——————— a twig,
Or two, to stick about his wig.
As a specimen of the materials whereon he relies for a laurel crown, the following lines are drawn out from his “snarl” of versifyings:—
As few began the world, so I multiplied.
Plain, at twenty-one, I did begin
Which in my manuscript was seen.
Tho’ I did not know the use of grammar,
I was well supported by my hammer.
I sticked to my King, leather, and tools;
And, for order, wrote a set of shop rules.
Working with the hands only is but part,
The head’s the essential to make the work smart.
After this poetical effusion the captain rises to “the height of his great argument,” his undying doings. “Now,” says the captain, “now for my sixty home achievements during the late war for my king and country.” Alas! the captain seems to have disdained the “use of numbers,” except when inspired by the muses, or the “sweet voices” of the people of Exeter, when they honoured him with a “Skimmington,” which he passes over with a modesty equal to that of the Roman general who never mentioned his great ovation. The captain’s “sixty achievements” are doubtless in his pamphlet; but they in “wrong order go,” and are past the arithmetician’s art to enumerate. The chief of them must be gathered from his own account. Foremost stands “the labour I took in pleasing and accommodating my customers;” and almost next, “the many hours I have knocked my head, as it were, against Samuel Johnson, to find words for handbills and advertisements all at my own expense, to avoid inflammatory pamphlets. I gloried in the name of ‘John Bull,’ and shall to my life’s end. I went into the pot-houses at Exeter, and treated with mugs round, and gave loyal toasts and sentiments. I became a volunteer in the infantry, before the cavalry were equipped by my brother tradesmen, that they should not say my loyalty was for trade. After this, I joined the second troop of the first Devon Royal Cavalry. One of my advertisements in the difficult times, at a guinea each, in the Exeter, Sherborne, and Sun, which was then the ministerial paper, was reprinted for its loyalty and novelty in Philadelphia, and in two miscellaneous volumes of Literary Leisure, by Solomon Sumpter, Esq.; and from the attention I paid to the nobility, gentry, dragoon and militia officers, &c. when they tarried at Exeter or its neighbourhood, it was a pleasure and an honour mixed with fatigue. Besides my own business, I procured for them, gratis, manors, estates, houses, lodgings, carriages, horses, servants, fish, fowl, hunting, shooting, and trout fishing. I may say John Cooke, the saddler of Exeter, is known from England to the Indies; on the Continent, Ireland, in Scotland, by the lord chief baron Dundas, from Berwick-upon-Tweed to Penzance. I had two direction-posts at my door during the war, that no one had in the kingdom beside; one to the various places and distances, from Exeter to London 170 miles, &c. &c.; the other a large sheet of paper written as a daily monitor gratis, a bulletin of news, to cheer people in the worst of times, to guide them in the constitutional road. I even made myself a direction-post, and wore a conspicuous breastplate painted with this motto, ‘Fear God, honour the king, and revere his ministers;’ which made not only the auditory, but the judges, sheriff, and counsel stare at me. I went from Exeter to London, to the funeral of lord Nelson, the late hero of the Nile, in 1805.” The truth of the latter of the captain’s achievements “nobody can deny.” He did go to the funeral, and sat on a wall in solemn silence, fast asleep, while it passed, and then returned to Exeter, great as the great Bourbon, who
———————— with forty thousand men,
Went up the hill, and then came down again.
From hence the captain diverges to other of his achievements. “I used to rise, before we had firemen, at the dead of night or morning with my apprentices at any alarm of fire, desiring all women, children, and lookers on, if they did not help they were of harm, being in the way. I put in my bulletins, you are to take the left of all you meet in riding, and the right in walking. I was the means of the watering cart to lay the dust of the streets in summer. I have subscribed to all the institutions at Exeter, and at rejoicings of news I was not behindhand. When I saw the allied sovereigns in London, I compared colonel Hain of the North Devon, if he wore mustachios, to marshal Blucher, who came forward to his window at signals; Mr. Chubb, of St. Thomas, Exeter, and Mr. Gribble, attornies, of Newton Bushel, to the emperor Alexander in face; the king of Prussia and his sons like healthy English country esquires in their best clothes. I saw the duke of Wellington, who looked thinner than his picture. I saw Buonaparte at Torbay, exact like his picture; a huge stiff broad back, strong neck, big calf to his legs, he looked about fifty, and about five feet eight, resembling a country master builder, a sturdy one, full of thought as about a building.—I end this pamphlet. Four words: thought is the quickest; time the wisest; the laws of necessity the strongest; truth the most durable.
“This from a Devonshire Jog-trot, who has done enough to be termed a public character in his way; a John Bull tradesman.
“John Cooke.”
“Waterloo Cottage,
18th Feb. 1819.”
So end the achievements of the chief of the javelin-men of Exeter, written by himself, concerning whom, give me leave, Mr. Editor, to inquire, if there be any thing more to be told than is set down in his book. I think that captain Cooke’s “Skimmington” took place after he favoured the public with appearing in print; and I remember to have heard that the procession was highly ludicrous, and honoured by every shop in the High-street of Exeter being closed, and every window above being filled. I may venture to affirm in behalf of your readers, that an account of it would be highly amusing; and if it be agreeable to your inclination, as I think it may, that such a narrative of the recent celebration of a very ancient custom should be permanently recorded, do me the favour to let me express an earnest hope that some of your Exeter readers will enable you to give particulars in the Table Book.