like it, and so don't suffer it. As to the fair, where lads and lasses meet in their best gowns, and ribands, and clean smocks, you must know, most assuredly, more of it than I do, as I seldom troubled about it. You must bear in mind that this fair is exactly the same as that held in the month of May, but as no notice has been taken of it by Mr. Hone in either of his volumes, I suppose it very little matters whether your description is of the fair held in May or September." I have to lament, my dear sir, the discontinuance of the ancient custom of backswording at Purton village; but so TO THE WORTHY AND RESPECTABLE INHABITANTS OF PURTON, By their ever true and devoted humble servant, C. T. CHARLES TOMLINSON. SONG. PURTON FAIR. Come, neighbours, listen, I'll sing you a song, The damsels all meet full of mirth and of glee, And they are as happy as happy can be; Such worth, and such beauty, fairs seldom display, There's the brave lads of Purton at backsword so clever, "Tis "Old Corey Dyne," who wisely declares, "Old Corey's" the merriest blade in the fair, September 4. HOW TO KEEP APPLES. Gather them dry, and put them with clean straw, or clean chaff, into casks; cover them up close, and put them into a cool dry cellar. Fruit will keep perfectly good a twelvemonth in this manner. How to mark your fruit. Let the cultivator of choice fruit cut in paper the initial letters of his name, or any other mark he likes; and just before his peaches, nectarines, &c. begin to be coloured, stick such letters or mark with gum-water on that side of the fruit which is next the sun. That part of the rind which is under the paper will remain green, in the exact form of the mark, and and so the fruit be known wheresoever found, for the mark cannot be obliterated. NATURALISTS' CALENDAR. Mean Temperature... 59. 92. September 5. OLD BARTHOLOMEW. I learn to climb, to walk and run. All life's concerns require that health That limb and muscle, nerve and vein, The Olympic games, of Grecian birth, With ease the horseman learns to ride Clias, and Voelker as the chief, This day has been so marked in our Fling down the gauntlet,-mount the line. almanacs since the new style. THE SEASON. We may expect very pleasant weather during this month. For whether the summer has been cold, warm, or showery, September, in all latitudes lying between 45 and 55 degrees north, produces, on an average, the finest and pleasantest weather of the year as we get farther south the pleasantest temperature is found in October; more northward than 55 degrees the chills of autumn are already arrived, and we must look for temperature to August. THE GYMNASIUM. For the Every-Day Book. Hæc opera atque hæ sunt generosi Principis artes. Let cricket, tennis, fives, and ball, • Perennial Calendar. Caleidoscopes were once the taste,— Sept. 1826. J. R. PRIOR. A TOTAL ECLIPSE IN CALIGRAPHY. To the Editor of the Every-Day Book Sir,-As a subscriber to your highly entertaining work, I take the liberty of sending you the following. In the first volume of the Every-Day Book, page 1086, I found an account of some small writing, executed by Peter Bales, which Mr. D'Israeli presumed to have been the whole bible written so small, that it might be put in an English walnut no bigger than a hen's egg. "The nut holdeth the book; there are as many leaves in this little book as in the great bible, and as much written in one of the little leaves, as a great leaf of the bible."—There is likewise an account in the same pages of the "Iliad" having been written so small that it might be put in a nut-shell; which is nothing near so much as the above. I have lately seen written within the compass of a new penny piece, with the naked eye, and with a common clarified pen, the lord's prayer, the creed, the ten commandments, the sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth, tenth, eleventh, twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth collects after Trinity, the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, &c., the name of the writer, place of abode, nearest market town, county, day of the month and date of the year, all in words at length, and with the whole of the capital letters and stops belonging thereto, the_commandments being all numbered. It was written by, and is in the possession of, Mr. John Parker of Wingerworth, near Chesterfield, Derbyshire: the writing bears date September 10, 1823. This piece of writing, I find, upon calculation, to be considerably smaller than either of the before-mentioned pieces. My calculation is as follows: A moderate sized egg will hold a book one inch and three quarters by one inch and three-eighths. Bibles have from about sixty to eighty lines in a column; I have not seen more. In this ingenious display of fine penmanship, there are eighty lines in one inch, and two half-eighths of an inch, which in one inch and three quarters, (the length of the bible,) is one hundred and six lines, which would contain one-third more matter than the bibles with eighty lines in a column; and one line of this writing, one inch and two-half eighths of an inch in length, (which is the sixteenth of an inch less in bread than the small bible,) is equal to two lines from one column of the great bible--for example. and I will make the Land waste, and all that is therein, by the hand of strangers." One line of Mr. Parker's writing being part of the seventh collect after Trinity: "good things; graft in our hearts the love of thy name, increase in us true religion, now”– : Another line being part of the ninth and tenth commandments :Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's house."— "false witness against thy neighbour. 10.- his writing to the inspection of the curious, Mr. Parker very obligingly submits and would execute one similar for a prothought worthy of a place in your " Everyper reward. If this account should be Day Book," I shall feel much obliged by its insertion, and will endeavour to send you something amusing respecting the customs, pastimes, and amusements of this part of Derbyshire. I am, Sir, Your well-wisher And obedient servant, Lings, near Chesterfield, NATURALISTS' CALENDAR. September 7. ENURCHUS. For this saint, in the church of England calendar, see vol. i. col. 1253. CHRONOLOGY. On the 7th of September, 1772, a most astonishing rain fell at Inverary, in Scotland, by which the rivers rose to such a heighth, as to carry every thing along with the current that stood in the way. Even trees that had braved the floods for more than one hundred years, were torn up by the roots and carried down the stream. Numbers of bridges were swept away, and the military roads rendered impassable. All the duke of Argyle's cascades, bridges, and bulwarks, were destroyed at his fine palace, in that neighbourhood.* • Annual Register. the stage of the world more remarkable for their peculiarities and eccentricities. Of the early part of James Brown's life little is known that can be depended upon, but the compiler of the present article has heard him assert that he was born at Berwick-on-Tweed; if this be the case it is probable he left that town at a very early age, as in his speech none of the provincialisms of the lower order of inhabitants of Berwick could be observed, and had he resided there for any length of time, he must have imperceptibly imbibed the vulgar dialect. Certain, however, it is, that when a young man he resided in that "fashionable" part of Newcastleupon-Tyne called "the Side," where he kept a rag-shop, and was in the habit of attending the fairs in the neighbourhood with clothes ready-made for sale. During his residence in Newcastle his first wife died; of this person he always spoke in terms of affection, and was known long after her death, to shed tears on her being alluded to. In all probability it was owing to his loss of her that his mind became disturbed, and from an industrious tradesman he became a fanatic. A few years after her decease he married a Miss Richardson, of Durham, a respectable though a very eccentric character, and who survived him a year. This lady being possessed of a theatre, and some other little property in Durham, he removed to that city to reside. When Brown first devoted himself to the muses is uncertain, but about thirtythree years ago, he lived in Newcastle, styled himself the poet-laureate of that place, and published a poem explanatory of a chapter in the Apocalypse, which was "adorned" with a hideous engraving of a beast with ten horns. Of this plate he always spoke in terms of rapture. We have heard that it was designed by the bard; but as Mr. B., though a poet, never laid any claim to the character of an artist, it is our belief that he had no hand in its manufacture, but that it was the work of some of those waggish friends who deceived him by their tricks, and rendered his life a pleasure. Their ingenious fictions prevented his dwelling on scenes by which his existence might have been embittered, and it is but justice to his numerous hoaxers to assert, that without their pecuniary assistance he would have often been in want of common necessaries. Though credulous he was honest; though poor he was possessed of many virtues; and while they laughed at the fancies of the visionary, they respected the man. Brown once indulged a gentleman in Durham with a sight of the drawing above alluded to, and on a loud laugh at what the poet esteemed the very perfection of terrific sublimity, Brown told him he was no christian, or he would not deride a scriptural drawing which the angel Gabriel had approved !" Brown's poesy was chiefly of a serious nature, (at least it was intended to be so,) levity and satire were not his forte. Like Dante, his imagination was gloomy-he delighted to describe the torments of hell the rattling of the chains, and the screams of the dainned; the mount of Sisyphus was his Farnassus, the Styx was his Helicon, and the pale forms that flit by Lethe's billows, the muses that inspired his lay. His poems consisted chiefly of visions, prophecies, and rhapsodies, suggested by some part of the sacred volume of the contents of which he had an astonishing recollection. When he was at the advanced age of ninety-two it was almost impossible to quote any passage of scripture to him without his remembering the book, chapter, and frequently the verse from whence it was taken. Of his poetry (though in his favourite city he has left many imitators) we cannot say any thing in praise; it had "neither rhyme nor reason," it was such as a madman would inscribe on the walls of his cell. His song, like that of the witches in Thalaba, was "an unintelligible song" to all but the writer, on whose mind in reading it, to use the words of one of the sweetest of our modern poets, "meaning flashed like strong inspiration." The only two lines in his works that have any thing like meaning in them are "When men let Satan rule their heart Our author's last, and as he esteemed it, his best work-his monumentum ære perennius, was a pamphlet published in Newcastle in 1820, by Preston and Heaton, at the reasonable price of one shilling; for, unlike his brother bards, Mr. Brown never published in an expensive form. He was convinced that merit would not lie hid though concealed in a pamphlet, but like Terence's beauty, diu latere non potest, and that nonsense, though printed in quarto with the types of a Davison, would be still unnoticed and neglected. On his once being shown the |