578 The Seventh Son of a Seventh Son. [June, 



hedge, wlio had dawdled after us, and was now lying at his length on the 

 broad turf walk of the garden. 



Septimus, being the seventh son of Richard, the seventh son of John 

 Martin, was of course, his mother said, a genius born, and was origi- 

 nally intended for a doctor — Medicine being, since astrology has been 

 out of fashion, the turn which this peculiar gift is assumed to take. 

 But poor Seppy, when sent at some cost to a grammar school, proved 

 unluckily, to use her own phrase, too clever to learn, and was dismissed 

 at the end of the half-year, as an incorrigible dunce. In consequence 

 of this misfortune the apothecary had refused to take him as an ap- 

 prentice, and he had remained at home ever since, giving most satisfactory 

 proofs of his genius by wandering about the fields in utter idleness all 

 the day Ion* ; avoiding his brothers and sisters, occasionally muttering 

 to himself, and reading all the penny ballads that fell in his way. 

 Wiser people than Mrs. Martin might have found the harmless, lazy, 

 mother-spoilt boy guilty of genius on no better proof than this poetical 

 love of the delicious Jcir niente. Latterly, however, he had manifested 

 a decided vocation for the fine arts, and the present difficulty lay in the 

 choice, Seppy having shewn an equal taste for music and painting — 

 " Go and fetch your music, Seppy," said Mrs. Martin, and Seppy 

 obeyed. 



During his absence his mother recounted the rise and progress of his 

 musical talent. She had been once gi'eatly afraid that Seppy's disposi- 

 tion was warlike. He had cheapened an image of Buonaparte which 

 he preferred to a white horse and even to a green parrot which adorned 

 the same board ; he had nearly lost his thumb in attempting, during 

 a frost, to fire off the old blunderbuss which her husband kept to scare 

 thieves from the house and birds from the chimnies ; and, on the arrival 

 of a recruiting party at the next village, he had gone every evening to 

 hear the drum and fife, and had formed an intimacy with the drummer. 

 She had been sadly afraid that he would enlist, but she had been mis- 

 taken ; it was only his great turn for music. Now that he could play all 

 their marches he never went near the soldiers. Indeed the drummer 

 was nothing of a musician compared with Seppy ; for Samuel Stave, 

 the bassoon player, had taught him all manner of church tunes, and he 

 had learnt several country-dances from Dick the fiddler. At this point 

 of her narration Seppy reappeared with a flageolet in one hand and a 

 tambourine in the other, and seizing the latter instrument, Mrs. Martin 

 exhibited it triumphantly as a visible and tangible proof of her son's 

 genius. 



The history of this tambourine was curious. It had originally belonged 

 to the young lady of the manor, a child of eight j^ears old, who had 

 soon become weary of her toy, and after cutting the parchment to pieces 

 and breaking two of the bells, had given it to the nursery maid. The 

 nursery maid had, in her turn, transferred the useless instrument to her 

 little brother Jem Willis of the lodge, " a hoarding boy," observed Mrs. 

 Martin, " who is alvays thinking of his pocket. Of him Seppy bought 

 it for two-pence," continued she, " and a poor thing it was when he 

 brought it home, and would have been to this day but for Seppy's 

 genius. First he took two of our sheep bells and filled up the holes. 

 Then he begged a piece of parchment of his cousin Tom who writes for 

 a lawyer. Tom very civilly gave him an old mortgage, as may plainly be 

 seen." [Indeed I could easily distinguish fragments of upright clerk- 



