LXI. Anecdotes of FRANCIS STUART. MR. URBAN, THE following note on Captain Grose's Olio may, perhaps, be acceptable to the lovers of biography. You may rely on its authenticity. Yours, &c. W. N. P. 161. A porter-drinking man, Steward.] This Steward was Francis Stuart. He was the son of a shopkeeper in Edinburgh, and was brought up to the law. For several years he was employed as a writer in some of the principal offices of Edinburgh, and being a man of good natural parts, and given to literature, he frequently assisted in digesting and arranging MSS. for the press; and, among other employments of this sort, he used to boast of assisting or copying some of the juvenile productions of the afterwards celebrated Lord Kaims, when he was very young, and a correspondent with the Edinburgh Magazine. When he came to London, he stuck more closely to the press; and in this walk of copying or arranging for the press, he got recommended to Dr. Johnson, who then lived in Gough-square. Frank was a great admirer of the Doctor, and upon all occasions consulted him; and the Doctor had also a very respectable opinion of his amanuensis Frank Stuart, as he always familiarly called him. But it was not only in collecting authorities that Frank was employed, he was the man who did every thing in the writing way for him and managed all his affairs between the Doctor, his bookseller, and his creditors, who were then often very troublesome, and every species of business the Doctor had to do out of doors; and for this he was much better qualified than the Doctor himself, as he had been more accustomed to common business, and more conversant in the ways of men. That he was a porter-drinking man, as Captain Grose says, may be admitted; for he usually spent his evenings. at the Bible, in Shire-lane, a house of call for bookbinders and printers; where Frank was in good esteem among some creditable neighbours that frequented the back-room; for, except his fuddling, he was a very worthy character. But his drinking and conviviality, he used to say, he left behind him at Edinburgh, where he had connected himself with some jovial wits and great card-players, which made his journey to London very prudent and necessary, as nothing but such a measure could break off the connexion, or bring him to good hours and moderation.* In one of those night rambles, Stuart and his companions met with the mobprocession when they were conducting Captain Porteus to be hanged; and Stuart and his companions were next day examined about it before the town-council, when (as Stuart used to say) "we were found to be too drunk to have any hand in the business." But he gave a most accurate and particular account of that memorable transaction in the Edinburgh Magazine of that time, which he was rather fond of relating. In another walk, besides collecting authorities, he was remarkably useful to Dr. Johnson; that was, in the explanation of low cant phrases, which the Doctor used to get Frank to give his explanation of first; and all words relating to gambling and card-playing, such as All-Fours, Catchhonours, Cribbage, &c. were, among the Typos, said to be Frank Stuart's, corrected by the Doctor, for which he received a second payment. At the time this happened, the Dictionary was going on printing very briskly in three departiments, letter D, G, and L, being at work upon at the same time; and the Doctor was, in the printing-house phrase, out of town, that is, had received more money than he had produced MS.; for the proprietors restricted him in his payments, and would answer no more demands from him than at the rate of a guinea for every sheet of MS. copy he delivered, which was paid him by Mr. Strahan on delivery; and the Doctor readily agreed to this. The copy was written upon 4to. post, and in two columns each page. The Doctor wrote, in his own hand, the words and their explanation, and generally two or three words in each column, leaving a space between each for the authotities, which were pasted on as they were collected by the different clerks or amanuenses employed and in this mode the MS. was so regular, that the sheets of MS. which made a sheet of print could be very exactly ascertained. Every guinea * Before the journey to London was resolved on, Frank took some pains to bring his companions to order and good hours; and one of his efforts this way was his writing a song of four verses, to the famous old tune of Woe's my heart that we should sunder," and every verse concluded with a chorus line, "Let's leave lang-jinks but never sunder." Lang jinks is the name for Lansquenet in Scotland among gau esters, parcel came after this agreement regularly tied up, and was put upon a shelf in the corrector's room till wanted. The MS. being then in great forwardness, the doctor supplied copy faster than the printers called for it; and in one of the heaps of copy it happened that, upon giving it out to the compositors, some sheets of the old MS. that had been printed off were found among the new MS. paid for. As the MS. was then in such a ready and forward state, it is but justice to the doctor's character to say, that he does not appear to be driven to his shifts so much as to make use of this shabby trick to get three or four guineas, for it amounted to no more. It is, therefore, more probable that it hap pened by the doctor's keeping the old copy, which was always returned him with the proof, in a disorderly manner. But another mode of accounting for this was, at that time, very current in the printing-house. The doctor, besides his old and constant assistant, Stuart, had several others, some of them not of the best characters; and one of this class had been lately discharged, whom the doctor had been very kind to, notwithstanding all his loose and idle tricks; and it was generally supposed that he had fallen upon this expedient of picking up the old MS. to raise a few guineas, finding the money so readily paid on the MS. as he delivered it. Upon the whole, every body was inclined to acquit the doctor, as he had been well known to have rather too little thoughts about money matters. And what served to complete the doctor's acquittal was, Stuart inmediately on the discovery supplying the quantum of right copy (for it was ready;) which set every thing to rights, and that in the course of an hour or two, as the writer of this note can truly assert, as he was employed in the business. How such an erroneous and injurious account of an accident so fairly and justly to be accounted for, and the doctor's character cleared from all imputation of art or guilt, came to Captain Grose's ears, is hard to be accounted for: but it appears to have been picked up among the common gossip of the press-room, or other remote parts of the printing-house, where the right state of the fact could not be minutely related, nor accurately known. 1799, Suppl. W. N. LXII. Biographical Anecdotes of RICHARD MULCAster. MR. URBAN, MANY of your pages have been often and successfully devoted to Biography, a branch of literature peculiarly useful and entertaining; and, should the life of Richard Mulcaster, who once ranked high as a philologist, be thought worthy a niche in your Miscellany, an early insertion of it will oblige, Yours, &c. E. H. THE memoir I present is unmarked by adventurous anecdote: it is of a man who performed the task of life amid the schools of science; who penetrated the intricacies of knowledge only to facilitate the entrance of others. Richard Mulcaster arrogated not to himself the pride of high descent; his ancestors were people of opulence in Cumberland so far back as the time of William Rufus, where their chief care was to defend the border counties from the incursions of the Scots.* His father was William Mulcaster, a gentleman, who resided at Carlisle, where, as Wood affirms, his son Richard was born. He was educated on the foundation at Eton, whence, in 1548, he gained his election to King's College, Cambridge. Here he took no degree, but while scholar removed to Oxford; for what reason we are not told. In 1555, he was elected student of Christ Church; and in the next year licensed to proceed in arts. While at Eton or Cambridge, we do not hear that he made any proficiency in the learned languages. But, after he had resided some time at Oxford, he became eminent for his skill in Eastern literature. He entered on the teacher's life about 1559; and on September 24, 1561, for his extraordinary accomplishments in philology was appointed the first master of the school on LaurencePountney-hill, then just founded by the Merchant Taylors' Company. Of his method of teaching, Fuller quaintly remarks: In a morning he would exactly and plainly construe and parse the lessons to his scholars; which done, he * A pedigree of his family occurs in a volume of Surrey descents among the MSS. of Dr. Rawlinson, at Oxford, slept his hour (custome made him critical to proportion it). in his desk in the school; but wo be to the scholar that slept the while! Awaking, he heard them accurately; and Atropos might be perswaded to pity, as soon as he to pardon where he found just fault. The prayers of cockering mothers prevailed with him as much as the requests of indulgent fathers, rather increasing than mitigating his severity on their offending child." Immediately after, however, the witty historian has informed us," His sharpness was the better endured because unpartiall; and many excellent scholars were bred under him."* In this school Mulcaster spent nigh twenty-six years in harmless drudgery; yet, though he felt the inconvenience, he was happy in the toil. "A great learned man," saith het [P. Melanchthon]," in our dayes, thought fo much of the troublesome and toilsome life we teachers lead, as he wrote a pretie book of the miseries of maisters. We are to thank him for his good will: but when any kind of life, be it high, be it low, is not troubled with his proportion to our portion, we will yield to misery. Our life is very painfull indede, yet what if beyond comparison painfull? Much ado we have, and what if none more? Yet sure many as much, though they deale not with so many." In another part of the Positions, he thus feelingly bewails the neglect into which his honest and useful employment had fallen: "Our calling creepes low and hath paine for companion, still thrust to the wall though still confessed good." In another, he complains that "the teacher's life wrestles with unthankefullnesse;" such small recompence hath so great pain," the very acquaintance dying when the childe departs, though with confessede desertes and manifeste profit." And here I am glad to notice an anecdote of the learned Bishop Andrews, whom Mulcaster had educated at Merchant Taylors'. He not only retained a very high esteem for his old master, but used in all companies of his friends to place him at the upper end of the table. Nor did his grateful acknowledgement stop here; he many time with a liberal hand supplied our teacher's wants; and, when he died, caused his portrait to be hung up over his study door. And Bishop Andrews, we are told, had but few others in his house. Nor *Fuller's Worthies, Westmoreland, 139. In his Positions, p. 265. "The Miseries of Schoolmaisters vttered in a Latine Oration made by the famous Clearke, Philip Melanchthon." Licensed. Octavo, 1569. Ames's Typograph. Antiq. 2d edit. p. 945. |