in rags, and the person who was defeated, without any clothes, exemplified in other places than on signs, may also help to confirm the salutary practice.. COMMON-PLACE JOKES, on religion, law, war, physic, and marriage. More than one example has been given in this collection, to prove that deists, infidels, and freethinkers, do not exactly hold all the tenets they profess. To make lawyers and their profession a source of satire, invective, misrepresentation, and reproach, is common in most jovial companies; this charge has also been alleged against the editor of the present page; if well founded, he is and must be an ungrateful and unreasonable man, for he has found in special attorneys and barristers, some of the most agreeable and useful of his associates. Indeed, when our persons and property are invaded, we make a sorry figure without them. To abuse the medical tribe, to laugh at the family apothecary, and to ridicule pills, potions and gallipots, has been thought fair from the days of Dryden and Garth; yet in the hour of danger, sickness, and distress, we send for them with anxious haste. The military spirit has been for ages the subject of declamation to philosophers, historians, moralists, and poets; one author has not scrupled to call them the plague and reproach of mankind; yet, under our present circumstances, and while man continues to be a singularly contrasted compound of vice and virtue, weakness and magnanimity, how and where should we have been without our present patriotic and well disciplined army? The correct manners, and in many instances the laudable conduct, of quakers in private life, merit approbation, but they would be crushed or annihilated by the first troop of unprincipled desperadoes, who might choose to attack them; and does not the general conduct of mankind in the mass afford a strong proof, that they would be attacked? To ridicule marriage and encourage nuptial infidelity was once the burthen of their song, with play-writers, novelists, and poets; yet of those who write and those who read their performances with such applause, how very few could be named, who at some period of their lives have not entered into the marriage state, or ardently desired it! In reply, it may be observed and has been said by a lady, who has often contributed to the amusement of my readers, that all this is very true, but Mr. Common-Place Book, would you deprive us of an innocent laugh? By no means, I only wish merry folks to recollect, that ridicule is not the test of truth; that we may laugh at our best friends, and our best interests, till we cease to value and almost despise them. A case in point is upon record; a well known profligate, who repented as others have done, when it was too late, was visited in his last hours by a neighbouring clergyman, intimate for many years with his family, and in the days of uncorrupted youth an associate of the dying man; a short but interesting conversation took place, which concluded with the ecclesiastic's offering up ardent prayers for his recovery or his repentance. The sinking sinner repeatedly suggesting doubts if it was possible for the Almighty to accept and admit so foul an offender into the realms of everlasting bliss, the minister proceeded to quote several passages from the New Testament, strongly in favour of mercy and forgiveness. He was suddenly amazed and interrupted in this rational and humane work by the offender's exclaiming, and apparently in great agitation," My dear sir, let me intreat you to forbear; every word you repeat from that much injured book plants new daggers in my heart; there is scarcely a passage in it, which I and my profane companions have not reviled and made a joke of in our hours of revelry and carousing, by which means I have poisoned what would otherwise at this terrible moment be an inestimable source of comfort!!" CONCANNEN, MATTHEW, one of the members of a literary club, who excited the satirical vengeance of Pope. Concannen would long since have been forgotten, except in the Dunciad, had not a singular circumstance brought his name again before the public: Dr. Knight, librarian to the British Museum, having in the year 1750 taken a house in Crane-court; while it was repairing, the persons employed informed him, that in a recess by the fire-side of an upper room, covered with canvass and papered, but which had once been a closet, they had discovered a number of dusty papers. They were deposited by his direction in a place of safety, and when the doctor took possession, to examine his treasure was the occasional employment of a leisure hour; covered by a heap of old bills, receipts, and other uninteresting documents, he found an original letter from doctor Warburton, who, at the time of writing it, was an attorney at Newark, in Nottinghamshire; it was addressed to the subject of our present article, who at a certain time probably lodged in the house, which had formerly been let in separate apartments. Although not, strictly speaking, his property, Dr. Knight considering it as an aliquot part of his dwelling, preserved the paper; it afterwards came into the possession of Dr. Mark Akenside, an eminent whig-poet, and author of "The Pleasures of the Imagination;" and ultimately passed into the hands of the acute and indefatigable Mr. Malone, by whom it was laid before the public. The circumstance, though trifling, was curious, that the future editor and panegyrist of Pope should have been actually introduced to a society of persons, who had grossly reviled him; that he should thankfully acknowledge this introduction as an honour and a favour; that he should join with them in abusing his future patron, accuse him of plagiarism and a want of genius; and finally, that he should write notes to a malig nant personal satire, in which his old friends were virulently attacked. Little accidents sometimes are productive of important changes; had the letter in question been ever seen or heard of by the irritable and easily exasperated translator of Homer, Warburton would himself have been handed down to everlasting ridicule in the Dunciad, he would never have defended the Essay on Man, against Crousaz; his introduction to the wealthy niece of Mr. Allen would not have taken place, and the humble Nottinghamshire attorney would never have ascended an ecclesiastic throne, in the cathedral of Gloucester: the letter has been talked of so much, that I had almost forgotten to transcribe it. DEAR SIR, Newark, Jan. 2, 1726. Having had no more regard for those papers which I spoke of and promised to Mr. Theobald than just what they deserved, I in vain sought for them through a number of loose papers that had the same kind of abortive birth. I used to make it one good part of my amusement in reading the English poets, those of them I mean whose vein flows regularly as well as clearly, to trace them to their sources, and to observe what ore, as well as dirt, they brought down with them. Dryden, I have often had occasion to observe, borrows for want of leisure, and Pope for want of genius, Milton from pride, and Addison through modesty. And now I am speaking of the latter, that you and Mr. Theobald may see of what kind those idle collections are, and to give you my notion of what we may safely pronounce an imitation; for it is not I presume the same train of ideas that follow in the same description of an ancient and a modern, where nature, when attended to, always supplies the same stores, which will authorise us to pronounce the latter an imitation, for as Terence has observed, nihil est dictum, quod non sit prius dictum: for these reasons I say, I give myself the pleasure of setting down some imitations I observed in the Cato of Addison: A day, an hour of virtuous liberty Is worth a whole eternity of bondage.-Addison. Quod si immortalitas consequeretur præsentis periculi fugam, tamen eo magis ea fugienda esse videretur, quo diuturnior esset servitus.-Tullii Philippica. Bid him disband his legions, Restore the commonwealth to liberty, And stand the judgment of a Roman senate; Bid him do this, and Cato is his friend.-Addison. Pacem vult? arma deponat, roget, deprecetur. Neminem equiorem reperiet quam me.-Tullii Philippica. But what is life? 'Tis not to stalk about and draw fresh air From time to time; "Tis to be free. When liberty is gone, Life grows insipid and has lost its relish.-Addison. Non enim in spiritu vita est; sed ea nulla est omnino servienti. Tullii Philippica Remember, O! my friends, the laws, the rights, O! never let it perish in your hands.-Addison. Hanc libertatem retinete, quæso, Quirites, quam vobis, tanquam hereditatem, majores nostri reliquerunt.-Tullii Philippica. This mistress of the world, this seat of empire, The nurse of heroes, the delight of gods.-Addison. Roma domus virtutis, imperii et dignitatis; domicilium gloriæ, lux orbis terrarum.-Tullius de Oratore. Half of the fifth scene of the third act is copied from the ninth book of Lucan, between the three hundredth and the seven hundredth line. You see by this the exactness of Mr. Addison's judgment, who wanting sentiments worthy the Roman Cato, sought for them in Tully and Lucan. When he would wish to give his subject a terrible grace, he borrows from Shakspeare. O think what anxious moments pass between O! 'tis a dreadful interval of time Filled up with horror all, and big with death.-Addison. Between the acting of a dreadful thing Are then in council; and the state of man, Like to a little kingdom, suffers then The nature of an insurrection.-Shakspeare's Julius Cæsar. You may justly complain of my so long deferring my thanks for all your favours during my stay in town, but more particularly for introducing me to those worthy and ingenious gentlemen with whom we passed our last evening. I am, Sir, with all esteem, Your most obliged friend, and humble servant, CONCINI, or as he was called by his own countrymen, Conchini, and by the French, Conchine, the son of a clerk in a public office at Florence, who, entering into the domestic service of Mary de Medicis, previously to her marriage with Henry the Fourth, king of France, accompanied that princess to Paris. By the graces of his person, and a pleasing address, having secured the queen's favour, and won the affections of Leonora Galigaï, a daughter of her majesty's nurse, he became her husband, and by this connection added considerably to his influence with the royal widow, who was of the same age with Leonora, and had been inordinately fond of her from their earliest infancy. The attachment of Concini, on this occasion, must have been founded on motives of political interest, or intellectual esteem, for his wife was grossly deficient in personal beauty. Their patroness being appointed Queen Regent, during the minority of Louis the Thirteenth, Concini became in fact, if not in form, Maire du Palais, an office so hatefully administered in the earlier ages of the French monarchy, in a word, governor of the palace as well as the person of the young king; he was ennobled, the dignity of Marshal of France was conferred upon him, and he accumulated enormous wealth, securing for himself, his family, and dependants, the highest and most lucrative appointments. But the vain and ambitious Florentine was not satisfied with possessing these advantages; he could not be content without an ostentatious display of them in every place, and on every occasion; this weakness, which a court favourite more than any man ought always to avoid, this weakness appeared in the splendour of his dress, the magnificence of his houses, the profusion of his table, and the costly liveries of three hundred attendants. Such conduct was unpardonable in a man, who on other occasions discovered no want of acuteness and good sense; it can only be attributed to his sudden elevation, and an unexpected tide of wealth and prosperity suddenly flowing in upon him; these are often found to weaken the head, and corrupt the heart. Brutus confessed, that after frequently wavering he was irrevocably fixed in his purpose of assassination, by Cæsar's receiving the senate sitting; we may judge of its effect on a stern republican, when an ancient writer and a moderate man mentions this circumstance in the following strong terms;—præcipuam et inexpiabilem invidiam. The death of Concini is said to have been determined on, by his appearing with his head covered in the king's presence. This imprudent folly, more than real crimes, proved his ruin; it excited the king's jealousy, and provoked the hatred of the people, whose prejudices against foreign favourites were soon converted into malignity, abhorrence, and detestation. These expressions may appear too strong, but they scarcely convey an adequate idea of the sentiments of rancour and aversion universally entertained against him; this I believe will be the opinion of most readers, when informed of certain extraordinary proceedings, which I mean presently to relate. Another circumstance hastened his destruction; the king was now approaching to manhood, and indignant at the dishonourable state of vassalage in which he had been long confined, which had deprived him of improving intercourse, customary amusements, and necessary exercise. Although little more than sixteen years old, the king quickly saw that in the present exasperated state of the public mind, to dismiss and to punish Concini would be acceptable to the majority of his subjects; but he knew, at the same time, that a numerous and powerful party were attached to him by blood, by gratitude, and interest. The sovereign in this instance conspired against the minister; private meetings were held, and after mature consideration it was resolved to remove the presumptuous Italian, who, though a stranger of obscure birth, thus arrogantly presumed to establish an uncontrolled ascendancy over king, nobles, and people. This disgraceful business was undertaken by one of those tools who are ready on most occasions to execute the purposes of despotism and vengeance; the unpopular favourite was way-laid as he passed to the Louvre, and received the contents of a pistol in his heart. A detachment of soldiers was sent to seize the wife of the murdered man; it being the dead hour of night, Leonora was found in her bed, from which the miscreants dragged her with many circumstances of brutality and indecorum. After plundering the apartments of her papers, her money, and jewels, they conveyed her to the Bastile; a prosecution was commenced against her for practising Jewish mysteries and other crimes, which it is not easy to read or to relate without a smile or a sigh. The prisoner was accused of rising before day-break at every return of the Jewish festivals, and of chaunting select passages from the Psalms of David; of sacrificing a cock, as is a custom with Jews on the day of the feast of reconciliation; of consulting magicians and astrologers, who professed judicial mathematics, particularly the beldame Isabel, a sorceress by trade, to know, whether by virtue of her art |