Eighteenth Century Waifs. Ashton John
it is necessary that the principles of the game should be given. It was played by four persons, each having ten cards dealt to them.
The general laws of this game are, 1. It is not permitted to deal the cards otherwise than four by three, the dealer being at liberty to begin with which of those numbers he pleases. 2. If he who plays either
11
Dressing-gown.
12
Entendres.
13
Wonders.
14
These leaden combs were used for darkening the hair.
15
Pulled down 1885.
16
Forsitan et nostros ducat de marmore vultus Nectens aut Paphia myrti aut Parnasside lauri Fronde comas – At ego secura pace quiescam.
17
John Speed, the historian, died 1629, and was buried in the church of St. Giles’, Cripplegate.
18
The few hairs of a lighter colour, are supposed to have been such as had grown on the sides of the cheeks after the corpse had been interred.
19
‘MDCLV. May vi, died my (now) only and eldest son, John Smith (
20
Edward Philips or Phillips, in his life of Milton, attached to ‘Letters of State, written by Mr. John Milton,’ &c., London, 1694, (p. 43), says: ‘He is said to have dyed worth £1,500 in Money (a considerable Estate, all things considered), besides Household Goods; for he sustained such losses as might well have broke any person less frugal and temperate than himself; no less than £2,000 which he had put for Security and Improvement into the Excise Office, but, neglecting to recal it in time, could never after get it out, with all the Power and Interest he had in the Great ones of those Times; besides another great Sum by mismanagement and for want of good advice.’
21
Thomas Newton, Bishop of Bristol, thus writes in his life of Milton, prefixed to his edition of ‘Paradise Lost,’ London, 1749: ‘His body was decently interred near that of his father (who had died very aged about the year 1647) in the chancel of the church of St. Giles, Cripplegate; and all his great and learned friends in London, not without a friendly concourse of the common people, paid their last respects in attending it to the grave. Mr. Fenton, in his short but elegant account of the life of Milton, speaking of our author’s having no monument, says that “he desired a friend to inquire at St. Giles’s Church, where the sexton showed him a small monument, which he said was supposed to be Milton’s; but the inscription had never been legible since he was employed in that office, which he has possessed about forty years. This sure could never have happened in so short a space of time, unless the epitaph had been industriously erased; and that supposition, says Mr. Fenton, carries with it so much inhumanity that I think we ought to believe it was not erected to his memory.” It is evident that it was not erected to his memory, and that the sexton was mistaken. For Mr. Toland, in his account of the life of Milton, says that he was buried in the chancel of St. Giles’s Church, “where the piety of his admirers will shortly erect a monument becoming his worth, and the encouragement of letters in King William’s reign.” This plainly implies that no monument was erected to him at that time, and this was written in 1698, and Mr. Fenton’s account was first published, I think, in 1725; so that not above twenty-seven years intervened from the one account to the other; and consequently the sexton, who it is said was possessed of his office about forty years, must have been mistaken, and the monument must have been designed for some other person, and not for Milton.’
22
Between the creditable trades of pawnbroker and dram-seller there is a strict alliance. As Hogarth observes, the money lent by Mr. Gripe is immediately conveyed to the shop of Mr. Killman, who, in return for the produce of rags, distributes poison under the specious name of cordials. See Hogarth’s celebrated print called Gin Lane.
23
Probably in the month of September, as the entry of his baptism in the registry of the chapelry of Middlesmoor, in Netherdale, says ‘Eugenius Aram, son of Peter Aram, baptized the 2nd of October.’
24
Though no warrants were issued against them, Aram was arrested for debt, in order to keep him; yet he immediately discharged this debt – not only so, he paid off a mortgage on his property at Bondgate. Suspicious facts, considering he was, notably, a poor man.