The novel finished, his thoughts were still at work.
As lying within the compass of his now limited
means of research, he undertook a second series of
* Half-hours with the best Letter-Writers and Auto-
biographers ; and I see by the dates on the proof-
sheets now lying before me, that he had completed
it by the beginning of June 1868. But his vigour
was by this time greatly abated, and he acknow
ledges in the Preface the help for which he had
been indebted to a member of his family. Still, as
in the earlier series, the examples are well selected ;
the introductions and interchapters are written in a
cheerful and kindly spirit ; there is shrewd charac
terisation, genial criticism, a healthy moral tone ;
and, as in the sketch of Sir John Dinely, some
pleasant personal reminiscences.
With these Half-hours ended his career as an
author. His career as editor continued a few
months longer. In the second volume of the Pas
sages (pp. 58-64) he narrates at length the circum
stances which led him to originate in 1827 the
* British Almanac/ and the associated volume, the
* Companion to the Almanac, and he remarks with
evident, and very justifiable, satisfaction that {i the
pair have travelled on together for thirty-seven
years under my direction, through many changes of
12 INTRODUCTORY.
times and men," while "the general features of
these publications have undergone very little change
during this long period." For yet five years more
he continued to edit the pair, and he brought his
literary labours to a close by preparing during the
last autumn days of 1868, the volume of the * Com
panion to the Almanac for 1869. This was the
forty-second of the annual series, each volume of
which had been produced under his direct super
vision. He could not have undertaken the labour
another year, and the work was transferred, with
its high character unimpaired, to other hands.
Mr. Knight s latest literary contribution to the
* Companion was a lively and interesting paper in
the volume for 1867 on Mural Records of Pedestrian
Tourists the pedestrian tourists being the pro
fessional tramps who infest the country workhouses,
and the mural records the scribblings they leave
behind them on the walls of the " Tramp-wards " in
which they make their temporary abode.
For a while longer he continued to select, or to
talk of selecting, books to be read to him with a view
to some new work ; but day by day it became more
and more clear to those who watched so tenderly
over him, that at length his working days were past,
and gradually, but tacitly, he seemed himself to ac
quiesce in that conviction. When, however, he ceased
to read, or be read to, with a view to writing, he re
mained as eager as ever in acquisition. At this time.
INTRODUCTORY. 13
and indeed as long as his strength held out, he was an
almost insatiable listener. Still, as of old, he watched
with unfailing interest the course of public events,
still liked to know what new books were published,
and in his general reading, whilst following the
current literature, mingled therewith the good old
favourites, alternating with the lighter works,
whether old or new, those of a higher and graver
purpose. Thus, for example, in these last years he
found in the Life, but still more in the Sermons, of
the Kev. W. F. Kobertson, of Brighton, a perennial
source of pleasure, refreshment and support.
And so, becoming constantly feebler, more and
more entirely dependent on those around him, slowly
wore away these latter days. For change of air and
scene, and brighter skies and warmer winter climate,
Ventnor, St. Boniface, with its pleasant grounds, and
Bonchurch, were successively chosen for residence
(1869-71) ; and when it was thought advisable to
be nearer London, Esher, Weybridge, and finally
Addlestone in Surrey (1871-73). But he had become
indifferent now to place or scene ; the days of his
fourscore years were in "their strength but labour
and sorrow," and fast " coming to~ an end, as it were
a tale that is told/
The end came gently, solemnly. About half-past
two in the afternoon of Sunday, the 9th of March,
1873, tended and supported still, as ever, by Her to
whom, eight years before, he had dedicated these
14 INTRODUCTORY.
Passages/ and by the Daughters who constantly
shared in the pious duty, he passed away peacefully,
and, as it seemed to those who watched by him,
painlessly, to his rest. He was laid in the family
vault in the old burial-ground at Windsor on the
following Friday : the morrow would have been his
eighty-second birthday.
This is neither the place nor the occasion to con
sider the rank of Charles Knight as a writer, or to
attempt to estimate the work which he undertook
and that which he achieved. What he did is told
in the following pages. These few supplementary
lines are simply a notice of the occupations of his last
years. What he aimed to bring about, and what he
more than any one else aided in effecting, was, " the
general diffusion of sound popular literature." He
from the first longed to see "the wide fields of
knowledge become the inheritance of all ;" or, as he
expressed it in one of the last pages which he wrote
with his own hand,* in the outset of life he formed
the " desire to make knowledge a common possession
instead of an exclusive privilege," and to the end,
through good and evil fortune, he steadily prosecuted
his purpose.
JAMES THOBNE.
April, 1873.
* Dedication to Shadows of the Old Booksellers. October, 1865.
EAELY EEM1NISCENCES.
EAELY REMINISCENCES:
A PRELUDE.
SECTION I.
N the night of the thirty-first of December,
1800, I had gone to bed with a vague
fear that I should be awakened by a
terrific noise which would shake the
house more than the loudest thunder-clap, and
would produce such a concussion of the air as
would break every window-pane in Windsor town.
The house in which my father lived, and in which I
was born, was close to the great entrance to the
lower ward of Windsor Castle, called, after its
builder, Henry the Eighth s gateway. I crept down
in the dawning of that first day of the year to a sit
ting room which commanded a view of the Round
Tower. The aspect of that room was eastern. I
watched the gradual reddening of the sky ; and I
momently expected to see a flash from one of the
many cannon mounted on the Tower, and to hear
that roar from those mighty pieces of ordnance which
was to produce such alarming consequences. I knew
not then that these guns were only four-pounders,
and that if all the seventeen had been fired at once
the windows would most probably have been safe.
I watched and watched till the sun was high. It was
18 EARLY REMINISCENCES :
then reported that the King had ordered there should
be no discharge of the cannon of the keep, for the
new painted window by Mr. West, at the east end of
St. George s Chapel, might be broken by the concus
sion. There was no boom of artillery ; but the bells
of the belfry of St. George s Chapel and the bells of
the parish church rang out a merry peal not so
much to welcome the coming of the new year and
beginning of the new century (for the learned had
settled, after a vast deal of popular controversy, that
the century had its beginning on the 1st of January,
1801, and not on the 1st of January, 1800), but to
hail the legal commencement of the Union with Ire
land. The sun shone brilliantly on a new standard
on the Round Tower. I had often looked admiringly
upon the old standard, tattered and dingy as it some
times was ; but I now beheld that this new standard
was not only perfect in its shape and bright in its
colours, but was wholly of an unaccustomed pattern.
There were the arms of England in the first and
fourth quarterings ; the arms of Scotland in the
second quartering ; and the arms of Ireland in the
third. But where had vanished the fleur-de-lys ?
Was his gracious majesty no longer King of Great
Britain, France, and Ireland, as his style had run in
all legal instruments in the memory of man, and a
good deal beyond ? The newspapers said he was now
to be styled " George the Third, by the grace of God,
of the United Kingdom of Great Britain arid Ire
land, King, Defender of the Faith." The good folks
of Windsor argued that the change was ominous of
the departing glory of Old England.
It is not to be supposed that I knew much of
such matters in this tenth year of my life ; but,
A PRELUDE. 19
nevertheless, I knew something of what was going
on in my little world of Windsor, in connexion with
the doings of the great world beyond the favoured
home of the king. I was the only child of a widowed
father ; his companion in his few leisure hours ; the
object of his incessant solicitude. I cannot remem
ber myself as I was painted at two years old, in a
white frock with a black sash the indication that
I had lost my mother. She was, as I was told by
those who knew her and loved her, a most amiable
woman, whose society my father had enjoyed only
for a few years the daughter of a wealthy yeoman,
of Iver, in Buckinghamshire. The "yeoman" of
those days, although a landed proprietor, did not
aspire to be called "esquire." He would now be
recognised as " gentleman-farmer." My white frock
and black sash had given place to jacket and trowsers.
But still I can call to remembrance the unjoyous
head of the desolate household ; his passionate
caresses of his boy; his long fits of gloom and
silence. We had little talk of childish things. Of
his own childhood he never spake to me. I came
to know, in after years, that he had been brought
up by his relative, the Rev. James Hampton, who
subsequently earned an honourable fame as the
translator of Polybius. This learned man died in
1778. In 1780, my father was settled at Windsor ;
for I have heard him relate with some complacency
how he had asserted his political independence, by
voting for Admiral Keppel in that year ; " though,"
according to Horace Walpole, " all the royal bakers,
and brewers, and butchers voted against him." My
father had qualified himself for his trade of a book
seller, by his experience in the house of Hors-
20 EARLY REMINISCENCES :
field, the successor of the Knaptons, both of which
publishers were very eminent in their day. He had
moreover a taste for literary composition, which he
professionally indulged in the useful labour of com
piling a little work which held its place in many
editions for half a century as " The Windsor Guide."
I find copper-plate views accompanying this hand
book which bear the inscription : " Published as the
Act directs by Charles Knight, Windsor, March 31st,
1785." In 1786 and 1787 he published the first
celebrated periodical written by Etonians. I possess
an interesting document, being the receipt to Charles
Knight for fifty guineas " in full for the copyright of
The Microcosm, a periodical work earned on by us,
the undermentioned persons, under the name and
title of Gregory Griffin. Received for John Smith,
Robert Smith, John Frere, and self, George Canning."
Of this school-boys production, remarkable for its
intrinsic merits, but more so for the subsequent
eminence of its writers, Canning was the working
Editor. He was thus brought into friendly commu
nication with my father. It was not only when the
brilliant supporter of Pitt was rising into political
importance, but when he had taken his place among
the foremost men of his time, that he had a kindly
feeling towards his first publisher, often calling
upon him with a cordial greeting when he visited
Windsor.
As I recollect my father when I was a child of
seven or eight years, he was much occupied by his
business, for he had become a printer in addition to
his trade of stationer and bookseller. A considerable
portion of his time was also spent on public affairs,
first of the Parish, and then of the Corporation. I
A PRELUDE. 21
was left much to myself, except when I listened
to the old-world stories of the faithful servant to
whose charge I was committed by my dying mother
how like she was to the Peggotty of Dickens !
It was fortunate, therefore, that I acquired very
early a taste for reading. I had access to a large
collection of books, and I quickly found abundant
consolation for my solitary hours in that reading
which, somewhat unwisely I think, has now been
supplanted by what is held to be directly instructive.
To the child, Robinson Crusoe is, happily, not a
sealed book in an educational age ; but the " Seven
Champions of Christendom," the "Arabian NigUts,"
the "Arabian Tales," with their wonders of the
" Dom Daniel" (which, looking back upon, seem to mo
to have as much poetry in them as "Thalaba"), the
"Tales of the Genii," "Gulliver s Travels," "Philip
Quarll," " Peter Wilkins," and a dozen others, now
vanished, were not then superseded, either in their
original seductions or in safer abridgments, by the
tamer fictions in which moral and religious truths are
inculcated. My avidity for reading, and, perhaps,
the dangerous locality in which I lived an open
sewer from the Castle creeping at the back of my
father s house made my constitution feeble ; and
the feebleness ended in typhoid fever. I recovered
slowly, and was taken for the establishment of my
health to a farm which was tenanted by the father
of my good nurse. I have described what was the
life of a small farmer when I was playing at
"Farmer s Boy" at Warfield one of the parishes
comprised in Windsor Forest.* My host was a
* "Once upon a Time." The Farmer s Kitchen.
22 EARLY REMINISCENCES :
shrewd Yorkshireman, from whom I learnt more
than I could have obtained from many books. He
was a tenant on the Walsh estate, having been placed
in this farm as a reward for his faithful service
with the Governor of Pennsylvania, Sir John Walsh,
before the War of Independence. He would dis
course to me of the wonderful man who drew light
ning from the skies the friend of his own scientific
master (whose papers about the Torpedo and other
curious matters may be read in the Philosophical
Transactions), and he told how Benjamin Franklin
became a great instrument in accomplishing that
change which had separated the American States
from their parent country. He would relate to me
incidents of the war about taxing the colonists,
speaking rather from the revolutionist than the
loyal point of view. Altogether, a plain good man
of simple habits and large intelligence. He and his
bustling wife lived in the usual style of the southern
farmer of the days of Arthur Young, before he was
pampered by war-prices into luxury and display.
The greater war-time of the French Revolution had
in twenty years extinguished much of the imme
diate interest of the half-forgotten era of the Ame
rican war. My experienced friend would make
the stirring passing events of the week known to
his household, in reading aloud the " Reading
Mercury," which was duly delivered at his door by
an old newsman on a shambling pony. How eagerly
we looked for this messenger, whose budget would
provide occupation for many a dull evening ! Pitt
and Fox, Nelson and Bonaparte, were familiar
names. Dibdin s songs had found their way to this
solitary inland place. Invasion was a threat we
A PRELUDE. 23
despised ; for within a couple of miles of our farm
was a summer-camp of regular soldiers. I have
walked wonderingly through the lines of tents which
stretched across the sandy plain near Swinley, and
have lingered among the pickets till the evening gun
warned us to move homeward. But our country had
other protectors from our great enemy. It was satis
factory to learn, from a popular song which our
ploughmen trolled out, that
"Should their flat-bottoms in darkness come o er,
Our brave Volunteers would receive them on shore."
There were, indeed, Volunteers before the close of
the eighteenth century, and though they were some
what disparagingly called "Loyal Associations," as
though they were not soldiers, I can bear my testi
mony that at Windsor in their blue coats, black belts,
and round hats with a bear-skin over the crown, they
looked very formidable, although perhaps not quite
equal to suppress a riot for cheap bread.
My pleasant months at Brock Hill Farm came to
an end ; and I went home to begin the dreary life of
a day-school. Dreary, indeed, it was ; for the educa
tion was altogether rote-work ; without the slightest
attempt to smooth over the difficulties that presented
themselves in geographical names held together by
no thread of description, and in rules of arithmetic,
to be regularly worked through without the slightest
endeavour to explain their rationale. The beginning
of the century found me at this school. I was one
of the few who learnt Latin and French. The same
emigrd of the Revolutionary times taught both
tongues. I have no doubt his French accent was
perfect ; but his Latin, if I may judge from the way
24 EAELY REMINISCENCES :
in which he read the first line of the JSneid, was not
the Latin of Eton " I do trow."
" Arma veeroomque cano,Trojfe quee preemus ab orees."
My language-master was a pleasant gentlemanly
person who hated England thoroughly. I have
looked with him upon our illuminations of tallow
candles for some naval victory, and have been dashed
in my confident belief that our town guns, and our
bells, and the " Reading Mercury " told the truth,
when he assured me that this rejoicing was only a
false pretence ; that it was vain to expect that a
trumpery island would ever be able to contend
against France ; and that assuredly George III.
would soon resign Windsor Castle to the First Con
sul. Nevertheless, he prayed that he might not see
the downfall of another monarchy.
The misery of the poor in my native town at the
beginning of the century was sufficiently visible even
to my childish apprehension. On an evening of the
previous . autumn, when I was returning homeward
from a game in the Park, I heard the distant shouts of
a multitude, and saw a furious mob gathering at the
junction of the streets near the market-place. I got
into the safety of my home not too soon, for the mob
was coming towards the baker s shop that was next
door. They had smashed the windows of several
bakers in the lower part of the town. They believed,
as the greater number of people everywhere believed,
that the high price of corn was wholly occasioned by
combinations of corn-factors, meal-men, millers, and
bakers ; and that if these oppressors of the nation
could be compelled to bring their stores to market,
there would be abundance and cheapness, and no
A PKELUDE. 25
possible chance of the supply falling short. Our
neighbour the baker hid hiinself. He cared little if
his door were forced, and his loaves stolen, provided
the heavy box under his bed were safe. That box,
as he more than once showed me, was full of crowns
and half crowns, with some bright guineas, which he
had long hoarded. The reputed money-hoarders
were many in our town men and women who had
no faith in the Funds or the Bank of England. The
baker hid himself in the back bed-room where his
treasure was. My father from his window exhorted
the people to go home. I stood trembling behind
him, and was somewhat astonished to see how power
ful was the influence of firmness and kindness in
turning aside the wild but unpremeditated excite
ment of unhappy and ignorant men, who were not
without a sense of justice even in their anger. There
were a few more outbreaks as the winter drew on ;
for the price of bread continued to rise. In January
the price of the quartern loaf of 4 Ibs. 5 J ozs. was
Is. 9d. Windsor was always famous for its charities,
which, no doubt, were often improvidently bestowed;
but this, at any rate, was not a time in which the rich
could shrink from helping the poor, even if they had
known that the gratuitous distribution of provisions
had really a tendency to raise the price of food.
And so I looked upon crowds bringing daily their
tickets to a great empty house, which had been
fitted up with coppers, wherein unlimited shins of
beef became reduced into savoury soup, and bushels
of rice were boiled into a palatable mess. The work
of distribution was performed under the inspection of
a committee, who laboured with zeal, if not always
with judgment. One benefit they effected in addition
2
26 EARLY REMINISCENCES :
to that of saving the humbler population from the pains
of hunger. They gave time for them to ask them
selves whether any good would be accomplished by
threatening millers and bakers with summary ven
geance if they did not lower the price of meal and
bread. It was a hard lesson to learn, when there
were few sound teachers. Not many of the working
people could then read the newspapers ; but some
who did read them might tell their neighbours that it
was argued that the excessive price of meal and bread
was a hard thing to bear, but that it was less terrible
than the famine which would ensue, if farmers and
millers and bakers could be compelled to sell from
their small stores at a price at which every mouth
could be fed as in years of plenty. Nevertheless, the
educated and the ignorant would equally learn from
the newspapers, that great peers and wise judges did
not altogether disapprove of the principles that led
to mill-burning and window-breaking. They would
learn how a corn-factor named Rusby had been found
guilty of the crime of having purchased by sample in
the corn-market at Mark Lane 90 quarters of oats
at 41s. per quarter, and sold 30 of them in the same
market, on the same day, at 44s. ; and how the Lord
Chief Justice Kenyon had said to the jury, " You
have conferred, by your verdict, almost the greatest
benefit on your country that ever was conferred by
any jury." They would learn how this wicked corn-
factor met with his deserts, even before his sentence
for the crime of regrating had been passed upon him ;
for that his house in Blackfriars Road had been
gutted by an enraged populace. They would learn
how the earl of Warwick in the House of Lords had
recommended the adoption of a maximum, by which
A PRELUDE. 2?
no wheat should be sold at a higher price than ten
shillings the bushel ; and how his lordship had
rejoiced that no less than four hundred convictions
had taken place throughout the country for fore
stalling, regrating, and monopolising. And why did
he rejoice ? When the man Rusby, he said, was
convicted, the price of oats was fifty-two shillings per
quarter ; but such was the effect of his conviction,
that the price of oats fell from day to day till it came
as low as seventeen shillings and sixpence. Such
were the economic doctrines proclaimed sixty years
ago in high places ! Can we wonder that the igno
rance of the people was in perfect concord ?
It was a gloomy season, but nevertheless we
went on with our usual course of social observances.
Valentine s Day was well kept amongst us. It was
a serious affair then for a bachelor to send a letter
embellished with hearts and darts to a lady ; for it
was held to have a solemn meaning. But children
innocently played at Valentines. I have been led
blindfolded to the mistress of my affections in the
early mom, that no meaner divinity might meet my
eyes : no vulgar chance should interfere with our
deliberate choice. On St. Valentine s eve some would
draw lots, to determine which pair should be regis
tered in " Cupid s Kalendar." Old customs linger
about my early memories, like patches of sunlight
in a sombre wood. On the Saturday before mid-
lent Sunday, the farmers wives who kept their stalls
in our market would exhibit their well-known pre
paration of boiled wheat, which few old housewives
would neglect to purchase. On that fourth Sunday
in Lent, I regularly feasted on Furmety, with a lady
who was carefully observant of ancient usages. Does
28 EARLY REMINISCENCES :
any one in the southern counties now know the taste
of this once famous dish, made of boiled wheat
prepared in the farmer s household, and having been
a second time boiled in milk with plums, was served
sugared and spiced in a tureen ? In the West, the
custom is still as duly regarded as the rite of the
pancake on Shrove Tuesday. The first of May
was scarcely saluted " with our early song." But
in this May of 1801, there was a great ceremony at
Windsor, in which I bore a humble part. On the
10th of May the custom of perambulating the
parish, which had been in disuse since 1783, was
revived, with wondrous feastings. The printed record
of these doings for three days takes me back into
the scenes of my childhood. There, still, my "little