S. Baring-Gould

“ The farmers were indisposed to favour his scheme, and of resident sporting squires there were none at all.
It had long been the practice of the natives to kill a fox whenever and however they could catch him; and Russell had not been long at Iddesleigh when one day his ear caught the sound of a church bell, rung in a jangling fashion and with more than usual clamour. It was the signal that a fox had been tracked to ground or balled into a brake; and the bell summoned every man who possessed a pickaxe, a gun, or a terrier to hasten to the spot and lend a hand in destroying the noxious animal. ”

“ Truculent and redoubtable gladiators flocked to the scene—kickers from Dartmoor, the recruiting-ground of the Devonshire system, and bear-like huggers from the land of Tre, Pol, and Pen—a wonderful company of tried and stalwart experts. Ten thousand persons bought tickets at a premium for seats, and the hills around swarmed with spectators. The excitement was at the highest possible pitch, and overwhelming volumes of cheering relieved the tension as the rivals entered the ring—Polkinghorne in his stockings, and Cann with a monstrous pair of shoes whose toes had been baked into flints. ”

“ The question presents itself to the mind whether Joanna was a conscious impostor, or whether she was self-deluded. With her dying confession and her will before us, it would seem that she knew that she was imposing on the credulity of men and women. She had seen a debauched and dissolute Methodist preacher in her master’s house pose as an apostle and as inspired, and draw crowds and convince them that he was an oracle of God. She imitated him, and found that her imitation was successful, and also that it paid well. ”

“ Wrestlers wore nothing else, except worsted stockings, and in Devonshire shoes, soaked in bullock’s blood and baked at a fire, making them hard as iron. Three men were appointed as sticklers to watch the players and act as umpires, and decide, in the case of a fall, whether it was a fair back or not. For a fair back both shoulders and one hip must touch the ground at the same time, or both hips and one shoulder. Such a fall was called a Threepoint Fall.
The men having stepped into the ring, shook hands, and then separated, and the play began by trying for a hitch. ”

“ Sir Thomas, by his will, left a guinea to be wrestled for at Bradmore, Nottinghamshire, every Midsummer Day, and had his monument carved for him during his lifetime, representing him in wrestling costume, sculptured in marble by his chaplain, prepared for either the Cornish Hug or the Flying Mare. On one side is a well-limbed figure lying above the scythe of Time, the sun rising and shining on him as a wrestler in the prime of life ”

“ An eager student of the laws of nature, and at the same time a devoted follower of the chase, whether of stag, or fox, or any other such beast, he was at once the enemy and the patron of dumb animals. He used to keep a toad on the doorsteps of his house with such care, that that hateful and loathsome animal, moved by such unusual kindness, used to come out of its hiding place, when its master called it, and take its food on the table before his astonished guests, until it lost its life through the peck of a tame raven. ”

“ An industrious man of business, a shrewd and painstaking inventor, deeply versed in the science of the day, valued in society for his geniality and power of conversation, he was at the same time one of the simplest and devoutest of Quakers, and an enthusiastic believer in the views of Swedenborg. He was a firm believer in the divining rod, and left a treatise on its uses. In short, Cookworthy was a man of many sides, but always genial, courageous, and persevering; a man who won the respect and esteem alike of high and low by his strict integrity, wide sympathies, and varied powers ”

“ In the midst of this horrid slaughter, one man among the rear prisoners, with great presence of mind and undaunted courage, turned and advanced to the soldiers, amidst the fire of hundreds, and while his fellow prisoners were falling around him, and in a humble and suppliant manner implored mercy of Captain Shortland to spare his countrymen. ”

“ On one occasion when hay was being cut, a man wounded himself at Kelly, some eight miles distant, and the blood flowed in streams. At once the farmer bade a man take a kerchief dipped in his blood and gallop as hard as he could to the tumble-down cottage, and get Marianne to bless the blood. ”

“ The words are mere doggerel, but they would appeal to Gifford, as they have appealed to many a Devonshire apprentice, and often in his garret he may have hummed over the pathetic air as he thought of the kind young face that alone in Exeter had smiled on him.
The darkest hour precedes the dawn. ”

“ Spesinick, returning to the beach where they had kindled the fire, to his great joy, saw a boat from the vessel coming on shore. The crew had reached the beach before Spesinick got to it; but his voice was drowned by the noise of a rookery of macaroonys he had disturbed on the hill. Seeing the fire, the smoke of which had first attracted their attention, they were convinced that there were human beings on the island, and had commenced a search. In the interim, Spesinick had made for the boat, and having reached it clung to it in a fit of desperate joy that gave him the appearance of a maniac ”

“ Posterity has not seen occasion to reverse the judgment of his contemporaries on Haydon’s paintings.
His engrossing love of art, with his consciousness of great powers, and excessive self-esteem, made him a most enthusiastic devotee to any work which he had on his easel, and enabled him to bear up long against the thousand interruptions from embarrassed circumstances which are detailed in his Autobiography. Whilst painting his “Maid of Saragossa” he accidentally wounded his foot with a bayonet, but went on with the picture, using his own blood as a pigment, till the surgeon arrived. ”

“ The lieutenant was furious, especially at seeing the colours flying, as a sign of triumph on the part of Rattenbury, who spread sail and scudded away to Alderney, took in a cargo of contraband spirits, and returned safely with it.
Occasionally, to give fresh zest to his lawless transactions, he did an honest day’s work, as when he piloted safely into harbour a transport vessel that was in danger. We need not follow him through a succession of hair’s-breadth escapes, of successes and losses, imprisonments and frauds. ”

“ We see Lafayette as the humble farmer, absorbed in rearing his pigs and his cattle; Lord Hastings as a youth climbing a volcano during an eruption; George IV as the fickle friend, pocketing humiliation in order to condone deceit, or, at a period of exciting national danger, filling his letters to Coke with characteristically trivial speculations whether the Sergeant whom he was sending to recruit the Holkham Yeomanry would, or would not, get drunk. Again, we see Fox as a slovenly schoolboy playing pitch-and-toss at Eton; Nelson, but as the delicate son of an obscure Norfolk clergyman. ”

“ Jackson how to please and be pleased? Are we to have no music in our concerts but elegies and balads? Mr. Jackson’s favourite style of music has been elegies, but what is an elegy to a tragedy or to an epic poem? He sees but one angle of the art of music, and to that all his opinions are referred. His elegy is no more than a closet in a palace.”
The great Handel Commemoration in Westminster Abbey in 1784 affected the organist of Exeter Cathedral with an attack of the spleen, from which he seems never to have recovered. ”

“ Gay was bound apprentice to a London mercer, but, his health failing, he returned to Barnstaple, where he dwelt with his uncle, the Dissenting minister, John Hanmer. The association must have been most unsuitable to both. John “toujours gai” with a poet’s fancy, a buoyant heart, what more incongruous than to be lodged under the roof and nourished at the table of a sour and moody Puritan! ”

“ As seen nearer the island shows itself a lofty table-headed granite rock, rising to the height of 500 feet, surrounded by steep and occasionally perpendicular cliffs, storm-beaten, riven, and scarred over with grisly seams and clefts, and hollowed out here and there along the shore into fantastic coves and grottoes, with huge piles of granite thrown in wild disorder. The cliffs and [Pg 225] adjacent sea are alive with sea-birds, every ledge and jutting rock being dotted with them, or they are whirling round in clouds, filling the air with their discordant screams. ”

“ She, Cross, my uncle and aunt, were all sobbing and much touched; for my part, my chest hove up and down as I struggled with emotions at this singular and afflicting meeting. Disappointment in love, where the character is amiable, gives a pathetic interest to woman or man. But how much more than ordinary sympathy must he excite who, dumb by nature, can only express his feelings by the lightenings of the eye! ”

“ The great churches stand up by themselves in the midst of modern houses destitute of beauty, islands of loveliness in a sea of vulgarity. Great streets have been driven through the town, picturesque houses have been swept away ”

“ John sprang up. “Two can play at that game!” shouted he, and catching up another dumpling threw it at the Doctor, who dodged, and the apple burst its crust and remained clinging to the wall. This was the beginning of a war of pelting with dumplings; and it so tickled the patient that he burst out laughing and burst the quinsy.
He was visiting a labouring man who was weak, and Budd saw that what he needed more than physic was good nourishing diet. Now that day he was having mock-turtle soup at his table, so he sent a bowl of it to his patient. ”

“ The streets were crowded, the Mayor, the Magistrates and Under Sheriff can hardly pass for the throng. The poor maid was drawn on the hurdle. The posture she lay in was on her left side, her face in her bosom, her Bible under her arm, seeming like one dead rather than alive. At length we came, though slowly, to the place of execution. Plimouth was then naked of inhabitants, the town was easy to be taken, and the houses to be plundered, if an enemie had been at hand to have done it. Catdowne, the Lambhay, the Citadel, and Catwater are pressed with a multitude of twenty thousand persons. ”

“ In the summer of 1864, the American literary blacksmith, Elihu Burritt, spent three days with Capern, on his “Walk from London to the Land’s End and back,” and gave an excellent description of his host. He says: “Edward Capern, of Bideford, is a poet, and he is a postman, and both at once, and good at each. He is as faithful and genial a postman as ever dropped a letter in a cottage door, with an honest and welcome face, itself a living epistle of good will and friendly cheer. ”

“ The gentleman was so crossed in mind, and disturbed in thought at having involuntarily caused a man to commit suicide, that his soul could not be quiet till he had seen the woeful widow. So towards evening he hired a boat and was rowed from the Old Bailey, where he lived, to Black Friars, and went directly to Peele’s house, where he found the wife plucking larks, the orphaned daughter turning the spit, and George, pinned up in a blanket, hard at work at the translation. ”

“ Ever ready to assist the young by the counsels of experience, he is a fine example of perseverance and industry combined with suavity of manner and those endearing attributes which invariably blend with admiration of the artist, affection for the man. During the last six or seven years we have sometimes found our way into his quiet studio, where, like a delicate exotic requiring the most careful treatment to retain life within it, he could keep himself warm and snug, as he expressed it. ”

“ But as she was so young it was arranged that she should not live with her husband till she reached a nubile age. She never did live with him, for he caught a severe chill through lying on the damp ground when hot and tired with hunting, and he died in November, 1611. She was the wealthiest heiress in Devonshire, and the Earl of Suffolk schemed to obtain her for his third son, Sir Thomas Howard. She was not only rich, but beautiful. Her father had been a remarkably handsome man, and Lord Clarendon, long after this date, speaks of her as “having been of extraordinary beauty.” ”

“ A young farmer, curious as to the future, visited a White Witch to learn who his future wife would be. Said she—this witch was a woman, and an old one: there are female witches who are young and exercise very powerful charms—said she: “Next Sunday, you go along Narracott lane, and the first young woman you see pass, look her well in the face, and when you’ve gone by, turn your head and look, and if she’s also turned her head and is looking at you, that’s the one.” ”

“ Andrew’s Church, Plymouth, is a marble tablet to his memory.
“There is one point,” says Ruskin, “in which Turner, Bewick, Hunt, and Prout, all four agree—that they can draw the poor, but not the rich. They acknowledge with affection, whether for principal or accessory subjects of their art, the British farmer, the British sailor, the British market-woman, and the British workman. They agree unanimously in ignoring the British gentleman. Let the British gentleman lay it to heart, and ask himself why. ”

“ The conversation turned on a monstrous pig that Froude had killed, and which was hung up in his outhouse, and he invited his guests to accompany him and view the carcase, and estimate the weight. One thought it weighed so many stone, others thought differently. Froude said that it weighed just the same as his curate, who was fat. The rough farmers demurred to the rector’s estimate, and, finding an empty corn-sack, they thrust the intoxicated ecclesiastic into it, and, hanging him up to the end of the beam, shouted with delight as the curate brought the weight down. ”