Dame. Handy Bart-pugh! Bart. stands for Baronight, mun. Ash. Likely, likely. Drabbit it, only to think of the zwaps and changes of this world! Dame. Our Nelly married to a great baronet! I wonder, Tummus, what Mrs Grundy will say? Ash. Now, woolye be quiet and let I read-' And she has proposed bringing me to see you; an offer, I hope, as acceptable to my dear feyther ' Dame. And mother'. Ash. Bless her, how prettily she do write 'feyther,' dan't she? Dame. And 'mother.' Ash. Ees, but feyther first, though-as acceptable to my dear feyther and mother as to their affectionate daughter, Susan Ashfield.' A facetious personage in the play, seeing Dame Ashfield making lace on a pillow, opens the conversation thus: Bob. How do you do? How do you do? Making lace, I perceive. Is it a common employment here? Dame. Oh, no, sir; nobody can make it in these parts but myself. Mrs Grundy, indeed, pretends; but, poor woman, she knows no more of it than you do. Bob. Than I do? that's vastly well. My dear madam, I passed two months at Mechlin for the express purpose. Dame. Indeed! Bob. You don't do it right; now I can do it much better than that. Give me leave, and I'll show you the true Mechlin method. [Turns the cushion round, kneels down, and begins working.] First you see, so-then so Even at the next mention of her name, Mrs Grundy is simply a respected neighbour, not a prude or hypocrite: Ash. I tell ye, I zee'd un gi' Susan a letter, an' I dan't like it a bit. Dame. Nor I;-if shame should come to the poor child -I say, Tummus, what would Mrs Grundy say then? Ash. Dom Mrs Grundy; what would my poor wold heart say? but I be bound it be all innocence. When the brave farmer and his wife refuse to turn out of their house, at the wicked baronet's command, the (unrevealed) son of the baronet's brother and victim, the wicked baronet proceeds to sell up the farmer, who is in his debt. The farmer and his wife talk over the unpleasant prospect. Ash. Drabbit it! what can he do? he can't send us to gaol. Why, I have corn will sell for half the money I do owe 'un-and han't I cattle and sheep?-deadly lean, to be sure—and han't I a thumping zilver watch, almost as big as thy head? and Dame here ha' got silk gowns have thee got, Dame? How many Dame. Three, Tummus-and sell them all, and I'll go to church in a stuff one, and let Mrs Grundy turn up her nose as much as she pleases. By a well-nigh miraculous intervention the tide turns, and a wealthy suitor asks the farmer's daughter in marriage. Ash. Drabbit, I shall walk in the road all day to zee Sue ride by in her own coach. Susan. You must ride with me, father. Dame. I say, Tummus, what will Mrs Grundy say then? And a little farther on : Ash. Bless her, how nicely she do trip the gentry! away with Dame. And then, Tummus, think of the wedding. Ash. [Reflecting.] I declare I shall be just the zame ever-maybe, I may buy a smartish bridle, or a zilver backy-stopper, or the like o' that. Dame. [Apart.] And then, when we come out of church, Mrs Grundy will be standing about there. Ash. I shall shake hands agreeably wi' all my friends. [Apart.] Dame. [Apart]. Then I just look at her in this manner. Ash. [Apart, and bowing towards centre.] How dost do, Peter? Ah, Dick! glad to zee thee, wi' all my zoul! Dame. [Apart.] Then, with a kind of half curtsey, I shall[They bump against each other. Ash. What an wold fool thee beest, dame ! Come along, and behave pratty, do'e. [Exeunt. Frederic Reynolds (1764-1841), produced about a hundred plays, tragic or comic, of which some twenty were popular for a time at least. He was the son of a London merchant, and was educated at Westminster School; but he left law for dramatic work, Werter (1785), based on Goethe, being his first piece. But the bulk of his work was in comedy, and his most successful play was The Dramatist (1789). In The Caravan, produced by Sheridan at Drury Lane, a live dog was made to save a child from drowning in real water, and, as Sheridan said, saved the theatre too, when at a crisis, by its success. Reynolds published an Autobiography in 1826. John Tobin (1770-1804) was an unlucky dramatist, who spent weary years in trying to get his plays accepted, and seeing them successively rejected till the very year of his death, when his Honey Moon, his fourteenth piece, was not merely accepted at Drury Lane, but secured a success it maintained for twenty years. Tobin, born in Salisbury, was articled to a solicitor in Lincoln's Inn, and practised law there while producing his plays. The Honey Moon, a comedy mostly in verse, was translated into French by Charles Nodier; other comedies, in prose or verse, were The Curfew, The Connoisseur, and The Faro Table. A volume of his plays was published in 1820, with a Life by Miss Benger. William Barnes Rhodes (1772-1826), born in Leeds, became a chief teller in the Bank of England, and is barely remembered in literature as the author of a once popular burlesque, Bombastes Furioso; for of the many who know the title of the piece and have some notion of the character of the mouthing braggart who is its hero, comparatively few know anything about the author. The title is obviously a play on Orlando Furioso, and the design is similar to that of Carey's Chrononhotonthologos, though the plot is, if possible, sillier [Forms his sash into a noose.] And, bent some favour'd party to regale, And with this wicked wanton world a woeful war I'll [Draws his sword, and retires up the stage, and off. The piece, at first anonymous, was produced in 1810. Rhodes published besides a verse translation of Juvenal and some epigrams. William Henry Ireland (1777-1835) was the name of the forger of Shakespearean MSS., but he sometimes prefixed Samuel, or signed himself 'Samuel Ireland, JunĂ.' His father, Samuel Ireland, was originally a weaver, but became an etcher, then a dealer in scarce books and prints, and produced a long series of Picturesque Tours, illustrated by aquatints and lithographs. The son (by a housekeeper) was articled to a conveyancer in New Inn, was fond of the stage, and was profoundly impressed by the story of Chatterton. The curio-collecting bookseller was morbidly anxious to discover some scrap of Shakespeare's handwriting, and this set the youth to manufacture a number of documents, which he pretended to have got from a mysterious gentleman of fortune, who preferred not to be known save as 'M. H.' 'Amongst a mass of family papers,' says the elder Ireland of his son's portentous discoveries, 'the contracts between Shakespeare, Lowine, and Condelle, and the lease granted by him and Hemynge to Michael Fraser, which was first found, were discovered; and soon afterwards the deed of gift to William Henry Ireland (described as the friend of Shakespeare, in consequence of his having saved his life on the river Thames), and also the deed of trust to John Hemynge, were discovered. In pursuing this search he was so fortunate as to meet with some deeds very material to the interests of this gentleman. At this house the principal part of the papers, together with a great variety of books, containing his manuscript notes, and three manuscript plays, with part of another, were discovered.' These forged documents included, besides the deeds, a Protestant Confession of Faith by Shakespeare; letters from him to Anne Hathaway, the Earl of Southampton, and others; a letter to Shakespeare from Queen Elizabeth (attested by him); an original version of King Lear; parts of Hamlet; and two professedly Shakespearean dramas, Vortigern and Rowena and Henry II. Such a treasure was pronounced invaluable, and the manuscripts were exhibited at the elder Ireland's house in Norfolk Street. A fierce and tangled controversy arose as to the genuineness of the documents, in which Malone took an energetic part in proving that they were forged; but the productions found many admirers and believers, including James Boswell, Joseph Warton, Dr Parr, and Pye the laureate; though to all who knew anything about the older English, it should have been plain that the writer of these documents knew less about sixteenth century spelling than Chatterton did about the English of the fifteenth—as plain as that whereas Chatterton was a genius and a poet, Ireland was but a smart attorney's clerk. The recipe for restoring Shakespeare was mainly the systematic doubling of final consonants and adding an e, the substitution of y for i, the omission of all punctuation, the derangement of capitals, &c., with a few arbitrary alterations here and there, as will be seen from a few lines of Ireland's Kynge Leare: Enterre Kent Gloster and Edmunde Glo So didde itte everre feeme to ufse Butte nowe appeares notte whiche of thefe Dukes he Values mofte forre Qualytyes arre fo weyghd thatte curyofytye inne neytherre canne make choyce of thothers Moietye All the MSS. but those of l'ortigern and of Henry II. were published by subscription and in fac-simile in a large and splendid volume. Vortigern was brought out by Sheridan at Drury Lane Theatre in 1796, John Kemble acting the principal character. Kemble, however, was not duped by the young forger; Mrs Siddons threw up her part; and the representation completely broke up the imposture. The structure and language of the piece were at once so feeble and extravagant that no intelligent audience could believe it to have been Shakespeare's. As the play proceeded, the torrent of ridiculous bombast overtaxed the endurance of the audience; and when Kemble gravely declaimed And when this solemn mockery is o'er, the pit rose and closed the scene with shrieks of laughter. So impudent a fabrication-made the subject of James Payn's The Talk of the Town in 1885-was perhaps never before thrust upon public notice. The young adventurer, foiled in this effort, attempted to earn distinction as a novelist and dramatist, but utterly failed. In 1796 he published a confession of the Shakespearean forgery, An Authentic Account of the Shaksperian MSS., expanded in 1805 into Confessions, in which he makes this declaration : 'I solemnly declare, first, that my father was perfectly unacquainted with the whole affair, believing the papers most firmly the productions of Shakespeare. Secondly, that I am myself both the author and writer, and had no aid from any soul living, and that I should never have gone so far, but that the world praised the papers so much, and thereby flattered my vanity. Thirdly, that any publication which may appear tending to prove the manuscripts genuine, or to contradict what is here stated, is false; this being the true account.' The old man, whose credit was seriously compromised by the impostures, plaintively professed till his death in 1800 to believe in the whole of the documents, and to deny that his son could have written the plays. Of the half-dozen novels (The Woman of Feeling, Gondez the Monk, Rizzio, &c.), ballads and narrative poems, satires and political squibs, and dramas such as Mutius Scævola, it may at least be said that they showed sufficient facility and faculty to prove that he had all the mental equipment necessary to produce the forgeries. He wrote a Life of Napoleon, translated Voltaire's Pucelle, and did a vast amount of precarious and miscellaneous hackwork; but his work brought him little credit and no success, and never attracted a tithe of the notice that attended his youthful exploits. Samuel Ireland, still believing in their authenticity, published Vortigern and Henry II., but not in the 'original' spelling, in 1799. The following speech by the hero was considered the 'most sublime passage' in Vortigern: Vortigern. Time was, alas! I needed not this spur. But here's a secret and a stinging thorn, [science! That wounds my troubl'd nerves. O! conscience! conWhen thou didst cry, I strove to stop thy mouth, By boldly thrusting on thee dire ambition : Then did I think myself, indeed, a god! But I was sore deceiv'd; for as I pass'd, Scoffingly bade me look on that, which soon And when thou wouldst be merry, thou dost choose John Taylor (1750-1826), founder of the literary family of the Taylors of Norwich,' was in no wise connected with William Taylor, also 'of Norwich,' the promoter of German studies in England. John Taylor was a yarn-factor in Norwich, a writer of many hymns used in the Unitarian churches, and an advanced Liberal, who wrote one famous song, 'The Trumpet of Liberty.' His wife, Susanna Cook, was also a woman of strong character and many accomplishments, the friend of many eminent men and women. Among their seven children were several authors -one of them, Sarah, John Austin's wife. This John Taylor was descended from the famous John Taylor (1694–1761), a Dissenting clergyman who taught a modified form of Trinitarianism, and as an opponent of Calvinism and the orthodox doctrine of the atonement, exercised a wide and permanent influence in England, Scotland, and New England. From 1733 he was a pastor in Norwich; from 1757 a lecturer in the Warrington Academy. [Isaac Taylor and his family were of 'the Taylors of Ongar.'] William Taylor, 'of Norwich' (1765-1836), is credited with having given a great impulse to the study of German literature in England, before his time hardly known save in connection with some dramas such as Kotzebue's, and some little read translations from Klopstock and Gessner. Taylor did much to show his countrymen that German was a great literature, made the study of it incumbent on the learned, and so became the spiritual midwife of Scott and his contemporaries. He was the son of a Unitarian merchant, entered his father's counting-house in 1779, and, sent next year to the Continent, mastered French, Italian, and German (1780–88). The French Revolution indoctrinated him with democratic ideas and began the ruin of his father's business-completed by the American troubles and other disasters; and Taylor turned to literature. He introduced to English readers the poetry and drama of Germany, mainly through criticisms and translations in periodicals, collected in his Historic Survey of German Poetry (1828-30). The first-fruits were his verse translations of Bürger's Lenore, Lessing's Nathan, and Goethe's Iphigenia in Tauris, all written in 1790. Pye had already translated Lenore in 1782, but this version was not published till 1795; and it was Taylor's translation, read by Mrs Barbauld in Edinburgh and repeated to him by a friend who had been present, that so stirred Scott-'made him a poet,' Scott said-and sent him too to Bürger. Tales of Yore was another book of translations, mainly stories; and another outcome of this miscellaneous work was English Synonyms Discriminated (1813), where, for example, he draws between Fancy and Imagination the distinction Wordsworth adopted and worked out. The mannerisms of his prose and his word-coinings led Mackintosh to speak of the 'Taylorian language.' He was advanced in politics, more advanced or even paradoxical in theology. Borrow's Lavengro describes his philosophy, his scepticism, and his inveterate smoking. His correspondence with Southey, Scott, Mackintosh, Godwin, and others is given in the Life of him by Robberds (1843); and see Georg Herzfeld, Taylor von Norwich, eine Studie (1897). Vicesimus Knox (1752-1851) earned a title to commemoration in this work as compiler of the long-famous Elegant Extracts; his sermons, his essays, his treatises on Liberal Education and on The Lord's Supper, and his aggressive Whig Spirit of Despotism, dedicated to' and levelled at Castlereagh, are all equally forgotten. The son of a master in Merchant Taylors' School, afterwards headmaster of Tunbridge School, he was educated at Merchant Taylors' and St John's, Oxford, and from 1778 to 1812 held the post at Tunbridge vacated by his father. He was also rector of two small livings in Essex, but from 1812 lived mainly in London. The first Elegant Extracts bore to be 'useful and entertaining passages in prose selected for the improvement of scholars at classical and other schools in the art of speaking, in reading, thinking, composing, and the conduct of life,' and appeared in a quarto in 1783; the poetical series appeared in 1789, and the Elegant Epistles, a selection of familiar and amusing letters,' followed in 1790. The three series were constantly reprinted, separately or jointly (often in six volumes; sometimes with a select series of sermons appended), on till about the middle of the nineteenth century. In spite of the name, the selections constituted a valuable and most serviceable work. Even in their own day they must have been regarded as on the whole more improving than amusing; one of the things that entertains a modern reader is the way in which he finds, amidst extracts from Dr Johnson, Dr Parr, Mr Gibbon, &c., others described simpliciter as being by Moses, David, and Job-Knox's plan comprising passages from the authorised version of Scripture. Francis Douce (1757-1834), an eccentric and learned antiquary, born in London, was some time keeper of the British Museum MSS.; he deserves mention here mainly for his Illustrations of Shakespeare (1807) and a book on The Dance of Death (1833). He bequeathed his splendid collection of books, MSS., prints, and coins to the Bodleian; his curiosities to Sir Samuel R. Meyrick; and his letters and commonplace-books to the British Museum in a chest not to be opened till 1900. When the seal on the latter was solemnly broken and the papers examined in May of 1900, the documents were found to contain no important mysteries and to have little interest or value of any kind. William Sotheby (1757-1833), son of an officer of good family, was born in London and bred at Harrow and the Military Academy of Angers. When stationed with his regiment at Edinburgh he became Sir Walter Scott's friend, and when he retired from the army, welcomed Scott to his house in London, and made him known to many of his intimates, who included Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Rogers, Moore, and all the brilliant literary circles they represented. Byron afterwards called Sotheby's works trash, and said he 'imitated everybody, and occasionally surpassed his models.' Sotheby published Poems in 1790, secured the esteem of Wieland by a translation of Oberon (1798), and when his version of Virgil's Georgics appeared, was acclaimed by Jeffrey and Christopher North as author of the best translation in the language. None of his dramas, Oberon, Julian and Agnes, or The Confession, Llewelyn the Great, and the rest (some nine in all, in blank verse), were successful; and his odes, epics, poetical epistles, &c., 'On the Battle of the Nile,' on 'Saul,' 'Constance of Castille' (in imitation of the Lady of the Lake), met with little public favour. His last considerable enterprise, a translation of the Iliad and the Odyssey in rhyming couplets, followed Pope's model, but was perhaps less Homeric. Richard Sharp (1759-1835), commonly called 'Conversation Sharp,' was born in Newfoundland, and made a fortune in London as a West India merchant and hat manufacturer. After mingling in the distinguished society of London, from the days of Johnson and Burke to those of Byron, Rogers, and Moore, in 1834 he published-at first anonymously-a volume of Letters and Essays in Prose and Verse. Rogers thought it hardly equal to Sharp's reputation; Mackintosh, however, termed Sharp the best critic he had ever known. Sharp was in Parliament off and on from 1806 to 1827, and left £250,000 realised in business. The Essays show knowledge of the world and sound sense, as may be seen from these maxims and reflections: Satirical writers and talkers are not half so clever as they think themselves, nor as they ought to be. They do winnow the corn, 'tis true, but 'tis to feed upon the chaff. I am sorry to add that they who are always speaking ill of others are also very apt to be doing ill to them. It requires some talent and some generosity to find out talent and generosity in others; though nothing but self-conceit and malice are needed to discover or to imagine faults. The most gifted men that I have known have been the least addicted to depreciate either friends or foes. Dr Johnson, Mr Burke, and Mr Fox were always more inclined to overrate them. Your shrewd, sly, evil-speaking fellow is generally a shallow personage, and frequently he is as venomous and as false when he flatters as when he reviles-he seldom praises John but to vex Thomas. Trifling precautions will often prevent great mischiefs; as a slight turn of the wrist parries a mortal thrust. Untoward accidents will sometimes happen; but after many, many years of thoughtful experience, I can truly say that nearly all those who began life with me have succeeded or failed as they deserved. Even sensible men are too commonly satisfied with tracing their thoughts a little way backwards; and they are, of course, soon perplexed by a profounder adversary. In this respect, most people's minds are too like a child's garden, where the flowers are planted without their roots. It may be said of morals and of literature as truly as of sculpture and painting, that to understand the outside of human nature we should be well acquainted with the inside. Sir Samuel Egerton Brydges (1762–1837), born at Wooton House in Kent, and educated at Maidstone, Canterbury, and Queen's College, Cambridge, was called to the Bar in 1787, but retired five years later to his books at his country house in Kent. He published poetry and novels of much less value than his edition of Edward Philip's Theatrum Poetarum Anglicanorum (1800), his Censura Literaria, containing Titles and Opinions of old English Books (10 vols. 1805-9), and his edition of Collins' Peerage of England (9 vols. 1812). The claim of his family to the barony of Chandos broke down, but Brydges was gratified with a Swedish knighthood in 1808 and an English baronetcy in 1814. He represented Maidstone in 1812-18, and printed privately at the 'Lee Priory Press' small editions of many rare Elizabethan books. After 1818 he lived abroad, and he died near Geneva. See his Autobiography (1834). Edward Daniel Clarke (1769-1822), born at Willingdon vicarage, Sussex, passed from Tunbridge School to Jesus College, Cambridge, and from 1790 to 1799 was tutor and travelling companion in noblemen's families, making the tour of Britain, France, Italy, Switzerland, and Germany. In 1799-1802 he thus traversed Finland, Russia, Scandinavia, Tartary, Asia Minor, Syria, Egypt, and Greece. Ordained in 1805, he held two livings, and was (from 1808) first Professor of Mineralogy at Cambridge. His Travels (6 vols. 1810-23) were received with extraordinary favour, and became a kind of standard by which records of travel were judged; his other works were chiefly on antiquarian subjects and mineralogy. There is a Life of him by Bishop Otter (1825). Thomas Hartwell Horne (1780-1860), distinguished as an early Biblical critic, born in London, and educated at Christ's Hospital, became clerk to a barrister, and then held a post in the Record Office. In 1818 he published his Introduction to the Holy Scriptures, a work which procured him admission to orders, a London rectory, a prebend of St Paul's, and an assistant librarianship at the British Museum. His other theological works numbered over a score. The Introduction became the standard English work on the subject, and passed through many editions: in the tenth (1856), in which the point of view was changed, and 'advanced' views startled old-fashioned readers, he was assisted by Dr Samuel Davidson and Dr Tregelles. His Reminiscences were issued by his daughter (1862). Rudolf Erich Raspe (1737-94) was nearly forty years of age when, fleeing in disgrace from Germany, he first reached the shores of England ; but by his Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen, published ten years later, he established his claim to be considered a minor English classic. Born in Hanover, Raspe studied at Göttingen and Leipzig, and already in his student days was familiar with English. He was an early translator of Macpherson's Ossian, discussing its authenticity, and seems to have been the very first to call the attention of Germany to Percy's Reliques a work which was to exercise such a remarkable influence on Bürger and Herder, and on romanticism on the Continent as well as at home. The indefatigable and versatile Raspe had acquired special mineralogical learning, had helped to edit Leibniz, and had written an allegorical poem of chivalrous derring-do, when in 1767 he was appointed a lecturer at Cassel and keeper of the Landgrave's coins, gems, and medals. He soon became librarian at Cassel, wrote on mineralogy and natural history, and in 1769, for a paper on the fossil remains of the mammoth, was made an honorary F.R.S. of London. He wrote also on lithography and music; but when he was travelling in Italy in 1775 he was discovered to have made away with valuable coins from the collection under his charge. He was apprehended, but escaped from the police, and was soon busy publishing in London works on German and Hungarian geology and mineralogy. In 1781 he translated Lessing's Nathan, and by other translations helped to make German literature known in England. An Essay on the Origin of Oil-Painting (1781) secured Horace Walpole's favour, and was published under his auspices ; and in 1782 the refugee held a post as a mining expert at Dolcoath in Cornwall. Here he produced the original Munchausen, published in 1785 ; and was next engaged by James Tassie to prepare in English and French a Descriptive Catalogue of his collection of 'ancient and modern gems, cameos, &c.' (mainly pastes or impressions), published in two volumes 4to in 1791. About this time he cheered the heart of Sir John Sinclair of Ulbster |