An “antiquary” is usually alarming. Those who are not acquainted with him personally, imagine that he is necessarily dull, tasteless, and passionless. Yet this conception might be dissipated by reference to the memoirs of the eminent departed, or by courting the society of the distinguished living. A citation in the notice of Grose[77] tells us that
“society droops for the loss of his jest:”
that antiquary’s facetiousness enlivened the dullest company, and with the convivial he was the most jovial. Pennant’s numerous works bear internal evidence of his pleasant mindedness. Jacob Bryant, “famous for his extensive learning, erudition,” and profound investigations concerning “Heathen Mythology,” and the situation and siege of “Troy,” was one of the mildest and most amiable beings: his society was coveted by youth and age, until the termination of his life, in his eighty-ninth year. Among the illustrious lovers of classic or black letter lore, were the witty and humorous George Steevens, the editor of Shakspeare; Dr. Richard Farmer, the learned author of the masterly “Essay on the Genius and Learning of Shakspeare,” is renowned by the few who remember him for the ease and variety of his conversation; Samuel Paterson, the celebrated bibliopolist, was full of anecdote and drollery; and the placid and intelligent Isaac Reed, the discriminating editor of “the immortal bard of Avon,” graced every circle wherein he moved. It might seem to assume an intimacy which the editor of this work does not pretend to, were he to mention instances of social excellence among the prying investigators of antiquity yet alive: one, however, he cannot forbear to name—the venerable octogenarian John Nichols, esq. F.S.A. of whom he only knows, in common with all who have read or heard of him, as an example of cheerfulness and amenity during a life of unwearied perseverance in antiquarian researches, and the formation of multiform collections, which have added more to general information, and created a greater number of inquirers on such subjects, than the united labours of his early contemporaries.
Still it is not to be denied, that seclusion, wholly employed on the foundations of the dead, and the manners of other times, has a tendency to unfit such devotees for easy converse, when they seek to recreate by adventuring into the world. Early-acquired and long-continued severity of study, whether of the learned languages, or antiquities, or science, or nature, if it exclude other intimacies, is unfavourable to personal appearance and estimation. The mere scholar, the mere mathematician, and the mere antiquary, easily obtain reputations for eccentricity; but there are numerous individuals of profound abstraction, and erudite inquiry, who cultivate the understanding, or the imagination, or the heart, who are, in manner, so little different from others, that they are scarcely suspected by the unknown and the self-sufficient of being better or wiser than themselves. Hence, “in company,” the individual whom all the world agrees to look on as “The Great Unknown,” may be scarcely thought of, as “The Antiquary”—the “President of the Royal Society” pass for “quite a lady’s man”—and Elia be only regarded as “a gentleman that loves a joke!”
NATURE AND ART.
“Buy my images!”
“Art improves nature,” is an old proverb which our forefathers adopted without reflection, and obstinately adhered to as lovers of consistency. The capacity and meshes of their brain were too small to hold many great truths, but they caught a great number of little errors, and this was one. They bequeathed it to “their children and their children’s children,” who inherited it till they threw away the wisdom of their ancestors with their wigs; left off hair powder; and are now leaving off the sitting in hot club rooms, for the sake of sleep, and exercise in the fresh air. There seems to be a general insurrection against the unnatural improvement of nature. We let ourselves and our trees grow out of artificial forms, and no longer sit in artificial arbours, with entrances like that of the cavern at Blackheath hill, or, as we may even still see them, if we pay a last visit to the dying beds of a few old tea-gardens. We know more than those who lived before us, and if we are not happier, we are on the way to be so. Wisdom is happiness: but “he that increaseth knowledge, increaseth sorrow.” Knowledge is not wisdom; it is only the rough material of wisdom. It must be shaped by reflection and judgment, before it can be constructed into an edifice fitting for the mind to dwell in, and take up its rest. This, as our old discoursers used to say, “brings us to our subject.”
“Buy my images!” or, “Pye m’imaitches,” was, and is, a “London cry,” by Italian lads carrying boards on their heads, with plaster figures for sale. “In my time,” one of these “images” (it usually occupied a corner of the board) was a “Polly”—
A Parrot.
