Born:
John Henley
(Orator Henley), preacher satirised by
Pope, 1692,
Melton Mowbray; Charles, Earl Stanhope, reforming
statesman, and ingenious in mechanics, 1753; Frederick
William III of Prussia, 1770.
Died: James II of
Scotland, killed before Roxburgh, 1460; Stephen Dolet,
eminent scholar and typographer, burned at Lyon, 1546;
Jeremy Taylor, bishop of Down and Connor, celebrated
author of Holy Living and other works, 1667, Lisburn,
Ireland; John Matthias Gesner, distinguished classical
scholar and editor, 1761, G�ttingen; Archbishop Thomas
Seeker, learned prelate, Lambeth, Palace; Sir Richard
Arkwright, celebrated inventor or applier of the
roller machine for spinning cotton, 1792, Crumford,
Derbyshire; Christopher Anstey, author of The New Bath
Guide, 1805, Chippenham; Michael Adanson, French
naturalist, 1806, Paris; Eugene Sue, eminent French
novelist, 1857, Annecy, Savoy; Father Ventura,
Catholic controversial writer, 1861, Versailles.
Feast Day: St.
Nicodemus. St. Gamaliel. The Invention of St. Stephen,
or the Discovery of his Relics, 415. St. Walthen or
Waltheof, confessor, and abbot of Melrose, 1160.
CHARLES, EARL
STANHOPE
This nobleman merits a passing
notice here as the inventor of the printing-press
which bears his name. It is rather a remarkable
circumstance in connection with the typographical art,
that from the period of its first introduction up to
the later half of the eighteenth century, no
alternative took place in the form or mode of working
the press. The same clumsy wooden machine which it was
in the hands of Faust and Gutenberg it continued to be
in those of Baskerville and Bensley. The improvements
devised by Lord Stanhope have been followed by the
wonderful achievements of the printing-machine, but
the value of his ingenuous invention is still
recognized.
Besides the printing press,
the earl's engineering turn led him to the construction
of various other mechanical implements, all displaying
a considerable amount of practical genius. They
include, among others, a machine for performing
arithmetical operations, and a contrivance for the
management of locks on canals. He also entered the
literary arena, and published a reply to
Burke's
Reflections on the French Revolution, with other
political treatises. As a statesman, Lord Stanhope is
noted for the violence and extremeness of his
democratic views, leading him, on one occasion, in a
fit of republican enthusiasm, to lay aside his
carriage, and cause the armorial-bearings to be erased
from his plate and furniture. His eccentric character
seems to have been inherited in another form by his
eldest daughter, the celebrated Lady Hester Stanhope,
whose mother, the earl's first wife, was the eldest
daughter of
Pitt, the great Earl of Chatham.
STEPHEN DOLET
The lives of the early
printers are full of sorrows and vicissitudes; always
men of high literary attainments, they had to wage the
battle of learning against ignorance, of liberty
against tradition, of the rights of law against the
brutality of actual life, of the renaissance against
routine. The stories of Fust, Shr�eder, Etienne, and
Aldus give confirmation to this statement, and that of
Dolet is still more striking, as his was one of those
ardent impetuous natures that are incapable of
calculation and circumspection, and his life was full
of trouble and sorrow, ending in the dreadful
punishment of the stake.
Etienne Dolet, or according to
the fashion of those days, Stephanus Doletus Aurelius,
was born in the city of Orleans, on that day of the
year on which he afterwards suffered death. He was
said to be an illegitimate child of Francis I. He
early shewed the germs of the great talent which was
after-wards developed. At twelve years of age, he
arrived in Paris for the sake of study, and there
followed assiduously the lectures on Latin eloquence
given by his compatriot Nicolas B�rauld, and
especially devoted himself to the works of Cicero.
From Paris he proceeded to Padua, where for three
years he laboured night and day under the direction of
Simon de Villeneuve, to gain a pure Latin style and
the art of rhetoric. He was then inclined to return to
France; but Du Bellay-Langey, one of the most learned,
eloquent, and wise diplomatists of the day, offered
him the post of secretary in his political mission to
Venice; the opportunity was too good to refuse, his
classical studies would not suffer, and as for
society, the famous Rabelais was
one of his
companions, as surgeon to the ambassador.
In 1530, he returned to
France, and though devotedly attached to literary
pursuits, he did not find that they would give him a
position, so he determined to study law at Toulouse.
This celebrated city had besides its university many
societies which had been in existence for centuries,
in which various nations�French, Spaniards, and
Aquitanians�discussed any subject brought before them,
and on which the government cast no favourable eye.
The parliament of Toulouse seized upon the pretext of
some disorders committed by the students to dissolve
the associations, and Dolet, who had been elected
orator of the French section, was cast into prison;
the first of a long series of incarcerations which
made one of his enemies remark, 'that the prison was
his country.' Nor need it excite our wonder when he
spoke thus of the city. 'This place,' said he,
'which
arrogates to itself the monopoly of the true faith,
and bears aloft the torch of Catholicism, is still in
the lowest rudiments of the Christian faith, and
altogether given up to the ridiculous superstitions of
the Turks. How otherwise can we speak of
the yearly ceremony of the feast of St. George, which
consists in galloping nine times round the church
tower? or of the cross which on certain days is
plunged into the Garonne, with vows and prayers
addressed to it to be preserved from inundations?
'What are we to say in summer of the statues of the
saints, bits of dried wood which children carry
through the street to bring down rain after a long
drought? Yet this city, so shamefully ignorant of true
religion, dares to impose on all its own way of
thinking, and treats as heretics those free spirits
who will not submit.'
After a few days, he was
released, to the great discontent of some narrow
minds, who published atrocious libels against him, and
even hired assassins to kill him, at the same time
parading a pig, mounted on a car, through the streets,
bearing a label, on which was written in large letters
the name�Dolet. Amidst such animosity the place was no
longer tenable, and he took refuge in Lyon, where he
published his two harangues against Toulouse; but they
issued from a private press, and were prefaced
'without the permission of the author.' This was all
he wanted, a little vengeance, and then he returned to
Paris, and his early love, Cicero, which he regretted
having abandoned for such wretched rivals as the
Pandects.
At the age of twenty-five, he solicited
permission to print the first volmne of his
Commentaries on the Latin Language, a work of immense
erudition, but it was with the greatest difficulty
that he obtained leave: many were of opinion that
printing was an invention of the devil, and they
feared the rapid extension of knowledge. His friend,
Sebastian Gryphius, brought it out, with all the
splendour that suited a book of those times, and with
the strict correction that marked so conscientious a
printer; but from this time Dolet would have his own
presses, and the second volume, which appeared soon
after, was of his own printing.
He had at this time taken a
wife, and in 1539 his little son Claude was born, yet
nothing could make him prudent; he was heaping up
fagots for his funeral-pyre. He dared to attack the
voluptuous character of the monks, and then published
The Holy Scripture in the Vulgar Tongue. Such a man
became too dangerous; he was accused of eating meat in
Lent, and given up to the Inquisition.
On the 2nd of
October 1542, the vicar-general pronounced the
sentence of 'heretic, schismatic, scandalous defender
of errors and heresies' upon him, and for fifteen
months he lay in the dungeons of the holy church, from
which the bishop of Tulle released him, taking care to
revenge himself on thirteen of his books, which were
burned. Once more free, but not for long; in nine
months, two packets addressed to him were seized at
the gates of Paris, containing prohibited books from
the press of Geneva; he was arrested, but after three
days contrived to escape into Piedmont; yet the
longing to see his wife, his dear books and
manuscripts, and to print some articles he had written
in his exile, brought him back to Lyon, where he was
immediately arrested and condemned, for a false
translation of a line from Plato, to be tortured, put
to the question, hung and burned, with his books, in
the Place Maubert. In his prison he composed a noble
canticle, in which he declares his firm adherence to
the doctrines he had believed for years; but his
enemies say that he recanted on the scaffold, and
begged those present to read his books with much
circumspection. Of the likelihood of this final
concession, the reader may judge for himself.
RICHARD ARKWRIGHT
It
is not uncommon to hear Arkwright's merits as an
inventor questioned. It is said that at the best he
merely completed other men's conceptions and reduced
them to practice. To trace such assertions to their
roots in fact or fancy is no easy matter.
Unquestionably Arkwright held converse with many
mechanicians, and what he owed to them, and what to
himself, it would be impossible for us to determine.
Probably Arkwright himself would have been unable to
disentangle precisely the hints of others from his own
ideas.
That he was a man of amazing ingenuity, energy,
and originality there can be no doubt; these qualities
were written out large in his prosperous career; and
the claims he made as an inventor are certainly
consistent with the known power and range of his
faculties. Nor, even accepting the lowest estimate of Arkwright's genius, need
we esteem it a slight service
to mankind, that he perfected the contrivances of
amateurs, and shaped them to use, transforming
mechanical dreams into operative realities. Those
alone who have introduced some new engine or process
to the world, can duly appreciate Arkwright's merit on
that score.
Richard Arkwright was born in
Preston on the 23
rd
of December 1732, the youngest of
thirteen children. His parents were poor, and little
Dick was bred up a barber. When a young man, he opened
shop in Bolton, where, as Carlyle observes, 'in
stropping of razors, in shaving of dirty beards, and
the contradictions and confusions attendant thereon,
the man had notions in that rough head of his!
Spindles, shuttles, wheels, and contrivances plying
ideally within the same.' In 1760, he gave up the shop
and commenced travelling about the country, buying
fine heads of hair from women willing to sell, which,
when clipped, he prepared for the wig-makers. By this
traffic, and a recipe for hair-dye, he managed to
accumulate a little money.
There was much talk in
Lancashire, in those days, about improvements in
spinning and weaving. Employment was abundant, and
wages were high. Traders in linen and cotton cloths
were anxious to have them produced more rapidly and
cheaply, whilst, on the other hand, the makers were
jealous of improvements, lest their craft should be
endangered, and their gains diminished. The trader's
desire for cheapness, and the worker's interest in
dearness, were the stimulus and the terror of
inventors. Hargreaves, the Blackburn carpenter, who
contrived the spinning jenny, by means of which twenty
or thirty threads could be produced with the labour
formerly requisite for one, was persecuted and ruined
by the populace for his pains.
The yarn spun by the jenny of
poor Hargreaves could only be used for weft, being
destitute of the firmness required in the long
threads, or warp. It was at this point Arkwright came
in. One day, while watching some workmen elongating a
red-hot bar of iron between rollers, the idea suddenly
suggested itself; that cotton might be treated in a
similar manner. As he was no mechanic, he applied to
Kay, a Warrington clockmaker, to help him, and with
the aid of Kay's fingers he constructed a machine, in
which, by means of a double set of rollers, one moving
three times as fast as the other, cotton was spun into
a firm fine thread, as fit for warp as though it had
been linen. Whilst prosecuting his experiments, he
gave out that he was in pursuit of perpetual motion; a
ruse, Dr. Ure imagines, to avert popular animosity
from his true design.
His first machine was
completed at Preston in 1768; and so close had he cut
into his funds, that he was unable to vote a burgess
of Preston at a contested election, until the party
who sought his support had given him a decent suit of
clothes. To be safe from Lancashire rioters, Arkwright
removed to Nottingham, where he had the happy fortune
to find a partner in Jedediah Strutt, the patentee and
improver of the ribbed-stocking frame. Strutt was able
to indicate several useful alterations in Arkwright's
spinning frame, for which a patent was secured in
1769. In the same year, they opened a mill at
Nottingham, which they worked by horses. Horse-power,
however, was found too costly, and Arkwright thereon
advised that they should move to Cromford, in
Derbyshire, and use the river to turn their mill. The
suggestion was acted on; a factory was there built and
opened in 1771, and through many discouragements it
grew into a great success. Cromford has been justly
styled 'the nursing place of the factory power and
opulence of Great Britain.'
Manufacturers, at the outset,
refused to buy the water-twist, as the Cromford yarn
was called. To meet this difficulty, the partners wove
it into cloth; but here a new attempt was made to
checkmate them. There was a duty of 6d. a yard levied
on calicoes imported from India, and the Excise was
set on to claim 6d. on every yard of the Cromford
cloth; for it was alleged to be the same kind of
fabric as the Hindu, and therefore liable to pay the
same duty. Parliament, however, had the grace to pass
an act, in which it was obligingly conceded, that the
making of calicoes was 'not only a lawful but a
laudable manufacture,' and fixed the duty at '3d. per
square yard on cotton printed, painted, or stained
with colours;' thus placing the Cromford company on a
level with other manufacturers. Arkwright's patent was
repeatedly infringed, and great sums were expended for
its defence in Chancery, with varying results. Yet,
spite of all, large profits were realised, and
Arkwright became the dictator of the cotton-market.
Factories on the Cromford model were set up in other
places. Mobs occasionally tore them down, sometimes
with the connivance of the authorities; but where
money is to be made, the enterprise of Englishmen is
not to be defeated.
Arkwright died in his sixtieth
year in 1792, leaving behind him a fortune of about
half a million sterling. He was succeeded by his son
Richard, who inherited a full share of his father's
tact. He died in 1843, at the age of eighty-eight,
with the reputation of the richest commoner in
England. On the proving of his will, his property was
sworn to exceed one million, that being merely a
nominal sum, because the scale of stamp-duties goes no
higher. The probate bore a stamp of �15,750.
Asthma plagued Arkwright
nearly all his life, but nothing seemed to arrest his
energy and devotion to work. He was a very early
riser, a severe economist of time, and one who seemed
to consider nothing impossible. His administrative
skill was extraordinary, and would have done credit to
a statesman; his plans of factory management were
entirely his own; and the experience of a century has
done little to improve them. He had passed his
fiftieth birthday when, to retrieve the deficiency of
his early education, he devoted an hour in the morning
to grammar, and an hour in the evening to writing and
spelling. King George knighted him in 1786, when, as
high-sheriff of Derbyshire, he presented an address to
his majesty, congratulating him on his escape from the
knife of Margaret Nicolson.
POWEL'S PUPPET-SHOW
Jointed dolls have amused the
world for ages. Originally intended to gratify
children, they ended in being a diversion for adults;
and puppet-shows attracted a due amount of attention
in the middle ages, arriving at such a perfection in
the sixteenth century, that their performances
rivalled in attraction that of living actors. Readers
of Cervantes's immortal work will
remember the zest
with which the puppet-show is described, and the
reality with which Don Quixote invests the
performance; and the student of our early dramatic
literature will be equally familiar with the amusing
close of Ben Jonson's play, Bartholomew
Fair, which
takes place at the performance of a drama on the
adventures of Hero and Leander, acted by puppets in
one of the booths there.
The great French novelist, Le
Sage, produced dramas for the Theatre de la Foire; and
on this being silenced in 1721, he and his fellow-labourer,
Francisque, procured puppets instead of living actors,
and devoted their talents to the production of
puppet-plays. These became exceedingly popular in
England in the early part of the last century, but
none more so than those under the conduct of Robert
Powel, whose performances were not restricted to
London, but were given in 'the season' at Bath, &c.,
and at Oxford on great public occasions. He has a
certain immortality from the fact of being mentioned
in the pages of the Tatler and the Spectator.
The first notice of Powel's
performances occurs in No. 16 of the Tatler (published
May 15, 1709), describing the rivalry between his show
and 'the play of Alexander the Great to be acted by
the company of strollers.' To insure due attention to
the wooden actors, we are told 'the puppet-drummer,
Adam and Eve, and several others who lived before the
flood, passed through the streets on horseback, to
invite us all to the pastime, and the representation
of such things as we all knew to be true; and Mr.
Mayor was so wise as to prefer these innocent people,
the puppets, who, he said, were to represent
Christians, before the wicked players, who were to
shew Alexander, a heathen philosopher.'
At ten in the morning, all the
fashionables of Bath honoured the show, which seems to
have been constructed on the principles of the old
religious Mysteries and Moralities, with all their
absurdities mixed with modern incongruities. Thus,
'when we came to Noah's Flood in the show, Punch and
his wife were introduced dancing in the ark. An honest
plain friend of Florimel's, but a critic withal, rose
up in the midst of the representation, and made very
many good exceptions to the drama itself, and told us
it was against all morality, as well as the rules of
the stage, that Punch should be in jest in the deluge,
or indeed that he should appear at all. This was
certainly a just remark, and I thought to second him,
but he was hissed by Prudentia's party; upon which,
really, we, who were his friends, hissed him too. Old
Mrs. Petulant desired both her daughters to mind the
moral: then whispered Mrs. Mayoress: "This is very
proper for young people to see." Punch, at the end of
the play, made Madam Prudentia a compliment, and was
very civil to the whole company, making bows till his
buttons touched the ground.'
The delight with which the
appearance of Punch was greeted at all times, proper
or improper, has been humorously noted in Swill's
Dialogue between Mad Mullinix and Timothy:
Observe, the audience is
in pain,
While Punch is hid behind the scene;
But when they hear his rusty voice,
With what impatience they rejoice!
And then they value not two straws,
How Solomon decides the cause;
Which the true mother�which, pretender.'
This obtrusive minister of fun
appears to have been brought forward whenever the
interest of the scene flagged. He entered and seated
himself in the queen of Sheba's lap, when 'Solomon in
all his glory' was exhibited to gaping spectators. He
fights the Duke of Lorraine, 'sells the king of Spain'
a bargain
'St George himself he plays
the wag on,
And mounts astride upon the dragon.'
The engraving above, copied
from the frontispiece to A Second Tale of a Tub, or
the History of Robert Powel the Puppet-Showman, 1715,
represents Punch and his wife on the stage. It will be
noted that Punch partakes more fully of his Italian
character than in more modern impersonations; and his
wife (then called Joan) is but a simple elderly woman,
without the grotesque characteristics of the Judy of
the present day. The stage is furnished with a
set-scene, wings, and sky-borders; the performance
takes place by lamplight; and Powel, wand in hand,
takes his place, like the Chorus of a Greek play, to
illustrate the performance. He appears to have been
humpbacked, and otherwise slightly deformed. It must
be stated that this book is, in reality, a severe
satire on the ministry of Robert Harley, Earl of
Oxford, under the name of Powel; and was written by
Thomas Burnet, son of the famous bishop. In his
dedication, he alludes to the great popularity of
Powers show; and asks 'what man, woman, or child that
lives within the verge of Covent Garden, or what beau
or belle, visitant at Bath, knows not Mr. Powel? Have
England, Scotland, France, and Ireland; have not even
the Oreades-the utmost limits of Caesar's
conquests�been filled with the fame of Mr. Powel's
mechanical achievements?
The Dutch, the most expert
nation in the world for puppet-shows, must now confess
themselves to be shamefully outdone. It would be
trifling after this to recount to you how Mr. Powel
has melted a whole audience into pity and tears, when
he has made the poor starved children in the wood
miserably depart in peace, and a robin bury them. It
would be tedious to enumerate how often he has made
Punch the diversion of all the spectators, by putting
into his mouth many bulls and flat contradictions, to
the dear joy of all true Teagues. Or to what end
should I attempt to describe how heroically he makes
King Bladud perform the part of a British prince?' So
great a favourite was he in Bath, that 'he was
mightily frequented by all sorts of quality, and
Punch, with his gang, soon broke the strollers, and
enjoyed the city of Bath to them-selves. Money coming
in apace, Mr. Powel bought him several new scenes, for
the diversion of his audience, and the better acting
of several incomparable dramas of his own composing;
such as, Whittington and his Cat, The Children in the
Wood, Dr. Faustus, Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay,
Robin
Hood and Little John, Mother Shipton, Mother Goose,
together with the pleasant and comical humours of
Valentini, Nicolini, and the tuneful warbling-pig of
Italian race.'
Powel set up his puppet-show
in London, under the Piazza at Covent Garden. It was
humorously announced by Steele, that Powel would
gratify the town with the performance of his drama on
the story of Chaste Susannah, which would be graced by
'the addition of two new elders.' In the Spectator
(No. 14), a letter was introduced, purporting to come
from the sexton of the parish of St. Paul's, Covent
Garden, complaining that when he tolls to prayers, ' I
find my congregation take the warning of my bell,
morning and evening, to go to a puppet-show, set forth
by one Powel under the Piazzas. By this means I have
not only lost my two best customers, whom I used to
place, for sixpence apiece, over-against Mrs. Rachel
Eyebright, but Mrs. Rachel herself has gone thither
also. There now appear among us none but a few
ordinary people, who come to church only to say their
prayers, so that I have no work worth speaking of but
on Sundays. I have placed my son at the Piazzas, to
acquaint the ladies that the bell rings for church,
and that it stands on the other side of the garden;
but they only laugh at the child!'
The literary celebrity that
has thus invested Powel's show, has ,not been shared
by his rivals. The Taller, however, announces, in the
account of the downfall of May-fair, that 'Mrs.Saraband,
so famous for her ingenious puppet-show, has set up a
shop in the Exchange, where she sells her little troop
under the name of jointed babies.' Penkethman, the
comedian, was also proprietor of a puppet-show, and
regularly attended the great fairs; where 'Crawley's
Booth' was also fixed, and exhibited 'the Creation of
the World, yet newly revived, with the addition of
Noah's Flood,' where, according to his own
advertisement, might be seen ' six angels ringing of
bells, with Dives rising out of hell, and Lazarus seen
in Abraham's bosom, besides several figures dancing
jigs, sarabands, and country-dances (with Punch among
them), to the admiration of the spectators!'
When the Scottish lords and
others were executed for their share in the Rebellion
of 1745, 'the beheading of puppets' made one of the
exhibitions at May-fair, and was continued for some
years. The last 'great' proprietor of puppets was
Flockton, whose puppet-show was in high repute about
1790, and enabled him in time to retire on a handsome
competence.
