THE FIRST MAIL-COACH. 165 was connected with Bath and with Birmingham; his poems are dedicated to Meyler, a well-known Bath bookseller; and he seems to have been proprietor or editor of the Birmingham Chronicle. I suspect I might discover more about him by investigation in the reading-room of the British Museum; but life is too short for such researches. One thing is clear: he was an intimate friend of Palmer, theatrical manager at Bath and Bristol, and afterwards, I think, Member of Parliament for the former city, who was the first man to start mail-coaches in England. This seems a trifle to us, in the days of railways; but the truth is, that when, in 1784, the first mail-coach was started from London to Bristol, the principle of the swiftest possible travelling was accepted, and the modern express train is merely a corollary of Palmer's fast coaches. Once admit the principle-the faster the better and all else is merely an application of machinery. Palmer's enterprise was strongly attacked in those days: there were plenty of people interested in the preservation of slowness-there always are. His poetical friend Collins says :— "The lies Envy broaches, to run down mail-coaches, Like the grease on their axis their speed not relaxes, This stanza is not particularly intelligible-but it may pass. John Collins was laudator temporis acti. He sangenthusiastically sang-the golden days of good Queen 1 This "though" should evidently, I think, be "as."-T. T. Bess. I have a preference for later times, and indeed am rather of opinion that this planet is a big hotel, whose managers are only just beginning to learn how to manage it. Even now there is a confounded row in the kitchen, because the French cook has quarrelled with the German bonne. However, Collins is delighted with a time— "When our ladies, with large ruffs, tied round about the neck fast, Would gobble up a pound of beefsteaks for their breakfast." It must have been a pleasant time enough, if we accept the poet's account of some of its characteristics : "Then a woman with a fortune was reckon'd but a flirt, If she could not make a pudding, make a bed, or make a shirt ; With a fortune out at elbows-a man would make a shift." He Nothing could more clearly show that there is a revolution in modern English thought than a vein of friendly sympathy which runs through John Collins's verse. has always "a purse when a friend wants to borrow." Modern friendship has taken quite another turn: the idea that a friend might want to borrow shocks the sensitive nerves of men nowaday. Borrow! Why, there is no well-conducted person of this later era who would allow his friend to know that it was possible for him to want money. Swindle him he will, to the fullest extent. To do him out of a thousand pounds is clever; to borrow a sovereign of him is "bad form." John Collins was rather a good hand at an epigram. In Oldham churchyard he happened to notice epitaphs upon Paul Fuller and Peter Potter. Thereupon he wrote: JOHN COLLINS. ""Tis held by Peter and by Paul That when we fill our graves or urns, And dust to dust once more returns: Appears in monumental lay : Paul's grave is fill'd with Fuller's earth, And Peter's cramm'd with Potter's clay." 167 Had I time and space, there are multitudinous more things I should like to say about John Collins. Parting from him, let me remark that he belongs to a class of men who might be increased without public inconvenience. More such men in our country towns would keep up that intellectual life which is the healthiest of all influences. No man can deny that a song like "To-morrow" is nobly suggestive; and though one doesn't encounter a Collins every day, it is quite conceivable that men of the Collins type would multiply if country towns were less stagnant than they are, less content to be stagnant, less absurdly unconscious that they have duties to perform, and that a few centuries ago their names were known in history. For the sake of English local literature, I heartily wish there were more Collinses. THE ROMAN GIRL OF THE PERIOD. It is often convenient, in writing for immediate purposes, to accept words and phrases which, though inaccurate, are for the moment popular. This must account for our using the illiterate expression "Girl of the Period' in the course of this article. A period is exactly equivalent to a cycle; and unless it can be shown that there is anything recurrent in the procession of time, the word is without significance in this popular phrase. Its originator (a lady probably) should have used the word "era." Having made this preliminary remark, we shall make use of the phrase when necessary. Imperial Rome takes very high rank among the great cities of the world-second perhaps to London only. The English are a superior race to the Romans, intellectually and physically. This is already certain, though we have seen the Roman race at its highest point of development, while as yet the English have not reached that point. Questionless there are matters wherein the Romans surpassed us. They built stronger bridges, laid firmer roads, made terser and clearer laws, wrote sharper THE GIRLS OF ROME. 169 satire. They were madder in their luxury and more shameless in their vice. They were a strong and resolute people, but devoid of originality, which especially appears in their literature. Their drama and epic and history were all borrowed from the Greeks; even so was their art. Their satire was original; it sprang from the depth of their social degradation, the hideous character of their vice, as phosphoric exhalations arise from fetid morasses. Satire apart, they had but one original writer-Catullus. He, indolent aristocrat and aristologist, has left us a few perfect gems, but cared not to do justice to his own. genius. We conjecture his power, as we should have to guess at Shakespeare's if he had written nothing but his sonnets and his songs. What girls were like in Rome we do not learn from this fine gentleman and finer poet. He burned with a mad passion for one woman only, and contemptuously notices others. Nor again from Horace. His lyrics are almost all from Greek sources, and the women he names -Cinara and perhaps Lydia excepted-are names and nothing more. But there is one writer whose brilliant pages reflect for us the very life of Rome under Domitian, Nerva, and Trajan-ay, and the girls of that period are as vividly photographed as it is possible for the most expert of contemporary artists to depict the girls of this present day. That writer is Marcus Valerius Martialis, whose name we have shortened to Martial. In about fifteen hundred epigrams he reflects every phase of Roman life, and his gallery of female characters is entirely unrivalled in literature. |