CHAPTER LVII. CONTINUATION OF THE REIGN OF GEORGE III. Life so grand Not by age to be defaced. FORD: The Broken Heart, act iii. sc. iv. Atque equidem, extremo ni jam sub fine laborum VIRGIL Georg. iv. 116. I am a man, And all those glories, empires heap'd upon me, Or bribe the uncorrupted hand of death, To spare me one short minute. BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER : The Prophetess, act iv. sc. v. My Talking Friend recalled to my recollection the great cold at the beginning of the year, when there was much snow, partial thaws, and then frost again-and still harder frosts yet. Several people were found frozen to death—one by the Leeds coach between Barnsley and Ferrybridge. The poor fellow was sitting upright in his cart, with the reins still dangling in his key-cold hand. On Dartmoor the snow lay deeper than it did in the severe winter six years ago. My patient chronicler said that it started the old bark on his sides, that the Pound Meadow lane was all but impassable, and that the little runlets at Shorthill and Sibberscott were quite choked up. The boathouse bank, close to Shrewsbury, was in a most dangerous state After many attempts to get it improved it remains the same till this day. Meanwhile, old Hafren flows close by, and ripples triumphantly. Great rivers are the highways of the world. Early in this year Southey proposed to Longmans & Co. to publish an edition of some one of his poems, with or without the notes, in a small cheap form-one of the first steps towards the cheaper literature we are now enjoying. 'I do not think,' are his words, 'it would lessen the sale of the current editions, but that sufficient purchasers would be found to give 3s. 6d. or 4s. who would never give 14s. I should like to try this experiment with "Thalaba," that being of all my poems the most likely to become popular. It would thus be placed within reach of a whole class of customers who never buy books till they are lowered in price to their means; but this class is numerous and always on the increase, and is plainly worth printing for, because so many books are printed for it.' I believe the cheap edition had a considerable sale. On January 20 this year Cruck Meole and all the neighbourhood met with no common loss by the death of old Henry Warter, of the Upper House, as it was called, and within the precincts of which stood that noble oak, my Talking Friend and ancient chronicler. This good old man departed full of years-fourscore, I think and I remember well his hearty laugh and undisguised freedom of speech; for he was one who never mingled with the English tongue either Latinisms or French-in truth, other than plain Saxon entered not into his vocabulary. He called ‘a spade a spade,' and 'a kettle but a kettle,' and used other terms also, when excited, which are now relegated and banished, and to be found only in Grose and other dictionaries of the vulgar tongue. During all the years of high prices, a bushel of corn was never sold off the farm he cultivated, and his labourers and their families never knew, to their cost, what the 'dear loaf' meant. Allusion is made to this in 'The Last of the Old Squires,' where it is said the good old man might have taken rank with the Dalmatian 'Gens Anicia,' who at Rome, in A.D. 717, got the name of à Frangipanibus. The Tiber at that time overflowed its banks, and the people were rescued from the flood in the boats of Flavius Anicius, 'who added,' says Mr. Wingfield in his 'Tour in Dalmatia, Albania, and Montenegro,'' to his work of beneficence by distributing bread among the sufferers.' Nothing could surpass the simplicity of his habits, and he served his generation well in his humble position. Chaucer's words in the Wife of Bath's Tale were very applicable to him: Look who that is most vertuous alway, Pride and pert, and most extendeth age, Crist wol we clayme of him our gentillesse Such men of ancient virtue and simplicity are scarce now. And an old Shrewsbury boy called to mind the words of Demea in the play : Homo amicus nobis jam inde a puero. Di boni ! Næ illiusmodi jam nobis magna civium Penuria est; homo antiqua virtute ac fide, Richard de la Wycke, some time Bishop of Chichester, but born in our adjoining county of Worcester, was not more ready to feed the poor than old Henry Warter, of the Upper House, and the numbers that he was said to have fed in a time of scarcity at Ferring by miracle were not more, probably, than this good old man fed without one, in the largeness of his heart and for Christian charity's sake. And my Talking Friend reminded me once more how all the road from Jack Crane's home was thronged by the women from all the country round, who came a bidding,' and how all the five-shilling parcels of pence, amounting to many pounds, and which had been collected for the day by the old millers Cross and Pickering were not sufficient to supply all comers with a little. I had often witnessed this ancient custom of profuse largesse, and although indiscriminate charity rarely does good to those on whom it is lavished, it is better than gripple close-fistedness, and softens the giver's heart. A wretched soul, bruised with adversity, But were we burdened with like weight of pain, As much or more, we should ourselves complain. Having referred to the begging system on St. Thomas' Day, I must not forget to add that several protégés of the old housekeeper Nancy used to bring peck-bags with them, which were filled with corn, evidently giving rise to the term 'going a corning,' used in the neighbouring county of Warwick, the commoner terms a going 'a bidding,' or 'a gowing,' and in Herefordshire going a mumping.' And I bethought me of Herrick's Lar's Portion and the Poet's Part': At my homely country-seat, I have there a little wheat, Which I worke to meale and make Therewithal a holy cake; Part of which I give to Larr, Part is my peculiar. In Roman days my Talking Friend would have been as one of the heroes from his ancient position and standing. 'Our Lady of the Oke' at Islington was not better known in bluff Henry VIII's days. But it was not only in the valley of the Rea that death was busy, and among the poor there, or amongst those of middle rank, like the good old man just mentioned, but in our palaces too: Pallida Mors æquo pulsat pede pauperum tabernas Regumque turres. On January 23 the Duke of Kent died at Sidmouth, or rather in a Devonshire house called Woolbrooke Glen, hard by. His Royal Highness was only in his fifty-third year. The Duchess, as we all know, was the sister of that faithful brother Leopold. On the death of her father our gracious Queen Victoria was only eight months old. He was buried at Windsor on February 13. Scarce a week more, and the nation sustained a still greater loss-if loss it should be called-in the death of its aged King, George III. He departed this troublesome life at thirty-five minutes past eight o'clock on the evening of January 29, having arrived at the age of eighty-one years and nearly eight months-the first of the long line of English kings who died at Windsor Castle, says Mr. Charles Knight, in his Passages of a Working Man's Life.' Very simple were the words of Lord Eldon to Mrs. H. Ridley, January 31: I have lost the master whom I have long served, and whom I have most affectionately loved.' It must have been a solemn sound that, on what Shakespeare somewhere calls the heavy middle of the night,' when at twelve o'clock the tolling of the great bell of St. Paul's, followed by those of Westminster, St. Margaret's, and of all the other bells of the vast metropolis announced to its inhabitants that the afflicted monarch who had ruled over them for sixty years had ceased to exist'; a faithful, upright, honest man, of whom, could he have had his wishes, it might have been said, as of Nerva, or Nerva Trajanus, as called by adoption Recta fides, hilaris clementia, cauta potestas Jam redeunt; longi terga dedere metus. On Tuesday, February 15-to use the term of the day— he lay in state, and on the night of the 16th he was buried in St. George's Chapel. REX ULTIMUS ILLE BONORUM! In what is a loyal history like this I am not called upon to draw the character of the departed monarch, whose departure I so well remember, even as though it were to-day. Enough to say that, notwithstanding the disadvantage of education, George III. had good, sound, common sense, of which Voltaire said after many others, 'Le sens commun n'est pas si commun,' and this helped him on marvellously well, so that in his communications with his several ministers he held his own, and was neither imposed upon by an English fallacy, nor by Scotch metaphysics, nor by the plausible forms of speech in the mouth of an Irish demagogue. The fact is, if his early studies were contracted, throughout life he studied man, and was quick at checkmating any intrigue. He had nothing in common with a Louis XIV. of France, and of kingcraft, such as James I. trusted in, he knew simply nothing, for he was a king at heart. Perhaps his reply to the |