Books and Authors Part 5

The Rev. Sydney Smith compares Mr. Canning in office to a fly in amber: "n.o.body cares about the fly: the only question is, how the devil did it get there?" "Nor do I," continues Smith, "attack him for the love of glory, but from the love of utility, as a burgomaster hunts a rat in a Dutch d.y.k.e, for fear it should flood a province. When he is jocular, he is strong; when he is serious, he is like Samson in a wig. Call him a legislator, a reasoner, and the conductor of the affairs of a great nation, and it seems to me as absurd as if a b.u.t.terfly were to teach bees to make honey. That he was an extraordinary writer of small poetry, and a diner-out of the highest l.u.s.tre, I do most readily admit. After George Selwyn, and perhaps Tickell, there has been no such man for the last half-century."

THE AUTHORs.h.i.+P OF "WAVERLEY."

Mrs. Murray Keith, a venerable Scotch lady, from whom Sir Walter Scott derived many of the traditionary stories and anecdotes wrought up in his novels, taxed him one day with the authors.h.i.+p, which he, as usual, stoutly denied. "What!" exclaimed the old lady, "d'ye think I dinna ken my ain groats among other folk's kail?"

QUID PRO QUO.

Campbell relates:--"Turner, the painter, is a ready wit. Once at a dinner where several artists, amateurs, and literary men were convened, a poet, by way of being facetious, proposed as a toast the health of the _painters_ and _glaziers_ of Great Britain. The toast was drunk; and Turner, after returning thanks for it, proposed the health of the British _paper-stainers_."

HOPE'S "ANASTASIUS."

Lord Byron, in a conversation with the Countess of Blessington, said that he wept bitterly over many pages of _Anastasius_, and for two reasons: first, that _he_ had not written it; and secondly, that _Hope_ had; for it was necessary to like a man excessively to pardon his writing such a book; as, he said, excelling all recent productions, as much in wit and talent as in true pathos. Lord Byron added, that he would have given his two most approved poems to have been the author of _Anastasius_.

SMART REPARTEE.

Walpole relates, after an execution of _eighteen_ malefactors, a woman was hawking an account of them, but called them _nineteen_. A gentleman said to her, "Why do you say _nineteen_? there were but _eighteen_ hanged." She replied, "Sir, I did not know _you_ had been reprieved."

COLTON'S "LACON."

This remarkable book was written upon covers of letters and sc.r.a.ps of paper of such description as was nearest at hand; the greater part at a house in Princes-street, Soho. Colton's lodging was a penuriously-furnished second-floor, and upon a rough deal table, with a stumpy pen, our author wrote.

Though a beneficed clergyman, holding the vicarage of Kew, with Petersham, in Surrey, Colton was a well-known frequenter of the gaming-table; and, suddenly disappearing from his usual haunts in London about the time of the murder of Weare, in 1823, it was strongly suspected he had been a.s.sa.s.sinated. It was, however, afterwards ascertained that he had absconded to avoid his creditors; and in 1828 a successor was appointed to his living. He then went to reside in America, but subsequently lived in Paris, a professed gamester; and it is said that he thus gained, in two years only, the sum of 25,000_l_. He blew out his brains while on a visit to a friend at Fontainebleau, in 1832; bankrupt in health, spirits, and fortune.

BUNYAN'S COPY OF "THE BOOK OF MARTYRS."

There is no book, except the Bible, which Bunyan is known to have perused so intently as the _Acts and Monuments_ of John Fox, the martyrologist, one of the best of men; a work more hastily than judiciously compiled, but invaluable for that greater and far more important portion which has obtained for it its popular name of _The Book of Martyrs_. Bunyan's own copy of this work is in existence, and valued of course as such a relic of such a man ought to be. It was purchased in the year 1780, by Mr. Wantner, of the Minories; from him it descended to his daughter, Mrs. Parnell, of Botolph-lane; and it was afterwards purchased, by subscription, for the Bedfords.h.i.+re General Library.

This edition of _The Acts and Monuments_ is of the date 1641, 3 vols, folio, the last of those in the black-letter, and probably the latest when it came into Bunyan's hands. In each volume he has written his name beneath the t.i.tle-page, in a large and stout print-hand. Under some of the woodcuts he has inserted a few rhymes, which are undoubtedly his own composition; and which, though much in the manner of the verses that were printed under the ill.u.s.trations of his own _Pilgrim's Progress_, when that work was first adorned with cuts, (verses worthy of such embellishments,) are very much worse than even the worst of those.

Indeed, it would not be possible to find specimens of more miserable doggerel.

Here is one of the Tinker's tetrasticks, penned in the margin, beside the account of Gardiner's death:--

"The blood, the blood that he did shed Is falling one his one head; And dredfull it is for to see The beginers of his misere."

One of the signatures bears the date of 1662; but the verses must undoubtedly have been some years earlier, before the publication of his first tract. These curious inscriptions must have been Bunyan's first attempts in verse: he had, no doubt, found difficulty enough in tinkering them to make him proud of his work when it was done; otherwise, he would not have written them in a book which was the most valuable of all his goods and chattels. In later days, he seems to have taken this book for his art of poetry. His verses are something below the pitch of Sternhold and Hopkins. But if he learnt there to make bad verses, he entered fully into the spirit of its better parts, and received that spirit into as resolute a heart as ever beat in a martyr's bosom.[2]

[2] Southey's Life of John Bunyan.

LITERARY LOCALITIES.

Leigh Hunt pleasantly says:--"I can no more pa.s.s through Westminster, without thinking of Milton; or the Borough, without thinking of Chaucer and Shakspeare; or Gray's Inn, without calling Bacon to mind; or Bloomsbury-square, without Steele and Akenside; than I can prefer brick and mortar to wit and poetry, or not see a beauty upon it beyond architecture in the splendour of the recollection. I once had duties to perform which kept me out late at night, and severely taxed my health and spirits. My path lay through a neighbourhood in which Dryden lived, and though nothing could be more common-place, and I used to be tired to the heart and soul of me, I never hesitated to go a little out of the way, purely that I might pa.s.s through Gerard-street, and so give myself the shadow of a pleasant thought."

CREED OF LORD BOLINGBROKE.

Lord Brougham says:--"The dreadful malady under which Bolingbroke long lingered, and at length sunk--a cancer in the face--he bore with exemplary fort.i.tude, a fort.i.tude drawn from the natural resources of his vigorous mind, and unhappily not aided by the consolations of any religion; for, having early cast off the belief in revelation, he had subst.i.tuted in its stead a dark and gloomy naturalism, which even rejected those glimmerings of hope as to futurity not untasted by the wiser of the heathens."

Lord Chesterfield, in one of his letters, which has been published by Earl Stanhope, says that Bolingbroke only doubted, and by no means rejected, a future state.

BUNYAN'S PREACHING.

It is said that Owen, the divine, greatly admired Bunyan's preaching; and that, being asked by Charles II. "how a learned man such as he could sit and listen to an itinerant tinker?" he replied: "May it please your Majesty, could I possess that tinker's abilities for preaching, I would most gladly relinquish all my learning."

HONE'S "EVERY-DAY BOOK."

This popular work was commenced by its author after he had renounced political satire for the more peaceful study of the antiquities of our country. The publication was issued in weekly sheets, and extended through two years, 1824 and 1825. It was very successful, the weekly sale being from 20,000 to 30,000 copies.

In 1830, Mr. Southey gave the following tribute to the merits of the work, which it is pleasurable to record; as these two writers, from their antipodean politics, had not been accustomed to regard each other's productions with any favour. In closing his _Life of John Bunyan_, Mr. Southey says:--

"In one of the volumes, collected from various quarters, which were sent to me for this purpose, I observe the name of William Hone, and notice it that I may take the opportunity of recommending his _Every-day Book and Table Book_ to those who are interested in the preservation of our national and local customs. By these curious publications, their compiler has rendered good service in an important department of literature; and he may render yet more, if he obtain the encouragement which he well deserves."

BUNYAN'S ESCAPES.

Bunyan had some providential escapes during his early life. Once, he fell into a creek of the sea, once out of a boat into the river Ouse, near Bedford, and each time he was narrowly saved from drowning. One day, an adder crossed his path. He stunned it with a stick, then forced open its mouth with a stick and plucked out the tongue, which he supposed to be the sting, with his fingers; "by which act," he says, "had not G.o.d been merciful unto me, I might, by my desperateness, have brought myself to an end." If this, indeed, were an adder, and not a harmless snake, his escape from the fangs was more remarkable than he himself was aware of. A circ.u.mstance, which was likely to impress him more deeply, occurred in the eighteenth year of his age, when, being a soldier in the Parliament's army, he was drawn out to go to the siege of Leicester, in 1645. One of the same company wished to go in his stead; Bunyan consented to exchange with him, and this volunteer subst.i.tute, standing sentinel one day at the siege, was shot through the head with a musket-ball. "This risk," Sir Walter Scott observes, "was one somewhat resembling the escape of Sir Roger de Coverley, in an action at Worcester, who was saved from the slaughter of that action, by having been absent from the field."--_Southey._