Note 320 — MISCELLANEOUS RECOLLECTIONS A SUPPLEMENTARY CHAPTER BEGUN IN 1826

For a long time Resident Senior Fellow of King’s College. He had taken an active part in the Chatterton controversy, and maintained to the last the authenticity of the poems. I knew nothing of him but his appearance. That was not prepossessing. He had the reputation of a saturnine and sarcastic wit, but was known by his intimates to conceal a very warm heart under that rugged exterior. He it was who said of Porson, that it was “a pity so much wit should be in a fool’s keeping.” Mr. Smith (Bobus) related an incident which occurred when he was sitting with him in his study at King’s, and which, as it illustrates his whimsical character and at the same time redounds to his credit, may be worth repeating. They heard a strange noise and clacking on the staircase, which, when followed by a knock at the door, greatly discomposed the morose old bachelor. However, he exclaimed with a resolute voice, “Come in,” and an ill-dressed old country-woman, with a magpie on her wrist, made her appearance. Glynn, it seemed, from charity had frequently, and ultimately with success, visited her sick daughter gratis at a distance from Cambridge, and the grateful old goody had trudged over from the fens with the only remuneration her slender means could supply, viz., “her favourite magpie.” The studious Doctor was appalled at the prospect of so troublesome an inmate, and yet unwilling to mortify the kind feelings that had brought him. So, after sundry gesticulations and grotesque exclamations of “Pretty Meg,” “Charming bird indeed,” he archly and good-humouredly said, “Thank ye, Dame, thank ye from the bottom of my heart. I like the bird vastly; I enjoy the present exceedingly. And now I’ll tell you what you shall do; you shall board it for me at half a crown a week, for I know you will take care of it, and mind you do: but I should be called out to my patients and neglect it.”—V.H.

[Robert Glynn (1719-1800), physician. He was a firm believer in the authenticity of the Rowley Poems, and bequeathed the originals, at his death, to the British Museum. These poems are now undisputably known to be the work of Thomas Chatterton, the youthful genius who poisoned himself at the early age of eighteen in despair at his poverty and the ill success of his forged essays and verses.]