Mr Timbs, in his book upon English Eccentrics and Eccentricities, introduces us to a collection of funny people, with whom it is good company to pass an hour. To get away from the dull routine of conventionality for a while is at all times a relief, more especially when we fill the interval by watching some of our eccentric fellow-creatures who are good enough to divert us by their antics. Some are serious in their folly; some are mad; some we admire, while others again awake our pity; but one and all they are gifted with a force of will that merits attention.

A collection of dead-and-gone eccentrics now pass before us, recalling a few living ones that we know of, whose collected vagaries, if published, may in turn probably amuse our grandchildren. First, let us look at Beckford, a name not much remembered now, although it belonged to a man who was a marvel in his day. Gifted with extraordinary powers of mind and will, he did everything by turns, and nothing long. He wrote a book that created a sensation. No great marvel that, to people of our day, when the difficulty is to find some one who has not written a book; but Beckford wrote as no other author. Vathek was written at one sitting! It took him three days and two nights of hard labour, during which time he never undressed. We know of one instance somewhat similar. A reigning lady novelist told us once that she was pledged to her publisher to send him a three-volume novel by a certain date. Two days previous to the expiration of her contract, her novel had only reached the opening chapter of the third volume. On the evening of the first day she went to a ball, danced all night, returning home at the small-hours of morning, when, after taking off her ball-dress, and drinking some strong tea, she sat down to finish her task. All that day she wrote and on into the next night, never leaving her desk until she had written finis; when with trembling hands she despatched her manuscript in time to fulfil her engagement.

There are some natures that need the pressure of necessity, or self-imposed necessity, to goad them into action; their resolution once formed, no obstacle is suffered to come between them and its fulfilment. Beckford was one of these. He determined to build a house—the abbey at Fonthill, where he resided for twenty years—and swore by his favourite St Anthony that his Christmas-dinner should be cooked in the abbey kitchen. Christmas approached, and the kitchen was in an unfinished condition. Every exertion that money could command was brought to the task, and Christmas morning saw the kitchen finished and the cooks installed. A splendid repast was prepared, and the dinner actually cooked, when lo! and behold, as the servants were carrying in the dishes through the long passages into the dining-room, a loud noise was heard, and the kitchen fell through with a crash! But what cared Beckford? He was rich; he could afford to build his kitchen over again; meantime he had humoured his whim and kept his vow to St Anthony; and we may add, made good his title to eccentricity, for which we applaud him, and pass on to watch some others.

What sorry figure is this that comes next? A poor neglected imbecile, living in squalid lodgings at Calais. It is scarcely possible to recognise in this unhappy being the once gay and elegant Beau Brummel, the glass of fashion and mould of form to the men and women of his generation, whom he ruled with the despotism of an autocrat. Yet this is the poor Beau and no other. He is holding a phantom reception. Having desired his attendant to arrange his apartment, set out the whist-tables, and light the candles—alas! only tallow—he is ready at eight o'clock to receive the guests, which the servant, previously instructed, now announces. First comes the Duchess of Devonshire. On hearing her name the Beau leaves his chair, and with the courtliest bow, the only reminiscence of his departed glory, he advances to the door and greets the phantom Duchess with all the honour that he would have given the beautiful Georgiana. He takes her hand and leads her to a seat, saying as he does so: 'Ah, my dear Duchess, how rejoiced I am to see you; so very amiable of you to come at this short notice. Pray bury yourself in this arm-chair. Do you know it was the gift to me of the Duchess of York, who was a very kind friend of mine; but poor thing, you know, she is no more!' At this point tears of idiotcy would fall from his eyes, and he would sink into the arm-chair himself, awaiting the arrival of other guests, who, being duly announced, were similarly greeted. With these ghosts of the past he would spend the evening until ten o'clock, when the servant telling each guest that his or her carriage was waiting, would carry his poor old master off to bed. We cannot wish him good-night without the payment of a sigh for the pantomime he has acted and the sad lesson it conveys.

And now we conjure up a droll figure, whose eccentricity borders on madness, the spendthrift squire of Halston, John Mytton. He is tormented with hiccup, and tries the novel cure of setting fire to himself in order to frighten it away. Applying a candle to his garment, being sparely clad at the time, he is soon in flames. His life is only saved by the active exertions of some people who chance to be in the way at the time. He invites some friends once, and when the company are assembled in the drawing-room, he startles them all by riding into the room on a bear! The guests are panic-stricken: one mounts on a table, another on a chair; they all strive to make their escape from the ungracious animal, and its still more savage master, who is enjoying the misery of his guests with the laugh of a madman. Let us too leave him.

Ladies have a great field for the display of eccentricity, in their mode of costume. We know of one lady who has never altered her style of dress since she was eighteen. The consequence is that every ten years or so the fashions come round to her, and for a brief period she is À la mode. Never having made any concessions to the abominations of crinoline or false hair, she is at the present time more orthodox than she appeared five years ago. Every time has had its eccentricities in this respect, and Mr Timbs shews us a certain Miss Banks, who died in 1818, and in plain terms looked a 'regular guy.' She was a lady of good position, being the sister of Sir Joseph Banks. Her costume consisted of a Barcelona quilted petticoat, which had a hole on each side, for the convenience of rummaging two immense pockets stuffed with books of all sizes, which did not add to the symmetry of her already large proportions. In this guise she went about, followed by a footman carrying a cane, as tall as his mistress, or her luggage when accompanying her on a journey. She was the originator of the words Hightum, Tightum, and Scrub, which so many ladies are fond of applying in the order of precedence to their wearing apparel. These words Miss Banks invented to distinguish three dresses she had made for herself at the same time, and all alike; the first for best, the second for occasional, and the third for daily wear.

While on feminine eccentricities we must record some that we have met with in our own day. So convinced is one elderly married lady of the peculating propensities of all lodging-house menials, that after each meal a curious scene takes place in her room. Every article, such as her tea-caddy, sugar-basin, jam-pot, &c., which she has had occasion to use during the meal, is placed on the table, on which stand a gum-bottle, a brush, and several long strips of paper. She then proceeds to gum up her property. A strip of paper is gummed round the opening to the tea-caddy; the pot of preserve is similarly secured, together with all else that is likely to attract that lawless fly the lodging-house servant! We know of another lady who for years has lived with only the light of gas or candle in her rooms. She imagines that air and daylight are injurious to her sight, and her rooms are little better than well-furnished tombs, into which no chink of light or breath of heaven is suffered to intrude.

Mr Timbs introduces us to a lady equally eccentric in her ideas about water. Lady Lewson of Clerkenwell objected totally to washing either her house or her person. She considered water to be the root of all malady, in the unnecessary way people expose themselves to the chills caught by frequent ablution! And as for health—was she not a living instance that a morning tub is all nonsense, for she was one hundred and sixteen years old when she died! For the greater part of her life she never dipped her face into water, using hog's-lard instead, to soften her skin. Although large and well furnished, her house, like her person, was never washed and but rarely swept.

We remember an amusing instance of French respect for cold water, in the speech of a French gentleman, married to an English lady of our acquaintance who used to indulge in a bath morning and evening; a custom so astounding to her husband that he exclaimed in our hearing: 'She does not use water—she abuses it.'

Eccentricity often displays itself in an inordinate affection for animals and a singular manner of treating them. An instance of this was the late Earl of Bridgewater, who now comes before us with his family of performing dogs. He lived in Paris during the last century, where the circumstances we narrate took place. He was a miserable-looking little man, unable to walk without the support of two lackeys. He had an immense fortune, which he spent in gratifying every caprice. Was a book lent him? It was regarded as the representative of its owner, and returned in the earl's landau, occupying the place of honour and attended by four footmen in costly livery, who handed it to the astonished owner. His carriage was frequently to be seen filled with dogs, his special pets. On the feet of these dogs he bestowed as much attention as though they were unfortunate human beings; he ordered them boots, for which he paid as dearly as for his own. Not caring to entertain his own kind at his table, few people dined with him. Still, covers were daily laid for a dozen, served by suitable attendants. At this table he received, and dined with no less than twelve favourite dogs, who seemed to comprehend the compliment paid them, as they occupied their chairs with decorum, each with its white napkin tied round its neck. They were so trained, that should any, by an instinct of appetite, transgress any rule of good-manners, he was banished from the table, and degraded to an antechamber, where he picked his bone in mortification; his place remaining empty until he had earned his master's pardon.

There are some whose eccentricity takes the form of hatred of society. Of this number was the Honourable Henry Cavendish, a man of great learning and enormous fortune, who earned the title of 'Woman-hating Cavendish,' as he would never see a woman if he could avoid it. If a female servant was unlucky enough to shew herself, she was instantly dismissed. He was compelled to employ a housekeeper, but all their communications were carried on by correspondence. His ideas of dining were restricted to legs of mutton only. On one occasion when his housekeeper suggested that one leg of mutton would not be sufficient for a party invited, he met the difficulty by ordering two!

A number of eccentricities are displayed by people in their burial bequests. A certain Dr Fidge, a physician of the old school, converted a favourite boat into a coffin, which he kept under his bed for many years in readiness. When death drew near, he begged his nurse to pull his legs straight and place him as a dead man, as it would save her trouble afterwards, saying which he comfortably departed. Job Orton, a publican of the Bell Inn, Kidderminster, had his tombstone with epitaph erected in the parish church. His coffin was also built and ready for him; but until he was ready for it he used it as a wine-bin. Major Peter Laballiere of Box Hill, Dorking, selected a spot for his burial, which he directed should be without church rites, and head downwards; in order that, 'as the world was in his opinion topsy-turvy, he might come right end up at last!' But a certain Jack Fuller caps even the major, for he left directions that he was to be buried in a pyramidal mausoleum in Brightling churchyard, Sussex; giving as his reason for selecting to be embalmed in stone above ground, his unwillingness to be eaten by his relatives—a process he considered inevitable if buried in the ordinary manner, for 'The worms,' he declares, 'would eat me; the ducks would eat the worms; and my relations would eat the ducks.'

Of all eccentricities, those displayed by misers are the most notable and repulsive. To dwell upon them at any length is neither pleasant nor interesting; it is only where parsimony and genius are allied that one pauses to examine the specimen. Let us now take a brief survey of Nollekens the sculptor, in whom these opposites were met. Descended from a miserly stock, he did not fall short of his ancestry in his love of money, and it first became apparent in a filthy mode of living while a student at Rome. He married a woman even more parsimonious than himself, and their housekeeping was pitiful. Hatred of light is an observable trait with most misers; and over their coals and candles the Nollekens were scrupulously economical; the former, Nollekens counted with his own hands. The candles were never lighted at the commencement of the evening; and if a knock were heard at the door, it was not answered until repeated, in case the first should prove a runaway, and the candle be wasted! A flat candlestick served them for ordinary purposes, and by carefully extinguishing them when company went, they made a pair of moulds last a whole year!

Before his marriage, Nollekens had an unfortunate little servant called Bronze, whose appetite he so feared that he placed her on board-wages, and gave her only just enough money to furnish him with food each day, which he took care to consume. Bronze with rare patience, for which we cannot account, continued to serve after her master was married, and declared that never had she seen a jack-towel in their house and never had she washed with soap! Mrs Nollekens never went to any but a second-hand shop for their wearing apparel and shoes, and their charity was of the same second-hand nature, as when Mrs Nollekens directed the maid to give the 'bone with little or no meat on it' to two starving men who applied for relief. If a present of a leveret was sent them, they made it serve two dinners for four people. The sculptor grew more generous before death, his parsimonious partner having gone first, as though he strove by sundry spasmodic gifts to atone for the avarice of a life. If these details are as unsavoury to some as to ourselves, we only justify their narration on the ground stated, that the qualities they set forth were found existing in a genius.

Did time permit we should like to linger over those notable eccentrics, Porson, Horne Tooke, Peter Pindar (Dr Wolcot), and others; but we can only give a characteristic anecdote or two. Porson, the cleverest and most erratic of creatures, was the victim of abstraction to an extent that rendered him forgetful at times to eat. 'Will you not stay and dine,' asked Rogers the poet. 'Thank you; no; I dined yesterday!' he replied. Dr Parr asked him before a large assembly what he thought about the introduction of moral and physical evil into the world. 'Why, doctor,' said Porson, 'I think we should have done very well without them.' And it makes us laugh to hear an ignorant person, who was anxious to get into conversation with him, ask, if Captain Cook was killed in his first voyage. 'I believe he was,' answers Porson; 'though he did not mind it much, but immediately entered on a second!'

Tooke began life with a joke, telling every one that he was the son of a Turkey merchant; by which name he defined his father's trade of poulterer. His ready wit was never at a loss; and it is to him we are indebted for the following well-known joke. 'Now, young man,' said an uncle to him one day, giving him good advice, 'as you are settled in town I would advise you to take a wife.' 'With all my heart, sir,' replied Tooke; 'whose wife shall I take?'

Peter Pindar boasted that he was the only man that ever outwitted a publisher. Being a popular writer, his works brought him a good income. His publisher wishing to purchase the copyright and print a collected edition, made him an offer in cash. In order, however, to drive a good bargain, Pindar feigned to be in very bad health, declaring he could not live long; and every time the publisher came to see him he acted the invalid to such perfection that he got a handsome annuity, which, to the disgust of the publisher, he lived to enjoy until the unconscionable age of eighty-one.

We leave a number of our eccentric friends with regret. There was Curtis, whom we do not care to accompany in his search after the horrible and his passion for convicts and executions. There was Dr Fordyce, whose eccentricity in the matter of food is a study; he lived for years on one meal a day only, but a meal so enormous that we wonder, as we read the quantities, how he ever lived to repeat it daily for twenty years. We can only now recommend those who have been interested so far, to supply our deficiencies by going to the source from whence we have gathered the matter for this brief notice.