Eighteenth Century Vignettes

10

It was disposed of in 1750 by raffle or lottery. 'Yesterday,' – says the 'General Advertiser' for May 1 in that year, – 'Mr. Hogarth's subscription was closed. 1843 chances being subscrib'd for, Mr Hogarth gave the remaining 107 chances to the Foundling Hospital. At two o'clock the Box was opened, and the fortunate chance was No. 1941, which belongs to the said Hospital; and the same night Mr Hogarth delivered the Picture to the Governors.'

11

Johnson had, if not a taste, at least an appetite, for the old-fashioned romances which Mrs. Lenox satirised. Once, at Bishop Percy's, he selected 'Fenxmarte of Hircania' (in folio) for his habitual reading, and he read it through religiously. Upon another occasion his choice fell upon Burke's favourite, 'Palmerin of England.' 'History as She is wrote' in 'Clelia' and 'Cleopatra;' the persistence of Arabella in finding princes in gardeners, and rescuers in highwaymen – are things not ill-invented. But repeated they pall; and not all the insistence upon her natural good sense and her personal charms, nor (as compared with such concurrent efforts as Mrs. Eliza Haywood's 'Betsy Thoughtless')

12

This, like 'Betsy Thoughtless,' belongs to 1751.

13

The picture, it should be added, was not at first presented in its racy entirety. When, in February, 1755, the 'Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon' was given to the world for the benefit of Fielding's widow and children, although the 'Dedication to the Public' affirmed the book to be 'as it came from the hands of the author,' many of the franker touches which go to complete the full-length of Captain Richard Veal, as well as sundry other particulars, were withheld. This question is fully discussed in the Introduction to the limited edition of the 'Journal,' published in 1892 by the Chiswick Press.

14

'Te venienie die, te decedenle canebat.' – Georg, iv. 466.

15

Bensley succeeded Allen the printer, Johnson's landlord. During Bensley's tenancy of the house it was twice the scene of disastrous fires, by the second of which (in June, 1819) the Doctor's old rooms were entirely destroyed. Among other valuables burned at Bensley's was the large wood block engraved by Bewick's pupil, Luke Clennell, for the diploma of the Highland Society; and the same artist's cuts after Stothard for Rogers's 'Pleasures of Memory' of 1810 were only saved from a like fate by being kept in a 'ponderous iron chest.'

16

He visited it in 1831 (Froude's 'Carlyle,' vol. ii., eh. x.).

17

For August 19, 1750, on 'Country Congregations.' The old clock still exists, in working order, at a villa in Regent's.

18

This ring was exhibited at the Guelph Exhibition of 1891 by Mr. A. C. Lomax

19

Of an illustrated edition of the' Vicar' published at the end or 1890, we are credibly informed that 8,000 copies were sold within a twelvemonth. And where is 'Rasselas' now?

20

The original No. 17 of the 'North Briton,' dated Saturday, September 25, 1762, had no portrait. The portrait was added to a reprint of Wilkes's article issued May 21, 1763, or immediately after the appearance of Hogarth's etching of Wilkes. Since the above paper was first published in America, this interesting relic of Hogarth has once more come to light. In April, 1845, it was sold with Mr. H. P. Standly's collection. At the sale, in February, 1892, of Dr. J. R. Joly's Hogarth prints and books, it passed (with some of the Standly correspondence) to Mr. James Tregaskis, the well-known bookseller at the 'Caxton Head' in Holborn, from whom it was acquired by the present writer. By November, 1789, however, all this had become 'portion and parcel' of the irrevocable past.

21

By a piece of auction-room humour, 'The Bathos' appears as 'The Bathers.'

22

Ray's 'Select Remains' with life by Derham, 1740, and many marginal notes by Gray, was recently in a London bookseller's catalogue.

23

Modern usage here requires the alteration of a word.

24

A more popular rendering of this useful maxim is the 'heyes hopen and mouth shut' of Thomas the footman in 'The Newcomes,' eh. xlvii.

25

Desnoyers was the fashionable English dancing-master; Marcel, the French one.

26

Babiole was His Lordship's country-house at Blackheath, so entitled in imitation of Bagatelle, the seat near Paris of his friend Madame la Marquise de Monconseil. It was also the name of a house of Madame de Pompadour.

27

There is one of these labels in the Dyce Collection at South Kensington.

28

Racine was in similar case. In the inventory of his effects, discovered some time since, there is not a single copy of his works.

29

Published by Macmillan in 1890. The sketch forms the tailpiece to the Preface, p. xxi.

30

See ante, p. 192.

31

A writing-cap worn by Cowper, his watch, a seal-ring given to him by his eousin Theodora (his first love), and a ball of worsted which he wound for Mrs. Unwin, were among the relics exhibited in the South Gallery of the Guelph Exhibition of 1891. The exhibitors were the Rev. W. Cowper Johnson, and the Rev. W. Cowper Johnson, jun.

32

Since this paper was first written, the summer-house, the garden, and the 'Guinea Orchard' – a strip of field which came between Cowper's garden and that of the Parsonage – have been sold by auction, the purchaser being a local butcher.

The sale took place in February, 1896.

33

Wright's 'Cowper,' 1892, pp. 311, 312. Wilson was a man of considerable intelligence, and a local 'character.' When in 1781 he joined the Baptists, he declined to dress Lady Austen's hair on Sundays. Consequently she was obliged to call him in on Saturday evenings, and more than once had to sit up all night to prevent the disarrangement of her 'head.'

34

Coleridge is also extravagant on this theme in his 'Table Talk.' 'If it were not for a certain tendency to affectation, scarcely any praise could be too high,' he says, 'for Stothard's designs [to Peter Wilkins].'

35

Strangely enough he set little more by this quality, but apparently valued himself more for his 'correctness' ('Bryan Waller Procter,' Bell, 1877, pp. 83-90).

36

Mr. Ruskin – it may be hinted – expounding the tailpieces solely by the light of his intuitive faculty, has sometimes neglected the well-established traditional interpretations of Bewick's work.

37

Hartley Coleridge grew up to write sympathetically, in his papers entitled 'Ignoramus on the Fine Arts,' of these very tailpieces. In them, he says, Bewick is 'a poet – the silent poet of the waysides and hedges. He unites the accuracy and shrewdness of Crabbo with the homely pathos of Bloomfield.' (Blackwood's Magazine, October, 1831.)

38

It is also included, with some omissions, in Cassell's excellent 'National Library.'

39

Another of his remarks is of special interest in our day: – 'That same influenza, which I left at Berlin, I have had the hard fortune again to find here; and many people die of it' (the italics are ours). Elsewhere he says that the Prussian quack Katterfelto – Cowper's=

'Katerfelto, with his hair on end.

At his own wonders wondering for his bread,'

whose advertisements were then in every paper, attributed the epidemic to a minute insect, against which, of course, he professed to protect his patients. Walpole's correspondence contains references to the same visitation. It was, he writes, 'universal,' but not 'dangerous or lasting.' 'The strangest part of it,' he tells Mann in June, 'is, that, though of very short duration, it has left a weakness or lassitude, of which people find it very difficult to recover.'

40

There is a print of Edwin in this character after a picture by Alefounder. He was also a favourite 'Croaker' in the 'Good Natur'd Man.'

41

See the preceding paper, 'A German in England.'

42

See ante, – 'The Citizen of the World,' p. 161.

43

For some supplementary particulars respecting this statue, see 'Eighteenth Century Vignettes,' 2nd series, 1894, pp. 53-4.

44

The name 'Leicester Square' – it is but right to say – is also of fairly early date. In 'A Journey through England,' 4th cd., 1724, 1778, the writer, speaking of the space before Leicester House, says: 'This was till these Fourteen Years always called Leicester-Fields, but now LeicesterSquare.'' There is, however, abundant evidence that the older name continued to be freely used throughout the century. For example, in 1783, Mrs. Hogarth's house is advertised as 'The Golden Head, in Leicester Fields;' and it is "at his house in Leicester Fields,' in 1792, that Malone makes Reynolds die.

45

Cunningham failed to identify Swan Close. But from a letter in the State Paper Office, quoted in 'Temple Bar' for June, 1874, it would seem that this was the aetual site of the building.

46

'Memoirs of John Evelyn,' etc., 1827, ii. pp. 375-6.

47

It was for Marlborough, no doubt, that the Prince sat to Kneller. The portrait, in which he wears the Order of the Golden Fleece over a rich coat of armour, and holds a marshal'? baton, was mezzotinted by John Simon in this very year 1712

48

'History of His Own Time,' ii. (1731), pp. 589-90.

49

If he received royal gifts, he was also princely in his acknowledgments. According to Hearne (Dohle, 1889, iii. 329), he paid twenty guineas for Joshua Barnes's quarto 'Homer' of 1711, and fifteen guineas for Wiston's 'Heretical Book.' he also paid thirty guineas for Samuel Clarke's edition of 'Caesar's Commentaries (Tonson, 1712),' then just published with a magnificent portrait of Marlborough, to whom it was dedicated. A large paper copy of this, sumptuously bound, fetched sixteen guineas at Dr. Mead's sale of 1754-5; but though it is praised by Addison in 'Spectator,' No. 367, as doing 'Honour to the English Press,' Eugene certainly gave too much. Probably he meant to do so. 'Je fis des présens,' he says ('Mémoires,' 1811, p. 107); 'ear' – he adds significantly – 'on achète beaucoup en Angleterre.'

50

See 'Mary Lepel, Lady Hervey,' in 'Eighteenth Century Vignettes,' 1806, pp. 293-323.

51

See 'Cambridge the Everything,' in 'Eighteenth Century Vignettes,' 3rd series, 1896, p. 1847 In an outhouse of the 'Holophusikon,' it may be added, were exhibited (stuffed) Queen Charlotte's elephant and female zebra – two favourites of royalty, which, during their lifetime, had enjoyed an exceptional, if not always enviable, notoriety.

52

A house in Lisle Street, looking down Leicester Place, still (1897) perpetuates the name, and bears on its façade in addition the words, 'New Lisle Street, mdccxci.' It is occupied by a foreign school or schools ('Ecoles de Notre Dame de France').

53

Mr. Tom Taylor ('Leicester Square,' 1874, pp. 306 and 456) says that Dibdin's Theatre stood nearly on the site of 'The Feathers,' Hogarth's house of call in the Fields. But if Leicester Place did not exist until 1796, and then occupied ground occupied six years before by Leicester House, it is difficult to connect Hogarth with any tavern in Leicester Place, as Hogarth died in 1764.

54

A so-ealled Observatory on the roof, now non-existent, was for many years exhibited at Newton's. Recent authorities, however, contend that this was the fabrication of a later tenant. But it should be noted that Madame D'Arblay, who also lived in the house, and wrote novels in the room in question, seems to have had no doubts of the kind. She says ('Memoirs of Dr. Burney,' 1832, i. 290-1) that her father not only reverently repaired the Observatory when he entered upon his tenancy of No. 35 [in 1774], but went to the expense of practically reconstructing it when it was all but destroyed by the hurricane of 1778.

55

See 'Newton: his Friend: and his Niece,' 1885, by Professor Augustus de Morgan, which labours, with much digression, but with infinite ingenuity and erudition, to establish this satisfactory solution of a problem in which the good fame of Newton cannot be regarded as entirely unconcerned.

56

At present (1897) being rebuilt by the Alhambra Company as part of their premises.

57

This, with the carved easel given to him by Gray's friend Mason, is preserved at the Royal Academy. His palette is said to be in the possession of Messrs. Roberson and Co., of 99, Long Acre.