I might also relate how he once carried skull caps made of printing balls stuffed with wool to his brother printers, who were to exhibit their faces in that wooden frame called the pillory; in which frame nevertheless he seems to think they were properly set; and the mob were of the same opinion, for these skull caps proved but weak helmets against the missiles wherewith they were assailed. Moreover further to exemplify the perils which in those days environed the men who meddled with printer's types, I might proceed to say how, after a strange dream, poor Gent was in the dead of the night alarmed by a strange thundering noise at the door, and his door broken open, and himself seized in his bed by two king's messengers upon a false information that he had been engaged in printing some lines concerning the imprisoned Bishop of Rochester, which had given offence; and how he was carried to a public house near St. Sepulchre's Church, whither his two employers Mr. Midwinter and Mr. Clifton were also brought prisoners, and how they were taken to Westminster and there imprisoned in a very fine house in Manchester Court which had nevertheless within the fusty smell of a prison; and how from the high window of his humble back apartment he could behold the Thames, and hear the dashing of the flowing waters against the walls that kept it within due bounds: and how in the next room to him was confined that unhappy young Irish clergyman Mr. Neynoe, (not Naypoe as the name in these memoirs is erroneously given.) “I used,” says Gent, “to hear him talk to himself when his raving fits came on; and now and then would he sing psalms with such a melodious voice as produced both admiration and pity from me, who was an object of commiseration myself, in being awhile debarred from friends to see me, or the use of pen, ink, and paper to write to them.” And how after five days he was honourably discharged, and took boat from Palace Yard stairs, in which he says “my head seemed to be affected with a strange giddiness; and when I safely arrived at home, some of my kinder neighbours appeared very joyful at my return. And my poor linnet, whose death I very much feared would come to pass, saluted me with her long, pleasant, chirping notes; and indeed the poor creature had occasion to be the most joyful, for her necessary stock was almost exhausted, and I was come just in the critical time to yield her a fresh supply.” It was some compensation for his fright on this occasion that he printed the Bishop of Rochester's Effigy “with some inoffensive verses that pleased all parties,” which sold very well; and that he formed some observations upon the few dying words of Counsellor Layer, in nature of a large speech, which for about three days had such a run of sale that the unruly hawkers were ready to pull his press in pieces for the goods.
Farther I might say of Gent that in January 1739 when the Ouse at York was frozen, he set up a press on the ice, and printed names there, to the great satisfaction of young gentlemen, ladies, and others, who were very liberal on the occasion. And how having been unjustly as he thought ejected from a house in Stonegate which was held under a prebendal lease and which fell to Mr. Laurence Sterne, (to whom however it was in vain to apply for redress, it not being in his power to relieve him,) he bought a house in Petergate and built a tower upon it; “by which addition,” said he “my house seems the highest in the city and affords an agreeable prospect round the country: we have a wholesome air whenever we please to ascend, especially the mornings and evenings, with great conveniency for my business when overcrowded in the narrow rooms below; and several gentlemen have occasionally taken a serious pipe there, to talk of affairs in printing, as well as neighbours to satisfy their curiosity in viewing the flowers that grow almost round about upon the walls.”
This, and much more than this, might be said of Thomas Gent, and would have been deemed not uninteresting by the collectors of English topography, and typographic curiosities, Gent being well known to them for his “famous history of the City of York, its magnificent Cathedral, St. Mary's Abbey, &c.;” his “History of the Loyal Town of Ripon, Fountains Abbey, Beverley, Wakefield, &c.;” and his “History of the Royal and Beautiful Town of Kingston-upon-Hull.” He entered upon a different province when he wrote his Treatise, entitled “Divine Justice and Mercy displayed in the Life of Judas Iscariot.” But though it was because of his turn for books and antiquities that the Doctor employed him to hunt the stalls at York, as Browne Willis did to collect for him epitaphs and tradesmen's halfpence, what I had to say of him arises out of his connection with Richard Guy, and must therefore be confined to his dilatory courtship and late marriage.
CHAPTER CXV.
THE READER IS REMINDED OF PRINCE ABINO JASSIMA AND THE FOX-LADY. GENT NOT LIKE JOB, NOR MRS. GENT LIKE JOB'S WIFE.
A me parrebbe a la storia far torto,
S' io non aggiungo qualche codicillo;
Acciò che ognun chi legge, benedica
L' ultimo effetto de la mia fatica.
PULCI.
I cannot think so meanly of my gentle readers as to suppose that any of them can have forgotten the story of the Japanese Prince Abino Jassima, and the gradual but lamentable metamorphosis of his beautiful wife. But perhaps it may not have occurred to them that many a poor man, and without any thing miraculous in the case, finds himself in the same predicament,—except that when he discovers his wife to be a vixen he is not so easily rid of her.