Chapter XVIII: Part 18

Mr. Heber's taste strengthened as he grew older. Not only was his collection of old English literature unprecedented, but he brought together a larger number of fine copies of Latin, Greek, French, Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese books than had ever been possessed by a private individual. His house at Hodnet, in Shropshire, was nearly all library. His house in Pimlico (where he died in 1833) was filled with books from top to bottom: every chair, table, and passage containing "piles of erudition." A house in York Street, Westminster, was similarly filled. He had immense collections of books in houses rented merely to contain them, at Oxford, Paris, Antwerp, Brussels, and Ghent. When he died, curiosity was naturally excited to know what provision he had made in reference to his immense store of books; but when his will was discovered, after a long and almost hopeless search among bills, notes, memoranda, and letters, it was found, to the astonishment of every one on reading it, that the library _was not even mentioned_! It seemed as if Heber cared nothing what should become of the books, or who should possess them, after his decease; and as he was never married, or influenced greatly by domestic ties, his library was considered by the executors of his will as merely so much "property," to be converted into cash by the aid of the auctioneer. What was the number of books possessed by him or the amount of money paid for them, appears to have been left in much doubt. Some estimated the library at 150,000 volumes, formed at a cost of 100,000_l._; others reckoned it at 500,000 volumes, at an aggregate value of 250,000_l._ The truth was, his executors did not know in how many foreign towns his collections of books were placed. Thus it could not accurately be ascertained what portion of the whole was sold by auction in London in 1834-6; but the mere catalogue of that portion fills considerably more than two thousand printed octavo pages. The sales were conducted by Mr. Evans, Messrs. Sotheby, and other book-auctioneers, and occupied two hundred and two days, extending through a period of upwards of two years from April 10, 1834, to July 9, 1836. One copy of the catalogue has been preserved, with marginal manuscript notes, relating to almost every lot; and from this a summary of very curious information is deducible. It appears that, whatever may have been the number of volumes sold by auction, or otherwise got rid of abroad, those sold at this series of auctions in London were 117,613 in number, grouped into 52,672 lots. As regards the ratio borne by the prices obtained, to those which Mr. Heber had paid for the books in question, the account as rendered showed that the auctioneer's hammer brought 56,775_l._ for that which had cost 77,150_l._ It would appear, therefore, that the losses accruing to Mr. Heber's estate through his passion for book-collecting, amounted to upwards of 20,000_l._, and this irrespective of the fate of the continental libraries.

Sir John Soane Lampooned.

Sir John Soane, who bequeathed to the country his Museum in Lincoln's Inn Fields, which cost him upwards of 50,000_l._, was the son of a bricklayer, and was born at Reading in 1753; he was errand-boy to Dance, the architect, and subsequently his pupil. He rose to great eminence, grew rich and liberal; he gave for Belzoni's elaborate sarcophagus in the Soane Museum, 2,000 guineas; paid large sums for art rarities; subscribed 1,000_l._ for the Duke of York's monument, was contended with his knighthood, and declined to receive a baronetcy. Yet he was a man of overweening vanity, and was much courted by legacy-hunters; whilst his alienation from his son assisted in raising up many enemies, in addition to those which Soane's remarkable success brought against him. From the latter section may have proceeded the following curious and popular squib of the day, said to have been found under the plates at one of the artistic or academic dinners. It is headed:--

"THE MODERN GOTH.

"Glory to thee, great Artist! soul of taste!
For mending pigsties where a plank's misplaced:
Whose towering genius plans from deep research
Houses and temples fit for Master Birch
To grace his shop on that important day,
When huge twelfth-cakes are raised in bright array.
Each pastry pillar shows thy vast design--
Hail! then, to thee, and all great works of thine.
Come, let me place thee, in the foremost rank,
With him whose dullness discomposed the bank;
[_A line illegible._]
Thy style shall finish what his style begun.
Thrice happy Wren! he did not live to see
The dome that's built and beautified by thee.
Oh! had he lived to see thy blessed work,
To see plaster scored like loins of pork;
To see the orders in confusion move:
Scrolls fixed below, and pedestals above:
To see defiance hurled at Rome and Greece,
Old Wren had never left the world in peace.
Look where I will, above, below, is shown
A pure disordered order of thine own;
Where lines and circles curiously unite,
A base, confounded, compound Composite:
A thing from which, in truth it may be said,
Each lab'ring mason turns abash'd his head;
Which Holland reprobates, and Dance derides,
Whilst tasteful Wyatt holds his aching sides.
Here crawl, ye spiders! here, exempt from cares,
Spin your fine webs above the bulls and bears!
Secure from harm enjoy the charnell'd niche:
No maids molest you, for no brooms can reach;
In silence build from models of your own,
But never imitate the works of Soane!"

Soane is described by his biographer as "one of the vainest and most self-sufficient of men, who courted praise and adulation from every person and source, but dreaded, and was even maddened by, anything like impartial and discriminating criticism." But he grew so disgusted with his flatterers, that a short time before his death he shut himself up in a house at Richmond, to get out of the way of their attentions.

_Numeros memini._ VIRGIL.]

Extraordinary Calculators.

On the 3rd of July, 1839, some of the eminent members of the Academy of Sciences at Paris, including MM. Arago, Lacroix, Libri, and Sturm, met to examine a remarkable boy whose powers of mental calculation were deemed quite inexplicable. This boy, named Vito Mangiamele, a Sicilian, was the son of a shepherd, and was about eleven years old. The examiners asked him several questions which they knew, under ordinary circumstances, to be tedious of solution--such as, the cube root of 3,796,416, and the 10th root of 282,475,249; the first of these he answered in half-a-minute, the second in three minutes. One question was of the following complicated character--"What number has the following proportions, that if its cube is added to 5 times its square, and then 42 times the number, and the number 42 be subtracted from the result, the remainder is equal to 0 or zero." M. Arago repeated this question a second time, but while he was finishing the last word, the boy replied--"The number is 5!"

In the same year, Master Bassle, who was only thirteen years of age, went through an extraordinary mnemonic performance at Willis's Rooms, London. Five large sheets of paper, closely printed with tables of dates, specific gravities, velocities, planetary distances, &c., were distributed among the visitors, and every one was allowed to ask Master Bassle a question relating to these tables, to which was received a correct answer. He would also name the day of the week on which any day of the month had fallen in any particular year. He could repeat long series of numbers backwards and forwards, and point out the place of any number in the series; and to prove that his powers were not merely confined to the rows of numbers in the printed tables, he allowed the whole company to form a long series, by contributing each two or three digits in the order in which they sat; and then, after studying this series for a few minutes, he committed it to memory, and repeated it entire, both backwards and forwards, from the beginning to the end. These performances are believed to have been not the result of any natural mnemonic power, but of a method to be acquired by any person in the course of twelve lessons.

Zerah Colburn, who excited much interest in London in 1812, was a native of Vermont, in the United States. At six years old, he suddenly showed extraordinary powers of mental calculation. By processes which seemed to be almost unconscious to himself, and were wholly so to others, he answered arithmetical questions of considerable difficulty. When eight years old, he was brought to London, where he astonished many learned auditors and spectators by giving correct solutions to such problems as the following: raise 8 up to the 16th power; give the square root of 106,929; give the cube root of 268,336,125; how many seconds are there in 48 years? The answers were always given in very few minutes--sometimes in a few seconds. He was ignorant of the ordinary rules of arithmetic, and did not know how or why particular modes of process came into his mind. On one occasion, the Duke of Gloucester asked him to multiply 21,734 by 543. Something in the boy's manner induced the Duke to ask how he did it, from which it appeared that the boy arrived at the result by multiplying 65,202 by 181, an equivalent process; but why he made this change in the factors, neither he nor any one else could tell. Zerah Colburn was unlike other boys also in this, that he had more than the usual number of toes and fingers; a peculiarity observable also in his father and in some of his brothers.

An exceptional instance is presented in the case of Mr. Bidder, of this faculty being cultivated to a highly useful purpose. George Parker Bidder, when six years old, used to amuse himself by counting up to 100, then to 1,000, then to 1,000,000: by degrees he accustomed himself to contemplate the relations of high numbers, and used to build up peas, marbles, and shot, into squares, cubes, and other regular figures. He invented processes of his own, distinct from those given in books on arithmetic, and could solve all the usual questions mentally more rapidly than other boys with the aid of pen and paper. When he became eminent as a civil engineer, he was wont to embarrass and baffle the parliamentary counsel on contested railway bills, by confuting their statements of figures almost before the words were out of their mouths. In 1856, he gave to the Institution of Civil Engineers an interesting account of this singular arithmetical faculty--so far, at least, as to show that _memory_ has less to do with it than is generally supposed; the processes are actually worked out _seriatim_, but with a rapidity almost inconceivable.

The most famous calculator in the last century was Jedediah Buxton, who, in 1754, resided for several weeks at St. John's Gate, Smithfield. This man, though he was the son of a schoolmaster, and the grandson of the vicar of his native parish, Elmeton, in Derbyshire, had never learned to write, but he could conduct the most intricate calculations by his memory alone; and such was his power of abstraction that no noise could disturb him. One who had heard of his astonishing ability as a calculator, proposed to him for solution the following question:--In a body whose three sides measure 23,145,789 yards, 5,642,732 yards, and 54,965 yards, how many cubical eighths-of-an-inch are there? This obtuse reckoning he made in a comparatively short time, although pursuing the while, with many others, his labours in the fields. He could walk over a plot of land and estimate its contents with as much accuracy as if it had been measured by the chain. His knowledge was, however, limited to figures. In 1754, Buxton walked to London, with the express intention of obtaining a sight of the King and Queen, for beyond figures, royalty formed the only subject of his curiosity. In this intention he was disappointed: he was, however, introduced to the Royal Society, whom he called the "volk of the Siety Court." They tested his powers, and dismissed him with a handsome gratuity.

He was next taken by his hospitable entertainer at St. John's Gate, to see Garrick in the character of Richard III. at Drury Lane Theatre, when undazzled by the splendour of the stage appointments, and unmoved by the eloquent passion of the actor, the simple rustic employed himself in reckoning the number of words he heard, and the sum total of the steps made by the dancers; and after the performance of a fine piece of music, he declared that the innumerable sounds had perplexed him.

To these feats may be added the following:--Buxton multiplied a sum of thirty-nine places of figures into itself and even conversed whilst performing it. His memory was so great, that he could leave off and resume the operation at the distant period of a week, or even several months. He said that he was _drunk_ once with reckoning by memory from May 17 until June 16, and then recovered after sleeping soundly for seven hours. The question which occupied him so intensely was the reduction of a cube of upwards of 200,000,000 of miles into barleycorns, and then into hairs'-breaths of an inch in length. He kept an account of all the beer which he had drunk for forty years, which was equal to five thousand one hundred and sixteen pints: of these two thousand one hundred and thirty-two were drunk at the Duke of Kingston's and only ten at his own house.

There was a portrait of Buxton at Rufford Abbey, Nottinghamshire. A print of him was engraved in the _Gentleman's Magazine_, June, 1754, with this subscription: "Jedediah Buxton. Ætat. 49.--Numeros memini. _Virgil._" He was married and had several children, and died at the age of 70, in the year 1777.

Charles Lamb's Cottage at Islington.

In a very pleasant paper on "Ideal Houses," in No. 4 of the _Cornhill Magazine_, we find this clever sketch of a few of the amiable eccentricities of our famous Essayist, Charles Lamb:--

"I believe," says the contributor, "more in the influence of dwellings upon human character than in the influence of authority on matters of opinion. The man may seek the house, or the house may form the man; but in either case the result is the same. A few yards of earth, even on this side of the grave, will make all the difference between life and death. If our dear old friend, Charles Lamb, was now alive (and we must all wish he was, if only that he might see how every day is bringing him nearer the crown that belongs only to the Prince of British Essayists), there would be something singularly jarring to the human nerves in finding him at Dalston, but not so jarring in finding him a little farther off at Hackney. He would still have drawn nourishment in the Temple and in Covent Garden; but he must surely have perished if transplanted to New Tyburnia. I cannot imagine him living at Pentonville (I cannot, in my uninquiring ignorance, imagine who Penton was, that he should name a _ville_?), but I can see a certain appropriate oddity in his cottage at Colebrook Row, Islington.

"In the first place, we may agree that this London suburb is very odd, without going into the vexed question of whether it was very 'merry.' In the second place, this same Colebrook Row was built a few years before our dear old friend was born--I believe, in 1770. In the third place, it was called a 'Row,' though 'Lane' or 'Walk' would have been as old and as good; but 'Terrace' or 'Crescent' would have rendered it unbearable. The New River flowed calmly past the cottage walls--as poor George Dyer found to his cost--bringing with it fair memories of Isaak Walton and the last two centuries. The house itself had also certain peculiarities to recommend it. The door was so constructed that it opened into the chief sitting-room; and this, though promising much annoyance, was really a source of fun and enjoyment to our dear old friend. He was never so delighted as when he stood on the hearth-rug receiving many congenial visitors as they came to him on the muddiest-boot and the wettest-of-umbrella days. His immediate neighbourhood was also peculiar.

"It was there that weary wanderers came to seek the waters of oblivion. Suicide could pitch upon no spot so favourable for its sacrifice as the gateway leading into the river inclosure before Charles Lamb's cottage. Waterloo Bridge had not long been built, and was not then a fashionable theatre for self-destruction. The drags were always kept ready in Colebrook Row, at a small tavern a few doors from the cottage. The landlord's ear, according to his own account, had become so sensitive by repeated practice, that when aroused at night by a heavy splash in the water, he could tell by the sound whether it was an accident or a wilful plunge. He never believed that poor George Dyer tumbled in from carelessness, though it was no business of his to express an opinion on the matter. After the eighth suicide within a short period, Charles Lamb began to grow restless.

"'Mary,' he said to his sister, 'I think it's high time we left this place;' and so they went to Edmonton."

Thomas Hood.

This remarkable man of genius whose wit and humour entitle him to high rank in English literature, was born in 1798, in the Poultry, London, where his father was, for many years, acting partner in the firm of Vernor, Hood, and Sharpe, extensive booksellers and publishers. "There was a dash of ink in my blood," he writes: "my father wrote two novels, and my brother was decidedly of a literary turn, to the great disquietude, for a time, of an anxious parent." Thomas Hood was sent to a school in Tokenhouse Yard, in the City, as a day-boarder. The two maiden sisters, who kept the school, and with whom Hood took his dinner, had the odd name of Hogsflesh, and they had a sensitive brother, who was always addressed as "Mr. H.," and who subsequently became the prototype of Charles Lamb's unsuccessful farce, called "Mr. H."

In 1812, Hood was sent to a day-school, his account of which is as follows:--"In a house formerly a suburban seat of the unfortunate Earl of Essex, over a grocer's shop, up two pair of stairs, there was a very select day-school, kept by a decayed Dominie, as he would have been called in his native land. In his better days, when my brother was his pupil, he had been master of one of those wholesale concerns in which so many ignorant men have made fortunes, by favour of high terms, low ushers, gullible parents, and victimized little boys. Small as was our college, its principal maintained his state, and walked gowned and covered. His cap was of faded velvet, of black, or blue, or purple, or sad-green, or, as it seemed, of altogether, with a sad _nuance_ of brown; his robe of crimson damask lined with the national tartan. A quaint, carved, high-backed elbowed article, looking like an _émigré_ from a set that had been at home in an aristocratical drawing-room under the _ancien régime_, was his professional chair, which, with his desk, was appropriately elevated on a dais some inches above the common floor. From this moral and material eminence he cast a vigilant yet kindly eye over some dozen of youngsters: for adversity, sharpened by habits of authority, had not soured him, or mingled a single tinge of bile with the peculiar red-streak complexion so common to the wealthier natives of the north...." "In a few months, my education progressed infinitely farther than it had done in as many years under the listless superintendence of B.A. and LL.D. and assistants. I picked up _some_ Latin, was a tolerable grammarian, and so good a French scholar, that I earned a few guineas--my first literary fee--by revising a new edition of _Paul et Virginie_ for the press. Moreover, as an accountant, I could work a _summum bonum_, that is, a good sum."

Young Hood finished his education at Wanostrocht's Academy at Camberwell; and removed thence to a merchant's counting-house in the City, where he realized his own inimitable sketch of the boy "Just set up in Business:"--

"Time was I sat upon a lofty stool,
At lofty desk, and with a clerkly pen
Began each morning at the stroke of ten
To write in Bell and Co.'s commercial school,
In Warnford Court, a shady nook and cool,
The favourite retreat of merchant men;
Yet would my quill turn vagrant even then,
And take stray dips in the Castalian pool.
Now double entry--now a flowery trope--
Mingling poetic honey with trade wax:
Blogg, Brothers--Milton--Grote and Prescott--Pope--
Bristles and Hogg--Glyn, Mills, and Halifax--
Rogers and Towgood--Hemp--the Bard of Hope--
Barilla--Byron--Tallow--Burns, and Flax."

In 1824, Hood, after having contributed to some periodicals at Dundee in 1821, obtained the situation of sub-editor of the _London Magazine_. "My vanity," says he, "did not rashly plunge me into authorship, but no sooner was there a legitimate opening than I jumped at it, _à la_ Grimaldi, head foremost, and was speedily behind the scenes."

Mr. Hood's first work was anonymous--his _Odes and Addresses to Great People_--a little, thin, mean-looking foolscap sub-octavo of poems with nothing but wit and humour (could it want more?) to recommend it. Coleridge was delighted with the work, and taxed Charles Lamb by letter with the authorship.

His next work was _A Plea for the Midsummer Fairies_, a serious poem of infinite beauty, full of fine passages and of promise; it obtained praise from the critics, but little favour from the public; and Hood's experience of the unpleasant truth that

"Those who live to please must please to live,"

induced him to have recourse again to his lively vein. He published a second and third series of _Whims and Oddities_, and in 1829 commenced the _Comic Annual_, and it was continued nine years. It proved very profitable; it was a small, widely-printed volume, with rough woodcuts drawn by Hood, who had been some time on probation with Sands and Le Keux, the engravers. Several thousand copies were sold annually, as the publishers' ledgers show. Then came out the comic poem of _The Epping Hunt_, which, Hood tells us, "was penned by an underling at the Wells, a person more accustomed to riding than writing," as shown in this epistle:--"Sir,--Abouut the Hunt. In anser to your Innqueries, their as been a great falling off latterally, so much so this year that there was nobody allmost. We did a mear nothing provisionally, hardly a Bottle extra, which is as proof in Pint. In short our Hunt may be sad to be in the last Stag of a Decline. Bartholomew Rutt." Next appeared _The Dream of Eugene Aram_, with this note: "The late Admiral Burney went to school at an establishment where the unhappy Eugene Aram was usher subsequent to his crime. The Admiral stated that Aram was generally liked by the boys; and that he used to discourse to them about _murder_ in somewhat of the spirit which is attributed to him in this poem." The poem is exquisitely written throughout, and is sometimes little less than sublime.

In the spring of 1831, Hood became the occupier of Lake House, near Wanstead; and while residing here, he wrote his novel of _Tylney Hall_, in which the characters are exuberant with wit and humour, but the plot is defective. Hood next published _Hood's Own; or, Laughter from Year to Year_, a volume of comic lucubrations, reprinted, "with an infusion of New Blood for General Circulation." He next went to the Continent for the benefit of his health. When in Belgium, he published his _Up the Rhine_, constructed on the groundwork of _Humphrey Clinker_. The work consists of a series of imaginary letters from a hypochondriacal old bachelor, his widowed sister, his nephew, and a servant-maid, who form the imaginary travelling party. Each individual writes to a friend in England, and describes the scenes, manners, and circumstances, in a manner suitable to the assumed character. The nephew's remarks seem to embody the opinions and observations of Hood himself. The book is illustrated with whimsical cuts in Hood's rough but effective style, and abounds in good sense as well as humour. Here is a specimen:--

"An English lady resident at Coblentz, one day wishing to order of her German servant (who did not understand English) a boiled fowl for dinner, Grettel was summoned, and that experiment began. It was one of the lady's fancies, that the less her words resembled her native tongue, the more they must be like German. So her first attempt was to tell the maid that she wanted a cheeking, or keeking. The maid opened her eyes and mouth, and shook her head. 'It's to cook,' said the mistress, 'to cook, to put in an iron thing, in a pit--pat--pot.' 'Ish understand risht,' said the maid, in her Coblentz patois. 'It's a thing to eat,' said her mistress, for dinner--for deener--with sauce, soace--sowose.' No answer. 'What on earth am I to do?' exclaimed the lady, in despair, but still made another attempt. 'It's a little creature--a bird--a bard--a beard--a hen--a hone--a fowl--a fool; it's all covered with feathers--fathers--feeders!' 'Ha, ha,' cried the delighted German, at last getting hold of a catchword, 'Ja, ja! fedders--ja woh!' and away went Grettel, and in half-an-hour returned triumphantly, with a bundle of stationers' quills."

Hood afterwards became editor of the _New Monthly Magazine_, from which he retired in 1843. In the course of this year, public feeling had been much excited by cases of distress and destitution, which came before the London police-magistrates, arising from the excessively low rate of wages paid by dealers in ready-made linen to their workwomen. Taking advantage of a market overstocked with labourers, these tradesmen got their work done for a rate of payment so small that fourteen or fifteen hours' labour were frequently required in order to obtain sixpence! Hood's sympathy was excited, and "The Song of the Shirt" was the result--"a burst of poetry and indignant passion by which he produced tears almost as irrepressibly as in other cases he produced laughter." "The Song of the Shirt" was sent to a comic periodical, but was refused insertion; it has, however, been sung through the whole length and breadth of the three kingdoms.

Our author's last periodical was _Hood's Magazine_, which he continued to supply with the best of its contributions till within a month before his death. It contained a novel, which was interrupted by his last illness and death; the last chapters were, in fact, written by him when he was propped up by pillows in bed. He had the consolation, a short time before his death, of having a Government pension of 100_l._ a-year, which was offered him by Sir Robert Peel, in the following noble and touching letter, Sir Robert knowing of his illness, but not of his imminent danger--"I am more than repaid," writes Peel, "by the personal satisfaction which I have had in doing that for which you return me warm and characteristic acknowledgments. You perhaps think that you are known to one with such multifarious occupations as myself merely by general reputation as an author; but I assure you that there can be little which you have written and acknowledged which I have not read, and that there are few who can appreciate and admire more than myself the good sense and good feeling which have taught you to infuse so much fun and merriment into writings correcting folly and exposing absurdities, and yet never trespassing beyond those limits within which wit and facetiousness are not very often confined. You may write on with the consciousness of independence as free and unfettered as if no communication had ever passed between us. I am not conferring a private obligation upon you, but am fulfilling the intentions of the Legislature, which has placed at the disposal of the Crown a certain sum (miserable, indeed, in amount) to be applied to the recognition of public claims on the bounty of the Crown. If you will review the names of those whose claims have been admitted on account of their literary or scientific eminence, you will find an ample confirmation of the truth of my statement. One return, indeed, I shall ask you--that you will give me the opportunity of making your personal acquaintance."

To this statement in the _Cornhill Magazine_ are appended the following reflections:--"O sad, marvellous picture of courage, of honesty, of patient endurance, of duty struggling against pain! How noble Peel's figure is standing by that sick-bed, how generous his words, how dignified and sincere his compassion! And the poor dying man, with a heart full of natural gratitude towards his noble benefactor, must turn to him and say--'If it be well to be remembered by a Minister, it is better still not to be forgotten by him in a 'hurly Burleigh!' Can you laugh? Is not the joke horribly pathetic from the poor dying lips? As dying Robin Hood must fire a last shot with his bow--as one reads of Catholics on their death-bed putting on a Capuchin dress to go out of the world--here is poor Hood at his last hour putting on his ghastly motley, and uttering one joke more. He dies, however, in dearest love and peace with his children, wife, friends: to the former especially his whole life had been devoted, and every day showed his fidelity, simplicity, and affection. In going through the record of his most pure, modest, honourable life, and living along with him, you come to trust him thoroughly, and feel that here is a most loyal, affectionate, and upright soul, with whom you have been brought into communion. Can we say as much of all lives of all men of letters? Here is one at least without guile, without pretension, without scheming, of pure life, to his family and little modest circle of friends tenderly devoted."

After a lethargy, which continued four days, Hood died May 3rd, 1845. He was buried in Kensal Green Cemetery, where a poetical monument has been erected to his memory. He left a son, who inherits much of his father's genius.

"Hood," says one of his biographers, "was undoubtedly a man of genius. His mind was stored with a vast collection of materials drawn from a great variety of sources, but especially his own observations; and he possessed the power of working up those materials into combinations of wit and humour and pathos of the most original and varied kinds. He has wit of the highest quality, as original and as abundant as Butler's or Cowley's, drawn from as extensive an observation of nature and life, if not from so wide a reach of learning, and combined with a richness of humour of which Butler had little and Cowley none. His humour is frequently as extravagantly broad as that of Rabelais, but he has sometimes the delicate touches of that of Addison. As a punster he stands alone. His puns do not consist merely of double meanings of words--a low kind of punning, of which minds of a low order are capable, and with which his imitators have deluged English comedy and comic literature--but of double meanings of words combined with double meanings of sense in such a manner as to produce the most extraordinary effects of surprise and admiration. His power of exciting laughter is wonderful, his drollery indescribable, inimitable. His pathetic power is not equal to his comic, but it is very great. The moral tendency of Hood's works is excellent. In the indulgence of his spirit of fun, he is anything but strait-laced as regards the introduction of images and phrases which a fastidious person might call vulgar or coarse; but an indecent description or even allusion will not easily be found. He is liberal-minded, a warm eulogist as well as a glowing depicter of the good feelings of our nature and the generous actions which those feelings prompt, and he is an unsparing satirist of vice, pretension, and cant in all their forms.

"Hood, in his person, was thin, pale, and delicate; in his temper he was kind and cheerful; he seems to have imbibed the social and benevolent feeling of his friend Lamb, and he was no less than Lamb a favourite among his friends. His long-continued sufferings only stimulated him to amuse himself and others by the exercise of his extraordinary imagination; and when at last he could no longer bear up under his bodily pains, his complaint was simple, but it indicated a terrible degree of suffering--'I cannot die, I cannot die.'"

A Witty Archbishop.

An industrious student, a deep thinker, an acute reasoner, a learned mind, a correct and at times elegant writer--these are titles of honour which the mere out-side-world, travelling in its flying railway-carriage, will gladly award to the late Archbishop of Dublin (Dr. Whately). Not so familiar are certain minor and more curious gifts, which he kept by him for his own and his friends' entertainment, which broke out at times on more public occasions. He delighted in the oddities of thought, in queer quaint distinctions; and if an object had by any possibility some strange distorted side or corner, or even point, which was undermost, he would gladly stoop down his mind to get that precise view of it, nay, would draw it in that odd light for the amusement of the company.

Thus he struck Guizot, who described him as "startling and ingenious, strangely absent, familiar, confused, eccentric, amiable, and engaging, no matter what unpoliteness he might commit, or what propriety he might forget." In short, a mind with a little of the Sydney Smith's leaven, whose brilliancy lay in precisely these odd analogies. It was his recreation to take up some intellectual hobby, and make a toy of it. Just as, years ago, he was said to have taken up that strange instrument the boomerang, and was to be seen on the sands casting it from him, and watching it return. It was said, too, that at the dull intervals of a visitation, when ecclesiastical business languished, he would cut out little miniature boomerangs of card, and amuse himself by illustrating the principle of the larger toy by shooting them from his finger.

The even, and sometimes drowsy, current of Dublin society was almost always enlivened by some little witty boomerang of his, fluttering from mouth to mouth, and from club to club. The Archbishop's last was eagerly looked for. Some were indifferent, some were trifling; but it was conceded that all had an odd extravagance, which marked them as original, quaint, queer. In this respect he was the Sydney Smith of the Irish capital, with this difference--that Sydney Smith's king announced that he would never make the lively Canon of St. Paul's a Bishop.

Homœopathy was a medical paradox, and was therefore welcome. Yet in this he travelled out of the realms of mere fanciful speculation, and clung to it with a stern and consistent earnestness faithfully adhered to through his last illness. Mesmerism, too, he delighted to play with. He had, in fact, innumerable _dadas_, as the French call them, or hobby-horses, upon which he was continually astride.

This led him into a pleasant affection of being able to discourse _de omnibus rebus_, &c., and the more recondite or less known the subject, the more eager was he to speak. It has been supposed that the figure of the "Dean," in Mr. Lever's pleasant novel of _Roland Cashel_, was sketched from him. Indeed, there can be no question but that it is an unacknowledged portrait.

"What is the difference," he asked of a young clergyman he was examining, "between a form and a ceremony? The meaning seems nearly the same; yet there is a very nice distinction." Various answers were given. "Well," he said, "it lies in this: you sit upon a form, but you stand upon ceremony."

"Morrow's Library" is the Mudie of Dublin; and the Rev. Mr. Day, a popular preacher. "How inconsistent," said the archbishop, "is the piety of certain ladies here. They go _to Day for a sermon_, and _to Morrow_ for a novel!"

At a dinner-party he called out suddenly to the host, "Mr. ----!" There was silence. "Mr. ----, what is the proper female companion of this John Dory?" After the usual number of guesses an answer came, "Anne Chovy." [This has been attributed to Quin, the actor and epicure.]

_Another Riddle._--"The laziest letter in the alphabet? The _letther_ G!" (lethargy).

_The Wicklow Line._--The most unmusical in the world--having a Dun-Drum, Still-Organ, and a Bray for stations.

_Doctor Gregg._--The new bishop and he at dinner. Archbishop: "Come, though you _are_ John Cork, you musn't stop the bottle here." The answer was not inapt: "I see your lordship is determined to draw me out."

On Dr. K----x's promotion to the bishopric of Down, an appointment in some quarters unpopular: "The Irish government will not be able to stand many more such Knocks Down as this!"

The merits of the same bishop being canvassed before him, and it being mentioned that he had compiled a most useful Ecclesiastical Directory, with the Values of Livings, &c., "If that be so," said the archbishop, "I hope the next time the claims of our friend Thom will not be overlooked." (Thom, the author of the well known _Almanack_.)

A clergyman, who had to preach before him, begged to be let off, saying, "I hope your grace will excuse my preaching next Sunday." "Certainly," said the other indulgently. Sunday came, and the archbishop said to him, "Well! Mr. ----, what became of you! we expected you to preach to-day." "Oh, your grace said you would excuse my preaching to-day." "Exactly; but I did not say I would excuse you _from_ preaching."

At a lord lieutenant's banquet a grace was given of unusual length. "My lord," said the archbishop, "did you ever hear the story of Lord Mulgrave's chaplain?" "No," said the lord lieutenant. "A young chaplain had preached a sermon of great length. 'Sir,' said Lord Mulgrave, bowing to him, 'there were some things in your sermon of to-day I never heard before.' 'Oh, my lord,' said the flattered chaplain, 'it is a common text, and I could not have hoped to have said anything new on the subject.' '_I heard the clock strike twice_,' said Lord Mulgrave."

At some religious ceremony at which he was to officiate in the country, a young curate who attended him grew very nervous as to their being late. "My good young friend," said the archbishop, "I can only say to you what the criminal going to be hanged said to those around, who were hurrying him, 'Let us take our time, they can't begin without us.'"--(_Yorick Junior._--_Notes and Queries. Third Series._)

The following charade, said to be one of the last by Dr. Whatley, has puzzled many wise heads:--

"Man cannot live without my _first_,
By day and night it's used;
My _second_ is by all accursed,
By day and night abused.
My _whole_ is never seen by day,
And never used by night;
Is dear to friends when far away,
But hated when in sight."

A Correspondent of _Notes and Queries_ suggests the following solution:--

"_Ignis_, or fire, all men will own
Essential to the life of man;
_Fatuus_, a fool, has been, 'tis known,
Cursed and abused since time began.
Some _Ignis Fatuus_, Will-o'-wisp.
Not seen by day, nor used by night,
Men love, and for their phantom list,
When 'tis unseen, but hate its sight."

Literary Madmen.

"Great wits are sure to madness near allied,
And their partitions do their bounds divide."--DRYDEN.

This bold assertion has long since been pronounced incorrect. Nevertheless, the barrier between genius and madness has not been traced. Eccentricity is often mistaken for craziness; and the entire subject is beset with nice points and shades of controversy. In 1860 appeared Octave Delepierre's _Histoire Littéraire des Fous_, upon the soundness of which critics are divided in opinion. The following sketch of its contents, however, shows the work to be full of interest.

A history of literary madmen is yet to be written--whether it be a history of authors who have gone mad, or of persons who, being mad, have turned authors. It is singular to notice what relief madmen find in literary composition; so much so, that it has been employed as a method of cure in more than one of our lunatic asylums. At the Crichton Royal Institution, Dumfriesshire, a little journal, entitled the _New Moon_, was published every month, the contents being contributed, set up, and printed by the inmates in their lucid moments. Occasionally there was a little incoherence--a little roughness; but, as a whole, the _New Moon_ would bear comparison with many other amateur periodicals. Here are two stanzas written by a man tortured by long sleeplessness, whom private misfortunes had driven mad:--

"Go! sleep, my heart, in peace,
Bid fear and sorrow cease:
He who of worlds takes care,
One heart in mind doth bear.

"Go! sleep, my heart, in peace,
If death should thee release,
And this night hence thee take,
Thou yonder wilt awake."

Theology has sent more people mad than any other pursuit--a truth of which M. Delepierre's _Histoire Littéraire des Fous_ furnishes some interesting illustrations.

The writer has, however, occasionally mistaken eccentricity for craziness. Simon Stylites on his pillar and St. Anthony in his cave were crazed; but we do not think that Baxter's _Hooks and Eyes for Believers' Breeches_ is an indication of insanity any more than such works as _La Seringue Spirituelle pour les Ames constipées en Dévotion_, or _La Tabatière Spirituelle pour faire éternuer les Ames dévotes_. Very probably, if we could refer to these works, we should find that the title had little or nothing in common with the contents, but as a mere trick to catch purchasers. Few people would charge Latimer with being mad because he preached a "Sermon on a Pack of Cards." Nor do we think any conclusion can be drawn unfavourable to the Jesuit missionary Paoletti from the mere fact of his writing a treatise to prove that the American aborigines were eternally damned without hope of redemption, because they were the offspring of the Devil and one of Noah's daughters. His mind had not lost its balance to such a degree as that of old Portel, who persuaded himself that the soul of John the Baptist had passed into his body; or of Miranda, a living man, who fancies himself the forty-ninth incarnation of Adam through Romulus and Mohamed; while Queen Victoria is the seventieth embodiment of the soul of Eve, by way of Miriam and the Virgin Mary! Geoffrey Vallée was another monomaniac of this class, who began by having a shirt for every day in the year, which he used to send into Flanders to be washed at a certain spring, and ended by being burnt at the stake as an atheist for a silly book he wrote. Our own John Mason, who proclaimed Christ's coming, and declared Water Stratford, near Buckingham, to be the seat of his throne, has had many imitators at home and abroad.

Endeavours to interpret prophecy and explain the Apocalypse have turned many a brain, even in our own days. One Francis Potter wrote a book with the following title:--"An Interpretation of the number 666, wherein it is shown that this number is an exquisite and perfect character, truly, exactly, and essentially describing that state of government to which all other notes of Antichrist do agree." A Frenchman, Soubira, ran mad on the same subject about the same period. In 1828 he published a pamphlet with this meagre title--"666." Here is a sample:--

Les banquiers de la France 666
Des organistes de la Foi 666
Et des concerts de la cadence 666
Vont accomplir la loi 666
Et conterminer l'alliance 666

Joseph O'Donnelly fancied he had discovered the primitive language, and printed some specimens of it at Brussels in 1854.

The literary madman is often harmless enough, and his condition being not rarely the result of an overtasked brain, in his lucid moments he is his former self. If in his mad moments Lee called upon Jupiter to rise and snuff the moon; it was in his calmer hours that he replied to the sneers of a silly poet--"It is very difficult to write like a madman, but very easy to write like a fool." Christopher Smart was another poetical lunatic, whose best pieces were composed while he was under restraint. These are not, however, very remarkable, their chief merit consisting in their history. Like the Koran, they were committed to writing under circumstances of great difficulty; the whitened walls of his cell were his paper, and his pen the end of a piece of wood burnt in the fire. Thomas Lloyd belonged to this class, but few of his fragments have been preserved. Milman, of Pennsylvania, lost his bride by lightning on their wedding-day: his reason never recovered the shock.

Luke Clennel, the engraver, forgot his art during his long state of unreason, but would compose very passable verses; while John Clare, whose poetry brought him into note, and led to his ruin, scarcely wrote at all during his mad moods. Thomas Bishop took to the drama, and his _Koranzzo's Feast, or the Unfair Marriage_, a tragedy founded on facts 2,366 years ago, is a serious performance, amply illustrated. Among the characters are four queens, three savages, and five ghosts, not including the ghost of a clock, intended as part of the stage furniture. The most singular of this class of one-sided writers is M. G. Desjardins, who, we believe, is still alive. It is impossible to imagine a head more completely turned than his.

Another writer of this eccentric class is Paulin Gagne, author of _L'Unitéide, ou la Femme-Messie_, a poem in twelve cantos. The thirty-eighth act of the eighth canto passes in a potato-field, and the scene is opened by _Pataticulture_ in a speech of this fashion:--

"Peuples et Rois, je suis la Pataticulture,
Fille de la nature et du siècle en friture;
J'ai toujours adoré ce fruit délicieux
Que, dit-on, pour extra, mangeaient jadis les Dieux."

He winds up by declaring that

"Dans la pomme de terre est le salut de tous."

In the following act, _Carroticulture_ is introduced with a new version of the Marseillaise:--

"Allons, enfans de la Cacrotte."

Science and Philosophy have had their victims; and those, though we must except Newton, so long reckoned among those whose brain had given way under intense thought, we must include Kant, his disciple Wirgman, and others of less note. William Martin, whose two brothers made themselves famous in very different lines--one by setting fire to York Minster, the other by his paintings--was as mad as could be desired, both in science and poetry. Here is a sample combined:--

"The creation of the world,
Likewise Adam and Eve, we know,
Made by the Great God, from
Whom all blessings flow."

The famous Walking Stewart went crazy on "the polarization of moral truth." At the dinner-table he spoilt the digestion of his guests by turning the conversation to his one beloved subject, and he was as fatal as the Ancient Mariner to any man who might chance to address him a civil word in public places or conveyances.

A deplorable instance of this class is afforded by Wirgman, the Kantesian, just named, who, after making a fortune as a goldsmith and silversmith, in St. James's Street, Westminster, squandered it all as _a regenerating philosopher_. He printed several works, and had paper made specially for one, the same sheet being of several different colours; and as he changed the work many times while it was printing, the expense was enormous: one book of four hundred pages cost 2,276_l._ He published a grammar of the five senses, which was a sort of system of metaphysics for the use of children; and he maintained that when it was universally adopted in schools, peace and harmony would be restored to the earth, and virtue would everywhere replace crime. He complained much that people would not listen to him, and that although he had devoted nearly half a century, he had asked in vain to be appointed Professor in some University or College--so little does the world appreciate those who labour unto death in its service. Nevertheless, exclaimed Wirgman, after another useless application, "while life remains, I will not cease to communicate this blessing to the rising world."

A Perpetual-Motion Seeker.

The celebrated French physician, Pinel, relates the case of a watchmaker who was infatuated with the chimera of Perpetual Motion, and to effect this discovery, he set to work with indefatigable ardour. From unremitting attention to the object of his enthusiasm, coinciding with the influence of revolutionary disturbances, his imagination was greatly heated, his sleep was interrupted, and at length a complete derangement took place. His case was marked by a most whimsical illusion of the imagination: he fancied that he had lost his head upon the scaffold; that it had been thrown promiscuously among the heads of many other victims; that the judges having repented of their cruel sentence, had ordered their heads to be restored to their respective owners, and placed upon their respective shoulders; but that, in consequence of an unhappy mistake, the gentleman who had the management of that business, had placed upon his shoulders the head of one of his unhappy companions. The idea of this whimsical change of his head occupied his thoughts night and day, which determined his friends to send him to an asylum. Nothing could exceed the extravagance of his heated brain: he sung, he cried, or danced incessantly; and as there appeared no propensity to commit acts of violence or disturbance, he was allowed to go about the hospital without control, in order to expend, by evaporation, the effervescence of his spirits. "Look at these teeth!" he cried; "mine were exceedingly handsome; these are rotten and decayed. My mouth was sound and healthy; this is foul and diseased. What difference between this hair and that of my own head!"

The idea of perpetual motion frequently recurred to him in the midst of his wanderings; and he chalked on all the doors or windows as he passed the various designs by which his wondrous piece of mechanism was to be constructed. The method best calculated to cure so whimsical an illusion appeared to be that of encouraging his prosecution of it to satiety. His friends were accordingly requested to send him his tools, with materials to work upon, and other requisites, such as plates of copper and steel, and watch-wheels. His zeal was now redoubled; his whole attention was rivetted upon his favourite pursuit: he forgot his meals, and after about a month's labour our artist began to think he had followed a false route. He broke into a thousand fragments the piece of machinery which he had fabricated with so much toil, and thought, and labour; he then entered upon a new plan, and laboured for another fortnight. The various parts being completed, he brought them together; he fancied that he saw a perfect harmony amongst them. The whole was now finally adjusted--his anxiety was indescribable--_motion succeeded_; it continued for some time, and he supposed it capable of continuing for ever. He was elevated to the highest pitch of ecstasy and triumph, and ran like lightning into the interior of the hospital, crying out, like another Archimedes, "At length I have solved this famous problem, which has puzzled so many men celebrated for their wisdom and talents!" Grievous to add, he was checked in the midst of his triumph. The wheels stopped! the _perpetual motion_ ceased! His intoxication of joy was succeeded by disappointment and confusion; though to avoid a humiliating and mortifying confession, he declared that he could easily remove the impediment: but, tired of such experimental employment, he determined for the future to devote his attention solely to his business.

There still remained another imaginary impression to be counteracted--that of the exchange of his head, which unceasingly occurred to him. A keen and unanswerable stroke of pleasantry seemed best adapted to correct this fantastic whim. Another convalescent, of a gay and facetious turn, instructed beforehand, adroitly turned the conversation to the subject of the famous miracle of St. Denis, in which it will be recollected that the holy man, after decapitation, walked away with his head under his arm, which he kissed and condoled with for its misfortune. Our mechanician strongly maintained the possibility of the fact, and sought to confirm it by an appeal to his own case. The other set up a laugh, and replied with a tone of the keenest ridicule, "Madman as thou art, how could St. Denis kiss his own head? Was it with his heels?" This equally unexpected and unanswerable retort forcibly struck the maniac. He retired confused amidst the laughter which was provoked at his expense, and never afterwards mentioned the _exchange of his head_.

"Her beauty's found beyond the skill
Of the best paynter to embrace."
]

The Romantic Duchess of Newcastle.