THE INDIAN JUGGLERS

William Hazlitt

From Table Talk, 1828

COMING forward and seating himself on the ground in his white dress and
tightened turban, the chief of the Indian Jugglers begins with tossing up two
brass balls, which is what any of us could do, and concludes with keeping up
four at the same time, which is what none of us could do to save our lives, nor
if we were to take our whole lives to do it in. Is it then a trifling power we see
at work, or is it not something next to miraculous! It is the utmost stretch of
human ingenuity, which nothing but the bending the faculties of body and
mind to it from the tenderest infancy with incessant, ever-anxious application
up to manhood, can accomplish or make even a slight approach to. Man, thou
art a wonderful animal, and thy ways past finding out! Thou canst do strange
things, but thou turnest them to little account! - To conceive of this effort of
extraordinary dexterity distracts the imagination and makes admiration
breathless. Yet it costs nothing to the performer, any more than if it were a
mere mechanical deception with which he had nothing to do but to watch and
laugh at the astonishment of the spectators. A single error of a hair's-breadth,
of the smallest conceivable portion of time, would be fatal: the precision of the
movements must be like a mathematical truth, their rapidity is like lightning. To
catch four balls in succession in less than a second of time, and deliver them
back so as to return with seeming consciousness to the hand again, to make
them revolve round him at certain intervals, like the planets in their spheres, to
make them chase one another like sparkles of fire, or shoot up like flowers or
meteors, to throw them behind his back and twine them round his neck like
ribbons or like serpents, to do what appears an impossibility, and to do it with
all the ease, the grace, the carelessness imaginable, to laugh at, to play with
the glittering mockeries, to follow them with his eye as if he could fascinate
them with its lambent fire, or as if he had only to see that they kept time with
the music on the stage - there is something in all this which he who does not
admire may be quite sure he never really admired any thing in the whole
course of his life. It is skill surmounting difficulty, and beauty triumphing over
skill. It seems as if the difficulty once mastered naturally resolved itself into
ease and grace, and as if to be overcome at all, it must be overcome without an
effort. The smallest awkwardness or want of pliancy or self-possession would
stop the whole process. It is the work of witchcraft, and yet sport for children.
Some of the other feats are quite as curious and wonderful, such as the
balancing the artificial tree and shooting a bird from each branch through a
quill; though none of them have the elegance or facility of the keeping up of
the brass balls. You are in pain for the result, and glad when the experiment is
over; they are not accompanied with the same unmixed, unchecked delight as
the former; and I would not give much to be merely astonished without being
pleased at the same time. As to the swallowing of the sword, the police ought
to interfere to prevent it. When I saw the Indian Juggler do the same things
before, his feet were bare, and he had large rings on the toes, which kept
turning round all the time of the performance, as if they moved of themselves.
- The hearing a speech in Parliament, drawled or stammered out by the
Honourable Member or the Noble Lord, the ringing the changes on their
common-places, which any one could repeat after them as well as they, stirs
me not a jot, shakes not my good opinion of myself: but the seeing the Indian
Jugglers does. It makes me ashamed of myself. I ask what there is that I can do
as well as this! Nothing. What have I been doing all my life! Have I been idle, or
have I nothing to shew for all my labour and pains! Or have I passed my time in
pouring words like water into empty sieves, rolling a stone up a hill and then
down again, trying to prove an argument in the teeth of facts, and looking for
causes in the dark, and not finding them? Is there no one thing in which I can
challenge competition, that I can bring as an instance of exact perfection, in
which others cannot find a flaw? The utmost I can pretend to is to write a
description of what this fellow can do. I can write a book: so can many others
who have not even learned to spell. What abortions are these Essays! What
errors, what ill-pieced transitions, what crooked reasons, what lame
conclusions! How little is made out, and that little how ill! Yet they are the best
I can do. I endeavour to recollect all I have ever observed or thought upon a
subject, and to express it as nearly as I can. Instead of writing on four subjects
at a time, it is as much as I can manage to keep the thread of one discourse
clear and unentangled. I have also time on my hands to correct my opinions,
polish my periods: but the one I cannot, and the other I will not do. I am fond
of arguing: yet with a good deal of pains and practice it is often as much as I
can do to beat my man; though may be a very indifferent hand. A common
fencer would disarm his adversary in the twinkling of an eye, unless he were a
professor like himself. A stroke of wit will sometimes produce this effect, but
there is no such power or superiority in sense or reasoning. There is no
complete mastery of execution to be there: and you hardly know the professor
from the impudent pretender or the mere clown. [1]

I have always had this feeling of the inefficacy and slow progress of intellectual
compared to mechanical excellence, and it has always made me somewhat
dissatisfied. It is a great many years since I saw Richer, the famous rope-dancer,
perform at Sadler's Wells. He was matchless in his art, and added to his
extraordinary skill exquisite ease, and unaffected natural grace. I was at that
time employed in copying a half-length picture of Sir Joshua Reynolds's; and it
put me out of conceit with it. How ill this part was made out in the drawing!
How heavy, how slovenly this other was painted! I could not help saying to
myself, 'If the rope-dancer had performed his task in this manner, leaving so
many gaps and botches in his work, he would have broke his neck long ago; I
should never have seen that vigorous elasticity of nerve and precision of
movement!' - Is it then so easy an undertaking (comparatively) to dance on a
tight-rope? Let any one, who thinks so, get up and try. There is the thing. It is
that which at first we cannot do at all, which in the end is done to such
perfection. To account for this in some degree, I might observe that mechanical
dexterity is confined to doing some one particular thing, which you can repeat
as often as you please, in which you know whether you succeed or fail, and
where the point of perfection consists in succeeding in a given undertaking. - In
mechanical efforts, you improve by perpetual practice, and you do so infallibly,
because the object to be attained is not a matter of taste or fancy or opinion,
but of actual experiment, in which you must either do the thing or not do it. If a
man is put to aim at a mark with a bow and arrow, he must hit it or miss it,
that's certain. He cannot deceive himself, and go on shooting wide or falling
short, and still fancy that he is making progress. The distinction between right
and wrong, between true and false, is here palpable; and he must either
correct his aim or persevere in his error with his eyes open, for which there is
neither excuse nor temptation. If a man is learning to dance on a rope, if he
does not mind what he is about, he will break his neck. After that, it will be in
vain for him to argue that he did not make a false step. His situation is not like
that of Goldsmith's pedagogue. -

'In argument they own'd his wondrous skill,

And e'en though vanquish'd, he could argue still.'
Danger is a good teacher, and makes apt scholars. So are disgrace, defeat,
exposure to immediate scorn and laughter. There is no opportunity in such
cases for self-delusion, no idling time away, no being off your guard (or you
must take the consequences) - neither is there any room for humour or caprice
or prejudice. If the Indian Juggler were to ply tricks in throwing up the three
case-knives, which keep their positions like the leaves of a crocus in the air, he
would cut his fingers. I can make a very bad antithesis without cutting my
fingers. The tact of style is more ambiguous than that of double-edged
instruments. If the Juggler were told that by flinging himself under the wheels
of the Jaggernaut, when the idol issues forth on a gaudy day, he would
immediately be transported into Paradise, he might believe it, and nobody
could disprove it. So the Brahmins may say what they please on that subject,
may build up dogmas and mysteries without end, and not be detected: but
their ingenious countryman cannot persuade tile frequenters of the Olympic
Theatre that he performs a number of astonishing feats without actually giving
proofs of what he says. - There is then in this sort of manual dexterity, first a
gradual aptitude acquired to a given exertion of muscular power, from constant
repetition, and in the next place, an exact knowledge how much is still wanting
and necessary to be supplied. The obvious test is to increase the effort or
nicety of the operation, and still to find it come true. The muscles ply
instinctively to the dictates of habit. Certain movements and impressions of the
hand and eye, having been repeated together an infinite number of times are
unconsciously but unavoidably cemented into closer and closer union; the
limbs require little more than to be put in motion for them to follow a regular
track with ease and certainty; so that mere intention of the will acts
mathematically, like touching the spring of a machine, and you come with
Locksley in Ivanhoe, shooting at a mark, 'to allow for the wind.'

Farther, what is meant by perfection in mechanical exercises is the performing

certain feats to a uniform nicety, that is, in fact, undertaking no more than you
can perform. You task yourself, the limit you fix is optional, and no more than
human industry and skill can attain to: but you have no abstract, independent
standard of difficulty or excellence (other than the extent of your own powers).
Thus he who can keep up four brass balls does this to perfection; but he cannot
keep up five at the same instant, and would fail every time he attempted it.
That is, the mechanical performer undertakes to emulate himself, not to equal
another. [2] But the artist undertakes to imitate another, or to do what nature
has done, and this it appears is more difficult, viz. to copy what she has set
before us in the face of nature or 'human face divine,' entire and without a
blemish, than to keep up four brass balls at the same instant; for the one is
done by the power of human skill and industry; and the other never was nor
will be. Upon the whole, therefore, I have more respect for Reynolds, than I
have for Richer; for, happen how it will, there have been more people in the
world who could dance on a rope like the one than who could paint like Sir
Joshua. The latter was but a bungler in his profession to the other, it is true; but
then he had a harder task-master to obey, whose will was more wayward and
obscure, and whose instructions it was more difficult to practise. You can put a
child apprentice to a tumbler or rope-dancer with a comfortable prospect of
success, if they are but sound of wind and limb: but you cannot do the same
thing in painting. The odds are a million to one. You may make indeed as many
H - -s and H - -s, as you put into that sort of machine, but not one Reynolds
amongst them all, with his grace, his grandeur, his blandness of gusto, 'in tones
and gestures hit,' unless you could make the man over again. To snatch this
grace beyond the reach of art is then the height of art - where fine art begins,
and where mechanical skill ends. The soft suffusion of the soul, the speechless
breathing eloquence, the looks 'commercing with the skies,' the ever-shifting
forms of an eternal principle, that which is seen but for a moment, but dwells
in the heart always, and is only seized as it passes by strong and secret
sympathy, must be taught by nature and genius, not by rules or study. It is
suggested by feeling, not by laborious microscopic inspection: in seeking for it
without, we lose the harmonious clue to it within: and in aiming to grasp the
substance, we let the very spirit of art evaporate. In a word, the objects of fine
art are not the objects of sight but as these last are the objects of taste and
imagination, that is, as they appeal to the sense of beauty, of pleasure, and of
power in the human breast, and are explained by that finer sense, and revealed
in their inner structure to the eye in return. Nature is also a language. Objects,
like words, have a meaning; and the true artist is the interpreter of this
language, which he can only do by knowing its application to a thousand other
objects in a thousand other situations. Thus the eye is too blind a guide of itself
to distinguish between the warm or cold tone of a deep blue sky, but another
sense acts as a monitor to it, and does not err. The colour of the leaves in
autumn would be nothing without the feeling that accompanies it; but it is that
feeling that stamps them on the canvas, faded, seared, blighted, shrinking from
the winter's flaw, and makes the sight as true as touch -

'And visions, as poetic eyes avow,

Cling to each leaf and hang on every bough.'
The more ethereal, evanescent, more refined and sublime part of art is the
seeing nature through the medium of sentiment and passion, as each object is
a symbol of the affections and a link in the chain of our endless being. But the
unravelling this mysterious web of thought and feeling is alone in the Muse's
gift, namely, in the power of that trembling sensibility which is awake to every
change and every modification of its ever-varying impressions, that,
'Thrills in each nerve, and lives along the line.'

This power is indifferently called genius, imagination, feeling, taste; but the
manner in which it acts upon the mind can neither be defined by abstract rules,
as is the case in science, nor verified by continual unvarying experiments, as is
the case in mechanical performances. The mechanical excellence of the Dutch
painters in colouring and handling is that which comes the nearest in fine art to
the perfection of certain manual exhibitions of skill. The truth of the effect and
the facility with which it is produced are equally admirable. Up to a certain
point, every thing is faultless. The hand and eye have done their part. There is
only a want of taste and genius. It is after we enter upon that enchanted
ground that the human mind begins to droop and flag as in a strange road, or
in a thick mist, benighted and making little way with many attempts and many
failures, and that the best of us only escape with half a triumph. The undefined
and the imaginary are the regions that we must pass like Satan, difficult and
doubtful, 'half flying, half on foot.' The object in sense is a positive thing, and
execution comes with practice.
Cleverness is a certain knack or aptitude at doing certain things, which depend
more on a particular adroitness and off-hand readiness than on force or
perseverance, such as making puns, making epigrams, making extempore
verses, mimicking the company, mimicking a style, &c. Cleverness is either
liveliness and smartness, or something answering to sleight of hand, like letting
a glass fall sideways off a table, or else a trick, like knowing the secret spring of
a watch. Accomplishments are certain external graces, which are to be learnt
from others, and which are easily displayed to the admiration of the beholder,
viz. dancing, riding, fencing, music, and so on. These ornamental acquirements
are only proper to those who are at ease in mind and fortune. I know an
individual who if he had been born to an estate of five thousand a year, would
have been the most accomplished gentleman of the age. He would have been
the delight and envy of the circle in which he moved - would have graced by his
manners the liberality flowing from the openness of his heart, would have
laughed with the women, have argued with the men, have said good things
and written agreeable ones, have taken a hand at piquet or the lead at the
harpsichord, and have set and sung his own verses - nugae canorae - with
tenderness and spirit; a Rochester without the vice, a modern Surrey! As it is,
all these capabilities of excellence stand in his way. He is too versatile for a
professional man, not dull enough for a political drudge, too gay to be happy,
too thoughtless to be rich. He wants the enthusiasm of the poet, the severity of
the prose-writer, and the application of the man of business. - Talent is the
capacity of doing any thing that depends on application and industry, such as
writing a criticism, making a speech, studying the law. Talent differs from
genius, as voluntary differs from involuntary power. Ingenuity is genius in
trifles, greatness is genius in undertakings of much pith and moment. A clever
or ingenious man is one who can do any thing well, whether it is worth doing
or not: a great man is one who can do that which when done is of the highest
importance. Themistocles said he could not play on the flute, but that he could
make of a small city a great one. This gives one a pretty good idea of the
distinction in question.

Greatness is great power, producing great effects. It is not enough that a man
has great power in himself, he must shew it to all the world in a way that
cannot be hid or gainsaid. He must fill up a certain idea in the public mind. I
have no other notion of greatness than this two-fold definition, great results
springing from great inherent energy. The great in visible objects has relation to
that which extends over space: the great in mental ones has to do with space
and time. No man is truly great, who is great only in his life-time. The test of
greatness is the page of history. Nothing can be said to be great that has a
distinct limit, or that borders on something evidently greater than itself.
Besides, what is short-lived and pampered into mere notoriety, is of a gross and
vulgar quality in itself. A Lord Mayor is hardly a great man. A city orator or
patriot of the day only shew, by reaching the height of their wishes, the
distance they are at from any true ambition. Popularity is neither fame nor
greatness. A king (as such) is not a great man. He has great power, but it is not
his own. He merely wields the lever of the state, which a child, an idiot, or a
madman can do. It is the office, not the man we gaze at. Any one else in the
same situation would be just as much an object of abject curiosity. We laugh at
the country girl who having seen a king expressed her disappointment by
saying, 'Why, he is only a man!' Yet, knowing this, we run to see a king as if he
was something more than a man. - To display the greatest powers, unless they
are applied to great purposes, makes nothing for the character of greatness. To
throw a barley-corn through the eye of a needle, to multiply nine figures by
nine in the memory, argues infinite dexterity of body and capacity of mind, but
nothing comes of either. There is a surprising power at work, but the effects are
not proportionate, or such as take hold of the imagination. To impress the idea
of power on others, they must be made in some way to feel it. It must be
communicated to their understandings in the shape of an increase of
knowledge, or it must subdue and overawe them by subjecting their wills.
Admiration, to be solid and lasting, must be founded on proofs from which we
have no means of escaping; it is neither a slight nor a voluntary gift. A
mathematician who solves a profound problem, a poet who creates an image
of beauty in the mind that was not there before, imparts knowledge and power
to others, in which his greatness and his fame consists, and on which it
reposes. Jedediah Burton will be forgotten; but Napier's bones will live.
Lawgivers, philosophers, founders of religion, conquerors and heroes, inventors
and great geniuses in arts and sciences, are great men; for they are great public
benefactors, or formidable scourges to mankind. Among ourselves, Shakespear,
Newton, Bacon, Milton, Cromwell, were great men; for they shewed power by
acts and thoughts, which have not yet been consigned to oblivion. They must
needs be men of lofty stature, whose shadows lengthen out to remote
posterity. A great farce-writer may be a great man; for Moliere was but a great
farce-writer. In my mind, the author of Don Quixote was a great man. So have
there been many others. A great chess-player is not a great man, for he leaves
the world as he found it. No act terminating in itself constitutes greatness. This
will apply to all displays of power or trials of skill, which are confined to the
momentary, individual effort, and construct no permanent image or trophy of
themselves without them. Is not an actor then a great man, because 'he dies
and leaves the world no copy?' I must make an exception for Mrs. Siddons, or
else give up my definition of greatness for her sake. A man at the top of his
profession is not therefore a great man. He is great in his way, but that is all,
unless he shews the marks of a great moving intellect so that we trace the
master-mind, and can sympathise with the springs that urge him on. The rest is
but a craft or mystery. Hunter was a great man - that any one might see
without the smallest skill in surgery. His style and manner shewed the man. He
would set about cutting up the carcass of a whale with the same greatness of
gusto that Michael Angelo would have hewn a block of marble. Lord Nelson
was a great naval commander; but for myself, I have not much opinion of a
sea-faring life. Sir Humphry Davy is great chemist, but I am not sure that he is a
great man. I am not a bit the wiser for any of his discoveries, nor I never met
with any one that was. But it is in the nature of greatness to propagate an idea
of itself, as wave impels wave, circle without circle. It is a contradiction in terms
for a coxcomb to be a great man. A really great man has always an idea of
something greater than himself. I have observed that certain sectaries and
polemical writers have no higher compliment to pay their most shining lights
than to say that 'Such a one was a considerable man in his day.' Some new
elucidation of a text sets aside the authority of the old interpretation, and a
'great scholar's memory outlives him half a century,' at the utmost. A rich man
is not a great man, except to his dependants and his steward. A lord is a great
man in the idea we have of his ancestry, and probably of himself, if we know
nothing of him but his title. I have heard a story of two bishops, one of whom
said (speaking of St. Peter's at Rome) that when he first entered it, he was
rather awe-struck, but that as he walked up it, his mind seemed to swell and
dilate with it, and at last to fill the whole building - the other said that as he
saw more of it, he appeared to himself to grow less and less every step he took,
and in the end to dwindle into nothing. This was in some respects a striking
picture of a great and little . mind - for greatness sympathises with greatness,
and littleness shrinks into itself. The one might have become a Wolsey; the
other was only fit to become a Mendicant Friar - or there might have been
court-reasons for making him a bishop. The French have to me a character of
littleness in all about them; but they have produced three great men that
belong to every country, Moliere, Rabelais, and Montaigne.

To return from this digression, and conclude the Essay. A singular instance of
manual dexterity was shewn in the person of the late John Cavanagh, whom I
have several times seen. His death was celebrated at the time in an article in
the Examiner newspaper (Feb. 7, 18I9), written apparently between jest and
earnest: but as it is pat to our purpose, and falls in with my own way of
considering such subjects, I shall here take leave to quote it.

'Died at his house in Burbage-street, St. Giles's, John Cavanagh, the famous
hand fives-player. When a person dies, who does any one thing better than any
one else in the world, which so many others are trying to do well, it leaves a
gap in society. It is not likely that any one will now see the game of fives played
in its perfection for many years to come - for Cavanagh is dead, and has not left
his peer behind him. It may be said that there are things of more importance
than striking a ball against a wall - there are things indeed which make more
noise and do as little good, such as making war and peace, making speeches
and answering them, making verses and blotting them; making money and
throwing it away. But the game of fives is what no one despises who has ever
played at it. It is the finest exercise for the body, and the best relaxation for the
mind. The Roman poet said that "Care mounted behind the horseman and
stuck to his skirts." But this remark would not have applied to the fives-player.
He who takes to playing at fives is twice young. He feels neither the past nor
future "in the instant." Debts, taxes, "domestic treason, foreign levy, nothing
can touch him further." He has no other wish, no other thought, from the
moment the game begins, but that of striking the ball, of placing it, of making
it! This Cavanagh was sure to do. Whenever he touched the ball, there was an
end of the chase. His eye was certain, his hand fatal, his presence of mind
complete. He could do what he pleased, and he always knew exactly what to
do. He saw the .whole game, and played it; took instant advantage of his
adversary's weakness, and recovered balls, as if by a miracle and from sudden
thought, that every one gave for lost. He had equal power and skill, quickness,
and judgment. He could either out-wit his antagonist by finesse, or beat him by
main strength. Sometimes, when he seemed preparing to send the ball with
the full swing of his arm, would by a slight turn of his wrist drop it within an
inch of the line. In general, the ball came from his hand, as if from a racket, in a
straight horizontal line; so that it was in vain to attempt to overtake or stop it.
As it was said of a great orator that he never was at loss for a word, and for the
properest word, so Cavanagh always could tell the degree of force necessary to
be given to a ball, and the precise direction in which it should be sent. He did
his work with greatest ease; never took more pains than was necessary; and
while others were fagging themselves to death, was as cool and collected as if
he had just entered the court. His style of play was as remarkable as his power
of execution. He had no affectation, no trifling. He did not throw away the
game to show off an attitude, or try an experiment. He was a fine, sensible,
manly player, who did what he could, but that was more than any one else
could even affect to do. His blows were not undecided and ineffectual -
lumbering like Mr. Wordsworth's epic poetry, nor wavering like Mr. Coleridge's
lyric prose, nor short of the mark like Mr. Brougham's speeches nor wide of it
like Mr. Canning's wit, nor foul like the Quarterly, not let balls like the
Edinburgh Review. Cobbett and Junius together would have made a Cavanagh.
He was the best up-hill player in the world; even when his adversary was
fourteen, he would play on the same or better, and as he never flung away the
game through carelessness and conceit, he never gave it up through laziness or
want of heart. The only peculiarity of his play was that he never volleyed, but
let the balls hop; but if they rose an inch from the ground, he never missed
having them. There was not only nobody equal, but nobody second to him. It is
supposed that he could give any other player half the game, or beat him with
his left hand. His service was tremendous. He once played Woodward and
Meredith together (two of the best players in England) in the Fives-court, St.
Martin's-street, and made seven and twenty aces following by services alone -
a thing unheard of. He another time played Peru, who was considered a
first-rate fives-player, a match of the best out of five games, and in the three
first games, which of course decided the match, Peru got only one ace.
Cavanagh was an Irishman by birth, and a house-painter by profession. He had
once laid aside his working-dress, and walked up, in his smartest clothes, to the
Rosemary Branch to have an afternoon's pleasure. A person accosted him, and
asked him if he would have a game. So they agreed to play for half-a-crown a
game, and a bottle of cider. The first game began - it was seven, eight, ten,
thirteen, fourteen, all. Cavanagh won it. The next was the same. They played
on, and each game was hardly contested. "There," said the unconscious
fives-player, "there was a stroke that Cavanagh could not take: I never played
better in my life, and yet I can't win a game. I don't know how it is." However,
they played on, Cavanagh winning every game, and the by-standers drinking
the cider, and laughing all the time. In the twelfth game, when Cavanagh was
only four, and the stranger thirteen, a person came in, and said, "What! are you
here, Cavanagh! " The words were no sooner pronounced than the astonished
player let the ball drop from his hand, and saying, "What! have I been breaking
my heart all this time to beat Cavanagh?" refused to make another effort. "And
yet, I give you my word," said Cavanagh, telling the story with some triumph, "I
played all the while with my clenched fist." - He used frequently to play
matches at Copenhagen-house for wagers and dinners. The wall against which
they play is the same that supports the kitchen-chimney, and when the wall
resounded louder than usual, the cooks exclaimed, "Those are the Irishman's
balls," and the joints trembled on the spit! - Goldsmith consoled himself that
there were places where he too was admired: and Cavanagh was the
admiration of all the fives-courts, where he ever played. Mr. Powell, when he
played matches in the Court in St. Martin's-street, used to fill his gallery at half
a crown a head, with amateurs and admirers of talent in whatever department
it is shown. He could not have shown himself in any ground in England, but he
would have been immediately surrounded with inquisitive gazers, trying to find
out in what part of his frame his unrivalled skill lay, as politicians wonder to see
the balance of Europe suspended in Lord Castlereagh's face, and admire the
trophies of the British Navy lurking under Mr. Croker's hanging brow. Now
Cavanagh was as good-looking a man as the Noble Lord, and much better
looking than the Right Hen. Secretary. He had a clear, open countenance, and
did not look sideways or down, like Mr. Murray the bookseller. He was a young
fellow of sense, humour, and courage. He once had a quarrel with a waterman
at Hungerford-stairs, and, they say, served him out in great style. In a word,
there are hundreds at this day, who cannot mention his name without
admiration, as the best fives-player that perhaps ever lived (the greatest
excellence of which they have any notion) - and the noisy shout of the ring
happily stood him in stead of the unheard voice of posterity! - The only person
who seems to have as much in another way as Cavanagh did in his, was the late
John Davies, the racket-player. It was remarked of him that he did not seem to
follow the ball, but the ball seemed to follow him. Give him a foot of wall, and
he was sure to make the ball. The four best racket-players of that day were Jack
Spines, Jem. Harding, Armitage, and Church. Davies could give any one of these
two hands a time, that is, half the game, and each of these, at their best, could
give the best player now in London the same odds. Such are the gradations in
all exertions of human skill and art. He once played four capital players
together, and beat them. He was also a first-rate tennis-player, and an excellent
fives-player. In the Fleet or King's Bench, he would have stood against Powell,
was reckoned the best open-ground player of his time. This last-mentioned
player is at present the keeper of the Fives-court, and we might recommend to
him for a motto over his door - "Who enters here, forgets himself, his country,
and his friends." And the best of it is, that by the calculation of the odds, none
of the three are worth remembering! - Cavanagh died from the bursting of a
blood-vessel, which prevented him from playing for the last two or three years.
This, he was often heard to say, he thought hard upon him. He was fast
recovering, however, when he was suddenly carried off, to the regret of all who
knew him. As Mr. Peel made it a qualification of the present Speaker, Mr.
Manners Sutton, that he was an excellent moral character, so Jack Cavanagh
was a zealous Catholic, and could not be persuaded to eat meat on a Friday, the
day on which he died. We have paid this willing tribute to his memory.

"Let no rude hand deface it,

And his forlorn 'Hic Jacet.'"'