The innocent and the unaspiring may always be happy. Their pleasures like their knitting needles, and hedging gloves, are easily purchased, and when bestowed are estimated as distinctions. The late Dr.Parr, the fascinating converser, the skilful controverter, the first Greek scholar, and one of the greatest and most influential men of the age, was a patron May-day sports. Opposite his pare-house at Hatton, near Warwick, other side of the road, stood the Maypole, which on the annual festival was dressed with garlands, surrounded by a numerous band of villagers. The doctor was "first of the throng," and danced with his parishioners the gayest of the gay. He kept the large crown of the Maypole in a closet of his house, from whence it was produced every May-day, with fresh flowers and streamers preparatory to its elevation, and to the doctor's own appearance in the ring. He always spoke of this festivity as one wherein he joined with peculiar delight to himself, and advantage to his neighbours. He was deemed eccentric, and so he was; for he was never proud to the humble, nor humble to the proud. His eloquence and wit elevated humility, and crushed insolence; he was the champion of the oppressed, a foe to the oppressor, a friend to the friendless, and a brother to him who was ready to perish. Though a prebend of the church with university honours, he could afford to make his parishoners happy without derogating from his ecclesiastical dignities, or abatement of self-respect, or lowering himself in the eyes of any who were not inferior in judgment, to the most inferior of the villagers of Hatton. Formerly a pleasant character dressed out with ribands and flowers, figured in village May-games under the name of JACK-O'-THE-GREEN. The Jack-o'-the-Greens would sometimes come into the suburbs of London, and amuse the residents by rustic dancing. The last of them, that I remember, were at the Paddington May-dance, near the "Yorkshire Stingo," about twenty years ago, from whence, as I heard, they diverged to Bayswater, Kentish-town, and adjoining neighbourhoods. A Jack-o'the-Green always carried a long walking stick with floral wreaths; he whisked it about in the dance, and afterwards walked with it in high estate like a lord mayor's footman. On this first of the month we cannot pass the poets without listening to their carols, as we do, in our walks, to the songs of the spring birds in their thickets. VOL. II.-71. To MAY. Welcome! dawn of summer's day, The most ancient of our bards makes noble melody in this glorious month. Mr. Leigh Hunt selects a delightful passage from Chaucer, and compares it with Dryden's paraphrase: It is sparkling with young manhood and a gentle freshness. What a burst of radiant joy is in the second couplet; what a vital quick ness in the comparison of the horse," starting as the fire;" and what a native and happy case in the conclusion! The busy lark, the messenger of day, Dryden falls short in the freshness and Here they are. the first line, as The word morning in second, we are bound to consider as a slip of the pen; perhaps for mounting. The morning-lark, the messenger of day, Saluteth in her song the morning gray; And soon the sun arose with beams so bright, And licks the drooping leaves, and dries the dews; For thee the Graces lead the dancing hours, "How poor," says Mr. Hunt," is this to Arcite's leaping from his courser with a lusty heart.' How inferior the commonplace of the fiery steed,' which need not involve any actual notion in the writer's mind, to the courser starting as the fire-how inferior the turning his face to the rising day,' and raising his voice,' to the singing loud against the sunny sheen; and lastly, the whole learned invocation and adjuration of May, about guiding his wandering steps' and 'so may thy tender blossoms' &c. to the call upon the fair fresh May, ending with that simple, quick-hearted line, in which he hopes he shall get some green here;' a touch in the happiest taste of the Italian vivacity. Dryden's genius, for the most part, wanted faith in nature. It was too gross and sophisticate. There was as much difference between him and his original, as between a hot noon in perukes at St. James's, and one of Chaucer's O dolce primavera, o fior novelli, O thou delicious spring, O ye new flowers, O airs, O youngling bowers; fresh thickening grass, Myrtles, and palms serene, ivies, and bays; And ye Sannazzaro. O quivered virgins bright, Pans rustical, "This time two hundred years ago, our ancestors were all anticipating their May holidays. Bigotry came in, and frowned them away; then debauchery, and identified all pleasure with the town; then avarice, and we have ever since been mistaking the means for the end. Fortunately, it does not follow, that we shall continue to do so. Commerce, while it thinks it is only exchanging commodities, is helping to diffuse knowledge. All other gains,-all selfish and extravagant systems of acquisition,-tend to over-do themselves, and to topple down by their own undiffused magnitude. The world, as it learns other things, may learn not to confound the means with the end, or at least, (to speak more philosophically,) a really poor means with a really richer. The veriest cricket-player on a green has as sufficient a quantity of excitement, as a fundholder or a partizan; and health, and spirits, and manliness to boot. Knowledge may go on; must do so, from necessity; and should do so, for the ends we speak of: but knowledge, so far from being incompatible with simplicity of pleasures, is the quickest to perceive its wealth. Chaucer would lie for hours looking at the daisies. Scipio and Lælius could amuse themselves with making ducks and drakes on the water. Epaminondas, the greatest of all the active spirits of Greece, was a flute-player and dancer. Alfred the Great could act the whole part of a minstrel. Epicurus taught the riches of temperance and intellectual pleasure in a garden. The other philosophers of his country walked between heaven and earth in the colloquial bowers of Academus; and the wisest heart of Solomon,' who found every thing vain because he was a king, has left us panegyrics on the spring and the voice of the turtle,' because he was a poet, a lover, and a wise man.' Aubrey remarks, that he never remembers to have seen a Maypole in France; but he says, "in Holland, they have their May-booms, which are streight young trees, set up; and at Woodstock, in Oxon, they every May-eve goe into the parke, The Indicator. and fetch away a number of hawthornetrees, which they set before their dores: 'tis pity that they make such a destruction of so fine a tree." As the old antiquary takes us to Woodstock, and a novel by the "Great Unknown," bears that title, we will "inn" there awhile, agreeably to an invitation of a correspondent who signs Ωνωφίλτατος, and who promises entertainment to the readers of the Every-Day Book, from an account of some out-of-the-way doings at that place, when there were out-of-theway doings every where. Our friend with the Greek name is critical; for as regards the "new novel," he says, that "Woodstock would have been much better if the author had placed the incidents before the battle of Worcester, and supposed that Charles had been drawn over to England to engage in some plot of Dr. Rochecliffes, which had proved unsuccessful. This might have spared him one great anachronism, (placing the pranks of the merry devil of Woodstock in 1651, instead of 1649,) at the same time that it would throw a greater air of probability over the story; for the reader who is at all acquainted with English history, continually feels his pleasure destroyed by the recollection that in Charles's escapes after the battle of Worcester, he never once visited Woodstock. Nor does the merry devil of Woodstock excite half the interest, or give us half the amusement he would have done, if the author had lately read the narrative I am now about to copy. He seems to have perused it at some distance of time, and then to have written the novel with imperfect recollection of the circumstances.--But let me begin my story; to wit, an article in the British Magazine' for April, 1747, which will I suppose excite some curiosity, and is in the following words : "THE GENUINE HISTORY "GOOD DEVIL OF WOODSTOCK, "Famous in the world in the year 1649, and never accounted for, or at all understood to this time." The teller of this "Genuine History" proceeds as hereafter verbatim. Some original papers having lately fallen into my hands under the name of "Authentic Memoirs of the Memorable Joseph Collins of Oxford, commonly known by the name of Funny Joe, and now intended for the press," I was extremely delighted to find in them a circumstantial and unquestionable account of the most famous of all invisible agents, so well known in the year 1649, under the name of the good devil of Woodstock, and even adored by the people of that place for the vexation and distress it occasioned some people they were not much pleased with. As this famous story, though related by a thousand people, and attested in all its circumstances beyond all possibility of doubt by people of rank, learning, and reputation, of Oxford and the adjacent towns, has never yet been accounted for or at all understood, and is perfectly explained in a manner that can admit of no doubt in these papers, I could not refuse my readers their share of the pleasure it gave me in reading As the facts themselves were at that time so well known that it would have been tedious to enumerate them, they are not mentioned in these papers; but that our readers may have a perfect account of the whole transaction, as well as the secret history of it, I shall prefix a written account of it, drawn up and signed by the commissioners themselves, who were the people concerned, and which I believe never was published, though it agrees very well with the accounts Dr. Plot and other authors of credit give of the whole affair. This I found affixed to the author's memorial, with this title : "A particular account of the strange and surprising apparitions and works of spirits, which happened at Woodstock, in Oxfordshire, in the months of October and November, in the year of our Lord Christ 1649, when the honourable the commissioners for surveying the said manor-house, park, woods, and other demesnes belonging to that manor, sat and remained there. Collected and attested by themselves. "The honourable the commissioners arrived at Woodstock manor-house, October 13th, and took up their residence in the king's own rooms. His majesty's bedchamber they made their kitchen, the council hall their pantry, and the presence chamber was the place where they sat.for despatch of business. His majesty's dining room they made their wood yard, and stowed it with no other wood but that of the famous royal oak from the high park, which, that nothing might be left with the name of the king about it, they had dug up by the roots, and bundled up into faggots for their firing. "October 16. This day they first sat for the despatch of business. In the midst of their first debate there entered a large black dog (as they thought) which made a terrible howling, overturned two or three of their chairs, and doing some other damage, went under the bed, and there gnawed the cords. The door this while continued constantly shut, when after some two or three hours, Giles Sharp, their secretary, looking under the bed, perceived that the creature was vanished, and that a plate of meat which one of the servants had hid there was untouched, and showing them to their honours, they were all convinced there could be no real dog concerned in the case; the said Giles also deposed on oath that to his certain knowledge there was not. "October 17. As they were this day sitting at dinner in a lower room, they heard plainly the noise of persons walking over their heads, though they well knew the doors were all locked, and there could be none there; presently after they heard also all the wood of the king's oak brought by parcels from the dining-room, and thrown with great violence into the presence chamber, as also the chairs, stools, tables, and other furniture, forcibly hurled about the room, their own papers of the minutes of their transactions torn, and the ink-glass broken. When all this had some time ceased, the said Giles proposed to enter first into these rooms, and in presence of the commissioners of whom he received the key, he opened the door, and entering with their honours following him, he there found the wood strewed about the room, the chairs tossed about and broken, the papers torn, and the ink-glass broken over them, all as they had heard, yet no footsteps appeared of any person whatever being there, nor had the doors ever been opened to admit or let out any persons since their honours were last there. It was therefore This is not king Charles the Second's celebrated" Royal Oak," but the " King's Oak" so ing in 1651 is another anachronism by the by. ny wplaTaTOS. often mentioned in the novel. To make it stand |