Page:The Library, volume 5, series 3.djvu/228

 216 HENRY CROSS-GROVE, JACOBITE, Hunter's c fete champetre.' But Cross-Grove could write better verse than this, and occasionally even indulged in Latin. He had a great admira- tion for ' that sweet singer Stephen Duck ' the farm labourer whom the Queen pensioned, some- what to Pope's disgust. But his love for poetry did not prevent his selling quack medicines. That ' Noble Elixir ' of Daffey's was puffed by him in nearly every number of his paper, and the cures reported by him are incredible. Only second to 'Daffey's Elixir' was a 'Sovereign Salve' at 2s. a roll, also sold by him at his printing office. Country printers in those days could not make a living out of printing, and Cross-Grove's solitary important book, a new translation of Josephus, does not seem to have been a success. It has not survived. He had a way of taking the subscribers to his paper into his confidence about his own affairs which is distinctly funny. On I4th August, 1731, he tells them : 1 have one piece more of drumstick news (as Ralph once called it) namely, that as this is the Anniversary of My Own Birthday, in which I enter the 49th year of my Age, I intend to remember all my Honest-hearted Friends and Customers over a Glass of the Best. The c glass of the best ' was, as we know from his own poems, ' nut brown ale.' He detested tea, which, he says, was drunk twice a day, at ten in the morning and four in the afternoon, and broke out into Latin verse on the subjeft 9