Part 7 (2/2)

Indeed a very silly, weak young man!

'What such an one may either think or say, With sober people matters not one pin; In _their_ opinion his own senseless bray Proves _him_ the a.s.s WRAPT IN A LION'S SKIN!'

Better is the following address to a certain Dr. E.:

'A bullying, brawling, champion of the Church, Vain as a parrot screaming on her perch; And like that parrot screaming out by rote, The same stale, flat, unprofitable note; Still interrupting all debate With one eternal cry of ”Church and State!”

With all the High Tory's ignorance increased, By all the arrogance that makes the priest; One who declares upon his solemn word The Voluntary system is absurd; He well may say so, for 'twere hard to tell Who would support him did not law compel.'

A prophet, it is said, is not honoured in his own country. Bernard Barton was happily the rare exception that proves the rule. I remember being at the launching of a vessel, bought and owned by a Woodbridge man, called the _Bernard Barton_; it was the first time I had ever seen a s.h.i.+p launched, and I was interested accordingly. The ultimate fate of the craft is unknown to history. On one occasion she was reported in the s.h.i.+pping list amongst the arrivals at some far-off port as the _Barney Burton_. Such is fame!

Of his local reputation Bernard was not a little proud. His little town was vain of him. It was something to go into the bank and get a cheque cashed by the poet. The other evening I went to the house of a Woodbridge man who has done well in London, and lives in one of the few grand old houses which yet adorn Stoke Newington Green-just a stone's throw from where Samuel Rogers dwelt-and there in the drawing-room were Bernard Barton's own chair and cabinet preserved with as much pious care as if he had been a Shakespeare or a Milton. Bernard Barton made no secret of his vocation, and when the time had come that he had delivered himself of a new poem, it was his habit to call on one or other of his friends and discuss the matter over a bottle of port-port befitting the occasion; no modern liquor of that name-

'Not such as that You set before chance comers, But such whose father grape grew fat On Lusitanian summers.'

And then there was a good deal of talk, as was to be expected, on things in general, for B. B. loved his joke and was full of anecdote-anecdote, perhaps, not always of the most refined character. But what could you expect at such happy times from a man brimful of human nature, who had to pose all life under the double weight of decorum imposed on him, in the first place as a Quaker, and in the second place as a banker's clerk?

Bernard Barton, as I recollect him, was somewhat of a dear old man-short in person, red in face, with dark brown hair. He was, as I have said, a clerk in a bank, but his poetry had elevated him, somehow, to the rank of a provincial lion, and at certain houses, where the dinner was good and the wine was ditto, he ever was a welcome guest. I dined with him at the house of a friend in Woodbridge, and it seemed to me that he cared more for good feeding and a gla.s.s of wine and a pinch of snuff than the sacred Nine. Of course at that time I had not been educated up to the fitting state of mind with which the philosopher of our day proceeds to the performance of the mysteries of dinner. Dining had at that time not been elevated to the rank of a science, to the study of which the most acute intellects devote their highest energies; nor had flowers then been invoked to lend an additional grace to the dining-table. Besides, dinners such as Mr. Black gives at Brighton, scientific dinners, such as those feasts with which Sir Henry Thompson regales his friends, were unknown. Nevertheless, now and then we managed to dine comfortably off roast beef or lamb, a slice of boiled or roast fowl, a bit of plum-pudding or fruit tart, a crust of bread and cheese, with-tell it not in Gath, publish it not in the streets of Askalon-sherry and Madeira at dinner, and a few gla.s.ses of fine old fruity port after. Some Shakespearian quotations-unknown to me then, for Shakespeare was little quoted in purely evangelical circles, either in Church or Dissent-a reference to Sir Walter Scott's earlier German translations, formed about the sum and substance of the conversation which took place between the poet and my host; all the rest was princ.i.p.ally social gossip and an exchange of pleasantries between the poet and his friend, whom he addressed familiarly as 'mine ancient.' It was a great treat to me, of course, to dine with Bernard Barton, the Quaker poet. Once upon a time a Quaker minister had come to Woodbridge on a preaching tour, and all the Quakers, male and female, small and great, rich and poor, were ranged before him. When Bernard Barton was announced, the good old man said, 'Barton-Barton-that's a name I don't recollect.' The bearer of the name replied it would be strange if he did, seeing that they had never met before. Suddenly looking up, the minister exclaimed, 'Art thou the versifying man?' Unlike the venerable stranger, I had no need to ask the question, as in my mother's alb.u.m there was more than one letter from the genial B. B.

I can well recall the room in which I dined with the poet. My host had come into a handsome fortune by marrying a wealthy widow-one of the possibilities of a Dissenting minister's situation-and he had retired from the ministry to cultivate literature and literary men. As I think of that room and that dinner, I am reminded of the wonderful contrast effected within the last age. At that time the dinner-table presented a far less picturesque appearance than it does now. We had always pudding before meat; the latter was solid, and in the shape of a joint. Nor was it handed round by servants, but carved by the host or his lady. Silver forks were unknown, and electro-plate had not then been invented.

Vegetables, also, were deficient as regards quant.i.ty and quality compared with the supply at a respectable dinner nowadays. In manners the change is equally remarkable. It was said of a n.o.bleman, a personal friend of George III., and a model gentleman of his day, that he had made the tour of Europe without ever touching the back of his travelling carriage.

That includes an idea of self-denial utterly unknown to all the young people of to-day. The study now is how to make our houses more comfortable, and to furnish them most luxuriously. Then, perhaps, there was but one sofa in the house, and that was repellent rather than attractive. Easy-chairs were few and far between. Lounging of any kind was out of the question. In the drawing-room, the furniture was of the same uncomfortable description, and there were none of the modern appliances which exist to make ladies and gentlemen happy. Couches, antimaca.s.sars, photographs, were unknown. One picture invariably to be seen was a painting of a favourite steed, with the owner looking at it in a state of intense admiration; and a few family portraits might be ostentatiously displayed. As to pianos, there never was but one in the house; and a billiard-table would have been considered as the last refuge of human depravity. In sitting-rooms and bedrooms and pa.s.sages there was a great deficiency of carpets and of oilcloth. But furniture was furniture then, and could stand a good deal of wear and tear; while as to the spare bed in the best room, with its enormous four posts and its gigantic funereal canopy and its heavy curtains, through which no breath of fresh air could penetrate, all I can say is that people slept in it and survived the operation-so wonderfully does nature adapt itself to circ.u.mstances the most adverse.

This reference to Bernard Barton reminds me of a portrait he has left in one of his pleasant letters of a Suffolk yeoman, a cla.s.s of whose virtues I can testify from personal experience. 'He was a hearty old yeoman of eighty-six, and had occupied the farm in which he lived and died about fifty-five years. Social, hospitable, friendly, a liberal master to his labourers, a kind neighbour, and a right merry companion within the limits of becoming mirth. In politics a stanch Whig, in his theological creed as st.u.r.dy a Dissenter; yet with no more party spirit in him than a child. He and I belonged to the same book-club for about forty years.

. . . Not that he greatly cared about books or was deeply read in them, but he loved to meet his neighbours and get them round him on any occasion or no occasion at all. As a fine specimen of the true English yeoman, I have met with few to equal, if any to surpa.s.s him, and he looked the character as well as he acted it, till within a few years, when the strong man was bowed by bodily infirmity. About twenty-six years ago, in his dress costume of a blue coat and yellow buckskins, a finer sample of John Bullism you would rarely see. It was the whole study of his long life to make the few who revolved round him in his little orbit as happy as he seemed to be himself. Yet I was gravely queried when I happened to say that his children had asked me to write a few lines to his memory, whether I could do this in keeping with the general tone of my poetry-the speaker doubted if he was a decidedly pious character! He had at times in his alt.i.tude been known to vociferate a song, of which the chorus was certainly not teetotalism:

'”Sing old Rose, and burn the bellows, Drink and drive dull care away.”'

Bernard Barton goes on to describe the deceased yeoman as a diligent attendant at the meeting-house, a frequent and serious reader of the Bible, and the head of an orderly and well-regulated house. He is described as knowing Dr. Watts' hymns almost by heart, and as singing them on Sunday at meeting with equal fervour and unction. Bernard Barton feared in 1847-the date of his epistle-the breed of such men was dying out. It is to be feared in East Anglia the race is quite extinct. In our meeting-house at Wrentham, when I was a lad, there were several such.

I am afraid there is not one there now. The sons and daughters have left the old rustic houses, and gone out into the world. They have become respectable, and go to church, and have lost a good deal of the vigour and independence of their forefathers. In all the East Anglian meeting-houses fifty years ago such men abounded. Of a Sunday, with their blue coats and kerseymere knee-breeches, and jolly red laces, they looked more like country squires than common farmers. They drove up to the meeting-house yard with very superior gigs and cattle. In their houses creature comforts of all known kinds were to be found. Tea-a hearty meal, not of mere bread-and-b.u.t.ter, but of ham and cake as well-was served up in the parlour, with a gla.s.s or two of real home-brewed ale, amber-coloured, of a quality now unknown, and which was wonderfully refres.h.i.+ng after a long walk or drive. Then, if it were summer, there was a stroll in the big garden, well planted with fruit-trees and strawberry-beds, and adorned with flowers-old-fas.h.i.+oned, perhaps, but rich, nevertheless, in colour and perfume. In one corner there was sure to be an arbour, all covered with honeysuckle, such as Izaak Walton himself would have approved; and there, while the seniors over their long pipes discussed politics and theology, and corn and cattle, the younger ones would make their first feeble efforts, all unconsciously, perhaps, to conjugate the verb 'to love.' Outside the church organizations these old yeomen lived and died. There was a flavour of the world about them. They would dine at market ordinaries, and perhaps would stop an hour in the long room of the public-house, where they put up their horses, to smoke a pipe and take a drop of brandy-and-water for the good of the landlord. Now and then-sometimes to the sorrow of their wives, who were often church-members-they would join, as I have indicated, in a song of an objectionable character when severely criticised. Perhaps their parson would be much exercised on their behalf; but surely the n.o.ble spirit of humanity in these old yeomen, at any rate, was as worthy of admiration as the Puritanic faith of the past-or as the honest doubt of the present age. If I mistake not, the fine old yeoman to whom Bernard Barton referred lived not far from Seckford Hall.

Woodbridge has some claim to consideration from the Nonconformist point of view. In 1648 a schoolmistress, Elizabeth Warren, published a pamphlet, 'The Old and Good Way Vindicated, in a Treatise, wherein Divers Errours, both in Judgment and Practice incident to these Declining Days, are Unmasked for the Caution of humble Christians.' From the same town also there issued 'The Preacher Sent: a Vindication of the Liberty of Public Preaching by Some Men not Ordained.' The author of this book, or one of the authors of it, was the Rev. Frederick Woodall, the first pastor of the Free Church-'a man of learning, ability, and piety, a strict Independent, zealous for the fifth monarchy, and a considerable sufferer after his ejectment.' He had, we are told, to contend with a tedious embarra.s.sment, through the persecuting spirit that for many years prevailed, and considerably cramped the success of his ministry.

Woodbridge is one of the churches which Mr. Harmer refers to in his 'Miscellaneous Works,' as being rigidly Congregationalist, and which conducted its affairs rather according to the heads of Savoy Confession than the heads of Agreement. When I was a boy the pastor was a Mr.

Pinchback, who seems to have been a worthy successor of G.o.dly men, equally attractive and successful. He had previously settled at Ware.

It is recorded of the good divine that on one occasion he had to leave his wife at the point of death, as it seemed, to go to chapel. In the course of the service he mentioned the fact of her illness, and announced in consequence that he would preach her funeral sermon on the following Sunday. But when the following Sunday came the lady was better, and lived for many years to a.s.sist her husband in his G.o.dly work. In the rural districts the Baptists flourished immensely.

At Grundisburgh there preached for many years to a large congregation a worthy man of the name of Collins, who was one of the leading lights of the body which rejoiced in a John Foreman and a Brother Wells. People who live in London cannot have forgotten Jemmy Wells, of the Surrey Tabernacle, and his grotesque and telling anecdotes. One can scarcely imagine how people could ever believe the things Wells used to say as to the Lord's dealings with him; but they did, and his funeral-in South London, at any rate-was almost as numerously attended as that of Arthur, Duke of Wellington. I expect high-and-dry Baptists have been not a little troublesome in their day, and in East Anglia they were more numerous than in London. It may be that they have helped to weaken Dissent in that part of the world. Men of independent intellect must have been not a little shocked by that unctuous familiarity with G.o.d and the devil which is the characteristic of that cla.s.s. On a Sunday morning Jemmy Wells, as his admirers called him, would describe in the most graphic manner what the devil had said to him in the course of the week; and on one memorable occasion, at any rate, described with much force the shame he felt at having to tell the gentleman in black that his people's memories, unfortunately, were somewhat remiss in the matter of pew-rents.

Brother Collins avoided such flights, but he was an attractive preacher to all the country round, nevertheless. Truly such a one was needed in that district. At Rendham, a village near Saxmundham, lived a G.o.dly minister of the Church of England. In 1844, speaking to a friend of the writer, he said that when he came into the county, between thirty and forty years before, there was only one other clergyman and himself between Ipswich and Great Yarmouth who preached the Gospel, and that sometimes the squire of the parish would hold up his watch to him to bid him close his sermon. In some places where he went to preach he had to have a body-guard to prevent his being mobbed and pelted with rotten eggs on account of his evangelical principles.

CHAPTER X.

MILTON'S SUFFOLK SCHOOLMASTER.

Stowmarket-The Rev. Thomas Young-Bishop Hall and the Smectymnian divines-Milton's mulberry-tree-Suffolk relations.h.i.+ps.

'My father destined me,' writes John Milton, in his 'Defensio Secunda,'

'while yet a little boy, for the study of humane letters, which I served with such eagerness that, from the twelfth year of my age, I scarcely ever went from my lessons to bed before midnight, which, indeed, was the first cause of injury to my eyes, to whose natural weakness there were also added frequent headaches; all which not r.e.t.a.r.ding my natural impetuosity in learning, he caused me to be instructed both at the Grammar School and under other masters at home.' Of the latter, the best known was the Rev. Thomas Young, the Puritan minister, of Stowmarket, Suffolk.

It is generally claimed for Young that he was an East Anglian. Professor Ma.s.son has, however, settled the question that he was a Scotchman, of the University of Aberdeen. Be that as it may, like most Scotchmen, he made his way to England, and was employed by Mr. Milton, the scrivener of Bread Street, to teach his gifted son. As he seems to have been married at the time, it is not probable that he resided with his pupil, but only visited him daily. Never had master a better pupil, or one who rewarded him more richly by the splendour of his subsequent career. The poet, writing to him a few years after he ceased to be his pupil, speaks of 'the incredible and singular grat.i.tude he owed him on account of the services he had done him,' and calls G.o.d to witness that he reverenced him as his father. In a Latin elegy, after implying that Young was dearer to him than Socrates to Alcibiades, or than the great Stagyrite to his generous pupil, Alexander, he goes on to say: 'First, under his guidance, I explored the recesses of the Muses, and beheld the sacred green spots of the cleft summit of Parna.s.sus and quaffed the Pierian cups, and, Clio favouring me, thrice sprinkled my joyful mouth with Castalian wine;' from which it is clear that Young had done his duty to his pupil, and that the latter ever regarded him with an affection as beautiful as rare. Never did a Rugby lad write of Arnold as Milton of Thomas Young. How long the latter's preceptors.h.i.+p lasted cannot be determined with precision. 'It certainly closed,' writes Professor Ma.s.son, in that truly awful biography of his, 'when Young left England at the age of thirty-five, and became pastor of the congregation of British merchants settled at Hamburg.'

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