May 5.
“A Particular Fact.”
The Indexes, &c. to the Every-Day Book, Vol. I. were published on the 5th of May, 1826.
The new preface to the volume is particularly addressed to the notice of correspondents, and I shall be particularly obliged if every reader of the work will favour it with attentive perusal.
Chronology.
It should be observed of Joseph Baretti, who died on this day in the year 1789, that he was the friend and associate of Johnson, who introduced him to the Thrale family, and whom he assisted in the compilation of his “Dictionary of the English Language.”
Baretti was a native of Turin; he had received a good education, and inherited paternal property, which in his youth he soon gambled away, and resorted to a livelihood by teaching Italian to some English gentlemen at Venice; whence he repaired to England, and distinguished himself as a teacher of Italian. By his employment under Dr. Johnson, he acquired such a knowledge of our language as to be enabled to compile the “Italian and English Dictionary,” which is still in use. He then revisited his native country, and after an absence of six years returned through Spain and Portugal, and in 1768 published “An Account of the Manners and Customs of Italy,” in reply to some querulous strictures on that country in the “Letters from Italy” by surgeon Sharp, which Baretti’s book effectually put down, with no small portion both of humour and argument. Not long afterwards, he was accosted in the Haymarket by a woman, whom he repulsed with a degree of roughness which was resented by her male confederates, and in the scuffle, he struck one of them with a French pocket dessert knife. On this, the man pursued and collared him; when Baretti, still more alarmed, stabbed him repeatedly with the knife, of which wounds he died on the following day. He was immediately taken into custody, and tried for murder at the Old Bailey, when Johnson, Burke, Goldsmith, Garrick, Reynolds, and Beauclerk gave testimony to his good character; and although he did not escape censure for his too ready resort to a knife, he was acquitted. Domesticated in the Thrale family, he accompanied them and Dr. Johnson to Paris, but in a fit of unreasonable disgust, quitted them the next year; and in the latter part of his life was harassed with pecuniary difficulties, which were very little alleviated by his honorary post of foreign secretary to the Royal Academy, and an ill-paid pension of eighty pounds per annum under the North administration. Among other works he published one with the singular title of “Tolondron: Speeches to John Bowles about his edition of Don Quixote, together with some account of Spanish Literature.” This was his last production; his constitution was broken by uneasiness of mind and frequent attacks of the gout, and he died in May, 1789.
Baretti was rough and cynical in appearance, yet a pleasant companion; and of his powers in conversation Johnson thought very highly.
He communicated several of Dr. Johnson’s letters to the “European Magazine,” and intended to publish several more; but on his decease his papers fell into the hands of ignorant executors, who barbarously committed them to the flames.[177]
It is remarkable that with Johnson’s scrupulous attachment to the doctrines and ceremonies of the church of England, he was sincerely attached to Baretti, whose notions on religious matters widely differed from the opinions of “the great lexicographer.” Johnson seems to have been won by his friend’s love of literature and independence of character. Baretti often refused pecuniary aid when it was greatly needed by his circumstances: his morals were pure, and his conduct, except in the unhappy instance which placed his life in jeopardy, was uniformly correct. He died with the reputation of an honest man.
There is an engraving representing Diogenes at noon-day with his lantern in one hand, and in the other a circular picture frame, which is left vacant, that a purchaser of the print may insert the portrait of the man he delights to honour as the most honest. Hence the vacancy is sometimes supplied by the celebrated John Wilkes, the prophetic Richard Brothers, the polite lord Chesterfield, Churchill, the satirist, Sam House, or Joseph Baretti, or any other. “Cornelius May,” of whose existence, however, there is reason to doubt, would scarcely find a head to grace the frame.
“Poetry.”
“The Knaverie of the Worlde, sette forthe in homelie verse, by Cornelius May,” from “The Seven Starrs of Witte,” 1647.
Ah me throughoute the worlde
Doth wickednesse abounde!
And well I wot on neither hande
Can honestie be founde.
The wisest man in Athens
Aboute the citie ran
With a lanthorne in the light of daie
To find an honeste man;
And when at night he sate him downe
To reckon on his gaines,
He onely founde—alack poore man!
His labour for his paines.
And soe thou now shalt finde
Alle men of alle degree
Striving, as if their onely trade
Were that of cheating thee.
Thy friend will bid thee welcome,
His servantes at thy calle—
The dearest friend he has on earthe
Till he has wonne thy alle;
He will play with thee at dice
Till thy golde is in his hande,
He will meete thee at the tennis court
Till he winne alle thy lande.
The brother of thy youth
When ye shared booke and bedde
Would eat himself the sugar plums
And leave thee barley bread:
But growing up to manhode
His hart is colder grown,
Aske in thy neede for barley bread
And he’ll give thee a stone.
The wife whom thou dost blesse
Alack, she is thy curse—
A bachelor’s an evil state,
But a married man’s is worse.
The lawyer at his deske
Good lawe will promise thee
Untill thy very last groat
Is given for his fee.
Thy baker, and thy brewer
Doe wronge thee night and morne;
And thy miller, he doth grinde thee
In grinding of thy corne.
Thy goldsmith and thy jeweller
Are leagu’d in knavish sorte,
And the elwande of thy tailor
It is an inche too shorte.
Thy cooke hath made thy dish
From the offals on the shelfe,
While fishe and fowle and savourie herbes
Are served to himselfe.
The valet thou dost trust,
Smooth-tongued and placid-faced,
Dothe weare thy brilliantes in his cappe
And thou wear’st his of paste.
Alack! thou canst not finde
Of high or lowe degree
In cott or courte or cabinett
A man of honestie.
There is not in the worlde,
Northe, southe, or easte, or weste,
Who would maintaine a righteous cause
Against his intereste.
Ah me! it grieves me sore,
And I sorrowe nighte and daie,
To see how man’s arch enemie
Doth leade his soule astraie.