1827.J Anecdotes and Conversations. 259 



"Illeautem, 



Fauci bus ingentem fumum, mirabile dictu, 

 Evomit ;" 



and the satirists "fumum et opes strepitumque Roma" the last, likewise, 

 indicating that the habit of smoking was not, as with us, chiefly preva- 

 lent among the lower classes, but was practised by the rich. The "fumus 

 et vapor balneamm," mentioned by Valerius Maximus, shews that smoak- 

 ing was among the luxuries of the bath : and Martial speaks of (< venders 

 vanos circum Palatiafumos," as an usual mode of getting bread. Cicero's 

 "fumosce imagines," affords still further confirmation, if any were need- 

 ful, of so evident a discovery. 



I have very little to add to what the world already knows, concerning 

 the doctor's Greek translation of Chevy Chase, which drew upon him the 

 ill-natured epithet of " seventh form school-boy," a reproach which he felt 

 very keenly. " Many wise and good men," -he remarked to me, almost 

 with tears in his eyes, " had exercised themselves in Greek translations 

 from the English poets ; nor could he conceive how a man could be a 

 worse Christian for writing the language of the New Testament, or a worse 

 statesman for practising the nervous diction of Thucydides and Demos- 

 thenes ;" " but/' he added, in a solemn and awfully prophetic tone of 

 voice, " the run which is made against Greek is part of the jacobin con- 

 spiracy against social order. He who despises learning wars against his 

 superiors, and is wanting in that humility and prostration of intellect, 

 without which there can be no true religion." 



The archdeacon was amongst those who believed in the authenticity of 

 Ireland's Shaksperian MSS. ; and as he had been intimate with Dr. 

 Farmer at Cambridge, and was enthusiastic in all that concerned the great 

 natural poet, he could not bear with patience being jeered on this mistake. 

 *' Sir," said he, " if the play was not written by Shakspeare, it ought to 

 have been : not indeed for the matter (though Vortigern is at least as good 

 as Titus Andronicus) but on account of the evidence, which he who 

 doubted might as well doubt the thirty-nine articles." The strength of 

 his conviction could not be more forcibly demonstrated. Another point on 

 which he was sore, was Pitt's resignation about the Catholic Question. 

 He was amongst those who never believed that statesman in earnest, and 

 to the last declared it was an hallucination wholly inexplicable. But, 

 " nemo" he said, (t nemo omnibus horis sapit." and though he had given 

 his support at once to Mr. Addington's administration, he could not but 

 forgive his old favourite, as soon as he found him once more at the head of 

 affairs ; a circumstance that fully evinced my respected friend to have been 

 as good a Christian as he was an eminent scholar, and shewed that if he 

 had zeal, it was not untempered by discretion. The archdeacon, holding 

 good church preferment, it was often thought that he would marry ; and 

 when he painted the parsonage house, we all set it down that his friendship 

 for a certain maiden lady, who shall be nameless, would have terminated 

 in a conjugal alliance. Whether it was through the doctor's fault, or the 

 lady's, I never could learn ; but the marriage did not take place. That 

 he would have made a good family man is barely possible. He was a 

 professed misogamist, and was never at a loss for a quotation from Euri- 

 pides to back out a sly hit at a sex, from which, I more than suspect, he 

 had in early life received some slight. " Sir," he would say, " there is 

 one thing in which I think the papists are right, and that is, in representing 



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