DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.70302#0049
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SOME PARTICULARS RELATIVE TO THE ECCENTRIC
JOSEPH CAPPER, ESQ.
With a Plate from an original Drawing.
For a circumstantial account of this gentleman, we re-
fer our readers to p. 478, of the second volume of that
popular work, Kirby’s Wonderful and Scientific Museum,
lately completed; we doubt not but the purchasers of
that publication will be highly gratified with the striking
likeness of this original character which we now present.
We have been favoured, by persons who knew Mr.
Capper intimately, with the following additional parti-
culars concerning him :—It is well known to every reader
of classic taste, that the Roman emperor Domitian,
though the brother of the excellent Titus, was accus-
tomed to amuse himself for hours together with destroy-
ing flies. Mr. Capper’s antipathy to those insects has
already been noticed, and for this reason, the company
with whom he used to associate at the Horns, gave him
the appellation of Domitian.
A mischance which befel him in the indulgence of
this fly-killing propensity, which he pursued with all the
eagerness of a youthful sportsman, is thus related :—
After dinner he regularly took a pint of wine, and always
had a glass, a tumbler, and a bowl placed on the table
before him, and was accustomed to cover his wine with
a piece of paper, to prevent his enemies, the flies, from
quaffing the precious beverage. One day he happened
to leave the room, and during his absence a gentleman
laid on the paper a small piece of snuff of candle. Cap-
per, on his return, mistaking it for a fly, said to himself,
“Aha I now I shall have you;” and cautiously creeping
towards the table, with his stick discharged such a blow
as shivered his glasses into a thousand pieces, to the no
small diversion of the company.
Eccentric, No. I. r Though
' o
SOME PARTICULARS RELATIVE TO THE ECCENTRIC
JOSEPH CAPPER, ESQ.
With a Plate from an original Drawing.
For a circumstantial account of this gentleman, we re-
fer our readers to p. 478, of the second volume of that
popular work, Kirby’s Wonderful and Scientific Museum,
lately completed; we doubt not but the purchasers of
that publication will be highly gratified with the striking
likeness of this original character which we now present.
We have been favoured, by persons who knew Mr.
Capper intimately, with the following additional parti-
culars concerning him :—It is well known to every reader
of classic taste, that the Roman emperor Domitian,
though the brother of the excellent Titus, was accus-
tomed to amuse himself for hours together with destroy-
ing flies. Mr. Capper’s antipathy to those insects has
already been noticed, and for this reason, the company
with whom he used to associate at the Horns, gave him
the appellation of Domitian.
A mischance which befel him in the indulgence of
this fly-killing propensity, which he pursued with all the
eagerness of a youthful sportsman, is thus related :—
After dinner he regularly took a pint of wine, and always
had a glass, a tumbler, and a bowl placed on the table
before him, and was accustomed to cover his wine with
a piece of paper, to prevent his enemies, the flies, from
quaffing the precious beverage. One day he happened
to leave the room, and during his absence a gentleman
laid on the paper a small piece of snuff of candle. Cap-
per, on his return, mistaking it for a fly, said to himself,
“Aha I now I shall have you;” and cautiously creeping
towards the table, with his stick discharged such a blow
as shivered his glasses into a thousand pieces, to the no
small diversion of the company.
Eccentric, No. I. r Though
' o