THE YORKSHIRE TYKE AND THE MERCER. SOME years ago there was a monstrous talk The citizens of London rais'd a troop, And puffy fingers learnt their swords to clench; Cut off their horses' ears, cry'd "cock a whoop," And bad our fleet be sure keep off the French; They really had a very martial air, And made, no doubt, their wives and children stare. It chanc'd a Yorkshire Tyke then had to sell And for a chap was looking out, full well He knew both how to find, and take him in ; At last he on a mercer fix'd his eye, A new-commission'd trooper by the bye. The Yorkshire man survey'd him back and front, His trick he plann'd, for soon his man he knew; The Tyke prevail'd on him to view his stud; But of THE horse, he would not say a word, Small minds are ever ready to suspect; "Why pass that handsome horse," then ask'd the mercer, "What! does he run away, or wont he stir, Sir." "Sir, he wont suit you, quoth the man; he runs Away from fire-arms; a sad trick he's got, He will not face an enemy or guns, And flies from cannon like a cannon-shot; But in ought else, the horse is free from vice, And cheap as dirt, a hundred is the price." "There's Major Funk about him-shou'd be here Ere this the horse wont long remain on hand-" Humph thought the mercer, life is very dear; What! he wont face them, if the French should land. To save my carcase, I'll e'en risk my neck "I'll take the horse," quoth he, and paid his cheque. DANDYISM OF OUR FORE- MR. EDITOR, Among the many new things, which we may confidently look for in the course of this new year, must undoubtedly be numbered New Fashions. Our Exquisites will certainly ere long astonish and amuse us with some further external metamorphoses, though of what description they may be, it would be in vain to conjecture. Before the important era arrive, which must of course absorb the attention of your readers, permit me to draw their notice to a few curious anecdotes of the Dandyism of other days. It seems, that Englishmen have, from the very earliest times, been infected with this ridiculous passion, if we may so call it. "To what cause," says an entertaining old author, "our mutability may be referred, I know not, unless that we, as all Islanders, are Lunares, or the Moon's men, which as it is in the old Epigram, would be fitted with no apparell. Our cousins the Germans have been immutable herein." Robert, eldest son to the Conqueror, resolving to become the first exquisite of his day, sported short stockings, by which he obtained the appellation of Court-hose. I need not add that the fashion soon became general. William Rufus, it appears, cared less about the make than the price of his apparel. Take the story out of our old rhyming historian, Robert of Gloucester : Henry II. was of a different taste. He introduced the short mantle, from which he acquired the bye-name of Court-mantle, and was the first Englishman who wore silk or bombazeen. That the habits of the people were continually changing reigns of John, Henry III. and their during the successors, their monuments, old windows, and ancient arras still remaining, sufficiently show. In the time of Edward III. the height to which fashionable absurdities were arrived, provoked the following rhyme : "Long beards, heartless, Painted hoods, witless, Gay coats, graceless, Makes England thriftless.” It had now even become necessary to provide many statutes relating to dress. But I proceed to give you a full length portrait of an exquisite of that age, from an ancient Manuscript Chronicle in the Bodleian Library. "The Commons were besotted in excess of apparel, in wide surcoats reaching to their loyns, some in a garment reaching to their heels, close before and strowting out on the sides, so that on the back, they make men seem women, and this they call by a ridiculous name, Gown: their hoods are little, tyed under the chin, and buttoned like the women's, but set with gold, silver, and precious stones; their larripippes reach to their heels all jagged; they have another weed of silk which they call a Paltock; their hose are of two colours, or pied, with more, which, with latchets, which they call herlots, they tye to their paltocks without any breeches. Their girdles are of gold and silver, some worth 20 marks. Their shoes and pattens are snowted and piked more than a finger long, crooking upwards, which they call cracrows, resembling the devil's claws, which were fastned to the knees with chains of gold and which were lyons in the hall, and silver. And thus were they garmented, hares in the field." A I cannot go through all the particulars of succeeding fashions. strange description of the attire of some of our countrymen under Rich. II. is to be found in Chaucer's prose works. The title of one of Occleve's Poems, who lived in the time of Hen, IV. is "Of Pride and of wast clothing." "Not many years after," says. my author, "foolish pride so descend ed to the foot, that it was proclaimed that no man should have his shoes broader at the toes than six inches;" and it was enacted, in 22 E. 4. chap. 1. that no manner of person under the estate of a Lord, shall wear from that time any gown or mantle of less than certain dimensions, upon pain to forfeit to our Sovereign Lord the King at every default 20 shillings." I shall conclude by telling you how Sir Philip Calthrop purged John Drakes, the shoemaker, of Norwich, in the time of Henry the VIII. of the proud humour which the people had to be of the gentlemen's cut." "This knight bought on a time as much fine French tawney cloth as should make him a gown, and sent it to the Tayloures to be made; John Drakes, a shoemaker of that town, coming to the said taylour's and secing the Knight's gown-cloath laying there, liking it well, caused the taylour to buy him as much of the same cloth and price, to the same intent, and further bad him to make it of the same fashion, that the Knight would have his made of. Not long after, the Knight coming to the taylour's, to take measure of his gown, perceiveth the like gown-cloth lying there, asked of the taylour whose it was; quoth the taylour it is John Drake's, who will have it made of the self-same fashion that yours is made of; well, said the Knight, in good time be it, I will (said he) have mine made as full of cuts as thy sheers can make it: it shall be done said the tailour, whereupon because the time drew near, he made haste of both their garments. John Drake, when he had no time to goe to the taylour's till Christmasday, for serving of customers, when he had hoped to have worn his gown, perceiving the same to be full of cuts, began to swear with the taylour, for the making of his gown after that sort. I have done nothing (quoth the taylour) but that you bade me, for as Sir Philip Calthorpe's is, even so have I made your's. By my latchet, quoth John Drake, I will never wear gentleman's fashion again." I suspect honest John Drake was no thorough-bred Dandy after all, or he would never have quarrelled with his garment for the absurdity of its cut. I am, Your's, SIMON PLAINGARB. TO A MOTHER ON HER SON GOING TO SCHOOL. Why rises the maternal tear, "Where ignorance is bliss Why throbs your heart with hope and fear? Ah! see your much lov'd boy at play, Unthinking of the parting day, Which causes all your care. In forms terrific you behold The master stern, the school-boy bold; Nor thinks of future pain. Your fancy paints a thousand harms, In this new scene of life. Then will his gentle tender heart Alas! reflect on human woe; And check his sad career. And are as soon forgot. In youth we still the mirror see We quite forget to-day. Then check the fond maternal tear, And makes your boy his care. SOMEBODY. WHIGS AND ANTI-WHIGS; Or Evil and Good Contrasted. CONTINUed. No. III. WHAT will our modern Whigs say to the following portrait? Will they not allow, that it presents some happy points of resemblance to originals of the present day ? The Scurrilous and Seditious Whig Writer is, generally speaking, either an unemployed needy lawyer, a proscribed field conventicler, a Caledonian medicaster, or a renegado Popish priest, new licked into a Socinian tubster, and under some or all of these qualifications, commences a member politic of an incorporate faction, a formal pedantic fault-finder in Government, and a pamphleteer for seditious malcontented clubbers. His style is either a blustering noise of insignificant pompous words, that threaten to kill six opponents with his pen, and six-and-twenty with his inkhorn, or else a fardle of obsolete phrases, or moth-eaten adages, that were in use when men wore bonnets, and wiped their noses on their sleeves, for want of handkerchiefs. The scope of his pamphlets (if they have any) is to possess the people with fears of arbitrary power, to reflect scandal upon the Government, to pelt the Court with lean and meagre reproaches, and the ministry with such audacious suggestions, as may give the multitude a loathing of the men and the constitution. He is always provided (at the charge of the common stock of busy intermeddlers) to write for that party, who are still afraid of losing what cannot be taken from them, and upon those fantastical apprehensions, care not if the Government be dissolved, to gratify their scruples. He is full of extraordinary hints against mismanagements, and wounds royal authority through the sides of pretended evil counsellors. Ile is sometimes a droll, and always a sceptic, and there's scarcely any thing so certain or sacred, that he does not expose to question and contempt: insomuch, that betwixt the hypocrite and the atheist, the very foundation of religion and morality is shaken, the two tables of the decalogue dashed to pieces, the laws of Government subjected to the fancies of the vulgar, and public authority to the private passions of the fickle multitude. He is so fond of being public, that he will rather be a blasphemous or a ridiculous incendiary, than not be taken notice of as a Whiggish author. If there be a libel in town against the Government, some one, or a club of them all, are sure to be the composers of it, and are celebrated among the seditious, as men of extraordinary merit, merely for being mischievous. Nothing comes amiss to make him alarm the mobile with approaching dangers. What a fury will he raise about nothing, and counterfeit a foolish melancholy upon improbable dangers, to excite the brutish passions of the rabble, upon every slight and frivolous suggestion? The oration of the old dotard in Apuleius would be less ridiculous than some of their doleful, and tragical harangues about a Standing Army. The old fellow comes forth with hideous bellowings, and with all the solemnities of sorrow, and a discomposed mind, to declaim in the presence of the whole city, against a little boy; and as soon as he could, for sighs and groans, begins with weeping tears, to let them know, that he has something to communicate, that required all their attentions, as they tendered the safety of the Common Wealth; and so proceeds to conjure them, by all things sacred and civil, by their Gods and their Altars, not to let the murderer escape unpunished; and having screwed up the people's expectations even to impatience, he was earnestly desired to declare the crime, that so they might atone the anger of the Gods, which otherwise they might expect upon their city, if they should suffer such a horrid villainy to pass unrevenged. At last (after he had moved all this indignation) he produces three bottles broken all to pieces by the lad; here, here (says he) behold the cruel murderer. At which (you may suppose) all the audience fell a laughing then, as all wise men do at our pedantic authors now, for endeavouring, with so much seriousness and dreadful apprehensions, to raise a fu rious passion out of nothing. To keep him within the limits of his own sphere, was to confine a wild boar with sober words. There has been no peace upon earth since he was in it, and a man might as well attempt the conversion of the Great Turk, as reconcile him to his duty. He is the most savage creature in the world, and no less incapable of discipline than rats and swallows; and smells so rankly of confusion and disorder, that no towardly Christian can approach him without an antidote. He furiously combats every trifle; raises a tempest from the least drop of water; either commends or dispraises to the last degree of rigour, and censures without judgment or authority: and there's no way to persuade him from repeating his follies, and muddling himself in ink, but to turn him to his old trade of lampoons, ballads, and Grub-Street wonder making, or make him foreswear the use of pen, ink, and paper." "For he'll proceed, come on't what will, There is no middle course in doing ill.' No. IV. " "The true Englishman, as a Clergyman," says our author, who appears to have had a correct view of the requisite qualifications and duties of the sacred office," is a holy man in his conversation, and gains souls to God, as well by the integrity of his life as the purity of his doctrine. He is universally learned, sees with his own eyes, and is able to discern truth from error by understanding the originals; while others are imposed upon for want of those lights, which a generous education and hard study have happily blessed him with. His religion is the ground of his loyalty, and the rule he prescribes to others. His companions are his books, his apartment his study; and unless upon the discharge of his office, in relieving the poor, visiting the sick, or reconciling differences among his neighbours, he is seldom to be found out of it. His recreations are doing good works, and he shows the stedfastness of his faith, by making the Holy Scriptures the rule of his life, and in practising what he preaches. He reads before he writes, writes before he ascends the pulpit, and leaves nothing to a scandalous extemporary invention. He performs the offices of the Church with a decent gravity, and by his own example awes his congregation into a praying-professing, or hearing posture, and puts them in mind of what they are doing. His sermons are adapted to the capacity of his auditors, and he makes it his business to instruct, and not to amuse or please them. He knows sound doctrine in decent expressions, without exercises of wit, is the business of a preacher; and that his learning is better seen in the substance of his matter, than in elegant harangues. He is a stranger to all manner of affectation either in his words or gesture, and commands attention only by the seriousness of his discourses, which are always confined to what we ought to believe or practice, without wandering into unnecessary disputes, or impertinent digressions. If Providence raises him to be a Governor in the Church, he is so much the more humble, the higher he is exalted; for he sees his work and account to be greater, and requires the exercise of his greatest care and industry to discharge it uprightly. His authority in his diocese does not make him forget that the inferior clergy are his brethren, and he treats them accordingly: and the augmentation to his estate reminds him that he is only a trustee for the poor, and must be given to hospitality. If any under his jurisdiction offends, and, by repeating his crimes after a fatherly admonition he is constrained to punish his contumacy, it is done with so much meekness, as shows him necessitated to it by the rules of justice, and not to his own inclination to severity; and therefore upon his sincere reformation receives him again into his bosom. If he has only a competency in a single cure, without any other additional preferments, he lives peaceably among his neighbours, contentedly in his family, discharges his duty conscientiously, and dies much lamented." No. V. "An Amphibious Latitudinarian, Aldermanlike-Whig" is thus ludicrously exhibited: of a Right Worshipful Sir Something, "In the Country he wears the title that sprung up from nothing; but being laid across the shoulders with a Knighthood, his horn is exalted above his neighbours. His father was a man of good stock, tho' but a grazier; he bought the land, and his son the title, and the next generation returns his family into their original. His study is the fashion of his clothes. His religion, Whiggism; which, like French pottage, is made up of every thing. |