Life
?1731-1791 [Captain Grose]; Adjutant and paymaster in a British regiment; prolific English antiquarian and draughtsman; he served as Richmond Herald (Coll. of Arms), 1755-63; elected FSA, 1757; exhibited tinted landscape drawings at Royal Academy; met Robert Burns during a Scottish tour and became the dedicatee of Burns’ poem “Tam o’ Shanter”; issued Antiquities of England and Wales (1773-87), with num. engraved plates; also Antiquities of Scotland (1789-91); Grose’s Antiquities is short title used to name Antiquities of Ireland, 2 vols. (London 1791-95; rep. Dublin 1804) which was edited and largely written as to text by Edward Ledwich [q.v.] following Grose’s death in Dublin, where he travelled to supply a set of illustrations for the London printer S. Hooper - after which the publisher solicited Ledwich, who had just published his own Antiquities of Ireland in 1790, to bring it to completion;
the resulting 2 vol. work incorporates sections on ancient buildings, ecclesiastical buildings, and military buildings in Ireland and seven pages of descriptions; - his Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue (London 1785) is highly prized and his Advice to Officers in the British Army 90, in the manner of Swift"s Advice to Servants, has been reprinted in Philadephia and New York on different occasions; d. May 1791; bur. Drumcondra [Glasnevin Cem.]; a full-length portrait of Grose appears as a frontispiece to the 1811 reprint of his Dictionary of Buckish Slang, University Wit, and Pickpocket Eloquence .. altered and enlarged as Lexicon Balatronicum (1811). ODNB RIA
[ See notice on Antiquities of Ireland under Edward Ledwich [q.v.], who was the author of the textual parts of that book. Note that Ledwich says prefatorily that Grose wrote seven pages to accompany his plates which Ledwich thereafter expanded in the descriptive sections of the book. It is apparent from testy remarks about Charles Vallencey in the Introduction to Volume I and the allusions to Grose death and (‘the late Captain GROSE’) and his genial character in the Preface that Ledwich - who therein recounts that he met him - is the author throughout. Hence quotations from the book are to be found under Ledwich’s page in RICORSO - as infra. ]
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Works
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Bibliographical details
Advice to the Officers of the British Army (London [Hooper] 1783); Do. [5th Edn.] Advice to the Officers of the British Army: with the addition of some hints to the drummer and private soldier (London: printed by W. Richardson for G. Kearsley 1783), iv., 134pp.; Do. [6th edn.] (London: Kearsley 1787), iv, 170pp.; Do [with John Williamson] (London: printed for G. Kearsley, at No. 46, in Fleet-Street MDCCLXXXVII [1787]), iv, iv, 170, [2]pp., pl.); Do. [by John Williamson, writer on military subjects] (Dublin: W. Wilson 1787), iv, 170pp., 12º; Do. [facs. rep. with unsigned preface] (NY: Agathynian Club 1867), xx, iv, 134, 5pp. [120 copies; based on 6th London edition]; Do., another edn. [Francis Grose Society] (Owlswick Press 1978), xi, 144pp. [follows 1867 edn.; bibl. refs].
Commentary
Mary Cusack, The Liberator [Life of Daniel O’Connell] (London: 1872), makes reference to Captain Grose of whom Burn’s wrote, ‘A chiel’s among you takin’ notes / And, faith, he’ll prent em.’ (ftn. p.319); also notes a story of O’Connell’s, who wrote that ‘Grose ... came to Ireland full of strong prejudices against the people, but gave way beneath the influence of Irish drollery’, and further tells a story of a ‘sly, waggish butcher’ who survey’s Grose’s fat, ruddy face and corpulent person, only to remark, “Well, plaze your honour, I won’t ask you to buy since it puts your honour in a passion. But I’ll tell you how you’ll sarve me. … Just tell all your friends that its Larry Heffernan that supplies your honour with mate [for meat], and never fear I’ll have enough custom.” (p.320.)
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| Extensive quotations from the Antiquities of Ireland, (2 vols. 1791-95) are given under Edward Ledwich [q.v.] - who was the author of all the textual parts of that work and who refers to Grose in the third person in the Preface and the Introductions. |
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Popular Superstitions: "It will scarcely Be conceived how great a number of superstitious notions and practices are still remaining and prevalent in different parts of these kingdoms, many of which are still used and alluded to even in and about the metropolis ; and every person, however carefully educated, will, upon examination, find that he has some how or other imbibed and stored up in his memory a much greater number of these rules and maxims than he could at first have imagined. To account for this, we need only turn our recollection towards what passed in our childhood, and reflect on the avidity and pleasure with which we listened to stories of ghosts, witches, and fairies, told us by our maids and nurses. And even among those whose parents had the good sense to prohibit such relations, there is scarce one in a. thousand but may remember to have heard, from some maiden aunt or antiquated cousin, the various omens that have announced the approaching deaths of different branches of the family: a copious catalogue of thugs lucky and unlucky; a variety of charms to cure warts, the cramp, and tooth-ache ; preventatives against the night-mare; with observations relative to sympathy, denoted by shiverings, burning of the cheeks, and itchings of the eyes and elbows. The effects of ideas of this kind are not easily got the better of; and the ideas themselves rarely, if ever, forgotten. In former times these notions were so prevalent, that it was deemed little less than atheism to doubt them ; and in many instances the terrors caused by them embittered the lives of a great nmnber of persons of all ages; by degrees almost shutting them out of their evvn houses, and deterring them from going from one village to another after sun-set. The room in which the head of a family had died, was for a long time untenanted; particularly if they died without a will, or were supposed to have entertained any particular religious opinions. [...] (In A Provincial Glossary, with a Collection of Local Proverbs and Popular Superstitions (rep. 1811, p.99.) |
| On Fairies: ‘This piece of Superstition seems to come from the East, and was probably imported into Europe by some of the Crusaders; as this kind of spirits, in many instances, resembles the genii, of whom so many wonderful stories are lold by the Arabians; though some derive them from the lares and larvee of the Romans.’ (p.98.) |
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References
Ann Cruikshank and the Knight of Glin [Fitzgerald], Irish Portraits 1600-1860 (1969) notes that Nathaniel Hone (The Elder) sent his painting Two Gentlemen in Masquerade (1774), to the Royal Academy (London) - being a satirical composition which shows Grose and Theophilus Forrest as two Franciscan friars regaling themselves with punch, one stirring the liquid with a crucifix, but was persuaded to replace the latter with a ladle for the exhibition, and later restored it. (See , p.47.)
Notes
Grose as author: Captain Francis Grose was an Army paymaster and he author of a Advice to the Officers of the British Army as well as "Rules for Drawing Caricatures, with an Essay on Comic Painting (q.d.); A Provincial Glossary, with a Collection of Local Proverbs and Popular Superstitions (rep. 1811, 124pp.); Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue (1785) - reissued as Lexicon Balatronicum (1811); A Guide to Health, Beauty, Riches and Honour", the last being a collection of curious advertisements of quacks, money-lenders, &c.
Advice to the Officers of the British Army: a facsimile reprint of the sixth London edition, with introduction and notes [rep. edn.] (NY Agathynian Club 1867) [120 copies], Preface ([i]-xx) - quotes from the satire reprinted here: ‘[...] To all the British Dealers in Blood and Slaughter who are under the rank of Ensign. / Soldiers, Gentlemen, Heroes, / For such you are, whatever was your former station or employment in life. He who was yesterday the ninth part of a man, by becoming a soldier to-day has multiplied his existence by at least three times three. Yet, hard fate! the integer of to-day is much more liable to be destroyed than the paltry fraction of yesterday. But what is that to your employers, you know? The more danger, the more honour; needs must when the devil drives.’ (Quoted prefatorally, p.v-vi; copy in Bodleian Library available at Internet Archive online; accessed 05.02.2024.) [Note that the work reprinted here retains the f-for-s font of the original and reproduces the t.p. of the sixth edition issued at M DCC LXXXIII [1783] - a date that falls within Grose’s lifetime. The piece is held to be in the style of #146quot;s Advice to Servants (see Maty’s review, Nov. 1782, rep. in front matter.)
The Agathynian preface contains a biographical notice: ‘Captain Francis Grose, the reputed author of the Advice to the Officers of the British Army, was a distinguished antiquary of the last century, who wrote several works on the antiquities of England, Scotland and Ireland, besides one on military antiquities, and another on ancient armor. Himself an officer of the militia, a devoted student, and thrown, during camp and garrison service, into constant association with officers of the army of all grades, he was enabled to acquire the knowledge of their {xvi} errors and habits which enabled him to write the present volume. (pp.xv-xvi.) [There follows a copy of his correspondence about his son and his own situation in the army which had been reprinted in Nichol"s Literary Anecdotes, Vol. VIII, p.693.] The present work he is not known to have acknowledged, although it has been, by common consent, attributed [xviii] to him. It first appeared in London in 1783, and rapidly run through several editions. It was in the same year re-published in Philadelphia. (pp.xviii-xix.)
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