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January 27th
Born: Dr. Thomas Willis, 1622, Bothnia; J. C. W. Mozart, Celebrated composer,
1756.
Died: Sir William Temple, 1699; Thomas Woolston, 1733, King's Bench Prison;
Admiral Lord Hood, 1816; Dr. C. Hutton, mathematician, 1823; Rev. Dr. Andrew Bell,
originator of the Madras System of Juvenile Education, 1832; John James Audubon,
naturalist, 1851, New York.
Feast Day: St. Julian, bishop, 3rd
century. St. John Chrysostom, archbishop, 407. St. Marius, abbot, 555.
ST. JOHN CHRYSOSTOM
St. John Chrysostomus is one of the most celebrated of the fathers of the Eastern
or Greek church. He was born about the year 347, at Antioch. His father was
commander of the Imperial army in Syria. He was educated for the bar, but became a
convert to Christianity; and the
solitary manner of living being then in great estimation, and very prevalent in
Syria, he retired to a mountain not far from Antioch, where he lived some years in
solitude, practicing the usual austerities. He returned to the city in 381, and
was ordained by Meletius, Bishop of
Antioch, to the office of deacon, and to that of presbyter in 386. He became one
of the most popular preachers of the age; his reputation extended throughout the
Christian world; and in 398, on the death of Nectarius, he was elected Bishop of
Constantinople. He was zealous and
resolute in the reform of clerical abuses, and two years after his consecration,
on his visitation in Asia Minor, he deposed no less than thirteen bishops of Lydia
and Phrygia. His denunciations of the licentious manners of the court drew upon
him the resentment of the Empress
Eudoxia, who encouraged. Theophilus, patriarch of Alexandria, to summon a synod at
Chalcedon, in which a number of accusations were brought against Chrysostom. He
was condemned, deposed, and banished to Cucusus, a place in the mountain-range of
Taurus, whence, after the death of
the Empress, it was determined to remove him to a desert place on the Euxine. He
travelled on foot, and caught a fever, which occasioned his death at Comana, in
Pontus, September 14th, 407, at the age of sixty.
The works of Chrysostom are very numerous, consisting of 700 homilies and 242
epistles, as well as commentaries, orations, and treatises on points of doctrine.
His life has been written by Socrates, Sozomen, Theodora, and other early writers,
and by Neander in more recent times.
The name Chrysostomus, or golden-mouthed, on account of his eloquence, was not
given to him till some years after his death. Socrates and the other early writers
simply call him John, or John of Constantinople.
DR. ANDREW BELL
Dr. Andrew Bell, being a holder of rich livings, was able, by the aid of very
frugal or rather penurious habits, to realise a large fortune, all of which he
devoted at his death to exemplify and perpetuate that system of juvenile
education, the introduction of which, first in
Madras and afterwards in England, had given him celebrity, but of which, it need
scarcely be remarked, the merits are now found to have been largely
over-estimated. It is sad to reflect that, among the founders of useful
institutions, several, if not many, or the greatest number,
have been wretched egotists, or noted in life rather for the unfavourable aspect
they bore towards their fellow-creatures, than for anything of a benevolent or
genial cast. Thus Guy, the bookseller, whose money established the medical
hospital bearing his name, is alleged to have
made it chiefly by purchasing seamen's tickets, and a not very creditable success
in the affair of the South Sea
bubble. Of George Watson, founder of an hospital for the nurture of
boys in Edinburgh, the papers preserved in his
cabinet shew how penuriously he lived, and how rigorous beyond measure he was as a
creditor. James Donaldson, who left a quarter of a
million for a similar purpose, over-looked in his will all his old servants and
retainers, and assigned but one or
two poor annuities to those nearest him in blood. There are, of course, many
instances in which benevolent intentions have solely or mainly ruled ; but,
certainly, many have been of the opposite complexion here indicated. Among such
must be reckoned Andrew Bell, who left �120,000
Three per Cent. Consols, to found an extensive establishment for juvenile
education in his native city of St. Andrews. The egotism of this old gentleman, as
indicated in his ordinary conversation, and in his leaving a considerable sum for
the composition and publication of a
memoir to glorify him, allow no room to doubt that, in the hoarding of money, and
in the final disposal of what he acquired, he had purely an eye to himself.
Thomas De
Quincey tells some things of a domestic nature regarding Dr. Bell,
which, in the case of any reasonably respectable man, one would not desire to see
repeated, but which, regarding him, do not
call for being put under any restriction. 'Most men,' says the Opium-eater, 'have
their enemies and calumniators; Dr. Bell had his, who happened rather indecorously
to be his wife, from whom he was legally separated .. . divorced � mensă
et thoro. This legal separation did
not prevent the lady from persecuting the unhappy doctor with everlasting letters,
endorsed outside with records of her enmity and spite. Sometimes she addressed her
epistles thus:
"To that supreme of rogues, who looks the
hang-dog that he is, Doctor (such a doctor!) Andrew Bell."
Or again:
"To the ape of apes, and the knave of knaves,
who is recorded to have once paid a debt�but a small one, you may be sure, it
was that he selected for this wonderful experiment�in fact, it was 4
2
d.
Had it been on the other side of 6d., he must have died before he could have
achieved so dreadful a sacrifice."
Many others, most ingeniously varied in the style of
abuse, I have heard rehearsed by Coleridge, Southey, Lloyd,
&c.; and one, in particular, addressed to the doctor, when spending a summer
at the cottage of Robert Newton, an old
soldier, in Grasmere, presented on the back two separate adjurations, one
specially addressed to Robert himself, pathetically urging him to look sharply
after the rent of his lodgings; and the other more generally addressed to the
unfortunate person as yet undisclosed to the
British public (and in this case turning out to be myself), who might be
incautious enough to pay the postage at Amble-side. "Don't grant him an
hour's credit," she urged upon the person unknown, "if I had any regard
to my family." "Cash down!" she wrote twice over. Why the
doctor submitted to these annoyances, nobody knew. Some said it was mere
indolence; but others held it to be a cunning compromise with her inexorable
malice. The letters were certainly open to the "public" eye ; but
meantime the "public " was a very narrow one: the clerks in the
post-office had little time for digesting such. amenities of conjugal affection ;
and the chance bearer of the letters to the doctor would naturally solve the
mystery by supposing an extra portion of madness in the writer, rather than an
extra portion of knavery in the reverend
receiver.'
ROBERT BURTON
On the 27th January 1639, there was interred in Christ Church
Cathedral, Oxford, one of the most singular men of genius that England has at any
time produced,�the famous Robert Burton, author of the Anatomy of
Melancholy. Though occupying a clerical charge in
his native county of Leicester, he lived chiefly in his rooms in Christ Church
College, and thus became a subject of notice to Anthony Wood, who, in his
Athence Oxonienses, thus speaks of him: He was an exact mathematician, a
curious calculator of nativities, a
general-read scholar, a thorough-paced philologist, and one that understood the
surveying of lands well. As he was by many accounted a severe student, a devourer
of authors, a melancholy and humorous person, so, by others who knew him well, a
person of great honesty,
plain-dealing, and charity. I have heard some of the ancients of Christ Church
say, that his company was very merry, facete, and juvenile; and no man in his time
did surpass him for his ready and dexterous interlarding his common discourse
among them with verses from the poets,
or sentences from classical authors, which, being then all the fashion in the
University, made his company more acceptable.'
The Anatomy of Melancholy was the only work which Burton produced. After
the 8th edition (1676), the book seems to have fallen into neglect,
till Dr. Johnson's remark, that it was the only book that ever took him out of bed
two hours sooner than he wished to
rise, again directed attention to it. Dr. Ferrier has shewn that Sterne was
largely indebted to it, and other authors have been poachers on the same preserve.
The work contains a vast number of quotations, nearly all Latin, combined with.
his own reflections on the large mass of
historical and other materials which he has collected. His humour is quaint and
peculiar. His melancholy resembles that of Jacques in As you Like it. The fine
stanzas prefixed to his book, beginning:
'When I goe musing all alone,'
exhibit the meaning which Burton attaches to The word,
which seems to be, not depression of spirits, but rather a habit of rumination,
during which the feelings are cheerful or sad according to the succession of
thoughts which pass
through the mind.
These lines are thought to have suggested to Milton
many ideas in his Il Penseroso:
'When I goe musing all alone,
Thinking of divers things fore-known,
When I would build castles in the air,
Void of sorrow and void of fear,
Pleasing myself with phantasms sweet,
Methinks the time runs very fleet:
All my joys to this are folly,
Nought so sweet as Melancholy.
'When I goe walking all alone,
Recounting what I have ill done,
My thoughts on me then tyrannise,
Fear and sorrow me surprise;
Whether I tarry still or go,
Methinks the time moves very slow:
All my griefs to this are jolly,
Nought so sad as Melancholy.
'When to my selfe I act and smile,
With pleasing thoughts the time beguile,
By a brookside or wood so green,
Unheard, unsought for, or unseen,
A thousand pleasures doe me bless,
And crown my soul with happiness.
All my joyes besides are folly,
None so sweet as Melancholy.
'When I lie, sit, or walk alone,
I sigh, I grieve, making great mone,
In a dark grove, or irksome den,
With discontents and furies then,
A thousand miseries at once
Mine heavy heart and soul ensconce.
All my griefs to this are jolly,
None so sour as Melancholy.'
An edition of the work was published in 1849, in 8vo,
with notes, in which the quotations are translated, explained, and referred to the
respective works from which they have been derived.
Burton died at or very near the time which he had some years before foretold from
the calculations of his own nativity, and which, says Wood:
'being exact, several of the students did not
forbear to whisper among themselves, that rather than there should be a mistake
in the calculation, he sent up his soul to heaven through a slip about his
neck.'
We have no other evidence of the truth of this than an
obscure hint in the epitaph on his tomb, which was written by the author himself,
a short time before his death. Over his grave, against the upper pillar of the
aisle, was raised
a monument, with the bust of Burton, painted to the life; and on the right-hand,
is the calculation of his nativity; and under the bust is the epitaph:
Paucis notes, paucioribus ignotus,
Hic jacet Democritus junior,
Cui vitam dedit et modem
Melancholia.
Ob. 8, Id. Jan. A.C. MD.XXXIX.'
EARLY NOTICES OF COFFEE IN ENGLAND -
FROM BROADSIDES IN THE LUTTREL COLLECTION
A manuscript note, written by Oldys, the celebrated antiquary,
states that 'The use of coffee in England was first known in 1657. Mr. Edwards, a
Turkey merchant, brought from Smyrna to London one Pasqua Rosee, a Ragusan youth,
who prepared this drink for him every morning. But
the novelty thereof drawing too much company to him, he allowed his said servant,
with another of his son-in-law, to sell it publicly, and they set up the first
coffee-house in London, in St. Michael's alley in Cornhill. The sign was Pasqua
Rosee's own head.' Oldys is slightly
in' error here; Rosee commenced- his coffee-house in 1652, and one Jacobs, a Jew,
had established a similar undertaking at Oxford,-a year or two earlier. One of
Rosee's original shop or hand-bills, the only mode of advertising in those days,
is now before us; and considering it
to be a remarkable record of a great social innovation, we here reprint it for the
amusement of the reader:
THE
VERTUE OF THE COFFEE DRINK
First made and publicly sold in England by Pasqua
Rosee.
The grain or berry called coffee, groweth upon little trees only in the deserts
of Arabia. It is brought from thence, and drunk generally throughout all the
Grand Seignour's dominions. It is a simple, innocent thing, composed into a
drink, by being dried in an oven, and ground
to powder, and boiled up with spring water, and about half a pint of it to be
drunk fasting an hour before, and not eating an hour after, and to be taken as
hot as possibly can be endured; the which will never fetch the skin off the
mouth, or raise any blisters by reason of
that heat.
The Turks' drink at meals and other times is usually water, and their diet
consists much of fruit; the crudities whereof are very much corrected by this
drink.
The quality of this drink is cold and dry; and
though it be a drier, yet it neither heats, nor inflames more than hot posset.
It so incloseth the orifice of the stomach, and fortifies the heat within, that
it is very good to help
digestion; and therefore of great use to be taken about three or four o'clock
afternoon, as well as in the morning. It much quickens the spirits, and makes
the heart lightsome; it is good against sore eyes, and the better if you hold
your head over it and take in the steam that
way. It suppresseth fumes exceedingly, and therefore is good against the
head-ache, and will very much stop any deflexion of rhenms, that distil from the
head upon the stomach, and so prevent and help consumptions and the cough of the
lungs.
It is excellent to prevent and cure the dropsy,
gout, and scurvy. It is known by experience to be better than any other drying
drink for people in years, or children that have any running humours upon them,
as the king's evil, &c.
It is a most excellent remedy against the spleen, hypochondriac winds, and the
like. It will prevent drowsiness, and make one fit for business, if one have
occasion to watch, and therefore you are not to drink of it after supper, unless
you intend to be watchful, for it will
hinder sleep for three or four hours.
It is observed that in Turkey, where this is generally
drunk, that they are not troubled with the stone, gout, dropsy, or scurvy, and
that their skins are exceeding clear and white. It is neither laxative nor
restringent.
The new beverage, as may readily be supposed, had its opponents, as well as its
advocates. The following extracts from A Broadside against Coffee, published about
the same period, informs us that Rosee's partner, the servant of Mr. Edwards's
son-in-law, was a coachman; while it
controverts the statement that hot coffee will not burn the mouth, and ridicules
the broken English of the Ragusan:
A
BROADSIDE AGAINST COFFEE
A coachman was the first (here) coffee made,
And ever since the rest drive on the trade:
'Me no good Engalash!' and sure enough,
He played the quack to salve his Stygian stuff;
Ver boon for de stomach, de cough, de phthisick.',
And I believe him, for it looks like physic.
Coffee a crust is charred into a coal,
The smell and taste of the mock china bowl;
Where huff and puff, they labour out their lungs,
Lest, Dives-like, they should bewail their tongues.
And yet they tell ye that it will not burn,
Though on the jury blisters you return;
Whose furious heat does make the waters rise,
And still through the alembics of your eyes.
Dread and desire, you fall to 't snap by snap,
As hungry dogs do scalding porridge lap.
But to cure drunkards it has got great fame;
Posset or porridge, will 't not do the same?
Confusion hurries all into one scene,
Like Noah's ark, the clean and the unclean.
And now, alas! the drench has credit got,
And he's no gentleman that drinks it not;
That such a dwarf should rise to such a stature!
But custom is but a remove from Nature.
A little dish and a large coffee-house,
What is it but a mountain and a mouse?
But, in spite of opposition, coffee soon became a
favourite drink, and the shops, where it was sold, places of general resort.
One of the most noted was at the Sultan Morat or
Amurath's head in Exchange-alley; another was 'Ward's' in Bread-street, at the
sign of the Sultan Solyman's head. Tokens, to serve as small money, were issued by
both of these
establishments, and are here represented. Another of the earliest houses was the
Rainbow, near Temple-bar, which still flourishes, but altogether in a new style.
There can be little doubt that the coffee-house, as a substitute for the
beerseller's fire-side, was a movement
towards refinement, as well as temperance. There appears to have been a great
anxiety that the coffee-house, while open to all ranks, should be conducted under
such restraints as might prevent the better class of customers from being
offended. Accordingly, the following
regulations, printed on large sheets of paper, were hung up in conspicuous
positions on the walls:
THE RULES AND ORDERS OF
THE COFFEE-HOUSE
Enter, sirs, freely, but first, if you please,
Peruse our civil orders, which are these.
First, gentry, tradesmen, all are welcome hither,
And may without affront sit down together:
Pre-eminence of place none here should mind,
But take the next fit seat that he can find:
Nor need any, if finer persons come,
Rise up for to assign to them his room
To limit men's expense, we think not fair,
But let him forfeit twelve-pence that shall swear:
He that shall any quarrel here begin,
Shall give each man a dish t' atone the sin;
And so shall he, whose compliments extend
So far to drink in coffee to his friend;
Let noise of loud disputes be quite forborne,
Nor maudlin lovers here in corners mourn,
But all be brisk, and talk, but not too much;
On sacred things, let none presume to touch,
Nor profane Scripture, nor saucily wrong
Affairs of State with an irreverent tongue:
Let mirth be innocent, and each man see
That all his jests without reflection be;
To keep the house more quiet and from blame,
We banish hence cards, dice, and every game;
Nor can allow of wagers, that exceed.
Five shillings, which ofttimes do troubles breed;
Let all that 's lost or forfeited be spent
In such good liquor as the house cloth vent,
And customers endeavour, to their powers,
For to observe still, seasonable hours.
Lastly, let each man what he calls for pay,
And so you 're welcome to come every day.
The above rules are ornamented, with an engraved
representation of a coffee-house. Five persons, one of them smoking, and,
evidently, from their dresses of different ranks in life, areseated at a table, on
which. are small basins,
with-out saucers, and tobacco pipes, while a waiter is engaged in serving coffee.
Believing that the public will feel some interest in the seventeenth century
coffee-house�the resort of Dryden, Wycherley, and the wits and poets
generally�we have caused a transcript of this print
to be here presented.
Immediately after their first establishment, the
coffee-houses became the resort of quidnuncs, and the great marts for news of all
kinds, true and false. A broadside song, published in 1667, thus describes the
principal subjects of
coffee-house conversation:
You that delight in wit and mirth,
And long to hear such news
As come from all parts of the earth,
Dutch, Danes, and Turks, and Jews,
I'll send you to a rendezvous,
Where it is smoking new;
Go hear it at a coffee-house,
It cannot but be true.
There battles and sea-fights are fought,
And bloody plots displayed;
They know more things than ere was thought,
Or ever was betrayed:
No money in the Minting-house
Is half so bright and new;
And, coming from the coffee-house,
It cannot but be true.
Before the navies fall to work,
They know who shall be winner;
They there can tell you what the Turk
Last Sunday had to dinner;
Who last did cut De Ruyter's corns,
Amongst his jovial crew;
Or who first gave the devil horns,
Which cannot but be true.
Another swears by both his ears,
Monsieur will cut our throats;
The French king will a girdle bring,
Made of flat-bottomed boats,
Shall compass England round about,
Which must not be a few,
To give our Englishmen the rout;
This sounds as if 'twere true.
There's nothing done in all the world,
From monarch to the mouse,
But every day or night 'tis hurled
Into the coffee-house.
What Lily, or what Booker can
By art not bring about,
At coffee-house you'll find a man
Can quickly find it out.
They'll tell you there what lady-ware
Of late is grown too light;
What wise man shall from favour fall,
What fool shall be a knight;
They'll tell you when our failing trade
Shall rise again and flourish,
Or when Jack Adams shall be made
Churchwarden of the parish.
They know all that is good or hurt,
To bless ye, or to save ye;
There is the college, and the court,
The country, camp, and navy;
So great a university,
I think there ne'er was any,
In which you may a scholar be
For spending of a penny.
A merchant's prentice there shall show
You all and everything
What hath been done, and is to do,
'Twixt Holland and the King;
What articles of peace will be
He can precisely shew;
What will be good for them or we
He perfectly doth know.
The drinking there of chocolate
Can make a fool a Sophy;
'Tis thought the Turkish Mahomet
Was first inspired with coffee,
By which his powers did overflow
The land of Palestine;
Then let us to the coffee-house go,
'Tis cheaper far than wine.
You shall know there what fashions are,
How periwigs are curled;
And for a penny you shall hear
All novells in the world.
Both old and young, and great and small,
And rich and poor, you'll see;
Therefore let 's to the coffee all,
Come all away with me.
In 1675 a proclamation was issued for shutting up and
suppressing all coffee-houses. The government of the day, however, found that, in
making this proclamation, they had gone a step too far. So early as this period,
the coffee-house
had become a power in the land�as Macaulay tells us�a most important political
institution, when public meetings, harangues, resolutions, and the rest of the
machinery of agitation, had not come into fashion, and nothing resembling a
newspaper existed. In such circumstances, the
coffee-houses were the chief organs through which the public opinion of the
metropolis vented itself. Consequently, on a petition of the merchants and
retailers of coffee, permission was granted to keep the coffee-houses open for six
months, under an admonition that the masters
of them should prevent all scandalous papers, books, and libels from being read in
them; and hinder every person from declaring, uttering, or divulging all manner of
false and scandalous reports against government, or the ministers thereof. The
absurdity of constituting every
maker of a cup of coffee a censor of the press, was too great for even those days;
the proclamation was laughed at, and no more was heard of the suppression of
coffee-houses. Their subsequent history does not fall within our present limits,
but may be referred to at another
opportunity.
THE ORIGIN OF SOME WELL-KNOWN
LINES
'His angle-rod made of a sturdy oak;
His line a cable, which in storms ne'er broke;
His hook he baited with a dragon's tail,
And sat upon a rock, and bobbed for whale.'
The origin of these somewhat famous lines seems not to
be generally known. In our contemporary Notes and Queries (for November 30, 1861,
p. 448) they are spoken of as 'Dr. King's well-known quatrain upon A Giant
Angling.' This is a
mistake at least, if Dr. William King, the Oxford wit and poet, is the person
meant; indeed, there seems every reason to suppose that they were composed before
Dr. King was born. With one or two trifling variations, they are to be found in
the Mock Romance, a rhapsody attached to
The Loves of Hero and Leander, a small 12mo published in London in the
years 1653 and 1677; the following being the context:
This day (a day as fair as heart could wish)
This giant stood on shore of sea to fish:
For angling-rod, he took a sturdy oak;
For line a cable, that in storm ne'er broke;
His hook was such as heads the end of pole,
To pluck down house ere fire consumes it whole:
His hook was baited with a dragon's tail,
And then on rock he stood to bob for whale:
Which straight he caught, and nimbly home did pack,
With ten cart-load of dinner on his back.'
Dr. King, however, is not the only unsuccessful
claimant of the above four lines. They are printed in the fifth volume of
Dryden's Miscellany, and have been attributed to Daniel Kenrick, a quack
physician, at Worcester. As,
however, Kenrick was thirty-two years of age in 1685, it is as impossible that
they can have been written by him as by Dr. King. Their true origin we have given
above; their authorship is, and probably always will be, unknown.
January 28th
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