Part 43

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 100l. 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.