the term "as merry as a grig" came from the fondness of the inhabitants of those isles of eternal summer for dancing, and that it should be properly "as merry as a Greek." Quien sabe? I know that lately in the Sessions papers I stumbled over the examination of one Levi Solomon, alias Cockleput, who stated that he lived in Sweet Apple Court, and that he "went a-grigging for his living." I have no Lexicon Balatronicum at hand; but from early researches into the vocabulary of the "High Mung" I have an indistinct impression that "griggers" were agile vagabonds who danced, and went through elementary feats of posture-mastery in taverns.
In '24, Hogarth illustrated a translation of the Golden Ass of Apuleius. The plates are coarse and clumsy; show no humour; were mere pot-*boilers, gagne-pains, thrusts with the burin at the wolf looking in at the Hogarthian door, I imagine. Then came five frontispieces for a translation of Cassandra. These I have not seen. Then fifteen head-pieces for Beaver's Military Punishments of the Ancients, narrow little slips full of figures in chiaroscuro, many drawn from Callot's curious martyrology, Les Saincts et Sainctes de l'Année, about three hundred graphic illustrations of human torture! There was also a frontispiece to the Happy Ascetic, and one to the Oxford squib of Terræ Filius, in 1724, but of the joyous recluse in question I have no cognizance.
In 1722 (you see I am wandering up and down the years as well as the streets), London saw a show—and Hogarth doubtless was there to see—which merits some lines of mention. The drivelling, avaricious dotard, who, crossing a room and looking at himself in a mirror, sighed and mumbled, "That was once a man:"—this poor wreck of mortality died, and became in an instant, and once more, John the great Duke of Marlborough. On the 9th of August, 1722, he was buried with extraordinary pomp in Westminster Abbey. The saloons of Marlborough House, where the corpse lay in state, were hung with fine black cloth, and garnished with bays and cypress. In the death-chamber was a chair of state surmounted by a "majesty scutcheon." The coffin was on a bed of state, covered with a "fine holland sheet," over that a complete suit of armour, gilt, but empty. Twenty years before, there would have been a waxen image in the dead man's likeness within the armour, but this hideous fantasy of Tussaud-tombstone effigies had in 1722 fallen into desuetude.[*] The garter was buckled round the steel leg of this suit of war-harness; one listless gauntlet held a general's truncheon; above the vacuous helmet with its unstirred plumes was the cap of a Prince of the Empire. The procession, lengthy and splendid, passed from Marlborough House through St. James's Park to Hyde Park Corner, then through Piccadilly, down St. James's Street, along Pall Mall, and by King Street, Westminster, to the Abbey. Fifteen pieces of cannon rambled in this show. Chelsea pensioners, to the number of the years of the age of the deceased, pre-*
- Not, however, to forget that another Duchess, Marlborough's daughter, who loved
Congreve so, had after his death a waxen image made in his effigy, and used to weep over it, and anoint the gouty feet.
