GUESS, Reader, where I once saw a full-sized figure of Fame, erect, tip-toe, 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 mayest 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 shop-board 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 d'eux, says Bayle, et leur vanité ne serait pas satisfaite s'il n'y avait quelque chose de superlatif et d'éminent dans leur mauvaise réputation. Le plus haut degré de l'infamie est le but de leurs souhaits, et il y a des choses qu'ils ne feraient pas se elles n'étaient extraordinairement odieuses.+ Plutarch has preserved the name of Chorephanes, who was notorious among the ancients for having painted such subjects as Julio 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 know not; but the Patent Worm Lozenges have gained our Launceston apothecary a large fortune, and secured to him perpetual fame." Would not John Dory's name have died with him, and so been long ago dead as a door-nail, if a grotesque likeness for him had not been discovered in the fish, which, being called after him, has immortalised him and his ugliness? But if John Dory could have anticipated this sort of immortality when he saw his own face in * Tacitus. "On account of the extent of their infamy, from which prodigals derive the greatest pleasure." + "They wish to be talked of, and their vanity is not satisfied unless they had a reputation for something very striking, and most uncommon. To attain the highest degree of infamy is the end of their desires, and there are certain things, which if they did not bring upon thera the greatest odium, they would refuse to perform." 4TH QUARTER. E the glass, he might very well have "blushed to find it fame." There would have been no other memorial of Richard Jaquett 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 Jaquett, 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 school-boys 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 rancour 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? 66 : Johnson tells a story of a man who was standing in an inn kitchen with his back to the fire, and thus accosted a traveller who stood next to him, "Do you know, sir, who I am?" "No, sir," replied the traveller, "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 waggons, or was it in the age of pack-horses? Who was Jack Robinson? not the once well-known Jack Robinson of the Treasury, (for his celebrity is now like a tale that is told,) but the one whose name is in every body's 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 Conjurer, 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 d'avoir bien écrit; et ceux qui le lisent, voulent avoir la gloire de l'avoir lu; et moi qui écris ceci, j'ai peut être cette envie, et peut être que ceux qui le lirent, l'aurent aussi.* "Those who write against Glory wish to have the glory of having written well; and those who read their composition wish to have the glory of having read it; and I who write this, I too perhaps have this desire, and perhaps those who will read it will have the desire also." 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 scape-grace by Skelton, and in the Ralph Roister Doister of Nicholas Udall, that Udall, who, on poor Tom Tusser's 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? Out-roaring 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 hat-band, that it has ever since served as a standing comparison for all queer things? By what name besides Richard was he known? His birth, parentage, education, life, character and behaviour, who can tell? 'Nothing," said the Where did he live, and when ? doctor, "is remembered of aim, except that he was familiarly called Dick, and that his queer hat-band went nine times round and would not tie." "O vain world's glory and unstedfast state Of all that lives on face of sinful earth!"* Who was Betty Martin, and wherefore should she so often be mentioned in connection with my precious eye or yours? Who was Ludlam, whose dog was so lazy that he leant his head against a wall to bark? And who was Old Cole, whose dog was so proud that he took the wall of a dung-cart, and got squeezed to death. by the wheel? Was he the same person of whom the song says:— "Old King Cole Was a merry old soul, And a merry old soul was he?" And was his dog proud because his master was called king? Here are questions to be proposed in the examination papers of some Austrálian Cambridge, two thousand years hence, when the people of that part of the world shall be as reasonably inquisitive concerning our affairs, as we are now concerning those of the Greeks. But the Burneys, the Parrs, and the Porsons, the Elmsleys, Monks, and Blomfields of that age, will puzzle over them in vain, for we cannot answer them now. "Who was the Vicar of Bray? I have had a long chase after him," said Mr. Brome to Mr. 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 * Spenser. 66 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 Jew's-harp; a rich heir excellent at Noddy; a justice of the peace skilful at Quoytes; a merchant's 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 Jew's-harper, that person excellent at Noddy, that great Quoytes-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 the admirable game of Doublehand, Hot-cockles, &c., and that Gregory Dawson, an Englishman, devised the unmatchable mystery of Blind-man's-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 Back-gammon, what antiquary can hope to ascertain it ? 66 "Elizabeth Canning, Mary Squires, the Gipsey, 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 Nay, who reads the "Isaac's rigadoon shall live as long As Raffael's paintings, or as Virgil's song." poem wherein those lines are found, though the author predicted for them, in self-applauding pleasantry, that "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 Even of the most useful of those lines the ". uses are gone by." Ladies before they leave the ball-room are now no longer fortified against the sudden change of temperature by a cup of generous white wine, mulled with ginger; nor is it necessary now to caution them at such times against a draught of cold small beer, because, as the poet in his own experience assured them, "Destruction lurks within the poisonous dose, A fatal fever, or a pimpled nose." * *Soame Jenyns. 296. THE MARRIED LIFE OF ALBERT DURER. LEOPOLD SCHEFER. [A LITTLE Volume was published in 1848, entitled 'The Artist's Married Life.' It professes to be the Autobiography of Albert Durer; but is manifestly a fictitious narrative, the author being Leopold Schefer. The translation from the German is by Mrs. Stodart. The book is a singularly interesting fragment, and its views of Art, and of the Artist's vocation, are noble and elevating. Durer marries a beautiful girl who does not understand him :-it is the unhappy union, not at all uncommon, of genius with worldliness.] The importance of the honeymoon, which had been so much vaunted to him by his father, had not held good; because he felt that he himself in this fascination had scarcely seen his wife as she actually was; in like manner, she also had not seen him as he was, much less had she understood him; but least of all would she be able soon to get accustomed to the peculiarities which he, as every man does, brought with him into the married state: of that he was sensible. Everything must therefore once more be contemplated after the ordinary manner of the world, once more with subdued feelings spoken of, considered, and settled, as the opportunity might offer. It was best, however, that everything should come right of itself, and as it might chance; in all things indifferent the husband must be willing to yield, however new it might be to him, however different from what he himself thought; he had also to learn that he must sacrifice the half of his existence, must give it up to the wife, in order thereby to gain the half of another beloved existence, and must scarcely venture to warn, must only tell, even when anything evil was to be shunned, or anything good to be done. A husband must not be a teacher, or a domestic chaplain. One word may be sufficiently intelligible, and when there is good intention on the wife's part, she has long years in which to discipline herself in silence thereon-often also to suffer. Albert was therefore meekly silent, and studied the holy condition of marriage with a devout mind, because the Lord had placed him in Paradise. Under favour of his silence, everything in the house was soon directed and regulated according to Agnes's wili; and what in itself appeared indifferent, through the number and association of things, was soon no longer so. Yet he let everything alone which was not really bad. For he knew well that he exercised a mental ascendancy which constrained his wife in her will, and against which she thought she could maintain an artificial equilibrium by opposition alone. She knew not the power of submission, not even that of submission to the best of husbands. And when she saw daily the two-headed eagle over the park gate, on the arms of the Imperial City, then she thought that in marriage there should also be two heads, without considering that no living creature can so exist, and that even when painted or hewn in stone it is a monster or represents one. It should be said, however, in excuse for her, that she was the child of an old father, and had not learned obedience, even when he asked her to be happy, not to mention anything else. She had only laughed when her father once asked her quite gravely to laugh, so that he might see his daughter lively for once-were it only in appearance. Thus demure was her mind, and only directed towards a few objects in life, but to them so much the more firmly and constantly. And these things were not censurable, but, on the contrary, desirable and necessary for every one. Her sense of honour was great, strong, and pure; but she wished to carry it about with her through life, not only firmly maintained but undisputed. But Albert's father had, it is true, bought him a house, but he had not paid for it. And therefore the walls oppressed and confined poor Agnes, so that it was impossible to move her to look out at the window with him—out of a borrowed house. As often also as she went to church like a good Catholic, she avoided the streets in which any one dwelt who was in Albert's debt, that she might not appear needy or dunning. Albert, with his usual candour, had also imparted to her letters he had received from Venice dunning him. They were for debts contracted in travelling and for instruction; and he who would allow his neighbour, with whose circumstances he is intimately acquainted, to starve, will lend to the stranger: for when any one |