182

Sam Johnson's "Julian the Apostate."

sovereign of opposite faith was in power. In Julian the Apostate there was also a lurking suggestion that it was expedient to rebel, and even to assassinate; giving the example of the emperor being slain by one of his own soldiers who is a Christian-of Johnson's sort. The chaplain has been described by Dryden himself, in Nahum Tate's second part of Absalom and Achitophel, 1682, under the name of Ben Jochanan, and the portrait seems faithful, without flattery. We give it on our next page. This same Samuel Johnson is mentioned in the seventeenth verse of a grim satire called The Assembly of the Moderate Divines, which begins, "Pray, pardon, John Bayes [i.e. Dryden], for I beg your excuse:

There's Johnson the Apostate, who deserves to be hemp'd,
For he alone (were all others exempt)

Were occasion enough for the Clergy's Contempt.
There's Colchester Hickeringill, the Fanaticks' delight,
Who "Gregory Gray-Beard" and "Meroz" did write:
You may see who are Saints in a Pharisee's sight.
There's Titus the Witness, the Nation's trite Theme,
Who for Satan and Hell hath so great an esteem
That uogeuwe would be a Preferment for him.

[See Vol. IV.

[T. Oates.

We quoted as a motto on p. 171 a few lines from Woolnoth's pasquinade, The Coffee Scuffle, occasioned by a Contest between a Learned Knight and a Pitiful Pedagogue: with the Character of a Coffee-House. London, printed and are to be sold at the Latine Coffee House near the Stocks, 1662. It is in 4to. and begins, "Of Gyants and Knights, and their terrible fights." Sir A. Langham and one Evans a schoolmaster are understood to have been the persons lampooned. Another pamphlet to be noticed is Coffee-Houses Vindicated. In answer to the late published Character of a CoffeeHouse. Asserting from Reason, Experience, and Good Authors, the excellent Use and physical virtues of that Liquor; with the grand conveniency of such civil places of Resort and ingenious Conversation. London: Printed by J. Lock, for J. Clarke, 1675.

In short, libels were innumerable. Langley Curtis, convicted of printing and publishing a scandalous pamphlet called The Nightwalkers of Bloomsbury, was sentenced along with Lawrence Braddon (who had tried to represent on inconclusive evidence of children that the Earl of Essex was murdered in the Tower), and with Hugh Speke again on 21st April, 1684. Curtis was fined heavily, and condemned to the pillory, which he well deserved, as did most of the pamphleteers on his side of the controversy.

In the Stationers' Company's Registers (G. fol. 80 verso) we read, under date of 8th or 9th September (blotted), 1683, to Mr. John Grantham, is "Entered then for his Booke or Coppy entitled The Night-walker of Blumsbury, being the Result of severall late consultations between a Vintner, Judge, Tallow-chandler, and a brace of Fishmongers and a Printer: In a Dialogue between Ralph and Will." The mark of Mary Davis is added. Witness, Martin Newton, vjd.

Dryden's portrait of" Ben Jochanan " Johnson. 183

We need not pursue the story. These cases will show the nature and frequency of the libels and seditious gossip that circulated in the Whig Coffee-houses during the reign of Charles the Second.

It may be interesting to notice, in the twenty-fourth line of the following Satyr against Coffee, that the publicans had two centuries ago anticipated the modern Coffee Tavern, by adding this beverage to their other attractions, to earn a crust. Most people drink too much, even of non-intoxicants. The truly temperate man knows when to stop and does it, without processional rant or cant, wearing of blue-ribbons, beating of drums, or blowing his own noisy trumpet.

It would be culpable to omit this representative portrait of Samuel Johnson by Dryden. It follows after one describing Phaleg (i.e. James Forbes, another Scotchman), who is mentioned separately on our later p. 217, with extract from the same poem, Second Part of Absalom and Achitophel :

[Roxburghe Collection, III. 831.]

A Satyr against Coffee.

A Void, Satanick Tipple behin

Thou Murtherer of Farthings, and of Pence;

And Midwife to all False Intelligence.

3

Avoid, I say, of Hell thou art;

For God no liquor doth to man impart

But that which quenches Thirst, or chears the Heart.

6

By which the Devil's Children (Lies) are nurst.

12

That robs the Vintner, and undoes the Brewer.

18

For by this poor Arabian Berry

Comes the neglect of Malago and Sherry,

And sooty Surges rise to Charon's Ferry.

The Sweat of Negroes, Blood of Moores,

The Blot of Sign-post, and the Stain of doors,
And the last shift of Publicans and soч.
Give o're, you Whifflers, then, enough!
Convert your Powder into Irish Snuff,
And lay your Lace upon some other Stuff.

[FINIS.]

[In White-letter. No printer's name, woodcut, or date, but it possibly belongs to 1675-76; when Charles II. sent out a proclamation against CoffeeHouses, as nests of "False-Intelligencers," and the circulation of seditious pamphlets. Compare our introduction to "Mug-House Loyalty," pp. 171, 172.]

1 An allusion tolerably well understood, and to a transaction that may have afforded a precedent to a modern Chancellor of the Exchequer, who went so low as to level a tax against his own Lucifer's matches. The Text reads "impos'd Excise on [th]is." With King Lear (iv. 6) the Satyrist should ask, “Give me an ounce of civet, good apothecary! to sweeten my imagination:" but he needed a cwt.

AMONG

The Norwich Loyal Litany.

"There's not a soberer dog, I know, in Norwich.
What, wou'd ye have him drunk with porridge?
This I confess, he goes a round, a round,

A hundred times, and never touches ground."

-Matt. Stevenson's Norfolk Drollery. 1673.

MONG the numerous Loyal Addresses, either expressing thanks for the King's Declaration, or "abhorrence" of Shaftesbury's proposed Association, there was one sent to King Charles II. "from the single men and apprentices of the city and county of Norwich." This was early in October, 1681, soon after which date and occasion we attribute the following Litany. By internal evidence, we believe it to have been issued before the death of Shaftesbury (January, 1683); even before the return of Monmouth from Gloucestershire in the previous December; we suppose it to belong to the time when Shaftesbury was newly out of the Tower. In August or September, 1681, some conventicles had been suppressed at Norwich, and proceedings commenced against the preachers. Capital had been sought to be made out of these cases, which provoked a loyal reaction. "This town I find divided into two factions, Whigs and Torys; the former are the more numerous, but the latter carry all before them, as consisteing of ye Governing part of the town, and both contend for their way with the utmost violence." Thus wrote Dr. Humphrey Prideaux, on August 17th, 1681, from Norwich, where he had accepted a prebendal stall, worth from a hundred to two hundred a year. He found that the place swarms with alehouses, every other house is almost one, and every one of them [query, the houses, or only the alehouses?] is alsoe a bawdy house. The brewers of late [mostly Whigs] haveing several of them succeeded in the Mayor's office, have increased the number of those houses for their own advantage; which, proving of very mischievous consequence to the place, this Mayor [Hugh Bokenham, a gentleman of good family in Suffolk, his estate reputed worth 15,000l. who became in 1689-94 the M.P. for Norwich,] hath set himselfe to redresse it . . . and hath reduced them to a more tolerable number." The Brewers made an outcry and complained to the Commissioners of Excise and to the King in Council. So hard is it to set crooked things straight.

66

The "Loyal Addresses" came in, with enthusiastic persistence, and were received by the King with his usual pleasant courtesy. It was a very different piece of work to come before him, glowing with affectionate reverence and being knighted or otherwise rewarded for one's pains, instead of meeting a distasteful frown for an impertinent, ill-worded and worse delivered "Petition "-a scarcely disguised Demand, for the immediate issue of writs to call a new

186

The Loyalty of Norwich.

Parliament, or a Remonstrance and Resolution against it being moved from disaffected London to loyal Oxford. The seditious language had become so threatening, and the mastery over the Crown so vehemently attempted by "the Country party," that few could have expected the King's firm resistance to its demands would have passed successfully without a Civil War. But the Whigs had shown their hand too plainly. From nearly every shire were forwarded assurances of loyal support to his Majesty, and thus strengthened at heart, with sufficient temperance to enable him to avoid any palpable breach of Constitutional Law, such as had made his father imperil the allegiance of many who would otherwise have shielded him from the rebellious Commons, Charles the Second became master of the situation. He not only won the victory, by skill and courage, at Oxford, but he continued to advance in popular affection, beside regaining the power which had seemed about to be wrested from him. One Loyal Poem is The Case is Altered now; or, The Conversion of Anthony, King of Poland [Shaftesbury], published for satisfaction of the Sanctified Brethren, beginning "Ev'n as a Lyon, with his paws uprear'd." It tells that, Thus for a while I danc'd to my own Pipe, Till I was grown Association ripe. But then Addresses from each County came, And Loyalty did soon put out the flame.

[Stephen College.

Then was the time that Tyburn claim'd its due;
But had it not, for want of such as You:
Yet it had some small satisfaction giv'n,
By the deserved Death of Traitor Stephen.
Cabals and factious Clubs so rife were grown,
And old Rebellious Seed so thick were sown,
I hop'd ere this the day would be my own.

November, 1682.-"The Mayor and several of the citizens of Norwich have waited on his Majestie, and surrendred up their Charter to him, and presented him also with a Petition, wherein is this remarkable: that whenever his majestie shall please to grant them a new one, they humbly pray him to reserve to himself the approbation of the Mayor, Sheriffs, aldermen and common-councill, and that none shall be sworn into those places without the said approbation."-Luttrell's Brief Relation, i. 236. The loyalty of Norwich was rewarded, King Charles granting a new Charter in April, 1683. In 1671 the King and his Court had been sumptuously entertained there.

Although the Virtues habitually dwell with the Bishop of Norwich, Fuller in his Worthies mentions certain litigious propensities of Norfolk, which contributed many pilgrim step-fathers to America: "Whereas pedibus ambulando is accounted but a vexatious suit in other Counties, here (where men are said to study law as following the plough-tail,) some would persuade us that they will enter an action for their neighbour's horse but looking over their hedge." This is the spirit of factious Whigs denounced by Dean Prideaux.