South-British way) that I wished it were the father instead of the son, when four of them started up at once, to inform me that was impossible, because he was dead." "THAT WE SHOULD LIE DOWN WITH THE LAMB." "We could never quite understand the philosophy of this arrangement, or the wisdom of our ancestors in sending us for instruction to those woolly bed-fellows. A sheep, when it is dark, has nothing to do but to shut its silly eyes and sleep, if it can. Man found out long sixes. Hail, candle-light !"— Popular Fallacies. LETTER-WRITING. Charles Lamb in one of his delightful letters, says: "My head aches at the bare prospect of letter-writing. I wish all the ink in the ocean dried up, and would listen to the quills shivering up in the candle, like perishing martyrs." Lamb speaks of "crying halves to ideas," struck out like sparks from the anvils in the heat of conversation. Some one, perhaps Dean Swift, describes himself as catching by stealth, in its transit, an idea Heaven intended for some other man." 66 BLACK LETTER. An old friend of Lamb having been in vain trying to make out a black-letter text of Chaucer, in the Temple library, laid down the precious volume, and with an erudite look, told Lamb: "In these old books, Charley, there is sometimes a deal of very, very indifferent spelling;" and the antibibliomanaic seemed to come to himself with the conclusion. R. H. BARHAM.-THE "INGOLDSBY LEGENDS." THESE two volumes comprise a reprint of the memoir of the Author of the Ingoldsby Legends, re-written, and enlarged by letters, and unpublished and other poems, by the Rev. Richard Harris Barham, and his son. As a biography it does not claim to be perfect; but its extracts from diaries are attractive; still, there is need to remind the reader that it is only in a literary point of view-only as a writer whose wit and humour have attracted more than common notice— only, in short, as Thomas Ingoldsby, that Mr. Barham is brought before the public at all." He appears to have been a happy man : "The real secret of his success lay in that unenviable combination of tact, benevolence, and good humour, supported by unflagging spirit, which, while it carried him through a vast amount of work, enabled him invariably to avoid giving needless offence, and generally to soften if not disarm opposition." "I am perfectly convinced," says a common friend, "that the same social influence would have followed Mr. Barham into any other line of life that he might have adopted; that the profits of agitating pettifoggers would have materially lessened in a district where he acted as a magistrate; and that duels would have been nipped in the bud at his regimental mess. It is not always an easy task to do as you would be done by ; but to think as you would be thought of and thought for, is, perhaps, still more difficult, as superior power of tact and intellect are here required in order to second good intentions. These faculties, backed by an uncompromising love of truth and fair dealing, indefatigable good nature, and a nice sense of what was due to every one in the several relations of life, both gentle and simple; rendered our late friend invaluable, either as an adviser or a peacemaker, in matters of delicate and difficult handling. How he managed to get through his more-important duties is a marvel. Certain it is that they were well and punctually performed in every important point relating to cathedral matters, as well as his engagements as a parochial incumbent and priest of the household, which I believe was the nature of his office at the Chapel Royal." men. He used to say of himself that he was naturally an idle but not an indolent man. But he was rarely if ever to be seen unoccupied. If Fox thought lying under a tree with a book luxury only to be surpassed by lying under a tree without one, Mr. Barham would hardly have sympathized with the statesman. His very amusements and hobbies, such as manfully struggling through the stiffest of Kentish coverts, in the old style, after pheasants, which, to say the truth, he very seldom bagged; or pursuing, half smothered by dust, genealogical and antiquarian researches in the libraries of St. Paul's and Sion College; or sitting up till three or four o'clock in the morning, after a hard day's work, scribbling articles for Blackwood or Bentley;-all this, which was really play and recreation, would be thought rather severely to tax the majority of It is not proposed to deal with his experience as a clergyman, but simply to throw together some slight records of his leisure hours and recreative pursuits; and from his correspondence, diaries, and commomplace books, to allow his social life to be told pretty much in his own words. Mr. Barham's father, in point of activity, both of mind and body, was unquestionably deficient, as may be inferred from the fact of his having attained to the enormous weight of seven and twenty stone before he completed his forty-eighth year. Dying in 1795, he bequeathed his estates, a portion of which consisted of the farm known as Tappington, or Tapton Wood, so often alluded to in the Ingoldsby Legends. Dismissing these, "the shaded avenue terminates in a lodge, whose gates support the Ingoldsby device," together with Mrs. Botherby and the secret passages, as pardonable myths, a very comfortable and picturesque manor-house, haunted or not haunted, still remains, boasting its "gable ends, stone staunchions, and tortuous chimneys," and above all, its bloodstained stair, the scene of the remarkable fratricide, which is a genuine tradition, and the sanguinary evidence of which is pointed out with enviable faith by the present tenants. We can only quote a few of the many amusing anecdotes from the diary. First, is one Cannon, a clerical friend, remarkable for the enormous quantity of snuff which he was in the habit partly of taking, and partly of scattering right and left over shirt, waistcoat, table, chair, carpet, everything that he approached. Once, at the Chapel Royal, he set the Bishop of London sneezing through the whole of the Communion service. "August 10.-Preached at St. Martin's, Ludgate, to the Stationers' Company, and dined with them afterwards at their annual livery dinner; Mr. Marsh of Canterbury, brother to the Bishop of Peterborough, taking the chair as master. Mr. Bthe noted amateur of hanging, was presently the guest of his brother, a member of the Court. Marsh informed me that on a similar occasion to the present, this gentleman, who was pledged to attend an execution on the following morning, got so sublimely elevated that he was obliged to be carried home and put to bed by his friends, and that, to his lasting regret, he did not awake till the possibility of keeping his engagement was past." "THE INGOLDSBY LEGENDS." The merits of these celebrated Legends are thus cleverly summed up in an opening page of the second volume :-"As respects the poems, remarkable as they have been pronounced for the wit and humour which they display, their distinguishing attraction lies in the almost unparalleled flow and facility of the versification. Popular phrases, sentences the most prosaic, even the cramped technicalities of legal diction, and snatches from various languages, are wrought in with an apparent absence of all effort that surprises, pleases, and convulses the reader at every turn; the author triumphs with a master's hand over every sort of stanzas, however complicated or exacting; not a word out of place, not an expression forced; syllables the most intractable find the only partners fitted for them throughout the range of language, and couple together as naturally as those kindred spirits which poets tell us were created pairs, and dispersed in space to seek out their particular mates. A harmony pervades the whole, a modulation of number never perhaps surpassed, and rarely equalled in compositions of their class. This was the forte of Thomas Ingoldsby; a harsh line or untrue rhyme grated painfully upon his ear; no inviting or alluring pun could induce him to entertain either for an instant; sacrifice or circumlocution were the only alternatives. At the same time, no vehicle could be better adapted for the development of his peculiar powers than that unshackled metre which admits of no law save those of rhyme and melody, but which also, from the very want of definite regulations, presents no landmark to guide the poet, and demands a thorough and intuitive knowledge of rhythm to prevent his becoming lost among a succession of confused and unconnected stanzas. "Of the unflagging spirit of fun which animates these productions, there can be but one opinion. Mr. Barham was unquestionably an adept in all the mysteries of mirth, happy in the use of anachronism, and all the means and appliances of burlesque; skilled, moreover, to relieve his humour, however broad, from any imputation of vulgarity, by a judicious admixture of antiquarian lore. There are, indeed, passages in his writings-in the 'Execution' for example, the 'Black Mousquetaire,' the Dead Drummer'-standing out in strong contrast from the ludicrous imagery which surrounds them, and affording evidence of powers of a very opposite and far higher order." 6 THE OLD WOMAN CLOTHED IN GRAY. "The times Described in these rhymes, Were as fruitful in virtues as ours are in crimes; Sometimes betrayed an occasional taint or two, While scarcely a convent but boasted its saint or two: Of saints, rarely indeed, With their dignified presence have darkened our pew-doors. Though Wiseman and Dullman combine against Newman, But this by the way, the convent I speak about Had them in scores- -they said mass week and week about; And well might have borne These words which are worn By our Nulli Secundus Club-poor dear lost muttons- VOL. I. 13 |