A Foot's Heart.

Waikato Times, Volume X, Issue 567, 8 January 1876, Page 2 (Supplement)

A Foot's Heart.

BY JOHN HLACKItiN.

In the year 1710, in tho r°ign of Queen Anne, when all Fngland was in a state of ferment in consequence of the burning of two sermons preached hy Dr fcaeheverill, rector of St t-a-viourV, t-outhwark, in which he denounced the revolution and recommended firo and stake for all persons who dissented from tho established Church, there was born, on the sixth of February, a poet who was destined to move in the highest ranks of society as the most popular poet of j his ape, who wrote and published I several volumes of verse, satirical and I laudatory, which brought him fortune 1 and fame, and won for him a wife from the family of a wealthy baronet, yet whose very name is now forgotten. Scarcely a similar instance can be found in the annals of literature in evidence of the evanescent character of worldly famo when not associated with truth and nature and tho progress of humanity. At the very moment when Bishop Atterbury was engaged upon Sacheverell's defence, this child of tho Muses was screaming in a little dark London room, over a tailor's shop, in one of the many dark passages between the Royal ■ xchango and Finsbury square. The morning was raw and frosty when Mrs. U hitehead presented to her husband, Paul Whitehead, tailor, of London Wall, a son and heir, Paul Whitehead tho younger. Ihe lad grew ruddy and healthful for a t ondon boy, am l in due time went to a school within the sound of the famous Bow bells which bad in other days so much enchanted JUick Whittington. The elder "Whiteheads circumstances gradually improved, he was recognised as a first-rate cutter, and made the plush breeches of jolly aldermen and was even patronised by the Lord Mayor Little Paul objected to tho trade of a tailor and was duly apprenticed to a city mercer, where it appears he preferred writing satires on passing events to attending to his master's concerns. He was moreover very ambitious, and wanted a profession. He left the city mercer, and found his way j into the office of a barrister in the ! Temple where he made more progress in rhyming than in law, consequently he was never called to the bar. He ' wrote, and found a publisher who introduced hie to the public. A young lady Mary Dyer, beautiful and accomplished for the time, was enraptured with Paul's verses and especially with a delicious ode to herself, extolling her virtues and beauty, and their influence over a poet's heart. Mary was the only daughter of Mr K winner- | ton Dyer, Baronet of Spain's Hall, situated near Chelmsford, in the pastoral county of Essex. Mary was a plain name for a baronet's daughter, but plain names flrere choson by tho aristocracy in the days of Queen « nne, they were queenly and fashionable. The queen herself, according to historians, wa« remarkably simple and homely in her tastes. The poet's heart was touched, and he laid his effusions at Mark's feet He proposed and was accepted on certain conditions — like Jacob he was to wait seven years for tho baronet's daughter. During that period he brought forth a succession of poems on love, war, and other subjects, full of egotism and vanity, and soon found himself tho most popular poet of England. Mary was still faithful, and on a beautiful May morning in 1736, Paul Whitehead and Mary L)yer were married in the village church near tho baronet's estate, and he received his wife's wedding portion of £10,000. The marriage was worthy of a prince, and wm favoured by the queen. Paul ; Whitehead, poet, and his little, loving wife, who gloried in being united to tho greatest poet of the age, associated with the highest families in the land They resided in a town house, in tho locality of Drury Lane, then the most fashionable part of London, and near where famous Mr Pepys lived when V> wrote his diary, which is still r> ad with interest, while the vorses of Paul Whitehead are buried in eveilasting oblivion. Paul's mode ol living was far beyond his in come, and his vrife'B fortune soon passed away. He now sought a r«tirtmtnt mort luittd to hii moftni,

and pu ret 1 a sod a pi elty residence on the skirts of Twickenham common ; o spot well known in conneciiou with Ilsc lives of /lit Manner ''ope, and Jlora< l o'V\ alpolc, a^d there \Vhitcliend lived m comparative contentment vith Mary, i* it* Middlesex homo was coav and comfortable for a man of uiodcrate views, but Paul was ambitious, and like Moore, the Irish poet, fond of the Bociety of a lord. His wife died at the cottage and her husband, whose money was gone, and whose popularity was on the wane was now a lonely man, and wrote sorrowfully on the vanity of earthly fame. The shadows of life were gathering about him, and and possibly he would have fallen into poverty had it not been for Lord Do Spencer, of High Wycombo, who know the poet in his butterfly days. This nobleman procured for the melancholy poet a considerable annuity from the Government of Gcorgo the 'Ihird, about the year 1770, which saved him from despair. "Wbitehead died on the 30th December, 1774, at his Twickenham cottage. Ho bequeathed his heart to his generous benefactor, and might havo said ' I Rive tlieo Ml. I p»n no more, 1 hough poor tlio offering bo ' The poet's heart was taken out of his body, and forwarded to his patron, who received it as an expression of gratitude, enclosed it in a small urn, and placed it on an elegant marble pedestal in ono of the nhadv recesses of his lordship's park at Wycomhe with ' A heart that knows no guile ' written thereon. The pedestal was surrounded bv a fence, inside of which ro^es and "other flowers lent their beauty and fragrance. The ceremony of fixing the urn was performed with great solemnity, and the day was a general holiday with the peasants and chair-raakers of this part of Buckinghamshire. \'\h Lorddhip made a jrreat speech on the occasion, and upoke of the man and the immortality of his verses. The Buckinghamshire militia attended, minute guns were fired, and an original incantation set to music by the celebrated Dr. Samuel Arnold was sung by professional singers from London engaged for the purpose. The verses and fame of Paul Whitebead havo passed for ever, and the urn under a willow tree and a little dust are all that remains of a poet's heart.