University of Virginia Library

As the mention of this long-eared beast brings to my recollection some curious facts, I shall here annex the same by way of a note, for the edification of those writers, who, like Mr. Clio, may be led to imagine that the world can be amused with Braying.

Ammonius Alexandrinus, the master of Origen, informs us of an ass that was a pattern of wisdom. Midas was honoured with the vast auricular appendages of this animal; and, in holy writ, Balaam's Ass, on the appearance of an angel, was gifted with speech. But in order to prove still further the honours conferred upon this creature, on quoting an English writer of two centuries back, in whose work the ass is made to speak, he thus expresseth himself.

“As contemptible as we are, there are two of us who have a bright place in heaven, as the constellation of Cancer will show you: as contemptible as we are, some of your greatest philosophers have held grand disputes on our very shadow, and Apuleius's golden ass makes us famous to eternity. As contemptible as we are, the strongest man that ever was made use of the jaw-bone of one of us, to destroy thousands of his enemies. The Empress Poppæa used our milk to make her skin the whiter: and lastly, you know who made his entry into Jerusalem upon one of us, for which we carry the cross upon our shoulders, as the badge of a blessing even to this day; which made a zealous Spaniard break out in these lines upon the sight of a pageant on Palm Sunday.

In the city of Beauvais, on the 14th of January was celebrated the Ass's Festival, or Holiday, in order to represent to the life the flight of Mary into Egypt. For this purpose the clergy of the cathedral being assembled, selected from amongst several that were presented to them the most beautiful damsel, who, being placed upon an Ass richly caparisoned, was thus conducted, as it were in triumph, from the principal church to that of St. Stephen's; where the young maid and her donkey were introduced into the chancel, and placed on the right side of the altar. In the course of the service, performed on this occasion, the chants were interrupted at intervals with an Hiu Haw, in imitation of the Ass's braying, which was loudly articulated by the whole congregation; and at the close of the mass, the deacon, instead of the accustomed Ita Missa est, uttered three loud brays, which were immediately re-echoed by his auditors. But the sublimest part of this famous ceremony was the hymn chanted on the occasion, which, as a great curiosity, I shall now give at full length; being handed down to posterity by Charles du Cange, the French antiquary, who preserved the extraordinary morceau from a manuscript upwards of five hundred years old.

From the eastern country this Ass is arrived, comely and stout, and fittest to bear a load.

Of pace he was slow, unless one had a stick, and his flanks were pricked with a spur.

He was on the hills of Sichem, bred up and fed by Reuben, and crossing the Jordan he leaped into Bethlehem.

Lo! with his long ears, the son of the yoke-bearer, a charming Ass! the king of Asses.

He outruns the young fawns, the deer, and the kids; and surpasses in swiftness the Dromedaries of Midian.

The gold from Arabia, and the frankincense and myrrh from Saba, were brought into the church by the virtue of the Ass.

While he is yoked to the cart with a heavy burden, his jaws grind a coarse food.

The barley with its ears and the thistle are his food; the corn from the straw by him is divided in the trough.

Say Amen, O! gentle Ass! now sated with grass. Repeat, O! repeat Amen! and now despise old forms.

So terminates this curious composition in praise of the Jack Ass tribe; the Latinity of which is peculiarly well adapted to illustrate the ceremony it was intended to commemorate.

If any man be desirous of a surfeit of laughing, let him but purchase the poems of Clio Rickman, and, upon perusal, I will venture my life to a farthing that he allows the dose to be infallible. His lucubrations, indeed, most powerfully bring to my recollection the flights of a writing-master bitten with the divine cacoëthes, who, during my boyish days, composed a prologue to Cato, which was to be performed on the breaking up of the seminary for the holidays, four lines of which I perfectly call to mind, viz.

And again,

This self-dubbed companion of the Nine was some years back a most determined advocate for the doctrines of Tom Paine; and such continues to be his reverence for that departed reformer of morality and religion, that he still keeps, as an invaluable relic, the table whereon were written the never-to-be-forgotten Age of Reason and Rights of Man; which fact the visitant is given to understand from a long inscription upon a brass plate, which now adorns this inestimable treasure; and, as extraordinary freaks are ever the concomitants of eccentric characters, Mr. Clio, to answer some momentous purpose, was no less enamoured of two-penny loaves, samples of which, both French and English, he was in the habit of procuring, in order, as it was conjectured, to contemplate the respective sizes of these staves of life; whence he drew a comparison between the prosperity of Gaul and his own native country. Such pursuits are well calculated to immortalize a man of Mr. Rickman's comprehensive and exhaustless genius, and it would be well for innumerable poetasters, who strut in his stilts, were they to adopt similar vagaries, in order to leave to posterity an indelible stamp of their boundless mental capacities. I should have felt extremely happy in obeying Sir Noodle by tacking the names of Clio's brethren to the present note, but as I fear the list might extend ad infinitum, I shall content myself with what has been already advanced upon the score of this gentleman's perceptions, leaving the reader to annex such signatures as may have appeared worthy the distinguished honour of being inscribed with that of the present celebrated character.

After having written the above, I perchance stumbled on a couplet, which I will here insert for the benefit of Mr. Rickman, who may doubtless be enabled to turn the same to good account.

The following lines were made by a Mr. Canfield, who was employed in rendering the Highlands of Scotland passable, by means of the finest military roads which ever were made in so wild a country. This gentleman must surely have felt the “fine phrensy” of which the Bard sings, before he could have taken this sublime flight from Parnassus.