Austin Dobson - Eighteenth Century Vignettes

The rough, illiterate, septuagenarian sea-captain, 'full of strange oaths' and superstitions, despotic, irascible and good-natured, awkwardly gallanting the ladies in all the splendours of a red coat, cockade and sword, and heart-broken, privateer though he had been, when his favourite kitten is smothered by a feather-bed, has all the elements of a finished individuality. It is with respect to him that occurs almost the only really dramatic incident of the voyage. A violent dispute having arisen about the exclusive right of the passengers to the cabin, Fielding resolved, not without misgivings, to quit the ship, ordering a hoy for that purpose, and taking care, as became a magistrate, to threaten Captain Veal with what that worthy feared more than rock or quicksand, the terrors of retributary legal proceedings. The rest may be told in the journalist's own words: 'The most distant sound of law thus frightened a man, who had often, I am convinced, heard numbers of cannon roar round him with intrepidity. Nor did he sooner see the hoy approaching the vessel, than he ran down again into the cabin, and, his rage being perfectly subsided, he tumbled on his knees, and a little too abjectly implored for mercy.

'I did not suffer a brave man and an old man, to remain a moment in this posture; but I immediately forgave him.' Most of those who have related this anecdote end discreetly at this point. Fielding, however, is too honest to allow us to place his forbearance entirely to the credit of his magnanimity. 'And here, that I may not be thought the sly trumpeter of my own praises, I do utterly disclaim all praise on the occasion. Neither did the greatness of my mind dictate, nor the force of my Christianity exact this forgiveness. To speak truth, I forgave him from a motive which would make men much more forgiving, if they were much wiser than they are; because it was convenient for me so to do.'

With the arrival of the 'Queen of Portugal' at Lisbon the 'Journal' ends, and no further particulars of its writer are forthcoming. Two months later he died in the Portuguese capital, and was buried among the cypresses of the beautiful English cemetery. Luget Britannia gremio non dari Fovere natum – is inscribed upon his tomb.

ONE hot day in Holborn, – one of those very hot days when, as Mr. Andrew Lang or M. Octave Uzanne has said, the brown backs buckle in the fourpenny boxes, and you might poach an egg on the cover of a quarto, – the incorrigible bookhunter who pens these pages purchased two octavo volumes of 'Beauties of the Spectators, Tatlers and Guardians, Connected and Digested under Alphabetical Heads.' That their contents were their main attraction would be too much to say. For the literary 'Beauties' of one age, like those other are not always the 'Beauties' of another. Where the selector of to-day would put Sir Roger de Coverley and Will Wimble, the Everlasting Club, or the Exercise of the Fan, the judicious gentlemen in rusty wigs and inked ruffles who managed the 'connecting' and 'digesting' department for Messrs. Tonson in the Strand, put passages on Detraction, Astronomy, Chearful-ness (with an 'a'), Bankruptcy, Self-Denial, Celibacy, and the Bills of Mortality. They must have done a certain violence to their critical convictions by including, in forlorn isolation, such flights of imagination as the 'Inkle and Yarico' of Mr. Steele and the 'Hilpah and Shalum' of Mr. Addison. The interest of this particular copy is, however, peculiar to itself. It is bound neatly in full mottled calf, with stamped gold roses at the corners of the covers; and at the points of a star in the centre are printed the letters E, G, C, G. An autograph inscription in the first volume explains this mystery. They are the initials of the 'Twin Sisters

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A few sentences in this paper are borrowed from the writer's 'Life of Steele,' 1886.

In this last character Charles Jervas painted her. The picture is in the National Portrait Gallery. She has hazel eyes and dark-brown hair.

'Harmonious Cibber entertains

The Court with annual Birth-day Strains;

Whence Gay was banish'd in Disgrace.'

Swift, On Poetry: a Rhapsody, 1733.

Expedition of Humphrey Clinker' (Letter to Dr. Lewis, September 15).

For example, a number of new letters are included in vol. iii. of the privately-printed 'Letters and Journals of Lady Mary Coke,' 1889-92.

He did not tell Spence (as he might have done) that his own 'Damn with faint praise' was borrowed from the man he was decrying. 'And with faint praises one another damn,' is a line in one of Wycherley's prologues.

This must have been a commonplace. 'Like the sick man, we are just expiring with all sorts of good symptoms,' says Swift, in the 'Conduct of the Allies,' 1711.

The copy hero described also contains – but apparently only inserted by a former owner – the scroll book-plate of Pepys.

Egham, Staines, and Windsor form a triangle. According to J. T. Smith, Alderman Boydell was one of the last who wore a hat of this type ('Book for a Rainy Day,' 1861, p. 221).

It was disposed of in 1750 by raffle or lottery. 'Yesterday,' – says the 'General Advertiser' for May 1 in that year, – 'Mr. Hogarth's subscription was closed. 1843 chances being subscrib'd for, Mr Hogarth gave the remaining 107 chances to the Foundling Hospital. At two o'clock the Box was opened, and the fortunate chance was No. 1941, which belongs to the said Hospital; and the same night Mr Hogarth delivered the Picture to the Governors.'

Johnson had, if not a taste, at least an appetite, for the old-fashioned romances which Mrs. Lenox satirised. Once, at Bishop Percy's, he selected 'Fenxmarte of Hircania' (in folio) for his habitual reading, and he read it through religiously. Upon another occasion his choice fell upon Burke's favourite, 'Palmerin of England.' 'History as She is wrote' in 'Clelia' and 'Cleopatra;' the persistence of Arabella in finding princes in gardeners, and rescuers in highwaymen – are things not ill-invented. But repeated they pall; and not all the insistence upon her natural good sense and her personal charms, nor (as compared with such concurrent efforts as Mrs. Eliza Haywood's 'Betsy Thoughtless')

This, like 'Betsy Thoughtless,' belongs to 1751.

The picture, it should be added, was not at first presented in its racy entirety. When, in February, 1755, the 'Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon' was given to the world for the benefit of Fielding's widow and children, although the 'Dedication to the Public' affirmed the book to be 'as it came from the hands of the author,' many of the franker touches which go to complete the full-length of Captain Richard Veal, as well as sundry other particulars, were withheld. This question is fully discussed in the Introduction to the limited edition of the 'Journal,' published in 1892 by the Chiswick Press.