\ 
 
 ] J
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 RIVERSIDE 
 
 > T ▼ ^ T ^ ▼ ■ 
 
 Ex Libris 
 ISAAC FOOT 
 
 P
 
 EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 
 
 VIGNETTES 
 
 BY AUSTIxM DOBSON 
 
 ' Faute d'archanges, il faut aimer ties 
 creatures imparfaites ' 
 
 ITonbon 
 
 CHATTO & WINDUS, PICCADILLY 
 
 1892

 
 TO 
 
 MY WIFE
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 Sixteen of the hventy papers comprised in this 
 volume appeared in America; but only one of 
 these — ' The Citizen of the World ' — has been 
 reprinted in England. Of the four papers 
 remaining, one was published (in part) in 
 the ^Saturday Review^ and the other three in 
 * Longman^ s 3fagazi?ie,' the '■National Review,' 
 and the ' Library ' respectively. Where permission 
 to reprint was required, it has been obtained ; and 
 it is hereby gratefully acknowledged. 
 
 With the exception of the last two, which are 
 more general in character than the rest, the papers 
 are notv chronologically arranged. They do not 
 by any 7neans exhaust the list of subjects originally 
 drazvn up by their writer for the kind of episodical 
 treatment at which they aim; and should these 
 first experiments find a public, it is not impossible 
 (^if the good Fates please'') that they may be 
 followed by a further collection.
 
 y 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Steele's Letters g 
 
 Trior's 'Kifty' 19 
 
 Spence's 'Anecdotes' 31 
 
 Captain Coram's Charity . 44 
 
 'The Female Quixote' 55 
 
 Fielding's 'Voyage to Lisbon' 68 
 
 Han way's Travels 79 
 
 A Garret in Gough Square 93 
 
 Hogarth's Sigismunda 104 
 
 /' 'The Citizen of the World' 115 
 
 An Old London Bookseller 125 
 
 Gray's Library 136 
 
 The New Chesterfield 147 
 
 A Day at Strawberry Hill 158 
 
 Goldsmith's Library 167 
 
 In Cowper's Arbour 176 
 
 The Quaker of Art 1S9 
 
 Bewick's Tailpieces 200 
 
 A German in England 211 
 
 Old Vauxhall Gardens 230
 
 EIGHTEENTH CENTURY VIGNETTES. 
 
 STEELE'S LETTERS. 
 
 /^N the 19th of May, 1708, Her Majesty 
 ^-^ Queen Anne being then upon the throne of 
 Great Britain and Ireland, a coach with two 
 horses, gaudy rather than neat in its appoint- 
 ments, drew up at the door of my Lord Sunder- 
 land's Office in Whitehall. It contained a lady 
 about thirty, of considerable personal attrac- 
 tions, and dressed richly in cinnamon satin. She 
 was a brunette, with a rather high forehead, the 
 height of which was ingeniously broken by two 
 short locks upon the temples. Moreover, she 
 had distinctly fine eyes, and a mouth which, in 
 its normal state, must have been arch and pretty, 
 but was now drawn down at the corners under 
 the influence of some temporary irritation. As 
 the coach stopped, a provincial-looking servant 
 promptly alighted, pulled out from the box-seat 
 a large case of the kind used for preserving the
 
 lo Eighteenth Century Vignettes . 
 
 voluminous periwigs of the period, and subse- 
 quently extracted from the same receptacle a 
 pair of shining new shoes with square toes and 
 silver buckles. These, with the case, he car- 
 ried carefully into the house, returning shortly 
 afterwards. Then ensued what, upon the stage, 
 would be called 'an interval,' during which time 
 the high forehead of the lady began to cloud 
 visibly with impatience, and the corners of her 
 mouth to grow more ominous. At length, about 
 twenty minutes later, came a sound of laughter 
 and noisy voices ; and by-and-by bustled out of 
 the Cockpit portal a square-shouldered, square- 
 faced man in a rich dress, which, like the coach, 
 was a little showy. He wore a huge black full- 
 bottomed periwig. Speaking with a marked 
 Irish accent, he made profuse apologies to the 
 occupant of the carriage — apologies which, as 
 might be expected, were not well received. An 
 expression of vexation came over his good-tem- 
 pered face as he took his seat at the lady's side, 
 and he lapsed for a few minutes into a moody 
 silence. But before they had gone many yards, 
 his dark, deep-set eyes began to twinkle once 
 more as he looked about him. When they 
 passed the Tilt- Yard, a detachment of the 
 Second Troop of Life Guards, magnificent in 
 their laced red coats, jack boots, and white
 
 Steele's Letters. ii 
 
 feathers, came pacing out on their black horses. 
 They toolc their way towards Charing Cross, 
 and for a short distance followed the same 
 route as the chariot. The lady was loftily indif- 
 ferent to their presence ; and she was, besides, 
 on the farther side of the vehicle. But her 
 companion manifestly recognized some old ac- 
 quaintances among them, and was highly grati- 
 fied at being recognized in his turn, although at 
 the same time it was evident he was also a little 
 apprehensive lest the ' Gentlemen of the Guard,' 
 as they were called, should be needlessly de- 
 monstrative in their acknowledgment of his ex- 
 istence. After this, nothing more of moment 
 occurred. Slowly mounting St. James's Street, 
 the coach turned down Piccadilly, and, passing 
 between the groups of lounging lackeys at the 
 gate, entered Hyde Park. Here, by the time 
 it had once made the circuit of the Ring, the 
 lady's equanimity was completely restored, and 
 the gentleman was radiant. He was, in truth, 
 to use his own words, ' no undelightful Com- 
 panion.' He possessed an infinite fund of wit 
 and humour ; and his manner to women had a 
 sincerity of deference which was not the pre- 
 vailing characteristic of his age. 
 
 There is but slender invention in this little 
 picture. The gentleman was Captain Steele,
 
 12 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 late of the Life Guards, the Coldstreams, and 
 Lucas's regiment of foot, now Gazetteer and 
 Gentleman Waiter to Queen Anne's consort, 
 Prince George of Denmark, and not yet ' Mr. 
 Isaac Bickerstaff' of the immortal ' Tatler.' 
 The lady was Mrs. Steele, nic Miss Mary Scur- 
 lock, his 'Ruler' and 'absolute Governesse ' 
 (as he called her), to whom he had been married 
 some eight months before. If you ask at the 
 British Museum for the Steele manuscripts 
 (Add. MSS. 5,145 A, B, and C), the courteous 
 attendant will bring you, with its faded ink, 
 dusky paper, and hasty scrawl, the very letter 
 making arrangements for this meeting (' best 
 Periwigg ' and 'new Shoes' included), at the 
 end of which the writer assures his ' dear Prue' 
 (another pet name) that she is * Vitall Life to 
 Y' Oblig'd Affectionate Husband & Humble 
 Ser°' Rich'' Steele.' There are many such in 
 the quarto volume of which this forms part, 
 written from all places, at all times, in all kinds 
 of hands. They take all tones ; they are pas- 
 sionate, tender, expostulatory, playful, dignified, 
 lyric, didactic. It must be confessed that from 
 a perusal of them one's feeling for the lady of 
 the chariot is not entirely unsympathetic. It 
 can scarcely have been an ideal household, that 
 ' third door right hand turning out of Jermyn
 
 Steele's Letters. 13 
 
 Street,' to which so many of them are ad- 
 dressed ; and Mrs. Steele must frequently have 
 had to complain to her confidante, Mrs. (or 
 Miss) Binns (a lady whom Steele is obviously 
 anxious to conciliate), of the extraordinary irre- 
 gularity of her restless lord and master. Now 
 a friend from Barbados has stopped him on his 
 way home, and he will come (he writes) ' within 
 a Pint of Wine ; ' now it is Lord Sunderland 
 who is keeping him indefinitely at the Council ; 
 now the siege of Lille and the proofs of the 
 ' Gazette ' will detain him until ten at night. 
 Sometimes his vague 'West Indian business' 
 (that is, his first wife's property) hurries him 
 suddenly into the City ; sometimes he is borne 
 off to the Gentleman Usher's table at St. 
 James's. Sometimes, even, he stays out all 
 night, as he had done not many days before the 
 date of the above meeting, when he had written 
 to beg that his dressing-gown, his slippers, and 
 'clean Linnen ' might be sent to him at * one 
 Legg's,' a barber ' over against the Devill Tavern 
 at Charing Crosse,' where he proposes to lie that 
 night, chiefly, it has been conjectured from the 
 context, in order to escape certain watchful 
 * shoulder-dabbers ' who were hanging obsti- 
 nately about his own mansion in St. James's. 
 For — to tell the truth — he was generally hope-
 
 14 Eighteenth Century t^ignettes. 
 
 lessly embarrassed, and scarcely ever without 
 a lawsuit on his hands. He was not a bad man ; 
 he was not necessarily vicious or dissolute. But 
 his habits were incurably generous, profuse, and 
 improvident ; and his sanguine Irish nature led 
 him continually to mistake his expectations for 
 his income. Naturally, perhaps, his ' absolute 
 Governesse ' complained of an absolutism so 
 strangely limited. If her affection for him was 
 scarcely as ardent as his passion for her, it was 
 still a genuine emotion. But to a coquette of 
 some years' standing, and ' a cried-up beauty ' 
 (as Mrs. Manley calls her), the realities of her 
 married life must have been a cruel disappoint- 
 ment ; and she was not the woman to conceal 
 it. .' I wish,' says her husband in one of his 
 letters, ' I knew how to Court you into Good 
 Humour, for Two or Three Quarrells more will 
 dispatch me quite.' Of her replies we have no 
 knowledge ; but from scattered specimens of 
 her style when angry, they must often have been 
 exceptionally scornful and unconciliatory. On 
 one occasion, where he addresses her as 
 ' Madam,' and returns her note to her in order 
 that she may see, upon second thoughts, the 
 disrespectful manner in which she treats him. 
 he is evidently deeply wounded. She has said 
 that their dispute is far from being a trouble to
 
 Steele's Letters. 15 
 
 her, and he rejoins that to him any disturbance 
 between them is the greatest affliction imagi- 
 nable. And then he goes on to expostulate, with 
 more dignity than usual, against her unreason- 
 able use of her prerogative. ' I Love you,' he 
 says, ' better than the light of my Eyes, or the 
 life-blood in my Heart but when I have lett 
 you know that, you are also to understand that 
 neither my sight shall be so far inchanted, or my 
 affection so much master of me as to make me 
 forgett our common Interest. To attend my 
 businesse as I ought and improve my fortune 
 it is necessary that my time and my Will should 
 be under no direction but my own.' Clearly 
 his bosom's queen had been inquiring too 
 closely into his goings and comings. It is a 
 strange thing, he says, in another letter, that, 
 because she is handsome, he must be always 
 giving her an account of every trifle, and minute 
 of his time. And again — ' Dear Prue, do not 
 send after me, for I shall be ridiculous!' It 
 had happened to him, no doubt. * He is gov- 
 erned by his wife most abominably, as bad as 
 Marlborough,' says another contemporary letter- 
 writer. And we may fancy the blue eyes of 
 Dr. Swift flashing unutterable scorn as he 
 scribbles off this piece of intelligence to Stella 
 and Mrs. Dingley.
 
 1 6 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 In the letters which follow Steele's above- 
 quoted expostulation, the embers of misunder- 
 standing flame and fade, to flame and fade again. 
 A word or two of kindness makes him raptur- 
 ous ; a harsh expression sinks him to despair. 
 As time goes on, the letters grow fewer, and the 
 writers grow more used to each other's ways. 
 But to the last Steele's aff"ectionate nature takes 
 tire upon the least encouragement. Once, years 
 afterwards, when Prue is in the country and he 
 is in London, and she calls him ' Good Dick,' it 
 throws him into such a transport that he de- 
 clares he could forget his gout, and walk down 
 to her at Wales. ' My dear little peevish, 
 beautiful, wise Governess, God bless you,' the 
 letter ends. In another he assures her that, 
 lying in her place and on her pillow, he fell 
 into tears from thinking that his ' charming little 
 insolent might be then awake and in pain ' with 
 headache. She wants flattery, she says, and he 
 flatters her. ' Her son,' he declares, ' is ex- 
 tremely pretty, and has his face sweetened with 
 something of the "Venus his mother, which is no 
 small delight to the Vulcan who begot him.' 
 He assures her that, though she talks of the 
 children, they are dear to him more because 
 they are hers than because they are his own.^ 
 
 ^ A few sentences in this paper are borrowed from the 
 writer's ' Life of Steele.'
 
 Steele's Letters. 17 
 
 And this reminds us that some of the best of 
 his later letters are about his family. Once, at 
 this time of their mother's absence in Wales, 
 he says that he has invited his eldest daughter 
 to dinner with one of her teachers, because she 
 had represented to him ' in her pretty language 
 that she seemed helpless and friendless, without 
 anybody's taking notice of her at Christmas, when 
 all the children but she and two more were with 
 their relations.' So now they are in the room 
 where he is writing. ' I told Betty,' he adds, 
 ' I had writ to you ; and she made me open the 
 letter again, and give her humble duty to her 
 mother, and desire to know when she shall have 
 the honour to see her in town.' No doubt this 
 was in strict accordance with the proprieties as 
 practised at Mrs. Nazereau's polite academy 
 in Chelsea ; but somehow one suspects that 
 ' Madam Betty' would scarcely have addressed 
 the writer of the letter with the same boarding- 
 school formality. Elsewhere the talk is all of 
 Eugene, the eldest boy. ' Your son, at the 
 present writing, is mighty well employed in 
 tumbling on the floor of the room and sweeping 
 the sand with a feather. He grows a most 
 delightful child, and very full of play and spirit. ' 
 He is also a very great scholar : he can read 
 his Primer ; and I have brought down my 
 
 2 
 
 '7
 
 1 8 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 Virgil. He makes most shrewd remarks upon 
 the pictures. We are very intimate friends and 
 play-fellows.' Yes : decidedly Steele's children 
 must have loved their clever, faulty, kindly 
 father.
 
 PRIOR'S ' KITTY.' 
 
 TN the year 1718, and presumably after Mr. 
 "*■ Matthew Prior had already printed his tall 
 and extremely miscellaneous folio of * Poems 
 on Several Occasions,' there was published 
 separately a little jeu d'csprit by the same * emi- 
 nent Hand,' which has not been regarded as 
 the least fortunate of his efforts. In its first 
 fugitive form, now so rare as to be known only 
 to a few highly-favoured collectors, it is a single 
 page or leaf of eight quatrains ; and of this there 
 are two issues, both attributing the verses to 
 Prior, both claiming to be authentic, both un- 
 authorized. The earlier, which is dated, is 
 headed ' Upon Lady Katherine H — des first 
 appearing at the Plar-House in Drury-Lane ; ' 
 the other, ' from CurlTs chaste press,' bears the 
 title of ' The Female Phaeton,' by which the 
 piece is now known. The person indicated 
 was the second daughter of Henry Hyde, Earl 
 of Clarendon and Rochester, and the grandchild 
 of the great Lord Chancellor and historian of
 
 20 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 the Rebellion. As she was born in 1700, she 
 must at this time have been eighteen. She was 
 'beautiful,' says the poet; 'she was wild as 
 Colt untam'd ; ' she was, besides, 
 
 ' Inflam'd with Rage at sad Restraint, 
 Which wise Mamma ordain'd.' 
 
 Her elder sister, Jane — the ' blooming H'ldz, 
 with Eyes so rare,' of whom John Gay had sung 
 in the ' Prologue ' to ' The Shepherd's Week ' 
 — was already married to the Earl of Essex. 
 Why should not She, too, be a Toast, and 
 ' bring home Hearts by Dozens ' .'' 
 
 ' Dearest Mamma, for once let me, 
 Unchain'd, my Fortune try ; 
 I '11 have my Earl, as well as She, 
 Or know the Reason why.' 
 
 And so the stanzas, eternally human and there- 
 fore eternally modern, dance and sparkle to 
 their natural ending : 
 
 ' Fondness prevail'd, Mamma gave way ; 
 
 Kitty, at Heart's Desire, 
 Obtains the Chariot for a Day, 
 And set the World on Fire.' 
 
 Apart from the reference to Drury Lane 
 Theatre supplied by the title, there is no clue
 
 Prior's 'Kitty.' 21 
 
 to the rncident recorded. But two years after 
 Prior wrote these playful verses, which were 
 sent to the lady through Mr. Harcourt, Cathe- 
 rine Hyde verified her poet's words by securing 
 a suitor of even higher rank than her sister's 
 husband. In March, 1720, she married Charles 
 Douglas, third Duke of Queensberry, an ami- 
 able and accomplished nobleman, who, it has 
 been hinted, must sometimes have been con- 
 siderably * exercised ' by the vagaries of the 
 charming but impetuous ' child of Nature ' 
 whom he had selected for his helpmate. In- 
 deed, despite her ability, many of her less 
 sympathetic contemporaries did not scruple to 
 suggest that her Grace's eccentricities almost 
 amounted to a touch of insanity. Bolingbroke 
 called her ' Sa Singiilaritd ; ' Walpole spoke of 
 her roundly as ' an out-pensioner of Bedlam.' 
 But neither the Abbot of Strawberry nor Pope's 
 ' guide, philosopher, and friend ' had any right 
 to set up for a Forbes-Winslow or a Brouardel ; 
 and there is in reality little more in what is re- 
 lated of her than might be expected of one who, 
 at once a spoiled child, a beauty, and a woman 
 of parts, deliberately revolted against the tyran- 
 nous conventionalities of her time. To the last 
 she persistently declined, as she told Swift, to 
 "cut and curl her hair like a sheep's head," in
 
 22 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 accordance with the reigning fashion ; and she af- 
 fected in her dress a simplicity and youthfulness 
 which nothing but the good looks she contrived 
 to retain so long, could possibly have justified. 
 She had a fancy for idyllic travesties, appearing 
 now as a shepherdess, now as a peasant, now 
 as a milkmaid.^ Upon one occasion she scan- 
 dalized the court-usher soul of Horace Walpole 
 by masquerading at St. James's in a costume of 
 red flannel. As a rule, she carried her innova- 
 tions triumphantly ; but now and then she was 
 forced to yield to a will more imperative than 
 her own. Once the fantastic old King of Bath 
 tore off her favourite white apron in the Pump 
 Room, flinging it contemptuously among the 
 ' waiting gentlewomen ' in the hinder benches. 
 ' None but abigails wore white aprons,' he de- 
 clared ; and the grande dame de par le monde 
 made a virtue of a necessity, and submitted. In 
 her own entertainments, however, she seems to 
 have been as despotic as Nash, insisting that 
 people should come early and leave early, and 
 declining to provide the profuse refreshments 
 then expected. High-spirited and whimsical no 
 doubt she was ; but the stories told of her are 
 
 1 In this last character Charles Jervas painted licr. 
 The picture is in the National Portrait Gallery. She 
 has hazel eyes and dark-brovvnhair.
 
 Prior's 'Kitty.' 23 
 
 probably exaggerated. Those who praise her, 
 praise her unreservedly. Her character was 
 unblemished. She was truthful ; she was 
 honest ; she was not a flatterer. And she 
 •was certainly fearless, for she dared, even in 
 the rudimentary epoch of the two-pronged fork, 
 to rally the terrible Dean of St. Patrick's for 
 that deplorable habit — so justly deprecated by 
 the Historian of Snobs — of putting his knife in 
 his mouth. When she saw any one ' administer 
 the cold steel,' as Thackeray calls it, she would 
 shriek out in affected terror lest they should do 
 themselves a mischief. She seems, although 
 they never really met after her girlhood, to have 
 wholly subjugated Swift, whose final tone to 
 her com.es perilously close to that fulsome adu- 
 lation which, in others, stirred his fiercest scorn. 
 ' I will excuse your blots upon paper,' he says, 
 writing to her after Gay's death, ' because they 
 are the only blots you ever did, or ever will 
 make, in the whole course of your life.' Further 
 on he refers ' to the universal, almost idolatrous 
 esteem you have forced from every person in 
 two kingdoms, who have the least regard for 
 virtue.' It is her peculiar art, he tells her again, 
 to bribe ' all wise and good men to be her flat- 
 terers.' Swift was no paragon ; but the praise 
 of Swift outweighs the sneers of Walpole.
 
 24 Eighteenth Century J/ignettes. 
 
 She was the friend of men of letters — this 
 capricious great lady, and they have judged her 
 best. To Swift in particular it was an attrac- 
 tion that she loved and befriended his favourite 
 Gay. The earlier part of the brief correspond- 
 ence from which the above quotation is bor- 
 rowed, shows the Duchess in her most amiable 
 light ; and it was with Gay that it originated. 
 From the days of her marriage she had protected 
 and petted that fat and feckless fabulist ; she 
 had championed him in the matter of his second 
 ballad-opera in such a way as to procure her 
 own exile from Court ; and at the time she be- 
 gan to write to Swift, Gay was domiciled at the 
 Duke's country house at Ambresbury, or Ames- 
 bury, near Salisbury, in Wiltshire. Gay begins 
 by sending Swift the Duchess's * services,' and 
 by wishing on his own account that Swift could 
 come to England, — could come to Amesbury. 
 Swift replies with conventional acknowledgment 
 of the civility of the lady, whom he had not seen 
 since she was a girl. He hears an ill thing of 
 her, he says — that she is matrc pulchrd jilia 
 pidchrior, and he would be angry she should ex- 
 cel her mother (Jane Leveson Gower), who, of 
 old, had long been his ' principal goddess.' In 
 the letter that succeeds, the Duchess herself 
 adds a postscript to confirm Gay's invitation.
 
 Prior's 'Kitty.' 25 
 
 ' I would fain have you come,' she writes. ' I 
 can't say you '11 be welcome ; for I don't know 
 you, and perhaps I shall not like you ; but if I 
 do not (unless you are a very vain person), you 
 shall know my thoughts as soon as I do myself.' 
 No mode of address could have suited Swift's 
 humour better ; and part of his next epistle to 
 Gay replies to her challenge in the true Swiftian 
 style. He begins very low down on the page — 
 'as a mark of respect, like receiving her Grace 
 at the bottom of the stairs.' He goes on with 
 a protest for form's sake against the imperious 
 manner of her advances ; but he argues in- 
 geniously that she must like him, since they are 
 both unpopular with the Queen. If he comes, 
 ' he will,' he adds, ' out of fear and prudence, 
 appear as vain as he can, that he may not know 
 her thoughts of him.' His closing sentences 
 are in Malvolio's manner. * This is your own 
 direction, but it was needless. For Diogenes 
 himself would be vain, to have received the 
 honour of being one moment of his life in the 
 thoughts of your grace.' 
 
 After this, les dpdes s'engagent. As to the 
 correspondence that ensued, opinions differ 
 widely. Warton discovered ' exquisite humour 
 and pleasantry' in Swift's 'affected bluntness,' 
 and compares him to Voiture, — to Waller writ-
 
 26 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 ing to Saccharissa on her marriage. Later 
 editors are less enthusiastic, regarding the whole 
 series of letters as ' empty, laboured, and child- 
 ish on both sides.' Each of these verdicts is 
 extreme. Swift tempering candour by compli- 
 ment, is an unusual but not an impossible spec- 
 tacle ; while the Duchess writes exactly as one 
 would expect her to write with Swift's fast friend 
 at her elbow. Gay, knowing that she will 
 probably follow him, warns Swift playfully that 
 she has her antipathies, — that she likes her own 
 way, — that she is very frank, and that in any 
 dispute he must take her side. Thereupon 
 her Grace takes up the pen herself : 
 
 ' "Write I must, particularly now, as I have an 
 opportunity to indulge my predominant passion 
 of contradiction. I do, in the first place, con- 
 tradict most things Mr. Gay says of me, to deter 
 you from coming here ; which if you ever do, 
 I hereby assure you, that, unless I like my own 
 way better, you shall have yours ; and in all 
 disputes you shall convince me, if you can. 
 But, by what I see of you, this is not a misfor- 
 tune, that will always happen ; for I find you are 
 a great mistaker. For example, you take pru- 
 dence for imperiousness : 't is from this first 
 that I determined not to like one, who is too
 
 Prior's 'Kitty.' 27 
 
 giddy-headed for me to be certain whether or 
 no I shall ever be acquainted with [him]. I 
 have known people take great delight in building 
 castles in the air ; but I should choose to build 
 friends upon a more solid foundation, I would 
 fain know you ; for I often hear more good 
 likable things [of you] than 'tis possible any 
 one can deserve. Pray, come, that I may find 
 out something wrong ; for I, and I believe most 
 women, have an inconceivable pleasure to find 
 out any faults, except their own. Mr. Cibbcr 
 is made poet laureat.^ I am. Sir, as much your 
 humble servant as I can be to any person I 
 don't know. 
 
 C. Q. 
 ' P. S. Mr. Gay is very peevish that I spell 
 and write ill ; but I don't care : for neither the 
 pen nor I can do better. Besides, I think you 
 have flattered me, and such people ought to be 
 put to trouble.' 
 
 That this fashion of writing, so new to him, 
 should not have captivated Swift, is impossible. 
 He could not accept the invitation ; but at least 
 
 ^ ' Harmonious Cibber entertains 
 The Court with annual Birtlvday Strains ; 
 Whence Gay was banish'd in Disgrace.' 
 
 Swil'T, OnPociry: a Rhapsody, 1733.
 
 28 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 he could prolong the correspondence. In his 
 next letter he enters upon preliminaries. He is 
 old, dull, peevish, perverse, morose. Has she 
 a clear voice ? — and will she let him sit at her 
 left hand, for his right ear is the better ? Can 
 the parson of the parish play at backgammon, 
 and hold his tongue ? Has she a good nurse 
 among her vv^oraen, in case he should fancy him- 
 self sick. ? How long will she maintain him and 
 his equipage if he comes } A week or two later, 
 in the form of another postscript to Gay, follows 
 the reply of the Duchess : 
 
 ' It was Mr. Ga/s fault that I did not write 
 sooner ; which if I had, I should hope you 
 would have been here by this time ; for I have 
 to tell you, all your articles are agreed to ; and 
 that I only love my own way, when I meet not 
 with others whose ways I like better. I am in 
 great hopes that I shall approve of yours ; for 
 to tell you the truth, I am at present a little 
 tired of my own. I have not a clear or distinct 
 voice, except when I am angry ; but I am a 
 very good nurse, when people don't fancy 
 themselves sick. Mr. Gay knows this ; and 
 he knows too how to play at backgammon. 
 Whether the parson of the parish can, I know 
 not ; but if he cannot hold his tongue, I can.
 
 Prior's 'Kitty.' 29 
 
 Pray set out the first fair wind, and stay with 
 us as long as ever you please. I cannot name 
 my fixed time, that I shall like to maintain you 
 and your equipage ; but if I don't happen to 
 like you, I know I can so far govern my temper 
 as to endure you for about five days. So come 
 away directly ; at all hazards you '11 be allowed 
 a good breathing time. I shall make no sort of 
 respectful conclusions ; for till I know you, I 
 cannot tell what I am to you.' 
 
 And so the correspondence, always conducted 
 on the one side by Gay and his kind protectress, 
 or Gay and the Duke, protracts itself until ar- 
 rives to Swift that fatal missive from Pope and 
 Arbuthnot announcing Gay's sudden death, — a 
 missive which, overmastered by a foreboding of 
 its contents, be kept unopened for days. At a 
 later date some further communications followed 
 between Swift and the Duchess. But he liked 
 best her postscripts to his dead friend's letters. 
 ' They made up,' he told Pope unaffectedly, 
 ' a great part of the little happiness I could have 
 here.' 
 
 Swift survived Gay for nearly fifteen years, 
 and the Duchess lived far into the reign of 
 George the Third. In the changing procession 
 of Walpole's pages one gets glimpses of her from
 
 30 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 time to time, generally emphasised by some 
 malicious anecdote or epithet. At the corona- 
 tion she returned to Court, appearing with per- 
 fectly white hair. Yet, four years before her 
 death, Walpole says of her that (by twilight) 
 you would ' sooner take her for a young beauty 
 of an old-fashioned century than for an anti- 
 quated goddess of this age.' Indeed her all- 
 conquering charms seduced him into panegyric ; 
 and one day in 1771, she found these verses on 
 her toilet-table, wrung from her most persistent 
 detractor : 
 
 ' To many a Kitty, Love his err 
 
 Will for a day engage, 
 But Prior's Kitty, ever fair. 
 Obtained it for an age 1 ' 
 
 She was then seventy-one. In later life she 
 was often at her seat of Drumlanrig, in Dum- 
 friesshire ; and Scott in his ' Journal,' under 
 date of August, 1826, speaks of the ' Walk ' by 
 the river Nith which she had formed, and which 
 still went by her name. Her peculiarities, over 
 which her friend Mrs. Delany sighs plaintively, 
 did not abate with age ; but her kind heart re- 
 mained. She died in Savile Row in 1777, 
 of a surfeit of cherries, and was buried at 
 Durrisdeer,
 
 SPENCE'S 'ANECDOTES.' 
 
 "IITHEN, in the year 1741, after his quarrel 
 • ' with Gray, Horace Walpole lay sick of 
 a quinsy at Reggio, the shearing of his thin-spun 
 life was only postponed by the opportune inter- 
 vention of a passing acquaintance. The Rev. 
 Joseph Spence, Fellow of New College, Oxford, 
 and Professor of Poetry to that University, then 
 travelling in Italy as Governor to Henry Clinton, 
 Earl of Lincoln, promptly arrived to his aid, 
 summoned Dr. Cocchi post-haste from Florence, 
 and thus became instrumental in enabling the 
 Prince of Letter-Writers to expand the thirty or 
 forty epistles he had already produced into that 
 magnificent correspondence which, incomplete 
 even now, extends to nine closely printed vol- 
 umes. Spence, to whom all Walpole's admirers 
 owe a lasting debt of gratitude, was one of the 
 fortunate men of a fortunate literary age. In 
 1726 he had published a ' genteel' critique of 
 Pope's ' Odyssey,' conspicuous for its courte- 
 ous mingling of praise and blame, and not the 
 less grateful to the person criticised because —
 
 32 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 as Bennet Langton said, and as good luck would 
 have it — ten out of the twelve objections fell 
 upon the labours of Pope's luckless coadjutors, 
 Broome and Fenton. The book made Pope 
 his friend, and himself Professor of Poetry, in 
 which capacity he patronised Thomson, and pro- 
 tected Queen Caroline's thresher-laureate, Ste- 
 phen Duck. During the continental tours which 
 he undertook in 1750 and 1737, and in that above 
 referred to, he collected the material for his 
 ' Polymetis,' a tall folio on classical mythology, 
 the earlier editions of which are now chiefly 
 sought after for their irreverent vignette of Dr. 
 Cooke^ propositor of Eton, in the disguise of ' an 
 ass's nowl.' Spence continued to dally lightly 
 with letters, editing Sackville's ' Gorboduc,' 
 annotating Virgil, writing a life of the blind poet 
 Blacklock, and comparing (after the manner of 
 Plutarch), for Walpole's private press at Straw- 
 berry, Mr. Robert Hill, the 'learned tailor' 
 of Buckingham, with that Florentine hellao libro- 
 rum, Signer Antonio Magliabecchi. He lived 
 the mildly studious life of a quiet, easy-going 
 clergyman of the eighteenth century, nursing a 
 widowed mother like Pope, and declining to 
 disturb the placid ripple of his days by the 
 ' violent delights ' of matrimony. He is ' the 
 completest scholar,' ' the sweetest tempered
 
 V Spence's 'Anecdotes.' 33 
 
 gentleman breathing,' cries his enthusiastic 
 friend, Mr. Christopher Pitt, himself a virtuoso 
 and a translator of Homer. He is * extremely 
 polite, friendly, cheerful, and master of an infi- 
 nite fund of subjects for agreeable conversa- 
 tion,' says Mr. Shenstone of the Leasowes. 
 ' He was a good-natured, harmless little soul, 
 but more like a silver penny than a genius/ 
 says ungrateful Mr. Walpole. ' He was a poor 
 creature, though a very worthy man,' says 
 clever Mr. Cambridge of the ' World ' and the 
 ' Scribleriad.' To strike an average between 
 these varying estimates is not a difficult task. It 
 gives us a character amiable rather than strong, 
 finical rather than earnest, well-informed and 
 ingenious rather than positively learned. For 
 the rest, ' Polymetis ' has been supplanted by 
 Lempriere, and is as dead as Stephen Duck ; 
 and its author lives now by the ' priefs ' which, 
 like Sir Hugh Evans, he made in his note-book, 
 — in other words, by the Anecdotes of the Lit- 
 erary Men of his age, which, when occasion of- 
 fered, he jotted down from the conversation of 
 Pope, Young, Dean Lockier, and other notabili- 
 ties into whose company he came from time to 
 time. 
 
 The story of Spence's ' Anecdotes ' is a che- 
 quered one. At their author's death they were 
 
 3
 
 34 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 still in manuscript, though their existence was 
 an open secret. Joseph Warton had hand- 
 selled them for his * Essay on Pope ; ' and War- 
 burton had used them for Ruffhead's ' Life.' 
 When Spence died in 1768, it was discovered 
 that he had himself intended to print them, — 
 that he had, in fact, conditionally sold a selec- 
 tion of them to Robert Dodsley, the bookseller 
 (whom he had formerly befriended), for a hun- 
 dred pounds. But before publication was fi- 
 nally arranged both Spence and Robert Dodsley 
 died. Spence's executors — Bishop Lowth, Dr. 
 Ridley and Mr. Rolle — thought suppression 
 for a time desirable ; and the surviving Dodsley, 
 James, although, says Joseph Warton, ' he prob- 
 ably would have gained 400/. or 500/. by it,' was 
 easily prevailed upon, out of regard for Spence, 
 to relinquish the bargain. The manuscript selec- 
 tion was then presented by the executors to 
 Spence's old pupil. Lord Lincoln, who had be- 
 come Duke of Newcastle, while the original 
 'Anecdotes,' and a fair copy, remained in Bishop 
 Lowth's possession. The Newcastle MS. was 
 lent to Johnson, who employed it for his * Lives 
 of the Poets,' giving great offence to the Duke 
 by acknowledging the loan without mentioning 
 the name of the lender ; and Malonehad access 
 to It for his Dryden, at the same time compiling
 
 Spence's 'Anecdotes.' 35 
 
 from it a smaller selection, which he annotated 
 briefly. By a series of circumstances too lengthy 
 to detail, this last, some years after Malone's 
 death, passed into the hands of Mr. John Mur- 
 ray, who published it in 1820. In the same 
 year, and, by a curious coincidence, upon the 
 same day, appeared another edition based upon 
 the Lowth papers, which had also found their 
 way into other hands. This was prefaced and 
 annotated by Mr. S. W. Singer, and a second 
 edition of it was issued in 1858 by J. R. Smith. 
 Beyond these three editions of the ' Anecdotes,' 
 there has been no other reprint but the excellent 
 little selection in the ' Camelot ' series which 
 Mr. John Underhill put forth in 1890. 
 
 As will be gathered from the above, Spence's 
 own selection is still unpublished, and is sup- 
 posed to remain in the possession of the New- 
 castle family. But as Malone extracted all of it 
 that he thought worth keeping, and as Singer 
 printed the materials on which it was based, it 
 is not likely that its publication now, even if 
 it were found to be practicable, would be of 
 material interest, except to show what Spence 
 personally regarded as deserving of preserva- 
 tion. With respect to the ' Anecdotes' them- 
 selves, there can be little doubt that, whatever 
 their subseauent extension may have been, they
 
 '36 Eighteenth Century Fignettes. 
 
 originated in Spence's acquaintanceship with 
 Pope ; and that their first purpose was the bring- 
 ing together of such dispersed data as might 
 serve for the basis of his biography. (So much, 
 in fact, Spence told Warburton when they were 
 returning from Twickenham after Pope's death ; 
 and then, like the courteous, amiable ' silver 
 penny ' that he was, surrendered all his memo- 
 randa to his more pretentious companion, in 
 whose subsequent ' Life,' for Ruffhead's ' Life 
 of Pope ' is really Warburton's, nearly every 
 anecdote of value is derived from Spence.) 
 From collecting Popiana to collecting ana of 
 Pope's contemporaries, would be a natural step ; 
 and it would be but a step farther to add, from 
 time to time, such supplementary notes or im- 
 pressions de voyage as presented themselves, 
 even if they had no special connection with the 
 primary matter, which is Pope and Pope's 
 doings. Indeed, in Singer's opinion, Spence's 
 ' Anecdotes ' already contain, not only ' a com- 
 plete though brief autobiography ' of the poet, 
 but also ' the most exact record of his opin- 
 ions on important topics,' — a record which is 
 ' probably the more genuine and undisguised, 
 because not premeditated, but elicited by the 
 impulse of the moment.' 
 
 This, as far as it relates to Pope's views on
 
 Spence's 'Anecdotes' 37 
 
 abstract literary questions, is no doubt true ; 
 but * genuine/ ' undisguised,' and ' unpremedi- 
 tated ' are scarcely the epithets which mod- 
 ern criticism has taught us to apply to some, 
 at least, of Pope's utterances concerning his 
 contemporaries ; and in these respects we are 
 more exactly informed than the Oxford Pro- 
 fessor of Poetry. Take, for instance, the well- 
 known Wycherley correspondence. ' People 
 have pitied you extremely,' says sympathetic 
 Mr. Spence, who professes to speak verbatim, 
 'on reading your letters to Wycherley [i.e., 
 the correspondence which Pope had printed] ; 
 surely 'twas a very difficult thing for you to 
 keep well with him I ' And thereupon Mr. Pope, 
 of Twickenham and Parnassus, replies that ' it 
 was the most difficult thing in the world ; ' that he 
 'was extremely plagued up and down, for al- 
 most two years,' with Wycherley's verses ; that 
 Wycherley was really angry at having them so 
 much corrected ; that his memory was entirely 
 gone, — and so forth. 1 All of which Mr. 
 Spence confidingly transfers to his tablets. But 
 
 ^ He did not tell Spence (as he might have done) that 
 his own ' Damn with faint praise ' was borrowed from 
 the man he was decrying. ' And with faint praises 
 one another^ damn/ is a line in one of Wycherlcy's 
 prologues.
 
 38 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 thanks to the publication by Mr. Courthope in 
 1889, from the manuscripts at Longleat, of most 
 of Wycherley's autograph letters, we now know 
 that the correspondence to which Spence re- 
 ferred had been considerably * edited ' by Pope 
 with the view of misrepresenting his dealings 
 with Wycherley ; and there is even something 
 more than a suspicion that he actually concocted 
 those of Wycherley's letters for which there are 
 no equivalent vouchers in the Marquis of Bath's 
 collection. In any case, the real documents 
 show clearly that, instead of resenting the amend- 
 ments and alterations of his ' Deare Little In- 
 fallible/ as he calls him, the old dramatist 
 received them with effusive gratitude ; and, far 
 from reproaching the poet for neglecting to visit 
 him (which Pope implied), constantly delayed 
 or postponed his own visits to Pope at Bin- 
 field ; — in short, did, in reality, just the very 
 reverse of what he is represented as doing in 
 Pope's garbled correspondence. So that, in 
 these worshipful communiques to Spence, Pope 
 must simply have been playing at that eigh- 
 teenth-century pastime to which Swift refers 
 in the ' Polite Conversation ' as ' Selling a 
 Bargain.' 
 
 In Pope's life, it is to be feared, there were not 
 a few of these equivocal mercantile transactions.
 
 Spence's 'Anecdotes.' 59 
 
 He certainly imposed on Spence's credulity 
 when he told him that * there was a design 
 which does not generally appear,' in other 
 words, a cryptic significance, in his correspond- 
 ence with Henry Cromwell. And he also, 
 with equal certainty, disposed of ' a great Penny- 
 worth ' (in the current phrase) when he gave 
 him the — from his own point of view — emi- 
 nently plausible account of the circumstances 
 which led to the notorious character of ' Atti- 
 cus.' Whether Spence, who could not be said 
 to be unwarned, since he records Addison's 
 caution to Lady Mary against Pope's ' devilish 
 tricks,' had any lurking suspicion that Pope was 
 not to be relied upon, does not appear. But 
 it is obvious that, without Spence's • Anecdotes,' 
 Pope's biographers would have played but a 
 sorry figure. From Spence it is that we get the 
 best account of Pope's precocious early years 
 and studies ; of his boyish epic of Alcander, 
 Prince of Rhodes, with its under-water scene, 
 and its four books of one thousand lines ; of 
 the manner of his translation of Homer and his 
 plan for the * Essay on Man ; ' and of a num- 
 ber of facts concerning the trustworthiness of 
 which there can be no reasonable doubt. Nor 
 can there be any doubt as to the bulk of his 
 purely critical utterances. Many of these, and
 
 40 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 especially such as deal with individual authors, 
 are now become trite and faded. However 
 novel may have been the announcement under 
 George the Second, we now learn without a 
 shoclc of surprise that Chaucer is an unequalled 
 tale-teller, that Bacon was a great genius, that 
 Milton's style is exotic. But, upon his own 
 craft, Pope's axioms are still sometimes worth 
 hearing. ' A poem on a slight subject,' he says, 
 ' requires the greater care to make it consider- 
 able enough to be read.' ' After writing a 
 poem one should correct it all over, with one 
 single view at a time. Thus, for language : if 
 an elegy, " These lines are very good, but are 
 they not of too heroical a strain ? " and so vice 
 versa.' * There is nothing so foolish as to pre- 
 tend to be sure of knowing a great writer by 
 his style.' ' Nil admirari is as true in relation 
 to our opinions of authors as it is in morality ; 
 and one may say, O, admiratores, senium pecus I 
 fully as justly as O, Imitatores ! ' ' The great 
 secret how to write well is to know thoroughly 
 what one writes about, and not to be affected.' 
 This last, however, is scarcely more than an 
 Horatian commonplace. 
 
 With the aid of Spence's ' Anecdotes ' we 
 gain admission to the little villa by the Thames 
 where, during the spring of 1744, wasted by an
 
 Spence's 'Anecdotes.* 41 
 
 intolerable asthma, but waiting serenely for the 
 end, Pope lay sinking slowly. Many of his 
 sayings, and the sayings of those who visited his 
 sick-room, have their only chronicle in this col- 
 lection. About three weeks before his death, 
 he printed his ' Ethic Epistles,' copies of which 
 he gave away to different persons. ' Here am 
 I, lilce Socrates,' he told Spence, ' distributing 
 my morality to my friends, just as I am dying.' 
 On Sunday, the 6th of May, he lost his mind 
 for several hours, — a circumstance which sets 
 him wondering * that there should be such a 
 thing as human vanity.' Already his spirit was 
 escaping fitfully to the Unknown. There are 
 false colours on the objects about him ; he looks 
 at everything ' as through a curtain ; ' he sees 
 ' a vision.' Most of all he suffers from his ina- 
 bility to think. But the old love of letters still 
 survives ; he quotes his own verses ; and when 
 in his waking moments Spence reads to him the 
 • Daphnis and Chloe ' of Longus, he marvels 
 how the infected mind of the Regent Orleans 
 can have relished so innocent a book. As to 
 his condition he has no illusions. On the i^th, 
 after having been visited by Thompson the 
 quack, who had been treating him (as Ward 
 treated Fielding) for dropsy, and professed to 
 find him better, he described himself to Lyttel-
 
 42 Eighteenth Century Fignettes. 
 
 ton as ' dying of a hundred good symptoms ! ' ^ 
 ' On every catching and recovery of his mind,' 
 Spence tells us, * he was always saying some- 
 thing kindly either of his present or his absent 
 friends ' — * as if his humanity had outlived his 
 understanding.' Many of the well-known fig- 
 ures of the day still came and went about his 
 bedside — Bolingbroke from Battersea, tearful 
 and melancholy, full-blown Warburton, Lyttel- 
 ton above-mentioned, Marchmont, blue-eyed 
 Martha Blount ; and it was ' very observable ' 
 how the entry of the lady seemed to give him 
 temporary strength, or a new turn of spirits. 
 To the last he continued to struggle manfully 
 with his malady. On the 27th, to the dismay 
 of his friends, he had himself brought down to 
 the room where they were at dinner ; on the 
 28th his sedan chair was carried for three hours 
 into the garden he loved so well, then filled 
 with the blossoms of May and smelling of the 
 coming summer. On the 29th he took the air 
 in Bushey Park, and a little later in the day re- 
 ceived the sacrament, flinging himself fervently 
 out of bed to receive it on his knees. ' There 
 is nothing that is meritorious/ he said after- 
 
 ^ This must have been a commonplace. ' We are expir- 
 ing "of a hundred good symptoms,"' says Swift, in the 
 ' Conduct of the Allies,' 1711.
 
 Spence's 'Anecdotes* 43 
 
 wards, ' but virtue and friendship, and indeed 
 friendship itself is only a part of virtue.' On 
 the next day, the 30th of May, 1744, he died. 
 * They did not know the exact time,' writes 
 the faithful friend to whom we owe so many of 
 these ' trivial, fond records,' — ' for his depart- 
 ure was so easy that it was imperceptible even 
 to the standers-by.'
 
 CAPTAIN CORAM'S CHARITY. 
 
 AMONG a ragged regiment of books, very 
 dear to their owner, but in whose dilapi- 
 dated company no reputable volume would 
 greatly care to travel through Coventry, is a 
 sheepskin-clad tract entitled ' Memoires Relat- 
 ing to the State of the Royal Navy of England, 
 For Ten Years, Determined December, 1688.' 
 It dates from those antiquated days when even 
 statistics had their air of scholarship, and their 
 motto from ' Tully ' or ' the Antients ' (Quid 
 Didcius Olio LiUerato I — it is in this case) ; 
 and the year of issue is 1690. The name of the 
 author does not appear, but his portrait by 
 Kneller does ; and he was none other than the 
 diarist Samuel Pepys, sometime Secretary to the 
 Admiralty under the second Charles and his 
 successor. In itself the little volume is an 
 extremely instructive one, as much from the 
 light it throws upon the prominent part played 
 by its writer in the reconstruction of the Caro- 
 line navy, as from its exposure of the lamentable 
 mismanagement which permitted toa4stools as
 
 Captiwi Coram's Charity. 45 
 
 big as Mr. Secretary's fists to flourish freely in 
 the ill-ventilated holds of his Majesty's ships-of- 
 war. But the special attraction of the particular 
 copy to which we are referring lies in certain 
 faded inscriptions which it contains. On March 
 14, 1724, it was presented by one ' C. Jackson' 
 to ' Tho. Coram,' by whom in turn it was 
 transferred to a Mr. Mills, being accompanied 
 by a holograph note which is pasted at the end : 
 'To M' Mills These Worthy Sir I happend 
 to find among my few Books, Mr Pepps, his 
 memoires [there has evidently been a struggle 
 over the spelling of the name], w'*" I thought 
 might be acceptable to you «& therefore pray you 
 to accept of it. I am w* much Respect Sir 
 your most humble Ser' Thomas Coram. June 
 10"', 1746.' It is not a lengthy document, but, 
 with its unaffected wording and its simple refer- 
 ence to ' my few Books,' it gives a pleasant 
 impression of the brave old mariner to whom, 
 even at the present day, so many hapless mortals 
 owe their all ; and whose ruddy, kindly face, 
 with its curling white hair, still beams on us 
 from Hogarth's canvas at the Foundling. 
 
 Captain Coram must have been seventy-eight 
 years old when he wrote the above letter, for he 
 had been born, at Lyme Regis in Dorsetshire, 
 as far back as 1668. Of his boyhood nothing is
 
 46 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 known ; but in 1694 he was working as a ship- 
 wright at Taunton, Massachusetts. His bene- 
 volent instincts seem to have developed early, 
 for in December, 1703, he conveyed to the 
 Taunton authorities some fifty-nine acres of 
 land as the site for a church or schoolhouse. 
 In the deed of gift he is described as ' of Bos- 
 ton, in New England, sometimes residing in 
 Taunton, in the County of Bristol, Shipwright.' 
 He also gave a library to Taunton ; and, from 
 the fact that the Common Prayer Book used in 
 the church of that town was presented to him 
 for the purpose by Mr. Speaker Onslow, must 
 have been successful in enlisting in his good 
 offices the sympathies of others. In course of 
 time he became master of a ship ; and, in 1719, 
 a glimpse of his life, of which there are scant 
 details, shows him being plundered and mal- 
 treated by wreckers at Cuxhaven, while a pas- 
 senger on a vessel called the ' Sea Flower,' upon 
 which occasion the affidavit describes him as 
 ' of London, Mariner and Shipwright.' At this 
 date he was engaged in the supply of stores to 
 the navy. He must have prospered fairly in his 
 calling, for he soon afterwards retired from a 
 seafaring life in order to live upon his means, 
 and occupy himself entirely with charitable ob- 
 jects. In the Plantations, as they were then
 
 Captain Coram's Chanty. 47 
 
 called, he took great interest ; being notably 
 active as regards the colonization of Georgia 
 and the improvement of the Nova Scotian cod 
 fisheries. Lord Walpole of Wolterton (Horace 
 Walpole's uncle), who had met him, testified 
 warmly to his honesty, his disinterestedness, and 
 his knowledge of his subject. Neither an edu- 
 cated nor a polished man (and not always a 
 judicious one), he was indefatigable in the pur- 
 suit of his purpose, and his single-minded phil- 
 anthropy was beyond the shadow of a doubt. 
 ' His arguments,' said his intimate friend Dr. 
 Brocklesby, ' were nervous, though not nice — 
 founded commonly upon facts, and the conse- 
 quences that he drew, so closely connected with 
 them, as to need no further proof than a fair 
 explanation. When once he made an impres- 
 sion, he took care it sliould not wear out ; for he 
 enforced it continually by the most pathetic re- 
 monstrances. In short, his logic was plain 
 sense ; his eloquence, the natural language of 
 the heart.' 
 
 His crowning enterprise was the obtaining of 
 a charter for the establishment of the Foundling 
 Hospital. Going to and fro at Rotherhithe, 
 where in his latter days he lived, he was con- 
 stantly coming upon half-clad infants, ' some- 
 times alive, sometimes dead, and sometimes
 
 48 Eighteenth Century Fignettes. 
 
 dying,' who had been abandoned, by their 
 parents to the mercy of the streets ; and he 
 determined to devote his energies to the pro- 
 curing of a public institution in which they 
 might find an asylum. For seventeen years, 
 with an unconquerable tenacity, and in the face 
 of the most obstinate obstruction, apathy, and 
 even contempt, he continued to urge his suit 
 upon the public, being at last rewarded by a 
 Royal charter and the subscription of sufficient 
 funds to commence operations. An estate of 
 fifty-six acres was bought in Lamb's Conduit 
 Fields for;i^3,5oo; and the building of the Hos- 
 pital was begun from the plans of Theodore 
 Jacobsen. Among its early Governors were 
 many contemporary artists who contributed 
 freely to its adornment, thereby, according to 
 the received tradition, sowing the seed of the 
 existing Royal Academy. Handel, too, was 
 one of its noblest benefactors. For several 
 years he regularly superintended an annual per- 
 formance of the ' Messiah ' in the Chapel (an 
 act which produced no less than ;!^7,ooo to the 
 institution), and he also presented it with an 
 organ. Having opened informally in 1741 at a 
 house in Hatton Garden, the Governors moved 
 into the new building at the completion of the 
 west wing in 1741. But already their good
 
 Captain Coram's Charity. 49 
 
 offices had begun to be abused. Consigning 
 children to the Foundling was too convenient a 
 way of disposing of them ; and, even in the 
 Hatton Garden period, the supply had been 
 drawn, not from London alone, but from all 
 parts of the Kingdom. It became a lucrative 
 trade to convey infants from remote country 
 places to the undiscriminating care of the 
 Charity. Once a waggoner brought eight to 
 town, seven of whom were dead when they 
 reached their destination. On another occasion 
 a man with five in baskets got drunk on the 
 road, and three of his charges were suffocated. 
 The inevitable outcome of this was that the 
 Governors speedily discovered they were ad- 
 mitting far more inmates than they could possibly 
 afford to maintain. They accordingly applied to 
 Parliament, who voted them ;^io,ooo, but at the 
 same time crippled them with the obligation to 
 receive all comers. A basket was forthwith 
 hung at the gate, with the result that, on the 
 first day of its appearance, no less than 117 in- 
 fants were successively deposited in it. That 
 this extraordinary development of the intentions 
 of the projectors could continue to work satis- 
 factorily was of course impossible, and great 
 mortality ensued. As time went on, however, 
 a wise restriction prevailed ; and the Hospital 
 
 4
 
 50 Eighteenth Centwy Vignettes. 
 
 now exists solely for those unmarried mothers 
 whose previous character has been good, and 
 whose desire to reform is believed to be sincere. 
 Fortunately, long before the era of what one of 
 the accounts calls its ' frightful efflorescence ' — 
 an efflorescence which, moreover, could never 
 have occurred under Captain Coram's original 
 conditions — its benevolent founder had been 
 laid to rest in its precincts. After his wife's 
 death he fell into difficulties, and subscriptions 
 were collected for his benefit. When this was 
 broken to the old man — too modest himself to 
 plead his own cause, and too proud to parade 
 his necessity — he made, according to Hawkins, 
 the following memorable answer to Dr. Brock- 
 lesby : ' I have not wasted the little wealth of 
 which I was formerly possessed in self-indul- 
 gence, or vain expenses, and am not ashamed 
 to confess, that in this my old age I am poor.' 
 
 Although the Sunday services are still well at- 
 tended. Captain Coram's Charity is no longer 
 the ' fashionable morning lounge ' it was in the 
 Georgian era, when, we are told, the grounds 
 were crowded daily with brocaded silks, gold- 
 headed canes, and three-cornered hats of the 
 orthodox Egham, Staines, or Windsor pattern. 
 No members of the Royal Academy now assem- 
 ble periodically round the historical blue dragon
 
 Captain Coram' s Chanty. 51 
 
 punch-bowl, still religiously preserved, over 
 which Hogarth and Lambert and Highmore and 
 the other pictorial patrons of the place must of- 
 ten have chirruped ' Life a Bubble,' or ' Drink 
 and Agree,' at their annual dinners ; neither is 
 there of our day any munificent maestro like 
 Handel to present the institution with a new 
 organ or the original score of an oratorio. But 
 if you enter to the left of Mr. Calder Marshall's 
 statue at the gate in Guildford Street, you shall 
 still find the enclosure dotted with red-coated 
 boys playing at cricket, and with girls in white 
 caps ; and in the quiet, unpretentious building 
 itself are many time-honoured relics of its past. 
 Here, for example, is one of Hogarth's contri- 
 butions to his friend's enterprise, the ' March of 
 the Guards towards Scotland, in the year 174^,' 
 commonly called the ' March to Finchley' — 
 that famous performance for which King George 
 the Second of irate memory said he ought to 
 be ' bicketed,' and which the artist, in a rage, 
 forthwith dedicated to the King of Pnisia, 
 with one ' s.' A century and a half has passed 
 since it was executed, but it is still in excellent 
 preservation, having of late years, for greater 
 precaution, been placed under glass. -^ Here, 
 
 ^ It was disposed of in 1750 by raffle or lottery. ' Yes- 
 terday,' — says the ' General Advertiser ' for i May in that
 
 52 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 too, is the already mentioned full-length of the 
 founder — a portrait of the masterly qualities 
 and superb colouring of which neither McAr- 
 deirs mezzotint nor Nutter's stipple gives any 
 adequate idea. Here, again, is one of Hogarth's 
 ' failures,' the ' Moses Brought to Pharaoh's 
 Daughter,' which is not so great a failure after 
 all. Certainly it compares favourably with the 
 ' Finding of Moses ' by the professed history- 
 painter, Frank Hayman, which hangs hard by, 
 and is an utterly bald and lifeless production. 
 On the contrary, in Hogarth's picture, the ex- 
 pression in the eyes of the mother, which linger 
 on the child as her hand mechanically receives 
 the money, is one of those touches which make 
 the whole world kin. Among the circular paint- 
 ings of similar charities is a charming little 
 Gainsborough of the Charterhouse, while the 
 'Foundling' and 'St. George's Hospital' are 
 from the brush of Richard Wilson. There is a 
 dignified portrait of Handel by Kneller, which 
 makes one wonder how the caricaturists could 
 
 year, — 'Mr. Hogarth's Subscription was closed. 1843 
 cliances being subscrib'd for, M"' Hogarth gave the re- 
 maining 167 chances to the Foundling Hospital. At two 
 o'clock the Box was opened, and the fortunate chance 
 was N° 1941, which belongs to the said Hospital; and 
 the same night M"" Hogarth delivered the Picture to 
 the Governors.' -^
 
 Captain Coram s Charity. 53 
 
 ever have distorted him into the ' Charming 
 Brute ; ' and also a bust by Roubillac, being the 
 original model for the statues in Westminster 
 Abbey and Old Vauxhall Gardens. There are 
 autographs of Hogarth and Coram and John 
 Wilkes the demagogue ; there is a copy of his 
 ' Christmas Stories ' presented by the author, 
 Charles Dickens ; there is a case in one of the 
 windows full of the queer, forlorn * marks or 
 tokens' which, in the basket days, were found 
 attached to its helpless inmates — ivory fish, sil- 
 ver coins of Queen Anne or James, scraps of 
 paper with doggerel rhymes, lockets, lottery 
 tickets, and the like. As you pass from the 
 contemplation of these things — a contemplation 
 not without its touch of pathos — you peep into 
 the church, mentally filling the empty benches 
 in the organ loft with the singing faces and pure 
 voices of the childish choristers, and you re- 
 member that here Benjamin West painted the 
 altar-piece, and here Laurence Sterne preached. 
 Once more in Guildford Street, you turn in- 
 stinctively towards another thoroughfare, where 
 lived a later writer who must often have made 
 the pilgrimage you have Just accomplished. For 
 at No. 13 Great Coram Street was the home of 
 William Makepeace Thackeray, and from the 
 shadow of the Foundling, in July, 1840, he sent
 
 54 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 forth his ' Paris Sketch Book.' When, seven 
 years later, he was writing his greatest novel, 
 Captain Coram's Charity still lingered in his 
 memory. It is on the wall of its church that 
 old Mr. Osborne, of ' Vanity Fair' and Russell 
 Square, erects his pompous tablet to his dead 
 son : it is in the same building that, sitting ' in 
 a place whence she could see the head of the 
 boy under his father's tombstone,' poor Emmy 
 feasts her hungry maternal eyes on unconscious 
 little Georgy.
 
 'THE FEMALE QUIXOTE.' 
 
 /^NE evening in the spring of the' year 175 1, 
 ^-^ the famous St. Dunstan, or Devil Tavern, 
 by Temple Bar, — over whose Apollo Chamber 
 you might still read the rhymed ' Welcome ' 
 of Ben Jonson, whence Steele had scrawled 
 hasty excuses to ' Prue ' in Bury Street, and 
 where Garth and Swift and Addison had often 
 dined together, — was the scene of a remark- 
 able literary celebration. A young married 
 lady, not then so well-known as she afterwards 
 became, had written a novel called the ' Life of 
 Harriot Stuart,' which was either just published 
 or upon the point of issuing from the press. 
 It was her first effort in fiction ; and, probably 
 through William Strahan the printer, one of 
 whose employes she married, she had sought 
 and obtained the acquaintance of Samuel John- 
 son. The great man thought very highly of her 
 abilities : so much so, that he proposed to his 
 colleagues at the Ivy Lane Club (the prede- 
 cessor of the more illustrious Literary Club) to 
 commemorate the birth of the book by an ' all-
 
 56 Eighteenth Century yignettes. 
 
 night sitting.' Pompous Mr. Hawkins, who 
 tells the story, says that the guests, to the 
 number of near twenty, including Mrs. Lenox 
 (for that was the lady's name), her husband, 
 and a female acquaintance, assembled at the 
 Devil at about eight o'clock in the evening. 
 The supper is characterised as ' elegant,' a 
 prominent feature in it being a ' magnificent hot 
 apple-pye,' which, because, forsooth (the ' for- 
 sooth ' is Hawkins's), Mrs. Lenox was also a 
 minor poet, her literary foster-father had caused 
 to be stuck with bay-leaves. Besides this, 
 after invoking the Muses by certain rites of 
 his own invention, which should have been 
 impressive, but are not described, Johnson 
 ''encircled her brows' with a crown of laurel 
 specially prepared by himself. These cere- 
 monies completed, the company began to spend 
 the evening * in pleasant conversation, and 
 harmless mirth, intermingled at different periods 
 with the refreshments of coffee and tea.' But 
 there must have been stronger potations as well, 
 since the narrator, Hawkins, who had a ' raging 
 tooth,' and is therefore excusably inexplicit, 
 speaks of the desertion by some of those pres- 
 ent of ' the colours of Bacchus ; ' and he ex- 
 pressly mentions the fact that Johnson, whose 
 face, at five o'clock, ' shone with meridian
 
 ' The Female Quixote.' 57 
 
 splendour,' had confined himself exclusively to 
 lemonade. By daybreak, the ' harmless mirth' 
 was beginning to be intermingled with slumber, 
 from which those who succumbed were only 
 rallied with difficulty by a fresh relay of coffee. 
 At length, when St. Dunstan's Clock was near- 
 ing eight, after waiting two hours for an atten- 
 dant sufficiently wakeful to compile the bill, the 
 company dispersed. Their symposium had been 
 Platonic in its innocence ; but to Hawkins, de- 
 moralised by toothache, and sanctimonious by tem- 
 perament, their issue into the morning light of 
 Fleet Street had all the aspect, and something 
 of the remorse, of a tardily-terminated debauch. 
 Before he could mentally disinfect himself, he 
 was obliged to take a turn or two in the Temple, 
 and breakfast respectably at a coffee-house. 
 
 Although she is now forgotten, Charlotte 
 Lenox, the heroine of these Johnsonian ' high 
 jinks,' was once what Browning would have 
 termed ' a person of importance in her day.' 
 Her father. Colonel James Ramsay, was Lieu- 
 tenant-Governor of New York. When his 
 daughter was about fifteen, he sent her to 
 England, consigning her to the charge of a 
 relative in this country, who, by the time she 
 reached it, was either dead or mad. Then 
 Colonel Ramsay himself departed this life, and
 
 58 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 she was left without a protector. Lady Rock- 
 ingham took her up, receiving her into her 
 household ; but an obscure love-affair put an 
 end to their connection ; and she subsequently 
 found a fresh patroness in the Duchess of 
 Newcastle. She must also have tried the stage, 
 since Walpole speaks of her as a ' deplorable 
 actress.' Her sheet anchor, however, was 
 literature. In 1747 Paterson published a thin 
 volume of her poems, dedicated to ' the Lady 
 Issabella [sjc] Finch,' — a volume in which she 
 certainly ' touched the tender stops of various 
 quills,' since it recalls most of the singers who 
 were popular in her time. There are odes 
 in imitation of Sappho (with one ' p ') ; there 
 is a pastoral after the manner of Mr. Pope ; 
 there is ' Envy, a Satire ; ' there is a versification 
 of one of Mr. Addison's ' Spectators.' To this 
 maiden effort, a few years later, followed the 
 novel above-mentioned, which is supposed to 
 have been more or less autobiographical ; then 
 came another novel, ' The Female Quixote ; ' 
 then ' Shakespeare Illustrated ; ' then a trans- 
 lation of Sully's * Memoirs ; ' and then again 
 more novels, plays, and translations. Mrs. 
 Lenox lived into the present century, supported 
 at the last partly from the Literary Fund, and 
 partly by the Right Hon. George Rose, who
 
 ' The Female Quixote' 59 
 
 befriended her in her latter days, and ultimately, 
 when she died, old and very poor, in Dean's 
 Yard, Westminster, paid the expenses of her 
 burial. She is said — by Mr. Croker, of course 
 — to have been 'plain in her person.' If 
 this were so, she must have been considerably 
 flattered in the portrait by Reynolds which 
 Bartolozzi engraved for Harding's ' Shake- 
 speare.' It is also stated, on the authority of 
 Mrs. Thrale, that, although her books were 
 admired, she herself was disliked. As regards 
 her own sex, this may have been true ; but it 
 is dead against the evidence as regards the men. 
 Johnson, for example, openly preferred her be- 
 fore Mrs. Carter, Miss Hannah More, and 
 Miss Burney ; and he never, to judge by the 
 references in Boswell's ' Life,' wavered in his 
 allegiance. He wrote the Dedications to ' The 
 Female Quixote ' and ' Shakespeare Illus- 
 trated ; ' he helped her materially (as did also 
 Lord Orrery) in her version of P^re Brumoy's 
 ' Th(§atre des Grecs ; ' he quoted her in the 
 
 • Dictionary ; ' he drew up, as late as 1775, the 
 
 * Proposals ' for a complete edition of her works, 
 and he reviewed her repeatedly. "What is more, 
 he introduced her to Richardson, by whom, up- 
 on the ground of her gifts and her misfortunes 
 (' She has genius, and she has been unhappy,'
 
 6o Eighteenth Century Fignetfes. 
 
 said the sentimental little man), she was at once 
 admitted to the inner circle of the devoted 
 listeners at Parson's-Green, Another of her 
 admirers was Fielding, who, in his last book, 
 the ' Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon,' calls her 
 ' the inimitable and shamefully distress'd author 
 of the Female Quixote.' Finally, Goldsmith 
 wrote the epilogue to the unsuccessful comedy 
 of 'The Sister,' which she based in 1769 upon 
 her novel of ' Henrietta,' — an act which is the 
 more creditable on his part because the play 
 belonged to the ranks of that genteel comedy 
 which he detested. A woman who could thus 
 enlist the suffrage and secure the service of the 
 four greatest writers of her day must have pos- 
 sessed exceptional powers of attraction, either 
 mental or physical ; and this of itself is almost 
 sufficient to account for the lack of a corre- 
 sponding enthusiasm in her own sex. 
 
 How she obtained her education, the scanty 
 records of her life do not disclose. But it is 
 clear that she had considerable attainments ; 
 and she obviously added to them a faculty for 
 ingenious flattery, which, after the fashion of 
 that day, she exhibited in her books. In her best 
 effort, ' The Female Quixote,' there is a hand- 
 some reference to that ' admirable Writer,' IVlr. 
 Richardson ; and Johnson is styled ' the greatest
 
 ' The Female Qiiixote.' 6i 
 
 Genius in the present Age/ * Rail,' she makes 
 one of her characters say elsewhere, and pain- 
 fully cl-propos de holies, — ' Rail with premedi- 
 tated Malice at the " Rambler;" and, for the 
 want of Faults, turn even its inimitable Beauties 
 into Ridicule : The Language, because it reaches 
 to Perfection, may be called stiff, laboured, and 
 pedantic ; the Criticisms, when they let in more 
 Light than your weak Judgment can bear, super- 
 ficial and ostentatious Glitter ; and because 
 those Papers contain the finest System of 
 Ethics yet extant, damn the queer Fellow, for 
 over-propping Virtue;' — in all of which, it is 
 to be feared, the bigots of this iron time will 
 see nothing but the rankest log-rolling. Yet it 
 was not to Mrs. Lenox that Johnson said, 
 ' Madam, consider what your praise is worth.' 
 On the contrary, if Dr. Birkbeck Hill conjec- 
 tures rightly, he wrote a not unfavourable little 
 notice of the book in the * Gentleman's Maga- 
 zine ' for March, 1752, — a notice which, if it 
 does no more, at least compactly summarises the 
 scheme of the story. ' Arabella,' it says (the full 
 title is ' The Female Quixote ; or, the Adventures 
 of Arabella' ), ' is the daughter of a statesman, 
 born after his retirement in disgrace, and edu- 
 cated in solitude, at his castle, in a remote pro- 
 vince. The romances which she found in the
 
 62 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 library after her mother's death, were almost the 
 only books she had read ; from these therefore 
 she derived her ideas of life ; she believed the 
 business of the world to be love, every incident 
 to be the beginning of an adventure, and every 
 stranger a knight in disguise. The solemn man- 
 ner in which she treats the most common and 
 trivial occurrences, the romantic expectations 
 she forms, and the absurdities which she com- 
 mits herself, and produces in others, afford a 
 most entertaining series of circumstances and 
 events.' And then he goes on to quote, as 
 coming from one equally ' emulous of Cer- 
 vantes, and jealous of a rival,' the opinion which 
 Mr. Fielding had expressed a few days earlier, 
 in his 'Covent Garden Journal,' — an opinion 
 which, if, as Johnson asserts, he had at this 
 time no knowledge of the author of the book, 
 does even more credit to his generosity than to 
 his critical judgment. For the author of ' Tom 
 Jones' not only devotes rather more than two 
 handsome columns to ' The Female Quixote ; ' 
 but, professing to give his report of it ' with no 
 less Sincerity than Candour,' gravely proceeds to 
 show in what it falls short of, in what it equals, 
 and in what it excels (!) the master-piece of 
 which it is a professed imitation. According to 
 him, the advantage of Mrs. Lenox in the last
 
 ' The Female Quixote.* 63 
 
 respect (for the others may be neglected) lies in 
 the fact that it is more probable that the reading 
 of romances would turn the head of a young 
 lady than the head of an old gentleman ; that 
 the character of Arabella is more endearing 
 than that of Don Quixote ; that her situation 
 is more interesting ; and that the incidents of 
 her story, as well as the story itself, are less 
 ' extravagant and incredible ' than those of the 
 immortal hero of Cervantes. Finally, he sums 
 up with the words which Johnson afterwards 
 reproduced, in part, in the ' Gentleman's Maga- 
 zine : ' 'I do very earnestly recommend it, as a 
 most extraordinary and most excellent Perform- 
 ance. It is indeed a Work of true Humour, 
 and cannot fail of giving a rational, as well as 
 very pleasing Amusement to a sensible Reader, 
 who will at once be instructed and very highly 
 diverted. Some Faults perhaps there may be, 
 but I shall leave the unpleasing Task of pointing 
 them out to those who will have more Pleasure 
 in the Office. This Caution, however, I think 
 proper to premise, that no Persons presume to 
 find many [He is speaking in his assumed char- 
 acter of Censor of Great Britain]. For if they 
 do, I promise them the Critic and not the 
 Author will be to blame.' 
 Pro captu lectoris habent sua fata libelli. In
 
 64 Eighteenth Century Vignetted. 
 
 spite of the verdict of Johnson and Fielding, — 
 that is to say, in spite of the verdict of the 
 Macaulay and Thackeray of the Eighteenth 
 Century, — the Critic, it is to be feared, must 
 be blamed to-day. Were Fielding alone, one 
 might discount his opinion by assuming that he 
 would naturally welcome a work of art which 
 was on his side rather than on that of Richard- 
 son ; but this would not account for the equally 
 favourable opinion of Johnson.'' Nor could it 
 be laid entirely to the novelty of the attempt, for 
 ' Tom Jones ' and ' Clarissa ' and ' Peregrine 
 Pickle,' masterpieces all, had by this time been 
 written, and can still be read, which it is difficult 
 to say of ' The Female Quixote ; or, the Ad- 
 ventures of Arabella.' Mrs. Lenox's funda- 
 mental idea, no doubt, is a good one, although 
 the character of the heroine has its feminine 
 prototypes in the ' Pr^cieuses Ridicules ' of 
 Moli^re and the Biddy Tipkin of Steele's ' Ten- 
 der Husband.' It may be conceded, too, that 
 some of the manifold complications which arise 
 
 ^ Johnson had, if not a taste, at least an appetite, for 
 the old-fashioned romances which Mrs. Lenox satirised. 
 Once, at Bishop Percy's, he selected ' Feli.\marte of 
 Hircania ' (in folio) for his habitual reading, and he read 
 it through religiously. Upon another occasion his choice 
 fell upon Burke's favourite, * Palmerin of England.'
 
 ' The Female Qiiixote.' 65 
 
 from her bringing every incident of her career 
 to the touchstone of the high-falutin' romances 
 of the Sieur de la Calpren^de, and that ' grave 
 and virtuous virgin,' Madeleine de Scud^ry, are 
 diverting enough. The lamentable predicament 
 of the lover, Mr. Glanville, who is convicted of 
 imperfect application to the pages of ' Cassandra,' 
 by his hopeless ignorance of the elementary fact 
 that the Orontes and Oroondates of that perform- 
 ance are one and the same person ; the case of 
 the luckless dipper into Thucydides and Herodo- 
 tus at Bath who is confronted, to his utter dis- 
 comfiture, with ' History as She is wrote ' in 
 ' Clelia ' and ' Cleopatra ; ' the persistence of Ara- 
 bella in finding princes in gardeners, and rescuers 
 in highwaymen — are things not ill-invented. 
 But repeated they pall ; and not all the insistence 
 upon her natural good sense and her personal 
 charms, nor (as compared with such concurrent 
 efforts as Mrs. Hey wood's ' Betsy Thoughtless ') 
 the inoffensive tone of the book itself, can re- 
 concile us to a heroine who is unable to pass 
 the sugar-tongs without a reference to Parisatis, 
 Princess of Persia, or Cleobuline, Princess of 
 Corinth ; — who holds with the illustrious Man- 
 dana that, even after ten years of the most 
 faithful services and concealed torments, it is 
 still presumptuous for a monarch to aspire to 
 
 5
 
 66 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 her hand ; — and who, upon the slightest provo- 
 cation, plunges into tirades of this sort: ' Had 
 you persevered in your Affection, and continued 
 your Pursuit of that Fair-one, you would, per- 
 haps, ere this, have found her sleeping under 
 the Shade of a Tree in some lone Forest, 
 as Philodaspes did his admirable Delia, or 
 disguised in a Slave's Habit, as Ariobarsanes 
 saw his Divine Ol/mpia ; or bound haply in a 
 Chariot, and have had the Glory of freeing her, 
 as Ambriomer did the beauteous Agione ; or in 
 a Ship in the Hands of Pirates, like the incom- 
 parable Eli:{a ; or ' — at which point she is 
 fortunately interrupted. In another place she 
 fancies her uncle is in love with her, and there- 
 upon, ' wiping some Tears from her fine Eyes,' 
 apostrophises that elderly and astounded rela- 
 tive in this wise — ' Go then, unfortunate and 
 lamented Uncle ; go, and endeavour by Rea- 
 son and Absence to recover thy Repose ; and be 
 assured, whenever you can convince me you 
 have triumphed over these Sentiments which 
 now cause both our Unhappiness, you shall have 
 no Cause to complain of my Conduct towards 
 you.' There is an air of unreality about all this 
 which, one would think, should have impeded 
 its popularity in its own day. In the Spain of 
 Don Oui"*tote it is conceivable ; it is intolerable
 
 ' The Female Qiiixote.' 6j 
 
 in the England of Arabella. But there are other 
 reasons which help to account for the oblivion 
 into which the book has fallen. One is, that by 
 neglecting to preserve the atmosphere of the 
 age in which it was written, it has missed an 
 element of vitality which is retained even by 
 such fugitive efforts as Coventry's ' Pompey the 
 Little." ^ Indeed, beyond the above-quoted ref- 
 erences to Johnson and Richardson, and an 
 obscure allusion to the beautiful Miss Gunnings 
 who, at this date, divided the Talk of the Town 
 with the Earthquake, there is scarcely any 
 light thrown upon contemporary life and man- 
 ners throughout the whole of Arabella's history. 
 Another, and a graver objection (as one of her 
 critics, whose own admirable ' Amelia ' had been 
 but recently published, should have known better 
 than any one) is that, in spite of the humour of 
 some of the situations, the characters of the 
 book are colourless and mechanical. Fielding's 
 Captain Booth and his wife, Mrs. Bennet and 
 Serjeant Atkinson, Dr. Harrison and Colonel 
 Bath, are breathing and moving human beings : 
 the Glanvilles and Sir Charleses and Sir Georges 
 of Mrs. Charlotte Lenox are little more than 
 shrill-voiced and wire-jointed ' High-Life ' 
 puppets. 
 
 1 This, like 'Betsy Thoughtless,' belongs to 1751.
 
 FIELDING'S 'VOYAGE TO LISBON.' 
 
 lyrOT far from where these lines are written, 
 ^^ on the right-hand side of the road from 
 Acton to Ealing, stands a house called Ford- 
 hook. Shut in by walls, and jealously guarded 
 by surrounding trees, it offers itself but furtively 
 to the incurious passer-by. Nevertheless, it 
 has traditions which might well give him pause. 
 Even in this century, it enjoyed the distinction 
 of belonging to Lady Byron, the poet's wife ; 
 and in its existing drawing-room, ' Ada, sole 
 daughter of my house and heart,' was married 
 to William, Earl of Lovelace. But an earlier 
 and graver memory than this lingers about the 
 spot. More than one hundred and thirty-eight 
 years ago, on a certain Wednesday in June, the 
 cottage which formerly occupied the site was 
 the scene of one of the saddest leave-takings in 
 literature. On this particular day had gathered 
 about its door a little group of sympathetic 
 friends and relatives, who were evidently assem- 
 bled to bid sorrowful good-bye to some one,
 
 Fielding's ' Voyage, to Lisbon' 69 
 
 for whom, as the clock was striking twelve, a 
 coach had just drawn up. Presently a tall man, 
 terribly broken and emaciated, but still wearing 
 the marks of dignity and kindliness on his once 
 handsome face, made his appearance, and was 
 assisted, with some difficulty (for he had lost 
 the use of his limbs), into the vehicle. An 
 elderly, homely-looking woman, and a slim girl 
 of seventeen or eighteen, took their seats beside 
 him without delay ; and, amid the mingled tears 
 and good wishes of the spectators, the coach 
 drove off swiftly in the direction of London. 
 The sick man was Henry Fielding, the famous 
 novelist ; his companions, his second wife and 
 his eldest daughter. He was dying of a com- 
 plication of diseases ; and, like Peterborough 
 and Doddridge before him, was setting out in 
 the forlorn hope of finding life and health at 
 Lisbon. Since Scott quoted them in 182 1, the 
 words in which his journal describes his de- 
 parture have been classic : 
 
 * Wednesday, Jane 26, 1754. — On this day, 
 the most melancholy sun I had ever beheld 
 arose, and found me awake at my house at 
 Fordhook. By the light of this sun, I was, in 
 my own opinion, last to behold and take leave 
 of some of those creatures on whom I doated 
 with a mother-like fondness, guided by nature
 
 •JO Eighteenth Century yignettes. 
 
 and passion, and uncured and unhardened by 
 all the doctrine of tliat philosophical school 
 where I had learnt to bear pains and to despise 
 death, 
 
 ' In this situation, as I could not conquer 
 nature, I submitted entirely to her, and she 
 made as great a fool of me as she had ever done 
 of any woman whatsoever : under pretence of 
 giving me leave to enjoy, she drew me in to 
 suffer the company of my little ones, during 
 eight hours ; and I doubt not whether, in 
 that time, I did not undergo more than in all 
 my distemper.' 
 
 Of Fielding's life, it may be said truly, that 
 nothing in it became him like the leaving it. 
 At the moment of his starting for Lisbon, 
 his case, as is clear from the above quotation, 
 was already regarded by himself as desperate. 
 To * a lingering imperfect gout ' had succeeded 
 * a deep jaundice ; ' and to jaundice, asthma and 
 dropsy. He was past the power of the Duke 
 of Portland's powder ; past the famous tar- 
 water of the good Bishop Berkeley. Had he 
 acknowledged his danger earlier, his life might 
 have been prolonged, though, in all probability, 
 but for brief space. His health had for some 
 time been breaking ; he was worn out by his 
 harassing vocation as a Middlesex Magistrate;
 
 Fielding's 'Voyage to Lisbon.' "ji 
 
 and he feared that, in the event of his death, 
 his family must starve. This last consideration 
 it was, that tempted him to defer his retirement 
 to the country in order to break up a notorious 
 gang of street-robbers, and so earn (as he 
 fondly hoped) some government provision for 
 those helpless ones whom he must leave behind 
 him. He succeeded in his task, although he 
 failed of his reward ; and what was worse, as 
 regards his health, much irrecoverable oppor- 
 tunity had been lost. By the time that his 
 labours were at an end, he was a doomed man. 
 The Bath waters could effect nothing in the 
 advanced stage of his malady ; and, after a short 
 sojourn at his ' little house ' at Ealing, he took 
 his passage in the * Queen of Portugal,' Richard 
 Veal, master, for Lisbon. Of this voyage he 
 has left his own account ; and the posthumous 
 volume thus produced is a curiosity of literature. 
 It is one of the most touching records in the lan- 
 guage of fortitude under trial ; and it is not 
 surprising to learn, as we do from Hazlitt, that 
 it was the favourite book of another much- 
 enduring mortal, the gentle and uncomplaining 
 ' Elia.' 
 
 In these days of steam power, and floating 
 palaces, and luxurious sick-room appliances, it 
 is not easy to realize the intolerable tedium and
 
 72 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 discomfort, especially to an invalid, of a passage 
 in a second-rate sailing-ship in the middle of the 
 last century. When, after a rapid but fatiguing 
 two hours' drive. Fielding reached Redriff 
 (Rotherhithe), he had to undergo a further 
 penance. The ' Queen of Portugal ' lay in 
 mid-stream, a circumstance which necessitated 
 his being carried perilously across slippery 
 ground, transferred to a wherry, and finally 
 hoisted over the ship's side in a chair. Nor 
 were his troubles by any means at an end when 
 he found himself securely deposited in the cabin. 
 The voyage, already more than once deferred, 
 was again postponed. First, the vessel could 
 not be cleared at the Custom House until 
 Thursday, because Wednesday was a holiday 
 (Proclamation Day) ; then the skipper himself 
 announced that he should not weigh anchor 
 before Saturday. Meanwhile, from his unusual 
 exertions and other causes, Fielding's main 
 malady had gained so considerably that he was 
 obliged to summon Dr. William Hunter from 
 Covent Garden to tap him — an operation which 
 he had already more than once undergone with 
 considerable relief. On Sunday the vessel 
 dropped down to Gravesend, reaching the 
 Nore on July i. Then, for a week, they were 
 becalm.ed in the Downs, making Ryde just in
 
 Fielding's ' Voyage to Lisbon. ' 73 
 
 time to lie safely on the Motherbank during a 
 violent storm. Before the ship left Ryde, the 
 23d of July had arrived; and it was not until 
 the second week in August that she sailed up 
 the Tagus, having taken seven weeks to per- 
 form a journey which then, at most, occupied 
 three, and is now generally accomplished in 
 about four days. 
 
 If the ' Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon ' were 
 no more than the chronicle of the facts thus 
 summarized — nay, if it were no more than 
 what Walpole flippantly calls the ' account how 
 his [Fielding's] dropsy was treated and teased 
 by an innkeeper's wife in the Isle of Wight,' it 
 would require and deserve but little considera- 
 tion. That it is a literary masterpiece is not 
 pretended ; nor, in the circumstances of its 
 composition, could a masterpiece be looked for 
 — even from a master. But it is interesting 
 not so much by the events which it narrates as 
 by the indirect light which it throws upon its 
 writer's character, upon his manliness, his pa- 
 tience, and that inextinguishable cheerfulness 
 which, he says in the ' Proposal for the Poor,' 
 ' was always natural to me.' His sufferings 
 must have been considerable (he had to be 
 tapped again before the voyage ended) ; and 
 yet, with the exception of some not resentful
 
 74 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 comment upon the inhumanity of certain water- 
 men and sailors who had jeered at his ghastly 
 appearance, no word of complaint as to his own 
 condition is allowed to escape him. On the 
 other hand, his solicitude for his fellow-travel- 
 lers is unmistakable. One of the most touching 
 pages in the little volume relates how, when 
 his wife, worn out with toothache, lay sleeping 
 lightly in the stateroom, he and the skipper, 
 who was deaf, sat speechless over a ' small 
 bowl of punch ' in the adjoining cabin rather 
 than run the risk of waking her by a sound. 
 ' My dear wife and child,' he says, speaking of 
 a storm in the Channel, ' must pardon me, if 
 what I did not conceive to be any great evil 
 to myself, I was not much terrified with the 
 thoughts of happening to them : in truth, I 
 have often thought they are both too good, and 
 too gentle, to be trusted to the power of any 
 man I know, to whom they could possibly be 
 so trusted.' In another place he relates, quite 
 in his best manner, how he rebuked a certain 
 churlish Custom-house officer for his want of 
 courtesy to Mrs. Fielding. At times one for- 
 gets that it is a dying man who is writing, so 
 invincible is that appetite for enjoyment which 
 made Lady Mary say he ought to have been 
 immortal. Not long after they reached Ryde
 
 Fielding's 'Voyage to Lisbon.' 75 
 
 he wrote to his half-brother and successor John 
 (afterwards Sir John) Fielding : ' I beg that on 
 the Day you receive this Mrs. Daniel [his 
 mother-in-law] may know that we are just risen 
 from Breakfast in Health and Spirits [the italics 
 are ours] this twelfth Instant at 9 in the morn- 
 ing.' At Ryde they were shamefully entreated by 
 the most sharp-faced and tyrannical of landladies, 
 in whose incommodious hostelry they sought 
 temporary refuge ; and yet it is at Ryde that 
 he chronicles ' the best, the pleasantest, and the 
 merriest meal [in a barn], with more appetite, 
 more real, solid luxury, and more festivity, than 
 was ever seen in an entertainment at White's.' 
 And almost the last lines of the ' Journal ' recall 
 a good supper in a Lisbon cofifee-house for 
 which they * were as well charged, as if the bill 
 had been made on the Bath road, between 
 Newbury and London.' 
 
 But the pleasures of the table play a subor- 
 dinate part in the sick man's diary, and often 
 only prompt a larger subject, as when the John 
 Dory which regales them at Torbay introduces 
 a disquisition on the improvement of the London 
 fish supply. As might be anticipated, some of 
 his best passages deal with the humanity about 
 him. "With characteristic reticence, he says 
 little of his own companions, but his pen strays
 
 ']6 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 easily into graphic sketches of the little world of 
 the ' Queen of Portugal.' The ill-conditioned 
 Custom-house officer, already mentioned ; the 
 military fop who comes to visit the captain at 
 Spithead ; the sordid and shrewish Ryde land- 
 lady with her chuckle-headed nonentity of a 
 husband — are all touched by a hand which, if 
 tremulous, betrays no diminution of its cunning. 
 Of all the portraits, however, that of the skipper 
 is the best.^ The rough, illiterate, septuagena- 
 rian sea-captain, ' full of strange oaths ' and 
 superstitions, despotic, irascible and good- 
 natured, awkwardly gallanting the ladies in all 
 the splendours of a red coat, cockade and sword, 
 and heart-broken, privateer though he had been, 
 when his favourite kitten is smothered by a 
 feather-bed, has all the elements of a finished 
 individuality. It is with respect to him that 
 
 1 The picture, it should be added, was not, at first 
 presented in^its racy entirety. When, in February, 1755, 
 the ' Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon ' was given to the 
 world for the benefit of Fielding's widow and children, 
 although the ' Dedication to the Public ' affirmed the 
 book to be ' as it came from the hands of the author/ 
 many of the franker touches which go to complete the 
 full-length of Captain Richard Veal, as well as sundry 
 other particulars, were withheld. This question is fully 
 discussed in the Introduction to the limited edition of 
 the ' Journal,' published in 1892 by the Chiswick Press.
 
 Fielding's ' t^oyage to Lisbon.' "^j 
 
 occurs almost the only really dramatic incident 
 of the voyage. A violent dispute having arisen 
 about the exclusive right of the passengers to 
 the cabin, Fielding resolved, not without mis- 
 givings, to quit the ship, ordering a hoy for that 
 purpose, and taking care, as became a magis- 
 trate, to threaten Captain Veal with what that 
 worthy feared more than rock or quicksand, the 
 terrors of retributory legal proceedings. The 
 rest may be told in the journalist's own words : 
 ' The most distant sound of law thus frightened 
 a man, who had often, I am convinced, heard 
 numbers of cannon roar round him with intrepi- 
 dity. Nor did he sooner see the hoy approach- 
 ing the vessel, than he ran down again into the 
 cabin, and, his rage being perfectly subsided, he 
 tumbled on his knees, and a little too abjectly 
 implored for mercy. 
 
 ' I did not suffer a brave man and an old man, 
 to remain a moment in this posture ; but I im- 
 mediately forgave him.' Most of those who 
 have related this anecdote end discreetly at this 
 point. Fielding, however, is too honest to allow 
 us to place his forbearance entirely to the credit 
 of his magnanimity. ' And here, that I may not 
 be thought the sly trumpeter of my own praises, 
 I do utterly disclaim all praise on the occasion. 
 Neither did the greatness of my mind dictate,
 
 78 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 nor the force of my Christianity exact this for- 
 giveness. To speak truth, I forgave him from a 
 motive which would make men much more for- 
 giving, if they were much wiser than they are ; 
 because it was convenient for me so to do.' 
 
 With the arrival of the ' Queen of Portugal ' 
 at Lisbon the ' Journal ' ends, and no further 
 particulars of its writer are forthcoming. Two 
 months later he died in the Portuguese capital, 
 and was buried among the cypresses of the 
 beautiful English cemetery. Luget Britannia 
 grcmio non dari Fovcrc natiim — is inscribed 
 upon his tomb.
 
 HANWAY'S TRAVELS. 
 
 /^NE hot day in Holborn, — one of those 
 ^^ very hot days when, as Mr. Andrew Lang 
 or M. Octave Uzanne has said, the brown 
 backs buckle in the fourpenny boxes, and you 
 might poach an egg on the cover of a quarto, — 
 the incorrigible bookhunter who pens these 
 pages purchased two octavo volumes of ' Beauties 
 of the Spectators, Tatlers and Guardians, Con- 
 nected and Digested under Alphabetical Heads.' 
 That their contents were their main attraction 
 would be too much to say. For the literary 
 ' Beauties ' of one age, like those other 
 
 ' Beauties reckoned 
 So killing — under George the Second/ 
 
 are not always the literary ' Beauties ' of another. 
 Where the selector of to-day would put Sir 
 Roger de Coverley and Will Wimble, the Ever- 
 lasting Club, or the Exercise of the Fan, the 
 judicious gentlemen in rusty wigs and inked 
 ruffles who did the ' connecting ' and ' digest- 
 ing ' department for Messrs. Tonson in the
 
 8o Eighteenth Century f^ignettes. 
 
 Strand, put passages on Detraction, Astronomy, 
 Chearfulness (with an 'a'), Bankruptcy, Self- 
 Denial, Celibacy, and the Bills of Mortality. 
 They must have done a certain violence to their 
 critical convictions by including, in forlorn isola- 
 tion, such flights of imagination as the ' Inkle 
 and Yarico ' of Mr. Steele and the ' Hilpah and 
 Shalum' of Mr. Addison. The interest of this 
 particular copy is, however, peculiar to itself. 
 It is bound neatly in full mottled calf, with 
 stamped gold roses at the corners of the covers ; 
 and at the points of a star in the centre are 
 printed the letters G, E, G, C. An autograph 
 inscription in the first volume explains this 
 mystery. They are the initials of the ' Twin 
 Sisters Miss Elizabeth, & Miss Caroline Grigg,' 
 to whom are addressed the votive couplets that 
 follow : — ^ .- •; ^ • . 
 
 * Freedom & Virtue, Twin born from Heavn came. 
 And like two Sisters fair, are both tlie same. 
 On Thee Elizabeth may Virtue smile I 
 And Thou, sweet Caroline, Life's cares beguile 
 May Gracious Providence protect & guide, 
 That Days & Years in peace may slide ; 
 And bring You Bliss, in Parents love, 
 Till You shall reach the bliss above.' 
 
 After this comes — ' Thus prays Your very true 
 friend & affectionate Servant J Hanway,' — a
 
 Hallways' s Travels. 8i 
 
 signature which proves that one may be a praise- 
 worthy Philanthropist and a copious Pam- 
 phleteer and yet write no better verse than the 
 Bellman. For without consulting the records 
 at the Marine Society in Bishopsgate Street, 
 there is little doubt that the writer of these lines 
 was the once well-known Jonas Hanway of the 
 Ragged Schools, the Magdalen Hospital, and 
 half a hundred other benevolent undertakings. 
 Indeed the circumstance that the book is ad- 
 dressed to two ladies is, of itself, almost proof 
 of this, since, either from bachelor caution, or 
 from some other obscure cause, Hanway always 
 attaches a Dingley to his Stella. His ' Journey 
 from Portsmouth to Kingston ' is addressed to 
 two ladies ; so also is his famous ' Essay on 
 Tea.' But there is stronger confirmation still. 
 He was in the habit of giving away copies of 
 this very book — in fact of this very edition — 
 as presents to his friends and protdgds. Not 
 long ago, in a second-hand bookseller's cata- 
 logue, was advertised another pair of the same 
 volumes, in ' old English red morocco, elabo- 
 rately tooled,' which had been given by Hanway 
 to his 'young friend Master John Thomson.' 
 It was dated from Red Lion Square in 1772, 
 the same year in which his verses to the Demoi- 
 selles Grigg were written. Master Thomson's 
 
 6
 
 82 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 initials were also impressed upon the sides of 
 this copy ; and although the Muses had not been 
 invoked in his behalf, the book contained a 
 holograph letter of nine pages of useful advice, 
 by the aid of which, coupled with the ' Beauties,' 
 he was to learn ' to attain the treasures of health, 
 wealth, peace, and happiness.' But from the 
 excellent condition of the volumes in both in- 
 stances, it must be inferred that neither the twin 
 sisters nor Mr. Hanway's ' young friend ' acted 
 upon Johnson's precept' and gave their days 
 and nights to the periods of Addison. 
 
 Of Hanway himself, Johnson said, in his 
 memorable way, ' that he acquired some repu- 
 tation by travelling abroad, but lost it all by 
 travelling at home.' His ' Historical Account of 
 the British Trade on the Caspian Sea ' (generally 
 called ' Travels in Persia'), ijij^, 4 vols., quarto, 
 did indeed once enjoy a considerable reputation, 
 and his adventures were adventurous enough. 
 Beginning life as a Lisbon merchant, he subse- 
 quently accepted a partnership in a St. Peters- 
 burgh house. At this date the Russo-Persian 
 trade had recently been established by Captain 
 John Elton, who afterwards, to the disgust of 
 the St. Petersburgh factors, took service under 
 Nadir Shah. Hanway accompanied a caravan 
 of woollen goods to Persia ; and here began his
 
 Hallway's Travels. 83 
 
 experiences. He found Astrabad in rebellion, 
 and the caravan was plundered. Thereupon, 
 after many privations and narrow escapes, he 
 made his way to Nadir Shah, who ordered 
 restitution of the goods, — a restitution which 
 was more easy to order than to execute, although 
 something was restored. But the traveller's 
 troubles were by no means at an end. In the 
 Caspian, on the return voyage, his ship was at- 
 tacked by the Ogurtjoy pirates, and he himself 
 afterwards fell seriously ill. To this succeeded, 
 in consequence of the presence of plague at 
 Cashan, the amenities of a long quarantine on 
 an island in the Volga, in the final stage of 
 which the unhappy travellers ' were required to 
 strip themselves entirely naked in the open air 
 [this was in a Russian October], and go through 
 the unpleasant ceremony of having each a large 
 pail of warm water thrown over them, before 
 they were permitted to depart.' When Hanway 
 at last reached Moscow, he found that the op- 
 portune death of a relative had placed him in 
 possession ' of pecuniary advantages, much ex- 
 ceeding any he could expect from his engage- 
 ment in Caspian affairs.' He nevertheless stayed 
 five years and a half more at St. Petersburgh ; 
 and then, returning to England, took up his 
 abode in London, where he proceeded to pre-
 
 84 Eighteenth Century yignettes. 
 
 pare his travels for the press. Being laudably 
 unwilling that any publisher should run the risk 
 of losing money by him, the first edition was 
 printed at his own expense ; but the book proved 
 a great success, passing speedily into many 
 libraries (into Gray's among others), and An- 
 drew Millar ultimately purchased the copyright. 
 The remainder of Hanway's life was spent in 
 philanthropy and pamphleteering. He helped 
 Sir John Fielding and others to set on foot 
 the still existent Marine Society for training 
 boys for the sea ; he helped to remodel ' Cap- 
 tain Coram's Charity,' of which he was a Gov- 
 ernor ; he founded the Magdalen Hospital ; 
 he advocated the interests of Sunday-Schools 
 and Ragged Schools, of chimney-sweeps and 
 the infant poor. Not the least important of 
 his services to the community was his vindica- 
 tion, in the teeth of the chairmen and hackney 
 coachmen, of the use, by men, of the umbrella, 
 hitherto confined to the weaker sex.i As a 
 pamphleteer he was unwearied, and the mere 
 titles of his efforts in this way occupy four 
 
 ^ ' Good housewives all the winter's rage despise, 
 Defended by the riding-hood's disguise : 
 Or underneath th' umbrella's oily shed, 
 Safe thro' the wet, on clinking pattens tread.' 
 
 Gay's Trivia, 1716, i. 209-212.
 
 Hanway's Travels. 85 
 
 columns of Messrs. Stephen and Lee's great 
 dictionary. He wrote on the Naturalization of 
 the Jews ; he wrote on Vails-Giving, on the 
 American War, on Pure Bread, on Solitary 
 Confinement ; he wrote ' Earnest Advice ' and 
 * Moral Reflections ' to Everybody on Every- 
 thing. To misuse Ben Jonson's words of 
 Shakespeare, ' He flowed with that facility that 
 sometimes it was necessary he should be 
 stopped.' One entire pamphlet on bread was 
 dictated in the space of a forenoon, says his 
 secretary and biographer Pugh. When it is 
 further explained that it consisted of two hun- 
 dred law sheets, or ninety octavo pages, it is ob- 
 vious that the excellent author's powers as a 
 pamphleteer must have been preternatural. 
 But it is hardly surprising to find even his 
 admirer admitting that his ideas were not well 
 arranged, and that his style was undeniably 
 diff"use. 
 
 This latter quality is aptly illustrated by a 
 volume which lies before us, being in fact the 
 identical record of those travels in England by 
 which Johnson asserted that Mr. Hanway had 
 lost the celebrity he had acquired by his 
 ' Travels in Persia.' The very title of the book 
 — a privately printed quarto — is as long as that 
 of ' Pamela.' It runs thus, — ' A Journal 0/
 
 86 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 Eight Days Journey from Portsmouth to 
 Kingston upon Thames ; through Southamp- 
 ton, Wiltshire, etc. With Miscellaneous 
 Thoughts, Moral and Religious ; in a Series of 
 Sixty-four Letters : Addressed to two Ladies of 
 the Partie. To which is added, An Essay on 
 TEA, considered as pernicious to Health, obstruct- 
 ing Industry, and impoverishing the Nation : 
 With an Account of its Growth, and great Con- 
 sumption in these Kingdoms. With several 
 political Reflections ; and Thoughts on Public 
 Love. In Twenty-five Letters to the same 
 Ladies. By a Gentleman of the Partie. London : 
 H. Woodfall, 1756/ The ' Partie,' by the 
 way, if we are to trust Wale's emblematic 
 frontispiece, must have been limited to the 
 writer and these two ladies, discreetly dis- 
 guised in the ' Contents ' as * Mrs. D.' and 
 ' Mrs. O.' Why, as remarked by an inge- 
 nious ' Monthly Reviewer,' it should be 
 necessary to tell ' Mrs. D.' and ' Mrs. O.' 
 (whom the artist shows us conversing agreeably 
 with Mr. Hanway under an awning in a two- 
 oared boat) what, having been of the ' Partie,' 
 they probably knew quite as well as he did, is 
 not explained. But on the other hand, it may 
 be contended that he really tells them very little, 
 since the ' Moral and Religious ' reflections al-
 
 Hauway's Travels. ' 87 
 
 most entirely swallow up the Travels. ' On every 
 occurrence,' says the critic quoted, ' he expati- 
 ates, and indulges in reflection. The appear- 
 ance of an inn upon the road suggests ... an 
 eulogium on temperance ; the confusion of a 
 disappointed Landlady gives rise to a Letter on 
 Resentment ; and the view of a company of 
 soldiers furnishes out materials for an Essay on 
 War.' The company of soldiers was Lord 
 George Bentinck's regiment of infantry on their 
 march to Essex ; and one sighs to think with 
 what a bustle of full-blooded humanity — what 
 a ' March to Finchley ' of incident — the author 
 of a ' Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon ' would 
 have filled the storied page. But Mr. Hanway 
 is not the least penitent ; rather is he proud 
 of his reticence. He specially expresses his 
 gratitude to the hostess ' who gave occasion 
 for my thoughts on resentment, a subject far 
 more interesting than whether a battle was 
 fought at this, or any other place, five hun- 
 dred years ago.' (If ' Mrs. D.' and ' Mrs. 
 O.' were really of this opinion, they must have 
 been curiously constituted.) 'Can you bear 
 with this medley of both worlds ? ' he asks 
 them on another occasion, and it is not easy to 
 reply except by saying that there is too much of 
 one and too little of the other. To pass Bevis
 
 88 Eighteenth Century l^'ignettes. 
 
 Mount with the barest mention of Lord Peter- 
 borough ; to come to Amesbury and ' Prior's 
 Kitty ' and be fobbed off with ' a pious rhap- 
 sody ; ' to stop at Stockbridge for which Steele 
 was member when he was expelled from Par- 
 liament, only to enter upon fifty pages of 
 indiscriminate reflections on Public Love, Self- 
 examination, the Vanity of Life, and half a 
 dozen other instructive but irrelevant subjects, 
 — these things, indeed, are hard to bear, es- 
 pecially as they are not recommended by any 
 particular distinction of matter or manner, 
 ' Tho' his opinions are generally true,' says the 
 critic already quoted, ' and his regard for virtue 
 seems very sincere, yet these alone are not, at 
 this day, sufficient to defend the cause of truth ; 
 stile, elegance, and all the allurements of good 
 writing, must be called in aid : especially if the 
 age be in reality, as it is represented by this 
 Author, averse to everything that but seems to 
 be serious.' ' Novelty of thought,' he says 
 again, * and elegance of expression, are what 
 we chiefly require, in treating on topics with 
 which the public are already acquainted : but 
 the art of placing trite materials in new and 
 striking lights, cannot be reckoned among the 
 excellencies of this Gentleman ; who generally 
 enforces his opinions by arguments rather ob-
 
 Hanway's Travels. 89 
 
 vious than new, and that convey more con- 
 viction than pleasure to the Reader.' 
 
 Why, with the book before us, we should 
 borrow from an anonymous writer in the 
 ' Monthly Review,' requires a word of explana- 
 tion. The reviewer was Oliver Goldsmith, 
 at this time an unknown scribbler, working as 
 'general utility man ' to Mr. Ralph Griffiths the 
 bookseller, who owned the magazine. Gold- 
 smith devotes most of his notice to the ' Essay 
 on Tea,' the scope of which is sufficiently indi- 
 cated by its title. But the ' Essay on Tea ' 
 also engaged the attention of a better known 
 though not greater critic, Samuel Johnson, 
 whose ' corruption was raised ' (as the Scotch 
 say) by this bulky if not weighty indictment 
 of his darling beverage. Johnson's critique 
 was in the ' Literary Magazine.' At the out- 
 set he makes candid and characteristic profes- 
 sion of faith. * He is,' he says, 'a hardened 
 and shameless Tea-drinker, who has for twenty 
 years diluted his meals with only the infu- 
 sion of this fascinating plant, whose kettle has 
 scarcely time to cool, who with Tea amuses 
 the evening, with Tea solaces the midnight, and 
 with Tea welcomes the morning.' The argu- 
 ments, on either side, are now of little moment, 
 though Hanway, as a merchant, is better worth
 
 90 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 hearing on the commercial aspect of the Tea 
 question than on things in general. But the 
 review greatly irritated him. An unfortunate 
 remark dropped by Johnson about the religious 
 education of the children in the Foundling 
 stung him into an angry retort in the ' Gazetteer,' 
 — a retort to which (according to Boswell) 
 Johnson made the only rejoinder he is ever 
 known to have offered to anything that was 
 written against him. As may be expected, it 
 was not a document from which his opponent 
 could extract much personal gratification ; but 
 it is not otherwise remarkable. 
 
 That the criticism of Johnson and Goldsmith 
 was not wholly undeserved must, it is feared, be 
 conceded. Even in days less book-burdened, 
 and more patient of tedium than our own, to 
 string half a dozen pamphlets of platitudes upon 
 the slenderest of threads, and call it the ' Journal 
 of a Journey from Portsmouth to Kingston- 
 upon-Thames,' could scarcely have been toler- 
 able. Yet Johnson allowed to the author the 
 'merit of meaning well.' Hanway's benevo- 
 lence was, in truth, unquestioned. His sincerity 
 was beyond suspicion, and his services to his 
 fellow-creatures were considerable. His mis- 
 fortune was that, like many excellent persons, 
 his sense of humour was imperfect, and his in-
 
 Hanway's Travels. 91 
 
 firmity of digression chronic. He was, more- 
 over, the victim of the common delusion that to 
 teach and to preach are interchangeable terms. 
 His biographer Pugh, who admits that, with all 
 his good qualities, he had a ' certain singularity 
 of thought and manners,' gives some curious 
 details as to his habits and costume. In order 
 to be always ready for polite society, he usu- 
 ally appeared in dress clothes, including a large 
 French bag (which duly figures in Wale's fron- 
 tispiece) and a chapeau bras with a gold button. 
 'When it rained, a small parapluie defended his 
 face and wig.' His customary garb was a suit 
 of rich dark brown, lined with ermine, to which 
 he added a small gold-hilted sword. He was ex- 
 tremely susceptible to cold, and habitually wore 
 three pairs of stockings. He was an active 
 pedestrian, although he possessed an equipage 
 called a ' solo ' (which we take to be the equiva- 
 lent of Sterne's Ddsobligeanl). Among his other 
 characteristics was the embellishment of his 
 house in Red Lion Square in such a way as to 
 prompt and promote improving conversation in 
 those unhappy intermissions of talk which come 
 about while the card-tables are being set, and so 
 forth. The decorations in the drawing-room 
 were not without a certain mildly-moral inge- 
 nuity. They consisted of portraits of Adrienne
 
 92 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 Le Couvreur and five other famous beauties, in 
 frames united by a carved and gilded ribbon 
 inscribed with passages in praise of beauty. 
 Above these was placed a statue of Humility ; 
 below, a mirror just convex enough to reduce the 
 female spectator to the scale of the portraits, 
 and round the frame of this was painted, — 
 
 ' Wert thou, my daughter, fairest of the seven ; 
 Think on the progress of devouring Time, 
 And pay thy tribute to Humility.' 
 
 Hanway died in 1786, aged seventy-four. 
 His fate was one not unbefitting those whose 
 lives are expended in the ungrateful task of ame- 
 liorating society. He is buried at Hanwell, and 
 he has a bust in Westminster Abbey.
 
 A GARRET IN GOUGH SQUARE. 
 
 ATOT very far from 'streaming London's 
 ■'• ' central roar' — or, in plain words, about 
 midway in Fleet Street, on the left-hand side as 
 you go toward Ludgate Hill — is a high and 
 narrow archway or passage over which is painted 
 in dingy letters the words ' Bolt Court.' To the 
 lover of the ' Great Cham of Literature,' the 
 name comes freighted with memories. More 
 than a hundred years ago ' the ponderous mass 
 of Johnson's form,' to quote a poem by Mrs. 
 Barbauld, must often have darkened that con- 
 tracted approach, when, in order to greet with 
 tea the coming day {^ venicnte die'),'^ and to 
 postpone if possible that ' unseasonable hour at 
 which he had habituated himself to expect the 
 oblivion of repose,' he rolled across from the 
 Temple to Miss Williams's rooms. Where 
 the blind lady lodged, no Society of Arts tablet 
 now reveals to us ; but as soon as the pilgrim 
 has traversed the dark and greasy entrance-way, 
 
 1 ' Te veniente die, te diccdcnte cambut.' — Georg. 
 iv. 466.
 
 94 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 and finds himself in the little court itself, with 
 its disorderly huddle of buildings, and confusion 
 of tip-cat playing children, he is in Johnson's 
 land, and only a few steps from the actual spot 
 on which Johnson's last hours were spent. 
 Fronting him, in the farther angle of the enclo- 
 sure, is the Stationers' Company's School, and 
 the Stationers' Company's School stands upon 
 the site of No. 8 Bolt Court, formerly Bensley's 
 Printing Office,^ but earlier still the last residence 
 of Dr. Johnson, who lived in it from 1776 to 
 1784. It was in the back-room of its first floor 
 that, on Monday, the 13th December in the 
 latter year, at about seven o'clock in the even- 
 ing, his black servant Francis Barber and his 
 friend Mrs. Desmoulins, who watched in the 
 sick-chamber, ' observing that the noise he 
 made in breathing had ceased, went to the bed, 
 and found that he was dead.' 
 
 1 Bensley succeeded Allen the printer, Johnson's land- 
 lord. During Bensley's tenancy of the house it was 
 twice the scene of disastrous fires, by the second of 
 which (in June, 1819) the Doctor's old rooms were entirely 
 destroyed. Among other valuables burned at Bensley's 
 was the large wood block engraved by Bewick's pupil, 
 Luke Clennell, for the diploma of the Highland Society ; 
 and the same artist's cuts after Stothard for Rogers's 
 ' Pleasures of Memory ' of 18 10, were only saved from a 
 like fate by being kept in a ' ponderous iron chest.'
 
 A Garret in Goiigh Square. 95 
 
 Standing in Bolt Court to-day, before the 
 unimposing facade of the school which now oc- 
 cupies the spot, it is not easy to reconstruct 
 that quiet parting-scene ; nor is it easy to realize 
 the old book-burdened upper floors, or the 
 lower reception chamber, where, according to 
 Sir 'John Hawkins, were given those * not in- 
 elegant dinners ' of the good Doctor's more 
 opulent later years. Least of all is it possible 
 to conceive that, somewhere in this pell-mell of 
 bricks and mortar, was once a garden which the 
 famous Lexicographer took pleasure in water- 
 ing ; and where, moreover, grew a vine from 
 which, only a few months before he died, he 
 gathered ' three bunches of grapes. But if 
 Bolt Court prove unstimulating, you have only 
 to take a few steps to the right, and you arrive, 
 somewhat unexpectedly, in a little parallelo- 
 gram at the back, known as Cough Square. 
 Here, to-day, in the northwest corner, still 
 exists the last of those sixteen residences in 
 which Johnson lived in London. It is at present 
 a place of business ; but the tenants make no 
 difficulty about your examination of it, and when 
 you inquire for the well-known garret you are 
 at once invited to inspect it. The interior of 
 the house, of course, is much altered, but there 
 is still a huge chain at the front door, which
 
 96 Eighteenth Century Vignettes, 
 
 dates from Johnson's day, and the old oak- 
 balustraded staircase remains intact. As you 
 climb its narrow stages, you remember that, 
 sixty years since, Thomas Carlyle must have 
 made that ascent before you ; ^ and you wonder 
 how Johnson, with his bad sight and his rolling 
 gait, managed to steer up it at all. The flight 
 ends in the garret itself, upon which you emerge 
 at present, as in a hay-loft. But it is not in the 
 least such a ' sky-parlour' as Hogarth assigns to 
 his ' Distressed Poet.' It occupies the whole 
 width and breadth of the building ; it is suffi- 
 ciently lighted by three windows in front, and 
 two dormers at the sides ; and the pitch of the 
 roof is by no means low. Here you are act- 
 ually in Johnson's house ; and as you turn to 
 look at the stairway you have just quitted, it is 
 odds if you do not expect to see the shrivelled 
 wig, the seared, blinking face, and the heavy 
 shoulders of the Doctor himself rising slowly 
 above the aperture with a huge volume under 
 his arm. For it was in this very garret in 
 Gough Square, within sound of the hammers of 
 that famous clock of St. Dunstan's, to which 
 Cowper refers in the ' Connoisseur,' that the 
 great Dictionary was compiled. Here laboured 
 
 1 He visited it in 1831 (Froude's 'Carlyle,' vol. ii. 
 ch. X.).
 
 A Garret in Goiigh Square. 97 
 
 Shiels, the amanuensis, and his five com- 
 panions, ceaselessly transcribing the passages 
 which had been marked for them to copy, and 
 probably going ' odd man or plain Newmarket ' 
 for beer as soon as ever their employer's back 
 was turned ; here, also, at the little fire-place 
 in the corner, must often have sat Johnson him- 
 self, peering closely (much as Reynolds shows 
 him in the portrait of 1778) at the proofs that 
 were going to long-suffering Andrew Millar. It 
 was in this identical garret that Joseph Warton 
 once visited him to pay a subscription ; here 
 came RoublUac and Sir Joshua ; and here, when 
 the room had grown to be dignified by the title 
 of the ' library,' Johnson received Dr. Burney, 
 who found in it ' five or six Greek folios, a deal 
 writing-desk, and a chair and a half.' The half- 
 chair must have been that mentioned by Miss 
 Reynolds ; and it is evident that long experi- 
 ence or repeated misadventure had made John- 
 son both skilful and cautious in manipulating it. 
 ' A gentleman,' she says, ' who frequently visited 
 him whilst writing his ' Idlers" [the ' Idler' 
 was partly composed in Gough Square in 1758] 
 constantly found him at his desk, sitting on a 
 chair with three legs ; and on rising from it, he 
 remarked that Dr. Johnson never forgot its de- 
 fect, but would either hold it in his hand or place 
 
 7
 
 98 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 it with great composure against some support, 
 taking no notice of its imperfection to liis 
 visitor.' ' It was remarkable in Dr. Johnson,' 
 she goes on, ' that no external circumstances 
 ever prompted him to make any apology, or to 
 seem even sensible of their existence.' 
 
 In Gough Square Johnson lived from 1749 to 
 1759. 'I have this day moved my things,' he 
 writes to his step-daughter, Miss Porter, on the 
 23rd of March in the latter year, ' and you are 
 now to direct to me at Staple Inn.' These ten 
 years were among the busiest and most produc- 
 tive of his life. No pension had as yet made 
 existence easier to him ; no Boswell was at hand 
 to seduce him to port and the Mitre ; and the 
 Literary Club, as yet unborn, existed only in 
 embryo at a beefsteak shop in Ivy Lane. Be- 
 sides the ' Idler ' and the Dictionary, which 
 latter was published in the middle of his sojourn 
 at Gough Square, he sent forth from his garret 
 
 * Irene' and the ' Vanity of Human Wishes,' the 
 
 * Rambler,' and the essays in Hawkesworth's 
 ' Adventurer.' It was here that he drew up 
 those proposals for that belated edition of 
 Shakespeare of which Churchill said : 
 
 lie for Subscribers baits his hook, 
 
 And takes their cash — but where 's the Book?
 
 A Garret in Gotigh Square. 99 
 
 and here, early in 1759, he wrote his * Rasselas.' 
 It was in Gough Square, on the i6th of March, 
 1756, that he was arrested for ;^5 185., and only 
 released by a prompt loan from Samuel Richard- 
 son ; it was while living in Gough Square that 
 he penned that noble letter to Chesterfield, of 
 which Time seems to intensify rather than to 
 attenuate the dignity and the independent ac- 
 cent. ' Is not a Patron, my Lord, one who 
 looks with unconcern on a man struggling for life 
 in the water, and, when he has reached ground, 
 encumbers him with help ? The notice which 
 you have been pleased to take of my labours, had 
 it been early, had been kind ; but it has been de- 
 layed till I am indifferent, and cannot enjoy it ; 
 till I am solitary, and cannot impart it ; till I am 
 known, and do not want it. I hope it is no 
 very cynical asperity not to confess obligations 
 where no benefit has been received, or to be 
 unwilling that the Publick should consider me 
 as owing that to a Patron, which Providence 
 has enabled me to do for myself.' 
 
 * Till I am solitary, and cannot impart it.' 
 The same thought recurs in the closing words 
 of the preface to his magnum opus, which, little 
 more than two months after the date of the 
 above letter, appeared in a pair of folio vol- 
 umes. ' I have protracted my work till most of
 
 icx) Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 those whom I wished to please have sunk into 
 the grave ; and success and miscarriage are empty 
 sounds.' It needs no Bosweil to tell us that 
 the reference here is to the death, three years 
 before, of his wife, — that fantastic 'Tetty,' to 
 himself so beautiful, to his friends so unattrac- 
 tive, whom he loved so ardently and so faith- 
 fully, and whose name, coupled with so many 
 ' pious breathings,' is so frequently to be found 
 in his ' Prayers and Meditations.' 'This is the 
 day,' he wrote, thirty years afterwards, ' on 
 which, in 1752, dear Tetty died, I have now 
 uttered a prayer of repentance and contrition ; 
 perhaps Tetty knows that I prayed for her. Per- 
 haps Tetty is now praying for me. God help me.' 
 In her epitaph at Bromley he styles her *■ for- 
 mosa, ciilta, ingeniosa, pia.' In a recently dis- 
 covered letter she is his ' charming Love,' his 
 ' most amiable woman in the world,' and (even 
 at fifty) his ' dear Girl.' He preserved her 
 wedding ring, says Bosweil, ' as long as he 
 lived, with an affectionate care, in a little round 
 wooden box, in the inside of which he pasted 
 a slip of paper, thus inscribed by him in fair 
 characters, as follows : ' Eheu ! Eli^. Johnson, 
 Nupla Jul. p° ijjiS, Mortua, eheu ! Mart. iy° 
 17^2.^ Her loss was not the only bereavement 
 he suffered in Gough Square. Two months be-
 
 A Garret in Gough Square. loi 
 
 fore he left it, in 1759, his mother died at Lich- 
 field, — ' one of the few calamities,' he had told 
 Lucy Porter, ' on which he thought with terror.' 
 Confined to London by his work, he was not 
 able to close her eyes ; but he wrote to her a 
 last letter almost too sacred in its wording for 
 the profanation of type, and he consecrated an 
 'Idler' to her memory. 'The last year, the 
 last day, must come,' he says mournfully. ' It 
 has come, and is past. The life which made my 
 own life pleasant is at an end, and the gates of 
 death are shut upon my prospects.' To pay his 
 mother's modest debts, and to cover the ex- 
 penses of her funeral, he penned his sole ap- 
 proach to a work of fiction, — the story of 
 ' Rasselas.' 
 
 Who now reads Johnson ? If he pleases still, 
 'Tis most for Dormitive or Sleeping Pill, — 
 
 one might say, in not inappropriate parody of 
 Pope. His strong individuality, his intellectual 
 authority, his conversational power, must live 
 for ever ; but his books I — who, outside the 
 fanatics of literature, — who reads them now? 
 Macaulay, we are told by Lord Houghton, once 
 quoted ' London ' at a dinner-table, but then he 
 was talking to Dean Milman ; and Dr. Oliver 
 "Wendell Holmes, in his novel of ' A Mortal
 
 102 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 Antipathy,' refers to the Prince of Abyssinia. 
 Browning, says Mrs. Sutherland Orr, qualified 
 himself for poetry in his youth by a diligent 
 perusal of the Dictionary ; and it may perhaps 
 be said of him, in those words of Horace which 
 Johnson himself applied to Prior, that ' the 
 vessel long retained the scent which it first re- 
 ceived.' But who now, among the supporters 
 of the circulating libraries, ever gets out the 
 
 * Rambler,' or ' Irene,' or the ' Vanity of Human 
 Wishes ' (beloved of Scott and Byron), or ' Ras- 
 selas,' — * Rasselas,' once more popular than 
 the ' Vicar of Wakefield,' ^ — ' Rasselas/ which, 
 despite such truisms as ' What cannot be re- 
 paired is not to be regretted,' is full of sagacious 
 
 * criticism of life ' 1 The honest answer must be, 
 ' Very few.' Yet a day may come when the 
 Johnsonese of Johnson's imitators will be for- 
 gotten, and people will turn once more to the 
 fountain-head to find, with surprise, that it is 
 not so polluted with Latinisms after all, and that 
 it abounds in passages direct and forcible. ' Of 
 all the writings which are models,' says Profes- 
 sor Earle, ' models I mean in the highest sense 
 
 * Of an illustrated edition of the 'Vicar' published at 
 the end of 1890, we are credibly informed that 8,000 
 copies were sold within a twelvemonth. And where is 
 'Rasselas' now?
 
 A Garret in Goiigh Square. 103 
 
 of the word, models from which tlie spirit of 
 genuine true and wholesome diction is to be 
 imbibed (not models of mannerism of which 
 the trick or fashion is to be caught), I have no 
 hesitation in saying that there is one author 
 unapproachably and incomparably the best, and 
 that is Samuel Johnson.' And this is the ' de- 
 liberate conclusion ' of an expert who has given 
 almost a lifetime to the comparative study of 
 English prose.
 
 HOGARTH'S SIGISMUNDA. 
 
 npOWARDS the close of the last century, the 
 ■^ regular attendants upon the ministrations 
 of the Rev. James Trebeck in the picturesque 
 old church at the end of Chiswick Mall, must 
 often have witnessed the arrival of a well-known 
 member of the congregation. Year after year 
 had been wheeled in a Bath chair from her little 
 villa under the wing of the Duke of Devon- 
 shire's mansion hard by, a stately old lady be- 
 tween seventy and eighty years of age, whose 
 habitual costume was a silk sacque, a raised 
 head-dress, and a black calash. Leaning heavily 
 upon her crutched cane, and aided by the arm 
 of a portly female relative in similar attire, she 
 would make her way slowly and with much 
 dignity up the nave, being generally preceded 
 by a bent and white-haired man-servant, who, 
 after carrying the prayer-books into the pew, 
 and carefully closing the door upon his mistress 
 and her companion, would himself retire to a 
 remoter part of the building. From the fre- 
 quenters of the place, the little procession at-
 
 Hogarth's Sigismunda. 105 
 
 tracted no more notice than any other recog- 
 nized ceremonial, of which the intermission 
 would alone have been remarkable ; but it sel- 
 dom failed to excite the curiosity of those way- 
 farers who, under the third George, already 
 sought reverently, along the pleasant riverside, 
 for that house in Mavvson's Buildings where the 
 great Mr. Pope wrote part of his ' Iliad,' or for 
 the garden of Richard, Earl of Burlington, 
 where idle John Gay gorged himself with apri- 
 cots and peaches. They would be told that the 
 elder lady was the widow of the famous painter, 
 William Hogarth, who lay buried under the tea- 
 caddy-like tomb in the neighbouring churchyard ; 
 that her companion was her cousin, Mary Lewis, 
 in whose arms he died ; and that the old ser- 
 vant's name was Samuel. For five and twenty 
 years Mrs. Hogarth survived her husband, dur- 
 ing all of which time she faithfully cherished his 
 memory. Those who visited her at her Chis- 
 wick home (for she had another in Leicester 
 Square) would recall with what tenacity she was 
 wont to combat the view that he was a mere 
 maker of caricatura, or, at best, ' a writer of 
 comedy with the pencil,' as Mr. Horace Wal- 
 pole (whose over-critical book she had not even 
 condescended to acknowledge) had thought fit 
 to designate him. It was as a painter pure and
 
 io6 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 simple, as a rival of the Guides and Correggios, 
 that she mainly valued her William. ' They 
 said he could not colour 1 ' she would cry, point- 
 ing, it may be, as a protest against the words, 
 to the brilliant sketch of the 'Shrimp Girl,' now 
 in the National Gallery, but then upon her 
 walls. Or, turning from his merits to his mem- 
 ory, she would throw a shawl about her hand- 
 some head, and, stepping out under the over- 
 hanging bay-window into the old three-cornered 
 garden with its filbert avenue and its great 
 mulberry tree, would exhibit the little mural 
 tablet which Hogarth had himself scratched with 
 a nail, in remembrance of a favourite bullfinch. 
 * Alass poor Dick,' ran the now faint inscription, 
 not without characteristic revelation of the 
 sculptor's faulty spelling. And if she happened 
 to be in one of the more confidential moods of 
 old age, she would perhaps take from a drawer 
 that very No. 17 of the ' North Briton,' stained 
 and frayed at the folds, which she afterwards 
 gave to Ireland, and which her husband, she 
 would tell you, had carried about in his pocket 
 for days to show to sympathetic friends. ' The 
 supposed Author of the Analysis of Beaut/ ! ' — 
 she would indignantly exclaim, quoting from the 
 opening lines of Wilkes's nefarious print, headed 
 with its rude woodcut parody of Hogarth's por-
 
 Hogarth's Sigistmmda. 107 
 
 trait in ' Calais Gate,' ^ and then, turning the 
 blunt-lettered page, she would point silently 
 to the passages relating to the much-abused 
 * Sigismunda,' concerning which, if her hearers 
 were still judiciously inquisitive, they would, 
 in all probability, receive a gracious invitation 
 to test the truth of the libel by inspecting that 
 masterpiece itself at its home in her London 
 house. 
 
 By November, 1789, however, all this had 
 become part of the irrevocable past. In that 
 month Mrs. Hogarth had been laid beside her 
 mother and her husband under the tomb in Chis- 
 wick churchyard ; the little 'country box' had 
 passed to Mary Lewis ; and — by direction of the 
 same lady — the contents of the ' Golden Head ' 
 
 ^ The original No. 17 of the 'North Briton,' dated 
 Saturday, September 25, 1762, had no portrait. The 
 portrait was added to a reprint of Wilkes's article issued 
 May 21, 1763, or immediately after the appearance of Ho- 
 garth's etching of Wilkes. Since the above paper was first 
 published in America, this interesting relic of Hogarth has 
 once more come to light. In April, 1S45, it was sold with 
 Mr. H. P. Standly's collection. At the sale, in February, 
 1892, of Dr. J. R. Joly's Hogarth prints and books, it 
 passed (with some of the Standly correspondence) to 
 Mr. James Tregaskis, the well-known bookseller at the 
 ' Caxton Head ' in Holborn, from whom it was acquired 
 by the present writer.
 
 io8 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 in Leicester Square were shortly afterwards 
 (April, 1790) announced for sale. In the Print- 
 Room at the British Museum, where is also the 
 original manuscript of the famous * Five Days' 
 Tour' of 1732, is a copy of the auctioneer's 
 catalogue, which once belonged to George 
 Steevens. It is not a document of many pages. 
 At Mrs. Hogarth's death, her income from the 
 prints, exclusive property in which had been 
 secured to her in 1767 by special Act of Parlia- 
 ment, had greatly fallen off; and though she 
 had received the further aid of a small pension 
 from the Royal Academy, it is to be presumed 
 that her means were considerably straitened. 
 It is known, too, that there had been lodgers 
 at the ' Golden Head,' one being the engraver 
 Richard Livesay, another the strange Osslanic 
 enthusiast and friend of Fuseli, Alexander Run- 
 ciman ; and obviously nothing but ' strong ne- 
 cessity ' could justify the reception of lodgers. 
 These circumstances must explain the slender 
 contents of Mr. Greenwood's little pamphlet. 
 Many of the treasures of William Hogarth's 
 household had already become the prey of the 
 collector, or had passed to admiring friends ; 
 and what remained to be finally dispersed under 
 the hammer practically consisted of family relics. 
 There was Hogarth's own likeness of himself
 
 Hogarth's Sigismunda. 109 
 
 and his dog, soon to become the property of 
 Mr. Angerstein, from whom it passed to the 
 National Gallery ; there was another whole- 
 length painting of him ; there was Roubillac's 
 clever terra cotla, at present in the Bethnal 
 Green collection of portraits ; there was a cast 
 of the faithful Trump, and one of Hogarth's 
 hand ; there were the portraits of his sisters 
 Mary and Ann, which now belong to Mr. R. C. 
 Nichols. Other items were a set of ' twelve 
 Delft ware plates,' painted with the signs of the 
 zodiac by Sir James Thornhill ; portraits of Sir 
 James and his wife ; of Mrs. Hogarth herself ; 
 of Hogarth's six servants ; and there were also 
 numerous framed examples of his prints.-^ But 
 the most important object in the sale was un- 
 doubtedly the famous ' Sigismunda.' 
 
 ' Sigismunda Mourning over the Heart of 
 Guiscardo ' is the full title of the picture in the 
 National Gallery catalogue. As one looks at 
 it now, asylumed safely, post tot discrimina, in 
 Trafalgar Square, it is not so much its qualities 
 as its story that it recalls. How much heart- 
 burning, how much bitterness, would have been 
 saved to its sturdy little * Author,' as he loved 
 to style himself, if it had never been projected I 
 
 1 By a piece of auction-room waggery, * The Bathos' 
 appears as ' The Bathers.'
 
 no Eighteenth Century Fignettes. 
 
 He was an unparalleled pictorial satirist ; he 
 was, and still is, an unsurpassed story-teller 
 upon canvas. 
 
 ' In walks of Humour, in that cast of Style, 
 Which, probing to the quick, yet makes us smile ; 
 In Comedy, thy nat'ral road to fame. 
 Nor let me call it by a meaner name, 
 Where a beginning, middle, and an end 
 Are aptly joined ; where parts on parts depend. 
 Each made for each, as bodies for their soul, 
 So as to form one true and perfect whole, 
 Where a plain story to the eye is told, 
 Which we conceive the moment we behold, 
 Hogarth unrivall'd stands, and shall engage 
 Unrivall'd praise to the most distant age.' 
 
 Thus even his enemy and assailant, Charles 
 Churchill. But Hogarth had the misfortune to 
 live in an age when Art was given over to the 
 bubblemongers and ' black masters ; ' when, to 
 the suppression of native talent, sham chefs 
 d'oeuvre were praised extravagantly by sham 
 connoisseurs ; and the patriotic painter of ' Mar- 
 riage A-la-Mode ' justly resented the invasion of 
 the country by the rubbish of the Roman art- 
 factories. Had he confined himself to the for- 
 cible indignation of which, as an impenitent 
 islander, he possessed unlimited command, it 
 would have been better for his peace of mind. 
 But, in an unpropitious hour, he undertook to
 
 Hogarth's Sigismiuida. in 
 
 prove his case by demonstration. Among the 
 pictures from Sir Luke Schaub's collection, 
 offered for sale in 1758, was a 'Sigismunda,' 
 attributed to Correggio, but in reality from the 
 brush of the far inferior artist, Furini. It was 
 recklessly run up by the virtuosi, and was finally 
 bought in for over ^400. Hogarth, whose 
 inimitable * Marriage ' had fetched only ^^126 
 (frames included), determined to paint the same 
 subject. He had an open commission from Sir 
 Richard Grosvenor, a wealthy art-collector, who 
 had been one of the bidders for the Furini, and 
 he set to work. He took unusual pains — a 
 thing v/hich, in his case, was of evil augury ; 
 and he modified the details of his desijrn acraln 
 
 O O 
 
 and again, in obedience to the suggestions of 
 friends. When at last the picture was com- 
 pleted. Sir Richard, who, perhaps not unreason- 
 ably, had looked for something more in the 
 artist's individual manner, took advantage of 
 Hogarth's conventional offer to release him from 
 his bargain, and rather shabbily withdrew from 
 it upon the specious ground ' that the constantly 
 having it [the picture] before one's eyes would 
 be too often occasioning melancholy ideas ' — 
 a sentiment which the irritated painter, calling 
 verse to his relief, afterwards neatly paraphrased. 
 Admitting its power to touch the heart to be the
 
 112 Eighteenth Century f^ignettes. 
 
 ' truest test ' of a masterpiece, he says of 
 ' Sigismunda' : 
 
 ' Nay , 't is so moving that the Knight 
 Can't even bear it in his sight ; 
 Then who would tears so dearly buy, 
 As give four hundred pounds to cry ? 
 I own, he chose the prudent part. 
 Rather to break his word than heart ; 
 And yet, methinks, 't is tickh'sh deahng 
 With one so delicate — in feeling' 
 
 As a result of Sir Richard Grosvenor's action, 
 the picture remained on the artist's hands, — a 
 source of continual mortification to himself, and 
 a fruitful theme of discussion to both his friends 
 and enemies. The political caricaturists got 
 hold of it, and used it as a stick to beat the pen- 
 sionary of Lord Bute ; the critics employed it 
 to continue their assaults on the precepts of the 
 ' Analysis.' "When Wilkes retorted to Hogarth's 
 ill-advised print of the ' Times,' he openly de- 
 scribed ' Sigismunda ' as a portrait of Mrs. Ho- 
 garth ' in an agony of passion ; ' and the fact that 
 she had served as her husband's model was not 
 neglected by his meaner assailants. Finally, 
 after various attempts had been made to en- 
 grave it, the picture was left by the artist to his 
 widow with injunctions not to sell it for less 
 than ;^5oO' After her death it was bought at
 
 Hogarth's Sigismnnda. 113 
 
 the ' Golden Head ' sale for £<)6 by Alderman 
 Boydell. As already stated, it is now in the 
 National Gallery, to which it was bequeathed 
 by the late Mr. Anderdon in 1879. 
 
 In the couplets already quoted, Hogarth had 
 ended by saying : 
 
 ' Let the picture rust 
 Perhaps Time's price-enhancing dust, 
 As statues moulder into earth, 
 AVhen I 'm no more, may mark its worth ; 
 And future connoisseurs may rise, 
 Honest as ours, and full as wise, 
 To puff the piece and painter too, 
 And make me then what Gittdo 's now.- 
 
 To some extent the reaction he hoped for has 
 arrived. The latter-day student of ' Sigismunda,' 
 unblinded by political prejudice or private ani- 
 mosity, renders full justice to the soundness of 
 its execution and the undoubted skill of its 
 technique. Indeed, at the present moment, the 
 tendency seems to be rather to overrate than to 
 underrate its praiseworthy qualities. Yet, when 
 all is said, the subject remains an unattractive and 
 even a repulsive one. It must be admitted also 
 that, in one respect, contemporary critics were 
 right. They were wrong in their unreasoning 
 preference for doubtful ' exotics,' but they were 
 right in their contention that, upon this occasion, 
 
 8
 
 114 Eighteenth Century yignettes. 
 
 Hogarth had strayed perilously from his own 
 peculiar walk, and that so-called ' history paint- 
 ing ' was not his strongest point. Conscientious 
 and painstaking, ' Sigismunda ' is still a mistake, 
 although it is the mistake of a great artist ; and 
 Hogarth's recorded partiality for it affords but 
 one more example of that unaccountable blind- 
 ness which led Addison to put his poems before 
 the 'Spectator,' Prior to rank his 'Solomon' 
 above the ' loose and hasty scribble ' of 'Alma,' 
 and Liston, whose nose alone was provocative 
 of laughter, to cherish the extraordinary delu- 
 sion that his true vocation was that of a tragic 
 actor.
 
 'THE CITIZEN OF THE WORLD.' 
 
 '^T/'HATwas it that suggested to Goldsmith 
 ^ ' ' The Citizen of the World ' ? Biographers 
 and commentators have pointed to m.ore than 
 one plausible model, — the ' Lettres Persanes ' 
 of Montesquieu, the ' Lettres d'une Peruvienne ' 
 of Madame de Graf!igny, the ' Lettres Chi- 
 noises ' of the Marquis d'Argens, the ' Asiatic ' 
 of Voltaire's ' Lettres Philosophiques.' But it 
 is sometimes wise, especially in such hand-to- 
 mouth work as journalism, which was all Gold- 
 smith at first intended, to seek for origins in the 
 immediate neighbourhood rather than in remoter 
 places. In 1757 Horace Walpole published 
 anonymously, in pamphlet form, a clever little 
 squib upon Admiral Byng's trial in particular 
 and English inconstancy in general, which he 
 entitled ' A Letter from Xo Ho, a Chinese 
 Philosopher at London, to his friend Lien Chi, 
 at Peking.' This was briefly noticed in the 
 May issue of the ' Monthly Review,' where 
 Goldsmith was then acting as scribbler-general
 
 Ii6 Eighteenth Century ytgnettes. 
 
 to Griffiths, the proprietor of the magazine (his 
 reviews of Home's ' Douglas' and of Burke's 
 ' Sublime and Beautiful ' appeared in the same 
 number), and it was described as in Montes- 
 quieu's manner. A year later Goldsmith is 
 writing mysteriously to his friend Bob Bryanton, 
 of Ballymulvey, in Ireland, about a ' Chinese 
 whom he shall soon make talk like an English- 
 man ; ' and when at last his * Chinese Letters,' 
 as they were called at first, begin to appear in 
 Newbery's ' Public Ledger,' he takes for the 
 name of his Oriental, Lien Chi Altangi, one of 
 Walpole's imaginary correspondents having been 
 Lien Chi. This chain of association, if slight, 
 is strong enough to justify some connection. 
 The fundamental idea, no doubt, was far older 
 than either Walpole or Goldsmith ; but it is not 
 too much to suppose that Walpole's jeu d'esprit 
 supplied just that opportune suggestion which 
 produced the remarkable and now too-much- 
 neglected series of letters afterwards reprinted 
 under the general title of ' The Citizen of the 
 World.' 
 
 ' The metaphors and allusions,' says Gold- 
 smith in one of those admirable prefaces of 
 which he possessed the secret, ' are all drawn 
 from the East ; ' and in another place he tells us 
 that a certain apostrophe is wholly translated
 
 ' The Citizen of the World.' iiy 
 
 from Ambulaaohamed, a real (or fictitious) Ara- 
 bian poet. To these ingenuities he no doubt 
 attached the exaggerated importance habitually 
 assigned to work which has cost its writer pains. 
 But it is not the adroitness of his adaptations 
 from Le Comte and Du Halde that most de- 
 tains us now. The purely Oriental part of 
 the work — although it includes the amusing 
 story (an ' Ephesian Matron ' a la Chinoise) 
 of the widow who, in her haste to marry again, 
 fans her late husband's grave to dry it quicker, 
 and the apologue of Prince Bonbennin and the 
 White Mouse — is practically dead wood. It is 
 Goldsmith under the transparent disguise of 
 Lien Chi — Goldsmith commenting, after the 
 manner of Addison and Steele, upon Georgian 
 England, that attracts and interests the modern 
 reader. His Chinese Philosopher might well 
 have wondered at the lazy puddle moving mud- 
 dily along the ill-kept London streets, at the 
 large feet and white teeth of the women, at the 
 unwieldy signs with their nondescript devices, 
 at the unaccountable fashion of lying-in-state ; 
 but it is Goldsmith, and Goldsmith only, who 
 could have imagined the admirable humour of 
 the dialogue on liberty between a prisoner 
 (through his grating), a porter pausing from 
 his burden to denounce slavery and the French,
 
 ii8 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 and a soldier j^who, with a tremendous oath, 
 advocates, above all, the importance of religion. 
 It is Goldsmith again — the Goldsmith of Green- 
 Arbour-Court and Griffiths' back-parlour — who 
 draws, from a harder experience than could 
 have been possible to Lien Chi, the satiric pic- 
 ture of the so-called republic of letters which 
 forms his twentieth epistle. ' Each looks upon 
 his fellow as a rival, not an assistant in the same 
 pursuit. They calumniate, they injure, they 
 despise, they ridicule each other : if one man 
 writes a book that pleases, others shall write 
 books to show that he might have given still 
 greater pleasure, or should not have pleased. 
 If one happens to hit upon something new, there 
 are numbers ready to assure the public that all 
 this was no novelty to them or the learned ; that 
 Cardanus or Brunus, or some other author too 
 dull to be generally read, had anticipated the 
 discovery. Thus, instead of uniting like the 
 members of a commonwealth, they are divided 
 into almost as many factions as there are men ; 
 and their jarring constitution, instead of being 
 styled a republic of letters, should be entitled, 
 an anarchy of literature.' One rubs one's eyes 
 as one reads ; one asks oneself under one's 
 breath if it is of our day that the satirist is 
 speaking. No ; it is of the reign of the second
 
 ' The Citizen of the World.' 119 
 
 of the Georges, before Grub Street was turned 
 into Milton Street. 
 
 Literature, in its different aspects, plays not 
 a small part in the lucubrations of Lien Chi. 
 Two of the best letters are devoted to a whim- 
 sical description of the vagaries of some of its 
 humbler professors, who hold a Saturday Club 
 at the * Broom ' at Islington ; others treat of 
 the decay of poetry ; of novels, and ' Tristram 
 Shandy' in particular; of the necessity of in- 
 trigue or riches as a means to success. Nor 
 are art and the drama neglected. The virtuoso, 
 who afforded such a fund of amusement to 
 Fielding and Smollett, receives his full share of 
 attention ; and in the papers upon acting and 
 actors. Goldsmith once more displays that criti- 
 cal common-sense which he had shown so con- 
 spicuously in ' The Bee.' Travellers and their 
 trivialities are freely ridiculed ; there are papers 
 on Newmarket, on the Marriage Act, on the 
 coronation, on the courts of justice ; on quacks, 
 gaming, paint, mourning, and mad dogs. There 
 is a letter on the irreverent behaviour of the 
 congregation in St. Paul's ; there is another on 
 the iniquity of making shows of public monu- 
 ments. Now and then a more serious note is 
 touched, as when the author is stirred to un- 
 wonted gravity by the savage penal code of his
 
 120 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 day, which, 'cementing the laws with blood,' 
 closed every avenue with a gibbet, and against 
 which Johnson too lifted his sonorous voice. 
 
 ' Scarce can our fields, such crowds at Tyburn die, 
 With hemp the gallows and the fleet supply,' — 
 
 he sang in ' London,' anticipating his later 
 utterances in ' The Rambler.' Goldsmith, on 
 the other hand, crystallized in his verse the raw 
 material of which he made his Chinese philo- 
 sopher the mouthpiece. Several of the best 
 known passages of his two longest poems 
 have their first form in the prose of Lien Chi. 
 Indeed, one actual line of ' The Traveller,' ' A 
 land of tyrants, and a den of slaves,' is simply a 
 textual quotation from ' The Citizen of the 
 World.' 
 
 But what in the Chinese letters is even more 
 remarkable than their clever raillery of social 
 incongruities and abuses, is their occasional 
 indication of the author's innate but hitherto 
 undisclosed gift for the delineation of humor- 
 ous character. Up to this time he had exhibited 
 no particular tendency in this direction. The 
 little sketches of Jack Spindle and ' my cousin 
 Hannah,' in ' The Bee,' go no farther than the 
 corresponding personifications of particular qual- 
 ities in the ' Spectator ' and ' Tatler ; ' and they
 
 ' The Citizen of the World.' 121 
 
 are not of the kind which, to employ a French 
 figure, ' enter the skin ' of the personality pre- 
 sented. But in the case of the eccentric phi- 
 lanthropist of ' The Citizen of the World,' whom 
 he christens the ' Man in Black,' he comes 
 nearer to such a definite embodiment as Addi- 
 son's ' Will Wimble.' The ' Man in Black ' is 
 evidently a combination of some of those Gold- 
 smith family traits which were afterwards so 
 successfully recalled in Dr. Primrose, Mr. 
 Hardcastle, and the clergyman of ' The De- 
 serted Village.' The contrast between his 
 credulous charity and his expressed distrust of 
 human nature, between his simulated harshness 
 and his real amiability, constitutes a type which 
 has since been often used successfully in Eng- 
 lish literature ; it is clear, too, that in the 
 account of his life he borrows both from his 
 author and his author's father. When he 
 speaks of his unwillingness to take orders, of 
 his dislike to wear a long wig when he pre- 
 ferred a short one, or a black coat when he 
 dressed in brown, he is only giving expression 
 to that incompatibility of temper which led to 
 Goldsmith's rejection for ordination by the 
 Bishop of Elphin ; while in his picture of his 
 father's house, with its simple, kindly prodigal- 
 ity, its little group of grateful parasites who
 
 122 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 laugh, like Mr. Hardcastle's servants, at the 
 host's old jokes, and the careless paternal be- 
 nevolence which makes the children ' mere 
 machines of pity,' ' instructed in the art of giv- 
 ing away thousands before they were taught 
 the more necessary qualifications of getting a 
 farthing,' one recognises the environment of 
 that emphatically Irish household on the road 
 from Ballymahon to Athlone, in which Gold- 
 smith's own boyhood had been spent. 
 
 Excellent as he is, however, the ' Man in 
 Black,' with his grudging generosity and his 
 * reluctant goodness,' is surpassed in complete- 
 ness of characterization by the more finished 
 portrait of Beau Tibbs. The poor little pinched 
 pretender to fashion, with his tarnished finery 
 and his reed-voiced, simpering helpmate, — with 
 his coffee-house cackle of my Lord Mudlerand 
 the Duchess of Piccadilly, and his magnificent 
 promises of turbot and ortolan, which issue 
 pitifully in postponed ox-cheek and bitter beer, 
 — approaches the dimensions of a masterpiece. 
 Charles Lamb, one would think, must have 
 rejoiced over the reckless assurance which ex- 
 patiates on the charming view of the Thames 
 from the garret of a back-street in the suburbs, 
 which glorifies the ' paltry, unframed pictures' 
 on its walls into essays in the manner of the
 
 ' The Citizen of the World.' 123 
 
 celebrated Grisoni, and transforms a surly Scotch 
 hag-of-all-work into an old and privileged family- 
 servant, — the gift ' of a friend of mine, a Par- 
 liament man from the Highlands.' Nor are 
 there many pages in Dickens more perennially 
 humorous than the scene in which the ' Man in 
 Black,' his inamorata the pawnbroker's widow, 
 and Mr. and Mrs. Tibbs, all make a party to 
 the picturesque old Vauxhall Gardens of Jona- 
 than Tyers. The inimitable sparring which 
 ensues between the second-hand gentility of 
 the beau's lady and the moneyed vulgarity of 
 the tradesman's relict, their different and wholly 
 irreconcilable views of the entertainment, and 
 the tragic termination of the whole, by which 
 the widow is balked of ' the waterworks ' be- 
 cause good manners constrain her to sit out the 
 wire-drawn roulades and quavers of Mrs. Tibbs 
 — these are things which age cannot wither 
 nor custom stale. If Goldsmith had written 
 nothing but this miniature trilogy of Beau 
 Tibbs, — if Dr. Primrose were uninvented and 
 Tony Lumpkin non-existent, — he would still 
 have earned a perpetual place among English 
 humorists. 
 
 Something of this, undoubtedly, he owed to 
 the fortunate instinct which dictated his choice 
 of his material. The forerunner of Dickens, —
 
 124 Eighteenth Century yignettes. 
 
 the disciple, although he knew it not, of Field- 
 ing, — he makes his capital by his disregard of 
 the reigning models of his time. Declining to 
 select his characters from the fashionable ab- 
 stractions of Sentimental Comedy and the me- 
 chanical puppets of conventional High Life, he 
 turns aside to the moving, various, many-coloured 
 middle-classes, from whose ranks originality has 
 not yet been banished, or nature cast out. Of 
 these he had knowledge and experience ; of 
 those he had seen but little. Upon the other 
 walk, his labours might have been as forgotten 
 as the ' Henry' of Richard Cumberland or the 
 ' Henrietta' of Mrs. Charlotte Lenox. But he 
 took his own line ; and in consequence. Beau 
 Tibbs and the pawnbroker's widow (with her 
 rings and her green damask) are as much alive 
 to-day as Partridge or Mrs. Nickleby.
 
 AN OLD LONDON BOOKSELLER. 
 
 ' "TjEC. 22. Mr. John Newbery, of St. Paul's 
 ^^ churchyard, sincerely lamented by all who 
 knew him.'' These words, copied from the 
 'Gentleman's Magazine' for 1767, record the 
 death of one who, in his way, was an eighteenth 
 century notability. He belonged to the good old 
 ' Keep-your-Shop-and-your-Shop-will-keep-you ' 
 class of tradesmen, who lived without pretence 
 over their places of business in the City, 
 worked industriously during the week, marched 
 off to St. Bride's or St. Dunstan's on Sunday 
 morning with a crop-eared 'prentice in the 
 rear to carry the great gilt Bible, and jogged 
 away in crowded chaises of summer afternoons 
 to eat tarts at Highgate or drink tea out of 
 china in the Long Room at Bagnigge Wells. 
 In due time they made their * plumbs ; ' sent their 
 sons to St. Paul's or Merchant Taylors', some- 
 times even to Oxford or Cambridge ; and finally 
 left their portraits to posterity in the becoming 
 and worshipful garb of Sheriffs or Common-coun- 
 cilmen. Unfortunately for this paper, there is
 
 126 Eighteenth Century l^ignettes. 
 
 no such limner's likeness of ' honest John New- 
 bery.' Yet we are not wholly without details 
 as to his character and personal appearance. 
 That ' glorious pillar of unshaken orthodoxy,' 
 Dr. Primrose, formerly of Wakefield, for whom, 
 as all the world knows, he had published a 
 pamphlet ' against the Deuterogamists of the 
 age,' describes him as a red-faced good-natured 
 little man, who was always in a hurry. * He 
 was no sooner alighted,' says the worthy Vicar, 
 ' but he was in haste to be gone ; for he was ever 
 on business of the utmost importance.' ' Mr. 
 Idler' confirms this indication. ' Vv^hen he 
 enters a house, his first declaration is, that he 
 cannot sit down ; and so short are his visits, 
 that he seldom appears to have come for any 
 other reason but to say. He must go.' It is 
 not difficult to fill in the outline of Johnson and 
 Goldsmith. ' The philanthropic bookseller in St. 
 Paul's church-yard ' was plainly a bustling, multi- 
 farious, and not unkindly personage, essentially 
 commercial, essentially enterprising, rigorously 
 exacting his money's worth of work, keeping 
 prudent record of all casual cash advances, but, 
 on the whole, not unbeneficent in his business 
 fashion to the needy brethren of the pen by whom 
 he was surrounded. Many of John Newbery's 
 guineas passed to Johnson, to Goldsmith, to
 
 An Old London Bookseller. 127 
 
 poor mad Christopher Smart, who married h'ls 
 step-daughter. As Johnson impl-es, it is not 
 impossible that he finally fell a victim to that 
 unreasoning mental activity which left him al- 
 ways struggling hopelessly with more schemes 
 and proposals than one man could possibly 
 manage. His wig must often have been awry, 
 and his spectacles mislaid, in that perpetual 
 journey from pillar to post which ultimately 
 landed him, at the comparatively early age of 
 fifty-four, in his grave at Waltham St. Lawrence. 
 It was at Waltham St. Lawrence, a quiet 
 little Berkshire village, whose churchyard is 
 dotted with the tombs of earlier Newberys, 
 that he had been born. His father, a small 
 farmer, destined him for his own calling. But; 
 like Gay, it was not John Newbery's fate ' to 
 brighten ploughshares in paternal land.' He 
 passed early into the service of a * merchant,' 
 otherwise a printer and newspaper proprietor, 
 at Reading, managing so well that, when his 
 employer died, he was left a co-legatee in the 
 business. Thereupon, being a resolute man, 
 he did better still, and married his master's 
 widow, who had three children. Even this 
 succeeded ; upon which, progressing always in 
 prosperity, he began to think of starting in 
 London. Before doing so, he made a tour in
 
 128 Eighteenth Century l^ignettes. 
 
 the provinces. Of this expedition there exists 
 a curious record in the shape of an unprinted 
 journal, throwing much light upon modes of 
 travelling in those early coaching days, when 
 the unfortunate outside passenger (like Pastor 
 Moritz in a later paper'') had to choose between 
 being 'jolted to death in the basket, or clinging 
 like a fly to the slippery top of the vehicle. 
 The majority of the entries are merely matter 
 of business, — titles for new books, recipes for 
 diet-drinks, shrewd trade maxims, and the like. 
 But here and there the writer intersperses notes 
 of general interest, — on Dick Turpin the high- 
 wayman, on Lady Godiva and peeping Tom, 
 and (more than once) upon that ' curious and 
 very useful machine,' the Ducking-Stool for 
 scolds, a ' plan of which instrument (he says) 
 he shall procure and transplant to Berkshire 
 for the good of his native county.' His busi- 
 ness at Reading was as miscellaneous as his 
 memorandum book, and he seems to have dealt 
 in all kinds of goods. About 1744 he removed 
 to London, opening a shop at the sign of the 
 ' Bible and Crown,' near Devereux Court, 
 without Temple Bar, together with a branch 
 establishment at the Royal Exchange. To this 
 Johnson probably refers when he says : ' He has 
 i See ' A German in England.'
 
 An Old London Bookseller, 129 
 
 one habitation near Bow Church, and another 
 about a mile distant. By this ingenious distribu- 
 tion of himself between two houses, he has con- 
 trived to be found at neither.' From the * Bible 
 and Crown,' which had been his old Reading 
 sign, he moved a year later to the ' Bible and 
 Sun' in St. Paul's Churchyard. This continued 
 to be his headquarters until his death. Gradu- 
 ally his indiscriminate activities narrowed them- 
 selves to two distinct branches of business, in 
 these days incongruous enough, — the sale of 
 books and the sale of patent medicines. "While 
 at Reading, he had become part owner of Dr. 
 Hooper's Female Pills (can pills have a sex ?) ; 
 and soon after his settlement in London, he ac- 
 quired the sole management of a more famous 
 panacea. Dr. James's Fever Powders, which 
 had in their time an extraordinary vogue. Ac- 
 cording to Mrs. Delany, the King dosed the 
 Princess Elizabeth with them ; Gray and 
 Covvper both believed in their efficacy ; and 
 Horace Walpole declared he should take them 
 if the house were on fire. Fielding specially 
 praises them in ' Amelia,' affirming that in almost 
 any country but England, they would have 
 brought ' public Honours and Rewards ' to his 
 ♦ worthy and ingenious Friend Dr. James ; ' 
 while Goldsmith may be said to have laid down 
 ^ 9
 
 130 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 his life for them. With the sale of these and 
 kindred specifics, John Nevvbery alternated his 
 unwearied speculations as a bookseller. He 
 was at the back of Smollett's venture of the 
 ' British Magazine; ' it was for his ' Universal 
 Chronicle ' that Johnson wrote his ' Idler ' and 
 quizzed his proprietor as ' Jack Whirler ; ' he 
 was the publisher of Goldsmith's 'Traveller* 
 and ' Citizen of the "World ; ' and he probably 
 found part of the historical sixty guineas which 
 somebody paid for the ' Vicar of Wakefield.' 
 He died at Canbury or Canonbury House, 
 Islington, in the still-existent Tower of which 
 he was an occasional resident. Indeed, it is 
 more than probable that he was at one time 
 the responsible landlord of that favourite retir- 
 ing place for literary men, — a retiring place not 
 without its exceptional advantages, if we are to 
 believe last-century advertisements, which, in 
 addition to a natural cold bath, speak of ' a 
 superlative Room, furnish'd for a single Person, 
 or two Gentlemen, having a Prospect into five 
 Counties [' longos prospicit agros f], and the 
 use of a good Garden and Summer-House.' 
 Besides this there were traditions of Prior 
 Bolton and Anne of Cleves, of Bacon and 
 Elizabeth, of Sir John Spencer and William 
 Fielding, Earl of Denbigh (the novelist's grand-
 
 An Old London Bookseller. 131 
 
 uncle), which should certainly have figured in 
 any schedule of attractions, and must naturally 
 have been interesting to the Smarts and Hills 
 and Woodfalls and Goldsmiths who afterwards 
 inhabited the old ivy-clad Tower. 
 
 Newbery's epitaph in the churchyard of his 
 native village lays its main stress upon his con- 
 nection with Dr. James's nostrum ; and it was 
 doubtless to this and the other patent medi- 
 cines with which he was connected that he 
 owed the material part of his prosperity. Yet 
 it is not now upon the celebrated * Arquebusade 
 Water,' or the far-famed ' Cephalic Snuff,' or 
 the incomparable * Beaume de Vie,' once so 
 familiar in eighteenth-century advertisements, 
 that he bases his individual claim to the grati- 
 tude of posterity. It is, to quote his biographer, 
 Mr. Welsh, as ' the first bookseller who made 
 the issue of books, specially intended for chil- 
 dren, a business of any importance ; ' as the 
 publisher of ' The Renowned History of Giles 
 Gingerbread : a little Boy who lived upon. 
 Learning,' of ' Mrs. Margery Two-Shoes ' (after- 
 ward Lady Jones), of the redoubtable ' Tommy 
 Trip and his dog Jouler,' of the ' Lilliputian 
 Magazine,' and of numbers of other tiny master- 
 pieces in that flowered and gilt Dutch paper of 
 which the art has been lost^ that be is best
 
 132 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 remembered. Concerning these commendable 
 little treatises, with their matter-of-fact title- 
 pages and their artless appeal to all little Mas- 
 ters and Misses ' who are good, or intend to 
 be good,' there are varying opinions. Dr. John- 
 son, according to Mrs. Thrale, thought them too 
 childish for their purpose. He preferred the 
 ' Seven Champions,' or ' Parisenus and Paris- 
 menus.' ' Babies,' he said in his legislative way, 
 ' do not want to hear about babies. They like to 
 be told of giants and castles, and of somewhat 
 which can stretch and stimulate their little minds.' 
 * Remember always,' he added, ' that the par- 
 ents buy the books, and that the children 
 never read them.' Yet it is claimed for Robert 
 Southey that in Newbery's ' delectable histories' 
 he found just that very stimulus which made him 
 a lifelong book-lover ; and it is characteristic 
 of Charles Lamb (a better judge of children's 
 literature than Johnson) that he puts forward 
 these particular publications against the Bar- 
 baulds and Trimmers (' those blights and blasts 
 of all that is human in man and child '), as pre- 
 senting the very quality which Johnson desired, 
 the ' beautiful interest in wild tales, which made 
 the child a man, while all the time he suspected 
 himself to be no bigger than a child.' 'Think 
 what you would have been now,' he writes to
 
 An Old London Bookseller. 133 
 
 Coleridge of ' Goody Two-Shoes/ * if instead 
 of being fed with tales and old wives' fables 
 in childhood, you had been crammed with 
 geography and natural history 1 ' 
 
 The authorship of these ' classics of the nur- 
 sery' is an old battle ground. Newbery, it is 
 alleged, wrote some of them himself. He was 
 (says Dr. Primrose when he met him) ' at that 
 time actually compiling materials for the history 
 of one Mr. Thomas Trip,' and if this can hardly 
 be accepted as proof positive, it may be safely 
 asserted that to Newbery's business instinct 
 are due those ingenious references to his dif- 
 ferent wares and publications which crop up so 
 unexpectedly in the course of the narrative. 
 For example, in ' Goody Two-Shoes ' we are 
 told that the heroine's father ' died miserably ' 
 because he was * seized with a violent Fever in 
 a Place where Dr. James's Powder was not to 
 be had ' 1 But who were Newbery's assistant 
 authors ? Giles and Griffith Jones, say some ; 
 Oliver Goldsmith, say others. With respect to 
 the last-named no particular testimony seems to 
 be forthcoming beyond his known relations to the 
 publisher, and the so-called ' evidence of style.' 
 In the absence of confirmatory details the former 
 is worthless ; and the latter is often entirely 
 misleading. Without going back to the time-
 
 134 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 honoured case of Erasmus and Scaliger's ora- 
 tion, two modern instances of this may be 
 cited. Mr. Thackeray, says Mr. Forster, 
 claimed the ' Pleasant and Delightful History 
 of Thomas Hickathrift' for Henry Fielding. 
 But both Mr. Forster and Mr. Thackeray 
 should have remembered that their common 
 acquaintance, Mr. Isaac Bickerstaff, of the 
 'Tatler,' had written of Hickathrift as a chap- 
 book when Fielding was a baby. In the same 
 way ' Tommy Trip ' has, by no mean judges, 
 been attributed to Goldsmith upon the strength 
 of the following quatrain : — 
 
 ' Three children sliding on the ice 
 
 Upon a summer's day, 
 As it fell out they all fell in, 
 The rest they ran away.' 
 
 Alas 1 and alas 1 for the ' evidence of style.' 
 Not only had these identical lines been turned 
 into Latin in the ' Gentleman's Magazine ' for 
 July, 1754, when Goldsmith was still studying 
 medicine at Leyden ; but they are quoted at p. 
 30 of ' The Character of Richard St[ee]le, Esq ; ' 
 by ' Toby, Abel's Kinsman/ which was issued by 
 'J. Morphew, near Stationer's Hall' as far back 
 as the month of November, 171 3. As a matter 
 of fact, they are much older still, being affirmed
 
 An Old London Bookseller. 135 
 
 by Chambers in his excellent ' Book of Days ' 
 to be, in their first form, part of a long and 
 rambling story in doggerel rhyme dating from 
 the early part of the Civil Wars, which is to be 
 found at the end of a little old book entitled 
 'The Loves of Hero and Leander,' i2mo, 
 London, 1653, and 1677.
 
 GRAY'S LIBRARY. 
 
 AMONG Gray's papers was one inscribed 
 ' Dialogue of Books.' The handwriting 
 was that of his biographer Mason, but it was 
 believed to be either by Gray or by West. 
 There is a strong presumption that the author 
 was Gray ; and it is accordingly attributed to 
 him in Mr. D. C. Tovey's ' Gray and his 
 Friends/ where for the first time it was printed. 
 It shows us the little great man (if it is accu- 
 rately dated 1742, it must have been in the year 
 of his fullest poetical activity) sitting tranquilly 
 in his study chair, when he is ' suddenly alarmd 
 with a great hubbub of Tongues.' He listens ; 
 and finds that his books are talking to one an- 
 other. Madame de S^vign^ is being what Mrs. 
 Gamp would call ' scroudged ' by Aristotle, who 
 replies to her compressed expostulations with 
 all the brutality of a philosopher and a realist. 
 Thereupon she appeals to her relative, the 
 author of the ' Histoire amoureuse des Gaules.' 
 But the gallant M. Bussy-Rabutin, himself
 
 Gray's Library. '" 137 
 
 pining for an interchange of compliments with 
 a neighbouring Catullus, is hopelessly penned 
 in by a hulking edition of Strabo, and cannot 
 possibly arrive to the assistance of his belle 
 Cousine. Elsewhere La Bruy^re comments 
 upon the strange companions with whom Fate 
 has acquainted him ; and Locke observes, with 
 a touch of temper, that he is associated with 
 Ovid, — and Ray the Naturalist!^ Virgil pla- 
 cidly quotes a line of his own poems ; More, 
 the Platonist, delivers himself of a neat little 
 copy-book sentiment in praise of theological 
 speculation ; and great fat Dr. Cheyne huskily 
 mutters his own adage, ' Every man after forty 
 is either a fool or a Physician.' In another 
 corner an ill-judged and irrelevant remark by 
 Euclid, touching the dimensions of a point, 
 brings down upon him the scorn both of Swift 
 and Boileau, who clamour for the unconditional 
 suppression of mathematics. (If there be noth- 
 ing else, this in itself is almost sufficient to fix 
 the authorship of the paper with Gray, whose 
 hatred of mathematics was only equalled by that 
 of Goldsmith.) Then a pert exclamation from 
 a self-sufficient Vade Mecuin provokes the 
 
 1 Ray's ' Select Remains * with life by Derham, 1740, 
 and many marginal notes by Gray, was recently in a 
 London bookseller's catalogue.
 
 138 Eighteenth Century Fignettes. 
 
 owner of the library to so hearty an outburst 
 of merriment that the startled tomes at once 
 shrink back into ' uncommunicating muteness.' 
 Laughter, it would seem, is as fatal to books as 
 it was of old to the Coquecigrues. 
 
 Whether Gray's library ever again broke 
 silence, his biographers have not related. But 
 if his books were pressed for space while in his 
 possession, they have since enjoyed ample op- 
 portunities for change of air and scene. When 
 he died he left them, with his manuscripts, to 
 Mason, who in turn bequeathed them to the 
 poet's friend Stonehewer, from whom they 
 passed, in part, to a relative, Mr. Bright of Skef- 
 fington Hall. At Mr. Bright's death, being 
 family property, they were sold by auction. In 
 August, 185 1, they were again offered for sale; 
 and three years later a number of them, which 
 had apparently been reserved or bought in, 
 once more came under the hammer at Sotheby 
 and Wilkinson's. We have before us the cata- 
 logue of the second sale, which is naturally 
 much fuller than that of 18^4. What strikes one 
 first is the care with which the majority of the 
 volumes had been preserved by their later pos- 
 sessors. Many of the Note-Books were cush- 
 ioned on velvet in special cases, while the more 
 precious manuscripts had been skilfully inlaid,
 
 Gray's Library. 139 
 
 and bound in olive morocco with leather joints 
 and linings of crimson silk. Like Prior, Gray 
 must have preserved almost everything, ' e'en 
 from his boyish days.' Among the books is 
 ' Plutarch's Lives,' with Dacier's notes, and 
 the inscription, ' E libris Thomse Gray, Scholae 
 Eton: Alumn. Januar. 22, 1733 ' — a year before 
 he left for Cambridge ; there is also his copy of 
 Pope's ' Iliad,' with autograph date a year ear- 
 lier; there is a still more youthful (though 
 perhaps more suspicious) possession — namely, 
 three volumes of Dryden's ' Virgil,' which were 
 said to have actually belonged to Pope. * Ex 
 Libris A. Pope, 1710,' was written at the back 
 of the portrait, and the same inscription recurred 
 in each volume, though in the others some 
 Vandal, probably a classmate, by adding a tail 
 to the ' P ' and an 'r' at the end, had turned 
 the ' Pope ' into ' Roper.' Another of Gray's 
 Eton books was a Waller, acquired in 1729, in 
 which favourite poems and passages were under- 
 lined. 
 
 Of the classics he must have been a most un- 
 wearied and sedulous student. Euripides he 
 read in the great folio of Joshua Barnes (Cantab. 
 1694), which is marked throughout by a special 
 system of stars, inverted commas, and lines in 
 red crayon ; and his note-books bristle with ex-
 
 140 Eighteenth Century yignettes. 
 
 tracts, neatly ' arranged and digested,' from all 
 the best Greek authors — Sophocles, Thucy- 
 dides, Xenophon, and even that Isocrates whom 
 Goldsmith, from the critical altitudes of the 
 ' Monthly Review,' recommended him to study. 
 At other ' classics ' he worked with equal dili- 
 gence. His * Decameron ' — the London quarto 
 of 1725 — was filled with marginalia identifying 
 Boccaccio's sources of inspiration and principal 
 imitators, while his Milton — the two-volume 
 duodecimo of 1730-8 — was interleaved, and an- 
 notated profusely with parallel passages drawn 
 from the Bible, Dante, Shakespeare, and ' the 
 ancients.' He had crowded Dugdale's ' Baron- 
 age ' with corrections and additions ; he had 
 largely ' commented ' the four folio volumes of 
 Clarendon's ' Rebellion ; ' and he had followed 
 everywhere, with remorseless rectifications, the 
 vagrant utterances of gossiping Gilbert Burnet. 
 His patience, accuracy, research, were not less 
 extraordinary than his odd, out-of-the-way 
 knowledge. In the 'Voyages de Bergeron' 
 (quarto) that author says : ' Mango Cham fut 
 noi^.' No, comments Gray, decisively, ' Mun- 
 caca or Mangu-Khanw was not drowned, but in 
 reality slain in China at the siege of Ho-chew in 
 1258.' "Which of us could oblige an inquisitive 
 examiner with the biography of this Eastern po-
 
 Gray's Library. 141 
 
 tentate I Which of us would not be reduced to 
 ' combining our information ' (like the ingenious 
 writer on Chinese Metaphysics, as to 'mangoes' 
 and ' great Chams ' I 
 
 But the two most interesting items of the Cat- 
 alogue are yet unmentioned. One is the labo- 
 rious collection of Manuscript Music that Gray 
 compiled in Italy while frivolous Horace Walpole 
 was eating iced fruits in a domino to the sound 
 of a guitar. Zamperelli, Pergolesi, Arrigoni, 
 Galuppi — he has ransacked them all, noting the 
 school of the composer and the source of the 
 piece selected — copying out religiously even the 
 ' Regole per I'Accompagnamento.' The other, 
 which we who write have seen, is the famous 
 Linnaeus exhibited at Cambridge in 1885 by Mr. 
 Raskin. It is an interleaved copy of the ' Sys- 
 tema Naturae,' two volumes in three, covered 
 as to their margins and added pages with won- 
 derful minute notes in Latin, and illustrated by 
 Gray himself with delicately finished pen-and-ink 
 drawings of birds and insects. During the later 
 part of his life these volumes, we are told, were 
 continually on his table, and his absorbing love 
 for natural history is everywhere manifested in 
 his journals and pocket-books. When he is ia 
 the country, he classes the plants ; when in town, 
 he notes the skins of birds in shops ; and when
 
 142 Eighteenth Century yigneites. 
 
 he eats whitebait at Greenwich, he straightway 
 describes that dainty in the language of Tacitus. 
 Nullus odor nisiPiscis; farina respersiis,frLxusqus 
 cdilur. 
 
 Among the manuscripts proper of this collec- 
 tion, the place of honour belongs to one which 
 Mason had labelled * Original Copy of the Elegy 
 in a Country Church Yard.' In addition to other 
 variations from the printed text, erased words in 
 this MS. showed that Cato stood originally for 
 Hampden, and Tully and Caesar for Milton and 
 Cromwell : 
 
 'Some mute inglorious Tully here may rest, 
 Some Caesar guiltless of his country's blood.' 
 
 Here, too, were found those well-known but re- 
 jected ' additional ' stanzas : 
 
 * The thoughtless World to Majesty may bow, 
 Exalt the brave, and idolize Success ; 
 But more to Innocence their Safety owe 
 Than Pow'r and Genius e'er conspir'd to bless. 
 
 ' And thou, who mindful of th' unhonour'd Dead, 
 Dost in these Notes their artless Tale relate, 
 By Night and lonely Contemplation led 
 To linger in the gloomy Walks of Fate : 
 
 ' Hark ! how the sacred Calm that broods around, 
 Bids ev'ry fierce tumultuous Passion cease; 
 In still small Accents whisp'ring from the Ground, 
 A grateful Earnest uf eternal Peace.
 
 Grays Library. 143 
 
 ' No more, with Reason and thyself at Strife, 
 
 Give anxious Cares and endless Wishes room ; 
 But thro' the cool sequester'd Vale of Life 
 Pursue the silent Tenour of thy Doom.' i 
 
 Another group of autographs in this volume 
 had a special interest. The first was the note- 
 let, or 'spell,' which Lady Schaub and Miss 
 Speed left for Gray upon that first call when the 
 nervous poet was ' not at home ' to his unex- 
 pected visitors. Next to this came the poem 
 which the note elicited — that charming ' Long 
 Story,' with its echo of Matthew Prior, which has 
 set their tune to so many later verse-spinners : 
 
 ' ' His bushy beard, and shoe-strings green, 
 
 His high-crown'd hat, and sattin-doublet, 
 Mov'd the stout heart of England's Queen, 
 Tho' Pope and Spaniard could not trouble it.' 
 
 Or again : 
 
 ' Who prowl'd the country far and near, 
 
 Bewitch'd the children of the peasants. 
 Dried up the cows, and lam'd the deer. 
 And suck'd the eggs, and kill'd the pheasants.' 
 
 ?- Another additional stanza, perhaps better known than 
 the above, does not occur in the ' Original Copy ' of the 
 Elegy, but in a later MS. at Pembroke College : — 
 
 ' There scatter'd oft, the earliest of the Year, 
 By Hands unseen, are Show'rs of Violets found : 
 The Red-breast loves to build, & warble there, ,.> 
 And little Footsteps lightly print the Ground.' ,
 
 144 Eighteenth Century t^ignettes. 
 
 Does not one seem to catch in this the coming 
 cadences of another haunter of the ' Poets' Walk ' 
 at Eton — of Winthrop Mackworth Praed ; nay, 
 an it be not les& majeste, even of the lighter 
 strains of the Laureate himself I To the ' Long 
 Story' followed Miss Speed's polite little ac- 
 knowledgment with its invitation to dinner, and 
 a few pages further on the verses beginning — 
 
 ' Midst Beauty and Pleasure's gay Triumphs to languish,' 
 
 which Gray probably wrote for her — verses in 
 which there is more of poetic ardour than genu- 
 ine passion. Gray was not a marrying man. 
 Yet one feels half sorry that he was never united 
 to ' Your oblig'd & obedient Henrietta Jane 
 Speed,' with her £30,000, her house in town, 
 and her ' china and old japan infinite.' Still 
 more to be resented is the freak of Fate which 
 transformed the delightful Melissa of the ' Long 
 Story ' into the berouged French Baronne who, 
 sixteen years later, in company with her lap- 
 dogs, piping bullfinch, and cockatoo, arrived 
 from the Hague as Madame de la Perrifere, and 
 * Ministress at London.' 
 
 The large quarto volume containing the above 
 poems also included the first sketch in red crayon 
 of Gray's unfinished Latin Poem, ' De Princi- 
 piis Cogitandi,' and a copy of the translation of
 
 Gray's Library. 145 
 
 the Ugolino episode from the ' Inferno,' first 
 printed by Mr. Gosse in 1884. Of the volumes 
 of miscellaneous MSS. (where was to be found 
 the ' Dialogue of Books ') it is impossible to 
 speak here. But among the rest comes a copy 
 of the ' Strawberry Hill ' edition of the ' Odes 
 by Mr. Gray' — those Odes which at first he 
 had so obstinately refused to annotate. ' If a 
 thing cannot be understood without notes,' he 
 told Walpole, ' it had better not be understood 
 at all.' He must, however, have subsequently 
 recanted, since this copy is filled with carefully 
 written explanations of the allusions, and with 
 indications of the sources of information. This 
 book and the Note-Books of Travel and Read- 
 ing, with their methodical arrangement, their 
 scrupulous accuracy, their unwearied pains, all 
 help us to understand that leisurely fastidious- 
 ness, that hesitafing dilettanteism, that endless 
 preluding to unach'ieved performance, which 
 make of the most literary, exact, and polished of 
 poets, at the same time the least copious of 
 writers. In his bust in the hall of Pembroke 
 College, Mr. Hamo Thornycroft has happily 
 succeeded in accentuating these qualities of re- 
 finement and intellectual precision. For the 
 rest, is not Gray wholly contained in the vignette 
 of Rogers to Mitford ? Gray, he says, saw little 
 
 10
 
 146 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 society in London. He had 'a nice dinner 
 from the Tavern brought to his lodgings, a glass 
 or two of sweet wine, and [here is a delightful 
 touch !j as he sippd it talked about great Peo- 
 ple.' It needs but to fill the room with those 
 scarlet martagon-lilies and double stocks for 
 which he trudged daily to Covent Garden, to 
 spread a meteorological register upon the writ- 
 ing-table, to open Gavin Douglas his ' Palice of 
 Honour' in the window-seat — and the picture 
 is finished.
 
 THE NEW CHESTERFIELD. 
 
 T ORD CHESTERFIELD detested prov- 
 -'-' erbs. For him they were not so much the 
 wit of one man and the wisdom of many, as the 
 cheap rhetoric of the vulgar, to which no person 
 of condition could possibly condescend. Yet 
 it is his Lordship's misfortune to suggest one of 
 the homeliest. Nothing so well describes the 
 state of his modern reputation as the familiar 
 adage, ' Give a dog a bad name, and hang him.' 
 Dr. Johnson, who had more or less valid rea- 
 sons for antagonism, characterized the famous 
 letters in one of those vigorous verdicts, the 
 compactness of which has sometimes been al- 
 lowed to condone injustice. They taught, he 
 declared, ' the morals of a courtesan,^ and the 
 manners of a dancing-master.' Cowper fol- 
 lowed suit. Addressing the author in the ' Pro- 
 gress of Error ' as Petronius, he informed him 
 that the tears of the Muses would ' scald his 
 memory ; ' and after apostrophizing him as a 
 
 1 Modern usage here requires the alteration of a word.
 
 148 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 ' graybeard corrupter of our listening youth/ 
 and a ' polish'd and high-finish'd foe to Truth,' 
 adjured him finally (and rather fatuously) to 
 send from the shades some message of recanta- 
 tion, — in all of which there is more of poetic 
 phraseology than energy of reproach. With the 
 novelists Lord Chesterfield has hardly fared 
 better. Dickens, who drew upon him for Sir 
 John Chester in ' Barnaby Rudge,' makes that 
 personage declare enthusiastically that ' in every 
 page of this enlightened writer, he finds some 
 captivating hypocrisy which had never occurred 
 to him before, or some superlative piece of self- 
 ishness to which he was utterly a stranger.' 
 The picture in Thackeray's 'Virginians' is 
 quieter and more lifelike. We are shown Lord 
 Chesterfield at Tunbridge, when Harry War- 
 rington makes his dibul there — ' a little beetle- 
 browed, hook-nosed, high-shouldered gentle- 
 man,' much like his portrait by Gainsborough, 
 sitting over his wine at the White Horse with 
 M. de Pollnitz, rallying and ironically compli- 
 menting that ambiguous adventurer, making 
 magnificent apology to Mr. Warrington when 
 he has unwittingly insulted him, and, at a later 
 period, with his customary composure, losing 
 six hundred pounds to him at cards. As to this 
 last detail there may be doubts. Thackeray
 
 The New Chesterfield. 149 
 
 probably counted upon human frailty and the 
 inveteracy of an ancient habit, but Lord Car- 
 narvon says that Lord Chesterfield gave up play 
 when he accepted office, and he had been Am- 
 bassador at the Hague and "Viceroy in Ireland 
 years before he met Colonel Esmond's grandson 
 at M. Barbeau's much-frequented ordinary in 
 the Wells. 
 
 Turning to the two quarto volumes which, in 
 March, 1 774, were sent forth from Golden Square 
 by that not entirely discreet and certainly rapa- 
 cious representative, his Lordship's daughter- 
 in-law, one's first impression is that they have 
 been more talked about in the light of Johnson's 
 epigram than read by that of their own merits. 
 No one, of course, would affirm, even allowing 
 for the corrupt state of the society in which they 
 were written, that their moral tone, in one re- 
 spect especially, is defensible; nor can it be 
 denied, even supposing them to emanate from a 
 friend rather than a parent, that they contain 
 passages which, to our modern taste, are more 
 than unpleasant. But without in the least at- 
 tempting to extenuate these objectionable feat- 
 ures of the correspondence, it is but just to its 
 author to remember that it was never intended 
 either for the public instruction or for the public 
 eye. When Mrs. Eugenia Stanhope trusted the
 
 150 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 letters would be of use ' to the Youth of these 
 Kingdoms,' she was palpably overlooking this 
 obvious fact. If Lord Chesterfield had pub- 
 lished them himself, he would no doubt have 
 considerably edited them ; but it is extremely 
 unlikely that he would ever have published them 
 at all. The precepts which he desired to instil 
 into Philip Stanhope w^ere the precepts of the 
 society in which Philip Stanhope was moving — 
 the principles of his patron. Lord Albemarle, and 
 his preceptress, Lady Hervey. They were in- 
 tended not for the world at large, but for the 
 narrower world of fashion. 
 
 The systematic dissimulation which they ap- 
 pear to inculcate has also been urged against 
 them. But here again it seems to have been 
 forgotten that young Stanhope was intended 
 for a politician and statesman, — that what his 
 father most desired for him was the successes of 
 a court and the rewards of diplomacy. After all, 
 the volto sciolto and pensieri stretti, the ' looks 
 loose ' and ' thoughts close,' ^ which he so per- 
 sistently enjoins, are no more than the unim- 
 peachable Sir Henry Wotton impressed upon 
 the equally unimpeachable John Milton. Lord 
 
 ^ A more popular rendering of this useful maxim is the 
 ' heyes hopen and mouth shut 'of Thomas the footman 
 in ' The Newcomes,' ch. xlvii.
 
 The New Chesterfield. 151 
 
 Chesterfield puts his points coldly and cyni- 
 cally ; but by his excellent sermon on the 
 suaviter in modo and the fortiter in re, he 
 preaches in reality little beyond that necessary 
 conciliation of the feelings of others which is 
 inculcated by almost every manual of ethics. 
 Again, if he harps somewhat wearisomely upon 
 * les manitres, Us biensiances, Us agrimens, it is 
 precisely because these were the weak points of 
 his pupil, who, master at twenty of Latin, Greek, 
 and political history, speaking readily German, 
 French, and Italian, having a remarkable mem- 
 ory and a laudable curiosity, still retained an 
 awkwardness of address which neither Marcel 
 nor Desnoyers could wholly overcome,^ and a 
 defective enunciation which would have resisted 
 all the pebbles of Demosthenes. For the rest. 
 Lord Chesterfield's teaching is, in great measure, 
 unexceptional. Its worst fault, in addition to 
 those already mentioned, is that it too frequently 
 confuses being with seeming, and the assump- 
 tion of a virtue with the actual possession of it. 
 But many of its injunctions are irreproachable, 
 and even admirable as aphorisms ; and those to 
 whom their note of worldly wisdom is distasteful 
 must blame not so much the writer, as Horace 
 
 ^ Desnoyers was the fashionable English dancing- 
 master ; Marcel the French one.
 
 152 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 and Cicero, Bolingbroke and La Bruy^re, De 
 Retz and La Rochefoucault, from whom he had 
 compiled his rules for conduct, and shaped his 
 scheme of life. 
 
 When Philip Stanhope died at six and thirtyj 
 neither ' paitri [sic] de graces ' as Lord Chester- 
 field hoped, nor particularly distinguished in 
 statecraft (he was simply Envoy at Dresden), 
 it was discovered that he had so far adopted the 
 policy of pensieri stretti as to have been married 
 privately for some years. Probably the shock 
 of this discovery was softened to his father (who 
 nevertheless behaved liberally to the widow) 
 by the fact that, in the failure of his plans for 
 his son, he had already begun to interest him- 
 self in the training of another member of his 
 family, a little boy who was destined to be his 
 successor in the earldom. Seven years before 
 Philip Stanhope's death he had opened a new 
 series of letters with a godchild, also Philip 
 Stanhope, and the son of Mr. Arthur Stanhope, 
 of Mansfield, in Nottinghamshire. Beginning 
 when the boy was five and a half, the corre- 
 spondence was continued for nine years, follow- 
 ing him from ' Mr. Robert's Boarding School in 
 Marybone by London ' to the house in South- 
 ampton Row of his tutor, the notorious Dr. 
 Dodd. When the first letter was written, Lord
 
 The New Chesterfield. 153 
 
 Chesterfield was sixty-seven, and the last was 
 penned only three years before his death. This 
 is the collection which, after being mislaid for a 
 long period, was published in 1889 by the late 
 Lord Carnarvon, to whom it had been presented 
 by his father-in-law, the sixth Earl of Chester- 
 field. It contributes not a little to the revision 
 of the popular idea formed of the writer, — an 
 idea, it may be added, which, upon re-exami- 
 nation of the earlier correspondence, had already 
 been considerably modified by such critics as 
 Mr. Abraham Hayward and M. Sainte-Beuve. 
 Superficially, the letters resemble their prede- 
 cessors, and the outline of education is much 
 the same. Little Philip was to be ' perfectly 
 master ' of that French which his godfather loved 
 so dearly, and in which he wrote so often and 
 so well ; he was to be thoroughly grounded in 
 History, Geography, Dancing, Italian, German ; 
 he was to be proficient in Greek, and Latin, 
 and he was to complete his studies in the * well- 
 regulated republic ' of Geneva, the salutary 
 austerity of which was then usefully tempered 
 by the presence of Voltaire and the French 
 refugees. Many of the new letters reproduce 
 the old precepts ; there are even similarities of 
 thought and phraseology ; and though the volto 
 sciolto is not obtruded, ihQ'suaviUr in modo
 
 154 Eighteenth Century P'ignellez. 
 
 is still persistently advocated. But age has 
 brought its softening influences — the moral tone 
 is ostensibly higher, and the old worldly savoir- 
 faire has lost much of its ancient cynicism. 
 Some of the axioms which Lord Carnarvon 
 quotes are remarkable for their accent of ear- 
 nestness ; others, as he observes, are ' almost 
 theological ' in tone. Saint Augustine, for ex- 
 ample, could hardly say more than this : ' Si je 
 pouvois empScher qu'il n'y eut un seul mal- 
 heureux sur la Terre, j'y sacrifierois avec plaisir 
 mon bien, mes soins, et meme ma sant6. C'est 
 le grand devoir de rhomme, surtout de I'homme 
 Chretien.' The next is nearer to the elder 
 manner :' Ayez une grande Charity pour 
 I'amour de Dieu et une extreme politesse pour 
 I'amour de vous mSme.' And here is a graver 
 utterance than either : ' God has been so good 
 as to write in all our hearts the duty that he ex- 
 pects from us, which is adoration and thanks- 
 giving and doing all the good we can to our 
 fellow creatures.' 
 
 It is extraordinary to note what an infinity of 
 trouble Lord Chesterfield took to arouse and 
 amuse his little pupil. Sometimes the letter is 
 an anecdote, biographical or historical ; some- 
 times a cunningly contrived French vocabulary, 
 one of which, inter alia, comprehensively defines
 
 The New Chesterfield. -155 
 
 ' Les Graces' as ' Something graceful!, genteel, 
 and engaging in the air and figure.' Others (like 
 the admirable papers in ' The World ') denounce 
 the prevailing vice of drunkenness. ' Fuyez le 
 vin, car c'est un poison lent, mais sur.' Occa- 
 sionally a little diagram aids the exposition, as 
 when a rude circle, with a tiny figure at top, 
 stands for ' le petit Stanhope ' and ' ses anti- 
 podes ; ' in other cases, the course of instruction 
 in politeness and public speaking is diversified 
 by definitions of similes and metaphors, epigrams, 
 anagrams, and logogriphes. Finally, there is a 
 complete treatise, in fourteen epistles, on the 
 * Art of Pleasing,' from which we extract the 
 following on wit and satire : 
 
 ' When wit exerts itself in satyr it is a most 
 malignant distemper ; wit it is true may be 
 shown in satyr, but satyr does not constitute 
 wit, as most fools imagine it does. A man of 
 real wit will find a thousand better occasions of 
 showing it. Abstain therefore most carefully 
 from satyr, which though it fall upon no particu- 
 lar person in company, and momentarily from 
 the malignity of the human heart, pleases all ; 
 upon reflexion it frightens all too, they think it 
 may be their turn next, and will hate you for 
 what they find you could say of them more, 
 than be obliged to you for what you do not
 
 156 Eighteenth Century Vignettes, 
 
 say. Fear and hatred are next door neighbours. 
 The more wit you have the more good nature 
 and politeness you must show, to induce people 
 to pardon your superiority, for that is no easy 
 matter.' 
 
 Alas ! and alas 1 that so much labour and 
 patience should have been lost. For Philip the 
 Second, though he made no secret marriage, was 
 not a much greater success than Philip the First. 
 He turned out a commonplace country-gentle- 
 man, amiable, methodical, agricultural, but 
 wholly overshadowed and obliterated by the 
 fame of the accomplished statesman and orator 
 who had directed his studies. 
 
 ' The bows of eloquence are buried with the 
 Archers.' It is impossible, even with the aid of 
 the phonograph, to recapture the magnetic per- 
 sonality, the fervour of gesture that winged the 
 words and carried conviction to the hearer. 
 Equally impossible is it, in this age of egotisms 
 and eccentricities that pass for character, to 
 realize the fascination of those splendid manners 
 for which Lord Chesterfield was celebrated. 
 The finished elegance, the watchful urbanity, 
 the perfect ease and self-possession, which 
 Fielding commended, and Johnson could not 
 contest, are things too foreign to our rest- 
 less over-consciousness to be easily intelligible.
 
 The New Chesterfield. 157 
 
 ^- 
 But we can at least call up — not without com- 
 passionate admiration — the pathetic picture of 
 the deaf old gentleman who had been the rival 
 of ' silver-tongued Murray' and the correspond- 
 ent of Montesquieu, sitting down at seventy in 
 his solitary study at Babiole^ to write, in that 
 wonderful hand of which Lord Carnarvon gives 
 a facsimile, his periodical letter of advice to a 
 petit bout d'homme at Parson Dodd's in South- 
 ampton Row, concerning whose career in life 
 he had formed the fondest — and the vainest — 
 expectations. 
 
 1 Babiole was His Lordship's country-house at Black- 
 heath, so christened in imitation of Bagatelle, the seat near 
 Taris of his friend Madame la Marquise de Monconseil.
 
 A DAY AT STRAWBERRY HILL. 
 
 'T^O the rigorous exactitudes of modern realism 
 ■*• it may seem an almost hopeless task to 
 revive the details of a day in a Twickenham 
 Villa when George the Third was King. And 
 yet, with the aid of Horace Walpole's letters, of 
 the ' Walpoliana ' of Pinkerton, and, above all, 
 of the catalogue of Strawberry Hill printed by its 
 owner in 1774, there is no insurmountable diffi- 
 culty in deciding what must probably have been 
 the customary course of events. Nothing is 
 needed at the outset but to assume that you had 
 arrived, late on tlie previous night, at the em- 
 battled Gothic building on the Teddington 
 Road, and that the fatigues of your journey 
 had left you little more than a vague notion of 
 your host, and a fixed idea that the breakfast 
 hour was nine. Then, after carrying with you 
 into the chintz curtains of the Red Bedchamber 
 an indistinct recollection of Richardson's draw- 
 ings of Pope and his mother, and of Berming- 
 ham's ' owl cut in paper,' which you dimly make
 
 A Day at Strawberry Hill. 159 
 
 out with your candle on the walls, you would be 
 waked at eight next morning by Colomb, the 
 Swiss valet (as great a tyrant over his master 
 as his compatriot Canton in the ' Clandestine 
 Marriage '), and in due time would repair to the 
 blue-papered and blue-furnished Breakfast Room, 
 looking pleasantly on the Thames. Here, coast- 
 ing leisurely round the apartment, you would 
 probably pause before M. de Carmontel's 
 double picture of your host's dead friend, 
 Madame du Deffand, and her relative the 
 Duchesse de Choiseul, or you would peer 
 curiously at the view of Madame de S^vignd's 
 hotel in the ' Rue Coulture St. Catherine.' 
 Presently would come a patter of tiny feet, and 
 a fat, and not very sociable, little dog, which had 
 once belonged to the said Madame du Deffand, 
 vvould precede its master, whom you would hear 
 v/alking, with the stiff tread of an infirm person, 
 from his bedroom on the floor above. Shortly 
 afterwards would enter a tall, slim, frail-looking 
 figure in a morning-gown, with a high, pallid 
 forehead, dark brilliant eyes under drooping 
 lids, and a friendly, but forced and rather unpre- 
 possessing smile. Tonton (as the little dog was 
 called), after being cajoled into a semblance of 
 cordiality, would be lifted upon a small sofa at 
 his master's side, the tea-kettle and heater
 
 i6o Eighteenth Century Vignettes, 
 
 would arrive, and tea would be served in cups 
 of fine old white embossed Japanese china. 
 And then, the customary salutations exchanged 
 and over, would gradually begin, in a slightly 
 affected fashion, to which you speedily grow 
 accustomed, that wonderful flow of talk which 
 (like Praed's Vicar's) 
 
 ' Slipped from politics to puns, 
 
 And passed from Mahomet to Moses,' — 
 
 that endless stream of admirably told stories, of 
 recollections graphic and humorous, of sallies 
 and bon mots, of which Horace Walpole's ex- 
 traordinary correspondence is the cooled expres- 
 sion, but of the vivacity and variety of which, 
 enhanced as they were by the changes in the 
 speaker's voice and look, and emphasized by 
 his semi-French gesticulation, it is impossible 
 to give any adequate idea. A glance across the 
 river would suggest an anecdote of her Grace 
 the Duchess of Queensberry ; a falling spoon, a 
 mot of Lady Townshend. Upon yesterday's 
 execution at Tyburn would follow a vivid pict- 
 ure of the deaths of Balmerino and Kilmarnock ; 
 or a reference to your ride from London of the 
 night before, would usher in a full and particu- 
 lar account how the voluble and fascinating 
 gentleman before you, with the great chalk
 
 A Day at Strawberry Hill. i6i 
 
 stones in his fingers, was once all but shot 
 through the head by the highwayman James 
 Maclean. 
 
 Breakfast over, and a liberal bowl of bread- 
 and-milk tossed out of window to the troops of 
 squirrels that come flocking in from the high 
 trees round the lawn, your host would invite 
 you to make the tour of the grounds, adding (if 
 it were May) that his favourite lilacs were well 
 worth the effort. He would astonish you by 
 going out in his slippers and without a hat; and, 
 in reply to your ill-concealed astonishment, 
 would laughingly compare himself to the Indian 
 in the 'Spectator' who said he was 'all face.' 
 Passing by the Abbot's garden, with its bright 
 parterres, he would lead you to the pretty cot- 
 tage he had built on the site of the old resi- 
 dence of his deceased tenant Richard Franklin, 
 once printer of that scurrilous * Craftsman ' in 
 which Pulteney and Bolingbroke had so persist- 
 ently assailed his father. In its sunny, print- 
 hung tea-room, with the ' Little Library' at the 
 side, he would show you the picture of his friend 
 Lady Hervey, once the ' beautiful Molly Lepel ' 
 of Chesterfield's ballad, and would tell you that 
 the frame was carved by the same Grinling Gib- 
 bons to whom we owe the bronze statue of 
 King James the Second in the Privy Garden 
 
 II
 
 1 62 Eighteenth Century l/'ignettes. 
 
 at "Whitehall. Thence you would pass to the 
 chapel in the wood, with its stained-glass pict- 
 ures of Henry the Third and his Queen from 
 Bexhill Church, and its shrine from Santa Maria 
 Maggiore at Rome ; and he would explain that 
 the roof was designed by that unimpeachable 
 authority in Gothic, Mr. Chute of the Vyne, in 
 Hampshire ; that George Augustus Selwyn had 
 given him the great earthen pot at the door ; 
 and that the carved bench in the ante-chapel 
 had been contrived by no less a person than 
 the son of the famous ' Ricardus Aristarchus,' 
 Master of Trinity, the — 
 
 ' mighty Scholiast, whose unwearied pains 
 Made Horace dull, and humbled Milton's strains — ' 
 
 as he would quote from the ' Dunciad ' of the 
 late lamented Mr. Pope. Richard Bentley the 
 younger, he would remind you, had also drawn 
 some excellent illustrations to Gray (the originals 
 of which he will show you later in the library); 
 and meanwhile he invites your attention at the 
 end of the winding walk to another masterpiece 
 from the same ingenious brain — a huge oaken 
 seat shaped like a shell, in which once sat to- 
 gether three of the handsomest women in Eng- 
 land, — the Duchess of Hamilton, the Duchess 
 of Richmond, and the Countess of Ailesbury. 
 If you were still intelligently interested, and
 
 A Diiy at Strawberry HilL 163 
 
 your host still unfatigued (for he is capricious 
 and easily tired), you would pass from the garden 
 to the private printing-press, the ' Officina Ar- 
 buteana ' as he christens it, next the neighbour- 
 ing farmyard. Here you would be introduced 
 to the superintendent and occasional secretary, 
 Mr. Thomas Kirgate, who, if so minded, would 
 exhibit to you a proof of Miss Hannah More's 
 poem of 'Bishop Bonner's Ghost' (which his 
 patron is kindly setting up for her), or then and 
 there strike you off a piping-hot ' pull ' of the 
 latest quatrain to those charming Miss Berrys 
 who are now inhabiting ' Little Strawberry ' hard 
 by, once tenanted by red-faced, good-humoured 
 Mrs. Clive. As you return at last to the house, 
 your guide would almost certainly pause in the 
 Little Cloister at the entrance beside the blue 
 and white china tub for goldfish in which was 
 drowned that favourite cat whose fate was im- 
 mortalized by Gray; and, lifting the label, he 
 would read the poet's words : 
 
 ' 'T was on this lofty Vase's side, 
 Where China's gayest Art has dy'd 
 
 The azure Flow'rs, that blow, 
 Demurest of the tabby kind. 
 The pensive Selima reclin'd, 
 
 Gaz'd on the Lake below.' ^ 
 
 ^ There is one of these labels in the Dyce Collection at 
 South Kensington.
 
 i64 Eighteenth Century l^ignettes. 
 
 Once more under Bentley's japanned tin lan- 
 tern in the gloomy little hall, your host, pending 
 the scribbling of half-a-dozen pressing letters to 
 Lady Ossory, Mr. Pinkerton, or one or other 
 of his many correspondents, would beg you to 
 await him in the Picture Gallery. Here, long 
 before you had exhausted your admiration of the 
 Emperor Vespasian in basalt, or the incompara- 
 ble Greek Eagle from the baths of Caracalla, he 
 would resume his post of cicerone, leading you 
 almost at once to the portraits of his three beau- 
 tiful nieces, Edward Walpole's daughters, one 
 of whom, painted by Reynolds, had been for- 
 tunate enough to marry King George's own 
 brother, William Henry, Duke of Gloucester (a 
 fact of which her uncle Horace is ill-disguisedly 
 proud). From the Gallery you would pass to 
 the Round Drawing-Room, whose chief glory 
 was Vasari's ' Bianca Capello ; ' and thence to 
 the adjoining Tribune, a curious yellow-lit cham- 
 ber, with semicircular recesses, in which were 
 accumulated most of the choicest treasures of 
 Strawberry, — miniatures by Cooper and the Oli- 
 vers, enamels by Petitot and Zincke, gems from 
 Italy, bas-reliefs in ivory, coins and seal-rings 
 and reliquaries and filigree work, in the dis- 
 persed profusion of which you would afterwards 
 dimly recall such items as a silver bell carved
 
 A Day at Strawberry Hill. 165 
 
 with masks and insects by Benvenuto Cellini, a 
 missal illuminated by Raphael, a bronze Caligula 
 with silver eyes, and a white snuff-box with a 
 portrait purporting to be a gift from Madame de 
 Se'vigne in the Elysian Fields, but sent in real- 
 ity by the faithful Madame du Deffand. Each 
 object would bring its train of associations and 
 traditions ; and the fading of the ' all-golden af- 
 ternoon ' would find your companion still prom- 
 ising fresh marvels in the yet unexplored rooms 
 beyond, where are the speculum of cannel coal 
 once used by the notorious starmonger, Dr. 
 John Dee ; the red hat of his Eminence Cardi- 
 nal Wolsey ; and the very spurs worn by King 
 William the Third, of immortal memory, at the 
 ever-glorious Battle of the Boyne. 
 
 With four o'clock would come dinner, eaten 
 probably in the Refectory, a room consecrated 
 chiefly to the family portraits, conspicuous among 
 which, in blue velvet, was your host by Rich- 
 ardson. The repast was ' of Attic taste,' but 
 with very little wine, as Walpole himself drank 
 nothing but iced water, and ' coffee upstairs ' 
 was ordered with such promptitude as to afford 
 the visitor but scanty leisure for lingering over 
 the bottle. About five you migrated to the 
 Round Drawing-Room, where your entertainer, 
 after recommending you to replenish your box
 
 1 66 Eighteenth Century yignettes. 
 
 with Fribourg's snuff from a canister of which 
 the hiding-place was an ancient marble urn in 
 the window-seat, would take up his station 
 on the sofa, and resume his inexhaustible flood 
 of memories and reflections, always bright, often 
 striking, and never wearisome. Once, perhaps, 
 he would rise to exhibit the closet he had built 
 for Lady Di. Beauclerk's seven drawings in 
 soot-water to his own tragedy of the ' Mysteri- 
 ous Mother ; ' or he would adjourn for an hour 
 to the Library, to turn over his unrivalled col- 
 lection of Hogarth's prints; or to show you 
 Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's * Milton,' or 
 the identical ' Iliad' and * Odyssey' from which 
 Pope made his translations, or the long row of 
 books printed at the ' Officina Arbuteana.' But 
 he would gravitate sooner or later to his old 
 vantage-ground on the sofa, whence, unhasting, 
 unresting, he would discourse most excellent 
 anecdote into the small hours, when the chintz 
 curtains of the Red Bedchamber would again 
 receive his bewitched and bewildered, but still 
 unsatiated, visitor. And so would end your 
 day at Horace Walpole's Gothic Castle of Straw- 
 berry Hill.
 
 A 
 
 GOLDSMITH'S LIBRARY. 
 
 N auctioneer's catalogue — and particularly 
 an auctioneer's catalogue more than a 
 hundred years old — is not, at first sight, the 
 most suggestive of subjects. And yet that 
 issued in July, 1774, by Mr. Good, of 121 
 Fleet Street, still possesses considerable inter- 
 est. For it is nothing less than an account, bald, 
 indeed, and only moderately literary, of the 
 ' Houshold [sic] Furniture, with the Select Col- 
 lection of Scarce, Curious and Valuable Books, 
 in English, Latin, Greek, French, Italian and 
 other Languages, late the Library of Dr. 
 Goldsmith, Deceased.' As one runs over the 
 items, one seems to realize the circumstances. 
 One seems almost to see Mr. Good's unemo- 
 tional assistants, with their pens behind their 
 ears, and their ink-bottles ' upon the excise prin- 
 ciple' dangling from their button-holes, as they 
 peer about the dingy Chambers at Brick Court, 
 with the dark little closet of a bedroom at the 
 back where the poor Doctor lay and died. We 
 can imagine them sniffing superciliously at the 
 chief pictorial adornment, 'The Tragic Muse,
 
 1 68 Eighteenth Century yignettes. 
 
 in a gold frame ; ' or drawing from its sheath, 
 with an air of 'prentice connoisseurship, ' the 
 steel-hilted sword, inlaid with gold,' or * the 
 black-hilted ditto,' not without speculations as 
 to how those weapons would adorn their own 
 ungainly persons in a holiday jaunt to "White 
 Conduit House or Marybone Gardens. "We 
 see them professionally prodding the faded ma- 
 hogany sofa ' covered with blue morine' which 
 had so often vibrated under the nervous twitch- 
 ings of Johnson ; appraising the * compass card- 
 tables ' over which Boswell had dealt trumps to 
 Reynolds ; or critically weighing the teapot 
 in which the 'Jessamy Bride' had more than 
 once made tea. Their sordid commercial figures 
 must have crossed and re-crossed before * the 
 very large dressing-glass* with 'mahogany 
 frame,' which only a few weeks past had re- 
 flected the ' blue velvet,' and the ' straw- 
 coloured ' and ' silver-grey tamboured waist- 
 coats ' for which honest Mr. "William Filby, at 
 the sign of the Harrow in "Water Lane, was 
 never now to see the money. No doubt, too, 
 they desecrated, with their Fleet Street mud, 
 that famous "Wilton carpet which had looked so 
 sumptuous when it was first laid down but half 
 a dozen years ago ; and, if they were at all like 
 their brethren of these days, they must have
 
 Goldsmith's Library. 169 
 
 pished generally over the rest of those modest 
 properties which, in the golden epoch when the 
 
 * Good Natur'd Man ' seemed to promise per- 
 petual prosperity, had excited so much awe and 
 admiration among Goldsmith's humbler friends. 
 'Not much to tot up here, Docket!' — says 
 Mr. Good's young man to his fellow. And 
 we may fancy Mr. Docket assenting with a 
 contemptuous extension of his under lip, en- 
 forced by the supplementary proposition that 
 they should at once m.oisten their unpromising 
 labours by adjourning to a pot of Parsons' En- 
 tire at the Tavern by the Temple Gates. 
 
 As for the books, the * Select Collection ' 
 that the unsympathetic stock-takers turned over 
 so irreverently with their feet as they lay in dusty 
 ranges on the floor, it must be feared that 
 worthy Mr. Good's description of them as 
 
 • scarce, curious, and valuable ' is more credit- 
 able to his business traditions than his literary 
 insight. Goldsmith was scarcely a book-lover 
 in the sense in which that term is now used. 
 The man who, as Hawkins relates, could tear 
 half a dozen leaves out of a volume to save him- 
 self the trouble of transcription, — the man who 
 underscored objectionable passages with his 
 thumb-nail, as he once did to a new poem that 
 belonged to Reynolds — was not a genuine
 
 170 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 amateur du livre. They were a ' speculative 
 lot ' in all probability, the ' Brick Court Li- 
 brary ; ' and no doubt bore'about them visibly 
 the bumps and bruises of their transit * in two 
 returned post chaises ' to the remote farm at 
 Hyde, where their owner laboured at his vast 
 ' Animated Nature.' Many of them had mani- 
 festly been collected to that end. Hill's 
 •Fossils,' 1748; Piiny's ' Historia Naturalis,' 
 1752 ; Gessner and Aldrovandus ' De Quadru- 
 pedibus ; ' Gouan's ' Histoire des Poissons,' 
 1770; Bohadsch's ' De Animalibus Marinis,' 
 1761 ; De Geer's ' Histoire des Insectes,' 
 1 77 1, must all plainly have belonged to that 
 series of purchases for the nonce which, he 
 says in his preface, had so severely taxed his 
 overburdened resources. In the classics he 
 was fairly well equipped ; and, as might be 
 expected, he had many of the British poets, 
 not to mention two copies of that indispen- 
 sable manual, Mr. Edward Bysshe, his treatise 
 of the rhyming art. But it is in French liter- 
 ature generally, and in French minstrels and 
 playwrights in particular, that his store is 
 richest. He has the ' Encyclop^die,' the 
 • Dictionnaire ' and ' Recueil d'Anecdotes,' the 
 ' Dictionnaire Litteraire,' the ' Dictionnaire Cri- 
 tique, Pittoresque et Sentencieux,' the * Die-
 
 Goldsmith's Library. 171 
 
 tionnaire Gentilhomme ; ' he has many of the 
 ana — * Parrhasiana,' ' Ducatiana,' * Naudeana,' 
 * Patiniana,' although, oddly enough, there is 
 no copy of the * M^nagiana,' which not only 
 supplied him with that ancient ballad of * Mon- 
 sieur de la Palice * out of which grew ' Madam 
 Blaize.' but also with the little poem of Bernard 
 de la Monnoye, which he paraphrased so 
 brightly in the well-known stanzas beginning : 
 
 * Say, cruel Iris, pretty rake, 
 Dear mercenary beauty. 
 What annual offering shall I make, 
 I Expressive of my duty ? ' 
 
 He has the works of Voltaire, Diderot, 
 Fontenelle, Marmontel, Voiture ; he has the 
 plays of Brueys, La Chauss^e, Dancourt, 
 Destouches ; he has many of the madrigalists 
 and minor versemen, — all of which possessions 
 tend to corroborate that suspected close study 
 of Gallic authors from which, as many hold, 
 he derived not a little of the unfailing perspi- 
 cuity of his prose, and most of the brightness 
 and vivacity of his more familiar verse. Of 
 his own works — and the fact is curious when 
 one remembers some of his traditional charac- 
 teristics — there are practically no examples, at 
 least there are none catalogued. Their sole
 
 172 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 representative is an imperfect set of the * His- 
 tory of the Earth and Animated Nature,' which 
 had only recently been completed, and was 
 published posthumously. Not a single copy of 
 'The Vicar,' of 'She Stoops to Conquer,' of 
 'The Citizen of the World,' of 'The Deserted 
 Village ' I Not even a copy of that rarest of 
 rarities, the privately printed version of ' Edwin 
 and Angelina,' which its author told his friend 
 Cradock ' could not be amended ' — although 
 he was always amending it ! Of course it is 
 possible that his own writings had been with- 
 drawn from Mr. Good's catalogue, or that they 
 are included in the ' and others ' of unspecified 
 lots. But this is scarcely likely, and it may be 
 accepted as a noteworthy fact that one of the 
 most popular authors of his day did not, at his 
 death, possess any of his own performances,' 
 with the exception of an incomplete specimen of 
 his most laborious compilation.^ Besides this, 
 the only volumes that bear indirectly upon his 
 work are the ' Memoirs ' of the Cardinal de 
 Retz, which he had used in ' The Bee,' the 
 ' Lettres Persanes' of Montesquieu, which 
 perhaps prompted 'The Citizen of the World,' 
 
 1 Racine was in similar case. In the recently discov- 
 ered inventory of his effects, there is not a single copy of 
 his works.
 
 (joldsmith's Library. 173 
 
 and the 'Roman Comique' of M. Paul Scar- 
 ron, which he had been translating in the latter 
 months of his life — an accident which has 
 left its mark in his last poem, the admirable 
 ' Retaliation ' : 
 
 ' Of old, when Scarron his companions invited, 
 Each guest brought his dish, and the feast was united.' 
 
 It may be that he had intended to prefix a bio- 
 graphical sketch or memoir to his version of the 
 ' Comic Romance,' since the reference here is 
 plainly to those famous picnic suppers in the 
 Marais, to which, according to Scarron's most 
 recent biographer, M. Charles Baumet, came as 
 guests, but ' chacun apportant son plat,' the pink 
 of dames, of courtiers, and of men of letters. 
 
 Where did they go, these books and house- 
 hold goods of ' Dr. Goldsmith, deceased ' ? 
 It is to be presumed that he did not boast a 
 book-plate, for none, to our knowledge, has 
 ever been advertised, nor is there any record 
 of one in Lord de Tabley's well-known ' Hand- 
 book,' so that the existing possessors of those 
 precious volumes, in the absence of any auto- 
 graph inscription, must entertain their treasures 
 unawares. Of his miscellaneous belongings, the 
 only specimens now well-known do not seem 
 to have passed under the hammer of the Fleet
 
 1/4 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 Street auctioneer. His favourite chair, a dark, 
 hollow-seated, and somewhat penitential look- 
 ing piece of furniture, is preserved at South 
 Kensington, where, not long since, it was 
 sketched, in company with his cane — perhaps 
 the very cane that once crossed the back of 
 Evans the bookseller — by Mr. Hugh Thom- 
 son, the clever young Irish artist to whom we 
 are indebted for the most successful of recent 
 illustrated editions of the ' Vicar of Wakefield.' 
 Neither chair nor cane is in the Good Catalogue, 
 nor does it make any mention of the worn 
 old wooden writing-desk which Sir Benjamin 
 Hawes, once Under Secretary at War, pre- 
 sented to Sir Henry Cole's museum. Sir Ben- 
 jamin Hawes was the grandson of William 
 Hawes, the 'surgeon apothecary' in the 
 Strand, who was called in, late on that Friday 
 night in March, when the poor Doctor was 
 first stricken down with the illness which a 
 few days later terminated fatally. William 
 Hawes, a worthy and an able man, who sub- 
 sequently obtained a physician's degree, and 
 helped to found the Humane Society, was the 
 author of the little pamphlet, now daily grow- 
 ing rarer, entitled * An Account of the late Dr. 
 Goldsmith's Illness, so far as relates to the Ex- 
 hibition of Dr. James's Powders, etc., 1774'
 
 Goldsmith's Library. 175 
 
 [April]. He dedicated it to Burke and Rey- 
 nolds ; and he published It (he says) partly to 
 satisfy curiosity as to the circumstances of 
 Goldsmith's death, partly to vindicate his own 
 professional conduct in the matter. His narra- 
 tive, in which discussion of the popular nos- 
 trum upon which Goldsmith so obstinately 
 relied not unnaturally occupies a considerable 
 part, is too familiar for repetition ; and his re- 
 marks on Goldsmith as a writer are of the sign- 
 post order. But his personal testimony to the 
 character of ' his late respected and ingenious 
 friend ' may fitly close this paper: ' His [Gold- 
 smith's] humanity and generosity greatly ex- 
 ceeded the narrow limits of his fortune ; and 
 those who were no judges of the literary merit 
 of the Author, could not but love the Man for 
 that benevolence by which he was so strongly 
 characterised.'
 
 IN COWPER'S ARBOUR. 
 
 A MONG its many drawbacks controversy 
 "^"^ has this in particular, that it sometimes 
 embroils us with our closest friends. Writing 
 lately of Lord Chesterfield, we found occasion 
 to comment upon certain couplets which the 
 poet of the ' Progress of Error' addressed to 
 his Lordship concerning his celebrated * Let- 
 ters.' What was said amounted to no more 
 than that Cowper, in this instance at least, had 
 not proved himself a Juvenal, — a sentiment 
 which, seeing that his most modern biographer, 
 Mr. Goldwin Smith, accuses him, as a satirist, 
 of brandishing a whip without a lash, could 
 scarcely be regarded as extravagant condemna- 
 tion. Not the less, it has lain sorely upon our 
 conscience. Of all the lettered figures of the 
 eighteenth century, none is more dear to us 
 than the gentle recluse of the sleepy little town 
 by the Ouse. What I — the captivating letter- 
 writer, the inventor of the immortal ' John 
 Gilpin,' the delightful ' divagator ' of the ' Task ' 
 and the tea-urn, the kindly proprietor of those
 
 In Cowpcr's Arbour. 177 
 
 * canonized pets of literature,' Puss and Bess 
 and Tiney — how, upon such a theme, could 
 one reasonably utter things harsh or censorious ! 
 It is impossible to picture him, when the cur- 
 tains had fallen over those two windows that 
 looked upon the three-cornered market-place at 
 Olney, — his head decorated (it may be) with 
 the gaily ribboned cap which had been worked 
 for him by his cousin Lady Hesketh,^ his eyes 
 milder than they seem in Romney's famous 
 portrait, and placidly reading the ' Public Ad- 
 vertiser' to the click-click of Mrs. Unwin's 
 stocking-needles, — without being smitten by a 
 feeling of remorse. And opportunity for the 
 expression of such remorse arrives pleasantly 
 with an old-fashioned octavo which supplies the 
 pretext for a palinode in prose. 
 
 Its title, 'writ large,' is ' Cowper, Illustrated 
 by a Series of Views in, or near, the Park of 
 Weston-Underwood, Bucks ; ' and it is lavishly 
 
 * embellished ' with those mellow old plates 
 which denote that steel had not yet supplanted 
 copper. The artist and engraver for the most 
 
 1 A writing-cap worn by Cowper, his watch, a seal- 
 ring given to him by his cousin Theodora (his first love), 
 and a ball of worsted which he wound for Mrs. Unwin, 
 were among the relics exhibited in the South Gallery 
 of the Guelph Exhibition of 1891. 
 
 12
 
 178 Eighteenth Century t^ignettes. 
 
 part was one James Storer, a topographical chal- 
 cographer of some repute, and a ' tall man of 
 his hands ' in the days of conventional fore- 
 grounds, and trees that looked like pressed-out 
 patterns in seaweed. But his ' picturesque ' 
 designs give us a good idea of the landscape that 
 Cowper saw when he walked from Silver End 
 at Olneyto his friends the Throckmortons (the 
 ' Mr. and Mrs. Frog ' of his letters) at Weston 
 House. Here is the long bridge of ' The Task,' 
 
 ' That with its wearisome, but needful length, 
 Bestrides the wintry flood ' 
 
 between Olney and Emberton ; here, bosomed 
 in its embowering trees, the little farmhouse 
 called the ' Peasant's Nest.' Here, again, in 
 the valley, and framed between the feathery 
 branches of the shrubbery, is the spire of Olney 
 Church, from which one may almost fancy that 
 
 ' the sound of cheerful bells 
 Just undulates upon the list'ning ear; ' 
 
 here, standing out whitely from the yews and 
 evergreens of The Wilderness, the urn with the 
 epitaphs of Fop and Neptune. Further back (a 
 lovely little landscape) is the clump of poplars 
 by the water (not the poplars of the poem : those 
 were already felled) which the poet mistook for
 
 In Cowper's Arbour. 179 
 
 elms ; and here, lastly, is Cowper's own cottage 
 at Weston, which, with its dormer windows, 
 and its vines and jasmines, might have served as 
 a model for Randolph Caldecott or Kate Green- 
 away. And, behold ! ( • blest be the art that 
 can immortalize r ) here is Mrs. Unwin in a 
 high waist entering at the gate, while Cowpcr 
 bids her welcome from the doorway. 
 
 Of Olney itself there are not many glimpses 
 in the little volume. But the vignette on the 
 titlepage shows the tiny 'boudoir' or summer- 
 house, ' not much bigger than a sedan chair,' 
 which stood — nay, stands yet, — about midway 
 between the red-brick house on the market- 
 place and what was once John Newton's vicar- 
 age. It is still, say the latest accounts, kept up 
 by its present owner, and its walls and ceiling 
 are covered with the autographs of pious pil- 
 grims. In Storer's plate you look in at the open 
 door, catching, through the window on the 
 opposite side, part of the parsonage and of the 
 wall in which was constructed the gate that 
 enabled Cowper at all times to communicate 
 with his clerical friend. Its exact dimensions 
 are given as six feet nine by five feet five ; and 
 he must have been right in telling Lady Hes- 
 keth that if she came to see him they should be 
 ' as close-pack'd as two wax figures in an old-
 
 i8o Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 fashioned picture-frame.' A trap-door in the 
 floor covered a receptacle in which the previous 
 tenant, an apothecary, had stored his bottles ; 
 and here, * in the deep-delved earth,' one of 
 Cowper's wisest counsellors, the Rev. William 
 Bull of Newport Pagnell, the ' Carissimus 
 Taurorum ' of the letters, the 
 
 ' smoke-inhaling Bull, 
 Always filling, never full,' 
 
 was wont to deposit his pipes and his tobacco. 
 It was in passing from the summer-house to the 
 barn that Cowper encountered the viper whose 
 prompt taking-off gives motive and point to that 
 admirable little ' lusus poeticus,' — as Mr. 
 Grimshawe condescendingly calls it, — the 
 ' Colubriad ' : 
 
 * With outstretch'd hoe I slew him at the door, 
 And taught him never to come there no more.' 
 
 In this boudoir, or Buon Retiro, in the 
 garden, Cowper must have spent his happiest 
 hours. Even in the winter, when it simply 
 served the humbler uses of a greenhouse, it 
 prompted a poem. 
 
 "T is a bower of Arcadian sweets. 
 Where Flora is still in her prime, 
 A fortress to which she retreats 
 
 From the cruel assaults of the clime '—>
 
 hi Cowper's Arbour. i8i 
 
 he writes in [his favourite rocking-horse metre, 
 and most conventional language, bidding his 
 Mary remark the beauty of the pinks which it 
 has preserved through the frosts. But in mid- 
 July, when the floor was carpeted, and the sun 
 ■was excluded by an awning of mats, it became 
 'the pleasantest retreat in Olney.' 'We eat, 
 drink, and sleep, where we always did,' he says 
 to Newton ; ' but here we spend all the rest of 
 our time, and find that the sound of the wind in 
 the trees, and the singing of birds, are much more 
 agreeable to our ears than the incessant barking 
 of dogs and screaming of children,' from both 
 of which, it may be observed, they suffered 
 considerably in the front of the house. Two 
 years later he tells Mr. Unwin that ' our sever- 
 est winter, commonly called the spring, is now 
 over, and I find myself seated in my favourite 
 recess, the greenhouse. In such a situation, so 
 silent, so shady, where no human foot is heard, 
 and where only my myrtles presume to peep in 
 at the window, you may suppose I have no 
 interruption to complain of, and that my thoughts 
 are perfectly at my command. But the beauties 
 of the spot are themselves an interruption, my 
 attention being called upon by those very myrtles, 
 by a double row of grass pinks, just beginning 
 to blossom, and bv a bed of beans alr^adv ^n
 
 1 82 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 bloom ; and you are to consider it, if you please, 
 as no small proof of my regard, that, though 
 you have so many powerful rivals, I disengage 
 myself from them all, and devote this hour 
 entirely to you.' 
 
 Later still — a year later — he writes to New- 
 ton : ' My greenhouse is never so pleasant as 
 when we are just upon the point of being turned 
 out of it. The gentleness of the autumnal suns, 
 and the calmness of this latter season, make it 
 a much more agreeable retreat than we ever 
 find it in the summer ; when, the winds being 
 generally brisk, we cannot cool it by admitting 
 a sufficient quantity of air, without being at the 
 same time incommoded by it. But now I sit 
 with all the windows and the door wide open, 
 and am regaled with the scent of every flower, 
 in a garden as full of flowers as I have known 
 how to make it. We keep no bees, but if I 
 lived in a hive, I should hardly hear more of 
 their music. All the bees in the neighbourhood 
 resort to a bed of mignonette, opposite to the 
 window, and pay me for the honey they get out 
 of it by a hum, which, though rather monoto- 
 nous, is as agreeable to my ear as the whistling 
 of my linnets. All the sounds that Nature utters 
 are delightful, at least in this country.' But he 
 goes on, nevertheless, to except the braying of
 
 hi Cowper's Arbour. 183 
 
 an ass ; and from another letter it seems that 
 the serene quietude of his bower was at times 
 invaded by the noise of a quadruped of this 
 kind (inimical to poets !) which belonged to a 
 neighbour. 
 
 All his summer writing was done in this con- 
 tracted paradise, and not only his letters but his 
 poems. ' Never poet had a more commodious 
 oratory in which to invoke his muse,' he tells 
 Lady Hesketh. Here 'lived happy prisoners' 
 the two goldfinches celebrated in ' The Faithful 
 Bird ; ' here he wrote ' The Task,' and, accord- 
 ing to Mr. Thomas Wright, of Olney, it is to 
 the stimulating environment of its myrtles and 
 mignonette that we owe, if not the germ, at 
 least the evolution, of 'John Gilpin.' Every 
 one knows how, in the current story. Lady 
 Austen's diverting narrative of the way in which 
 a certain citizen of the Chepe, Beyer by name, 
 rode out to celebrate the anniversary of his mar- 
 riage, gradually seduced her listener from the 
 moody melancholy which was fast overclouding 
 him ' into a loud and hearty peal of laughter,' It 
 ' made such an impression on his mind that at 
 night he could not sleep ; and his thoughts hav- 
 ing taken the form of rhyme, he sprang from 
 bed, and committed them to paper, and in the 
 morning brought down to Mrs. Unwin the
 
 1 84 Eighteenth Century Fignettes. 
 
 crude outline of "John Gilpin." Only the out- 
 line, however. But all that day and for several 
 days he secluded himself in the summer-house, 
 and went on with the task of polishing and im- 
 proving what he had written. As he filled his 
 slips of paper he sent them across the Market- 
 place to Mr. Wilson, to the great delight and 
 merriment of that jocular barber, who on several 
 other occasions had been favoured with the first 
 sight of some of Cowper's smaller poems. This 
 version of the origin of " John Gilpin" diff'ers, 
 we are aware, from the one generally received, 
 which represents the famous ballad as having 
 been commenced and finished in a night; but 
 that the facts here stated are accurate we have 
 the authority of Mrs. Wilson ; moreover, it has 
 always been said in Olney that "John Gilpin" 
 was written in the " summer-house," and that 
 the first person who saw the complete poem, 
 and consequently the forerunner of that noble 
 army who have giggled at its drolleries, was 
 William Wilson the barber.' ^ 
 
 ^ Wilson was a man of considerable intelligence, and 
 a local 'character.' When in 17S1 he joined the Baptists, 
 he declined to dress Lady Austen's hair on Sundays. 
 Consequently she was obliged to call him in on Saturday 
 evenings, and once had to sit up all night to prevent the 
 disarrangement of her ' head.'
 
 In Cowper's Arbour. 185 
 
 Cowper has been styled by a recent editor 
 the best of English letter-writers, a term which 
 Scott applied to Walpole, and it has been ap- 
 plied to others. Criticism loses its balance in 
 these superlatives. To be the best — to use a 
 schoolboy illustration — is to have the highest 
 marks all round. For epistolary vigour, for vi- 
 vacity, for wit, for humour, for ease, for sim- 
 plicity, for subject — can you give Cowper the 
 highest marks ? The answer obviously must 
 be ' no.' Other writers excel him in subject, 
 in wit, in vigour. But you can certainly give 
 him high marks for humour ; and you can give 
 him very high marks for simplicity and unaffect- 
 edness. He is one of the most unfeigned, most 
 easy, most natural of English letter-writers. In 
 the art of shedding a sedate playfulness over the 
 least promismg themes, in magnifying the inci- 
 dents of his 'set gray life' into occurrences 
 worthy of record, in communicating to his page 
 all the variations of mood that sweep across him 
 as he writes, he is unrivalled. Some one chris- 
 tened Addison a parson in a tye-wig ; Cowper 
 (at his best) is a humourist in a nightcap. It 
 would be easy to select from his correspondence 
 passages that show him in all these aspects — 
 morbid and gloomy to Newton, genial and 
 friendly to Hill and Unwin, confidential and
 
 1 86 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 caressing to Lady Austen and Lady Hesketh. 
 But it is not uncommon for him to vary his tone 
 to each of these, for which reason we close with 
 an epistle to that austere friend and monitor 
 who has perhaps been credited with a more 
 baleful inlluence over his hypochondriac corre- 
 spondent than is strictly borne out by the evi- 
 dence. The reader may be told, since he must 
 speedily discover it, that the following letter 
 from Cowper to John Newton, like the title- 
 page of Mr. Lowell's ' Fable for Critics,' is in 
 rhymed prose : 
 
 My very dear Friend, — I am going to 
 send, what when you have read, you may 
 scratch your head, and say, I suppose, there 's 
 nobody knows whether what I have got be 
 verse or not ; — by the tune and the time, 
 it ought to be rhyme, but if it be, did you 
 ever see, of late or of yore, such a ditty 
 before ? 
 
 I have writ ' Charity,' not for popularity, but 
 as well as I could, in hopes to do good ; and if 
 the Reviewer should say ' to be sure the gentle- 
 man's Muse wears Methodist shoes, you may 
 know by her pace and talk about grace, that 
 she and her bard have little regard for the taste 
 and fashions, and ruling passions, and hoiden-
 
 In Cowper's Arbour. 187 
 
 ing play, of the modern day ; and though she 
 assume a borrowed plume, and now and then 
 wear a tittering air, 'tis only her plan to 
 catch, if she can, the giddy and gay, as they 
 go that way, by a production on a new con- 
 struction : she has baited her trap, and hopes 
 to snap all that may come with a sugar plum.' 
 — His opinion in this will not be amiss; 
 't is what I intend, my principal end, and, if I 
 succeed, and folks should read, till a few are 
 brought to a serious thought, I shall think. I 
 am paid for all I have said and all I have 
 done, though I have run many a time, after 
 a rhyme, as far as from hence to the end of 
 my sense, and by hook or crook, write 
 another book, if I live and am here, another 
 year. 
 
 I have heard before of a room with a floor 
 laid upon springs, and such like things, with so 
 much art in every part, that when you went in 
 you was forced to begin a minuet pace, with an 
 air and a grace, swimming about, now in and 
 now out, with a deal of state, in a figure of 
 eight, without pipe, or string, or any such thing ; 
 and now I have writ, in a rhyming fit, what will 
 make you dance, and, as you advance, will keep 
 you still, though against your will, dancing 
 away, alert and gay, till you come to an end of
 
 1 88 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 what I have penn'd, which that you may do, 
 ere Madam and you are quite worn out with 
 gigging about, I take my leave, and here you 
 receive a bow profound, down to the ground, 
 from your humble me — W. C
 
 THE QUAKER OF ART. 
 
 A BOVE the chimney-piece in the Study at 
 ■^"^ Abbotsford, and therefore on Sir Walter's 
 right-hand as he wrote, hung — nay, hangs, if 
 we may trust the evidence of a photograph be- 
 fore us — a copy of the Schiavonetti-cum-Heath 
 engraving of Thomas Stothard's once-popular 
 'Canterbury Pilgrims.' With its dark oblong 
 frame and gold corner-ornaments, it must still 
 look much as it did on that rainy August morn- 
 ing described in Lockhart, when one of Scott's 
 guests, occupied ostensibly with the last issues 
 of the Bannatyne Club, sat listening in turn to 
 the patter of the drops on the pane, and the 
 ' dashing trot' of his host's pen across the paper 
 to which he was then committing the first series 
 of the 'Tales of a Grandfather.' The visitor 
 (it was that acute and ingenious John Ley- 
 cester Adolphus whose close-reasoned ' Letters 
 to Richard Heber' had practically penetrated the 
 mystery of the ' Waverley Novels ') specially
 
 190 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 noticed the picture ; and he also afterwards 
 recalled and repeated a characteristic comment 
 made upon it by Scott, with whom it was evi- 
 dently a favourite, in one of those brief dia- 
 logues which generally took place when it 
 became necessary to consult a book upon the 
 shelves. Were the procession to move, re- 
 marked Sir Walter, the prancing young 'Squire 
 in the foreground would be over his horse's 
 head in a minute. The criticism was more 
 of the riding-school than the studio ; and too 
 much might easily be inferred from it as to the 
 speaker's equipments as an Art-critic. For 
 Art itself, we are told, notwithstanding his 
 genuine love of landscape and natural objects, 
 Scott cared nothing ; and Abbotsford was rich 
 rather in works suggestive and commemorative, 
 than in masterpieces of composition and colour. 
 ' He talked of scenery as he wrote of it,' says 
 Leslie in his ' Recollections,' ' like a painter ; 
 and yet for pictures, as works of art, he had little 
 or no taste, nor did he pretend to any. To him 
 they were interesting merely as representing 
 some particular scene, person, or 'event, and 
 very moderate merit in their execution con- 
 tented him.' Stothard's cavalcade, progressing 
 along the pleasantly undulated background of 
 'he Surrey Hills, with its drunken Miller dron-
 
 The Qiiaker of Art. 191 
 
 ing on his bagpipes at the head, with its bibu- 
 lous Cook at the tail, and between these, all 
 that moving, many-coloured pageant of Middle- 
 Age society upon which Geoffrey Chaucer 
 looked five hundred years ago, must have been 
 thoroughly to his liking, besides reaching a 
 higher artistic standard than he required. To 
 one whose feeling for the past has never yet 
 been rivalled, such a picture would serve as a 
 perpetual fount of memory and association. 
 He must besides have thoroughly appreciated 
 its admitted accuracy of costume, and it would 
 not have materially affected his enjoyment if 
 the Dick Tintos or Dick Minims of his day 
 had assured him that, as a composition, it was 
 deficient in ' heroic grasp,' or had reiterated 
 the stereotyped objection that the Wife of Bath 
 was far too young-looking to have buried five 
 lawful husbands. 
 
 The original oil-sketch from which the ' Can- 
 terbury Pilgrims ' was engraved, is now in the 
 National Gallery, having been bought some 
 years ago, with Hogarth's ' Polly Peachum,' 
 at the dispersal of the Leigh Court Collection. 
 It is not, however, by his more ambitious efforts 
 that Stothard is most regarded in our day. Now 
 and then, it maybe, the Abbotsford engraving, or 
 * The Flitch of Bacon,' or ' John Gilpin,' makes
 
 192 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 fitful apparition in the print-shop windows ; 
 now and then again, in some culbute gdndrale 
 of the bric-h-brac merchant, there comes 
 forlornly to the front a card-table contrived 
 adroitly from the once famous Waterloo Shield. 
 But it is not by'these, or by the huge designs 
 on the staircase at Burleigh (' Burleigh-house 
 by Stamford-town"), or by any of the efforts 
 which his pious biographer and daughter-in-law 
 fondly ranked with Raphael and Rubens, that 
 he best deserves remembrance. Time, deal- 
 ing summarily with an unmanageable inheri- 
 tance, has a trick of making rough and ready 
 distinctions ; and Time has decided, not that 
 he did these things ill, but that he did other 
 things better — for instance, book illustrations. 
 And the modern collector is on the side of 
 Time. Stothard as a colourist (and here per- 
 haps is some injustice) he disregards : Stothard 
 as a history-painter he disavows. But for Stot- 
 hard as the pictorial interpreter of ' David 
 Simple ' and ' Betsy Thoughtless,' of ' The 
 Virtuous Orphan' and the ' Tales of the Genii,' 
 of 'Clarissa' and 'Sir Charles Grandison/ or 
 (to cite another admirer, Charles Lamb) of that 
 ' romantic tale ' i 
 
 ' Where Glums and Gawries wear mysterious things. 
 That serve at once for jackets and for wings,' —
 
 The Qtiaker of Art. 193 
 
 to wit, ' The Life and Adventures of Peter 
 Wilkins,'^ he cares very much indeed. He is 
 not surprised that they gained their designer 
 the friendship of Flaxman ; and if he is not 
 able to say w^ith Elia, — 
 
 ♦ In several ways distinct you make us feel, — 
 Graceful as Raphael, as Watteau genteel,' — 
 
 epithets which, in our modern acceptation of 
 them, sound singularly ill-chosen, he can at 
 least admit that if his favourite is occasion- 
 ally a little monotonous and sometimes a little 
 insipid, there are few artists in England in whose 
 performances the un-English gift of grace is so 
 unmistakably present. 
 
 Fifty years ago there were but few specimens 
 of Stothard's works in the Print Room of the 
 British Museum, and even those were not ar- 
 ranged so as to be easily accessible. To-day, 
 this complaint, which Pye makes in that mis- 
 cellany of unexpected information, his ' Patron- 
 age of British Art,' can no longer be renewed. 
 In the huge Balmanno collection, a labour of 
 five-and-twenty years, the student may now 
 study his Stothard to his heart's content. Here 
 
 ^ Coleridge is also extravagant on this theme in his 
 ' Table Talk.' ' If it were not for a certain tendency to 
 affectation, scarcely any praise could be too high,' he says, 
 'for Stothard's designs [to Peter \Yilkins].' 
 
 13
 
 194 Eighteenth Century l^ignettes. 
 
 is brought together his work of all sorts, his 
 earliest and latest, his strongest and his feeblest, 
 from the first tentative essays he made for 
 the 'Lady's Magazine' and Hervey's 'Naval 
 History' to those final designs, which, aided 
 by the supreme imagination of Turner, did so 
 much to vitalise the finicking and overlaboured 
 couplets of his faithful but fastidious patron at 
 St. James's Place. 
 
 ' Of Rogers's " Italy," Luttrell relates, 
 It would surely be dished, if 'twere not for the plates, 
 
 said the wicked wits of 1830 ; and the sarcasm 
 has its parallel in the ' Ce poete se sauve du 
 naufrage de planche en planche/ which the 
 Abb^ Galiani applied to Dorat embellished by 
 Marillier and Eisen. But Stothard did many 
 things besides illustrating Samuel Rogers. Al- 
 manack heads and spelling-books, spoon-handles 
 and decanter labels, — nothing came amiss to his 
 patient industry. And in his book illustrations 
 he had one incalculable advantage, — he lived 
 in the silver age of line engraving, the age of the 
 Cooks and Warrens and Heaths and Findens. 
 
 Shakespeare and Bunyan, Macpherson and 
 Defoe, Boccaccio and Addison, — most of the 
 older classics passed under his hand. It is 
 the fashion in booksellers' catalogues to vaunt
 
 The Qiiahcr of Art. 195 
 
 the elaborate volumes he did in later life for the 
 banker poet. But it is not in these, nor his 
 more ambitious efforts, that the true lover of 
 Stothard finds his greatest charm. He is the 
 draughtsman of fancy rather than imagination ; 
 and he is moreover better in the mellow copper 
 of his early days than the ' cold steel ' of his de- 
 cline. If you would view your Stothard aright, 
 you must take him as the illustrator of the 
 eighteenth-century novelists, of Richardson, of 
 Fielding, of Sterne, of Goldsmith, where the 
 costume in which he delightedj was not too 
 far removed from his own day, and where the 
 literary note was but seldom pitched among the 
 more tumultuous passions. In this semi-domes- 
 tic atmosphere he moves always easily and 
 gracefully. His conversations and interviews, 
 his promenade and garden and tea-table scenes, 
 his child-life with its pretty waywardnesses, his 
 ladies full of sensibility and in charming caps, 
 his men respectful and gallant in their ruffles 
 and silk stockings, — in all these things he is at 
 home. The bulk of his best work in this way is 
 in ' Harrison's Magazine,' and in the old double- 
 column edition of the essayists, where it is set 
 off for the most part by the quaint and pretty 
 framework which was then regarded as an in- 
 dispensable decoration to plates engraved for
 
 196 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 books. If there be anything else of his which 
 the eclectic (not indiscriminate) collector should 
 secure, it is two of the minor Rogers volumes 
 for which the booksellers care little. One is 
 the ' Pleasures of Memory' of 1802, if only for 
 Heath's excellent engraving of ' Hunt the Slip- 
 per ; ' the other is the same poems of 1810 with 
 Luke Clennell's admirable renderings of the 
 artist's quill-drawings, — renderings to rival 
 which, as almost faultless reproductions of 
 pen-and-ink, we must go right back to Hans 
 Liitzelburger, and Holbein's famous ' Dance of 
 Death.' 
 
 There is usually one thing to be found in 
 Stothard's [designs which many of ^his latter-day 
 successors, who seem to care for little except 
 making an effective ' compo,' are often in the 
 habit of neglecting. He is generally fairly 
 loyal to his text, and honestly endeavours to 
 interpret it pictorially. Take, for example, a 
 sketch at random, — the episode of the acci- 
 dent to Count Galiano's baboon in Sharpe's 
 ' Gil Bias.' You need scarcely look at Le Sage ; 
 the little picture gives the entire story. There, 
 upon the side of the couch, is the Count in an 
 undress, — effeminate, trembling, almost tearful. 
 Beside him is his wounded favourite, turning 
 plaintively to its agitated master, while the
 
 The Quaker of Art. 197 
 
 hastily summoned surgeon, his under lip pro- 
 truded, professionally binds up the injured limb. 
 Around are the servants in various attitudes of 
 sycophantic sympathy. Or take from a mere 
 annual, the 'Forget-me-not' of 1828, this 
 little genre picture out of Sterne. Our old 
 friend Corporal Trim is moralising in the 
 kitchen to the hushed Shandy servants on 
 Master Bobby's death. He has let fall his 
 hat upon the ground, ' as if a heavy lump of 
 clay had been kneaded into the crown of it.' 
 ' Are we not here now,' says Trim, 'and are 
 we not gone ! in a moment.' Holding her 
 apron to her eyes the sympathetic Susannah 
 leans her hand confidingly upon Trim's shoulder ; 
 Jonathan, the coachman, with a mug of ale on 
 his knee, stares with dropped lip at the hat, as 
 if he expected it to do something ; Obadiah 
 wonders at Trim ; the cook pauses as she lifts 
 the lid of a cauldron at the fire, and the ' foolish 
 fat scullion' — the 'foolish fat scullion' who 
 ' had been all autumn struggling with a dropsy ' 
 and is still immortal — looks up enquiringly 
 from the fish-kettle she is scouring on her 
 knees. It is all there ; and Stothard has told 
 us all of it that pencil could tell. 
 
 In the vestibule at Trafalgar Square is a bust 
 of Stothard by Baily, which gives an excellent
 
 iqS EightiCnth Century Vignettes. 
 
 idea of the dignified yet deferential old gentle- 
 man, who said 'Sir' in speaking to you, like 
 Dr. Johnson, and whose latter days were passed 
 as Librarian of the Royal Academy. Another 
 characteristic likeness is the portrait, now in 
 the National Portrait Gallery, which was en- 
 graved by Scriven in 1833 for Arnold's ' Library 
 of the Arts,' and once belonged to Samuel 
 Rogers. The story of Stothard's life has little 
 memorable but the work that filled and satis- 
 fied it. Placid, placable, unpretentious, mod- 
 estly unsolicitous of advancement, labouring 
 assiduously but cheerfully for miserable wage, 
 he seems to have existed at equipoise, neither 
 exalted nor depressed by the extremes of either 
 fortune. He was an affectionate father and a 
 tender husband ; and yet so even-pulsed that 
 on his wedding-day he went as usual to the 
 drawing-school ; and he bore more than one 
 heart-rending bereavement with uncomplaining 
 patience. For nearly forty years he lived con- 
 tentedly in one house (28 Newman Street) with 
 little change beyond an occasional country ex- 
 cursion when he would study butterflies for his 
 fairies' wings, or a long walk in the London 
 streets and suburbs, when he would note at 
 every turn some new gesture or some fresh 
 group for his ever-growing storehouse of im-
 
 The Qiiaker of Art. 199 
 
 agination. It is to this unremitting habit of 
 observation that we owe the extraordinary 
 variety and fecundity of his compositions ; to 
 it also must be traced their occasional executive 
 defects. That no two men will draw from the 
 living model in exactly the same way, is a 
 truism. But the artist, who, neglecting the 
 model almost wholly, draws by preference from 
 his note-book, is like a man who tells a story 
 heard in the past of which he has retained the 
 spirit rather than the details. He will give it 
 the cachet of his personal qualities ; he will 
 reproduce it with unfettered ease and freedom ; 
 but those who afterwards compare it with the 
 original will find to their surprise that the origi- 
 nal was not exactly what they had been led to 
 expect. In a case like the present where the 
 artist's mind is so uniformly pure and innocent, 
 so constitutionally gentle and refined, the gain 
 of individuality is far greater than the loss of 
 finish and academic accuracy. If to Stothard's 
 grace and delicacy we add a certain primness 
 of conception, a certain prudery of line, it is 
 difficult not to recognise the fitness of that 
 happy title which was bestowed upon him by 
 the late James Smetham. He is the ' Quaker 
 of Art.' ,
 
 BEWICK'S TAILPIECES. 
 
 "DETWEEN the years 1767 and 178^, travel- 
 ^ lers going southward to Newcastle along 
 the right bank, of the Tyne must frequently have 
 encountered a springy, well-set lad walking, or 
 oftener running, rapidly in the opposite direc- 
 tion. During the whole of that period, which 
 begins with Thomas Bewick's apprenticeship 
 and closes with the deaths of his father and 
 mother, he never ceased to visit regularly the 
 little farm at Cherryburn where he was born. 
 
 'Dank and foul, dank and foul, 
 By the smoky town in its murky cowl,' 
 
 is the Tyne at Newcastle, where he lived his 
 working life ; but at Ovingham, where he lies 
 buried, and whence you can see the remains of 
 his birthplace, it still flows 
 
 ' clear and cool, 
 ^ By laughing shallow, and dreaming pool,' 
 
 like the river in the ' Water-Babies,' and one 
 can easily conceive with what an eagerness the 
 country-bred engraver's-apprentice must have
 
 Bewick's Tailpieces. 201 
 
 turned, in those weekly escapes from the great, 
 gloomy manufacturing city, to the familiar sights 
 and sounds of nature which had filled his boy- 
 hood with delight. To his love for these things 
 we are indebted for his best work ; it was his 
 intimate acquaintance with them that has kept 
 his memory green ; and, even when he was an 
 old man, they prompted some of the most effec- 
 tive passages of those remarkable recollections 
 which, despite their longueurs et langueurs, 
 present so graphic a picture of his early life. 
 ' I liked my master,' he says ; ' I liked the busi- 
 ness ; but to part from the country, and to leave 
 all its beauties behind me, with which I had 
 been all my life charmed in an extreme degree, 
 — and in a way I cannot describe, — I can 
 only say my heart was like to break.' And 
 then he goes on to show how vivid still, at a 
 distance of sixty years, was that first scene of 
 separation. ' As we passed away, I inwardly 
 bade farewell to the whinny wilds, to Mickley 
 bank, to the Stob-cross hill, to the water-banks, 
 the woods, and to particular trees, and even to 
 the large hollow old elm, which had lain per- 
 haps for centuries past, on the haugh near the 
 ford we were about to pass, and which had 
 sheltered the salmon-fishers, while at work 
 there, from many a bitter blast.'
 
 202 Eigbhrnfb Century Vignettes. 
 
 As an artist on wood, as the reviver of the 
 then disused art of Xylography — a subject 
 hedged round with many delicate and hair- 
 splitting controversies — it is not now necessary 
 to speak of Bewick. Nor need anything be 
 said here of his extraordinary skill — a skill 
 still unrivalled — in delineating those 'beau- 
 tiful and interesting aerial wanderers of the 
 British Isles,' as he styles them in his old- 
 fashioned language, the birds of his native 
 country. In both of these respects, although 
 he must always be accomplished, he may one day 
 be surpassed. But as regards his vignettes or 
 tailpieces (' talepieces ' they might be called, 
 since they always tell their story), it is not 
 likely that a second Bewick will arise. They 
 were imitated in his own day ; they are imitated 
 still — only to prove once more how rare and 
 exceptional is the peculiarly individual combina- 
 tion that produced them. Some of his own 
 pupils, Luke Clennell, for instance, working 
 under his eye and in his atmosphere, have occa- 
 sionally trodden hard upon his heels in land- 
 scape ; others, as Robert Johnson, have caught 
 at times a reflex of his distinctive humour; but, 
 as a rule, a Bewick tailpiece of the best period 
 is a thing per se, unapproachable, inimitable, 
 unique ; and they have contributed far more —
 
 Bewick's Tailpieces. 203 
 
 these labours of his playtime — to found his 
 reputation than might be supposed. If you ask 
 a true Bewickian about Bewick, he will begin 
 by dilating upon the markings of the Bittern, 
 the exquisite downy plumage of the Short-eared 
 Owl, the lustrous spring coat of the Starling, 
 the relative and competitive excellences of the 
 Woodcock and the White Grouse ; but sooner 
 or later he will wander off unconsciously to the 
 close-packed pathos of the microscopic vignette 
 where the cruel cur is tearing at the worried 
 ewe, whose poor little knock-kneed lamb looks 
 on in trembling terror ; or to the patient, mel- 
 ancholy shapes of the black and white horses 
 seen vaguely through the pouring rain in the 
 tailpiece to the Missel Thrush ; or to the ex- 
 cellent jest of the cat stealing the hypocrite's 
 supper while he mumbles his long-winded grace. 
 He will tell you how Charles Kingsley, the 
 brave and manly, loved these things ; how they 
 fascinated the callow imagination of Charlotte 
 Bront6 in her dreary moorland parsonage ; how 
 they stirred the delicate insight of the gentle, 
 pure-souled Leslie ; and how Ruskin (albeit 
 nothing if not critical) has lavished upon them 
 some of the most royal of his epithets.^ 
 
 1 Mr. Ruskin, it may be hinted, expounding the tail- 
 pieces solely by the light of his intuitive faculty, has
 
 204 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 ' No Greek work, is grander than the angry 
 dog,' he says, referring to a little picture of which 
 an early proof, on the old rag-paper held by col- 
 lectors to be the only fitting background for a 
 Bewick, now lies before us. A tramp, with his 
 wallet or poke at his side, his tattered trousers 
 corded at the knees, and his head bound with a 
 handkerchief under his shapeless hat, has sham- 
 bled, in his furtive, sidelong fashion, through 
 the open gates of a park, only to find himself 
 confronted by a watchful and resolute mastiff. 
 He lifts his stick, carved rudely with a bird's 
 head, the minute eye and beak of which are 
 perfectly clear through a magnifying-glass, and 
 holds it mechanically with both hands across his 
 body, just as tramps have done immemorially 
 since the days of the Dutchman Jacob Cats, in 
 whose famous 'Emblems' there is an almost 
 similar scene. The dog, which you may en- 
 tirely cover with a shilling, is magnificent. 
 There is not a line in its body which does not 
 tell. The brindling of the back, the white mark- 
 ing of the neck and chest — to say nothing of 
 the absolute moral superiority of the canine 
 guardian to the cowering interloper — are all 
 conveyed with the strictest economy of stroke. 
 
 sometimes neglected the well-established traditional in- 
 terpretations of Bewick's work.
 
 Bewick's Tailpieces. 205 
 
 Another tailpiece, to which Ruskin gives the 
 adjective ' superb,' shows a man crossing a river, 
 probably the Tyne. The ice has thawed into 
 dark pools on either side, and snow has fallen 
 on what remains. He has strapped his bundle 
 and stick at his back, and, with the foresight 
 taught of necessity in those bridgeless days, is 
 astride upon a long bough, so that if by any 
 chance the ice gives way, or he plumps into 
 some hidden fissure, he may still have hope of 
 safety. From the bows of the moored ferry- 
 boat in the background his dog anxiously 
 watches his progress. When its master is safe 
 across, it will come bounding in his tracks. 
 The desolate stillness of the spot, the bleak, in- 
 hospitable look of the snow-clad landscape, are 
 admirably given. But Bewick is capable of 
 even higher things than these. He is capable 
 of suggesting, in these miniature compositions, 
 moments of the keenest excitement, as, for ex- 
 ample, in the tailpiece to the Baboon in the 
 volume of ' Quadrupeds.' A vicious-looking 
 colt is feeding in a meadow ; a little tottering 
 child of two or three plucks at its long tail. 
 The colt's eye is turned backward ; its heel is 
 ominously raised ; and over the North Country 
 stile in the background a frightened relative 
 comes rushing. The strain of the tiny group is
 
 2o6 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 intense ; but as the little boy was Bewick's 
 brother, who grew up to be a man, we know 
 that no harm was done. Strangely enough, the 
 incident depicted is not without a hitherto un- 
 noticed parallel. Once, when Hartley Cole- 
 ridge was a child, he came home with the mark 
 of a horse hoof impressed unmistakably upon 
 his pinafore. Being questioned, he admitted 
 that he had been pulling hairs out of a horse's 
 tail ; and his father could only conclude that 
 • the animal, with intentional forbearance, had 
 gently pushed him backward. ■* 
 
 In describing the tailpiece to the Baboon, we 
 omitted to mention one minor detail, significant 
 alike of the artist and his mode of work. The 
 presence of a strayed child in a field of flowers 
 is not, perhaps, a matter which calls urgently 
 for comment. But Bewick leaves nothing un- 
 explained. In the shadow of a thicket to the 
 left of the spectator is the negligent nurse who 
 should have watched over her charge, but who, 
 at this precise moment of time, is wholly en- 
 
 ^ Hartley Coleridge grew up to write sympathetically, 
 in his papers entitled ' Ignoramus on the Fine Arts,' of 
 these very tailpieces. In them, he says, Bewick is 'a poet 
 — the silent poet of the waysides and hedges. He unites 
 the accuracy and shrewdness of Crabbe with the homely 
 pathos of Bloomfield.' (Blackwood's Magazine, October, 
 
 1831)
 
 Bewick's Tailpieces. 207 
 
 grossed by the attentions of an admirer whose 
 arm is round her waist. Nor is it in those ac- 
 cessories alone which aid the story that Bevviclc 
 is so careful. His local colouring is scrupu- 
 lously faithful to nature, and, although not al- 
 ways an actual transcript of it, is invariably 
 marked by that accuracy of invention which, 
 as some one said of Defoe, 'lies like truth.' 
 Nothing in his designs is meaningless. If he 
 draws a tree, its kind is always distinguishable ; 
 he tells you the nature of the soil, the time of 
 year, often the direction of the wind. Refer- 
 ring to the * little, exquisitely finished inch-and- 
 a-half vignette ' of the suicide in the ' Birds,' 
 Henry Kingsley (of whom, equally with his 
 brother Charles, it may be said, in the phrase 
 of the latter, // sail son Bewick) notes that the 
 miserable creature has hanged himself ' in the 
 month of June, on an oak bough, stretching 
 over a shallow trout stream, which runs through 
 carboniferous limestone.' Sero sed serio is the 
 motto which Bewick has written under the 
 dilapidated, desperate figure, whose dog, even 
 as the dog of Sikes in ' Oliver Twist,' is run- 
 ning nervously backwards and forwards in its ef- 
 forts to reach its pendent, motionless, strangely 
 silent master. These mottoes and inscriptions, 
 characteristic of the artist, are often most hap-
 
 2o8 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 pily effective. Generally, like the Jiislissima 
 Tellus of the vignette of the ploughman, or the 
 Grata siime of the spring at which Bewick him- 
 self, on his Scotch tour, is drinking from the 
 * flipe ' of his hat, they simply add to the restful 
 or rural beauty of the scene ; but sometimes 
 they supply the needful key to the story. In 
 the tailpiece to the Woodchat, for example, a 
 man lies senseless on the ground. His eyes are 
 closed, and his hat and wig have fallen back- 
 ward. Is he dead, or in a fit, or simply drunk ? 
 He is drunk. On a stone hard by is the date 
 '4 June, 179),' ^^^ ^^ ^^^ obviously been toast- 
 ing the nativity of his Majesty George the 
 Third. 
 
 But clearness of message, truth to nature, 
 and skill in compressed suggestion are not 
 Bewick's sole good qualities. He does not 
 seem to have known much of Hogarth — per- 
 haps the Juvenalian manner of that great graphic 
 satirist was not entirely to his taste — but he is 
 a humorist to some extent in Hogarth's manner, 
 and, after the fashion of his day, he is a moralist. 
 He delights in queer dilemmas and odd em- 
 barrassments. Now it is a miserly fellow who 
 fords a river with his cow to save the bridge 
 toll. The water proves deeper than he ex- 
 pected ; the cow, to whose tail he is clinging.
 
 Bewick's Tailpieces. 209 
 
 rather enjoys it ; her master does not. Now it 
 is an old man at a standstill on an obstinate 
 horse. It is raining heavily, and there is a high 
 wind. He has lost his hat and broken his stick, 
 but he is afraid to get down because he has a 
 basket of excited live fowl on his arm. Occa- 
 sionally the humour is a little grim, after the true 
 North Country fashion. Such is the case in 
 the tailpiece to the Curlew where a blacksmith 
 (or is it a tanner ? ) looks on pitiless at the un- 
 happy dog with a kettle dangling at its tail ; such, 
 again, in the vignette of the mischievous young- 
 ster who leads the blind man into mid-stream. 
 As a moralist, Bewick is never tired of exhibit- 
 ing the lachrimcc rerum, the brevity of life, the 
 emptiness of fame. The staved-in, useless boat ; 
 the ruined and deserted cottage, with the grass 
 growing at the hearthstone ; the ass rubbing 
 itself against the pillar that celebrates the ' glo- 
 rious victory ; ' the churchyard, with its rising 
 moon, and its tombstone legend, ' Good 
 Times, bad Times, and all Times got over,' are 
 illustrations of this side of his genius. But the 
 subject is one which could not be exhausted in 
 many papers, for this little gallery is Bewick's 
 * criticism of life,' and he had seventy-five years' 
 experience. His final effort was a ferryman 
 v/aiting to carry a coffin from Eltringham to 
 
 14
 
 210 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 Ovingham ; and on his death-bed he was medi- 
 tating his favourite work. In a lucid moment 
 of his last wanderings he was asked of what he 
 had been thinking, and he replied, with a faint 
 smile, that he had been devising subjects for 
 some new Tailpieces.
 
 A GERMAN IN ENGLAND. 
 
 "IirHEN, in 1768, the yet undistinguished 
 '' James Bosvvell of Auchinleck gave to 
 the world his ' Journal of a Tour to Corsica,' 
 Gray wrote to Horace Walpole from Pembroke 
 College that the book had strangely pleased and 
 moved him. Then, with the curious contempt 
 for the author which that egregious personage 
 seems to have inspired in so many of his con- 
 temporaries, Gray goes on : ' The pamphlet 
 proves what I have always maintained, that any 
 fool may write a most valuable book by chance, 
 if he will only tell us what he heard and saw 
 with veracity/ This is an utterance which 
 suggests that sometimes even the excellent 
 critic Mr. Gray, like the Sage of Gough Square, 
 * talked laxly.' At all events this particular exam- 
 ple scarcely illustrates his position. There was 
 more than mere veracity in Boswell's method. 
 Conscious or unconscious, his faculty for re- 
 producing his impressions effectively, and his 
 thoroughly individual treatment of his material, 
 are far more nearly akin to genius than folly.
 
 212 Eighteeiilh Century yignettes. 
 
 Nor could his success be said to be a matter 
 of chance, since on two subsequent occasions 
 — in the 'Tour to the Hebrides' and the 
 ' Life of Johnson' — he not only repeated that 
 success, but carried further towards perfection 
 those fortunate characteristics which he had 
 exhibited at first. Walpolc, if we may trust 
 the title-page of the * little lounging miscellany ' 
 known as ' Walpoliana,' reported his friend's 
 dictum with greater moderation. * Mr. Gray the 
 poet has often observed to me, that, if any 
 person were to form a Book of what he had 
 seen and heard himself, it must, in whatever 
 hands, prove a most useful and entertaining 
 one.' As a generalisation, this leaves nothing 
 to be desired. That the unaffected record of 
 ordinary experiences, ' honestly set down,' is 
 seldom without its distinctive charm, needs no 
 demonstration ; and when lapse of time has 
 added its grace of remoteness, the charm is 
 heightened. These considerations must serve 
 as our excuse for recalling a half-forgotten 
 'pamphlet' — as Gray would have styled it — 
 which points the moral of his amended apho- 
 rism far better than Boswell's ' Tour.' 
 
 The narrative of Charles P. Moritz's ' Trav- 
 els, chiefly on Foot, through several Parts of 
 England,' belongs to 1782. It was first pub-
 
 A German in England, 213 
 
 lished at Berlin in 1783, and the earliest English 
 version is dated 179V The second edition 
 (now before us) came two years later, and 
 other issues are occasionally met with in book- 
 sellers' catalogues ; besides which, John Pin- 
 kerton, the compiler of the ' Walpoliana' above 
 mentioned, included the book in the second 
 volume of his ' Collections of Voyages,' etc., and 
 Mavor also reprinted it in vol. ix. of his ' British 
 Tourist.' ^ The English translator was a ' very 
 young lady,' said to be the daughter of an un- 
 identified personage referred to by the author : 
 the editor, who, in a copious preface, testifies, 
 among other things, to the favourable recep- 
 tion of the work in Berlin and Germany gener- 
 ally, remains anonymous. Moritz himself, the 
 writer of the volume, was a young Prussian 
 clergyman, enthusiastic about England and 
 things English, who came among us ' to draw 
 Miltonic air ' (in Gay's phrase), and to read 
 his beloved ' Paradise Lost ' in the very land of 
 its conception. He stayed exactly seven weeks 
 in this country, three of which he spent in 
 London, the rest being occupied by visits to 
 Oxford, Birmingham, the Peak, and elsewhere. 
 "What he sees, and what he admires (and luckily 
 
 1 It is also included, with some omissions, in Cassell's 
 excellent ' National Library.'
 
 214 EighfeeiitJ} Century yignettes. 
 
 for us he admires a great deal), he describes in 
 letters to one Frederic Gedike, a professorial 
 friend at Berlin. 
 
 His first communication, dated 31st May, de- 
 picts his progress up the Thames, which he re- 
 gards as greatly surpassing even ' the charming 
 banks of the Elbe.'' Then he disembarks near 
 Dartford, whence, with two companions, he 
 posts to London, behind a round-hatted postilion 
 ' with a nosegay in his bosom.' He is delighted 
 with the first view he gets of an English soldier, 
 'in his red uniform, his hair cut short and 
 combed back on his forehead, so as to afford a 
 full view of his fine broad manly face.' He 
 is interested also to see two boys engaged in 
 the national pastime of boxing ; and he mar- 
 vels at the huge gateway-like sign-posts of the 
 village inns. Passing over Westminster Bridge, 
 he does not, like Wordsworth, burst into a 
 sonnet, but he is impressed (as who would not 
 be 1) by that unequalled coup d'ceil. ' The pros- 
 pect from this bridge alone,' he says, ' seems to 
 afford one the epitome of a journey, or a voyage 
 in miniature, as containing something of every- 
 thing that most usually occurs on a journey.' 
 Presently, a little awed by the prodigious great- 
 ness and gloom of the houses (which remind 
 him of Leipzig), he takes lodgings in George
 
 A German in England. 215 
 
 Street, Strand, with a tailor's widow, not very 
 far, as he is pleased to discover, from that 
 Adelphi Terrace where once ' lived the re- 
 nowned Garrick/ To his simple tastes his 
 apartments, with their leather-covered chairs, 
 carpeted floors and mahogany tables, have an air 
 of splendour. ' I may do just as I please,' he 
 says, ' and keep my own tea, coffee, bread and 
 butter, for which purpose [and here comes a 
 charming touch of guilelessness !] my landlady 
 has given me a cupboard in my room, which 
 locks up.' With one of his landlady's sons for 
 guide, he makes the tour of St. James's Park 
 (where you may buy milk warm from the cow), 
 and he experiences for the first time ' the ex- 
 quisite pleasure of mixing freely with a con- 
 course of people, who are for the most part 
 well dressed and handsome.' His optimism 
 finds a further gratification in the ' sweet se- 
 curity ' (the expression is not his, but Lamb's) 
 which is afforded ' from the prodigious crowd 
 of carts and coaches,' by the footways on either 
 side of the streets ; and he explains to his 
 ' dearest Gedike ' the mysteries of giving the 
 wall. He thinks London better lighted than 
 Berlin (which implies little short of Cimmerian 
 darkness in that centre of civilisation !), and 
 he waxes sorrowful over the general evidence of
 
 2i6 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 dram-drinking and the sale of spirituous liquors. 
 ' In the late riots [i. e. the Gordon Riots of 
 1780], which even yet are hardly quite sub- 
 sided, and which are still the general topic of 
 conversation, more people have been found 
 dead near empty brandy-casks in the streets, 
 than were killed by the musket-balls of regi- 
 ments, that were called in.' Another thing 
 which strikes him as foreign to his experience is 
 the insensibility of the crowd to funerals. ' The 
 people seem to pay as little attention to such a 
 procession, as if a hay-cart were driving past.' 
 Among more pleasurable novelties, are the Eng- 
 lish custom of sleeping without a feather bed, 
 and the insular institution of ' buttered toast,' 
 which, incredible as it may sound, appears to 
 have been still an unknown luxury in the land 
 of Werther.-^ 
 
 1 Another of his remarks is of special interest in our 
 day : — ' That same influenza, which I left at Berlin, I 
 have had the hard fortune again to find here; and f/ia/ijy 
 people die of W (the italics are ours). Elsewhere he 
 says that the Prussian quack Katterfelto, — Cowper's 
 
 ' Katerfelto, with his hair on end, 
 At his own wonders wondering for his bread,' — 
 
 whose advertisements were then in every paper, at- 
 tributed the epidemic to a minute insect, against which, 
 of course, he professed to protect his patients. Wal- 
 pole's correspondence contains references to the same
 
 A German in England. 217 
 
 On the second Sunday after his arrival he 
 preaches at the German Church on Ludgate 
 Hill for the pastor, the Rev. Mr. Wendeborn, 
 who resides ' in a philosophical, but not un- 
 improving retirement ' at chambers in New 
 Inn, — and he visits the Prussian Ambassador, 
 Count Lucy, with whom, over a ' dish of 
 coflfee ' he has a learned argument upon the 
 pending dispute ' about the tacismiis or sta- 
 cismus.' Then he pays a visit to Vauxhall 
 Gardens. Comparing great things with small, 
 he traces certain superficial resemblances be- 
 tween the Surrey Paradise and the similar 
 resort at Berlin, — resemblances which are en- 
 forced by his speedy discovery of that chiefest 
 glory of the English gardens, Roubillac's statue 
 of Handel. The Gothic orchestra, and the 
 painted ruins at the end of the walks (some- 
 times used by flippant playwrights as similes 
 for beauty in decay) also come in for a share 
 of his admiration ; and he is particularly im- 
 pressed by Hayman's pictures in the Rotunda. 
 ' You here,' he adds, speaking of this last, 
 
 visitation. It was, he writes, 'universal,' but not ' danger- 
 ous or lasting.' ' The strangest part of it,' he tells Mann 
 in Ji'iie, 'is, that, though of very short duration, it has 
 left a weakness or lassitude, of which people find it very 
 difficult to recover.'
 
 2i8 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 ' find the busts of the best English authors, 
 placed all round on the sides. Thus a Briton 
 again meets with his Shakespeare, Locke, Mil- 
 ton, and Dryden in the public places of his 
 amusements ; and there also reveres their 
 memory.' He finds further confirmation of 
 this honoured position of letters in the popu- 
 larity of the native classics as compared with 
 those of Germany, ' which in general are read 
 only by the learned ; or, at most, by the 
 middle class of people. The English national 
 authors are in all hands, and read by all people, 
 of which the innumerable editions they have 
 gone through, are a sufficient proof.' In Ger- 
 many * since Gellert [of the Fables], there has 
 as yet been no poet's name familiar to the 
 people.' But in England even his landlady 
 studies her ' Paradise Lost,' and indeed by her 
 own account won the affections of her husband 
 (now deceased) ' because she read Milton with 
 such proper emphasis.' Another institution that 
 delights him is the second-hand bookseller, at 
 whose movable stall you may buy odd volumes 
 ' so low as a penny ; nay, even sometimes for an 
 half-penny a piece.' Of one of these ' itinerant 
 antiquarians ' he buys the ' Vicar of Wakefield ' 
 in two volumes for sixpence. 
 
 After Vauxhall foU.ows, as a matter of course.
 
 A German in England. 219 
 
 a visit to the equally popular Ranelagh. Like 
 most people, the traveller had expected it to 
 resemble its rival, and until he actually entered 
 the Great Room, was grievously disappointed. 
 ' But,' he continues, ' it is impossible to de- 
 scribe, or indeed to conceive, the effect it had 
 on me, when, coming out of the gloom of the 
 garden, I suddenly entered a round building, 
 illuminated by many hundred lamps, the splen- 
 dour and beauty of which surpassed every thing 
 of the kind I had ever seen before. Every- 
 thing seemed here to be round ; above, there 
 was a gallery, divided into boxes, and in one 
 part of it an organ with a beautiful choir, from 
 which issued both instrumental and vocal music. 
 All around, under this gallery, are handsome 
 painted boxes for those who wish to take re- 
 freshments. The floor was covered with mats ; 
 in the middle of which are four high black 
 pillars, within which are neat fire-places for pre- 
 paring tea, coffee, and punch ; and all around 
 also there are placed tables, set out with all 
 kinds of refreshments. Within [he means 
 ' without '] these four pillars, in a kind of 
 magic rotundo, all the beau-monde of London 
 move perpetually round and round.' This, as 
 may be seen by a glance at Parr's print of 1751 
 after Canaletti, or the better-known plate in
 
 220 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 Stowe's 'Survey' of 1754, is a fairly faithful 
 description of the Ranelagh of Walpole and 
 Chesterfield. After a modest consommation, 
 which, to his astonishment, he finds is covered 
 by the half-crown he paid at the door, he 
 mounts to the upper regions. ' I now went up 
 into the gallery, and seated myself in one of 
 the boxes there : and from thence, becoming, 
 all at once, a grave and moralising spectator, I 
 looked down on the concourse of people who 
 were still moving round and round in the fairy 
 circle ; and then I could easily distinguish sev- 
 eral stars, and other orders of knighthood ; 
 French queues and bags contrasted with plain 
 English heads of hair, or professional wigs ; 
 old age and youth, nobility and commonalty, 
 all passing each other in the motley swarm. 
 An Englishman who joined me, during this my 
 reverie, pointed out to me, on my enquiring, 
 princes, and lords with their dazzling stars ; 
 with which they eclipsed the less brilliant part 
 of the company.' 
 
 His next experiences are of the House of 
 Commons. Here he had like to have been 
 disappointed from his unhappy ignorance of an 
 enlightened native formula. Having made his 
 way to Westminster Hall, a ' very genteel man 
 in black' informed him he must be introduced
 
 A German in England. 221 
 
 by a member, an announcement which caused 
 him to retire ' much chagrined.' Something 
 unintelligible was mumbled behind him about 
 a bottle of wine, but it fell on alien ears. As 
 soon as he returned home, his intelligent land- 
 lady solved the difficulty, sending him back next 
 day with the needful douceur, upon which the 
 * genteel man,' with much venal urbanity, 
 handed him into a select seat in the Strangers' 
 Gallery. The building itself strikes him as 
 rather mean, and not a little resembling a 
 chapel. But the Speaker and the mace ; the 
 members going and coming, some cracking nuts 
 and eating oranges, others in their greatcoats 
 and with boots and spurs ; the cries of ' Hear,' 
 and ' Order,' and ' Question,' speedily absorb 
 him. On his first visit he is fortunate. The 
 debate turns on the reward to Admiral Rodney 
 for his victory over De Grasse at Guadaloupe, 
 and he hears Fox, Burke, and Rigby speak. 
 ' This same celebrated Charles Fox,' he says, 
 ' is a short, fat, and gross man, with a swarthy 
 complexion, and dark ; and in general he is 
 badly dressed. There certainly is something 
 Jewish in his looks. But upon the whole, he 
 is not an ill-made nor an ill-looking man : and 
 there are many strong marks of sagacity and 
 fire in his eyes. . . . Burke is a well-made,
 
 222 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 tall, upright man, but looks elderly and broken. 
 Rigby is excessively corpulent, and has a jolly 
 rubicund face.' 
 
 Pastor Moritz repeated his visits to the Par- 
 liament House, frankly confessing that he pre- 
 ferred this entertainment to most others ; and, 
 indeed, it was a shilling cheaper than the pit 
 of a theatre. When, after his tour in the 
 country, he came back to London, he seems 
 at once to have gravitated to Westminster, for 
 he gives an account of the discussion on the 
 Barre pension which followed the death of 
 Lord Rockingham in July. He heard Fox, 
 with great eloquence, vindicate his resigna- 
 tion; he heard Horace Walpole's friend, 
 General Conway ; he heard Burke, in a pas- 
 sion, insisting upon the respect of the house ; 
 he heard the youthful Pitt, then scarcely look- 
 ing more than one-and-twenty, rivet univer- 
 sal attention. A little earlier he had been 
 privileged to witness that most English of sights, 
 the Westminster election in Covent Garden, 
 with its boisterous _/ina/^. 'When the whole 
 was over, the rampant spirit of liberty, and 
 the wild impatience of a genuine English mob, 
 were exhibited in perfection. In a very few 
 minutes the whole scaffolding, benches, and
 
 A German in England. 223 
 
 chairs, and everything else, was completely 
 destroyed ; and the mat with which it had been 
 covered torn into ten thousand long strips or 
 pieces, or strings ; with which they encircled 
 or enclosed multitudes of people of all ranks. 
 These they hurried along with them, and every- 
 thing else that came in their way, as trophies 
 of joy ; and thus, in the midst of exultation 
 and triumph, they paraded through many of the 
 most populous streets of London.' 
 
 To the British Museum he paid a flying visit 
 of little more than an hour, with a miscellane- 
 ous and ' personally conducted' party, — a visit 
 scarcely favourable to minute impressions. But 
 of the Haymarket Theatre, to which he went 
 twice Covent Garden and Drury Lane being 
 closed as usual for the summer months), he gives 
 a fairly detailed account. Foote's ' Nabob ' 
 was the play on the first night ; that on the 
 second, the ' English Merchant,' adapted by the 
 elder Colman from the ' Ecossaise " of Voltaire. 
 With this latter he was already familiar in its 
 German dress, having seen it at Hambura^. On 
 both occasions the performance wound up with 
 OKeeffe's once-famous ballad farce of ' The 
 Agreeable Surprise.' That excellent burletta 
 singer, John Edwin, took the part of ' Lingo '
 
 224 Eighteenth Centi/ry ytgnettes. 
 
 the schoolmaster (which he had created),^ to 
 the entire satisfaction of Moritz, who thought 
 him, with his ' Amo, amas, I love a lass,' etc. 
 and his musical voice, ' one of the best actors 
 of all that he had seen,' notwithstanding that 
 Jack Palmer (Lamb and Goldsmith's Palmer!) 
 acted the Nabob. But if he was pleased with 
 the acting, he was not equally impressed by 
 the audience. The ceaseless clamour of the 
 upper gallery and the steady hail of missiles 
 were anything but agreeable. ' Often and often 
 whilst I sat here [/. e. in the pit], did a rotten 
 orange, or pieces of the peel of an orange, fly 
 past me, or past some of my neighbours, and 
 once one of them actually hit my hat, without 
 my daring to look round, for fear another might 
 then hit me on my face.' Another passage 
 connected with this part of the entertainment 
 illustrates the old fashion of sending the lackeys 
 to keep their masters' places : ' In the boxes, 
 quite in a corner, sat several servants, who 
 were said to be placed there, to keep the seats 
 for the families they served, till they should 
 arrive ; they seemed to sit remarkably close and 
 
 1 There is a print of Edwin in tliis cliaracter after a pic- 
 ture by Alefounder. He was also a favourite ' Croaker' 
 in tiie ' Good Natur'd Man.'
 
 A German in England. 225 
 
 still, the reason of which, I was told, was their 
 apprehension of being pelted, for, if one of 
 them dares but to look out of the box, he is 
 immediately saluted with a shower of orange 
 peel from the gallery.' 
 
 Over the descriptions of St. Paul's and West- 
 minster Abbey we must pass silently, in order 
 to accompany the tourist on his road to Derby- 
 shire, to the ' natural curiosities ' of which, 
 after some hesitation, he felt himself most at- 
 tracted. Equipped with a road-book, he set 
 out by stage-coach from the White Hart (in 
 the Strand) for Richmond, intending thence to 
 pursue his journey on foot. According to his 
 own account, he must have travelled in just 
 such another vehicle as that depicted in 
 Hogarth's ' Country Inn-Yard,' and have 
 shared the curiosity, so often felt by admirers 
 of that veracious picture, and afterwards amply 
 gratified in his own case, as to the method by 
 which passengers managed to ' fasten them- 
 selves securely on the roof.' Luckily the coach 
 met neither highwayman nor footpad. At Rich- 
 mond he alighted, and is properly enthusiastic, 
 almost dithyrambic, over ' one of the first 
 situations in the world.' He even got up to 
 see the sun rise from Richmond Hill, with the 
 usual fate of such premature adventurers, a 
 
 IS
 
 226 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 clouded sky. Then he set out on foot by 
 Windsor to Oxford. But he speedily discov- 
 ered that, in a horse-riding age, a pedestrian 
 was a person of very inferior respectability ; 
 and though, modelling himself upon the Vicar 
 of Wakefield, he was careful to invite the land- 
 lords to drink with him, he found himself gen- 
 erally treated with pity or contempt, which, 
 when he sat down under a hedge to read Mil- 
 ton, almost changed into a doubt of his sanity. 
 At most of the inns they declined to give him 
 house-room, though, finally, he was allowed to 
 enter ' one of those kitchens which I had so 
 often read of in Fielding's fine novels,' where, 
 just as in those novels, presently arrives a showy 
 post-chaise to set the servile establishment in a 
 bustle, although the occupants called for noth- 
 ing but two pots of beer. After a vain attempt 
 to obtain a night's lodging at Nuneham, he 
 picks up a travelling companion in the shape of 
 a young clergyman, who had been preaching 
 at Dorchester and was returning to Oxford. 
 His new ally takes him to the time-honoured 
 Mitre, where he finds ' a great number of 
 clergymen, all with their gowns and bands on, 
 sitting round a large table, each with his pot of 
 beer before him.' A not very worshipful the- 
 ological discussion ensues, Vv'hich is too long to
 
 A German in England. 227 
 
 quote, and poor Parson Moritz is so well enter- 
 tained that he has a splitting headache next 
 morning. To follow his fortunes farther is im- 
 possible. From Oxford he goes to Stratford- 
 on-Avon, then to Lichfield and Derby, and so 
 to his destination, * the great Cavern near 
 Castleton, in the high Peake of Derbyshire/ 
 which he describes at length. He returns by 
 Nottingham and Leicester, whence, still en- 
 thusiastic, but a little weary of his humiliations 
 as a ' foot-wobbler/ he takes coach to North- 
 Bmpton, mounting to the top, in company with 
 a farmer, a young man and ' a black-a-moor.' 
 This eminence proving [as perilous as it looked, 
 he creeps into the basket, in spite of the warn- 
 ings of the black. ' As long as we went up 
 hill, it was easy and pleasant. And, having had 
 little or no sleep the night before, I was almost 
 asleep among the trunks and the packages ; 
 but how was the case altered when we came 
 to go down hill ; then all the trunks and parcels 
 began, as it were, to dance around me, and 
 everything in the basket seemed to be alive ; 
 and I every moment received from them such 
 violent blows, that I thought my last hour was 
 come. I now found that what the black had 
 told me was no exaggeration ; but all my com- 
 plaints were useless. I was obliged to suffer
 
 228 Eighteenth Ceiitiiiy yignettes. 
 
 this torture nearly an hour, till we came to an- 
 other hill again, when, quite shaken to pieces 
 and sadly bruised, I again crept to the top of 
 the coach, and took possession of my former 
 seat.' No wonder he concludes this part of his 
 experiences with a solemn warning to travellers 
 to take inside places in English post coaches. 
 With his return to London his narrative practi- 
 cally ends. But the rapid sketch here given of 
 it affords no sufficient hint of the abundance of 
 naif detail, of simple enthusiasm and kindly 
 wonderment, which characterise its pages. To 
 complete the impression given, we should be able 
 to suppose the writer resting contentedly from 
 a solitary literary effort, and ending tranquil 
 days as a kind of German Dr. Primrose, telling 
 grandchildren, such as Chodowiecki drew, how 
 he once saw Goldsmith's monument in the Great 
 Abbey by the Thames, and heard Pitt speak in 
 the Parliament House at Westminster. But 
 this is to reckon without the all-recording pages 
 of the ' Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie,' and 
 that harsh resolvent, Fact. For the future of 
 Pastor Moritz was not at all in this wise. Be- 
 sides his letters to his ' dearest Gedike,' he 
 wrote many other works, including a ' psycho- 
 logical romance ' and ' Travels in Italy ; ' be- 
 came a Fine-Art Professor ; married late in
 
 A German in Euglctnd. 229 
 
 life, but not happily ; left no family ; and, 
 last of all, had been dead two years when the 
 translation which has formed the subject of 
 these pages was first introduced to English 
 readers.
 
 OLD VAUXHALL GARDENS. 
 
 ' In gay Vauxhall now saunter beaux and belles, 
 And happier cits resort to Sadler's Wells.' 
 
 T^HUS sings one of Sylvanus Urban's poets, 
 -*■ describing the pleasures of Spring in the 
 London of George the Second. In the epithet 
 'happier' — an epithet probably suggested by 
 the not very profound observation that the middle 
 classes as a rule took their pleasure less sadly 
 than mere persons of quality — there is 'the 
 least little touch of spleen.' But the social dis- 
 tinction implied between the fashionable gardens 
 on the Surrey side of the water and the more 
 popular place of entertainment from which the 
 tired dyer and his melting wife are trudging 
 wearily in Hogarth's ' Evening ' is practically 
 preserved in the advertisements to be found, 
 between May and August, in' the newspapers of 
 the time. Sadler's Wells is specific in its at- 
 tractions, — its burletta or its rope-dancer : 
 Vauxhall, on the contrary, with a disdainful re- 
 ticence, — a superbia qiuvsita meritis befitting 
 the 'genuine and only Jarley,' — shortly sets 
 forth that its ' Evening Entertainments ' will 
 begin on such a date ; that the price of admis-
 
 Old Vauxhall Gardens. 231 
 
 sion is one shilling ; and that the doors will open 
 at five. After this notification it continued, at 
 rare intervals, to repeat that the gardens were at 
 the service of the public ; but made no more defi- 
 nite sign. Obviously the thing to do was to go. 
 With the help of a few old pamphlets and de- 
 scriptions, it is proposed to invite the reader to 
 make that expedition, and to revive, if it may be, 
 some memory of a place, the traces of which are 
 strewn broadcast over the literature of the last 
 century. It is true that Vauxhall Gardens sur- 
 vived to a date much later than this. But it was 
 Vauxhall ' with a difference,' and the Vauxhall 
 here intended is Vauxhall in its prime, between 
 1750 and 1790, — the Vauxhall of Horace Wal- 
 pole and the ' Connoisseur,' — of Beau Tibbs 
 and the pawnbroker's widow, — of Fielding's 
 ' Amelia ' and Fanny Burney's ' Evelina.' 
 
 In 17^0, the customary approach to this 
 earthly paradise was still along that silent high- 
 way of the Thames over which, nearly forty 
 years before. Sir Roger de Coverley and Mr. 
 Spectator had been rowed by the wooden-legged 
 waterman who had fought at La Hogue. There 
 was, indeed, a bridge built or being built at 
 Westminster ; but more than half a century was 
 to elapse before there was another at Vauxhall. 
 This little preliminary boating-party, especially
 
 232 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 to the accompaniment of French horns, must 
 have been one of the delights of the journey, 
 although, if we are to believe a Gallic poet who 
 addressed a copy of verses upon ' Le Vauxhall 
 de Londres' to M. de Fontenelle, ' le trajet du 
 fleuve fatal ' was not without its terrors to 
 would-be visitors. Goldsmith's Mrs. Tibbs, at 
 all events, had ' a natural aversion to the water,' 
 and when Mr. Matthew Bramble went, he went 
 by coach for fear of cold, while the younger and 
 bolder spirits of his party took ship from Rane- 
 lagh in ' a wherry, so light and slender ' that, 
 says poetical Miss Lydia Melford, they looked 
 'like fairies sailing in a nutshell.' They were 
 four in the boat, she nevertheless adds, besides 
 the oarsman ; and if this paper were to be illus- 
 trated by fancy pictures, the artist's attention 
 might be particularly invited to that very fan- 
 tastic fairy, Mrs. Tabitha Bramble, who, we 
 are told, ' with her rumpt gown and petticoat, 
 her scanty curls, her lappet-head, deep triple 
 ruffles and high stays,' was (in Lady Griskin's 
 opinion) ' twenty good years behind the fashion.' 
 What the waterman charged, the fair Lydia does 
 not tell us ; but he probably asked more than 
 usual for so exceptional a cargo. Meanwhile, 
 the old rates shown in the * Court and City 
 Registers' of the time are moderate enough.
 
 Old yaiixhall Gardens. 233 
 
 From Whitehall Stairs, the favourite starting- 
 place, the cost of a pair of oars was sixpence ; 
 from the Temple eightpence. For sculls you 
 paid no more than half. 
 
 When, after passing Lambeth Palace on the 
 left, — and possibly receiving from neighbour- 
 ing boats some of those flowers of rhetoric to 
 which Johnson once so triumphantly retorted, — • 
 you reached Vauxhall Stairs, your experiences 
 were still, in all probability, those of Lydia 
 Melford and her friends. There would be the 
 same crush of wherries and confusion of tongues 
 at the landing-place, and the same crowd of 
 mud-larks and loafers would come rushing into 
 the water to offer their unsolicited (but not 
 gratuitous) services. Once free of these, a few 
 steps would bring you to the unimposing en- 
 trance of the garden, — a gate or wicket in the 
 front of an ordinary-looking house. Here you 
 either exhibited your ticket, or paid your shil- 
 ling ; hurried, not without a throb of anticipa- 
 tion, down a darkened passage; and then, if 
 you were as young and unsophisticated as 
 Fanny Bolton in ' Pendennis,' probably uttered 
 an involuntary exclamation of wonder as, with 
 a sudden sound of muffled music, the many- 
 lighted enclosure burst upon your view. There 
 seems to be no doubt as to the surprise, height-
 
 234 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 eiied of course by the mean approach, and the 
 genuine fascination of this first impression. The 
 tall elms and sycamores, with the coloured 
 lamps braced to the tree-trunks or twinkling 
 through the leaves, the long ranges of alcoves 
 with their inviting supper-tables, the brightly- 
 shining temples and pavilions, the fading vistas 
 and the ever-changing groups of pleasure- 
 seekers, must have combined to form a whole 
 which fully justified the enthusiasm of contem- 
 poraries, even if it did not, in the florid language 
 of the old guide-books, exactly ' furnish the pen 
 of a sublime and poetic genius'with inexhaustible 
 scenes of luxuriant fancy.' 
 
 The general disposition of the gardens was 
 extremely simple and, in Miss Burney's opinion, 
 even ' formal.' Opposite you, as you entered, 
 was the Grand Walk, extending the entire length 
 of the enclosure for a distance of 900 feet, and 
 terminated, at the farther end, by a gilded statue 
 of Aurora, apparently ' tip-toe on the mountain 
 tops.' For this was afterwards substituted ' a 
 grand Gothic obelisk,' at the corners of which 
 were painted a number of slaves chained, and 
 over them the inscription : 
 
 Spectator 
 
 Fastidiosus 
 
 SiBi Molestus
 
 Old Vauxhall Gardens. 235 
 
 Beyond the end of this walk, was a sunk-fence 
 or ha-ha which separated the gardens from the 
 hayfields then adjoining it. Parallel to the 
 Grand Walk ran the South Walk with its trium- 
 phal arches ; next to this again was the covered 
 alley known indifferently as the Druid's or Dark 
 Walk, made rather for ' whispering lovers ' than 
 for ' talking age ; ' and last came a fourth walk 
 open at the top. Other walks, the chief of 
 which was the Cross Walk, traversed the garden 
 from side to side ; and in the quadrangle formed 
 by the Grand Walk, the Cross Walk, the South 
 Walk, and the remaining side of the grounds, 
 was a space of about five acres. This, which 
 lay to the right of the entrance, was known as 
 the Grove. 
 
 The chief feature of the Grove was its open- 
 air orchestra, at first no more than a modest 
 structure bearing the unambitious title of the 
 'rustic music-house.' But about 1758, this 
 made way for a much more ornate building ' in 
 the Gothic manner,' having, like its predecessor, 
 pavilions beneath for the accommodation of 
 supper-parties. Above, it contained a magnifi- 
 cent organ, in front of which, encircling an 
 open space for the singers, were ranged the 
 seats and desks of the musicians. This second 
 orchestra, which was lavishly ornamented with
 
 236 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 niches and carvings, was surmounted by the 
 ostrich plumes of the Prince of Wales. The 
 decorations were modelled in a composition 
 said to be known only to the ' ingenious archi- 
 tect,' a carpenter named Maidman, and the 
 whole was painted ' white and bloom colour.' 
 Immediately behind the orchestra was a build- 
 ing described as * a Turkish tent,' with a carved 
 blue and gold dome supported on eight internal 
 Ionic, and twelve external Doric columns. 
 This was profusely embellished, both within and 
 without, by rich festoons of flowers. A good 
 idea of the orchestra in its renovated form may 
 be gathered from a little plate by Wale, in which 
 the supper-tables are shown laid out in front. 
 These for a long time were covered with red 
 baize, an arrangement that added greatly to the 
 general effect, which was further enhanced by 
 arches of coloured lamps and other contrivances. 
 There is a tinted design by Rowlandson — one 
 indeed of his most popular efforts — depicting a 
 motley group in front of the orchestra during 
 the performance of Mrs. Weichsel, and number- 
 ing among the crowd of listeners the Prince of 
 Wales, Perdita, the Duchess of Devonshire, 
 Lady Duncannon, and other distinguished per- 
 sonages. In a supper-box at the side are John- 
 son, Boswell, Goldsmith, and Mrs. Thrale.
 
 Old yaiixhall Gardens. 237 
 
 The musical performances in the orchestra 
 generally began at six. At first they were 
 wholly instrumental, and confined to ' sonatas 
 and concertos.' In time, however, songs were 
 added to the programme ; and later still these 
 were diversified by catches and glees, which 
 generally came in the middle and at the end of 
 the sixteen pieces to which the entertainment 
 was restricted. Before the introduction of glees 
 and catches, it was the practice to wind up with 
 a duet or trio, accompanied by a chorus. In 
 the old Vauxhall song-books may be studied the 
 species of lyric which was trilled or quavered 
 nightly from the Gothic aviary in the Grove. 
 There is not much variety in these hymns to 
 'Jem of Aberdovey' or ' Kate of Aberdare,' and 
 the prevailing tone is abjectly sentimental. A 
 favourite form was the ' Rondeau,' a much more 
 rudimentary production than the little French 
 plaything now known by that name, and charac- 
 terised chiefly by its immoderate use of the 
 refrain. 
 
 ' Tarry awhile with me, my Love, 
 O tarry awhile with me.' 
 
 This is the artless burden of one of the ' cele- 
 brated Roundelays' sung at Vauxhall by the 
 celebrated Mrs. Bland {blandior Orpheo !) to the
 
 238 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 music of the equally celebrated Mr. James 
 Hook ; and the ' young Shepherd by Love sore 
 opprest, When the Maid of his heart he fondly 
 addrest/ can scarcely be acquitted of needless 
 iteration. But the music was often of a much 
 higher kind, and the beautiful Shakespearean 
 songs of Dr. Augustine Arne, ' When daisies 
 pied,' and ' Where the bee sucks,' or ' Water 
 parted ' from the same composer's Opera of 
 ' Artaxerxes/ alternated occasionally with the 
 more popular ditties which delighted the average 
 listener. Hook (the father of Theodore Hook), 
 who was organist for upward of forty years, and 
 Arne, who often conducted, were the most as- 
 siduous composers. Among the female singers 
 were many vocal celebrities of the last century, 
 — Mrs. Vincent and Miss Brent (of whom Gold- 
 smith writes in ' The Bee ' and ' The Citizen of 
 the World ; ' the above-named Mrs. Weichsel, 
 fair mother of the fairer Mrs. Billington ; Mrs. 
 Mountain ; and for men, Denman, Vernon, the 
 ' great Dignum,' and the famous tenor Beard, 
 whose name, together with that of one of his 
 gentler colleagues, survives in Churchill's hec- 
 toring couplets : 
 
 ' Where tyrants rule, and slaves with joy obey, 
 Let slavish minstrels pour th' enervate lay; 
 To Britons far more noble pleasures spring, 
 In native notes whilst Beard and Vincent sing.'
 
 Old yanxhall Gardens. 
 
 ^39 
 
 The broad-shouldered poet of the ' Rosciad,' 
 and the ' Apology,' it may be added, was himself 
 one of the constant frequenters of the garden, 
 where he was wont to appear, not in clerical 
 black, as in the pit of Drury Lane, but resplen- 
 dent in a blue coat, white silk stockings, silver 
 shoe-buckles, and a gold-laced hat." 
 
 The ' native notes ' of the orchestra, hov/- 
 ever, could only be comfortably enjoyed in fine 
 weather. When it rained, — and the eighteenth 
 century had no immunity in this respect, — the 
 company, like Mr. Bramble, took shelter in the 
 Rotunda. This was a large circular saloon, 
 entered through a colonnade to the left of the 
 Grand Walk. It was freely furnished with 
 busts, mirrors, sconces, and the like. But its 
 chief glory was its roof, known popularly as 
 ' the Umbrella,' and specially constructed for 
 musical purposes. Profusely ornamented with 
 gilding and festoons, it seems to have presented 
 something of the appearance of a large lluted 
 shell. When the ' new music room,' as it was at 
 first called, was erected, the organ and orchestra 
 it contained fronted the entrance through the 
 colonnade in the Grove. By and by these were 
 moved to the left, so as to face a new room 
 which was added to the Rotunda, and ran for- 
 ward into the garden at the back of the colon-
 
 240 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 nade, parallel to the Grove. This room, sup- 
 ported by elaborate columns, and lighted from 
 two cupolas painted with gods and goddesses, 
 must have added materially to the attractions 
 of the Rotunda when entered through it. In 
 course of time, the spaces between the side 
 columns were filled with large pictures repre- 
 senting national subjects, from the brush of 
 Hogarth's friend, the history painter, Frank 
 Hayman. In one, Britannia distributed laurels 
 to Lord Granby and other distinguished officers ; 
 in another, Clive received the homage of the 
 Nabob ; in the third, Neptune rejoiced over 
 Hawke's victory of 17)9- But the best known, 
 and the first finished of the group — it was ex- 
 hibited in 1761 — was the surrender of Montreal 
 to Amherst. Whether copies of these still exist 
 we know not ; but, to judge from its effect 
 upon Pastor Moritz, this last, at all events, 
 must have had its merits.-^ ' Among the paint- 
 ings,' he says, ' one represents the surrender of 
 a besieged city. If you look at this painting 
 with attention for any length of time, it affects 
 you so much that you even shed tears. The 
 expression of the greatest distress, even border- 
 ing on despair, on the part of the besieged, the 
 fearful expectation of the uncertain issue, and 
 ^ See the preceding paper, ' A German in England.'
 
 Old yauxhall Gardens. 241 
 
 what the victor will determine concerning those 
 unfortunate people, may all be read so plainly, 
 and so naturally in the countenances of the in- 
 habitants who are imploring for mercy, from the 
 hoary head to the suckling whom his mother 
 holds up, that you quite forget yourself, and in 
 the end scarcely believe it to be a painting 
 before you.' 
 
 The new room was entered through a Gothic 
 portal or temple, which contained portraits of 
 George the Third and Queen Charlotte, and 
 also formed the starting-point of a semicircular 
 piazza or colonnade that swept round to a similar 
 terminal temple at the end of the arc. Between 
 these two, in the middle of the semicircle, was 
 a higher central structure denominated in old 
 prints the Temple of Comus. This is said, 
 rather vaguely, to have been 'embellished with 
 rays,' and had above it a large star or sun, 
 which, from the description, would seem to 
 have been illuminated at night. Inside, it was 
 painted with a composition ' in the Chinese 
 taste ' representing Vulcan catching Mars and 
 Venus in the historical net, the painter being 
 named (not inappropriately) Risquet. The two 
 pavilions or alcoves immediately adjoining also 
 contained pictures. To the right a lady and 
 gentleman were shown entering Vauxhall ; to 
 
 16
 
 242 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 the left was a presumably emblematic design 
 of ' Friendship on the grass, drinking.' Other 
 boxes fitted for the accommodation of supper- 
 parties, but having no pictorial decorations, ex- 
 tended on either side of the Temple of Comus. 
 Of the terminal temples, one, as already 
 stated, served as the porch to the new room ; 
 its fellow at the farther end ultimately formed 
 the entrance to a famous and popular entertain- 
 ment referred to in a former paper, ^ and known 
 indifferently as the ' Waterworks ' or the ' Cas- 
 cade.' Some of the earlier references to this, 
 or to its earliest form, are more or less con- 
 temptuous, as the ' World,' the ' Connoisseur,' 
 and the ' Gray's Inn Journal ' all speak of it 
 slightingly as the ' Tin Cascade.' But, as time 
 went on, it must have been greatly improved. 
 Here is Moritz's description of it in 1782: 
 ' Lateish in the evening [i. e. about nine o'clock], 
 we were entertained with a sight, that is indeed 
 singularly curious and interesting. In a particu- 
 lar part of the garden, a curtain was drawn up, 
 and by means of some mechanism, of extraordi- 
 nary ingenuity, the eye and the ear are so com- 
 pletely deceived, that it is not easy to persuade 
 one's-self it is a deception ; and that one does 
 not actually see and hear a natural waterfall from 
 1 See ante, — ' The Citizen of the World.'
 
 Old l^u/ixki/l Gardens. 243 
 
 an high rock.' The next sentence adds a char- 
 acteristic detail : ' As every one was flocking 
 to this scene in crowds, there arose all at once, 
 a loud cry of "Take care of your pockets." 
 This informed us, but too clearly, that there were 
 some pick-pockets among the crowd, who had 
 already made some fortunate strokes.' Ten 
 years later still, many other details and effects 
 must have been added, since the descriptions 
 speak of representations of trees blown by the 
 wind, of thatches torn off, of wagons and troops 
 of soldiers crossing bridges, etc. By this time, 
 in fact, it was a monster ^moving picture,' of 
 the kind which Pinchbeck and Fawkes were in 
 the habit of exhibiting at Bartholomew Fair. 
 But in Goldsmith's day it was still in the ele- 
 mentary stage described by Sylvanus Urban in 
 August, 1765, that is to say, it exhibited 'a 
 beautiful landscape in perspective, with a miller's 
 house, a water-mill, and a cascade.' At the 
 proper moment this last presented the exact 
 appearance of water flowing down a declivity, 
 rising up in a foam at the bottom, and then 
 gliding away. 
 
 Beyond the terminal temple which served as 
 the approach to the water-works a sweep of 
 pavilions led back to the Grand Walk. In the 
 last of these was a picture of Gay's ' Black
 
 244 Eighteenth Century yignetles. 
 
 Eyed Susan,' taken apparently at that afTecting 
 moment when, returning to shore from her 
 faithful William, she ' waved her lily hand.' A 
 little higher the Grand Walk was intersected at 
 right angles by the Grand Cross Walk, which, 
 as already stated, traversed the gardens. To 
 the right this was terminated by the Druid's 
 Walk and a statue of Apollo ; to the left, by one 
 of the favourite illusions of the place, a large 
 painting representing ruins and running water. 
 In this part of the garden, as far as it is possible to 
 make it out from the descriptions, extending on 
 the left towards the bottom, were, on one side, 
 a wilderness, on the other rural downs ' with 
 several little eminences . . . after the manner 
 of a Roman camp.' These were ' covered with 
 turf, and pleasingly interspersed with cypress, 
 fir, yew, cedar, and tulip trees.' On one of 
 these heights, the attentive spectator soon dis- 
 covered, like Pastor Moritz, Roubillac's statue 
 (in lead) of Milton ' seated on a rock, in an at- 
 titude listening to soft music,' as described by 
 himself, in his * II Penseroso.' At night this 
 statue was lighted with lamps. From the 
 downs, say the old guide books, you had a 
 good view of Lambeth, Westminster, and St. 
 Paul's. It was in this part of the garden also, 
 from some of the bushes of the Roman camp, that
 
 Old yaiixhall Gardens. 245 
 
 proceeded the subterranean entertainment known 
 as the ' Fairy Music' But this ' lodging on 
 the cold ground,' to quote the old Caroline 
 song, was found prejudicial to the instruments, 
 probably also to the instrumentalists, and it was 
 eventually discontinued. 
 
 If, turning your back upon the picture of 
 ruins and running water, you followed the Cross 
 Walk behind the pavilions which formed the 
 north side of the Grove, you came upon the 
 South Walk, which ran parallel to the Grand 
 Walk. The speciality of this promenade was 
 its ' three splendid triumphal arches.' The 
 vista through these arches was, at first, closed 
 by a pictorial representation of the Ruins of Pal- 
 myra. But the simulated ruins themselves grew 
 ruinous, and finally made way for ' a noble view 
 of architecture designed by Sandby [no doubt 
 Hogarth's opponent of that name], and painted 
 by Mortimer.' At night the same painter's work 
 was exhibited in the form of an illuminated 
 transparency. Where the South Walk ran 
 parallel to the right side of the Grove was a 
 further range of pavilions, part of which formed 
 a semicircle shaded in front by lofty trees. In 
 the centre of this semicircle stood, for some 
 time, the cynosure of Vauxhall, Roubillac's 
 statue of Handel, rather less than life-size, in the
 
 246 Eighteenth i^entiiry l^igiicttes. 
 
 character of Orpheus phiying on his lyre. It 
 was, however, frequently moved ; and its diiTer- 
 ent positions are a source of considerable mys- 
 tification to the student of the old prints of the 
 place. In 1774, according to Smith's ' Nolle- 
 kens,' it had its habitat ' under an inclosed lofty 
 arch, surmounted by a figure [of Saint Cecilia] 
 playing the violoncello, attended by two boys ; 
 and it was then screened from the weather by 
 a curtain, which was drawn up when the visitors 
 arrived.' In Canaletti's view of six years later 
 it is disporting itself in the open, as above de- 
 scribed ; but after the new Gothic orchestra was 
 erected, it seems to have returned to its original 
 retreat, and later still had found an asylum in a 
 new supper-room which was added to the Ro- 
 tunda. Bartolozzi is credited with a fine en- 
 graving of this statue, which was the first work 
 Roubillac carved in England. The statue is 
 also said to have been highly ' approved of by 
 Mr. Pope ; ' and it may be added that the ears, 
 which, as becoming in a composer, were espe- 
 cially beautiful, were modelled from those of 
 the daughter of the patentee of Covent Garden 
 Theatre, — the Miss Rich (afterwards Mrs. 
 Horsley), of whose alleged portrait by Hogarth 
 there is a beautiful modern mezzotint by Samuel 
 Cousins. From the descriptions of critics, the
 
 Old l^auxhall Gardens. 247 
 
 Handel must nevertheless have been a repose- 
 less and somewhat ' tortured' performance. It 
 did not always remain at Vauxhall, and ulti- 
 mately passed into the keeping of the descend- 
 ants of the proprietor of the garden, v^^here we 
 need no further follovv^ its fortunes. 
 
 As already stated, each of the four sides of 
 the quadrangle which enclosed the Grove was 
 occupied by pavilions, alcoves, or booths fitted 
 up for the accommodation of supper-parties. 
 These were of varying importance, since we are 
 expressly informed, in ' The Citizen of the 
 World,' that some were more ' genteel ' than 
 others, and that those in that ' very focus of 
 public view,' affected by Goldsmith's Beau and 
 his lady were appropriated more or less by per- 
 sons of position. The one that fronted the 
 Orchestra was larger than the rest, having been 
 specially built for Frederick, Prince of Wales. 
 It was decorated by Hayman with paintings 
 from ' The Tempest,' ' King Lear,' ' Macbeth,' 
 and ' Henry the Fifth,' and had behind it a 
 handsome drawing-room. 
 
 The mention of the decorations in the Prince 
 of Wales's pavilion recalls one of the historical 
 attractions of the gardens, — the pictures in the 
 other supper-boxes. At night-time each of these 
 was ' enlightened to the front with globes ; ' and
 
 248 Eighteenth Century yignettes. 
 
 a story which has always seemed to us a little 
 indefinite, traces the first suggestion of them to 
 Hogarth. But one of the earliest and most 
 trustworthy of the guides — the ' Sketch of the 
 Spring Gardens, Vauxhall : In a Letter to a 
 Noble Lord' — implies that Hayman was the 
 true originator in this matter. It is certain, 
 however, that Hogarth contributed specimens 
 of his own works to the cause, and that others 
 were copied. According to his first annotator, 
 Nichols, Hayman reproduced the ' Four Times 
 of the Day' for Vauxhall ; and in 1782 two of 
 these, ' Evening ' and ' Night,' were still there, 
 and must have been seen by Moritz ; while in 
 the portico of the Rotunda was an unquestioned 
 picture from Hogarth's own brush, Henry the 
 Eighth and Anne Boleyn, — names which, it was 
 popularly whispered, but thinly veiled the like- 
 nesses of Frederick, Prince of Wales, and his 
 mistress, Anne Vane, not to be confused with the 
 notorious ' Lady of Quality ' of the same sur- 
 name in Smollett's ' Peregrine Pickle.' Another 
 work claimed as Hogarth's when, years after, 
 obscured by dirt and slashed by sandwich 
 knives, the relics of the little gallery came to 
 the hammer, was Harper and Mrs. Clive (then 
 Miss Raftor) as ' Jobson the Cobbler' and his 
 wife ' Nell ' in Coffey's farce of 'The Devil to
 
 Old Vauxhall Gardens. 249 
 
 pay ; or, the Wives Metamorphosed ; ' but this, 
 as well as a nautical genre picture called ' The 
 Wapping Landlady,' is plainly attributed to 
 Hayman in the contemporary prints of Sayer. 
 It is probable also that Hayman had the chief 
 hand in ' Mademoiselle Catherina,' a diminutive 
 lady whose history has escaped the chroniclers, 
 and ' Building Houses with Cards,' although 
 the two children in the latter have certainly a 
 look of his more illustrious contemporary. But, 
 on the whole, it may be concluded that there 
 was little of Hogarth's original work among the 
 sea-fights, popular games (e.g. the time-honoured 
 pastimes of ' Bob Cherry ' and ' Hot Cockles '), 
 and other engaging compositions which delighted 
 the simple soul of the pawnbroker's widow and 
 disgusted the eclectic Mr. Tibbs, full of Grisoni 
 and the grand contorno. Hogarth's picture in 
 the Rotunda portico, coupled with his permis- 
 sion to reproduce his other works, would, how- 
 ever, be ground enough to justify the gold ticket 
 In perpetuani Benejicii niemoriam with which he 
 was presented by the grateful proprietor. This 
 ticket, which admitted ' a coachful,' that is, six 
 persons, was, in 1808, in the possession of Mrs. 
 Hogarth's cousin, Mary Lewis, in whose arms 
 the painter died. It had passed to other hands 
 in 1825, when, with five silver passes, all said to
 
 250 Eighteenth Ceiitiuy l^lgnettes. 
 
 be struck from Hogarth's designs, and including 
 among the rest that of George Carey, the author 
 of many Vauxhall songs, it was engraved for the 
 ' Londina Illustrata ' of Wilkinson. 
 
 The greater part of the literary memories of 
 Vauxhall Gardens cluster round these gaily 
 painted boxes from which, at some moment of 
 their careers, most of the notabilities of the day 
 had taken their view of ' many-coloured life.' 
 Churchill we have already seen there in his 
 habit as he lived ; and Collins is said to have 
 divided his attentions between Vauxhall and the 
 playhouses. Goldsmith and Reynolds, we know, 
 were frequent visitors ; Johnson, according to 
 Dr. Maxwell (and in spite of Rowlandson), was 
 more partial to Ranelagh. It is in VauxhalTs 
 * proud alcoves ' that Fielding places one of the 
 scenes of ' Amelia ; ' prefacing it with a hand- 
 some compliment to the extreme ' elegance ' 
 and ' beauty ' of the place. The account of the 
 rudeness which his heroine and her party suffered 
 from Captain Trent and his companions is 
 scarcely separable from its context, although it 
 conveys a graphic idea, confirmed by other 
 records, of the annoyances to which the more 
 peaceable visitors were occasionally exposed at 
 the hands of the Georgian man-about-town. 
 But there is a pen-and-ink picture in Colman
 
 Old yaiixhait Gardens. 251 
 
 and Thornton's ' Connoisseur ' which, although 
 mainly levelled at the exorbitant prices of pro- 
 visions, may be taken to depict pretty accu- 
 rately the humours of an ordinary middle-class 
 family at Vauxhall. Mr. Rose, a tradesman, 
 his wife, and his two daughters, make the turn 
 of the place, and then sit down to supper. ' Do 
 let us have a chick, papa,' says one of the young 
 ladies. Papa replies that ' they are half a 
 crown apiece, and no bigger than a sparrow.' 
 Thereupon he is very properly rebuked by his 
 wife for his stinginess. ' When one is out upon 
 pleasure,' she says, ' I love to appear like some- 
 body ; and what signifies a iew shillings once 
 and away, when a body is about it r ' So the 
 chick is ordered, and brought. And then en- 
 sues a dialogue between the cit and the waiter, 
 in which the former, from the price of the 
 sample before him, ironically estimates the price 
 of an entire Vauxhall ham to be about ^24, 
 and after being decorated by his wife with a 
 coloured handkerchief by way of bib, proceeds 
 to eat, saying at every mouthful, ' There goes 
 twopence, there goes threepence, there goes 
 a groat.' Beef and cheese-cakes, which are 
 also freely commented upon, follow, and finally 
 Mr. Rose calls for a bottle of port, the size of 
 which does not escape invidious comparison
 
 252 Eighteenth Century yignettes. 
 
 with the more generous vessels of the Jerusalem 
 Coffee House, although the contents have the 
 effect of soothing the critic into the unwonted 
 extravagance of a second pint. Then, after the 
 old lady has observed upon the rudeness of the 
 gentlemen, who stare her out of countenance 
 with their spy-glasses, and the younger girl is 
 speculating whether, if she buys the words of 
 the last new song, she can carry home the tune, 
 arrives the reckoning, which is exactly thirteen 
 shillings and twopence. The last glimpse we 
 get of the little party shows them leaving the 
 gardens in a shower. Madam with her upper 
 petticoat thrown over her head, her daughters 
 with turned-up skirts, and Paterfamilias with his 
 flapped hat tied round with a pocket-handker- 
 chief, his coat buttoned to save his laced waist- 
 coat, and his wife's cardinal spread wrong side 
 out over his shoulders to save his coat. So 
 they sally out to their hack — he lamenting half 
 humorously, half ruefully, that he might have 
 spent his evening at Sot's Hole for fourpence 
 halfpenny, whereas VauxhaJl, with the coach 
 hire, will have cost him 'almost a pound.' In 
 the 'Wits' Magazine ' for 1784 you may see the 
 whole group depicted to the life after the broad, 
 ungentle fashion of the time. 
 That the cost of the refreshments was a fer-
 
 Old l^niixball Gardens. 253 
 
 tile topic of discussion is, to cite but one of 
 many witnesses, confirmed by Miss Burney in 
 ' Evelma ; ' and the popular legend that an ex- 
 pert Vauxhall carver could cover the entire 
 garden (about eleven acres) with slices from one 
 ham, may be accepted as corroborative evi- 
 dence. Old frequenters, indeed, pretended to 
 remember the particular angle at which the 
 plates had to be carried to prevent their leaf-like 
 contents from becoming the plaything of the 
 winds. But the above picture from the * Con- 
 noisseur,' it must be noted, is a picture of the 
 occasional visitor, — the visitor who made but 
 one annual visit, which was the event of the 
 year. The main supporters of the place were 
 the persons of quality, of whom Walpole gossips 
 so delightfully in his correspondence ; and it is 
 to his pages that one must go for a faithful rep- 
 resentation of High Life at Vauxhall. In one 
 of his letters to George Montagu, he describes, 
 with his inimitable air of a fine gentleman on a 
 frolic, a party of pleasure at which he has as- 
 sisted, and which (he considers) exhibits ' the 
 manners of the age.' He tells how he receives 
 a card from Lady Caroline Petersham (the 
 Duke of Grafton's daughter) to go with her to 
 Vauxhall. Thereupon he repairs to her house, 
 and finds ' her and the little Ashe, or the Pollard
 
 254 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 Ashe, as they call her,' having ' just finished 
 their last layer of red, and looking as handsome 
 as crimson can make them.' Others of the 
 company are the Duke of Kingston, Lord 
 March of Thackeray's ' Virginians,' Mr. White- 
 hed, ' a pretty Miss Beauclerc, and a very 
 foolish Miss Sparre.' As they ' sail up the 
 Mail,' they encounter cross-grained Lord Pe- 
 tersham (my lady's husband), 'as sulky as a 
 ghost that nobody will speak to first,' and who 
 declines to accompany his wife and her friends. 
 So they march to their barge, which has ' a boat 
 of French horns attending,' and little Ashe 
 sings. After parading up and down the river, 
 they ' debark ' at Vauxhall, where at the outset 
 they narrowly escape the excitement of a duel. 
 For a certain Mrs. Lloyd of Spring Gardens 
 (afterwards married to Lord Haddington), seeing 
 Miss Beauclerc and her companion following 
 Lady Petersham, says audibly, * Poor girls, I 
 am sorry to see them in such bad company,' a 
 remark which ' the foolish Miss Sparre ' (she is 
 but fifteen), for the fun of seeing a duel, en- 
 deavours to make Lord March resent. But my 
 Lord, who is ' very lively and agreeable,' laughs 
 her out of ' this charming frolic with a great 
 deal of humour.' 'At last,^ says Walpole, — 
 and here we may surrender the story to him
 
 Old JKiinxhiill Giirdens. 255 
 
 entirely, — ' we assembled in our booth, Lady 
 Caroline in the front, with the vizor of her hat 
 erect, and looking gloriously oily and hand- 
 some. She had fetched my brother Oxford 
 from the next box, where he was enjoying him- 
 self with his petite partie, to help us to mince 
 chickens. We minced seven chickens into a 
 china dish, which Lady Caroline stewed over a 
 lamp, with three pats of butter and a flagon of 
 water, stirring, and rattling, and laughing, and 
 we every minute expecting to have the dish fly 
 about our ears. She had brought Betty [Neale] 
 the fruit girl, with hampers of strawberries and 
 cherries from Rogers's, and made her wait upon 
 us, and then made her sup by us at a little table. 
 The conversation was no less lively than the 
 whole transaction. There was a Mr. O'Brien 
 arrived from Ireland, who would get the 
 Duchess of Manchester from Mr. Hussey if 
 she were still at liberty. I took up the biggest 
 hautboy in the dish, and said to Lady Caroline, 
 "Madam, Miss Ashe desires you would eat 
 this O'Brien strawberry ; " she replied immedi- 
 ately, " I won't, you hussey." You may im- 
 agine the laugh this reply occasioned. After 
 the tempest was a little calmed, the Pollard 
 said, " Now, how anybody would spoil this 
 story that was to repeat it and say, I won't, you
 
 256 Eighteenth Century yignettes. 
 
 jade I " In short, the whole air of our party 
 was sufficient, as you will easily imagine, to 
 take up the whole attention of the garden ; so 
 much so, that from eleven o'clock till half an 
 hour after one we had the whole concourse 
 round our booth ; at last they came into the 
 little gardens of each booth on the sides of ours, 
 till Harry Vane took up a bumper and was pro- 
 ceeding to treat them with still greater freedom. 
 It was three o'clock before we got home.' 
 
 Whether this ' frisk ' in good society included 
 the passage of the Dark Walk, their chronicler 
 has not related. But the Dark Walk, also 
 known as the ' Druid's,' or ' Lover's Walk,' is 
 almost the only feature of the gardens which 
 now needs to be described. Its position has 
 already been roughly indicated. It was formed 
 by tall overarching trees meeting at the top, in 
 which, in the place's palmiest days, blackbirds, 
 thrushes, and nightingales made their nests. A 
 visit to this selva oscura was the prime ambition 
 of the more inquiring visitor to Vauxhall, either 
 upon the simple ground put forward by the 
 elder Miss Rose in the ' Connoisseur ' that it was 
 ' solentar/,' or upon the more specious excuse, 
 advanced by the generality, that the music of the 
 Orchestra sounded better through the thick foli- 
 age of the trees. But the pretexts for seeking
 
 Old l^auxhall Gardens. 257 
 
 these attractive shades were probably as mani- 
 fold as the conventional reasons for drinking, the 
 last of which was ' any other reason.' In Miss 
 Burney's ' Evelina/ that delightful heroine is 
 decoyed into the Dark Walk by her vulgar 
 friends the Branghtons. There she is insulted 
 by a gang of rakes, and is rescued by Sir Cle- 
 ment Willoughby, who, apparently under the 
 influence of the genius loci, proceeds, after cer- 
 tain impertinences, to make her a spasmodic 
 declaration, plentifully punctuated with dashes 
 in this wise, — ' O Miss Anville, — loveliest of 
 women, — forgive me ; — my — I beseech you 
 forgive me ; — if I have offended — if I have 
 hurt you, — I could kill myself at the thought ! ' 
 etc. Thus this ' most impetuous of men ; ' and 
 thus did they make love in Vauxhall's ' green 
 retreats ' ' when George was king.' Nor love 
 alone, apparently ; for if the old descriptions are 
 strictly accurate in representing some of its fre- 
 quenters as yelling ' in sounds fully as terrific as 
 the imagined horrors of Cavalcanti's blood- 
 hounds,' there must have been a considerable 
 amount of more than questionable horse-play 
 besides ; and the licensing magistrates who, in 
 1763, bound the proprietors to do away with 
 the ' dark walks,' and to appoint proper watch- 
 men, were no doubt well advised. 
 
 17
 
 258 Eighteenth Century yigiiettes. 
 
 From the use of the plural ' walks," it may 
 be that the prohibition also included the numer- 
 ous wildernesses which occupied the north of 
 the enclosure, — wildernesses so intricate that, 
 even in the prehistoric era of the place, the 
 most experienced mothers — to use the ex- 
 pressive words of Tom Brown ' of facetious 
 memory' — often 'lost themselves in look- 
 ing for their daughters.' And this brings us 
 to the final item in our catalogue, the walk, 
 which bounded the garden on the north, closing 
 and terminating the four great promenades that 
 traversed it from top to bottom. This, shaded 
 like the rest by trees, had at each end one of 
 the favourite ' scenes.' That to the east was 
 a view in a Chinese garden ; that to the west, 
 a building with a scaffold and a ladder be- 
 fore it, which at a distance ' often deceived 
 the eye very agreeably.' History has ne- 
 glected the artist of these ingenious perform- 
 ances. But Hayman had begun with stage 
 decoration, and may perhaps have executed 
 them. Or they may have been from the brush 
 of George Lambert, the well-known scene- 
 painter of Covent Garden, who, like Hayman, 
 was a friend of Hogarth, and is reported to 
 have borne his part in the beautifying of the 
 place.
 
 Old yaiixhall Gardens. 259 
 
 111 the foregoing sketch we have endeav- 
 oured to revive some specific idea of the aspect 
 of a forgotten place of amusement, rather than 
 to produce that indefinite patchwork of anec- 
 dote which, with a judicious sprinkling of shoe- 
 buckles and periwigs, of hoops and gipsy-hats, 
 so often does duty for a ' picture of the time.' 
 But a last word must certainly be devoted to 
 the proprietor and presiding spirit, Jonathan 
 Tyers. Little seems to be known of him be- 
 fore he acquired the site of the old Spring 
 Garden of the 'Spectator' in March, 1728, 
 from one Elizabeth Masters, of London, upon a 
 thirty years' lease. Even then it must have had 
 many of the appurtenances of a public resort, 
 for the deed enumerates a Ham-room and a 
 Milk-house, and there were already primitive 
 alcoves in the shape of tiled arbours entitled 
 Royal George, Ship, Eagle, Phoenix, Checker, 
 and the like. Nay, there were already lofty 
 trees which dated from the seventeenth century 
 and the days of an earlier possessor, the Sir 
 Samuel Morland of Pepys's Diary. The rent 
 which Tyers paid was £2^0. He added music ; 
 then by degrees the orchestra and organ, the 
 statues, the pictures, and the other adornments. 
 He opened the garden in June, ijp, with illu- 
 minations and a Ridolto AV Fresco^ at which
 
 26o Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 Frederick, Prince of Wales, was present ; and 
 the company, numbering four hundred, wore 
 masks, dominoes, and lawyers' gowns. Order 
 was kept by a detachment of footguards, and 
 the admission ticket was designed by Jack 
 Laguerre, son of the Louis whose muscular 
 saints sprawl, in Pope's verse, upon the ceil- 
 ings of * Timon's Villa.' Payment was subse- 
 quently made at the gate; but in 1738, appar- 
 ently with a view to render the attendance 
 somewhat more select, a thousand silver season 
 tickets were issued. In i7')2 Tyers purchased 
 part of the estate out and out, and a few years 
 afterwards acquired the remainder. To the last 
 day of his life he retained the keenest interest 
 in the place, and only a few hours before his 
 death caused himself to be carried into the 
 gardens to take a parting look at them. At his 
 country-seat of Denbighs near Dorking in 
 Surrey, he had another private garden, in the 
 embellishment of which he must have found an 
 outlet for some otherwise obstructed eccentri- 
 city, since it contained a representation of the 
 Valley of the Shadow of Death, where, in an 
 alcove, had been depicted, in two compartments, 
 the ends of the infidel and the Christian. Ac- 
 cording to the ' Gentleman's Magazine,' Tyers 
 passed through the Valley himself in July, 1767.
 
 Old l^auxhall Gardens. 261 
 
 His descendants long continued to manage 
 Vauxhall Gardens. Perhaps the most notable 
 of these was his eldest son Tom, the friend and 
 biographer of Johnson, and the ' Tom Restless ' 
 of the ' Idler.' 
 
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