To divers temporal lords a yearly pension To that intent, that they with all their heart In right and wrong shall plainly take my part. Now, have I told you, sir, in my best ways, How that I have exercised my office. Scrybe. Father Abbot, this council bids me ask, How have you used your Abbey? Abbott. Touching my office I say to you plainly, My monks and I we live right easily: There are no monks from Carrick to Carrail That better fares, and drinks more wholesome ale; My Prior is a man of great devotion, As ony wench within the town of Ayr. Now judge me if my office be well guided. Third, as to the oppressiveness of some clerical customs. Correctioun. Johne, have ye any more debates Second, as to the morals of the Against the lords of Spiritual States? Clergy. Of their office to any king make count? But of my office you would have the 'feill, (sense) I let you know that I have used it well: And also, my lord, I give with good intention Johne. Now, sir, I dare not speak one word: Correctioun. Flyt (scold) on thy fill till I desire thee; So that thou show us but the verity. Johne. First, to complain on the Vicar. Temporalitie. Are all thy tales true, that thou tellest? Like Panter with his sons. 2 And Beaton with his daughters. True, sir, Pauper. For by the Holy Trinity The same was practised on me: One for my father; for my wife another; mother. Spiritualitie. False carle, to speak to me, stand'st not in awe? Pauper. The Fiend receive them that first devised that law! Within an hour after my dad was dead, The Vicar had my cow hard by the head. When I am Pope that law I shall put down; It is a sore law for the poor common. Spiritualitie. We will want nothing that we have in use, Kirtle nor cow, teind lamb, teind grice, nor goose. Do the old times live again,' my reader, in these verses? Does that old Scotland which our historians have yet to describe to us-that old Catholic Scotland, I mean, of which the Beatons, uncle and nephew, were the lords and the exemplars, become any more vivid from these brief touches of Lyndsay? Do you see and feel how thoroughly depraved the moral condition of the Church must have been: how 'rotten ripe for reformation ?' And do you see, too, that Lyndsay, next to Knox, must have forwarded the mighty change which so soon followed ? Anyhow, we shall be agreed that Scott has marked Lyndsay's place and power as a poet with much exactness in his well-known lines in Marmion': In the glances of his eye, have occurred more than 1 once to the reader how Lyndsay Prudent people, I pray you all 6 But the pastime' of free speech like Lyndsay's-for his it was— however disguised, was not then allowed by either Church or State. His words are not sly allusions, nor parodies; they are charges definite and direct, which amount to actual accusation. Mr. Burton finds the explanation in the fact, that Lyndsay was but repeating what the authorities of the realm asserted, and the Church itself mournfully confessed. Anything might be said to this purport if he who said it were so skilful as to avoid points of heresy,' &c. I wish I could believe it; and that history did not prove that where the Church could show her hand and crush the free-spoken man, she did not usually do so; and that in Scotland, in that very age, she did not burn friar Kyller, and tried to do her very worst to George Buchanan, for their satires. Moreover, what was confessed by the Church was confessed in the conclave it was not openly mourned over before the laity. What mattered that confession when public opinion attacked and ridiculed those same things? Was it likely that men, so proud of the privileges of their order, would humbly cry Peccavimus! There is nothing we all bridle up at quicker, and forgive slower, than an exposure of our known vices and faults: we cannot deny them, and instinctively strike at the exposer; and we may be quite sure, therefore, that the Lati History of Scotland, iv. 53. mers and the Lyndsays of those days, unless under royal protection or in high position, and whether there was definable heresy in the satire or not, were certainly silenced. Has not our very pleasant censor, Mr. Punch, had experiences, especially across the Channel, which show how far this is true, even in our own day? Some other reason, therefore, than Mr. Burton's must be found for Lyndsay's immunity from everyone of the forms of persecution. Mr. Laing does not hazard one. One thing is clear, that Lyndsay was no trimmer. He openly acknowledged himself as the author of his Satires; and if anecdote is to be trusted, he was as sharp at times with his tongue as with his pen. He was not a religious reformer, however; although, as Mr. Laing remarks, had he survived for a few years longer, we need scarcely doubt he would have joined himself to the Lords of the Congregation. As to that, we may but guess: as he was, we cannot but admire his boldness, and count him the bravest, clearest-seeing man of his time. Of his general literary character, it is not proposed to say anything. That, no doubt, has been pretty well gauged from the previous pages. We cannot claim for him the name of a great poet; as a satirist, he far surpasses any one of the early Scots poets. Enough if my readers have a clearer conception of the scenes and circumstances amidst which John Knox grew to manhood, and which immediately preceded his dauntlessly patriotic career; and if they are thus better able to judge of the men, whoever they were, who brought about and wrought out the Reformation in Scotland. L THE EARLY LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS.1 ONDON fifty years ago was in many respects a very different city from the London of to-day. To name only one point, there were no railways; those huge roofs that span the long platforms and iron webs of Euston, Paddington, St. Pancras, London Bridge, Victoria, Charing Cross, were not yet shadowed forth in the wildest dreams of architect or engineer. The word terminus' (which has risen, culminated, and is now going outsince we are not willing to accept any finality in physical progress) was then unknown to fame; nay, 'omnibus,' which preceded it, was as yet in the womb of time. Where the huge station and hotel now dominate Charing Cross, used to be Hungerford Market, with old lanes around it leading to the river; and in one of these lanes, rather less than half a century ago, was a blackingwarehouse-a young and envious rival of the celebrated Warren's, of 30 Strand. It was 'the last house on the left-hand side of the way at old Hungerford-stairs. It was a crazy, tumbledown old house, abutting of course on the river, and literally overrun with rats.' A little boy, about ten or eleven years old, who was at this time employed in the blacking-warehouse in a very humble capacity, afterwards, when he was grown up, wrote an account of the place and his own experience there: Its wainscoted rooms, and its rotten floors and staircase, and the old grey rats swarming down in the cellars, and the sound of their squeaking and scuffling coming up the stairs at all times, and the dirt and decay of the place, rise up visibly before me, as if I were there again. The counting-house was on the first floor, looking over the coal-barges and the river. There was a recess in it, in which I was to sit and work. My work was to cover the pots of paste-blacking; first with a piece of oil-paper, and then with a piece of blue paper; to tie them round with a string; and then to clip the paper close and neat, all round, until it looked as smart as a pot of ointment from an apothecary's shop. When a certain number of grosses of pots had attained this pitch of perfection, I was to paste on each a printed label; and then go on again with more pots. Two or three other boys were kept at similar duty down stairs on similar wages. One of them came up, in a ragged apron and a paper cap, on the first Monday morning, to show me the trick of using the string and tying the knot.' The chief manager of the blacking warehouse was a relative or connection of the little boy who was thus employed at the wages of six or seven shillings a week. He was a sort of cousin, and, though much older, had been friends with little Charley from the latter's cradle. Charley was born at Portsmouth, on the 7th of February, 1812, where his father, Mr. John Dickens, was then employed as a clerk in the Navy-pay Office. A sister of Mrs. John Dickens had married a Mr. Lamert, a widower with two sons. Mr. Lamert died. His widow, and the younger of her two stepsons, James Lamert, took up their abode with Mr. and Mrs. John Dickens, and formed part of their family circle. From Portsmouth they all moved together (one infers) to London in 1814, and thence to Chatham in 1816. They were certainly all living together at Chatham. Here Mrs. Lamert married a second time, 1 The Life of Charles Dickens. By John Forster. Vol. I. and her stepson James, a youth of some ability,' was sent to Sandhurst for his education, continuing to visit Chatham from time to time. At Chatham little Charley Dickens stayed till he was nine years old. He was a very little and a very sickly boy. He was subject to attacks of violent spasm which disabled him for any active exertion. He was never a good little cricket-player. He was never a first-rate hand at marbles, or peg-top, or prisoner's base. But he had great pleasure in watching the other boys, officers' sons for the most part, at these games, reading while they played; and he had always the belief that this early sickness had brought to himself one inestimable advantage, in the circumstance of his weak health having strongly inclined him to reading. He has frequently been heard to say that his first desire for knowledge, and his earliest passion for reading, were awakened by his mother, who taught him the first rudiments not only of English, but also, a little later, of Latin. She taught him regularly every day for a long time, and taught him, he was convinced, thoroughly well. . . . Then followed the preparatory day school, a school for girls and boys to which he went with his sister Fanny.' There was a small collection of books in a little room upstairs,' and from these the sickly boy rummaged out and read eagerly everything in the shape of a story-Roderick Random, Vicar of Wakefield, Don Quixote, Gil Blas, Robinson Crusoe, the Arabian Nights, and other famous works of fiction, and with these the Spectator, Idler, Citizen of the World, Mrs. Inchbald's Collection of Farees, and some volumes of Voyages and travels. became famous in his childish circle for having written a tragedy called Misnar, the Sultan of India, founded (and very literally founded, no doubt) on one of the Tales of the Genii. Nor was this his only distinction. He told a story offhand so well, and sang small comic songs so especially well, that he used to be elevated on chairs and tables, both at home and abroad, for more effective display of these talents.' James Lamert took the child for his first visit to the theatre, at a very tender age, but he was old enough to recollect how his young heart leapt with terror as the wicked king Richard, struggling for life against the virtuous Richmond, backed up and bumped against the box in which he was.' During the last two years of Charles's residence at Chatham, he was sent to a school kept in Clover-lane, by a young Baptist minister, Mr. William Giles. 'He was not much over nine years old when his father was recalled from Chatham to Somerset House, and he had to leave this good master, and the old place endeared to him by recollections that clung to him afterwards all his life long.' as Mr. John Dickens, as his son wrote afterwards, was as 'kindhearted and generous a man ever lived in the world. Everything that I can remember of his conduct to his wife, or children, or friends, in sickness or affliction, is beyond all praise. By me, as a sick child, he has watched night and day, unweariedly and patiently, many nights and days. He never undertook any business, charge, or trust that he did not zealously, conscientiously, punctually, honourably discharge. His industry has always been untiring. He was proud of me, in his way, and had a great admiration of the comic singing.' But he was easy-going, unapt for making way in the world; and having an increasing family, and at best but a very small income |