Among the autograph papers which I possess of Ogle, who published certain versifications of Chaucer, as also a work on the Gems of the Ancients, are some verses by Thomson, never yet printed; and their transcripts, Mr. Editor, make their obeisance before you:—

The following, also original, were written by Thomson in commendation of his much loved Amanda:—

In the hope that the present may draw forth further reliquiæ of the poet of the “Seasons” in your excellent publication, I beg leave to subscribe myself,

Sir, &c.
Will O’ The Wisp.

Sept. 17, 1827.

THE BERKSHIRE MISER.

The economy and parsimony of the Rev. Morgan Jones, late curate of Blewbury, a parish about six miles from Wallingford, were almost beyond credibility; he having outdone, in many instances, the celebrated Elwes, of Marcham.

For many of the last years of Mr. Jones’s ministerial labours, he had no servant to attend any of his domestic concerns; and he never had even the assistance of a female within his doors for the last twelve years. The offices of housemaid, chamber-maid, cook, and scullion, and even most part of his washing and mending, were performed by himself; he was frequently known to beg needles and thread at some of the farm-houses, to tack together his tattered garments, at which, from practice, he had become very expert. He was curate of Blewbury upwards of forty-three years; and the same hat and coat served him for his every-day dress during the whole of that period. The brim of his hat had, on one side, (by much handling,) been worn off quite to the crown, but on coming one day from the hamlet of Upton across the fields, he luckily met with an old left-off hat, stuck up for a scarecrow. He immediately secured the prize, and with some tar-twine, substituted as thread, and a piece of the brim, quite repaired the deficiencies of his beloved old one, and ever after wore it in common, although the old one was of a russet brown, and the new brim nearly as black as jet. His coat, when he first came from Ashton Keyns in 1781, was a surtout much the worse for wear; after some time he had it turned inside out, and made up into a common one. Whenever it became rent or torn, it was as speedily tacked together with his own hands: at length pieces fell out and were lost, and, as he found it necessary, he cut pieces off the tail to make good the upper part, until the coat was reduced to a jacket, stuck about with patches of his own applying. In this hat and coat, when at home on working days, he was constantly decorated, but he never wore it abroad or before strangers, except he forgot himself, as he several times had been much vexed at the ridicule his grotesque appearance had excited when seen by those with whom he was not much acquainted. This extraordinary coat (or more properly jacket) is now in the possession of one of the parishioners, and prized as a curiosity. His stockings were washed and mended by himself, and some of them had scarcely a vestige of the original worsted. He had a great store of new shirts, which had never been worn, but for many years his stock became reduced to one in use; his parsimony would not permit him to have this washed more than once in two or three months, for which he reluctantly paid a poor woman fourpence. He always slept without his shirt, that it might not want washing too often, and by that means be worn out; and he always went without one while it was washed, and very frequently at other times. This solitary shirt he mended himself, and as fast as it required to be patched in the body he ingeniously supplied it by cutting off the tail; but, as nothing will last for ever, by this constant clipping it unfortunately became too short to reach down his small-clothes. This, of course, was a sad disaster, and there was some fear least one of the new ones must be brought into use; but, after a diligent search, he fortunately found in one of his drawers the top part of a shirt with a frill on, which had probably lain by ever since his youthful and more gay days. This with his usual sagacity, he tacked on, to the tail of the old one, with the frill downwards, and it was thus worn until the day before he left Blewbury. Latterly his memory became impaired. He several times forgot to change his dress, and was more than once seen at the burial of a corpse dressed in this ludicrous and curious manner, with scarcely a button on any part of his clothes, but tied together in various parts with string. In this state he was by strangers mistaken for a beggar, and barely escaped being offered their charity.

His diet was as singular as his dress, for he cooked his pot only once a week, which was always on a Sunday. For his subsistence he purchased but three articles, which he denominated two necessaries and a luxury:—the necessaries were bread and bacon, the luxury was tea. For many years his weekly allowance of bread was half a gallon per week; and in the season, when his garden produced fruit, or when he once or twice a week procured a meal at his neighbours’, his half-gallon loaf lasted him a day or two of the following week; so that in five weeks he often had no more than four half-gallon loaves. He was also equally abstemious in his other two articles. He frequently ate with his parishioners; yet for the last ten years there was but a solitary instance of a person eating with him in return, and that a particular friend, who obtained only a bit of bread with much difficulty and importunity. For the last fifteen years there was never within his doors any kind of spirits, beer, butcher’s meat, butter, sugar, lard, cheese, or milk; nor any niceties, of which he was particularly fond when they came free of expense, but which he could never find the heart to purchase. His beverage was cold water; and at morning and evening weak tea, without milk or sugar.

However cold the weather, he seldom had a fire, except to cook with, and that was so small that it might easily have been hid under a half-gallon measure. He was often seen roving the churchyard to pick up bits of stick, or busily lopping his shrubs or fruit-trees to make this fire, while his woodhouse was crammed with wood and coal, which he could not prevail upon himself to use. In very cold weather he would frequently get by some of his neighbours’ fires to warm his shivering limbs; and, when evening came, retire to bed for warmth, but generally without a candle, as he allowed himself only the small bits left of those provided for divine service in the church by the parish.

He was never known to keep dog, cat, or any other living creature: and it is certain the whole expenses of his house did not amount to half a crown a week for the last twenty years; and, as the fees exceeded that sum, he always saved the whole of his yearly salary, which never was more than fifty pounds per annum. By constantly placing this sum in the funds, and the interest, with about thirty pounds per annum more, (the rent of two small estates left by some relations,) he, in the course of forty-three years, amassed many thousand pounds, as his bankers, Messrs. Child and Co., of Fleet-street, can testify.

In his youthful days he made free with the good things of this life; and when he first came to Blewbury, he for some time boarded with a person by the week, and during that time was quite corpulent: but, as soon as he boarded and lived by himself, his parsimony overcame his appetite, so that at last he became reduced almost to a living skeleton. He was always an early riser, being seldom in bed after break of day; and, like all other early risers, he enjoyed an excellent state of health; so that for the long space of forty-three years he omitted preaching only two Sundays.

His industry was such, that he composed with his own hand upwards of one thousand sermons; but for the last few years his hand became tremulous, and he wrote but little; he therefore only made alterations and additions to his former discourses, and this generally on the back of old marriage licenses, or across old letters, as it would have been nearly death to him to have purchased paper. His sermons were usually plain and practical, and his funeral discourses were generally admired; but the fear of being noticed, and the dread of expense, was an absolute prohibition to his sending any thing to the press, although he was fully capable, being well skilled in the English and Latin languages. The expense of a penny in the postage of a letter has been known to deprive him of a night’s rest! and yet, at times, pounds did not grieve him. He was a regular and liberal subscriber to the Bible, Missionary, and the other societies for the propagation of the Gospel and the conversion of the Jews; and more than once he was generous enough to give a pound or two to assist a distressed fellow-creature.

Although very fond of ale, he spent only one sixpence on that liquor during the forty-three years he was curate of Blewbury; but it must be confessed he used to partake of it too freely when he could have it without cost, until about ten years ago, when at a neighbour’s wedding, having taken too much of this his favourite beverage, it was noticed and talked of by some of the persons present. Being hurt by this, he made a vow never more to taste a drop of that or any other strong liquor; and his promise he scrupulously and honestly kept, although contrary to his natural desires, and exposed to many temptations.[358]

Vol. II.—40.

I thought, in the Every-Day Book, that I had done with “Hagbush-lane” altogether—the tale of the poor man’s wrongs, when “the proud man’s contumely” grew into open aggression, had passed from me; and I presumed that, for his little while on this side the grave, the oppressed might “go free,” and “hear not the voice of the oppressor”—but when selfishness is unwatched it has a natural tendency to break forth, and a sudden and recent renewal of an outrage, which every honest mind had condemned, furnishes a fresh story. It is well related in the following letter:—

To the Editor.

Sir,—In the first volume of the Every-Day Book you have favoured the lovers of rural scenery with an historical and descriptive notice of Hagbush-lane, Islington, accompanied with an engraving of the “mud edifice” which formerly stood there; of which you have given “the simple annals:”—its erection by a poor labourer who, else, had no shelter for himself, wife, and child, to “shrink into,” when “pierced by wintry winds;”—its demolition by the wealthy occupants of the neighbouring fields;—the again-houseless man’s endeavour to rebuild his hovel;—the rich man’s repetition of the destruction of his half-finished hut;—and finally, the labourer’s succeeding in the erection of a cottage, more commodious than the first, where he continued unmolested to sell small beer to poor workmen and wayfarers.—Allow me, sir, the melancholy task of informing you of the “final destruction” of this sample of rusticity.—Hagbush-lane is despoiled of its appropriate ornament.

I have ever been an admirer of the beautiful scenery that is to be met with on that side of the metropolis; and never, since reading your interesting narrative and description, have I strolled that way, without passing through Hagbush-lane. On entering the wide part from the field by Copenhagen-house, one day last week, I was sadly astonished at the change—the cottage, with its garden-rails and benches, had disappeared; and the garden was entirely laid waste: trees, bushes, and vegetables rudely torn up by the roots, lay withering where they had flourished. Upon the site of his demolished dwelling stood the poor old man, bent by affliction as much as by age, leaning on his stick. From the heartbroken expression of his features, it did not take me a moment to guess the cause of this devastation:—the opulent landholder has, for the third time, taken this ungentle expedient to rid his pastures of a neighbouring “nuisance”—the hut of cheerless poverty.

The distressed old rustic stated, that on Thursday, (which was the sixth of September,) at about six o’clock in the morning, before the inmates had arisen, a party of workmen came to the cottage; and, merely informing them that “they must disturb them,” instantly commenced the work of destruction. His dwelling was soon levelled with the ground; and the growth of his garden torn up, and thrown in a heap into the lane. He declared, with a tear, that “it had ruined him for ever, and would be the death of him.” I did not ask him many questions: it had been a sin to probe his too deeply wounded feelings.

Proceeding up the lane, to where it is crossed by the new road, I perceived that, in the open space by the road-side, at the entrance into the narrow part of the lane, the old man had managed to botch up, with pieces of board and old canvass, a miserable shed to shelter him. It was surrounded with household utensils, and what materials he had saved from the ruins of his cottage—a most wretched sty—but little larger than the dog-kennel that was erected near it, from which a faithful cur barked loudly at the intruder’s footstep.

Being a stranger in the neighbourhood, I cannot pretend to know any thing of the motives that have induced his rich neighbours thus to distress the poor and aged man;—perhaps they are best known to themselves, and it is well if they can justify them to any but themselves!—but surely, surely he will not be suffered to remain thus exposed in the approaching season,

Perhaps, sir, I give too much room to my feelings. My intention was but to inform you of a regretted change in a scene which you have noticed and admired in the Every-Day Book. Should you consider it worthy of further notice in the Table Book, you will oblige me by putting it forward in what form best pleases yourself.

I remain, &c.
So and So.

Sept. 19, 1827.

This communication, accompanied by the real name and address of its warmhearted writer, revived my recollections and kindled my feelings. I immediately wrote to a friend, who lives in the vicinage of Hagbush-lane, requesting him to hasten to the site of the old cottage, which was quite as well known to him as to me, and bring me a drawing of the place in its present state, with such particulars of the razing of the edifice as he could obtain. His account, as I collect it from verbal narration, corroborates that of my correspondent.

So complete has been the devastation, that a drawing of the spot whereon the cottage stood would merely be a view of the level earth. My friend walked over it, and along Hagbush-lane, till he came into the new road, (leading from the King’s Head at Holloway to the lower road from London to Kentish Town.) Immediately at the corner of the continuation of Hagbush-lane, which begins on the opposite side of the new road, he perceived a new hut, and near it the expelled occupant of the cottage, which had been laid waste in the other part of the lane. On asking the old man respecting the occasion and manner of his ejectment, he cried. It was a wet and dreary day; and the poor fellow in tears, and his hastily thrown up tenement, presented a cheerless and desolate scene. His story was short. On the Thursday, (mentioned in the letter,) so early as five in the morning, some men brought a ladder, a barrow, and a pickaxe, and ascending the ladder began to untile the roof, while the old man and his wife were in bed. He hastily rose; they demanded of him to unlock the door; on his refusing they burst it open with the pick-axe, and having thus forced an entrance compelled his wife to get up. They then wantonly threw out and broke the few household utensils, and hewed down the walls of the dwelling. In the little garden, they rooted up and destroyed every tree, shrub, and vegetable; and finally, they levelled all vestiges which could mark the place, as having been used or cultivated for the abode and sustenance of human beings. Some of the less destructible requisites of the cottage they trundled in the barrow up the lane, across the road, whither the old man and his wife followed, and were left with the few remnants of their miserable property by the housebreakers. On that spot they put together their present hut with a few old boards and canvass, as represented in the engraving, and there they remain to tell the story of their unredressed wrongs to all who desire the particulars.

The old man represents the “ringleader,” as he calls him, in this last work of ruin, to be the foreman of a great cow-keeping landholder and speculator, to whose field-possessions the cottage on the waste was adjacent. Who employed this “ringleader” and his followers? Who was the instigating and protecting accessary before and after this brutal housebreaking, and wilful waste?

The helpless man got his living by selling small beer, and a little meat, cooked by his wife, to others as poor and helpless as themselves; and they eked out their existence by their garden produce. In the summer of 1825 I heard it said, that their cottage was the resort and drinking-place of idle and disorderly persons. I took some pains to ascertain the fact; but could never trace it beyond—the most dubitable authority—general report. It is quite true, that I saw persons there whom I preferred not to sit down with, because their manners and habits were different from my own; yet I not unfrequently took a cup of the old man’s beer among them, and silently watched them, and sometimes talked with them; and, for any thing that I could observe—and I know myself to be a close observer—they were quite as honourable and moral, as persons of more refined language and dress, who frequent respectable coffee-houses. I had been, too, withinside the cottage, which was a place of rude accommodation for no more than its settled occupants. It was on the outside that the poor couple entertained their customers, who usually sat on the turf seat against the foot-path side of the hut, or on an empty barrel or two, or a three-legged milking-stool. On the hedge side of the cottage was a small low lean-to, wherein the old man kept a pig to fatten. At the front end was an enclosure of a few feet of ground, with domestic fowls and their callow broods, which ran about cackling, and routing the earth for their living. In the rear of the cottage was a rod or two of ground banked off, and well planted with potatoes, cabbages, and other garden stuff, where I have often seen the old man fully employed in weeding and cultivating; digging up old, or preparing for new crops, or plashing and mending his little fences. Between his vegetables, and his live stock, and his few customers, he had enough to do; and I never saw him idle. I never saw him sitting down to drink with them; and if he had, there was nothing among them but the small beer. From the early part of the spring to the end of the year just mentioned, I have been past and loitered near the cottage at all hours of the day, from the early dawn, before even the sun, or the inmates had risen, till after they had gone to rest, and the moon was high, and the stars were in their courses. Never in the hours I spent around the place by day or night, did I see or hear any persons or practices that would be termed disorderly by any but the worst judges of human nature and morals—the underbred overpolite, and vulgarly overdressed. There I have seen a brickmaker or two with their wives and daughters sitting and regaling, as much at home, and as sober and innocent, as parties of French ladies and gentlemen at Chedron’s in Leicester-square; and from these people, if spoken to civilly, there was language as civil. There I have seen a comfortably dressed man, in a clean shirt, and a coat and hat as good as a Fleet-street tradesman’s, with a jug of small “entire” before him, leisurely at work on a pair of shoes, joining in the homely conversation, and in choruses of old English songs, raised by his compeers. There, too, I have heard a company of merry-hearted labourers and holiday-making journeymen, who had straggled away from their smithies and furnaces in the lanes of London, to breathe the fresh air, pealing out loud laughter, while the birds whistled over their heads from the slender branches of the green elms. In the old man I saw nothing but unremitting industry; and in his customers nothing but rude yet inoffensive good-nature. He was getting his bread by the sweat of his brow, and his brow was daily moistened by labour.

When I before related something of this poor man’s origin,[359] and his former endurances, I little suspected that I should have to tell that, after the parochial officers of Islington had declined to receive him into the poor-house, the parish would suffer him to be molested as a labourer on its waste. He has been hunted as a wild beast; and, perhaps, had he been a younger man, and with vindictive feelings, he might have turned round upon his enemies, and lawlessly avenged himself for the lawless injuries inflicted on him. Vagrancy is easily tempted to criminality, and the step is short.

It is scarcely three weeks since the old cottager was in a snug abode of his own handmaking, with a garden that had yielded support to him and his wife through the summer, and roots growing in it for their winter consumption. These have been mercilessly laid waste at the coming-in of the inclement season. Will no one further investigate the facts, and aid him in obtaining “indemnity for the past, and security for the future?”

Respecting the rights of the parish of Islington in Hagbush-lane, as the ancient and long disused north road into London, I do not pretend to determine; because, after the warm discussions and strong resolutions of its vestries, sometime ago, respecting a part of this road which had been partially appropriated to private use, the parish may have thoroughly good reasons for acquiescing in the entire stopping up of a carriage thoroughfare, between the back road to Holloway and Islington upper street, which, if now open, would be of great use. Many of the inhabitants, however may not be so easily satisfied as a few that the individual, who has at length wholly enclosed it, and shut it against the public, has any more right to stop up, and take the ground of this highway to himself, than to enclose so much of the road to Holloway through which the mails pass.

I have often perambulated Hagbush-lane, as the old London north road, from Old-street across the City-road, the Lower and Upper Islington, and Holloway roads, by the Islington workhouse, on to the Bull ring field; (which is in private hands, no one knows how;) from thence, over the site of the destroyed cottage to the old man’s present hut; then along the meadows; across the Highgate-archway-cut into other meadows, through which it winds back again, and recrosses the archway-cut, and afterwards crosses the London road, between stately elms, towards Hornsey.

Perhaps the Commissioners of Crown Lands, or Woods and Forests, may find it convenient and easy to institute an inquiry into the encroachments of Hagbush-lane, as a disused public road; and devise a method of obtaining its worth, in aid of the public service.

Meantime, the aggression on the old cottager must not be forgotten. The private wrong he has sustained is in the nature of a public wrong; and it is open to every one to consider of the means by which these repeated breaches of the peace may be prevented, and redress be obtained for the poor man’s injuries.

*

Garrick Plays.
No. XXXV.

[From the “Hectors,” a Comedy; by Edmund Prestwick, 1641.]

A Waiting Maid wheedles an old Justice into a belief, that her Lady is in love with him.

The Waiting Maid places the Justice, where he can overhear a sham discourse of the Lady with a pretended Brother.

[From “Hey for Honesty,” a Comedy, by T. Randolph, 1651.]

To Plutus.

Riches above Poverty; a syllogism.

Stationer’s Preface before the Play.

[From the “Example,” a Tragi-Comedy, by Jas. Shirley, 1638.]

The humour of a wary Knight, who sleeps all day, and wakes all night, for security.—He calls up his Household at midnight.

C. L.

For the Table Book.

IMPERIAL FATE.

Does any man envy the situation of monarchs? Let him peruse the following statement, which particularizes the deaths of the forty-seven Roman emperors, from Julius Cæsar to Constantine the Great; only thirteen of whom encountered “the last enemy” in the ordinary course of nature:—

Where did these events occur? Among the savage tribes of interior Africa, or the rude barbarians of northern Europe? No: but in Rome—imperial Rome—in her “high and palmy state,” when she was mistress of the world, and held within her dominion all the science and literature of which the earth could boast. Surely we may with reason doubt, whether the moral improvement of mankind invariably keeps pace with their intellectual advancement.

O. Z.

ILL-FATED ROYAL FAMILIES.

The Line of Charlemagne.

The successors of Charlemagne in his French dominions, were examples of a melancholy destiny.

His son, Louis le Debonnaire, died for want of food, in consequence of a superstitious panic.

His successor, Charles the Bald, was poisoned by his physician.

The son of Charles, Louis the Stutterer, fell also by poison.

Charles, king of Aquitaine, brother to Louis, was fatally wounded in the head by a lord, named Albuin, whom he was endeavouring, by way of frolic, to terrify, in disguise.

Louis III., successor to Louis the Stutterer, riding through the streets of Tours, pursued the handsome daughter of a citizen named Germond, till the terrified girl took refuge in a house; and the king, thinking more of her charms than of the size of the gateway, attempting to force his horse after her, broke his back, and died.

His successor, Carloman, fell by an ill-directed spear, thrown, by his own servant, at a wild boar.

Charles the Fat perished of want, grief, and poison, all together.

His successor, Charles the Simple, died in prison of penury and despair.

Louis the Stranger, who succeeded him, was bruised to death as he was hunting.

Lotharius and Louis V., the two last kings of the race of Charlemagne, were both poisoned by their wives.

After a revolution of two hundred and thirty years, there remained of the whole line of Charlemagne, only Charles, duke of Lorrain; and he, after ineffectually struggling in defence of his rights against Hugh Capet, sunk beneath the fortune of his antagonist, and ended his life and race in solitary confinement.

The French historians observe, that the epithets given to the princes of the line of Charlemagne, were, almost all, expressive of the contemptuous light in which that family was held by the people over whom it reigned.

The Stuarts.

The royal line of Stuart was as steadily unfortunate as any ever recorded in history. Their misfortunes continued with unabated succession, during three hundred and ninety years.

Robert III. broke his heart, because his eldest son Robert was starved to death, and his youngest, James, was made a captive.

James I., after having beheaded three of his nearest kindred, was assassinated by his own uncle, who was tortured to death for it.

James II. was slain by the bursting of a piece of ordnance.

James III., when flying from the field of battle, was thrown from his horse, and murdered in a cottage, into which he had been carried for assistance.

James IV. fell in Flodden field.

James V. died of grief for the wilful ruin of his army at Solway Moss.

Henry Stuart, lord Darnley, was assassinated, and then blown up in his palace.

Mary Stuart was beheaded in England.

James I. (and VI. of Scotland) died, not without suspicion of being poisoned by lord Buckingham.

Charles I. was beheaded at Whitehall.

Charles II. was exiled for many years; and when he ascended the throne became a slave to his pleasures: he lived a sensualist, and died miserably.

James II. abdicated the crown, and died in banishment.

Anne, after a reign, which though glorious, was rendered unhappy by party disputes, died of a broken heart, occasioned by the quarrels of her favoured servants.

The posterity of James II. remain proscribed and exiled.

Original Poetry.

For the Table Book.

TALES OF TINMOUTHE PRIORIE.
No. I.

THE MAIDEN OF THE SEA.