In peace he’ll mind his chops, sir.”
After an attempt at establishing a sparring school in London, Gregson left the metropolis for Dublin, where his peculiar merits were more likely to be appreciated. He opened the rooms once occupied by the “Royal Irish Academy,” as a “School for teaching the art of self-defence,” and is said to have been “well supported by the first class of amateurs in Dublin.” In April, 1819, Gregson was in London, and took a benefit at the theatre in Catherine Street, Strand, at which Donnelly, “the Irish champion,” showed, with an arm lamed by an accident. In August, 1819, Donnelly, George Cooper and Gregson, were on a sparring tour in Ireland, and later we find Bob figuring as the landlord of “the Punch House,” Moor Street, Dublin. In 1824, Gregson, whose health had been for some time failing, died at Liverpool, in the month of November, and lies buried in St. Nicholas’ churchyard.
END OF PERIOD III.
PERIOD IV—1805–1820.
FROM THE APPEARANCE OF TOM CRIBB TO THE CHAMPIONSHIP OF TOM SPRING.
CHAPTER I.
THOMAS CRIBB, CHAMPION OF ENGLAND.—1805–1820.
“Advance, brave Broughton!” exclaims Captain Godfrey, with manly enthusiasm; “thee I pronounce Captain of the Boxers!” Had the worthy and trueborn writer of “the Characters” lived in the nineteenth century, he would have bestowed this compliment on “honest and brave Old Tom.” Since first the honour of champion was a coveted and distinguished prize for men of bold heart and iron sinew, for men of forbearing coolness and pain-defying fortitude, down to these evil days of wrangle, chaffing, bullying, and shifting, a more straightforward, excellent, simple-hearted, generous, and brave man than Tom Cribb, never held the hard-won trophy.
There are curious parallels to be traced in pugilistic as well as public annals, which exemplify the sagacious remark of a philosophic writer, that history is always repeating itself. Thus renown awakens emulation in other hearts, and bold adventurers are ready to challenge imputed superiority. In such competitions with man, horse, or hound, in athletic exercises, in courage, endurance, and in cool self-reliance even against odds physical or numerical, England has no cause to blush for her sons. In the days of Fig, we have seen that a Venetian gondolier, a formidable fellow, vaunted as “the strongest man in Europe,” proposed to tear the champion’s wreath from—
“England, that never did nor never shall
Lie at the proud foot of a conqueror.”