Chapter XXVIII: Farewell! (5)

The local charities connected with the family history of great landowners in England form one of the most interesting classes of public relief. They date chiefly from ante-Reformation times, and often embody a hidden symbolism into which none save the antiquary now cares to inquire. It is a mistake to suppose that _all_ the dying bequests of pious folk in the Middle Ages were devoted to the "Church" proper: the larger part certainly were, although the spirit that prompted even the making of such bequests was symbolical of the belief in the dispensing (rather than the appropriating) powers of churchmen: but many were also the sums left to be yearly spent in the relief of the poor and starving. Thus originated the alms-(or bede-) houses so frequently met with in the retired villages of England. _Bede_ (from the German _beten_, to "pray") meant prayer, hinting at the pious duty of those benefiting by the founder's legacy to pray for his eternal welfare. When the Reformation, among many abuses, also obliterated many beautiful and poetical customs, the meaning of these "houses of prayer" was forgotten, and their chapels were often ruthlessly whitewashed. The material part of the foundation, however, still remained, and the bedesmen, twelve or thirteen (in commemoration of the number of the apostles, or the apostles and their Master), continued to be chosen by the clergyman of the parish and the lord of the manor. In other places, instead of this more costly mode of relief, a custom prevailed of distributing a "dole" at stated times to a large number of poor people, the number corresponding to the age of the giver: if alive, of course the number increased every year; if dead, it was fixed at the age at which he or she had died. Many of these local customs continue to this day: some have even been instituted lately, since the revived taste for medievalism has beautified and refined English homesteads and village churches. The queen, a faithful upholder of ancient national manners, has given the example by adhering to the time-honored custom called the Royal Maundy. This word is from _mandatum_, or commandment, and refers to the "new commandment" given by Christ to his apostles at the Last Supper. In Catholic countries it is still the custom for the sovereign to wash the feet of twelve poor men (his wife performing the same office for twelve poor and aged women) in public on the Thursday before Easter, and to serve them at table afterward: in Vienna this is done in a very solemn and public manner. The chosen ones are brought to the palace in court-coaches, and after the ceremony is over are carried home in the same way, loaded with presents of clothing, money, and all the dishes, spoons, forks, etc., used at their dinner. In England the same charity, or its equivalent, is dispensed, not by the sovereign in person, but by her chaplains and almoners, in the midst of beautiful formalities. The dignity with which the ceremony is performed is a striking evidence of the national character, and a contrast to the sometimes slovenly manner in which great public religious functions are got through abroad. The charities are distributed in the chapel of Whitehall, the palace made tragically famous by the disgrace of Wolsey and the death of King Charles I. Fifty-five old men, and as many women, the number corresponding to the age of the sovereign, were thus relieved last year. On an earlier occasion witnessed by the writer a procession consisting of a detachment of the yeomen of the guard, under the command of a sergeant-major (one of the yeomen carrying the royal alms on a gold salver of the reign of William and Mary), several chaplains, almoners, secretaries and a few national schoolchildren (allowed to take part in the ceremony as a signal reward for good behavior), left the Royal Almonry Office for the chapel of Whitehall. It was met at the door by the lord high almoner and the subdeans of the Chapel Royal, who joined the ranks and passed up to the altar. The surpliced boys of the Chapel Royal, and the clergy and gentlemen belonging officially to it, took their appointed places right and left, and the gold salver was deposited in front of the royal pew, generally tenanted by one or more members of the royal family. Evening prayer, slightly varied and adapted for the occasion, as custom has decreed for several centuries, was then gone through; the forty-first Psalm was chanted; and after the First Lesson an anthem by Goss was sung. Then followed the distribution of £1 15s. to each woman, and a pair of shoes and stockings to each man. The two next anthems were by Mendelssohn, and in the intervals woolen and linen clothes were first distributed to each man, and money-purses to each man and woman. The Second Lesson was then read, and the fourth and concluding anthem, by Greene, chanted, after which the usual Thanksgiving and Prayer of St. Chrysostom were read. The musical part of the service, being especially prominent, was correctly and artistically performed by skillful musicians (some of them composers), styled officially "gentlemen of the Chapel Royal:" the solo in the first anthem was sung by one of the boys.

In addition to this special ceremony, other Easter bounties, styled "Minor Bounty," "Discretionary Bounty," and the "Royal Gate Alms," were, according to old custom, distributed at the Almonry Office on Good Friday and Saturday, while Easter Monday and Tuesday were devoted to the distribution of other supplementary relief to old and infirm people previously chosen by the clergy of the various London parishes. The recipients included over a thousand persons. Among the private local charities none is on so large a scale as the famous "Tichborne Dole." The idea we now attach to the word _dole_ is ludicrously inappropriate in this case, where the gift is in the proportion of one gallon of the best wheaten flour to each adult and half a gallon to each child, and where the number of the recipients is generally between five and six hundred, including the inhabitants of two parishes. This custom is seven hundred years old, and was first instituted on the Tichborne estate by Dame Mabel, the wife of Sir Roger de Tichborne, knight, in the beginning of the twelfth century. The foundress was renowned for her piety and charity, and by her own people was looked upon as a saint. The family record says that she was so charitable to the poor that, not content to exercise that virtue all her lifetime, she instituted the "dole" as a perpetual memorial of her goodness, and entailed it to her posterity. It is distributed yearly on the 25th of March. A large oil-painting, now hanging in the dining-room of Tichborne House, and representing the distribution of the "dole," was painted in 1670, and is considered as one of the most valuable family relics. The costumes of the period are faithfully represented, most of the prominent figures are portraits, and the scene is laid within the courtyard of the old manor, with its sculptured gables and picturesque mullioned windows. The present house, roomy and comfortable as it is, is a plain, unpretending building, with no architectural features to recommend it, but the park and grounds are very beautiful, the old trees disposed in deep glades and avenues, and the situation altogether very picturesque. Since the famous trial has made everything bearing the name of Tichborne a target for curiosity, the occupants have been sadly annoyed, and access to the house was at last, in self-defence, denied to strangers who came simply as gaping sight-seers. The "dole" distribution, as we have said, takes place every year. Last spring it was attended with less show than usual, owing to the illness of the little boy who now represents the old name (the nephew of the lost Roger Tichborne), in consequence of which none of the ladies of the family were present. But despite the absence of the festal arrangements by which it is usually accompanied, the main business was the same as it has always been since Dame Mabel's time. About nine o'clock the fine old park became thronged with men, women and children, all carrying bags and baskets in which to stow away the "bounty." The distribution was made at the back of the house. The people gathered in groups, dressed in all sorts of plain, dilapidated country garments--old men in worn-out smock-frocks (a sight seldom seen even in conservative England), gaiters such as they wear at work in the fields, and slouched, unrecognizable hats that had evidently seen better times; others stood in their "Sunday clothes," stiff and uncomfortable as a laborer looks in that unusual and unartistic guise; some were old and toothless, yet upright and almost martial-looking; while some, again, had that pathetic look--sunken eyes, bent limbs and general air of having given in to the attacks of time and sorrow--which invariably speaks the same language and stirs the same sympathy all over the world. The women were in the majority, most of them hale and hearty, the wives and daughters of laborers who were too busy to come in person. Nine sacks, each containing fifty gallons of flour, were emptied by two sturdy miller's men into an immense tub. The family being an old Roman Catholic one, a religious ceremony was the prelude of the distribution. The domestic chaplain offered up a short prayer, and after invoking the blessing of Heaven on the gift, sprinkled the flour with holy water in the form of a cross. It was no uncommon thing for one person to carry away three or four gallons of flour: the largest award was in the case of a family consisting of man, wife and seven children, the wife carrying away with her five and a half gallons. Many of those whose names appeared as witnesses for the defence during the memorable trial were present--John Etheridge, the blacksmith, and Kennett, coachman to the dowager Lady Tichborne, among the number. The latter lives in a small freehold cottage, his own property, at Cheriton, the next parish to Tichborne. Persons of all denominations were relieved--Church people, Dissenters and Roman Catholics alike--without the slightest favoritism being shown to any.

The same kind of charity, though on a smaller scale, and by the custom of living patrons instead of the will of deceased ones, is dispensed at various times in the year through the whole country by both large and small landed proprietors.

The 11th of November (St. Martin's Day) is the one generally chosen for the distribution of winter clothing to the poor of the parish, and this in commemoration of the mediaeval legend of the holy Bishop Martin, who gave half his ample cloak to a shivering leper who begged of him in the street. Next night, says the legend, he saw in a dream Christ himself clothed in that cloak, and remembered the promise that "inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of these, ye have done it unto Me." The writer has often assisted at such distribution of warm clothing, both made and unmade. In every county squire's house there is a bi-or tri-weekly distribution of soup to the village poor, and in most two or three sets of fine bed-linen and soft baby-clothes, to be lent out on occasions requiring greater comforts than the poor and too often thriftless women of agricultural villages can afford. Private charity is all-reaching: the "hall" is the dispensary and the general ark of refuge for all county ills, moral, physical and pecuniary, and its help is never thought degrading, like that of the "parish." Most families pay a doctor and a nurse by the year to attend the poor free of expense, and an order from the doctor for jellies, soup or wine, as well as for the ordinary sorts of medicine, is always sure of being filled from the ample stores of the "housekeeper's room." If the city poor were half as well provided for as are the agricultural poor by their "lords of the manor," there would be far less destitution. Some affect to sneer at a system which savors of what they call "feudalism," and which, they wisely suggest, encourages pauperism, but warm-hearted and charitable people will probably disagree with these searchers after new methods, and will be glad to find in the ready sympathy of English landowners for their poor neighbors a ray of the old-fashioned unquestioning charity which distinguished biblical times.

B.M.

* * * * *

LANDORIANA.

I wish to supplement the "Recollections of Landor," published in a former number of the Magazine, by an anecdote and two or three characteristic letters which by accident escaped me when I was writing on the subject before. Here is the story: Schlegel and Niebuhr had been for some time on unpleasant terms. The historical skepticism of the latter was altogether distasteful to Schlegel; and he was wont to deny Niebuhr's claim to the title of historian. Well, Landor was dining at Bonn, and among the company immediately opposite to him at table was Schlegel. Hardly had the soup been despatched before Landor, with that stentorian voice of his which always filled every corner of every room he spoke in, began: "Are not you the man, Mr. Schlegel, who has recently discovered, at the end of two hundred and fifty years, that Shakespeare is a poet? Well, perhaps if you live two hundred and fifty years longer, you may discover that Niebuhr is an historian." "Schlegel did not like it," added Landor when telling the story himself--very much as who should say, "I knocked him down with an unexpected blow of my fist, and he did not _like_ it!"

And now for my letters. Here is one dated "Florence, June, 1861," written to my wife when he was past eighty and within a year or two of his death. The latter portion of the letter is especially interesting, and will be none the less so to those who may be disposed to dispute the correctness of the judgments expressed in it.

"Do not be alarmed," he writes, "at a letter which 'like a wounded snake drags its slow length along.' Such, I suspect, mine will be, though it ought to contain only thanks for the admirable ones you have sent to me on the late affairs of Tuscany. Yesterday Mr. Trollope gave them to me as your present. I then exprest a hope that he or you would undertake a history of Italian affairs from the Treaty of Campo Formio down to the present day. Indeed, I hope and trust that it may be continued a year or two farther, until the recovery of Rome from the most perfidious enemy she and Italy were ever opprest by. And this under the title of deliverer! Lay your two heads together, and let me have to boast that the best and truest of our historians were my personal friends. Southey and Napier were most intimately so. Hallam is a dull proser--no discovery or illustration, no profound thought, no vivid description, not even a harmonious period. Macaulay is a smart reviewer, indifferent to truth, a hanger-on of party. Lingard is more honest, and writes better. He does not tag together loose epigrams with a crooked pin. Now put the empty chairs of these people against the wall, and sit down to your table with a long piece of work before you. And now you must be tired, as I foretold you would be. So hail the farewell of your affectionate old friend,

"W. LANDOR."

* * * * *

Here is another, undated, but shown by the Bath postmark to have been written in 1857. The whole letter is strongly characteristic of the writer, as indeed was everything that Landor wrote, said or did, so thoroughly and in every sense of the word was he _original_; but, as in the preceding letter, the most interesting portion is that toward the end, where he gives some amusing indications of his peculiar political opinions and feelings. This letter also was written to the same correspondent:

"My dear friend: It is now three years since I have been in London, except in passing through it to the Crystal Palace, without dismounting." [How curiously the phrase indicates the habits of the writer's youth, when gentlemen's journeys were for the most part performed on horseback!] "At Sydenham I remained three weeks, almost; but the air of London always disagreed with me, added to which, the necessity of visiting was always intolerable to me, and I have lost many friends by refusing to undergo it. If Mr. Trollope should find a few days' leisure for Bath, I can promise him a hearty reception and a comfortable bedroom. Is it not singular that on your letter being brought to me I laid down for it _Town and Country_ [a novel by Frances Trollope], which interests me as much on a second reading as on the first? To-morrow I must run--imagine a man of eighty-one running!--for the Athenaeum. I myself have not thrown away the pen, which sadly wants mending. They have published _Scenes from the Shades,_ and _Alfieri and Metastasio_, and _Codrus and Polio_. These last three are in _Fraser_. If they bring a few pounds or shillings, the money will be given to Capera, a laboring man who has written some noble poetry." [The writer in question produced some very tolerable verses, remarkable as coming from a man in his position, but in our friend's enthusiastic language they become "noble poetry" directly he makes the man his protegé--a truly Landorian touch!] "I could have collected three hundred pounds for Kossuth from friends who wrote to me about it, and probably ten or a dozen times as much from others, for no man ever had so few friends or acquaintances as I have. Nearly all are dead, and I have no leisure or inclination for new ones. It gave me much pleasure to hear that the fine and pleasant Lord Normanby is in part recovered from his paralysis. I parted from him at Bath with few hopes. Never have I spent a winter in England so free from every kind of malady as this last. A disastrous war ends with a disgraceful peace. We are to have an illumination and ringing of bells. Sir Claude Scott and myself will not illuminate, but I have promised the ringers twenty shillings if they will muffle the bells. Rejoice! The best generals and best soldiers in the Crymea [sic] were Italians.

"W.S.L."

Landor had many queer crotchets about spelling, and always absolutely declined to follow any rule but his own. It seems to have been one of these crotchets to spell Crimea as he spells it in the above-quoted letter--on what grounds I do not pretend to be able to guess: With regard to the seemingly unpatriotic sentiment contained in the last lines, it must be remembered that the writer was addressing a person long resident in Italy, and eagerly anxious for the well-doing of the Italian troops in their struggle with the different despotisms which oppressed the Peninsula. The bribing the ringers to _muffle_ the bells is a highly characteristic trait.

Of a third letter I will print only a part, because the remainder concerns the unfortunate affair which compelled the writer finally to leave England--the result, as is well known, of a trial for libel in which Landor was cast in heavy damages which were far beyond his diminished means to pay. He acted very wrongly, and still more imprudently, in attempting to expose what he honestly deemed misconduct of a nature that outraged all the generous feelings of his nature, by the publication of a very gross libel. The passages in the letter in question which refer to this business, then in the stage preceding his conviction, abundantly testify to the fact that the sentiments which had impelled him to act as he did were wholly and solely those of generous indignation at wrong done, in no-wise against himself, but against another, whom he deemed to be oppressed and unprotected. But I think, on the whole, that no good purpose would be served by raking up the matter afresh. And (for Landor in his wrath was at no time a Chrysostom) the letter bristles with assertions and accusations couched in language which might, for aught I know, make the publication of it a repetition of the offence for which he suffered. The other matters touched on are not uninteresting manifestations of opinion:

"My DEAR FRIEND," he writes: "Whether I am ill or well it is always with equal pleasure that I see the trace of your hand. Surely, I must have written to you since I sent the scenes of _Anthony and Octavius_. But I am too apt to believe that what I _ought_ to have done I _have_ done. You ask me what I think of the Neapolitan abominations." [The allusion is to some one or other of the many acts of grievous tyranny which were at that time perpetrated by the Neapolitan Bourbon government in its terrified attempts to protect itself against the rising indignation of the people.] "We countenance them. The despots are in _Holy Alliance_ against constitutions." [Surely, Landor's old antagonism to former English governments led him into error and injustice when he accuses England of "countenancing" the tyrannies of the Neapolitan government. How much Gladstone's celebrated letter and English sentiment in all quarters contributed toward the overthrow of that tyranny was not then known as well as it is now.] "On the other side of this," he continues, "you will find a few verses I wrote on Agesiloa Milano, the finest and bravest patriot on record." [Agesilao Milano, whose name was just then in every mouth in Italy, was one of the numerous victims of Austrian severity, who had met his fate with admirable courage, and who willingly gave his life for his country. But there was nothing to distinguish him specially from hundreds of other Italians who in those evil days did as much, and nothing save chance to distinguish him from the tens of hundreds who were ready to do as much had the lot fallen to them. But the mention of this poor fellow in the letter is very specially Landorian. No superlatives were with him strong enough to express his sentiments on aught that immediately moved his feelings either of admiration or indignation.] "The concessions in Lombardy," he goes on, "are fabulous. Thieves and assassins are turned out of prison with quiet literary men and brave patriots.... With kindest regards to your circle, ever your affec.

"W. LANDOR."

The verses on Agesilao Milano announced as being "on the other side" are there preceded by two epigrams on the object of his indignation above alluded to, which I suppress for the same reason that I have suppressed that portion of the letter referring to the same subject. The verses on the young Italian patriot and martyr run as follows:

Sometimes the brave have bent the head
To lick the dust that despots tread.
Not so Milano; he alone
Would bow to Justice on the throne.
To win a crown of thorns he trod
A flinty path, and rests with God.

T.A.T.

* * * * *

THE DEATH OF DOCTORS' COMMONS.

On the 20th of last October a venerable London institution changed its quarters. Doctors' Commons may almost be said to be no more. Its heart is gone. The Principal Registry of the Court of Probate--the successor to the Prerogative Court of Canterbury--is no longer to be found there, and those who seek their fortunes in wills have now to prosecute their researches in that hub of British departmental records, Somerset House. The knell of "the Commons" was rung about twenty years ago, when a campaign against the abuses prevailing in the ecclesiastical courts was begun in the London _Times_. It unquestionably had been the home _par excellence_ of sinecures and monopolies, which culminated in the office of registrar of the Prerogative Court of the archbishop of Canterbury. This office was in the gift of the archbishop, and was at the time these attacks began held by the Rev. Mr. Moore. Mr. Moore was a member of a family which had certainly good cause to stand steadfast in the faith of the Church of England, and not to waver one inch in attachment thereto. It may be doubted whether since its foundation any family--we except, of course, those to whom grants were made from abbey-lands--during the whole history of the Church has drawn such vast sums from it. His father, a singularly fortunate man, set the ball rolling. Having gone up to Christ Church, Oxford, as a sizar, or poor scholar, he happened about the time of taking his degree to cross the quadrangle at the moment when a nobleman of great position was asking the dean to recommend a tutor for his son. Young Moore at that moment caught the very reverend functionary's eye. There is the very man, thought he. He called him up, presented him to the peer, and an engagement was made. In those days the patronage of a powerful peer was a ready road to preferment. Young Moore gave satisfaction to his noble patron, and was pushed up the ecclesiastical tree until he reached its topmost branch, being created in 1783 archbishop of Canterbury. In 1770 he formed a very judicious marriage with Miss Eden. This lady was sister of Sir Robert Eden, governor of Maryland in 1776 (who married the sister and co-heir of the last Lord Baltimore), and of the first Lord Auckland, whom George III. very justly stigmatized as "that eternal intriguer." To the "eternal intriguer" the elevation of Moore to the archbishopric was probably mainly due. Lord Auckland was for many years as intimate a friend as Pitt ever had, and his daughter (afterward countess of Buckinghamshire) is the great minister's only recorded love. For twenty-three years Dr. Moore filled the archbishopric, and in those days it was a far better thing pecuniarily than it is now. He made hay whilst the sun shone, and then and for long after did his relatives bask in the sun. Registrarships, canonries and livings fell upon them in rich profusion, and the great prize of all, the registrarship of the Prerogative Court of the archbishop of Canterbury, fell to the luckiest of the lot.

Of course the registrar never came near his registry: his duties were discharged by three deputies. Not one penny, moreover, beyond what was absolutely necessary did he expend on the registry itself. Such a hole as it was! Cribbed, cabined and confined were the clerks who ran the reverend sinecurist's business in one of the most extraordinary rabbit-warrens, to use the epithet Bethell, Lord (Chancellor) Westbury, applied to it in the writer's hearing. In Great Knight Rider street--a name derived from the days of the Knights Templar--was a dingy passage-way leading into a yet dingier little court. Passing up a short flight of steps, you found yourself in a large room, with deep alcoves furnished with shelves, on which, above and on all sides, were ranged huge volumes with massive clasps. "What are all these books?" inquired a youthful visitor--"old Bibles?" "No, sir; they're testaments," was a waggish official's reply. They are, in fact, copies of wills. The originals are deemed too precious for exhibition except on special application, and the stranger who pays his shilling only sees a copy. Formerly, unless a searcher knew exactly when a will was proved, the process of finding it was very troublesome, because he had to search down indexes in Old English character arranged in order of date only; but now the registers have been put into alphabetical form.

The great change in Doctors' Commons took place in 1858, when the Probate Act came into operation. This was a very sweeping measure, which at a blow superseded the whole system of ecclesiastical courts, so far at least as wills were concerned. For them it substituted a Court of Probate, with jurisdiction over the whole of England. Attached to this court are about forty registries for wills. That in London is called the Principal Registry. A will must either be proved in the district in which a man dies or in the Principal Registry. The Principal Registry is a very large office, at the head of which are four registrars, who are also registrars of the Divorce Court, over which the judge of the Court of Probate presides, being styled "judge ordinary" of this latter. There are about forty registries scattered about the country, in most cases in places where formerly ecclesiastical courts existed for the proving of wills. The value of these registrarships ranges from three hundred to fifteen hundred pounds. They are all in the gift of the judge of the court, whose patronage is worth about sixty thousand pounds a year, and may be reckoned the best in England, inasmuch as he holds it continuously, whilst the lord chancellor and other political officers merely hold their patronage for the few years they may chance to continue in office. Moreover, the judge of the Court of Probate, not being a political officer, has no political pressure brought to bear upon him in the distribution of his patronage, and can dispense it precisely as he pleases. The registrars must, by the terms of the act of Parliament, be barristers, solicitors, or clerks who have served five years in the Principal Registry.

Doctors' Commons twenty years ago was a unique corner of the world. It lay so hid away that you might live for years in London, and be within a stone's throw of it, and yet never have its existence brought to your mind; and it had a life all its own. The ecclesiastical lawyers were called doctors and proctors, instead of barristers and attorneys; and although the former did not arrogate to themselves a higher rank socially and professionally than that of barrister, a proctor considered himself a great many cuts above an attorney, and indeed was, for the most part, the equal of the best class of attorneys. Proctors, it will be borne in mind, are sketched by Charles Dickens in the opening pages of _David Copperfield_, for Dora's papa, Mr. Spenlow, was in proctorial partnership with the reputably inexorable Jawkins. When the Probate Act came into force it was a frightful blow to the tribe of Spenlows. Not so much on account of the pecuniary loss. In that respect the blow was considerably tempered to the shorn lambs by a compensation all too liberal--for John Bull is unsurpassed as a respecter of vested interests--and the proctors were compensated on the basis of their incomes for the last five years, their returns proving in some instances curiously at variance with the amounts on which they had paid income-tax. But they regarded themselves as terrible losers in prestige and position by this rude invasion of the classic and aristocratic ground of the Doctores Commensales, and above all by being leveled down to the rank of attorneys. The clerks in the Prerogative Court--of which the registrars and head-clerks were all proctors, who, taking the cue from Chief Registrar Moore, executed their work by deputy, the deputies being clerks working long hours for small salaries--had kotooed to them with the most servile subserviency; but the Probate Office clerk was a government official, who could not be removed, even by the judge of the court, without the consent of the lord chancellor. What cared he, then, for Spenlow and Jawkins? "I am astonished, Mr. Spenlow," said a young clerk of the new _régime_, "that you should have made such a mistake!" Mr. Spenlow, in turn, was too much astonished to utter a word. Speechless with amazement and indignation, he left the "seat," as the different departments were called, to weep bitter tears in regret for the past in the solitude of his dingy sanctum in Bell Yard, leaving an emancipated clerk, who had served under the thraldom of the old _régime_, exclaiming, "Good Heavens! Only imagine any of us daring to use such language to a proctor two years ago!"

R.W.

* * * * *

THE LAY OF THE LEVELER.

Among the less known writings of Francis Quarles, author of the once famous _Emblems_, is a volume, now become very scarce, entitled _The Shepheards Oracles, delivered in certain Eglogues_. The copy of it to which I have access was published in 1646, or two years after Quarles's death. This spirited poem must have been perused with intense interest by Quarles's contemporaries. But history is constantly repeating itself with more or less of modification, and _The Shepheards Oracles_, at least here and there, and with reference to England, reads, but for its quaintness of manner and idiom, like a production of the nineteenth century. In the course of it there occur some verses, put into the mouth of Anarchus, which are well worth resuscitating. These verses, to which I have supplied a title as above, are, in a sufficiently exact transcription, as follows:

Know, then, my brethren, heav'n is cleare,
And all the Clouds are gone;
The Righteous now shall flourish, and
Good dais are coming on.
Come, then, my Brethren, and be glad,
And eke rejoyce with me:
Lawn Sleeves and Rochets shall goe down:
And, hey! then up goe we.

Wee'l break the windows which the Whore
Of Babylon hath painted;
And, when the Popish Saints are down,
Then Barow shall be Sainted.
There's neither Crosse nor Crucifixe
Shall stand for man to see:
Romes trash and trump'ries shall goe downe;
And, hey! then up goe we.

What ere [sic] the Popish hands have built,
Our Hammers shall undoe;
Wee'l breake their Pipes, and burn their Copes,
And pull downe Churches, too:
Wee'l exercise within the Groves,
And teach beneath a Tree;
Wee'l make a Pulpit of a Cart;
And, hey! then up goe we.

Wee'l down with all the Varsities,
Where Learning is profest,
Because they practise and maintain
The language of the Beast:
Wee'l drive the Doctors out of doores,
And Arts, what ere [sic] they be;
Wee'l cry both Arts and Learning down;
And, hey! then up goe we.

Wee'l down with Deans and Prebends, too;
But I rejoyce to tell ye
How then we will eat Pig our fill,
And Capon by the belly:
Wee'l burn the Fathers witty Tomes,
And make the Schoolmen flee;
Wee'l down with all that smels of wit;
And, hey! then up goe we.

If once that Antichristian crew
Be crusht and overthrown,
Wee'l teach the Nobles how to crouch,
And keep the Gentry down:
Good manners have an evil report,
And turn to pride we see:
Wee'l, therefore, cry good manners down;
And, hey! then up goe we.

The name of Lord shall be abhor'd;
For every man's a brother:
No reason why, in Church or State,
One man should rule another.
But, when the change of Government
Shall set our fingers free,
Wee'l make the wanton Sisters stoop:
And, hey! then up goe we.

Our Coblers shall translate their soules
From Caves obscure and shady;
Wee' make Tom T---- as good as my Lord,
And Joan as good as my Lady.
Wee'l crush and fling the marriage Ring
Into the Romane See;
Wee'l ask no bans, but even clap hands;
And, hey! then up goe we.

By "Barow," named in the second stanza, is intended, no doubt, Henry Barrow, the Nonconformist enthusiast who was executed at Tyburn in 1592. A follower of Robert Browne, founder of the Brownists, whence sprang the sect of Independents, he brought upon himself, by his zeal and imprudence, a vengeance which his wary leader contrived to evade. Browne himself is alluded to punningly in _The Shepheards Oracles_, where Philorthus, at sight of Anarchus approaching, asks whether he is "in a Browne study." Anarchus replies:

"Man, if thou be'st a Babe of Grace,
And of an holy Seed,
I will reply incontinent,
And in my words proceed;
But, if thou art a child of wrath,
And lewd in conversation,
I will not, then, converse with thee,
Nor hold communication."

Philorthus rejoins, referring by his "we all three" to Philarchus, with whom he had just been conversing:

"I trust, Anarchus, we all three inherit
The selfe same gifts, and share the selfe same Spirit."

Then follow the stanzas which I have first quoted. There is certainly ground to surmise that Lord Macaulay had in mind what I have called "The Lay of the Leveler" when in 1820 he wrote "A Radical War-song." In support of this opinion, I subjoin, for comparison, its last stanza but one:

Down with your sheriffs and your mayors,
Your registrars and proctors!
We'll live without the lawyer's cares,
And die without the doctor's.
No discontented fair shall pout
To see her spouse so stupid:
We'll tread the torch of Hymen out,
And live content with Cupid.

F.H.

* * * * *

THE PHILOSOPHER STRAUSS AS A POET.

The writer of a sketch in a late number of a Leipsic journal presents the famous author of the _Life of Jesus_, David Friederich Strauss, in a new character. He mentions, first, that in the _Unterhaltungen am häuslichen Heerde_ ("Conversations around the Homehearth"), published by Strauss in 1856, the latter makes, in the introduction, the following graceful reference to the deceased friend of his youth, E.F. Kauffmann: "If I were a philosophical emperor and wrote self-confessions, I would thank the gods for giving me, among other blessings, a poet and musician for an early friend. He is dead now, alas! the noble man whom alone I have to thank that my ear, though still unskillful, has been opened to the world of harmony. He was not a professional musician, but he had a thoroughly musical nature. The laws of composition he had studied theoretically, and he followed them practically. His position, in reality, was that of a professor of mathematics. But music was his secret love. He not only knew the great masters, but he lived in them. He thought little of playing on the piano the whole of one of Mozart's operas, note for note, without any written music before him. I have often seen him do this. How much I have owed to those hours! How he could draw his hearers into the right mood! How he could illuminate the groping mind with the lightning flash of thought!"

To this friend Strauss sent from Munich in 1851 ten sonnets. They were accompanied by a versified dedication to Kauffmann himself, and they constitute his claim to be considered a poet as well as a philosophic theologian. The sonnets are all on musical subjects, and may be taken as the natural outgrowth of that cultivation of his musical taste which he owed to his intimate association with Professor Kauffmann. The metrical dedication and the first five sonnets are given in the sketch before referred to. The writer of that article looks upon the tendency, thus displayed by Strauss, to "drop into poetry," as Mr. Wegg was accustomed to say, as another strong proof of the affinity--elsewhere noticed--between the genius of Strauss and that of Gotthold Ephraim Lessing; who, it will be remembered, sometimes diverted himself with the composition of light poetical pieces, such as his famous song, beginning "Gestern, Brüder, könnt ihr's glauben?"

The first sonnet is on Händel, the second on Glück, the third on Haydn, the fourth on _Don Juan_, and the fifth on _Figaro_.

The following attempt at a translation of the fourth sonnet may serve to give some idea of how far the world-renowned philosopher and skeptic has succeeded in his effort to assume the anomalous _rôle_ of a sonneteer:

DON JUAN.

How joyously life's fountains here are flowing!
In crystal cups the purple flood is foaming;
Through dusky myrtle-groves are lovers roaming,
The dance begins in halls all bright and glowing.
Be watchful, though! Here treachery is hiding.
Wild passion naught for truth or ruth is caring:
As hawks do doves, mild innocence 'tis tearing,
And human vengeance lightly is deriding.
But now, once more alive, the slain appear!
They speak, with awful voice, the words of doom:
Death his cold hand is silently extending.
Now sinks the daring mood in ghastly fear.
The golden dream of life dissolves in gloom;
The silent grave brings on the bright joy's ending.

It is very hard, if not impossible, to render into any other language the true spirit of a German poem. But in the original this sonnet is far above mediocrity. It idealizes the opera of _Don Juan_ very artistically, and displays a combination of force with harmony and grace which gives the impression, in connection with the other sonnets, that if Strauss had devoted his mental energy to poetry alone, he would not have taken a low rank among the poets of Germany.

W.W.C.

LITERATURE OF THE DAY.

The Life of Thomas Fuller, D.D., with Notices of his Books,
his Kinsmen and his Friends. By John Eglinton Bailey. London:
Pickering.

By no means to the credit of the nineteenth century, it is hardly prudent, as yet, to speak to the general public about Thomas Fuller without formally introducing him. Coleridge and Southey and Lamb were, to be sure, familiar with his writings, and prized them extremely. But they did the same by the writings of many another old worthy now undeservedly slighted; and, for all their eulogies on him, the great bulk of readers were still content to continue in ignorance of the treasures he has bequeathed to us. The neglect of him which at present prevails is, however, in large measure, a delinquency of long standing. His chief work is undoubtedly his _Church History_; and Heylin's elaborate impugnment of its accuracy appears to have had great weight, as with Fuller's contemporaries, so with the generation which immediately followed, and onward almost to our own time. To Heylin succeeded Bishop Nicolson in exerting himself to discredit that valuable work, and it is only within a few years that its character has been substantially rehabilitated. Together with the reputation of Fuller as an historian, his reputation in other respects for a long while underwent eclipse; for, as it is reviving again, we may not say that it passed away. His matter quite apart--and it is always interesting--and abstractedly from his pervasive pleasantry, which is always original, it is a wonder that he is not more esteemed than he is in an age which professes to set store by style. Mr. John Nichols, an editor of his _Worthies_, timidly hazarded the observation that, as against the strictures of Bishop Nicolson, there might be much said in "vindication of the language of Dr. Fuller"--a comment which excited Coleridge to a high pitch of exasperation. "Fuller's language!" he ejaculates. "Grant me patience, Heaven! A tithe of his beauties would be sold cheap for a whole library of our classical writers, from Addison to Johnson and Junius inclusive. And Bishop Nicolson!--a painstaking old charwoman of the Antiquarian and Rubbish Concern! The venerable rust and dust of the whole firm are not worth an ounce of Fuller's earth."

Of Fuller's ancestry nothing is known, on the paternal side, beyond his father, a college-bred clergyman, who died in 1632. His mother was a Davenant, of an ancient and respectable family. Fuller was born in June, 1608, at Aldwinkle, in Northamptonshire, at his father's rectory. When only about twelve years of age he was entered at Queen's College, Cambridge, his progress in his studies having been such as to authorize this unusually early transfer from school to the university. In 1628 he exchanged Queen's College for Sydney-Sussex College, and in the following year he was presented by the master and fellows of Corpus Christi College to the curacy of St. Benet's, Cambridge. Within a twelvemonth after--namely, in 1631--HE made his first appearance as an author. His _Davia's Heinous Sin, Hearty Repentance, Heavy Punishment_, which came out in that year, was his sole adventure of noteworthy compass as a versifier; and he certainly testified his discretion in choosing thenceforward to be satisfied with writing prose. A valuable prebend attached to the Salisbury Cathedral was bestowed on him at this time, near about which he is supposed to have delivered, in discourses, his so-called _Comment on Ruth_. Next we hear of him as rector of Broadwindsor, where, probably, he composed his _History of the Holy War_, published in 1639. His _Holy State_ was given to the world in 1642. Having just before this removed to London under circumstances which are involved in some obscurity, he was there appointed lecturer to the Inns of Court and to the Savoy Chapel. But trouble awaited him, as it then awaited all other loyalists whom it had not overtaken already, and 1643 found him a refugee at Oxford. There he was warmly welcomed by the king and his adherents, but on his imprudently daring to urge lenient counsels, his moderation gave as much dissatisfaction to the court party as it had previously given to the Parliamentarians, and he fell into temporary disgrace. Nevertheless, he suffered, at the hands of the anti-royalists, the same spoliation which would have been visited on a malignant of the extremest stamp. To fill up the measure of his misfortune--as if it were not enough that he should be deprived of his stated means of livelihood--he was despoiled of his library. For a while, also, his loyalty was held, though without the slightest grounds, in considerable suspicion. On coming to be better known, however, he was restored to favor, and was enrolled among the royal chaplains. If the doubts as to the sincerity of his adhesion to Charles were ever actually thought to have good foundation, they must have been dissipated by his voluntarily exposing himself to danger, as he did at one of the sieges of Basing House. Like Isaac Barrow, he would at need have done duty militant just as effectually with carnal weapons as with spiritual. No longer required at Basing House, he repaired to Oxford again, and then to Exeter, where he was nominated chaplain to the princess Henrietta Anne. But he held his new post for only a short period. Leaving Exeter, he once more sought Oxford, and thence went to London. Forbidden to preach there, he retired to Northamptonshire, and then reappeared at the metropolis, where he was sojourning in the memorable year 1649. Becoming in that year curate of Waltham Abbey, he enjoyed an interval of quietude while all around him was turbulence. Yet he was soon in London afresh, lecturer at various churches from 1651 till near the end of his life. In 1658 he was appointed rector of St. Dunstan's, Cranford, but we read of him as subsequently journeying to The Hague and to Salisbury, and as preaching at the Savoy Chapel. It must have solaced his latter days to reflect that he had survived to welcome the Restoration. He died, from what is reasonably surmised to have been typhus fever, on the 16th of August, 1661, and lies buried in the chancel of the church to which he last ministered, at Cranford, Surrey.

Considering the unsettled and wandering life which Fuller led for many years, it may seem almost a marvel that in those very years he should have accomplished such laborious--nay, all but gigantic--enterprises as are to be referred to them; for it was then that he composed his voluminous _Pisgah-sight of Palestine, Church History_ and _Worthies_, not to speak of many minor writings. But the secret of his prolificness amidst surroundings which would have paralyzed most men into stark sterility admits of ready elucidation. Besides being endowed with great physical vigor and enjoying uninterrupted health. Fuller never wasted a moment, was an unweariable student at odd hours, and moreover supplemented the advantage of a matchless memory by the strictest observance of method. Taken for all in all, he was without question one of the most remarkable of Englishmen--not of his own age merely, but of all bygone ages. "Next to Shakespeare," says Coleridge, "I am not certain whether Thomas Fuller, beyond all other writers, does not excite in me the sense and emotion of the marvelous.... Fuller was incomparably the most sensible, the least prejudiced, great man of an age that boasted a galaxy of great men." Others among his countrymen have been more learned, and others have surpassed him in this or that special faculty, but the whole that we have in him it would be hard to find a parallel to. Culeridge emphasizes the equity of his judgment; and this point is one regarding which there can be no diversity of opinion. As to his wit, granting that its quality may here and there be somewhat inferior, still, it has probably never been surpassed in quantity by any one man. It has the laudable character, too, of being nearly always impersonal, and while it amuses it almost in equal measure instructs. Had Fuller, with his mental agility and his mastery of incisive diction, been poisoned with the bile of Swift, it is terrible to think what a repertory of biting sarcasms and envenomed repartees he might have transmitted for the study and imitation of cynics and sneerers. Bitterer enemies no man ever had to contend against; and unenviable indeed must have been their disappointment at finding themselves wholly impotent to discompose his sage and large-hearted serenity. So impressive, withal, is his spirit of toleration and benevolence that a diligent reader of his pages is, as it were, perforce imbued by it. Indeed, we know of few writers whom we can point to with more confidence as calculated, in antidote to the fret and chafe inseparable from existence in our day, to induce a tone of repose and resignation in ourselves, and a disposition to take charity as our watchword in our dealings with others.

From Fuller we pass to Fuller's new biographer, the only biographer he has hitherto had that at all deserves the appellation. A completer life-history than that which Mr. Bailey has produced is of rare occurrence in English literature. There was no motive for his keeping back anything that is known of Fuller; and he has really enabled us to form wellnigh as distinct an idea of the portly and cheery old divine as if we had known him in the flesh. Faithful to rigid justice while reproducing the warmly eulogistic judgments which have been passed on Fuller, especially in this century, he has given us a circumstantial account of the censures which were denounced on him by microscopic and malevolent criticasters and Dryasdusts among his contemporaries. Some of the censures referred to were grounded on the multitudinous dedications in which Fuller indulged; and, in truth, it strikes one as rather singular to find, as in his _Church History_, not only every book, but every section of a book, prefaced by a long string of compliments addressed to a separate dedicatee. But these dedications meant money, and Fuller was poor. Furthermore, if in his necessity he flattered, his flattery was, for the most part, of a kind not irreconcilable with due self-respect on the part of the flatterer. It is a very different thing from the nauseous adulation to which Dryden--to name but one out of numerous kindred offenders--consented to abase himself. As auxiliary to a full understanding of Fuller in his social relations, his dedications are now of prime value. Though many of them are inscribed to persons else quite unknown to fame, with a good number of them it is otherwise; and they serve, by the information which they embody, to show that Fuller was on terms of familiar intimacy with a whole host of notabilities in Church and State. Of these personages, and so of many others with whom Fuller associated, Mr. Bailey, heedful of the adage _noscitur a sociis_, has compiled very satisfactory sketches, derived in all cases from the most trustworthy authorities. In addition to a Life of Fuller, he has thus gone far to give us a sort of biographical dictionary of the leading men, political and ecclesiastical, who rallied round the unfortunate First Charles, and who used their most strenuous diligence to save his desperate cause from shipwreck.

One who has already made acquaintance with Fuller's writings must feel animated, under the guidance of the new light now thrown upon them, to renew that acquaintance; and he to whom the wise and witty old worthy is as yet a stranger must, unless obdurately insensible, be moved to a suspicion that he ought to remain a stranger no longer. To Mr. Bailey we are beholden alike for a biography of the first excellence, and for a sterling contribution to the history of an era which possesses undying interest for every Englishman, be he conservative, liberal or republican; and for every intelligent American as well. We are given to understand that the author has now in contemplation the publishing of Fuller's sermons, of which there has never been a collective edition, and of which several are among the rarest books in our language. The design is one which challenges the furtherance of every lover of good literature; and the _Life_, which, in parting, we emphatically commend to our readers, should avail to secure for it the encouragement it unquestionably merits.

* * * * *

The Greville Memoirs: A Journal of the Reigns of King George
IV. and King William IV. By Charles C.F. Greville.
Bric-à-Brac Series. New York: Scribner, Armstrong & Co.

Books Received.

The Bhagavad Gitá. Translated from the Sanskrit by J. Cockburn Thompson. Chicago: Religio--Philosophical Publishing House. S.S. Jones.