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authorities in charge, notwithstanding a vehement protest from the other party. Thus closed the tomb on this unfortunate queen, whom, even after death, the storms which had visited her so fiercely while in life, did not cease to pursue.

AUGUST 15.

The Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary. St Alipius, bishop and confessor, 5th century. St Mac-cartin, Aid or Aed, bishop and confessor in Ireland, 506. St Arnoul or Arnulphus, confessor and bishop of Soissons, 1087.

Born.-Robert Blake, celebrated admiral, 1599, Bridge

water; Gilles Menage, miscellaneous writer (Dictionnaire

Etymologique), 1613, Angers; Frederick William I. of Prussia, 1688; Napoleon Bonaparte, French emperor, 1769, Ajaccio, France; Sir Walter Scott, poet and novelist, 1771, Edinburgh; Thomas de Quincey, author of Confessions of an English Opium Eater, 1785, Man

chester.

Died-Honorius, Roman emperor, 423; St Stephen, first king of Hungary, 1038, Buda; Alexius Comnenus, Greek emperor, 1118; Philippa, queen of Edward III. of England, 1369; Gerard Noodt, distinguished jurist, 1725, Leyden; Joseph Miller, comedian, 1738; Nicolas Hubert de Mongault, translator of Cicero's Letters, 1746, Paris; Dr Thomas Shaw, traveller, 1751, Oxford; Thomas Tyrwhitt, editor of Chaucer, 1786; Dr Herbert Mayo, eminent physiologist, 1852, Bad- Weilbach, near Mayence.

NAPOLEON BONAPARTE.

After all that has been said and written on the subject of Napoleon Bonaparte, the conclusion is forced upon us, that he had few of the elements in his composition which go to make up the character of a true hero. Of unbounded ambition, perfectly unscrupulous as to the means by which he might accomplish his ends, and tinged throughout by an utter selfishness and regardlessness of others, we can deem him no more entitled to a real and intelligent admiration, than a previous occupant of the French throne, Louis XIV, brilliant in many respects though the reigns of both these men undoubtedly were.

That the first Napoleon was in many ways a benefactor to France, cannot reasonably be denied. By his military and administrative abilities he raised himself to supreme power at a time when the country was emerging from the lawlessness and terrorism to which she had been subjected after the death of Louis XVI. The divided and profligate government of the Directorate had succeeded the anarchy and violence of the leaders of the Convention. Some powerful hand was required as a dictator to hold the reins of state, and arrange in a harmonious and well-adjusted train the various jarring and unstable systems of government. Had he conducted himself with the same prudence as his nephew, the present emperor, he might have died absolute sovereign of France, and the history of that country been written without the narrative of the Restoration of the Bourbons, the Three Days of July 1830, and the Revolution of February 1848. But vaulting ambition with him overleaped itself, and his impetuous self-willed nature, or what he himself used to consider his destiny, drove him headlong to his ruin. Regardless of the warnings addressed to him by the most sagacious of his

NAPOLEON BONAPARTE.

counsellors, contemptuously defiant of the coalitions formed to impede his progress, and careless, lastly, of the odium which his tyrannical sway in the end excited among his own subjects, he found himself at length left utterly destitute of resources, and obliged to submit to such terms as his enemies chose to impose. His career presents one of the most melancholy and impressive lessons that history affords. And yet how eagerly would a large portion of the French nation revert to a policy which, in his hands, overwhelmed it only with vexation and disaster!

Napoleon's character may be contemplated in three phases as a statesman, as a commander, and capacities, he displayed, as regards France, much as a private individual. In the first of these political and social reform. A vigorous administhat was worthy of commendation in point of tration of the laws, a simplification of legal ordinances and forms, a wise and tolerating system in religious matters, many important and judicious sanitary measures, the embellishment of the capital, and patronage afforded to art and science, must all be allowed to have been distinguishing attributes of his sway. But how little did he understand the art of conciliating and securing the allegiance of the countries which he had conquered! A total ignoring of all national predilections and tendencies seems to have been here habitually practised by him, and nowhere was this more conspicuous than in his treatment of Germany. That system of centralisation, by which he sought to render Paris the capital of a vast empire, at the expense of the dignity and treasures of other cities and kingdoms, might flatter very sensibly the national vanity of France, but was certain, at the same time, to exasperate the degraded and plundered countries beyond all hopes of forgiveness. And the outrages which he tacitly permitted his troops to exercise on the unfortunate inhabitants, argue ill for the solidity or wisdom of his views as a governor or

statesman.

The military genius of Bonaparte has been, and still is, a fruitful theme for discussion. In the early part of his career, he achieved such successes as rendered his name a terror to Europe, and gained for him a prestige which a series of continuous and overwhelming defeats in the latter period of his history was unable to destroy. But in the game of war, results alone can form the criterion, and the victories of Marengo, of Austerlitz, and of Wagram can scarcely be admitted in compensation for the blunders of the Russian campaign and the overthrow at Waterloo. One qualification, however, of a great general, the capacity of recognising and rewarding merit, in whatever position it might be found, was eminently conspicuous in Napoleon. Favouritism, and the influence of rank or fortune, were almost entirely unknown in his army. Few of his generals could boast much of family descent, and the circumstance that bravery and military talent were certain to receive their due reward in promotion or otherwise, gave every man a personal interest in the triumph of the emperor's arms.

An inquiry into the personal character of Bonaparte exhibits him perhaps in a still less favourable fight than that in which we have hitherto been con sidering him. Of a cold-blooded and impassible temperament, and engrossed exclusively by the master-passion, ambition, he betrayed no tendencies

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towards any of those aberrations by which the characters of so many other great men have been stained. But the very cause which kept his moral purity inviolate, rendered him totally insensible to the promptings of love and affection when his interest seemed to require that they should be disregarded. His ruthless abandonment of Josephine is a proof of this. And the insensibility with which he appears to have regarded the sacrifice of myriads of Frenchmen to his lust for power, leads us to form a very low estimate of the kindness or goodness of his heart. Two facts of his life stand prominently forward as evidence the one of the dark and arbitrary injustice of his nature, the other of a contemptible jealousy and littleness. These are the judicial murder of the Duke d'Enghien, and the vindictive and unchivalrous persecution of the talented Madame de Staël, and the amiable Louisa, queen of Prussia.

JOE MILLER.

It would be curious to note in how many cases the principle of lucus a non lucendo has been used, sometimes unintentionally, and sometimes perhaps as a joke, in the application of names. The man whose name is now the representative of the very idea of joking, Joe Miller, is said never to have uttered a joke. This reputed hero of all jokes, in reality an eminent comic actor of the earlier part of the last century, was born in the year 1684; he was no

doubt of obscure origin, but even the place of his birth appears to be unknown. In the year 1715, his name occurs for the first time on the bills of Drury Lane theatre as performing, on the last day of April, the part of Young Clincher in Farquhar's comedy of The Constant Couple; or a Trip to the

JOE MILLER.

the custom at that time, during the season when the regular theatres were closed, for the actors to perform in temporary theatres, or in booths erected at the several fairs in and near the metropolis, as in Bartholomew's Fair, Smithfield May Fair, Greenwich Fair, and, in this particular year, at the Frost Fair on the frozen Thames, for it was an extraordinary severe season. We find Joe Miller performing with one of the most celebrated of these movable companies that of the wellknown Pinkethman. At Drury Lane, Miller rose constantly in public esteem. At his benefit on the 25th of April 1717, when he played the part of Sir Joseph Whittol, in Congreve's Old Bachelor, the tickets were adorned with a design from the pencil of Hogarth, which represented the scene in which Whittol's bully, Noll, is kicked by Sharper. The original engraving is now extremely rare, and therefore, of course, very valuable.

For a rather long period we find Joe Miller acting as a member of the Drury Lane company, and, in the vacation intervals, first associated with Pinkethman, and subsequently established as an independent booth-theatre manager himself. Joe

appears also to have been a favourite among the members of his profession, and it has been handed down to us, through tradition and anecdote, that he was a regular attendant at the tavern, still known as the 'Black Jack,' in Portsmouth Street, Clare Market, then the favourite resort of the performers at Drury Lane and Lincoln's Inn Fields' theatres, and of the wits who came to enjoy their society. It is said that at these meetings Miller was remarkable for the gravity of his demeanour, and that he was so completely innocent of anything like joking, that his companions, as a jest, ascribed every new jest that was made to him. Joe Miller's last benefit-night was the 13th of April 1738. He died on the 15th of August of the same year; and the paragraphs which announce his death in the contemporary Press shew that he was

JOE MILLER.

Jubilee. Whatever may have been his previous career, it appears certain that his début was a successful one, for from this time he became regularly engaged on the boards of Drury. It was

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AUGUST 15.

not only greatly admired as an actor, but that he
was much esteemed for his personal character.
Miller was interred in the burial-ground of the
parish of St Clement Danes, in Portugal Street,
where a tombstone was erected to his memory.

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JOE MILLER'S TOMBSTONE, ST CLEMENT DANES
CHURCHYARD.

About ten years ago, that burial-ground, by the
removal of the mortuary remains, and the demoli-
tion of the monuments, was converted into a site for
King's College Hospital. Whilst this not unneces-
sary, yet undesirable, desecration was in progress,
the writer saw Joe's tombstone lying on the ground;
and, being told that it would be broken up and
used as materials for the new building, he took an
exact copy of the inscription, which was as follows:
'Here lye the Remains of
Honest Jo: MILLER,

a facetious Companion, and an excellent Comedian. He departed this Life the 15th day of August 1738, aged 54 years. If humour, wit, and honesty could save The humorous, witty, honest, from the grave, The grave had not so soon this tenant found, Whom honesty, and wit, and humour, crowned; Could but esteem, and love preserve our breath, And guard us longer from the stroke of Death, The stroke of Death on him had later fell, Whom all mankind esteemed and loved so well. S. DUCK.

From respect to social worth, mirthful qualities, and histrionic excellence, commemorated by poetic talent in humble life, the above inscription, which Time had nearly obliterated, has been preserved and transferred to this Stone, by order of MR JARVIS BUCK, Churchwarden, A.D. 1816.'

JOE MILLER.

The 'merry memory' of the comedian, the phrase used in one of the newspaper-paragraphs announcing Joe Miller's death, and the wit and humour ascribed to him in the epitaph, perhaps relate especially to his acting, or they would seem to contradict the tradition of his incapacity for making a joke. It was after his death, however, that he gained his fame as a jester. Among the society in which he usually mixed was a dramatic writer of no great merit, named John Mottley, the son of a Jacobite officer. This man was reduced to the position of living on the town by his wits, and in doing this he depended in a great measure on his pen. Among the popular publications of that time, was a kind easy of compilation, consisting substantially of the same jests, ever newly vamped up, with a few additions and variations. It was a common trick to place on the title of one of these brochures the name of some person of recent celebrity, in order to give it an appearance of novelty. Thus, there had appeared in the sixteenth century, Scogan's Jests and Skelton's Jests; in the seventeenth, Tarlton's Jests, Hobson's Jests, Peele's Jests, Hugh Peter's Jests, and a multitude of others; and in the century following, previous to the death of Joe Miller in 1738, Pinkethman's Jests, Polly Peachum's Jests, and Ben Jonson's Jests. It speaks strongly for the celebrity of Joe Miller, that he had hardly lain a year in his grave, when his name was thought sufficiently popular to grace the title of a jest-book; and it was Mottley who, no doubt pressed by necessity, undertook to compile a new collection which was to appear under it. The title of this volume, which was published in 1739, and sold for one shilling, was Joe Miller's Jests: or, the Wit's Vade-mecum. It was stated in the title to have been 'first carefully collected in the company, and many of them transcribed from the mouth, of the facetious gentleman whose name they bear; and now set forth and published by his lamentable friend and former companion, Elijah Jenkins, Esq. This was of course a fictitious name, under which Mottley chose to conceal his own. It must not be concealed that there is considerable originality in Mottley's collection-that it is not a mere republication, under a different name, of what had been published a score of times before; in fact, it is evidently a selection from the jokes which were then current about the town, and some of them apparently new ones. This was perhaps the reason of its sudden and great popularity. A second and third edition appeared in the same year, and it was not only frequently reprinted during the same century, but a number of spurious books appeared under the same title, as well as similar collections, under such titles as The New Joe Miller, and the like.

It appears to have been the custom, during at least two centuries, for people who were going to social parties, to prepare themselves by committing to memory a selection of jokes from some popular jest-book; the result of which would of course be, that the ears of the guests were subjected to the old jokes over and over again. People whose ears were thus wearied, would often express their annoyance, by reminding the repeater of the joke of the book he had taken it from; and, when the popularity of Joe Miller's jests had eclipsed that of all its rivals, the repetition of every old joke would draw forth from some one the exclamation: "That's

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a Joe Miller!' until the title was given indiscriminately to every jest which was recognised as not being a new one. Hence arose the modern fame of the old comedian, and the adoption of his name in our language as synonymous with 'an old joke.'

The S. Duck, whose name figures as author of the verses on Miller's tombstone, and who is alluded to on the same tablet, by Mr Churchwarden Buck, as an instance of 'poetic talent in humble life,' deserves a short notice. He was a thresher in the service of a farmer near Kew, in Surrey. Imbued with an eager desire for learning, he, under most adverse circumstances, managed to obtain a few books, and educate himself to a limited degree. Becoming known as a rustic rhymer, he attracted the attention of Caroline, queen of George II., who, with her accustomed liberality, settled on him a pension of £30 per annum; she made him a yeoman of the Guard, and installed him as keeper of a kind of museum she had in Richmond Park, called Merlin's Cave. Not content with these promotions, the generous, but perhaps inconsiderate queen, caused Duck to be admitted to holy orders, and preferred to the living of Byfleet, in Surrey, where he became a popular preacher among the lower classes, chiefly through the novelty of being the "Thresher Parson. This gave Swift occasion to write the following quibbling epigram:

The thresher Duck could o'er the queen prevail;
The proverb says "No fence against a fail."
From threshing corn, he turns to thresh his brains,
For which her majesty allows him grains;
Though 'tis confest, that those who ever saw
His poems, think 'em all not worth a straw.
Thrice happy Duck! employed in threshing stubble!
Thy toil is lessened, and thy profits double.'

One would suppose the poor thresher to have been beneath Swift's notice, but the provocation was great, and the chastisement, such as it was, merited. For, though few men had ever less pretensions to poetical genius than Duck, yet the court-party actually set him up as a rival, nay, as superior, to Pope. And the saddest part of the affair was, that Duck, in his utter simplicity and ignorance of what really constituted poetry, was led to fancy himself the greatest poet of the age. Consequently, considering that his genius was neglected, that he was not rewarded according to his poetical deserts, by being made the clergyman of an obscure village, he fell into a state of melancholy, which ended in suicide; affording another to the numerous instances of the very great difficulty of doing good. If the well-meaning queen had elevated Duck to the position of farmbailiff, he might have led a long and happy life, amongst the scenes and the classes of society in which his youth had passed, and thus been spared the pangs of disappointed vanity and misdirected

ambition.

THE BATTLE OF OTTERBOURNE AND
CHEVY CHASE.

The famous old ballad of Chevy Chase is subject to twofold confusion. There are two, if not three, wholly different versions of the ballad; and two wholly independent incidents mixed up by an anachronism. The battle of Otterbourne was a real event. In 1388, the border chieftains carried

AND CHEVY CHASE,

on a ruthless warfare. The Scots ravaged the country about Carlisle, and carried off many hundred prisoners. They then crossed into Northumberland, and committed further ravages. On their return home, they attacked a castle at Otterbourne, close to the Scottish border; but they were here overtaken, on the 15th of August, by an English force under Henry Percy, surnamed Hotspur, son of the Earl of Northumberland. James, Earl of Douglas, rallied the Scots; and there ensued a desperately fierce battle. The earl was killed on the spot; Lord Murray was mortally wounded; while Hotspur and his brother, Ralph Percy, were taken prisoners. It appears, moreover, that nearly fifty years after this battle, a private conflict took place between Hotspur's son and William, Earl of Douglas. There was a tacit understanding among the border families, that none should hunt in the domains of the others without permission; but the martial families of Percy and Douglas being perpetually at feud, were only too ready to break through this rule. Percy crossed the Cheviots on one occasion to hunt without the leave of Douglas, who was either lord of the soil or warden of the marches; Douglas resisted him, and a fierce conflict ensued, the particulars of which were not historically recorded. Now, it appears that some ballad-writers of later date mixed up these two events in such a way as to produce a rugged, exciting story out of them. The earliest title of the ballad was, The Hunting a' the Cheviat; this underwent changes until it came simply to Chevy Chase. In the Rev. George Gilfillan's edition of Percy's Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, the oldest known version of the ballad is copied from Hearne, who printed it in 1719 from an old manuscript, to which the name of Rychard Sheale was attached. Hearne believed this to be one Richard Sheale, who was living in 1588; but Percy, judging from the language and idiom, and from an allusion to the ballad in an old Scottish prose work, printed about 1548, inferred that the poet was of earlier date. Various circumstances fed Percy to believe that the ballad was written in the time of Henry VI. As given by Hearne and Percy, the Hunting a' the Cheviat occupies fortyfive stanzas, mostly of four lines each, but some of six, and is divided into two Fits or Sections. The ruggedness of the style is sufficiently shewn in the first stanza :

'The Persè owt of Northombarlande,

And a vowe to God mayde he,
That he wolde hunte in the mountayns
Off Chyviat within dayes thre,
In the mauger* of doughtè Dogles,

And all that ever with him be.' The ballad relates almost wholly to the conflict arising out of this hunting, and only includes a few incidents which are known to have occurred at the battle of Otterbourne-such as the death of Douglas and the captivity of Hotspur. One of the stanzas runs thus:

'Worde ys commyn to Eaden-burrowe,

To Jamy the Škottishe kyng,
That dougheti Duglas, leyff-tennante of the Merchis,
He lay slayne Cheviat within.'

Percy printed another version from an old manuscript in the Cotton Library. There is also another

* In spite of.

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THE BATTLE OF OTTERBOURNE

AUGUST 15.

manuscript of this same version, but with fewer |
stanzas, among the Harleian Collection. This
ballad is not confined to the incidents arising out
of the hunting by Percy, but relates to the raids
and counter-raids of the border-chieftains. Indeed,
it accords much better with the historical battle of
Otterbourne than with the private feud between
the Douglas and the Percy. It consists of seventy
stanzas, of four lines each; one stanza will suffice
to shew the metre and general style:

'Thus Syr Hary Percye toke the fylde,
For soth, as I you saye:

Jesu Cryste in hevyn on hyght
Dyd helpe hym well that daye.'

But the Chevy Chase which has gained so much
renown among old ballads, is neither of the above.
Addison's critique in the Spectator (Nos. 70 and 74)
related to a third ballad, which Percy supposes
cannot be older than the reign of Elizabeth, and
which was probably written after-perhaps in
consequence of the eulogium passed by Sir Philip
Sidney on the older ballad. Sidney's words were:
'I never heard the old song of Percy and Douglas,
that I found not my heart more moved than with
a trumpet; and yet it is sung by some blind
crowder with no rougher voice than rude style,
which being so evil-apparel'd in the dust and
cobweb of that uncivil age, what would it work
trimmed in the gorgeous eloquence of Pindar!'
Addison, approving of the praise here given, dis-
sents from the censure. I must, however,' he
says, 'beg leave to dissent from so great an authority
as that of Sir Philip Sidney, in the judgment
which he has passed as to the rude style and evil
apparel of this antiquated song; for there are
several parts in it where not only the thought but
the language is majestic, and the numbers sonor-
ous; at least the apparel is much more gorgeous
than many of the poets made use of in Queen
Elizabeth's time. This is taken as a proof that
Addison was not speaking of the older versions.
Nothing certain is known of the name of the
third balladist, nor of the time when he lived;
but there is internal evidence that he took one or

AND CHEVY CHASE. both of the older versions, and threw them into a more modern garb. His Chevy Chase consists of seventy-two stanzas, of four lines each, beginning with the well-known words:

'God prosper long our noble king,
Our lives and safetyes all;
A woful hunting once there did
In Chevy Chase befall.'

The ballad relates mainly to the hunting-exploit,
and what followed it: not to the battle of Otter-
bourne, or to the border-raids generally. Addison
does not seem to refer in his criticism to the
original ballad; he praises the third ballad for its
excellences, without comparing it with any other.
Those who have made that comparison, generally
admit that the later balladist improved the versifi-
cation, the sentiment, and the diction in most
cases; but Bishop Percy contends that in some few
passages the older version has more dignity of
expression than the later. He adduces the exploit
of the gallant Witherington:

'For Wetharryngton my harte was wo,
That ever he slayne shulde be;

For when both hys leggis were hewyne in to,
Yet he knyled and fought on hys kne.'
The bishop contends that, if this spelling be a
little modernised, the stanza becomes much more
dignified than the corresponding stanza in the

later version :

'For Witherington needs must I wayle,
As one in doleful dumpes;
For when his leggs were smitten off,

He fought upon his stumpes.'

In any sense, however, both the versions-or rather all three versions-take rank among our finest specimens of heroic ballad-poetry.

It will be learned, not without interest, that certain relics or memorials of the fight of Otterbourne are still preserved in Scotland. The story of the battle represents Douglas as having, in a personal encounter with Percy in front of Newcastle, taken from him his spear and its pennon or hanging flag, saying he would carry it home with

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