A SKETCH IN SPA FIELDS.
To the Editor.
Sir,—Allow me to draw your attention to a veteran, who in the Egyptian expedition lost his sight by the ophthalmy, and now asks alms of the passenger in the little avenue leading from Sadler’s Wells to Spa Fields, along the eastern side of the New River Head.
His figure, sir, would serve for a model of Belisarius, and even his manner of soliciting would be no disgrace to the Roman general. I am not expert at drawing portraits, yet will endeavour by two or three lines to give a slight conception of this. His present height is full six feet, but in his youth it must have been nearly two inches more; as the weight of about sixty-five years has occasioned a slight curvature of the spine. His limbs are large and muscular, his shoulders broad, his chest capacious, the lines of his countenance indicate intelligence; his motion is not graceful, for he appears to step without confidence, occasioned no doubt by his blindness.
Now, sir, give his head no other covering than a few very short grey hairs, and button him up close in the remains of a dragoon dress, and you have his likeness as exact as an unskilful artist can give it.
O.
N.B.—An old woman must lead him.
Extracts
FROM MY NOTE BOOK.
For the Table Book.
Moore, in his life of Sheridan, says, that “he (Sheridan) had a sort of hereditary fancy for difficult trifling in poetry; particularly to that sort which consists in rhyming to the same word through a long string of couplets, till every rhyme that the language supplies for it is exhausted:” and quotes some dozen lines, entitled “My Trunk,” and addressed “To Anne,” wherein a lady is made to bewail the loss of her trunk, and rhymes her lamentation. The editor, in a note, says, “Some verses by general Fitzpatrick on lord Holland’s father, are the best specimen I know of this scherzo.” The general’s lines I have never seen, and it is probable they are only in MS.; but le Seigneur des Accords, in his Bizarrures, (ed. 1585, Paris, Richer, feuillet 27,) quotes sixty lines, rhyming on a very indecent word from “un certain hure contre les femmes,” composed by Drusac, “un Tolosain rimailleur imitant Marot;” and who is there stated to have composed 300 or 400 verses on the same subject, and to the same rhyme. And at feuillet 162 of the same work and edition, the Seigneur adduces two other remarkable instances of “difficult trifling in poetry.” Speaking of one of which, he says, “Vn Allemant nommé Petrus Porcius Porta, autrement Petrus Placentius, a fait un petit poëme laborieux le possible auquel il descrit Pugnam Porcorum en 350 vers ou environ, qui commencent tous par P, dont j’ai rapporté ces XVI suivas pour exemple, et pour contenter ceux qui ne l’ont pas veu.” The quotation referred to commences with
“Præcelsis Proauis Pulchrè Prognate Patrone,”
and concludes with
“Pingui Porcorū Pingendo Poemate Pugnam.”
The other instances adduced by the Seigneur of this laborious folly, is related also of a German, by name Christianus Pierius; who, says the author, “depuis peu de temps a fait un opuscule d’environ mille ou douze cēs vers, intitulé Christus Crucifixus, tous les mots duquel commencent par C.” Four lines are quoted; they are as follows:—
Currite Castalides Christi Comitante Camœnæ
Concelabrature Cūctorum Carmine Certum
Confugium Collapsorum Concurrite Cantus
Concinnaturæ Celebres Celebresque Cothurnos.
I myself recollect seeing and copying at Notting Hill some lines written (I think) on the battle of Waterloo, (the copy of which I have however lost;) which, although short, were sufficiently curious. They were in an album belonging to the sister of a schoolfellow, (W. O. S.,) and, as far as I have ever seen, were unique in their species of the paronœmic genus. The first line began with “A,” and each subsequent one with a successive letter of the alphabet, and each word alliterated to the initial letter of the line where it was placed. The poem went through the whole of the alphabet, not even excepting X or Z, and must have required a world of Patience and Perseverance to Perfect.
Marot, christened Clement, the French poet, who is said, in a quotation from le Seigneur des Accords in the foregoing note, to have been imitated by Drusac, lived in the reign of Francis I., and was a Protestant. There is a portrait of him at page 161 of “Les Vrais Portraits des Hommes Illustres” of Théodore de Bèze, Geneva, 1581, whereto a short sketch of his life is attached; which says, that “par une admirable félicité d’esprit, sans aucune cognoissance des langues ni des sciences, il surpassa tous les poëtes qui l’auoient dévancé.” He was twice banished on account of his religion; and when in exile translated one-third of the Psalms into French verse. “Mais au reste,” says Théodore, “ayant passé presque toute sa vie à la suite de cour, (où la piété et l’honēsteté n’ōt guères d’audiance,) il ne se soucia pas beaucoup de réformer sa vie peu Chrétienne, ains se gouuernoit à sa manière accoutumée mesmes en sa vieillesse, et mourut en l’âge de 60 ans à Turin, où il s’estoit retiré sous la faueur du Lieutenant du Roi.” He was a Quercinois, having been born at Cahors, in Quercy.
The following lines were written after his death by Jodelle, who was famed for these “vers rapportez.”
Quercy, la Cour, le Piedmont, l’Univers
Me fit, me tint, m’enterra, me cogneut,
Quercy mon los, la cour tout mon temps eut.
Piedmont mes os, et l’univers mes vers.
Guildhall.—Misson, in his “Mémoires et Observations faites par un Voyageur en Angleterre,” published anonymously at the Hague in 1698, under this head, accounts thus philologically for the name:—“Il est à croire que la grande salle étoit autrefois dorée, puisque le mot de Guild ou Gild-hall, signifie SALLE DOREE.” To do him justice, however, after quoting so ridiculous a passage, I must annex his note, as follows:—“D’autres disent que Guild est un ancien mot qui signifie incorporé: Guildhall; la salle des incorporez ou associez.”—p. 236.
Juliet was no doubt a delectable little creature, but, like most of the genus, she was but a flimsy metaphysician. “What’s in a name?” that depends now-a-days on the length or age of it. The question should be put to a Buckinghamshire meeting man, if one would desire to know the qualities of all the component parts of an Abraham or Absalom. In some parts of the country, people seem to think they have bilked the devil, and booked sure places in heaven for their children, if, at their christening, they get but a scripture name tacked to the urchins. “In proof whereof,” Esther, Aaron, and Shadrack Puddyfat, with master Moses Myrmidon, formed a blackberrying party that I fell in with a summer back near Botley, on the road between Chesham and Hemel Hempstead. At a farm-house in Bucks it is no uncommon sight for the twelve apostles to be seen tucking in greens and bacon, or for the tribes of Israel to be found drunk together in a pot-house. Some poor drunken-brained bigots would not accept even the free services of a ploughman, whose name was not known before the flood.
Note.—The names above seem so very ludicrous, that I have no doubt there will be many sceptics to the belief of their reality if this passage be printed; but I declare positively, on the word, honour, and faith of a man and a gentleman, that they are as true, real, and existent, as Thomas Tomkins, or any other the most usual and common place.
J. J. K.