Roundabout Papers - Penn State University

Roundabout Papersborn, and was born therefore in 1715.We will begin with the present granny first. My goodold creature, you can’t of course remember, but thatlittle gentleman for whom your mother was laundressin the Temple was the ingenious Mr. Goldsmith, authorof a “History of England,” the “Vicar of Wakefield,” andmany diverting pieces. You were brought almost an infantto his chambers in Brick Court, and he gave yousome sugar-candy, for the doctor was always good tochildren. That gentleman who wellnigh smothered youby sitting down on you as you lay in a chair asleep wasthe learned Mr. S. Johnson, whose history of “Rasselas”you have never read, my poor soul; and whose tragedyof “Irene” I don’t believe any man in these kingdomsever perused. That tipsy Scotch gentleman who used tocome to the chambers sometimes, and at whom everybodylaughed, wrote a more amusing book than any ofthe scholars, your Mr. Burke and your Mr. Johnson, andyour Doctor Goldsmith. Your father often took him homein a chair to his lodgings; and has done as much forParson Sterne in Bond Street, the famous wit. Of course,my good creature, you remember the Gordon Riots, andcrying No Popery before Mr. Langdale’s house, the Popishdistiller’s, and, that bonny fire of my Lord Mansfield’sbooks in Bloomsbury Square? Bless us, what a heap ofilluminations you have seen! For the glorious victoryover the Americans at Breed’s Hill; for the peace in 1814,and the beautiful Chinese bridge in St. James’s Park; forthe coronation of his Majesty, whom you recollect asPrince of Wales, Goody, don’t you? Yes; and you went ina procession of laundresses to pay your respects to hisgood lady, the injured Queen of England, at BrandenburgHouse; and you remember your mother told you howshe was taken to see the Scotch lords executed at theTower. And as for your grandmother, she was born fiveyears after the battle of Malplaquet, she was; where herpoor father was killed, fighting like a bold Briton forthe Queen. With the help of a “Wade’s Chronology,” Ican make out ever so queer a history for you, my poorold body, and a pedigree as authentic as many in thepeerage-books.Peerage-books and pedigrees? What does she know274