how valuable am I! How fond of that Immortality, even of Infamy, that you have promised! I am ravish'd at the Thoughts of living a thousand Years hence in your indelible Lines, tho' to give Offence. He that burnt the Temple of Diana was Ambitious after much such a fort of Fame, as what your Worship seems to have in store for me! Nay, (juft tho' you are) you even strain a Point to oblige me, as to the Fate of my Atalantis, calling that prefent State Oblivion, which was Suppreffion. I doubt your Worship must be forced to make many as bold Attempts, elfe in my frail Woman's Life there will be little of Heroick Ills worth recording: Nor would I for the World (as your Worship seems to fear) by feign'd Names or none at all, put you to your Criticisms upon the Style of all your Contemporaries, though to give you an Opportunity to fhow your profound Judgment. No, Sir, I will not hazard losing my Title to fo promising a Favour. Draw what Lengths you please; I shall be proud of furnishing Matter towards your inexhaustible Tatler, and of being a perpetual Monument of Mr. Bickerstaff's Gallantry and Morality. As to the following Work (for which I humbly implore your Worship's All-fufficient Protection) I refer you to it felf and the Preface: But could I have found you in your Sheer-Lane, in which Attempt I have wander'd many Hours in vain, I should have fubmitted it, with that Humility due to fo Omnipotent a Cenfor. Receive then, Sir, with your ufual Goodnefs, with the fame intent with which it is directed, this Address of, SIR, Your moft Oblig'd Moft humble Servant, D. M. The letter from Steele is a true letter, and acknowledged a real service rendered. D. M. stands, of course, for De la Riviere Manley. The attack referred to is in Tatler No. 92. Sheer Lane (spelt also Shear Lane) was Shire Lane near Temple Bar-afterwards called Lower Serle's Place-in which stood a public-house called the 'Trumpet,' where the Tatler was said to meet his club. The lane has many other literary associations-with Sir Charles Sedley, Elias Ashmole, the Kit-Cat Club, Theodore Hook, and Dr Maginn. Walter Pope, born at Fawsley in Northamptonshire, was a half-brother of Bishop Wilkins. He entered Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1645, but graduated from Wadham College, Oxford, in which college he became dean. Having succeeded Sir Christopher Wren as professor of Astronomy in Gresham College, he died in London a very old man in 1714. Besides scientific papers, he wrote ironical Memoires of M. Du Vall and an ode on Claude Duval, translated Select Novels from Cervantes and Petrarch, wrote Moral and Political Fables, and was author of The Old Man's Wish,' sung a thousand times' by Benjamin Franklin in his youth, and done into Latin by Vincent Bourne. It is curiously irregular in rhythm, with many extra syllables. is repeated after each of the twenty verses. From 'The Old Man's Wish.' If I live to be old, for I find I go down, Let this be my fate. In a country town The chorus May I have a warm house, with a stone at my gate, And a cleanly young girl to rub my bald pate. May I govern my passions with an absolute sway, May my little house stand on the side of a hill With Horace and Petrarch, and two or three more With a courage undaunted may I face my last day, In the morning when sober, in the evening when mellow, 'He's gone and left not behind him his fellow.' . . . May I govern, &c. Thomas Wharton (1648–1715), first Marquis of Wharton, escaped from the Presbyterian and Puritan régime of his father, the third Baron Wharton, to become the greatest rake in England. Famous at Newmarket before he became a keen Whig partisan, he made himself highly obnoxious to the Duke of York, and finally boasted that by his ballad of Lillibulero (1688)—so the word is usually now spelt-set to music by Purcell, he had sung a king out of three kingdoms. He joined the Prince of Orange, but though made Privy Councillor and Master of the Household, did not realise his ambitions under William III. He was, without doubt, the astutest of the Whig managers. He was abhorred by Tories and Churchmen, and described by Lady Mary Wortley Montagu as the 'most profligate, impious, and shameless of men.' Swift reviled him as 'an atheist grafted on a dissenter;' Queen Anne disliked him, but in 1710 he was made Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, when he had Joseph Addison as his secretary. As a great Whig leader he naturally attained to a marquisate and other honours, which he enjoyed but for a few months. That very little ingenuity, the most rudimentary wit, and a plentiful lack of poetry sufficed to produce an epoch-making rhyme will be plain from a verse or two of his early and poor prophetic counterblast to 'The Wearing of the Green' (which oddly enough begins with a precisely similar question): Ho! broder Teague, dost hear de decree? Dat we shall have a new deputie? Lilli burlero, bullen a la. Lero lero, lilli burlero, lero lero, bullen a la, Ho! by Shaint Tyburn, it is de Talbote : Lilli, &c. And he will cut de Englishmen's troate. Dough by my shoul de English do praat But if dispence do come from de Pope, Now, now de hereticks all go down By Christ and Shaint Patrick the nation's our own. For Talbot 's de dog and Ja**s is de ass the ridiculous-looking refrain being repeated to satiety with each verse as with the first. Lilli burlero and bullen a la were understood to have been Irish watchwords in the rising against the English and Protestants in 1641. Samuel Johnson (1649-1703), Whig divine, was humbly born in Staffordshire or Warwickshire, was educated at St Paul's School and Trinity College, Cambridge, became chaplain to Lord William Russell, and was soon noted for his polemical tracts and sermons. In Julian the Apostate (1682) he gave an unflattering portrait of the Duke of York, and continued the controversy in Julian's Arts, which led to arrest, prosecution, and imprisonment. He continued to write pamphlets against popery and for the Revolution cause, was stripped of his robes and pilloried, received three hundred and seventeen lashes and was imprisoned again in 1686, and was said by Calamy, who called him 'that truly glorious person,' to have done more than any man in England besides towards paving the way for King William's revolution. He scornfully rejected the usual pretexts by which the Whigs salved their consciences, insisting that William's title was solely the free gift of the people. Soured by lack of gratitude on the part of the court (for he expected much), he wrote bitterly against Burnet and other favourites, but was ultimately pensioned. Dryden reviled him as Ben-Jochanan in Absalom and Achitophel, and Swift sneered at 'Julian Johnson.' Coleridge ranked him high amongst controversial writers. His works were published in a folio in 1710, and reprinted in 1713.-Another Samuel Johnson (1691-1773), a Manchester dancing-master and fiddler, produced in 1729 an absurd burlesque called Hurlothrumbo, followed by a series of poor comedies and comic operas. In the Julian pamphlet the Whig Samuel Johnson makes no secret of his design to institute a practical parallel between the Roman Emperor and the heirapparent to the British crown (as Strauss afterwards did with Frederick William IV. of Prussia), and to promote the policy of the exclusion bill by insisting on Christian ill-will to Julian. Of the Roman Catholics he says: 'No doubt they would bestow more good words on us if we would all be Passive Protestants; for then the fewer Active Papists would serve to despatch us;' and of passive obedience in Charles I.'s time says: And yet the arbitrary doctrine of those times did not bring any great terror along with it it was then but a rake, and serv'd only to scrape up a little paltry passive mony from the subject; but now it is become a murdering piece, loaden with no body knows how many bullets. And that the patrons of it may not complain that it is an exploded doctrine, as if men only hooted at it, but cou'd not answer it, I shall stay to speak a little more to it. From 'Julian the Apostate.' In reading many of the late addresses [against the exclusion of the Duke of York from succeeding to the crown], I cou'd not forbear thinking of those angels which Mahomet saw, whose horns were half fire and half snow: those contrarietys which they wore on the outside of their heads, methought, many of our addressers had got on the inside of theirs. For with a brave and warm zeal for the Protestant religion and a Protestant prince, they generously offer'd their lives and fortunes, and the last drop of blood, in defence of his Majesty and the religion now establish'd by law; and by and by the same lives and fortunes, and last drop of blood, are promis'd over again to a popish successor. What is this but clapping cold snow upon the head of all their Protestant zeal? For he that offers his service to both of these together, lifts himself under two the most adverse partys in the world, and is Guelph and Gibeline at once. What benefit a popish successor can reap from lives and fortunes spent in defence of the Protestant religion, he may put in his eye and what the Protestant religion gets by lives and fortunes spent in the service of a popish successor, will be over the left shoulder. But this contradictious zeal was nothing near so surprizing as that of our friends of Rippon, who beseech his Majesty, and are very sollicitous, lest he shou'd agree to a bill of exclusion (for plain English is as well understood on this side the Trent as on the other), and seem to be very much afraid of losing the great blessing of a popish successor. All the sober men that I have met with, who remain unsatisfy'd as to a bill of exclusion, do nevertheless acknowledg, that a popish successor will be a heavy judgment of God to this nation; to which we must patiently submit, as we do to all other calamitys. But did ever men pray for a judgment, and make it their humble request, that they might be sure of it? Do they not, on the other hand, when it begins to threaten them, heartily deprecate the evil, and are they not earnest with God to avert it? Nay, do they not moreover use all lawful human means to prevent it? There is no judgment represented in scripture to be so immediately the stroke of God as the plague. David, in his great strait, made choice of it under that notion, when he desir'd rather to fall into the hands of God than into the hands of men: and yet men do constantly make use of all lawful means to prevent it. For, besides their using Hippocrates's receipt of Citò, longè, tardè, and running away from it, they make no scruple of antidoting and fortifying themselves against it. They strive with an infected air; and with fires, and fumes of pitch and tar, &c., they endeavour to correct it." Nay, they 798502 A imprison men that are infected, and put them under a very close confinement, when they have committed no fault, nor done any thing to forfeit their liberty, only that they may thereby preserve others. This and many other things are done by law, till such time as it pleases God to countermand that heavy judgment. I was therefore perfectly pos'd with that address, and cou'd not tell what to make of it. The least I cou'd think of them was this, that if they were Protestants, they were men weary of their religion, who were so undone for a prince, a great part of whose religion it is to persecute and extirpate theirs. And considering with my self what precedents or examples they might have of this strange conduct, and being able to find none; instead thereof, I had an imperfect remembrance of the quite contrary carriage of the primitive Christians towards Julian. In which having thorowly satisfy'd my self, I was willing to give the world this short scheme of it. I can term it no otherwise for whoever pleases to look into those places which I have cited will find that I have not impoverish'd the subject, but have left, untouch'd, sufficient materials for whole volumes, to any one that shall be dispos'd to write them. From the Preface. How the Christians us'd Julian's Memory. To make amends for their dry eyes at Julian's funeral, the Christians spar'd neither pains nor cost to erect pillars and monuments to his memory. Gregory gives us the description of that stately one which he rear'd for him, speaking to Julian: This pillar we erect for you, which is higher and more conspicuous than Hercules's pillars. For they are fix'd in one place, and are only to be seen by those that come thither; but this being a movable one, cannot chuse but be known every where and by all men which I am sure will last to future ages, branding thee and thy actions, and warning all others not to attempt any such rebellion against God, lest doing the like things, they fare alike.' And I think he has made an example of him. For let any one read the inscription of this monument, and he will bless himself to see what titles of honour are bestow'd upon him. 'Thou persecutor next to Herod, thou traitor next to Judas (only thou hast not testify'd thy repentance by hanging thy self, as he did) and killer of Christ after Pilate; and next to the Jews, thou hater of God!' He calls him murderer, enemy, and avenger, &c. And all the ecclesiastical historians do the like. But I am weary of ripping up the reproachful and ignominious titles which the Christians tongues being unfetter'd, as Gregory's expression is, and the great facility of compounding Greek words, have lavishly bestow'd upon him. And after all, they lodg him in hell, and there they leave him. Says St. Chrysostom, 'Where is the emperor that threaten'd these things? He is lost and destroy'd, and now he is in hell, undergoing endless punishment.' What Protestants ever treated their worst persecutors at this rate? Who ever call'd Queen Mary mad bitch, as St. Jerom does Julian, mad dog? No, the courtesy of England has been shewn, even to that treacherous and bloody woman, who deserv'd as ill of the Christian religion as ever Julian did, which I hope to make very plain by and by. In the mean time it will be necessary to make some reflections upon this strange and unexpected behaviour of the primitive Christians. Chapter viii. John Asgill (1659–1738) was in his own time thought by many to be crazy, and is now seldom even named, yet Coleridge 'knew no genuine SaxonEnglish superior to Asgill's,' and 'thought his and Defoe's irony often finer than Swift's.' Born at Hanley Castle in Worcestershire, he qualified for the Bar at the Middle Temple. As executor and heir of Nicholas Barbon (believed to have been son of Praise God Barbon or Barebones), he bought life-interests in forfeited estates in Ireland, and so secured a succession of lawsuits and entanglements that led to his spending his last years within the rules of King's Bench. He wrote on banking and registration of titles, and sat in Parliament for Bramber in Sussex, but was expelled for the startling doctrines of his most famous book-an argument to prove that (on the fully developed forensic theory of Christ's having paid the penalty of death inflicted on man for Adam's sin) death is not inevitable for any Christian who claims his right to exemption, and desires to be 'translated' to heaven instead. It is doubtful how far he was sincere, how far he allowed his humorous propensities to carry him beyond his own convictions, to make simple people gape. He affected curiously short paragraphs of a single sentence or less. Southey quotes largely from him in The Doctor. The following is the whole of his pamphlet (1712) called An Essay for the Press. That there should be a restraint upon the press seems a matter of necessity: but the manner of it, a matter of debate. The use and intent of printing is (the same with that of preaching) for communicating our thoughts to others. And there is equal reason (in it self) for suppressing the one as the other. But this communication being the natural right of mankind (as sociable creatures, and all embarked in one common salvation), the suppressing of either of these is taking away the children's bread. And in this communication, printing is more diffusive than speaking. In the beginning of the gospel, for calling the Gentiles, the Spirit of God interpreted the first preaching of it to every auditor in his own language. And since that miraculous communication of it hath ceased, It pleased God in his own time to have dictated to Man the invention of printing, to supply the place of it. By which what is at first published in one language only, is made intelligible to all others by translations. And though several errors have and will be vented by the occasion of this invention, this is no more an argu ment against the invention itself, than the growing of tares among wheat is an argument against sowing of corn. Nor any more a reason for suppressing it by a law, than it would be for shutting up the church-doors because hypocrites crowd into the church with true worshippers. Whenever the sons of God came to present them. selves before the Lord, Satan would jostle in among them, and present himself before the Lord also. And yet we don't hear that they quitted their devotion upon it. And as Satan used our Saviour himself so : Have not I chosen you twelve, and one of you is a devil. So it will be to the end of the world. Wherefore to me, the clergy of the Church of England, in admitting their auditors to the sacraments without any personal examination, seem more orthodox with that standing rule, Let every man examine himself, than the ministers of those dissenting congregations, that first put each communicant to a test of experience; there being no such test necessary in the churches of God. Nor are they thereby secure of what they intend (to have none among them but true believers). A hypocrite will stand and sit, and kneel and pray, as the people of God. And I am apt to believe, that upon such a test, the Pharisee by giving himself so many distinguishing characters, might have had admission; and the poor publican, that had nothing to say for himself to God or man, but Lord have mercy upon me a sinner! might have been excluded. And as by the common rules of justice, 'tis better ten guilty escape than one innocent suffer: So in common charity among Christians, it is a less error to admit ten unworthy than to exclude one believing communicant. And by the like rules both of justice and charity to mankind, 'tis safer to suffer ten errors to be vented than one necessary truth concealed. For man is not bound to embrace the errors; but 'tis at his peril to come to the knowledg of the truth in matters of salvation. When Virgil (by reflection on his own works) finding some things imperfect, had devised them to the flames, the Roman emperor strained a point of law to preserve them from that sentence. 'Frangatur legum potius veneranda potestas.' Let laws themselves be cast into the urn.' All which is hinted as reasons against restraining the press, by subjecting it to a licence. And the project of a tax upon it seems impracti cable. As the press is now used, it is a paper-inquisition, by which any man may be arraigned, judged, and condemned (ay, and broad hints given for his execution too) without ever knowing his accusers. If this be objected to, as an imperfect remedy; for that, notwithstanding this, things may be clandestinely printed and dispersed : So they may under the restraint by licence. No prohibitions of human laws can totally extirpate the evils prohibited, but serve only to restrain the frequent commission of them. When men have once taught their beasts to refrain trespassing upon their neighbour's lands, Then may they expect to teach their fellow-creatures to cease from sin. In the meantime, they must content themselves with driving the offenders into corners (as they do their cattel into pounds). Patrick Walker, the Covenanting hagiographer, was born probably in Lanarkshire, some time about the middle of the seventeenth century. In 1682, as one of the wild Westland Whigs, he was concerned in the shooting of a dragoon near Lanark, and two years later was captured as a rebel and imprisoned in Edinburgh and Dunnottar Castle, suffering, according to his own story, the torture of the thumbscrew and the boot. He made his escape from Leith tolbooth in 1685, and was active in the rabbling of the curates at the Revolution. After the return of peaceful times he seems to have lived as a packman or pedlar, and, in the words of an unfriendly authority, 'when his means went from him, he became a vagrant person without a calling, and wandered through the country gathering old stories' about the Cameronian saints of the 'killing time.' Walker's own account is, that in the process of research he travelled upwards of a thousand miles in Scotland and Ireland in 1722 and 1723. The results appeared in the 'Remarkable Passages' of the Lives of Alexander Peden, John Semple, Richard Cameron, Daniel Cargill, and others, which were published mostly by the author himself at Bristo Port in Edinburgh, between 1724 and 1732. Walker was one of the irreconcilable zealots known as 'Society men,' who left their testimony in the Hind Let Loose; and his biographies, in their quaint and picturesque sincerity, give striking illustration of the ferocity, fanaticism, and childish superstition of that intractable remnant. They had a great chap-book vogue-the Life of the miraculous Peden in especial-among the Scottish peasantry of the eighteenth century, and supplied plentiful materials for such later writers as Howie of Lochgoin; while Sir Walter Scott turned them to good account in another fashion for Old Mortality and The Heart of Midlothian. In 1827 appeared a reprint, Biographia Presbyteriana; a scholarly new edition by Dr D. H. Fleming in 1901 fixed Walker's death in 1745. The first extract is from the life of Peden; the next is 'To the Reader.' Brown of Priesthill shot by Claverhouse. In the beginning of May 1685, he [Peden] came to the house of John Brown and Isabel Weir, whom he married before he went last to Ireland, where he stayed all night; and in the morning, when he took his farewel, he came out at the door, saying to himself, Poor woman, a fearful morning, twice over, a dark misty morning. The next morning between five and six hours, the said John Brown, having performed the worship of God in his family, was going with a spade in his hand, to make ready some peat-ground; the mist being very dark, knew not until bloody, cruel Claverhouse compassed him with three troops of horses, brought him to his house, and there examined him; who, tho' he was a man of a stammering speech, yet answered him distinctly and solidly; which made Claverhouse to examine these whom he had taken to be his guides thorow the muirs, if ever they heard him preach they answered, No, no, he was never a preacher. He said, If he has never preached, meikle has he prayed in his time. He said to John, Go to your prayers, for you shall immediately die. When he was praying, Claverhouse interrupted him three times. One time that he stopt him, he was pleading that the Lord would spare a remnant, and not make a full end in the day of his anger. Claverhouse said, I gave you time to pray, and ye 're begun to preach; he turned about upon his knees, and said, Sir, you know neither the nature of preaching nor praying, that calls this preaching; then continued without confusion. When ended, Claverhouse said, Take goodnight of your wife and children; his wife standing by, with her child in her arms, that she had brought forth to him, and another child of his first wife's, he came to her, and said, Now Isabel, the day is come, that I told you would come, when I spake first to you of marrying me; she said, Indeed, John, I can willingly part with you; then he said, That's all I desire, I have no more to do but die, I have been in case to meet with death for so many years. He kissed his wife and bairns, and wished purchased and promised blessings to be multiplied upon them, and his blessing. Claverhouse ordered six soldiers to shoot him; the most part of the bullets came upon his head, which scattered his brains upon the ground. Claverhouse said to his wife, What thinkest thou of thy husband now, woman? She said, I thought ever much good of him, and as much now as ever he said, It were but justice to lay thee beside him; she said, If ye were permitted, I doubt not but your cruelty would go that length; but how will you make answer for this morning's work? He said, To man I can be answerable; and for God, I will take him in my own hand. Claverhouse mounted his horse, and marched, and left her with the corps of her dead husband lying there; she set the bairn upon the ground, and gathered his brains, and tied up his head, and straighted his body, and covered him with her plaid, and sat down and wept over him; it being a very desert place, where never victual grew, and far from neighbours. It was some time before any friends came to her; the first that came was a very fit hand, that old singular Christian woman in the Cummerhead, named Jean Brown, three miles distant, who had been tried with the violent death of her husband at Pentland, afterwards of two worthy sons, Thomas Weir, who was killed at Drumclog, and David Steil, who was suddenly shot afterwards, when taken. The said Isabel Weir, sitting upon her husband's gravestone, told me that before that, she could see no blood but she was in danger to faint, and yet was helped to be a witness to all this, without either fainting or confusion, except when the shotts were let off, her eyes dazled. His corps were buried at the end of his house where he was slain, with this inscription on his grave stone: 'In earth's cold bed the dusty part here lies Of one who did the earth as dust despise. Here in that place from earth he took departure, Now he has got the garland of the martyr.' This murder was committed betwixt six and seven in the morning; Mr Peden was about ten or eleven miles distant, having been in the fields all night; he came to the house betwixt seven and eight, and desired to call in the family, that he might pray amongst them: He said, Lord, when wilt thou avenge Brown's blood? Oh, let Brown's blood be precious in thy sight, and hasten the day when thou 'lt avenge it, with Cameron's, Cargill's, and many others of our martyrs' names; and O for that day when the Lord would avenge all their bloods. When ended, John Muirhead enquired what he meant by Brown's blood; he said twice over, What do I mean? Claverhouse has been at the Preshill this morning, and has cruelly murdered John Brown; his corps are lying at the end of his house, and his poor wife sitting weeping by his corps, and not a soul to speak comfortably to her. This morning after the sun-rising, I saw a strange apparition in the firmament, the appearance of a very bright clear-shining star, fall from heaven to the earth; and indeed there is a clear-shining light fallen this day, the greatest Christian that ever I conversed with. Straighted in the form straughted is still the vernacular word in Scotland for laying out a dead body. Signs and Wonders. In the year 1686, especially in the months of June and July, many yet alive can witness, that about the Crosfoord-boat, two miles beneath Lanark, especially at the Mains, on the water of Clyde, many people gathered together for several afternoons, where there were showers of bonnets, hats, guns and swords, which covered the trees and ground, companies of men in arms marching in order, upon the water-side, companies meeting companies, going all through other, through other, and then all falling to the ground, and disappearing; and other companies immediately appear ing the same way. I went there three afternoons together, and, as I could observe, there were two of the people that were together saw, and a third that saw not; and tho' I could see nothing, yet there was such a fright and trembling upon these that did see, that was discernible to all from these that saw not. There was a gentleman standing next to me who spake as too many gentlemen and others speak, who said, A pack of damn'd witches and warlocks, that have the second sight, the devil-ha't do I see. And immediately there was a discernible change in his countenance, with as much fear and trembling as any woman I saw there, who cried out, O all ye that do not see, say nothing; for I perswade you it is matter of fact, and discernible to all that is not stone-blind: and these who did see, told what works the guns had, and their length and wideness, and what handles the swords had whether small or three-barred, or Highland-guards and the closing-knots of the bonnets, black or blue; and these who did see them there, where-ever they went abroad, saw a bonnet and a sword drop in the way. I have been at a loss ever since what to make of this last however a profane age may mock, disdain, and make sport of these extraordinary things, yet these are no new things, but some such things have been in former times. Warlocks, wizards; devil-ha't, deil hae't, the devil a thing. |