back” from a miller. The consequence was that the poor girl fell ill, and immediately abstained from taking food, “and so” adds the chronicler, “she hath continued till within a fortnight before the date hereof, which amounts to thirteen months and upwards.” She occasionally indulged in a few drops of the syrup of stewed prunes, water, and sugar, “or the juice of a roasted raisin.” The last delicacy might have been refreshing, but Miss Taylor’s biographer is clearly right in describing it as “prodigiously insufficient for sustenation.” She was watched by a person appointed by the Duke of Devonshire, but the only discovery made was that sleep was as unnecessary to her as food, since she once “continued for five weeks waking.”
Another individual of remarkably abstemious habits was one Roger Crab, who flourished at Uxbridge in 1655. “He can live,” says the record, “on three farthings a-week”—a consummation devoutly to be wished for in many other cases. Economical housewives may envy Roger Crab’s system in its results, although they would probably hesitate to follow it in its operations. For his constant food was “roots and herbs, as cabbage, turneps, carrots, dock-leaves, and grass; also bread and bran.” Not the least curious fact in Roger’s history was, that he once kept a shop, but retired to the woods on his dock-leaves and grass, “because of the many lyes, swearing, and deceiving that are too frequently used by most shopkeepers and tradesmen.”
In 1614 was published a “True and wonderfull account of a strange and monstrous serpent or dragon, yet living, to the great annoyance and divers slaughters both of men and cattell by his strong and violent poyson.” This appalling monster “lived” in a wood two miles from Horsham; the “account” of it was written by M. A. R., who appends to his name the quaint notice, “He that would send better newes if he had it.” The dragon was nine feet in length, and must have been in every way an interesting object. In colour it was black in some parts and red in others, in shape it was like the axletree of a cart, and its general appearance is thus sketched. “He is of countenance very proud, and at the sight or hearing of men or cattell will raise his necke upright, and seeme to listen and look about with great arrogancy.” On his side were “two great branches,” which were likely to expand into wings; but M. A. R, expressed a hope that he would be destroyed before he grew “so fledge.” Very terrible was this dragon to meet, for he “cast his venome about four rodde from him,” and had thereby killed several people. What became of him there is no record to show, and the town very soon forgot this prodigy in the consideration of another—an old woman of Denbighshire, who was “perfectly able to relate what she hath said and done 130 years ago.” It is scarcely necessary to say that her name was Morgan. Her teeth were perfect, “although about three score years ago she had lost most of them. Her organs of smell were so corroborated by age that no stench could invade them to the least prejudice.” Mrs. Morgan had only one fault—she was a termagant. She was the terror of “catchpolls and petty constables,” and “whatever ground she trod upon was as fatal to them as Irish earth to venomous creatures.” Another little weakness of the old dame was displayed in her choice of food—“carrion buried two or three days she will take up, slice, and fling as collops upon the coals, which she will eat as savourly as he that thinks he eats the best in town.” Moreover, she smoked tobacco “in a comfortable short pipe.”
Such are a few examples of the prodigies which astonished our pensive great-grandfathers.
ALLAN RAMSAY, JUNIOR.
Allan Ramsay, the author of the “Gentle Shepherd,”—“the best pastoral that had ever been written,” said Mr. Boswell, whose judgments upon poetry, however, are not final, Allan Ramsay, the poet, father of Allan Ramsay, principal painter to King George the Third, claimed descent from the noble house of Dalhousie; he was the great grandson of the laird of Cockpen. His claim was admitted by the contemporary earl, who ever took pride in recognising, as a relative, the “restorer of Scottish national poetry.” Certainly the poetical branch of the family tree had been in some danger of being lost altogether—the clouds of obscurity had so gathered round it—the sunshine of good fortune had so ceased to play upon it. The laird’s children appear to have been of the humblest class, dwelling in a poor hamlet on the banks of the Glangomar, a tributary of the Clyde among the hills between Clydesdale and Annandale. The father of the Gentle Shepherd is said to have been a workman in Lord Hopetoun’s lead-mines, and the Gentle Shepherd himself, as a child, was employed as a washer of ore. Early in the last century he was in Edinburgh, a barber’s apprentice. In 1729 he had published his comic pastoral, and was then in a bookseller’s shop in the Luckenbooths. Here he used to amuse Gay, famous for his Newgate pastoral, with pointing out the chief characters and literati of the city as they met daily in the forenoon at the Cross, according to custom. Here Gay first read the “Gentle Shepherd,” and studied the Scottish dialect, so that, on his return to England, he was able to explain to Pope the peculiar merits of the poem. And the poets, Gay and Ramsay, spent much time and emptied many glasses together at a twopenny ale-house opposite Queensbury House, kept by one Janet Hall, called more frequently Janet Ha’.
It was at Edinburgh that Allan Ramsay, junior, was born, the eldest of seven children, in the year 1713, or in 1709, as some say. Late in life he was fond of understating his age as people somehow will do:
“I am old enough,” he said once, with the air of making a very frank avowal, “I am old enough to have been a contemporary of Pope.” Which was not remarkable, considering that Pope did not die until 1744, when Mr. Ramsay must have been at least thirty-one.
He had considerable talent for art. He began to sketch at twelve. But his father was poor with a large family to support,—it was not possible to afford much of an education to the young artist. He
