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During the minority of King Gun, Johannes Talpa, in the monastery of Beargarden, where at the age of fourteen he had made his profession and from which he never departed for a single day throughout his life, composed his celebrated Latin chronicle in twelve books called "De Gestis Penguinorum." The monastery of Beargarden lifts its high walls on the summit of an inaccessible peak.
In the delightful and now somewhat rare book Talpa; or, The Chronicles of a Clay Farm, by Chandos Wren Hoskins, one of the few agricultural works ever written by a scholar, he refers to his first experience of this sort, when speaking of his difficulty in making up his mind as to whether he should let the property into which he had just come by inheritance, or occupy it himself, as follows: "What was to be done?
I learnt to read under the guidance of a master who was called Amicus, and who would have been better named Inimicus. As I did not easily attain to a knowledge of my letters, he beat me violently with rods so that I can say that he printed the alphabet in strokes upon my back." In another passage Talpa confesses his natural inclination towards pleasure.
Cypraa scurra, Chemnitz. 38. Cypraa erosa, Linne. 39. Cypraa caurica, Linne. 41. Cypraa talpa, Linne. 41B. Cypraea lynx, Linne. 42. Cerithium tuberosum, Fabricius. 43. Strombus tricornis, Lamarck. 45. Strombus gibberulus, Linne. 46. Strombus floridus, Lamarck. 47. Strombus fasciatus, Born. 48. Pterocera truncatum, Lamarck. 49. Planaxis breviculus, Deshayes. 50. Nerita marmorata, Reeve. 51.
My stature, naturally small, has with years become diminished and bent. My white beard gives warmth to my breast." With a charming simplicity, Talpa informs us of certain circumstances in his life and some features in his character. "Descended," he tells us, "from a noble family, and destined from childhood for the ecclesiastical state, I was taught grammar and music.
Groans and death-cries arose in the midst of the flames, and on the edges of the crumbling roofs monks ran in thousands like ants, and fell into the valley. Yet Johannes Talpa kept on writing his Chronicle. The soldiers of Crucha retreated speedily and filled up all the issues from the monastery with pieces of rock so as to shut up the Porpoises in the burning buildings.
I commend Talpa, with George Cruikshank's clever illustrations, to the attention of all readers of the curiosities of agriculture, as well as to practical men; it is one of those uncommon books which enters into the humorous side of farming under disadvantages as, for instance, prejudiced labourers who have long been employed upon such work as draining.
George Cruikshank gives a very spirited and comic realization of Horace's lines, in Hoskin's Talpa, where ploughing, sowing, harrowing, reaping, harvesting, thrashing, grinding and carting away the finished product, are all actively proceeding in the same field.
Soon there was left nothing of the rich and extensive abbey but the cell of Johannes Talpa, which, by a marvellous chance, hung from the ruin of a smoking gable. The old chronicler still kept writing. This admirable intensity of thought may seem excessive in the case of an annalist who applies himself to relate the events of his own time.
The author adds, "Need I tell you who said this? or give you the whole of the colloquy to which it furnished the epilogue?" Talpa was published sixty-seven years ago, but it contains much that might well be taken to heart by our post-war amateur agricultural reconstructionists.
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