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CIII.

EXTRACTS FROM THE DIARY OF A LEARNED DIVINE AND ANTIQUARY OF THE

EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.

June 25th, 1766.-Foggy. My beautiful parrot died at ten at night, without knowing the cause of his illness, he being very well last night.

Feb. 1. Saturday.-Fine day and cold. Will Wood junior carried three or four loads of dung into the clay-pit close. Baptised William, the son of William Grace, blacksmith, who I married about six months before.

March 3. Monday. I baptised Sarah, the bastard daughter of the widow Smallwood of Eton, aged near 50, whose husband died above a year ago.

was

6. Thursday. Very fine weather. My man blooded. I sent a loin of pork and a spare-rib to Mr. Cartwright in London.

8. Saturday. Very fine weather, and Mr. Cartwright brought me a quarter of house-lamb from London.

27. Thursday. I sent my two French wigs to my London barber to alter them, they being made so miserably I could not wear them.

June 17. Tuesday.-Windy, cold, and rainy. I went to our new archdeacon's visitation at Newport-Pagnel. I took young H. Travel with me, in order that he might hear the organ at Newport, he being a great psalm-singer. Mr. Tanquerary, rector of Bow-Brick-Hill, preached the sermon before the archdeacon, who gave a charge. The most numerous appearance of clergy that I remember:

forty-four dined with the archdeacon, and, what is extraordinary, not one smoked tobacco. My new coach-horse very ungain.

Aug. 16th. Saturday.-Cool day. Tom reaped for Joe Holdom. I cudgelled Jem for staying so long on an errand at Newton Longueville."

The Rev. William Cole, author of "Athenæ Cantabrigienses," (for our diarist was no less a personage,) was at this time, we believe, vicar of Burnham in Buckinghamshire. He was not at all in the dotage of age (as might indeed be presumed from his vigour in cudgelling), being only fifty-two years old. He was a favourite companion and correspondent and intimate friend of the fastidious Horace Walpole, of the poet Gray, and other distinguished men of the period. He left to the British Museum one hundred folio volumes of MSS., all neatly written with his own hand; enjoining that they were not to be opened till twenty years after his death.

CIV. FANS.

THOMAS CORYAT's story about the use of forks in Italy, and his introduction of those cleanly and convenient implements into England, whereby, and "for no other cause," he obtained the nickname of Furcifer, is very generally known. The following description of fans by the same odd, fantastic traveller, which goes to prove that paper fans were not used in England at the time of his tour (1608), and that we borrowed them as well as forks from the Italians, has been less noticed.

"Here I will mention a thing, that altho' perhaps it will seeme but frivolous to divers readers that have already travelled in Italy, yet because unto many that neither have beene there, nor ever intend to go thither while they live, it will be a meere novelty, I will not let it passe unmentioned. The first Italian fannes that I saw in Italy did I observe in this space betwixt Pizighiton and Cremona; but afterwards I observed them common in most places of Italy where I travelled. These fannes both men and women of the country doe carry, to coole themselves withall in the time of heat, by the often fanning of their faces. Most of them are very elegant and pretty things. For whereas the fanne consisteth of a painted piece of paper and a little wooden handle; the paper, which is fastened into the top, is on both sides most curiously adorned with excellent pictures, either of amorous things tending to dalliance, having some witty Italian verses or fine emblems written under them; or of some notable Italian city, with a briefe description thereof added thereunto. These fans are of a meane price, for a man may buy one of the fairest of them for so much money as countervaileth our English groate.”— Coryat's Crudities.

In the south of Italy men still continue to use the fan, and in hot weather one may often see a captain of dragoons, moustached and "bearded like the pard," fanning himself with all the graces and dexterity of a young coquette. The fans in general use are not such "elegant and pretty things" as Coryat found; but, such as they are, an active trade is carried on in them by old men

and little boys, who hawk them about the streets, and always take their stand by the doors of the theatres and coffee-houses when the evening is particularly close and melting.

END OF THE SECOND VOLUME.

LONDON:

PRINTED BY SAMUEL BENTLEY,
Dorset Street, Fleet Street.

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