“To the Queen.—Madam: Of all the extraordinary things that have been tendered to your royal hands, since your first happy arrival in Britain, it may be boldly said, what now bespeaks your majesty’s acceptance is the chief. Not in itself indeed; it is a trifle unworthy your exalted rank, and what will hardly prove an entertaining amusement to one of your majesty’s deep penetration, exact judgment, and fine taste; but on account of the author, who is the first being of the kind, and yet without a name.
“He was once a man, and of some little name; but of no worth, as his present unparalleled case makes but too manifest: for, by the immediate hand of an avenging God, his very thinking substance has for more than seven years been continually wasting away, till it is wholly perished out of him, if it be not utterly come to nothing. None, no, not the least remembrance of its very ruins, remain; not the shadow of an idea is left, nor any sense, so much as one single one, perfect or imperfect, whole or diminished, ever did appear to a mind within him, or was perceived by it.
“Such a present, from such a thing, however worthless in itself, may not be wholly unacceptable to your majesty, the author being such as history cannot parallel; and if the fact, which is real, and no fiction, or wrong conceit, obtains credit, it must be recorded as the most memorable, and indeed, astonishing event, in the reign of George II. that a tract composed by such a thing, was presented to the illustrious Caroline;—his royal consort need not be added; fame, if I am not misinformed, will tell that with pleasure to all succeeding times. He has been informed, that your majesty’s piety is genuine and eminent, as your excellent qualities are great and conspicuous. This can, indeed, be truly known to the great searcher of hearts only. He alone, who can look into them, can discern if they are sincere, and the main intention corresponds with the appearance; and your majesty cannot take it amiss, if such an author hints, that his secret approbation is of infinitely greater value than the commendation of men, who may be easily mistaken, and are too apt to flatter their superiors. But, if he has been told the truth, such a case as his will certainly strike your majesty with astonishment; and may raise that commiseration in your royal breast, which he has in vain endeavoured to excite in those of his friends; who, by the most unreasonable and ill-founded conceit in the world, have imagined that a thinking being could not, for seven years together, live a stranger to its own powers, exercises, operations, and state; and to what the great God has been doing in it, and to it. If your majesty, in your most retired address to the King of kings, should think of so singular a case, you may perhaps make it your devout request, that the reign of your beloved sovereign and consort may be renowned to all posterity, by the recovery of a soul now in the utmost ruin, the restoration of one utterly lost at present amongst men; and should this case affect your royal breast, you will commend it to the piety and prayers of all the truly devout, who have the honour to be known to your majesty: many such doubtless there are; though courts are not usually the places where the devout resort, or where devotion reigns. And it is not improbable, that multitudes of the pious throughout the land may take a case to heart, that, under your majesty’s patronage, comes thus recommended.
“Could such a favour as this restoration be obtained from heaven, by the prayers of your majesty, with what transport of gratitude would the recovered being throw himself at your majesty’s feet, and, adoring the divine power and grace, profess himself.
I am, &c.
Simon Browne.”
The next curious character we shall exhibit is Edward Wortley Montague.
He was son of the celebrated Lady Mary Wortley Montague. He passed through such various scenes, that he is well entitled to a place in this collection of curiosities. From Westminster school, where he was placed for education, he ran away thrice. He exchanged clothes with a chimney-sweeper, and followed for some time that sooty occupation. He next joined a fisherman, and cried flounders in Rotherhithe. He then sailed as a cabin-boy for Spain; where he had no sooner arrived, than he ran away from the vessel, and hired himself to a driver of mules. After thus vagabondizing it for some time, he was discovered by the consul, who returned him to his friends in England. They received him with joy, and a private tutor was employed to recover those rudiments of learning which a life of dissipation, blackguardism, and vulgarity, might have obliterated. Wortley was sent to the West Indies, where he remained some time; then returned to England, acted according to the dignity of his birth, was chosen a member, and served in two successive parliaments. His expenses exceeding his income, he became involved in debt, quitted his native country, and commenced that wandering traveller he continued to the time of his death. Having visited most of the eastern countries, he contracted a partiality for their manners. He drank little wine, but a great deal of coffee; wore a long beard; smoked much; and even whilst at Venice, was habited in the eastern style. He sat cross-legged in the Turkish fashion, from choice. With the Hebrew, the Arabic, the Chaldaic, and the Persian languages, he was as well acquainted as with his native tongue. He published several pieces: one on the Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire; another on the Causes of Earthquakes. He had seraglios of wives; but the lady whom he married in England was a washerwoman, with whom he did not cohabit. When she died without leaving issue to him, being unwilling that his estate should go to the Bute family, he set out for England, to marry a young woman already pregnant, whom a friend had provided for him; but he died on his journey.
The next character that comes before us is Blaise Pascal. He was one of the sublimest geniuses the world ever produced; was born at Clermont, in Auvergne, in 1623. He never had any preceptor but his father. So great a turn had he for the mathematics, that he learned, or rather invented, geometry, when but twelve years old; for his father was unwilling to initiate him in that science early, for fear of its diverting him from the study of the languages. At sixteen, he composed a curious mathematical piece. About nineteen, he invented his machine of arithmetic, which has been much admired by the learned. He afterwards employed himself assiduously in making experiments according to the new philosophy, and particularly improved upon those of Toricellius. At the age of twenty-four his mind took a different turn; for, all at once, he became as great a devotee as any age has ever produced, and gave himself up entirely to prayer and mortification.
The next is a character famous for longevity.—Thomas, or Old Parr, a remarkable Englishman, who lived in the reign of ten kings and queens. He was the son of John Parr, a husbandman, of Winnington, in the parish of Alderbury, Salop. Following the profession of his father, he laboured hard, and lived on coarse fare. Being taken up to London by the Earl of Arundel, the journey proved fatal to him. Owing to the alteration of his diet, to the change of the air and his general mode of life, he lived but a very short time; though one Robert Samber says, in his work entitled Long Livers, that Parr lived 16 years after his presentation to Charles II. He was buried in Westminster Abbey. After his death his body was opened, and an account was drawn up by the celebrated Dr. Harvey, of which the following is an extract: “He had a large breast, not fungous, but sticking to his ribs, and distended with blood; a lividness in his face, as he had a difficulty of breathing a little before his death; and a long lasting warmth in his arm-pits and breast after it; which sign, together with others, were so evident in his body as they use to be on those who die by suffocation. His heart was great, thick, fibrous, and fat; the blood in the heart, blackish and diluted; the cartilages of the sternum not more bony than in others, but flexile and soft. His viscera were sound and strong, especially the stomach; and he used to eat often, by night and day, though contented with old cheese, milk, coarse bread, small beer, and whey; and, which is more remarkable, he ate at midnight a little before he died. His kidneys were covered with fat, and pretty sound; only on the interior surface were found some aqueous or serous abscesses, whereof one was near the bigness of a hen’s egg, with a yellowish water in it, having made a roundish cavity, impressed on that kidney; whence some thought it came, that, a little before his death, a suppression of urine had befallen him; though others were of opinion, that his urine was suppressed upon the regurgitation of all the serosity into his lungs. There was not the least appearance of any stony matter, either in the kidneys or bladder. His bowels were also sound, a little whitish without. His spleen very little, hardly equal to the bigness of one kidney. In short, all his inward parts appeared so healthy, that if he had not changed his diet and air, he might, perhaps, have lived a good while longer. The cause of his death was imputed chiefly to the change of food and air; forasmuch as coming out of a clear, thin, and free air, he came into the thick air of London; and, after a constant, plain, and homely country diet, he was taken into a splendid family, where he fed high, and drank plentifully of the best wines, whereupon the natural functions of the parts of his body were overcharged, his lungs obstructed, and the habit of the whole body quite disordered; upon which there could not but ensue a dissolution. His brain was sound, entire, and firm; and though he had not the use of his eyes, nor much of his memory, several years before he died, yet he had his hearing and apprehension very well; and was able, even to the 130th year of his age, to do any husbandman’s work, even threshing of corn.”—The following summary of his life is from Oldy’s MS. Notes on Fuller’s Worthies: