No corner of a street is complete without them. They are as indispensable as the Ballad Singer; and in their picturesque attire as ornamental as the signs of old London. They were the standing morals, emblems, mementos, dial-mottos, the spital sermons, the books for children, the salutary checks and pauses to the high and rushing tide of greasy citizenry -Look Upon that poor and broken bankrupt there. Above all, those old blind Tobits that used to line the wall of Lincoln's-inn Garden, before modern fastidiousness had expelled them, casting up their ruined orbs to catch a ray of pity, and (if possible) of light, with their faithful Dog Guide at their feet,whither are they fled? or into what corners, blind as themselves, have they been driven, out of the wholesome air and sun-warmth? immersed between four walls, in what withering poor-house do they endure the penalty of double darkness, where the chink of the dropt half-penny no more consoles their forlorn bereavement, far from the sound of the cheerful and hope-stirring tread of the passenger? Where hang their useless staves? and who will farm their dogs? - Have the overseers of St. L-caused them to be shot? or were they tied up in sacks and dropt into the Thames, at the suggestion of B-, the mild rector of .? Well fare the soul of unfastidious Vincent Bourne, most classical, and at the same time, most English of the Latinists!-who has treated of this human and quadrupedal alliance, this dog and man friendship, in the sweetest of his poems, the Epitaphium in Canem, or Dog's Epitaph. Reader, peruse it; and say, if customary sights, which could call up such gentle poetry as this, were of a nature to do more harm or good to the moral sense of the passengers through the daily thoroughfares of a vast and busy metropolis. Pauperis hic Iri requiesco Lyciscus, herilis, Queis corda et mentem indiderat natura benignam. Hi mores, hæc vita fuit, dum fata sinebant, Dum neque languebam morbis, nec inerte senectâ; Exiguum hunc Irus tumulum de cespite fecit, Poor Irus' faithful wolf-dog here I lie, That wont to tend my old blind master's steps, His guide and guard; nor, while my service lasted, These were my manners, this my way of life, These dim eyes have in vain explored for some months past a well-known figure, or part of the figure of a man, who used to glide his comely upper half over the pavements of London, wheeling along with most ingenious celerity upon a machine of wood; a spectacle to natives, to foreigners, and to children. He was of a robust make, with a florid sailor-like complexion, and his head was bare to the storm and sunshine. He was a natural curiosity, a speculation to the scientific, a prodigy to the simple. The infant would stare at the mighty man brought down to his own level. The common cripple would despise his own pusillanimity, viewing the hale stoutness, and hearty heart, of this half-limbed giant. Few but must have noticed him; for the accident which brought him low took place during the riots of 1780, and he has been a groundling so long. He seemed earth-born, an Antæus, and to suck in fresh vigour from the soil which he neighboured. He was a grand fragment; as good as an Elgin marble. The nature, which should have recruited his reft legs and thighs, was not fost, but only retired into his upper parts, and he was half a Hercules. I heard a tremendous voice thundering and growling, as before an earthquake, and casting down my eyes, it was this mandrake reviling a steed that had started at his portentous appearance. He seemed to want but his just stature to have rent the offending quadruped in shivers. Heas as the man-part of a centaur, from which the horse half had been cloven in some dire Lapithan controversy. He moved on, as if he could have made shift with yet half of the body-portion which was left him. The os sublime was not wanting; and he threw out yet a jolly countenance upon the heavens. Forty-and-two years had he driven this out-of-door trade, and now that his hair is grizzled in the service, but his good spirits no tray impaired, because he is not content to exchange his free air and exercise for the restraints of a poor-house, he is expiating his contumacy in one of those houses (ironically christened) of Correction. against him by a clergyman deposing before a House of Commons' Committee - was this, or was his truly paternal consideration, which (if a fact) deserved a statue rather than a whipping-post, and is inconsistent, at least, with the exaggeration of nocturnal orgies which he has been slandered with—a reason that he should be deprived of his chosen, harmless, nay edifying, way of life, and be committed in hoary age for a sturdy vagabond? — There was a Yorick once, whom it would not have shamed to have sate down at the cripples' feast, and to have thrown in his benediction, ay, and his mite too, for a companionable symbol. "Age, thou hast lost thy breed."— Half of these stories about the prodigious fortunes made by begging are (I verily believe) misers' calumnies. One was much talked of in the public papers some time since, and the usual charitable inferences deduced. A clerk in the Bank was surprised with the announcement of a five-hundredpound legacy left him by a person whose name he was a stranger to. It seems that in his daily morning walks from Peckham (or some village thereabouts) where he lived, to his office, it had been his practice for the last twenty years to drop his halfpenny duly into the hat of some blind Bartimeus, that Was a daily spectacle like this to be sate begging alms by the way-side in the deemed a nuisance, which called for legal in- Borough. The good old beggar recognised terference to remove? or not rather a salu- his daily benefactor by the voice only; and, tary and a touching object to the passers- when he died, left all the amassings of his by in a great city? Among her shows, alms (that had been half a century perhaps her museums, and supplies for ever-gaping in the accumulating) to his old Bank friend. curiosity (and what else but an accumula- Was this a story to purse up people's hearts, tion of sights-endless sights-is a great and pennies, against giving an alms to the city; or for what else is it desirable?) was blind? — or not rather a beautiful moral of there not room for one Lusus (not Natura well-directed charity on the one part, and indeed, but) Accidentium? What if in forty-noble gratitude upon the other? and-two-years' going about, the man had scraped together enough to give a portion to his child, (as the rumour ran) of a few hundreds- whom had he injured?-whom had he imposed upon? The contributors had enjoyed their sight for their pennies. What if after being exposed all day to the heats, the rains, and the frosts of heaven-shuffling his ungainly trunk along in an elaborate and painful motion he was enabled to retire at night to enjoy himself at a club of his fellow cripples over a dish of hot meat and regetables, as the charge was gravely brought I sometimes wish I had been that Bank clerk. I seem to remember a poor old grateful kind of creature, blinking, and looking up with his no eyes in the sun Is it possible I could have steeled my purse against him? Perhaps I had no small change. Reader, do not be frightened at the hard words imposition, imposture-give, and ask no questions. Cast thy bread upon the waters. Some have unawares (like this Bank clerk) entertained angels. |