Coming forward and seating himself on the ground in his white dress and
tightened turban, the chief of the Indian Jugglers begins with tossing
up two brass balls, which is what any of us could do, and concludes with
keeping up four at the same time, which is what none of us could do to
save our lives, nor if we were to take our whole lives to do it in. Is
it then a trifling power we see at work, or is it not something next to
miraculous? It is the utmost stretch of human ingenuity, which nothing
but the bending the faculties of body and mind to it from the tenderest
infancy with incessant, ever anxious application up to manhood can
accomplish or make even a slight approach to. Man, thou art a wonderful
animal, and thy ways past finding out! Thou canst do strange things,
but thou turnest them to little account!--To conceive of this effort of
extraordinary dexterity distracts the imagination and makes admiration
breathless. Yet it costs nothing to the performer, any more than if it
were a mere mechanical deception with which he had nothing to do but to
watch and laugh at the astonishment of the spectators. A single error
of a hairsbreadth, of the smallest conceivable portion of time, would be
fatal: the precision of the movements must be like a mathematical truth,
their rapidity is like lightning. To catch four balls in succession in
less than a second of time, and deliver them back so as to return with
seeming consciousness to the hand again; to make them revolve round him
at certain intervals like the planets in their spheres; to make them
chase one another like sparkles of fire, or shoot up like flowers or
meteors; to throw them behind his back and twine them round his neck
like ribbons or like serpents; to do what appears an impossibility, and
to do if with all the ease, the grace, the carelessness imaginable; to
laugh at, to play with the glittering mockeries; to follow them with his
eye as if he could fascinate them with its lambent fire, or as if he had
only to see that they kept time with the music on the stage,--there is
something in all this which he who does not admire may be quite sure
he never really admired anything in the whole course of his life. It is
skill surmounting difficulty, and beauty triumphing over skill. It seems
as if the difficulty once mastered naturally resolved itself into ease
and grace, and as if to be overcome at all, it must be overcome
without an effort. The smallest awkwardness or want of pliancy or
self-possession would stop the whole process. It is the work of
witchcraft, and yet sport for children. Some of the other feats are
quite as curious and wonderful, such as the balancing the artificial
tree and shooting a bird from each branch through a quill; though none
of them have the elegance or facility of the keeping up of the brass
balls. You are in pain for the result, and glad when the experiment is
over; they are not accompanied with the same unmixed, unchecked delight
as the former; and I would not give much to be merely astonished without
being pleased at the game time. As to the swallowing of the sword, the
police ought to interfere to prevent it. When I saw the Indian Juggler
do the same things before, his feet were bare, and he had large rings on
the toes, which kept turning round all the time of the performance, as
if they moved of themselves.--The hearing a speech in Parliament drawled
or stammered out by the Honourable Member or the Noble Lord; the ringing
the changes on their common-places, which any one could repeat after
them as well as they, stirs me not a jot, shakes not my good opinion of
myself; but the seeing the Indian Jugglers does. It makes me ashamed of
myself. I ask what there is that I can do as well as this? Nothing. What
have I been doing all my life? Have I been idle, or have I nothing to
show for all my labour and pains? Or have I passed my time in pouring
words like water into empty sieves, rolling a stone up a hill and then
down again, trying to prove an argument in the teeth of facts, and
looking for causes in the dark and not finding them? Is there no one
thing in which I can challenge competition, that I can bring as an
instance of exact perfection in which others cannot find a flaw? The
utmost I can pretend to is to write a description of what this fellow
can do. I can write a book: so can many others who have not even learned
to spell. What abortions are these Essays! What errors, what ill-pieced
transitions, what crooked reasons, what lame conclusions! How little
is made out, and that little how ill! Yet they are the best I can do.
I endeavour to recollect all I have ever observed or thought upon a
subject, and to express it as nearly as I can. Instead of writing on
four subjects at a time, it is as much as I can manage to keep the
thread of one discourse clear and unentangled. I have also time on
my hands to correct my opinions, and polish my periods; but the one I
cannot, and the other I will not do. I am fond of arguing: yet with a
good deal of pains and practice it is often as much as I can do to beat
my man; though he may be an indifferent hand. A common fencer would
disarm his adversary in the twinkling of an eye, unless he were a
professor like himself. A stroke of wit will sometimes produce this
effect, but there is no such power or superiority in sense or reas
hardly know the professor from the impudent pretender or the mere
clown.(1)
I have always had this feeling of the inefficacy and slow progress of
intellectual compared to mechanical excellence, and it has always made
me somewhat dissatisfied. It is a great many years since I saw Richer,
the famous rope-dancer, perform at Sadler's Wells. He was matchless
in his art, and added to his extraordinary skill exquisite ease, and
unaffected, natural grace. I was at that time employed in copying a
half-length picture of Sir Joshua Reynolds's; and it put me out of
conceit with it. How ill this part was made out in the drawing! How
heavy, how slovenly this other was painted! I could not help saying
to myself, 'If the rope-dancer had performed his task in this manner,
leaving so many gaps and botches in his work, he would have broken his
neck long ago; I should never have seen that vigorous elasticity of
nerve and precision of movement!'--Is it, then, so easy an undertaking
(comparatively) to dance on a tight-rope? Let any one who thinks so get
up and try. There is the thing. It is that which at first we cannot do
at all which in the end is done to such perfection. To account for this
in some degree, I might observe that mechanical dexterity is confined
to doing some one particular thing, which you can repeat as often as
you please, in which you know whether you succeed or fail, and where the
point of perfection consists in succeeding in a given undertaking.--In
mechanical efforts you improve by perpetual practice, and you do so
infallibly, because the object to be attained is not a matter of taste
or fancy or opinion, but of actual experiment, in which you must either
do the thing or not do it. If a man is put to aim at a mark with a bow
and arrow, he must hit it or miss it, that's certain. He cannot deceive
himself, and go on shooting wide or falling short, and still fancy that
he is making progress. No distinction between right and wrong, between
true and false, is here palpable; and he must either correct his aim or
persevere in his error with his eyes open, for which there is neither
excuse nor temptation. If a man is learning to dance on a rope, if he
does not mind what he is about he will break his neck. After that it
will be in vain for him to argue that he did not make a false step. His
situation is not like that of Goldsmith's pedagogue:--
In argument they own'd his wondrous skill,
And e'en though vanquish'd, he could argue still.
Danger is a good teacher, and makes apt scholars. So are disgrace,
defeat, exposure to immediate scorn and laughter. There is no
opportunity in such cases for self-delusion, no idling time away, no
being off your guard (or you must take the consequences)--neither is
there any room for humour or caprice or prejudice. If the Indian Juggler
were to play tricks in throwing up the three case-knives, which keep
their positions like the leaves of a crocus in the air, he would cut his
fingers. I can make a very bad antithesis without cutting my fingers.
The tact of style is more ambiguous than that of double-edged
instruments. If the Juggler were told that by flinging himself under the
wheels of the Juggernaut, when the idol issues forth on a gaudy day, he
would immediately be transported into Paradise, he might believe it, and
nobody could disprove it. So the Brahmins may say what they please on
that subject, may build up dogmas and mysteries without end, and not be
detected; but their ingenious countryman cannot persuade the frequenters
of the Olympic Theatre that he performs a number of astonishing feats
without actually giving proofs of what he says.--There is, then, in this
sort of manual dexterity, first a gradual aptitude acquired to a given
exertion of muscular power, from constant repetition, and in the next
place, an exact knowledge how much is still wanting and necessary to be
supplied. The obvious test is to increase the effort or nicety of the
operation, and still to find it come true. The muscles ply instinctively
to the dictates of habit. Certain movements and impressions of the hand
and eye, having been repeated together an infinite number of times, are
unconsciously but unavoidable cemented into closer and closer union; the
limbs require little more than to be put in motion for them to follow a
regular track with ease and certainty; so that the mere intention of the
will acts mathematically like touching the spring of a machine, and you
come with Locksley in _Ivanhoe_, in shooting at a mark, 'to allow for
the wind.'
Further, what is meant by perfection in mechanical exercises is
the performing certain feats to a uniform nicety, that is, in fact,
undertaking no more than you can perform. You task yourself, the limit
you fix is optional, and no more than human industry and skill can
attain to; but you have no abstract, independent standard of difficulty
or excellence (other than the extent of your own powers). Thus he who
can keep up four brass balls does this _to perfection_; but he cannot
keep up five at the same instant, and would fail every time he attempted
it. That is, the mechanical performer undertakes to emulate himself, not
to equal another.(2) But the artist undertakes to imitate another, or to
do what Nature has done, and this it appears is more difficult, viz.
to copy what she has set before us in the face of nature or 'human face
divine,' entire and without a blemish, than to keep up four brass balls
at the same instant, for the one is done by the power of human skill
and industry, and the other never was nor will be. Upon the whole,
therefore, I have more respect for Reynolds than I have for Richer; for,
happen how it will, there have been more people in the world who could
dance on a rope like the one than who could paint like Sir Joshua. The
latter was but a bungler in his profession to the other, it is true; but
then he had a harder taskmaster to obey, whose will was more wayward and
obscure, and whose instructions it was more difficult to practise.
You can put a child apprentice to a tumbler or rope-dancer with a
comfortable prospect of success, if they are but sound of wind and limb;
but you cannot do the same thing in painting. The odds are a million to
one. You may make indeed as many Haydons and H----s as you put into that
sort of machine, but not one Reynolds amongst them all, with his grace,
his grandeur, his blandness of gusto, 'in tones and gestures hit,'
unless you could make the man over again. To snatch this grace beyond
the reach of art is then the height of art--where fine art begins,
and where mechanical skill ends. The soft suffusion of the soul, the
speechless breathing eloquence, the looks 'commercing with the skies,'
the ever-shifting forms of an eternal principle, that which is seen but
for a moment, but dwells in the heart always, and is only seized as
it passes by strong and secret sympathy, must be taught by nature
and genius, not by rules or study. It is suggested by feeling, not by
laborious microscopic inspection; in seeking for it without, we lose the
harmonious clue to it within; and in aiming to grasp the substance, we
let the very spirit of art evaporate. In a word, the objects of fine art
are not the objects of sight, but as these last are the objects of taste
and imagination, that is, as they appeal to the sense of beauty, of
pleasure, and of power in the human breast, and are explained by that
finer sense, and revealed in their inner structure to the eye in return.
Nature is also a language. Objects, like words, have a meaning; and the
true artist is the interpreter of this language, which he can only do by
knowing its application to a thousand other objects in a thousand other
situations. Thus the eye is too blind a guide of itself to distinguish
between the warm or cold tone of a deep-blue sky; but another sense acts
as a monitor to it and does not err. The colour of the leaves in autumn
would be nothing without the feeling that accompanies it; but it is
that feeling that stamps them on the canvas, faded, seared, blighted,
shrinking from the winter's flaw, and makes the sight as true as touch--
And visions, as poetic eyes avow,
Cling to each leaf and hang on every bough.
The more ethereal, evanescent, more refined and sublime part of art is
the seeing nature through the medium of sentiment and passion, as each
object is a symbol of the affections and a link in the chain of our
endless being. But the unravelling this mysterious web of thought
and feeling is alone in the Muse's gift, namely, in the power of
that trembling sensibility which is awake to every change and every
modification of its ever-varying impressions, that
Thrills in each nerve, and lives along the line.
This power is indifferently called genius, imagination, feeling, taste;
but the manner in which it acts upon the mind can neither be defined by
abstract rules, as is the case in science, nor verified by continual,
unvarying experiments, as is the case in mechanical performances. The
mechanical excellence of the Dutch painters in colouring and handling
is that which comes the nearest in fine art to the perfection of certain
manual exhibitions of skill. The truth of the effect and the facility
with which it is produced are equally admirable. Up to a certain point
everything is faultless. The hand and eye have done their part. There
is only a want of taste and genius. It is after we enter upon that
enchanted ground that the human mind begins to droop and flag as in a
strange road, or in a thick mist, benighted and making little way with
many attempts and many failures, and that the best of us only escape
with half a triumph. The undefined and the imaginary are the regions
that we must pass like Satan, difficult and doubtful, 'half flying, half
on foot.' The object in sense is a positive thing, and execution comes
with practice.
Cleverness is a certain _knack_ or aptitude at doing certain things,
which depend more on a particular adroitness and off-hand readiness than
on force or perseverance, such as making puns, making epigrams, making
extempore verses, mimicking the company, mimicking a style, etc.
Cleverness is either liveliness and smartness, or something answering
to _sleight of hand_, like letting a glass fall sideways off a table, or
else a trick, like knowing the secret spring of a watch. Accomplishments
are certain external graces, which are to be learned from others, and
which are easily displayed to the admiration of the beholder,
viz. dancing, riding, fencing, music, and so on. These ornamental
acquirements are only proper to those who are at ease in mind and
fortune. I know an individual who, if he had been born to an estate of
five thousand a year, would have been the most accomplished gentleman of
the age. He would have been the delight and envy of the circle in which
he moved--would have graced by his manners the liberality flowing from
the openness of his heart, would have laughed with the women, have
argued with the men, have said good things and written agreeable ones,
have taken a hand at piquet or the lead at the harpsichord, and have set
and sung his own verses--nugae canorae--with tenderness and spirit;
a Rochester without the vice, a modern Surrey! As it is, all these
capabilities of excellence stand in his way. He is too versatile for a
professional man, not dull enough for a political drudge, too gay to be
happy, too thoughtless to be rich. He wants the enthusiasm of the poet,
the severity of the prose-writer, and the application of the man
of business. Talent differs from genius as voluntary differs from
involuntary power. Ingenuity is genius in trifles; greatness is genius
in undertakings of much pith and moment. A clever or ingenious man is
one who can do anything well, whether it is worth doing or not; a great
man is one who can do that which when done is of the highest importance
make of a small city a great one. This gives one a pretty good idea of
the distinction in question.
Greatness is great power, producing great effects. It is not enough that
a man has great power in himself; he must show it to all the world in
a way that cannot be hid or gainsaid. He must fill up a certain idea in
the public mind. I have no other notion of greatness than this twofold
definition, great results springing from great inherent energy. The
great in visible objects has relation to that which extends over space;
the great in mental ones has to do with space and time. No man is truly
great who is great only in his lifetime. The test of greatness is the
page of history. Nothing can be said to be great that has a distinct
limit, or that borders on something evidently greater than itself.
Besides, what is short-lived and pampered into mere notoriety is of a
gross and vulgar quality in itself. A Lord Mayor is hardly a great man.
A city orator or patriot of the day only show, by reaching the height
of their wishes, the distance they are at from any true ambition.
Popularity is neither fame nor greatness. A king (as such) is not a
great man. He has great power, but it is not his own. He merely wields
the lever of the state, which a child, an idiot, or a madman can do.
It is the office, not the man we gaze at. Any one else in the same
situation would be just as much an object of abject curiosity. We laugh
at the country girl who having seen a king expressed her disappointment
by saying, 'Why, he is only a man!' Yet, knowing this, we run to see a
king as if he was something more than a man.--To display the greatest
powers, unless they are applied to great purposes, makes nothing for
the character of greatness. To throw a barleycorn through the eye of a
needle, to multiply nine figures by nine in the memory, argues definite
dexterity of body and capacity of mind, but nothing comes of
either. There is a surprising power at work, but the effects are not
proportionate, or such as take hold of the imagination. To impress the
idea of power on others, they must be made in some way to feel it. It
must be communicated to their understandings in the shape of an increase
of knowledge, or it must subdue and overawe them by subjecting their
wills. Admiration to be solid and lasting must be founded on proofs
from which we have no means of escaping; it is neither a slight nor a
voluntary gift. A mathematician who solves a profound problem, a poet
who creates an image of beauty in the mind that was not there before,
imparts knowledge and power to others, in which his greatness and
his fame consists, and on which it reposes. Jedediah Buxton will be
forgotten; but Napier's bones will live. Lawgivers, philosophers,
founders of religion, conquerors and heroes, inventors and great
geniuses in arts and sciences, are great men, for they are great
public benefactors, or formidable scourges to mankind. Among ourselves,
Shakespear, Newton, Bacon, Milton, Cromwell, were great men, for
they showed great power by acts and thoughts, that have not yet been
consigned to oblivion. They must needs be men of lofty stature, whose
shadows lengthen out to remote posterity. A great farce-writer may be
a great man; for Moliere was but a great farce-writer. In my mind, the
author of _Don Quixote_ was a great man. So have there been many others.
A great chess-player is not a great man, for he leaves the world as he
found it. No act terminating in itself constitutes greatness. This will
apply to all displays of power or trials of skill which are confined to
the momentary, individual effort, and construct no permanent image or
trophy of themselves without them. Is not an actor then a great man,
because 'he dies and leaves the world no copy'? I must make an exception
for Mrs. Siddons, or else give up my definition of greatness for her
sake. A man at the top of his profession is not therefore a great man.
He is great in his way, but that is all, unless he shows the marks of
a great moving intellect, so that we trace the master-mind, and can
sympathise with the springs that urge him on. The rest is but a craft or
_mystery_. John Hunter was a great man--_that_ any one might see without
the smallest skill in surgery. His style and manner showed the man.
He would set about cutting up the carcass of a whale with the same
greatness of gusto that Michael Angelo would have hewn a block of
marble. Lord Nelson was a great naval commander; but for myself, I
have not much opinion of a seafaring life. Sir Humphry Davy is a great
chemist, but I am not sure that he is a great man. I am not a bit the
wiser for any of his discoveries, nor I never met with any one that was.
But it is in the nature of greatness to propagate an idea of itself, as
wave impels wave, circle without circle. It is a contradiction in terms
for a coxcomb to be a great man. A really great man has always an
idea of something greater than himself. I have observed that certain
sectaries and polemical writers have no higher compliment to pay their
most shining lights than to say that "Such a one was a considerable man
in his day." Some new elucidation of a text sets aside the authority of
the old interpretation, and a "great scholar's memory outlives him half
a century," at the utmost. A rich man is not a great man, except to his
dependents and his steward. A lord is a great man in the idea we have of
his ancestry, and probably of himself, if we know nothing of him but his
title. I have heard a story of two bishops, one of whom said (speaking
of St. Peter's at Rome) that when he first entered it, he was rather
awe-struck, but that as he walked up it, his mind seemed to swell and
dilate with it, and at last to fill the whole building: the other said
that as he saw more of it, he appeared to himself to grow less and less
every step he took, and in the end to dwindle into nothing. This was
in some respects a striking picture of a great and little mind; for
greatness sympathises with greatness, and littleness shrinks into
itself. The one might have become a Wolsey; the other was only fit to
become a Mendicant Friar--or there might have been court reasons for
making him a bishop. The French have to me a character of littleness in
all about them; but they have produced three great men that belong to
every country, Moliere, Rabelais, and Montaigne.
To return from this digression, and conclude Essay. A singular instance
of manual dexterity was shown in the person of the late John Cavanaugh,
whom I have several times seen. His death was celebrated at the time
in an article in the _Examiner_ newspaper (Feb. 7, 1819), written
apparently between jest and earnest; but as it is _pat_ to our purpose,
and falls in with my own way of considering such subjects, I shall here
take leave to quote it:--
'Died at his house in Burbage Street, St. Giles's, John Cavanagh, the
famous hand fives-player. When a person dies who does any one thing
better than any one else in the world, which so many others are trying
to do well, it leaves a gap in society. It is not likely that any one
will now see the game of fives played in its perfection for many years
to come--for Cavanagh is dead, and has not left his peer behind him.
It may be said that there are things of more importance than striking a
ball against a wall--there are things, indeed, that make more noise and
do as little good, such as making war and peace, making speeches and
answering them, making verses and blotting them, making money and
throwing it away. But the game of fives is what no one despises who has
ever played at it. It is the finest exercise for the body, and the best
relaxation for the mind. The Roman poet said that "Care mounted behind
the horseman and stuck to his skirts." But this remark would not have
applied to the fives-player. He who takes to playing at fives is twice
young. He feels neither the past nor future "in the instant." Debts,
taxes, "domestic treason, foreign levy, nothing can touch him further."
He has no other wish, no other thought, from the moment the game begins,
but that of striking the ball, of placing it, of _making_ it! This
Cavanagh was sure to do. Whenever he touched the ball there was an end
of the chase. His eye was certain, his hand fatal, his presence of mind
complete. He could do what he pleased, and he always knew exactly what
to do. He saw the whole game, and played it; took instant advantage of
his adversary's weakness, and recovered balls, as if by a miracle and
from sudden thought, that every one gave for lost. He had equal power
and skill, quickness and judgment. He could either outwit his antagonist
by finesse, or beat him by main strength. Sometimes, when he seemed
preparing to send the ball with the full swing of his arm, he would by a
slight turn of his wrist drop it within an inch of the line. In general,
the ball came from his hand, as if from a racket, in a straight,
horizontal line; so that it was in vain to attempt to overtake or stop
it. As it was said of a great orator that he never was at a loss for
a word, and for the properest word, so Cavanagh always could tell
the degree of force necessary to be given to a ball, and the precise
direction in which it should be sent. He did his work with the greatest
ease; never took more pains than was necessary; and while others were
fagging themselves to death, was as cool and collected as if he had just
entered the court. His style of play was as remarkable as his power of
execution. He had no affectation, no trifling. He did not throw away
the game to show off an attitude or try an experiment. He was a fine,
sensible, manly player, who did what he could, but that was more than
any one else could even affect to do. His blows were not undecided and
ineffectual--lumbering like Mr. Wordsworth's epic poetry, nor wavering
like Mr. Coleridge's lyric prose, nor short of the mark like Mr.
Brougham's speeches, nor wide of it like Mr. Canning's wit, nor foul
like the _Quarterly_, nor _let_ balls like the _Edinburgh Review_.
Cobbett and Junius together would have made a Cavanagh. He was the best
_up-hill_ player in the world; even when his adversary was fourteen, he
would play on the same or better, and as he never flung away the game
through carelessness and conceit, he never gave it through laziness
or want of heart. The only peculiarity of his play was that he never
_volleyed_, but let the balls hop; but if they rose an inch from the
ground he never missed having them. There was not only nobody equal, but
nobody second to him. It is supposed that he could give any other
player half the game, or beat him with his left hand. His service was
tremendous. He once played Woodward and Meredith together (two of the
best players in England) in the Fives-court, St. Martin's street, and
made seven and twenty aces following by services alone--a thing unheard
of. He another time played Peru, who was considered a first-rate
fives-player, a match of the best out of five games, and in the three
first games, which of course decided the match, Peru got only one ace.
Cavanagh was an Irishman by birth, and a house-painter by profession.
He had once laid aside his working-dress, and walked up, in his smartest
clothes, to the Rosemary Branch to have an afternoon's pleasure. A
person accosted him, and asked him if he would have a game. So they
agreed to play for half a crown a game and a bottle of cider. The first
game began--it was seven, eight, ten, thirteen, fourteen, all. Cavanagh
won it. The next was the same. They played on, and each game was hardly
contested. "There," said the unconscious fives-player, "there was a
stroke that Cavanagh could not take: I never played better in my life,
and yet I can't win a game. I don't know how it is!" However, they
played on, Cavanagh winning every game, and the bystanders drinking the
cider and laughing all the time. In the twelfth game, when Cavanagh was
only four, and the stranger thirteen, a person came in and said, "What!
are you here, Cavanagh?" The words were no sooner pronounced than the
astonished player let the hall drop from his hand, and saying, "What!
have I been breaking my heart all this time to beat Cavanagh?" refused
to make another effort. "And yet, I give you my word," said Cavanagh,
telling the story with some triumph, "I played all the while with my
clenched fist."--He used frequently to ploy matches at Copenhagen House
for wagers and dinners. The wall against which they play is the same
that supports the kitchen-chimney, and when the wall resounded louder
than usual, the cooks exclaimed, "Those are the Irishman's balls," and
the joints trembled on the spit!--Goldsmith consoled himself that there
were places where he too was admired: and Cavanagh was the admiration
of all the fives-courts where he ever played. Mr. Powell, when he played
matches in the Court in St. Martin's Street, used to fill his gallery
at half a crown a head with amateurs and admirers of talent in whatever
department it is shown. He could not have shown himself in any ground in
England but he would have been immediately surrounded with inquisitive
gazers, trying to find out in what part of his frame his unrivalled
skill lay, as politicians wonder to see the balance of Europe suspended
in Lord Castlereagh's face, and admire the trophies of the British
Navy lurking under Mr. Croker's hanging brow. Now Cavanagh was as
good-looking a man as the Noble Lord, and much better looking than the
Right Hon. Secretary. He had a clear, open countenance, and did not look
sideways or down, like Mr. Murray the bookseller. He was a young fellow
of sense, humour, and courage. He once had a quarrel with a waterman at
Hungerford Stairs, and, they say, served him out in great style. In a
word, there are hundreds at this day who cannot mention his name without
admiration, as the best fives-player that perhaps ever lived (the
greatest excellence of which they have any notion); and the noisy
shout of the ring happily stood him in stead of the unheard voice
of posterity!--The only person who seems to have excelled as much
in another way as Cavanagh did in his was the late John Davies, the
racket-player. It was remarked of him that he did not seem to follow the
ball, but the ball seemed to follow him. Give him a foot of wall, and he
was sure to make the ball. The four best racket-players of that day were
Jack Spines, Jem Harding, Armitage, and Church. Davies could give any
one of these two hands a time, that is, half the game, and each of
these, at their best, could give the best player now in London the same
odds. Such are the gradations in all exertions of human skill and art.
He once played four capital players together, and beat them. He was also
a first-rate tennis-player and an excellent fives-player. In the Fleet
or King's Bench he would have stood against Powell, who was reckoned the
best open-ground player of his time. This last-mentioned player is at
present the keeper of the Fives-court, and we might recommend to him for
a motto over his door, "Who enters here, forgets himself, his country,
and his friends." And the best of it is, that by the calculation of the
odds, none of the three are worth remembering!--Cavanagh died from the
bursting of a blood-vessel, which prevented him from playing for the
last two or three years. This, he was often heard to say, he thought
hard upon him. He was fast recovering, however, when he was suddenly
carried off, to the regret of all who knew him. As Mr. Peel made it a
qualification of the present Speaker, Mr. Manners Sutton, that he was an
excellent moral character, so Jack Cavanagh was a zealous Catholic,
and could not be persuaded to eat meat on a Friday, the day on which he
died. We have paid this willing tribute to his memory.
Let no rude hand deface it,
And his forlorn "_Hic Jacet_."'