THE LIFE AND REMAINS OF JOHN ROBY. * THE late Mr.
Roby was a banker of Rochdale, who combined many tastes, acquirements, and accomplishments, not often found in one person, and still less in the member of a calling where it is so dan- gerous to deviate from rigid routine or follow the promptings of imagination. He played, he sang, he even composed a little. He loved pictorial art, and followed it as an amateur. He wrote verses and published them. He achieved The .Duke of Man- tua, a Tragedy ; which on its first appearance, in 1823, ran through several editions, and, as his most unequivocally success- ful poetical attempt, is reprinted by his widow in this volume of his Remains. He had also a taste for the beauties of nature, and a strong turn for archseolog,y, whether connected with edifices or traditions. To this last subject he was indebted for what is upon the whole his best and his best-known work, the " Traditions of Lancashire "; into which he threw the knowledge he had acquired of the history or legends of his native county. The first series of this work was published in 1829, and, though expensive from its style of printing and illustration, shortly reached a second edition. A second series appeared in 1831, with equal success; and in 1837 Mr. Roby published an account of a Continental trip chiefly characterized by rapid locomotion. As he wrote fluently, he still continued to publish, but in a fugitive form. He also fell in with the practice of lecturing, now become a fashion, and, incessantly active, gave lectures on various topics at various places. He was contemplating further occupations when he was drowned, by the wreck of the Orion steamer, in 1850, in the fifty-eighth year of his
age. This book is rather a tribute of affection by his widow than the fulfilment of a public demand; but many worse books are published from far' less praiseworthy motives. The poetry, although wanting force and originality, is pleasing; the three tales of county tradi- tions have a smack of Scott's manner, the Waverley novels having perhaps unconsciously suggested Mr. Roby's principal work; the memoir is agreeably and gracefully written, though of course with a leaning to the subject of it which confines the criticism to one side.
Externally John Roby's life flowed placidly enough, and on the whole internally also ; yet an incident occurred to him in youth, which, strange as it is, has been so often made the staple turning- point of romance as to have become stale in fiction.
"It will be readily supposed, that, with the impassioned temperament of genius, he gave himself up without reserve to the power of a first love ; and, with the adhesiveness which phrenology so largely assigned to him, the per- manence of his attachment promised to equal its intensity. For a time, the course of true love did ' run smooth' ; but at length a coldness he could not account for, but which had for some time pained him, led on his part to re- monstrance. It was resented, and the interview ended in mutual displea- sure. Riding home, not in the happiest mood, his horse stumbled and threw him. For a few days he lay, unable to travel, in a house near the spot where he had been °thrown. Humbler and wiser thoughts prevailed ; and the first use he made of his recovered power of moving was to return and seek another interview. Reconciliation followed, and he left happy and reassured. But, the evening after his arrival at home, a short, cold, and haughty epistle, brought him by private hand, forbade his future visits. Stung to the quick by what appeared heartlessness, if not duplicity, he re- solved to forget his idol for ever, and looked around for a worthier object in whose affection he might lose his sense of injury and regret. It was not till his faith was plighted to another that he discovered the undated note was written previously to his last visit, shortly after their angry parting, but owing to his absence from home not sooner delivered. Honour forbade any allusion to this circumstance to the object of the second attachment, to whom he considered himself sacredly engaged ; but the blow struck home. A severe illness, during which his life was despaired of, supervened ; and, though an elastic nature recovered, it still retained traces of this 'maddening misery.' More than thirty years afterwards he could not refer to these passages of his history without a shudder, and intense though controlled feeling."
This bit of romance in a banker's life is in seeming strong con- trast to a singular power of intuitive arithmetic.
"One remarkable endowment that must have contributed to his success in his own walk in life, was a power he possessed of determining the amount of any sum of figures that might be laid before him. The friend an extract from whose letter was given on p. 41, thus alludes to this faculty. If a double column, twenty figures in each row, or a cube of six, arranged as be- low, were placed before him, he would tell the sum as soon as his eye could
1 2 5 4 9 1 6 3 9 8 1 9 6 9 1 2 2 9 7 8 2 7 9 2 3 7 4 7 8 4 4 6 3 6 1 3 read the figures.
He arrived at the result without going through the ordinary process ; he saw it at a glance. If, as was rarely the case, owing to a passing fit of dulness, or a momentary distraction of thought, he failed to see the sum at once, he was rather slow than otherwise in doing it by the ordinary mode. Mr. Roby himself told me, that Bidder, perhaps the most wonderful calculator this country ever produced, though his superior in some points, could not approach him here.' "
Mrs. Roby was with her husband in the Orion, accompanied by his daughter by his first wife. In the crowd and confusion she missed him, and, though herself apparently in the most dan- gerous part of the stern, was saved. Independently of the reader's interest in the feelings of a person so near death, the account is not without use, as showing how slight a thing may save, assisted
• The Legendary and Poetical Remains of John Roby, Author of "Traditions of Lancashire." With a Sketch of his Life and Character. By his Widow. Pub- lished by Longman and Co. by presence of mind and quiet. "Everything comes to him who I knows how to wait." " The vessel was perceptibly going down in the fore-part, when the cap- tain jumped on the skylight, and assured the passengers that if they could remain in the vessel they would be saved. This seemed probable, as the shore- boats were seen in the twilight putting toward us; but, alas! we were now too rapidly sinking to allow of their near approach. The vessel lurched gradually towards the shore. We had placed ourselves on the part which, from the position of the ship, would be longest above water, with the foot resting on the ledge, where we had so happily stood in the afternoon. It enabled us to grasp a rope which came down from the mizen-mast to the edge of the vessel, and there awaited her going down, which I now saw was inevitable.
• • • •
" In a few minutes, a sudden hissing excited fears of an explosion, and we sank immediately, the hot water rushing up to us as we went down. Rising again, before my head was above water, I felt something at the back of my hand ; I instinctively grasped it—it was a rope. A moment after I was on the surface. I exchanged the rope for a spar, and turning round my head to ask for Lille, found, to my inexpressible joy, she was close behind me, just as we had sunk.. This cheered us both with hope of eventual safety. But where was one far dearer ? I grasped with my left band one of those fenders made of netted cords which are used to prevent ships coming into too close contact with each other or with the harbour ; but it was hard work to keep up. We encouraged each other, and, recollecting that the human body is lighter than the same bulk of water, we tried to float ; but this was no easy matter. The number of persons struggling in the water agitated it ; and in the endeavour to keep it out of the ears by raising the head, the equilibrium was disturbed, and the feet sank, and with that the dread of going down again came. By the stopping of my watch at half-past one, it afterwards appeared that a quarter of an hour elapsed between the striking of the ves- sel and her going down, and probably nearly as long passed between our rising and our being picked up by the shore-boats. It was a work of some difficulty and time, when they came up, to extricate us from the ropes : our benumbed limbs and weakened frames rendered us incapable of making any effort ourselves. Never mind, you are come among Christian people,' was the boatman's exclamation, when he had taken me into the boat ; and never was truer word spoken. The heartfelt sympathy and substantial kindness we received from all classes could not have been exceeded, and can hardly be imagined."
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