Born
: King Louis IX of France, 1215; Julius C�sar Scaliger, eminent
scholar, 1484; George, Lord Anson, navigator, 1697, Shuckborough; Sir Gilbert
Elliot, first Earl of Minto, statesman, 1751.
Died
: Pierre Danes, eminent French scholar, 1577; William
Shakspeare, 1616, Stratford-on-Avon; Maurice de Nassau, Prince of Orange, 1625;
Jean Barbeyrac, eminent jurist, 1744; Andrew Baxter, philosophical writer, 1750;
Joseph Nollekins, sculptor, 1823, London; Aaron Arrowsmith, geographer, 1823,
London; William Wordsworth, poet, 1850; Count de Volney, French philosophical
writer, 1820.
Feast Day: St. George, martyr, about 303. St. Ibar, or
Ivor, Bishop in Ireland, about 500. St. Gerard, Bishop of Toul, confessor, 994.
St. Adalbert, Bishop of Prague, martyr, 997.
ST. GEORGE
If Gibbon's
sketch of St. George's career be correct, that martial hero owes his position in
the Christian calendar to no merit of his own.
Born in a fuller's shop in Epiphania, Cilicia, he contrived to ingratiate
himself with those above him by servilely flattering them, and so gradually rose
from his original obscurity. A lucrative contract for supplying the army with
bacon, proved, under his unscrupulous
management, a mine of wealth; but as soon as he had made his fortune, he was
compelled to fly the country, to escape the consequences of the discovery of his
dishonest practices. He afterwards became a zealous convert to Arianism, and
made himself so conspicuous in his new
vocation, that he was sent by Constantius to supersede Athanasius in the
archbishopric of Alexandria. To satisfy his avarice, the pagan temples were
plundered, and the pagan and Christian inhabitants taxed, till the oppression
became unendurable. The people rose and expelled the
ex-contractor, but he was quickly reinstated by the army of Constantius. The
accession of Julian was the signal for retribution.
George and two of his most obnoxious adherents were dragged
to prison by the exultant Alexandrians, where they lay for twenty-four days,
when the impatience of the people refused to wait longer for revenge. The prison
doors were broken open, the archbishop
and his friends murdered, and their bodies, after being carried through the city
in triumph, thrown into the sea. This death at the hands of the pagans made the
tyrant a martyr in the eyes of the Arians, and canonization followed as a matter
of course. When the Arians re-entered
the church, they brought back their saint with them; and although he was at
first received with distrust, the sixth century saw him firmly established as
one of the first order. The Crusades added to his renown. He was said to have
fought for Godfrey of Bouillon at the battle of
Antioch, and appeared to Coeur-de-Lion before Acre as
the precursor of victory, and from that time the Cappadocian adventurer became
the chosen patron of arms and chivalry. Romance cast its halo around him,
transforming the symbolical dragon into a real
monster slain in Lybia to save a beautiful maiden from a dreadful death.
Butler, the historian of the Romish calendar, repudiates
George of Cappadocia, and will have it that the famous saint was born of noble
Christian parents, that he entered the army, and rose to a high grade in its
ranks, until the persecution of his
co-religionists by Diocletian compelled him to throw up his commission, and
upbraid the emperor for his cruelty, by which bold conduct he lost his head and
won his saintship. Whatever the real character of St. George might have been, he
was held in great honour in England from a
very early period. While in the calendars of the Greek and Latin churches he
shared the twenty-third of April with other saints, a Saxon Martyrology declares
the day dedicated to him alone; and after the Conquest his festival was
celebrated after the approved fashion of
Englishmen.
In 1344, this feast was made memorable by the creation of the
noble Order of St. George, or the Blue Garter, the institution being inaugurated
by a grand joust, in which forty of England's best and bravest knights held the
lists against the foreign
chivalry attracted by the proclamation of the challenge through France,
Burgundy, Hainault, Brabant, Flanders, and Germany. In the first year of the
reign of Henry V, a council held at London decreed, at the instance of the king
himself, that henceforth the feast of St. George
should be observed by a double service; and for many years the festival was kept
with great splendour at Windsor and other towns. Shakspeare, in Henry VI,
makes the Regent Bedford say, on receiving the news of disasters in France:
Bonfires in France I am forthwith to make
To keep our great St. George's feast withal!'
Edward VI promulgated certain statutes severing the
connection between the 'noble order' and the saint; but on his death, Mary at
once abrogated them as 'impertinent, and tending to novelty.' The festival
continued to be observed until 1567, when, the
ceremonies being thought incompatible with the reformed religion, Elizabeth
ordered its discontinuance. James I, however, kept the 23rd of April
to some extent, and the revival of the feast in all its glories was only
prevented by the Civil War. So late as 1614, it was
the custom for fashionable gentlemen to wear blue coats on St. George's day,
probably in imitation of the blue mantle worn by the Knights of the
Garter.
In olden times, the standard of St. George was borne before
our English kings in battle, and his name was the rallying cry of English
warriors. According to Shakspeare, Henry V led the attack on Harfleur to the
battle-cry of 'God for Harry! England! and
St. George!' and 'God and St. George' was Talbot's slogan on the fatal field of
Patay. Edward of Wales exhorts his peace-loving parents to
'Cheer these noble lords,
And hearten those that fight in your defence;
Unsheath your sword, good father, cry St. George!'
The fiery Richard invokes the same saint, and his rival can
think of no better name to excite the ardour of his adherents:
'Advance our standards, set upon our foes,
Our ancient word of courage, fair St. George,
Inspire us with the spleen of fiery dragons.'
England was not the only nation that fought under the banner
of St. George, nor was the Order of the Garter the only chivalric institution in
his honour. Sicily, Arragon, Valencia, Genoa, Malta, Barcelona, looked up to him
as their guardian saint; and as
to knightly orders bearing his name, a Venetian Order of St. George was created
in 1200, a Spanish in 1317, an Austrian in 1470, a Genoese in 1472, and a Roman
in 1492, to say nothing of the more modern ones of Bavaria (1729), Russia
(1767), and Hanover (1839).
DRAGON LEGENDS
In all the wide domain of the mythical and marvellous, no
legends occur so frequently, or in so many various forms, as those which
describe a monstrous winged serpent, or dragon, devouring men, women, and
children, till arrested by the miraculous valour or
saintly piety of some hero. In nearly all of these legends, a maiden, as the
special victim of the monster, and a well, cave, or river, as its
dwelling-place, are mixed up with the accessory objects of the main story. The
Grecian mythology abounds with such narrations, apparently
emblematical of the victory gained by spring over winter, of light over
darkness, of good over evil. Nor was this pagan myth antagonistic to the
language or spirit of Christianity. Consequently we find a dragon�as the emblem
of sin in general, and paganism in
particular�vanquished by a saint, a perpetually recurring myth running through
all the ancient Christian legends. At first the monster was used in its
figurative sense alone; but in the darker ages, the idea being understood
literally, the symbol was translated into an
acknowledged fact.
In many instances the ravages caused by inundations have been
emblematized as the malevolent deeds of dragons. In the seventh century, St.
Romanus is said to have delivered the city of Rouen from one of those monsters.
The feat was accomplished in this
very simple manner. On Ascension day, Romanus, taking a condemned criminal out
of prison, ordered him to go and fetch the dragon. The criminal obeyed, and the
dragon following him into the city, walked into a blazing fire that had
previously been prepared, and was burned to
death. To commemorate the event, King Dagobert gave the clergy of Rouen the
annual privilege of pardoning a condemned criminal on Ascension day; a right
exercised with many ceremonies, till the period of the first Revolution. This
dragon, named Gargouille (a water-spout), lived
in the river Seine; and as Romanus is said to have constructed embankments to
defend Rouen from the overflowing of that river, the story seems to explain
itself.
The legends of Tarasque, the dragon of the Rhone, destroyed
by St. Martha, and the dragon of the Garonne, killed by St. Martial at Bordeaux,
admit of a similar explanation. The winding rivers resembling the convolutions
of a serpent, are frequently found
to take the name of that animal in common language, as well as in poetical
metaphor. The river Draco, in Bithynia, is so called from its numerous windings,
and in Italy and Germany there are rivers deriving their names from the same
cause. In Switzerland the word drach has been
frequently given to impetuous mountain torrents, which, suddenly breaking out,
descend like avalanches on the lower country. Thus we can easily account for
such local names as Drachenlok, the dragon's hole; Drackenreid, the dragon's
march; and the legends of Struth, of Winkelreid,
and other Swiss dragon-slayers.
But the inundation theory will not explain all dragon
legends. Indeed, it would be as easy for a supernaturally endowed power to
arrest the overflowing of a river as to destroy a dragon, admitting there were
animals of that description. But such a
comparison cannot be applied to the limited power of an ordinary man, and we
find not only saints, but sinners of all kinds, knights, convicts, deserters,
and outlaws, figuring as dragon-killers. And this may readily be accounted for.
In almost every strange object the ignorant
man fancies he discovers corroboration of the myths learned in his childhood;
and, as different periods and places exhibit different phenomena, legends in
course of time are varied by being mixed up with other myths and facts
originally unconnected with them. The mediaeval
naturalists, too, by recognizing the dragon as a genuine existing animal known
to science and travellers, laid a foundation for innumerable varieties of the
legend. Thus, at Aix, the fossilized head of an extinct Saurian reptile is shewn
as the veritable head of the dragon slain
by St. Martha.
In churches at Marseilles, Lyons, Ragusa, and Cimiers, skins
of stuffed alligators are exhibited as the remains of dragons. The best
authenticated of all the dragon stories is that of the one said to have been
killed by Dieudonne, of Gozo, a knight of
Rhodes, and afterwards Grand Master of the Order, in the fourteenth century. The
head of this dragon was carefully preserved as a trophy at Rhodes, till the
knights were driven out of the island. The Turks, respecting bravery even in a
Christian enemy, preserved the head with
equal care, so that it was seen by Thevenot as late as the middle of the
seventeenth century; and from his account it appears to have been no other than
the head of a hippopotamus.
Real persons have, in some instances, been made the heroes of
legends as wild as that of Perseus. The ignorant, unable to appreciate or even
to comprehend the mere idea of literary fame, have ever given a mythical
reputation to men of letters. In Italy,
Virgil is still spoken of as a potent necromancer; and a sculptured
representation of St. George and the dragon on the portal of a church at Avignon
has conferred on Petrarch the renown of a dragon-killer. According to the tale,
as Petrarch and Laura were one day hunting, they
chanced to pass the den of a dragon. The hideous monster, less ravenous than
amorous, attacked Laura; but the poet rushing to her assistance, killed the
beast with his dagger. If the story be doubted, the narrator triumphantly points
to the sculpture as a proof of its
correctness; just as the painted representation of a dragon, on the wall of
Mordiford church, in Herefordshire, has been innumerable times pointed out as
the exact resemblance and memorial of a reptile killed by a condemned criminal
in the neighbouring river Lug. To vulgar minds
such evidence appears incontrovertible. As a local poet sings
'Who has not heard, of Herefordian birth,
Who has not heard, as winter evenings lag on,
That tale of awe to some�to some of mirth
Of Mordiford's most famous huge green dragon?
Who has not seen the figure on its church,
At western end outspread to all beholders,
Where leaned the beggar pilgrim on his crutch
And asked its meaning�body, head, and shoulders?
There still we see the place, and hear the tale,
Where man and monster fought for life and glory;
No one can righteously the facts assail,
For even the church itself puts it before ye.'
A fertile source of mythical narrations is found in the
ancient names of places; legends being invented to account for the names, and
then we are gravely informed that the names were derived from the alleged facts
of the legends. Near Dundee, in
Forfarshire, there is a well called The Nine Maidens' Well, and adjoining are
places named respectively Pittempton, Baldragon, Strathmartin, and Martinstane.
From these simple circumstances we have a dragon story, which may be thus
abridged. A dragon devoured nine maidens at the
well near Pittempton. Martin, the lover of one of the maidens, finding life a
burden, determined to kill the reptile, or perish in the attempt. Accordingly,
he attacked it with a club, striking the first blow at Strath�pronounced by the
country people Strike � martin. The
venomous beast was scotched, not killed, by this blow; but as it dragged �
Scottice, draiglet � 'its slow length along 'through a morass, the hero of the
adventure followed up the attack, and finally killed the monster at Martinstane.
The dragon, like other great criminals of the
olden time, made a 'last speech, confession, and dying declaration,' in the
following words:
I was tempit (tempted) at Pittempton,
Draiglit (draggled) at Baldragon,
Stricken at Strikemartin,
And killed at Martinstane.'
The festival of the Rogations, anciently held on the three
days preceding Ascension Day, were the prime source of dragon legends. During
these days the clergy, accompanied by the church officers and people, walked
round the boundaries of their respective
parishes; and at certain pre-scribed spots offered up prayers, beseeching
blessings on the fruits of the earth, and protection from the malevolent spirit
of all evil. To a certain extent, the custom is still observed in many English
parishes. In the ancient processions, there was
always carried the image of a dragon, the emblem of the infernal spirit, whose
overthrow was solicited from heaven, and whose final defeat was attributed to
the saint more particularly revered by the people of the diocese or parish. On
the third day of the processions, the dragon
was stoned, kicked, buffeted, and treated in a very ignominious, if not indecent
manner. Thus every parish had its dragon as well as its saint, with a number of
dragon localities�the dragon's rock, the dragon's well, &c., so named from
being the spots where the dragon was
deposited, when the processions stopped for refreshment or prayer.
The processional dragon has descended down even to our own
day. Previous to the Municipal Corporations Act of 1835, Snap, the famous
Norwich dragon, annually went in procession with the mayor and corporation on
the Tuesday preceding the eve of St. John the
Baptist. Snap was a magnificent reptile, all glittering in green and gold. He
was witty, too, bandying jokes on men and things in general, with his admiring
friends in the crowd. Guarded by four whifflers, armed with drawn swords, Snap
seemed to be quite at home among the bands
and banners of the procession. But, true to his ancient traditionary instincts,
though on that important anniversary the cathedral was strewn with rushes to
receive the civic dignitaries in the olden manner, Snap never presumed to enter
the sacred edifice, but sat upon a
stone�the dragon's stone�till the service was concluded, and the procession
resumed its onward march. But the act previously referred to has ruthlessly
swept away Snap, with all the grand corporate doings and feastings for which the
East Anglian city was once so famous. Yet the
rabble, affectionately clinging to their time-honored friend the dragon, have
more than once attempted to get up a mock Snap, to be speedily put to flight by
the 'Move on there!' of a blue-coated policeman. Such are the inevitable changes
of time.
SHAKSPEARE
'He was a man of universal genius, and from a period soon after
his own era he has been universally idolized. It is difficult to compare him to
any other individual. The only one to whom I can at
all compare him is the wonderful Arabian dervise who dived into the body of each
[person], and in that way became familiar with the thoughts and secrets of their
hearts. He was a man of obscure origin, and, as a player, limited in his
acquirements; but he was born evidently with
a universal genius. His eye glanced at the various aspects of life, and his
fancy portrayed with equal felicity the king on the throne and the clown who
cracked his chestnuts at a Christmas fire. Whatever note he took, he struck it
just and true, and awakened a corresponding
chord in our bosoms.'
�Sir Walter Scott's speech on proposing the Memory of
Shakspeare at the Edin. Theat. Fund Dinner, February 23rd, 1827.
As is well known, a house in Henley Street, Stratford, is
traditionally famous as that in which Shakspeare was born, though the fact has
been the subject of considerable doubt. It is but the beginning of the
obscurities which rest on the biography of the
Bard of Avon. The facts established regarding him by documentary evidence form
but a handful: that he was baptized on the 26th of April 1564; that
his father was a man of substance, at one time high bailiff' of the burgh, but
subsequently fell into difficulties; that
he himself, at eighteen, married Anne
Hathaway, who was twenty-seven, and who brought him a daughter six
months after, and subsequently a daughter and a son together; that, in 1589, he
is found as a shareholder in the Blackfriars
Theatre in London, afterwards a shareholder in that called the Globe; that, as a
writer of plays for these houses, he realized large gains, and in 1597 began to
buy houses and land at his native town, to which he latterly retired to spend
the evening of his days in comfort and
dignity; and that, on the 23rd of April 1616, he died at Stratford,
and was buried in the chancel of the parish church, where there is a monument,
presenting a portrait bust to his memory.
Such is nearly all we
know for certain; it is from the uncertain voice of tradition alone that we hear
of his having been
apprenticed to a butcher, of his having got into trouble by a deer-stealing
adventure, and of his first occupation in London having been that of holding
gentlemen's horses at the theatre door. One or two faint allusions to his
writings in those of his contemporaries complete the
effective materials of what may be by courtesy called the Life of
Shakspeare. Let us not forget, however, one other particular to which we
should cling with great and affectionate interest, that he was characterised by
these con-temporaries as the Gentle Shakspeare.
It conveys the idea of a union of amiability and modest dignity, especially
pleasing.
Driven to deductions and surmises regarding Shakspeare, we
hope that the following remarks may appear allowable. First, we would say that
the shade of family misfortune and difficulty which fell upon him in early
manhood is sufficient to account for his
leaving his native borough. We conceive that, his father being impoverished, and
himself feeling anxious for the future of his own little family, he bethought
him, as so many young men in similar circumstances still do, of attempting to
advance his fortunes in London. An
acquaintance with the London players, who we know occasionally visited
Stratford, and the impulse of his own genius, probably determined him to the
stage. There, in adapting plays which had been written by other persons, he
fully discovered his wonderful powers, and was gradually
drawn on to write original plays, deriving his subjects from history and from
collections of prose tales.
Fortune following on these exertions, his mind took only the
firmer hold of Stratford and his loved relatives there. It became the dream of
his life to restore his family to the comfort and respectability from which they
had fallen�to become, if possible,
a man of some consequence there. In this he might be said to resemble Scott,
who, comparatively indifferent to literary eclat, concentrated his
highest aspirations on founding a laird's family in the county of his
race�Roxburghshire. As in Scott's case there was a basis
for the idea in the gentle blood of which he was descended, so was there in
Shakspeare's. Through at least the mother, Mary Arden,
of Wilmcote, if not also through the father, there was a trace of connection
with land and birth. It is a highly significant
circumstance that, in 1596, when Shakspeare was getting his head above water in
London, his father is found applying to the Heralds' College for a coat-of-arms,
on the basis of family service to King Henry VII, of official dignity, of the
possession of property, and the fact of
having married a daughter of Arden of Wilmcote; an application which was
extended three years later, to one for the privilege of impaling the Shakspeare
arms with those of Arden.
There can of course be no doubt that William the poet
prompted these ambitious applications, and designed them for the benefit of
himself and his descendants. They take their place with the investments at
Stratford as part of the ultimate plan of life
which the great poet had in view. Let it be observed that with this conception
of his idea of life all the other known and even the negative circumstances are
in conformity. He thought not of taking a high place in London�he rather kept
retired, and saved money. To this voluntary
obscurity it may be attributed that he has passed so notelessly amongst his
fellows in the metropolis, and been left so wholly without a biography amongst
them. In about ten years from his coming to London�namely in 1597�he was
beginning to make his purchases of property in
Stratford, and in a few years more he had wholly withdrawn to live like a
private gentleman in the handsome house of the New Place�probably the best house
in the town�where he lived till the end of his days. Let it be observed �
strange that it should not have been observed
before!�that this whole course of procedure is peculiar,�stands quite singular
among the literary, and still more the theatrical lives of that day, arguing a
character in Shakspeare as original and self-dependent as his talents were
exalted.
It seems to us to speak strongly for a just and rational view
of the ends of life on his part; it shows him as a man whose original healthy
tastes had never become spoilt by town life, as one who never allowed himself to
be carried away by love of
excitement and applause: the smoke of the stage lamps had never smirched him;
the homage of the Pembrokes and the Northamptons had never misled him. He
desired simply to be a gentleman, living on his own acres, procul a
negotiis. It was an idea of life both modest and
dignified. We hear not of his seeking any external honours beyond the
coat-of-arms. We hear of no ovations at his retirement from the stage; most
probably he was too proud a man to undergo a testimonial, even had such things
been then fashionable. He had come to town for a
purpose, and when that was accomplished, he quietly resumed the calm existence
he loved by the banks of that beautiful river of his youth, ever pressing along
its green and umbrageous meadows. Could anything be more worthy of 'a gentleman
of Nature's making' or of a man of
genius?
One of the few certainties about Shakspeare is the date of
his baptism, for it is inserted in the baptismal register of his native town of
Stratford in the following clear, though. ungrammatical fashion: '1564, April
26th, Gulielmus, filius
Joanne s Shakspere.' We know, then, that he was baptized on the 26th
of April 1564. When was he born? A fond prepossession in favour of St. George's
day has led to an assumption that the 23rd of April might be his
natal morn, thus allowing him to be three
days old at the time of his baptism; and accordingly it has long been customary
to hold festivals in his honour on that day.
The question that first arises here is, Did three days form a
customary interval in that age between the birth and baptism of a child? We must
answer that there are examples of its doing so. But there are also many
instances of a longer interval. Milton,
who was born in Shakspeare's lifetime, was baptized when eleven days old. In the
case of the family of Thomas Godfrey, the eldest of whom was born in 1609, not
one of the fifteen was christened in less than six days from birth, the entire
series giving us the following intervals:
13, 6, 8, 15, 11, 12, 14, 21, 13, 10, 14, 10, 18, 15, and 11 days .
There is, however, something like positive, though
hitherto almost unnoticed evidence, that the Bard of Avon sang his first song
some time before the 23rd of April. It is
to be found on his tomb-stone in the legend�' OBIIT ANO. DOI. 1616. AETATIS 53.
DIE 23, AP.' As this was inscribed under the care of relatives and
contemporaries, it could scarcely but be correct; and, if so, we must accept it
as an intimation that, on the 23rd of
April 1616, Shakspeare had passed the fifty-two years which would have been
exactly his age if he had been born on the 23rd of April 1564, and
gone some way into his fifty-third year. In other words, being in his
fifty-third year on the 23rd of April 1616,
he must have been born some time before the same day in 1564.
The date of the baptism, nevertheless, gives us tolerable
assurance that the birthday was one very short while prior to the
23rd; and there is a likelihood that it was the
22nd. 'One only argument,' says Mr.
de Quincey, 'has sometimes
struck us, for supposing tat the 22nd might be the day, and not the
23rd; which is, that Shakspeare's sole grand-daughter, Lady Barnard,
was married on the 22nd of
April 1626, ten years exactly from the poet's death; and the reason for choosing
this day might have had a reference to her illustrious grandfather's birthday,
which, there is good reason for thinking, would be celebrated as a festival in
the family for generations.'
The 23rd of April being
usually given as the date of the death of Cervantes, a supposition has arisen,
and become the subject of some rather puerile remark, that Shakspeare and the
illustrious author of Don Quixote died on the same day. It has
not heretofore been pointed out that, if Shakspeare died on the day reckoned the
23rd of April in England, and Cervantes on that reckoned the
23rd of April in Spain, these two great, and in some measure kindred
geniuses, necessarily did not die on the same
day. Spain had adopted the Gregorian calendar on its first promulgation in 1582,
and consequently the 23rd day of April in Spain corresponded with the
13th in England; there being at that time ten days' difference
between the new and old style. It is to be
hoped, then, that we shall have no more carefully-laboured, semi-mystical
disquisitions on the now [we believe for the first time] exploded fallacy of
Shakspeare and Cervantes having died on the same day.
AN
IDEA AND A RHYME
On the title-page of the first folio edition of Shakspeare's
plays, there is an engraved portrait of the immortal bard, from the burin of
Martin Droeshout, accompanied by some verses written by
Ben Jonson, and commencing thus,
The figure that thou here see'st put,
It was for gentle Shakspeare cut;
Wherein the graver had a strife
With nature, to outdo the life.'
When Betterton, the English Roscius, possessed the
painting, now termed the Chandos portrait of Shakspeare, he allowed Dryden to
have a copy taken from it by the pencil of Kneller. The poet paid
the painter for his trouble, in flattery, a medium most
convenient for Dryden, and, next to coin, the most acceptable to Kneller. In
Dryden's poetic epistle to Kneller, on this occasion, we find the following
lines:
Such are thy pieces, imitating life
So near, they almost conquer in the strife.'
On the publication of the above, the coffee-house critics of
the day, uproariously bellowing plagiarism, reviled Dryden for so servilely
appropriating the idea and rhyme of Jonson, over-looking the actual fact that
Jonson himself had appropriated both from
Shakspeare's Venus and Adonis, where we may read:
Look, where a painter would surpass the life,
His art's with nature's workmanship at strife.'
The rhyme thus repeated was not suffered to lie idle even,
though the original idea was lost sight of. Thus, in an epilogue to the play of
the Brothers, written by Cumberland, we find the following allusion to
Reynolds's celebrated picture of
Garrick, between Tragedy
and Comedy-
'Who but hath seen the celebrated strife,
Where Reynolds calls the canvas into life,
And 'twixt the tragic and the comic muse,
Courted of both, and dubious which to chose,
Th' immortal actor stands?'
And in reference to the very same subject, we find in a
Critical Epistle to Sir Joshua Reynolds
'Your pencil summoned into life,
For Garrick's choice, the ardent strife.'
Both the rhyme and the original idea might be hunted much
further, and found in many unexpected places, were the result of sufficient
interest to merit further attention here.
HENRY CLIFFORD
'THE SHEPHERD LORD'
The life of Henry Clifford, commonly called the Shepherd
Lord, is a striking illustration of the casualties which attended the long and
disastrous contest between the Houses of York and Lancaster. The De Cliffords
were zealous and powerful adherents of the
Lancastrian interest. In this cause Henry's grandfather had fallen at the battle
of St. Alban's; and his father at the battle of Towton, that bloody engagement
at which nearly 40,000 Englishmen perished by the hands of their
fellow-countrymen. But scarcely had the Yorkists gained
this victory, which placed their leader on the throne as Edward the Fourth, than search was made for
the sons of the fallen Lord Clifford. These were two boys, of whom Henry, the
eldest, was only seven years old. But the very name of Clifford
was so hated and dreaded by the Yorkists, that Edward, though acknowledged king,
could be satisfied with nothing less than the lives of these two boys. The young
Cliffords were immediately searched for, but their mother's anxiety had been too
prompt even for the eagerness of
revenge; they could nowhere be found. Their mother was closely and peremptorily
examined about them. She said, 'She had given direction to convey them beyond
sea, to be bred up there; and that being thither sent, she was ignorant whether
they were living or not.'
This was all that could be elicited from their cautious
mother. Certain it is that Richard, her younger son, was taken to the
Netherlands, where he shortly afterwards died. But Henry, the elder, and heir to
his father's titles and estates, was either never
taken out of England; or, if he were, he speedily returned, and was placed by
his mother at Lonsborow, in Yorkshire, with a trustworthy shepherd, the husband
of a young woman who had been under-nurse to the boy whom she was now to adopt
as her foster-son.
Here, in the lowly hut of this humble shepherd, was the young
heir of the lordly Cliffords doomed to dwell�to he clothed, fed, and employed as
the shepherd's own son. In this condition he lived month after month, and year
after year, in such perfect
disguise, that it was not till he had attained the fifteenth year of his age
that a rumour reached the court of his being still alive and in England. Happily
the Lady Clifford had a friend at court, who forewarned her that the king had
received an intimation of her son's place of
concealment. With the assistance of her then husband, Sir Lancelot Threlkeld, Lady Clifford instantly
removed 'the honest shepherd with his wife and family into Cumberland,' where he
took a farm near the Scottish Borders. Here, though his mother
occasionally held private communications with him, the young Lord Clifford
passed fifteen years more, disguised and occupied as a common shepherd; and had
the mortification of seeing his Castle and Barony of Shipton in the hands of his
adversary, Sir
William Stanley; and his Barony of Westmoreland possessed by the Duke of
Gloucester, the king's brother.
On the restoration of the Lancastrian line by the accession
of Henry the Seventh, Henry Clifford, now thirty-one years old, was summoned to
the House of Lords, and restored to his father's titles and estates. But such
had been his humble training, that he
could neither write nor read. The only book open to him during his shepherd's
life was the book of nature; and this, either by his foster-father's
instruction, or by his own innate intelligence, he had studied with diligence
and effect. He had gained a practical knowledge of the
heavenly bodies, and a deep-rooted love for Nature's grand and beautiful
scenery.
Among the shepherd-grooms, no mate
Had he�a child of strength and state!
Among the heavens his eye could see
Face of thing that is to be;
And, if man report him right,
He could whisper words of might.'
Wordsworth
Having regained his property and position, he immediately
began to repair his castles and improve his education. He quickly learnt to
write his own name; and, to facilitate his studies, built Barden Tower, near
Bolton Priory, that he might place himself
under the tuition of some learned monks there, and apply himself to astronomy,
and other favourite sciences of the period.
Thus this strong-minded man, who, up to the age of thirty,
had received no education, became by his own determination far more learned than
noblemen of his day usually were, and appears to have left behind him scientific
works of his own composition.
His training as a warrior had been equally defective. Instead
of being practised from boy-hood to the use of arms and the feats of chivalry,
as was common with the youth of his own station, he had been trained to handle
the shepherd's crook, and tend, and
fold, and shear his sheep. Yet scarcely had he emerged from his obscurity and
quiet pastoral life, when we find him become a brave and skilful soldier,�an
able and victorious commander. At the battle of Flodden he was one of the
principal leaders, and brought to the field a
numerous retinue. He died the 23rd of April 1523, being then about
seventy years old.
A CELEBRATED JOCKEY
It was said of Tregonwell Frampton, Royal Stud Keeper at
Newmarket, and 'Father of the Turf,' that he was 'a thorough good groom, yet
would have made a good minister of state, if he had been trained for it.'
Frampton was supposed to be better acquainted
with the genealogy of the most celebrated horses than any man of his time, for
he could reckon up the sires, grandsires, great grandsires, and
great-great-grandsires, which he had himself seen. As few genealogists can trace
the pedigrees of the most noted running horses for more
than ten or twelve descents, it has been regretted that a kind of Heralds'
Office was never created for horses, by which Childers in the last, and some of
the great racers in the present age, might prove their descent from Bucephalus.
Frampton could choose the best racers equally well, from the
thorough English black to the best-bred bay; and 'not a splint, or sprain, or
bad eye, or old broken knee, or pinched foot, or low heel, escaped in the choice
of a horse.' But the longest heat
will come to an end; and even Frampton finished his course, in 1727, aged 86.