Born: Matthew Boulton, partner of James Watt, 1728, Birmingham; Sir
John Soane, architect, 1753, Reading; Prince Eugene de Beauharnois, step-son of
Napoleon
Bonaparte, 1781, Paris.
Died: Richard Tarleton, celebrated comedian, 1588; Sir
Edward Coke, eminent lawyer, 1634, Stoke Pogeis; Claudius Salmasius, author of a
Defence of Charles I, 1653; Oliver Cromwell, Protector of England, 1658,
Whitehall, London; David Ancillon,
eminent Protestant divine, 1692, Berlin; George Lillo, dramatist, 1739; Joseph Ritson, antiquary, 1803,
Hoxton; Clara Reeve, novelist, 1807, Ipswich; George Richardson Porter, statist,
1852, Tunbridge Wells.
Feast Day: St. Mansuet, first bishop of Toul, in
Lorraine, about 375. St. Macnisius, first bishop of Connor, in Ireland, 513. St.
Simeon Stylites, the Younger, 592. St. Remaclus, bishop of Maestricht,
confessor, about 664.
DICK TARLETON
In the morning of the English stage, just before Shakspeare
gave it form and finish, the most favourite comic actor was Richard Tarleton. Of
peasant origin in Shropshire, this quaint person seems to have spent most of his
early life in the business of
tavern-keeping, first in the country, afterwards in London. He had, at one time,
an hostelry in Gracechurch Street; at another time, an ordinary in Paternoster
Row�it has been surmised that the latter establishment has come down to more
recent times, under the well-known name of
Dolly's Chop-house. Dick could write ballads for the streets; he could make
witty answers in rhyme; his aspect�which included a flattened nose�was
provocative of mirth wherever it shewed itself; he was full of the mimetic gift.
After living some years in London by tavern-keeping, he was
adopted into the service of Queen Elizabeth, that he might enliven her at
supper-time by his jests and his gossip. We must imagine this grand old woman,
at the very time when she was perhaps
counter-conspiring against Mary and Babington, or giving orders for meeting the
Armada, or devising plans for preserving her rule in Ireland, prone to listen to
the 'quips, and cranks, and wanton wiles' of this poor fellow: a wise thing,
too, for even the life of a sovereign will
be the better of occasional condescensions to simple natural merriment and
outbreaks of laughter.
Latterly, Dick was a performer at the Curtain Theatre, in
Shoreditch�a favourite one in low comedy, as we should now call it, though in
plain truth there was then no other. His face was half his fortune in
professional respects. It was so droll, that the
moment he appeared�before he had said a word�it took the audience with laughter
that scarcely subsided for an hour. He could regale them with dexterous fencing,
an accomplishment in which he had attained some fame; but his most popular
single performance was the playing of what
was in those days called a Jig.
This was not simply a merry dance, as it still is, but also a
song or ballad. In came the irresistible Dick, quaintly attired, playing a
little tabor with one hand, and ready to finger a pipe with the other:
curveting, skipping, shuffling round and roumd
before the bewitched audience, he would then chant forth a long string of
verses, referring in comic or satiric terms to some persons or things of the
day, all with such droll expression as was in itself charm enough. We have
fortunately preserved to us one of Tarleton's jigs,
entitled A Horseload of Fools, in which he
takes off a great variety of persons, as the Puritan, the Courtier, the Poet,
the Lover, and at length comes to the corporation dignitary�a class which made
itself odious to the players by constant
efforts to repress theatricals in the city.
'This fool comes of the citizens,
Nay, prithee, do not frown;
I know him as well as you
By his livery gown:
Of a rare horn-mad family.
He is a fool by 'prenticeship
And servitude, he says;
And hates all kinds of wisdom,
But most of all in plays:
Of a very obstinate family.
You have him in his livery gown,
But presently he can
Qualify for a mule or mare,
Or for an alderman:
With a gold chain in his family.
Being born and bred for a fool,
Why should he be wise?
It should make him not fit to sit
With his brethren of Ass-ize:
Of a very long-eared family,' &c.
The
contemporary portrait of Tarleton, here copied, represents him in the act of
performing one of his jigs; and one can readily see in the face that homely
comicality which made him the delight of the Shoreditch groundlings of his day,
and enabled him to cure his queen of melancholy 'better,' as old Fuller tells
us, 'than all her physicians.'
Poor Tarleton is supposed to have been cut off suddenly by
the plague, for he made his will, died, and was buried all on one day. His
remains were deposited in the churchyard of St. Leonard's, Shoreditch. He could
not have reached any considerable age, for
from his will it appears that his mother was still alive, and the son to whom he
left his property is spoken of as under tutelage. His wife Kate, who is often
alluded to in his jests, and who appears to have been of loose life, is not
adverted to in the will. She had probably by
that time departed from this sublunary sphere.
Dick is alluded to by several contemporary writers, always in
kindly terms. It is pleasant to think of one who made so many laugh, that he
passed through life unoffendingly. The London populace are said to have kept his
memory alive for a century; they
named game-cocks after him; they had an ale-house in Southwark adorned with his
portrait. Tarleton's jests were collected and published after his death, and
have been reproduced with much illustrative matter by the Shakspeare Society. In
vain, however, do we look in them for any
very brilliant wit or profound humour. We must presume that the droll
countenance, voice, and mamner of the man were mainly what his contemporaries
enjoyed.
OLIVER
CROMWELL�HIS DEATH�A QUEER PECULIARITY OF HIS CHARACTER
The 3rd of September had become a day very
memorable to Cromwell. In his expedition to reduce the Scotch Presbyterians, who
had taken up the son of the late king as their sovereign, he gained his first
great success in the battle of Dunbar,
fought on the 3rd of September 1650. The affair was closed
triumphantly for him at Worcester on the 3rd of September 1651. In an
age when individuals were believed to have days specially connected with their
destiny, the 3rd of September might
well appear auspicious to the Protector. A strange turn, however, was given to
these superstitious ideas in his case, when, on the 3rd of September
1658, the Protector died. It is usually stated that his decease took place
amidst a storm of singular violence, which was
tearing and flooding the whole country, and which fittingly marked the occasion;
but the storm, in reality, happened on Monday the 30th of August, and
must have been pretty well spent before the Friday afternoon, when Oliver
breathed his last.
M. Guizot, in his Life of Cromwell, describes the
Protectoral court as confined within rather narrow limits, and having his own
family as its 'centre and chief element.' His wife, Elizabeth Bouchier, was a simple and
timid woman, anxious about her children, and a little jealous (not without
cause) of himself. Two or three ladies of rank�one in particular, the Lady
Dysart, subsequently Duchess of Lauderdale�were now and then seen at court. The
other principal figures were the Protector's
children. 'He summoned his son Richard to London, and obtained his election as a
member of parliament, a privy-councillor, and chancellor of the university of
Oxford.
His son-in-law, John Claypole,
was a man of elegant tastes, and, like Richard Cromwell, was on friendly terms
with a great many Cavaliers. After the marriage of his two younger daughters
with Lord Falconbridge and Mr. Rich,
Cromwell had about him four young and wealthy families, desirous to enjoy life,
and to share their enjoyments with all who came near them in rank and fortune.
The Protector himself was fond of social amusements and brilliant assemblies; he
was also passionately fond of music, and
took delight in surrounding himself with musicians, and in listening to their
performances. His court became, under the direction of his daughters, numerous
and gay. One of them, the widow of Ireton and wife of Fleetwood, was a zealous
and austere republican, and took but little
part in their festivities, and deplored the monarchical and worldly tendencies
which prevailed in the house-hold as well as in the policy of the Protector. In
the midst of his public labours, Cromwell exulted in the enjoyment of this
domestic prosperity.'
After making full allowance for the verity of what M. Guizot
states, it is necessary to look at a certain fact considerably derogating from
the dignity of the Protector's court. He was, in reality, a man of a coarse
humour, fond of playing off jokes
equally rough and childish. It will scarcely be believed, but it is well
authenticated, that, at the marriage of his daughter Frances to Mr. Rich,
November 1657, not a twelvemonth before his death, he amused himself by throwing
about sackposset among the ladies, to soil their
rich clothes; flung wet sweetmeats about, and with the same article daubed the
stools on which the ladies were to sit. He also pulled off the bridegroom's
peruke, and made as if he would have thrown it in the fire, but did not: he only
sat upon it. These pranks appear to have
been viewed by the company with the usual complaisance shewn to even the
mauvaises plaisanteries of the great, for we are told that the ladies took their
share of the sack-posset sent them in so irregular a manner as 'a favour.'
Dr. Bates, in his book on the Troubles in England,
records an anecdote of Cromwell's youth, which we might have set down as a
royalist fiction but for the pranks above described. It is to the effect that,
when Sir Oliver Cromwell was holding
Christmas in the old English fashion at Hitchenbrook, his nephew and namesake,
the future Protector, mingled amongst the dancers, with gloves and leggings
befouled in the most horrible manner, that he might spread contamination amongst
the company, thus spoiling innocent mirth,
and rendering the house itself insufferable. A writer in the Gentleman's
Magazine, who brought forward this unpleasant story, adds the observation:
'I have noticed this itch in certain boys at school, who were invariably tyrants
in their nature.'
COCKER'S ARITHMETIC
The 3rd of September 1677 is the date of the
licensing (by Sir Roger
L'Estrange) of Cocker's Arithmetick. The fifty-first edition
was published in 1745 by 'R. Ware, at the Bible and
Sun, Amen Corner;' marking the extraordinary success which attended the book
during the first seventy years of its existence. There had been manuals of
arithmetic before; but Cocker's had a superior completeness, which threw all
others into the shade.
In his original 'proeme or preface,' the author, who
described himself as a 'practitioner in the arts of writing, arithmetick, and
engraving' (to which he had been directed by 'the secret influence of Divine
Providence'), says:
'For you, the pretended Numerists of this vapouring age,
who are more disingeniously witty to propound unnecessary questions, than
ingeniously judicious to resolve such as are necessary; for you was this book
composed and published, if you will deny
yourselves so much as not to invert the streams of your ingenuity, but by
studiously conferring with the Notes, Names, Orders, Progress, Species,
Properties, Proprieties, Proportions, Powers, Affections and Applications of
Numbers delivered herein, become such Artists indeed,
as you now only seem to be.'
He further assured the world that all the rules in his book
are 'grounded on Verity and delivered with Sincerity; the Examples built up
gradually from the smallest Consideration to the greatest
'Zoilus and Morus, lie you down and die,
For these inventions your whole force defy.'
Cocker, however, was not destined to see anything of the
success which has since made his name proverbial in England in connection with
arithmetical subjects. The little book was edited from a manuscript he had left,
by 'Mr. John Hawkins, writing-master,
near St. George's Church, in Southwark;' bearing, nevertheless, a wood-cut
portrait of the author, with the following inscription below:
'Ingenious Cocker, now to rest thou'rt gone,
No art can show thee fully, but thine own;
Thy rare Arithmetick alone can shew
Th' vast sum of thanks we for thy labours owe.'
It appears that Cocker died in the year of the publication of
his book, and was buried in St. George's Church, Southwark, 'in the passage at
the west end, within the church.' He was rather a caligrapher, a writer and
engraver of 'letters, knots, and
flourishes,' than an arithmetician, and valued himself chiefly on the former
accomplishments. His life seems to have been one of struggle: there is extant a
petition sent by him, some years before his death, to the Treasurer, Earl of
Southampton, entreating payment of �150,
granted to him by the king for his encouragement in the arts of writing and
engraving, as he was hindered in his operations 'by reason of extreme want and
necessity.' He probably could have gone through a second life in handsome style
on the profits of his Arithmetick.
Connected with the life of Cocker, it may be allowable to
introduce a set of remarks, by the great novelist of our age, upon an ancient mode of keeping accounts
which was kept up in the British Exchequer long
after better nodes were in use everywhere else.
'Ages ago, a savage mode of
keeping accounts on notched sticks was introduced into the Court of Exchequer,
and the accounts were kept much as Robinson Crusoe
kept his calendar on the desert island. In the course of considerable
revolutions of time, the celebrated Cocker was born, and died. Walkinghame of
the Tutor's Assistant, well versed in figures, was also born, and died� a
multitude of accountants, bookkeepers, and actuaries were
born, and died. Still official routine inclined to these notched sticks, as if
they were the pillars of the constitution, and still the Exchequer accounts
continued to be kept on certain splints of elm-wood called "tallies."
In the reign of George III an inquiry was made by some
revolutionary spirit whether�pens, ink, and paper, and slates and pencils being
in existence�this obstinate adherence to an obsolete custom ought to be
continued, and whether a change ought not to be effected.
All the red tape in the country grew redder at the bare
mention of this bold and original conception, and it took till 1826 to get these
sticks abolished. In 1834, it was found that there was a considerable
accumulation of them, and the question then
arose, what was to be done with such worn-out, wormeaten, rotten old bits of
wood? I daresay there was a vast amount of minuting, memo-randuming, and
despatch-boxing on this mighty subject. The sticks were housed at Westminster,
and it would naturally occur to any intelligent
person that nothing could be easier than to allow them to be carried away for
firewood by the miserable people who live in that neighbourhood. However, they
never had been useful, and official routine required that they never should be,
and so the order went forth that they were
to be privately and confidentially burned.
It came to pass that they were to be burned in a stove in the
House of Lords. The stove, overgorged with these preposterous sticks, set fire
to the panelling; the panelling set fire to the House of Lords; the House of
Lords set fire to the House of
Commons; the two houses were reduced to ashes; architects were called in to
build others; we are now in the second million of the cost thereof; the national
pig is not nearly over the stile yet, and the little old woman, Britannia,
hasn't got home to-night. Now, I think we may
reasonably remark, in conclusion, that all obstinate adherence to rubbish which
the time has long outlived, is certain to have in the soul of it more or less
that is pernicious and destructive, and that will some day set fire to something
or other, which, if given boldly to the
winds, would have been harmless, but which, obstinately retained, is ruinous.'
An example of the Exchequer notched sticks is here depicted
for the amusement of the reader. It contains a half-intelligible legend in
Latin, indicating that it is the record of an East Indian loan. Of course the
reader will understand that there is, after
all, a sort of' rationality in the system, the one stick being for the creditor,
the other for the lender, and the tallying of the notches a proof that both are
genuine. In Scotland, till the early days of the editor, it was customary for
the baker's lad to bring the Nick-sticks
with his bread, a notch being made for each loaf he left. While the notches on
his stick corresponded with those on the one left with the family, both parties
were satisfied that the account was justly kept.
'STRANGE FISH'

The Sea Monk
|
When Trinculo (in Shakspeare's Tempest) mistakes Caliban for
'a strange fish,' he at once exclaims: ' Were I in England now, and had but this
fish painted, not a holiday fool there but would give a piece of silver: there
would this monster make a man; any
strange beast there makes a man: when they will not give a doit to relieve a
lame beggar, they will lay out ten to see a dead Indian.' This love of the
English populace for strange sights is frequently alluded to by other writers of
the Elizabethan era; a time fertile of travel,
and abounding in discoveries which required very little exaggeration to carry
them into the marvellous. This taste for the wonderful was well supplied�shows,
ballads, and broadsides fostered and fed the public appetite. Occasionally, the
'monster' was a very mild form of monster
indeed! A shark or a polypus was, by dint of rhetorical flourishes, converted
into a very alarming monster, of which instances occur in Halliwell's folio
edition of Shakspeare.
The continental artists and authors went far beyond all this;
the inland people particularly, from their inexperience of the sea, appear to
have been thought capable of believing anything. Gesner, Rondeletius, and other
authors of the sixteenth century,
narrate the capture of marine monsters of a very 'strange' order, and among them
one that was 'taken in Polonia in 1531,' which bore a general resemblance to a
bishop!
In the rare and curious little volume on Costume, by
Johannes Sluper, published at Antwerp in 1572, is
a picture of this fish, here reproduced in facsimile. The quatrain appended to
this cut assures us that bishops are
not confined to land alone, but that the sea has the full advantage of their
presence; and that though they may not speak, they wear a mitre.
The Sea Monk
|
This 'monster,' we are told, was brought to the king, 'and
after a while seemed very much to express to him, that his mind was to return to
his own element again: which, the king perceiving, commanded that it should be
so; and the bishop was carried back
to the sea, and cast himself into it immediately.' The bishop once established
in the popular mind, the clergy might follow of course, the more particularly as
it would seem to countenance a sort of divine creation of monkery in the sea. So
accordingly we find in the same work,
this equally extraordinary representation of ' The Sea-Monk,' to which the
following stanza is appended:
La Mer poissons en abondance apporte,
Par dons devins que devous estimer.
Mais fert estrange est le Moyne de Mer,
Qui est ains'e que ce pourtrait le porte.'
In the office-book of the master of the revels, Sir Henry
Herbert, is the entry of 'a licence to James Leale to shew a strange fish for
half a yeare, the 3rd of September 1632.' The records of London
exhibitions, and the chronicles of
Bartholomew, and other fairs, supply a constant succession of these favourite
shows. A most amusing underplot in Jasper Mayne's comedy, The City Match,
1659, is founded on this popular weakness. A silly young Cockney is intoxicated
by revellers, upon whom he forces his
company for the sake of learning fashionable follies, and is dressed up and
exhibited at a tavern, as 'a strange fish,' to wondering sight-seers at a
shilling a head. One asks, if it is a whale, that the charge is so high; and
another declares, 'We gave but a groat to see the
last fish;' the showman replies with quiet dignity:
Gentlewoman, that was but an Irish Sturgeon!
This came from the Indies; and eats five crowns a day,
In fry, ox-livers, and brown paste!'
But we must not laugh too freely at our ancestors. It is not
more than three years since a 'talking fish' was profitably exhibited in London,
and the principal provincial towns, at a shilling a head. The fish was a species
of seal, and the 'talking'
consisted of a free translation of its natural cry into the words ma-ma or pa
pa, according to the fancy of the showman or spectator.