The doctor, &c., vol. I (of 7)

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Title: The doctor, &c., vol. I (of 7)
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THE DOCTOR, &c.

There is a kind of physiognomy in the titles of books no less than in
the faces of men, by which a skilful observer will as well know what
to expect from the one as the other.

BUTLER'S REMAINS.

THE DOCTOR, &c.

[Illustration: a tetrahedron]

VOL. I.

LONDON:

LONGMAN, REES, ORME, BROWN, GREEN AND LONGMAN.

1834.

LONDON:

PRINTED BY W. NICOL, CLEVELAND-ROW, ST. JAMES'S.

PRELUDE OF MOTTOES.

Now they that like it may: the rest may chuse.

G. WITHER.

_Je veux à face descouverte qu'on sçache que je fay le fol. Et
pourquoy ne me le sera-t-il permis, si le grand Solon dans Athenes, ne
douta de le faire pour apporter un grand bien à sa Republique? La
Republique dont j'ay charge, est ce petit monde que Dieu a estably en
moy; pour la conservation duquel je ne scay meilleur moyen que de
tromper mes afflictions par quelques honnestes jeux d'esprit;
appellez-les bouffonneries si ainsi le voulez._

PASQUIER.

If you are so bold as to venture a blowing-up, look closely to it! for
the plot lies deadly deep, and 'twill be between your legs before you
be aware of it.—But of all things have a care of putting it in your
pocket, for fear it takes fire, or runs away with your breeches. And
if you can shun it, read it not when you are alone; or at least not
late in the evening; for the venom is strongest about midnight, and
seizes most violently upon the head when the party is by himself. I
shall not tell you one line of what is in it; and therefore consider
well what you do, and look to yourself. But if you be resolved to
meddle, be sure have a care of catching cold, and keep to a moderate
diet; for there is danger and jeopardy in it besides.

DR. EACHARD.

—For those faults of barbarism, Doric dialect, extemporanean stile,
tautologies, apish imitation, a rhapsody of rags gathered together
from several dung-hills, excrements of authors, toyes and fopperies,
confusedly tumbled out, without art, invention, judgement, wit,
learning, harsh, raw, rude, phantasticall, absurd, insolent,
indiscreet, ill-composed, indigested, vain, scurrile, idle, dull, and
dry:—I confess all; ('tis partly affected;) thou canst not think worse
of me than I do of myself. 'Tis not worth the reading! I yield it. I
desire thee not to lose time in perusing so vain a subject. I should
be peradventure loth myself to read him or thee so writing; 'tis not
_operæ pretium_. All I say is this, that I have precedents for it.

BURTON.

A foolish extravagant spirit, full of forms, figures, shapes, objects,
ideas, apprehensions, motions, revolutions; these are begot in the
ventricle of memory, nourished in the womb of _pia mater_, and
delivered upon the mellowing of the occasion. But the gift is good in
those in whom it is acute, and I am thankful for it.

LOVE'S LABOUR'S LOST.

If the world like it not, so much the worse for them.

COWPER.

_—un boschetto,
Donne per quello givan fior cogliendo,
Con diletto, co' quel, co' quel dicendo;
Eccolo, eccol! . . che à?—è fiordaliso!
Va là per le viole;
Più colà per le rose, cole, cole,
Vaghe amorose.
O me, che' l prun mi punge!
Quell' altra me v' aggiunge.
U', ù, o, ch' è quel che salta?
Un grillo! un grillo!
Venite qua, correte,
Ramponzoli cogliete;
E' non con essi!
Si, son!—colei o colei
Vien qua, vien qua per funghi, un micolino
Piu colà, più cola per sermollino._

UGOLINO UBALDINI _or_
FRANCO SACCHETTI.

If the particulars seem too large or to be over tediously insisted
upon, consider in how many impertinent and trifling discourses and
actions the best of us do consume far more hours than the perusal of
this requires minutes, and yet think it no tediousness: and let them
call to mind how many volumes this age imprints and reads which are
foolish if not wicked. Let them be persuaded likewise, that I have not
written this for those who have no need thereof, or to shew my own wit
or compendiousness but to instruct the ignorant; to whom I should more
often speak in vain, if I did not otherwhile by repetitions and
circumlocutions, stir up their affections, and beat into their
understandings the knowledge and feeling of those things which I
deliver. Yea, let them know that I know those expressions will be both
pleasing and profitable to some which they imagine to be needless and
superabundant; and that I had rather twenty nice critics should
censure me for a word here and there superfluous than that one of
those other should want that which might explain my meanings to their
capacities, and so make frustrate all my labour to those who have most
need of it, and for whom it was chiefly intended.

G. WITHER.

_Tempus ad hoc mecum latuit, portuque resedit,
Nec fuit audaces impetus ire vias.
Nunc animi venere; juvat nunc denique funem
Solvere:——
Ancora sublata est; terræ, portusque valete!
Imus; habet ventos nostra carina suos._

WALLIUS.

POSTSCRIPT.

There was a certain Pisander whose name has been preserved in one of
the proverbial sayings of the Greeks, because he lived in continual
fear of seeing his own ghost. How often have I seen mine while
arranging these volumes for publication, and carrying them through the
press!

Twenty years have elapsed since the intention of composing them was
conceived, and the composition commenced, in what manner and in what
mood the reader will presently be made acquainted. The vicissitudes
which in the course of those years have befallen every country in
Europe are known to every one; and the changes, which, during such an
interval, must have occurred in a private family, there are few who
may not, from their own sad experience, readily apprehend.

Circumstances which when they were touched upon in these volumes were
of present importance, and excited a lively interest, belong now to
the history of the past. They who were then the great performers upon
the theatre of public life have fretted their hour and disappeared
from the stage. Many who were living and flourishing when their names
were here sportively or severely introduced, are gone to their
account. The domestic circle which the introduction describes has in
the ordinary course of things been broken up; some of its members are
widely separated from others, and some have been laid to rest. The
reader may well believe that certain passages which were written with
most joyousness of heart, have been rendered purely painful to the
writer by time and change: and that some of his sweetest thoughts come
to him in chewing the cud, like wormwood and gall.—But it is a
wholesome bitterness.

He has neither expunged nor altered any thing on any of these
accounts. It would be weakness to do this on the score of his own
remembrances, and in the case of allusions to public affairs and to
public men it would be folly. The Almanack of the current year will be
an old one as soon as next year begins.

It is the writer's determination to remain unknown; and they who may
suppose that

By certain signs here set in sundry place,

they have discovered him, will deceive themselves. A Welsh Triad says
that the three unconcealable traits of a person by which he shall be
known, are the glance of his eye, the pronunciation of his speech, and
the mode of his self-motion;—in briefer English, his look, his voice,
and his gait. There are no such characteristics by which an author can
be identified. He must be a desperate mannerist who can be detected by
his style, and a poor proficient in his art if he cannot at any time
so vary it, as to put the critic upon a false scent. Indeed every
day's experience shews that they who assume credit to themselves, and
demand it from others for their discrimination in such things, are
continually and ridiculously mistaken.

On that side the author is safe; he has a sure reliance upon the
honour as well as the discretion of the very few to whom he is
naturally or necessarily known; and if the various authors to whom the
Book will be ascribed by report, should derive any gratification from
the perusal, he requests of them in return that they will favour his
purpose by allowing such reports to pass uncontradicted.

CONTENTS.

PRELUDE OF MOTTOES.—Page v.

POSTSCRIPT.—p. ix.

CHAPTER VII. A. I.—p. 1.

A FAMILY PARTY AT A NEXT DOOR NEIGHBOUR'S.

Good Sir, reject it not, although it bring
Appearances of some fantastic thing
At first unfolding!

GEORGE WITHER TO THE KING.

CHAPTER VI. A. I.—p. 6.

SHEWING THAT AN AUTHOR MAY MORE EASILY BE KEPT AWAKE BY HIS OWN
IMAGINATIONS THAN PUT TO SLEEP BY THEM HIMSELF, WHATEVER MAY BE THEIR
EFFECT UPON HIS READERS.

Thou sleepest worse than if a mouse should be forced to take up her
lodging in a cat's ear: a little infant that breeds its teeth, should
it lie with thee, would cry out as if thou wert the more unquiet
bedfellow.

WEBSTER.

CHAPTER V. A. I.—p. 10.

SOMETHING CONCERNING THE PHILOSOPHY OF DREAMS, AND THE AUTHOR'S
EXPERIENCE IN AERIAL HORSEMANSHIP.

If a dream should come in now to make you afear'd,
With a windmill on his head and bells at his beard,
Would you straight wear your spectacles here at your toes,
And your boots on your brows and your spurs on your nose?

BEN JONSON.

CHAPTER IV. A. I.—p. 15.

A CONVERSATION AT THE BREAKFAST TABLE.

_Tel condamne mon coq-à-l'âne qui un jour en justifiera le bon sens._

LA PRETIEUSE.

CHAPTER III. A. I.—p. 18.

THE UTILITY OF POCKETS. A COMPLIMENT PROPERLY RECEIVED.

_La tasca è propria cosa da Christiani._

BENEDETTO VARCHI.

CHAPTER II. A. I.—p. 25.

CONCERNING DEDICATIONS, PRINTERS TYPES, AND IMPERIAL INK.

_Il y aura des clefs, et des ouvertures de mes secrets._

LA PRETIEUSE.

DEDICATION.—p. 31.

CHAPTER I. A. I.—p. 33.

NO BOOK CAN BE COMPLETE WITHOUT A PREFACE.

I see no cause but men may pick their teeth,
Though Brutus with a sword did kill himself.

TAYLOR, THE WATER POET.

ANTE-PREFACE.—p. 35.

I here present thee with a hive of bees, laden some with wax, and some
with honey. Fear not to approach! There are no Wasps, there are no
Hornets here. If some wanton Bee should chance to buzz about thine
ears, stand thy ground and hold thy hands: there's none will sting
thee if thou strike not first. If any do, she hath honey in her bag
will cure thee too.

QUARLES.

PREFACE.—p. 37.

Oh for a quill plucked from a Seraph's wing!

YOUNG.

INITIAL CHAPTER.—p. 43.

᾿Εξ οὗ δὴ τὰ πρῶτα.

HOMER.

THE DOCTOR, &c.

_Eccoti il libro; mettivi ben cura
Iddio t' ajuti e dia buona ventura._

ORL. INNAM.

CHAPTER I. P. I.—p. 45.

THE SUBJECT OF THIS HISTORY AT HOME AND AT TEA.

If thou be a severe sour complexioned man then I here disallow thee to
be a competent judge.

IZAAK WALTON.

CHAPTER II. P. I.—p. 47.

WHEREIN CERTAIN QUESTIONS ARE PROPOSED CONCERNING TIME, PLACE AND
PERSONS.

_Quis? quid? ubi? quibus auxiliis? cur? quomodo? quando?_

TECHNICAL VERSE.

CHAPTER III. P. I.—p. 51.

WHOLESOME OBSERVATIONS UPON THE VANITY OF FAME.

Whosoever shall address himself to write of matters of instruction, or
of any other argument of importance, it behoveth that before he enter
thereinto, he should resolutely determine with himself in what order
he will handle the same; so shall he best accomplish that he hath
undertaken, and inform the understanding, and help the memory of the
Reader.

GWILLIM'S DISPLAY OF HERALDRY.

CHAPTER IV. P. I.—p. 56.

BIRTH AND PARENTAGE OF DR. DOVE, WITH THE DESCRIPTION OF A YEOMAN'S
HOUSE IN THE WEST RIDING OF YORKSHIRE A HUNDRED YEARS AGO.

_Non possidentem multa vocaveris
Recte beatum; rectius occupat
Nomen beati, qui Deorum
Muneribus sapienter uti,
Duramque callet pauperiem pati,
Pejusque letho flagitium timet._

HORACE, L. 4, Od. 9.

CHAPTER V. P. I.—p. 64.

EXTENSION OF THE SCIENCE OF PHYSIOGNOMY, WITH SOME REMARKS UPON THE
PRACTICAL USES OF CRANIOLOGY.

_Hanc ergo scientiam blande excipiamus, hilariterque amplectamur, ut
vere nostram et de nobismet ipsis tractantem; quam qui non amat, quam
qui non amplectitur, nec philosophiam amat, neque suæ vitæ discrimina
curat._

BAPTISTA PORTA.

CHAPTER VI. P. I.—p. 72.

A COLLECTION OF BOOKS NONE OF WHICH ARE INCLUDED AMONGST THE
PUBLICATIONS OF ANY SOCIETY FOR THE PROMOTION OF KNOWLEDGE RELIGIOUS
OR PROFANE.—HAPPINESS IN HUMBLE LIFE.

_Felix ille animi, divisque simillimus ipsis,
Quem non mordaci resplendens gloria fuco
Solicitat, non fastosi mala gaudia luxus,
Sed tacitos sinit ire dies, et paupere cultu
Exigit innocuæ tranquilla silentia vitæ._

POLITIAN.

CHAPTER VII. P. I.—p. 84.

RUSTIC PHILOSOPHY. AN EXPERIMENT UPON MOONSHINE.

_Quien comienza en juventud
A bien obrar,
Señal es de no errar
En senetud._

PROVERBIOS DEL MARQUES DE SANTILLANA.

CHAPTER VIII. P. I.—p. 93.

A KIND SCHOOLMASTER AND A HAPPY SCHOOL BOY.

Though happily thou wilt say that wands be to be wrought when they are
green, lest they rather break than bend when they be dry, yet know
also that he that bendeth a twig because he would see if it would bow
by strength may chance to have a crooked tree when he would have a
straight.

EUPHUES.

INTERCHAPTER I.—p. 98.

REMARKS IN THE PRINTING OFFICE. THE AUTHOR CONFESSES A DISPOSITION TO
GARRULITY. PROPRIETY OF PROVIDING CERTAIN CHAPTERS FOR THE RECEPTION
OF HIS EXTRANEOUS DISCOURSE. CHOICE OF AN APPELLATION FOR SUCH
CHAPTERS.

_Perque vices aliquid, quod tempora longa videri
Non sinat, in medium vacuas referamus ad aures._

OVID.

CHAPTER IX. P. I.—p. 106.

EXCEPTIONS TO ONE OF KING SOLOMON'S RULES—A WINTER'S EVENING AT
DANIEL'S FIRESIDE.

These are my thoughts; I might have spun them out into a greater
length, but I think a little plot of ground, thick sown, is better
than a great field which, for the most part of it, lies fallow.

NORRIS.

CHAPTER X. P. I.—p. 113.

ONE WHO WAS NOT SO WISE AS HIS FRIENDS COULD HAVE WISHED, AND YET
QUITE AS HAPPY AS IF HE HAD BEEN WISER. NEPOTISM NOT CONFINED TO
POPES.

There are of madmen as there are of tame,
All humoured not alike.———Some
Apish and fantastic;
And though 'twould grieve a soul to see God's image
So blemished and defaced, yet do they act
Such antic and such pretty lunacies,
That spite of sorrow, they will make you smile.

DEKKER.

CHAPTER XI. P. I.—p. 121.

A WORD TO THE READER, SHEWING WHERE WE ARE, AND HOW WE CAME HERE, AND
WHEREFORE; AND WHITHER WE ARE GOING.

'Tis my venture
On your retentive wisdom.

BEN JONSON.

CHAPTER XII. P. I.—p. 129.

A HISTORY NOTICED WHICH IS WRITTEN BACKWARD. THE CONFUSION OF TONGUES
AN ESPECIAL EVIL FOR SCHOOLBOYS.

For never in the long and tedious tract
Of slavish grammar was I made to plod;
No tyranny of Rules my patience rackt;
I served no prenticehood to any Rod;
But in the freedom of the Practic way
Learnt to go right, even when I went astray.

DR. BEAUMONT.

CHAPTER XIII. P. I.—p. 136.

A DOUBT CONCERNING SCHOOL BOOKS, WHICH WILL BE DEEMED HERETICAL: AND
SOME ACCOUNT OF AN EXTRAORDINARY SUBSTITUTE FOR OVID OR VIRGIL.

They say it is an ill mason that refuseth any stone; and there is no
knowledge but in a skilful hand serves, either positively as it is, or
else to illustrate some other knowledge.

HERBERT'S REMAINS.

CHAPTER XIV. P. I.—p. 149.

AN OBJECTION ANSWERED.

Is this then your wonder?
Nay then you shall under-
stand more of my skill.

BEN JONSON.

CHAPTER XV. P. I.—p. 154.

THE AUTHOR VENTURES AN OPINION AGAINST THE PREVAILING WISDOM OF MAKING
CHILDREN PREMATURELY WISE.

Pray you, use your freedom;
And so far, if you please allow me mine,
To hear you only; not to be compelled
To take your moral potions.

MASSINGER.

CHAPTER XVI. P. I.—p. 159.

USE AND ABUSE OF STORIES IN REASONING, WITH A WORD IN BEHALF OF
CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS AND IN REPROOF OF THE EARL OF LAUDERDALE.

My particular inclination moves me in controversy especially to
approve his choice that said, _fortia mallem quam formosa_.

DR. JACKSON.

INTERCHAPTER II.—p. 165.

ABALLIBOOZOBANGANORRIBO.

_Io'l dico dunque, e dicol che ognun m'ode._

BENEDETTO VARCHI.

CHAPTER XVII. P. I.—p. 172.

THE HAPPINESS OF HAVING A CATHOLIC TASTE.

There's no want of meat, Sir;
Portly and curious viands are prepared
To please all kinds of appetites.

MASSINGER.

CHAPTER XVIII. P. I.—p. 179.

ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL.

Τὰ δ᾿ἄν ἐπιμνησϑῶ,—ὑπὸ τοῦ λόγου ἐξαναγκαζὀμενος ἐπιμνησϑῄσομαι.

HERODOTUS.

CHAPTER XIX. P. I.—p. 184.

A CONVERSATION WITH MISS GRAVEAIRS.

_Operi suscepto inserviendum fuit;_ so Jacobus Mycillus pleadeth for
himself in his translation of Lucian's Dialogues, and so do I; I must
and will perform my task.

BURTON.

CHAPTER XX. P. I.—p. 192.

HOW TO MAKE GOLD.

_L' Alchimista non travaglia a voto;
Ei cerca l' oro, ei cerca l' oro, io dico
Ch' ei cerca l' oro; e s' ei giungesse in porto
Fora ben per se stesso e per altrui.
L' oro e somma posanza infra mortali;
Chiedine a Cavalier, chiedine a Dame,
Chiedine a tutto il Mondo._

CHIABRERA.

CHAPTER XXI. P. I.—p. 201.

A DOUBT CONCERNING THE USES OF PHILOSOPHY.

_El comienzo de salud
es el saber,
distinguir y conocer
qual es virtud._

PROVERBIOS DEL MARQUES DE SANTILLANA.

CHAPTER. XXII. P. I.—p. 205.

Τὸν δ᾿ ἀπαμειβόμενος.

_O felice colui, che intender puote
Le cagion de le cose di natura,
Che al piu di que' che vivon sono ignote;
E sotto il piè si mette ogni paura
De fati, e de la morte, ch'è si trista,
Ne di vulgo gli cal, nè d'altro ha cura._

TANSILLO.

CHAPTER XXIII. P. I.—p. 213.

ROWLAND DIXON AND HIS COMPANY OF PUPPETS.

_Alli se ve tan eficaz el llanto,
las fabulas y historias retratadas,
que parece verdad, y es dulce encanto._

* * * * *

_Y para el vulgo rudo, que ignorante
aborrece el manjar costoso, guisa
el plato del gracioso extravagante;_

_Con que les hartas de contento y risa,
gustando de mirar sayal grossero,
mas que sutil y candida camisa._

JOSEPH ORTIZ DE VILLENA.

CHAPTER XXIV. P. I.—p. 226.

QUACK AND NO QUACK, BEING AN ACCOUNT OF DR. GREEN AND HIS MAN KEMP.
POPULAR MEDICINE, HERBARY, THEORY OF SIGNATURES, WILLIAM DOVE, JOHN
WESLEY, AND BAXTER.

Hold thy hand! health's dear maintainer;
Life perchance may burn the stronger:
Having substance to maintain her
She untouched may last the longer.
When the Artist goes about
To redress her flame, I doubt
Oftentimes he snuffs it out.

QUARLES.

CHAPTER XXV. P. I.—p. 254.

_Hiatus valde lacrymabilis._

Time flies away fast,
The while we never remember
How soon our life here
Grows old with the year
That dies with the next December!

HERRICK.

CHAPTER XXVI. P. I.—p. 258.

DANIEL AT DONCASTER; THE REASON WHY HE WAS DESTINED FOR THE MEDICAL
PROFESSION, RATHER THAN HOLY ORDERS; AND SOME REMARKS UPON SERMONS.

_Je ne veux dissimuler, amy Lecteur, que je n'aye bien préveu, et me
tiens pour deüement adverty, que ne puis eviter la reprehension
d'aucuns, et les calomnies de plusieurs, ausquels c'est éscrit
désplaira du tout._

CHRISTOFLE DE HERICOURT.

CHAPTER XXVII. P. I.—p. 272.

A PASSAGE IN PROCOPIUS IMPROVED. A STORY CONCERNING URIM AND THUMMIM;
AND THE ELDER DANIEL'S OPINION OF THE PROFESSION OF THE LAW.

Here is Domine Picklock
My man of Law, sollicits all my causes,
Follows my business, makes and compounds my quarrels
Between my tenants and me; sows all my strifes
And reaps them too, troubles the country for me,
And vexes any neighbour that I please.

BEN JONSON.

CHAPTER XXVIII. P. I.—p. 278.

PETER HOPKINS. EFFECTS OF TIME AND CHANGE. DESCRIPTION OF HIS
DWELLING-HOUSE.

_Combien de changemens depuis que suis au monde,
Qui n'est qu' un point du tems!_

PASQUIER.

CHAPTER XXIX. P. I.—p. 284.

A HINT OF REMINISCENCE TO THE READER. THE CLOCK OF ST. GEORGE'S. A
WORD IN HONOR OF ARCHDEACON MARKHAM.

There is a ripe season for every thing, and if you slip that or
anticipate it, you dim the grace of the matter be it never so good. As
we say by way of Proverb that an hasty birth brings forth blind
whelps, so a good tale tumbled out before the time is ripe for it, is
ungrateful to the hearer.

BISHOP HACKETT.

CHAPTER XXX. P. I.—p. 289.

THE OLD BELLS RUNG TO A NEW TUNE.

If the bell have any sides the clapper will find 'em.

BEN JONSON.

CHAPTER XXXI. P. I.—p. 302.

MORE CONCERNING BELLS.

Lord, ringing changes all our bells hath marr'd;
Jangled they have and jarr'd
So long, they're out of tune, and out of frame;
They seem not now the same.
Put them in frame anew, and once begin
To tune them so, that they may chime all in.

HERBERT.

CHAPTER XXXII. P. I.—p. 308.

AN INTRODUCTION TO CERTAIN PRELIMINARIES ESSENTIAL TO THE PROGRESS OF
THIS WORK.

_Mas demos ya el assiento en lo importante,
Que el tiempo huye del mundo por la posta._

BALBUENA.

THE DOCTOR, &c.

CHAPTER VII. A. I.

A FAMILY PARTY AT A NEXT DOOR NEIGHBOUR'S.

Good Sir, reject it not, although it bring
Appearances of some fantastic thing
At first unfolding!

GEORGE WITHER TO THE KING.

I was in the fourth night of the story of the Doctor and his horse,
and had broken it off, not like Scheherezade because it was time to
get up, but because it was time to go to bed. It was at thirty-five
minutes after ten o'clock, on the 20th of July in the year of our Lord
1813. I finished my glass of punch, tinkled the spoon against its
side, as if making music to my meditations, and having my eyes fixed
upon the Bhow Begum, who was sitting opposite to me at the head of her
own table, I said, “It ought to be written in a Book!”

There had been a heavy thunder-storm in the afternoon; and though the
thermometer had fallen from 78 to 70, still the atmosphere was
charged. If that mysterious power by which the nerves convey sensation
and make their impulses obeyed, be (as experiments seem to indicate)
identical with the galvanic fluid; and if the galvanic and electric
fluids be the same (as philosophers have more than surmised;) and if
the lungs (according to a happy hypothesis) elaborate for us from the
light of heaven this pabulum of the brain, and material essence, or
essential matter of genius,—it may be that the ethereal fire which I
had inhaled so largely during the day produced the bright conception,
or at least impregnated and quickened the latent seed. The punch,
reader, had no share in it.

I had spoken as it were abstractedly, and the look which accompanied
the words was rather cogitative than regardant. The Bhow Begum laid
down her snuff-box and replied, entering into the feeling, as well as
echoing the words, “It _ought_ to be written in a book,—certainly it
ought.”

They may talk as they will of the dead languages. Our auxiliary verbs
give us a power which the ancients, with all their varieties of mood,
and inflections of tense, never could attain. “It _must_ be written in
a book,” said I, encouraged by her manner. The mood was the same, the
tense was the same; but the gradation of meaning was marked in a way
which a Greek or Latin grammarian might have envied as well as
admired.

“Pshaw! nonsense! stuff!” said my wife's eldest sister, who was
sitting at the right hand of the Bhow Begum; “I say write it in a book
indeed!” My wife's youngest sister was sitting diagonally opposite to
the last speaker: she lifted up her eyes and smiled. It was a smile
which expressed the same opinion as the late vituperative tones; there
was as much of incredulity in it; but more of wonder and less of
vehemence.

My wife was at my left hand, making a cap for her youngest daughter,
and with her tortoiseshell-paper work-box before her. I turned towards
her and repeated the words, “It _must_ be written in a book!” But I
smiled while I was speaking, and was conscious of that sort of meaning
in my eyes, which calls out contradiction for the pleasure of sporting
with it.

“Write it in a book?” she replied, “I am sure you wo'nt!” and she
looked at me with a frown. Poets have written much upon their ladies'
frowns, but I do not remember that they have ever described the thing
with much accuracy. When my wife frowns two perpendicular wrinkles,
each three quarters of an inch in length, are formed in the forehead,
the base of each resting upon the top of the nose, and equi-distant
from each other. The poets have also attributed dreadful effects to
the frown of those whom they love. I cannot say that I ever
experienced any thing very formidable in my wife's. At present she
knew her eyes would give the lie to it if they looked at me steadily
for a moment; so they wheeled to the left about quick, off at a
tangent, in a direction to the Bhow Begum, and then she smiled. She
could not prevent the smile; but she tried to make it scornful.

My wife's nephew was sitting diagonally with her, and opposite his
mother, on the left hand of the Bhow Begum. “Oh!” he exclaimed, “it
ought to be written in a book! it will be a glorious book! write it,
uncle, I beseech you!” My wife's nephew is a sensible lad. He reads my
writings, likes my stories, admires my singing, and thinks as I do in
politics:—a youth of parts and considerable promise.

“He _will_ write it!” said the Bhow Begum, taking up her snuff-box,
and accompanying the words with a nod of satisfaction and
encouragement. “He will never be so foolish!” said my wife. My wife's
eldest sister rejoined, “he is foolish enough for any thing.”

CHAPTER VI. A. I.

SHEWING THAT AN AUTHOR MAY MORE EASILY BE KEPT AWAKE BY HIS OWN
IMAGINATIONS THAN PUT TO SLEEP BY THEM HIMSELF, WHATEVER MAY BE THEIR
EFFECT UPON HIS READERS.

WEBSTER.

When I ought to have been asleep the “unborn pages crowded on my
soul.” The Chapters ante-initial and post-initial appeared in
delightful prospect “long drawn out:” the beginning, the middle and
the end were evolved before me: the whole spread itself forth, and
then the parts unravelled themselves and danced the hays. The very
types rose in judgment against me, as if to persecute me for the tasks
which during so many years I had imposed upon them. Capitals and small
letters, pica and long-primer, brevier and bourgeois, english and
nonpareil, minion and pearl, Romans and Italics, black-letter and red,
past over my inward sight. The notes of admiration!!! stood straight
up in view as I lay on the one side; and when I turned on the other to
avoid them, the notes of interrogation cocked up their hump-backs???
Then came to recollection the various incidents of the eventful tale.
“Visions of glory spare my aching sight!” The various personages, like
spectral faces in a fit of the vapours, stared at me through my
eyelids. The Doctor oppressed me like an incubus; and for the
Horse,—he became a perfect night-mare. “Leave me, leave me to repose!”

Twelve by the kitchen clock!—still restless!—One! O Doctor, for one of
thy comfortable composing draughts!—Two! here's a case of
insomnolence! I, who in summer close my lids as instinctively as the
daisy when the sun goes down; and who in winter could hybernate as
well as Bruin, were I but provided with as much fat to support me
during the season, and keep the wick of existence burning:—I, who, if
my pedigree were properly made out, should be found to have descended
from one of the Seven Sleepers, and from the Sleeping Beauty in the
Wood!

I put my arms out of bed. I turned the pillow for the sake of applying
a cold surface to my cheek. I stretched my feet into the cold corner.
I listened to the river, and to the ticking of my watch. I thought of
all sleepy sounds and all soporific things: the flow of water, the
humming of bees, the motion of a boat, the waving of a field of corn,
the nodding of a mandarine's head on the chimney-piece, a horse in a
mill, the opera, Mr. Humdrum's conversation, Mr. Proser's poems, Mr.
Laxative's speeches, Mr. Lengthy's sermons. I tried the device of my
own childhood, and fancied that the bed revolved with me round and
round. Still the Doctor visited me as perseveringly as if I had been
his best patient; and, call up what thoughts I would to keep him off,
the Horse charged through them all.

At last Morpheus reminded me of Dr. Torpedo's divinity lectures, where
the voice, the manner, the matter, even the very atmosphere, and the
streamy candle-light were all alike somnific;—where he who by strong
effort lifted up his head, and forced open the reluctant eyes, never
failed to see all around him fast asleep. Lettuces, cowslip-wine,
poppy-syrup, mandragora, hop-pillows, spiders'-web pills, and the
whole tribe of narcotics, up to bang and the black drop, would have
failed: but this was irresistible; and thus twenty years after date I
found benefit from having attended the course.

CHAPTER V. A. I.

SOMETHING CONCERNING THE PHILOSOPHY OF DREAMS, AND THE AUTHOR'S
EXPERIENCE IN AERIAL HORSEMANSHIP.

BEN JONSON.

The wise ancients held that dreams are from Jove. Virgil hath told us
from what gate of the infernal regions they go out, but at which of
the five entrances of the town of Mansoul they get in John Bunyan hath
not explained. Some have conceited that unembodied spirits have access
to us during sleep, and impress upon the passive faculty, by divine
permission, presentiments of those things whereof it is fitting that
we should be thus dimly forewarned. This opinion is held by Baxter,
and to this also doth Bishop Newton incline. The old atomists supposed
that the likenesses or spectres of corporeal things, (_exuviæ scilicet
rerum, vel effluvia_, as they are called by Vaninus, when he takes
advantage of them to explain the _Fata Morgana_) the atomists I say,
supposed that these spectral forms which are constantly emitted from
all bodies,

_Omne genus quoniam passim simulacra feruntur_[1]

assail the soul when she ought to be at rest; according to which
theory all the lathered faces that are created every morning in the
looking-glass, and all the smiling ones that my Lord Simper and Mr.
Smallwit contemplate there with so much satisfaction during the day,
must at this moment be floating up and down the world. Others again
opine, as if in contradiction to those who pretend life to be a dream,
that dreams are realities, and that sleep sets the soul free like a
bird from a cage. John Henderson saw the spirit of a slumbering cat
pass from her in pursuit of a visionary mouse;—(I know not whether he
would have admitted the fact as an argument for materialism); and the
soul of Hans Engelbrecht not only went to hell, but brought back from
it a stench which proved to all the bystanders that it had been
there.—Faugh!

[Footnote 1: Lucretius.]

Whether then my spirit that night found its way out at the nose, (for
I sleep with my mouth shut) and actually sallied out seeking
adventures; or whether the spectrum of the Horse floated into my
chamber; or some benevolent genius or dæmon assumed the well-known and
welcome form; or whether the dream were merely a dream,—

_si fuè en espiritu, ò fuè
en cuerpo, no sè; que yo
solo sè, que no lo sè;_[2]

so however it was that in the visions of the night I mounted Nobs.
Tell me not of Astolfo's hippogriff, or Pacolet's wooden steed; nor

Of that wonderous horse of brass
Whereon the Tartar King did pass;

nor of Alborak, who was the best beast for a night-journey that ever
man bestrode. Tell me not even of Pegasus! I have ridden him many a
time; by day and by night have I ridden him; high and low, far and
wide, round the earth, and about it, and over it, and under it. I know
all his earth-paces, and his sky-paces. I have tried him at a walk, at
an amble, at a trot, at a canter, at a hand-gallop, at full gallop and
at full speed. I have proved him in the _manége_ with single turns and
the _manége_ with double turns, his bounds, his curvets, his
_pirouettes_, and his _pistes_, his _croupade_ and his _balotade_, his
gallop-galliard and his capriole. I have been on him when he has
glided through the sky with wings outstretched and motionless, like a
kite or a summer cloud; I have bestrode him when he went up like a
bittern with a strong spiral flight, round, round and round, and
upward, upward, upward, circling and rising still; and again when he
has gone full sail, or full fly, with his tail as straight as a
comet's behind him. But for a hobby or a night horse, Pegasus is
nothing to Nobs.

[Footnote 2: Calderon.]

Where did we go on that memorable night? What did we see?—What did we
do?—Or rather what did we not see! and what did we not perform!

CHAPTER IV. A. I.

A CONVERSATION AT THE BREAKFAST TABLE.

_Tel condamne mon Coq-à-l'âne qui un jour en justifiera le bon sens._

LA PRETIEUSE.

I went down to breakfast as usual overflowing with joyous thoughts.
For mirth and for music the skylark is but a type of me. I warbled a
few wood notes wild, and then full of the unborn work, addressed
myself to my wife's eldest sister, and asked if she would permit me to
dedicate the Book to her. “What book?” she replied. “The History,”
said I, “of Dr. Daniel Dove of Doncaster, and his Horse Nobs.” She
answered, “No indeed! I will have no such nonsense dedicated to
me!”—and with that she drew up her upper lip, and the lower region of
the nose. I turned to my wife's youngest sister: “Shall I have the
pleasure of dedicating it to you?” She raised her eyes, inclined her
head forwards with a smile of negation, and begged leave to decline
the honour. “Commandante,” said I, to my wife and Commandress, “shall
I dedicate it then to you?” My Commandante made answer, “not unless
you have something better to dedicate.”

“So Ladies!” said I; “the stone which the builders rejected,”—and then
looking at my wife's youngest sister—“Oh, it will be such a book!” The
manner and the tone were so much in earnest that they arrested the
bread and butter on the way to her mouth; and she exclaimed, with her
eyes full of wonder and incredulity at the same time, “Why you never
can be serious?” “Not serious?” said I; “why I have done nothing but
think of it and dream of it the whole night.” “He told me so,”
rejoined my Commandante, “the first thing in the morning.” “Ah
Stupey!” cried my wife's eldest sister, accompanying the compliment
with a protrusion of the head, and an extension of the lips, which
disclosed not only the whole remaining row of teeth, but the chasms
that had been made in it by the tooth drawer; _hiatus valde
lacrymabiles_.

“Two volumes,” said I, “and this in the title-page!” So taking out my
pencil, I drew upon the back of a letter the mysterious monogram,
erudite in its appearance as the digamma of Mr. A. F. Valpy.

[Illustration: a tetrahedron]

It past from hand to hand. “Why he is not in earnest?” said my wife's
youngest sister. “He never can be,” replied my wife. And yet beginning
to think that peradventure I was, she looked at me with a quick turn
of the eye,—“a pretty subject indeed for you to employ your time upon!
You,—_vema whehaha yohu almad otenba twandri athancod!_” I have
thought proper to translate this part of my Commandante's speech into
the Garamna tongue.

CHAPTER III. A. I.

THE UTILITY OF POCKETS. A COMPLIMENT PROPERLY RECEIVED.

_La tasca è proprio cosa da Christiani._

BENEDETTO VARCHI.

My eldest daughter had finished her Latin lessons, and my son had
finished his Greek; and I was sitting at my desk, pen in hand, and in
mouth at the same time, (a substitute for biting the nails which I
recommend to all onygophagists;) when the Bhow Begum came in with her
black velvet reticule, suspended as usual from her arm by its silver
chain.

Now of all the inventions of the Tailor (who is of all artists the
most inventive) I hold the pocket to be the most commodious, and
saving the fig leaf, the most indispensible. Birds have their craw;
ruminating beasts their first or ante-stomach; the monkey has his
cheek, the opossum her pouch; and, so necessary is some convenience of
this kind for the human animal, that the savage who cares not for
clothing makes for himself a pocket if he can. The Hindoo carries his
snuff-box in his turban. Some of the inhabitants of Congo make a
secret fob in their wooly toupet, of which as P. Labat says, the worst
use they make is—to carry poison in it. The Matolas, a long haired
race who border upon the Caffres, form their locks into a sort of
hollow cylinder in which they bear about their little implements;
certes a more sensible bag than such as is worn at court. The New
Zealander is less ingenious; he makes a large opening in his ear, and
carries his knife in it. The Ogres, who are worse than savages, and
whose ignorance and brutality is in proportion to their bulk, are
said, upon the authority of tradition, when they have picked up a
stray traveller or two more than they require for their supper, to
lodge them in a hollow tooth as a place of security till breakfast;
whence it may be inferred that they are not liable to tooth ache, and
that they make no use of tooth-picks. Ogres, Savages, Beasts and Birds
all require something to serve the purpose of a pocket. Thus much for
the necessity of the thing. Touching its antiquity much might be said;
for it would not be difficult to show, with that little assistance
from the auxiliaries _must_ and _have_ and _been_ which enabled
Whitaker of Manchester to write whole quartos of hypothetical history
in the potential mood, that pockets are coeval with clothing: and, as
erudite men have maintained that language and even letters are of
divine origin, there might with like reason be a conclusion drawn from
the twenty-first verse of the third chapter of the book of Genesis,
which it would not be easy to impugn. Moreover Nature herself shows us
the utility, the importance, nay the indispensability, or, to take a
hint from the pure language of our diplomatists, the
_sinequanonniness_ of pockets. There is but one organ which is common
to all animals whatsoever: some are without eyes, many without noses;
some have no heads, others no tails; some neither one nor the other;
some there are who have no brains, others very pappy ones; some no
hearts, others very bad ones; but all have a stomach,—and what is the
stomach but a live inside pocket? Hath not Van Helmont said of it,
“_saccus vel pera est, ut ciborum olla?_”

Dr. Towers used to have his coat pockets made of capacity to hold a
quarto volume—a wise custom; but requiring stout cloth, good buckram,
and strong thread well waxed. I do not so greatly commend the humour
of Dr. Ingenhouz, whose coat was lined with pockets of all sizes,
wherein, in his latter years, when science had become to him as a
plaything, he carried about various materials for chemical
experiments: among the rest so many compositions for fulminating
powders in glass tubes, separated only by a cork in the middle of the
tube, that, if any person had unhappily given him a blow with a stick,
he might have blown up himself and the Doctor too. For myself, four
coat pockets of the ordinary dimensions content me; in these a
sufficiency of conveniences may be carried, and that sufficiency
methodically arranged. For mark me, gentle or ungentle Reader! there
is nothing like method in pockets, as well as in composition: and what
orderly and methodical man would have his pocket-handkerchief, and his
pocket-book, and the key of his door (if he be a batchelor living in
chambers) and his knife, and his loose pence and half-pence, and the
letters which peradventure he might just have received, or
peradventure he may intend to drop in the post-office, two-penny or
general, as he passes by, and his snuff, if he be accustomed so to
regale his olfactory conduits, or his tobacco-box, if he prefer the
masticable to the pulverized weed; or his box of lozenges if he should
be troubled with a tickling cough; and the sugar-plumbs and the
gingerbread nuts which he may be carrying home to his own children, or
to any other small men and women upon whose hearts he may have a
design;—who I say would like to have all this in chaos and confusion,
one lying upon the other, and the thing which is wanted first fated
alway to be undermost!—(Mr. Wilberforce knows the inconvenience;—) the
snuff working its way out to the gingerbread, the sugar-plumbs
insinuating themselves into the folds of the pocket-handkerchief, the
pence grinding the lozenges to dust for the benefit of the
pocket-book, and the door key busily employed in unlocking the
letters?

Now, forasmuch as the commutation of female pockets for the reticule
leadeth to inconveniences like this, (not to mention that the very
name of commutation ought to be held in abhorrence by all who hold
day-light and fresh air essential to the comfort and salubrity of
dwelling-houses,) I abominate that bag of the Bhow Begum,
notwithstanding the beauty of the silver chain upon the black velvet.
And perceiving at this time that the clasp of its silver setting was
broken, so that the mouth of the bag was gaping pitiably, like a sick
or defunct oyster, I congratulated her as she came in upon this
farther proof of the commodiousness of the invention; for here, in the
country, there is no workman who can mend that clasp, and the bag must
therefore either be laid aside, or used in that deplorable state.

When the Bhow Begum had seated herself I told her how my proffered
dedication had been thrice rejected with scorn, and repeating the
offer I looked for a more gracious reply. But, as if scorn had been
the influenza of the female mind that morning, she answered, “No;
indeed she would not have it after it had been refused by every body
else.” “Nay, nay,” said I; “it is as much in your character to accept,
as it was in their's to refuse.” While I was speaking she took a pinch
of snuff; the nasal titillation co-operated with my speech, for when
any one of the senses is pleased, the rest are not likely to continue
out of humour. “Well,” she replied, “I will have it dedicated to me,
because I shall delight in the book.” And she powdered the carpet with
tobacco dust as she spake.

CHAPTER II. A. I.

CONCERNING DEDICATIONS, PRINTERS TYPES AND IMPERIAL INK.

_Il y aura des clefs, et des ouvertures de mes secrets._

LA PRETIEUSE.

Monsieur Dellon, having been in the Inquisition at Goa, dedicated an
account of that tribunal, and of his own sufferings to Mademoiselle Du
Cambout de Coislin, in these words:

_Mademoiselle_

_J'aurois tort de me plaindre des rigueurs de l'Inquisition, et des
mauvais traitemens que j'ay éprouvez de la part de ses ministres,
puisqu'en me fournissant la matiére de cet ouvrage, ils m'ont procuré
l'avantage de vous le dedier._

This is the book which that good man Claudius Buchanan with so much
propriety put into the hands of the Grand Inquisitor of India, when he
paid him a visit at the Inquisition, and asked him his opinion of the
accuracy of the relation upon the spot!

The Frenchman's compliment may truly be said to have been far-fetched
and dearly bought. Heaven forefend that I should either go so far for
one, or purchase it at such a price!

A dedication has oftentimes cost the unhappy author a greater
consumption of thumb and finger-nail than the whole book besides, and
all varieties of matter and manner have been resorted to. Mine must be
so far in character with the delectable history which it introduces
that it shall be unlike all which have ever gone before it. I knew a
man, (one he was who would have been an ornament to his country if
methodism and madness had not combined to overthrow a bright and
creative intellect) who, in one of his insaner moods, printed a sheet
and a half of muddy rhapsodies with the title of the “Standard of God
Displayed:” and he prefaced it by saying that the price of a perfect
book, upon a perfect subject, ought to be a perfect sum in a perfect
coin; that is to say one guinea. Now as Dr. Daniel Dove was a perfect
Doctor, and his horse Nobs was a perfect horse, and as I humbly hope
their history will be a perfect history, so ought the Dedication
thereunto to be perfect in its kind. Perfect therefore it shall be, as
far as kalotypography can make it. For though it would be hopeless to
exceed all former Dedications in the turn of a compliment or of a
sentence, in the turn of the letters it is possible to exceed them
all. It was once my fortune to employ a printer who had a love for his
art; and having a taste that way myself, we discussed the merits of a
new font one day when I happened to call in upon him. I objected to
the angular inclination of a capital italic _A_ which stood upon its
pins as if it were starting aghast from the next letter on the left,
and was about to tumble upon that to the right; in which case down
would go the rest of the word, like a row of soldiers which children
make with cards. My printer was too deeply enamoured with the beauties
of his font, to have either ear or eye for its defects; and hastily
waiving that point he called my attention to a capital _R_ in the same
line, which cocked up its tail just as if it had been nicked; that
cock of the tail had fascinated him. “Look Sir,” said he, while his
eyes glistened with all the ardour of an amateur; “look at that
turn!—that's sweet, Sir!” and drawing off the hand with the forefinger
of which he had indicated it, he described in the air the turn that
had delighted him, in a sort of heroic flourish, his head with a
diminished axis, like the inner stile of a Pentegraph, following the
movement. I have never seen that _R_ since without remembering him. **
*** ** **** ** *** ******** ** *** ***** ******* ** *******, ***
********* *****, ***, *** ** *** ******* ***** ** **********, *** ***
*******. He who can read the stars, may read in them the secret which
he seeketh.

But the turns of my Dedication to the Bhow Begum shall not be trusted
to the letter founders, a set of men remarkable for involving their
craft in such mystery that no one ever taught it to another, every one
who has practised it having been obliged either surreptitiously to
obtain the secret, or to invent a method for himself. It shall be in
the old English letter, not only because that alphabet hath in its
curves and angles, its frettings and redundant lines, a sort of
picturesque similitude with Gothic architecture, but also because in
its breadth and beauty it will display the colour of the ink to most
advantage. For the Dedication shall not be printed in black after the
ordinary fashion, nor in white like the Sermon upon the Excise Laws,
nor in red after the mode of Mr. Dibdin's half titles, but in the
colour of that imperial encaustic ink, which by the laws of the Roman
Empire it was death for any but the Roman Emperor himself to use. We
Britons live in a free country, wherein every man may use what
coloured ink seemeth good to him, and put as much gall in it as he
pleases, or any other ingredient whatsoever. Moreover this is an
imperial age, in which to say nothing of M. Ingelby the Emperor of the
Conjurors, we have seen no fewer than four new Emperors. He of Russia
who did not think the old title of Peter the Great good enough for
him: he of France, for whom any name but that of Tyrant or Murderer is
too good; he of Austria who took up one imperial appellation to cover
over the humiliating manner in which he laid another down; and he of
Hayti, who if he be wise will order all public business to be carried
on in the talkee-talkee tongue, and make it high treason for any
person to speak or write French in his dominions. We also must dub our
old Parliament imperial forsooth! that we may not be behindhand with
the age. Then we have Imperial Dining Tables! Imperial Oil for
nourishing the hair! Imperial Liquid for Boot Tops! Yea, and, by all
the Cæsars deified and damnified, Imperial Blacking! For my part I
love to go with the stream, so I will have an Imperial Dedication.

Behold it Reader. Therein is mystery.

[Illustration: To The Bhow Begum KEDORA NIABARMA]

CHAPTER I. A. I.

NO BOOK CAN BE COMPLETE WITHOUT A PREFACE.

I see no cause but men may pick their teeth,
Though Brutus with a sword did kill himself.

TAYLOR, THE WATER POET.

Who was the Inventor of Prefaces? I shall be obliged to the immortal
Mr. Urban, (immortal, because like the king in law he never dies) if
he will propound this question for me in his Magazine, that great
lumber-room wherein small ware of all kinds has been laid up
higgledy-piggledy by half-penny-worths or farthing-worths at a time
for fourscore years, till like broken glass, rags, or rubbish it has
acquired value by mere accumulation. To send a book like this into the
world without a Preface would be as impossible as it is to appear at
Court without a bag at the head and a sword at the tail, for as the
perfection of dress must be shown at Court, so in this history should
the perfection of histories be exhibited. The book must be _omni
genere absolutum_; it must prove and exemplify the perfectibility of
books: yea with all imaginable respect for the “Delicate
Investigation,” which I leave in undisputed possession of an
appellation so exquisitely appropriate, I conceive that the title of
THE BOOK, as a popular designation κατ᾿ εξοχην, should be transferred
from the edifying report of that Inquiry, to the present unique,
unrivalled and unrivalable production;—a production the like whereof
hath not been, is not, and will not be. Here however let me warn my
Greek and Arabian translators how they render the word, that if they
offend the Mufti or the Patriarch, the offence as well as the danger
may be theirs: I wash my hands of both. I write in plain English,
innocently and in the simplicity of my heart: what may be made of it
in heathen languages concerns not me.

ANTE-PREFACE.

QUARLES.

Prefaces, said Charles Blount, Gent., who committed suicide because
the law would not allow him to marry his brother's widow,—(a law, be
it remarked in passing, which is not sanctioned by reason, and which
instead of being in conformity with scripture, is in direct opposition
to it, being in fact the mere device of a corrupt and greedy
church)—“Prefaces,” said this flippant, ill-opinioned and unhappy man,
“ever were, and still are but of two sorts, let other modes and
fashions vary as they please. Let the profane long peruke succeed the
godly cropt hair; the cravat, the ruff; presbytery, popery; and popery
presbytery again, yet still the author keeps to his old and wonted
method of prefacing; when at the beginning of his book he enters,
either with a halter about his neck, submitting himself to his
reader's mercy whether he shall be hanged, or no; or else in a huffing
manner he appears with the halter in his hand, and threatens to hang
his reader, if he gives him not his good word. This with the
excitement of some friends to his undertaking, and some few apologies
for want of time, books, and the like, are the constant and usual
shams of all scribblers as well ancient as modern.”—This was not true
then, nor is it now; but when he proceeds to say, “for my part I enter
the lists upon another score,”—so say I with him; and my Preface shall
say the rest.

PREFACE.

Oh for a quill plucked from a Seraph's wing!

YOUNG.

So the Poet exclaimed; and his exclamation may be quoted as one
example more of the vanity of human wishes; for in order to get a
Seraph's quill it would be necessary, according to Mrs. Glasse's
excellent item in her directions for roasting a hare, to begin by
catching a Seraph. A quill from a Seraph's wing is, I confess, above
my ambition; but one from a Peacock's tail was within my reach; and be
it known unto all people, nations and languages, that with a Peacock's
quill this Preface hath been penned—literally—truly, and _bona-fidely_
speaking. And this is to write, as the learned old Pasquier says,
_pavonesquement_, which in latin minted for the nonce may be rendered
_pavonicè_ and in English peacockically or peacockishly, whichever the
reader may like best. That such a pen has verily and indeed been used
upon this occasion I affirm. I affirm it upon the word of a true man;
and here is a Captain of his Majesty's Navy at my elbow, who himself
made the pen, and who, if evidence were required to the fact, would
attest it by as round an oath as ever rolled over a right English
tongue. Nor will the time easily escape his remembrance, the bells
being at this moment ringing, June 4, 1814, to celebrate the King's
birthday, and the public notification that peace has been concluded
with France.

I have oftentimes had the happiness of seeing due commendation
bestowed by gentle critics, unknown admirers and partial friends upon
my pen, which has been married to all amiable epithets:—classical,
fine, powerful, tender, touching, pathetic, strong, fanciful, daring,
elegant, sublime, beautiful. I have read these epithets with that
proper satisfaction which when thus applied they could not fail to
impart, and sometimes qualified the pride which they inspired by
looking at the faithful old tool of the Muses beside me, worn to the
stump in their service: the one end mended up to the quick in that
spirit of œconomy which becomes a son of the Lackland family, and
shortened at the other by the gradual and alternate processes of
burning and biting, till a scant inch only is left above the finger
place. Philemon Holland was but a type of me in this respect. Indeed I
may be allowed to say that I have improved upon his practice, or at
least that I get more out of a pen than he did, for in the engraved
title-page to his Cyrupædia, where there appears the Portrait of the
_Interpres_ marked by a great D inclosing the Greek letter Φ (which I
presume designates Doctor Philemon) _ætatis suæ_ 80. A°. 1632, it may
be plainly seen that he used his pen only at one end. Peradventure he
delighted not, as I do, in the mitigated ammoniac odour.

But thou, O gentle reader, who in the exercise of thy sound judgment
and natural benignity wilt praise this Preface, thou mayest with
perfect propriety bestow the richest epithets upon the pen wherewith
its immortal words were first clothed in material forms. Beautiful,
elegant, fine, splendid, fanciful, will be to the very letter of
truth: versatile it is as the wildest wit; flexible as the most
monkey-like talent; and shouldst thou call it tender, I will whisper
in thine ear—that it is only too soft. Yet softness may be suitable;
for of my numerous readers one half will probably be soft by sex, and
of the other half a very considerable proportion soft by nature. Soft
therefore be the Pen and soft the strain.

I have drawn up the window-blinds (though sunshine at this time acts
like snuff upon the mucous membrane of my nose) in order that the
light may fall upon this excellent Poet's wand as I wave it to and
fro, making cuts five and six of the broad-sword exercise. Every
feather of its fringe is now lit up by the sun; the hues of green and
gold and amethyst are all brought forth; and that predominant lustre
which can only be likened to some rich metallic oxyd; and that spot of
deepest purple, the pupil of an eye for whose glorious hue neither
metals nor flowers nor precious stones afford a resemblance: its
likeness is only to be found in animated life, in birds and insects
whom nature seems to have formed when she was most prodigal of beauty:
I have seen it indeed upon the sea, but it has been in some quiet bay
when the reflection of the land combined with the sky and the ocean to
produce it.

And what can be more emblematic of the work which I am beginning than
the splendid instrument wherewith the Preface is traced? What could
more happily typify the combination of parts each perfect in itself
when separately considered, yet all connected into one harmonious
whole; the story running through like the stem or back-bone, which the
episodes and digressions fringe like so many featherlets, leading up
to that catastrophe, the gem or eye-star, for which the whole was
formed, and in which all terminate.

They who are versed in the doctrine of sympathies and the arcana of
correspondences as revealed to the Swedish Emanuel, will doubtless
admire the instinct or inspiration which directed my choice to the
pavonian Pen. The example should be followed by all consumers of ink
and quill. Then would the lover borrow a feather from the turtle dove.
The lawyer would have a large assortment of kite, hawk, buzzard and
vulture: his clients may use pigeon or gull. Poets according to their
varieties. Mr. —— the Tom Tit. Mr. —— the Water-wagtail. Mr. —— the
Crow. Mr. —— the Mocking-bird. Mr. —— the Magpie. Mr. —— the Sky-lark.
Mr. —— the Eagle. Mr. —— the Swan. Lord —— the Black Swan. Critics
some the Owl, others the Butcher Bird. Your challenger must indite
with one from the wing of a game cock: he who takes advantage of a
privileged situation to offer the wrong and shrink from the atonement
will find a white feather. Your dealers in public and private scandal,
whether Jacobins or Anti-Jacobins, the pimps and pandars of a
profligate press should use none but duck feathers, and those of the
dirtiest that can be found in the purlieus of Pimlico or St. George's
Fields. But for the Editor of the Edinburgh Review, whether he
dictates in morals or in taste, or displays his peculiar talent in
political prophecy, he must continue to use goose quills. Stick to the
goose Mr. Jeffrey, while you live stick to the Goose!

INITIAL CHAPTER.

᾿Εξ οὗ δὴ τὰ πρῶτα.

HOMER.

They who remember the year 1800 will remember also the great
controversy whether it was the beginning of a century, or the end of
one; a controversy in which all Magazines, all Newspapers, and all
persons took part. Now as it has been deemed expedient to divide this
work, or to speak more emphatically this Opus, or more emphatically
still this Ergon, into Chapters Ante-Initial and Post-Initial, a
dispute of the same nature might arise among the commentators in after
ages, if especial care were not now taken to mark distinctly the
beginning. This therefore is the Initial Chapter, neither Ante nor
Post, but standing between both; the point of initiation, the goal of
the _Antes_, the starting place of the _Posts_; the mark at which the
former end their career, and from whence the latter take their
departure.

THE DOCTOR, &c.

_Eccoti il libro; mettivi ben cura
Iddio t' ajuti e dia buona ventura._

ORL. INNAM.

CHAPTER I. P. I.

THE SUBJECT OF THIS HISTORY AT HOME AND AT TEA.

If thou be a severe sour complexioned man then I here disallow thee to
be a competent judge.

IZAAK WALTON.

The clock of St. George's had struck five. Mrs. Dove had just poured
out the Doctor's seventh cup of tea. The Doctor was sitting in his
arm-chair. Sir Thomas was purring upon his knees; and Pompey stood
looking up to his mistress, wagging his tail, sometimes whining with a
short note of impatience, and sometimes gently putting his paw against
her apron to remind her that he wished for another bit of bread and
butter. Barnaby was gone to the farm: and Nobs was in the stable.

CHAPTER II. P. I.

WHEREIN CERTAIN QUESTIONS ARE PROPOSED CONCERNING TIME, PLACE AND
PERSONS.

_Quis? quid? ubi? quibus auxiliis? cur? quomodo? quando?_

TECHNICAL VERSE.

Thus have I begun according to the most approved forms; not like those
who begin the Trojan War from Leda's egg, or the History of Great
Britain from Adam, or the Life of General Washington from the
Discovery of the New World; but in conformity to the Horatian precept,
rushing into the middle of things. Yet the Giant Moulineau's appeal to
his friend the story-telling Ram may well be remembered here; _Belier
mon ami, si tu voulois commencer par le commencement tu me ferois
grand plaisir_. For in the few lines of the preceding chapter how much
is there that requires explanation?—Who was Nobs?—Who was Barnaby?—Who
was the Doctor?—Who was Mrs. Dove?—The place, where?—The time,
when?—The persons, who?—

I maie not tell you all at once;
But as I maie and can, I shall
By order tellen you it all.

So saith Chaucer; and in the same mind, _facilius discimus quæ congruo
dicuntur ordine quam quæ sparsim et confusim_, saith Erasmus. Think a
moment I beseech thee, Reader, what order is! Not the mere word which
is so often vociferated in the House of Commons or uttered by the
Speaker _ore rotundo_, when it is necessary for him to assume the tone
of Ζεὺς ὑψιβρεμέτης; but order in its essence and truth, in itself and
in its derivatives.

Waiving the Orders in Council, and the Order of the Day, a phrase so
familiar in the disorderly days of the French National Convention,
think gentle Reader of the order of Knighthood, of holy orders, of the
orders of architecture, the Linnæan orders, the orderly Serjeant, the
ordinal numbers, the Ordinary of Newgate, the Ordinary on Sundays at 2
o'clock in the environs of the Metropolis, the ordinary faces of those
who partake of what is ordinarily provided for them there; and under
the auspices of Government itself, and _par excellence_ the
Extraordinary Gazette. And as the value of health is never truly and
feelingly understood except in sickness, contemplate for a moment what
the want of order is. Think of disorder in things remote, and then as
it approaches thee. In the country wherein thou livest, bad; in the
town whereof thou art an inhabitant, worse; in thine own street,
worser; in thine own house, worst of all. Think of it in thy family,
in thy fortune, in thine intestines. In thy affairs, distressing; in
thy members, painful; in thy conduct, ruinous. Order is the sanity of
the mind, the health of the body, the peace of the city, the security
of the state. As the beams to a house, as the bones to the microcosm
of man, so is order to all things. Abstract it from a Dictionary, and
thou mayest imagine the inextricable confusion which would ensue.
Reject it from the Alphabet, and Zerah Colburne himself could not go
through the chriscross row. How then should I do without it in this
history?

A Quaker by name Benjamin Lay (who was a little cracked in the head
though sound at heart) took one of his compositions once to Benjamin
Franklin that it might be printed and published. Franklin having
looked over the manuscript observed that it was deficient in
arrangement; it is no matter, replied the author, print any part thou
pleasest first. Many are the speeches and the sermons and the
treatises and the poems and the volumes which are like Benjamin Lay's
book; the head might serve for the tail, and the tail for the body,
and the body for the head,—either end for the middle, and the middle
for either end;—nay if you could turn them inside out like a polypus,
or a glove, they would be no worse for the operation.

When the excellent Hooker was on his death-bed, he expressed his joy
at the prospect of entering a World of Order.

CHAPTER III. P. I.

WHOLESOME OBSERVATIONS UPON THE VANITY OF FAME.

GWILLIM'S DISPLAY OF HERALDRY.

Who was the Doctor?

We will begin with the persons for sundry reasons, general and
specific. Doth not the Latin grammar teach us so to do, wherein the
personal verbs come before the impersonal, and the _Propria quæ
maribus_ precede all other nouns? Moreover by replying to this
question all needful explanation as to time and place will naturally
and of necessity follow in due sequence.

Truly I will deliver and discourse
The sum of all.[1]

[Footnote 1: G. PEELE.]

Who was the Doctor?

Can it then be necessary to ask?—Alas the vanity of human fame! Vanity
of vanities, all is Vanity! “How few,” says Bishop Jeremy Taylor,
“have heard of the name of Veneatapadino Ragium! He imagined that
there was no man in the world that knew him not: how many men can tell
me, that he was the King of Narsinga?” When I mention Arba, who but
the practised textualist can call to mind that he was “a great man
among the Anakim,” that he was the father of Anak, and that from him
Kirjath-Arba took its name? A great man among the Giants of the earth,
the founder of a city, the father of Anak!—and now there remaineth
nothing more of him or his race than the bare mention of them in one
of the verses of one of the chapters of the Book of Joshua: except for
that only record it would not now be known that Arba had ever lived,
or that Hebron was originally called after his name. _Vanitas
Vanitatum! Omnia Vanitas._ An old woman in a village in the West of
England was told one day that the King of Prussia was dead, such a
report having arrived when the great Frederic was in the noon-day of
his glory. Old Mary lifted up her great slow eyes at the news, and
fixing them in the fullness of vacancy upon her informant, replied,
“is a! is a!—The Lord ha' marcy!—Well, well! The King of Prussia! And
who's he?”—The “Who's he” of this old woman might serve as text for a
notable sermon upon ambition. “Who's he” may now be asked of men
greater as soldiers in their day than Frederic, or Wellington; greater
as discoverers than Sir Isaac, or Sir Humphrey. Who built the
Pyramids? Who ate the first Oyster? _Vanitas Vanitatum! Omnia
Vanitas._

Why then doth flesh, a bubble-glass of breath,
Hunt after honour and advancement vain,
And rear a trophy for devouring Death,
With so great labour and long-lasting pain,
As if his days for ever should remain?
Sith all that in this world is great or gay,
Doth as a vapour vanish and decay.

Look back who list unto the former ages,
And call to count what is of them become;
Where be those learned wits and antique sages
Which of all wisdom knew the perfect sum?
Where those great warriors which did overcome
The world with conquest of their might and main,
And made one mear of the earth and of their reign?[2]

[Footnote 2: SPENSER.]

Who was the Doctor?

Oh that thou hadst known him, Reader! Then should I have answered the
question—if orally, by an emphasis upon the article,—_the_ Doctor; or
if in written words, THE DOCTOR—thus giving the word that capital
designation to which, as the head of his profession within his own
orbit, he was so justly entitled. But I am not writing to those only
who knew him, nor merely to the inhabitants of the West Riding, nor to
the present generation alone;—No! to all Yorkshire,—all England; all
the British Empire; all the countries wherein the English tongue is,
or shall be, spoken or understood; Yea to all places, and all times to
come. _Para todos_, as saith the famous Doctor Juan Perez de Montalvan
_Natural de Madrid_, which is, being interpreted, a Spanish
Cockney—_para todos; porque es un aparato de varias materias, donde el
Filosofo, el Cortesano, el Humanista, el Poeta, el Predicador, el
Teologo, el Soldado, el Devoto, el Jurisconsulto, el Matematico, el
Medico, el Soltero, el Casado, el Religioso, el Ministro, el Plebeyo,
el Señor, el Oficial, y el Entretenido, hallaran juntamente utilidad y
gusto, erudicion y divertimiento, doctrina y desahogo, recreo y
enseñanza, moralidad y alivio, ciencia y descanso, provecho y
passatiempo, alabanzas y reprehensiones, y ultimamente exemplos y
donaires, que sin ofender las costumbres delecten el animo, y sazonen
el entendimiento_.

Who was the Doctor?

* * * * *

The Doctor was Doctor Daniel Dove.

CHAPTER IV. P. I.

BIRTH AND PARENTAGE OF DR. DOVE, WITH THE DESCRIPTION OF A YEOMAN'S
HOUSE IN THE WEST RIDING OF YORKSHIRE A HUNDRED YEARS AGO.

_Non possidentem multa vocaveris
Recte beatum; rectius occupat
Nomen beati, qui Deorum
Muneribus sapienter uti,
Duramque callet pauperiem pati,
Pejusque letho flagitium timet._

HORACE, L. 4, Od. 9.

Daniel, the son of Daniel Dove and of Dinah his wife, was born near
Ingleton in the West Riding of Yorkshire, on Monday the twenty second
of April, old style, 1723, nine minutes and three seconds after three
in the afternoon; on which day Marriage came in and Mercury was with
the Moon; and the aspects were □ ♄ ♀: a week earlier, it would have
been a most glorious Trine of the Sun and Jupiter;—circumstances which
were all duly noted in the blank leaf of the family Bible.

Daniel the father was one of a race of men who unhappily are now
almost extinct. He lived upon an estate of six and twenty acres which
his fathers had possessed before him, all Doves and Daniels, in
uninterrupted succession from time immemorial, farther than registers
or title deeds could ascend. The little church called Chapel le Dale,
stands about a bow shot from the family house. There they had all been
carried to the font; there they had each led his bride to the altar;
and thither they had, each in his turn, been borne upon the shoulders
of their friends and neighbours. Earth to earth they had been
consigned there for so many generations, that half of the soil of the
churchyard consisted of their remains. A hermit who might wish his
grave to be as quiet as his cell, could imagine no fitter resting
place. On three sides there was an irregular low stone wall, rather to
mark the limits of the sacred ground, than to inclose it; on the
fourth it was bounded by the brook whose waters proceed by a
subterraneous channel from Wethercote cave. Two or three alders and
rowan trees hung over the brook, and shed their leaves and seeds into
the stream. Some bushy hazels grew at intervals along the lines of the
wall; and a few ash trees, as the winds had sown them. To the East and
West some fields adjoined it, in that state of half cultivation which
gives a human character to solitude: to the South, on the other side
the brook, the common with its limestone rocks peering every where
above ground, extended to the foot of Ingleborough. A craggy hill,
feathered with birch, sheltered it from the North.

The turf was as soft and fine as that of the adjoining hills; it was
seldom broken, so scanty was the population to which it was
appropriated; scarcely a thistle or a nettle deformed it, and the few
tomb-stones which had been placed there were now themselves half
buried. The sheep came over the wall when they listed, and sometimes
took shelter in the porch from the storm. Their voices, and the cry of
the kite wheeling above, were the only sounds which were heard there,
except when the single bell which hung in its niche over the entrance
tinkled for service on the Sabbath day, or with a slower tongue gave
notice that one of the children of the soil was returning to the earth
from which he sprung.

The house of the Doves was to the East of the Church, under the same
hill, and with the same brook in front; and the intervening fields
belonged to the family. It was a low house, having before it a little
garden of that size and character which shewed that the inhabitants
could afford to bestow a thought upon something more than mere bodily
wants. You entered between two yew trees clipt to the fashion of two
pawns. There were hollyhocks and sunflowers displaying themselves
above the wall; roses and sweet peas under the windows, and the
everlasting pea climbing the porch. Over the door was a stone with
these letters.

D
D + M
A.D
1608.

The A. was in the Saxon character. The rest of the garden lay behind
the house, partly on the slope of the hill. It had a hedge of
gooseberry-bushes, a few apple-trees, pot-herbs in abundance, onions,
cabbages, turnips and carrots; potatoes had hardly yet found their way
into these remote parts: and in a sheltered spot under the crag, open
to the south, were six bee-hives which made the family perfectly
independent of West India produce. Tea was in those days as little
known as potatoes, and for all other things honey supplied the place
of sugar.

The house consisted of seven rooms, the dairy and cellar included
which were both upon the ground floor. As you entered the kitchen
there was on the right one of those open chimneys which afford more
comfort in a winter's evening than the finest register stove; in front
of the chimney stood a wooden bee-hive chair, and on each side was a
long oak seat with a back to it, the seats serving as chests in which
the oaten bread was kept. They were of the darkest brown, and well
polished by constant use. On the back of each were the same initials
as those over the door, with the date 1610. The great oak table, and
the chest in the best kitchen which held the house-linen, bore the
same date. The chimney was well hung with bacon, the rack which
covered half the ceiling bore equal marks of plenty; mutton hams were
suspended from other parts of the ceiling; and there was an odour of
cheese from the adjoining dairy, which the turf fire, tho' perpetual
as that of the Magi, or of the Vestal Virgins, did not overpower. A
few pewter dishes were ranged above the trenchers, opposite the door
on a conspicuous shelf. The other treasures of the family were in an
open triangular cupboard, fixed in one of the corners of the best
kitchen, half way from the floor, and touching the ceiling. They
consisted of a silver saucepan, a silver goblet, and four apostle
spoons. Here also King Charles's Golden Rules were pasted against the
wall, and a large print of Daniel in the Lion's Den. The Lions were
bedaubed with yellow, and the Prophet was bedaubed with blue, with a
red patch upon each of his cheeks: if he had been like his picture he
might have frightened the Lions; but happily there were no “judges” in
the family, and it had been bought for its name's sake. The other
print which ornamented the room had been purchased from a like
feeling, though the cause was not so immediately apparent. It
represented a Ship in full sail, with Joseph and the Virgin Mary, and
the Infant on board, and a Dove flying behind as if to fill the sails
with the motion of its wings. Six black chairs were ranged along the
wall, where they were seldom disturbed from their array. They had been
purchased by Daniel the grandfather upon his marriage, and were the
most costly purchase that had ever been made in the family; for the
goblet was a legacy. The backs were higher than the head of the
tallest man when seated; the seats flat and shallow, set in a round
frame, unaccommodating in their material, more unaccommodating in
shape; the backs also were of wood rising straight up, and ornamented
with balls and lozenges and embossments; and the legs and cross bars
were adorned in the same taste. Over the chimney were two Peacocks'
feathers, some of the dry silky pods of the honesty flower, and one of
those large “sinuous shells” so finely thus described by Landor;

Of pearly hue
Within, and they that lustre have imbibed
In the sun's palace porch; where, when unyoked,
His chariot wheel stands midway in the wave,
Shake one, and it awakens; then apply
Its polished lips to your attentive ear,
And it remembers its august abodes,
And murmurs as the ocean murmurs there.

There was also a head of Indian corn there, and a back scratcher, of
which the hand was ivory and the handle black. This had been a present
of Daniel the grandfather to his wife. The three apartments above
served equally for store-rooms and bed-chambers. William Dove the
brother slept in one, and Agatha the maid, or Haggy as she was called,
in another.

CHAPTER V. P. I.

EXTENSION OF THE SCIENCE OF PHYSIOGNOMY, WITH SOME REMARKS UPON THE
PRACTICAL USES OF CRANIOLOGY.

BAPTISTA PORTA.

They who know that the word physiognomy is not derived from phiz, and
infer from that knowledge that the science is not confined to the
visage alone, have extended it to handwritings also, and hence it has
become fashionable in this age of collectors to collect the autographs
of remarkable persons. But now that Mr. Rapier has arisen, “the
Reformer of illegible hands,” he and his rival Mr. Carstairs teach all
their pupils to write alike. The countenance however has fairer play
in our days than it had in old times, for the long heads of the
sixteenth century were made by the nurses, not by nature. Elongating
the nose, flattening the temples, and raising the forehead are no
longer performed by manual force, and the face undergoes now no other
artificial modelling than such as may be impressed upon it by the aid
of the looking-glass. So far physiognomy becomes less difficult, the
data upon which it has to proceed, not having been falsified _ab
initio_; but there arises a question in what state ought they to be
examined? Dr. Gall is for shaving the head, and overhauling it as a
Turk does a Circassian upon sale, that he may discover upon the
outside of the skull the organs of fighting, murder, cunning, and
thieving (near neighbours in his _mappa cerebri_,) of comparing
colours, of music, of sexual instinct, of philosophical judgement &c.
&c. all which, with all other qualities, have their latitudes and
longitudes in the brain, and are conspicuous upon the outward skull,
according to the degree in which they influence the character of the
individual.

It must be admitted that if this learned German's theory of craniology
be well founded, the Gods have devised a much surer, safer and more
convenient means for discovering the real characters of the Lords and
Ladies of the creation, than what Momus proposed, when he advised that
a window should be placed in the breast. For if his advice had been
followed, and there had actually been a window in the sternum,—it is I
think beyond all doubt that a window-shutter would soon have been
found indispensably necessary in cold climates, more especially in
England where pulmonary complaints are so frequent; and, secondly, the
wind would not be more injurious to the lungs in high latitudes, than
the sun would be to the liver in torrid regions; indeed every where
during summer it would be impossible to exist without a green curtain,
or Venetian blinds to the window; and after all, take what precautions
we might, the world would be ten times more bilious than it is.
Another great physical inconvenience would also have arisen; for if
men could peep into their insides at any time, and see the motions and
the fermentations which are continually going on, and the rise and
progress of every malady distinctly marked in the changes it produced,
so many nervous diseases would be brought on by frequent inspection,
and so many derangements from attempting to regulate the machine, that
the only way to prevent it from making a full stop would be to put a
lock upon the shutter, and deliver the key to the Physician.

But upon Dr. Gall's theory how many and what obvious advantages
result! Nor are they merely confined to the purposes of speculative
physiognomy; the uses of his theory as applied to practice offer to us
hopes scarcely less delightful than those which seemed to dawn upon
mankind with the discovery of the gasses, and with the commencement of
the French Revolution, and in these later days with the progress of
the Bible Society. In courts of Justice for instance how beautifully
would this new science supply any little deficiency of evidence upon
trial! If a man were arraigned for murder, and the case were doubtful,
but he were found to have a decided organ for the crime, it would be
of little matter whether he had committed the specific fact in the
indictment, or not; for hanging if not applicable as punishment, would
be proper for prevention. Think also in State Trials what infinite
advantages an Attorney General might derive from the opinion of a
Regius Professor of Craniology! Even these are but partial benefits.
Our Generals, Ministers, and Diplomatists would then unerringly be
chosen by the outside of the head, though a criterion might still be
wanted to ascertain when it was too thick and when too thin. But the
greatest advantages are those which this new system would afford to
education; for by the joint efforts of Dr. Gall and Mr. Edgeworth we
should be able to breed up men according to any pattern which Parents
or Guardians might think proper to bespeak. The Doctor would design
the mould, and Mr. Edgeworth by his skill in mechanics devise with
characteristic ingenuity the best means of making and applying it. As
soon as the child was born the professional cap, medical, military,
theological, commercial or legal, would be put on, and thus he would
be perfectly prepared for Mr. Edgeworth's admirable system of
professional education. I will pursue this subject no farther than
just to hint that the materials of the mould may operate
sympathetically, and therefore that for a lawyer in _rus_ the cap
should be made of brass, for a divine of lead, for a politician of
base-metal, for a soldier of steel, and for a sailor of heart of
English oak.

Dr. Gall would doubtless require the naked head to be submitted to him
for judgement. Contrariwise I opine,—and all the Ladies will agree
with me in this opinion,—that the head ought neither to be stript, nor
even examined in undress, but that it should be taken with all its
accompaniments, when the owner has made the best of it, the
accompaniments being not unfrequently more indicative than the
features themselves. Long ago the question whether a man is most like
himself drest or undrest, was propounded to the British Apollo; and it
was answered by the Oracle that a man of God Almighty's making is most
like himself when undrest; but a man of a tailor's, periwig-maker's,
and sempstress's making, when drest. The Oracle answered rightly; for
no man can select his own eyes, nose, or mouth,—but his wig and his
whiskers are of his own chusing. And to use an illustrious instance,
how much of character is there in that awful wig which alway in its
box accompanies Dr. Parr upon his visits of ceremony, that it may be
put on in the hall, with all its feathery honours thick upon it, not a
curl deranged, a hair flattened, or a particle of powder wasted on the
way!

But if we would form a judgement of the interior of that portentous
head which is thus formidably obumbrated, how could it be done so well
as by beholding the Doctor among his books, and there seeing the food
upon which his terrific intellect is fed. There we should see the
accents, quantities, dialects, digammas, and other such small gear as
in these days constitute the complete armour of a perfect scholar; and
by thus discovering what goes into the head we might form a fair
estimate of what was likely to come out of it. This is a truth which,
with many others of equal importance, will be beautifully elucidated
in this nonpareil history. For Daniel Dove the Father had a collection
of books; they were not so numerous as those of his contemporary
Harley, famous for his library, and infamous for the Peace of Utrecht;
but he was perfectly conversant with all their contents, which is more
than could be said of the Earl of Oxford.

Reader whether thou art man, woman or child, thou art doubtless
acquainted with the doctrine of association as inculcated by the great
Mr. Locke and his disciples. But never hast thou seen that doctrine so
richly and so entirely exemplified as in this great history, the
association of ideas being, in oriental phrase, the silken thread upon
which its pearls are strung. And never wilt thou see it so clearly and
delightfully illustrated, not even if the ingenious Mr. John Jones
should one day give to the world the whole twelve volumes in which he
has proved the authenticity of the Gospel History, by bringing the
narratives of the Four Evangelists to the test of Mr. Locke's
metaphysics.

“Desultoriness,” says Mr. Danby, “may often be the mark of a full
head; connection must proceed from a thoughtful one.”

CHAPTER VI. P. I.

A COLLECTION OF BOOKS NONE OF WHICH ARE INCLUDED AMONGST THE
PUBLICATIONS OF ANY SOCIETY FOR THE PROMOTION OF KNOWLEDGE RELIGIOUS
OR PROFANE.—HAPPINESS IN HUMBLE LIFE.

POLITIAN.

Happily for Daniel, he lived before the age of Magazines, Reviews,
Cyclopædias, Elegant Extracts and Literary Newspapers, so that he
gathered the fruit of knowledge for himself, instead of receiving it
from the dirty fingers of a retail vender. His books were few in
number, but they were all weighty either in matter or in size. They
consisted of the Morte d'Arthur in the fine black-letter edition of
Copland; Plutarch's Morals and Pliny's Natural History, two goodly
folios, full as an egg of meat, and both translated by that old worthy
Philemon, who for the service which he rendered to his contemporaries
and to his countrymen deserves to be called the best of the Hollands,
without disparaging either the Lord or the Doctor of that appellation.
The whole works of Joshua Sylvester (whose name, let me tell thee
reader in passing, was accented upon the first syllable by his
contemporaries, not as now upon the second);—Jean Petit's History of
the Netherlands, translated and continued by Edward Grimeston, another
worthy of the Philemon order; Sir Kenelm Digby's Discourses; Stowe's
Chronicle; Joshua Barnes's Life of Edward III.; “Ripley Revived by
Eirenæus Philalethes, an Englishman styling himself Citizen of the
World,” with its mysterious frontispiece representing the _Domus
Naturæ_, to which, _Nil deest, nisi clavis_: the Pilgrim's Progress:
two volumes of Ozell's translation of Rabelais; Latimer's Sermons; and
the last volume of Fox's Martyrs, which latter book had been brought
him by his wife. The Pilgrim's Progress was a godmother's present to
his son: the odd volumes of Rabelais he had picked up at Kendal, at a
sale, in a lot with Ripley Revived and Plutarch's Morals: the others
he had inherited.

Daniel had looked into all these books, read most of them, and
believed all that he read, except Rabelais, which he could not tell
what to make of. He was not however one of those persons who
complacently suppose every thing to be nonsense, which they do not
perfectly comprehend, or flatter themselves that they do. His simple
heart judged of books by what they ought to be, little knowing what
they are. It never occurred to him that any thing would be printed
which was not worth printing, any thing which did not convey either
reasonable delight or useful instruction: and he was no more disposed
to doubt the truth of what he read, than to question the veracity of
his neighbour, or any one who had no interest in deceiving him. A book
carried with it to him authority in its very aspect. The Morte
d'Arthur therefore he received for authentic history, just as he did
the painful chronicle of honest John Stowe, and the Barnesian labours
of Joshua the self-satisfied: there was nothing in it indeed which
stirred his English blood like the battles of Cressy and Poictiers and
Najara; yet on the whole he preferred it to Barnes's story, believed
in Sir Tor, Sir Tristram, Sir Lancelot and Sir Lamorack as entirely as
in Sir John Chandos, the Captal de Buche and the Black Prince, and
liked them better.

Latimer and Du Bartas he used sometimes to read aloud on Sundays; and
if the departed take cognizance of what passes on earth, and poets
derive any satisfaction from that posthumous applause which is
generally the only reward of those who deserve it, Sylvester might
have found some compensation for the undeserved neglect into which his
works had sunk, by the full and devout delight which his rattling
rhymes and quaint collocations afforded to this reader. The
silver-tongued Sylvester however was reserved for a Sabbath book; as a
week-day author Daniel preferred Pliny, for the same reason that bread
and cheese, or a rasher of hung mutton contented his palate better
than a syllabub. He frequently regretted that so knowing a writer had
never seen or heard of Wethercote and Yordas caves; the ebbing and
flowing spring at Giggleswick, Malham Cove, and Gordale Scar, that he
might have described them among the wonders of the world. _Omne
ignotum pro magnifico_ is a maxim which will not in all cases hold
good. There are things which we do not undervalue because we are
familiar with them, but which are admired the more the more thoroughly
they are known and understood; it is thus with the grand objects of
nature and the finest works of art,—with whatsoever is truly great and
excellent. Daniel was not deficient in imagination; but no description
of places which he had never seen, however exaggerated (as such things
always are) impressed him so strongly as these objects in his own
neighbourhood, which he had known from childhood. Three or four times
in his life it had happened that strangers with a curiosity as
uncommon in that age as it is general in this, came from afar to visit
these wonders of the West Riding, and Daniel accompanied them with a
delight such as he never experienced on any other occasion.

But the Author in whom he delighted most was Plutarch, of whose works
he was lucky enough to possess the worthier half: if the other had
perished Plutarch would not have been a popular writer, but he would
have held a higher place in the estimation of the judicious. Daniel
could have posed a candidate for university honors, and perhaps the
examiner too, with some of the odd learning which he had stored up in
his memory from these great repositories of ancient knowledge.
Refusing all reward for such services, the strangers to whom he
officiated as a guide, though they perceived that he was an
extraordinary person, were little aware how much information he had
acquired, and of how strange a kind. His talk with them did not go
beyond the subjects which the scenes they came to visit naturally
suggested, and they wondered more at the questions he asked, than at
any thing which he advanced himself. For his disposition was naturally
shy, and that which had been bashfulness in youth assumed the
appearance of reserve as he advanced in life; for having none to
communicate with upon his favorite studies he lived in an intellectual
world of his own, a mental solitude as complete as that of Alexander
Selkirk or Robinson Crusoe. Even to the Curate his conversation, if he
had touched upon his books, would have been heathen Greek; and to
speak the truth plainly, without knowing a letter of that language, he
knew more about the Greeks, than nine-tenths of the clergy at that
time, including all the dissenters, and than nine-tenths of the
schoolmasters also.

Our good Daniel had none of that confidence which so usually and so
unpleasantly characterizes self-taught men. In fact he was by no means
aware of the extent of his acquirements, all that he knew in this kind
having been acquired for amusement not for use. He had never attempted
to teach himself any thing. These books had lain in his way in
boyhood, or fallen in it afterwards, and the perusal of them intently
as it was followed, was always accounted by him to be nothing more
than recreation. None of his daily business had ever been neglected
for it; he cultivated his fields and his garden, repaired his walls,
looked to the stable, tended his cows and salved his sheep, as
diligently and as contentedly as if he had possessed neither capacity
nor inclination for any higher employments. Yet Daniel was one of
those men, who, if disposition and aptitude were not overruled by
circumstances, would have grown pale with study, instead of being
bronzed and hardened by sun and wind and rain. There were in him
undeveloped talents which might have raised him to distinction as an
antiquary, a virtuoso of the Royal Society, a poet, or a theologian,
to which ever course the bias in his ball of fortune had inclined. But
he had not a particle of envy in his composition. He thought indeed
that if he had had grammar learning in his youth like the curate, he
would have made more use of it; but there was nothing either of the
sourness or bitterness (call it which you please) of repining in this
natural reflection.

Never indeed was any man more contented with doing his duty in that
state of life to which it had pleased God to call him. And well he
might be so, for no man ever passed through the world with less to
disquiet or to sour him. Bred up in habits which secured the
continuance of that humble but sure independance to which he was born,
he had never known what it was to be anxious for the future. At the
age of twenty-five he had brought home a wife, the daughter of a
little landholder like himself, with fifteen pounds for her portion:
and the true-love of his youth proved to him a faithful helpmate in
those years when the dream of life is over, and we live in its
realities. If at any time there had been some alloy in his happiness
it was when there appeared reason to suppose that in him his family
would be extinct; for though no man knows what parental feelings are
till he has experienced them, and Daniel therefore knew not the whole
value of that which he had never enjoyed, the desire of progeny is
natural to the heart of man; and though Daniel had neither large
estates, nor an illustrious name to transmit, it was an unwelcome
thought that the little portion of the earth which had belonged to his
fathers time out of mind, should pass into the possession of some
stranger, who would tread on their graves and his own without any
regard to the dust that lay beneath. That uneasy apprehension was
removed after he had been married fifteen years, when to the great joy
of both parents, because they had long ceased to entertain any hope of
such an event, their wishes were fulfilled in the birth of a son. This
their only child was healthy, apt and docile, to all appearance as
happily disposed in mind and body as a father's heart could wish. If
they had fine weather for winning their hay or shearing their corn,
they thanked God for it; if the season proved unfavourable, the labour
was only a little the more and the crop a little the worse. Their
stations secured them from want, and they had no wish beyond it. What
more had Daniel to desire?

The following passage in the divine Du Bartas he used to read with
peculiar satisfaction, applying it to himself:—

O thrice, thrice happy he, who shuns the cares
Of city troubles, and of state-affairs;
And, serving Ceres, tills with his own team,
His own _free land_, left by his friends to him!

Never pale Envy's poisony heads do hiss
To gnaw his heart: nor Vulture Avarice:
His fields' bounds, bound his thoughts: he never sups,
For nectar, poison mixed in silver cups;
Neither in golden platters doth he lick
For sweet ambrosia deadly arsenic:
His hand's his bowl (better than plate or glass)
The silver brook his sweetest hippocrass:
Milk cheese and fruit, (fruits of his own endeavour)
Drest without dressing, hath he ready ever.

False counsellors (concealers of the law)
Turncoat attorneys that with both hands draw;
Sly pettifoggers, wranglers at the bar,
Proud purse-leeches, harpies of Westminster,
With feigned-chiding, and foul jarring noise,
Break not his brain, nor interrupt his joys;
But cheerful birds chirping him sweet good-morrows
With nature's music do beguile his sorrows;
Teaching the fragrant forests day by day
The diapason of their heavenly lay.

His wandering vessel, reeling to and fro
On th' ireful ocean (as the winds do blow)
With sudden tempest is not overwhurled,
To seek his sad death in another world:
But leading all his life at home in peace,
Always in sight of his own smoke, no seas
No other seas he knows, no other torrent,
Than that which waters with its silver current
His native meadows: and that very earth
Shall give him burial which first gave him birth.

To summon timely sleep, he doth not need
Æthiop's cold rush, nor drowsy poppy-seed;
Nor keep in consort (as Mecænas did)
Luxurious Villains—(Viols I should have said);
But on green carpets thrum'd with mossy bever,
Fringing the round skirts of his winding river,
The streams mild murmur, as it gently gushes,
His healthy limbs in quiet slumber hushes.

Drum fife and trumpet, with their loud alarms,
Make him not start out of his sleep, to arms;
Nor dear respect of some great General,
Him from his bed unto the block doth call.
The crested cock sings “_Hunt-is-up_” to him,
Limits his rest, and makes him stir betime,
To walk the mountains and the flow'ry meads
Impearl'd with tears which great Aurora sheds.

Never gross air poisoned in stinking streets,
To choke his spirit, his tender nostril meets;
But th'open sky where at full breath he lives,
Still keeps him sound, and still new stomach gives.
And Death, dread Serjeant of the Eternal Judge,
Comes very late to his sole-seated lodge.

CHAPTER VII. P. I.

RUSTIC PHILOSOPHY. AN EXPERIMENT UPON MOONSHINE.

_Quien comienza en juventud
A bien obrar,
Señal es de no errar
En senetud._

PROVERBIOS DEL MARQUES DE SANTILLA.

It is not however for man to rest in absolute contentment. He is born
to hopes and aspirations as the sparks fly upward, unless he has
brutified his nature and quenched the spirit of immortality which is
his portion. Having nothing to desire for himself, Daniel's ambition
had taken a natural direction and fixed upon his son. He was resolved
that the boy should be made a scholar; not with the prospect of
advancing him in the world, but in the hope that he might become a
philosopher, and take as much delight in the books which he would
inherit as his father had done before him. Riches and rank and power
appeared in his judgement to be nothing when compared to philosophy;
and herein he was as true a philosopher as if he had studied in the
Porch, or walked the groves of Academus.

It was not however for this,—for he was as little given to talk of his
opinions as to display his reading,—but for his retired habits, and
general character, and some odd practices into which his books had led
him, that he was commonly called Flossofer Daniel by his neighbours.
The appellation was not affixed in derision, but respectfully and as
his due; for he bore his faculties too meekly ever to excite an
envious or an ill-natured feeling in any one. Rural Flossofers were
not uncommon in those days, though in the progress of society they
have disappeared like Crokers, Bowyers, Lorimers, Armourers, Running
Footmen and other descriptions of men whose occupations are gone by.
But they were of a different order from our Daniel. They were usually
Philomaths, Students in Astrology, or the Cœlestial Science, and not
unfrequently Empirics or downright Quacks. Between twenty and thirty
almanacs used to be published every year by men of this description,
some of them versed enough in mathematics to have done honor to
Cambridge, had the fates allowed; and others such proficients in
roguery, that they would have done equal honor to the whipping-post.

A man of a different stamp from either came in declining life to
settle at Ingleton in the humble capacity of schoolmaster, a little
before young Daniel was capable of more instruction than could be
given him at home. Richard Guy was his name; he is the person to whom
the lovers of old rhyme are indebted for the preservation of the old
poem of Flodden Field, which he transcribed from an ancient
manuscript, and which was printed from his transcript by Thomas Gent
of York. In his way through the world, which had not been along the
King's high Dunstable road, Guy had picked up a competent share of
Latin, a little Greek, some practical knowledge of physic, and more of
its theory; astrology enough to cast a nativity, and more acquaintance
with alchemy than has often been possessed by one who never burnt his
fingers in its processes. These acquirements were grafted on a
disposition as obliging as it was easy; and he was beholden to nature
for an understanding so clear and quick that it might have raised him
to some distinction in the world if he had not been under the
influence of an imagination at once lively and credulous. Five and
fifty years had taught him none of the world's wisdom; they had
sobered his mind without maturing it; but he had a wise heart, and the
wisdom of the heart is worth all other wisdom.

Daniel was too far advanced in life to fall in friendship; he felt a
certain degree of attractiveness in this person's company; there was
however so much of what may better be called reticence than reserve in
his own quiet habitual manners, that it would have been long before
their acquaintance ripened into any thing like intimacy, if an
accidental circumstance had not brought out the latent sympathy which
on both sides had till then rather been apprehended than understood.
They were walking together one day when young Daniel, who was then in
his sixth year, looking up in his father's face proposed this
question: “will it be any harm, Father, if I steal five beans when
next I go into Jonathan Dowthwaites, if I can do it without any one's
seeing me?”

“And what wouldst thou steal beans for?” was the reply, “when any body
would give them to thee, and when thou knowest there are plenty at
home?”

“But it wo'nt do to have them given, Father,” the boy replied. “They
are to charm away my warts. Uncle William says I must steal five
beans, a bean for every wart, and tie them carefully up in paper, and
carry them to a place where two roads cross, and then drop them, and
walk away without ever once looking behind me. And then the warts will
go away from me, and come upon the hands of the person that picks up
the beans.”

“Nay boy,” the Father made answer; “that charm was never taught by a
white witch! If thy warts are a trouble to thee, they would be a
trouble to any one else; and to get rid of an evil from ourselves
Daniel, by bringing it upon another, is against our duty to our
neighbour. Have nothing to do with a charm like that!”

“May I steal a piece of raw beef then,” rejoined the boy, “and rub the
warts with it and bury it? For Uncle says that will do, and as the
beef rots, so the warts will waste away.”

“Daniel,” said the Father, “those can be no lawful charms that begin
with stealing; I could tell thee how to cure thy warts in a better
manner. There is an infallible way, which is by washing the hands in
moonshine, but then the moonshine must be caught in a bright silver
basin. You wash and wash in the basin, and a cold moisture will be
felt upon the hands, proceeding from the cold and moist rays of the
moon.”

“But what shall we do for a silver basin,” said little Daniel?

The Father answered, “a pewter dish might be tried if it were made
very bright; but it is not deep enough. The brass kettle perhaps might
do better.”

“Nay,” said Guy, who had now begun to attend with some interest, “the
shape of a kettle is not suitable. It should be a concave vessel, so
as to concentrate the rays. Joshua Wilson I dare say would lend his
brass basin, which he can very well spare at the hour you want it,
because nobody comes to be shaved by moonlight. The moon rises early
enough to serve at this time. If you come in this evening at six
o'clock I will speak to Joshua in the mean time, and have the basin as
bright and shining as a good scouring can make it. The experiment is
curious and I should like to see it tried. Where Daniel didst thou
learn it?” “I read it,” replied Daniel, “in Sir Kenelm Digby's
Discourses, and he says it never fails.”

Accordingly the parties met at the appointed hour. Mambrino's helmet
when new from the armourers, or when furbished for a tournament, was
not brighter than Guy had rendered the inside of the barber's basin.
Schoolmaster, Father and son retired to a place out of observation, by
the side of the river, a wild stream tumbling among the huge stones
which it had brought down from the hills. On one of these stones sate
Daniel the elder, holding the basin in such an inclination toward the
moon that there should be no shadow in it; Guy directed the boy where
to place himself so as not to intercept the light, and stood looking
complacently on, while young Daniel revolved his hands one in another
within the empty basin, as if washing them. “I feel them cold and
clammy Father!” said the boy. (It was the beginning of November)
“Aye,” replied the father, “that's the cold moisture of the moon!”
“Aye!” echoed the schoolmaster, and nodded his head in confirmation.

The operation was repeated on the two following nights; and Daniel
would have kept up his son two hours later than his regular time of
rest to continue it on the third if the evening had not set in with
clouds and rain. In spite of the patient's belief that the warts would
waste away and were wasting, (for Prince Hohenlohe could not require
more entire faith than was given on this occasion) no alteration could
be perceived in them at a fortnight's end. Daniel thought the
experiment had failed because it had not been repeated sufficiently
often, nor perhaps continued long enough. But the Schoolmaster was of
opinion that the cause of failure was in the basin: for that silver
being the lunar metal would by affinity assist the influential virtues
of the moonlight, which finding no such affinity in a mixed metal of
baser compounds, might contrariwise have its potential qualities
weakened, or even destroyed when received in a brasen vessel, and
reflected from it. Flossofer Daniel assented to this theory.
Nevertheless as the child got rid of his troublesome excrescences in
the course of three or four months, all parties disregarding the lapse
of time at first, and afterwards fairly forgetting it, agreed that the
remedy had been effectual, and Sir Kenelm if he had been living, might
have procured the solemn attestation of men more veracious than
himself that moonshine was an infallible cure for warts.

CHAPTER VIII. P. I.

A KIND SCHOOLMASTER AND A HAPPY SCHOOL BOY.

EUPHUES.

From this time the two Flossofers were friends. Daniel seldom went to
Ingleton without looking in upon Guy, if it were between school hours.
Guy on his part would walk as far with him on the way back, as the
tether of his own time allowed, and frequently on Saturdays and
Sundays he strolled out and took a seat by Daniel's fire side. Even
the wearying occupation of hearing one generation of urchins after
another repeat _a-b-ab_, hammering the first rules of arithmetic into
leaden heads, and pacing like a horse in a mill the same dull dragging
round day after day, had neither diminished Guy's good-nature, nor
lessened his love for children. He had from the first conceived a
liking for young Daniel, both because of the right principle which was
evinced by the manner in which he proposed the question concerning
stealing the beans, and of the profound gravity (worthy of a
Flossofer's son) with which he behaved in the affair of the moonshine.
All that he saw and heard of him tended to confirm this favourable
prepossession; and the boy, who had been taught to read in the Bible
and in Stowe's Chronicle, was committed to his tuition at seven years
of age.

Five days in the week (for in the North of England Saturday as well as
Sunday is a Sabbath to the Schoolmaster) did young Daniel after
supping his porringer of oat-meal pottage, set off to school, with a
little basket containing his dinner in his hand. This provision
usually consisted of oat-cake and cheese, the latter in goodly
proportion, but of the most frugal quality, whatever cream the milk
afforded having been consigned to the butter tub. Sometimes it was a
piece of cold bacon or of cold pork; and in winter there was the
luxury of a shred pie, which is a coarse north country edition of the
pie abhorred by puritans. The distance was in those days called two
miles; but miles of such long measure that they were for him a good
hour's walk at a cheerful pace. He never loitered on the way, being at
all times brisk in his movements, and going to school with a spirit as
light as when he returned from it, like one whose blessed lot it was
never to have experienced, and therefore never to stand in fear of
severity or unkindness. For he was not more a favorite with Guy for
his docility, and regularity and diligence, than he was with his
schoolfellows for his thorough good nature and a certain original
oddity of humour.

There are some boys who take as much pleasure in exercising their
intellectual faculties, as others do when putting forth the power of
arms and legs in boisterous exertion. Young Daniel was from his
childhood fond of books. William Dove used to say he was a chip of the
old block; and this hereditary disposition was regarded with much
satisfaction by both parents, Dinah having no higher ambition nor
better wish for her son, than that he might prove like his father in
all things. This being the bent of his nature, the boy having a kind
master as well as a happy home, never tasted of what old Lily calls
(and well might call) the wearisome bitterness of the scholar's
learning. He was never subject to the brutal discipline of the Udals
and Busbys and Bowyers, and Parrs and other less notorious tyrants who
have trodden in their steps; nor was any of that inhuman injustice
ever exercised upon him to break his spirit, for which it is to be
hoped Dean Colet has paid in Purgatory;—to be hoped, I say, because if
there be no Purgatory, the Dean may have gone farther and fared worse.
Being the only _Latiner_ in the school his lessons were heard with
more interest and less formality. Guy observed his progress with
almost as much delight and as much hope as Daniel himself. A
schoolmaster who likes his vocation feels toward the boys who deserve
his favour something like a thrifty and thriving father toward the
children for whom he is scraping together wealth; he is contented that
his humble and patient industry should produce fruit not for himself,
but for them, and looks with pride to a result in which it is
impossible for him to partake, and which in all likelihood he may
never live to see. Even some of the old Phlebotomists have had this
feeling to redeem them.

“Sir,” says the Compositor to the Corrector of the Press, “there is no
heading in the Copy for this Chapter. What must I do?”

“Leave a space for it,” the Corrector replies. “It is a strange sort
of book; but I dare say the Author has a reason for every thing that
he says or does, and most likely you will find out his meaning as you
set up.”

Right Mr. Corrector! you are a judicious person, free from the common
vice of finding fault with what you do not understand. My meaning will
be explained presently. And having thus prologized, we will draw a
line if you please, and begin.

* * * * *

Ten measures of garrulity, says the Talmud, were sent down upon the
earth, and the women took nine.

I have known in my time eight terrific talkers; and five of them were
of the masculine gender.

But supposing that the Rabbis were right in allotting to the women a
ninefold proportion of talkativeness, I confess that I have inherited
my mother's share.

I am liberal of my inheritance, and the Public shall have the full
benefit of it.

And here if my gentle Public will consider to what profitable uses
this gift might have been applied, the disinterestedness of my
disposition in having thus benevolently dedicated it to their service,
will doubtless be appreciated as it deserves by their discrimination
and generosity. Had I carried it to the pulpit, think now how I might
have filled the seats, and raised the prices of a private chapel! Had
I taken it to the bar, think how I could have mystified a judge, and
bamboozled a jury! Had I displayed it in the senate, think how I could
have talked against time, for the purpose of delaying a division, till
the expected numbers could be brought together; or how efficient a
part I could have borne in the patriotic design of impeding the
business of a session, prolonging and multiplying the debates, and
worrying a minister out of his senses and his life.

_Diis aliter visum_.—I am what I was to be,—what it is best for myself
that I should be,—and for you, my Public, also. The rough-hewn plans
of my destination have been better shaped for me by Providence than I
could have shaped them for myself.

But to the purpose of this chapter, which is as headless as the
Whigs—Observe my Public, I have not said as brainless...If it were,
the book would be worth no more than a new Tragedy of Lord Byron's; or
an old number of Mr. Jeffrey's Review, when its prophecies have proved
false, its blunders have been exposed, and its slander stinks.

Every thing here shall be in order. The digressions into which this
gift of discourse may lead me must not interrupt the arrangement of
our History. Never shall it be said of the Unknown that “he draweth
out the thread of his verbosity finer than the staple of his
argument.” We have a journey to perform from Dan to Beersheba, and we
must halt occasionally by the way. Matter will arise contingent to the
story, correlative to it, or excrescent from it; not necessary to its
progress, and yet indispensable for your delight, my gentle Public,
and for mine own ease. My Public would not have me stifle the
_afflatus_ when I am labouring with it, and in the condition of Elihu
as described by himself in the 18th and 19th verses of the xxxii.
chapter of the book of Job.

_Quemadmodum cælator oculos diu intentos ac fatigatos remittit atque
avocat, et, ut dici solet, pascit; sic nos animum aliquando debemus
relaxare et quibusdam oblectamentis reficere. Sed ipsa oblectamenta
opera sint; ex his quoque si observaveris, sumes quod possit fieri
salutare._[1]

[Footnote 1: SENECA, Epist. 58.]

But that the beautiful structure of this history may in no wise be
deranged, such matter shall be distributed into distinct chapters in
the way of intercalation; a device of which as it respects the year,
Adam is believed to have been the inventor; but according to the
Author of the book of Jalkut, it was only transmitted by him to his
descendants, being one of the things which he received by revelation.

How then shall these Chapters be annominated? Intercalary they shall
not. That word will send some of my readers to Johnson's Dictionary
for its meaning; and others to Sheridan, or Walker for its
pronunciation. Besides, I have a dislike to all mongrel words, and an
especial dislike for strange compounds into which a preposition
enters. I owe them a grudge. They make one of the main difficulties in
Greek and German.

From our own Calenders we cannot borrow an appellation. In the
Republican one of our neighbours, when the revolutionary fever was at
its height, the supplemental days were called _Sansculottedes_. The
Spaniards would call them _Dias Descamisados_. The holders of liberal
opinions in England would term them Radical Days. A hint might be
taken hence, and we might name them radical chapters, as having the
root of the matter in them;—Or _ramal_, if there were such a word,
upon the analogy of the Branch Bible societies. Or _ramage_ as the
king of Cockayne hath his Foliage. But they would not be truly and
philosophically designated by these names. They are not branches from
the tree of this history, neither are they its leaves; but rather
choice garlands suspended there to adorn it on festival days. They may
be likened to the waste weirs of a canal, or the safety valves of a
steam engine; (my gentle Public would not have me stifle the
_afflatus_!)—interludes;—symphonies between the acts;—voluntaries
during the service;—resting places on the ascent of a church tower;
angular recesses of an old bridge, into which foot passengers may
retire from carriages or horsemen;—houses-of-call upon the road; seats
by the way side, such as those which were provided by the Man of Ross,
or the not less meritorious Woman of Chippenham, Maud Heath of Langley
Burrel,—Hospices on the passages of the Alps,—Capes of Good Hope, or
Isles of St. Helena,—yea Islands of Tinian or Juan Fernandez, upon the
long voyage whereon we are bound.

Leap-chapters they cannot properly be called; and if we were to call
them Ha Has! as being chapters which the Reader may leap if he likes,
the name would appear rather strained than significant, and might be
justly censured as more remarkable for affectation than for aptness.
For the same reason I reject the designation of Intermeans, though it
hath the sanction of great Ben's authority.

Among the requisites for an accomplished writer Steele enumerates the
skill whereby common words are started into new significations. I will
not presume so far upon that talent (—modesty forbids me—) as to call
these intervening chapters either Interpellations or Interpositions,
or Interlocations, or Intervals. Take this Reader for a general rule,
that the readiest and plainest style is the most forcible (if the head
be but properly stored;) and that in all ordinary cases the word which
first presents itself is the best; even as in all matters of right and
wrong, the first feeling is that which the heart owns and the
conscience ratifies.

But for a new occasion, a new word or a new composite must be formed.
Therefore I will strike one in the mint of analogy, in which alone the
king's English must be coined, and call them Interchapters—and thus
endeth

INTERCHAPTER I.

_Perque vices aliquid, quod tempora longa videri
Non sinat, in medium vacuas referamus ad aures._

OVID.

CHAPTER IX. P. I.

EXCEPTIONS TO ONE OF KING SOLOMON'S RULES—A WINTER'S EVENING AT
DANIEL'S FIRE-SIDE.

These are my thoughts; I might have spun them out into a greater
length, but I think a little plot of ground, thick sown, is better
than a great field which, for the most part of it, lies fallow.

NORRIS.

“Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old his feet
will not depart from it.” Generally speaking it will be found so; but
is there any other rule to which there are so many exceptions?

Ask the serious Christian as he calls himself, or the Professor
(another and more fitting appellative which the Christian Pharisees
have chosen for themselves)—ask him whether he has found it hold good?
Whether his sons when they attained to years of discretion (which are
the most indiscreet years in the course of human life) have profited
as he expected by the long extemporaneous prayers to which they
listened night and morning, the sad sabbaths which they were compelled
to observe, and the soporific sermons which closed the domestic
religiosities of those melancholy days? Ask him if this discipline has
prevented them from running headlong into the follies and vices of the
age? from being birdlimed by dissipation? or caught in the spider's
web of sophistry and unbelief? “It is no doubt a true observation,”
says Bishop Patrick, “that the ready way to make the minds of youth
grow awry, is to lace them too hard, by denying them their just
freedom.”

Ask the old faithful servant of Mammon, whom Mammon has rewarded to
his heart's desire, and in whom the acquisition of riches has only
encreased his eagerness for acquiring more—ask him whether he has
succeeded in training up his heir to the same service? He will tell
you that the young man is to be found upon race-grounds, and in
gaming-houses, that he is taking his swing of extravagance and excess,
and is on the high road to ruin.

Ask the wealthy Quaker, the pillar of the meeting—most orthodox in
heterodoxy,—who never wore a garment of forbidden cut or colour, never
bent his body in salutation, or his knees in prayer,—never uttered the
heathen name of a day or month, nor ever addrest himself to any person
without religiously speaking illegitimate English,—ask him how it has
happened that the tailor has converted his sons? He will fold his
hands, and twirl his thumbs mournfully in silence. It has not been for
want of training them in the way wherein it was his wish that they
should go.

You are about, Sir, to send your son to a public school; Eton or
Westminster; Winchester or Harrow; Rugby or the Charter House, no
matter which. He may come from either an accomplished scholar to the
utmost extent that school education can make him so; he may be the
better both for its discipline and its want of discipline; it may
serve him excellently well as a preparatory school for the world into
which he is about to enter. But also he may come away an empty coxcomb
or a hardened brute—a spendthrift—a profligate—a blackguard or a sot.

To put a boy in the way he should go, is like sending out a ship well
found, well manned and stored, and with a careful captain; but there
are rocks and shallows in her course, winds and currents to be
encountered, and all the contingencies and perils of the sea.

How often has it been seen that sons, not otherwise deficient in duty
toward their parents, have, in the most momentous concerns of life,
taken the course most opposite to that in which they were trained to
go, going wrong where the father would have directed them aright, or
taking the right path in spite of all inducements and endeavours for
leading them wrong! The son of Charles Wesley, born and bred in
methodism and bound to it by all the strongest ties of pride and
prejudice, became a papist. This indeed was but passing from one
erroneous persuasion to another, and a more inviting one. But Isaac
Casaubon also had the grief of seeing a son seduced into the Romish
superstition, and on the part of that great and excellent man, there
had been no want of discretion in training him, nor of sound learning
and sound wisdom. Archbishop Leighton, an honor to his church, his
country, and his kind, was the child of one of those firebrands who
kindled the Great Rebellion. And Franklin had a son, who
notwithstanding the example of his father (and such a father!)
continued stedfast in his duty as a soldier and a subject; he took the
unsuccessful side—but

_nunquam successu crescat honestum._[1]

[Footnote 1: LUCAN.]

No such disappointment was destined to befal our Daniel. The way in
which he trained up his son was that into which the bent of the boy's
own nature would have led him; and all circumstances combined to
favour the tendency of his education. The country abounding in natural
objects of sublimity and beauty (some of these singular in their kind)
might have impressed a duller imagination than had fallen to his lot;
and that imagination had time enough for its workings during his
solitary walks to and from school morning and evening. His home was in
a lonely spot; and having neither brother nor sister, nor neighbours
near enough in any degree to supply their place as playmates, he
became his father's companion imperceptibly as he ceased to be his
fondling. And the effect was hardly less apparent in Daniel than in
the boy. He was no longer the same taciturn person as of yore; it
seemed as if his tongue had been loosened, and when the reservoirs of
his knowledge were opened they flowed freely.

Their chimney corner on a winter's evening presented a group not
unworthy of Sir Joshua's pencil. There sate Daniel, richer in
marvellous stories than ever traveller who in the days of mendacity
returned from the East; the peat fire shining upon a countenance which
weather-hardened as it was, might have given the painter a model for a
Patriarch, so rare was the union which it exhibited of intelligence,
benevolence and simplicity. There sate the boy with open eyes and
ears, raised head, and fallen lip, in all the happiness of wonder and
implicit belief. There sate Dinah, not less proud of her husband's
learning than of the towardly disposition and promising talents of her
son,—twirling the thread at her spinning wheel, but attending to all
that past; and when there was a pause in the discourse, fetching a
deep sigh, and exclaiming “Lord bless us! what wonderful things there
are in the world!” There also sate Haggy, knitting stockings, and
sharing in the comforts and enjoyments of the family when the day's
work was done. And there sate William Dove;—but William must have a
chapter to himself.

CHAPTER X. P. I.

ONE WHO WAS NOT SO WISE AS HIS FRIENDS COULD HAVE WISHED, AND YET
QUITE AS HAPPY AS IF HE HAD BEEN WISER. NEPOTISM NOT CONFINED TO
POPES.

DEKKER.

William Dove was Daniel's only surviving brother, seven years his
junior. He was born with one of those heads in which the thin
partition that divides great wits from folly is wanting. Had he come
into the world a century sooner, he would have been taken _nolens
volens_ into some Baron's household, to wear motley, make sport for
the guests and domestics, and live in fear of the rod. But it was his
better fortune to live in an age when this calamity rendered him
liable to no such oppression, and to be precisely in that station
which secured for him all the enjoyments of which he was capable, and
all the care he needed. In higher life, he would probably have been
consigned to the keeping of strangers who would have taken charge of
him for pay; in a humbler degree he must have depended upon the parish
for support; or have been made an inmate of one of those moral
lazar-houses in which age and infancy, the harlot and the idiot, the
profligate and the unfortunate are herded together.

William Dove escaped these aggravations of calamity. He escaped also
that persecution to which he would have been exposed in populous
places where boys run loose in packs, and harden one another in
impudence, mischief and cruelty. Natural feeling, when natural feeling
is not corrupted, leads men to regard persons in his condition with a
compassion not unmixed with awe. It is common with the country people
when they speak of such persons to point significantly at the head and
say _'tis not all there_;—words denoting a sense of the mysteriousness
of our nature which perhaps they feel more deeply on this than on any
other occasion. No outward and visible deformity can make them so
truly apprehend how fearfully and wonderfully we are made.

William Dove's was not a case of fatuity. Though _all_ was not there,
there was a great deal. He was what is called _half-saved_. Some of
his faculties were more than ordinarily acute, but the power of self
conduct was entirely wanting in him. Fortunately it was supplied by a
sense of entire dependence which produced entire docility. A dog does
not obey his master more dutifully than William obeyed his brother;
and in this obedience there was nothing of fear; with all the strength
and simplicity of a child's love, it had also the character and merit
of a moral attachment.

The professed and privileged Fool was generally characterized by a
spice of knavery, and not unfrequently of maliciousness: the unnatural
situation in which he was placed, tended to excite such propensities
and even to produce them. William had shrewdness enough for the
character, but nothing of this appeared in his disposition; ill-usage
might perhaps have awakened it, and to a fearful degree, if he had
proved as sensible to injury as he was to kindness. But he had never
felt an injury. He could not have been treated with more tenderness in
Turkey (where a degree of holiness is imputed to persons in his
condition) than was uniformly shewn him within the little sphere of
his perambulations. It was surprizing how much he had picked up within
that little sphere. Whatever event occurred, whatever tale was
current, whatever traditions were preserved, whatever superstitions
were believed, William knew them all; and all that his insatiable ear
took in, his memory hoarded. Half the proverbial sayings in Ray's
volume were in his head, and as many more with which Ray was
unacquainted. He knew many of the stories which our children are now
receiving as novelties in the selections from Grimm's _Kinder- und
Haus-Marchen_, and as many of those which are collected in the Danish
Folk-Sagn. And if some zealous lover of legendary lore, (like poor
John Leyden, or Sir Walter Scott) had fallen in with him, the
Shakesperian commentators might perhaps have had the whole story of
St. Withold; the Wolf of the World's End might have been identified
with Fenris and found to be a relic of the Scalds: and Rauf Collyer
and John the Reeve might still have been as well known as Adam Bell,
and Clym of the Clough and William of Cloudeslie.

William had a great fondness for his nephew. Let not Protestants
suppose that Nepotism is an affection confined to the dignitaries of
the Roman Catholic Church. In its excess indeed it is peculiarly a
Papal vice,—which is a degree higher than a Cardinal one; but like
many other sins it grows out of the corruption of a good feeling. It
may be questioned whether fond uncles are not as numerous as unkind
ones, notwithstanding our recollections of King Richard and the
Children in the Wood. We may use the epithet nepotious for those who
carry this fondness to the extent of doting, and as expressing that
degree of fondness it may be applied to William Dove: he was a
nepotious uncle. The father regarded young Daniel with a deeper and
more thoughtful, but not with a fonder affection, not with such a
doting attachment. Dinah herself, though a fond as well as careful
mother did not more thoroughly

———delight to hear
Her early child mis-speak half-uttered words;[1]

and perhaps the boy so long as he was incapable of distinguishing
between their moral qualities, and their relative claims to his
respect and love and duty, loved his uncle most of the three. The
father had no idle hours; in the intervals when he was not otherwise
employed, one of his dear books usually lay open before him, and if he
was not feeding upon the page, he was ruminating the food it had
afforded him. But William Dove from the time that his nephew became
capable of noticing and returning caresses seemed to have concentered
upon him all his affections. With children affection seldom fails of
finding its due return; and if he had not thus won the boy's heart in
infancy, he would have secured it in childhood by winning his ear with
these marvellous stories. But he possessed another talent which would
alone have made him a favourite with children,—the power of imitating
animal sounds with singular perfection. A London manager would have
paid him well for performing the cock in Hamlet. He could bray in
octaves to a nicety, set the geese gabbling by addressing them in
their own tongue, and make the turkey-cock spread his fan, brush his
wing against the ground, and angrily gob-gobble in answer to a gobble
of defiance. But he prided himself more upon his success with the
owls, as an accomplishment of more difficult attainment. In this Mr.
Wordsworth's boy of Winander was not more perfect. Both hands were
used as an instrument in producing the notes; and if Pope could have
heard the responses which came from barn and doddered oak and ivied
crag, he would rather, (satirist as he was,) have left Ralph
unsatirized, than have vilified one of the wildest and sweetest of
nocturnal sounds.

[Footnote 1: DONNE.]

He was not less expert to a human ear in hitting off the wood-pigeon's
note, though he could not in this instance provoke a reply. This sound
he used to say ought to be natural to him, and it was wrong in the
bird not to acknowledge his relation. Once when he had made too free
with a lasses lips, he disarmed his brother of a reprehensive look, by
pleading that as his name was William Dove it behoved him both to
_bill_ and to _coo_.

CHAPTER XI. P. I.

A WORD TO THE READER, SHEWING WHERE WE ARE, AND HOW WE CAME HERE, AND
WHEREFORE; AND WHITHER WE ARE GOING.

'Tis my venture
On your retentive wisdom.

BEN JONSON.

Reader, you have not forgotten where we are at this time: you remember
I trust, that we are neither at Dan nor Beersheba; nor any where
between those two celebrated places; nor on the way to either of them:
but that we are in the Doctor's parlour, that Mrs. Dove has just
poured out his seventh cup of tea, and that the clock of St. George's
has struck five. In what street, parade, place, square, row, terrace
or lane, and in what town, and in what county; and on what day, and in
what month, and in what year, will be explained in due time. You
cannot but remember what was said in the second chapter _post-initium_
concerning the importance and the necessity of order in an undertaking
like this. “All things,” says Sir Thomas Brown, “began in order; so
shall they end, and so shall they begin again; according to the
ordainer of order, and mystical mathematics of the City of Heaven:”
This awful sentence was uttered by the Philosopher of Norwich upon
occasion of a subject less momentous than that whereon we have
entered, for what are the mysteries of the _Quincunx_ compared to the
delineation of a human mind? Be pleased only at present to bear in
mind where we are. Place but as much confidence in me as you do in
your review, your newspaper, and your apothecary; give me but as much
credit as you expect from your tailor; and if your apothecary deserves
that confidence as well, it will be well for you, and if your credit
is as punctually redeemed it will be well for your tailor. It is not
without cause that I have gone back to the Doctor's childhood and his
birth place. Be thou assured, O Reader! that he never could have been
seated thus comfortably in that comfortable parlour where we are now
regarding him—never by possibility could have been at that time in
that spot, and in those circumstances;—never could have been the
Doctor that he was,—nay according to all reasonable induction, all
tangible or imaginable probabilities,—never would have been a Doctor
at all,—consequently thou never couldst have had the happiness of
reading this delectable history, nor I the happiness of writing it for
thy benefit and information and delight,—had it not been for his
father's character, his father's books, his schoolmaster Guy, and his
Uncle William, with all whom and which, it was therefore indispensable
that thou shouldst be made acquainted.

A metaphysician, or as some of my contemporaries would affect to say a
psychologist, if he were at all a master of his art bablative (for it
is as much an _ars bablativa_ as the Law, which was defined to be so
by that old traitor and time-server Serjeant Maynard)—a metaphysician
I say, would not require more than three such octavo volumes as those
of Mr. Malthus's Essay on Population, to prove that no existing
circumstance could at this time be what it is, unless all preceding
circumstances had from the beginning of time been precisely what they
were. But, my good Reader, I have too much respect for you, and too
much regard for your precious time, and too much employment, or
amusement (which is a very rational kind of employment) for my own, to
waste it in demonstrating a truism. No man knows the value of time
more feelingly, than I do!

Man's life, Sir, being
So short, and then the way that leads unto
The knowledge of ourselves, so long and tedious,
Each minute should be precious.[1]

[Footnote 1: BEAUMONT and FLETCHER.]

It is my wish and intention to make you acquainted with a person most
worthy to be known, for such the subject of this history will be
admitted to be: one whom when you once know him it will be impossible
that you should ever forget: one for whom I have the highest possible
veneration and regard; (and though it is not possible that your
feelings towards him should be what mine are) one who, the more he is
known, will and must be more and more admired. I wish to introduce
this person to you. Now, Sir, I appeal to your good sense, and to your
own standard of propriety, should I act with sufficient respect either
to yourself or him, if, without giving you any previous intimation,
any information, concerning his character and situation in life; or in
any way apprizing you who and what he was, I were to knock at your
door and simply present him to you as Doctor Dove? No, my dear Sir! it
is indispensable that you should be properly informed who it is whom I
thus introduce to your acquaintance; and if you are the judicious
person that I suppose you to be, you will be obliged to me as long as
you live. “For why,” as old Higgins hath it,—

For why, who writes such histories as these
Doth often bring the Reader's heart such ease
As when they sit and see what he doth note,
Well fare his heart, say they, this book that wrote!

Ill fare that reader's heart who of this book says otherwise! “_Tam
suavia dicam facinora, ut malè sit ei qui talibus non delectetur!_”
said a very different person from old Higgins, writing in a different
vein, I have not read his book, but so far as my own is concerned, I
heartily adopt his malediction.

Had I been disposed, as the Persians say, to let the steed of the pen
expatiate in the plains of prolixity, I should have carried thee
farther back in the generations of the Doves. But the good garrulous
son of Garcilasso my Lord (Heaven rest the soul of the Princess who
bore him,—for Peru has never produced any thing else half so precious
as his delightful books,)—the Inca-blooded historian himself, I say,
was not more anxious to avoid that failing than I am. Forgive me,
Reader, if I should have fallen into an opposite error; forgive me if
in the fear of saying too much I should have said too little. I have
my misgivings:—I may have run upon Scylla while striving to avoid
Charybdis. Much interesting matter have I omitted; much have I past by
on which I “cast a longing lingering look behind;”—much which might
worthily find a place in the History of Yorkshire;—or of the West
Riding (if that history were tripartitively distributed;)—or in the
Gentleman's Magazine;—or in John Nichols's Illustrations of the
Literary History of the Eighteenth Century: (I honor John Nichols, I
honor Mr. Urban!) much more might it have had place,—much more might
it be looked for here.

I might have told thee, Reader, of Daniel the Grandfather, and of
Abigail his second wife, who once tasted tea in the housekeeper's
apartments at Skipton Castle; and of the Great Grandfather who at the
age of twenty-eight died of the small pox, and was the last of the
family that wore a leathern jerkin; and of his father Daniel the
_atavus_, who was the first of the family that shaved, and who went
with his own horse and arms to serve in that brave troop, which during
the wreck of the King's party the heir of Lowther raised for the loyal
cause: and of that Daniel's Grandfather (the _tritavus_) who going to
Kentmere to bring home a wife was converted from the popish
superstition by falling in with Bernard Gilpin on the way. That
apostolic man was so well pleased with his convert, that he gave him
his own copy of Latimer's sermons,—that copy which was one of our
Daniel's Sunday books, and which was religiously preserved in
reverence for this ancestor, and for the Apostle of the North (as
Bernard Gilpin was called) whose autograph it contained.

The history of any private family, however humble, could it be fully
related for five or six generations, would illustrate the state and
progress of society better than could be done by the most elaborate
dissertation. And the History of the Doves might be rendered as
interesting and as instructive as that of the Seymours or the Howards.
Frown not, My Lord of Norfolk, frown not, your Grace of Somerset, when
I add, that it would contain less for their descendants to regret.

CHAPTER XII. P. I.

A HISTORY NOTICED WHICH IS WRITTEN BACKWARD. THE CONFUSION OF TONGUES
AN ESPECIAL EVIL FOR SCHOOLBOYS.

DR. BEAUMONT.

It has been the general practice of historians, from the time of
Moses, to begin at the beginning of their subject: but as a river may
be traced either from its sources or its mouth, so it appears that a
history may be composed in the reversed order of its chronology; and a
French author of very considerable ability and great learning has
actually written a history of the Christian religion from his own
times upwards. It forms part of an elaborate and extensive work
entitled _Parallele des Religions_, which must have been better known
than it appears to be at present if it had not happened to be
published in Paris during the most turbulent year of the Revolution.
Perhaps if I had carried back the memoirs of the Dove family, I might
have followed his example in chusing the up-hill way, and have
proceeded from son to father in the ascending line. But having
resolved (whether judiciously or not) not to go farther back in these
family records than the year of our Lord 1723, being the year of the
Doctor's birth, I shall continue in the usual course, and pursue his
history _ab incunabulis_ down to that important evening on which we
find him now reaching out his hand to take that cup of tea which Mrs.
Dove has just creamed and sugared for him. After all the beaten way is
usually the best, and always the safest. “He ought to be well
mounted,” says Aaron Hill, “who is for leaping the hedges of custom.”
For myself I am not so adventurous a horseman as to take the hazards
of a steeple chace.

Proceeding therefore after the model of a Tyburn biography, which
being an ancient as well as popular form is likely to be the best,—we
come after birth and parentage to education. “That the world from
Babel was scattered into divers tongues, we need not other proof,”
says a grave and good author, “than as Diogenes proved that there is
motion,—by walking;—so we may see the confusion of languages by our
confused speaking. Once all the earth was of one tongue, one speech
and one consent; for they all spake in the holy tongue wherein the
world was created in the beginning. But _pro peccato dissentionis
humanæ_ (as saith St. Austin,)—for the sin of men disagreeing,—not
only different dispositions but also different languages came into the
world.—They came to Babel with a disagreeing agreement; and they came
away punished with a speechless speech. They disagree among
themselves, while every one strives for dominion. They agree against
God in their _Nagnavad lan Liguda_,—we will make ourselves a
rendezvous for idolatry. But they come away speaking to each other,
but not understood of each other; and so speak to no more purpose than
if they spake not at all. This punishment of theirs at Babel is like
Adam's corruption, hereditary to us; for we never come under the rod
at the Grammar School, but we smart for our ancestor's rebellion at
Babel.”

Light lie the earth upon the bones of Richard Guy, the Schoolmaster of
Ingleton! He never consumed birch enough in his vocation to have made
a besom; and his ferule was never applied unless when some moral
offence called for a chastisement that would be felt. There is a
closer connection between good-nature and good sense than is commonly
supposed. A sour ill-tempered pedagogue would have driven Daniel
through the briars and brambles of the Grammar and foundered him in
its sloughs; Guy led him gently along the green-sward. He felt that
childhood should not be made altogether a season of painful
acquisition, and that the fruits of the sacrifices then made are
uncertain as to the account to which they may be turned, and are also
liable to the contingencies of life at least, if not otherwise
jeopardized. “_Puisque le jour peut lui manquer, laissons le un peu
jouir de l'Aurore!_” The precepts which warmth of imagination inspired
in Jean Jacques was impressed upon Guy's practice by gentleness of
heart. He never crammed the memory of his pupil with such horrific
terms as Prothesis, Aphæresis, Epenthesis, Syncope, Paragoge, and
Apocope; never questioned him concerning Appositio, Evocatio,
Syllepsis, Prolepsis, Zeugma, Synthesis, Antiptosis, and Synecdoche;
never attempted to deter him (as Lily says boys are above all things
to be deterred) from those faults which Lily also says, seem almost
natural to the English,—the heinous faults of Iotacism, Lambdacism,
(which Alcibiades affected,)—Ischnotesism, Trauli'sm and Plateasm. But
having grounded him well in the nouns and verbs, and made him
understand the concords, he then followed in part the excellent advice
of Lily thus given in his address to the Reader:

“When these concords be well known unto them (an easy and pleasant
pain, if the foregrounds be well and thoroughly beaten in) let them
not continue in learning of the rules orderly, as they lie in their
Syntax, but rather learn some pretty book wherein is contained not
only the eloquence of the tongue, but also a good plain lesson of
honesty and godliness; and thereof take some little sentence as it
lieth, and learn to make the same first out of English into Latin, not
seeing the book, or construing it thereupon. And if there fall any
necessary rule of the Syntax to be known, then to learn it, as the
occasion of the sentence giveth cause that day; which sentence once
made well, and as nigh as may be with the words of the book, then to
take the book and construe it; and so shall he be less troubled with
the parsing of it, and easiliest carry his lesson in mind.”

Guy followed this advice in part; and in part he deviated from it,
upon Lily's own authority, as “judging that the most sufficient way
which he saw to be the readiest mean;” while therefore he exercised
his pupil in writing Latin pursuant to this plan, he carried him on
faster in construing, and promoted the boy's progress by gratifying
his desire of getting forward. When he had done with Cordery, Erasmus
was taken up,—for some of Erasmus's colloquies were in those days used
as a school book, and the most attractive one that could be put into a
boy's hands. After he had got through this, the aid of an English
version was laid aside. And here Guy departed from the ordinary
course, not upon any notion that he could improve upon it, but merely
because he happened to possess an old book composed for the use of
Schools, which was easy enough to suit young Daniel's progress in the
language, and might therefore save the cost of purchasing Justin or
Phædrus or Cornelius Nepos, or Eutropius,—to one or other of which he
would otherwise have been introduced.

CHAPTER XIII. P. I.

A DOUBT CONCERNING SCHOOL BOOKS, WHICH WILL BE DEEMED HERETICAL: AND
SOME ACCOUNT OF AN EXTRAORDINARY SUBSTITUTE FOR OVID OR VIRGIL.

They say it is an ill mason that refuseth any stone; and there is no
knowledge but in a skilful hand serves, either positively as it is, or
else to illustrate some other knowledge.

HERBERT'S REMAINS.

I am sometimes inclined to think that pigs are brought up upon a wiser
system, than boys at a grammar school. The Pig is allowed to feed upon
any kind of offal, however coarse, on which he can thrive, till the
time approaches when pig is to commence pork, or take a degree as
bacon; and then he is fed daintily. Now it has sometimes appeared to
me that in like manner, boys might acquire their first knowledge of
Latin from authors very inferior to those which are now used in all
schools; provided the matter was unexceptionable and the Latinity
good; and that they should not be introduced to the standard works of
antiquity till they are of an age in some degree to appreciate what
they read.

Understand me, Reader, as speaking doubtfully,—and that too upon a
matter of little moment; for the scholar will return in riper years to
those authors which are worthy of being studied, and as for the
blockhead—it signifies nothing whether the book which he consumes by
thumbing it in the middle and dog-earing it at the corners be worthy
or not of a better use. Yet if the dead have any cognizance of
posthumous fame, one would think it must abate somewhat of the
pleasure with which Virgil and Ovid regard their earthly immortality,
when they see to what base purposes their productions are applied.
That their verses should be administered to boys in regular doses, as
lessons or impositions, and some dim conception of their meaning whipt
into the tail when it has failed to penetrate the head, cannot be just
the sort of homage to their genius which they anticipated or desired.

Not from any reasonings or refinements of this kind, but from the mere
accident of possessing the book, Guy put into his pupil's hands the
Dialogues of Johannes Ravisius Textor. Jean Tixier, Seigneur de
Ravisy, in the Nivernois, who thus latinized his name, is a person
whose works, according to Baillet's severe censure, were buried in the
dust of a few petty colleges and unfrequented shops, more than a
century ago. He was however in his day a person of no mean station in
the world of letters, having been Rector of the University of Paris,
at the commencement of the 16th century; and few indeed are the
writers whose books have been so much used; for perhaps no other
author ever contributed so largely to the manufacture of exercises
whether in prose or verse, and of sermons also. Textor may be
considered as the first compiler of the _Gradus ad Parnassum_; and
that collection of Apopthegms was originally formed by him, which
Conrade Lycosthenes enlarged and re-arranged; which the Jesuits
adopted after expurgating it; and which during many generations served
as one of the standard common-place books for common-place divines in
this country as well as on the continent.

But though Textor was continually working in classical literature with
a patience and perseverance which nothing but the delight he
experienced in such occupations could have sustained, he was without a
particle of classical taste. His taste was that of the age wherein he
flourished, and these his Dialogues are Moralities in Latin verse. The
designs and thoughts which would have accorded with their language had
they been written either in old French or old English, appear when
presented in Latinity, which is always that of a scholar, and largely
interwoven with scraps from familiar classics, as strange as Harlequin
and Pantaloon would do in heroic costume.

Earth opens the first of these curious compositions with a bitter
complaint for the misfortunes which it is her lot to witness. Age
(_Ætas_) overhears the lamentation and enquires the cause; and after a
dialogue in which the author makes the most liberal use of his own
common-places, it appears that the perishable nature of all sublunary
things is the cause of this mourning. _Ætas_ endeavours to persuade
_Terra_ that her grief is altogether unreasonable by such brief and
cogent observations as _Fata jubent_, _Fata volunt_, _Ita Diis
placitum_. Earth asks the name of her philosophic consoler, but upon
discovering it, calls her _falsa virago_, and _meretrix_, and abuses
her as being the very author of all the evils that distress her.
However _Ætas_ succeeds in talking _Terra_ into better humour, advises
her to exhort man that he should not set his heart upon perishable
things, and takes her leave as _Homo_ enters. After a recognition
between mother and son, _Terra_ proceeds to warn _Homo_ against all
the ordinary pursuits of this world. To convince him of the vanity of
glory she calls up in succession the ghosts of Hector, Achilles,
Alexander and Samson, who tell their tales and admonish him that valor
and renown afford no protection against Death. To exemplify the vanity
of beauty Helen, Lais, Thisbe and Lucretia are summoned, relate in
like manner their respective fortunes, and remind him that _pulvis et
umbra sumus_. Virgil preaches to him upon the emptiness of literary
fame. Xerxes tells him that there is no avail in power, Nero that
there is none in tyranny, Sardanapalus that there is none in
voluptuousness. But the application which _Homo_ makes of all this, is
the very reverse to what his mother intended: he infers that seeing he
must die at last, live how he will, the best thing he can do is to
make a merry life of it, so away he goes to dance and revel and enjoy
himself: and _Terra_ concludes with the mournful observation that men
will still pursue their bane, unmindful of their latter end.

Another of these Moralities begins with three Worldlings (_Tres
Mundani_) ringing changes upon the pleasures of profligacy, in
Textor's peculiar manner, each in regular succession saying something
to the same purport in different words. As thus

PRIMUS MUNDANUS.
_Si breve tempus abit_,

SECUNDUS MUNDANUS.
_Si vita caduca recedit_;

TERTIUS MUNDANUS.
_Si cadit hora_.

PRIMUS MUNDANUS.
_Dies abeunt_,

SECUNDUS MUNDANUS.
_Perit Omne_,

TERTIUS MUNDANUS.
_Venit Mors_,

PRIMUS MUNDANUS.
_Quidnam prodesset fati meminisse futuri?_

SECUNDUS MANDANUS.
_Quidnam prodesset lachrymis consumere vitam?_

TERTIUS MUNDANUS.
_Quidnam prodesset tantis incumbere curis?_

Upon which an unpleasant personage who has just appeared to interrupt
their trialogue observes,

_Si breve tempus abit, si vita caduca recedit,
Si cadit hora, dies abeunt, perit omne, venit Mors,
Quidnam lethiferæ Mortis meminisse nocebit?_

It is _Mors_ herself who asks the question. The three Worldlings
however behave as resolutely as Don Juan in the old drama; they tell
Death that they are young and rich and active and vigorous, and set
all admonition at defiance. Death or rather Mrs. Death, (for _Mors_
being feminine is called _læna_, and _meretrix_, and _virago_,) takes
all this patiently, and letting them go off in a dance, calls up Human
Nature who has been asleep meantime, and asks her how she can sleep in
peace while her sons are leading a life of dissipation and debauchery?
Nature very coolly replies by demanding why they should not? and Death
answers, because they must go to the infernal regions for so doing.
Upon this Nature, who appears to be liberally inclined, asks if it is
credible that any should be obliged to go there? and Death to convince
her calls up a soul from bale to give an account of his own
sufferings. A dreadful account this _Damnatus_ gives; and when Nature,
shocked at what she hears, enquires if he is the only one who is
tormented in _Orcus_, _Damnatus_ assures her that hardly one in a
thousand goes to Heaven, but that his fellow-sufferers are in number
numberless; and he specifies among them Kings and Popes, and Senators
and severe Schoolmasters,—a class of men whom Textor seems to have
held in great and proper abhorrence—as if like poor Thomas Tusser he
had suffered under their inhuman discipline.

Horrified at this, Nature asks advice of _Mors_, and _Mors_ advises
her to send a Son of Thunder round the world, who should reprove the
nations for their sins, and sow the seeds of virtue by his preaching.
_Peregrinus_ goes upon this mission and returns to give an account of
it. Nothing can be worse than the report. As for the Kings of the
Earth, it would be dangerous, he says, to say what they were doing.
The Popes suffered the ship of Peter to go wherever the winds carried
it. Senators were won by intercession or corrupted by gold. Doctors
spread their nets in the temples for prey, and Lawyers were dumb
unless their tongues were loosened by money.—Had he seen the
Italians?—Italy was full of dissentions, ripe for war, and defiled by
its own infamous vice. The Spaniards?—They were suckled by Pride. The
English?—

_Gens tacitis prægnans arcanis, ardua tentans,
Edita tartareis mihi creditur esse tenebris._

In short the Missionary concludes that he has found every where an
abundant crop of vices, and that all his endeavours to produce
amendment have been like ploughing the sea shore. Again afflicted
Nature asks advice of _Mors_, and _Mors_ recommends that she should
call up Justice and send her abroad with her scourge to repress the
wicked. But Justice is found to be so fast asleep that no calling can
awaken her. _Mors_ then advises her to summon _Veritas_; alas! unhappy
_Veritas_ enters complaining of pains from head to foot and in all the
intermediate parts, within and without; she is dying and entreats that
Nature will call some one to confess her. But who shall be applied
to?—Kings? They will not come.—Nobles? _Veritas_ is a hateful
personage to them.—Bishops, or mitred Abbots? They have no regard for
Truth.—Some Saint from the desert? Nature knows not where to find one!
Poor _Veritas_ therefore dies “unhouseled, disappointed, unanealed;”
and forthwith three Demons enter rejoicing that Human Nature is left
with none to help her, and that they are Kings of this world. They
call in their Ministers, _Caro_ and _Voluptas_ and _Vitium_, and send
them to do their work among mankind. These successful missionaries
return, and relate how well they have sped every where; and the Demons
being by this time hungry, after washing in due form, and many
ceremonious compliments among themselves, sit down to a repast which
their ministers have provided. The bill of fare was one which
Beelzebub's Court of Aldermen might have approved. There were the
brains of a fat monk,—a roasted Doctor of Divinity who afforded great
satisfaction,—a King's sirloin,—some broiled Pope's flesh, and part of
a Schoolmaster; the joint is not specified, but I suppose it to have
been the rump. Then came a Senator's lights and a Lawyer's tongue.

When they have eaten of these dainties till the distended stomach can
hold no more, _Virtus_ comes in and seeing them send off the fragments
to their Tartarean den, calls upon mankind to bestow some sustenance
upon her, for she is tormented with hunger. The Demons and their
ministers insult her and drive her into banishment; they tell Nature
that to-morrow the great King of Orcus will come and carry her away in
chains; off they go in a dance, and Nature concludes the piece by
saying that what they have threatened must happen, unless Justice
shall be awakened, Virtue fed, and _Veritas_ restored to life by the
sacred book.

There are several other Dialogues in a similar strain of fiction. The
rudest and perhaps oldest specimen of this style is to be found in
Pierce Ploughman, the most polished in Calderon, the most popular in
John Bunyan's Holy War, and above all in his Pilgrim's Progress. It
appears from the Dialogues that they were not composed for the use of
youth alone as a school book, but were represented at College; and
poor as they are in point of composition, the oddity of their
combinations, and the wholesome honesty of their satire, were well
adapted to strike young imaginations and make an impression there
which better and wiser works might have failed to leave.

A schoolmaster who had been regularly bred would have regarded such a
book with scorn, and discerning at once its obvious faults, would have
been incapable of perceiving any thing which might compensate for
them. But Guy was not educated well enough to despise a writer like
old Textor. What he knew himself, he had picked up where and how he
could, in bye ways and corners. The book was neither in any respect
above his comprehension, nor below his taste; and Joseph Warton, never
rolled off the hexameters of Virgil or Homer, _ore rotundo_, with more
delight, when expatiating with all the feelings of a scholar and a
poet upon their beauties, to such pupils as Headley and Russell and
Bowles, than Guy paraphrased these rude but striking allegories to his
delighted Daniel.

CHAPTER XIV. P. I.

AN OBJECTION ANSWERED.

Is this then your wonder?
Nay then you shall under-
stand more of my skill.

BEN JONSON.

“This account of Textor's Dialogues,” says a critical Reader, “might
have done very well for the Retrospective Review, or one of the
Magazines, or D'Israeli's Curiosities of Literature. But no one would
have looked for it here, where it is completely out of place.”

“My good Sir, there is quite enough left untouched in Textor to form a
very amusing paper for the journal which you have mentioned, and the
Editor may thank you for the hint. But you are mistaken in thinking
that what has been said of those Dialogues is out of place here. May I
ask what you expected in these volumes?”

“What the Title authorized me to look for.”

“Do you know, Sir, what mutton broth means at a city breakfast on the
Lord Mayor's Day, mutton broth being the appointed breakfast for that
festival? It means according to established usage—by liberal
interpretation—mutton broth and every thing else that can be wished
for at a breakfast. So, Sir, you have here not only what the title
seems to specify, but every thing else that can be wished for in a
book. In treating of the Doctor, it treats _de omnibus rebus et
quibusdam aliis_. It is the Doctor &c., and that &c., like one of
Lyttleton's, implies every thing that can be deduced from the words
preceding.

“But I maintain that the little which has been said of comical old
Textor (for it is little compared to what his Dialogues contain)
strictly relates to the main thread of this most orderly and well
compacted work. You will remember that I am now replying to the
question proposed in the third chapter P. I. ‘Who was the Doctor?’ And
as he who should undertake to edite the works of Chaucer, or Spenser,
or Shakespear would not be qualified for the task, unless he had made
himself conversant with the writings of those earlier authors, from
whose storehouses (as far as they drew from books) their minds were
fed; so it behoved me (as far as my information and poor ability
extend) to explain in what manner so rare a character as Dr. Dove's
was formed.

“_Quo semel est imbuta recens_,—you know the rest of the quotation,
Sir. And perhaps you may have tasted water out of a beery glass,—which
it is not one or two rinsings that can purify.

“You have seen yew trees cut into the forms of pyramids, chess-kings,
and peacocks:—nothing can be more unlike their proper growth—and yet
no tree except the yew could take the artificial figures so well. The
garden passes into the possession of some new owner who has no taste
for such ornaments: the yews are left to grow at their own will; they
lose the preposterous shape which had been forced upon them, without
recovering that of their natural growth, and what was formal becomes
grotesque—a word which may be understood as expressing the incongruous
combination of formality with extravagance or wildness.”

The intellectual education which young Daniel received at home was as
much out of the ordinary course as the book in which he studied at
school. Robinson Crusoe had not yet reached Ingleton. Sandford and
Merton had not been written, nor that history of Pecksey and Flapsey
and the Robin's Nest, which is the prettiest fiction that ever was
composed for children, and for which its excellent authoress will one
day rank high among women of genius when time shall have set its seal
upon desert. The only book within his reach, of all those which now
come into the hands of youth, was the Pilgrim's Progress, and this he
read at first without a suspicion of its allegorical import. What he
did not understand was as little remembered as the sounds of the wind,
or the motions of the passing clouds; but the imagery and the
incidents took possession of his memory and his heart. After a while
Textor became an interpreter of the immortal Tinker, and the boy
acquired as much of the meaning by glimpses as was desirable, enough
to render some of the personages more awful by spiritualizing them,
while the tale itself remained as a reality. Oh! what blockheads are
those wise persons who think it necessary that a child should
comprehend every thing it reads!

CHAPTER XV. P. I.

THE AUTHOR VENTURES AN OPINION AGAINST THE PREVAILING WISDOM OF MAKING
CHILDREN PREMATURELY WISE.

Pray you, use your freedom;
And so far, if you please allow me mine,
To hear you only; not to be compelled
To take your moral potions.

MASSINGER.

“What, Sir,” exclaims a Lady, who is bluer than ever one of her naked
and woad-stained ancestors appeared at a public festival in full
dye,—“what, Sir, do you tell us that children are not to be made to
understand what they are taught?” And she casts her eyes complacently
toward an assortment of those books which so many writers, male and
female, some of the infidel, some of the semi-fidel, and some of the
super-fidel schools have composed for the laudable purpose of enabling
children to understand every thing.—“What, Sir,” she repeats, “are we
to make our children learn things by rote like parrots, and fill their
heads with words to which they cannot attach any signification?”

“Yes, Madam, in very many cases.”

“I should like, Sir, to be instructed why?”

She says this in a tone, and with an expression both of eyes and lips
which plainly show, in direct opposition to the words, that the Lady
thinks herself much fitter to instruct, than to be instructed. It is
not her fault. She is a good woman, and naturally a sensible one, but
she has been trained up in the way women should not go. She has been
carried from lecture to lecture, like a student who is being crammed
at a Scotch University. She has attended lectures on chemistry,
lectures on poetry, lectures on phrenology, lectures on mnemonics; she
has read the latest and most applauded essays on Taste: she has
studied the newest and most approved treatises practical and
theoretical upon Education: she has paid sufficient attention to
metaphysics to know as much as a professed philosopher about matter
and spirit; she is a proficient in political economy, and can
discourse upon the new science of population. Poor Lady, it would
require large draughts of Lethe to clear out all this undigested and
undigestible trash, and fit her for becoming what she might have been!
Upon this point however it may be practicable to set her right.

“You are a mother, Madam, and a good one. In caressing your infants
you may perhaps think it unphilosophical to use what I should call the
proper and natural language of the nursery. But doubtless you talk to
them; you give some utterance to your feelings; and whether that
utterance be in legitimate and wise words, or in good extemporaneous
nonsense it is alike to the child. The conventional words convey no
more meaning to him than the mere sound; but he understands from
either all that is meant, all that you wish him to understand, all
that is to be understood. He knows that it is an expression of your
love and tenderness, and that he is the object of it.

“So too it continues after he is advanced from infancy into childhood.
When children are beginning to speak they do not and cannot affix any
meaning to half the words which they hear; yet they learn their mother
tongue. What I say is, do not attempt to force their intellectual
growth. Do not feed them with meat till they have teeth to masticate
it.

“There is a great deal which they ought to learn, can learn, and must
learn, before they can or ought to understand it. How many questions
must you have heard from them which you have felt to be best answered,
when they were with most dexterity put aside! Let me tell you a story
which the Jesuit Manuel de Vergara used to tell of himself. When he
was a little boy he asked a Dominican Friar what was the meaning of
the seventh commandment, for he said he could not tell what committing
adultery was. The Friar not knowing how to answer, cast a perplexed
look round the room, and thinking he had found a safe reply pointed to
a kettle on the fire, and said the Commandment meant that he must
never put his hand in the pot while it was boiling. The very next day,
a loud scream alarmed the family, and behold there was little Manuel
running about the room holding up his scalded finger, and exclaiming
‘Oh dear, oh dear, I've committed adultery! I've committed adultery!
I've committed adultery!’”

CHAPTER XVI. P. I.

USE AND ABUSE OF STORIES IN REASONING, WITH A WORD IN BEHALF OF
CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS AND IN REPROOF OF THE EARL OF LAUDERDALE.

My particular inclination moves me in controversy especially to
approve his choice that said, _fortia mallem quam formosa_.

DR. JACKSON.

I ended that last chapter with a story, and though “I say it who
should not say it,” it is a good story well applied. Of what use a
story may be even in the most serious debates may be seen from the
circulation of old Joes in Parliament, which are as current there as
their sterling namesakes used to be in the city some threescore years
ago. A jest though it should be as stale as last weeks newspaper, and
as flat as Lord Flounder's face, is sure to be received with laughter
by the Collective Wisdom of the Nation: nay it is sometimes thrown out
like a tub to the whale, or like a trail of carrion to draw off hounds
from the scent.

The Bill which should have put an end to the inhuman practice of
employing children to sweep chimneys, was thrown out on the third
reading in the House of Lords (having passed the Commons without a
dissentient voice) by a speech from Lord Lauderdale, the force of
which consisted in, literally, a Joe Millar jest. He related that an
Irishman used to sweep his chimney by letting a rope down, which was
fastened round the legs of a goose, and then pulling the goose after
it. A neighbour to whom he recommended this as a convenient mode
objected to it upon the score of cruelty to the goose: upon which he
replied, that a couple of ducks might do as well. Now if the Bill
before the house had been to enact that men should no longer sweep
chimneys but that boys should be used instead, the story would have
been applicable. It was no otherwise applicable than as it related to
chimney-sweeping: but it was a joke, and that sufficed. The Lords
laughed; his Lordship had the satisfaction of throwing out the Bill,
and the home Negro trade has continued from that time, now seven
years, till this day, and still continues. His Lordship had his jest,
and it is speaking within compass to say that in the course of those
seven years two thousand children have been _sacrificed_ in
consequence.

The worst actions of Lord Lauderdale's worst ancestor admit of a
better defence before God and Man.

Had his Lordship perused the evidence which had been laid before the
House of Commons when the Bill was brought in, upon which evidence the
Bill was founded? Was he aware of the shocking barbarities connected
with the trade, and inseparable from it? Did he know that children
inevitably lacerate themselves in learning this dreadful occupation?
that they are frequently crippled by it? frequently lose their lives
in it by suffocation, or by slow fire? that it induces a peculiar and
dreadful disease? that they who survive the accumulated hardships of a
childhood during which they are exposed to every kind of misery, and
destitute of every kind of comfort, have at the age of seventeen or
eighteen to seek their living how they can in some other
employment,—for it is only by children that this can be carried on?
Did his Lordship know that girls as well as boys are thus abused? that
their sufferings begin at the age of six, sometimes a year earlier?
finally that they are sold to this worst and most inhuman of all
slaveries, and sometimes stolen for the purpose of being sold to it?

I bear no ill-will towards Lord Lauderdale, either personally or
politically: far from it. His manly and honorable conduct on the
Queen's trial, when there was such an utter destitution of honor in
many quarters where it was believed to exist, and so fearful a want of
manliness where it ought to have been found, entitles him to the
respect and gratitude of every true Briton. But I will tell his
Lordship that rather than have spoken as he did against an act which
would have lessened the sum of wickedness and suffering in this
country,—rather than have treated a question of pure humanity with
contempt and ridicule,—rather than have employed my tongue for such a
purpose and with such success, I would———But no: I will not tell him
how I had concluded. I will not tell him what I had added in the
sincerity of a free tongue and an honest heart. I leave the sentence
imperfect rather than that any irritation which the strength of my
language might excite should lessen the salutary effects of
self-condemnation.

James Montgomery! these remarks are too late for a place in thy
Chimney Sweepers' Friend: but insert them I pray thee in thy
newspaper, at the request of one who admires and loves thee as a Poet,
honors and respects thee as a man, and reaches out in spirit at this
moment a long arm to shake hands with thee in cordial good will.

My compliments to you Mr. Bowring! your little poem in Montgomery's
benevolent album is in a strain of true poetry and right feeling. None
but a man of genius could have struck off such stanzas upon such a
theme. But when you wrote upon Humanity at Home, the useful reflection
might have occurred that Patriotism has no business abroad. Whatever
cause there may be to wish for amendment in the government and
institutions of other countries, keep aloof from all revolutionary
schemes for amending them, lest you should experience a far more
painful disappointment in their success than in their failure. No
spirit of prophecy is required for telling you that this must be the
result. Lay not up that cause of remorse for yourself, and time will
ripen in you what is crude, confirm what is right, and gently rectify
all that is erroneous; it will abate your political hopes, and enlarge
your religious faith, and stablish both upon a sure foundation. My
good wishes and sincere respects to you Mr. Bowring!

INTERCHAPTER II.

ABALLIBOOZOBANGANORRIBO.

_Io'l dico dunque, e dicol che ognun m'ode._

BENEDETTO VARCHI.

Whether the secret of the Freemasons be comprized in the mystic word
above is more than I think proper to reveal at present. But I have
broken no vow in uttering it.

And I am the better for having uttered it.

Mahomet begins some of the chapters of the Koran with certain letters
of unknown signification, and the commentators say that the meaning of
these initials ought not to be enquired. So Gelaleddin says, so sayeth
Taleb. And they say truly. Some begin with A. L. M. Some with K. H. I.
A. S.: some with T. H.;—T. S. M.;—T. S. or I. S. others with K. M.;—H.
M. A. S. K.;—N. M.;—a single _Kaf_, a single _Nun_ or a single _Sad_,
and _sad_ work would it be either for _Kaffer_ or Mussulman to search
for meaning where _none_ is. Gelaleddin piously remarks that there is
only One who knoweth the import of these letters—I reverence the name
which he uses too much to employ it upon this occasion. Mahomet
himself tells us that they are the signs of the Book which teacheth
the true doctrine,—the Book of the Wise,—the Book of Evidence, the
Book of Instruction. When he speaketh thus of the Koran he lieth like
an impostor as he is: but what he has said falsely of that false book
may be applied truly to this. It is the Book of Instruction inasmuch
as every individual reader among the thousands and tens of thousands
who peruse it will find something in it which he did not know before.
It is the Book of Evidence because of its internal truth. It is the
Book of the Wise, because the wiser a man is the more he will delight
therein; yea, the delight which he shall take in it will be the
measure of his intellectual capacity. And that it teacheth the true
doctrine is plain from this circumstance, that I defy the British
Critic, the Antijacobin, the Quarterly and the Eclectic Reviews,—aye,
and the Evangelical, the Methodist, the Baptist and the Orthodox
Churchman's Magazine, with the Christian Observer to boot, to detect
any one heresy in it. Therefore I say again

Aballiboozobanganorribo,

and like Mahomet I say that it is the Sign of the Book; and therefore
it is that I have said it;

_Nondimen nè la lingua degli Hebrei
Nè la Latina, nè la Greca antica,
Nè quella forse ancor degli Aramei._[1]

[Footnote 1: MOLZA.]

Happen it may,—for things not less strange have happened, and what has
been may be again;—for may be and has been are only tenses of the same
verb, and that verb is eternally being declined:——Happen I say it may;
and peradventure if it may it must; and certainly if it must it
will:—but what with indicatives and subjunctives, presents,
præterperfects and paulo-post-futura, the parenthesis is becoming too
long for the sentence, and I must begin it again. A prudent author
should never exact too much from the breath or the attention of his
reader,—to say nothing of the brains.

Happen then it may that this Book may outlive Lord Castlereagh's
Peace, Mr. Pitt's reputation (we will throw Mr. Fox's into the
bargain); Mr. Locke's Metaphysics, and the Regent's Bridge in St.
James's Park. It may outlive the eloquence of Burke, the discoveries
of Davy, the poems of Wordsworth, and the victories of Wellington. It
may outlive the language in which it is written; and in heaven knows
what year of heaven knows what era, be discovered by some learned
inhabitant of that continent which the insects who make coral and
madrepore are now, and from the beginning of the world have been,
fabricating in the Pacific Ocean. It may be dug up among the ruins of
London, and considered as one of the Sacred Books of the Sacred Island
of the West,—for I cannot but hope that some reverence will always be
attached to this most glorious and most happy island when its power
and happiness and glory like those of Greece shall have passed away.
It may be decyphered and interpreted, and give occasion to a new
religion called Dovery or Danielism, which may have its Chapels,
Churches, Cathedrals, Abbeys, Priories, Monasteries, Nunneries,
Seminaries, Colleges and Universities;—its Synods, Consistories,
Convocations and Councils;—its Acolytes, Sacristans, Deacons, Priests,
Archdeacons, Rural Deans, Chancellors, Prebends, Canons, Deans,
Bishops, Archbishops, Prince Bishops, Primates, Patriarchs, Cardinals
and Popes;—its most Catholic Kings, and its Kings most Dovish or most
Danielish. It may have Commentators and Expounders—(who can doubt that
it will have them?) who will leave unenlightened that which is dark,
and darken that which is clear. Various interpretations will be given,
and be followed by as many sects. Schisms must ensue; and the
tragedies, comedies and farces, with all the varieties of tragi-comedy
and tragi-farce or farcico-tragedy which have been represented in this
old world, be enacted in that younger one. Attack on the one side,
defence on the other; high Dovers and low Dovers; Danielites of a
thousand unimagined and unimaginable denominations; schisms, heresies,
seditions, persecutions, wars,—the dismal game of Puss-catch-corner
played by a nation instead of a family of children, and in dreadful
earnest, when power, property and life are to be won and lost!

But without looking so far into the future history of Dovery, let me
exhort the learned Australian to whom the honour is reserved of
imparting this treasure to his countrymen, that he abstain from all
attempts at discovering the mysteries of Aballiboozobanganorribo! The
unapocalyptical arcana of that stupendous vocable are beyond his
reach;—so let him rest assured. Let him not plunge into the fathomless
depths of that great word, let him not attempt to soar to its
unapproachable heights. Perhaps,—and surely no man of judgement will
suppose that I utter any thing lightly,—perhaps if the object were
attainable, he might have cause to repent its attainment. If too
“little learning be a dangerous thing,” too much is more so;

_Il saper troppo qualche volta nuoce._[2]

[Footnote 2: MOLZA.]

“Curiosity,” says Fuller, “is a kernel of the Forbidden Fruit, which
still sticketh in the throat of a natural man, sometimes to the danger
of his choaking.”

There is a knowledge which is forbidden because it is dangerous.
Remember the Apple! Remember the beautiful tale of Cupid and Psyche!
Remember Cornelius Agrippa's library; the youth who opened in unhappy
hour his magical volume; and the choice moral which Southey, who
always writes so morally, hath educed from that profitable story!
Remember Bluebeard! But I am looking far into futurity. Bluebeard may
be forgotten; Southey may be forgotten; Cornelius Agrippa may be no
more remembered; Cupid and Psyche may be mere names which shall have
outlived all tales belonging to them;—Adam and Eve—Enough.

Eat beans, if thou wilt, in spite of Pythagoras. Eat bacon with them,
for the Levitical law hath been abrogated: and indulge in
black-puddings, if thou likest such food, though there be Methodists
who prohibit them as sinful. But abstain from Aballiboozobanganorribo.

CHAPTER XVII. P. I.

THE HAPPINESS OF HAVING A CATHOLIC TASTE.

There's no want of meat, Sir;
Portly and curious viands are prepared
To please all kinds of appetites.

MASSINGER.

A fastidious taste is like a squeamish appetite; the one has its
origin in some disease of mind, as the other has in some ailment of
the stomach. Your true lover of literature is never fastidious. I do
not mean the _helluo librorum_, the swinish feeder, who thinks that
every name which is to be found in a title-page, or on a tomb-stone,
ought to be rescued from oblivion; nor those first cousins of the
moth, who labour under a bulimy for black-letter, and believe every
thing to be excellent which was written in the reign of Elizabeth. I
mean the man of robust and healthy intellect, who gathers the harvest
of literature into his barns, threshes the straw, winnows the grain,
grinds it at his own mill, bakes it in his own oven, and then eats the
true bread of knowledge. If he bake his loaf upon a cabbage leaf, and
eat onions with his bread and cheese, let who will find fault with him
for his taste,—not I!

The Doves, father as well as son, were blest with a hearty
intellectual appetite, and a strong digestion: but the son had the
more catholic taste. He would have relished caviare; would have
ventured upon laver undeterred by its appearance—and would have liked
it.

What an excellent thing did God bestow on man
When he did give him a good stomach![1]

[Footnote 1: BEAUMONT and FLETCHER.]

He would have eaten sausages for breakfast at Norwich, Sally Luns at
Bath, Sweet Butter in Cumberland, Orange Marmalade at Edinburgh,
Findon Haddocks at Aberdeen, and drunk punch with Beef steaks to
oblige the French if they insisted upon obliging him with a _dejeûner
a l'Angloise_.

A good digestion turneth all to health.[2]

[Footnote 2: HERBERT.]

He would have eaten squab-pye in Devonshire, and the pye which is
squabber than squab in Cornwall; sheep's head with the hair on in
Scotland, and potatoes roasted on the hearth in Ireland; frogs with
the French, pickled herrings with the Dutch, sour-krout with the
Germans, maccaroni with the Italians, aniseed with the Spaniards,
garlic with any body; horse-flesh with the Tartars; ass-flesh with the
Persians; dogs with the North Western American Indians, curry with the
Asiatic East Indians, birds' nests with the Chinese, mutton roasted
with honey with the Turks, pismire cakes on the Orinoco, and turtle
and venison with the Lord Mayor; and the turtle and venison he would
have preferred to all the other dishes, because his taste, though
catholic, was not indiscriminating. He would have tried all, tasted
all, thriven upon all, and lived contentedly and cheerfully upon
either, but he would have liked best that which was best. And his
intellectual appetite had the same happy catholicism.

He would not have said with Euphues, “if I be in Crete, I can lie; if
in Greece, I can shift; if in Italy, I can court it:” but he might
have said with him, “I can carouse with Alexander; abstain with
Romulus; eat with the Epicure; fast with the Stoic; sleep with
Endymion; watch with Chrysippus.”

The Reader will not have forgotten I trust, (but if he should I now
remind him of it,) that in the brief inventory of Daniel's library
there appeared some odd volumes of that “book full of Pantagruelism,”
the inestimable life of the Great Gargantua. The elder Daniel could
make nothing of this book; and the younger, who was about ten years
old when he began to read it, less than he could of the Pilgrim's
Progress. But he made out something.

Young Daniel was free from all the _isms_ in Lily, and from rhotacism
to boot; he was clear too of schism, and all the worse _isms_ which
have arisen from it: having by the blessing of Providence been bred up
not in any denomination ending in _ist_ or _inian_, or _erian_ or
_arian_, but as a dutiful and contented son of the church of England.
In humour however he was by nature a Pantagruelist. And indeed in his
mature years he always declared that one of the reasons which had led
him to reject the old humoral pathology was that it did not include
Pantagruelism, which he insisted depended neither upon heat or cold,
moisture or dryness, nor upon any combination of those qualities; but
was itself a peculiar and elementary humour; a truth he said, of which
he was feelingly and experimentally convinced, and lauded the Gods
therefore.

Mr. Wordsworth in that Poem which Mr. Jeffrey has said _won't do_—(Mr.
Jeffrey is always lucky in his predictions whether as a politician or
a critic,—bear witness Wellington! bear witness Wordsworth and
Southey! bear witness Elia and Lord Byron!) Mr. Wordsworth in that
Poem which

The high and tender Muses shall accept
With gracious smile deliberately pleased,
And listening Time reward with sacred praise:

Mr. Wordsworth in that noble Poem observes,

Oh many are the Poets that are sown
By nature!

Among the Emblems of Daniel Heinsius (look at his head, Reader, if
thou hast a collection of portraits to refer to, and thou wilt marvel
how so queer a conceit should have entered it, for seldom has there
been a face more gnarled and knotted with crabbed cogitation than that
of this man, who was one of the last of the Giants;)—among his
emblems, I say, is one which represents Cupid sowing a field, and
little heads springing out of the ground on all sides, some up to the
neck, others to the shoulders, and some with the arms out. If the crop
were examined I agree with Mr. Wordsworth that Poets would be found
there as thick as darnel in the corn;—and grave counsellors would not
be wanting whose advice would be that they should be weeded out.

The Pantagruelists are scarcer. Greece produced three great tragic
Poets, and only one Aristophanes. The French had but one Rabelais when
the seven Pleiades shone in their poetical hemisphere. We have seen a
succession of great Tragedians from Betterton to the present time; and
in all that time there has been but one Grimaldi in whom the
Pantagruelism of Pantomime has found its perfect representative.

And yet the Reader must not hastily conclude that I think
Pantagruelism a better thing than Poetry, because it is rarer; that
were imputing to me the common error of estimating things by their
rarity rather than their worth, an error more vulgar than any which
Sir Thomas Brown has refuted. But I do hold this, that all the
greatest Poets have had a spice of Pantagruelism in their composition,
which I verily believe was essential to their greatness. What the
world lost in losing the Margites of Homer we know not, we only know
that Homer had there proved himself a Pantagruelist. Shakespear was a
Pantagruelist; so was Cervantes; and till the world shall have
produced two other men in whom that humour has been wanting equal to
these, I hold my point established.

Some one objects Milton. I thank him for the exception; it is just
such an exception as proves the rule; for look only at Milton's Limbo
and you will see what a glorious Pantagruelist he might have been,—if
the Puritans had not spoilt him for Pantagruelism.

CHAPTER XVIII. P. I.

ALL'S WELL THAN ENDS WELL.

Τὰ δ᾿ἄν ἐπιμνησϑῶ,—ὑπὸ τοῦ λόγου ἐξαναγκαζὀμενος ἐπιμνησϑῄσομαι.

HERODOTUS.

If William Dove had been installed in office with cap and bells and
bauble, he would have been a Professor of Pantagruelism, and might
have figured in Flógel's History of such Professors with Tyll
Eulenspiegel, Piovano Arlotto, and Peter the Lion; and in Douce's
Illustrations of Shakespear with Muckle John, Rees Pengelding and
Robin Rush. The humour lay latent till the boy his nephew hit the
spring by reading to him some of those chapters in Rabelais which in
their literal grotesqueness were level to the capacity of both. These
readings led to a piece of practical Pantagruelism, for which William
would have been whipt if he had worn a Fool's coat.

One unlucky day, Dan was reading to him that chapter wherein young
Gargantua relates the course of experiments which he had made with a
velvet mask, a leaf of vervain, his mother's glove, a lappet worked
with gold thread, a bunch of nettles, and other things more or less
unfit for the purpose to which they were applied. To those who are
acquainted with the history of Grandgousier's royal family, I need not
explain what that purpose was; nor must I to those who are not, (for
reasons that require no explanation) farther than to say, it was the
same purpose for which that wild enigma (the semi-composition of the
Sphinx's Ghost) was designed,—that enigma of all enigmas the wildest,

“On which was written Ρῆγμάρωλ.”

William had frequently interrupted him with bursts of laughter; but
when they came to that crowning experiment in which Gargantua thought
he had found the _beau ideal_ of what he was seeking, William clapt
his hands, and with an expression of glee in his countenance worthy of
Eulenspiegel himself exclaimed, “thou shalt try the Goose, Dan! thou
shalt try the Goose!”

So with William's assistance the Goose was tried. They began with due
prudence, according to rule, by catching a Goose. In this matter a
couple of Ducks Lord Lauderdale knows would not have answered as well.
The boy then having gone through the ceremony which the devotees of
Baal are said to have performed at the foot of his Image, as the
highest act of devotion, (an act of super-reverence it was;) and for
which the Jews are said to have called him in mockery Baalzebul,
instead of Baalzebub;—cried out that he was ready. He was at that
moment in the third of those eight attitudes which form a _Rik'ath_.
My Readers who are versed in the fashionable Poets of the day (_this_
day I mean—their fashion not being insured for tomorrow)—such Readers,
I say, know that a rose is called a ghul, and a nightingale a bulbul,
and that this is one way of dressing up English Poetry in Turkish
Costume. But if they desire to learn a little more of what Mahometan
customs are, they may consult D'Ohsson's _Tableau_ of the Ottoman
Empire, and there they may not only find the eight attitudes
described, but see them represented. Of the third attitude or _Rukeou_
as it is denominated, I shall only say that the Ancients represented
one of their Deities in it, and that it is the very attitude in which
_As in præsenti_ committed that notorious act for which he is
celebrated in scholastic and immortal rhyme, and for which poor Syntax
bore the blame. _Verbum sit sat sapienti._ During the reign of Liberty
and Equality, a Frenchman was guillotined for exemplifying it under
Marat's Monument in the _Place du Carousal_.

The bird was brought, but young Daniel had not the strength of young
Gargantua; the goose, being prevented by William from drawing back,
prest forward; they were by the side of the brook and the boy by this
violent and unexpected movement was, as the French would say in the
politest and most delicate of all languages, _culbuté_, or in sailors'
English capsized into the water. The misfortune did not end there; for
falling with his forehead against a stone, he received a cut upon the
brow which left a scar as long as he lived.

It was not necessary to prohibit a repetition of what William called
the _speriment_. Both had been sufficiently frightened; and William
never felt more pain of mind than on this occasion, when the Father
with a shake of the head, a look of displeasure and a low voice told
him he ought to have known better than to have put the lad upon such
pranks!

The mishap however was not without its use. For in after life when
Daniel felt an inclination to do any thing which might better be left
undone, the recollection that he had _tried the goose_ served as a
salutary memento, and saved him perhaps sometimes from worse
consequences.

CHAPTER XIX. P. I.

A CONVERSATION WITH MISS GRAVEAIRS.

_Operi suscepto inserviendum fuit_; so Jacobus Mycillus pleadeth for
himself in his translation of Lucian's Dialogues, and so do I; I must
and will perform my task.

BURTON.

“It does not signify, Miss Graveairs! you may flirt your fan, and
overcloud that white forehead with a frown; but I assure you the last
chapter could not be dispensed with. The Doctor used to relate the
story himself to his friends; and often alluded to it as the most
wholesome lesson he had ever received. My dear Miss Graveairs, let not
those intelligent eyes shoot forth in anger arrows which ought to be
reserved for other execution. You ought not to be displeased; ought
not, must not, can not, shall not!”

“But you ought not to write such things, Mr. Author; really you ought
not. What can be more unpleasant than to be reading aloud, and come
unexpectedly upon something so strange that you know not whether to
proceed or make a full stop, nor where to look, nor what to do? It is
too bad of you, Sir, let me tell you! and if I come to any thing more
of the kind, I must discard the book. It is provoking enough to meet
with so much that one does not understand; but to meet with any thing
that one ought not to understand is worse. Sir, it is not to be
forgiven; and I tell you again that if I meet with any thing more of
the same kind I must discard the book.”

“Nay, dear Miss Graveairs!”

“I must Mr. Author; positively I must.”

“Nay, dear Miss Graveairs! Banish Tristram Shandy! banish Smollett,
banish Fielding, banish Richardson! But for the Doctor,—sweet Doctor
Dove, kind Doctor Dove, true Doctor Dove, banish not him! Banish
Doctor Dove, and banish all the world!—Come, come, good sense is
getting the better of preciseness. That stitch in the forehead will
not long keep the brows in their constrained position; and the
incipient smile which already brings out that dimple, is the natural
and proper feeling.”

“Well, you are a strange man!”

“Call me a rare one, and I shall be satisfied. ‘O rare Ben Jonson’ you
know was epitaph enough for one of our greatest men.”

“But seriously why should you put any thing in your book, which if not
actually exceptionable exposes it at least to that sort of censure,
which is most injurious?”

“That question, dear Madam, is so sensibly proposed that I will answer
it with all serious sincerity. There is nothing exceptionable in these
volumes; ‘Certes,’ as Euphues Lily has said, ‘I think there be more
speeches here which for gravity will mislike the foolish, than
unseemly terms which for vanity, may offend the wise.’ There is
nothing in them that I might not have read to Queen Elizabeth if it
had been my fortune to have lived in her golden days; nothing that can
by possibility taint the imagination, or strengthen one evil
propensity, or weaken one virtuous principle. But they are not
composed like a forgotten novel of Dr. Towers's to be read aloud in
dissenting families instead of a moral essay, or a sermon; nor like
Mr. Kett's Emily to complete the education of young ladies by
supplying them with an abstract of universal knowledge. Neither have
they any pretensions to be placed on the same shelf with Cœlebs. But
the book is a moral book; its tendency is good, and the morality is
both the wholesomer and pleasanter because it is not administered as
physic, but given as food. I don't like morality in doses.”

“But why, my good Mr. Author, why lay yourself open to censure?”

“Miss Graveairs, nothing excellent was ever produced by any author who
had the fear of censure before his eyes. He who would please posterity
must please himself by chusing his own course. There are only two
classes of writers who dare do this, the best and the worst,—for this
is one of the many cases in which extremes meet. The mediocres in
every grade aim at pleasing the public, and conform themselves to the
fashion of their age whatever it may be.”

My Doctor, like the Matthew Henderson of Burns, was a queer man, and
in that respect I his friend and biographer, humbly resemble him. The
resemblance may be natural, or I may have caught it,—this I pretend
not to decide, but so it is. Perhaps it might have been well if I had
resolved upon a farther designation of Chapters, and distributed them
into Masculine and Feminine; or into the threefold arrangement of
virile, feminile and puerile; considering the book as a family
breakfast, where there should be meat for men, muffins for women, and
milk for children. Or I might have adopted the device of the
Porteusian Society, and marked my Chapters as they (very usefully)
have done the Bible, pointing out what should be read by all persons
for edification, and what may be passed over by the many, as
instructive or intelligible only to the learned.

Here however the book is,—

An orchard bearing several trees,
And fruits of several taste.[1]

Ladies and Gentlemen, my gentle Readers, one of our liveliest and most
popular old Dramatists knew so well the capricious humour of an
audience that he made his Prologue say

He'd rather dress upon a Triumph-Day
My Lord Mayor's Feast, and make them sauces too,
Sauce for each several Mouth; nay further go,
He'd rather build up those invincible Pies
And Castle-Custards that affright all eyes,—
Nay, eat them all and their artillery,—
Than dress for such a curious company,
One single dish.

But I, gentle Readers, have set before you a table liberally spread.
It is not expected or desired that every dish should suit the palate
of all the guests, but every guest will find something that he likes.
You, Madam, may prefer those boiled chicken, with stewed celery,—or a
little of that fricandeau;—the Lady opposite will send her plate for
some pigeon pye. The Doctor has an eye upon the venison—and so I see
has the Captain.—Sir, I have not forgotten that this is one of your
fast days—I am glad therefore that the turbot proves so good,—and that
dish has been prepared for you. Sir John, there is garlic in the
fricassee. The Hungarian wine has a bitterness which every body may
not like; the Ladies will probably prefer Malmsey. The Captain sticks
to his Port, and the Doctor to his Madeira.—Sir John I shall be happy
to take Sauterne with you.—There is a splendid trifle for the young
folks, which some of the elders also will not despise:—and I only wish
my garden could have furnished a better dessert; but considering our
climate, it is not amiss.—Is not this entertainment better than if I
had set you all down to a round of beef and turnips?

If any thing be set to a wrong taste
'Tis not the meat there, but the mouth's displaced;
Remove but that sick palate all is well.[2]

[Footnote 1: MIDDLETON and ROWLEY'S Spanish Gipsey.]

[Footnote 2: BEN JONSON.]

Like such a dinner I would have my book,—something for every body's
taste and all good of its kind.

It ought also to resemble the personage of whom it treats; and

If ony whiggish whingin sot
To blame the Doctor dare, man;
May dool and sorrow be his lot
For the Doctor was a rare man![3]

[Footnote 3: BURNS.]

Some whiggish sots I dare say will blame him, and whiggish sots they
will be who do!

“_En un mot; mes amis, je n'ai entrepris de vous contenter tous en
general, ainsi uns et autres en particulier; et par special,
moymême._”[4]

[Footnote 4: PASQUIER.]

CHAPTER XX. P. I.

HOW TO MAKE GOLD.

CHIABRERA.

William had heard so much about experiments that it is not surprising
he should have been for making some himself. It was well indeed for
his family that the speculative mind, which lay covered rather than
concealed under the elder Daniel's ruminating manners, and quiet
contented course of life, was not quickened by his acquaintance with
the schoolmaster into an experimental and dangerous activity, instead
of being satisfied with theoretical dreams. For Guy had found a book
in that little collection which might have produced more serious
consequences to the father than the imitation of Gargantua had done to
the son.

This book was the Exposition of Eirenæus Philalethes upon Sir George
Ripley's Hermetico-Poetical works. Daniel had formerly set as little
value upon it as upon Rabelais. He knew indeed what its purport was,
thus much he had gathered from it: but although it professed to
contain “the plainest and most excellent discoveries of the most
hidden secrets of the Ancient Philosophers that were ever yet
published,” it was to him as unintelligible as the mysteries of
Pantagruelism. He could make nothing of the work that was to ascend in
_Bus_ and _Nubi_ from the Moon up to the Sun, though the Expositor had
expounded that this was in _Nubibus_; nor of the Lake which was to be
boiled with the ashes of Hermes's Tree, night and day without ceasing,
till the Heavenly Nature should ascend and the Earthly descend: nor of
the Crow's bill, the White Dove, the Sparkling Cherubim, and the Soul
of the Green Lion. But he took those cautions simply and honestly as
cautions, which were in fact the lures whereby so many infatuated
persons had been drawn on to their own undoing. The author had said
that his work was not written for the information of the illiterate,
and illiterate Daniel knew himself to be. “Our writings,” says the
dark Expositor, “shall prove as a curious edged knife; to some they
shall carve out dainties, and to others it shall serve only to cut
their fingers. Yet we are not to be blamed; for we do seriously
profess to any that shall attempt the work, that he attempts the
highest piece of Philosophy that is in Nature; and though we write in
English, yet our matter will be as hard as Greek to some, who will
think they understand us well, when they misconstrue our meaning most
perversely; for is it imaginable that they who are fools in Nature
should be wise in our Books, which are testimonies unto Nature?” And
again, “make sure of thy true matter, which is no small thing to know;
and though we have named it yet we have done it so cunningly, that
thou mayest sooner stumble at our Books than at any thou ever didst
read in thy life.—Be not deceived either with receipt or discourse;
for we verily do not intend to deceive you; but if you will be
deceived, be deceived!—Our way which is an easy way, and in which no
man may err,—our broad way, our _linear_ way, we have vowed never to
reveal it but in metaphor. I, being moved with pity, will hint it to
you. Take that which is not yet perfect, nor yet wholly imperfect, but
in a way to perfection, and out of it make what is most noble and most
perfect. This you may conceive to be an easier receipt than to take
that which is already perfect and extract out of it what is imperfect
and make it perfect, and after out of that perfection to draw a
_plusquam_ perfection; and yet this is true, and we have wrought it.
But this last discovery which I hinted in few words is it which no man
ever did so plainly lay open; nor may any make it more plain upon pain
of an anathema.”

All this was heathen Greek to Daniel, except the admonition which it
contained. But Guy had meddled with this perilous pseudo-science, and
used to talk with him concerning its theory, which Daniel soon
comprehended, and which like many other theories wanted nothing but a
foundation to rest upon. That every thing had its own seed as well as
its own form seemed a reasonable position; and that the fermental
virtue, “which is the wonder of the world, and by which water becomes
herbs, trees and plants, fruits, flesh, blood, stones, minerals and
every thing, works only in kind. Was it not then absurd to allow that
the fermentive and multiplicative power existed in almost all other
things, and yet deny it to Gold, the most perfect of all sublunary
things?”—The secret lay in extracting from Gold its hidden seed.

Ben Jonson has with his wonted ability presented the theory of this
delusive art. His knavish Alchemist asks of an unbeliever

Why, what have you observed Sir, in our art
Seems so impossible?
_Surly_. But your whole work, no more!
That you should hatch gold in a furnace, Sir,
As they do eggs in Egypt.
_Subtle_. Sir, do you
Believe that eggs are hatch'd so?
_Surly_. If I should?
_Subtle_. Why I think that the greater miracle.
No egg but differs from a chicken more
Than metals in themselves.
_Surly_. That cannot be.
The egg's ordained by nature to that end,
And is a chicken _in potentiâ_.
_Subtle_. The same we say of lead and other metals,
Which would be gold if they had time.
_Mammon_. And that
Our art doth further.
_Subtle_. Aye, for 'twere absurd
To think that nature in the earth bred gold
Perfect in the instant: something went before.
There must be remote matter.
_Surly_. Ay, what is that?
_Subtle_. Marry we say—
_Mammon_. Ay, now it heats; stand father;
Pound him to dust.
_Subtle_. It is, of the one part,
A humid exhalation, which we call
_Materia liquida_, or the unctuous water;
On the other part a certain crass and viscous
Portion of earth; both which concorporate
Do make the elementary matter of gold;
Which is not yet _propria materia_,
But common to all metals and all stones;
For where it is forsaken of that moisture,
And hath more dryness, it becomes a stone;
Where it retains more of the humid fatness,
It turns to sulphur, or to quicksilver,
Who are the parents of all other metals.
Nor can this remote matter suddenly
Progress so from extreme unto extreme,
As to grow gold, and leap o'er all the means.
Nature doth first beget the imperfect, then
Proceeds she to the perfect. Of that airy
And oily water, mercury is engendered;
Sulphur of the fat and earthy part; the one,
Which is the last, supplying the place of male,
The other of the female in all metals.
Some so believe hermaphrodeity,
That both do act and suffer. But these too
Make the rest ductile, malleable, extensive.
And even in gold they are; for we do find
Seeds of them, by our fire, and gold in them;
And can produce the species of each metal
More perfect thence than nature doth in earth.

I have no cause to say here with Sheik Mohammed Ali Hazin that “taste
for poetical and elegant composition has turned the reins of my
ink-dropping pen away from the road which lay before it:” For this
passage of learned Ben lay directly in the way; and no where, Reader,
couldst thou find the theory of the Alchemists more ably epitomized.

“Father,” said the boy Daniel one day, after listening to a
conversation upon this subject, “I should like to learn to make gold.”

“And what wouldst thou do, Daniel, if thou couldst make it?” was the
reply.

“Why I would build a great house, and fill it with books; and have as
much money as the King, and be as great a man as the Squire.”

“Mayhap, Daniel, in that case thou wouldst care for books as little as
the Squire, and have as little time for them as the King. Learning is
better than house or land. As for money, enough is enough; no man can
enjoy more; and the less he can be contented with the wiser and better
he is likely to be. What, Daniel, does our good poet tell us in the
great verse-book?

Nature's with little pleased; enough's a feast:
A sober life but a small charge requires:
But man, the author of his own unrest,
The more he hath, the more he still desires.

No, boy, thou canst never be as rich as the King, nor as great as the
Squire; but thou mayest be a Philosopher, and that is being as happy
as either.”

“A great deal happier,” said Guy. “The Squire is as far from being the
happiest man in the neighbourhood, as he is from being the wisest or
the best. And the King, God bless him! has care enough upon his head
to bring on early grey hairs.

Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.”

“But what does a Philosopher do?” rejoined the boy. “The Squire hunts
and shoots and smokes, and drinks punch and goes to Justice-Meetings.
And the King goes to fight for us against the French, and governs the
Parliament, and makes laws. But I cannot tell what a Philosopher's
business is. Do they do any thing else besides making Almanacks and
gold?”

“Yes,” said William, “they read the stars.”

“And what do they read there?”

“What neither thou nor I can understand, Daniel,” replied the father,
“however nearly it may concern us!”

CHAPTER XXI. P. I.

A DOUBT CONCERNING THE USES OF PHILOSOPHY.

_El comienzo de salud
es el saber,
distinguir y conocer
qual es virtud._

PROVERBIOS DEL MARQUES DE SANTILLANA.

That grave reply produced a short pause. It was broken by the boy, who
said returning to the subject, “I have been thinking, Father, that it
is not a good thing to be a Philosopher.”

“And what, my Son, has led thee to that thought?”

“What I have read at the end of the Dictionary, Father. There was one
Philosopher that was pounded in a mortar.”

“That Daniel,” said the Father, “could neither have been the
Philosopher's fault nor his choice.”

“But it was because he was a Philosopher, my lad,” said Guy, “that he
bore it so bravely, and said, beat on, you can only bruise the shell
of Anaxarchus! If he had not been a Philosopher they might have
pounded him just the same, but they would never have put him in the
Dictionary. Epictetus in like manner bore the torments which his
wicked master inflicted upon him, without a groan, only saying, ‘take
care, or you will break my leg;’ and when the leg was broken, he
looked the wretch in the face and said, ‘I told you you would break
it.’”

“But,” said the youngster, “there was one Philosopher who chose to
live in a tub; and another who that he might never again see any thing
to withdraw his mind from meditation, put out his eyes by looking upon
a bright brass basin, such as I cured my warts in.”

“He might have been a wise man,” said William Dove, “but not wondrous
wise: for if he had, he would not have used the basin to put his eyes
out. He would have jumped into a quickset hedge, and scratched them
out, like the Man of our Town; because when he saw his eyes were out,
he might then have jumped into another hedge and scratched them in
again. The Man of our Town was the greatest philosopher of the two.”

“And there was one,” continued the boy, “who had better have blinded
himself at once, for he did nothing else but cry at every thing he
saw. Was not this being very foolish?”

“I am sure,” says William, “it was not being merry and wise.”

“There was another who said that hunger was his daily food.”

“He must have kept such a table as Duke Humphrey,” quoth William; “I
should not have liked to dine with him.”

“Then there was Crates,” said the persevering boy; “he had a good
estate and sold it and threw the money into the sea, saying, ‘away ye
paltry cares! I will drown you, that you may not drown me.’”

“I should like to know,” quoth William, “what the overseers said to
that chap, when he applied to the parish for support.”

“They sent him off to Bedlam, I suppose,” said the Mother, “it was the
fit place for him, poor creature.”

“And when Aristippus set out upon a journey he bade his servants throw
away all their money, that they might travel the better. Why they must
have begged their way, and it cannot be right to beg if people are not
brought to it by misfortune. And there were some who thought there was
no God. I am sure they were fools, for the Bible says so.”

“Well Daniel,” said Guy, “thou hast studied the end of the Dictionary
to some purpose!”

“And the Bible too, Master Guy!” said Dinah,—her countenance
brightening with joy at her son's concluding remark.

“It's the best part of the book,” said the boy, replying to his
schoolmaster; “there are more entertaining and surprizing things there
than I ever read in any other place, except in my Father's book about
Pantagruel.”

CHAPTER XXII. P. I.

Τὸν δ᾿ ἀπαμειβόμενος.

_O felice colui, che intender puote
Le cagion de le cose di natura,
Che al piu di que' che vivon sono ignote;
E sotto it piè si mette ogni paura
De fati, e de la morte, ch'è si trista,
Ne di vulgo gli cal, nè d'altro ha cura._

TANSILLO.

The elder Daniel had listened to this dialogue in his usual quiet way,
smiling sometimes at his brother William's observations. He now
stroked his forehead, and looking mildly but seriously at the boy
addressed him thus.

“My son, many things appear strange or silly in themselves if they are
presented to us simply, without any notice when and where they were
done, and upon what occasion. If any strangers for example had seen
thee washing thy hands in an empty basin, without knowing the
philosophy of the matter, they would have taken thee for an innocent,
and thy master and me for little better; or they might have supposed
some conjuring was going on. The things which the old Philosophers
said and did, would appear, I dare say, as wise to us as they did to
the people of their own times, if we knew why and in what
circumstances they were done and said.

“Daniel, there are two sorts of men in all ranks and ways of life, the
wise and the foolish; and there are a great many degrees between them.
That some foolish people have called themselves Philosophers, and some
wicked ones, and some who were out of their wits, is just as certain
as that persons of all these descriptions are to be found among all
conditions of men.

“Philosophy, Daniel, is of two kinds: that which relates to conduct,
and that which relates to knowledge. The first teaches us to value all
things at their real worth, to be contented with little, modest in
prosperity, patient in trouble, equal-minded at all times. It teaches
us our duty to our neighbour and ourselves. It is that wisdom of which
King Solomon speaks in our rhyme-book. Reach me the volume!” Then
turning to the passage in his favourite Du Bartas he read these lines:

“She's God's own mirror; she's a light whose glance
Springs from the lightening of his countenance.
She's mildest heaven's most sacred influence;
Never decays her beauties' excellence,
Aye like herself; and she doth always trace
Not only the same path but the same pace.
Without her honor, health and wealth would prove
Three poisons to me. Wisdom from above
Is the only moderatrix, spring and guide
Organ and honor of all gifts beside.”

“But let us look in the Bible:—aye this is the place.

“For in her is an understanding spirit, holy, one only, manifold,
subtil, lively, clear, undefiled, plain, not subject to hurt, loving
the thing that is good, quick, which cannot be letted, ready to do
good;

“Kind to man, steadfast, sure, free from care, having all power,
overseeing all things, and going through all understanding, pure and
most subtil spirits.

“For wisdom is more moving than any motion: she passeth and goeth
through all things by reason of her pureness.

“For she is the breath of the power of God, and a pure influence,
flowing from the glory of the Almighty; therefore can no defiled thing
fall into her.

“For she is the brightness of the everlasting light, the unspotted
mirror of the power of God, and the image of his goodness.

“And being but one she can do all things; and remaining in herself she
maketh all things new: and in all ages entering into holy souls she
maketh them friends of God, and prophets.

“For God loveth none but him that dwelleth with wisdom.

“For she is more beautiful than the Sun, and above all the order of
Stars: being compared with the light she is found before it.

“For after this cometh night: but vice shall not prevail against
wisdom.”

He read this with a solemnity that gave weight to every word. Then
closing the book, after a short pause, he proceeded in a lower tone.

“The Philosophers of whom you have read in the Dictionary possessed
this wisdom only in part, because they were heathens, and therefore
could see no farther than the light of mere reason sufficed to shew
the way. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and they had
not that to begin with. So the thoughts which ought to have made them
humble produced pride, and so far their wisdom proved but folly. The
humblest Christian who learns his duty, and performs it as well as he
can, is wiser than they. He does nothing to be seen of men; and that
was their motive for most of their actions.

“Now for the philosophy which relates to knowledge. Knowledge is a
brave thing. I am a plain, ignorant, untaught man, and know my
ignorance. But it is a brave thing when we look around us in this
wonderful world to understand something of what we see: to know
something of the earth on which we move, the air which we breathe, and
the elements whereof we are made: to comprehend the motions of the
moon and stars, and measure the distances between them, and compute
times and seasons: to observe the laws which sustain the universe by
keeping all things in their courses: to search into the mysteries of
nature, and discover the hidden virtue of plants and stones, and read
the signs and tokens which are shown us, and make out the meaning of
hidden things, and apply all this to the benefit of our fellow
creatures.

“Wisdom and knowledge, Daniel, make the difference between man and
man, and that between man and beast is hardly greater.

“These things do not always go together. There may be wisdom without
knowledge, and there may be knowledge without wisdom. A man without
knowledge, if he walk humbly with his God, and live in charity with
his neighbours, may be wise unto salvation. A man without wisdom may
not find his knowledge avail him quite so well. But it is he who
possesses both that is the true Philosopher. The more he knows, the
more he is desirous of knowing; and yet the farther he advances in
knowledge the better he understands how little he can attain, and the
more deeply he feels that God alone can satisfy the infinite desires
of an immortal soul. To understand this is the height and perfection
of philosophy.”

Then opening the Bible which lay before him, he read these verses from
the Proverbs.

“My son, if thou wilt receive my words,—

“So that thou incline thine ear unto wisdom and apply thine heart to
understanding;

“Yea, if thou criest after knowledge, and liftest up thy voice for
understanding;

“If thou seekest after her as silver, and searchest for her as for hid
treasures;

“Then shalt thou understand the fear of the Lord and find the
knowledge of God.

“For the Lord giveth wisdom; out of His mouth cometh knowledge and
understanding.

“He layeth up sound wisdom for the righteous; He is a buckler to them
that walk uprightly.

“He keepeth the paths of judgement and preserveth the way of his
Saints.

“Then shalt thou understand righteousness and judgement and equity;
yea, every good path.

“When wisdom entereth into thine heart, and knowledge is pleasant unto
thy soul;

“Discretion shall preserve thee, understanding shall keep thee,

“To deliver thee from the way of the evil.

“Daniel, my son,” after a pause he pursued, “thou art a diligent good
lad. God hath given thee a tender and a dutiful heart; keep it so, and
it will be a wise one, for thou hast the beginning of wisdom. I wish
thee to pursue knowledge, because in pursuing it happiness will be
found by the way. If I have said any thing now which is above thy
years, it will come to mind in after time, when I am gone perhaps, but
when thou mayest profit by it. God bless thee, my child!”

He stretched out his right hand at these words, and laid it gently
upon the boy's head. What he said was not forgotten, and throughout
life the son never thought of that blessing without feeling that it
had taken effect.

CHAPTER XXIII. P. I.

ROWLAND DIXON AND HIS COMPANY OF PUPPETS.

_Alli se ve tan eficaz el llanto,
las fabulas y historias retratadas,
que parece verdad, y es dulce encanto._

* * * * *

_Y para el vulgo rudo, que ignorante
aborrece el manjar costoso, guisa
el plato del gracioso extravagante;_

_Con que les hartas de contento y risa,
gustando de mirar sayal grossero,
mas que sutil y candida camisa._

JOSEPH ORTIZ DE VILLENA.

Were it not for that happy facility with which the mind in such cases
commonly satisfies itself, my readers would find it not more easy to
place themselves in imagination at Ingleton a hundred years ago, than
at Thebes or Athens, so strange must it appear to them that a family
should have existed in humble but easy circumstances, among whose
articles of consumption neither tea nor sugar had a place, who never
raised potatoes in their garden nor saw them at their table, and who
never wore a cotton garment of any kind.

Equally unlike any thing to which my contemporaries have been
accustomed, must it be for them to hear of an Englishman whose talk
was of philosophy moral or speculative not of politics; who read books
in folio and had never seen a newspaper; nor ever heard of a magazine,
review, or literary journal of any kind. Not less strange must it seem
to them who if they please may travel by steam at the rate of thirty
miles an hour upon the Liverpool and Manchester rail-way, or at ten
miles an hour by stage upon any of the more frequented roads, to
consider the little intercourse which in those days was carried on
between one part of the kingdom and another. During young Daniel's
boyhood, and for many years after he had reached the age of manhood,
the whole carriage of the northern counties, and indeed of all the
remoter parts was performed by pack-horses, the very name of which
would long since have been as obsolete as their use, if it had not
been preserved by the sign or appellation of some of those inns at
which they were accustomed to put up. Rarely indeed were the roads
about Ingleton marked by any other wheels than those of its indigenous
carts.

That little town however obtained considerable celebrity in those days
as being the home and head quarters of Rowland Dixon, the Gesticulator
Maximus, or Puppet-show-master-general, of the North; a person not
less eminent in his line than Powel whom the Spectator has
immortalized.

My readers must not form their notion of Rowland Dixon's company from
the ambulatory puppet shows which of late years have added new sights
and sounds to the spectacles and cries of London. Far be it from me to
depreciate those peripatetic street exhibitions, which you may have
before your window at a call, and by which the hearts of so many
children are continually delighted: Nay I confess that few things in
that great city carry so much comfort to the cockles of my own, as the
well-known voice of Punch.

——the same which in my school-boy days
I listened to,——

as Wordsworth says of the Cuckoo,

And I can listen to it yet—
And listen till I do beget
That golden time again.

It is a voice that seems to be as much in accord with the noise of
towns, and the riotry of fairs, as the note of the Cuckoo, with the
joyousness of spring fields and the fresh verdure of the vernal woods.

But Rowland Dixon's company of puppets would be pitifully disparaged,
if their size, uses or importance were to be estimated by the street
performances of the present day.

The Dramatis Personæ of these modern exhibitions never I believe
comprehends more than four characters, and these four are generally
the same, to wit, Punch, Judy as she who used to be called Joan is now
denominated, the Devil and the Doctor, or sometimes the Constable in
the Doctor's stead. There is therefore as little variety in the action
as in the personages. And their dimensions are such that the whole
company and the theatre in which they are exhibited are carried along
the streets at quick time and with a light step by the two persons who
manage the concern.

But the Rowlandian, Dixonian, or Ingletonian puppets were large as
life; and required for their removal a caravan (in the use to which
that word is now appropriated),—a vehicle of such magnitude and
questionable shape, that if Don Quixote had encountered its like upon
the highway, he would have regarded it as the most formidable
adventure which had ever been presented to his valour. And they went
as far beyond our street-puppets in the sphere of their subjects as
they exceeded them in size; for in that sphere _quicquid agunt
homines_ was included,—and a great deal more.

In no country and in no stage of society has the drama ever existed in
a ruder state than that in which this company presented it. The Drolls
of Bartholomew Fair were hardly so far below the legitimate drama, as
they were above that of Rowland Dixon; for the Drolls were written
compositions: much ribaldry might be, and no doubt was, interpolated
as opportunity allowed or invited; but the main dialogue was prepared.
Here on the contrary, there was no other preparation than that of
frequent practice. The stock pieces were founded upon popular stories
or ballads, such as Fair Rosamond, Jane Shore, and Bateman who hanged
himself for love; with scriptural subjects for Easter and
Whitsun-week, such as the Creation, the Deluge, Susannah and the
Elders, and Nebuchadnezzar or the Fall of Pride. These had been handed
down from the time of the old mysteries and miracle-plays, having, in
the progress of time and change, descended from the monks and clergy
to become the property of such managers as Powel and Rowland Dixon. In
what manner they were represented when thus

Fallen, fallen, fallen, fallen,
Fallen from their high estate,

may be imagined from a play-bill of Queen Anne's reign, in which one
of them is thus advertised:

“At Crawley's Booth, over against the Crown Tavern in Smithfield,
during the time of Bartholomew Fair, will be presented a little Opera,
called the Old Creation of the World, yet newly revived; with the
addition of Noah's flood. Also several fountains playing water during
the time of the play. The last scene does present Noah and his family
coming out of the Ark, with all the beasts two and two, and all the
fowls of the air seen in a prospect sitting upon trees. Likewise over
the Ark is seen the Sun rising in a most glorious manner. Moreover a
multitude of Angels will be seen in a double rank, which presents a
double prospect, one for the Sun, the other for a palace, where will
be seen six Angels, ringing of bells. Likewise machines descend from
above double and treble, with Dives rising out of Hell, and Lazarus
seen in Abraham's bosom; besides several figures dancing jigs,
sarabands and country dances, to the admiration of the spectators;
with the merry conceits of Squire Punch, and Sir John Spendall.”

I have not found it any where stated at what time these irreverent
representations were discontinued in England, nor whether (which is
not unlikely) they were put an end to by the interference of the
magistrates. The _Autos Sacramentales_, which form the most
characteristic department of the Spanish drama, were prohibited at
Madrid in 1763, at the instance of the Conde de Teba, then Archbishop
of Toledo, chiefly because of the profaneness of the actors, and the
indecency of the places in which they were represented: it seems
therefore that if they had been performed by clerks, and within
consecrated precincts, he would not have objected to them. The
religious dramas, though they are not less extraordinary and far more
reprehensible, because in many instances nothing can be more
pernicious than their direct tendency, were not included in the same
prohibition; the same marks of external reverence not being required
for Saints and Images as for the great object of Romish Idolatry.
These probably will long continue to delight the Spanish people. But
facts of the same kind may be met with nearer home. So recently as the
year 1816, the Sacrifice of Isaac was represented on the stage at
Paris: Samson was the subject of the ballet; the unshorn son of Manoah
delighted the spectators by dancing a solo with the gates of Gaza on
his back; Dalilah clipt him during the intervals of a jig; and the
Philistines surrounded and captured him in a country dance!

That Punch made his appearance in the puppet-show of the Deluge, most
persons know; his exclamation of “hazy weather, master Noah,” having
been preserved by tradition. In all of these wooden dramas whether
sacred or profane, Punch indeed bore a part, and that part is well
described in the verses entitled _Pupæ gesticulantes_, which may be
found among the _Selecta Poemata Anglorum Latina_, edited by Mr.
Popham.

_Ecce tamen subitò, et medio discrimine rerum,
Ridiculus vultu procedit Homuncio, tergum
Cui riget in gibbum, immensusque protruditur alvus:
PUNCHIUS huic nomen, nec erat petulantior unquam
Ullus; quinetiam media inter seria semper
Importunus adest, lepidusque et garrulus usque
Perstat, permiscetque jocos, atque omnia turbat.
Sæpe puellarum densa ad subsellia sese
Convertens,—sedet en! pulchras mea, dixit, amica
Illic inter eas! Oculo simul improbus uno
Connivens, aliquam illarum quasi noverat, ipsam
Quæque pudens se signari pudefacta rubescit;
Totaque subridet juvenumque virumque corona.
Cum vero ambiguis obscœnas turpia dictis
Innuit, effuso testantur gaudia risu._

In one particular only this description is unlike the Punch of the
Ingleton Company. He was not an _homuncio_, but a full grown
personage, who had succeeded with little alteration either of
attributes or appearance to the Vice of the old Mysteries, and served
like the Clown of our own early stage, and the _Gracioso_ of the
Spaniards, to scatter mirth over the serious part of the performance,
or turn it into ridicule. The wife was an appendage of later times,
when it was not thought good for Punch to be alone; and when as these
performances had fallen into lower hands, the quarrels between such a
pair afforded a standing subject equally adapted to the capacity of
the interlocutor and of his audience.

A tragic part was assigned to Punch in one of Rowland Dixon's pieces,
and that one of the most popular, being the celebrated tragedy of Jane
Shore. The Beadle in this piece, after proclaiming in obvious and
opprobrious rhyme the offence which had drawn upon Mistress Shore this
public punishment, prohibited all persons from relieving her on pain
of death, and turned her out, according to the common story, to die of
hunger in the streets. The only person who ventured to disobey this
prohibition was Punch the Baker; and the reader may judge of the
dialogue of these pieces by this Baker's words, when he stole behind
her, and nudging her furtively while he spake, offered her a loaf,
saying, “_tak it Jenny, tak it!_” for which act so little consonant
with his general character, Punch died a martyr to humanity by the
hangman's hands.

Dr. Dove used to say he doubted whether Garrick and Mrs. Cibber could
have affected him more in middle life, than he had been moved by Punch
the Baker and this wooden Jane Shore in his boyhood. For rude as were
these performances, (and nothing could possibly be ruder,) the effect
on infant minds was prodigious, from the accompanying sense of wonder,
an emotion which of all others is at that time of life the most
delightful. Here was miracle in any quantity to be seen for two-pence,
and be believed in for nothing. No matter how confined the theatre,
how coarse and inartificial the scenery, or how miserable the
properties; the mind supplied all that was wanting.

“Mr. Guy,” said young Daniel to the schoolmaster, after one of these
performances, “I wish Rowland Dixon could perform one of our Latin
dialogues!”

“Aye Daniel,” replied the schoolmaster, entering into the boy's
feelings; “it would be a grand thing to have the Three Fatal Sisters
introduced, and to have them send for Death; and then for Death to
summon the Pope and jugulate him; and invite the Emperor and the King
to dance; and disarm the soldier, and pass sentence upon the Judge;
and stop the Lawyer's tongue; and feel the Physician's pulse; and make
the Cook come to be killed; and send the Poet to the shades; and give
the Drunkard his last draught. And then to have Rhadamanthus come in
and try them all! Methinks Daniel that would beat Jane Shore and Fair
Rosamond all to nothing, and would be as good as a sermon to boot.”

“I believe it would indeed!” said the Boy: “and then to see MORS and
NATURA; and have DAMNATUS called up; and the Three Cacodæmons at
supper upon the sirloin of a King, and the roasted Doctor of Divinity,
and the cruel Schoolmaster's rump! Would not it be nice Mr. Guy?”

“The pity is, Daniel,” replied Guy, “that Rowland Dixon is no Latiner,
any more than those who go to see his performances.”

“But could not you put it into English for him, Mr. Guy?”

“I am afraid Daniel, Rowland Dixon would not thank me for my pains.
Besides I could never make it sound half so noble in English as in
those grand Latin verses, which fill the mouth and the ears, and the
mind,—aye and the heart and soul too. No, boy! schools are the proper
places for representing such pieces, and if I had but Latiners enough
we would have them ourselves. But there are not many houses, my good
Daniel, in which learning is held in such esteem as it is at thy
father's; if there were, I should have more Latin scholars;—and what
is of far more consequence, the world would be wiser and better than
it is!”

CHAPTER XXIV. P. I.

QUACK AND NO QUACK, BEING AN ACCOUNT OF DR. GREEN AND HIS MAN KEMP.
POPULAR MEDICINE, HERBARY, THEORY OF SIGNATURES, WILLIAM DOVE, JOHN
WESLEY, AND BAXTER.

QUARLES.

It was not often that Rowland Dixon exhibited at Ingleton. He took his
regular circuits to the fairs in all the surrounding country far and
wide; but in the intervals of his vocation, he, who when abroad was
the servant of the public, became his own master at home. His puppets
were laid up in ordinary, the voice of Punch ceased, and the master of
the motions enjoyed _otium cum dignitate_. When he favoured his
friends and neighbours with an exhibition, it was _speciali gratiâ_,
and in a way that rather enhanced that dignity than derogated from it.

A performer of a very different kind used in those days to visit
Ingleton in his rounds, where his arrival was always expected by some
of the community with great anxiety. This was a certain Dr. Green, who
having been regularly educated for the profession of medicine, and
regularly graduated in it, chose to practice as an itinerant, and take
the field with a Merry Andrew for his aid-de-camp. He was of a
respectable and wealthy family in the neighbourhood of Doncaster,
which neighbourhood on their account he never approached in his
professional circuits, though for himself he was far from being
ashamed of the character that he had assumed. The course which he had
taken had been deliberately chosen, with the twofold object of
gratifying his own humour, and making a fortune; and in the remoter as
well as in the immediate purpose, he succeeded to his heart's content.

It is not often that so much worldly prudence is found connected with
so much eccentricity of character. A French poetess, Madame de
Villedieu, taking as a text for some verses the liberal maxim _que la
vertu dépend autant du temperament que des loix_, says,

_Presque toujours chacun suit son caprice;
Heureux est le mortel que les destins amis
Ont partagé d'un caprice permis._

He is indeed a fortunate man who if he _must_ have a hobby-horse,
which is the same as saying if he _will_ have one, keeps it not merely
for pleasure, but for use, breaks it in well, has it entirely under
command, and gets as much work out of it as he could have done out of
a common roadster. Dr. Green did this; he had not taken to this
strange course because he was impatient of the restraints of society,
but because he fancied that his constitution both of body and of mind
required an erratic life; and that, within certain bounds which he
prescribed for himself, he might indulge in it, both to his own
advantage, and that of the community,—that part of the community at
least among whom it would be his lot to labour. Our laws had provided
itinerant Courts of Justice for the people. Our church had formerly
provided itinerant preachers; and after the Reformation when the
Mendicant Orders were abolished by whom this service used to be
performed, such preachers have never failed to appear during the
prevalence of any religious influenza. Dr. Green thought that
itinerant physicians were wanted; and that if practitioners regularly
educated and well qualified would condescend to such a course, the
poor ignorant people would no longer be cheated by travelling quacks,
and sometimes poisoned by them!

One of the most reprehensible arts to which the Reformers resorted in
their hatred of popery, was that of adapting vulgar verses to church
tunes, and thus associating with ludicrous images, or with something
worse, melodies which had formerly been held sacred. It is related of
Whitefield that he, making a better use of the same device, fitted
hymns to certain popular airs, because, he said, “there was no reason
why the Devil should keep all the good tunes to himself.” Green acted
upon a similar principle when he took the field as a Physician Errant,
with his man Kemp, like another Sancho for his Squire. But the Doctor
was no Quixote; and his Merry Andrew had all Sancho's shrewdness,
without any alloy of his simpleness.

In those times medical knowledge among the lower practitioners was at
the lowest point. Except in large towns the people usually trusted to
domestic medicine, which some Lady Bountiful administered from her
family receipt book; or to a Village Doctress whose prescriptions were
as likely sometimes to be dangerously active, as at others to be
ridiculous and inert. But while they held to their garden physic it
was seldom that any injury was done either by exhibiting wrong
medicines or violent ones.

Herbs, Woods and Springs, the power that in you lies
If mortal man could know your properties![1]

There was at one time abundant faith in those properties. The holy
Shepherdess in Fletcher's fine pastoral drama, which so infinitely
surpasses all foreign compositions of that class, thus apostrophises
the herbs which she goes out to cull:

O you best sons of earth,
You only brood unto whose happy birth
Virtue was given, holding more of Nature
Than man, her first-born and most perfect creature,—
Let me adore you, you that only can
Help or kill Nature, drawing out that span
Of life and breath even to the end of time!

So abundantly was the English garden stocked in the age of the Tudors,
that Tusser, after enumerating in an Appendix to one of his Chapters
two and forty herbs for the kitchen, fourteen others for sallads or
sauces, eleven to boil or butter, seventeen as strewing herbs, and
forty “herbs branches and flowers for windows and pots,” adds a list
of seventeen herbs “to still in summer,” and of five and twenty
“necessary herbs to grow in the garden for physic, not rehearsed
before;” and after all advises his readers to seek more in the fields.
He says,

The nature of Flowers dame Physic doth shew;
She teacheth them all to be known to a few.

Elsewhere he observes that

The knowledge of stilling is one pretty feat,
The waters be wholesome, the charges not great.

[Footnote 1: FLETCHER.]

In a comedy of Lord Digby's, written more than a hundred years after
Tusser's didactics, one of the scenes is laid in a lady's laboratory,
“with a fountain in it, some stills, and many shelves, with pots of
porcelain and glasses;” and when the lady wishes to keep her attendant
out of the way, she sends her there, saying

I have a task to give you,——carefully
To shift the oils in the perfuming room,
As in the several ranges you shall see
The old begin to wither. To do it well
Will take you up some hours, but 'tis a work
I oft perform myself.

And Tusser among “the Points of Housewifery united to the Comfort of
Husbandry,” includes good housewifely physic, as inculcated in these
rhymes;

Good houswife provides ere an sickness do come,
Of sundry good things in her house to have some;
Good _aqua composita_, and vinegar tart,
Rose water, and treacle to comfort the heart;
Cold herbs in her garden for agues that burn,
That over-strong heat to good temper may turn;
White endive, and succory, with spinage enow,
All such with good pot-herbs should follow the plough.
Get water of fumitory liver to cool,
And others the like, or else go like a fool;
Conserves of barberry, quinces and such,
With syrups that easeth the sickly so much.

Old Gervase Markham in his “Approved Book called the English
Housewife, containing the inward and outward virtues which ought to be
in a complete woman,” places her skill in physic as one of the most
principal; “you shall understand,” he says, “that sith the
preservation and care of the family touching their health and
soundness of body consisteth most in her diligence, it is meet that
she have a physical kind of knowledge, how to administer any wholesome
receipts or medicines for the good of their healths, as well to
prevent the first occasion of sickness, as to take away the effects
and evil of the same, when it hath made seizure upon the body.” And
“as it must be confessed that the depths and secrets of this most
excellent art of physic, are far beyond the capacity of the most
skilful woman,” he relates for the Housewife's use some “approved
medecines and old doctrines, gathered together by two excellent and
famous physicians, and in a manuscript given to a great worthy
Countess of this land.”

The receipts collected in this and other books for domestic practice
are some of them so hyper-composite that even Tusser's garden could
hardly supply all the indigenous ingredients; others are of the most
fantastic kind, and for the most part they were as troublesome in
preparation, and many of them as disgusting, as they were futile. That
“Sovereign Water” which was invented by Dr. Stephens was composed of
almost all known spices, and all savoury and odorous herbs, distilled
in claret. With this Dr. Stephens “preserved his own life until such
extreme old age that he could neither go nor ride; and he did continue
his life, being bed-rid five years, when other physicians did judge he
could not live one year; and he confessed a little before his death,
that if he were sick at any time, he never used any thing but this
water only. And also the Archbishop of Canterbury used it, and found
such goodness in it that he lived till he was not able to drink out of
a cup, but sucked his drink through a hollow pipe of silver.”

Twenty-nine plants were used in the composition of Dr. Adrian
Gilbert's most sovereign Cordial Water, besides hartshorn, figs,
raisins, gillyflowers, cowslips, marygolds, blue violets, red
rose-buds, ambergris, bezoar-stone, sugar, aniseed, liquorice, and to
crown all, “what else you please.” But then it was sovereign against
all fevers; and one who in time of plague should take two spoonsfull
of it in good beer, or white wine, “he might walk safely from danger,
by the leave of God.”—The Water of Life was distilled from nearly as
many ingredients, to which were added a fleshy running capon, the
loins and legs of an old coney, the red flesh of the sinews of a leg
of mutton, four young chickens, twelve larks, the yolks of twelve
eggs, and a loaf of white bread, all to be distilled in white wine.

For consumption, there were pills in which powder of pearls, of white
amber and of coral, were the potential ingredients; there was
cockwater, the cock being to be chased and beaten before he was
killed, or else plucked alive! and there was a special water procured
by distillation, from a peck of garden shell-snails and a quart of
earth worms, besides other things; this was prescribed not for
consumption alone, but for dropsy and all obstructions. For all
faintness, hot agues, heavy fantasies and imaginations, a cordial was
prepared in tabulates, which were called _Manus Christi_: the true
receipt required one ounce of prepared pearls to twelve of fine sugar,
boiled with rose water, violet water, cinnamon water, “or howsoever
one would have them.” But apothecaries seldom used more than a drachm
of pearls to a pound of sugar, because men would not go to the cost
thereof; and the _Manus Christi simplex_ was made without any pearl at
all. For broken bones, bones out of joint, or any grief in the bones
or sinews, oil of swallows was pronounced exceeding sovereign, and
this was to be procured by pounding twenty live swallows in a mortar
with about as many different herbs! A mole, male or female according
to the sex of the patient, was to be dried in an oven whole as taken
out of the earth, and administered in powder for the falling evil. A
grey eel with a white belly was to be closed in an earthen pot, and
buried alive in a dunghill, and at the end of a fortnight its oil
might be collected to “help hearing.” A mixture of rose leaves and
pigeon's dung quilted in a bag, and laid hot upon the parts affected,
was thought to help a stitch in the side; and for a quinsey, “give the
party to drink,” says Markham, “the herb mouse-ear, steept in ale or
beer; and look when you see a swine rub himself, and there upon the
same place rub a slick-stone, and then with it slick all the swelling,
and it will cure it.”

To make hair grow on a bald part of the head, garden snails were to be
plucked out of their houses, and pounded with horse-leaches, bees,
wasps and salt, an equal quantity of each; and the baldness was to be
anointed with the moisture from this mixture after it had been buried
eight days in a hot bed. For the removal and extirpation of
superfluous hairs, a depilatory was to be made by drowning in a pint
of wine as many green frogs as it would cover, (about twenty was the
number,) setting the pot forty days in the sun, and then straining it
for use.

A water specially good against gravel or dropsy might be distilled
from the dried and pulverized blood of a black buck or he-goat, three
or four years old. The animal was to be kept by himself, in the summer
time when the sun was in Leo, and dieted for three weeks upon certain
herbs given in prescribed order, and to drink nothing but red wine, if
you would have the best preparation, though some persons allowed him
his fill of water every third day. But there was a water of mans blood
which in Queen Elizabeth's days was a new invention, “whereof some
princes had very great estimation, and used it for to remain thereby
in their force, and, as they thought, to live long.” A strong man was
to be chosen, in his flourishing youth, and of twenty-five years, and
somewhat choleric by nature. He was to be well dieted for one month
with light and healthy meats, and with all kinds of spices, and with
good strong wine, and moreover to be kept with mirth; at the month's
end veins in both arms were to be opened, and as much blood to be let
out as he could “tolerate and abide.” One handful of salt was to be
added to six pounds of this blood, and this was to be seven times
distilled, pouring the water upon the residuum after every
distillation, till the last. This was to be taken three or four times
a year, an ounce at a time. One has sight of a theory here; the life
was thought to be in the blood, and to be made transferable when thus
extracted.

Richard Brathwait, more famous since Mr. Haslewood has identified him
with Drunken Barnaby, than as author of “the English Gentleman and the
English Gentlewoman, presented to present times for ornaments, and
commended to posterity for precedents,” says of this Gentlewoman,
“herbals she peruseth, which she seconds with conference; and by
degrees so improves her knowledge, as her cautelous care perfits many
a dangerous cure.” But herbals were not better guides than the medical
books of which specimens have just been set before the reader, except
that they did not lead the practitioner so widely and perilously
astray. “Had Solomon,” says the author of Adam in Eden, or the
Paradise of Plants, “that great proficient in all sublunary
experiments, preserved those many volumes that he wrote in this kind,
for the instruction of future ages, so great was that spaciousness of
mind that God had bestowed on him, that he had immediately under the
Deity been the greatest of Doctors for the preservation of mankind:
but with the loss of his books so much lamented by the Rabbins and
others, the best part of this herbarary art hath since groaned under
the defects of many unworthy authors, and still remains under divers
clouds and imperfections.” This writer, “the ingeniously learned and
excellent Herbarist Mr. William Coles,” professing as near as possible
to acquaint all sorts of people with the very pith and marrow of
herbarism, arranges his work according to the anatomical application
of plants, “appropriating,” says he, “to every part of the body, (from
the crown of the head, with which I begin, and proceed till I come to
the sole of the foot,) such herbs and plants whose grand uses and
virtues do most specifically, and by signature thereunto belong, not
only for strengthening the same, but also for curing the evil effects
whereunto they are subjected:—the signatures being as it were the
books out of which the ancients first learned the virtues of herbs;
Nature, or rather the God of Nature, having stamped on divers of them
legible characters to discover their uses, though he hath left others
without any, that after he had shewed them the way, they, by their
labour and industry which renders every thing more acceptable, might
find out the rest.” It was an opinion often expressed by a physician
of great and deserved celebrity, that in course of time specifics
would be discovered for every malady to which the human frame is
liable. He never supposed, (though few men have ever been more
sanguine in their hopes and expectations,) that life was thus to be
indefinitely prolonged, and that it would be man's own fault, or his
own choice, if he did not live for ever; but he thought that when we
should thus have been taught to subdue those diseases which cut our
life short, we should, like the Patriarchs, live out the number of our
days, and then fall asleep,—Man being by this physical redemption
restored to his original corporeal state.

Then shall like four straight pillars, the four Elements
Support the goodly structure of Mortality:
Then shall the four Complexions, like four heads
Of a clear river, streaming in his body,
Nourish and comfort every vein and sinew:
No sickness of contagion, no grim death,
Or deprivation of health's real blessings,
Shall then affright the creature, built by Heaven,
Reserved for immortality.[2]

[Footnote 2: FORD.]

He had not taken up this notion from any religious feeling; it was
connected in him with the pride of philosophy, and he expected that
this was one of the blessings which we were to obtain in the progress
of knowledge.

Some specific remedies being known to exist, it is indeed reasonable
to suppose that others will be found. Old theorists went farther; and
in a world which everywhere bears such undeniable evidences of design
in every thing, few theories should seem more likely to be favourably
received than the one which supposed that every healing plant bears,
in some part of its structure, the type or signature of its peculiar
virtues: now this could in no other way be so obviously marked, as by
a resemblance to that part of the human frame for which its remedial
uses were intended. There is a fable indeed which says that he who may
be so fortunate as to taste the blood of a certain unknown animal
would be enabled thereby to hear the voice of plants and understand
their speech; and if he were on a mountain at sunrise, he might hear
the herbs which grow there, when freshened with the dews of night they
open themselves to the beams of the morning, return thanks to the
Creator for the virtues with which he has indued them, each specifying
what those virtues were, _le quali veramente son tante e tali che
beati i pastori che quelle capessero_. A botanical writer who
flourished a little before the theory of signatures was started
complains that herbal medicine had fallen into disuse; he says,
“_antequam chemia patrum nostrorum memoriâ orbi restitueretur,
contenti vivebant ὅι τῶν ἰατρῶν κομψὸι και χαριὲστατοι pharmacis ex
vegetabilium regno accersitis parum solliciti de Solis sulphure et
oleo, de Lunæ sale et essentiâ, de Saturni saccaro, de Martis tincturâ
et croco, de vitriolo Veneris, de Mercurio præcipitato, et Antimonii
floribus, de Sulphuris spiritu et Tartari crystallis: nihilominus
masculè debellabant morbos, et tutè et jucundè. Nunc sæculi nostri
infelicitas est, quod vegetabilibus contemptim habitis, plerique nihil
aliud spirant præter metallica ista, et extis parata horribilia
secreta._”[3] The new theory came in timely aid of the Galenists; it
connected their practice with a doctrine hardly less mysterious than
those of the Paracelsists, but more plausible because it seemed
immediately intelligible, and had a natural religious feeling to
strengthen and support it.

[Footnote 3: Petri Laurembergii Rostochiensis Horticultura—Præloquium,
p. 10.]

The Author of Adam in Eden refers to Oswald Crollius as “the great
discoverer of signatures,” and no doubt has drawn from him, most of
his remarks upon this theory of physical correspondence. The
resemblance is in some cases very obvious; but in many more the
Swedenborgian correspondences are not more fantastic; and where the
resemblances exist the inference is purely theoretical.

Walnuts are said to have the perfect signature of the head; the outer
husks or green covering represents the _pericranium_, or outward skin
of the skull, whereon the hair groweth,—and therefore salt made of
those husks is exceeding good for wounds in the head. The inner woody
shell hath the signature of the skull, and the little yellow skin or
peel, that of the _dura_ and _pia mater_ which are the thin scarfs
that envelope the brain. The kernel hath “the very figure of the
brain, and therefore it is very profitable for the brain and resists
poisons.” So too the Piony, being not yet blown, was thought to have
“some signature and proportion with the head of man, having sutures
and little veins dispersed up and down, like unto those which environ
the brain: when the flowers blow they open an outward little skin
representing the skull:” the piony therefore besides its other virtues
was very available against the falling sickness. Poppy heads with
their crowns somewhat represent the head and brain, and therefore
decoctions of them were used with good success in several diseases of
the head. And Lillies of the Valley, which in Coles's days grew
plentifully upon Hampstead-heath, were known by signature to cure the
apoplexy; “for as that disease is caused by the dropping of humours
into the principal ventricles of the brain, so the flowers of this
lilly hanging on the plants as if they were drops, are of wonderful
use herein.”

All capillary herbs were of course sovereign in diseases of the hair;
and because the purple and yellow spots and stripes upon the flowers
of Eyebright very much resemble the appearance of diseased eyes, it
was found out by that signature that this herb was very effectual “for
curing of the same.” The small Stone-crop hath the signature of the
gums, and is therefore good for scurvy. The exquisite Crollius
observed that the woody scales of which the cones of the pine tree are
composed, resemble the fore teeth; and therefore pine leaves boiled in
vinegar make a gargle which relieves the tooth-ache. The Pomegranate
has a like virtue for a like reason. Thistles and Holly leaves signify
by their prickles that they are excellent for pleurisy and stiches in
the side. Saxifrage manifesteth in its growth its power of breaking
the stone. It had been found experimentally that all roots, barks and
flowers which were yellow, cured the yellow jaundice; and though
Kidney beans as yet were only used for food, yet having so perfect a
signature, practitioners in physic were exhorted to take it into
consideration and try whether there were not in this plant some
excellent faculty to cure nephritic diseases. In pursuing this
fantastic system examples might be shown of that mischief, which,
though it may long remain latent, never fails at some time or other to
manifest itself as inherent in all error and falsehood.

When the mistresses of families grounded their practice of physic upon
such systems of herbary, or took it from books which contained
prescriptions like those before adduced, (few being either more simple
or more rational,) Dr. Green might well argue that when he mounted his
hobby and rode out seeking adventures as a Physician-Errant, he went
forth for the benefit of his fellow creatures. The guidance of such
works, or of their own traditional receipts, the people in fact then
generally followed. Burton tells us that Paulus Jovius in his
description of Britain, and Levinus Lemnius have observed, of this our
island, how there was of old no use of physic amongst us, and but
little at this day, except he says “it be for a few nice idle
citizens, surfeiting courtiers, and stall-fed gentlemen lubbers. The
country people use kitchen physic.” There are two instances among the
papers of the Berkeley family, of the little confidence which persons
of rank placed upon such medical advice and medicinal preparations as
could be obtained in the country, and even in the largest of our
provincial cities. In the second year of Elizabeth's reign Henry Lord
Berkeley “having extremely heated himself by chasing on foot a tame
deer in Yate Park, with the violence thereof fell into an immoderate
bleeding of the nose, to stay which, by the ill counsel of some about
him, he dipt his whole face into a bason of cold water, whereby,” says
the family chronicler, “that flush and fulness of his nose which
forthwith arose could never be remedied, though for present help he
had Physicians in a few days from London, and for better help came
thither himself not long after to have the advice of the whole
College, and lodged with his mother at her house in Shoe-lane.”—He
never afterwards could sing with truth or satisfaction the old song,

Nose, Nose, jolly red Nose,
And what gave thee that jolly red Nose?
Cinnamon and Ginger, Nutmegs and Cloves,
And they gave me this jolly red Nose.

A few years later, “Langham an Irish footman of this Lord, upon the
sickness of the Lady Catherine, this Lord's wife, carried a letter
from Callowdon to old Dr. Fryer, a physician dwelling in Little
Britain in London; and returned with a glass bottle in his hand
compounded by the doctor for the recovery of her health, a journey of
an hundred and forty-eight miles performed by him in less than
forty-two hours, notwithstanding his stay of one night at the
physician's and apothecary's houses, which no one horse could have so
well and safely performed.” No doubt it was for the safer conveyance
of the bottle, that a footman was sent on this special errand, for
which the historian of that noble family adds, “the lady shall after
give him a new suit of cloaths.”

In those days, and long after, they who required remedies were likely
to fare ill, under their own treatment, or that of their neighbours;
and worse under the travelling quack, who was always an ignorant and
impudent impostor, but found that human sufferings and human credulity
afforded him a never-failing harvest. Dr. Green knew this: he did not
say with the Romish priest _populus vult decipi, et decipietur!_ for
he had no intention of deceiving them; but he saw that many were to be
won by buffoonery, more by what is called _palaver_, and almost all by
pretensions. Condescending therefore to the common arts of quackery,
he employed his man Kemp to tickle the multitude with coarse wit; but
he stored himself with the best drugs that were to be procured,
distributed as general remedies such only as could hardly be
misapplied and must generally prove serviceable; and brought to
particular cases the sound knowledge which he had acquired in the
school of Boerhaave, and the skill which he had derived from
experience aided by natural sagacity. When it became convenient for
him to have a home, he established himself at Penrith, in the County
of Cumberland, having married a lady of that place; but he long
continued his favourite course of life and accumulated in it a large
fortune. He gained it by one maggot, and reduced it by many:
nevertheless there remained a handsome inheritance for his children.
His son proved as maggotty as the father, ran through a good fortune,
and when confined in the King's Bench prison for debt, wrote a book
upon the Art of cheap living in London!

The father's local fame, though it has not reached to the third and
fourth generation, survived him far into the second; and for many
years after his retirement from practice, and even after his death
every travelling mountebank in the northern counties adopted the name
of Dr. Green.

At the time to which this chapter refers, Dr. Green was in his
meridian career, and enjoyed the highest reputation throughout the
sphere of his itinerancy. Ingleton lay in his rounds, and whenever he
came there he used to send for the schoolmaster to pass the evening
with him. He was always glad if he could find an opportunity also of
conversing with the elder Daniel, as the Flossofer of those parts.
William Dove could have communicated to him more curious things
relating to his own art; but William kept out of the presence of
strangers, and had happily no ailments to make him seek the Doctor's
advice; his occasional indispositions were but slight, and he treated
them in his own way. That way was sometimes merely superstitious,
sometimes it was whimsical, and sometimes rough. If his charms failed
when he tried them upon himself, it was not for want of faith. When at
any time it happened that one of his eyes was blood-shot, he went
forthwith in search of some urchin whose mother, either for laziness,
or in the belief that it was wholesome to have it in that state,
allowed his ragged head to serve as a free warren for certain “small
deer.” One of these hexapeds William secured, and “using him as if he
loved him,” put it into his eye; when according to William's account
the insect fed upon what it found, cleared the eye, and disappearing
he knew not where or how, never was seen more.

His remedy for the cholic was a pebble posset; white pebbles were
preferred, and of these what was deemed a reasonable quantity was
taken in some sort of milk porridge. Upon the same theory he sometimes
swallowed a pebble large enough as he said to clear all before it; and
for that purpose they have been administered of larger calibre than
any bolus that ever came from the hands of the most merciless
apothecary, as large indeed sometimes as a common sized walnut. Does
the reader hesitate at believing this of an ignorant man, living in a
remote part of the country? Well might William Dove be excused, for a
generation later than his John Wesley prescribed in his Primitive
Physic quicksilver, to be taken ounce by ounce, to the amount of one,
two, or three pounds, till the desired effect was produced. And a
generation earlier, Richard Baxter of happy memory and unhappy
digestion, having read in Dr. Gerhard “the admirable effects of the
swallowing of a gold bullet upon his father,” in a case which Baxter
supposed to be like his own, got a gold bullet of between twenty and
thirty shillings weight, and swallowed it. “Having taken it,” says he,
“I knew not how to be delivered of it again. I took clysters and
purges for about three weeks, but nothing stirred it; and a gentleman
having done the like, the bullet never came from him till he died, and
it was cut out. But at last my neighbours set a day apart to fast and
pray for me, and I was freed from my danger in the beginning of that
day!”

CHAPTER XXV. P. I.

_Hiatus valde lacrymabilis._

Time flies away fast,
The while we never remember
How soon our life here
Grows old with the year
That dies with the next December!

HERRICK.

I must pass over fourteen years, for were I to pursue the history of
our young Daniel's boyhood and adolescence into all the ramifications
which a faithful biography requires, fourteen volumes would not
contain it. They would be worth reading, for that costs little; they
would be worth writing, though that costs much. They would deserve the
best embellishments that the pencil and the graver could produce. The
most poetical of artists would be worthily employed in designing the
sentimental and melancholy scenes; Cruikshank for the grotesque;
Wilkie and Richter for the comic and serio-comic; Turner for the
actual scenery; Bewick for the head and tail pieces. They ought to be
written; they ought to be read. They should be written—and then they
would be read. But time is wanting:

_Eheu! fugaces Posthume, Posthume,
Labuntur anni!_

and time is a commodity of which the value rises as long as we live.
We must be contented with doing not what we wish, but what we can,—our
_possible_ as the French call it.

One of our Poets—(which is it?)—speaks of an _everlasting now_. If
such a condition of existence were offered to us in this world, and it
were put to the vote whether we should accept the offer and fix all
things immutably as they are, who are they whose voices would be given
in the affirmative?

Not those who are in pursuit of fortune, or of fame, or of knowledge,
or of enjoyment, or of happiness; though with regard to all of these,
as far as any of them are attainable, there is more pleasure in the
pursuit than in the attainment.

Not those who are at sea, or travelling in a stage coach.

Not the man who is shaving himself.

Not those who have the tooth ache, or who are having a tooth drawn.

The fashionable beauty might; and the fashionable singer, and the
fashionable opera dancer, and the actor who is in the height of his
power and reputation. So might the alderman at a city feast. So would
the heir who is squandering a large fortune faster than it was
accumulated for him. And the thief who is not taken, and the convict
who is not hanged, and the scoffer at religion whose heart belies his
tongue.

Not the wise and the good.

Not those who are in sickness or in sorrow.

Not I.

But were I endowed with the power of suspending the effect of time
upon the things around me, methinks there are some of my flowers which
should neither fall nor fade: decidedly my kitten should never attain
to cathood; and I am afraid my little boy would continue to “mis-speak
half-uttered words;” and never, while I live, outgrow that epicene
dress of French grey, half European, half Asiatic in its fashion.

CHAPTER XXVI. P. I.

DANIEL AT DONCASTER; THE REASON WHY HE WAS DESTINED FOR THE MEDICAL
PROFESSION, RATHER THAN HOLY ORDERS; AND SOME REMARKS UPON SERMONS.

CHRISTOFLE DE HERICOURT.

Fourteen years have elapsed since the scene took place which is
related in the twenty-second chapter: and Daniel the younger at the
time to which this present chapter refers was residing at Doncaster
with Peter Hopkins who practised the medical art in all its branches.
He had lived with him eight years, first as a pupil, latterly in the
capacity of an assistant, and afterwards as an adopted successor.

How this connection between Daniel and Peter Hopkins was brought
about, and the circumstances which prepared the way for it, would have
appeared in some of the non-existent fourteen volumes, if it had
pleased Fate that they should have been written.

Some of my readers, and especially those who pride themselves upon
their knowledge of the world, or their success in it, will think it
strange perhaps that the elder Daniel, when he resolved to make a
scholar of his son, did not determine upon breeding him either to the
Church, or the Law, in either of which professions the way was easier
and more inviting. Now though this will not appear strange to those
other readers who have perceived that the father had no knowledge of
the world, and could have none, it is nevertheless proper to enter
into some explanation upon that point.

If George Herbert's Temple, or his Remains, or his life by old Izaak
Walton, had all or any of them happened to be among those few but
precious books which Daniel prized so highly and used so well, it is
likely that the wish of his heart would have been to train up his Son
for a Priest to the Temple. But so it was that none of his reading was
of a kind to give his thoughts that direction; and he had not
conceived any exalted opinion of the Clergy from the specimens which
had fallen in his way. A contempt which was but too general had been
brought upon the Order by the ignorance or the poverty of a great
proportion of its members. The person who served the humble church
which Daniel dutifully attended was almost as poor as a Capuchine, and
quite as ignorant. This poor man had obtained in evil hour from some
easy or careless Bishop a licence to preach. It was reprehensible
enough to have ordained one who was destitute of every qualification
that the office requires; the fault was still greater in promoting him
from the desk to the pulpit.

“A very great Scholar,” is quoted by Dr. Eachard, as saying “that such
preaching as is usual is a hindrance of salvation rather than the
means to it.” This was said when the fashion of conceited preaching
which is satirized in Frey Gerundio, had extended to England, and
though that fashion has so long been obsolete, that many persons will
be surprized to hear it had ever existed among us, it may still
reasonably be questioned whether sermons such as they commonly are, do
not quench more devotion than they kindle.

My Lord! put not the book aside in displeasure! (I address myself to
whatever Bishop may be reading it.) Unbiassed I will not call myself,
for I am a true and orthodox churchman, and have the interests of the
Church zealously at heart, because I believe and know them to be
essentially and inseparably connected with those of the commonwealth.
But I have been an attentive observer, and as such, request a hearing.
Receive my remarks as coming from one whose principles are in entire
accord with your Lordship's, whose wishes have the same scope and
purport, and who while he offers his honest opinion, submits it with
proper humility to your judgement.

The founders of the English Church did not intend that the sermon
should invariably form a part of the Sunday services. It became so in
condescension to the Puritans, of whom it has long been the fashion to
speak with respect, instead of holding them up to the contempt and
infamy and abhorrence which they have so richly merited. They have
been extolled by their descendants and successors as models of
patriotism and piety; and the success with which this delusion has
been practised is one of the most remarkable examples of what may be
effected by dint of effrontery and persevering falsehood.

That sentence I am certain will not be disapproved at Fulham or
Lambeth. Dr. Southey, or Dr. Phillpots might have written it.

The general standard of the Clergy has undoubtedly been very much
raised since the days when they were not allowed to preach without a
licence for that purpose from the Ordinary. Nevertheless it is certain
that many persons who are in other, and more material respects well,
or even excellently qualified for the ministerial functions, may be
wanting in the qualifications for a preacher. A man may possess great
learning, sound principles and good sense, and yet be without the
talent of arranging and expressing his thoughts well in a written
discourse: he may want the power of fixing the attention, or reaching
the hearts of his hearers; and in that case the discourse, as some old
writer has said in serious jest, which was designed for _e_dification
turns to _te_dification. The evil was less in Addison's days when he
who distrusted his own abilities, availed himself of the compositions
of some approved Divine, and was not disparaged in the opinion of his
congregation, by taking a printed volume into the pulpit. This is no
longer practised; but instead of this, which secured wholesome
instruction to the people, sermons are manufactured for sale, and sold
in manuscript, or printed in a cursive type imitating manuscript. The
articles which are prepared for such a market, are for the most part
copied from obscure books, with more or less alteration of language,
and generally for the worse; and so far as they are drawn from such
sources they are not likely to contain any thing exceptionable on the
score of doctrine: but the best authors will not be resorted to, for
fear of discovery, and therefore when these are used, the congregation
lose as much in point of instruction, as he who uses them ought to
lose in self-esteem.

But it is more injurious when a more scrupulous man composes his own
discourses, if he be deficient either in judgement or learning. He is
then more likely to entangle plain texts than to unravel knotty ones;
rash positions are sometimes advanced by such preachers, unsound
arguments are adduced by them in support of momentous doctrines, and
though these things neither offend the ignorant and careless, nor
injure the well-minded and well-informed, they carry poison with them
when they enter a diseased ear. It cannot be doubted that such sermons
act as corroboratives for infidelity.

Nor when they contain nothing that is actually erroneous, but are
merely unimproving, are they in that case altogether harmless. They
are not harmless if they are felt to be tedious. They are not harmless
if they torpify the understanding: a chill that begins there may
extend to the vital regions. Bishop Taylor (the great Jeremy) says of
devotional books that “they are in a large degree the occasion of so
great indevotion as prevails among the generality of nominal
Christians, being,” he says, “represented naked in the conclusions of
spiritual life, without or art or learning; and made apt for persons
who can do nothing but believe and love, not for them that can
consider and love.” This applies more forcibly to bad sermons than to
common-place books of devotion; the book may be laid aside if it
offend the reader's judgement, but the sermon is a positive infliction
upon the helpless hearer.

The same Bishop,—and his name ought to carry with it authority among
the wise and the good, has delivered an opinion upon this subject, in
his admirable Apology for Authorized and Set Forms of Liturgy.
“Indeed,” he says, “if I may freely declare my opinion, I think it
were not amiss, if the liberty of making sermons were something more
restrained than it is; and that such persons only were intrusted with
the liberty, for whom the church herself may safely be
responsive,—that is men learned and pious; and that the other part,
the _vulgus cleri_, should instruct the people out of the fountains of
the church and the public stock, till by so long exercise and
discipline in the schools of the Prophets they may also be intrusted
to minister of their own unto the people. This I am sure was the
practice of the Primitive Church.”

“I am convinced,” said Dr. Johnson, “that I ought to be at Divine
Service more frequently than I am; but the provocations given by
ignorant and affected preachers too often disturb the mental calm
which otherwise would succeed to prayer. I am apt to whisper to myself
on such occasions, ‘How can this illiterate fellow dream of fixing
attention, after we have been listening to the sublimest truths,
conveyed in the most chaste and exalted language, throughout a liturgy
which must be regarded as the genuine offspring of piety impregnated
by wisdom!’”—“Take notice, however,” he adds, “though I make this
confession respecting myself, I do not mean to recommend the
fastidiousness that sometimes leads me to exchange congregational for
solitary worship.”

The saintly Herbert says,

“Judge not the Preacher, for he is thy Judge;
If thou mislike him thou conceiv'st him not.
God calleth preaching folly. Do not grudge
To pick out treasures from an earthen pot.
The worst speak something good. If all want sense
God takes a text and preacheth patience.

He that gets patience and the blessing which
Preachers conclude with, hath not lost his pains.”

This sort of patience was all that Daniel could have derived from the
discourses of the poor curate; and it was a lesson of which his meek
and benign temper stood in no need. Nature had endowed him with this
virtue, and this Sunday's discipline exercised without strengthening
it. While he was, in the phrase of the Religious Public, _sitting
under_ the preacher, he obeyed to a certain extent George Herbert's
precept,—that is he obeyed it as he did other laws with the existence
of which he was unacquainted,—

Let vain or busy thoughts have there no part;
Bring not thy plough, thy plots, thy pleasure thither.

Pleasure made no part of his speculations at any time. Plots he had
none. For the Plough,—it was what he never followed in fancy,
patiently as he plodded after the furrow in his own vocation. And then
for worldly thoughts they were not likely in that place to enter a
mind, which never at any time entertained them. But to that sort of
thought (if thought it may be called) which cometh as it listeth, and
which when the mind is at ease and the body in health, is the
forerunner and usher of sleep, he certainly gave way. The curate's
voice past over his ear like the sound of the brook with which it
blended, and it conveyed to him as little meaning and less feeling.
During the sermon therefore he retired into himself, with as much or
as little edification, as a Quaker finds at a silent meeting.

It happened also that of the few clergy within the very narrow circle
in which Daniel moved, some were in no good repute for their conduct,
and none displayed either that zeal in the discharge of their pastoral
functions, or that earnestness and ability in performing the service
of the Church, which are necessary for commanding the respect and
securing the affections of the parishioners. The clerical profession
had never presented itself to him in its best, which is really its
true light; and for that cause he would never have thought of it for
the boy, even if the means of putting him forward in this path had
been easier and more obvious than they were. And for the dissenting
ministry, Daniel liked not the name of a Nonconformist. The Puritans
had left behind them an ill savour in his part of the country, as they
had done every where else; and the extravagances of the primitive
Quakers, which during his childhood were fresh in remembrance, had not
yet been forgotten.

It was well remembered in those parts that the Vicar of Kirkby
Lonsdale through the malignity of some of his puritanical
parishioners, had been taken out of his bed—from his wife who was then
big with child, and hurried away to Lancaster jail, where he was
imprisoned three years for no other offence than that of fidelity to
his Church and his King. And that the man who was a chief instigator
of this persecution, and had enriched himself by the spoil of his
neighbour's goods, though he flourished for a while, bought a field
and built a fine house, came to poverty at last, and died in prison,
having for some time received his daily food there from the table of
one of this very Vicar's sons. It was well remembered also that, in a
parish of the adjoining county-palatine, the puritanical party had set
fire in the night to the Rector's barns, stable, and parsonage; and
that he and his wife and children had only as it were by miracle
escaped from the flames.

William Dove had also among his traditional stores some stories of a
stranger kind concerning the Quakers, these parts of the North having
been a great scene of their vagaries in their early days. He used to
relate how one of them went into the church at Brough, during the
reign of the Puritans, with a white sheet about his body, and a rope
about his neck, to prophesy before the people and their Whig Priest
(as he called him) that the surplice which was then prohibited should
again come into use, and that the Gallows should have its due! And how
when their ringleader George Fox was put in prison at Carlisle, the
wife of Justice Benson would eat no meat unless she partook it with
him at the bars of his dungeon, declaring she was moved to do this;
wherefore it was supposed he had bewitched her. And not without
reason; for when this old George went, as he often did, into the
Church to disturb the people, and they thrust him out, and fell upon
him and beat him, sparing neither sticks nor stones if they came to
hand, he was presently for all that they had done to him, as sound and
as fresh as if nothing had touched him; and when they tried to kill
him, they could not take away his life! And how this old George rode a
great black horse, upon which he was seen in the course of the same
hour at two places threescore miles distant from each other! And how
some of the women who followed this old George used to strip off all
their clothes, and in that plight go into the church at service time
on the Sunday to bear testimony against the pomps and vanities of the
world; “and to be sure,” said William, “they must have been witched,
or they never would have done this.” “Lord deliver us!” said Dinah,
“to be sure they must!”—“To be sure they must, Lord bless us all!”
said Haggy.

CHAPTER XXVII. P. I.

A PASSAGE IN PROCOPIUS IMPROVED. A STORY CONCERNING URIM AND THUMMIM;
AND THE ELDER DANIEL'S OPINION OF THE PROFESSION OF THE LAW.

BEN JONSON.

Among the people who were converted to the Christian faith during the
sixth century were two tribes or nations called the Lazi and the Zani.
Methinks it had been better if they had been left unconverted; for
they have multiplied prodigiously among us, so that between the Lazy
Christians and the Zany ones, Christianity has grievously suffered.

It was one of the Zany tribe whom Guy once heard explaining to his
congregation what was meant by Urim and Thummim, and in technical
phrase _improving_ the text. Urim and Thummim, he said, were two
precious stones, or rather stones above all price, the Hebrew names of
which have been interpreted to signify Light and Perfection, or
Doctrine and Judgement, (which Luther prefers in his Bible, and in
which some of the northern versions, have followed him) or the Shining
and the Perfect, or Manifestation and Truth, the words in the original
being capable of any or all of these significations. They were set in
the High Priest's breast-plate of judgement; and when he consulted
them upon any special occasion to discover the will of God, they
displayed an extraordinary brilliancy if the matter which was referred
to this trial were pleasing to the Lord Jehovah, but they gave no
lustre if it were disapproved. “My Brethren,” said the Preacher, “this
is what learned Expositors, Jewish and Christian, tell me concerning
these two precious stones. The stones themselves are lost. But, my
Christian Brethren, we need them not, for we have a surer means of
consulting and discovering the will of God; and still it is by Urim
and Thummim if we alter only a single letter in one of those
mysterious words. Take your Bible, my brethren; _use him and thumb
him—use him and thumb him well_, and you will discover the will of God
as surely as ever the High Priest did by the stones in his breast
plate!”

What Daniel saw of the Lazi, and what he heard of the Zani, prevented
him from ever forming a wish to educate his son for a North country
cure, which would have been all the preferment that lay within his
view. And yet if any person to whose judgement he deferred had
reminded him that Bishop Latimer had risen from as humble an origin,
it might have awakened in him a feeling of ambition for the boy, not
inconsistent with his own philosophy.

But no suggestions could ever have induced Daniel to chuse for him the
profession of the Law. The very name of Lawyer was to him a word of
evil acceptation. Montaigne has a pleasant story of a little boy who
when his mother had lost a lawsuit which he had always heard her speak
of as a perpetual cause of trouble, ran up to him in great glee to
tell him of the loss as a matter for congratulation and joy; the poor
child thought it was like losing a cough, or any other bodily ailment.
Daniel entertained the same sort of opinion concerning all legal
proceedings. He knew that laws were necessary evils; but he thought
they were much greater evils than there was any necessity that they
should be; and believing this to be occasioned by those who were
engaged in the trade of administering them, he looked upon lawyers as
the greatest pests in the country—

Because, their end being merely avarice,
Winds up their wits to such a nimble strain
As helps to blind the Judge, not give him eyes.[1]

He had once been in the Courts at Lancaster, having been called upon
as witness in a civil suit, and the manner in which he was cross
examined there by one of those “young spruce Lawyers,” whom Donne has
so happily characterized as being

———“all impudence and tongue”

had confirmed him in this prejudice. What he saw of the proceedings
that day induced him to agree with Beaumont and Fletcher, that

Justice was a Cheese-monger, a mere cheese-monger,
Weighed nothing to the world but mites and maggots
And a main stink; Law, like a horse-courser,
Her rules and precepts hung with gauds and ribbands,
And pampered up to cozen him that bought her,
When she herself was hackney, lame and founder'd.[2]

His was too simple and sincere an understanding to admire in any other
sense than that of wondering at them

Men of that large profession that can speak
To every cause, and things mere contraries,
Till they are hoarse again, yet all be law!
That with most quick agility can turn
And re-return; can make knots and undo them,
Give forked counsel, take provoking gold
On either hand, and put it up. These men
He knew would thrive;—[3]

but far was he from wishing that a son of his should thrive by such a
perversion of his intellectual powers, and such a corruption of his
moral nature.

[Footnote 1: LORD BROOKE.]

[Footnote 2: WOMAN PLEASED.]

[Footnote 3: BEN JONSON.]

On the other hand he felt a degree of respect amounting almost to
reverence for the healing art, which is connected with so many
mysteries of art and nature. And therefore when an opportunity offered
of placing his son with a respectable practitioner, who he had every
reason for believing would behave toward him with careful and prudent
kindness, his entire approbation was given to the youth's own choice.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

PETER HOPKINS. EFFECTS OF TIME AND CHANGE. DESCRIPTION OF HIS
DWELLING-HOUSE.

_Combien de changemens depuis que suis au monde,
Qui n'est qu' un point du tems!_

PASQUIER.

Peter Hopkins was a person who might have suffered death by the laws
of Solon, if that code had been established in this country; for
though he lived in the reigns of George I. and George II. he was
neither Whig nor Tory, Hanoverian nor Jacobite. When he drank the
King's health with any of his neighbours, he never troubled himself
with considering which King was intended, nor to which side of the
water their good wishes were directed. Under George or Charles he
would have been the same quiet subject, never busying himself with a
thought about political matters, and having no other wish concerning
them than that they might remain as they were,—so far he was a
Hanoverian, and no farther. There was something of the same temper in
his religion; he was a sincere Christian, and had he been born to
attendance at the Mass or the Meeting House would have been equally
sincere in his attachment to either of those extremes. For his whole
mind was in his profession. He was learned in its history; fond of its
theories; and skilful in its practice, in which he trusted little to
theory and much to experience.

Both he and his wife were at this time well stricken in years; they
had no children, and no near kindred on either side; and being both
kind-hearted people, the liking which they soon entertained toward
Daniel for his docility, his simplicity of heart, his obliging temper,
his original cast of mind, and his never failing good-humour, ripened
into a settled affection.

Hopkins lived next door to the Mansion House, which edifice was begun
a few years after Daniel went to live with him. There is a view of the
Mansion House in Dr. Miller's History of Doncaster, and in that print
the dwelling in question is included. It had undergone no other
alteration at the time this view was taken than that of having had its
casements replaced by sash windows, an improvement which had been made
by our Doctor, when the frame work of the casements had become
incapable of repair. The gilt pestle and mortar also had been removed
from its place above the door. Internally the change had been greater;
for the same business not being continued there after the Doctor's
decease, the shop had been converted into a sitting room, and the very
odour of medicine had passed away. But I will not allow myself to
dwell upon this melancholy subject. The world is full of mutations;
and there is hardly any that does not bring with it some regret at the
time,—and alas, more in the retrospect! I have lived to see the
American Colonies separated from Great Britain, the Kingdom of Poland
extinguished, the republic of Venice destroyed, its territory seized
by one Usurper, delivered over in exchange to another, and the
transfer sanctioned and confirmed by all the Powers of Europe in
Congress assembled! I have seen Heaven knows how many little
Principalities and States, proud of their independance, and happy in
the privileges connected with it, swallowed up by the Austrian or the
Prussian Eagle, or thrown to the Belgic Lion, as his share in the
division of the spoils. I have seen constitutions spring up like
mushrooms and kicked down as easily. I have seen the rise and fall of
Napoleon.

I have seen Cedars fall
And in their room a mushroom grow;
I have seen Comets, threatening all,
Vanish themselves;[1]

wherefore then should I lament over what time and mutability have done
to a private dwelling-house in Doncaster?

[Footnote 1: HABINGTON.]

It was an old house, which when it was built had been one of the best
in Doncaster; and even after the great improvements which have changed
the appearance of the town, had an air of antiquated respectability
about it. Had it been near the church it would have been taken for the
Vicarage; standing where it did, its physiognomy was such that you
might have guessed it was the Doctor's house, even if the pestle and
mortar had not been there as his insignia. There were eight windows
and two doors in front. It consisted of two stories, and was oddly
built, the middle part having, something in the Scotch manner, the
form of a gable end towards the street. Behind this was a single
chimney, tall, and shaped like a pillar. In windy nights the Doctor
was so often consulted by Mrs. Dove concerning the stability of that
chimney, that he accounted it the plague of his life. But it was one
of those evils which could not be removed without bringing on a worse,
the alternative being whether there should be a tall chimney, or a
smoky house. And after the mansion house was erected, there was one
wind which in spite of the chimney's elevation drove the smoke
down,—so inconvenient is it sometimes to be fixed near a great
neighbour.

This unfortunate chimney, being in the middle of the house, served for
four apartments; the Doctor's study and his bedchamber on the upper
floor, the kitchen and the best parlour on the lower, that parlour,
yes Reader, that very parlour wherein, as thou canst not have
forgotten, Mrs. Dove was making tea for the Doctor on that ever
memorable afternoon with which our history begins.

CHAPTER XXIX. P. I.

A HINT OF REMINISCENCE TO THE READER. THE CLOCK OF ST. GEORGE'S. A
WORD IN HONOR OF ARCHDEACON MARKHAM.

BISHOP HACKETT.

The judicious reader will now have perceived that in the progress of
this narrative,—which may be truly said to

——bear
A music in the ordered history
It lays before us,——

we have arrived at that point which determines the scene and acquaints
him with the local habitation of the Doctor. He will perceive also
that in our method of narration nothing has been inartificially
anticipated; that there have been no premature disclosures, no
precipitation, no hurry, or impatience on my part; and that on the
other hand there has been no unnecessary delay, but that we have
regularly and naturally come to this developement. The author who
undertakes a task like mine,

must nombre al the hole cyrcumstaunce
Of hys matter with brevyacion,

as an old Poet says of the professors of the rhyming art, and must
moreover be careful

That he walke not by longe continuance
The perambulate way,

as I have been, O Reader! and as it is my fixed intention still to be.
Thou knowest, gentle Reader, that I have never wearied thee with idle
and worthless words; thou knowest that the old comic writer spake
truly when he said, that the man who speaks little says too much, if
he says what is not to the point; but that he who speaks well and
wisely will never be accused of speaking at too great length,

Τὸν μὴ λέγοντα τῶν δεόντων μηδὲ ἓν
Μακρὸν νόμιζε, κᾂν δύ᾿ εἴπῃ συλλαβάς.
Τὸν δ᾿ εὗ λέγοντα, μὴ νόμιζ᾿ εἶναι μακρὸν,
Μηδ᾿ ἂν σφόδρ᾿ εἴπῃ πολλὰ, και πολὺν χρόνον.[1]

[Footnote 1: PHILEMON.]

My good Readers will remember that, as was duly noticed in our first
chapter P. I. the clock of St. George's had just struck five when Mrs.
Dove was pouring out the seventh cup of tea for her husband, and when
our history opens. I have some observations to make concerning both
the tea and the tea service, which will dear the Doctor from any
imputation of intemperance in his use of that most pleasant,
salutiferous and domesticizing beverage: but it would disturb the
method of my narration were they to be introduced in this place. Here
I have something to relate about the Clock. Some forty or fifty years
ago a Butcher being one of the Churchwardens of the year, and fancying
himself in that capacity invested with full power to alter and improve
any thing in or about the Church, thought proper to change the
position of the clock, and accordingly had it removed to the highest
part of the tower, immediately under the battlements. Much beautiful
Gothic work was cut away to make room for the three dials, which he
placed on three sides of this fine tower; and when he was asked what
had induced him thus doubly to disfigure the edifice, by misplacing
the dials, and destroying so much of the ornamental part, the great
and greasy killcow answered that by fixing the dials so high, he could
now stand at his own shop door and see what it was o'clock! That
convenience this arrant churchwarden had the satisfaction of enjoying
for several years, there being no authority that could call him to
account for the insolent mischief he had done. But Archdeacon Markham
(to his praise be it spoken) at the end of the last century prevailed
on the then churchwardens to remove two of the dials, and restore the
architectural ornaments which had been defaced.

This was the clock which, with few intervals, measured out by hours
the life of Daniel Dove from the seventeenth year of his age, when he
first set up his rest within its sound.

Perhaps of all the works of man sun-dials and church-clocks are those
which have conveyed most feeling to the human heart; the clock more
than the sun-dial because it speaks to the ear as well as to the eye,
and by night as well as by day. Our forefathers understood this, and
therefore they not only gave a Tongue to Time, but provided that he
should speak often to us and remind us that the hours are passing.
Their quarter-boys and their chimes were designed for this moral
purpose as much as the memento which is so commonly seen upon an old
clock-face,—and so seldom upon a new one. I never hear chimes that
they do not remind me of those which were formerly the first sounds I
heard in the morning, which used to quicken my step on my way to
school, and which announced my release from it, when the same tune
methought had always a merrier import. When I remember their tones,
life seems to me like a dream, and a train of recollections arises,
which if it were allowed to have its course would end in tears.

CHAPTER XXX. P. I.

THE OLD BELLS RUNG TO A NEW TUNE.

If the bell have any sides the clapper will find 'em.

BEN JONSON.

That same St. George's Church has a peal of eight tunable bells, in
the key of E. b. the first bell weighing seven hundred, one quarter
and fourteen pounds.

_Tra tutte quante le musiche humane,
O Signor mio gentil, tra le più care
Gioje del mondo, è 'l suon delle campane;
Don don don don don don, che ve ne pare?_[1]

[Footnote 1: AGNOLO FIRENZUOLA.]

They were not christened, because they were not Roman Catholic bells;
for in Roman Catholic countries church bells are christened with the
intention of causing them to be held in greater reverence,—

_—però ordinò n'un consistoro
Un certo di quei buon papi all' antica,
Che non ci lavoravan di straforo,
Che la campana si, si benedica,
Poi si battezzi, e se le ponga il nome,
Prima che' in campanil l' ufizio dica.
Gli organi, ch' anco lor san sì ben come
Si dica il vespro, e le messe cantate,
Non hanno questo honor sopra le chiome.
Che le lor canne non son battezzate,
Ne' nome ha l' una Pier, l' altra Maria
Come hanno le campane prelibate._[2]

[Footnote 2: AGNOLO FIRENZUOLA.]

The bells of St. George's, Doncaster, I say, were not christened,
because they were Protestant bells; for distinction's sake however we
will name them as the bells stand in the dirge of that unfortunate Cat
whom Johnny Green threw into the well.

But it will be better to exhibit their relative weights in figures, so
that they may be seen synoptically. Thus then;—

Cwt. qr. lb.
Bim the first 7 . . 1 . . 14
Bim the second 8 . . 0 . . 18
Bim the third 8 . . 2 . . 6
Bim the fourth 10 . . 3 . . 15
Bim the fifth 13 . . 1 . . 0
Bim the sixth 15 . . 2 . . 16
Bom 22 . . 1 . . 0
Bell 29 . . 1 . . 20

I cannot but admit that these appellations not so stately in
appearance as those of the peal which the Bishop of Chalons recently
baptized, and called a “happy and holy family” in the edifying
discourse that he delivered upon the occasion. The first of these was
called Marie, to which—or to whom,—the Duke and Duchess of Danderville
(so the newspapers give this name) stood sponsors. “It is you Marie,”
said the Bishop, “who will have the honor to announce the festivals,
and proclaim the glory of the Lord! You appear among us under the most
happy auspices, presented by those respectable and illustrious hands
to which the practices of piety have been so long familiar. And you
Anne,” he pursued, addressing the second bell,—“an object worthy of
the zeal and piety of our first magistrate (the Prefect) and of her
who so nobly shares his solicitude,—you shall be charged with the same
employment. Your voice shall be joined to Marie's upon important
occasions. Ah! what touching lessons will you not give in imitation of
her whose name you bear, and whom we reverence as the purest of
Virgins! You also Deodate, will take part in this concert, you whom an
angel, a new-born infant, has conjointly with me consecrated to the
Lord! Speak Deodate! and let us hear your marvellous accents.” This
Angel and Godmother in whose name the third bell was given was
Mademoiselle Deodate Boisset, then in the second month of her age,
daughter of Viscount Boisset. “And you Stephanie, crowned with glory,”
continued the orator, in learned allusion to the Greek word _σεφανος_,
“you are not less worthy to mingle your accents with the melody of
your sisters. And you lastly Seraphine and Pudentienne, you will raise
your voices in this touching concert, happy all of you in having been
presented to the benedictions of the Church, by these noble and
generous souls, so praiseworthy for the liveliness of their faith, and
the holiness of their example.” And then the Bishop concluded by
calling upon the congregation to join with him in prayer that the
Almighty would be pleased to preserve from all accidents this “happy
and holy family of the bells.”

We have no such sermons from our Bishops! The whole ceremony must have
been as useful to the bells as it was edifying to the people.

Were I called upon to act as sponsor upon such an occasion, I would
name my bell Peter Bell in honour of Mr. Wordsworth. There has been a
bull so called, and a bull it was of great merit. But if it were the
great bell, then it should be called Andrew, in honour of Dr. Bell;
and that bell should call the children to school.

There are, I believe, only two bells in England which are known by
their Christian names, and they are both called Tom; but Great Tom of
Oxford which happens to be much the smaller of the two was christened
in the feminine gender, being called Mary, in the spirit of catholic
and courtly adulation at the commencement of the bloody Queen's reign.
Tresham the Vicechancellor performed the ceremony, and his exclamation
when it first summoned him to mass has been recorded:—“O delicate and
sweet harmony! O beautiful Mary! how musically she sounds! how
strangely she pleaseth my ear!”

In spite of this christening, the object of Dr. Tresham's admiration
is as decidedly a Tom-Bell, as the Puss in Boots who appeared at a
Masquerade (Theodore Hook remembers when and where) was a Tom Cat.
Often as the said Tom-Bell has been mentioned, there is but one other
anecdote recorded of him; it occurred on Thursday the thirteenth day
of March 1806, and was thus described in a letter written two hours
after the event:—“An odd thing happened to-day about half past four,
Tom suddenly went mad; he began striking as fast as he could about
twenty times. Every body went out doubting whether there was an
earthquake, or whether the Dean was dead, or the College on fire.
However nothing was the matter but that Tom was taken ill in his
bowels: in other words something had happened to the works, but it was
not of any serious consequence, for he has struck six as well as ever,
and bids fair to toll 101 to-night as well as he did before the
attack.”

This was written by a youth of great natural endowments, rare
acquirements, playful temper, and affectionate heart. If his days had
been prolonged, his happy industry, his inoffensive wit, his sound
judgement and his moral worth, favoured as they were by all favourable
circumstances, must have raised him to distinction, and the name of
Barrè Roberts which is now known only in the little circle of his own
and his father's friends, would have had its place with those who have
deserved well of their kind and reflected honor upon their country.

But I return to a subject, which would have interested him in his
antiquarian pursuits,—for he loved to wander among the Ruins of Time.
We will return therefore to that ceremony of christening Church Bells,
which with other practices of the Holy Roman Catholic and Apostolic
Church, has been revived in France.

Bells, say those Theologians in _issimi_ who have gravely written upon
this grave matter, Bells, say they, are not actually baptized with
that baptism which is administered for the remission of sins; but they
are said to be christened because the same ceremonies which are
observed in christening children, are also observed in consecrating
them, such as the washing, the anointing and the imposing a name; all
which however may more strictly be said to represent the signs and
symbols of baptism, than they may be called baptism itself.—

Nothing can be more candid! Bells are not baptized for the remission
of sins, because the original sin of a bell would be a flaw in the
metal, or a defect in the tone, neither of which the Priest undertakes
to remove. There was however a previous ceremony of blessing the
furnace when the bells were cast within the precincts of a monastery,
as they most frequently were in former times, and this may have been
intended for the prevention of such defects. The Brethren stood round
the furnace ranged in processional order, sang the 150th Psalm, and
then after certain prayers blessed the molten metal, and called upon
the Lord to infuse into it his grace and overshadow it with his power,
for the honor of the Saint, to whom the bell was to be dedicated and
whose name it was to bear.

When the time of christening came, the officiating Priest and his
assistant named every bell five times, as a sort of prelude, for some
unexplained reason which may perhaps be as significant and mystical as
the other parts of the ceremony. He then blessed the water in two
vessels which were prepared for the service. Dipping a clean linen
cloth in one of these vessels he washed the bell within and without,
the bell being suspended over a vessel wider in circumference than the
bell's mouth, in order that no drop of the water employed in this
washing might fall to the ground; for the water was holy. Certain
psalms were said or sung (they were the 96th and the four last in the
psalter;) during this part of the ceremony and while the officiating
Priest prepared the water in the second vessel: this he did by
sprinkling salt in it, and putting holy oil upon it, either with his
thumb, or with a stick; if the thumb were used, it was to be cleaned
immediately by rubbing it well with salt over the same water. Then he
dipt another clean cloth in this oiled and salted water, and again
washed the bell, within and without: after the service the cloths were
burnt lest they should be profaned by other uses. The bell was then
authentically named. Then it was anointed with chrism in the form of a
cross four times on the broadest part of the outside, thrice on the
smaller part, and four times on the inside, those parts being anointed
with most care against which the clapper was to strike. After this the
name was again given. Myrrh and frankincense were then brought, the
bell was incensed while part of a psalm was recited and the bell was
authentically named a third time; after which the priest carefully
wiped the chrism from the bell with tow, and the tow was immediately
burnt in the censer. Next the Priest struck each bell thrice with its
clapper, and named it again at every stroke; every one of the
assistants in like manner struck it and named it once. The bells were
then carefully covered each with a cloth and immediately hoisted that
they might not be contaminated by any irreverent touch. The Priest
concluded by explaining to the congregation, if he thought proper, the
reason for this ceremony of christening the bells, which was that they
might act as preservatives against thunder and lightning, and hail and
wind, and storms of every kind, and moreover that they might drive
away evil Spirits. To these and their other virtues the Bishop of
Chalons alluded in his late truly Gallican and Roman Catholic
discourse. “The Bells,” said he, “placed like centinels on the towers,
watch over us and turn away from us the temptations of the enemy of
our salvation, as well as storms and tempests. They speak and pray for
us in our troubles; they inform heaven of the necessities of the
earth.”

Now were this edifying part of the Roman Catholic ritual to be
re-introduced in the British dominions,—as it very possibly may be now
that Lord Peter has appeared in his robes before the King, and been
introduced by his title,—the opportunity would no doubt be taken by
the Bishop or Jesuit who might direct the proceedings, of
complimenting the friends of their cause by naming the first “holy and
happy family” after them. And to commemorate the extraordinary union
of sentiment which that cause has brought about between persons not
otherwise remarkable for any similitude of feelings or opinions, they
might unite two or more names in one bell, (as is frequently done in
the human subject,) and thus with a peculiar felicity of compliment,
shew who and who upon this great and memorable occasion have _pulled
together_. In such a case the names selected for a peal of eight
tunable bells might run thus

Bim 1st. — Canning O'Connel.
Bim 2d. — Plunkett Shiel.
Bim 3d. — Augustus Frederick Cobbett.
Bim 4th. — Williams Wynn Burdett Waithman.
Bim 5th. — Grenville Wood.
Bim 6th. — Palmerston Hume.
Bom — Lawless Brougham.
Bell — Lord King, _per se_;—

—alone _par excellence_, as the thickest and thinnest friend of the
cause, and moreover because

None but himself can be his parallel;

and last in order because the base note accords best with him; and
because for the decorum and dignity with which he has at all times
treated the Bishops, the clergy and the subject of religion, he must
be allowed to bear the bell not from his compeers alone but from all
his contemporaries.

CHAPTER XXXI. P. I.

MORE CONCERNING BELLS.

HERBERT.

There are more mysteries in a peal of bells than were touched upon by
the Bishop of Chalons in his sermon. There are plain bob-triples,
bob-majors, bob-majors reversed, double bob-majors, and
grandsire-bob-cators, and there is a Bob-maximus. Who Bob was, and
whether he were Bob Major, or Major Bob, that is whether Major were
his name or his rank, and if his rank, to what service he belonged,
are questions which inexorable Oblivion will not answer, however
earnestly adjured. And there is no Witch of Endor who will call up Bob
from the grave to answer them himself. But there are facts in the
history of bell-ringing which Oblivion has not yet made her own, and
one of them is that the greatest performance ever completed by one
person in the world, was that of Mr. Samuel Thurston at the New
Theatre Public House in the City of Norwich, on Saturday evening, July
1, 1809, when he struck all these intricate short peals, the first
four upon a set of eight musical hand bells, the last on a peal of
ten.

But a performance upon hand-bells when compared to bell-ringing is
even less than a review in comparison with a battle. Strength of arm
as well as skill is required for managing a bell-rope. Samuel
Thurston's peal of plain bob-triples was “nobly brought round” in two
minutes and three quarters, and his grandsire-bob-cators were as nobly
finished in five minutes and fourteen seconds. The reader shall now
see what real bell-ringing is.

The year 1796 was remarkable for the performance of great exploits in
this manly and English art,—for to England the art is said to be
peculiar, the cheerful carrillons of the continent being played by
keys. In that year, and in the month of August the Westmorland youths
rang a complete peal of 5040 grandsire triples, in St. Mary's Church
Kendal, being the whole number of changes on seven bells. The peal was
divided into ten parts, or courses of 504 each; the bobs were called
by the sixth, a lead single was made in the middle of the peal, and
another at the conclusion which brought the bells home. Distinct leads
and exact divisions were observed throughout the whole, and the
performance was completed in three hours and twenty minutes. A like
performance took place in the same month at Kidderminster in three
hours and fourteen minutes. Stephen Hill composed and called the peal,
it was conducted through with one single, which was brought to the
4984th change, viz. 1267453. This was allowed by those who were
conversant in the art to exceed any peal ever yet rung in this kingdom
by that method.

_Paulo majora canamus_. The Society of Cambridge youths that same year
rang in the Church of St. Mary the Great, a true and complete peal of
Bob maximus, in five hours and five minutes. This consisted of 6600
changes, and for regularity of striking and harmony throughout the
peal was allowed by competent judges to be a very masterly
performance. In point of time the striking was to such a nicety that
in each thousand changes the time did not vary one sixteenth of a
minute, and the compass of the last thousand was exactly equal to the
first.

Eight Birmingham youths (some of them were under twenty years of age)
attempted a greater exploit, they ventured upon a complete peal of
15120 bob major. They failed indeed, _magnis tamen ausis_. For after
they had rang upwards of eight hours and a half, they found themselves
so much fatigued that they desired the caller would take the first
opportunity to bring the bells home. This he soon did by omitting a
bob and so brought them round thus making a peal of 14224 changes in
eight hours and forty-five minutes, the longest which was ever rung in
that part of the country, or perhaps any where else.

In that same year died Mr. Patrick the celebrated composer of
church-bell-music, and senior of the Society of Cumberland Youths,—an
Hibernian sort of distinction for one in middle or later life. He is
the same person whose name was well known in the scientific world as a
maker of barometers; and he it was who composed the whole peal of
Stedman's triples, 5040 changes, (which his obituarist says had till
then been deemed impracticable, and for the discovery of which he
received a premium of 50_l._ offered for that purpose by the Norwich
amateurs of the art) “his productions of real double and treble bob
royal being a standing monument of his unparalleled and superlative
merits.” This Mr. Patrick was interred on the afternoon of Sunday,
June 26, in the church-yard of St. Leonard, Shoreditch; the corpse was
followed to the grave by all the Ringing Societies in London and its
environs, each sounding hand bells with muffled clappers, the church
bells at the same time ringing a dead peal;

̔Ως οἵγ̕ ἀμφἰεπον τάφον Πατρἰκος βοϐϐοδάμοιο.

James Ogden was interred with honours of the same kind at Ashton under
Line, in the year of this present writing, 1827. His remains were
borne to the grave by the ringers of St. Michael's Tower in that town,
with whom he had rung the tenor bell for more than fifty years, and
with whom he performed “the unprecedented feat” of ringing five
thousand on that bell (which weighed 28 cwt.) in his sixty-seventh
year. After the funeral his old companions rang a dead peal for him of
828 changes, that being the number of the months of his life. Such in
England are the funeral honors of the Βελτιϛοι.

It would take 91 years to ring the changes upon twelve bells, at the
rate of two strokes to a second; the changes upon fourteen could not
be rung through at the same rate in less than 16575 years; and upon
four and twenty they would require more than 117,000 billions of
years.

Great then are the mysteries of bell-ringing! And this may be said in
its praise, that of all devices which men have sought out for
obtaining distinction by making a noise in the world, it is the most
harmless.

CHAPTER XXXII. P. I.

AN INTRODUCTION TO CERTAIN PRELIMINARIES ESSENTIAL TO THE PROGRESS OF
THIS WORK.

_Mas demos ya el asiento en lo importante,
Que el tiempo huye del mundo por la posta._

BALBUENA.

The subject of these memoirs heard the bells of St. George's ring for
the battles of Dettingen and Culloden; for Commodore Anson's return
and Admiral Hawke's victory; for the conquest of Quebec; for other
victories, important in their day, though in the retrospect they may
seem to have produced little effect; and for more than one Peace; for
the going out of the Old Style, and for the coming in of the New; for
the accession, marriage and coronation of George the 3d; for the birth
of George the 4th; and that of all his royal brethren and sisters;—and
what was to him a subject of nearer and dearer interest than any of
these events,—for his own wedding.

What said those bells to him that happy day? for that bells can convey
articulate sounds to those who have the gift of interpreting their
language, Whittington Lord Mayor of London Town knew by fortunate
experience.

So did a certain Father Confessor in the Netherlands whom a buxom
widow consulted upon the perilous question whether she should marry a
second husband, or continue in widowed blessedness. The prudent Priest
deemed it too delicate a point for him to decide; so he directed her
to attend to the bells of her church when next they chimed—(they were
but three in number)—and bring him word what she thought they said;
and he exhorted her to pray in the mean time earnestly for grace to
understand them rightly, and in the sense that might be most for her
welfare here and hereafter, as he on his part would pray for her.—She
listened with mouth and ears, the first time that the bells struck up;
and the more she listened, the more plainly they said “_Nempt een man,
Nempt een man!_—Take a Spouse, Take a Spouse!” “Aye Daughter!” said
the Confessor, when she returned to him with her report, “If the bells
have said so, so say I; and not I alone, but the Apostle also, and the
Spirit who through that Apostle hath told us when it is best for us to
marry!” Reader thou mayest thank the Leonine poet Gummarus Van Craen
for this good story.

What said the Bells of Doncaster to our dear Doctor on that happy
morning which made him a whole man by uniting to him the rib that he
till then had wanted? They said to him as distinctly as they spoke to
Whittington, and to the Flemish Widow,

Daniel Dove brings Deborah home.
Daniel Dove brings Deborah home.

[Illustration]

But whither am I hurrying? It was not till the year 1761 that that
happy union was effected; and the fourteen years whose course of
events I have reluctantly, yet of necessity, pretermitted, bring us
only to 1748 in which year the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle was made.
Peter Hopkins and Mrs. Hopkins were then both living, and Daniel had
not attained to the honors of his diploma. Before we come to the day
on which the bells rung that joyful peal, I must enter into some
details for the purpose of shewing how he became qualified for his
degree, and how he was enabled to take it; and it will be necessary
therefore to say something of the opportunities of instruction which
he enjoyed under Hopkins, and of the state of society in Doncaster at
that time. And preliminary to, as preparatory for all this, some
account is to be given of Doncaster itself.

Reader, you may skip this preliminary account if you please, but it
will be to your loss if you do! You perhaps may be one of those
persons who can travel from Dan to Beersheba, and neither make enquiry
concerning, nor take notice of, any thing on the way; but, thank
Heaven, I cannot pass through Doncaster in any such mood of mind. If
however thou belongest to a better class, then may I promise that in
what is here to follow, thou wilt find something to recompense thee
for the little time thou wilt employ in reading it, were that time
more than it will be, or more valuable than it is. For I shall
assuredly either tell thee of something which thou didst not know
before; (and let me observe by the bye that I never obtained any
information of any kind, which did not on some occasion or other prove
available;)—or I shall waken up to pleasurable consciousness thy
napping knowledge. Snuff the candles therefore, if it be candle-light,
and they require it; (I hope, for thine eyes' sake, thou art not
reading by a lamp!)—stir the fire, if it be winter, and it be prudent
to refresh it with the poker; and then comfortably begin a new
chapter:

_Faciam ut hujus loci semper memineris._[1]

[Footnote 1: TERENCE.]

END OF VOL. I.

W. Nicol, Cleveland-row, St. James's.

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