No _head_ is a vacuum. Some, like a paltry cottage, are ill
accommodated, dark, and circumscribed; others are capacious as
Westminster-hall. Though none are immense, yet they are capable of
immense furniture. The more room is taken up by knowledge, the less
remains for credulity. The more a man is acquainted with things, the
more willing to “give up the _ghost_.” Every town and village, within my
knowledge, has been pestered with spirits, which appear in horrid forms
to the imagination in the winter night--but the spirits which haunt
Birmingham, are those of industry and luxury.
If we examine the whole parish, we cannot produce one _old_ “witch;” but
we have numbers of young, who exercise a powerful influence over us.
Should the ladies accuse the harsh epithet, they will please to
consider, I allow them, what of all things they most wish for,
_power_--therefore the balance is in my favour.
If we pass through the planetary worlds, we shall be able to muster two
conjurers, who endeavoured to “shine with the stars.” The first, John
Walton, who was so busy in casting the nativity of others, that he
forgot his own. Conscious of an application to himself, for the
discovery of stolen goods, he employed his people to steal them. And
though, for many years confined to his bed by infirmity, he could
conjure away the property of others, and, for a reward, conjure it back
again.
The prevalence of this evil, induced the legislature, in 1725, to make
the _reception_ of stolen goods capital. The first sacrifice to this law
was the noted Jonathan Wild.
The officers of justice, in 1732, pulled Walton out of his bed, in an
obscure cottage, one furlong from the town, now Brickiln-lane, carried
him to prison, and from thence to the gallows--they had better have
carried him to the work-house, and his followers to the anvil.
To him succeeded Francis Kimberley, the only reasoning animal, who
resided at No. 60, in Dale-end, from his early youth to extreme age. A
hermit in a crowd! The windows of his house were strangers to light. The
shutters forgot to open; the chimney to smoke. His cellar, though amply
furnished, never knew moisture.
He spent threescore years in filling six rooms with such trumpery as was
just too good to be thrown away, and too bad to be kept. His life was as
inoffensive as long. Instead of _stealing_ the goods which other people
used, he _purchased_ what he could not use himself. He was not difficult
in his choice of the property that entered his house; if there was
_bulk_, he was satisfied.
His dark house, and his dark figure, corresponded with each other. The
apartments, choked up with lumber, scarcely admitted his body, though of
the skeleton order. Perhaps leanness is an appendage to the science, for
I never knew a corpulent conjurer. His diet, regular, plain, and
slender, showed at how little expense life might be sustained. His
library consisted of several thousand volumes, not one of which, I
believe, he ever read; having written, in characters unknown to all but
himself, his name, the price, and the date, in the title-page, he laid
them by for ever. The highest pitch of his erudition was the annual
almanack.
He never wished to approach a woman, or be approached by one. Should the
rest of men, for half a century, pay no more attention to the fair, some
angelic hand might stick up a note like the arctic circle over one of
our continents, “this world to be let.”
If he did not cultivate the acquaintance of the human species, the
spiders, more numerous than his books, enjoyed an uninterrupted reign of
quiet. The silence of the place was not broken; the broom, the book,
the dust, or the web, was not disturbed. Mercury and his shirt performed
their revolutions together; and Saturn changed _his_ with his coat. He
died in 1756, as conjurers usually die, unlamented.[63]
[61] The word is not pronounced the same as _gipsy_, a fortune-teller;
the _g_, in this case, being sounded hard as in _gimlet_.
[62] I am somewhat embarrassed by this difference between two valued
correspondents, and I hope neither will regard me in an ill light, if
I venture to interpose, and deprecate controversy beyond an extent
which can interest the readers of the _Table Book_. I do not say that
it has passed that limit, and hitherto all has been well; perhaps,
however, it would be advisable that “A Reader” should confide to me
his name, and that he and my “Old Correspondent,” whom I know, should
allow me to introduce them to each other. I think the result would be
mutually satisfactory.