William Hone

“ In his play of “Bartholomew Fair,” we have John Littlewit, a proctor “o’ the Archdeacon’s-court,” and “one of the pretty wits o’ Paul’s” persuading his wife, Win-the-fight, to go to the Fair. He says “I have an affair i’ the Fair, Win, a puppet-play of mine own making.—I writ for the motion-man.” She tells him that her mother, dame Purecraft, will never consent; whereupon he says, “Tut, we’ll have a device, a dainty one: long to eat of a pig, sweet Win, i’ the Fair; do you see? i’ the heart o’ the Fair; not at Pye-corner. Your mother will do any thing to satisfie your longing.” ”

“ Then he directs his attention to the Mitre, at Stangate, kept by “independent Bent,” a house celebrated for authors who “flourish” there, for “actors of all work,” and artists of less prudence than powers. He will tell you of the capital porter-shops that were in Palace-yard before the old coffee-houses were pulled down, and he directs you to the high chimney of Hodges’s distillery, in Church-street, Lambeth. He stands erect, and looks at Cumberland-gardens as though they were his freehold—for there has he been in all his glory ”

“ Gordon was met one day by a person of rather indifferent character, who pitied Jemmy’s forlorn condition, (he being without shoes and stockings,) and said, “Gordon, if you will call at my house, I will give you a pair of shoes.” Jemmy, assuming a contemptuous air, replied, [699, 700] “No, sir! excuse me, I would not stand in your shoes for all the world!”
Some months ago, Jemmy had the misfortune to fall from a hay-loft, wherein he had retired for the night, and broke his thigh; since then he has reposed in a workhouse. No man’s life is more calculated
“To adorn a moral, and to point a tale.” ”

“ He was fond however of what are termed the pleasures of the table; and is represented in a fine mezzotinto, drawn and engraved by his friend Nathaniel Hone, with Theodosius Forrest, the barrister, and Hone himself, dressed in the character of monks, over a bowl, which Grose is actively preparing for their carousal. He died of apoplexy in Mr. Hone’s house in Dublin, at the age of fifty-two. In reference to his principal works, the following epitaph, quoted by Mr. Nichols in his “Anecdotes,” was proposed for him in the “St. James’s Chronicle:”—
Here lies Francis Grose. ”

“ This may be termed either a huxter or a gardiner, having his fruits and herbs on his back from the market. This was a fit crest for the company of Fruiterers or Huxters.” This man is a costard-monger in Mr. Archdeacon Nares’s view of the term; for doubtless the huckster pitched his load in the market and sold it there; yet Holme does not give him that denomination, as he would have done if he had so regarded him; he merely calls him “the hutler or huxter.” ”

“ Devil. Mr. Johnson merely calls him the errand-boy of a printing-house; but though he has that office, Holme properly says, that he is the boy that takes the sheets from the tympan, as they are printed off. “These boys,” adds Holme, “do in a printing-house commonly black and dawb themselves, whence the workmen do jocosely call them devils, and sometimes spirits, and sometimes flies.”
Drive out. “When a compositor sets wide,” says Mr. Johnson. Whereto Holme adds, if letter be cast thick in the shank it is said to drive out, &c. ”

“ Against the wall, the grapes have put on that transparent look which indicates their complete ripeness, and have dressed their cheeks in that delicate bloom which enables them to bear away the bell of beauty from all their rivals. ”

“ And then, when we retire to bed in a room with thick, woollen curtains closely drawn, and a fire in the room, how sweet a lullaby is the piping of the gale down the flues, and the peppering of the rain on the tiles and windows; while we are now and then rocked in the house as if in a cradle! ”

“ Poor Willie! may he live long and live happy. When he dies many a tear will fall from eyes that seldom weep, and hearts that know little of the more refined sensations of our nature will heave a sigh. Willie will die, but not his fame will die. In many of those humorous provincial songs, with which Newcastle abounds more than any other town I am acquainted with—the very airs as well as the words of which possess a kind of local nationality—“Blind Willie” is the theme. These songs are the admiration of all who know how to appreciate genuine humour ”

“ So men of blood, incited by its taste, By lust of rule urged on, laid England waste; Oppression then upon oppression grew, One royal wretch another overthrew; They made a football of the People's crown, And brother-tyrant brother-king pull'd down, Succeeding robberies revenged the past, And every age of crime outdid the last. Look on once more—the tangled line survey, By which kings claim to bind men to obey. ”

“ The scaffold—the rain—the faces of the multitude—the people clinging to the house-tops—the smoke that beat heavily downwards from the chimneys—the waggons filled with women, staring in the inn-yards opposite—the hoarse low roar that ran through the gathered crowd as we appeared. ”

“ Every face which you contribute to set sparkling at Christmas is a reflection of that goodness of nature which generosity helps to uncloud, as the windows reflect the lustre of the sunny heavens. Every holly bough and lump of berries with which you adorn your houses is a piece of natural piety as well as beauty, and will enable you to relish the green world of which you show yourselves not forgetful. ”

“ He was bred a haberdasher of small wares in Fleet-street, married his mistress’s sister [47, 48] before his apprenticeship determined, set up in the Poultry, became a bankrupt, in three months got his certificate signed, and again set up in Holborn, where he lived but a little while before he was thrown into the King’s Bench for debt, and there got acquainted with one Playstowe, who gradually led him into scenes of fraud, which he afterwards imitated. Playstowe being a handsome man, usually passed for a gentleman, and Stroud for his steward ”

“ There lived in Houndsditch, about the year 1632, one Alexander Hart, who had been a soldier formerly, a comely old man, of good aspect, he professed questionary astrology and a little of physic; his greatest skill was to elect young gentlemen fit times to play at dice, that they might win or get money. ”

“ Spring is with us once more pacing the earth in all the primal pomp of her beauty, with flowers and soft airs and the song of birds every where about her, and the blue sky and the bright clouds above. ”

“ I think the name is more appropriate than “Ninepenny-marl;” and moreover, we of Norfolk have the authority of our immortal bard in his “Midsummer Night’s Dream,” where the queen of the fairies, speaking to Oberon, says, “The Nine Men’s Morris is filled up with mud.”
There are some men who are not a little proud at being proficients at this game. I heard an anecdote at North Walsham of a man named Mayes, still living in that neighbourhood, who is so great a lover of the pastime, that a wager was laid by some wags, that they would prevent his going to church, by tempting him to play ”

“ One of the pick-pockets was afterwards apprehended, on whom thirty-five of the tickets were found, and recovered; the other fifteen he said were carried to Holland by his accomplices.
The preceding anecdotes are in the newspapers of the time, together with the following, which strongly marks the perversion of a weak mind. “A gentlewoman in Holborn, whose husband had presented her with a ticket, put up prayers in the church, the day before drawing, in the following manner: The prayers of the congregation are desired for the success of a person engaged in a new undertaking.” ”

“ Hundreds of immense wheels turned round with a velocity that almost seemed as if demons were whirling them, letting fall thousands of hissing dragons, and scorpions, and fiery snakes, whose long convolutions, darting forward as far as the eye could reach in every direction, at length vanished into air. ”

“ In fixedness of courage immovable, in clearness of intellect unrivalled, she shone on earth as the polar-star in the firmament of her sex, and in her utmost need, they circled round her as the sun of their glory. ”

“ Every here and there, too, we meet with little patches of dark green heaths, hung all over with their clusters of exquisitely wrought filigree flowers, endless in the variety of their forms, but all of the most curiously delicate fabric, and all, in their minute beauty, unparalleled by the proudest occupiers of the parterre. ”

“ I speak not this to move thy compassion, who hast none for thy own offspring, or for the wife of thy bosom, nor to prolong my own life, which through thy most brutal usage of me, is past recovery, and a burden to me; nor yet to teach thee humanity for the future. I know thee to have neither a head, a heart, nor a hand to show mercy ”

“ These brief memoranda suffice to memorialize a peculiar individual. James Gordon at one time possessed “fame, wealth, and honours:” now—his “fame” is a hapless notoriety; all the “wealth” that remains to him is a form that might have been less careworn had he been less careless; his honour is “air—thin air,” “his gibes, his jests, his flashes of merriment, that were wont to set the table in a roar,” no longer enliven the plenteous banquet:—
“Deserted in his utmost need
By men his former bounty fed,”
the bitter morsel for his life’s support is parish dole. ”

“ Or who, that has visited Alpine scenery, has not beheld with a poetic feeling, the mountaineers come winding down out of their romantic seclusions on a sabbath morning, pacing the solitary heath-tracks, bounding with elastic step down the fern-clad dells, or along the course of a riotous stream, as cheerful, as picturesque, and yet as solemn as the scenes around them? ”

“ It whets the sword for destruction; it urges the laudable acts of humanity. It is the universal hinge on which we move; it glides with the gentle stream of usefulness; it overflows the mounds of reason, and swells into a destructive flood. Like the sun, in his milder rays, it animates and draws us towards perfection ”

“ Trace the first Tyrants to their fancied thrones, Placed in that heaven that all their crimes disowns:— If in the Royal lists some monsters reign'd, Abborr'd by heaven, and hated by mankind, By lust and blood exalted to a throne, For all the exquisites of Tyrant known, The meaner name of monarch they despise, Alive, usurp the throne, and dead, the skies; Above the clouds th' incarnate devil stands, And nations worship with polluted hands! ”

“ The bittern sits all day hid among the reeds and rushes with its head erect; at night it rises on the wing, and soars to a vast height in a spiral direction. Those who desire to see it must pursue a swampy route, through watery fens, quagmires, bogs, and marshes. ”

“ But devilish hate could ne'er endure A joy so sweet, a bliss so pure; And the cherub-smile that cheer'd her life, Was rudely torn from the widow'd wife! But who shall tell—or who shall believe, That malice could deeper wrongs conceive? ”

“ The earth is chapped with parching. The shadows of the trees are particularly grateful, heavy, and still. The oaks, which are freshest because latest in leaf, form noble clumpy canopies, looking, as you lie under them, of a strong and emulous green against the blue sky. ”

“ Often within this fortress, impregnable to birds, bees, and even to mischievous boys themselves, that beautiful moth which flutters about so gaily during the first weeks of summer, on snow-white wings spotted all over with black and yellow, takes up its final abode,—retiring thither when weary of its desultory wanderings, and after having prepared for the perpetuation of its ephemeral race, sleeping itself to death, to the rocking lullaby of the breeze. ”

“ You are the well-fenced orchard, the fruitful border, the fair and delicate garden of sweet flowers, embalming the earth and air with their odoriferous fragrance, yet shut up and secured from any enemy’s entrance and irruption; you are the holy fountain, sealed with the signet of the most sacred Trinity, from whence the happy waters of life inflow upon the whole universe ”

“ At this time the crowing of the cocks, the noise of busy rooks and daws, which feed in flocks in the meadows, and fly at morning and eventide in flocks to and from their nests, the music of distant singing, and the strokes of the church clocks and chimes are heard for miles, as if carried along under the apparent sounding board of the clouds above. Even the voices of persons are heard at a vast distance, all being hushed around. ”

“ It is there that he gazes upon the gorgeous sunset,—the evening star following with silvery lamp the fading day, or the moon showering her pale lustre through the balmy night air, with a fancy that kindles and soars into the heavens before him,—there, that we have all felt the charm of woods and green fields, and solitary boughs waving in the golden sunshine, or darkening in the melancholy beauty of evening shadows. ”

“ Strange ponderous riddle, that we can neither penetrate nor grasp in our comprehension, ebbing and flowing like human life, and swallowing it up in thy remorseless womb,—what art thou? What is there in common between thy life and ours, who gaze at thee? ”

“ The peaches and nectarines have become fragrant, and the whole wall where they hang is ‘musical with bees.’ Along the espaliers, the rosy-cheeked apples look out from among their leaves, like laughing children peeping at each other through screens of foliage; and the young standards bend their straggling boughs to the earth with the weight of their produce. ”