stylish merchant became bankrupt, and never went through the tiresome formality of paying a dividend. On returning one day from a provincial tour, Mr. Grimaldi found his house in the possession of strange people. "What's this?" "Only an execution for rent," said the head man; then to his clerk, who was writing an inventory, “Mirror, in gilt frame, Villiam." It transpired that the actor's landlord was merely a lessee, and Joseph had the privilege of paying £84 and costs. On another occasion he found a dear friend waiting to see him. That gentleman borrowed £150, and, in the warmth of his friendship, treated the same as a gift. Then Grimaldi, although prosperous, allowed himself to be persuaded into becoming part proprietor of Sadler's Wells Theatre. The house was soon carried on at a loss. But Joseph's crowning misfortune was the extravagance of his wife, who was inordinately fond of new dresses. We can hardly give credence to such a statement; but it seems clear that he was in difficulties, and consulted a solicitor. For the first, and almost the only, time in his life, Grimaldi met with an honest man, and if we knew the gentleman's name we would immortalise him. The upright lawyer saw Joe's difficulty, and pointed the way out. First, he advised his client to give up his country house, horse and gig, groom, and hangers-on; then he called the creditors together and asked for time, which was granted. Grimaldi had the good sense to do as he was told, with the result that in eight months he had paid everybody in full, and was free to face the world again. Theatrical performers are, perhaps, just a little prone to what Shakespeare calls the "pleasant vices." Early in the present century they had a bad reputation, and a prosecuting counsel said. of Grimaldi, who appeared as a witness:-"He is a common player; a mountebank stroller; a man who is necessarily a systematic liar; one upon whose oath or word no thinking person could place any reliance." Barristers have greatly improved, for such statements would now be considered too harsh to apply to a company promoter or fashionable physician. The learned judge gave no heed to such prejudiced rubbish, but accepted Mr. Grimaldi's evidence, and complimented him on his conduct. Dutton Cook says Joseph had "a reputation for private worth and propriety," and another account, while admitting imprudence in finance, declares that "he was a sober man, of good estimation, and all that is known of him is to his credit." Eminent performers are ever subjected to the patronage of the wealthy, and Joseph Grimaldi did not escape the infliction. His Birmingham friends gave him a snuff-box, adorned with his portrait by S. Raven. Lord Byron also presented him with a box, on which was engraved, "The gift of Lord Byron to Joseph Grimaldi.” Royalty, as represented by the Duke of York, also noticed him. It was at Covent Garden, and His Royal Highness was accompanied by Sir Godfrey Webster. On his coming off the stage, Sir Godfrey asked, “Hard work, Grimaldi ?" "Hard and hot, Sir Godfrey "Have a pinch of snuff, Grimaldi, it will refresh you," said the Baronet, handing a very large snuff box. Then, pointing to Pantaloon, "Take it to that gentleman, and see if he would like a pinch." Joe scented new "business." Having to appear in a foppish scene, he took the box and offered it to Pantaloon, with great affectation of politeness. The audience laughed at the gigantic size of the box. "Where did you get this snuff-box?" asked Pantaloon. Affecting modest diffidence, the clown turned his head. "You have stolen it!" He protested it was a gift. "Pray, who gave it you?" Joe pointed to the royal box, whither Sir Godfrey Webster had retired. "Where are you going to take it?" Joe backed towards the wings and said, “To my uncle's, where it has often been before" Sir Godfrey ran round for his snuff-box, and presented Grimaldi with five guineas, as his share of a wager. The Royal Duke observed, "Although Mr. Grimaldi is not a porter, Sir Godfrey, I have no doubt he would carry your box every night on the same terms." In the last sad scene of all, poor Joe appears in piteous plight. For ten years had he struggled against diminishing strength, occasioned by early forcing, exposure, overstrain, accident, and nervous exhaustion. On January 27th, 1828, he was awarded a benefit by some kind friends—(with all their faults, players have a fine reputation for standing by a brother in distress)—and on that occasion Grimaldi spoke a few words from a chair on the stage. "If I have_now any aptitude for tumbling, it is through bodily infirmity. Four years since, I jumped my last jump, filched my last oyster, boiled my last sausage, and set in for retirement-not so well provided for as in the days of my clownship, for then, you remember, I used to have a fowl in one pocket and sauce in the other." It is pleasing to learn that Grimaldi never knew the poverty "that numbs the soul with icy hand," he having been provided with a pension of £100 a year from the "Drury Lane Benevolent Fund;" neither did he suffer from intellectual decay; but, from the quiet of domestic life, which he loved so well, this good and simple-hearted man passed peacefully into his rest at the age of fifty-eight. A. L. The place of the Bible in Literature. THE Bible, says Edmund Burke, is "a most venerable, but economy; a collection of an infinite variety of cosmogony, theology, history, prophecy, psalmody, morality, apologue, allegory, legislation, ethics, carried through different books, by different authors, at different ages, for different ends and purposes." most multifarious, collection of the records of the Divine It is, in fact, a miscellany made up of historical narratives, biographies, anecdotes, legislative codes, manuals of ritual, Doomsday Books, ordnance survey reports, pedigrees, love lyrics, dramatic poems, hymns, prophecies, philosophical speculations, proverbs and maxims, theological treatises (polemical, hortatory, and devotional), and a few private letters. Although this remarkable volume is written in languages which have not for many centuries been familiar to any but scholars, it has enjoyed, through the medium of numerous versions, a circulation almost incredible in its extent. It has been translated, wholly or in part, into at least three hundred languages or dialects. More than six million copies are issued every year from the Bible publishing firms and societies in Great Britain alone; its readers are not limited to the members of any particular nation or race, and are to be found in every part of the globe. St. John's narrative of the Crucifixion has brought tears to the eyes of the grimy fur-clad Greenlander; it has also aroused the indignant wrath of the cannibal chief in the South Seas. The North American Indian has travelled hundreds of miles to listen to the story of the Gospel; and the keen-witted, semi-civilised Chinese scholar has even laid aside his hatred of the "Foreign Devil," rather than miss the opportunity of learning about this Bible, with its strange, yet curiously hope-inspiring, teachings as to God, humanity, and salvation from sin, ་་ A complete History of the Bible and its Adventures' would be a narrative beside which the most sensational romance ever penned would be dull indeed. Emperors (heathen and so-called Christian), kings, popes, ecclesiastical councils, statesmen and soldiers have sought its destruction with a burning zeal— devouring in its intensity-yet ever mysteriously baffled by the calm courage of devoted men and women. The arena, the rack, the auto-da-fé the dungeon, the scaffold, the thumb-screw-indeed all the tortures for mind and body which Devil-inspired ingenuity, masking under the style of zeal for God, could invent have been employed to destroy the Book; but in vain, for, from amid the flames, the voice of the martyred Huss is heard foretelling its ultimate triumph; the ashes of Wycliffe, scattered on the surface of the Ouse, are but symbolic of the seed cast upon the waters, to be found after many days bearing fruit in every part of the globe ; the reeking dungeon of Vilvoorde is to William Tyndale but the ante-chamber to the Temple of Immortality; the Wartburg affords to Luther the leisure and seclusion essential for the completion of his great German translation of the Scriptures; and exile from England did but enable many a reformer to carry on in Switzerland the work of translation, with greater facilities than were available at home. We have not far to seek for the reason of the hostility to which we have alluded. The Bible has ever been the great cloud dispeller, scattering the mists of prejudice and ignorance Political and intellectual tyranny have invariably been overcome by it, and the true progress of a nation may be fairly gauged by ascertaining the degree of appreciation with which such nation receives the Bible. The Book has been, and is, the most treasured companion of millions of men and women of every rank and position; and there is no condition of life, however strange; no vicissitude of fortune, however startling; no time of distress, danger, or perplexity, however bewildering; in which men and women have not found in its pages just the needed words of comfort, sympathy, guidance, and encouragement. The influence of the Authorised Version of 1611 on English literature can hardly be over-estimated. To the Bible we Owe "Paradise Lost,' "Paradise Regained," "Samson Agonistes," "Pilgrim's Progress," George Herbert's "The Temple," Jeremy Taylor's "Holy Living" and "Holy Dying," Sir Thomas Browne's "Religio Medici," numerous papers in "The Spectator," Burns's "Cotter's Saturday Night," Cowper's "Task" and "Hymns," many of Browning's finest poems, e.g., "Saul," "An Epistle," "The Death in the Desert," much of "In Memoriam," and many of the noblest passages in the prose writings of John Ruskin. Nor has this influence been less marked over English oratory. In the pages of the Bible our most eloquent speakers have found the inspiration for their noblest utterances; and in their most thrilling periods we frequently catch the echo of the magnificent outbursts of the Hebrew prophets and poets. "He stood between the living and the dead, and the plague was stayed" (Numbers xvi.), said Wilberforce, describing Pitt's unwavering opposition to the revolutionary outbursts of a century ago. The speeches of Burke abound in Scriptural allusions and phrases. "The Angel of Death (Exodus xii.) has been abroad throughout the land; you may almost hear the beating of his wings. There is no one, as when the first-born were slain of old, to sprinkle with blood the lintel and the two sideposts of our doors, that he may spare and pass on; he takes his victims from the castle of the noble, the mansion of the wealthy, and the cottage of the poor and lowly, and it is on behalf of all these classes that I make this solemn appeal," said Bright in 1855, alluding, in one of his speeches on the Crimean War, to the numerous signs of mourning visible around him in the House of Commons. : Abraham Lincoln's second inaugural address-perhaps the most truly prophetic utterance made by any public man in the last half-century-mainly owes its force to its Scriptural allusions. Biblical phrases have often been caught up as party rallyingcries as, eg., Lincoln's "divided house" speech in 1858, when, alluding to the threatened secession, he said: "A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this Government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved; I do not expect the house to fall; but I do expect that it will cease to be divided." A few years later, the South, in its turn, caught up the Biblical allusion made by the pro-slavery orator, A. H. Stephen, in the words "The foundations of our new Government are laid; its corner-stone rests upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery--subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition;" and the oration is known in history as "The corner-stone speech." Some of the happiest hits in political oratory have been made by apt allusions to Biblical incidents; Bright's reference to "The cave of Adullam" instantly passed into the political phrase-book; and the jest current in the political world, on the occasion of Disraeli's appointment as Chancellor of the Exchequer, that Benjamin's mess will be five times as great as the others, Owes its pungency to the Biblical allusion. The The extent to which the language of the Bible has influenced colloquial English is probably very little realised by us. It may easily be tested by an examination of our daily papers. Westminster Gazette of November 9th-chosen quite at randomcontained at least thirty-five phrases or words distinctly Biblical in their origin, in addition to many Biblical names. The following words and phrases are obvious examples :-"Deluge," "calling and election,' dispensation, days of grace,' ""forbidden fruit,' "revival," "hireling," "simony, good Samaritan," "talents," "prodigal," "field" (of labour), "mite," ""Pharisee," " "Philistine," "flesh-pots," "olive-branches," "exodus," "first-fruits," "loaves 99 66 99 66 |