best stuffs were English. ... In the catalogue of a circulating library kept at this place (Lausanne) by Louis Knab, which is now lying before me, I can scarcely find anything but translations of English novels." Vevay, Clarens, Chillon, Bex, Martigny, were visited in due course. " Saturday, July loth. I left the inn at Martigny, which I found clean but not very comfortable (Les Cygnes), at about a quarter past five. The road to the Col de Fourclas bears, as does all the Valley of Martigny, dreadful marks of last year's inundation. This inundation arose from a glacier having fallen into the Val de Bagnes, nine hours from Martigny. It there choked up the valley at a place called Malvoisin, and formed an immense dam for the waters of the Drance. After three months these waters were so accumulated that they burst their barrier and arrived in an hour and a quarter at Martigny, the usual time by the same route being nine hours. They destroyed three hundred houses, but fortunately only thirty-five persons ; the misfortune having been long apprehended, the inhabitants had withdrawn at the first notice to the mountains. This notice was a hurricane driven before the waters in their furious descent, which caused more damage than they did. I saw trees yet standing about ten or twelve feet from the ground, whose trunks of enormous size were snapped by the hurricane like reeds, and the trunks yet remain in some places where they have been swept by the waters and carried among the rocks. The water 1819.] MARTIGNYCHAMOUNY. \J\ seems not to have risen at Martigny more than twelve or fourteen feet, but as the valley is wide this is a great height, and the trees that remain have still all their trunks torn and stripped of bark by the enormous stones which were carried by the torrent and still remain on the plain. ***** " I have seen to-day at Chamouny that rare animal the bouquetin. It was caught by the hunter who killed its dam when it was just born, and is now two years old, and very playful and lively. I have seen only one eagle soaring in the Alps, and at present no vultures, of which I am told there are many. ***** ''Monday morning, July \2th. This morning I rose at five, intending to reach Martigny in good time, but I have been detained by my wish to see Jacques Balma, the guide so often mentioned by Saussure, and the very interesting circumstance of seeing two American travellers reach the summit of Mont Blanc. The direct distance from the summit to this place is only six miles, but the difficulties of approach are so great that the journey is no less than thirty-six. I went to Balma's house, and found the good old man not yet up (7 o'clock). He seemed much flattered by my coming to see him, and would accompany me a little way up Mont Blanc itself, that I might have the pleasure of saying I had been on it. We returned by the Glacier of Boissons, which is very magnificent. With my telescope I can very distinctly see the travellers, now within an hour of the summit. They have eight guides ; they took nine, but one seems to have failed at least he is absent. It is very curious to see these little insects, for such they look, going in a line on the snow. They appear to proceed well and rapidly. Their names are Dr. Van Rensselaer and Mr. W. Howard from Baltimore. Half-past twelve. They have this moment reached the summit, and I proceed on my journey. ***** " Tuesday, July i$th. I am just about to set out for the Grand St. Bernard. . . . Among several bad wooden bridges I have had to pass, the worst was this day. A Swiss bridge is always terrific. It is composed by two fir-trees, which if they grow near the spot and are long enough are felled so as to cross the stream. These are covered with a few inch boards when at best, but in general with a few deal scantlings, round as they come from the tree, and always loose. The bridge is almost always at a cataract, because there the river is generally narrowest, but you always feel and see the planks bend under the weight of your mule and see the water through the crevices. ***** " At a quarter past seven I reached the Hospice, involved in 172 FIRST VISIT TO ITALY. [Cn. XII. clouds, and exceedingly cold and fatigued. The effect of coming to a comfortable establishment after such a journey is incon- ceivable. The porter rang a bell on my arrival, and a monk immediately appeared, who conducted me into the refectory. Here I found the Prior and seven brothers had just finished dinner, and there were four strangers. Wine was instantly brought me, and in half an hour a very good dinner, consisting of potage au riz, eggs, spinach, and roast veal, with figs, cheese, and nuts for dessert. As soon as I had done, grace was said by one of the monks, and after a few minutes' general conversation we all went to bed, about nine o'clock. I was shown into a good room with a warm fire of pine logs, a bed well covered with an eiderdown quilt, and all things suitable. The wind whistled at my window like a dreary November evening, and the snow fell fast all this on the evening of a day the morning of which I had found intolerable for its heat. The whole of this day's journey seemed like a dream, its conclusion especially in gentlemanly society, with every comfort and accommodation amidst the rudest rocks and in the region of perpetual snow. The thought that I was sleeping in a convent, and occupied the bed of no less a person than Napoleon, that I was in the highest inhabited spot in the world, and in a place celebrated in every corner of it, at . . . feet above the sea, kept me awake for some time. " Wednesday, July \\th. . . . After breakfast I saw all their collection of natural history and mineralogy, and the coins and inscriptions which have been found in the Temple of Jupiter Pceninus (for so it is always spelt), and went to the temple itself, where are some remains of foundations. It stood at a little distance to the west of the present Hospice, at the end of the lake, than which nothing can be conceived more dreary, and which has only been thawed five days ago. But my great delight in this little excursion was the fine dogs of the Hospice, and the monk who was with me set them to work in the snow. They are in the head something like a Newfoundland, in the form like a mastiff, and most exceedingly docile and sagacious, very fond of strangers, and of great strength. When I had all the four jumping at once about me I could hardly stand. Two were remarkably fine, one called Courage, a sort of brindled colour dog, but getting old, and the other Jupiter, young and quite white. As I went to the Temple of Jupiter they all four began to dig in different places of the snow. This they do in a manner exactly different from a dog when he scratches a hole. They push away the snow with their feet instead of accumulating it behind them, and in this manner in a minute will make a hole larger than themselves. They then put their noses to the snow to see if there is any one underneath. . . . With regret I took leave of these hospitable fathers, and after ten hours' descent reached Martigny, exceedingly fatigued." 1819.] GREAT ST. BERNARD MILAN. 173 In the notebook from which I have taken the foregoing extracts there is a copy of the Latin elegiacs on the Hospice of the Great St. Bernard, inscribed by Dr. Butler in the visitors' album, and given in the Arundines Cami, to which I must refer the reader. " Thursday, July 15^. Rose at six. . . . About a league from Sion I hear a noise more resembling a mixture of that made by young ducks and watchman's rattles combined than anything I can express. On my inquiring, I had the delight to find that it proceeded from the cigales on the neighbouring trees. 'Et cantu querulse rumpunt arbusta cicadas.' No person can enjoy this line who has not heard them. ... I reach Bryg at half-past five o'clock, having performed eighteen country or twenty-five post leagues in less than eleven hours. Good work. . . . [On the following day, after crossing the Simplon], ... I have reached Baveno, and shall sleep, if my feelings will allow me, for the first time on Italian soil. ***** " Saturday, July 17 th. Set out at five in the morning to see the Isola Bella. . . . On my return left Baveno at seven (where I was agreeably disappointed in not finding any bugs), and pro- ceeded through a most cheerful and lovely country till I crossed the Ticino by a flying bridge at Sesto Calende, and entered Lombardy. Here I found the Austrian custom-house officers very exacting, and the face of things a little, or rather a good deal, changed for the worst. The first alteration that strikes one is the road, which is no longer so good, but rather like a common English turnpike road, with high hedges on both sides, and where, when you do not see the vines and Indian corn and hear the cigales, you might think yourself travelling in the flat part of England. " I reached Milan at five, and am at a most capital hotel (De la Grande Bretagne). I have been to see the Cathedral. . . . From the first story upwards all the richest part has been rebuilt de novo within the last fifteen years by Napoleon. He renewed all the statues and pinnacles in the purest white marble after the antient model ; instead of the decayed and miserable roof of tiles, he had begun and had roofed more than one-third of the church with white marble. He is in great, and I think I may reasonably say in just, favour with the Milanese. ***** '''Sunday, July \$>th. Set off at eight o'clock to see the most particular curiosities. The amphitheatre of Bonaparte, in which he 174 FIRST VISIT TO ITALY, [C H . XII. exhibited a naumachia on the birth of the King of Rome, is no great matter ; but his superb triumphal arch of pure Carrara marble, adorned with sculptures worthy of the best age of the antients, is indeed a stupendous and admirable work. It is yet unfinished, and I suppose ever will be so, to the great grief of the Milanese, who adore Bonaparte. It was to cost ten millions of francs, of which only about six have yet been spent. I saw a magnificent column destined for it lying by the roadside as I was passing the Simplon. In the cornice of the amphitheatre, which is very finely painted in relief, I saw a curious thing. The heads of Napoleon and Josephine were there in medallion. By the addi- tion of a beard and hood and one wrinkle Napoleon is turned into Neptune, but the features are evidently to be traced, and Josephine by the help of a helmet has been transformed into the virgin goddess Minerva. Thence I went to the Church of St. Ambrose, and saw the cypress doors from which in antient times the archbishop repelled the Grecian emperor. They are quite perfect, and the outside richly carved. ***** " Thence I went to the Cathedral to high mass, which was celebrated with a splendour I never before witnessed, and was certainly a most interesting and imposing spectacle. The preacher made a very good, plain, and practical sermon of about half an hour on Jesus opening the eyes of the blind. He divided his treatment into bodily and mental blindness, and made proper and sensible remarks applicable to the subject. He spoke so distinctly that 1 was able to understand him throughout. ***** " Monday, July 19^. Left Milan for Turin at half-past four. The road is all the way on a dead flat, cropped with rice, Indian corn, and millet, with nothing interesting but the magnificent view of the Alps when gilt by the morning sun. It is difficult to express the glory of a sunrise under an Italian sky. There is a blue in the heavens unknown to and inconceivable by the inhabitants of our climate. A flood of fire is poured from the east, which gradually subsides towards the west in white, pale, and at last celestial blue. Monte Rosa, which is only two or three hundred feet lower than Mont Blanc, and which is so called from its summits inclining towards one another like a rose, appeared at first almost blood-red on its snow-capped summits. By degrees as the light spread down its sides it assumed a fainter colour, but continued till near nine o'clock of a faint tint of blood. ... I reached Turin, exceedingly fatigued, at about half-past six, having performed a journey of more than a hundred miles in fourteen hours. * * * * " Tuesday, July 2oth. I have just made a discovery which is 1819.] TURIN CHAMBERY. 175 very characteristic of the people. I observed that all the knives are of a singular form. Instead of coming to a point, they all of a sudden expand again, and end in a singularly formed blunt button, a little like the end of a foil. This is a precaution on the part of government to diminish in some little degree the frequency of assassination, and no other knives are allowed to be sold. " Wednesday, July 2ist. Passed the day with William Hill. Saw nothing but the magnificent view of the Alps from the ramparts, and the sugar-loaf of Monte Viso where the Po rises, directly opposite his windows. The Alps seem as if one could actually touch them at the end of each street. I witnessed two customs which I was gratified with remarking. One is the Eastern mode of clapping hands instead of ringing a bell to call servants. The other is the serenade; in returning from the ambassador's hotel about eleven I saw three lovers in different streets serenading their mistresses. The music consisted of a violoncello, violin, bassoon, and (I think) clarionet. One man sang well ; the rest was very moderate. " Friday, July 2yd. Rose at half-past three, and found myself very unwell, and unfit for the journey. Proceeded, however, to Susa, where I was so very ill that I much doubted whether I ought not to return to Turin. ... I am now by a comfortable fire of pine logs, at the Hotel Royal at Lanslebourg, which is kept by an Englishwoman, and I found myself better than at Susa. About two-thirds of the way down Mont Cenis I saw a sight that illustrated a passage of Virgil. He makes Discord mount upon the roof of the shepherd's cottage, where, he says, ' Pastorale canit signum.' In the very same situation on the ridge of the roof of a chalet did I see a peasant girl stand blowing the cor des Alpes. " I may also note the general custom in Italy and here of spinning in the antient classical mode, by the distaff stuck in the bosom, and the spindle hanging from it.* " Saturday, July 2^th. Left Lanslebourg, where I found every- thing but my bedroom as uncomfortable as possible, at a quarter before six. . . . After travelling a considerable distance on this noble road, I came to the fortress of Echellons, now building by the King of Sardinia to command the road. ... I arrived at the Hotel de la Poste at Chambery at half-past seven, having accom- plished about a hundred miles in thirteen hours. I have been much better since I have been among the mountains. " Sunday, July 2$th. Left Chambery, which is a most miserable * When I first remember Italy, in 1843 and I remember it exceedingly well one hardly met a woman on a country road but she was spinning as she went along. Now it is rare to see a spindle and distaff at all. -ED. 1 76 FIRST F/S/r TO ITALY. [Cn. XII. town (but the Hotel de la Poste is not bad), at half-past five. . . . Having left Beauvoisin, I met a large and jovial group with a violin before them, leading an old man on an ass with his face turned to the tail, and a woman following him holding a large distaff over his head filled with flax. This I found is the rustic mode of marking contempt for a man who suffers his wife to beat him. ... At one of the post-houses I saw a girl carrying what I thought at first was the top of a round oak table on her head, but it turned out to be a loaf of rye bread : the diameter could not possibly be less than five feet, and I found it was intended to last a numerous family six days. It is baked of this size because it keeps moister, and the longer it is kept the further a little of it goes. The road to Lyons is broad, but was rather rough. I reached this superb city, by far the finest I have seen in France after Paris, at half-past six, having performed fourteen and a half posts, or between eighty and ninety miles, in thirteen hours. I am at the Hotel de Provence, a very grand house, which looks out into the grand Place. My apartment, which is about twenty-four feet square by eighteen feet high, is sumptuously fur- nished. Dieu me garde de punaises. Two looking-glasses, each above six feet high ; magnificent bed, with curtains and coverlet of crimson satin, with green and gold frieze ; fine carpet of real Lyons tapestry ; calico curtains, with broad striped muslin frieze. The Rhine here, after its junction with the Saone, is a truly noble river, wider than the Seine at Paris, but not quite so wide as the Thames at London about equal to it at Fulham. "Monday, July 26th. . . . The want of cleanliness in the streets of Lyons is striking, and the stench of them is almost poisonous. I left at two, and having bad postilions and excessive heat did not arrive at Macon till near ten eight and a half posts, or about fifty miles, in eight hours. ... I also now see the use of shepherds, cowherds, and swineherds; for the fields being all unenclosed, even a single cow requires its keeper, and one sees women and children tending their little flocks and herds everywhere along the road, the poor animals having nothing to eat but the grass and weeds of the ditches. " Tuesday, July z^th. I was up at four, but owing to the inattention of the post I could not get off till a quarter before five, and this has in fact been a day of vexations. I soon after had the misfortune to overtake a caleche, which by the laws of the post being a carriage of the same description as my own, and drawn by the same number of horses, I might not pass. At last I contrived to pass it while the owners were at breakfast, but I had then the misfortune to overtake the mail, which no carriage may pass, and was obliged to follow in its train for forty miles, by which I lost a good hour. I got past this plague at Autun, where the mail stopped to dinner, but broke a spring on the road between that place and Saulieu, where I arrived at eight 1819.] LYONS PARIS DOVER. 177 o'clock, having performed nineteen and a half posts, or about a hundred and sixteen miles, in fifteen and a quarter hours. At the entrance of Autun there is a very large and handsome college. I met about two hundred of the boys walking two and two, attended by eight or ten teachers the youngest boys first, who seemed to be from nine years and upwards. The last seventy or eighty seemed quite adults, from eighteen or nineteen to twenty- four. Some of the younger and middle-sized boys had a gentle- manly appearance ; the adults were evidently of low rank and shabbily dressed. . . . The air is indeed sensibly cold, and the sky different in colour and transparency from that of Italy. My dessert this evening at Saulieu has been not according to its usual profusion of pears, plums, peaches, figs, apricots, almonds, and filberts, but a solitary small plate of very indifferent gooseberries. Sic transit gloria inundi. The inn here (the Poste) is small and unpretending, but does not appear dirty, and I have found a passable supper and a really good bottle of claret. " Wednesday, July z^th, and legions of bugs, which are giving me a degree of itching quite intolerable. Left at five, and pro- ceeded five posts to Avallon. After this the country improves to Auxerre, and the vineyards are of immense extent. . . . From Auxerre about five posts brought me to Joigny, and 1 then fell into the road I had passed in setting out to Sens, which I reached at eight o'clock. ... I hope to reach Paris by three to-morrow afternoon, being to an hour the exact month since I set out, in which time how much have I seen ! But I am not very sanguine in this hope, for the carriage is so very crazy that it is next to a miracle if it does not tumble to pieces before I can reach Paris, or at least if something does not break, to repair which will require considerable delay. " Thursday, July iqth. Left Sens at four o'clock, and after a journey which offered nothing remarkable, having passed through Charenton and by the castle of Vincennes, where the Duke D'Enghien was shot, I arrived at my friend Baron Merian's, at the same hour and day on which I had departed a month ago, and found him ill in bed. He rose, however, to dinner, and we passed the evening most agreeably. ***** " Saturday, July 3 is/. Left Paris at six, arrived at Amiens at ten at night, and saw its magnificent Cathedral, but little inferior to Rheims, by moonlight. Arrived at Calais at nine o'clock, August ist, and found near a hundred people fighting, scolding, entreating, demanding, and tearing Madame Meurice to pieces for beds. At last, after an hour's delay, I got one two streets off, clean and quiet. " On Monday, August 2nd, I left Calais at half-past nine ; and after a most delightful passage in the French mail, the officers and sailors of which are remarkably civil and attentive, I arrived in three hours and twenty minutes at Dover." VOL. I. 12 1 78 CORRESPONDENCE. [Cn. XII. CORRESPONDENCE, AUGUST STH, 1819 JULY IOTH, 1820. FROM THE REV. S. TILLBROOK. "August $th, 1819. * * * * * " My own time has been spent leisurely enough. I have been a little while at the Lakes, and to Scotland for a season, and am now going to see old Cheviot put on his nightcap. By the end of this month I hope my caravansary will reach Salop. My rod has had harder duty than yours since we parted, and has tickled up the Poissons in grand style. I have been a vagrant and a vagabond ; have been suspected of passing forged banknotes once all but apprehended in Yorkshire, with no one to give me a character but my dog Pepper and no bail at hand. Almost forced to pawn horse and gig." To MR. BROOME, CHURCH STRETTON. "SHREWSBURY, August 2oth, 1819. " Dr. Butler feels extremely obliged to Mr. Broome for his attention in removing the coachman who overturned the Here- ford coach, when his boys broke up at midsummer last. The man has been to Dr. Butler (whom he did not see), and has stated ' that he has been fifteen years on the road, and has never before been intoxicated nor complained of to Mr. Broome, but that Mr. Broome will not restore him without Dr. B.'s con- currence.' If this statement be correct, Dr. Butler would wish Mr. Broome to consider him as not disposed to object to the man's restoration, should he be inclined to reinstate him, but he wishes by no means to be considered as making a request to this effect, or as doing more than merely leaving the matter wholly to Mr. Broome's consideration, to whom he begs to return his very sincere thanks." FROM BARON MERIAN. "August 30/A, 1819. " DEAR SIR, It is, by Jupiter, not permitted that in A.D. 1811 an erudite editor of Shakespeare should be ignorant of the mean- ing of the word child applied to knights, warriors (see King Lear, III. 4), and wonder like a silly ninny hammer ' how that came to pass ' (p. 413, Chalmers). Why, on the Continent a child knoweth that yon child is nothing in the world but held, heros, hero, a most common German word, and by mere chance resembling your , child,' infans, which again is corrupted from the German kind. I say corrupted, because kind has an original signification, which 1819.] CORRESPONDENCE. 179 child has not. It is a most unconceivable thing that your dictionaries, at least such as I saw, give not child, hero. I dare to say that it is ridiculous to let boys and scholars believe that child, infans, and child, hero, are one and the same word, or teach, like Miller, that child is sometimes applied to princes and kings in the same way as Infante is in Spain. " This is a long speech about a single word, but it leads me or a most serious, and I believe important, reflection. The English grammarians and learned men will as a matter of course fot ever be in the dark about such matters, if they continue in that unaccountable neglect of the German languages of which they are more than any people, and with much less excuse, guilty to the present day. I wrote to you once upon this subject I do it again, for it is crying aloud. How the excellent Johnson writes an etymological dictionary of the English tongue, and, forsooth, knows not one word of German ! ! ! Would you write a similar work on the Italian, and not know one word of Latin ? You laugh at the idea : give us leave not to laugh at a man like Johnson, but to be stupefied at the phenomenon. " Give us further leave to tell you that since Lewis XIV. you lean altogether a great deal too much, in more than one aspect, to French, and similar culture. Smooth Alex. Pope, for instance, is not an English but a French poet, and will therefore not survive among you ; and merely for running after idle wenches the noble English maiden is grown forgetful of her own venerable mother. I pretend no man can say ' I understand English ' unless he understand German, and I engage to show you in a trice twenty English words which you, my dear friend, do not understand, and which I do. What, e.g., is jeopardy, and buxom ? And do you know what your mole-hill is ? A tautology, and no better than hill-hill ; for mole is by no means an animal, but a little rising ground, in German maul, meil ; in Russian mogila ; in Latin moles. . . . You borrow daily words from the French which are not French but German, and by passing through that filthy medium have lost their original purity and lustre. . . . Ex. gr. you had an old ' sicker 'the German ' sicher.' No, faith, that would not do ; but you must run after ' secure,' which, with e^vpos, is nothing but cant for sicher and sicker and you give it a nonsensical accent ; for mark that every true English word has its momentum on its radical syllable bewilder, unlucky a quality which no language in the world has, except the German and its offspring. And so strongly does this innate (why not inborn ?) notion act on English minds and throats, that without being aware of it they alter foreign words, and draw the accent against foreign rule to its right and natural place. Thus senatus became senate, papyrus paper, so deeply are you German, and yet neglect German. It is wicked. ***** T80 CORRESPONDENCE. [Cn. XII. " They ought, I repeat it, to look seriously back to the place from which they sprang, and consider the three eternal partitions of Europe, which are so well described by Madame de Stael in the beginning of her book De FAllemagne, and which, in spite of contrary wars, treaties, and dictionaries, will and must forcibly break through and pop up in scecula sceculorum. Amen. " And lastly we beg you will show this to Dr. Parr, TU> -n-dw, by whom we should of all things like to be a little scourged." FROM BARON MERIAN. " September gth, 1819. " DEAR SIR, Here's one morsel of Morcellus.* The other will follow always at Rothschild's. Be not angry at my late letters, but consider that if I scold 'tis only because I love England and its literature. Now let me give you another striking instance to support the truth of my ' grand ' letter ; take peace and war. Ask of any English schoolboy to explain peace, he will soon say, Peace, paix, pax, pactum, pangere. Right. Then ask about war. He cannot answer. And yet war is of your mother tongue, and peace is foreign, and introduced by the Conquest only, for fred is the right word that answers war. I do not recollect : does J ohnson or any new lexicographer explain war and fred ? I doubt ; for to say they are Anglo-Saxon is not to explain. Why is bellum called war? and why is, or was, pax called fredt " If we inquire, we find that the very same notion or observa- tion which created the Latin pax created also the German fried or fred, both meaning originally a stick, or term of separation : palus solo impactus ; septum. "This and a hundred similar questions your short but profound vocabulary might explain, and by doing so astound many a learned professor, who never fancied there could be sense any- where but in Greek and Hebrew. Now the fact is the very contrary. Greek and Latin are corrupted German." FROM THE REV. S. TILLBROOK. " MILLBROOK, September l$th, 1819. " DEAR DOCTOR, Finding the ale still incomparably good at Shiffnal, I desired the landlord to forward a two-dozen hamper of it to your cellar. Drink the health of the donor, and save one bottle for him till next year. " Report i.e. the waiter at the King's Head, Coventry assured me that at the Bear and Ragged Staff at Daventry I should * Morcellus wrote a work entitled De Stylo Inscriptionum. 'Eto. 1819.1 CORRESPONDENCE. l8l find the ale as good as in Shropshire. The name of this aubergc amused me, so I determined to hobble to this interesting shrine of Sir John Barleycorn. Under cover of the night I sneaked into the auberge aforesaid, and found, as I opined, that the ale of Daventry bore no comparison to that of Salop. " I consider my summer travels at an end now, and shall begin to celebrate them in Hudibrastic doggerel when I resume my armchair at St. Peter's. I am afraid, excepting to such ready wit as your own, that Monte Pulciano, Alleatico, Siracuso, Alchermes, Curacoa, Maraschino, etc., offer insurmountable difficulties, and yet it would be unpardonable to omit them." FROM BARON MERIAN. \End of September, 1819.] " The Scotch family of Elphinstone is of German origin ; the Counts of Helfenstein are well known in Germany, and suffered much in what they call the War of the Peasants. " Your Utis has on my brains the effect of I do not know whose victories on the brains of Themistocles : he could not sleep. But the difference is that Themistocles soon equalled those victories : I never shall your Utis. Gin-is dp.i. " Whatever you undertake you never fail of executing in a masterly way. I have read the introduction and part of Charlemagne. I have but this to say : if I had not been told so, I should never have taken that poem for a translation. Yet on this occasion I must lament once more do, only for the love of me, not fetch your Saxon mythology out of French phials. Irmensul is no more a god than General Hill's column is one. Bless us ! Sul(?) is a column, and Irmen is not ascertained yet, but conjectured to be Herman. Such mistakes look very pretty in French productions ; but you noble Saxon progeny ought to look elsewhere for the cultus of your forefathers. Suppose an unlucky German was to travel through England, and then write down, Habent in ista regione deum sive idolum cui nomen est Hillicolumnus : what would you say ? Thus formerly a French lawyer used to quote with great respect the German lawyer Harcomannus. Now let it be known that he mistook the word Herkommen, which means custom, law not written. I beseech you, my dear friend, take all these criticisms and witticisms in bonam partem. Your great superiority is acknowledged ; if you take one flight more, you will be, not what Saumaise or Scaliger were, but what, each in his sphere, Bacon was or Newton. You may give grammar a new turn, and language a new foundation, i.e. the old and only right one. Your eyes will become sharp-sighted, and you will be struck with thousands of errors and mistakes round about you which hitherto have escaped your sight. Dr. Hodgson, for 1 82 CORRESPONDENCE. [Cn. XII instance, writes Adalguise quite wrong ; it is Adel-weis, nobilis, sapiens for mark, that anciently, and still now in the Orients, all proper names were and are appellative ones, having a clear signi- fication. Bagatelles, very true, but they show and demonstrate the truth of the assertion which lies at the bottom of my scolding letter, viz. that since Lewis XIV. you have considerably leaned to the French side in literature, and to your vast detriment ; for French (politics, manners, and) literature are, and must for ever be, foreign to you ; 'twould be alloying copper to your silver. Ergo ista bagatelles, si non seria ducunt in mala, tamen arguunt ista adesse mala. Let levity be far from German characters ; it becomes them not : what becomes them hath been marked out by Schiller : Ernst und Liebe, die Beyden Ziemen dem Deutschen. " The second morsel of Morcellus goes with this to Messrs. Rothschild, London." The " old Utis " in the foregoing and sundry other letters of Baron Merian refers to an explanation given by Dr. Butler of a passage in Shakespeare. In a commonplace book, dated 1816, I find the following : " ' By the mass, there will be old Utis ; it will be an excellent stratagem' (King Henry IV., Part I., p. 241. Ed. Malone). ' " Old Utis " signifies festivity in a high degree ' (Steevens). ' " Utis," a merry festival, from the French " huiet," " octo," " the octaves " ' (Pope). I conceive Shakespeare alludes to the story of Utis in the Odyssey. The Prince and Poins are going to disguise themselves, and impose on Falstaff as two waiters or drawers. Shakespeare, who had heard probably of the story of Ouris and Polypheme, means to say that they will renew the old story of Utis (as it would be written in the translation) in their imposture on Falstaff." FROM BARON MERIAN. " October tfh, 1819. " DEAR SIR, I continue my reading and remarks. General Hill's column gave me much pleasure ; you wrote admirably, but why is your beautiful civi suo and POPULARES EJUS not expressed in the English inscription ? ' Contemporary ' is sorely vague, and kills the interesting sentiment of concitizenship. Besides, why Masonry ? * What was that good for ? Such secret societies are * Dr. Butler must have sent Baron Merian Captain Moyle Sherer's 1819.] INSCRIPTION ON LORD HILLS COLUMN. 183 either dangerous or ridiculous. Non datur tertium. For if they and their leaders have no idea but of doing good, assist the poor, teach children, why for heaven's sake cannot they act sub dio ? There is no reply to this. Now all their signs, and marks, and shots, and aprons are fiddle-faddle and kickshaws fit for boys. All that part of the story is a miserable cant a serious man ought to be ashamed of, for 'tis not even ingenious. And what signifies their brotherhood ? Arrant nonsense likewise. ***** " That incoherent meddling of masonry has brought me off my theme, which was your Latin composition. I doubt whether Morcellus has any one thing finer than that so short, so strong, so plain, so properly rising, and exit with a thunderclap. The English inscription I don't know who wrote it I think very fine too (the exposition of merits is delightful), only I repeat that ' contemporary ' is too weak, since something more forcible and engaging might have been said. The Englishman does not tell us that the hero is a Salopian." The preceding letter makes it clear that Dr. Butler wrote the Latin inscription on Lord Hill's column, but I have found no draft of either Latin or English among his papers. The English inscription is generally believed in Shrews- bury (probably with truth) to have been also written by Dr. Butler. The Latin inscription runs : CIVI . SUO . ROLANDO DOMINO . BARONI . HILL . AB . ALMARAZ . ET . HAWKSTONE POPULARES . EJUS . EX . AGRO . ATQUE . MUNICIPIO . SALOPIENSI COLUMNAM . HANCCE . CUM . STATUA . P.C. A.S. MDCCCXVI. IS . IN . RE . MILITARI . QUEMADMODUM . SE . GESSERIT TESTES . SINT . LUSITANIA . HISPANIA . GALLL.E NARBONENSIS . AC . BELGICA AfcTURUS . DUX . A . WELLINGTON SOCIORUM . ET . QUIDEM . HOSTIUM . EXERCITUS. description of Lord Hill's column in Shrewsbury, etc., where the fact of one of the principal contributors being a Freemason is expressly stated. He was Mr. John Straphen, a builder in Shrewsbury, and he gave the internal staircase. 1 84 CORRESPONDENCE. [Cn. XII. The English inscription is as follows : TO LIEUTENANT-GENERAL ROWLAND LORD HILL, BARON HILL OF ALMARAZ AND HAWKSTONE, G.C.B. NOT MORE DISTINGUISHED FOR HIS SKILL AND COURAGE IN THE FIELD, DURING THE ARDUOUS CAMPAIGNS IN SPAIN AND PORTUGAL, THE SOUTH OF FRANCE, AND THE MEMORABLE PLAINS OF WATERLOO, THAN FOR HIS BENEVOLENT AND PATERNAL CARE IN PROVIDING FOR THE COMFORTS AND SUPPLYING THE NECESSITIES OF HIS VICTORIOUS COUNTRYMEN, AND FOR THAT HUMANITY AND GENEROSITY WHICH THEIR VANQUISHED FOES EXPERIENCED AND ACKNOWLEDGED, THE INHABITANTS OF THE TOWN AND COUNTY OF SALOP HAVE ERECTED THIS COLUMN AND STATUE, AS A MEMORIAL OF THEIR RESPECT AND GRATITUDE TO AN ILLUSTRIOUS CONTEMPORARY, AND AN INCITEMENT TO EMULATION IN THE HEROES AND PATRIOTS OF FUTURE AGES. A.D. MDCCCXVI. FROM BARON MERIAN. " October gth, 1819. " DEAR SIR, The ENGLISH language is of a singular nature Every other language has some foreign words admixed to it, comparatively few (peu), but the ENGLISH is composed of two distinct and belligerent parts, which no time will and can ever amalgamate, the GERMAN part and the FRENCH part for a very few remainders of ancient BRITISH are hardly worth notice. Yon two parts are at present (xixth century] a match for one another, the second, however, gaining continually ground, for your fine people think themselves prodigiously witty and happy when they may thrust in some fashionable FRENCH expression, some of which by degrees stick fast, and are at last reputed to be ENGLISH. I say reputed, for in fact they are not and never can be. It is to me a wonderful thing to look attentively at an ENGLISH page : I there perceive distinctly two languages instead of one (very often two words instead of one, and now and then a third one ' kingly,' ' royal,' and besides ' regal.' Now what's the use of that ?), and am in search accordingly for two dictionaries, a GERMAN-ENGLISH one and a FRENCH-ENGLISH one. To illustrate this impression I have used italics for words of FRENCH origin. In any quite new composition you'll find proportionally more of such words, and this circumstance shows you the path you are now in, for style is man. CORRESPONDENCE. 185 " There is, however, this one great difference : the German is the foundation, the French the superstructure, so this may one day be blown away. . . . Your plan for 1820, 1821, is delightful. Je ferai mon possible pour le realiser. I have^other things in view besides in which I shall once more beg of you to assist me. . . . There will be old Utis. My respects to great Dr. Parr." FROM THE SAME. " October 2$th, 1819. " DEAR SIR, I have received Etymologicum Universale* 2 vols. Splendid : a very fine book indeed, and for which I am deeply indebted to you. ... Is Whiter still conversant on this globe, and where ? " Ten thousand thanks at least for your kind answer con- cerning our Calypso ; your advice will be strictly followed. You have most probably by giving it saved a very worthy man from ruin. . . . " Champagne. I suspect it to be in England long ago. Have you asked Dejex about it ? and has he answered ? You must and shall have it, Meherde ! " I look with great impatience for the printed accounts of the triumphal ya^os.f Such honours are true honours, for they proceed from free-will. No authority can command, no money can purchase, them. Your benevolent mind, your great activity in forwarding whatever is KaXoKa.ya.66v, have now met with a due and public reward ; and you might, if pride was admissible, be justly proud of testifications, which, in exalting the daughter, tend to exalt the father. " Where lives now this said fair and dear daughter ? Do reflect about marrying your elder daughter too. It is not fit that she should long be a looker-on. Such cases engender bitterness of heart. You are not surely one of those parents who fancy children are born to make their tea for ever." FROM THE SAME. " November z^th, 1819. "DEAR SIR, -Ecce my notes on the sermon. [Dr. Butler's Installation Sermon of 1811, referred to on pp. 66-71.] 3fc f? $ T& SJt " Page 31. Engine [referring to what Dr. Butler had written about confession]. It became so by abuse. Originally to confess, i.e. * By the Rev. Walter Whiter. t The marriage of Dr. Butler's second daughter, Harriet, to T. J. Lloyd, Esq. CORRESPONDENCE. [Cn. XII. to tell one's misdeeds to an aged worthy person, ask for counsel, and even submit to opposite restrictions (as fasting for gluttonry), is no doubt one of the best remedies, and safest. Do you not teach your children to come and tellen you freely whenever they did amiss ? You are the father of your children. Well, from the day you take away the parental and filial connection between priests and laics, you have done away the whole estab- lishment of religion. Abba, pater, father, papa, is and was throughout the universe the appropriate, the first name of the priests. Unless I can consider and reverence him as a father, I have no occasion for a priest. Atqui to a father I may, nay I ought, to confess my failings. Ergo . . . You, for instance, Dr. Butler I treat you as my friend and equal : we are about the same age, both of cheerful disposition, and yet be assured that beyond this level intercourse, and behind it, there is still something other of respectfulness in me towards you which cannot and shall not be in you towards me. I am perhaps older than you. I have been furiously thrown about in this world, and so forsooth am not deprived of experience, and yet I would most willingly repair and fly to you, not only for advice, but for admonishment not only for admonishment, but for correction. And why ? Because that you are a priest and I a laic. The next year will probably evince the truth and explain the purport of these words, and old Utis will then become very intelligible. " Champagne. Not cheap, faith ; but let Parliament answer for half the price. Here's the proportion : Buying and carrying from Epernay, Champagne, to Calais, 415 francs. 5 francs a bottle on the spot where it grows. But now follows shipping and taxes, 395.21. Consequently nearly as much again. " If the wine, on tasting it after some rest, prove not exquisitely good, write to me, and you will hear at Shrewsbury the tremendous tempest I shall raise at Epernay. " Homer with fifty-eight drawings is preparing for his journey to M. Rothschild's, London. Et iterum munera ? Quoadusque tandem ? To a thousand I cannot answer one. I only wish you could see me blush like a virgin at fifteen. " Be tranquil of mind. Robortellus must and shall be yours, though 'tis harder to come at him than at a quadriphyllous trefoil. " I pity Whiter. A great etymologist perhaps the greatest that ever lived. A genius certainly ; but it seems, like most eminent artists, dissolute. Ten thousand thanks for your Hamletiana. After such intelligence only, we understand a poet. I entirely agree with you after due rumination. Homer and Shakespeare are the only two poets in the wide world." , 1820.] CORRESPONDENCE. 1 8? FROM DR. WOOD, MASTER OF ST. JOHN'S, CAMBRIDGE. (Original in Cambridge University College Library.) " December 2$th, 1819. ***** " Your liberal offer of assistance to such as want and deserve it I shall certainly bear in mind, as there is no man living in whose hands I would sooner place a boy than yours." ***** To DR. PARR. " SHREWSBURY, January 2$th, 1820. " DEAR DR. PARR, After long and very serious considera- tion of the case in the joint letter I received from yourself and Dr. Maltby, and after every allowance for the claims of private friendship and public respect due to you both from me, I find myself obliged to say that I cannot admit the boy. ***** " One more objection, and that of high importance, remains. From the horror in which the conduct of the boy who stole from his schoolfellows, whoever he might be, was held, I am convinced that, except those furta Laconica which you and I flog boys for with a grave face, and inwardly laugh at, or admire for their intrepidity and spirit of adventure, no meanness of the kind pre- vails among my boys. Pickle boys rob an orchard, but they would scorn to steal a shilling. Now is it just to introduce among them one of a different description? And if anything should happen, would not parents justly reproach me for the result ? ***** " To-morrow we celebrate your birthday. With your present vigour of mind and body it is reasonable to hope that you may long be spared to enjoy its recurrence with your friends. God bless you, my dear Dr. Parr ; accept our kindest united con- gratulations on its return, and believe me yours very affectionately, " S. BUTLER." FROM THE VERY REV. THE DEAN OF HEREFORD. " DEANERY, HEREFORD, February 6,th, 1820. " MY DEAR FRIEND, I have proof enough that in your com- mendations of my son Fred you did not flatter me. ... If I had the ear of his mathematical master (you can vellere et admonere), I should beg that he would enjoin upon Fred not to read any proposition of Euclid in the book before it had been clearly demonstrated to him and the scheme drawn, and no finished figure as in the book shown him. Thus in the first term I learned four books of Euclid viva voce, and thus for 1 88 CORRESPONDENCE, [CH. XII. upwards of thirty-six years I taught geometry, and never among my asses did one boggle at the pons asinorum. When Charles Luxmoore was superannuated at Eton, I offered the Bishop my services, and his son learned well, three books of Euclid in a fortnight : from college he soon wrote to his father that by reading he puzzled himself and despaired; but if his tutor would teach him as I had taught him, he and ' the old carpenter ' might have jogged on together very lovingly ! "I believe I followed this plan from a sentence of good old Postlethwaite : ' Write, write, sir ; many a man reads without sense and talks nonsense, but few are such fools as to write nonsense ! ' ... All a lecturer in mathematics should do or can do is to direct the march of his pupil's intellect ; he is no post-horse to carry the lad, but a guide-post to prevent him going out of his road. Eh bien I where is my hobby carrying me ? " I did not examine the tradesmen's bills before this morning. I contented myself, as well I might, with your sum-total, and your P.S. testimonial of ' bene meruit' ; but lo ! I find a note of thanks, and I think from the pen of dear Mary, date December 1 5th, for venison, two hares, and three partridges, folded up among the bills. ' Oh,' said Kate, ' I remember them leaving, and that Dr. Butler thanked you in September and one of the hares I think you intended for Mr. Griffiths.' ' True, Kate, be it so ; the season is well advanced, and I will look out for a puss fit for a classic's regale, inasmuch as sapiens sectabitur annos.' "I seem to hear you say, 'I am glad the Dean is in good spirits.' Why, my good friend, as you approached your home on your return from Warwickshire, did you not feel your spirits elated at the prospect of rejoining your family ? And is not the near termination of the long journey of life an object as ex- hilarating as the near termination of any stage of it ? Do I not hope to rejoin those whom I have loved with whom I have lived ? With these hopes you will say, ' Vade, vale ' ; and do not, I beseech you, omit to add, 'Cave ne titubes.' Ever yours most affectionately, " GEORGE GRETTON. " P.S. Dross of my gratitude, my pecuniary debit, is enclosed. Corrigenda. In the mollia tempera fandi, a man is often well corrected. Therefore at dinner I have been informed of and correct my error. No hare was sent hence to Mr. Griffiths since July last ; therefore both were yours. Nevertheless a gravid hare (if I can beg one) shall, as before said, be sent to Mr. Griffiths. The three partridges (were they salted ?) were sent to you by the rector of Nantwich. Alas ! what a chasm fell on Saturday last between you and my Henry ! From Hereford to Salop, thence to Adderley, and so to Nantwich. My old friend the rector of Adderley, whose regard I possessed during sixty years, from a child on his knee to the olim meminisse of our age, 1 8ao.] CORRESPONDENCE. 189 died last Saturday. Good as our old King was. If kings have chaplains in heaven, surely the coincident translation of both together from earth would make me, what ? wish that a country parish priest who deserved to be a bishop may be near the person and enjoying the bliss of the best prince who ever exchanged a temporal for an eternal crown." Dr. Gretton died about three weeks after the foregoing letter was written. To A PUPIL WHO WAS LEAVING. " April yd, 1820. " DEAR - , You judged rightly in supposing that great inconvenience would arise were such communications frequent as that which I received from Gladstone on your departure. And for that reason I should not have replied to it, had I not just received your note enclosing the two guineas for yourself and your brother. As I now send you a reply which you may produce in your own defence if necessary, it would, I think, be inconsistent with the friendship I feel towards you not to answer that communication. " I give you full credit for the contempt you express for dis- honourable boys ; and though I have forgotten any particular occurrences* of your earlier years here, I am fully satisfied they were exempt from any acts of meanness. The cause which made me wish your removal was the influence I observed you to have over A , which he himself acknowledged, and which I per- ceived was highly prejudicial to him. In fact, I did not think it possible to keep you both, and the relationship between myself and A made me prefer letting him return of the two. How far I might have succeeded in keeping you both, had he not gone to India when you returned, I do not know, for I certainly should not have looked over some things, had he been here with you, which while you were here alone I considered of less importance. " In arranging the places of the boys I never pretend to infallibility. Impartiality is my aim, and that I confidently claim. I decide upon the evidence of their exertions which appears before me. Boys may have much better talents than those above them, and yet lose ground if those talents are not accompanied with proportionate exertion. I have no doubt that, had you chosen to put forth your strength, you would have done much more and have been much higher ; but I am not to blame because you were not industrious ; nor is a boy to stand so much upon points with * From an erasure in the draft, it appears that there had been some " particular occurrences " which Dr. Butler had not forgotten. ED. 190 CORRESPONDENCE. [Cn. XII. his instructors as to fancy himself ill-used when he finds others placed above him whom the master believes to have used more exertions. This, I know, is a common error with boys, which is best unlearned by experience in life. " I certainly could have wished for your own sake that you had kept more to the spirit than to the letter of your promise ; for I cannot say that your behaviour, though not actually contumacious, has been altogether satisfactory by your own acknowledgement it was not all it might have been, nor what my own goodwill towards you had led me to expect. Do not understand me to say this as upbraiding you ; my object is to show you why I confine the note which you may produce when necessary to as few words as possible. You know that you were not dismissed, and you know the precautions I took to prevent such a supposition; but you should also bear in mind that where it exists it has probably originated in some rumour about your general conduct here latterly, and especially just previous to your leaving me, and this may help to convince you that it has been injudicious. What you have heard me say sometimes to the boys I may now repeat to you with more probability of your attending to it, which is, that here, as well as at all other public schools, there are plenty of people who have little to do but amuse themselves with prying into the transactions of the master and boys, and magnifying all the faults they find. Nothing is so easy as to find fault, and wherever there are boys there will of course be opportunities of doing so. It is fortunate when these misstatements can be cor- rected, but this opportunity is not always found. I have thus replied at some length to your parting letter, because I am persuaded the time will come when you will be convinced that the course you latterly adopted here was rather headstrong than becoming, and because, if you are in consequence led to reflect, you may be saved from similar errors in your academical course, where you may perhaps not find similar indulgence. I am your sincere friend and well-wisher, " S. BUTLER." The letter enclosed, that was " to be shown if necessary," ran : " DEAR , In reply to your note of last night, I have only to say, what is well known to your schoolfellows, that you did not leave me in consequence of a dismissal or any application made on my part to your father, but in consequence of a note from him requesting that I would send you home, in order that you might be equipped to go to college. You are at full liberty to show this note to any person to whom you may think proper to make the communication. I am your sincere friend, "$. BUTLER," 1 820. ] CORRESPONDENCE. 1 9 1 FROM THE REV. S. TILLBROOK. " KING'S HEAD, COVENTRY, June ist, 1820. " Without being sent I find myself among the noisy descendants of peeping Tom, and shall be very happy to turn my back upon them to-morrow. I have just been reconnoitring from my bed- room ; in front of it stand fourteen caravans containing all sorts of beasts of the brute or human kind. The Devonshire giant is drawn up alongside the Flemish fairy I know not why, except that 01 TToXXot may compare great things with small. The wilder beasts are roaring for their prey, and the rabble for the showman. What a curse to be kept here twenty-four hours among the ferce naturce, without a chance of earning a penny by exhibiting one's own beauties or deformities. I think, however, that I might have excited popular curiosity as the descendant of a fire-eater whose nose had been likened to a furnace by a certain learned doctor, and which was capable of being converted at will to a fire or candle lighter. " Talking of fire, I have had a visit from the Poet Laureate * at Peterhouse. He stayed three days, and I had a dinner in honour of him. I was glad to find he liked my stock, and swallowed it more greedily than I do his poetry. He was going to Oxford to meet Lord Hill and the Duke of Wellington an honorary degree was to be the payment of his travelling expenses. " But we can talk of this when we meet. I see no reason why I should not reach your dinner-table by four o'clock on Sunday next. Bishops travel on Sundays, so I suppose a fortiori B.D.'s may do the same. Have the goodness to send John to bespeak a stall for my horse, and a bed for myself in my old room adjoining the upstairs dining-room at the Raven. Mind, I do not and cannot think of troubling you for anything but larder and cellar provisions, and as much of your native good-humour as you can spare. I give you a day or two's warning that you may announce my intended arrival to the Serjeant. I have letters to a gentleman at Ludlow, and to Mr. Knight for Leintwardine, and long to be at the grayling and trout. If I am not with you by Sunday, some accident will have happened to me worse than wind or weather." FROM THE REV. T. SHEEPSHANKS TO MRS. BUTLER. "July 2nd, 1820. ***** " I am glad to hear Tom is diligent ; he shall have a week's decent drilling from me at Shrewsbury before the examination, and after that he must trust to good luck and his own brains. Southey. 1 92 CORRESPONDENCE. [CH. XII. " I have read The Fortunes of Nigel would I had not ! The author seems to me to have taken final leave of his senses, and I trust has or will pay the same compliment to his readers. ***** " I can't say I have been very successful in the way of obtaining boys to fill up the vacancies (this being the most interesting subject, I ought to have mentioned it sooner). I had one nibble at Worcester, which I think may possibly catch a gudgeon. 1 had a bout the other day with an honest gentleman, who wanted a private tutor for his son. I recommended him, of course, to send him to Shrewsbury, where I would (for a consideration, of course) be his private tutor myself. I enlarged, as in duty bound, on the superiority of schools over private tuition, and on the superiority of Shrewsbury over all other schools. He said he wanted his son to have exercise and cleanliness, etc. I observed that we had the Quarry and the Severn the best walk and river in the kingdom ; but I took especial care not to say that the one was out of bounds, and being caught in the other a flogging. He reckoned, however, that he wanted his son to have a little wine not too much, of course, after his dinner. In order that he might have no excuse for making his son a dunce, I said that a private tutor would take him for ^200 per annum, whereas your terms were only forty-six guineas, and offered (what could I do more?) that for the remaining ^151 14^. I would myself take care that he had wine daily, and not too much. Of the quantity necessary I was to be sole judge. This plan alto- gether he did not approve, so I was obliged to let him go. You see, however, I have spared no efforts. Of Mr. White I know nothing, except that as proproctor he behaved very ill to a friend of mine. If, however, he sends some boys who are acquaintances and private pupils of mine, I will forgive him all his sins. Pray give my best regards to Miss Butler, and Mrs. John Lloyd and Mr. John Lloyd, and Tom and Lizzie, and Mrs. John Lloyd's little baby, and Mrs. John Lloyd's little baby's little finger in short, to the whole concern. " Believe me, my dear madam, yours most sincerely, "T. SHEEPSHANKS." To A PARENT. " SHREWSBURY, July loth, 1820. " DEAR SIR, At the time of the breaking up I learned that an attack was meditated by some boys on your son and some other of his schoolfellows, the result of some party quarrel, in which it is generally most advisable for a master not to interfere, because the disputes of boys are best settled among themselves, and the interference of the master tends to perpetuate ill-will. 1 820.] DR. BUTLER ON SCHOOL FIGHTS. 193 On this occasion, however, finding that there was serious and vindictive aggression on one side, and a steady determination to resist it on the other, I felt it my duty to prevent the mischief by separating the contending parties. I have since learned that your son, who appears to have been on the defensive, not the aggressive side, was armed with so deadly a weapon as a loaded pistol. I have therefore to request that you will insist on his most faithfully promising you and me that he will never arm himself with a similar weapon during his continuance under my care, and will give up to you that which he now has. ***** " When two boys quarrel, though battles ought not to be encouraged, perhaps the most desirable thing is that they should settle it between themselves by a trial of mastery, which generally puts a stop to all further squabbles. But no master can either say this or encourage it. I am only giving you my opinion, which is for your private consideration, not for promulgation." VOL. I, 13 CHAPTER XIII. THE LETTERS TO HENRY BROUGHAM, ESQ., M.P. Correspondence, September 2oth, 1820 December l6th, 1820. Appointment to the Archdeaconry of Derby. Correspondence, January ist, 1821 December 3rd, 1821. TWO Bills were introduced by Mr. Brougham in the summer of 1820 which threatened to prejudice the interests of almost all future masters of endowed grammar schools throughout the kingdom. The schools of Eton, Westminster, Winchester, Harrow, the Charterhouse, and Rugby were exempted, and as the Bills were not retro- spective Dr. Butler was not affected ; believing, however, that the Bills would lower the tone of public educa- tion, he attacked them (or rather the second of them, dated July I4th, 1820) in two vigorous letters to Mr. Brougham himself, the first of which was published in 1820 and the second in 1821. The first dealt with the effects of the measure on education generally, while the second urged the claims of Shrewsbury to be added to the list of schools excluded from its provisions. Among the objectionable clauses was one empowering those who had the appointment to the mastership of any school to limit che number of boarders which the master might take, or, if they chose, "to forbid altogether the taking, receiving, or entertaining of any such boarders." By another clause the master was liable to be compelled " to teach, either by himself or by an usher or assistant, reading, writing, and accounts," should those who appointed him see fit to 194 i820.] ASHTON'S ORDINANCES. 195 so require. The Bills were abandoned after having been amended in committee. I need not therefore give any analysis of the arguments advanced in the first of the two letters. A few extracts from the earlier ordinances for the government of the school (commonly called Ashton's ordinances), and Dr. Butler's synopsis of the course of instruction for the fifth and sixth forms in his own time, comprise all that is of present interest in the second letter. " i. Schoolmaster not to frequent alehouses. " 2. Master's families to quit, on vacancies, within three months. "3. Item. The head schoolmaster's degree of the said school for the time being shall be, at the time of his election, a Master of Arts of two years' standing at the least, well able to make a Latin verse, and learned in the Greek tongue. " 4. Item. The second schoolmaster of the said school for the time being shall be, at the time of his election, a Master of Arts at the least, and well able to make a Latin verse, and learned in the Greek tongue, before he be admitted to teach in the said school. " 5. Item. The third schoolmaster of the said school for the time being shall be a Bachelor of Arts at the least, and well able to make a Latin verse, and of such sufficient learning as that place requireth, before he be admitted. ***** "21. Item. Every Thursday the scholars of the highest form before they go to play shall for exercise declaim and play one act of a comedy, and every Saturday versify, and against Monday morning give up their themes or epistles ; and all other exercises of writing or speaking shall be used in Latin. ***** " 24. Item. That no scholar shall be admitted into the Free Grammar School before he can write his name with his own hand, and before he can read English perfectly, and have his accidence without (book ?), and can give any case of any number of a noun substantive or adjective, and any person of any number of a verb active or passive, and can make Latin by any of the concords, the Latin words being first given him. ***** " 33. Item. There shall be read in the same school, for prose, in Latin, Tully, Caesar's Commentaries, Sallust, and Livy ; also two little books of Dialogues drawn out of Tully's Offices and 196 LETTERS TO HENRY BROUGHAM, ESQ., M.P. [Cn. XIII. Ludovicus Vives by Mr. Ashton, some time chief schoolmaster of the said school ; for verse, Virgil, Horace, Ovid, and Terence ; for Greek, the Greek Grammar of Clenard, the Greek Testa- ment, Isocrates ad Demonicum, or Xenophon's Cyrus ; and those authors, or some of them, mentioned in the table for the manner of teaching to be read in this school,* according to the head- master's discretion and choice, as shall seem best for the children's capacities." ***** The weekly course of instruction for the fifth and sixth forms, under Dr. Butler, was as follows : Monday. i. Chapel. 'History, Grecian, Roman, English. Repeat Greek Grammar. 2. Dalzel's Analecta Majora, sixth and upper fifth only. The parts read in this class are Thucydides, Plato, Greek Orators, Aristotle, Longinus. Lecture on Greek Grammar. 3. Cicero's Orations. 4. Virgil. Shell attend. Chapel. Tuesday. i. Chapel. Repeat Virgil. Show up Latin theme. 2. Dalzel's Analecta Majora. Parts read are the Greek plays, Pindar, Theocritus, Callimachus. Subject for Latin verses given. Remainder of Latin themes shown up. Half-holiday. Masters of accomplish- ments attend. Wednesday. i. Chapel. Tacitus, Demosthenes, Greek play or Plautus, for sixth and upper fifth ; Pitman's Excerpta, lower fifth ; and repeat Dalzel of Tuesday. 2. Greek play. Examination of a class of the lower boys. 3. Horace, Odes. 4. Scriptores Romani. Chapel. Thursday. i. Chapel. Repeat Horace. Show up Latin verses. 2. Homer. Shell attend. Lecture in Algebra to sixth and upper fifth. Remaining verse exercises shown up. Half-holiday as Tuesday. Friday. i. Chapel. Repeat Homer. Show up lyrics. 2. Juvenal or Horace, the Satires and Epistles. Shell attend. Show up the remainder of the lyric exercises. 3. Tacitus, Demosthenes, Greek play or Plautus, to sixth and upper fifth only. Lower fifth Pitman. 4. Virgil. Shell attend. Chapel. * This table was not in existence in Dr. Butler's time. ED. 1 820.] SHREWSBURY CURRICULUM. 197 Saturday. i. Chapel. Repeat Juvenal or Horace. Lecture in Euclid to sixth and upper fifth. 2. Open lesson, generally English translated into Greek or Latin prose, or lesson in Greek play. Prepostors of the week show up Greek verses. Sunday. Church in the morning. Chapel in the evening. Upper boys examined in Watts' Scripture History or Tomline's Theology, Lower boys examined in Catechism. Examination for the Sixth and Upper Fifth Forms, commencing August 7//fc, 1820. Monday. i. English theme. 2. Latin theme. 3. Greek metres ; adjustment and translation into Latin verse of a Greek chorus. Tuesday. i. History. 2. English translated into Latin. Wednesday. i . Geography. 2. Euclid. 3. Philology. Thursday. i. Latin translated into English. 2. Latin verses. Friday. i. English translated into Greek. 2. Greek translated into English. 3. Algebra. Saturday. i. Religion. 2. Arrangement of classes. Distribution of prizes. The questions are all given and answered in writing, in the presence of the head-master, who never quits the school during the period of examination, and each subject takes on an average two hours. CORRESPONDENCE, SEPTEMBER 20TH, 1820 DECEMBER i6TH, 1820 To THE HON. H. G. BENNET, M.P. " September 2Oth, 1820. ***** "Writing to you on a previous occasion I claimed that Shrews- bury School should be put on at least as favourable a footing as Eton, Westminster, or any other. I now see that in this Bill Eton, Westminster and Winchester, Harrow, Charterhouse and Rugby, are excepted as being public schools. I claim the same 198 CORRESPONDENCE. [Cn. XIII. exception for Shrewsbury on that ground also, and I beg to state my reasons. " If by a public school is meant one to which persons from all parts of the kingdom send their sons for education and I cannot conceive any other meaning of the term then I beg leave to say that there is now, and usually have been during my master- ship, boys at Shrewsbury School from almost every county in England and Wales, some from Scotland and some from Ireland. " If reference is made to the extent of the foundations and exhibitions, I beg to say that this foundation is far more extensive than Harrow, and has more numerous and valuable exhibitions than Rugby. For particulars I refer you and Mr. Brougham to Mr. Carlisle's books on endowed schools. " If to merit, it is tender ground and invidious for me to speak, but there are more prizemen at Cambridge from Shrewsbury School in proportion to numbers than from any other school in England, and more in actual numbers than from any school but Eton and Charterhouse. " If to numbers, there are now a hundred and fifty-eight boys, and the number is limited for want of room. " I see no right which any of the excepted schools have to their exception, or to the title of public schools, which does not equally belong to Shrewsbury, and I therefore claim the same exception and the same distinction." FROM THE REV. T. S. HUGHES. (In reference to the letter to Henry Brougham, Esq.) "November 1st, 1820. " MY DEAR DOCTOR, I should have written to you before this on the subject of your letter if I had not known that old Till intended to do so, and had agreed with him in some opinions which he expressed. " I have the pleasure to tell you that I never knew a thing so well received ; the observation of all who read it is that the argu- ments and statements are quite unanswerable. I have lent my copy to go round a large circuit of houses. I have introduced the subject in all quarters, and have found no dissentient opinion. I only heard one person say that he thought one or two of the remarks were a little too caustic." ***** FROM W. H. BUTLER, ESQ., OF THE STONE HOUSE, KENILWORTH. " KENILWORTH, November $th, 1820. ***** " We have not experienced any disturbance here or at War- wick since you left us, and the electioneering goes on smoothly. 1 820.] CORRESPONDENCE. 199 The only incident I heard of yesterday was that one of Mr. Spooner's friends from Coventry being over-fatigued by his exertions, and unwilling to walk home, proceeded at dusk to the Saltisford Common with a string formed as a bridle, caught a horse, and rode away briskly through the outskirts of Warwick towards the Coventry road. But the animal became restive and set off full-speed into the town, making a dead stop at the bride- well door. The keeper, being accidentally on the outside, recog- nised his own horse, called the turnkey, and had both horse and rider immediately secured." FROM THE RIGHT HON. J. C. VILLIERS, M.P. (AFTERWARDS EARL OF CLARENDON). " EUSTON, November "jth, 1820. ***** " I must recur to what I mentioned in my former letter,* and I only do so for the further credit of your school you may depend upon the fact that the principle of tuition by the boys is with success carried to a greater extent than is thought of in any other classical school ; and you may rely upon its general utility to the scholars upon the testimony of so competent and great an authority as the eminent Etonian whom I mentioned, and whose testimony has satisfied me upon the subject." FROM BULKELEY WILLIAMS, ESQ. (A FORMER PUPIL). " MAGDALENE COLLEGE, December yd, 1820. " REVEREND SIR, It is with considerable concern that I in- form you that I am again refused a scholarship on Dr. Millington's foundation. I am the more disappointed as Mr. Crawley held out great hopes of success to me, expressing himself satisfied with my performance at the examination. He gave me a paper of questions, and said that if the answers to them were not satis- factory he would give me another such paper. The first answers, however, seemed sufficient, as he gave no more questions. Upon this I began to feel sure of success, but some time after he informed me that -he had written to the Master on the subject, and observed that he was afraid I could not have the Millington Scholarship, but that I should have some other ; his last account, however, informs me that I can have none at all. As he really thought me deserving of a scholarship, I am at a loss to conjecture why the Master should give a different decision, who, being at his living in Flintshire, can have no idea of the result of the examina- * I did not find the letter referred to among Dr. Butler's papers. -ED. 200 CORRESPONDENCE. [Cn. XIII- tion, hut from the account he has received from Mr. Crawley. Bray is also deprived of his scholarship, being rusticated for a very slight offence without been convened, and merely not having an opportunity of saying anything in his defence. I trust that this will not appear irrelevant to the subject, as there seems to appear in it a wish on the part of the College to have as many scholarships as possible vacant. Shall I under these circum- stances beg the favour of that advice which you have so kindly offered me? I should wish to change my College (and should prefer Peterhouse to all others here) ; in this step however I shall be happy to be ruled by you. " I am, Reverend Sir, " Your most obedient and grateful pupil, " BULKELEY WILLIAMS. " P.S. A line to my father on the subject would be thankfully received by him." FROM THE REV. P. WILLIAMS. "BEAUMARIS, December i6th, 1820. " DEAR SIR, I have received a letter from Mr. Crawley since I troubled you before about my son Bulkeley regretting that he had not been able to recommend his election into the scholarship on Dr. Millington's foundation, and, after paying him some compliments on his regular conduct in College, says ' that by some unaccountable means he has left school so exceedingly ill- informed as to the first principles of grammar, that I have found it absolutely impossible to support his pretensions without violating that duty which I owe to the College and that respect for the institutions of the founder which I conceive ought in all such cases to be the primary consideration.' " Mr. Crawley had Bulkeley before him some time after the ex- amination, and told him in direct terms he must not expect the exhibition, and Mr. Neville has written to the same effect to Lord Bulkeley : we must therefore give it up, but my son is so much mortified and disappointed, and conceives himself so much ill- treated, that I cannot prevail on him to remain at Magdalene. He is very ready and willing to go to any other College at Cambridge you may recommend, to which Lord Bulkeley has also consented, and his Lordship agrees with me that my son has been ill-used and deceived. Bulkeley has intimated a wish to go to Peterhouse, but as I am not competent to judge what is best now to be done with him, I shall be exceedingly thankful to you for your friendly advice on this occasion, and be so good as to let me hear from you soon, so that I may write to Bulkeley, who remains at College during the Christmas recess, to arrange his 1 820, 1821.] ARCHDEACONRY OF DERBY. 2OI plans for his removal and to have the benefit of the terms he has kept. " My son John has just arrived at home, and was sorry he could not contrive to stop at Shrewsbury and call upon you, but I find he has no means of judging of the examination of his brother, who has kept no copy of the papers he brought up to Mr. Crawley. Upon the whole I fear nothing can now be done but to remove poor Bulkeley from a College where the sons of great men only are encouraged, under the government of the Tutor as well as the Master. I hope you will excuse my troubling you on this occasion, and remain, with our united and best regards to Mrs. Butler, yourself, and family, dear Sir, " Your obliged and faithful servant, " P. WILLIAMS." Dr. Butler does not appear to have kept any drafts of the answers which it may be taken as certain that he wrote to both the foregoing letters, probably because the letters reached him just at the end of the half-year, which is always a busy time. Early in 1821 Dr. Butler was appointed by Lord Cornwallis, then Bishop of Lichfield and Coventry, to the Archdeaconry of Derby, which office he held till he was himself appointed to the See of Lichfield and Coventry on the death of Bishop Ryder. CORRESPONDENCE, JANUARY IST, 1821 DECEMBER 3RD, 1821. FROM BARON MERIAN. . "January 1st, 1821. " DEAR SIR, Pray where is that verse of Homer in which a person is commended (or blamed) for being very expert in swearing ? I believe and am almost sure the verb 6pKietv is in that verse. The sense of the line is equal to those where a man is quoted for being a good runner, a wise judge, a rich farmer. I have asked two Greek professors here, but they could not tell me. I am, however, quite certain of the existence of such a Homeric verse." ***** 202 CORRESPONDENCE. [Cn. XIII. The passage referred to is in Odyssey, xix. 392, etc, where Autolycus is mentioned as singularly expert at thieving and false-swearing. Dr. Butler sent the required reference, and on March 9th, 1821, the Baron wrote, "The verse of Homer is ipsissimus: now I shall beat my French doctors." To AN OLD PUPIL. 44 SHREWSBURY, March $th, 1821. "DEAR BRAY, We have examined the decree under which you hold your exhibition, and can find no power given to the Master and Fellows to deprive you of it All that appears is that, if you do not keep the greater part of each term, you forfeit for the first offence one-half the exhibition for that year, and for the second offence die exhibition is made vacant The utmost penalty, therefore, which you have incurred is the loss of one-half your exhibition for the present year, and if you keep the present and next terms you ought certainly to have the other half. If the Master and Mr. Crawley have declared your exhibition vacant, your remedy lies in an appeal to the visitor. " It is true that the visitor is the Master's father ; but still, were I you, I would appeal to him : you cannot be worse off by so doing ; you may be better off ; and you will either obtain justice, or subject the visitor to the same suspicion of partiality as the Master and Mr. Crawley now labour under. Some legal advice is necessary on making the appeal, and I think you should first consult your father on the subject and tiien apply to some respectable lawyer at Cambridge. By all means go to some one who ranks high in the profession, and not to an understrapper. He will draw out your appeal, which cannot cost you much, and if you succeed it will be a great triumph for you. When you have consulted your father, which I wish you to do without delay, write to me upon the subject If your father consents to your appealing, I presume the first step you have to take will be to call on Mr. Crawley with your lawyer, ask him whether your exhibition is declared vacant, and demand a decisive answer. If he says No, tiien you have no need to appeal. If he says Yes, then tell him you shall appeal to the visitor. In all this I give you my advice as a friend, not as a trustee : it is my own opinion unconnected with the trustees, and they are not responsible for it Nor will it be in their power or mine to allow you anything from the trust funds towards the expense of the appeal, whatever it may be. Of course I write all this to you confidentially, and do not wish to be mentioned in the College or to any one but your father as having ifai.] CORRESPONDENCE. 203 given any advice in the ntiwtrr, fV*^ I ihil always be ready eopgh to avow my opinion of Mr. C - when called upon." FROM THE RET. S. TELLBXOOK. " HUSTLEK'S ROOKS, JESCS C"*'*"^ Jbgr 64, 180. a MY DEA& DOCTOR. Since I wrote to yon some days or even weeks hate elapsed, yet I hare heard no tidings of your convalescence. Pray write to te2 me you are well again, and mean to keep so. My Easter was spent mainly in Hampshire tronts and fishing-rods die order of the day. There are some ffo"fffi streams in the neighbourhood of Andorer and Stockbridge, and I mean to have a legal right over their inHAa .!. as soon as any of tbe piscatorial fiberties are ofiered far hire- "By-the-bye, Mr. Madoi and O)kd Leighton. as I understand, have hired the fishery of Llyn Ogwyn. What is now to become of me ? Unless I can carry on the war I may as veil keep oat of Wales, a*l !**"" free from the contaminating influences of enw and covetousness ; for rhnogh Gwyned and Tally LJyn be very good reservoirs, yet Ogwyn is far die best of die three. When yon see Mr. Madox. present my angular and drtmlmr compfiinents to him, i.e. come round him if yon can. My ptmiM. ill r rtiiMi is to be in Wales during August, and to return to Salop at the beginning of September, so as to give the gMffaig a "Ask Mr. Madox if he be acquainted with die new fly called ' the coachman ' : it is much used in Hants, and, as I suppose, took its name from whipping its wings are white, body red hackle and peacock neck [?], hook middle size. I know you love diese minutiae. I moid tefl of some other pecuhanDes, and prooBse to let yon into die arcana, provided always dot yon reward me accordingly. You do indeed know some of die best bails for a fisherman, and sauces tor his fishy but as I hone already pot yon into a stew, I will leave yon there for the taotnt to fatten with any odd fish yon may chance to faH in with. It is ten to one bat he or some one of his connections win and otter-like propensities. "I have tried to g^ you stxne dotterel, but hare been at ]^ imsuth. Arrived at Paris after a most fatiguing journey in a diligence with five very disagreeable dirty French people, and found most comfortable apartments provided for me at Meurice's hotel by my friend the Baron, who had also engaged an exceed- ingly good and nearly new carriage, and one of the most agreeable intelligent servants I ever met with. From what I have seen of Paris, it appears much changed since I was here last, several new streets having been built. I drove to the Bois de Boulogne from the Champs Elyse'es, and dined there capitally ; among other good things, we had a fine brace of partridges, no game laws existing here as to the time of killing them. * * * * # " Milan, June 2$th. A great change appears in Milan since I was last here ; every shop is shut [during church time ED.] with even Presbyterian strictness, and I cannot be allowed so much as to go to the top of the Cathedral or to see the body of S. Carlo in the splendid chapel beneath the high altar. But by a singular i822.] THE CAPITOL MASS 'AT ST. PETER'S. 22? contrast to the general strictness, the first thing after service in the Cathedral is a drive to the Corso, and the next to the opera. ***** "Rome, June 2gth. At three o'clock yesterday morning I left Radicofani, which is situated on a hill about as high as Cader Idris, and did not get to Viterbo till three [?], having found the mountains much more tedious than I expected. From thence I was obliged to drive most furiously for seventy miles, in order to get to Rome before the dangers of the Campagna are at their height. I caught a glimpse of the Immortal City about a mile and a half above Baccano that is, I had seen the cross and the cupola of St. Peter's, and the city bearing away to the left. I then closed all the avenues to the air to avoid the maVaria. On reach- ing the Ponte Molle, and finding by the sound of the wheels that we were going over a bridge (which I knew could be no other) two miles from Rome, I threw open the windows of my calhhe, knowing all danger was over, and saw on my right hand St. Peter's one blaze of light. This being one of the greatest festivals of the Romish Church, the eve of St. Peter's is kept as well as the day. " At five this morning, June 3oth, I rose and got into my carriage with a very intelligent guide. I drove first to the Capitol, and ascended its tower. I could not contemplate from this spot, which commands all the monuments of Antient Rome, without feeling very strong sensations ; in short, I could not refrain from an actual gush of tears. I stood on the Capitol : on my left was the site of the Temple of Jupiter Capitolinus," etc., etc. ***** " At half-past ten I drove to St. Peter's to grand mass that is to say, to the most imposing ceremonies of the Catholic Church in the most august temple in the world. ... I must not omit a circumstance which had a ludicrous and almost profane effect. Just after the cardinals had descended the steps of the high altar, and were preparing to accompany the Pope * up them again previous to the consecration of the mass, two dogs came and sat down on the very seats their eminences had just quitted, and I was really in pain for the gravity of the procession when it returned. I thought they would have flown at one of the cardinals who shook his robe at them. ***** " The Church of S. Giovanni in Laterano . . . contains many highly interesting antiquities, and many that are not a little comical. Among the latter, as I was a favoured visitor, I saw among the reliques the very table upon which our Saviour celebrated the Last Supper, which is large enough in the present On this occasion represented by one of the cardinals. ED. 228 VISIT TO ROME. [Cn. XV. times to hold four people, so that the world cannot have degener- ated so much as some people suppose : one corner of this table is decayed they say that Judas sat there, and the place where his elbow leaned is become corrupted. ... I have seen a thousand such fooleries ; but the better class of people appear wholly to disregard them, and I never saw any but the most squalid and miserable objects pay them attention." ***** The following passage goes far to explain why Mr. Philip Browne's eyes twinkled when he was asked if Dr. Butler knew anything about the art of painting : " I have seen an immense number of fine paintings, as well as all the capi d'opera, which seem to me to have a faded appearance. Beautiful indeed they are, but they all seem past their prime. They will, however, be preserved in the freshest beauty in the mosaics of St. Peter's, which are eminently beautiful in them- selves, and will be highly interesting when their originals, with which they will bear the strictest investigation, are no more." This can only be surpassed, if indeed it is surpassed, by Dr. Arnold's taking the terra-cotta figures of the Varese chapels for waxworks, and mistaking an Assumption of the Virgin (to whose ascending figure the eyes of all present are directed) for a visit of the Apostles to the tomb of Christ* "The people in the ecclesiastical states are certainly more wretched and dirty, and probably more unprincipled, than in any of the northern states. I believe every third person one meets is ready to be an assassin. The look of lurking malignity, which arises indeed from poverty and oppression, is not to be mistaken. ***** " Amid all these ruins and trophies of ancient grandeur not a * The passage runs : " In one of these chapels, looking in through the window, we saw that it was full of waxen figures as large as life, representing the Apostles on the Day of Pentecost ; and in another there was the sepulchre hewn out of the rock, and the Apostles coming, as on the morning of the Resurrection, ' to see the place where Jesus lay.' I confess these waxen figures seemed to me anything but absurd ; from the solemnity of the place altogether, and from the goodness of the execution, I looked on them with no disposition to laugh or to criticise" (Stanley's Life of Arnold, 1844, Vol. II., pp. 367, 368). 1 822.] TIVOLIPOPE PIUS VII. 229 sound was heard, nor a human being, except the sentinel at the gate of the Colosseum, could be seen. The moon fell upon the foundations of the palaces of the Caesars and the cottage of Romulus, upon the temples of the greatest people in the world, and on the humble shrine of their founder : all was buried in the same repose. A gulf seems to separate antient and modern Rome ; yet turn but a corner, and you find yourself once more in a city whose temples and palaces, unrivalled for grandeur, for number and magnificence, for the precious works of art which they contain, and for the splendour with which they are still decorated, proclaim her to be imperial and immortal. Rome is the only city in the world which has survived every change, every convulsion, every calamity, and which may therefore so far deserve the epithet of ' eternal.' ***** " I then (July 4th) drove through a very extensive wood of antient olives (the site of Tibur) to the modern town of Tivoli, which is of considerable extent, and beyond all comparison the filthiest and most horribly disgusting specimen of an Italian town I have ever seen : the inn, however, is pretty fair. ... I tasted the wines of Tibur, but they have greatly degenerated since the days of my friend Horace. I returned partly by day and partly by moonlight. The heavens were red-hot, and the wind blows like a flame. ***** "July 6th. I went at six this evening to the Quirinal to see the Pope * take his airing, and had an excellent view, being rather less than two yards from him. He seems excessively feeble, bent almost double, and quite unfit to be dragged out of his apartment. Indeed he is so ill that this day for the first time he came through the gardens of the Quirinal instead of the usual way, being unable to bear the fatigue of going downstairs. His carriage, drawn by four black horses, proceeded only at a foot's pace, and I followed in mine about eighty yards' distant to see the people great and small ; and those who were in carriages got out and knelt in the dust. The Pope was dressed in light buff- coloured clothes ; his hair is grey, but not white : he is eighty- six years of age. I went about a mile and a half to watch this procession. ***** "J u fy 9*h- From Arezzo to Florence is but little more than forty miles, but I took more than twelve hours to perform it without losing an instant. It is a succession of ups and downs, and yet I am at a loss to conceive how I could have been from two in the afternoon till half-past two in the morning about it." Pius VII., who was succeeded in the following year by Leo XII. 230 VISIT TO ROME. [Cn. XV. Dr. Butler continued his journey to Pisa, Lucca, and Massa, intending to go on to Genoa by the coast road from Lerici to Genoa. On arriving there, he found that he could not proceed. He therefore returned to Pisa. "Pisa, Saturday evening, July i$th. I am safe and well, but am obliged to retrace all my steps. By to-morrow morning I hope to reach Florence once more, from whence I shall in one hour commence my journey homewards. " The case is, that a storm which happened the night before last has utterly destroyed fourteen miles of the road to Genoa just made, so that for six months it will be impassable ; and when I got my carriage embarked at Lerici in order to proceed by sea, which was as clear and as smooth as a looking-glass, an accidental, or I may rather say providential, delay in signing my bill of health of Genoa saved me from a sudden hurricane that must have been fatal if I had been out at sea. The captain of the felucca refused to go (but he got my money), and I find these sudden hurricanes are very frequent at this season on this coast. I have now renounced all intention of going by sea, or of going to Genoa at all ; and owing to this adventure, I have taken in vain a journey of two hundred and fifty miles at an expense of ,30, and the loss of four good days." It seems, then, that there were three violent storms within a few days of one another. From the foregoing passage the most violent appears to have been, not the one that occurred on the 8th, in which Shelley lost his life, nor that of the day on which Dr. Butler was writing, but an intermediate one on the nth ; for it is not likely that he is confusing the 8th and the nth. He must have perfectly well known of the disaster which had been fatal to Shelley ; but Shelley's body was not found till the 22nd : it was not yet therefore absolutely certain that he had not been picked up and saved. Dr. Butler would naturally say nothing about what had happened, for fear of alarming his wife and daughters ; but it is curious that there should be no reference in a very long letter from the Hon. W. Hill (dated Genoa, August I2th, 1822, and dealing almost entirely with the real or supposed effects of the storms in 1 822.] SHELLEY'S STORM 231 question) to an event which is now held as epoch-making in the literary annals of the century. " Bologna, July ibth. After a long, harassing, and fruitless journey from Pisa to Florence, my carriage broke down at the gates of the latter place, and it cost me a day to repair it. I set off last night to cross the Apennines ; and though the road is good, yet it took me sixteen hours to accomplish fifty miles. * * * ^^ * * " Wednesday, July \ith. Thank God! after many difficulties and never having had my clothes off once but to change them since Saturday, I am now arrived safe at Turin, tolerably well, but fatigued and heated to death. I have now done with the dangers of banditti and malaria. ... I am just going to the ramparts to take an evening view. I shall then go to bed for six hours, an immense indulgence which I have not had anything like since I left Rome nor indeed ever more than that there, having been in bed at ten and up at four regularly. It is surprising with how little sleep (for I do not sleep half the time I am in bed) a man may live in a hot country. I believe what has kept me alive and well is the tepid bath which I always feel a great relief from fatigue. ***** " Paris. I am just arrived here safe and well, and have sent immediately for my letters. My disappointment is extreme; I have not heard from England once since I left it. I hope to be at Shrewsbury on Tuesday the 30th." CORRESPONDENCE, AUGUST i2TH, 1822 NOVEMBER 3OTH, 1822. FROM THE HON. W. HILL. " GENOA, August 12th, 1822. " MY DEAR FRIEND, I had been rather unwell before you fixed your time for being with me, when I worked day and night to prepare some despatches for your conveyance, that I might have the entire enjoyment of your society for the few hours you meant to give me. My labours and anxiety of mind at your non- arrival affected my health deeply, and I am now but just crawled out of my bed, to which or my room I have been confined ever since. Not having tasted food for twelve days consecutively, during the progress of my illness, and having been nourished by broth and jellies only, I am still in such a state of weakness that I scarcely know how I shall get through this letter. Thanks to an English physician lately settled here, oceans of bark, and 232 CORRESPONDENCE. [Cn. XV. diminution of heat, I recover a little strength daily, and the first use I make of it is to express my regret, and (may I add without reproach after all your own sufferings ?) my astonishment at our curious misfortunes. When three or four days had elapsed after the latest time fixed, I turned to my nephew and said despond- ingly that I could not guess what had happened, but that I gave you up. He laughed and said, What were two or three days' delay to a traveller ? I acknowledged in every other case he might be right, but he did not know Dr. Butler or his engage- ments, and that I was sure you would be punctual if health per- mitted. Among my conjectures I expressed my fears that you had been induced by some felucca rascals to abandon the road for their own interest, but Noel, who likes the sea, would hear nothing against the sailors. "I had prepared a passport for you to go 'en courrier' with despatches for the British Government, which, without obliging you to go faster than you pleased (and you might have slept every night on the road), would have given you innumerable advantages between this place and Paris, where you would have left the letters with Charles Vaughan or carried them on as you liked. You would have had the right to pass every other carriage, to be served first with horses, exemption from every search of baggage and stoppage whatever ! ! ! For this I hoped to have screwed out of you another day, if not two; and as it was, you had better have given me six days than have turned back from Lerici, except to go to the Spezia, and so on to Genoa by land or even waited for the wind. I can easily conceive the fidget you must have been in, but a moment's reflection must have convinced you that I would not have recommended that road upon light grounds, in spite of the foolish information of Prince Engarin [?]. Prince Leopold's sister went over that road in the winter; Lord and Lady Bradford in April or May ; Lord Clare went from my house to see his old schoolfellow Lord Byron at Pisa, and returned and dined with me again, carrying letters for me to Paris ; the Prussian envoy's wife and daughters, and innumerable persons you do not know by name, were going and coming every day. It is true Lord William Russell, who was living with me when I expected you, told me that the road-makers, where reparations are wanting, like to be tipped for moving machines and carts out of the way when a carriage passes, but this is all. Lord William prefers a felucca a strange taste, like Noel, and the wind had been east and south-east for two months consecutively, as it frequently is at this time of year, and perfectly fair from Lerici. It might have been too boisterous the day you were there, but twelve hours would have settled it, and perhaps it was so only in the Gulph, or not at all, but some rascality of the felucca-men, who wished to go to some fete, when they had secured your carriage, and found you frightened about the road. If your bargain was written and 1 822.] THE HON. W. HILL. 233 made in a proper manner I could make the rascal vomit up all your money. You may guess how painful it was to learn your adventure and determination when every day before and every day after numerous feluccas arrived under my windows, bringing different passengers, some of my acquaintances, some with letters of recommendation, etc. Last year, at the very time you arrived, I passed twice myself before the road was finished, but where there was no carriage road there was an excellent horse road, and delightful mules and horses, for about two hours only. As Noel preferred the sea I gave him my carriage baggage and a servant, and went with Mr. Hamilton and one servant in a carriage of the country from Spezia, except where we rode. I remember the innkeeper at Massa telling me I could not cross some torrents. I never saw them, at least the water. You had better have remained two or three days at Lerici than have done what you did, or sent an estafette to me, or threatened the rascally felucca-man with complaint to me. It is but seven or eight hours with a fair wind, but you might have landed at Sestri in four, five, or six, according to its state. "You could not certainly know what arrangements I had prepared for you here, but there was one thing above all which must have struck you with your road book in your hand con- tinually, and your different calculations, if your agitation and anxiety had not blinded you. I am an old resident of the country, and must have known (as I dare say you have) that Alexandria is but nine hours from this place. If I had not been certain of my fact, and that it was an immense saving to you to avoid the dreadful hills of Bologna, I would have advised your coming from thence and returning, particularly as you had preceded your time, and indeed you might have turned long before you got to Alexandria. I go through that place five or six times every year, and the waiters there are my oldest friends, by which means I got your letter the next morning. As I had by that time given you up, it gave me no disappointment, but relieved me as to any anxiety for your personal safety. My first impression was to send my despatches after you, but I must have been too late, .as you would have even left Turin. My illness made such rapid progress I could not even direct a purpose messenger with them for some time to Paris. For the want of two or three hours' sober reflection or inquiry, you have missed seeing a beautiful country, a singular and beautiful city adorned with the finest palaces in Italy and many fine pictures, of which you have seen enough; but what is worse, you have hurried, fatigued, and vexed yourself to death, and lost much precious time and your health and money to avoid seeing them. We have both suffered sufficiently, so God bless you, and pray believe me to be yours always truly and affectionately, "W. H." 234 CORRESPONDENCE. [Cn. XV. FROM THE REV. WALTER WHITER. "CAMBRIDGE, August l$th, 1822. " DEAR SIR, I must express to you my best acknowledgements for the trouble which you have had in conveying to me the literary packet from your friend Baron Merian. The packet arrived safe on Sunday last at this place, where I have now taken up my abode for a few months. ***** " Let me take this occasion to express what I think on the support you have given to the Etymologicum Universak* It appears to me that your zeal in the cause has introduced the work to the Continent, and I shall always be prompt to declare this opinion. In our own country these studies are not cultivated, and it would perhaps be difficult to discover in what pursuits our literature consists. Yet there are some men in our country of the genuine stamp, whose scholarship is of the highest order, and who read and meditate with unceasing diligence, urged by no other motives than those which the love of literature supplies. I have been fortunate enough to obtain the favourable opinion of some men who do honour to this order of scholars, and I rejoice at the occasion which the present letter affords me of expressing to you with acknowledgements of my gratitude what I feel on this subject. " Your friend Baron Merian is full of zeal in the cause of good letters, and ardent to proclaim and to applaud what he conceives to be well and diligently performed for the advancement of truth. To you, sir, I owe this auxiliary who is at once so able and so willing to promote the cause which he espouses. I have looked over the little pamphlet on language by the Russian [Gulianow], and agree with you that it savours of mysticism. You say that the author and the French Institute are at loggerheads on the subject. I tremble for a subject when the loggerheads of Insti- tutes, Academies, etc., etc., have taken it under their care or jurisdiction, either as athletes or arbiters. ***** " I have no copy of this work [the Etymologicufti Magnum^ here, nor do I know where a copy is to be had. Poor Billy Lunn told me that when the price of this book in one volume was reduced to its fourth part five shillings and became an inhabitant of the stalls about London, the copies suddenly disappeared, and came into the possession of those ambulating readers who hang about the stalls in the capital a powerful, numerous, contemplative body of stu- dents, of more weight, as I am told, in deciding the final fate of books, than the greedy collectors of libraries are disposed to imagine. " So unknown is the Etym. Univ. in this country that Todd, * Cambridge, 1822 1825, 3 vols., 4to. ED. t Cambridge, 1800, Part I. (no more published). ED. I822.J SHILLETO'S LATIN COUPLET. 235 the editor of Johnson's dictionary (whom I know a little), a regular bookman, seems to be ignorant that such a work exists. He quotes always, as I believe, the former work Etym. Mag. The traffic of literature, as it reigns at present in our own country, is, I am informed, alike potent and active in its sway. Whether it executes its province of publishing, or exerts its propensities to conceal not to be enrolled in some band of literary conscripts is to suffer the penalties of proscription, and to be banished from their roll of fame." MEMO IN DR. BUTLER'S FIRST LETTER-BOOK. " August ljth, 1822. " Went to Harwood with Mr. Sheepshanks and told him that I had strictly forbidden the boys to hire boats, and that if any accident happened in consequence of his letting them have boats after warning, the blame would rest with him, and that he was hereby most earnestly requested by me not to let them. He replied that he kept his boats for hire, and should let them when- ever desired to do so. Upon this I called on the Mayor with Mr. Sheepshanks, and was promised by the Mayor that he would see Harwood this evening, and inform him that if he did so in defiance of this warning, the law should lay hold on him." There had been no boating at Rugby, and Dr. Butler was afraid of the boys getting drowned ; hence a pro- hibition which was for some years a fertile source of trouble, and in connection with which my good old friend and tutor the late Rev. Richard Shilleto once told me the following story. Dr. Butler was reprimanding the boys about the boating, and spoke with a slight hesitancy, which Mr. Shilleto told me was habitual with him when pre- tending to be more angry than he really was. " If the men," he said t " will let the boys have boats, I will have them up before the magistrates." As these words fell gradually from the Doctor's lips, Shilleto wrote on a scrap of paper : " Quando velint homines pueris conducere cymbas, Ante magistratus Butler habebit eos." Having done so, he slid them on to Dr. Butler's desk. 236 CORRESPONDENCE. [Cn. XV. " Psha, boy, psha," was all the answer made him ; " but," said Mr. Shilleto, " the Doctor folded the paper carefully up and put it in his pocket. I knew 'conducere' was wrong, but it was the nearest thing I could get at the moment, and I have never been able to set it right since without spoiling the whole thing : so it must stand." FROM THE REV. AUTHORITY NORMAN. " BRAILSFORD, August 26th, 1822. " REV. SIR, I think it my duty to inform you that a practice which prevails in this part of the country of deteriorating the Church property under the guise of repairing it has now reached this parish. Since I mentioned to you at Derby the condition of my church, it has been determined to repair the roof after the practice of which I speak, by taking away the lead and covering it with slate. The old lead I am told will sell for sixty pounds, and the cost of the slate will be about twenty and these repairs are only over the aisle. The roof of the church body will soon require to be repaired, and the lead which covers it will sell for upwards of a hundred pounds. " At the vestry meeting, where this measure was proposed, I stated my opinion of its illegality, and begged that no such step might be taken without Mr. Mott's advice. I was answered that it must be done ' under the rose,' and that I need not to notice it, as other clergymen had not ; and it was held out to me that I should have a vestry built if there was money to spare. Since that time it is determined without a public meeting to pursue this plan. Yesterday the churchwarden informed me of it, and I think it imperative upon me to make you acquainted with it. But should you in consequence deem it proper to pursue any measure, may I beg that the source of your informa- tion be not named, as it would certainly be followed by every vexation and hostility to me, with which the troubles of the present day are so familiar ? # * * * * " I named the promise of building a vestry, as I also spoke to you concerning one. My house is distant half a mile from the church, and I often have to walk through the wet grass, but the personal inconvenience is not so much to be regretted as the consequent loss of official dignity by being obliged to mix with the people before the service, and even by putting on and off the surplice and gown in their sight. I have refrained from asking for a vestry in consideration of the difficulty of the times, 1 822.] EARLY ALPHABETIC CHARACTERS. 237 but after such an offer on the part of the parish it needs no further delicacy on mine. I trust that the nature of this case will excuse the liberty of my address." FROM THE REV. WALTER WHITER. "CAMBRIDGE, August 271/1, 1822. ***** " You ask whether any analogy can be traced between the form of letters and the position of the organs of speech that utter them in any of the earliest written languages, and you add that you can trace none. No more can I. I think, however, that many of the things that have been frequently repeated on the formation of letters are sufficiently true, and such observations as occur to me at the moment without looking into any books I shall write down till my paper obliges me to stop. "I do not think that attempts were made to form figures according to any conceived resemblances of those figures or letters with the organs of speech. In hieroglyphical writing something of this kind may have occasionally taken place, but in general I imagine nothing of this sort was attempted or conceived. The marks adopted were such as were suggested to the inventor at the moment. They were straight lines, not curves, which were more difficult to mark on stones, etc. as most seem to agree. The resemblance of letters in different alphabets has been observed by all, but they do not seem to have perceived the full extent of this resemblance especially in letters supposed to have a different power. I think that more dexterity has been exhibited by reformers of alphabets in noting this resemblance than is commonly imagined. I think that we shall discover similarities before hidden if we turn our curves into straight lines forming angles. "The passage in Don Quixote (I have brought my Don Quixote with me) in which Cervantes describes the mode of forming the name of Dulcinea del Toboso always appeared to me to contain words which admirably described this dexterity of these inventors of alphabets, though the artifice adopted by these inventors and Don Quixote proceeds on a different principle. ' Buscandole nombre que no desdixasse mucho del suyo, y que tirasse, y se encaminasse al de Princesa,' etc. In the formation of cognate letters it is contrived that they do not much gainsay each other, as it were, that they draw near to each other in their forms and traces ; that they walk, as it were, in the same track, or that they are entrack'd with one another, if I may so put it ; or, in other words, that cognate letters are traced or drawn not much different from each other. You have justly seen that B and 3_belong to each other. Turn the curves of our English B into straight lines and you have E (two Hebrew B's, C L), which, 238 CORRESPONDENCE. [Cn. XV. accommodated to the Hebrew mode of writing from right to left, becomes U U, the Hebrew Beth 3. " Let us examine the other labials. The English F is the ^Eolic digamma f, and the P turned into straight lines be- comes F. " The V or V V, U or u u, contain the Beth cavity C 3. When the parallel lines in L, 2, or 3 form angles > < V, the M is M or two V V inverted, A A ; hence the cognates ft. and ft. 11 Mu and beta are, as you say, almost indistinguishable from one another. The modern Greeks represent the sound of B (English) by M B. The Greek II is another 3 n, in Hebrew 3. The Greek 3> represented by straight lines becomes ^, which is two F's or 1 F. " We cannot but note how S, etc., appears under a similar form in various languages : W (Heb.), ) (^Egypt.), 2 or x? or E, or w , -^ , the Arabic ^ -., in Russian IU. N is an organical ap- pendage to M in many cases, and hence it is like it in shape. In modern Greek N before n becomes as M, TOV -n-arepa, torn batera. "There is a mingled sound of the guttural and labial in the human voice, and hence the Q and U are united with each other in Latin words, so that Gualterus becomes Walter, guerre war, etc., as all understand. Hence G and F are sometimes like each other, as F~. F, or F. and hence F is called the two gammas, or digamma. This muffled sound is expressed in Hebrew by y (Am). " Those who wish to know anything about the nature of this mingled sound of G and U or V or of the digamma would do well to study Mr. Owen's dictionary among the Welsh words beginning with gw, where they will see how in each word the two forms are adopted, of the guttural G and the labials w and [letter illegible] beginning the word, and from hence they will pass to their parallel words in other languages, and see how terms appar- ently different in form belong to one another. "Thus 'Gwener' 'that confers happiness, Venus' becomes Wener, and hence we have the Latin Venus, Vener-is, and understand how gun in gune may belong to the Ven in Venus, and how in other dialects of the Celtic the name for woman appears under the labial form Bean, and sometimes under the guttural form Gean (see Shaw's diet.). Wenin is another form of queen, quean, and this is the origin of the en in Helen, etc., quasi Olwen, the Celtic Venus (see Owen's Welsh dictionary). You will at once call to mind the passage in Herodotus that the temple dedicated to a foreign Venus in Egypt was no other than the Grecian hEL-EN. The war of Troy was a war of two states rivals in religion and commerce, and if Paris ravished away from Argos a material personage of flesh and blood called ) a priestess of Olwen, whose name she bore, he like- 1822.] EARLY ALPHABETIC CHARACTERS. 239 wise, we may conjecture, may have taken away the mistress the goddess Olwen, the deity of the temple without flesh and blood, under form of a statue. The people of Argos might have considered this insult to their religion a more reasonable cause of war than the insult offered to Menelaus by taking away his wife. Herodotus would have been altogether of the same opinion. This will account for the story of the image of Helen in Lycophron, Euripides, etc. By examining Gn in Mr. Owen's dictionary, you will see that it means whatever is delightful, beautiful what is white, bright, fair, etc., and you will agree that it belongs to the Greek Gan-os (Tavos), which is explained in Prelim. Dissert, to Etym. Univ., page 121. The Olwen is supposed to mean the person with fair or beautiful traces of countenance, and thus by considering the sense of Ol, the track, trace, and by examining the words connected with ala, etc., in Mr. Shaw's Gaelic dictionary, you will see how Ol belongs to Hole and to av\a, c EA/cos, ovX-t], etc. Such is the composition of the Grecian Hel-En. These observations have drawn me from the remarks on letters, with which I will fill the remaining part of my paper. " It might be asked whether the cavity of 3 and p belongs to the cavity of Beth 3, and whether their similarity arises from the connexion between the guttural and labial sound. Though the figures of letters are not taken from the supposed resemblance to the organs of speech, yet their names may, and the Hebrews might have called these letters Beth, Capa, Coph, from j-Q, the hollow, as a den, bed, etc., etc., HDD [or rather cp], the hollow of the hand, as some have conjectured, and such might be the Hebrew idea. Yet Beith is the Irish name for B, and this signifies a birch-tree, though we are reminded of the Irish Both, a cottage or booth, which corresponds with the sense of JV3. "Some tribes of the Celts called their alphabet from trees, and the twigs of trees under certain relations to parallel horizontal lines represented the letters. This species of writing was called the Ogham. From this the notation of musical sounds is derived, and by this Ogham we take our degrees in Cambridge. These twigs were sometimes put loosely upon the tablet, and hence, I imagine, is the story of the Sibyl's books being dispersed by the wind. In Vallancey's grammar the forms of the Ogham may be seen, and in other books on alphabetical writing. These are very hasty remarks, which I should have only ventured to write from your desire to hear what I think on a subject, on which I have only thought enough to convince me that nothing satisfactory can be made of it. I am, my dear Sir, your most faithful servant, "WALTER WHITER. " There is still a little room left. The Rho of the Greeks and the English P are alike P. Hence I should conjecture some 240 CORRESPONDENCE. [Cn. XV. relation in their sound, and should conceive that the Greek Rho had sometimes a vowel breathing before it in the beginning of a word with a labial kind of sound. Our rudiments tell us in the same article that v and p have an aspirate, v8r). The rough breathing would be the due accompaniment. I cannot but think that this observation on the P is of some weight. These are only the slightest sketches of very many things that might be said on the same subject, but I fear that even some of these things may appear fanciful. Some- thing, however, of this sort I think must exist, if it was only developed, or if there should be evidence enough belonging to the subject to ensure conviction." To A LADY. " August 2%th, 1822. ***** " I am myself a loyal member of that Church in which I have the honour to hold an office of some importance. I aim at nothing better, and in truth I know nothing batter. I cannot comprehend the meaning of the term ' evangelical,' which some of those who profess to be its ministers assume to themselves in exclusion of the rest. 1 teach those principles of religion to my pupils in which I have been educated myself, and in which I believe myself, and I teach no more." To THE VENERABLE ARCHDEACON BLOMFIELD. " August 31 st, 1822. " I know nothing likely to remove me hence if I have my health till this boy shall have completed his education, but of course he must take his chance as to my continuance. My belief is that I shall remain here till he is fit to go to college, and longer, but one cannot look so far into futurity, and all that I can promise is that as long as I am master of this school he shall have his board and education gratis. I should not have mentioned this had I not been tormented lately with letters of inquiry, owing to a report that I had expressed an intention of becoming a candidate for Rugby, which is, and always will be, the farthest thing from my intention." I presume there must have been some rumours about Dr. Wooll's intending to resign the head-mastership of Rugby. As a matter of fact he did not do so till 1828. 1 822.] CORRESPONDENCE. 24! To THE EDITOR OF THE " SHEFFIELD INDEPENDENT." (Original written on the back of a document which I de- stroyed. ED.) " September 2 1st, 1822. " SIR, Observing a paragraph in the St. James's Chronicle of September igth quoted from the Sheffield Independent, which states that the Vicar, churchwardens, and constable of one of the most populous parishes of the High Peak had attended a large cattle fair for the purpose of selecting a bull to be baited for the pleasure of their parishioners, I beg leave to say that I shall feel much obliged to you if you will inform me which parish in the High Peak you allude to, and am, Sir," etc. ***** FROM DR. PARR. (Signature and address only in Dr. Parr's handwriting.) " November (?) $oth, 1822. " In general terms I scouted the tale, and of course I did justice to the calm and genuine virtues of your venerable mother. I anticipated in my mind all and more than all that you have written in detail. Her whole life was a course of preparation for everything which is intelligible and credible in a future state. I quite approve of the word ' veneration ' which you propose, and should disapprove of any epithet affixed to it. The term is strong, sufficiently strong, and it harmonises with the general simplicity and seriousness of the inscription. " As to the contest in your county, I certainly exult in the victory gained over Toryism, and from the events which are passing among us and around us, your sagacity must perceive that Toryism has endangered the Church and State. I shall always reprobate the invidious and indiscriminate application of the word Radical. They who opposed the French war were called Jacobins ; they who censured the measures of administration and dread the servility and corruption of Parliament are now called Radicals. This perversion of language is convenient for the very worst purposes and the very worst rulers. No man of common sense would suppose for a moment that I would co-operate with such miscreants as Hunt and Cobbett ; yet I hold that Hunt was cruelly punished, and I further hold that Cobbett has diffused the knowledge of many substantial and important truths. Many of his disciples will in practice be found wiser and better men than their master. They will separate the tares from the wheat, and they will apply to good ends what the wretch himself pro- claims for very bad ones. As to myself, I am a man of too much research and too much discernment to be even in speculation a VOL. I. 1 6 242 CORRESPONDENCE. [CH. XV. republican, and in practice I hope to die as I have hitherto lived, a constitutional Whig. I divide my hatred among the Minis- terialists and the Radicals in portions nearly equal, but as matters now stand my fears of the Ministerialists are greater than my fears of the Radicals. I observe, too, that when men are pre- paring to apostatise they disguise their latent views under the pretence of condemning and resisting that which is indisputably evil. You, namesake, have too much sincerity and too much magnanimity for such paltry artifices. Again, I dislike the doctrine that all statesmen are rogues, and I have observed that doctrine employed as a pretence for joining those rogues who are in power at the time. In the present state of Europe nothing can be adiaphorous to a wise man. I have been, and ever shall be, a partisan, but my approbation of the Whigs is not indis- criminate, and they know it. My good friend, no man will undertake to defend the system upon which the English Govern- ment has been conducted since the accession of George III., and surely the party which for more than sixty years has deliberately sacrificed power gives the best possible pledge for sincerity. The Radicals are shrewd in their generation when they inculcate distrust and dislike of the persons with whom I sympathise. The Tories, by long success, have multiplied perils to the Church and State ; the Whigs will not be permitted to save them ; the Radicals would subvert them to-morrow. Namesake, I decidedly prefer Canning to Londonderry, and do not you believe that Romilly would have been a more desirable statesman than Lord Eldon ? Let us talk these matters over when we meet. I hear a favourable account of the four Cambridge candidates, and par- ticularly of Bankes, but I detest the principle on which Bankes relies. Among the Herveys, from the time of Pope to the present hour, there never was a dunce nor a worthy, unless your corre- spondent forms an exception. Grant has a large share of talent and virtue. Scarlett's integrity in private life is adorned by his steadiness in public, and if he had played fast and loose he would have risen to the situation which is now filled by Abbott. Respect him at least for his consistency, and prefer him you must to such deserters as Charles Warren, Copley, and Gifford. If Scarlett fails, as I think he will, the death-blow is given to the cause of freedom in Cambridge. That the young men should have caught the contagion of servility from the old is a dreadful spectacle ; but the plain truth is that, to an extent quite unpre- cedented, the Church and both the Universities are corrupt to the very root. Your grandchildren will be eye-witnesses of the mischief. I have lived, and happily my head will be under the sod when the storm bursts." ***** The inscription referred to in the preceding letter is the 1 822.] EPITAPH ON DR. BUTLER'S PARENTS. 243 one written by Dr. Butler for the mural tablet that stands unless the modern practice of moving old monuments has found its way also to Kenilworth in the old church on the south side of the chancel arch. It runs : NEAR THE PULPIT ARE INTERRED THE REMAINS OF MR. WILLIAM BUTLER AND LUCY HIS WIFE, THE FORMER OF WHOM DEPARTED THIS LIFE MARCH 21, 1815, IN HIS 8;TH YEAR, THE LATTER NOV. 2, 1822, IN THE 84TH YEAR OF HER AGE. THEY WERE UNOSTENTATIOUS BUT EXEMPLARY IN THE DISCHARGE OF THEIR RELIGIOUS, MORAL, AND SOCIAL DUTIES. THIS MONUMENT IS ERECTED BY THEIR ONLY SON, SAMUEL BUTLER, D.D., ARCHDEACON OF DERBY AND VICAR OF THIS CHURCH, IN VENERATION FOR THE MEMORY OF HIS BELOVED PARENTS, AND IN HUMBLE THANKFULNESS TO ALMIGHTY GOD, WHO VOUCHSAFED TO GRANT THEM LENGTH OF DAYS, ESTEEM OF FRIENDS, CONTENT OF MIND, AND AN EASY, GENTLE PASSAGE TO ETERNITY. I see Professor Mayor places here among Dr. Butler's works An Essay upon Education; intended to show that the Common Method is defective in Religion, Morality, etc. (8vo, London, no date) ; he queries it, however, as by another author. This is the case ; it is by one S. Butler of Bristol, and was first published in 1753 as "By a gentleman of Bristol," though later editions are signed S. Butler. In the British Museum, catalogue it is rightly excluded from the list of Dr. Butler's works. Of the Praxis on the Latin Prepositions, published in December 1822, Professor Mayor says: " The book held its ground about twenty-five years, but seems to have been superseded by Mr. T. K. Arnold's and other exercise books, which follow the dry, mechanical system of Ollendorf. There is great reason to believe that the quality of the ele- mentary books used in many schools has fallen off : it may well 244 DR. BUTLER'S PRAXIS. [Cn. XV. be questioned whether this Praxis might not be re-introduced with advantage." I am not philologist enough to know whether the derivations given by Dr. Butler of the several prepositions will in all cases be held correct, but the book is pleasant reading from its clearness and from the excellence of the translations given as examples. These translations from a Latin writer are intended to be re-translated into Latin by the student, and the master is furnished with a key containing the original passage. CHAPTER XVI. AN ARDUOUS UNDERTAKING. The School Lawsuit. Correspondence, January 4th, 1823 July 3rd, 1823. Kennedy takes the Person Prize whilst still at School. His Remarks upon the Shrewsbury System. Correspondence, August 1 7th, 1823 April igth, 1824. IN January 1823 I meet with the first traces among Dr. Butler's papers of a lawsuit which, originating in the reign of James I., had been continued intermittently from that date till Dr. Butler took it in hand. The successful strangling of this suit was perhaps the most arduous and important of the many services he rendered to Shrewsbury School, and it is evident from his letter to the Master and Fellows of St. John's, written in 1835, and announcing his intended resignation, that he so con- sidered it himself. After a period of repose that had lasted for some years, there had been a recrudescence of legal activity between the years 1806 and 1823, which brought the school property into such serious difficulties that on the 6th of January, 1823, the trustees unanimously resolved to reduce by 50 per cent, the salaries of the masters that had been augmented since the passing of the School Act, and also to reduce by 50 per cent, the head-money allowed for each boy on the founda- tion. At the same time they declined, on the score of want of funds, to render assistance in the matter of closing the school-lane thoroughfare, which passed along the whole 245 246 AN ARDUOUS UNDERTAKING. [CH. XVI. front of what are now the Museum buildings, and so into Castle Street. Dr. Butler, knowing that the suit would never be ended as long as it was in the hands of the trustees, and seeing that things kept on going from bad to worse, determined to get the matter into his own hands, and accordingly wrote to the trustees asking them to make an order that should give him access to all documents in the hands of their bailiff and solicitor relative to the lawsuit, which he might have occasion to consult. At their meeting in July 1823 the trustees made the necessary order ; and from that time until the final settle- ment of their claims, in the early months of 1827, the direction of the whole matter was practically left to Dr. Butler. It should be remembered that the very arduous task on which he now entered a work more than sufficient to occupy any man's whole time was undertaken in addition to the wearing labours of his school, then enter- ing on its most brilliant period, and the by no means light business of his archdeaconry. I have heard my aunt, Mrs. Bather, say that her father's health, at no time robust, never fully recovered from the strain now put upon it. i CORRESPONDENCE, JANUARY 4TH, 1823 JULY 3RD, 1823. FROM THE REV. T. S. HUGHES. " YARMOUTH, January qth, 1823. " I have just accidentally heard the pleasing intelligence, and send you a line instantly to tell you, that I am elected Christian Advocate in the room of Lonsdale. I am writing this before going to bed, having come from a dinner party where the master of the house put me into no small surprise by wishing me joy of my new honours. Upon expressing my total ignorance of his meaning, he produced the paper which announced the appointment, very gallantly cut out the paragraph, and presented it to my dear Maria. The fact is that about three months ago I sent in my name, 1823.] "A BISHOP ABLE MAN." 247 but ... I gave up all hopes of success, and had really almost forgotten the whole affair. How I came to be chosen is yet a secret ; I suppose I slipped in through contending interests. The appointment is very gratifying to me, especially as it may promote my success in the world wherein I am now going to settle ; and I well know that no one will rejoice more in my good prospects than you, my oldest and dearest friend." ***** FROM BARON MERIAN. "January 24th, 1823. ***** " Pray push Mr. Whiter to send me his letter. 'Tis a great drama we are about, and he has opened the scene. Whatever is printed here of that sort shall be sent to you. It has been found that nine hundred years ago the Chinese had paper money (bank- notes) just as we have, and with the same vicissitudes of rising and falling, the same wry remedies, etc. But that's another chapter. ***** " Two circumstances make a man rise : favour, which you disdain ; and merit, which you possess but merit often subsides when it is not supported by what the French call ' la force des choses,' a power infinitely more powerful than the ' force des hommes? We Christians might call it the views and decrees of Providence. You will never get a bishop's mitre and crook for your sake : you will get them for the sake of your flock not because you have friends, but because you are a bishopable man." * * ' * * * To THE REV. T. S. HUGHES. (Original in possession of addressee's representatives.) "March I2tk, 1823. ***** " What you tell me about your projected review * interests me much more. If you can effect a change in the present disgraceful system of public classical examinations and awards of prizes you will do a great thing. I have lately conversed with Parr, Dobree, and Blomfield on this subject, who are all quite of my opinion. The utter ignorance of all Latinity which allows such detestable verse and prose to go forth to the world under the shape of odes and essays is an teternum opprobrium to the University. I must write to you again on this .subject if I can. I know that ' Eubulus ' had an intention of putting forth a pamphlet on that subject, and that he was deterred by fearing he should be misunderstood by the young men, who might suppose he was criticising them instead of their judges. I suggested a plan to him by which this * I was unable to discover what review was here contemplated ED. 248 CORRESPONDENCE. [Cn. XVI. difficulty might be avoided, but other occupations, I believe, will prevent him from undertaking it. And here, in strict confidence, let me give you a piece of advice which you may do well to profit by. If you are disposed to fall foul upon ' Eubulus,' read temperately and dispassionately his two pamphlets, and do not petulantly think to write him down. He is not one whom it is wise to provoke, and I know he has an esteem for you, and is your well-wisher, and inclined to think of you as highly as I believe he does contemptuously of ' Philograntus.' I give you this piece of advice in the strictest confidence, but you must profit or not by it as you please. And let me give you another hint : do not toady anybody in your review. I heartily wish you well on your marriage and your subsequent plans." FROM BARON MERIAN. "May \$th, 1823. " DEAR SIR, Nothing can be more judicious than the rules which you lay down for the investigation of Analogy. I am bound to say so, because they are the very same which we follow. Nay, we make use of a printed formulary (first sketched by the Empress Catherina II.), containing about three hundred chief words of the identical classes which you mention. Bread, however, is perhaps not quite proper, as being an artefactum which many nations have been and some are still without. " Grammar (inflexions) is less important than Roots ; roots are the inalterable stuff, grammatical accidents are the variable forms ; it signifies little that the Germans say hack-end and the English hack-ing, or the Romans por-orum and the English ' of the por-z&J the first syllable, i.e. the root, being decisive. I call herepor a root, though, strictly spoken, gutturals only can form roots. " The expression ' fas coming from fa ' is not quite in our style ; fas comes not from fa, and fa. comes not from fas. They are not father and son ; but, as you yourself perfectly indite, they are ' brothers and sisters ' sprung from one general idea and primitive verb, fa, pa, or ba (cry, speak), which you will meet with in fifty distant places, modified into rj-fu, fa-or, for, bo-o, (3o-dw, as you justly observe. The Chinese have preserved fa and pa (Deguignes, 1118, 1157, 11683). " Lex (legs) belongs not to lego in the sense of ' read ' ; it might belong to Ae'yw in the sense of ' say ' ; but in fact it belongs to Ae'yu in the sense of ' lay,' ' lay down.' (Compare the second line of this letter, and Ge-setz, seize, statutum, statuo, #T/AOS, 0e