IZAAK WALTON.

Rachel Floud, maternally descended from Archbishop Cranmer. Seven children were the fruit of this union, but they all died in childhood, and last of all the mother also, in 1640. The narrow accommodations which London tradesmen then assigned to their families are sufficient to account for such tragic results. Meanwhile Walton's business as linen-draper prospered; and for recreation he used to go a-fishing with honest Nat, and R. Roe.' His favourite stream was the Lea, a river which has its source above Ware, in Hertfordshire, and gliding about the country to the north-east of London, falls into the Thames a little above Blackwall.

age.

Amidst the troubles of the civil war, while London was generally parliamentarian, worthy Izaak remained a steady royalist and churchman. Having accumulated a small independence, and anxious, it is supposed, to escape from the scene of 50 many domestic afflictions, and from possible annoyance on the score of his faith and politics, he gave up shopkeeping, about 1643, and retired into the country. In 1646, he contracted a second marriage with Anne Ken, sister of the saintly bishop of Bath and Wells. She died in 1662, leaving her husband a son Izaak and a daughter Anne to comfort him in his prolonged old Walton was fifty when he gave up business, and forty years of leisure remained for his enjoyment. Authorship he had begun before he left his shop. In the parish church of St Dunstan he had been a hearer and, as he says, 'a convert' to the preaching of Dean Donne, the poet. An intimate friendship ensued between the divine and the linen-draper, and when Donne died in 1631, Walton was tempted into writing his elegy; and to a collection of the dean's Sermons, published in 1640, he prefixed The Life of Dr John Donne. His success in this piece of biography led on to other efforts of the same kind, as inclination and opportunity offered. In 1651, appeared his Life of Sir Henry Wotton; in 1662, The Life of Mr Richard Hooker; in 1670, The Life of Mr George Herbert; and in 1678, The Life of Dr Sanderson. These five biographies, brief yet full, written in sympathy yet with faithfulness, with reverence, modesty, and discretion, have been accepted as choice miniatures of the several worthies who are their subjects, and are reprinted and read to this day with unabated admiration.

Not the Lives, however, but The Complete Angler or Contemplative Man's Recreation is Walton's true title to fame. It was published in 1653, the year in which Oliver Cromwell was declared Protector, and Walton lived to see it pass through four other editions-namely, in 1655, 1664, 1668, and 1676. How often it has since been reprinted, annotated by admiring editors, and extolled by critics of every mind, time would fail to tell. The Angler has long ago taken an undisputed place among English classics, and to speak of its abounding poetry, wisdom, and piety would be to repeat criticism which has passed into commonplace.

The advices which Walton gives for the treatment of live-bait-as, for instance, the dressing of a frog with hook and wire, needle and thread, using him as though you loved him, that is, harm him as little as you may possible, that he may live the longer,' and the recommendation of a perch for taking pike, as the longest-lived fish on a hook'

65

DRYDEN THE WEAPON SALVE.

-have subjected him to the charge of cruelty. Hence Byron writes in Don Juan of-

'Angling, too, that solitary vice,
Whatever Izaak Walton sings or says;
The quaint, old, cruel coxcomb, in his gullet
Should have a hook, and a small trout to pull it.'

But people in the seventeenth century concerned themselves little or nothing with animal suffering. Boyle, a good Christian and contemporary of Walton's, records experiments with animals in the air-pump with a coolness which makes us shudder. The Puritans objected to bull and bear baiting, not, as Lord Macaulay observes, in pity for bull or bear, but in aversion and envy at the pleasure of the spectators. Strange as it may seem, compassion for animals is a virtue, the coming in of which may be remembered by living men.

Blessed with fine health, Walton carried the vigour of manhood into old age; in his eightythird year, we find him professing a resolution to begin a pilgrimage of more than a hundred miles, to visit his friend Cotton on the Dove in Derbyshire. In the great frost of 1683, which covered the Thames with ice eleven inches thick, split oaks and forest trees, and killed the hollies, and in which nearly all the birds perished, old Izaak died in his ninety-first year. He was at the time on a visit to his daughter Anne, at Winchester, and in Winchester Cathedral he lies buried. In a will made a few months before, he declared his 'belief to be, in all points of faith, as the Church of England now professeth;' a declaration of some consequence, he asserts, on account of 'a very long and very true friendship with some of the Roman Church.'

DRYDEN-THE WEAPON SALVE.

not only receive fifty pounds, which is deposited in the hands of Mr Blandard, goldsmith, next door to Temple Bar, for the said purpose; but if the discoverer himself be one of the actors, he shall have the fifty pounds, without letting his name be known, or receiving the least trouble by any prosecution.'

In Dryden's version of Shakspeare's Tempest, Ariel is made to save Hippolito's life by directing Ferdinand's sword to be anointed with weaponsalve and wrapped up close from the air. Believers were not wanting in this extraordinary nostrum, so well suited to an age when every gentleman carried a sword as a matter of course, which, equally as a matter of course, he was ready to draw on the slightest provocation. Sconce, the hero of Glapthorne's comedy of The Hollander, knew a captain reported to have obtained some of the precious ointment from the witches of Lapland, and is extremely anxious to get some himself, that he may safely confront the glistering steel, outface the sharpest weapon.' An apothecary's man gives him an unguent which he warrants genuine, thirty citizens blown up by an explosion of gunpowder having been saved by dressing the smoke of the powder with the salve! Sconce is so convinced by this evidence, that when he has occasion to test the efficacy of the ointment, and finds it of little avail, he attributes the failure to some impediment in his blood, and fully credits the doctor's assertion that

'The same salve will cure

At any distance-as if a person hurt

Should be at York, the weapon dressed at London On which the blood is.'

Davenant says (The Unfortunate Lovers, Act II., scene I.):

'Greatness hath still a little taint i' th' blood; And often 'tis corrupted near the heart; But these are not diseases held, till by The monarch spied who our ambition feeds, Till at surfeits with his love; nor do we strive To cure or take it from ourselves, but from His eyes, and then our medicine we apply Like the weapon-salve, not to ourselves but him Who was the sword that made the wound.' The ever-memorable' John Hales, of Eton, thought it worth while to make a serious attack on the weapon-salve, in a 'letter to an honourable person' (1630). He declares it is but 'a child of yesterday's birth,' one amongst the many pleasant phantasies of the Rosicrucians; and as for the cures it has worked, 'the effect is wrought by one thing, and another carries the glory of it. A man is wounded; the weapon taken, and a wound-working salve applied to it; in the meanwhile, the wounded person is commanded to use abstinence as much as may be, and to keep the wound clean. Whilst he thus doth, he heals, and the weapon-salve bears the bell away. No man in his right senses would ever have thought of curing a wound by anointing the weapon that inflicted it; therefore the discovery must have been the result of experience, in which case there must have been a fortuitous concurrence of circumstances scarcely credible. 'First the salve, made for some other end, must fall on the weapon, and that upon the place where the blood was, and there rest, and then some man must observe it, and find that it wrought

QUEEN ELIZABETH AT TILBURY FORT.

the cure.' He then shews that if the doctrine be true, that it is through the blood that the cure is worked, the salve would be just as efficacious applied whereon the blood fell, and is therefore foolishly called weapon-salve; and having thus deprived it both of reputation and name, he winds up his letter triumphantly thus: 'I have read that a learned Jew undertook to persuade Albertus, one of the Dukes of Saxony, that by certain Hebrew letters and words, taken out of the Psalms, and written on parchment, strange cures might be done upon any wound; as he one day walked with the duke, and laboured him much to give credit to what he discoursed in that argument, the duke suddenly drew his sword, and wounding him in divers places, tells him he would now see the conclusion tried upon himself. But the poor Jew could find no help in his Semhamphoras, nor his Hebrew characters, but was constrained to betake himself to more real chirurgery. I wish no man any harm, and therefore I desire not the like fortune might befall them who stand for the use of weapon-salve; only this much I will say, that if they should meet with some Duke of Saxony, he would go near to cure them of their errors, howsoever they would shift to cure their wounds.'

The latest allusion to this wonderful medicine we can find, is in Mrs Behn's Young King, published in 1690, in which play one of the characters is cured of a wound by a balm

"That like the weapon-salve Heals at a distance.'

QUEEN ELIZABETH AT TILBURY FORT.

During the first week of August, in the eventful year 1588, there was doubt in England whether the much-dreaded Spanish Armada would or would not enter the Thames, in its attack upon the freedom and religion of England. Both sides of the Thames were hastily fortified, especially at Gravesend and Tilbury, where a chain of boats was established across the river to bar the passage. There was a great camp at Tilbury Fort, in which more than twenty thousand troops were assembled. After having reviewed the troops assembled in London, the queen went down to encourage those encamped at Tilbury, where her energetic demeanour filled the soldiery with enthusiasm. Riding on a warcharger, wearing armour on her back, and holding a marshal's truncheon in her hand-with the Earls of Essex and Leicester holding her bridle-rein, she harangued them thus :-'My loving people, we have been persuaded by some that are careful of our safety, to take heed how we commit ourselves to armed multitudes, for fear of treachery. But I assure you I do not desire to live to distrust my faithful and loving people. Let tyrants fear! I have always so behaved myself that, under God, I have placed my chiefest strength and safeguard in the loyal hearts and good-will of my subjects; and, therefore, I have come amongst you at this time, not as for my recreation and sport, but being resolved in the midst and heat of the battle to live or die amongst you all-to lay down for my God, for my kingdom, and for my people, my honour and my blood, even in the dust. I know that I have but the body of a weak and feeble woman; but I have the heart of a king, and of a king of England

too, and think foul scorn that Parma, or Spain, or any prince of Europe, should dare to invade the borders of my realm! To which, rather than any dishonour shall grow by me, I myself will take up arms, I myself will be your general, the judge and rewarder of every one of your virtues in the field. I know already by your forwardness, that

ANNULLED MARRIAGE.

assure

you, on the word of a prince, they shall be duly paid you. In the meantime, my lieutenant-general shall be in my stead, than whom never prince commanded more noble or more worthy subject. Nor will I suffer myself to doubt, but that by your obedience to my general, by the concord in the camp, and your valour in the field, we shall shortly have a famous victory over those enemies of my God, my kingdom, and my people.' The harangue is given in slightly different form by different historians; but the substance is the same in all.

However much historians may have differed, and still do differ, concerning the character of Elizabeth, there can be no doubt of the fitness of such an harangue to rouse the people to an heroic resistance. She was no longer youthful; but her sex and her high spirit recommended her to the hearts of her people. By the spirited behaviour,' says Hume, 'she revived the tenderness and admiration of the soldiery; an attachment to her person became a kind of enthusiasm among them; and they asked one another, whether it were possible Englishmen could abandon this glorious cause, could display less fortitude than appeared in the female sex, or could ever by any dangers be induced to relinquish the defence of their heroic princess?' The so-called 'Invincible Armada,' as most English readers are aware, did not afford an opportunity for Elizabeth's land-forces to shew their valour; its destruction was due to other agencies.

THE DUKE OF SUSSEX'S ANNULLED MARRIAGE. The annulling of the late Duke of Sussex's first marriage, in August 1794, was one of the sad consequences of the Royal Marriage Act. That statute was passed about twenty years before, at the request, and almost at the command, of George III. The king, who held very high notions concerning royal prerogatives, had been annoyed by the Inarriages of two of his brothers with English ladies. He wished to see the regal dignity maintained in a twofold way-by forbidding the marriage of English princes and princesses with English subjects; and by rendering the consent of the reigning sovereign necessary, even when the alliance was with persons of royal blood. The Royal Marriage Act, by making provision for the last-named condition, virtually insured the first named so long as the king should live: seeing that he had resolved never to give his consent to the marriage of any of his children with any of his own subjects. The nation sympathised deeply with the amiable prince whose happiness was so severely marred on this particular occasion. While travelling in Italy in 1792, the duke formed an attachment to Lady Augusta Murray, daughter of the Earl of Dunmore. The earl was not in Italy at that time; but Lady Dunmore consented to a private marriage of her daughter with the Duke of Sussex (who was then about twenty years

lady and her friends, the duke consented to a second marriage-ceremony, more public and regular than the first. The couple took lodgings in South Molton Street, at the house of a coal-merchant; merely that they might, by a residence of one month in the parish of St George's, Hanover Square, be entitled to have their banns asked in the church of that parish. They were regularly married on the 5th of December 1793, under the names of Augustus Frederick, and Augusta Murray. It was an anxious time for the lady, seeing that she was about to become a mother, and had every motive for wishing to be recognised as a true wife. She was, however, destined to disappointment. The king never forgave the duke for this marriage, which he inflexibly determined not to recognise. In his own name, as if personally aggrieved in the matter, the obstinate monarch instituted a suit against his own son in the Court of Arches, for a nullity of the marriage. Within one week of Lady Augusta's confinement, the king's proctor served a citation on the Duke of Sussex, to answer the charges of the suit. The investigations underwent many costly changes. At one time the privy-council made searching inquiries; at other times other tribunals; and the fact of the marriage at St George's Church had to be rendered manifest by the testimony of the mother and sister of Lady Augusta, the clergyman who had performed the marriage-ceremony, the coal-merchant and his wife, and another witness who was present. So far as the church was concerned, the marriage was in all respects a valid one; but the terms of the Royal Marriage Act were clear and decided; and after many months of anxious doubt, the duke and Lady Augusta were informed, by the irreversible judg ment of the courts, that their marriage was no marriage at all in the eyes of the English law, and that their infant son was illegitimate. Later sovereigns sought to alleviate the misery thus occasioned to an amiable family (a daughter was born before the Duke of Sussex and Lady Augusta finally separated), by giving a certain degree of rank and position to those who were taboo'd from the royal circle; but nothing could fully compensate for the misery and disappointment that had been occasioned. Lady Augusta, in a letter to a friend written in 1811, said: Lord Thurlow told me my marriage was good in law; religion taught me it was good at home; and not one device of my powerful enemies could make me believe otherwise, nor ever will.' The Duke of Sussex settled an income on Lady Augusta, out of the allowance he received from parliament; and the king took care, during the whole remainder of his life, not to give the duke a single office or post that would augment his resources. In 1826, Lord (then Mr) Brougham, in a speech relating to the duke, characterised the Royal Marriage Act, which had produced so much misery, as the most unfortunate of all acts;' while Mr Wilberforce stigmatised it as 'the most unconstitutional act that ever disgraced the statutebook.'

ST LAWRENCE.

AUGUST 10.

St Lawrence, martyr, 258. St Deusdedit, confessor. St Blaan, bishop of Kinngaradha among the Picts, in Scotland, about 446.

ST LAWRENCE.

of the kingdom of Aragon, and even go so far as remark, that his heroism under unheard-of sufferings was partly owing to the dignity and fortitude inherent in him as a Spanish gentleman. Being taken to Rome, and appointed one of the deacons under Bishop Xystus, he accompanied that pious prelate to his martyrdom, anno 257, and only expressed regret that he was not consigned to the same glorious death. The bishop enjoined him, after he should be no more, to take possession of the churchtreasures, and distribute them among the poor. He did so, and thus drew upon himself the wrath of the Roman prefect. He was called upon to account for the money and valuables which had been in his possession; The emperor needs them,' said he, and you Christians always profess that the things which are Caesar's should be rendered to Cæsar.' Lawrence promised, on a particular day, to shew him the treasures of the church; and when the day came, he exhibited the whole body of the poor of Rome, as being the true treasures of a Christian community. What mockery is this?' cried the officer. You desire, in your vanity and folly, to be put to death-you shall be so, but it will be by inches.' So Lawrence was laid upon a gridiron over a slow fire. He tranquilly bore his sufferings; he even jested with his tormentor, telling him he was now done enough on one sideit was time to turn him. While retaining his presence of mind, he breathed out his soul in prayers, which the Christians heard with admiration. They professed to have seen an extraordinary light emanating from his countenance, and alleged that the smell of his burning was grateful to the sense. It was thought that the martyrdom of Lawrence had a great effect in turning the Romans to Christianity.

The extreme veneration paid to Lawrence in his native country, led to one remarkable result, which is patent to observation at the present day. The bigoted Philip II., having gained the battle of St Quintin on the 10th of August 1557, vowed to build a magnificent temple and palace in honour of the holy Lawrence. The Escurial, which was

BERNARD NIEUWENTYT,

constructed in fulfilment of this vow, arose in the course of twenty-four years, at a cost of eight millions, on a ground-plan which was designed, by its resemblance to a gridiron, to mark in a special manner the glory of that great martyrdom. The palace represents the handle. In its front stood a silver statue of St Lawrence, with a gold gridiron in his hand; but this mass of the valuable metals was carried off by the soldiers of Napoleon. The only very precious article now preserved in the place, is a bar of the original gridiron, which Pope Gregory is said to have found in the martyr's tomb at Tivoli. The cathedral at Exeter boasted, before the Reformation, of possessing some of the coals which had been employed in broiling St Lawrence.

Born.--Bernard Nieuwentyt, eminent Dutch mathematician, &c., 1654; Armand Gensonné, noted Girondist, 1758, Bordeaux; Sir Charles James Napier, conqueror of Scinde, 1782, Whitehall.

Lyon; John de Witt and his brother Cornelius, eminent Died.-Magnentius, usurper of Roman empire, 353, Dutch statesmen, murdered by the mob at the Hague, 1672; Cardinal Dubois, intriguing statesman, 1723, Versailles; Gabrielle Emilie de Breteuil, Marquise du Chastelet, translator of Newton's Principia, 1749, palace of Luneville; Dr Benjamin Hoadly, eldest son of the bishop, and author of the Suspicious Husband, 1757, Chelsea; Ferdinand VI. of Spain, 1759, Madrid; John Wilson Croker, Tory politician and reviewer, 1857; Sir George Thomas Staunton, wrote on Chinese affairs, 1859.

BERNARD NIEUWENTYT, THE REAL AUTHOR

OF PALEY'S NATURAL THEOLOGY.' On the 10th of August 1654, the pastor of Westgraafdyke, an obscure village in the north of Holland, had a son born to him. This child, named Bernard Nieuwentyt, was educated for the ministry, but to the great disappointment of his reverend father, the youth resolutely declined to enter the church. Studying medicine, he acquired the degree of doctor; and then settled down contentedly in his native place in the humble capacity of village leech. Nieuwentyt, however, was very far from being an ordinary man. While the boorish villagers considered him an addle-pated dunce, unable to acquire sufficient learning to fit him for the duties of a country minister, he was sedulously pursuing abstruse mathematical and philosophical studies; when he became a contributor to the Leipsic Transactions, the principal scientific periodical of the day, the learned men of Europe admired the abilities of the man who, by his neighbours, was considered to be little better than a fool. The talents of Nieuwentyt were at last recognised by his countrymen, and he was offered lucrative and honourable employment in the service of the state; but the unambitious student, finding in science its own reward, could never be persuaded to leave the seclusion of his native village.

Though the name of Nieuwentyt is scarcely known in this country, yet the patient student of the obscure Dutch hamlet has left an important impress on English literature. Towards the close of the seventeenth century, he contributed a series of papers to the Leipsic Transactions, the object of which was to prove the existence and wisdom of God from the works of creation. These papers

were collected, and published in Dutch, and subsequently translated into French and German. Mr Chamberlayne, a Fellow of the Royal Society, translated the work into English, and it was published by the evergreen-house of Longman in 1718, under the title of The Religious Philosopher. The work achieved considerable popularity in its day, but, another line of argument becoming more fashionable, it fell into oblivion, and until a few years ago was utterly forgotten. In 1802, the wellknown English churchman and author, William Paley, published his equally well-known Natural Theology. The well-merited popularity of this last work need not be noticed here; it has gone through many editions, and had many commentators, not one of whom seems ever to have suspected that it was not the genuine mental offspring of Archdeacon Paley. But, sad to say, for common honesty's sake, it must be proclaimed that Paley's Natural Theology is little more than a version or abstract, with a running commentary, of Nieuwentyt's Religious Philosopher!

Many must remember the exquisite gratification experienced, when reading, for the first time, Paley's admirably interesting illustration of the watch. Alas! that watch was stolen, shamefully stolen, from Bernard Nieuwentyt, and unblushingly vended as his own, by William Paley! As a fair specimen of this great and gross plagiarism, a few passages on the watch-argument may be here adduced. The Dutchman finds the watch 'in the middle of a sandy down, a desert, or solitary place;' the Englishman on 'a heath;' and thus they describe it:

Nieuwentyt. So many different wheels, nicely adapted by their teeth to each other.

Paley. A series of wheels, the teeth of which catch in and apply to each other.

Nieuwentyt. Those wheels are made of brass, in order to keep them from rust; the spring is steel, no other metal being so proper for that

purpose.

Paley. The wheels are made of brass, in order to keep them from rust; the spring of steel, no other metal being so elastic.

Nieuwentyt. Over the hand there is placed a clear glass, in the place of which if there were any other than a transparent substance, he must be at opening it every time to look upon

the pains the hand. Paley. Over the face of the watch there is placed a glass, a material employed in no other part of the work, but in the room of which if there had been any other than a transparent substance, the hour could not have been seen without opening

the case.

The preceding quotations are quite sufficient to prove the identity of the two works. Paley, in putting forth the Natural Theology as his own, may have been guided by his favourite doctrine of expediency; but if he did not succumb to the temptation of wilful fraud, he must have had very confused ideas on the all-important subject of meum and tuum. And no one can have any hesitation in naming Bernard Nieuwentyt the author of Paley's Natural Theology.

In conclusion, it may be added that, though everybody knows the meaning of the words plagiarist and plagiarism, yet few persons are acquainted with their derivation. Among the

SIR CHARLES JAMES NAPIER.

more depraved classes in ancient Rom", there existed a nefarious custom of stealing children and selling them as slaves. According to law, the child-stealers, when detected, were liable to the penalty of being severely flogged; and as the Latin word plaga signifies a stripe or lash, the ancient kidnappers were, in Cicero's time, termed plagiari-that is to say, deserving of, or liable to, stripes; and thus both the crime and criminals received their names from the punishment inflicted.

SIR CHARLES JAMES NAPIER.

When one recalls the character and expressions of this person and his brother William, author of The History of the Peninsular War, he cannot but feel a curiosity to learn whence was derived ability so vivid and blood so hot. They were two of the numerous sons of the Hon. George Napier, 'comptroller of accounts in Ireland,' a descendant of the celebrated inventor of the logarithms, but more immediately of Sir William Scott of Thirlstain, a scholar and poet of the reign of Queen Anne. Their mother was the Lady Sarah Lennox, who has been noticed in this work (under February 14) as a great-grand-daughter of Charles II., and the object of a boyish flame of George III. attachment of Charles Napier to his mother was deep and lasting, as his many letters to her attest; she lived to see him advance to middle life, and one envies the pride which a woman must have had in such a son.

The

In childhood, the future conqueror of Scinde was sickly, and of a demure and thoughtful turn, but he early displayed an ardent enthusiasm for a military life. When only ten years of age, he rejoiced to find he was short-sighted, because a portrait of Frederick the Great, which hung up in his father's room, had strange eyes, and he had heard Plutarch's statement mentioned, that Philip, Sertorius, and Hannibal had each only one eye, and that Alexander's eyes were of different colours. The young aspirant for military fame even wished to lose one of his own eyes, as the token of a great general; a species of philosophy which recalls to mind the promising youth, depicted by Swift, who had all the defects characterising the great heroes of antiquity. Though naturally of a very sensitive temperament, he overcame all his tendencies to timidity by his wonderful force of will, and became almost case-hardened both to fear and pain. Throughout life, from boyhood to old age, he was constantly meeting with accidents, which, however, had no effect in diminishing his passion for perilous adventures. On one occasion, when a mere boy, he struck his leg in leaping against a bank of stones, so as to inflict a frightful wound, which, however, he bore with such stoical calmness as to excite the admiration of many rough and stern natures. Another time, at the age of seventeen, he broke his right leg leaping over a ditch when shooting, and by making a further scramble after being thus disabled, to get hold of his gun, produced such a laceration of the flesh, and extravasation of blood, that it was feared by the surgeons that amputation would be necessary. This was terrible news to the youth, as he rather piqued himself on a pair of good legs, and he resolved, according to his own account, to commit