Part 42

Eccentricities of Cobbett.

Cobbett began his career a political writer of ultra-Conservative stamp. He first became known to the public as "Peter Porcupine," under which name he fiercely attacked the democratic writers and speakers of France and America. He was then resident in America, and encountered one or two trials at law for alleged libels, in his defence of monarchical and aristocratic institutions. The Porcupine Papers attracted much notice in England, were quoted and lauded by the government organs—quoted in both Houses of Parliament, and eulogized in the pulpit. The writer was considered one of the most powerful supports of the principles of the British constitution. This series of papers was republished in England, in twelve volumes octavo, under the patronage of the Prince Regent, to whom, it is believed, the work was dedicated.

On his return from America, Cobbett began a daily paper called the Porcupine. This was soon discontinued, and he began the Register. Both these papers were strongly in favour of the government; and the Register ran through several volumes before a change took place in the political opinions of the editor—a change hastened, if not caused, by an affront offered him by William Pitt. Windham was a great admirer of Cobbett, and after reading one of his Porcupine papers, declared that the author was "worthy of a statue in gold." Pitt had refused to meet the author of the Register at Windham's table; and this Cobbett resented, and never forgave. Very soon after this, a marked change took place in his politics; henceforth he was more consistent, and the last Register which came from his pen, very shortly before his death, breathed the same spirit which he had shown years before as one of the leaders of the democratic party.

One of Cobbett's oddities was the wood-cut of a gridiron which for many years headed the Political Register, as an emblem of the martyrdom which he avowed he was prepared to undergo, upon certain conditions. The gridiron will be recollected as one of the emblems of St. Lawrence, and we see it as the large gilt vane of one of the City churches dedicated to the saint.

As he was broiled on a gridiron for refusing to give up the treasures of the church committed to his care, so Cobbett vowed that he would consent to be broiled upon certain terms, in his Register, dated Long Island, on the 24th of September, 1819, wherein he wrote the well-known prophecy on Peel's Cash Payments Bill of that year as follows:—"I, William Cobbett, assert that to carry their bill into effect is impossible; and I say that if this bill be carried into full effect, I will give Castlereagh leave to lay me on a gridiron, and broil me alive, while Sidmouth may stir the coals, and Canning stand by and laugh at my groans."

On the hoisting of the gridiron on the Register, he wrote and published the fulfilment of his prophecy in the following statement:—"Peel's bill, together with the laws about small notes, which last were in force when Peel's bill was passed; these laws all taken together, if they had gone into effect, would have put an end to all small notes on the first day of May, 1823; but to precede this blowing-up of the whole of the funding system, an act was passed, in the month of July, 1822, to prevent these laws, and especially that part of Peel's bill which put an end to small Bank of England notes, from going into full effect; thus the system received a respite; but thus did the parliament fulfil the above prophecy of September, 1819."

A large sign-gridiron was actually made for Mr. Cobbett. It was of dimensions sufficient for him to have lain thereon (he was six feet high); the implement was gilt, and we remember to have seen it in his office-window, in Fleet Street; but it was never hoisted outside the office. It was long to be seen on the gable-end of a building next Mr. Cobbett's house at Kensington.

Cobbett possessed extraordinary native vigour of mind; but every portion of his history is marked by strange blunders. Shakspeare, the British Museum, antiquities, posterity, America, France, Germany, are, one and all, either wholly indifferent to him, or objects of his bitter contempt. He absurdly condemned the British Museum as "a bundle of dead insects;" abused drinking "the immortal memory" as a contradiction of terms; and stigmatized "consuming the midnight oil" as cant and humbug. His political nicknames were very ludicrous: as big O for O'Connell; Prosperity Robinson for a flaming Chancellor of the Exchequer; and shoy-hoy for all degrees of quacks and pretenders. Still, his own gridiron was a monstrous piece of quackery, as audacious as any charlatan ever set up.

When he had a subject that suited him, he is said to have handled it not as an accomplished writer, but "with the perfect and inimitable art with which a dog picks a bone." Still, his own work would not bear this sort of handling—witness the biting critique upon his English grammar, which provoked the remark that he would undertake to write a Chinese grammar.

In country or in town, at Barn Elms, in Bolt Court or at Kensington, Cobbett wrote his Registers early in the morning: these, it must be admitted, had force enough; for he said truly, "Though I never attempt to put forth that sort of stuff which the intense people on the other side of the Channel call eloquence, I bring out strings of very interesting facts; I use pretty powerful arguments; and I hammer them down so closely upon the mind, that they seldom fail to produce a lasting impression." This he owed, doubtless, to his industry, early rising, and methodical habits.

Cobbett affected to despise all acquirements which he had not. In his English Grammar he selects examples of bad English from the writings of Dr. Johnson and Dr. Watts, and is very contemptuous on "what are called the learned languages;" but he would not have entered upon Latin or Greek.

It seemed to be Cobbett's aim to keep himself fresh in the public eye by some means of advertisement or other; a few were very reprehensible, but none more than his disinterring the bones of Thomas Paine, buried in a field on his own estate near New Rochelle, and bringing these bones to England, where, Cobbett calculated, pieces of them would be worn as memorials of the gross scoffer. Cobbett, however, never more widely mistook English feeling: instead of arousing, as he expected, the enthusiasm of the republican party in this country, he only drew upon himself universal contempt.

Heber, the Book-Collector.

There have been many instances of the indulgence of book collecting to the extent which is termed book-madness; but none more remarkable than that of Mr. Richard Heber, half-brother to the celebrated Bishop of Calcutta of the same name. Mr. Heber inherited property which permitted him to spend immense sums in the purchase of books; and he received an education which enabled him to appreciate the books when purchased. He was not therefore, strictly speaking, a bibliomaniac, and nothing more, though his exertions in collecting amounted to eccentricities. He would make excursions from the family seats in Yorkshire and Shropshire to London, to attend book sales; and when the termination of the war in 1815 opened the Continent to English travellers, Heber visited France, Belgium and the Netherlands, and made large purchases of books in each country. He cared for nothing but books. He kept up a correspondence with all the great dealers in old books throughout the kingdom. On hearing of a curious book, he was known to have put himself into a mail-coach, and travelled three or four hundred miles to obtain it, fearful to entrust his commission to any agent. He was known to say seriously to his friends, on their remarking on his many duplicates, "Why, you see, sir, no man can do comfortably without three copies of a work. One he must have for a show copy, and he will, probably, keep it at his country-house. Another he will require for his use and reference; and, unless he is inclined to part with this, which is very inconvenient, or risk the injury of his best copy, he must needs have a third at the service of his friends."

Mr. Hill Burton, in his Book-hunter, relates the following incident of Heber's experience in the rarity-market. A celebrated dealer in old books was passing a chandler's shop, where he was stopped by a few filthy old volumes in the window. One of them he found to be a volume of old English poetry, which he—a practised hand in that line—saw was utterly unknown as existing, though not unrecorded. Three and sixpence was asked; he stood out for a half-a-crown, on first principles, but, not succeeding, he paid the larger sum, and walked away, book in pocket, to a sale, where the first person he saw was Heber. Him the triumphant bookseller drew into a corner, with "Why do you come to auctions to look for scarce books, when you can pick up such things as this in a chandler's shop for three and sixpence?" "Bless me, —, where did you get this?" "That's tellings! I may get more there." "—, I must have this." "Not a penny under thirty guineas!" A cheque was drawn, and a profit of 17,900 per cent. cleared by the man who had his eyes about him, in whose estimation such a sum was paltry compared with the triumph over Heber.

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 100,000l.; others reckoned it at 500,000 volumes, at an aggregate value of 250,000l. 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 56,775l. for that which had cost 77,150l. It would appear, therefore, that the losses accruing to Mr. Heber's estate through his passion for book-collecting, amounted to upwards of 20,000l., 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 50,000l., 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 1,000l. 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.

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.