

1832.] Affairs in General. 223 



" Mitford waa then a beggar, and Johnston the bookseller, who published it 

 [the poem], was afraid to trust him with money, knowing that when he had 

 cash in hand, he would not work. Each morning he received a shilling, and a 

 certain quantity of paper, which he engaged to fill with rhymes and deliver by 

 night. His method was to put some gin in a blacking-bottle, and twopenny- 

 worth of bread and cheese, with an onion and some salt ! Thus provisioned he 

 repaired to Bayswater fields, where he sat and wrote. It was a dry summer, 

 and he seldom had to encounter rain. In a gravel-pit, near the water-works, he 

 made a bed of grass and nettles : the nettles that grew on each side he twisted 

 over so as to form a canopy, and here he lay for forty-three nights the poem 

 being finished in that number of days. Before day-light [it was a " dry sum- 

 mer" Jack must have been an early riser] he would rise and wash his rag of a 

 shirt in a stagnant pool, which he put on wet, and yet never caught cold, nor 

 did he ever enjoy better health than when confined to his nettle-bed and a 

 shilling per day." 



The biographer descants on the luxury of " an onion/' a couch in the 

 fields, and the ablution afforded by a (f stagnant pool," with the gusto- of 

 an experienced sensualist. However, we can believe, if we except one 

 particular, the whole account as applied to Jack Mitford. We do not, 

 or we should be heretics indeed, dispute the blacking-bottle and gin we 

 can away with the onion, and grass bed ; nay, we will strive to believe 

 the nettles (how real poetry is often associated with matters of fact ! a 

 satirist making to himself a bed and curtains of nettles !) but we can- 

 not, though we stretch our belief to the wonders of a Waterton or a 

 Munchausen no, we cannot yield credence to the "rag" washed in the 

 tf stagnant pool." The clean shirt we turn from as apocryphal. 



It is said that a statue of Jack Mitford is about to be erected at the 

 corner of Holywell-street, a place peculiarly benefited by the labours, 

 not only of his drunken months, but of his " saner moments." If it be 

 asked why we devote this space to the exhibition of this literary Abhor* 

 son, our reply is, that the exposure of such creatures goes far to neu- 

 tralize their venom. Unhappily, in these days, miscreants of the Jack 

 Mitford genus are not uncommon ; and though they may elaborate their 

 poison over champagne instead of gin, they are alike worthy of the cold 

 contempt of those whose reputations they would vilify. 



THE GREENWICH RAIL-ROAD. The world seems never at a loss for 

 projects. One rail-way makes many, and the frog Greenwich is puffing 

 itself into the ox Manchester. A company has been formed, with a 

 capital of the usual number of hundreds of thousands, or millions, for 

 the purpose of establishing a rail-road communication between the me- 

 tropolis and Greenwich. We like new projects, if for no other reason 

 than to shew a spirit of resistance to those who hate innovations of all 

 kinds ; but we confess that we are romantic enough to like them the 

 better when they happen to be based upon some object of utility. But 

 we are as yet at a loss to discern the peculiar desirableness of this new 

 rail-road from the Green-park to Greenwich-park, and from Greenwich- 

 hospital to Guy's-hospital. Such a communication would no doubt tend 

 greatly to facilitate the progress of the ftys, caravans, and stages, on 

 Easter and Whit-mondays ; and the tumbles down One-tree-hill might 

 be rendered much more regular by means of a rail- way; but we can see 

 little other good that it is likely to effect unless indeed it should tend 

 to the comfort and convenience of the old pensioners, in their occasional 

 peregrinations to town. They might pay their visits to their shipmates 



