From The Doctor.
GUESS, reader, where I once saw a full-sized figure of Fame, erect, tiptoe, in the act of springing to take flight, and soar aloft, her neck extended, her head raised, the trumpet at her lips, and her cheeks inflated, as if about to send forth a blast which the whole city of London was to hear? Perhaps thou mayst have seen this very figure thyself, and surely if thou hast, thou wilt not have forgotten it. It was in the Borough Road, placed above a shopboard which announced that Mr. Somebody fitted up water-closets upon a new and improved principle.
But it would be well for mankind if Fame were never employed in trumpeting anything worse. There is a certain stage of depravity in which men derive an unnatural satisfaction from the notoriety of their wickedness, and seek for celebrity ob magnitudinem infamiæ, cujus apud prodigos novissima voluptas est. Ils veulent faire parler deux, says Bayle, et leur vanité ne serait pas satisfaite sil ny avait quelque chose de superlatif et déminent dans leur mauvaìse reputation. Le plus haut degré de linfamie est le but de leurs souhaits, et il y a des choses quils ne feraient pas si elles nétaient extraordinairement odieuses.
Plutarch has preserved the name of Chrephanes, who was notorious among the Ancients for having painted such subjects as Giulio Romano has the everlasting infamy of having designed for the flagitious Aretine. He has also transmitted to posterity the name of Parmeno, famous for grunting like a pig; and of Theodorus, not less famous for the more difficult accomplishment of mimicking the sound of a creaking cart-wheel. Who would wish to have his name preserved for his beggarliness, like Pauson, the painter, and Codrus, the poet? or for his rascality and wickedness, like Phrynondas? or like Callianax, the physician, for callous brutality? Our doctor used to instance these examples when he talked of the bubble reputation, which is sometimes to be had so cheaply, and yet for which so dear a price has often been paid in vain. It amused him to think by what odd or pitiful accidents that bubble might be raised. Whether the regular practitioner may sneer at Mr. Ching, says the historian of Cornwall, I knew not; but the Patent Worm Lozenges have gained our Launceton apothecary a large fortune, and secured to him perpetual fame.
Would not John Dorys name have died with him, and so been long ago dead as a doornail, if a grotesque likeness to him had not been discovered in the fish, which, being called after him, has immortalized him and his ugliness? But if John Dory could have anticipated this sort of immortality when he saw his own face in the glass, he might very well have blushed to find it fame. There would have been no other memorial of Richard Jacquett at this day than the letters of his name in an old dead and obsolete hand, now well-nigh rendered illegible by time, if he had not, in the reign of Edward VI., been lord of the manor of Tyburn, with its appurtenances, wherein the gallows was included, wherefore, from the said Jacquett, it is presumed by antiquaries that the hangman hath been ever since corruptly called Jack Ketch. A certain William Dowsing, who, during the great Rebellion, was one of the parliamentary visitors for demolishing superstitious pictures and ornaments of churches, is supposed by a learned critic to have given rise to an expression in common use among schoolboys and blackguards. For this worshipful commissioner broke so many mighty great angels in glass, knocked so many apostles and cherubims to pieces, demolished so many pictures and stone crosses, and boasted with so much puritanical rancor of what he had done, that it is conjectured the threat of giving any one a dowsing preserves his rascally name. So, too, while Bracton and Fleta rest on the shelves of some public library, Nokes and Stiles are living names in the courts of law; and for John Doe and Richard Roe, were there ever two litigious fellows so universally known as these eternal antagonists?
Johnson tells a story of a man who was standing in an inn kitchen with his back to the fire, and thus accosted a traveler, who stood next to him, Do you know, sir, who I am? No, sir, replied the traveler, I have not that advantage. Sir, said the man, I am the great Twalmley, who invented the new flood-gate iron. Who but for Johnson would have heard of the great Twalmley now? Reader, I will answer the question which thou hast already asked, and tell thee that his invention consisted in applying a sliding door, like a flood gate, to an ironing box, flat irons having till then been used, or box irons with a door and a bolt.
Who was Tom Long the carrier? when did he flourish? what road did he travel? did he drive carts or wagons, or was it in the age of pack horses? Who was Jack Robinson? not the once well-known Robinson of the treasury (for his celebrity is now like a tale that is told), but the one whose name is in everybodys mouth, because it is so easily and so soon said. Who was Magg? and what was his diversion? was it brutal, or merely boorish? the boisterous exuberance of rude and unruly mirth, or the gratification of a tyrannical temper and a cruel disposition? Who was Crop the conjuror, famous in trivial speech as Merlin in romantic lore, or Doctor Faustus in the school of German extravagance? What is remembered now of Bully Dawson? All I have read of him is that he lived three weeks on the credit of a brass shilling, because nobody would take it of him. There goes a story of Queen Elizabeth, says Ray, that being presented with a collection of English proverbs, and told by the author that it contained them all, Nay, replied she, Bate me an ace, quoth Bolton! which proverb being instantly looked for, happened to be wanting in his collection. Who this Bolton was, Ray says, I know not, neither is it worth inquiring. Nevertheless, I ask who was Bolton; and when echo answers, who? say in my heart, Vanitas vanitatum, omnia vanitas. And having said this, conscience smites me with the recollection of what Pascal has said, Ceux qui écrivent contre la gloire, veulent avoir la gloire davoir bien écrit; et ceux qui le lisent, voulent avoir la gloire de lavoir lu; et moi qui écris ceci, jai peut-être cette envie, et peut-être que ceux qui le lirent laurent aussi.
Who was old Ross of Potern, who lived till all the world was weary of him? All the world has forgotten him now. Who was Jack Raker, once so well known that he was named proverbially as a scapegrace by Skelton, and in the Ralph Roister Doister of Nicholas Udall, that Udall who, on poor Tom Tussers account, ought always to be called the bloody schoolmaster? Who was William Dickins, whose wooden dishes were sold so badly, that when any one lost by the sale of his wares, the said Dickins and his dishes were brought up in scornful comparison? Outroaring Dick was a strolling singer of such repute that he got twenty shillings a day by singing at Braintree Fair; but who was that desperate Dick that was such a terrible cutter at a chine of beef, and devoured more meat at ordinaries in discoursing of his frays and deep acting, of his flashing and hewing, than would serve half a dozen brewers draymen? It is at this day doubtful whether it was Jack Drum, or Tim Drum, whose mode of entertainment no one wishes to receive;for it was to haul a man in by the head and thrust him out by the neck and shoulders. Who was that other Dick who wore so queer a hatband, that it has ever since served as a standing comparison for all queer things? By what name besides Richard was he known? Where did he live, and when? His birth, parentage, education, life, character, and behavior, who can tell? Nothing, said the doctor, is remembered of him, except that he was familiarly called Dick, and that his queer hatband went nine times round and would not tie.
O vain worlds glory and unsteadfast state | |
Of all that lives on face of sinful earth! |
Old King Cole | |
Was a merry old soul, | |
And a merry old soul was he? |
Who was the Vicar of Bray? I have had long chase after him, said Mr. Brome to Rawlins, in 1735. Simon Aleyn, or Allen, was his name; he was Vicar of Bray about 1540, and died in 1588; so he held the living near fifty years. You now partake of the sport that has cost me some pains to take. And if the pursuit after such game seems mean, one Mr. Vernon followed a butterfly nine miles before he could catch him. Reader, do not refuse your belief of this fact, when I can state to you, on my own recollection, that the late Dr. Shaw, the celebrated naturalist, a librarian of the British Museum, and known by the name of the learned Shavius, from the facility and abundance of his Latin compositions, pointed out to my notice there, many years ago, two volumes written by a Dutchman, upon the wings of a butterfly. The dissertation is rather voluminous, sir, perhaps you will think, said the doctor, with somewhat of that apologetic air, which modest science is wont occasionally to assume in her communications with ignorance, but it is immensely important. Good-natured excellent enthusiast! fully didst thou appreciate the book, the Dutchman, and, above all, the butterfly.
I have known a great man, says Taylor, the water poet, very expert on the Jews-harp; a rich heir excellent at noddy; a justice of the peace skillful at quoits; a merchants wife a quick gamester at Irish, especially when she came to bearing of men, that she would seldom miss entering. Injurious John Taylor! thus to defraud thy friends of their fame, and leave in irremediable oblivion the proper name of that expert Jews-harper, that person excellent at noddy, that great quoits man, and that mistress who played so masterly a game at Irish! But I thank thee for this, good John the water poet; thou hast told us that Monsieur La Ferr, a Frenchman, was the first inventor of that admirable game of double-hand, hotcockles, etc., and that Gregory Dawson, an Englishman, devised the unmatchable mystery of blindmans-buff. But who can tell me what the game of carps was, the Ludus Carparum, which Hearne says was used in Oxford much, and being joined with cards, and reckoned as a kind of alea, is prohibited in some statutes? When Thomas Hearne, who learned whatever time forgot, was uncertain what game or play it really was, and could only conjecture that perhaps it might be a kind of backgammon, what antiquary can hope to ascertain it?
Elizabeth Canning, Mary Squires, the gipsy, and Miss Blandy, says one who remembered their days of celebrity, were such universal topics in 1752, that you would have supposed it the business of mankind to talk only of them; yet now, in 1790, ask a young man of twenty-five or thirty a question relative to these extraordinary personages, and he will be puzzled to answer.
Who now knows the steps of that dance, or has heard the name of its author, of which in our fathers days it was said in verse, that
Isaacs rigadoon shall live as long | |
As Raphaels paintings, or as Virgils song? |
Whilst birds in air or fish in streams we find, | |
Or damsels fresh with aged partners joined, | |
As long as nymphs shall with attentive ear | |
A fiddle rather than a sermon hear, | |
So long the brightest eye shall oft peruse | |
These useful lines of my instructive muse? |
Destruction lurks within the poisonous dose, | |
A fatal fever, or a pimpled nose. |