THE PENNY MAGAZINE

[View of Westminster Bridge.]

A century ago not one of the several bridges existed that now span the Thames at London. There was then, in fact, no bridge over the river at all, with the exception of that which stood where the present London bridge is now erected. It was not until the year 1735, that parliament, on the petition of the inhabitants of Westminster, passed an act for the building of a second bridge. Even then this improvement was not secured without great difficulty; a strenuous opposition being made to it by the Company of Watermen, the society called the West-Country Bargemen, the Borough of Southwark, and the City of London, all of which parties conceived themselves interested in forcing everybody who wanted to cross from one side of the water to the other, either to go round by London bridge, or to make the passage in a boat. Fortunately, however, it was determined that the convenience of the whole population should not be sacrificed, nor their personal safety placed in jeopardy, on this monstrous demand of a few individuals.

On the 13th of September, 1738, the preparations for the building of the bridge were begun, by the driving of the first pile for its foundation, in the presence of a vast multitude of spectators. The piers were built in cofferdams; of which contrivance we have already given a description in our notice of London bridge in the Supplement for April. On the 29th of January following, the first stone of one of the two central piers, that next the west side, was laid by the Earl of Pembroke. The whole structure is built of stone, and principally of Portland block stones, of which few are less than a ton in weight, while many are two or three, and some even four or five tons. There are fourteen piers in all, besides the two abutments, and consequently fifteen arches. They are semicircular in form, and the span of that in the middle is seventy-six feet; the others gradually decrease in width; the sixth from the centre on each side being only fifty-two feet, and the two next the abutments only twenty-five each. The whole length of the bridge is 1223 feet; and the clear water-way under the arches is 870 feet. The road over it is 44 feet in breadth, the foot-paths on each side included. In the beginning of 1747, when it was nearly completed, one of the piers sank so much as to determine the commissioners to have it pulled down and rebuilt; and this was the only circumstance by which the work was materially retarded. It was at last brought to a conclusion, on the 10th of November that year; when the new bridge was formally opened by a procession passing over it. The work cost in all 389,500l., which was granted for the purpose in successive years by parliament. Maitland states that the value of 40,000l. is computed to be always under water in stone and other materials; and according to other authorities the whole quantity of stone used in this bridge is asserted to have been nearly double that employed in St. Paul’s Cathedral^[1].

The business of creating from a mass of clay “vases, ewers, and urns,” which, in the homely language of the potter, is termed throwing, has always excited admiration. One moment, an unfashioned lump of earth is cast on the block; the next, it is seen starting into forms of elegance and beauty. A simple wheel, and hands untutored in other arts, effect this wondrous 218change. The means appear to be scarcely adequate to the end; and thence the poet, with seeming truth, asserts that “magic hands” perform this work of art.

The remotest ages of antiquity lay claim to the invention of earthenware;—probably it was carried to a higher point of improvement than any other of the early manufactures of the world. It could originate only in those regions which produced its essential materials, and thus we find no vestiges of its having existed in countries where clay is unknown. In America, while some regions possess curious specimens of ancient pottery, others, in which the raw material has not been found, present no such antique remains. The natives of these latter countries have availed themselves of such substitutes as nature has provided. The gourd, called calabash, which they ingeniously carve and cut into various forms, affords them as abundant a supply of vessels for holding liquids as their simple modes of life require.

[New Zealander drinking from a Calabash.]

The plastic power of clay was early discovered. It appears to have been employed in the most ancient times, as it still is in Egypt, to receive the impression of a seal, the affixing of which on property was probably considered, even at that period, as a legal protection. Job, in one of his poetic similies, says (chap. xxxviii, ver. 14), “It is turned as clay to the seal.”

Many centuries before the art was practised in Europe, the Chinese had brought it very nearly to the degree of perfection which their porcelain now exhibits. In this one branch of art they have undisputed possession of materials of the most perfect combination, of colours of unrivalled brilliance, but of “ideal grace” not one particle.

From Asia this art entered Europe through Greece, the land of “creative genius.” The Corinthian potters especially displayed, in their designs and execution, exquisite taste and skill. Their works were more prized than diamond or ruby, and were amongst the most valuable decorations in the dwellings of princes. Greece, supplying with porcelain Egypt the mother country of so many other arts, at length taught it to establish its own pottery, and, spreading the useful art far and wide, to become itself the benefactor of other regions.

A Phœnician colony, it is supposed, founded the ancient Etruria, whence modern Europe has drawn models of skill and beauty.

Though conquerors ought seldom to be regarded as benefactors, the Romans in many instances were such to the nations they subdued. Wherever they obtained a permanent empire, they planted their arts and manufactures. In this country, though some maintain that Phœnicia supplied Britain with earthen vessels in exchange for its metals, there are so many vestiges of Roman manufactures as to corroborate the belief of our being indebted to that people for the art of the potter. In the neighbourhood of Leeds the remembrance of a Roman pottery is still recorded in the name of the village which rose upon its site—Potter Newton.

Although introduced into Britain at so early a period, the potter’s art long remained in its rudest state. The coarse red ware only was made, but was not of sufficient beauty or utility to be received as a substitute for utensils and vessels of wood and metal, as earthenware, in its improved state, has since been. In every dwelling, even the humblest, earthenware and china are now essential, and not only in England, but in all the civilized regions of the world. This change was principally effected by the industry and comprehensive mind of one individual—Josiah Wedgwood, the founder of modern Etruria. The Staffordshire potteries, which in his day consisted of a few thinly-peopled villages, now present a continued chain of manufactories, extending for miles, in which tens of thousands of people are constantly employed and supported.

For centuries previous to the time of which we are speaking, the manufacture of earthenware had, in this country, remained unimproved; and in Europe, generally, it had been almost as stationary. From the east, the wealthy and luxurious of the western hemisphere were supplied with porcelain, valued on account of its rareness rather than for its beauty; while the humbler ranks of society sought no other than metal or wooden domestic utensils, unless they added to these some of the rude works of their native potters.

At length, in France, Germany, and Italy, princes and nobles, as if ashamed of the neglect the art had experienced in the most civilized portion of the world, founded in their respective countries porcelain manufactories. These subsequently became of considerable eminence. The Sêvres, Dresden, and Berlin porcelain grew in time to be the admiration of Europe, and was mingled with the works of China, which became less prized. But the benefit conferred by these royal and noble establishments was limited. Wealth was expended on them; talents were devoted to them; but their works never circulated throughout all ranks, nor effected any general change in domestic life: they have been limited to the use only of the noble and the rich.

These manufactories cannot claim the merit of such general utility as those of England, conducted by a different class of men and upon different principles. Here, unaided by the hand of power, without wealth, and sometimes almost without education, men, the founders of British manufactories, have often started from the level of humble life into prominent and commanding situations. Dispensing means of subsistence and opening prospects of improved condition to thousands, they have acquired an influence in their day which nobles might covet. Among this class of benefactors to their race, the late Josiah Wedgwood stood preeminent. His early education, as was usual in his sphere, was very limited. Education in his day was supposed to be incompatible with the habits of a man of business. The disadvantages of this narrow system were early perceived by the intelligent Wedgwood, and his first step to the eminence he afterwards attained was the education of himself. Though apprenticed to a potter, he found leisure for acquisitions in literary knowledge, which subsequently enabled him to sustain a part in the literary and philosophical society of his time.

He had no wild or irrational ambition which induced him to attempt attainments beyond his reach: this would have ended in disappointment and downfal. His dignified view was fixed to the improvement of himself and his condition by the most laudable means; and the result, after years of steady application, accompanied with great toil and anxiety, was an ample and distinguished success.

219About thirty years before he commenced the foundation of his future eminence, an accident had given rise to improvement in the earthenwares of Staffordshire. A potter from Burslem, (the centre of the potteries, and the birth-place of Mr. Wedgwood,) in travelling to London on horseback, was detained on the road by the inflamed eyes of his horse. Seeing the hostler, the horse-doctor of those times, burn a piece of flint and afterwards reduce it to a fine white powder, applying it as a specific for the diseased eyes, a notion arose in the mind of the traveller as to the possibility of combining this beautiful white powder with the clay used in his craft, so as to effect a change in the colour and body of his ware. The experiment succeeded, and this was the origin of the English white-ware. It will not be foreign to our subject to remark here, how every trifling circumstance that occurs is turned to account, when the mind is seriously at work on any subject. We know that the falling of an apple, the passing of the sun’s rays through a vessel of water, the swinging of a suspended lamp, casualties apparently trifling, were fraught with important discoveries, because observed by men deeply engaged in scientific investigations. We are not presuming to place our simple potter on a footing with Newton or Galileo—men of mighty powers; but we claim for him a point of resemblance, because like them he pursued his observations with investigation and experiment, so well directed as to ensure improvement and success. This man, whose name was Ashbury, also brought to his manufactory the superior clays of Devonshire and Cornwall, and as the potter’s wheel had been somewhat improved by a person named Alsager, we may consider that, though still vast and unoccupied, the field of improvement was discovered a short time before Mr. Wedgwood entered it. We must here do honour to the French philosopher and naturalist, Réaumur, who at a rather earlier period had been almost the first in forming the connexion between science and the arts of life, from that time indissoluble, and ever since producing improvement to which no termination can be foreseen. Science hitherto had been regarded as an abstract pursuit—leading to little practical good, if not unfitting those engaged in it for the pursuits of life. The chemical examination which Réaumur made on oriental china, anticipated what in time the common experiments of the manufacturer might have effected, though not with equal certainty or rapidity. Upon those experiments the Royal French manufactory of Sêvres was founded. This instance of the aid which science yielded to a manufacture similar to his own, was not likely to be unheeded by Mr. Wedgwood, and, accordingly, we find him effecting, in England, that union between science and his art which Réaumur had done in France. As soon as his means permitted him to deviate without pecuniary inconvenience from the beaten path, he appears to have employed men of science to aid him in his extended views. One amiable man, Mr. Chisholm, a superior chemist of the time, devoted his whole life to this business. Under the direction of the intelligence and indefatigable spirit of Mr. Wedgwood, he proceeded day by day, from experiment to experiment, until most of the principal objects in view were attained.

Varieties of clay were sought for, and the comparative value of their properties for the manufacture in question was ascertained, together with the true proportion of calcined flint with which each variety would unite, and the degree of heat to which each could be submitted. The glaze also, it has been said, gave rise to a most anxious and assiduous investigation on the part of these indefatigable labourers, which ended without their attaining the object they so earnestly desired. The rude brown ware before mentioned had been always glazed with fused salt, by a process uncertain in its results, and one which, producing noxious fumes, rendered an earthenware manufactory a nuisance to its neighbourhood. The improvement in this department of the manufacture led to the substitution of white lead for salt; but although the air on glazing days was no longer odious to breathe, the substitute acted as a powerful poison on those employed in this branch of the business. Every precaution which his humanity could suggest Mr. Wedgwood adopted, to prevent the injurious influence of the lead on his work-people: but the poison was too subtle; it was imbibed through the pores as well as inhaled; and paralysis often terminated the lives of those employed in glazing, or rendered a protracted existence an evil to them. Mr. Wedgwood’s humane endeavours to discover another substitute for the lead were never realized, although his hopes often represented to him the possibility of this being effected. The evil still exists.

The forms and colours were no less objects of his attention than the body of his manufacture. Oxides of metals, particularly those of iron, gave him an endless variety of colours, and for his forms and ornaments he took models from the best standards of grace and beauty which the ancient world afforded him. He also employed both English and foreign artists of merit in modelling and designing. The early talent of Flaxman, and the skilful pencil of Webber, were engaged in his service; of which there are evidences in the perfect imitation of the Barberini vase he has left behind him, and in the classic designs which decorate the beautiful imitation of jasper which he invented. Thus his manufactory comprehended every thing his art could attain; and taste, convenience, and comfort could draw thence ample gratification. Excellence was his aim—whether in the common articles of use, or in the choicer productions of his taste; and so ambitious was he to maintain the reputation of his manufacture, that he sacrificed every article which came from the oven in an imperfect state.

Such was the eminence Wedgwood reached as a manufacturer, that he carried every thing before him. His ware displaced foreign china in his own country, and spread itself over every part of Europe—not only ornamenting the palace, but filling the cottage with means of comfort and cleanliness. No ware could be sold that had not his name stamped on each article. Wedgwood became a generic term—the question being also asked on the Continent, “Have you any Wedgwood?” He secured this preeminence by the excellence of his productions, and not by exclusive advantages. He always steadily refused to obtain patents for his inventions, saying, “the world is wide enough for us all.”

The most unhappy.—Cosroes, King of Persia, in conversation with two philosophers and his Vizir, asked—“What situation of man is most to be deplored?” One of the philosophers maintained, that it was old age accompanied with extreme poverty; the other, that if was to have the body oppressed by infirmities, the mind worn out, and the heart broken by a heavy series of misfortunes. “I know a condition more to be pitied,” said the Vizir, “and it is that of him, who has passed through life without doing good; and who, unexpectedly surprised by death, is sent to appear before the tribunal of the Sovereign Judge.”—Miscellany of Eastern Learning.

Rat Conquest.—The most complete conquest ever made in England by invaders, is said to have been made by the Hanoverian rats that were accidentally introduced, and which have literally extirpated the original rat of the country.

Public Servants.—In an admonition addressed by the present Emperor of China to the officers of his government, is this remarkable passage—“He who sincerely serves his country, leaves the fragrance of a good name to a hundred ages; he who does not, leaves a name that stinks for tens of thousands of years.”

[Parish Church of Stratford-on-Avon.]

Within the walls of the fine old Church of Stratford-on-Avon, represented in the above wood-cut, lie the ashes of Shakspeare. In a small house still standing in the same town, was the great poet born. We may best convey to our readers some impression of the interest which we have felt in visiting this spot, by reprinting some passages from ‘The Sketch Book’ of Washington Irving, one of the most pleasing and accomplished writers that the United States has produced.

“I had come to Stratford on a poetical pilgrimage. My first visit was to the house where Shakspeare was born, and where, according to tradition, he was brought up to his father’s craft of wool-combing. It is a small mean-looking edifice of wood and plaster, a true nestling-place of genius, which seems to delight in hatching its offspring in bye-corners. The walls of its squalid chambers are covered with names and inscriptions, in every language, by pilgrims of all nations, ranks, and conditions, from the prince to the peasant; and present a simple, but striking instance of the spontaneous and universal homage of mankind to the great poet of nature.

“The house is shown by a garrulous old lady in a frosty red face, lighted up by a cold blue anxious eye, and garnished with artificial locks of flaxen hair, curling from under an exceedingly dirty cap. She was peculiarly assiduous in exhibiting the relics with which this, like all other celebrated shrines, abounds. There was the shattered stock of the very matchlock with which Shakspeare shot the deer, on his poaching exploit. There, too, was his tobacco-box; which proves that he was a rival smoker of Sir Walter Raleigh; the sword also with which he played Hamlet: and the identical lanthorn with which Friar Laurence discovered Romeo and Juliet at the tomb! There was an ample supply also of Shakspeare’s mulberry tree, which seems to have as extraordinary powers of self-multiplication as the wood of the true cross; of which there is enough extant to build a ship of the line.”

Since the visit of Mr. Irving to Stratford, the inscriptions on the walls of Shakspeare’s house have been obliterated. We can no longer hunt out the hand-writing of Garrick or Byron amidst the crowd of Smiths and Whites whom curiosity had brought hither. The ancient tenant of the house, the keeper of the Shaksperian relics described above, being ejected from the premises which she had so long occupied with profit, in a fit of wrath had the sacred walls smeared over with whitewash the night before she quitted them. The old lady had moved with her heap of relics to a house on the opposite side of the way when we visited Stratford about seven years ago. But the knowledge of her malicious outrage prevented us looking upon her trumpery with any patience. We had ceased to have any faith in these matters. We refused to sit in her Shakspeare’s chair, affirming, to her great mortification, that the real chair had been sold to the Empress of Russia; and, worst of all, we refused to purchase her own play of the Battle of Waterloo. Poor woman! she claimed to be a lineal descendant from the poet, and to prove her claim to the inheritance of his genius, wrote the most execrable verses that folly ever produced. We could have forgiven her bad verses, had some of Shakspeare’s good humour and kindness of heart descended to her. But she whitewashed out all the names, noble and ignoble, of the sacred chamber to spite her successor! Her play and her plaster doubly destroyed all belief in her pedigree! We should add, that the exterior of Shakspeare’s house has been much altered within the last forty years. The following cut exhibits it as it appeared in 1788.

[Shakspeare’s House as it appeared in 1788.]

We proceed with Mr. Irving’s agreeable narrative:—

“From the birth-place of Shakspeare a few paces brought me to his grave. He lies buried in the chancel of the parish church, a large and venerable pile, mouldering with age, but richly ornamented. It stands on the banks of the Avon, on an embowered point, and separated by adjoining gardens from the suburbs of the town. Its situation is quiet and retired: the river runs murmuring at the foot of the church-yard, and the elms which grow upon its banks droop their branches into its clear bosom. An avenue of limes, the boughs of which are curiously interlaced, so as to form in summer an arched way of foliage, leads up from the gate of the yard to the church-porch. The graves are overgrown with grass; the grey tomb-stones, some of them nearly sunk into the earth, are half covered with moss, which has likewise tinted the reverend old building. Small birds have built their nests among the cornices and fissures of the walls, and keep up a continual flutter and chirping; and rooks are sailing and cawing about its lofty grey spire.

“We approached the church through the avenue of limes, and entered by a gothic porch, highly ornamented, with carved doors of massive oak. The interior is spacious, and the architecture and embellishments superior to those of most country churches. There are several ancient monuments of nobility and gentry, over some of which hang funeral escutcheons, and banners dropping piecemeal from the walls. The tomb of Shakspeare is in the chancel. The place is solemn and sepulchral. Tall elms wave before the pointed windows, and the Avon, which runs at a short distance from the walls, keeps up a low perpetual murmur. A flat stone marks the spot where the bard is buried. There are four lines inscribed on it, said to have been written by himself, and which have in them something extremely awful. If they are indeed his own, they show that solicitude about the quiet of the grave, which seems natural to fine sensibilities and thoughtful minds:—

“Just over the grave, in a niche of the wall, is a bust of Shakspeare, put up shortly after his death, and considered as a resemblance. The aspect is pleasant and serene, with a finely arched forehead; and I thought I could read in it clear indications of that cheerful, social disposition, by which he was as much characterized among his contemporaries as by the vastness of his genius. The inscription mentions his age at the time of his decease—fifty-three years; an untimely death for the world: for what fruit might not have been expected from the golden autumn of such a mind, sheltered as it was from the stormy vicissitudes of life, and flourishing in the sunshine of popular and royal favour.

“The inscription on the tomb-stone has not been without its effect. It has prevented the removal of his remains from the bosom of his native place to Westminster Abbey, which was at one time contemplated. A few years since also, as some labourers were digging to make an adjoining vault, the earth caved in, so as to leave a vacant space almost like an arch, through which one might have reached into his grave. No one, however, presumed to meddle with his remains, so awfully guarded by a malediction; and lest any of the idle or the curious, or any collector of relics, should be tempted to commit depredations, the old sexton kept watch over the place for two days, until the vault was finished and the aperture closed again. He told me that he had made bold to look in at the hole, but could see neither coffin nor bones; nothing but dust. It was something, I thought, to have seen the dust of Shakspeare.

[Shakspeare.]

“Next to his grave are those of his wife, his favourite daughter Mrs. Hall, and others of his family. On a tomb close by, also, is a full-length effigy of his old 222friend John Combe, of usurious memory; on whom he is said to have written a ludicrous epitaph. There are other monuments around, but the mind refuses to dwell on anything that is not connected with Shakspeare. His idea pervades the place: the whole pile seems but as his mausoleum. The feelings, no longer checked and thwarted by doubt, here indulge in perfect confidence; other traces of him may be false or dubious, but here is palpable evidence and absolute certainty. As I trod the sounding pavement, there was something intense and thrilling in the idea, that, in very truth, the remains of Shakspeare were mouldering beneath my feet. It was a long time before I could prevail upon myself to leave the place; and as I passed through the church-yard I plucked a branch from one of the yew-trees, the only relic that I have brought from Stratford.”

Mr. Irving’s paper continues in a very pretty description of his visit to the old family seat of the Lucys at Charlecot, whose park was the scene of the hair-brained exploits of which Shakspeare’s boyhood has been accused. Our limits will not allow us to dwell longer on this subject, except to give the concluding paragraph of Mr. Irving’s reflections on Stratford-on-Avon:—

“He who has sought renown about the world, and has reaped a full harvest of worldly favour, will find, after all, that there is no love, no admiration, no applause, so sweet to the soul as that which springs up in his native place. It is there that he seeks to be gathered in peace and honour among his kindred and his early friends. And when the weary heart and failing head begin to warn him that the evening of life is drawing on, he turns as fondly as does the infant to the mother’s arms, to sink to sleep in the bosom of the scene of his childhood. How would it have cheered the spirit of the youthful bard, when, wandering forth in disgrace upon a doubtful world, he cast back a heavy look upon his paternal home; could he have foreseen that, before many years, he should return to it covered with renown; that his name should become the boast and glory of his native place; that his ashes should be religiously guarded as its most precious treasure; and that its lessening spire, on which his eyes were fixed in tearful contemplation, should one day become the beacon, towering amidst the gentle landscape, to guide the literary pilgrim of every nation to his tomb!”

These words are sometimes adjectives, as in the following examples:—

or they are used as adverbs, of which the following are a few samples:—

The word man-ly means like a man, and we believe that all such words were once written with the termination lic, or like, which means resemblance, or, in some cases, equality. As a proof of this position, we may observe, without quoting the authority of old printed books, that we still use several words in both forms: thus we have death-like, death-ly; god-like, god-ly; while in some instances we have retained the original termination like, without shortening it into ly, as in war-like. Custom has now assigned different meanings to such words as god-like and god-ly,—the former, a poetical kind of word, being used to signify resemblance to a god in actions, and the latter being applied to express the feeling of piety and devotion. In our older language a good-ly man signified handsome personage, and in some parts of this island the original phrase of a good-like man may be often heard in the mouths of the rustics. The word home-ly is now generally used in the sense of common, ordinary, as when we speak of homely fare or homely food; or it is applied to express our opinion of a person’s face, when we wish to say that it is rather ugly, without using so ugly a word. Milton explains this usage of the word in his Comus:—

The list of words in ly, which are used as adverbs, is rather numerous; very few of the class, we believe, are used both as adjectives and adverbs. We have, however, marked sick-ly as one instance of this double usage. Many of these adverbs in ly are derived from secondary forms, and from that class of words in ing commonly called participles; thus we have—

The mention of the words play-ful-ly, deceit-ful-ly, leads us to speak of the termination ful (German, voll).

These words might perhaps be more properly called compound words, because they are compounded or made up of two distinct words. Play-ful is formed of play and full: one of the l’s in the compound word being now generally dropped in writing. It may be well to explain how the compound word health-ful differs from the derived word health-y. The former is, as we have remarked, made up of two distinct words, health and full, both of which are still in common use; while health-y is, made up of the same word health and a termination y, or suffix, as it is sometimes called, which may once have been a real word, but it is so no longer; and we can only form a kind of guess at its meaning, by comparing a number of words in which it occurs one with another, and by observing what kind of ideas these words are used to convey. Thus the word wil-ful appears to signify full of will; and when we speak of a wilful murder, we mean the death of one man caused by another with full will and intention. This is quite intelligible; but this word wilful is often used very vaguely and in various senses that we have tried to understand, but hitherto without success.

These words, also, ought perhaps to be classed under the head of compounds, as the termination less is a real word in familiar use. Care-less, cheer-less, signify exactly the reverse of care-ful, cheer-ful, being used to express the absence or want of the thing signified by the noun prefixed. The word boot-less means without prey, booty, or profit; it has furnished occasion for one of Shakspeare’s worst puns, if we can venture to say which is the worst of the innumerable samples which that fertile brain produced. Glendower (Henry IV. Part 1st, Act iii. I) is telling Hotspur of his valorous exploits against Henry Bolingbroke, when he says—

The German word los is attached to many words like the English termination less, and appears to have exactly the same signification, as, for example, schlaf-los means sleep-less, and macht-los (might-less), without power or strength. Indeed the two terminations appear to be the same, both signifying to loose or take away: the German los is often prefixed to verbs, as well as put after nouns.

In our list of nouns we omitted to mention those in 223rick and wick, which ought to have been classed with nouns in dom. Their number is not large.

Ric, the same as the German reich, means possession, wealth, dominion. The Germans call France, Frankreich,—the kingdom or dominion of the Franks. The old Saxon word for kingdom is rice, which frequently occurs in the Anglo-Saxon laws.^[2] Bailiwick is, properly, the space over which the jurisdiction of a bailiff extends. We do not mean to say the jurisdiction of a bailiff as known in ordinary practice, but according to the more creditable and proper import of the word, which means a deputy or agent who manages the affairs of a superior, or superintendent.

September 7.—The birth-day of Dr. Samuel Johnson. He was born in 1709, in the city of Litchfield, where his father was a bookseller. Having received the elements of a classical education principally at the grammar school of his native place, he was sent at the age of nineteen to Pembroke College, Oxford, by a gentleman who engaged to maintain him there as a companion to his son. After some time, however, this person withdrew his aid; and Johnson, having made an ineffectual attempt to subsist on his own resources, found himself obliged to discontinue his residence before obtaining a degree. He had already, however, during the period he spent at the university, obtained a high reputation for scholarship and abilities. For many succeeding years the life of this distinguished luminary of English literature was one of those hard struggles with poverty which learning and genius have so often been called on to sustain. About the time that he left college, namely, in 1731, his father died, leaving scarcely twenty pounds behind him. Thus situated, Johnson was constrained to accept the office of usher at the grammar-school of Market Bosworth. But the treatment to which he was subjected soon forced him to give up this appointment. He now attempted in succession various projects of a literary nature, in order to escape from the extremest indigence. In 1735 he married a Mrs. Porter, the widow of a mercer, who brought him a fortune of about 800l.; and with this money he opened a boarding-school at Edial. But the scheme met with no success. He then determined to set out for London; and here accordingly he arrived in March, 1737, accompanied by a young friend, who had been one of his pupils, David Garrick, who afterwards became the greatest actor that the modern world had seen. The first employment which he obtained was from the proprietors of the Gentleman’s Magazine. But the emoluments he derived from this source were very insufficient to afford him a respectable subsistence; and he was often without a shilling to procure him bread during the day, or a lodging wherein to lay his head at night. These difficulties clung to him for a long while, but they did not prevent him from gradually working his way to literary distinction. His reports of parliamentary debates, inserted in the Gentleman’s Magazine, which were often almost entirely original compositions of his own, attracted a great deal of notice; but it was not till long afterwards that their authorship was generally known. The year after his arrival in the metropolis, he published his poem, entitled ‘London’, in imitation of the third Satire of Juvenal. This production had the honour of being commended in very warm terms by Pope. In 1744 appeared his eloquent and striking life of his friend Savage. Three years after he was engaged by an association of booksellers to prepare a new Dictionary of the English Language. This celebrated work occupied the greater part of his time for seven years, and at last appeared in 1755, after the money, 1500 guineas, which it had been agreed he should receive for his labour, was all spent. It brought him, however, a large share of public applause, and at once placed his name among the first of the living cultivators of English literature. Meanwhile, even before the appearance of his Dictionary, he had by various occasional productions been steadily advancing himself in reputation, although not in wealth. In 1749 he gave to the world his imitation of Juvenal’s tenth Satire, under the title of ‘The Vanity of Human Wishes.’ The same year his tragedy of Irene, which he had brought with him when he first came to town, was produced at Drury Lane by his friend Garrick. In March, 1750, he commenced the publication of ‘The Rambler,’ which he continued for two years at the rate of two papers every week, the whole, with the exception of only five numbers, being the production of his own pen. These, and other works, however, failed in relieving him from the pressure of great pecuniary difficulties, as is proved by the fact, that in 1756 he was arrested for a debt of about five pounds, and only obtained his liberty by borrowing the money from a friend. In 1758 he began a new periodical publication, to which he gave the name of ‘The Idler,’ and which, like the ‘Rambler,’ he carried on for about two years. In 1759 his mother, to whom he was tenderly attached, died at an advanced age; and having gone down to Litchfield to superintend her funeral, he there wrote his beautiful romance of Rasselas in a single week, while his parent lay unburied, in order to obtain the means of defraying the expenses of her interment. This may well be characterised as the finest anecdote that is to be told of Dr. Johnson; for the whole range of biography scarcely records anything more noble or affecting. At last, in 1762, the Crown was advised to bestow upon him a pension of 300l. per annum; an act of bounty which placed him for the rest of his life in ease and affluence. After this he distinguished himself as much by the brilliancy and power of his conversation in the literary circles and general society which he frequented, as by his labours with his pen; but still he was far from relinquishing authorship. In 1765 appeared a new edition of Shakspeare, in the superintendence of which he had been long engaged, and the splendid preface to which is one of the most celebrated of his productions. In 1773 he published the well-known account of his ‘Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland,’ which he had just accomplished in company with his friend Boswell. In 1775 he received the degree of LL.D. from the University of Oxford; and in 1781 he brought to a close the last, and perhaps, upon the whole, the greatest of his works, his ‘Lives of the Poets,’ in four volumes octavo. He survived this publication only a few years, and having died on the 13th of December, 1784, in the seventy-sixth year of his age, he was interred with great solemnity in Westminster Abbey, in a grave near to that of his friend Garrick. Notwithstanding considerable heat of temper and arrogance of manner, as well as some weak prejudices and singularities by which he was marked, it is impossible to deny that the moral character of Dr. Johnson abounded in noble points, or to regard it upon the whole with other feelings than those of admiration and reverence. A scrupulous respect for virtue, evinced both by the language and scope of all his writings and by the unvarying tenor of his conduct, a lofty scorn of injustice and baseness, a spirit of independence and self-reliance which no trials and sufferings could tame down either to despair or servility, a warm sympathy with human sorrow wheresoever found or howsoever caused, the intrepidity to do a good action in the face even of the world’s laugh, and 224charity in relieving the unfortunate to the utmost verge of his means, and even to his own painful inconvenience,—all these dispositions, based on religious principle, and adorned and crowded by the most fervid piety, are sufficient to cast into the shade far deeper traits of frailty than any with which his nature can fairly be said to have been marked. The question of the intellectual rank properly belonging to Dr. Johnson has given rise to more difference of opinion. He was certainly neither a very original nor a very subtle thinker; and his eminence, indeed, will probably be maintained even by his warmest admirers on the ground rather of his powers of expression than of thought. His poetry rarely ascends beyond the height of rhetoric in rhyme; and his metaphysical and philosophical speculations are throughout extremely common-place and unrefined. But in what may be called the art of criticism, the detection of conventional beauties and defects, and the delineation of the merely literary character of a writer’s productions, he is a great master. His style is undoubtedly a bad one in the main; for, to say nothing of its being more Latin than English, and so studiously regulated on the principle of mere sonorousness that it almost entirely wants picturesqueness and the other higher qualities which contribute to effective expression, it is suited at the best to only one kind of writing, the grave didactic. Still, with all its faults, even this style has great qualities. Its dignity is often very imposing, and its inventor is certainly entitled to the praise of having set the example of a grammatical accuracy and general finish of composition not to be found in the works of our best authors before his time, but which have since been copied by all.

[Johnson.]

The Firemen’s Dog.—A gentleman connected with one of the principal London fire-insurance offices has sent us the following account of the dog whose singular propensities we described in Number 23. Our correspondent has been induced to make particular inquiries in consequence of our notice:—“His home, if it can be called so, is in one of the recesses of Blackfriars Bridge; and it is supposed he has acquired his taste for blazes in consequence of being noticed by the firemen who so frequently pass over that bridge. It has been remarked that he invariably follows close upon the heels of every fireman he sees until driven away. This induces me to believe that it is for the men and not for the fires that he entertains so strong a regard. On one occasion he followed the engines to a fire at Greenwich, and remained there until the last of the engines had packed up its apparatus to depart. On another occasion (the fire at Mr. Tyler’s premises, in Warwick Lane) he remained with the men sixteen days, during which they were employed in rescuing property from the smouldering ruins. He is perfectly well known to every fireman in London. He is called ‘Tyke,’ and is exceedingly ugly in his appearance, being one of the worst formed specimens of the turnspit breed.”

Division of Time used by the Inhabitants of the Feroe Islands.—They have one method of dividing time peculiar to themselves: they reckon the day and night by eight ökter of three hours each; the ökters again are reduced into halves, and they are named according to the point of the compass where the sun is at the time: for example, East-North-East is half past four in the morning; East is six; East-South-East, half past seven.—Landt’s Description.