The English Spy Part 44

c.o.c.k Langford, so called, from the other auctioneer c.o.c.k, very early in the school discovered great talents for ways and means; and, by private contract, could do business as much and as well as his father.

His exercises were not noted for any excess of merit, or the want of it.

He certainly had parts, if they had been put in their proper direction: that was trade. In that he might have been conspicuously useful.

As he was in college, and nothing loath in any occasion that led to notice, in spite of a lisp in his speech, he played Davus in the Phormio; which he opened with singidar absurdity, as the four first words terminate in the letter s, which he, from the imperfection in his speech, could not help mangling.

From the patronage of Lord Orford, Mr. Langford had one of the best livings in Norfolk, 1000 a year; and afterwards, I understand, very well exemplified the useful and honourable duties of a clergyman resident on his benefice.

Hamilton. Every thing is the creature of accident; as that ~81~~works upon time and place, so are the vicissitudes which follow; vicissitudes that reach through the whole allotment of man, even to the charm of character, and the qualities which produce it.

Physically speaking, human nature can redress itself of climate, can generate warmth in high lat.i.tudes, and cold at the equator; but in respect to mind and manners, from the law of lat.i.tude there is no appeal. Man, like the plants that grow for him, has a proper sky and soil: with them to flourish, without them to fade; through either kingdom, vegetable and moral, in situations that are aquatic, the alpine nature cannot live.

All this applies to Hamilton wasting himself at Westminster. "Wild nature's vigour working at his root;"

his situation should have been accordingly; where he might have spread wide and struck deep.

With more than boyish apt.i.tudes and abilities, he should not thus have been lost among boys. His incessant intrepidity, his restless curiosity, his undertaking spirit, all indicated early maturity; all should have led to pursuits, if not better, at least of more pith and moment than the mere mechanism of dead language!

This by Hamilton (disdaining as a business what as an amus.e.m.e.nt perhaps might have delighted him) was deemed a dead letter, and as such, neglected; while he bestowed himself on other mechanism, presenting more material objects to the mind.

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Exercises out of school took place of exercises within. Not that like Sackville or Hawkins, he had a ball at every leisure moment in his hand; but, preferably to fives or cricket, he would amuse himself in mechanical pursuits; little in themselves, but great as to what they might have been convertible.

In the fourth form, he produced a red shoe of his own making. And though he never made a pocket watch, and probably might mar many, yet all the interior machinery he knew and could name. The whole movement he took to pieces, and replaced.

The man who is to find out the longitude, cannot have beginnings; better than these. Count Bruhl, since Madge's death, the best watch-maker of his time, did not raise more early wonder.

Besides this, Hamilton was to be found in every daring oddity. Lords Burlington and Kent, in all their rage for porticos, were nothing to him in a rage for pediments.

For often has the morning caught him scaling the high pediments of the school-door, and at peril of Ins life clambering down, opening the door within, before the boy who kept the gate could come with the key. His evenings set upon no less perils; in pranks with gunpowder; in leaping from unusual heights into the ~82~~Thames. As a practical geographer of London, and Heaven only knows how many miles round it, omniscient Jackson himself could not know more.

All this, surely, was intrinsically right, wrong only in its direction.

Had he been sent to Woolwich, he might have come out, if not a rival of the Duke of Richmond, then master of the ordnance, at least a first-rate engineer. In economical arts and improvements, nothing less than national, he might have been the Duke of Bridgewater of Ireland. Had the sea been his profession, Lord Mulgrave might have been less alone in the rare union of science and enterprise.

But all this capability of usefulness and fair fame, was brought to nought by the obstinate absurdity of the people about him; nothing could wean them from Westminster. His grandfather Roan, or Rohan, an old man who saved much money in Rathbone-place, and spent but little of it every evening at Slaughter's coffee-house, holding out large promise to property, so became absolute; and absolute nonsense was his conduct to his grandson. He persevered in the school; where, if a boy disaffects book-knowledge, his books are only bought and sold. And after Westminster, when the old man died, as if solicitous that every thing about his grave, but poppy and mandragora, should grow downwards, his will declared his grandson the heir, but not to inherit till he graduated at Cambridge.

To Cambridge therefore he went; where having pursued his studies, as it is called, in a ratio inverse and descending, he might have gone on from bad to worse; and so, as many do, putting a grave face upon it, he might have had his degree. But his animal spirits, and love of bustle, could not go off thus undistinguished; and so, after coolly attempting to throw a tutor into the Cam--after shaking all Cambridge from its propriety by a night's frolic, in which he climbed the sign-posts, and changed the princ.i.p.al signs, he was rusticated; till the good-humour of the university returning, he was re-admitted, and enabled to satisfy his grandfather's will!

After that, he behaved with much gallantry in America; and with good address in that very disagreeable affair, the contested marriage of his sister with Mr. Beresford the clergyman.

Indeed, through the intercourse of private life he was very amiable. The same suavity of speech, courteous attentions, and general good-nature, he had when a boy, continued and improved: good qualities the more to be prized, as the less probable, from his bold and eager temper, from the turbulence of his wishes, and the hurry of his pursuits.

~83~~Jekyl had in part, when a boy, the same happy qualities which afterwards distinguished him so entirely: in his economy of time, in his arts of arranging life, and distributing it exactly, between what was pleasant and what was grave.

With vigorous powers and fair pursuits, the doing one thing at a time is the mode to do every thing. Had Jekyl no other excellence than this, I could not be surprised when he became attorney-general.

"When you got into the place of your ancestor, Sir Joseph," said the tutor of Jekyl to him, "let this be your motto:

_Et properare loco, et Cesare_."

"Jekyl," said Mrs. Hobart one day, struck with the same address and exactness, "do you know, if you were a painter, Poussin would be nothing to you in the balance of a scene."

Several of his English exercises, and his verses, will not easily be forgotten. And it will be remembered also, in a laughable way, that he was as mischievous as a gentleman need be; the mobbing a vulgar, the hoaxing a quiz, all the dialect of the Thames below Chelsea-reach, and the whole reach of every thing, pleasant but wrong, which the school statutes put out of reach, but what are the practice of the wits, and of every gentleman who would live by the statutes. All these were among Jekyl's early peculiarities, and raised his fame very high for spirit and cleverness.

"So sweet and voluble was his discourse."

He was very popular among all the boys of his time. And he had a knack yet more gratifying, of recommending himself to the sisters and cousins of the boys he visited.

And he well held up in theory what he afterwards exemplified in fact.

For in one of the best themes of the time on this subject,

"_Non formosus erat, sod erat facundus Ulysses_,"

he was much distinguished.

~84~~"But the grave has closed upon most of the gay spirits of my earlier time," said Crony; "and I alone remain the sad historian. Yonder porch leads to the dormitory and school-room.{15}

'There Busby's awful picture decks the place, s.h.i.+ning where once he shone a living grace.'

15 This school was founded by Queen Elizabeth in 1560, for the education of forty boys, denominated king's scholars from the royalty of their founders; besides which, the n.o.bility and gentry send their sons thither for instruction, so that this establishment vies with Eton in celebrity and respectability. The school is not endowed with lands and possessions specifically appropriated to its own maintenance, but is attached to the general foundation of the collegiate church of Westminster, as far as relates to the support of the king's scholars. It is under the care of the dean and chapter of Westminster, conjointly with the dean of Christ Church, Oxford, and the master of Trinity, Cambridge, respect-ing the election of scholars to their respective colleges. The foundation scholars sleep in the dormitory, a building erected from the design and under the superintendence of the celebrated Earl of Burlington, in the reign of George the First; and in this place the annual theatrical exhibitions take place; the scenery and arrangements having been contrived under the direction of Mr. Garrick, were presented by Archbishop Markham, the former master of the school. The king's scholars are distin- guished from the town-boys, or independents, by a gown, cap, and college waistcoat; they have their dinner in the hall, but seldom take any other meal in college; they pay for education and accommodation as the town-boys; eight of them are generally elected at the end of the fourth year to the colleges above-named; they have students.h.i.+ps at Oxford, and scholars.h.i.+ps at Cambridge; the former worth from forty to sixty pounds per annum, but the latter of small beneficial consideration. The scholars propose themselves for the foundation by challenge, and contend with each other in Latin and Greek every day for eight weeks successively, when the eight at the head of the number are chosen according to vacancies. This contest occasions the king's scholars.h.i.+ps to be much sought after, as it becomes the ground-work of reputation, and incites desire to excel. There are four boys who are called Bishop's boys, from their being established by Williams, Bishop of Lincoln; they have a gratuitous education, and a small allowance which is suffered to acc.u.mulate till the period of their admission into St.

John's College, Cambridge; they are distinguished by wearing a purple gown, and are nominated by the dean and head- master.

What a cloud of recollections, studded with bright and variegated lights, pa.s.ses before my inward vision! Stars of eminence in every branch of learning, science, and public duties, who received their education within those walls; old Westminsters, whose fame will last as long as old England's records, and who shall doubt ~85~~that will be to the end of time? Here grew into manhood and renown the Lord Burleigh, King, Bishop of London, the poet Cowley, the great Dryden, Charles Montague, Earl of Halifax, Dr. South, Matthew Prior, the tragedian Rowe, Bishop Hooper, Kennet, Bishop of Peterborough, Dr. Friend, the physician, King, Archbishop of Dublin, the philosopher Locke, Atterbury, Bishop of Rochester, Bourne, the Latin poet, Hawkins Browne, Boyle, Earl of Cork and Orrery, Carteret, Earl of Granville, Charles Churchill, the English satirist, Frank Nicholls, the anatomist, Gibbon, the historian, George Colman, Bonnel Thornton, the great Earl of Mansfield, Clayton Mordaunt Cracherode, Richard c.u.mberland, the poet Cowper. These are only a few of the great names which occur to me at this moment; but here is enough to immortalize the memory of the old Westminsters."

ON FEASTERS AND FEASTING.

On the Attachment of the Moderns to Good Eating and Drinking--Its Consequences and Operation upon Society-- Different Description of Dinner Parties--Royal--n.o.ble-- Parliamentary--Clerical--Methodistical--Charitable-- Theatrical--Legal--Parochial--Literary--Commercial and Civil Gourmands--Sketches at a Side-table, by Bernard Blackmantle.

~86~~

"There are, while human miseries abound, A thousand ways to waste superfluous wealth, Without one fool or flatterer at your board, Without one hour of sickness or disgust."

--Armstrong.

In such esteem is good eating held by the moderns, that the only way in which Englishmen think they can celebrate any important event, or effect any charitable purpose, is by a good dinner. From the palace to the pot-house, the same affection for good eating and drinking pervades all cla.s.ses of mankind. The sovereign, when he would graciously condescend to bestow on any individual some mark of his special favour, invites him to the royal banquet, seats him _tete-a-tete_ with the most polished prince in Europe; by this act of royal notice exalts him in the public eye, and by the suavity and elegance of his manners rivets his affections and secures his zeal for the remainder of his life. The ministers too have their state dinners, where all important questions are considered before they are submitted to the grand council of the nation. The bishops dine in holy ~87~~conclave to benefit Christianity, and moralize over Champagne on the immorality of mankind. The judges dine with the lord chancellor on the first day of term, and try their powers of mastication before they proceed to try the merits of their fellow citizens' causes. A lawyer must eat his way to the bar, labouring most voraciously through his commons dinners in the Temple or Lincoln's Inn Halls, before he has any chance of success in common law, common pleas, or common causes in the court of King's Bench or Chancery. The Speaker's parliamentary dinners are splendid spreads for poor senators; but sometimes the feast is infested with rats, whom his majesty's royal rat-catcher immediately cages, and contrives, by the aid of a blue or red ribband, to render extremely useful and docile. Your orthodox ministers dine on t.i.thes, turtle, and Easter offerings, until they become as sleek as their own velvet cus.h.i.+ons, and eke from charity to mankind almost as red in the face from the ruby tint of red port, and the sorrowful recollections of sin and death. The methodist and sectarians have their pious love feasts--bachelor's fare, bread and b.u.t.ter and kisses, with a dram of comfort at parting, I suppose. The deaf, the dumb, the lame, the blind, all have their annual charitable dinnerings; and even the Actor's Fund is almost entirely dependent on the fund of amus.e.m.e.nt they contrive to offer to their friends at their annual fund dinner. The church-wardens dine upon a child, and the overseers too often upon the mite extorted from the poor. Even modern literature is held in thraldom by the banquetings of modern booksellers and publishers, who by this method contrive to cram the critics with their crudities, and direct the operation of their servile pens in the cutting up of poor authors. At the Publisher's Club, held at the Albion, Dr. Kitchener and Will Jerdau rule the roast; here these worthies may be heard commenting with ~88~~profound critical consistency on culinaries and the cla.s.sics, gurgling down heavy potations of black strap, and making still heavier remarks upon black letter bibliomania, until all the party are found labouring "_Dare pondus idonea fumo_," or, in the language of Cicero, it may be justly said of them, "_d.a.m.nant quod non intelligent_." The magnifico Murray has his merry meetings, where new books are made palatable to certain tastes by sumptuous feastings, and a choice supply of old wines. Colburn brings his books into notice by first bringing his dinner _coteries_ into close conclave; and Longman's monthly melange of authors and critics is a literary statute dinner, where every guest is looking out for a liberal engagement.

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Even the booksellers themselves feast one another before they buy and sell; and a trade sale, without a trade dinner to precede it, would be a very poor concern indeed. Fire companies and water companies, bubble companies and banking companies, all must be united and consolidated by a good dinner company. Your fat citizen, with a paunch that will scarce allow him to pa.s.s through the side avenue of Temple Bar, marks his feast days upon his sheet almanack, as a lawyer marks his term list with a double dash, thus =, and shakes in his easy chair like a sack of blubber as lie recapitulates the names of all the glorious good things of which he has partaken at the annual civic banquet at Fishmonger's Hall, or the Bible a.s.sociation dinner at the City of London Tavern: at the mention of white bait, his lips smack together with joy, and he lisps out instinctively Blackwall: talk of a rump steak and Dolly's, his eyes grow wild with delight; and just hint at the fine green fat of a fresh killed turtle dressed at Birch's, and his whole soul's in arms for a corporation dinner. Reader, I have been led into this strain of thinking by an excursion I am about to make with Alderman Marigold and family, ~89~~to enjoy the pleasures of a Sunday ordinary in the suburbs of the metropolis; an old fas.h.i.+oned custom that is now fast giving way to modern notions of refinement, and is therefore the more worthy of characteristic record.

Bernard Blackmantle.

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