home, and wrote the following note to the Premier; we quote from one of the innumerable publications into which it found its way at the time :—

My Lord,-After the pithy manner in which your lordship was pleased to express your sentiments on the subject of the pensions that have been granted to literary and scientific persons, it only remains for me to relieve you, as far as I am concerned, from all further uneasiness. I will not accept any favour at your hands, nor at the hands of any Cabinet of which you are a member.—I have the honour to be, etc., etc., etc.

Lord Melbourne characterised this as a most impudent letter. We are glad to learn from Dr. Tyndall, however, that he did ultimately write an apology to Faraday for the words he had so strangely permitted himself to use. Tradition says, indeed, that it was not to Lord Melbourne, but immediately to the king, William IV., Faraday was indebted for the pension he ultimately received; and it came about in this way :-Lady Mary Fox was visiting Sir James South, and saw on his table a little electrifying machine, which excited her interest, from a story told upon a ticket appended to it; it was the first electrifying machine Faraday ever had in his possession. It stood, when he was a hard-working youth, in an optician's window, marked four shillings and sixpence, but his pocket was so poorly furnished that he was unable to purchase it, and could only often go and look at it, and turn away again with grief. At last, however, he saved the four-and-sixpence, and went to the optician's and purchased his treasure. In all the early experiments which laid the foundation of his future eminence, this four-and-sixpenny machine was his sole assistant; he looked at it with growing affection, and it was almost constantly in his sight, until he gave it to Sir James South; and he used to say that it reproved him when he was tempted to forget how much he was indebted to Providence, and God's watchful blessing upon his own energies. When Lady Mary heard of the dispute between the great chemist

NOBLE BEHAVIOUR OF WILLIAM IV. 215

and the Premier, touched with this beautiful story, she was interested in obtaining a true version of all the facts of the case, and her verdict upon Faraday's letter was rather different to that of the Premier's. She said, "It is just what it ought to have been; as a man of honour and of merit he could not have written otherwise." Lady Mary was visiting the king at Brighton, and there she told him the whole story too, and the story of Faraday's early poverty, and struggles, and fame. It was just the story to affect William IV.; he was pleased with every part of it, and said, "That man deserves all the pension that Peel promised, and he shall have it too;" and accordingly Faraday was requested to accept the pension, not as a gift from the Cabinet, but as direct from the king. This is a very pretty story, so good that it ought to be true, and indeed the slight allusions made to the circumstances by Dr. Tyndall seem to give every justification to the more extended version.

And what is Faraday now? and, inquires Dr. Tyndall, What is the use of it all?" To which question Faraday himself once replied, by quoting Dr. Franklin's question and his reply, "What is the use of an infant?" "Endeavour to make it useful." Without aiming merely to be practical, but simply to enlarge, and while enlarging, to demonstrate the dominions and certainties of knowledge, the results of Faraday are everywhere. The application of electricity to medical purposes is Faraday's electricity; Faraday's current speeds from place to place along the crossing wires; Faraday's sparks throw out their. light at Dungeness, and preparations are being made for the introduction of the magneto-electric light round our coasts; while time, which rectifies and disturbs so many reputations, will exalt and illustrate this, and bring into more distinguished prominence the value of the labours of the philosopher, even as the study of the life makes more loveable and beautiful the features of the man.

Where's the wonder? If you look around,
You'll find some poets-cobblers most profound!
With borrowed thesis versify and patch it,
And spoil both upper leather, sole, and latchet;
By which 'tis so transform'd, so different grown,
That th' owner does not know it for his own.

A shoemaker and a poet?

Good agen:

Ar'nt shoemakers the same as other men !
No doubt; but men are born of diff'rent cast,
"Let not the cobbler go beyond his last !”
Lest, like that critic who to fame aspired,
He lose the honours which he has acquired;
For while he criticised upon the shoe,
He gain'd applause, as learned critics do;
But when he took upon him to impart
His curious observations on the art
Th' ingenious statuary had display'd,
Where all but life and motion was essay'd,
No wonder why the well-known censure past,
"Let not the cobbler go beyond his last."

But will much learning make dull blockheads wise?
Poets are often cobblers in disguise,

And give the world such patches of each other,

That Dulness nods to Dulness, thou'rt my brother;

Yet claim connection with Apollo's court,

As if th' inspiring Graces there resort.

POETIC HOMAGE TO SHOEMAKERS.

217

These verses are extracted from an address prefixed to a volume of fugitive poems, published in 1774, by John Bennett, shoemaker and parish clerk of Woodstock. The volume was dedicated to Thomas Warton, who took some interest in the author; and the quotation meeting our eye just as we were commencing this chapter, we have placed it there. We have only space for a short chapter, but the mental achievements of shoemakers might make a lengthy book. The Shoemaker's craft seems ever to have been a noble craft for great minds. It would seem an unprepossessing cradle enough, but even so it has been; the cordwainers made no inconsiderable stir in the cities of the Middle Ages. Whittier says:—

The foremost still by day and night,
On moated mound or heather,
Where'er the need of trampled right,
Brought toiling men together:
Where the free burghers, from the wall,
Defiled the mail-clad master,

Than yours, at Freedom's trumpet call,
No craftsmen rallied faster.

Let foplings sneer, let fools deride,

Ye need no idle scorner;

Free hands and hearts are still your pride,

And duty done your honour.

Ye dare to trust for honest fame,

The jury Time empanels;

And leave to Truth each noble name
Which glorifies your annals.

Thy songs, Hans Sach, are ringing yet,
In strong and healthy German;
And Bloomfield's lay, and Gifford's wit,
And the rare good sense of Sherman ;
Still from his book a mystic seer,

The soul of Boehmen preaches,

And England's priestcraft shakes to hear

Of Fox's leathern breeches.

We question whether any other craft can show such an

array of names as the cordwainer craft.

Philosophers,

patriots, poets, linguists, preachers, mystics, they have quite ennobled the Awl and the Last. There was the tuneful guild brother, HANS SACH, the contemporary of Luther, who by his dramatic and poetic power aided mightily, in his day, the progress of the Reformation. The son of a tailor, we are told he was taught the mysteries of song by a weaver. Like Albert Durer, he was a native of Nuremberg, the son of a tailor, apprenticed at fourteen to a shoemaker. His writings, which occupy five folio volumes, appear to be marvellously manifold. Goethe even greatly admired him his powers were lyrical, narrative, satirical, humourous, and earnest. Nuremberg still appreciates his memory highly, reverentially regards his house, and his works are just about to be reprinted. All his life long he kept his house by diligence in shoemaking. In his seventy-fourth year (1568), he found that he had written six thousand and forty-eight poetical pieces; of them two hundred and eight were tragedies and comedies. Carlyle calls him "a gay, childlike, devout, solid character; a man neither to be despised nor patronized, but left standing on his own basis, as a singular product, and still legible symbol and clear mirror of the time and country where he lived, not without genius and shrewd irony." *

Greater than Sach was BEHMEN, the shoemaker, and usually called the Teutonic Philosopher of Gorlitz, in Germany; the Prince of Mystics, the fountain and father of the modern mystical theology. In his earliest days, even as a herd boy, he appears to have thought things not only amazing by their depth, but not less amazing by their coherent harmony with the system of thought of his whole life. King Charles I. read his works, and declared that after reading them if, as he had been informed, Behmen was no scholar they were a proof that the Holy Ghost still led and taught men; but that if even he were a scholar his writings were among the greatest he had ever read. This was in

Miscellanies, vol. i. p. 31.