In a party to Ranelagh went, or Vauxhall : And oftentimes would they be giggling and leering,

But 'twas all one to Tom, their gibing and jeering,

valued him highly, resorted to the authority of the lord chamberlain. "Accordingly upon his complaint, a messenger was immediately despatched to Norwich, where Dogget then was, to bring him up in custody. But doughty Dogget, who had money in his pocket, and the cause of liberty at his heart, was not in the least intimidated by this formidable summons. He was observed to obey it with a particular cheerfulness, entertaining his fellow-traveller, the messenger, all the way in the coach (for he had protested against riding) with as much humour as a man of his business might be capable of

DOGGET.

Colley Cibber calls Dogget "a prudent, honest man," and relates anecdotes highly

to our founder's honour. One of them is very characteristic of Dogget's good sense and firmness.

The lord chamberlain was accustomed to exercise great power over actors. In king William's reign he issued an order that no actor of either company should presume to go from one to the other without a discharge, and the lord chamberlain's permission; and messengers actually took performers who disobeyed the edict into custody. Dogget was under articles to play at Drury-lane, but conceiving himself treated unfairly, quitted the stage, would act no more, and preferred to forego his demands rather than hazard the tediousness and danger of the law to recover them. The manager, who

were to be defrayed, he, at every inn, called for the best dainties the country could afford, or a pretended weak appetite could digest. At this rate they jollily rolled on, more with the air of a jaunt than a journey, or a party of pleasure than of a poor devil in durance. Upon his arrival in town, he immediately applied to the lord chief justice Holt for his habeas corpus. As his case was something particular, that eminent and learned notice of it: for Dogget was not only minister of the law took a particular discharged, but the process of his confinement (according to common fame) had a censure passed upon it in court."

"We see," says Cibber, "how naturally power, only founded on custom, is apt, where the law is silent, to run into excesses; and while it laudably pretends to govern others, how hard it is to govern itself."*

celebrated performer, but through Cibber, Scarcely any thing is known of this with whom he was a joint patentee in Drury-lane theatre. They sometimes warmly differed, but Cibber respected his integrity and admired his talents. The logy," are exceedingly amusing, and the accounts of Dogget in "Cibber's Apobook is now easily accessible, for it forms the first volume of "Autobiography, a collection of the most instructive and

amusing lives written by the parties themselves;"-a work printed in an ele gant form, and published at a reasonable price, and so arranged that every life may be purchased separately.

Cibber says of Dogget, "He was a golden actor.-He was the most an original, and the strictest observer of nature,

• Autobiography, 1826, 18mo. vol. i. p. 202.

of all his contemporaries. He borrowed from none of them; his manner was his own; he was a pattern to others, whose great merit was, that they had sometimes tolerably imitated him. In dressing a character to the greatest exactness he was remarkably skilful; the least article of whatever habit he wore, seemed in some degree to speak and mark the different humour he presented; a necessary care in a comedian, in which many have been too remiss or ignorant. He could be extremely ridiculous without stepping into the least impropriety to make him so. His greatest success was in characters of lower life, which he improved from the delight he took in his observations of that kind in the real world. In songs and particular dances, too, of humour, he had no competitor. Congreve was a great admirer of him, and found his account in the characters he expressly wrote for him. In those of Fondlewife, in his Old Batchelor,' and Ben, in Love for Love,' no author and actor could be more obliged to their mutual masterly performances." Dogget realized a fortune, retired from the stage, and died, endeared to watermen and whigs, at Eltham, in Kent, on the twenty-second of September, 1721.

NATURALISTS' CALENDAR. Mean Temperature . . . 64 · 77.

August 2

CHRONOLOGY.

Thomas Gainsborough, eminent as a painter, and for love of his art, died on the second of August, 1788. His last words were, "We are all going to heaven, and Vandyke is of the party." He was buried, by his own desire, near his friend Kirby, the author of the Treatise on "Perspective," in the grave-yard of Kew chapel.

Gainsborough was born at Sudbury, in Suffolk, in 1727, where his father was a clothier, and nature the boy's teacher. He passed his mornings in the woods alone; and in solitary rambles sketched old trees, brooks, a shepherd and his flock, cattle, or whatever his fancy seized After painting several landscapes, he arrived it. London and received instructions from Gravelot and Hayman: he lived in Hatton-Garden, married a lady with 2001. a year went to Bath, and painted portraits for five guineas, till the demand for his talent enabled him gradu

on.

He

ally to raise the price to a 100%. settled in Pall-mall in 1774, with fame and fortune.

Gainsborough, while at Bath, was chosen a member of the Royal Academy on its institution, but neglected its meetings. Sir Joshua Reynolds says, "whether he most excelled in portraits, landscapes, or fancy pictures, it is most difficult to determine." His aërial perspective is uncommonly light and beautiful. He derived his grace and elegance from nature, rather than manners; and hence his paintings are inimitably true and bewitching Devoted to his art, he regretted leaving it; just before his death, he said, "he saw his deficiences, and had endeavoured to remedy them in his last works."

No object was too mean for Gainsborough's pencil; his habit of closely observing things in their several particulars, enabled him to perceive their relations to each other, and combine them. By painting at night, he acquired new perceptions: he had eyes and saw, and he secured every advantage he discovered. He etched three plates; one for "Kirby's Perspective;" another an oak tree with gypsies; and the third, a man ploughing on a rising ground, which he spoiled in biting in:" the print is rare.

In portraits he strove for natural character, and when this was attained, seldom proceeded farther. He could have imparted intelligence to the features of the dullest, but he disdained to elevate what nature had forbidden to rise; hence, if he painted a butcher in his Sunday-coat, he made him, as he looked, a respectable yeoman; but his likenesses were chiefly of persons of the first quality, and he maintained their dignity. His portraits are seldom highly finished, and are not sufficiently estimated, for the very reason whereon his reputation for natural scenery is deservedly high. Sir Joshua gave Gainsborough one hundred guineas for a picture of a girl and pigs, though its artist only required sixty.*

Gainsborough had what the world calls eccentricities. They resulted rather from his indulgence in study, than contempt for the usages of society. It was wel for Gainsborough that he could disregard the courtesies of life without disturbance to his happiness, from those with whom manuers are morals.

Pilkington.

A series of "Studies of Figures" from Gainsborough's "Sketch Books," are executed in lithography, in exact imitation of his original drawings by Mr. Richard Lane. Until this publication, these draw ings were unknown. Mr. Lane's work is to Gainsborough, what the prints in Mr. Otley's "Italian School of Design," are to Raphael and Michael Angelo. Each print is so perfect a fac-simile, that it would be mistaken for the original drawing, if we were not told otherwise. This is the way to preserve the reputation of artists. Their sketches are often better than their paintings: the elaboration of a thought tends to evaporate its spirit.

NATURALISTS' CALENDAR. Mean Temperature... 64. 95.

August 3.

CHRONOLOGY.

Michael Adanson, an eminent naturalist of Scottish extraction, born in April, 1727, at Aix, in Provence, died at Paris on the third of August, 1806. Needham, at one of his examinations, presented Adanson, then a child, with a microscope, and the use of the instrument gave the boy a bias to the science which he distinguished as a philosopher. His parents destined him for the church, and obtained a prebend's stall for him, but he abandoned his seat, made a voyage to Senegal in 1757, and published the result of his labours in a natural history of that country. This obtained him the honour of corresponding member in the Academy of Sciences. In 1763, his "Famille des Plantes" appeared; it was followed by a design of an immense general work, which failed from Louis XV., withholding his patronage. He formed the project of a settlement on the African coast for raising colonial produce without negro slavery, which the French East India company refused to encourage: he refused to communicate his plan to the English, who, after they had become martyrs of Senegal, applied for it to Adanson, through lord North. He declined invitations from the courts of Spain and Russia, and managed as well as he could with pensions derived from his office of royal censor, his place in the academy, and other sources inadequate to the expense of forming his im

mense collections. He was reduced to poverty by the revolution. The French invited him to join it as a member; he answered, "he had no shoes." This procured him a small pension, whereon he subsisted till his death

So early as thirteen years of age, Adanson began to write notes on the natural histories of Aristotle and Pliny; but soon quitted books to study nature. He made a collection of thirty-three thousand exist ences, which he arranged in a series of his own. This was the assiduous labour of eight years. Five years spent at Senegal, gave him the opportunity of augmenting bis catalogue. He extended his researches to subjects of commercial utility, explored the most fertile and best situated districts of the country, formed a map of it, followed the course of the Niger, and brought home with him an immense collection of observations, philosophical, political, moral, and economical, with an addition to his catalogue of about thirty thousand hitherto unknown species, which, with his former list, and subsequent additions brought the whole number to more than ninety thousand.

The arrangement of Adanson's "Familles des Plantes," is founded upon the principle, " that if there is in nature a system which we can detect, it can only be founded on the totality of the relations of characters, derived from all the parts and qualities of plants." His labours are too manifold to be specified, but their magnitude may be conceived from his having laid before the academy, in 1773, the plan of his "Universal Natural Encyclopædia,' consisting of one hundred and twenty manuscript volumes, illustrated by seventy-five thousand figures, in folio. In 1776, he published in the " Supplement of the first Encyclopædia," by Diderot and D'Alembert, the articles relative to natural history and the philosophy of the sciences, comprised under the letters A. B. C. In 1779, he journied over the highest mountains in Europe, whence he brought more than twenty thousand specimens of different minerals, and charts of more than twelve hundred leagues o country. He was the possessor of the most copious cabinet in the world.

• General Biography, vol. i. 17.

Adanson's first misfortune from the revolution was the devastation of his experimental garden, in which he had cultivated one hundred and thirty kinds of mulberry to perfection; and thus the abour of the best part of his life was overthrown in an instant. One privation succeeded another, till he was plunged in extreme indigence, and prevented from pursuing his usual studies for want of fire and light. "I have found him in winter (says his biographer) at nine in the evening, with his body bent, his head stooped to the floor, and one foot placed upon another, before the glimmering of a small brand, writing upon this new kind of desk, regardless of the inconvenience of an attitude which would have been a torment to any one not excited by the most inconceivable habit of labour, and inspired with the ecstacy of meditation."

Adanson's miserable condition was somewhat alleviated by the minister Be nezech; but another minister, himself a man of letters, Francois de Neufchateau, restored Adanson to the public notice, and recommended him to his successors. The philosopher, devoted to his studies, and apparently little fitted for society, sought neither patron nor protector; and indeed he seems never to have been raised above that poverty, which was often the lot of genius and learning in the stormy period of the revolution. His obligations to men in power were much less than to a humbler benefactor, whose constant and generous attachment deserves honourable commemoration.

This was

Anne-Margaret-Roux, the wife of Simon Henry, who, in 1783, at the age of twentyeight, became the domestic of Adanson, and from that time to his death, stood in the place to him of relations, friends, and fortune. During the extremity of his distress, when he was in want of every necessary, she waited upon him during the day, and passed the night, without his knowledge, in labours, the wages of which she employed in the purchase of coffee and sugar, without which he could do nothing. At the same time, her husband, in the service of another master in Picardy, sent every week bread, meat, and vegetables, and even his savings in money, to supply the other wants of the philosopher. When Adanson's accumulated infirmities rendered the cares of the wife insufficient, Simon Henry came and assisted her, and no more quitted him.

From the time of his residence at Sene

gal, Adanson was exceedingly sensible of cold and humidity; and from inhabiting a ground floor, without cellars, in one of the lowest streets in Paris, he was continually labouring under rheumatic affections. The attitude in which he read and wrote, which was that of his body bent in an arm-chair, and his legs raised high on each side of the chimney-place, contributed to deposit humours upon his loins, and the articulations of his thighs. When he had again got a little garden, he used to pass whole days before his plants, sitting upon his crossed legs; and he often forgot, in the ardour of study, to go to bed. This mode of life occasioned an osseous disease in the right thigh. In January, 1806, as he was standing by his fire, he perceived his thigh bend, and would have fallen, had he not been supported by his devoted domestic. He was put to bed, the limb was replaced, and he was attended with the utmost assiduity by the faithful pair, who even tore up their own linen for his dressings. Except his surgeon, they were the only human beings he saw during the last six months of his life-a proof how little he had cultivated friendship among his equals. Napoleon informed of his wretched situation, sent him three thousand livres, which his two attendants managed with the greatest fidelity. Whilst confined to his bed, he continued his usual occupation of reading and writing, and was seen every morning with the pen in his hand, writing without spectacles, in very small characters, at arm's length. The powers of his understanding were entire when he expired.*

August 5.

ST. JAMES'S DAY, Old Style.

It is on this day, and not on St. James's day new style, as mistakingly represented in vol. i. col. 878, that oysters come in.

OYSTER DAY.

For the Every-Day Book.
Greengrocers rise at dawn of sun-
August the fifth-come haste away!
To Billingsgate the thousands run,—
'Tis Oyster Day!-'tis Oyster Day!
Now at the corner of the street

With oysters fine the tub is filled;
The cockney stops to have a treat
Prepared by one in opening skilled.
The pepper-box, the cruet,-wait

To give a relish to the taste;
The mouth is watering for the bait
Within the pearly cloisters chased.
Take off the beard-as quick as thought
The pointed knife divides the flesh;-
What plates are laden-loads are bought
And eaten raw, and cold, and fresh!

Some take them with their steak for sauce,
Some stew, and fry, and scollop well;
While, Leperello-like, some toss;

And some in gutting them excel.*

Poor creatures of the ocean's wave!

Born, fed, and fatted for our prey ;E'en boys, your shells when parted, crave, Perspective for the " Grotto day."

With watchful eye in many a band

The urchin wights at eve appear; They raise their "lights" with voice and hand

"A grotto comes but once a year!''

Then, in some rustic gardener's bed

The shells are fixed for borders neat;
Or, crushed within a dustman's shed,
Like deadmen's bones 'neath living feet.
*. *. P.

See the supper scene in "Don Giovanni,"-also the Irishman's joke of eating the oysters and taking his master the shells. Speaking of "Oysters"-the song sung by Grimaldi senior," An oyster crossed in love," has been very popular.

Bray, a privy counsellor to king Henry VI. In the first year of Richard III. Reginald had a general pardon, for having adhered, it is presumed, to Henry VI. He favoured the advancement of the earl of Richmond to the throne as Henry VII., who made him a knight banneret, probably on Bosworth field. At this king's coronation he was created a knight of the bath, and afterwards a knight of the garter.

Sir Reginald Bray was a distinguished statesman and warrior. He served at the battle of Blackheath in 1497, on the Cornish insurrection under lord Audley, part of whose estates he acquired by grant. He was constable of Oakham castle in Rutlandshire, joint chief justice of the forests south of Trent, high steward of the university of Oxford, chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster, and high treasurer. Distinguished by the royal favour, he held the Isle of Wight for his life at an annual rent of three hundred marks, and died possessed of large estates, under a suspicious sovereign who extorted large sums from his subjects when there was very little law to control the royal will. His administration was so just as to procure him the title of "the father of his country." To his skill in architecture we are indebted for the most eminent ecclesiastical ornament of the metropolis-the splendid chapel founded by Henry in his lifetime at Westminster; and he conducted the chapel of St. George, at Windsor palace, to its completion.

NATURALISTS' CALENDAR. Mean Temperature. . . . 63 · 47.

August 6.

TRANSFIGURATION.

For this denomination of the day see vol. i. col. 1071.

It is alleged that this festival was observed at Rome in the fifth century, though not universally solemnized until in 1457 pope Calixtus III. ordained its celebration to commemorate the raising of the siege of Belgrade by Mahomet II.*

NATURALISTS' CALENDAR.

Mean Temperature... 63 37.

• Butler. Brady.