Punch (58.1870)

Febluxabt 12, 1870.] PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI. 53

NEW CURIOSITIES OF LITERATURE.

as Shakspeare vaccinated? This im-
portant question which has hitherto
been a matter of considerable doubt,
and the origin of a good deal of
virulent controversy amongst anti-
quaries, is at last satisfactorily
answered by a letter which has been
recently discovered in a very unlikely
spot—in Spain—amongst the Siman-
cas MSS. It was written by Dr.
Kadcliffe, the physician who taught
Queen Anne how to eat asparagus,
and addressed to Lady Mary
Wortley Montagu, the bel esprit
who introduced the artichoke into
this country from Jerusalem, and
inoculated the leaders of fashion with
a taste for that esculent; and in it
the Doctor states that his grandfather, who was an eminent paper-
hanger at Stratford-upon-Avon, remembered being told by his old
nurse that her first husband's great aunt distinctly recollected
stroking, when a girl, the cow—dun, with a white face—to which
"the Swan of Avon" was indebted for his preservation from the
dangerous and disfiguring malady then so rife in England. This old
lady, the great aunt of the first husband of the nurse of the grandfather
of Dr. Radcliffe, who lived to be ninety-five, averred that the cow
she remembered fondling was always called " Shakspeare's Cow," and
was treated with the greatest respect and the choicest fodder; and that
at the Stratford " Jubilee " a tuft of hair from its tail was formed into a
bracelet, and presented, with a complimentary address on vellum, by
the Mayor and Corporation to Mrs. Garrick, who by will bequeathed
it to the Beef-Steak Club, enclosed in a bos made out of a piece of the
mahogany tree, under which Shakspeare used to sit and smoke and
drink mulled Canary with Ben Jonson and Sir Thomas Lucy, before
the battle of La Hogue.

This interesting letter will shortly be published (it is in cipher, but
fortunately the key is in the possession of the Ironmongers' Company)
with a preface, prolegomena, introduction, copious variorum notes,
including some ingenious but entirely conjectural emendations, appen-
dixes, and indexes, and with illustrations and fac-similes produced by
the new chromophotoltthotintotypoxylographic process. A few copies
willbe struck off' on large paper and appropriately bound in calf, for
presentation to various learned and scientific bodies at home and
abroad.____

In that delightful book for a drizzling day, the Diversions of Pur ley—
the only book, Johnson said that ever led him to neglect his mother-
in-law, and in which, by the way, the earliest mention of croquet
occurs—Horne Tooke first broached the startling theory that the tap-
root of the Anglo-Saxon tongue is not to be found in the great Aryan
family of languages, as Heliqgabalus and the learned Juan Fer-
nandez maintained, but in the Syro-Phcenician group, discovered by
Columbus in one ot the Pacific oceans, immediately upon the revival
of learning in the mountain fastnesses of the Zoliverein.

The aboriginal tin-plate workers introduced this language into Corn-
wall towards the close of a fine afternoon in the dark ages, and from
thence it spread rapidly over the entire island, until it reached the ears
of the Romans who in their coracles, under the command of Cincin-
natus—his descendants subsequently emigrated to the New World
and there founded Cincinnati—had then recently discovered Bristol
and the Severn salmon, but a few miles from the spot where the
missing books of Livy were lost in a gale off the Land's End.

There is no doubt that Shenstone knew who the author of Junius
was, and that if he had lived a few years longer he would not have
destroyed the repository of the secret—the little shagreen casket which,
to the great chagrin of all interested in this the unsolved problem of
our Literature, the author of The Schoolmistress committed to the
flames, while sitting in the dining-parlour of the Leasowes with Wilkes
and Lord Lyttelton over their walnuts and wine, the night Warren
Hastings came home from India, with portmanteaus of rupees, and met
Sir Philip Francis in a pouring rain under Temple Bar, returning
from a dinner-party at Lord George Sackville's, in Grafton Street.

Shenstone always slept with the little casket under his pillow, a
loaded blunderbuss and a watchman's rattle on the coverlet, and a
night-light burning on the mantel-piece. A bloodhound lay crouching
on a cocoa-nut mat outside the chamber-door, and two military pen-
sioners from the nearest market-town patrolled- the shrubberies, and
tried the doors of the house every hour during the night.

Morning Envelopes.—Dressing Gowns.

GOOD NEWS FOR BAD TRAVELLERS.

My dear Smith,

Has your wife seen this ?—

" Professor Tyndall asserts that, by means of cotton wool, air as pure
aa that of the Alps, may be brought into the chamber of the invalid."

Men like you and me, who hate the bore of travelling, may surely
feel rejoiced at this comforting intelligence. No more need in future
to take our wives to Switzerland when their health requires recruiting.
A bit of cotton wool wdl answer all the purpose of a journey to
Chamounix. Although throughout the season she appears robust and
vigorous, it is usual for my wife to become an invalid about the
first of August, and to discover that pure Alpine air is absolutely
needful to save her from complete and permanent prostration. Now,
thanks to dear friend Tyndall, instead of taking tickets for Lucerne
or Geneva, I shall merely get a respirator made of cotton wool, and
thus enable my poor invalid to breathe as much pure air as she con-
siders to be needful. If she requires some mounting exercise as well
as mountain air, she can exert herself by making the ascent of Prim-
rose Hill, or mounting to the summit of St. Paul's when she thinks
proper. If we cotton to the plan of using cotton wool to breathe
through, we may dine cosily at home throughout the month of August,
instead of being plagued by noisy foreign tables d'hote; and although
we miss the sight of some pleasant mountain scenes, we shall also miss
the sight of the unpleasant bills incurred for the privilege of seeing
them.

With a hope that Mrs. Smith may thank me for the hint, I remain
hers, most devotedly, Jeremiah Hunks.

POUNDERS STERLING.

If it were really a truth that the "sperrits" ever do, under condi-
tions, rap out answers to questions propounded to them by people
in the flesh, we should like to ask one of them, reuowned in its earthly
day, what it thinks of the statement which follows, extracted from a
letter written by Major Palliser to the Times on the rivalry between
pointed chilled shot and shot of flat-headed steel:—

" The late controversy cost the country £30,000, although it was confined
to 12-pounders and 70-pounders. I would ask, what will be the cost when
600-pounders are at stake ? Every round fired from the 70-pounder cost about
17*.; every round shot fired from the 600-pounder would cost £8 or £9."

There once existed, " in the form," as Yankee Mediums say, a certain
Spirit that might have been called the Spirit of Public Economy. Is
that Spirit present—the Spirit of Joseph Hume ? If so, will that dear
spirit be so obliging as to rap the table and say what it thinks of
blazing away sums of from seventeen shillings to nine pounds in artillery
experiments at one bang, and not a single enemy killed, or a farthing's
worth of enemy's property destroyed to show for it ?

No answer—of course not. It needs no ghost from the grave to tell
us what fools we should be to allow our money to be fired away at that
rate in unnecessary experiments, yet what still greater fools to shirk
trying any such experiments, if necessary. The kuown ability to sink
an enemy's fleet may save us the expense of having to do so at nine
pounds a shot.

But where will the increasing cost of projectiles stop ? By-and-by,
perhaps, we shall talk of six hundred-pounders meaning guns costing
£600 every discharge. Every gun will fire away a little fortune at a
time, enough to make a wife and several children happy. But then
what nation will be able to afford war r"

CABBY THE CORSAIR.

Thus spoke the Cabman, a frantic halloo,

" Up with the false flag, and down with the true ;

Sixpence a mile only stands for mv doo,"

" Driver, how much ?" " Sir, I'll leave it to you."

" Threaten my licence no more to renew—
Threaten me fine and imprisonment too.
Blow that ere Hact as I '11 drive right slap through.
Up with the false flag and down with the true! "

Chinese Customs and Chinese Tails.

Everybody knows that Chinamen wear tails, and attach a high
value to them. But few may be aware that these caudal appendages
are actually the measure of value in the Flowery Land. In the Chinese
Revenue Accounts just published, the value of duties on imports is put
down at 3,157,415 taels, that on exports at 4,879,015 taels, and 1 hat
on native goods charged for home consumption, 1,034,900 taels ! No
wonder chignons are expensive articles !