166 I take this opportunity of expressing my warm gratitude to the family of my dear and honoured friend sir James Mackintosh for confiding to me the materials collected by him at a time when he meditated a work similar to that which I have undertaken. Ihave never seen, and I do not believe that there anywhere exists, within the same compass, so noble a collection of extracts from public and private archives The judgment with which sir James in great masses of the rudest ore of history, selected what was valuable, and rejected what was worthless, can be fully appreciated only by one who has toiled after him in the same mine.
167 Life of Thomas Gent. A complete list of all printing houses in 1724 will be found in Nichols's Literary Anecdotae of the eighteenth century. There had then been a great increase within a few years in the number of presses, and yet there were thirty-four counties in which there was no printer, one of those counties being Lancashire.
168 Observator, Jan. 29, and 31, 1685; Calamy's Life of Baxter;Nonconformist Memorial.
169 Cotton seems, from his Angler, to have found room for his whole library in his hall window; and Cotton was a man of letters. Even when Franklin first visited London in 1724, circulating libraries were unknown there. The crowd at the booksellers' shops in Little Britain is mentioned by Roger North in his life of his brother John.
170 One instance will suffice. Queen Mary, the daughter of James, had excellent natural abilities, had been educated by a Bishop, was fond of history and poetry and was regarded by very eminent men as a superior woman. There is, in the library at the Hague, a superb English Bible which was delivered to her when she was crowned in Westminster Abbey. In the titlepage are these words in her own hand, " This book was given the King and I, at our crownation. Marie R."171 Roger North tells us that his brother John, who was Greek professor at Cambridge, complained bitterly of the general neglect of the Greek tongue among the academical clergy.
172 Butler, in a satire of great asperity, says, "For, though to smelter words of Greek And Latin be the rhetorique Of pedants counted, and vainglorious, To smatter French is meritorious."173 The most offensive instance which I remember is in a poem on the coronation of Charles the Second by Dryden, who certainly could not plead poverty as an excuse for borrowing words from any foreign tongue:-"Hither in summer evenings you repair To taste the fraicheur of the cooler air."174 Jeremy Collier has censured this odious practice with his usual force and keenness.
175 The contrast will be found in Sir Walter Scott's edition of Dryden.
176 See the Life of Southern. by Shiels.
177 See Rochester's Trial of the Poets.
178 Some Account of the English Stage.
179 Life of Southern, by Shiels.
180 If any reader thinks my expressions too severe, I would advise him to read Dryden's Epilogue to the Duke of Guise, and to observe that it was spoken by a woman.
181 See particularly Harrington's Oceana.
182 See Sprat's History of the Royal Society.
183 Cowley's Ode to the Royal Society.
184 "Then we upon the globe's last verge shall go, And view the ocean leaning on the sky;From thence our rolling neighbours we shall know, And on the lunar world secretly pry.'
Annus Mirabilis, 164.
185 North's Life of Guildford.
186 Pepys's Diary, May 30, 1667.
187 Butler was, I think, the only man of real genius who, between the Restoration and the Revolution showed a bitter enmity to the new philosophy, as it was then called. See the Satire on the Royal Society, and the Elephant in the Moon.
188 The eagerness with which the agriculturists of that age tried experiments and introduced improvements is well described by Aubrey. See the Natural history of Wiltshire, 1685.
189 Sprat's History of the Royal Society.
190 Walpole's Anecdotes of Painting, London Gazette, May 31, 1683; North's Life of Guildford.
191 The great prices paid to Varelst and Verrio are mentioned in Walpole's Anecdotes of Painting.
192 Petty's Political Arithmetic.
193 Stat 5 Eliz. c. 4; Archaeologia, vol. xi.
194 Plain and easy Method showing how the office of Overseer of the Poor may be managed, by Richard Dunning; 1st edition, 1685;2d edition, 1686.
195 Cullum's History of Hawsted.
196 Ruggles on the Poor.
197 See, in Thurloe's State Papers, the memorandum of the Dutch Deputies dated August 2-12, 1653.
198 The orator was Mr. John Basset, member for Barnstaple. See Smith's Memoirs of Wool, chapter lxviii.
199 This ballad is in the British Museum. The precise year is not given; but the Imprimatur of Roger Lestrange fixes the date sufficiently for my purpose. I will quote some of the lines. The master clothier is introduced speaking as follows:
"In former ages we used to give, So that our workfolks like farmers did live;But the times are changed, we will make them know.
* * * * * * * * * *"We will make them to work hard for sixpence a day, Though a shilling they deserve if they kind their just pay;If at all they murmur and say 'tis too small, We bid them choose whether they'll work at all.
And thus we forgain all our wealth and estate, By many poor men that work early and late.
Then hey for the clothing trade! It goes on brave;We scorn for to toyl and moyl, nor yet to slave.
Our workmen do work hard, but we live at ease, We go when we will, and we come when we please."200 Chamberlayne's State of England; Petty's Political Arithmetic, chapter viii.; Dunning's Plain and Easy Method;Firmin's Proposition for the Employing of the Poor. It ought to be observed that Firmin was an eminent philanthropist.
201 King in his Natural and Political Conclusions roughly estimated the common people of England at 880,0O0 families. Of these families 440,000, according to him ate animal food twice a week. The remaining 440,000, ate it not at all, or at most not oftener than once a week.
202 Fourteenth Report of the Poor Law Commissioners, Appendix B.
