MACKEY, THE LEARNED SHOEMAKER OF NORWICH, AND TWO OTHER LEARNED SHOEMAKERS.
In this connection we may mention a curious instance of learning in lowly life, mentioned in one of a series of interesting articles in the Leisure Hour, already alluded to. The writer says: “In that most entertaining miscellany Notes and Queries (No. 215) we find an interesting account of a very poor Norwich shoemaker named Mackey, whose mind appears to have been a marvellous receptacle of varied learning. He died in Doughty’s Hospital, in Norwich, an asylum for aged persons there. The writer of the paper found him surrounded by the tools of his former trade and a variety of astronomical instruments and apparatus, and he instantly was ready for conversation upon the mysteries of astronomical and mythological lore, the “Asiatic Researches of Captain Wilford,” and the mythological speculations of Jacob Bryant and Maurice, quoting Latin and Greek to his auditor. He was called “the learned shoemaker.” His learning was probably greatly undigested and ungeneralized, but it was none the less another singular instance of the pursuit of knowledge under difficulties, as is shown by his published works on mythological astronomy and on “The Age of Mental Emancipation.” To this notice of Mackey the writer in the Leisure Hour adds an amusing story, which is too good to be omitted, of a brother of the gentle craft (a cobbler) who, in order to eclipse a rival who lived opposite to him, put over his door on his stall the well-known motto, “Mens conscia recti” (a mind conscious of rectitude). But his adversary, determined not to be outdone, showed himself also a cobbler in classics as well as in shoes, by placing over his door the astonishingly comprehensive defiance, “Men’s and Women’s conscia recti.”
ANTHONY PURVER, THE SHOEMAKER WHO REVISED THE BIBLE.
Another curious instance of extensive reading and remarkable linguistic talent, somewhat similar to that of Dr. Partridge and the learned shoemaker of Norwich, is that of Anthony Purver. He was born at Up Hurstbourne in Hampshire in 1702. His parents were poor, and put their boy apprentice to the art and mystery of making and mending boots and shoes. When his “time was out,” he betook himself to the leisurely and healthy employment of keeping sheep, and began to study. His special line in after-life was decided by his meeting with a tract which pointed out some errors of translation in the authorized version of the Bible. This led him to resolve that he would read the Scriptures in the original Hebrew and Greek. Taking lessons from a Jew, Purver soon learned to read Hebrew. After this he took up Greek and Latin, until he could read with ease in either language. “On settling as a schoolmaster at Andover,“ we are told,[129] ”he undertook the extraordinary labor of translating the Bible into English, which work he actually accomplished, and it was printed at the expense of Dr. Fothergill in two vols. folio. This learned shoemaker, shepherd, and schoolmaster deeply felt the need of the great work which has been accomplished in our own day by the united scholarship of England and America. In his own way he completed the Herculean task single-handed; and if his translation was not of any general and practical utility, it none the less deserves mention as a monument of self-acquired learning and honorable industry. Purver died in 1777, at the age of seventy-five.
[POETS OF THE COBBLER’S STALL.]
In coming to speak of the poets of the cobbler’s stall, the task of selection is found to be by no means an easy one. It is hard enough to tell where to begin; it is harder still to know where to leave off. “This brooding fraternity” of shoemakers, it is said, “has produced more rhymers than any other of the handicrafts.”[130]
“Crispin’s sons