The Sun.
London, England, 1854-07-03 00:00:00

LIT BRAT URE.

The Flitch of Bacon; or, The Custom of Dunmow.
A Tale of English Home. By W. Harrison
Ainsworth. Routledge.
It would be scarcely surprising that Harrison
Ainsworth should have secured to himself a very
wide popularity—supposing his fictions to have
possessed scarcely any other merit besides that of
being based upon themes of the most felicitous
selection. We have remarked this more than once
already, but the thought recurs to us again with
every additional contribution offered in succession
by our novelist to what have long since been the suf-
ficiently ample stores of English imaginative litera-
ture. Sometimes it has so happened that, by the
luckiest inspiration, he has chosen as the subject
of his romance—be sure of this, a romance of cap-
tivating and enthralling fascination--a celebrated
personage, half real, half mythical, the marvel of
his generation and the glory of his country, such as
" Crichton," James Crichton, the Admirable
Crichtoi, the paragon of Scots, the beau ideal of a
fieholar and a gentleman, as daring as handsome,
as learned as accomplished. Surely no one ever hit
upon a worthier hero of Romance—not from the
I days of Apuleius to those of Lesage or of Bulwer
Lytton. Sometimes, and this, by the way, not
unfrequently, as the readers of Mr. Ainsworth—
readers numbered now by thousands upon thou-
sands—merely require to be reminded—sometimes
the scene and the very title of his romance have
been some renowned structure, some really national
edifice, a palace, or a prison, or a fortress (occasion-
ally even all three together, as in the instance of
"The Tower of London' ),a building, the very name of
which conjures up on the instant a multitude of
historic and heroic associations. It was thus with
" Windsor Castle" depicted by him at the time
when its royal precincts were haunted by the burly
form of Harry JIII., and the beautiful face of
Anne Boleyn, and the phantom shape of Herne the
goblin hunter. It was thus with the old palatial
fabric of " St. James's," the gorgeous interior of
which the romancist revealed to us, as it appeared
in the age of Addison and Marlborough, illus-
trating anew that famous couplet of Pope in re-
ference to Hampton Court—
" Here thou, great Anna! whom three realms obey,
Dust sometimes counsel take—and sometimes tea."

Thus, likewise, have we listened, " spell bound" to
the tale of " Old Saint Paul's," recounted in such
wierd and eldritch tones by the modern novelist,
who had not scanned in vain the wonderful
record of the Plague, by Defoe, or the no less mar-
vellous celebration of the Fire, by Dryden ; that
terrible plague which devastated London almost as
fearfully as the Angel of Death the army of
Sennacherib, and that dreadful fire which seemed
only to spare the remnant of the city, as by a
miracle, according to the bard of the year and the
event towards the close of his Annus lifirabilis,
when—

" The Eternal heard, and from the heavenly quire,
Chose out the cherub with flaming sword ;
And bade him slowly drive th' approaching fire
From where our naval magazines were stored."
When, in obedience to the summons--
" The blessed minister his wings display'd,
And like a shooting star, he cleft the night.
He charged the flames, and those that disobey'd
He lashed to duty with his sword of light."
Sometime, again, with no less adroitness than that
displayed by him in the selection of a celebrated
character, or of some celebrated palace or cathe-
dral, Mr. Ainsworth has found a fitting theme for
romantic narrative in a renowned fable like that of
the Rosicrucians, vide " Auriol," or in a memor-
able incident like that of the discovery of the Gun-
powder Plot, vide " Guy Fawkes." To say nothing
of the skill disclosed in the selection (as a kindred
theme for glamour or witchery over the mind of a
romance-reader) of the association of the fortunes
of thenotable housebreaker, "Jack Sheppard," with
those of the far-famed Jonathan Wild the Great,
already celebrated by the classic pea of Fielding ;
or of the association, again, of the fortunes of the
House of " Rookwood" with those of Dick Turpin,
the pink and pattern of highwaymen. Scarcely
less ability, or rather, we should say, perhaps more
correctly, scarcely less adroitness in the choice of a
new theme, was very recently shown once more by
Harrison Ainsworth, in the instance of ona of the
latest of his literary productions—we mean his ro-
mance of the " Star Chamber." Prior to this he
had taken a popular phrase, or legend, or whatever
else you may like to call it, as the theme of an-
other romantic narrative, meaning that of his demi-
diabolic story about Pendle Forest, called the
" Lancashire Witches." Not one of his ingeniously
selected subjects for romance, however, can be
deemed, we conjecture, in any one respect more
peculiarly happy as the theme for a thoroughly
English story—a story racy of the soil from
which it may be said to have sprung, as
really as any atom of its indigenous vegetation
—than the one which has here suggested to
our popular novelist this charming tale of
Home, anent " The Flitch of Bacon." It may be
rememhered by the readers of the .Neiv Monthly
Magazine as having adorned that periodical by
instalments inserted in it at uncertain and some
of them very protracted intervals. Completed at
length,its chapters have now been republished in
this goodly form collectively. The volume is
gracefully illustrated by woodcuts from designs 1 y
John Gilbert, and is dedicated moreover, quaintly,
but prettily, to
Bern-
hard Tauchnitz,
The
wFel Flitch
fain
nB
of Lei; sig, than whom, says
united couple"
the author, " I have never known a more fondly
"The Chevalier and Madame
goodiold English
their names, indeed, appropriately enough, inscribed
at the head of the ledieation As a chronicle of a
ewuhsteoreinf,orethw.cituhstroemasoofnros
Dunmow—
" wa—re
atebonb"elinieaveye,
accept-
able,
matter of fact, or, in words, to
other
beveendeetmo etdheaccmepostt-
imaginative of antiquary, While the alluring in-
terest of the tale itself in the incidents of which
the peculiarities of this eccentric old custom of
Dunmow may be said to be embalmed, mustrender
the book a welcome boon to the lover of genuine
romance. As the preface to the volume under
notice reminds us significantly—it has been said,
and said truly b.,.
Grose, " Among the jocular
treasures of England none have been more talked
of than the Bacon of Dunmow." Talked of, in
truth, so lunch has it been generation after gene-
ration that, as Mr. Ainsworth adds, " the Dun-
mow Flitch has passed into a proverb." A pro-
verb not unfrequently referred to in our na-
tional literature—mentioned by a writer in our
language as remote and venerable as Geoffrey
Chaucer—the Custom alluded to having been origi-
nated, it is generally believed, by a Fitz waiter, in
the early part of the thirteenth century. Wonder-
ful to relate, moreover, it is a custom which ap-
pears, from reliable records, to have survived the
lapse of nearly fire hundred years, having only very
recently, indeed, fallen into desuetude—namely,
about the middle of the last century. It is about
that period that the date of his pleasant story has
been fixed by Mr. Ainsworth—who informs his
readers at the outset, not. merely that he has dis-
covered that the last dehvery. of the Flitch occurred
on the 20th of June, 1701—Just three years and a
few days over a century from the present time—but
observes, " I possess a very curious print, quite
Hogarthian in its character, from a drawing taken
on the spot by David Ogborne, representing (appa-
rently with great accuracy) the ceremony and proces-
sion on that occasion." It appears, by the way, that
a similar custom to that so long in vogue at Dunmow,
in Essex, existed at one time at Wichenoure, in
Staffordshire. But as our romancist observes it was
much less generally known, that of the Dunmow
Flitch being in much greater request. According
to Grose—" some persons having demanded the
Flitch, it has, as is said, been refused "—hence
several of the more ludicrous scenes introduced
into Mr. Ainsworth's amusing narrative. ,c Many
years ago I planned this tale," writes the author,
" but it is only now that my long-meditated plan
has been accomplished." For the which may we,
with considerable reason, proffer him our felicita-
tions. Divided into five parts or books, the story
refers in the opening part to the Old Inn at Dun-
mow, in the second to the Lady of the Manor of
Little Dunmow, in the third to the Haunted
Chamber, in the fourth to Monkbury Palace, and
in the closing book to the Procession of the
Dunmow Flitch. No less than ton of Harrison
Ainsworth's animated and musical " Lyrics" will
be found scattered through the work—happiest
among which is Captain Juddock's bacchanalian,
i entitled " The Wine-Drinker's Declaration." The
different personages groopei together in this tale
of English Home are excellently well delineated.
First and foremost there is Jonas Nettlebeil, other-
, wise Jovial Jonas, otherwise Friar Bacon—the