The Pointer 285 



regard to any one of the many related incidents of his career. He was a 

 boy at Eton when Lawrence Sterne was connected with York Cathedral, 

 and it was a forgotten appointment of the Dean of York to meet Judge 

 Topham that was the means of Sterne first entering upon his literary life, 

 the Dean getting him to write a pamphlet entitled "The Adventure of a 

 Watch-coat," Judge Topham being the watchman of the tale, and the 

 future major the boy for which he was supposed to want to make a pair 

 of small clothes out of part of the parish watch-coat. Sterne was in York- 

 shire from 1740 to 1760, and we are not far wrong in giving the date of 

 about 1740 for Major Topham's birth. He was eleven years at Eton and 

 four at Cambridge, went abroad for eighteen months, and then travelled 

 through Scotland, describing the latter trip in his "Letters from Edin- 

 burgh." He entered the regiment of First Life Guards, was soon appointed 

 adjutant and so much did he improve the morale of the regiment that he 

 was caricatured in the prints of the period as "The Tip-Top Adjutant." 

 His hobby, however, was literary; he was one of the most popular writers 

 of epilogues for the plays of the day and numbered among his intimates 

 quite a different class of men from what was usually the custom with wealthy 

 young English officers of crack cavalry regiments. 



Being a gentleman of education, of travel, and accustomed to demand 

 exactness in his subordinates, we may claim with some degree of confidence 

 that he must have had reasons for specifying the pointer as the dog used 

 to find the game for coursing. So far as his reference to the time of King 

 John, he could not have had any more knowledge than we possess now, 

 but he could learn from first-hand knowledge what was the custom about 

 1700 and have accurate information regarding 1650. 



Speaking personally on this subject of recollection, we are about the 

 age Major Topham must have been when he wrote, exactly one hundred 

 years ago, and probably our earliest memory, outside of family occurrences, 

 is the death of the Duke of Wellington, November, 1852, and seeing the 

 pictures of his funeral in the shop windows in Edinburgh. Then came 

 the war in the Crimea, followed by the Indian mutiny, all before the end 

 of 1858, and of the main incidents of both wars our recollection is very 

 clear. As to what we were told by eye-witnesses, those of our own family 

 related incidents of the Bonaparte invasion scares, of the French prisoners, 

 the unknown author of "Waverley," the Battle of Waterloo and the rejoic- 

 ings at the downfall of "Boney." That period goes back to 1810. Beyond 



