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_THE SELECTOR,_ AND LITERARY NOTICES OF _NEW WORKS._
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"Anecdotes correspond in literature with the sauces, the savoury dishes,
and the sweetmeats of a splendid banquet;" and as our weekly sheet is a
sort of _literary fricassee_, the following may not be unacceptable
to the reader. They are penciled from a work quaintly enough entitled
"The Living and the Dead, by a Country Curate;" and equally strange,
the cognomen of the author is not a _ruse_--he being a curate
at Liverpool, the son of Dr. Adam Neale, and a nephew of the late
Mr. Archibald Constable, the eminent publisher, of Edinburgh. The
information which this volume contains, may therefore be received with
greater confidence than is usually attached to flying anecdotes; since
Mr. Constable's frequent and familiar intercourse with the first
literary characters of his time must have given him peculiar facilities
of observation of their personal habits. The present volume of "The
Living and the Dead" is what the publisher terms the Second Series; for,
like Buck, the turncoat actor, booksellers always think that one good
turn deserves another. Our first extracts relate to Chantrey's monument
in Lichfield Cathedral, and another of rival celebrity.
At the retired church of Ashbourne is "a remarkable monument", by Banks,
to the memory of a very lovely and intelligent little girl, a baronet's
only child. It bears an inscription which, to use the mildest term, as
it contains not the slightest reference to Christian hopes, should have
been refused admittance within a Christian church. To the sentiments
it breathes, Paine himself, had he been alive, could have raised no
objection. * * * * The figure, which is recumbent, is that of a little
girl; the attitude exquisitely natural and graceful. It recalls most
forcibly to the recollection Chantrey's far-famed monument in Lichfield
Cathedral; for the resemblance, both in design and execution, between
these beautiful specimens of art is close and striking.
Previous to his executing that most magnificent yet most touching piece
of sculpture, which alone would have sufficed to immortalize his name,
Chantrey was, at his own request, locked up alone in the church for two
hours. This fact may be apocryphal; but the following I do affirm most
confidently. When I hinted to the venerable matron who shows the
monument, and who, being a retainer of the Boothby family, feels their
honour identified with her own, that Chantrey's was by far the finer
effort of the two, and that I wished I had that yet to see; and my
companion added, that though the design of the Boothby monument was
good, the execution was coarse and clumsy in the extreme, compared with
the elaborate finish of the Robinson's. "Humph," said the old lady, with
a most vinegar expression of countenance, with a degree of angry
hauteur, an air of insulted dignity that Yates would have travelled
fifty miles to witness; "the like of that's what I now hear every day.
Hang that fellow Chantee, or Cantee, or what you call him; I wish he
had never been born!" The Ashbourne people are naturally proud of the
monument. With them it is a kind of idol, to which every stranger is
required to do homage. Among others, when Prince Leopold passed through
Ashbourne, and inquiries were made by some of his royal highness's suite
as to the "lions" of the neighbourhood--"We have one of our own, Sir,"
was the ready reply; "a noble piece of sculpture in the church." To the
church the royal mourner was on the very point of repairing, when Sir
Robert Gardiner suddenly inquired the description to which the sculpture
in question belonged. "It is a monument, Sir, no one passes through
without seeing it; for its like is not to be met with in England--it is
a monument to an only child, whose mother died--" "Not now," said the
prince faintly; "not now. I too have lost--" and he turned away from
the carriage in tears.