414 METALS—THE NOBLER.
land,
you observe, and were his family's before him); why, it is but
regarding his halfpence as ' gold and silver,' whilst turning the
ownership of the property a bit round your finger ; and there you have
the name of the children's game complete." " Mr. Mopes (the said
disreputable 'hermit'), by suffering everything about him to go to
ruin, and by dressing himself in a blanket, and skewer, and by steeping
himself in soot, and grease, and other nastiness, had acquired great
renown in all that country-side."
But
this mention of " Tom Tiddler's Ground," by Dickens, certainly did not
originate this oft-quoted phrase. It is true that Mr. Mopes, the hermit
in question, was a real person, a slovenly, filthy tinker, (Lucas, by
name, at Redcoats Green, near Stevenage, in Hertfordshire), who
wallowed in a ruined hovel, without a pane of glass in any window, and
not owning a plank, or beam, other than rotten. Nevertheless, long
before then, to play at " Tom Tiddler's ground," was a game with which
village lads were commonly familiar. Moreover, Dickens himself had
made express allusion thereto some twenty odd years previously, in Nicholas NicMeby, (first
published 1847). Mr. Mantalini, the lazy, luxurious, gambling,
dandified husband of Madame Mantalini, (a fashionable dressmaker in
London), had gone to raise money from the usurious Ralph Nickleby on
certain securities filched from his wife's private desk. She surprises
him by likewise visiting Nickleby's office at the same time, seeking
protection from her husband's disastrous extravagance. He—Mr.
Mantalini—evinces considerable discomposure, and hastily sweeps into
his pocket the cash just borrowed on the aforesaid securities. " Oh,
you are here," said Madame Mantalini, tossing
