Read Ebook: The Every-day Book and Table Book. v. 3 (of 3) Everlasting Calerdar of Popular Amusements Sports Pastimes Ceremonies Manners Customs and Events Incident to Each of the Three Hundred and Sixty-five Days in past and Present Times; Forming a Complete History by Hone William

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Transcriber's Notes

More transcriber's notes may be found at the end of this text.

THE EVERY-DAY BOOK AND TABLE BOOK;

OR,

EVERLASTING CALENDAR OF POPULAR AMUSEMENTS, SPORTS, PASTIMES, CEREMONIES, MANNERS, CUSTOMS, AND EVENTS,

INCIDENT TO ~Each of the Three Hundred and Sixty-five Days,~ IN PAST AND PRESENT TIMES;

FORMING A COMPLETE HISTORY OF THE YEAR, MONTHS, AND SEASONS,

AND A

PERPETUAL KEY TO THE ALMANAC;

INCLUDING

ACCOUNTS OF THE WEATHER, RULES FOR HEALTH AND CONDUCT, REMARKABLE AND IMPORTANT ANECDOTES, FACTS, AND NOTICES, IN CHRONOLOGY, ANTIQUITIES, TOPOGRAPHY, BIOGRAPHY, NATURAL HISTORY, ART, SCIENCE, AND GENERAL LITERATURE; DERIVED FROM THE MOST AUTHENTIC SOURCES, AND VALUABLE ORIGINAL COMMUNICATIONS, WITH POETICAL ELUCIDATIONS, FOR DAILY USE AND DIVERSION.

BY WILLIAM HONE.

I tell of festivals, and fairs, and plays, Of merriment, and mirth, and bonfire blaze; I tell of Christmas-mummings, new year's day, Of twelfth-night king and queen, and children's play; I tell of valentines, and true-love's-knots, Of omens, cunning men, and drawing lots:

I tell of brooks, of blossoms, birds and bowers, Of April, May, of June, and July-flowers; I tell of May-poles, hock-carts, wassails, wakes, Of bridegrooms, brides, and of their bridal cakes; I tell of groves, of twilights, and I sing The court of Mab, and of the fairy king.

HERRICK.

IN THREE VOLUMES.

LONDON: PRINTED FOR THOMAS TEGG, 73, CHEAPSIDE.

J. Haddon, Printer, Castle Street, Finsbury.

PREFACE

On the close of the EVERY-DAY BOOK, which commenced on New Year's Day, 1825, and ended in the last week of 1826, I began this work.

The only prospectus of the TABLE BOOK was the eight versified lines on the title-page. They appeared on New Year's Day, prefixed to the first number; which, with the successive sheets, to the present date, constitute the volume now in the reader's hands, and the entire of my endeavours during the half year.

So long as I am enabled, and the public continue to be pleased, the TABLE BOOK will be continued. The kind reception of the weekly numbers, and the monthly parts, encourages me to hope that like favour will be extended to the half-yearly volume. Its multifarious contents and the illustrative engravings, with the help of the copious index, realize my wish, "to please the young, and help divert the wise." Perhaps, if the good old window-seats had not gone out of fashion, it might be called a parlour-window book--a good name for a volume of agreeable reading selected from the book-case, and left lying about, for the constant recreation of the family, and the casual amusement of visitors.

W. HONE.

THE FRONTISPIECE.

PETRARCH'S INKSTAND.

"I delight," says Petrarch, "in my pictures. I take great pleasure also in images; they come in show more near unto nature than pictures, for they do but appear; but these are felt to be substantial, and their bodies are more durable. Amongst the Grecians the art of painting was esteemed above all handycrafts, and the chief of all the liberal arts. How great the dignity hath been of statues; and how fervently the study and desire of men have reposed in such pleasures, emperors and kings, and other noble personages, nay, even persons of inferior degree, have shown, in their industrious keeping of them when obtained." Insisting on the golden mean, as a rule of happiness, he says, "I possess an amazing collection of books, for attaining this, and every virtue: great is my delight in beholding such a treasure." He slights persons who collect books "for the pleasure of boasting they have them; who furnish their chambers with what was invented to furnish their minds; and use them no otherwise than they do their Corinthian tables, or their painted tables and images, to look at." He contemns others who esteem not the true value of books, but the price at which they may sell them--"a new practice" "crept in among the rich, whereby they may attain one art more of unruly desire." He repeats, with rivetting force, "I have great plenty of books: where such scarcity has been lamented, this is no small possession: I have an inestimable many of books!" He was a diligent collector, and a liberal imparter of these treasures. He corresponded with Richard de Bury, an illustrious prelate of our own country, eminent for his love of learning and learned men, and sent many precious volumes to England to enrich the bishop's magnificent library. He vividly remarks, "I delight passionately in my books;" and yet he who had accumulated them largely, estimated them rightly: he has a saying of books worthy of himself--"a wise man seeketh not quantity but sufficiency."

Petrarch loved the quiet scenes of nature, and these can scarcely be observed from a carriage or while riding, and are never enjoyed but on foot; and to me--on whom that discovery was imposed, and who am sometimes restrained from country walks, by necessity--it was no small pleasure, when I read a passage in his "View of Human Nature," which persuaded me of his fondness for the exercise: "A journey on foot hath most pleasant commodities; a man may go at his pleasure; none shall stay him, none shall carry him beyond his wish; none shall trouble him; he hath but one labour, the labour of nature--to go."

In "The Indicator" there is a paper of peculiar beauty, by Mr. Leigh Hunt, "on receiving a sprig of myrtle from Vaucluse," with a paragraph suitable to this occasion: "We are supposing that all our readers are acquainted with Petrarch. Many of them doubtless know him intimately. Should any of them want an introduction to him, how should we speak of him in the gross? We should say, that he was one of the finest gentlemen and greatest scholars that ever lived; that he was a writer who flourished in Italy in the fourteenth century, at the time when Chaucer was young, during the reigns of our Edwards; that he was the greatest light of his age; that although so fine a writer himself, and the author of a multitude of works, or rather because he was both, he took the greatest pains to revive the knowledge of the ancient learning, recommending it every where, and copying out large manuscripts with his own hand; that two great cities, Paris and Rome, contended which should have the honour of crowning him; that he was crowned publicly, in the metropolis of the world, with laurel and with myrtle; that he was the friend of Boccaccio the father of Italian prose; and lastly, that his greatest renown nevertheless, as well as the predominant feelings of his existence, arose from the long love he bore for a lady of Avignon, the far-famed Laura, whom he fell in love with on the 6th of April, 1327, on a Good Friday; whom he rendered illustrious in a multitude of sonnets, which have left a sweet sound and sentiment in the ear of all after lovers; and who died, still passionately beloved, in the year 1348, on the same day and hour on which he first beheld her. Who she was, or why their connection was not closer, remains a mystery. But that she was a real person, and that in spite of all her modesty she did not show an insensible countenance to his passion, is clear from his long-haunted imagination, from his own repeated accounts, from all that he wrote, uttered, and thought. One love, and one poet, sufficed to give the whole civilized world a sense of delicacy in desire, of the abundant riches to be found in one single idea, and of the going out of a man's self to dwell in the soul and happiness of another, which has served to refine the passion for all modern times; and perhaps will do so, as long as love renews the world."

At Vaucluse, or Valchiusa, "a remarkable spot in the old poetical region of Provence, consisting of a little deep glen of green meadows surrounded with rocks, and containing the fountain of the river Sorgue," Petrarch resided for several years, and composed in it the greater part of his poems.

The following is a translation by sir William Jones, of

AN ODE, BY PETRARCH,

TO THE FOUNTAIN OF VALCHIUSA

Ye clear and sparkling streams! Through whose transparent crystal Laura play'd; Ye boughs that deck the grove, Where Spring her chaplets wove, While Laura lay beneath the quivering shade; Sweet herbs! and blushing flowers! That crown yon vernal bowers, For ever fatal, yet for ever dear; And ye, that heard my sighs When first she charm'd my eyes, Soft-breathing gales! my dying accents hear. If Heav'n has fix'd my doom, That Love must quite consume My bursting heart, and close my eyes in death Ah! grant this slight request,-- That here my urn may rest, When to its mansion flies my vital breath. This pleasing hope will smooth My anxious mind, and soothe The pangs of that inevitable hour; My spirit will not grieve Her mortal veil to leave In these calm shades, and this enchanting bower Haply, the guilty maid Through yon accustom'd glade To my sad tomb will take her lonely way Where first her beauty's light O'erpower'd my dazzled sight, When love on this fair border bade me stray: There, sorrowing, shall she see, Beneath an aged tree, Her true, but hapless lover's lowly bier; Too late her tender sighs Shall melt the pitying skies, And her soft veil shall hide the gushing tear O! well-remember'd day, When on yon bank she lay, Meek in her pride, and in her rigour mild; The young and blooming flowers, Falling in fragrant showers, Shone on her neck, and on her bosom smil'd Some on her mantle hung, Some in her locks were strung, Like orient gems in rings of flaming gold; Some, in a spicy cloud Descending, call'd aloud, "Here Love and Youth the reins of empire hold." I view'd the heavenly maid And, rapt in wonder, said-- "The groves of Eden gave this angel birth," Her look, her voice, her smile, That might all Heaven beguile, Wafted my soul above the realms of earth The star-bespangled skies Were open'd to my eyes; Sighing I said, "Whence rose this glittering scene?" Since that auspicious hour, This bank, and odorous bower, My morning couch, and evening haunt have been. Well mayst thou blush, my song, To leave the rural throng And fly thus artless to my Laura's ear, But, were thy poet's fire Ardent as his desire, Thou wert a song that Heaven might stoop to hear

It is within probability to imagine, that the original of this "ode" may have been impressed on the paper, by Petrarch's pen, from the inkstand of the frontispiece.

THE TABLE BOOK.

Formerly, a "Table Book" was a memorandum book, on which any thing was graved or written without ink. It is mentioned by Shakspeare. Polonius, on disclosing Ophelia's affection for Hamlet to the king, inquires

"Nature's fair table-book, our tender souls, We scrawl all o'er with old and empty rules, Stale memorandums of the schools."

Table books, or tablets, of wood, existed before the time of Homer, and among the Jews before the Christian aera. The table books of the Romans were nearly like ours, which will be described presently; except that the leaves, which were two, three, or more in number, were of wood surfaced with wax. They wrote on them with a style, one end of which was pointed for that purpose, and the other end rounded or flattened, for effacing or scraping out. Styles were made of nearly all the metals, as well as of bone and ivory; they were differently formed, and resembled ornamented skewers; the common style was iron. More anciently, the leaves of the table book were without wax, and marks were made by the iron style on the bare wood. The Anglo-Saxon style was very handsome. Dr. Pegge was of opinion that the well-known jewel of Alfred, preserved in the Ashmolean museum at Oxford, was the head of the style sent by that king with Gregory's Pastoral to Athelney.

"And therefore will he wipe his tables clean And keep no tell tale to his memory."

As in the middle ages there were table-books with ivory leaves, this gentleman remarks that, in Chaucer's "Sompnour's Tale," one of the friars is provided with

He instances it as remarkable, that neither public nor private museums furnished specimens of the table books, common in Shakspeare's time. Fortunately, this observation is no longer applicable.

A correspondent, understood to be Mr. Douce, in Dr. Aikin's "Athenaeum," subsequently says, "I happen to possess a table-book of Shakspeare's time. It is a little book, nearly square, being three inches wide and something less than four in length, bound stoutly in calf, and fastening with four strings of broad, strong, brown tape. The title as follows: 'Writing Tables, with a Kalender for xxiiii yeeres, with sundrie necessarie rules. The Tables made by Robert Triple. London, Imprinted for the Company of Stationers.' The tables are inserted immediately after the almanack. At first sight they appear like what we call asses-skin, the colour being precisely the same, but the leaves are thicker: whatever smell they may have had is lost, and there is no gloss upon them. It might be supposed that the gloss has been worn off; but this is not the case, for most of the tables have never been written on. Some of the edges being a little worn, show that the middle of the leaf consists of paper; the composition is laid on with great nicety. A silver style was used, which is sheathed in one of the covers, and which produces an impression as distinct, and as easily obliterated as a black-lead pencil. The tables are interleaved with common paper."

Having shown what the ancient table book was, it may be expected that I should say something about

TABLE BOOK.

MY TABLE BOOK is enriched and diversified by the contributions of my friends; the teemings of time, and the press, give it novelty; and what I know of works of art, with something of imagination, and the assistance of artists, enable me to add pictorial embellishment. My object is to blend information with amusement, and utility with diversion.

MY TABLE BOOK, therefore, is a series of continually shifting scenes--a kind of literary kaleidoscope, combining popular forms with singular appearances--by which youth and age of all ranks may be amused; and to which, I respectfully trust, many will gladly add something, to improve its views.

Johnson.

Fosbroke's Encyclopaedia of Antiquities.

Gesner De rerum fossilium figuris, &c. Tigur. 1565. 12mo.

Glossary by Mr. Archd. Nares.

~Ode to the New Year

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