[270] The Rev. L. Dutens, in his “Inquiry into the Origin of the Discoveries attributed to the Moderns.”
For the Table Book.
It is feminine; a lower animal of the tribe Inquisitoria; and with all others of its species indescribably restless. It is commonly found with the bosom slatternly arrayed, leaning with folded arms out of a “two-pair front,” looking cunningly and maliciously over the side of a garden-pot—like a starling through the water-hole of its cage over the water-pot—with its head always on the bob, like that of the Chinese figure in grocers’ shops. Its features are lean and sharp as the bows of a Folkstone cutter, or the face of a Port Royal pig; its nose, like a racoon’s, is continually on the twist; the ears are ever pricking up for vague rumours and calumnious reports, and the eyes roll from side to side, like those of the image in the wooden clock at Kaltenbach’s in the Borough; the tongue is snake-like, is perpetually in motion—pretty yet pert—and venomous. Its habit is bilious, its temper splenetic. It is a sure extractor of all secrets, a thorough heart-wormer, a living diving-bell, a walking corkscrew. It generally “appears as well as its neighbours,” but it is fastidious, and loves to be different. Upon its legs, which are of the sparrow order, it looks a merry, light-hearted, artless, and good-natured little thing; but it is the green-bag-bearer of the parish, and its food is scandal. Hear it talk on a first meeting with a regular listener! Its voice is at first soft as the low piping of the nightingale, but gradually becomes like the loud hissing of an adder, and ends hoarse, and ominous of evil as that of the raven. It is an untiring spreader of idle and false reports, to the injury of many a good character. It is only innoxious to reasonable beings, for they never listen to it, or when obliged to do so, are no more amused by its sayings than by the singing of a tea-kettle; but these being few in number, compared with the lovers of small talk, to whom its company is always acceptable, it is a dangerous animal,
Look at it sitting in its habitation!—every sound from the street draws it to the light-hole[271]—every thing from a bonnet to a patten furnishes it with matter for gossip—every opening of a neighbour’s door brings its long neck into the street. Every misfortune that assails others is to it a pleasure—every death a new life to itself—and the failings of the departed are eternal themes for its envenomed slander. It is at the heels of every thing that stirs, and the sooner it is trodden upon the better. But people tolerate and like it, because it is “so amusing,” and “so clever;” and yet each of its listeners is traduced in turn. There is no dealing with it, but by giving it rope enough; it will then hang itself, which, by the by, will be such an end as the creature merits.
S. R. J.
[271] Window.
When the old duke of York (brother to George III.) went on board lord Howe’s ship, as a midshipman, the different captains in the fleet attended, to pay him their respects, on the quarter-deck. He seemed not to know what it was to be subordinate, nor to feel the necessity of moderation in the display of superiority resulting from his high rank, and he received the officers with some hauteur. This a sailor on the forecastle observed; and after expressing astonishment at the duke’s keeping his hat on, he told one of his messmates, that “the thing was not in its sphere;” adding, “it is no wonder he does not know manners, as he was never at sea before.”
It is alleged in a memoir of the Life of Lord Eldon, that, when plain John Scott, his zeal for knowledge of the law was so great, that he abandoned the pursuit of almost every other species of information, and never sacrificed a moment from his legal studies, beyond what was absolutely necessary to his health. His brother William, (afterwards lord Stowell,) with a view of engaging him to meet Dr. Johnson and other men of distinguished literary talent, would sometimes say, “Where do you dine to-day?” To this question John’s uniform answer was, “I dine on Coke to-day.” William would then demur, with a “Nay, but come to my chambers—you’ll see the doctor;” whereupon John argued, concerning the doctor, “He can’t draw a bill;” and so the friendly suit concluded.
It is further affirmed, on the best authority, that it was an amusement in the early legal life of John Scott to turn pieces of poetry into the form of legal instruments; and that he actually converted the ballad of “Chevy Chace” into the shape and style of a bill in chancery.
A professional gentleman, who, during his pupilage, was recommended by a distinguished barrister to commit the following verses to memory, duly availed himself of that advantage, and obligingly communicates them.
For the Table Book.
Canon I.
Cannon II.
Canon III.
Canon IV.
Canon V.
Canon VI.
Canon VII.
In the “Thuana” we read of a whimsical, passionate, old judge, who was sent into Gascony with power to examine into the abuses which had crept into the administration of justice in that part of France. Arriving late at Port St. Mary, he asked “how near he was to the city of Agen?” He was answered, “two leagues.” He then decided to proceed that evening, although he was informed that the leagues were long, and the roads very bad. In consequence of his obstinacy the judge was bemired, benighted, and almost shaken to pieces. He reached Agen, however, by midnight, with tired horses and harassed spirits, and went to bed in an ill humour. The next morn he summoned the court of justice to meet, and after having opened his commission in due form, his first decree was, “That for the future the distance from Agen to Port St. Mary should be reckoned six leagues.” This decree he ordered to be registered in the records of the province, before he would proceed to any other business.
Hogarth, in his “Analysis of Beauty,” mentions the circumstance of a dancing-master’s observing, that though the “minuet” had been the study of his whole life, he could only say with Socrates, that he “knew nothing.” Hogarth added of himself, that he was happy in being a painter, because some bounds might be set to the study of his art.
The Bishop’s Well, Bromley, Kent.
There is a way from Bromley market-place across meadow grounds to the palace of the bishop of Rochester. This edifice, about a quarter of a mile from the town, is a plain, homely mansion, erected in 1783 by bishop Thomas, on the site of the ancient palace built there by bishop Gilbert Glanville, lord chief justice of England, after he succeeded to the see in 1185, instead of a still more ancient palace, founded by the prelate Gundalph, an eminent architect, bishop of Rochester in the reign of William the Conqueror. At a few hundred yards eastward of the palace is the “Bishop’s Well;” which, while I minutely examined it, Mr. Williams sketched; and he has since engraved it, as the reader sees.
The water of the “Bishop’s Well” is a chalybeate, honoured by local reputation with surprising properties; but, in reality, it is of the same nature as the mineral water of Tunbridge Wells. It rises so slowly, as to yield scarcely a gallon in a quarter of an hour, and is retained in a small well about sixteen inches in diameter. To the stone work of this little well a wooden cover is attached by a chain. When the fluid attains a certain height, its surplus trickles through an orifice at the side to increase the water of a moat, or small lake, which borders the grounds of the palace, and is overhung on each side with the branches of luxuriant shrubs and trees. Above the well there is a roof of thatch, supported by six pillars, in the manner of a rustic temple, heightening the picturesque appearance of the scene, so as to justify its representation by the pencil. On visiting it, with Mr. W., this pleasant seclusion, consecrated by former episcopal care, and the fond recollections of ancient adjacent residents, was passing to ruin: we disturbed some boys in their work of pulling reeds from the thatched roof. A recent vacancy of the see seemed to have extended to the superintendence of the well; the seeds of neglect had germinated, and were springing up. I have revisited the spot, and seen
The “Bishop’s Well” is said to have been confounded with a spring of more ancient note, called St. Blase’s Well. Of this latter well topographers[272] say, “It anciently had an oratory annexed to it, dedicated to St. Blasius, which was much frequented at Whitsuntide, because Lucas, who was legate for Sixtus the Fourth, here in England, granted an indulgent remission of forty days; enjoined penance to all those who should visit this chapel, and offer up their orizons there in the three holidays of Pentecost. This oratory falling to ruin at the Reformation, the well too became disused, and the site of both in process of time was forgotten, and continued so till the well was discovered again in the year 1754, by means of a yellow ochrey sediment remaining in the tract of a small current leading from the spring to the corner of the moat, with the waters of which it used to mix. In digging round the well there were found the remains of the old steps leading down to it, made of oak plank, which appeared to have lain under ground many years. The water of this spring is chalybeate, and rises at the foot of a declivity, at a small distance eastward from the bishop’s palace. The soil through which it passes is gravel, and it issues immediately from a bed of pure white sand. The course of the spring seems to be about north-north-east and south-south-west from its aperture; its opening is towards the latter; and as Shooter’s Hill bears about north-north-east from its aperture, it probably comes from thence. The water being thus found to be a good chalybeate, was, by the bishop’s orders, immediately secured from the intermixture of other waters, and enclosed.”
Wilson, a recent writer, affirms, that “the old well, dedicated to St. Blase, is about two hundred yards north-west of the mineral spring, in a field near the road, with eight oaks in a cluster, on an elevated spot of ground adjoining.” This, however, seems wholly conjectural, and wholly nugatory; for, if “the old steps made of oak-plank, which appeared to have lain under ground many years,” led to the “Bishop’s Well,” it may reasonably be presumed that they were the “old steps” to St. Blase’s Well, and that the water of the ancient oratory now flows within the humble edifice represented by the engraving.
*
[272] Philipot, and Hasted.
To the Editor.
Dear Sir,—Somebody has fairly play’d a hoax on you (I suspect that pleasant rogue M—x—n[273]) in sending you the Sonnet in my name, inserted in your last Number. True it is, that I must own to the Verses being mine, but not written on the occasion there pretended, for I have not yet had the pleasure of seeing the Lady in the part of Emmeline; and I have understood, that the force of her acting in it is rather in the expression of new-born sight, than of the previous want of it.—The lines were really written upon her performance in the “Blind Boy,” and appeared in the Morning Chronicle some years back. I suppose, our facetious friend thought that they would serve again, like an old coat new turned.
Yours (and his nevertheless)
C. Lamb.
[273] It was.—Ed.
[From “Doctor Dodypol,” a Comedy, Author unknown, 1600.]
Earl Lassenburgh, as a Painter, painting his Mistress al grotesco.
A Cameo described.
Earl Lassenburgh, for some distaste, flees Lucilia, who follows him.
An Enchanter, who is enamoured of Lucilia, charms the Earl to a dead sleep, and Lucilia to a forgetfulness of her past love.
C. L.
[274] In charmed visions.
There are memoirs of this remarkable man in a rare quarto tract, entitled “The Way to be Rich, according to the practice of the great Audley, who began with two hundred pounds in the year 1605, and died worth four hundred thousand.” He died on the 15th of November, 1662, the year wherein the tract was printed.
Hugh Audley was a lawyer, and a great practical philosopher, who concentrated his vigorous faculties in the science of the relative value of money. He flourished through the reigns of James I., Charles I., and held a lucrative office in the “court of wards,” till that singular court was abolished at the time of the restoration. In his own times he was called “The great Audley,” an epithet so often abused, and here applied to the creation of enormous wealth. But there are minds of great capacity, concealed by the nature of their pursuits; and the wealth of Audley may be considered as the cloudy medium through which a bright genius shone, of which, had it been thrown into a nobler sphere of action, the “greatness” would have been less ambiguous.
Audley, as mentioned in the title of his memoir, began with two hundred pounds, and lived to view his mortgages, his statutes, and his judgments so numerous, that it was observed, his papers would have made a good map of England. A contemporary dramatist, who copied from life, has opened the chamber of such an usurer,—perhaps of our Audley—
Massinger’s City Madam.
This genius of thirty per cent. first had proved the decided vigour of his mind, by his enthusiastic devotion to his law-studies: deprived of the leisure for study through his busy day, he stole the hours from his late nights and his early mornings; and without the means to procure a law-library, he invented a method to possess one without the cost; as fast as he learned, he taught; and by publishing some useful tracts on temporary occasions, he was enabled to purchase a library. He appears never to have read a book without its furnishing him with some new practical design, and he probably studied too much for his own particular advantage. Such devoted studies was the way to become a lord-chancellor; but the science of the law was here subordinate to that of a money-trader.
When yet but a clerk to the clerk in the Counter, frequent opportunities occurred which Audley knew how to improve. He became a money-trader as he had become a law-writer, and the fears and follies of mankind were to furnish him with a trading-capital. The fertility of his genius appeared in expedients and in quick contrivances. He was sure to be the friend of all men falling out. He took a deep concern in the affairs of his master’s clients, and often much more than they were aware of. No man so ready at procuring bail or compounding debts. This was a considerable traffic then, as now. They hired themselves out for bail, swore what was required, and contrived to give false addresses. It seems they dressed themselves out for the occasion: a great seal-ring flamed on the finger, which, however, was pure copper gilt, and they often assumed the name of some person of good credit. Savings, and small presents for gratuitous opinions, often afterwards discovered to be very fallacious ones, enabled him to purchase annuities of easy landholders, with their treble amount secured on their estates. The improvident owners, or the careless heirs, were soon entangled in the usurer’s nets; and, after the receipt of a few years, the annuity, by some latent quibble, or some irregularity in the payments, usually ended in Audley’s obtaining the treble forfeiture. He could at all times out-knave a knave. One of these incidents has been preserved. A draper, of no honest reputation, being arrested by a merchant for a debt of 200l. Audley bought the debt at 40l., for which the draper immediately offered him 50l. But Audley would not consent, unless the draper indulged a sudden whim of his own: this was a formal contract, that the draper should pay within twenty years, upon twenty certain days, a penny doubled. A knave, in haste to sign, is no calculator; and, as the contemporary dramatist describes one of the arts of those citizens, one part of whose business was
the draper eagerly compounded. He afterwards “grew rich.” Audley, silently watching his victim, within two years, claims his doubled pennies, every month during twenty months. The pennies had now grown up to pounds. The knave perceived the trick, and preferred paying the forfeiture of his bond for 500l., rather than to receive the visitation of all the little generation of compound interest in the last descendant of 2000l., which would have closed with the draper’s shop. The inventive genius of Audley might have illustrated that popular tract of his own times, Peacham’s “Worth of a Penny;” a gentleman who, having scarcely one left, consoled himself by detailing the numerous comforts of life it might procure in the days of Charles II.
Such petty enterprises at length assumed a deeper cast of interest. He formed temporary partnerships with the stewards of country gentlemen. They underlet estates which they had to manage; and, anticipating the owner’s necessities, the estates in due time became cheap purchases for Audley and the stewards. He usually contrived to make the wood pay for the land, which he called “making the feathers pay for the goose.” He had, however, such a tenderness of conscience for his victim, that, having plucked the live feathers before he sent the unfledged goose on the common, he would bestow a gratuitous lecture in his own science—teaching the art of making them grow again, by showing how to raise the remaining rents. Audley thus made the tenant furnish at once the means to satisfy his own rapacity, and his employer’s necessities. His avarice was not working by a blind, but on an enlightened principle; for he was only enabling the landlord to obtain what the tenant, with due industry, could afford to give. Adam Smith might have delivered himself in the language of old Audley, so just was his standard of the value of rents. “Under an easy landlord,” said Audley, “a tenant seldom thrives; contenting himself to make the just measure of his rents, and not labouring for any surplusage of estate. Under a hard one, the tenant revenges himself upon the land, and runs away with the rent. I would raise my rents to the present price of all commodities: for if we should let our lands, as other men have done before us, now other wares daily go on in price, we should fall backward in our estates.” These axioms of political economy were discoveries in his day.
Audley knew mankind practically, and struck into their humours with the versatility of genius: oracularly deep with the grave, he only stung the lighter mind. When a lord, borrowing money, complained to Audley of his exactions, his lordship exclaimed, “What, do you not intend to use a conscience?” “Yes, I intend hereafter to use it. We monied people must balance accounts: if you do not pay me, you cheat me; but, if you do, then I cheat your lordship.” Audley’s monied conscience balanced the risk of his lordship’s honour, against the probability of his own rapacious profits. When he resided in the Temple among those “pullets without feathers,” as an old writer describes the brood, the good man would pule out paternal homilies on improvident youth, grieving that they, under pretence of “learning the law, only learnt to be lawless;” and “never knew by their own studies the process of an execution, till it was served on themselves.” Nor could he fail in his prophecy; for at the moment that the stoic was enduring their ridicule, his agents were supplying them with the certain means of verifying it; for, as it is quaintly said, he had his decoying as well as his decaying gentlemen.
Audley was a philosophical usurer: he never pressed hard for his debts; like the fowler, he never shook his nets lest he might startle, satisfied to have them, without appearing to hold them. With great fondness he compared his “bonds to infants, which battle best by sleeping.” To battle is to be nourished, a term still retained at the university of Oxford. His familiar companions were all subordinate actors in the great piece he was performing; he too had his part in the scene. When not taken by surprise, on his table usually lay opened a great Bible, with bishop Andrews’s folio sermons, which often gave him an opportunity of railing at the covetousness of the clergy! declaring their religion was “a mere preach;” and that “the time would never be well till we had queen Elizabeth’s Protestants again in fashion.” He was aware of all the evils arising out of a population beyond the means of subsistence. He dreaded an inundation of men, and considered marriage, with a modern political economist, as very dangerous; bitterly censuring the clergy, whose children, he said, never thrived, and whose widows were left destitute. An apostolical life, according to Audley, required only books, meat, and drink, to be had for fifty pounds a year! Celibacy, voluntary poverty, and all the mortifications of a primitive Christian, were the virtues practised by this puritan among his money bags.
Yet Audley’s was that worldly wisdom which derives all its strength from the weaknesses of mankind. Every thing was to be obtained by stratagem, and it was his maxim, that to grasp our object the faster, we must go a little round about it. His life is said to have been one of intricacies and mysteries, using indirect means in all things; but if he walked in a labyrinth, it was to bewilder others; for the clue was still in his own hand; all he sought was that his designs should not be discovered by his actions. His word, we are told, was his bond; his hour was punctual; and his opinions were compressed and weighty: but if he was true to his bond-word, it was only a part of the system to give facility to the carrying on of his trade, for he was not strict to his honour; the pride of victory, as well as the passion for acquisition, combined in the character of Audley, as in more tremendous conquerors. His partners dreaded the effects of his law-library, and usually relinquished a claim rather than stand a suit against a latent quibble. When one menaced him by showing some money-bags, which he had resolved to empty in law against him, Audley, then in office in the court of wards, with a sarcastic grin, asked, “Whether the bags had any bottom?” “Ay!” replied the exulting possessor, striking them. “In that case I care not,” retorted the cynical officer of the court of wards; “for in this court I have a constant spring; and I cannot spend in other courts more than I gain in this.” He had at once the meanness which would evade the law, and the spirit which could resist it.
The genius of Audley had crept out of the purlieus of Guildhall, and entered the Temple; and having often sauntered at “Powles” down the great promenade which was reserved for “Duke Humphrey and his guests,” he would turn into that part called “The Usurer’s Alley,” to talk with “Thirty in the hundred,” and at length was enabled to purchase his office at that remarkable institution, the court of wards. The entire fortunes of those whom we now call wards in chancery were in the hands, and often submitted to the arts or the tyranny of the officers of this court.
When Audley was asked the value of this new office, he replied, that “It might be worth some thousands of pounds to him who after his death would instantly go to heaven; twice as much to him who would go to purgatory; and nobody knows what to him who would adventure to go to hell.” Such was the pious casuistry of a witty usurer. Whether he undertook this last adventure, for his four hundred thousand pounds, how can a sceptical biographer decide! Audley seems ever to have been weak, when temptation was strong.
Some saving qualities, however, were mixed with the vicious ones he liked best. Another passion divided dominion with the sovereign one: Audley’s strongest impressions of character were cast in the old law-library of his youth, and the pride of legal reputation was not inferior in strength to the rage for money. If in the “court of wards” he pounced on incumbrances which lay on estates, and prowled about to discover the craving wants of their owners, it appears that he also received liberal fees from the relatives of young heirs, to protect them from the rapacity of some great persons, but who could not certainly exceed Audley in subtilty. He was an admirable lawyer, for he was not satisfied with hearing, but examining his clients; which he called “pinching the cause where he perceived it was foundered.” He made two observations on clients and lawyers, which have not lost their poignancy. “Many clients, in telling their case, rather plead than relate it, so that the advocate heareth not the true state of it, till opened by the adverse party. Some lawyers seem to keep an assurance-office in their chambers, and will warrant any cause brought unto them, knowing that if they fail, they lose nothing but what was lost long since, their credit.”
The career of Audley’s ambition closed with the extinction of the “court of wards,” by which he incurred the loss of above 100,000l. On that occasion he observed, that “his ordinary losses were as the shavings of his beard, which only grew the faster by them; but the loss of this place was like the cutting off of a member, which was irrecoverable.” The hoary usurer pined at the decline of his genius, discoursed on the vanity of the world, and hinted at retreat. A facetious friend told him a story of an old rat, who having acquainted the young rats that he would at length retire to his hole, desiring none to come near him: their curiosity, after some days, led them to venture to look into the hole; and there they discovered the old rat sitting in the midst of a rich parmesan cheese. It is probable that the loss of the last 100,000l. disturbed his digestion, for he did not long survive his court of wards.
Such was this man, converting wisdom into cunning, invention into trickery, and wit into cynicism. Engaged in no honourable cause, he however showed a mind resolved, making plain the crooked and involved path he trod. Sustine et abstine, to bear and to forbear, was the great principle of Epictetus, and our monied stoic bore all the contempt and hatred of the living smilingly, while he forbore all the consolations of our common nature to obtain his end. He died in unblest celibacy.—And thus he received the curses of the living for his rapine, while the stranger who grasped the million he had raked together, owed him no gratitude at his death.—D’Israeli.
There are two sorts of avarice. One consists in a solicitude to acquire wealth for the sake of those advantages which wealth bestows, and the dread of poverty and its attendant evils; the other, in an anxiety for wealth on its own account only, and which sacrifices to the attainment of it every advantage that wealth can give. The first is the exaggeration of a quality, which when not carried to excess is praiseworthy, and is called economy. The other, when indulged in the extreme, produces the effect of a species of prodigality. Where is the great difference between the man who reduces himself to the want of the common necessaries of life, by completing a collection of books, pictures, or medals, and the man who brings himself in effect to the same situation, for the sole end of leaving a precise sum of money to his executors? What signifies whether I starve myself and my family, because I will possess a copper farthing of Otho, or will not part with a golden guinea of king George?
But if there is more folly in one, the other is more likely to be productive of vice. A man who considers wealth as the object of his passion, will hardly refrain from acts of dishonesty when strongly tempted; and yet some of these jackdaw hoarders are men of inviolable integrity.
There are remarkable instances of improvident expenditure by misers on particular occasions. The money-loving Elwes, at his first election for Berkshire, besides opening houses, giving ribbons, and incurring every expense common on those occasions, dispersed guineas and half-guineas among the populace, with a profusion as useless as unprecedented.
Perhaps there is no character so seldom to be met with, as that of a man who is strictly reasonable in the value he sets on property—who can be liberal without profusion, and economical without avarice.
A rich and parsimonious person, remarkable for having by his will preferred public charities to his relations, was fond of going to the theatre, and taking his great coat with him. But where should he leave this useful appendage during the performance? The box-keepers would expect at least sixpence; and, should he leave it at a coffee-house, he must spend threepence to obtain house-room for it. His invention supplied him with a method cheaper and equally secure. He pledged his garment every evening that he attended the play, at a pawnbrokers, near the door, for a shilling. This sum he carried back at the close of the play, added one penny to it for interest, and received his great coat again safe and sound, as it had literally been laid up in lavender.