Punch (58.1870)

98

PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

[March 12, 1870

NEW CURIOSITIES OF LITERATURE. SELLING THE ANCHORS !

{By an ancient True-Blue.)

homson's Seasons
were not composed
at the periods and
under the circum-
stances which
might have been
expected to pro-
duce them. Spring
was written in fur-

You boast your business-habits,

At dock-yard muddlers thunder,
But here's Hay down on Baxter

For a colossal blunder:
Here's your out-and-out Controller,

Whom all forms and checks environ,
Selling twelve score service-anchors

nished1odgings?in : , *X\h,e value °f old iron~

the Poultry dur -^ucl " *lESSas- Shand and Thompson

ing the poet's re- nuHa&T?t behaTedillke bricksA

covery from an 1 hey d have sacked, per ton, the dm rence

attack of chicken- 4 Between forty pounds and six !

pox, brought on And to replace the damage

by the failure of At Bob .Lowe, the National Banker s,

the Cochin China ' Yo" 'd have had to lower your balance

expedition under T.°[ uur smPs leave without Anchors !

Drake. Summer he If 0what ?ou are as store-keepers

ouch you are as ship-builders—
Oh, ain't you a nice Baxter!
Ain't you a precious Childers !

Nor is't i' the dockyards only,
And their administration,

completed whilst

snowed up in a little restaurant amongst the Grampians, in the extraordinarily
severe winter of 1727, when several couples of fowls were roasted whole on the
Thames. Autumn, jotted down on the backs of old tavern bills, occupied him the
summer he was crickering with George Selwyn on Salisbury Plain; and Winter,
we know, from documents in the State Paper Office, he dictated to his amanuensis,

Charles Surface, as they lay lounging, and drinking syllabub with Blbb Dod-1 in£ b^ thf sell-same blunder

ington in the hay-fields near Burslem. You ™ .to Penj Put th^ natl°?' ,

The MS. Warburton took one windy night under his cassock to Dodsley, bm™ 7,U1£ hands trusted Kadical

in Pall Mall, who bought it for what we should think a very small sum; large S w^ ?_,^y-f}™^lt;ie'

enough, however, to enable Thomson to accomplish the object he had all along
had in view in writing the poem—the purchase of new stair carpets for his villa
at Richmond, where, to this day, they preserve and show (for a small gratuity)
some of the stones of the peaches he was so fond of eating in his flowered dressing-
gown.

With anchor after anchor

You've been parting, as old metal.
As Sir Spencer muddled " obsolete "

With " unappropriated,"
If you saw an unused anchor,

As useless it was rated ;
And that First Lord was sharpest,
That Controller the most clever,
Who contrived most to get rid of,
And have broken up for ever.

Business men as bright as Baxter,
And First Lords as 'cute as Childers.

Gray and Horace Walpole went abroad together excellent friends, but soon
quarrelled, and shouted so loud amongst the Apennines that all the neighbours
heard them. The cause of their disagreement has never been satisfactorily ascer-
tained, but according to Malone, Cumberland told Bishop Percy that Mason

told him that Gray's black servant, when he thought he was dying, solemnly j 1 ill to stay the good ship ifnto

declared that Walpole offended his master by persisting in playing the flute, i ^ As she drifts ashore^bewUders

almost unceasingly, in the chaise on the journey.

The origin of the coolness which sprang up between Steele and Addison was
almost as trivial. Addison, liberal and munificent as he could show himself to be,

had his small economies. Steele, having occasion to send a letter to his wife to I Once property made voters,

tell her that he should not be home till late, having unexpectedly been called on
to take the chair at a meeting of the Philanthropic Society, at the Thatched House
Tavern, borrowed four pence of Addison for the postage. Steele repaid the
temporary advance as soon as he was able, but, unluckily, one of the coins tendered
in discharge of the obligation proved to be French instead of English. Addison
discovered his loss when he had to remunerate the link-boy who lighted him
home that night from Dick's ; but Steele was either unconscious of the unfor-
tunate mistake he had made, or thought it too insignificant to rectify, and the
breach was never healed.

Those two great naturalists, Bdeeon and Cuvier, although professors in the
same university, living in the same street, and employing the same laundress,
ceased to speak to each other for sixteen years and a half, after having been
on terms of the closest intimacy, in consequence of a difference that arose between
them at a social tea-party as to the average width of the stripes on the male
Zebra. An eighth of an inch made a gulf between these two friends for ever.

From what humble beginnings have some of the greatest names in our annals
climbed to fame and fortune! Little did Francis Bacon think when he was
bird " tenting" at a penny a-day in the pleasant fields of Marylebone, and eating
the frugal dinner which his careful mother had wrapped up for him in a blue
checked handkerchief, that he should one day become Lord High Admiral of
England, a Peer of the realm, and the author of that great work on the Organ, then
newly introduced into this country from Nova Scotia, which has made his name
immortal.

Shakespeare, the merry black-eyed pastrycook's boy, carrying the tarts on his
head to the Stratford bakehouse; Blackstone serving the bricklayers in Chancery
Lane and reading Coke by stealth; Reynolds taking down tlie shutters and
sprinkling the floor of the haberdasher's shop (doing even that in an artistic
fashion) at Newcastle-under-Lyme; Mrs. Inchbald, as a domestic servant,
cleaning the door-step in Little Britain; John Locke, the alert, obliging ostler
at the Elephant and Castle; Samuel Richardson, with his cheery face and
welcome muffin bell, in the dimly lighted City streets on a dark November after-
noon—these and a thousand more such illustrious examples, what admirable
subjects do they furnish for the painter, how forcibly do they illustrate the
truth of Cicero's noble sentiment {Pro Consule Planco, xviii., 7, ed. Trombonius),
" Non insignificantia, non impecuniositas, non obscuri parentes obstant ingenio, neque
abilUates distinguiosissimas extinguere possunt."

And with its anchor fixed 'em,
Till our Dizzy and your Gladstone

God rid of that betwixt 'em:
And landed qualification,

M.P.'s anchor, is got rid of:
And the House is full of jobbers,

Mere £ s. d. at bid of :
Anchors of birth and breeding

Are in Ministers dispensed with :
From faith's anchor we've freed Parsons,

E'en loose Bishops have commenced with :
Ptobbed of its family anchor,
All adrift is our diplomacy,
And patrician finds plebeian

In F. O. as much at home as he.
From birch's and cat's anchor

We've loosed services and school:
And our soldiers, tars, and schoolboys

Go to wreck for lack of rule :
And as Holland clutched her stivers

Until she lost her guilders,
So may England, with her anchors
Left to Baxter's care and Childe.us.

Contented ignorance you've lost,

Best anchor of the masses :
Stem on, into each other.

Drive swells and working classes.
From the anchor of authority

You've cast loose press and pen;
Flung away the women's ancUor,

Of submission to the men.
The anchor of obedience

Is abandoned, e'en for babbies:
From the anchor of a tariff

Bruce has let loose the Cabbies :
From maiden-modesty's anchor,

Oar fast girls are set free -.