There are noses of all sorts,-pugs, aquilines, crooks,

Cocks, Grecian, Dutch tea-pots, snubs, hat-pegs, and hooks,-
Nay, the list, I dare say, would admit of extension,
As the genus depends on the form and dimension:
And seldom, if ever,

(I perhaps may add never,)

Will you find two alike, tho' for years you endeavour:
Tho' a man search, unfetter'd by hind'rance or trammel, he
Need not expect to see two in a family.

By many 'tis said

That a mind may be read

By a critical glimpse at the bumps on the head,
While others maintain

That as daylight 'tis plain,

There's a method more easy such knowledge to gain :
They profess all your habits and feelings to trace,
If you'll only allow them to look in your face.
Again, who does not from experience know,

Men are seldom admired, if their foreheads are low?
A fine open brow is imagined to be

A mirror wherein the whole heart we can see.
How often do poets say, we may descry

A proud haughty soul in a dark flashing eye?

While a glance soft and tender (as who cannot prove?)
Expresses confiding affection and love.

Ye bards, hide your heads-now a champion is come
To redress the wrong'd noses of Greece and of Rome,
And, defying the boasted success of Phrenology
Will establish a science, and call it Nose-ology!

Now each learn'd M.D.
Will doubtless agree

On the virtues of analysation with me;

Nor will any oppose
(When the facts I disclose)

My project of thus analysing the nose :

Tho, if I would convince either silly or sensible,-
A few facts (or fictions) are quite indispensable.

Imprimis-A nose, be its form what it may,
Should be decently large, (or, as some people say,
A nose you could find in a bottle of hay,)
Not like those you may see in the street any day,
But something more out of the usual way,
Like (if well I remember) the nose of Lord Grey,
Or his, whose proud home you may pause to survey,
If towards Hyde-Park-Corner you happen to stray;
(And here, I may venture a tribute to pay
Of respect to the nose, which in many a fray
Secured the brave leader's victorious sway,
In spite of Soult, Marmont, Massena, and Ney ;)
'Tis a fact, tho' a hero in mind and in body,
If a man has a small nose he looks a Tom Noddy.
I've hinted before,

(And none but a bore

Says a thing more than once, so enough on that score,)
What shape I like best;

But I never professed

To lay down the law as regards others, lest

My readers might fancy my motives were sinister,
And trust me no more than they would a Prime Minister.

Now I think, ev'ry man

Should give 'sops in the pan'

To the fair sex, when he conscientiously can;
So in this present case,

With the very best grace

I own that, to set off a feminine face

Peeping 'neath a smart cap, with an edging of lace,
A Grecian nose is by no means out of place;

But stop there, my dears, Lucy, Ellen, and Jaqueline,
It's no use your teasing, I can't bear an aquiline.

Paul Bedford, Paul Bedford, 't would ill become me
To omit a poor tribute of homage to thee,

E'en now in my mind's eye I see thee once more,
Like a dignified lion beginning to roar ;

While the sound of thy voice thro' each startled ear goes,
And Echo, half frightened, repeats

Ah, Paul! only think,

6

Tho' men now-a-days shrink

Jolly Nose !'

From a song lest by chance it should tempt 'em to drink,
It was not so with thee,

As a proof of which, see

(Tho' so many are sold-out of print it may be―)
Thy portrait in every music dépôt,

Exclusively published by D'Almaine and Co.
For thy chant is a triumph o'er dull melancholy,
And thy very phiz proves that the nose must be jolly.

Search History's page

From the earliest age,

Trace the portraits of warrior, poet, and sage;
Or, to solve your doubts, seek

Any statue antique,

It matters not whether 'tis Roman or Greek,

For its nose to the truth of my doctrine will speak: 'Tis a prominent feature in worthies like Plato,

Or Socrates, Seneca, Cæsar, or Cato;

But you'll find snubs predominate (Reader, I'm serious,)
In every bust that exists of Tiberius.

Besides, the mere name

Could formerly claim

For its lucky possessor no small share of fame,

As in his case, whose writings I once was quite pat in,

(And should be now, but I've forgotten my Latin,

Tho' I've left school some time, tis with shame that I say so,)

I was once so fond of Ovidius Naso!

Look closely, and then contradict, if you can,

That the Nose is, and must be, a type of the Man.

A FEW WORDS only will be necessary to the introduction of the following work. It is by no means of importance that the reader should be informed how this autobiographical memoir of Richard Savage fell into my hands, and thence came into the possession of the publisher. Perhaps it is a secret not hastily to be disclosed; perhaps it is a secret not worth the telling. This, however, may be said respecting it I found it in no old oak-chest,-I purloined it from no library of a certain nobleman,'-I purchased it from no cheesemonger, who told me that a person who had evidently seen better days, came into his shop last week, and with a heavy sigh laid the MS. upon the counter, and stickling for a turn of the scale, and the highest current price, sold it as waste-paper for one and eightpence.

After a diligent perusal of the work now about to be submitted to the public, and a comparison of the events it records with the facts stated in the admirable life of Savage written by Dr. Johnson, I find no such material discrepancy as should lead me to infer that this work might not have been written by Savage himself. I have seen a few specimens of his prose one, a performance of exquisite humour, which, were it republished, would probably be held to be greatly superior to anything that will be found in his autobiography. Still, if we are to believe the present work to be the composition of Savage at all, it must be remembered that it is avowedly written in prison; and although Dr. Johnson tells us that amid all the disadvantages and miseries which attend the residence in a gaol, Savage preserved his serenity unruffled, and even devoted a portion of his time to poetical labours, yet I cannot but think that his (so called) serenity was merely an outward appearance of calmness; for the poetry he wrote in Bristol gaol is greatly inferior to compositions undertaken at an earlier and happier period of his life-if, indeed, happiness and Savage could at any time of his existence be supposed to be connected.

It will not fail, I suspect, of being remarked,-since it struck me forcibly during the perusal of this autobiography,—that the levity, or the gaiety, or by whatever name it may be termed, which is introduced into it, is the diversion or the relief of an unhappy man, bent upon the completion of a very painful, although a self-imposed task, and, with all the anxiety of morbid pride, desirous to conceal from the reader the anguish his narrative revives within his breast. Still more obvious is the intent,

frequently disclosed, to impose upon the reader, and even upon himself, by sophistical excuses, and shallow attempts at palliation of his conduct in several particulars, a recourse to which, however, he disclaims at the outset. This is the common artifice of pride, which were indeed despicable, did it not, in spite of itself, discover a sense of shame.

The work contains allusions here and there which seem sometimes to require explanation. Where I have deemed it to be necessary I have subjoined a short note. I believe the whole, with these aids, will be perfectly intelligible.

In conclusion, although nearly a century has elapsed since the death of this unfortunate and erring man, let me bespeak for him, 'a wretch,' as he affectingly calls himself in the dedication of a poem to Queen Caroline, whose days were fewer than his sorrows;' let me bespeak for him, I say, that indulgent and charitable construction of his conduct which a year after his death was pleaded for him with so touching an earnestness by Samuel Johnson, his illustrious biographer and friend.

This it were needless now to do, but that a very few years since an attempt, not altogether unsuccessful, was made to throw utter and contemptuous discredit upon his story, so implicitly believed and set forth to the world by Johnson. To this ill-considered, ill-argued, and ignorant attempt, and to its author, I will not more particularly allude. The hand that wrote it is now as powerless as that of Richard Savage.

CHAPTER I.

WHENEVER I am seduced into reflection-for I confess I have no turn for it—nothing strikes me more forcibly than the incurable selfishness of mankind, myself of the number. In prison and likely to remain so, abandoned by my friends,-my enemies (how I scorn and despise them!) exulting, jubilant over my downfall,-laying their cool heads. together, their cold hearts left at home, and reciting over the finger and thumb all the acts of his life which precipitate the proof that Richard Savage must, of necessity, have come to this at last,-what should Richard Savage do, but as he does now, snap his unoccupied fingers at the world? bid his enemies and his friends-there is no difference between them-say their worst of him at leisure, and, if they can, do better at speed? and afterwards go to the-housetop, and pray, if it be only like the Pharisee? I was just upon commending them to a lower place; but they may wait till they are fetched.

Yes, this I have to do. Since the public will no longer have me piecemeal, they shall take me in the lump. If they will not purchase my brains for the future, as I have been accustomed to offer them, by small portions at a time, let them buy the whole carcass. I will write

my own history, and make some of the rogues blush, and turn pale too, and some of the folks stare, who have long ceased to look for alternations of red and white in the leathern visages of the said rogues. And, surely, in the life that I have led, or rather, in the life that has misled me, there must be much-more than enough-to be wise, grave, gay, lively, severe, and sad and solemn upon. Ah me! that joy should depart, -that woe should abide,—that memory should renew the one as a presence, and recall the other as a shadow,-that the will should have no power to remove woe, no power to restore joy! And yet what have I set down? That shall be fairly tried. My heart shall dance, though my soul be weary. My soul shall give my heart a little decorum; my heart shall lend her sister a little activity. No face-making or shouldershrugs; no trolling of sentiment from a round mouth; no deprecation of censure with expanded palms. There shall be no handkerchief at the eye when there were no tears; no laugh upon the lip when there was no smile. What I believe of myself, within; what I outwardly know of myself; that will I unfold-neither more nor less. If I shall not spare myself, no one will expect that I shall be merciful to others; and if I do not find for their actions such excuses and palliations as I make for my own, it will be because I know my own nature better than theirs ; and because I am not going to do for them what they can do, and probably will do, nay, very likely have done for themselves. And

now :

In the year 1698, and in the purlieus of Chancery Lane, lived an obscure couple, who had at one time seen better days than fortune appeared disposed to allot to them for the time to come. In fact, Mr. Ambrose Freeman had formerly officiated as butler in the family of a noble lord, in which capacity he acted for several years. Unfortunately, however, a passion for drinking, which, it seems, he inherited from his mother, and which he was wont to indulge without reference to time and without regard to place, wrought a conviction in the mind of his lordship that the services of Ambrose might be dispensed with, seeing that the wine under his care was far too unimpeachable to require so unceasing and rigorous a test as that to which he was accustomed to submit it. When, there fore, he had occasion to wait upon his master for his arrears of wages, with an intimation that if my lord would generously overlook his last inadvertence, he himself should be most happy to discard from his memory the kicking that ensued upon it, his proposition met with a decided negative; and Ambrose was fain, instigated by a little love, and a great deal of vengeance, to prevail upon the cook to ratify the compact that had so long subsisted between them, and to become Mistress Freeman. It was Hobson's choice with the lady--Freeman or no man. She gave him her thumb upon it, and got his assurance that he would be more circumspect as to his potations for the future.