* * * * *
_Hood's Comic Annual for 1833._--Mr. Hood's announcement of his
forthcoming volume is in the very vein of the work itself. He writes
to his publisher:--"The report of my death, I can assure you is
premature, but I am equally obliged to you for your tribute of putting
up shutters and wearing a crape hatband. I suspect your friend and
informant, Mr. Livingstone--(it should be Gravestone)--drew his
inference from a dark passage in Miss Sheridan's Preface which states
that, 'of the three _Comic Annuals_ which started at the same time,
the Comic Offering alone remains.' The two defuncts therein referred
to are the 'Falstaff' and 'The Humorist,' which I understand have put
an end to themselves.
"If you should still entertain any doubts, you will shortly have ten
thousand impressions to the contrary; for I intend to contradict my
_demys_ by fresh _octavos_. The Comic Annual for 1833, with its usual
complement of plates--mind, not coffin-plates--to appear as
heretofore, in November, will give the lie, I trust, not merely to my
departure, but even to anything like a _serious_ illness: and a novel,
about the same time, will help to prove that I am not in a state of
de-composition.
"I should have relieved your joint anxieties some days earlier, but
till I met Mr. Livingstone, at Bury, I was really not alive to my
death."
* * * * *
_Cartoons at Hampton Court_.[14]--I mentioned in my last, that I had
formed an acquaintance with Holloway, who has been sometime occupied
in copying in black chalks the Cartoons of Raphael in this palace. It
will be a magnificent work, and admirably executed, for he finishes
them as highly as a miniature; his chalk-pencils are of a superior
quality, and he cuts them to the finest point: but he says they will
only serve to work with on vellum, or on fine skin. He is an eccentric
genius, deeply read in Scripture history, which he expounds in the
most methodistical tone; but it is very delightful and instructive to
listen to his observations on the beauties and merits of these
masterpieces of Raphael. A Madame Bouiller, an interesting French
emigrant is also occupied on the same subjects. She is patronized by
West, who has given her permission to study here; and says that he
never saw such masterly artist touches of the crayon as hers. Her
style is large heads, after the size and manner of the French;
therefore the figures in the Cartoons are particularly adapted for her
pencil.
[14] From the Private Correspondence of a Woman of Fashion.
I found poor Holloway this morning foaming with rage in the Cartoon
Gallery. Some person has written against the Cartoons, denominating
them "washed daubs." No doubt it is either the pen of envy and
malignity, or of ignorance: _n'importe_, it has wounded the feelings
of a superior artist and a good man, who worships with religious
enthusiasm those works of Raphael, and who has spent so many years in
perfecting his engravings of them. It was a grotesque scene to behold
Madame Bouiller pacing after Holloway up and down the gallery, with
all the grimaces and vivacity of a Frenchwoman, and re-echoing his
furious lamentations.
* * * * *
_Edinburgh_ (by Mr. Cobbett).--I thought that Bristol, taking in its
heights and Clifton, and its rocks and its river, was the finest city
in the world; but Edinburgh, with its castle, its hills, its pretty
little sea-port, conveniently detached from it, its vale of rich land
lying all around, its lofty hills in the back ground, its views across
the Frith;--I think little of its streets and rows of fine houses,
though all built of stone, and though everything in London and Bath is
beggary to these; I think nothing of Holyrood House; but I think a
great deal of the fine and well-ordered streets of shops--of the
regularity which you perceive everywhere in the management of
business; and I think still more of the absence of all that
foppishness, and that affectation of carelessness, and that insolent
assumption of superiority, that you see in almost all the young men
that you meet with in the fashionable parts of the great towns in
England. I was not disappointed; for I expected to find Edinburgh the
finest city in the kingdom. Conversations at Newcastle, and with many
Scotch gentlemen for years past, had prepared me for this; but still
the reality has greatly surpassed every idea that I had formed about
it. The people, however, still exceed the place: here all is civility;
you do not meet with rudeness, or even with the want of a disposition
to oblige, even in persons in the lowest state of life. A friend took
me round the environs of the city; he had a turnpike ticket, received
at the first gate, which cleared five or six gates. It was sufficient
for him to _tell_ the future gatekeepers that he had it. When I saw
that, I said to myself, "Nota bene: Gate-keepers take people's word in
Scotland--a thing that I have not seen before since I left _Long
Island_."
* * * * *
_King John_--died at Swinshead Abbey, in Lincolnshire; his body was
interred at Worcester; his bowels in Croxton Abbey Church, in
Leicestershire, the abbot being his physician; and his heart at
Croxden, in Staffordshire. Perhaps the most precious portion of his
relics would be the hand that signed Magna Charta. (_See page 279_.)
* * * * *
_The River Dove_.--The fertility of the land on the upper parts of
this river has always been proverbial: "as rich as Dove" being applied
to any spot highly forced. The land has a perpetual verdure, and the
spring-floods of the river are very gratifying to the land-occupiers,
who have this proverb--
In April, Dove's flood
Is worth a king's good.
It is also said of Dove's banks in spring, that a stick laid down
there over-night shall not be found next morning for grass.
* * * * *
_St. Hellen's Well_, near Rushton Spencer, in Staffordshire, is
remarkable in superstitious history, for some singular qualities. It
sometimes becomes suddenly dry, after a constant discharge of water
for eight or ten years. This happens as well in wet as in dry seasons,
and always at the beginning of May, when the springs are commonly
esteemed highest; and so it usually continues till Martinmas, November
12, following. The people formerly imagined, that when this happened
there would soon follow some stupendous calamity of famine, war, or
some other national disaster, or change. It is said that it grew dry
before the civil war, and again before the beheading of Charles I.;
against the great scarcity of corn in 1670; and in 1679, when the
miscalled Popish plot was discovered; but we do not hear that St.
Hellen's Well withheld its supplies previous to, or upon, the breaking
out of the last calamitous war.
* * * * *
_Prodigious Elm_.--At Field, adjoining Rushton Spencer, grew a
prodigious witch elm, which was felled in 1680. Two able workmen were
five days in stocking or felling it. It was 120 feet in length; at the
butt-end it was seven yards in circumference; its girth was 25-1/2
feet in the middle. Fourteen loads of firewood, as much as six oxen
could draw, broke off in the fall; there were 47 loads more fire-wood
cut from the top; they were compelled to fasten two saws together, and
put three men to each end, to cut the body of it asunder. Out of this
tree were cut 80 pairs of naves for carriage-wheels, and 8,000 feet of
sawn timber in boards and planks, at six score per cent.--which, for
the sawing only, as the price of labour then was, came to the sum of
_12l_.
* * * * *
_Newcastle-under-Line._--The right of election in this borough has
been several times the subject of parliamentary investigation. At the
last inquiry, the greater part of the borough appeared to be the
property of the Marquess of Stafford; and it was found customary for
the burgesses to live ten, fifteen, and even twenty years in the
houses, without payment of rent!
* * * * *
_Monument to a Faithful Servant_.--In the church of King's Swinford,
Staffordshire, is a plain stone, erected by Joseph Scott, Esq., and
his wife, in memory of Elizabeth Harrison, who had been thirty years
in their service, and had conducted herself with such integrity, and
anxiety for her master's interest, as drew from him the following
epitaph:
While flattering praises from oblivion save,
The rich, and splendour decorates the grave,
Let this plain stone, O Harrison, proclaim
Thy humble fortune and thy honest fame.
In work unwearied, labour knew no end--
In all things faithful, everywhere a friend;
Herself forgot, she toiled with generous zeal,
And knew no interest but her master's weal.
'Midst the rude storms that shook his ev'ning day,
No wealth could bribe her, and no power dismay;
Her patrons' love she dwelt on e'en in death,
And dying, blest them with her latest breath.
She departed this life June 19, 1797. Aged 50 years.
Farewell, thou best of servants--may the tear
That sorrow trickled o'er thy parting bier,
Prove to thy happy shade our fond regard,
And all thy virtues find their full reward.
* * * * *
*** Mr. Warwick, on the Ostrich, in our next.
* * * * *
_Printed and published by J. LIMBIRD, 143, Strand, (near Somerset
House,) London; sold by G.G. BENNIS, 55, Rue Neuve, St. Augustin,
Paris; and by all Newsmen and Booksellers._