THE DOCTOR, &c.
a tetrahedron
VOL. II.
LONDON:
LONGMAN, REES, ORME, BROWN, GREEN AND LONGMAN.
1834.
LONDON:
PRINTED BY W. NICOL, CLEVELAND-ROW, ST. JAMES'S.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER XXXIII. P. I.—p. 1.
DONCASTRIANA. THE RIVER DON.
Rivers from bubbling springs Have rise at first; and great from abject things.
MIDDLETON.
CHAPTER XXXIV. P. I.—p. 11.
MORAL INTEREST OF TOPOGRAPHICAL WORKS. LOCAL ATTACHMENT.
Let none our Author rudely blame
Who from the story has thus long digrest;
But for his righteous pains may his fair fame
For ever travel, whilst his ashes rest.
SIR WILLILAM DAVENANT.
INTERCHAPTER III.—p. 20.
THE AUTHOR QUESTIONS THE PROPRIETY OF PERSONIFYING CIRCUMSTANCE, DENIES THE UNITY AND INDIVISIBILITY OF THE PUBLIC, AND MAY EVEN BE SUSPECTED OF DOUBTING ITS OMNISCIENCE AND ITS INFALLIBILITY.
_Ha forse
Testa la plebe, ove si chiuda in vece
Di senno, altro che nebbia? o forma voce
Chi sta più saggia, che un bebù d'armento?_
CHIABRERA.
CHAPTER XXXV. P. I.—p. 24.
DONCASTRIANA. POTTERIC CARR. SOMETHING CONCERNING THE MEANS OF EMPLOYING THE POOR, AND BETTERING THEIR CONDITION.
Why should I sowen draf out of my fist
When I may sowen wheat, if that me list?
CHAUCER.
CHAPTER XXXVI. P. I.—p. 32.
REMARKS ON AN OPINION OF MR. CRABBE'S. TOPOGRAPHICAL POETRY. DRAYTON.
Do, pious marble, let thy readers know
What they and what their children owe
To Drayton's name, whose sacred dust
We recommend unto thy trust.
Protect his memory, and preserve his story;
Remain a lasting monument of his glory;
And when thy ruins shall disclaim
To be the treasurer of his name,
His name that cannot fade shall be
An everlasting monument to thee.
EPITAPH IN WESTMINSTER ABBEY.
CHAPTER XXXVII. P. I.—p. 37.
ANECDOTES OF PETER HEYLYN AND LIGHTFOOT, EXEMPLIFYING THAT GREAT KNOWLEDGE IS NOT ALWAYS APPLICABLE TO LITTLE THINGS; AND THAT AS CHARITY BEGINS AT HOME, SO IT MAY WITH EQUAL TRUTH SOMETIMES BE SAID THAT KNOWLEDGE ENDS THERE.
A scholar in his study knows the stars,
Their motion and their influence, which are fix'd,
And which are wandering; can decypher seas,
And give each several land his proper bounds:
But set him to the compass he's to seek,
Where a plain pilot can direct his course
From hence unto both the Indies.
HEYWOOD.
CHAPTER XXXVIII. P. I.—p. 43.
THE READER IS LED TO INFER THAT A TRAVELLER WHO STOPS UPON THE WAY TO SKETCH, BOTANIZE, ENTOMOLOGIZE OR MINERALOGIZE, TRAVELS WITH MORE PLEASURE AND PROFIT TO HIMSELF THAN IF HE WERE IN THE MAIL COACH.
Non servio materiæ sed indulgeo; quæ quo ducit sequendum est, non quo invitat.
SENECA.
INTERCHAPTER IV.—p. 54.
ETYMOLOGICAL DISCOVERIES CONCERNING THE REMAINS OF VARIOUS TRIBES OR FAMILIES MENTIONED IN SCRIPTURAL HISTORY.
All things are big with jest; nothing that's plain But may be witty, if thou hast the vein.
HERBERT.
CHAPTER XXXIX. P. I.—p. 58.
A CHAPTER FOR THE INFORMATION OF THOSE WHO MAY VISIT DONCASTER, AND ESPECIALLY OF THOSE WHO FREQUENT THE RACES THERE.
My good Lord, there is a Corporation,
A body,—a kind of body.
MIDDLETON.
CHAPTER XL. P. I.—p. 73.
REMARKS ON THE ART OF VERBOSITY. A RULE OF COCCEIUS, AND ITS APPLICATION TO THE LANGUAGE AND PRACTICE OF THE LAW.
If they which employ their labour and travail about the public administration of justice, follow it only as a trade, with unquenchable and unconscionable thirst of gain, being not in heart persuaded that justice is God's own work, and themselves his agents in this business,—the sentence, of right, God's own verdict, and themselves his priests to deliver it; formalities of justice do but serve to smother right; and that which was necessarily ordained for the common good, is through shameful abuse made the cause of common misery.
HOOKER.
CHAPTER XLI. P. I.—p. 77.
REVENUE OF THE CORPORATION OF DONCASTER WELL APPLIED. DONCASTER RACES.
Play not for gain but sport: who plays for more Than he can lose with pleasure, stakes his heart; Perhaps his wife's too, and whom she hath bore.
HERBERT.
INTERCHAPTER V.—p. 84.
WHEREIN THE AUTHOR MAKES KNOWN HIS GOOD INTENTIONS TO ALL READERS, AND OFFERS GOOD ADVICE TO SOME OF THEM.
I can write, and talk too, as soft as other men, _with submission to better judgements,—and I leave it to you Gentlemen. I am but one, and I always distrust myself. I only hint my thoughts: You'll please to consider whether you will not think that it may seem to deserve your consideration._—This is a taking way of speaking. But much good may do them that use it!
ASGILL.
CHAPTER XLII. P. I.—p. 89.
DONCASTER CHURCH. THE RECTORIAL TITHES SECURED BY ARCHBISHOP SHARP FOR HIS OWN FAMILY.
Say ancient edifice, thyself with years
Grown grey, how long upon the hill has stood
Thy weather-braving tower, and silent mark'd
The human leaf in constant bud and fall?
The generations of deciduous man
How often hast thou seen them pass away!
HURDIS.
CHAPTER XLIII. P. I.—p. 94.
ANTIQUITIES OF DONCASTER. THE DEÆ MATRES. SAXON FONT. THE CASTLE. THE HELL CROSS.
_Vieux monuments,—
Las, peu à peu cendre vous devenez,
Fable du peuple et publiques rapines!
Et bien qu'au Temps pour un temps facent guerre
Les bastimens, si est ce que le Temps
Oeuvres et noms finablement atterre._
JOACHIM DU BELLAY.
CHAPTER XLIV. P. I.—p. 101.
HISTORICAL CIRCUMSTANCES CONNECTED WITH DONCASTER. THOMAS, EARL OF LANCASTER. EDWARD IV. ASKE'S INSURRECTION. ILLUSTRIOUS VISITORS. JAMES I. BARNABEE. CHARLES I. CHURCH LIBRARY.
They unto whom we shall appear tedious, are in no wise injured by us, because it is in their own hands to spare that labour which they are not willing to endure.
HOOKER.
CHAPTER XLV. P. I.—p. 109.
CONCERNING THE WORTHIES, OR GOOD MEN, WHO WERE NATIVES OF DONCASTER, OR OTHERWISE CONNECTED WITH THAT TOWN.
Vir bonus est quis?
TERENCE.
INTERCHAPTER VI.—p. 115.
CONTINGENT CAUSES. PERSONAL CONSIDERATIONS INDUCED BY REFLECTING ON THEM. THE AUTHOR TREMBLES FOR THE PAST.
_Vereis que no hay lazada desasida
De nudo y de pendencia soberana;
Ni a poder trastornar la orden del cielo
Las fuerzas llegan, ni el saber del suelo._
BALBUENA.
CHAPTER XLVI. P. I.—p. 120.
DANIEL DOVE'S ARRIVAL AT DONCASTER. THE ORGAN IN ST. GEORGE'S CHURCH. THE PULPIT. MRS. NEALE'S BENEFACTION.
_Non ulla Musis pagina gratior
Quam quæ severis ludicra jungere
Novit, fatigatamque nugis
Utilibus recreare mentem._
DR. JOHNSON.
CHAPTER XLVII. P. I.—p. 132.
DONCASTRIANA. GUY'S DEATH. SEARCH FOR HIS TOMB-STONE IN INGLETON CHURCH-YARD.
Go to the dull church-yard and see
Those hillocks of mortality,
Where proudest man is only found
By a small hillock on the ground.
TIXALL POETRY.
CHAPTER XLVIII. P. I.—p. 137.
A FATHER'S MISGIVINGS CONCERNING HIS SON'S DESTINATION. PETER HOPKINS'S GENEROSITY. DANIEL IS SENT ABROAD TO GRADUATE IN MEDICINE.
Heaven is the magazine wherein He puts
Both good and evil; Prayer's the key that shuts
And opens this great treasure: 'tis a key
Whose wards are Faith and Hope and Charity.
Wouldst thou prevent a judgement due to sin?
Turn but the key and thou may'st lock it in.
Or wouldst thou have a blessing fall upon thee?
Open the door, and it will shower on thee!
QUARLES.
CHAPTER XLIX.—p. 142.
CONCERNING THE INTEREST WHICH DANIEL THE ELDER TOOK IN THE DUTCH WAR, AND MORE ESPECIALLY IN THE SIEGE AND PROVIDENTIAL DELIVERY OF LEYDEN.
Glory to Thee in thine omnipotence,
O Lord who art our shield and our defence,
And dost dispense,
As seemeth best to thine unerring will,
(Which passeth mortal sense)
The lot of Victory still;
Edging sometimes with might the sword unjust;
And bowing to the dust,
The rightful cause, that so such seeming ill
May thine appointed purposes fulfil;
Sometimes, (as in this late auspicious hour
For which our hymns we raise,)
Making the wicked feel thy present power;
Glory to thee and praise,
Almighty God, by whom our strength was given!
Glory to Thee, O Lord of Earth and Heaven!
SOUTHEY.
CHAPTER L. P. I.—p. 149.
VOYAGE TO ROTTERDAM AND LEYDEN. THE AUTHOR CANNOT TARRY TO DESCRIBE THAT CITY. WHAT HAPPENED THERE TO DANIEL DOVE.
He took great content, exceeding delight in that his voyage. As who doth not that shall attempt the like?—For peregrination charms our senses with such unspeakable and sweet variety, that some count him unhappy that never travelled, a kind of prisoner, and pity his case that from his cradle to his old age he beholds the same still; still, still, the same, the same!
BURTON.
CHAPTER LI. P. I.—p. 158.
ARMS OF LEYDEN. DANIEL DOVE, M. D. A LOVE STORY, STRANGE BUT TRUE.
_Oye el extraño caso, advierte y siente;
Suceso es raro, mas verdad ha sido._
BALBUENA.
CHAPTER LII. P. I.—p. 163.
SHEWING HOW THE YOUNG STUDENT FELL IN LOVE—AND HOW HE MADE THE BEST USE OF HIS MISFORTUNE.
_Il creder, donne vaghe, è cortesia,
Quando colui che scrive o che favella,
Possa essere sospetto di bugia,
Per dir qualcosa troppo rara e bella.
Dunque chi ascolta questa istoria mea
E non la crede frottola o novella
Ma cosa vera—come ella è di fatto,
Fa che di lui mi chiami soddisfatto.
E pure che mi diate piena fede,
De la dubbiezza altrui poco mi cale._
RICCIARDETTO.
CHAPTER LIII. P. I.—p. 169.
OF THE VARIOUS WAYS OF GETTING IN LOVE. A CHAPTER CONTAINING SOME USEFUL OBSERVATIONS, AND SOME BEAUTIFUL POETRY.
Let cavillers know, that as the Lord John answered the Queen in that Italian Guazzo, an old, a grave discreet man is fittest to discourse of love-matters; because he hath likely more experience, observed more, hath a more staid judgement, can better discern, resolve, discuss, advise, give better cautions and more solid precepts, better inform his auditors in such a subject, and by reason of his riper years, sooner divert.
BURTON.
CHAPTER LIV. P. I.—p. 176.
MORE CONCERNING LOVE AND MARRIAGE, AND MARRIAGE WITHOUT LOVE.
Nay Cupid, pitch thy trammel where thou please, Thou canst not fail to catch such fish as these.
QUARLES.
CHAPTER LV. P. I.—p. 183.
THE AUTHOR'S LAST VISIT TO DONCASTER.
_Fuere quondam, hæc sed fuere;
Nunc ubi sint, rogitas? Id annos
Scire hos oportet scilicet. O bonæ
Musæ, O Lepôres—O Charites meræ!
O gaudia offuscata nullis
Litibus! O sine nube soles!_
JANUS DOUZA.
CHAPTER LVI. P. I.—p. 189.
A TRUCE WITH MELANCHOLY. GENTLEMEN SUCH AS THEY WERE IN THE YEAR OF OUR LORD 1747. A HINT TO YOUNG LADIES CONCERNING THEIR GREAT GRANDMOTHERS.
Fashions that are now called new,
Have been worn by more than you;
Elder times have used the same,
Though these new ones get the name.
MIDDLETON.
CHAPTER LVII. P. I.—p. 195.
AN ATTEMPT IS MADE TO REMOVE THE UNPLEASANT IMPRESSION PRODUCED UPON THE LADIES BY THE DOCTOR'S TYE-WIG AND HIS SUIT OF SNUFF-COLOURED DITTOS.
So full of shapes is fancy
That it alone is high fantastical.
TWELFTH NIGHT.
CHAPTER LVIII. P. I.—p. 199.
CONCERNING THE PORTRAIT OF DR. DANIEL DOVE.
The sure traveller
Though he alight sometimes still goeth on.
HERBERT.
CHAPTER LIX. P. I.—p. 204.
SHOWING WHAT THAT QUESTION WAS, WHICH WAS ANSWERED BEFORE IT WAS ASKED.
Chacun a son stile; le mien, comme vouz voyez, n'est pas laconique.
M^E. DE SEVIGNEˊ.
CHAPTER LX. P. I.—p. 208.
SHOWING CAUSE WHY THE QUESTION WHICH WAS NOT ASKED OUGHT TO BE ANSWERED.
Nay in troth I talk but coarsely, But I hold it comfortable for the understanding.
BEAUMONT and FLETCHER.
CHAPTER LXI. P. I.—p. 215.
WHEREIN THE QUESTION IS ANSWERED WHICH OUGHT TO HAVE BEEN ASKED.
_Ajutami, tu penna, et calamaio,
Ch' io hò tra mano una materia asciutta._
MATTIO FRANZESI.
CHAPTER LXII.—p. 222.
IN WHICH IS RELATED THE DISCOVERY OF A CERTAIN PORTRAIT AT DONCASTER.
Call in the Barber! If the tale be long
He'll cut it short, I trust.
MIDDLETON.
CHAPTER LXIII.—p. 228.
A DISCUSSION CONCERNING THE QUESTION LAST PROPOSED.
_Questo è bene un de' più profondi passi
Che noi habbiamo ancora oggi tentato;
E non è mica da huomini bassi._
AGNUOLO FIRENZUOLA.
CHAPTER LXIV.—p. 234.
DEFENCE OF PORTRAIT-PAINTING. A SYSTEM OF MORAL COSMETICS RECOMMENDED TO THE LADIES. GWILLIM. SIR T. LAWRENCE. GEORGE WITHER. APPLICATION TO THE SUBJECT OF THIS WORK.
Pingitur in tabulis formæ peritura venustas, Vivat ut in tabulis, quod perit in facie.
OWEN.
CHAPTER LXV.—p. 242.
SOCIETY OF A COUNTRY TOWN. SUCH A TOWN A MORE FAVOURABLE HABITAT FOR SUCH A PERSON AS DR. DOVE THAN LONDON WOULD HAVE BEEN.
Be then thine own home, and in thyself dwell; Inn any where; And seeing the snail, which every where doth roam, Carrying his own home still, still is at home, Follow (for he is easy paced) this snail; Be thine own Palace, or the World's thy jail.
DONNE.
CHAPTER LXVI.—p. 251.
MR. COPLEY OF NETHERHALL. SOCIETY AT HIS HOUSE. DRUMMOND. BURGH. GRAY. MASON. MILLER THE ORGANIST AND HISTORIAN OF DONCASTER. HERSCHEL.
All worldly joys go less
To the one joy of doing kindnesses.
HERBERT.
CHAPTER LXVII.—p. 257.
A MYTHOLOGICAL STORY MORALIZED.
Il faut mettre les fables en presse pour en tirer quelque suc de verité.
GARASSE.
CHAPTER LXVIII.—p. 270.
ECCENTRIC PERSONS, WHY APPARENTLY MORE COMMON IN ENGLAND THAN IN OTHER COUNTRIES. HARRY BINGLEY.
Blest are those Whose blood and judgement are so well commingled, That they are not a pipe for Fortune's finger To sound what stop she please.
HAMLET.
CHAPTER LXIX.—p. 282.
A MUSICAL RECLUSE AND HIS SISTER.
Some proverb maker, I forget who, says, “God hath given to some men wisdom and understanding, and to others the art of playing on the fiddle.”
Professor PARK'S Dogmas of the Constitution.
CHAPTER LXX.—p. 288.
SHEWING THAT ANY HONEST OCCUPATION IS BETTER THAN NONE, BUT THAT OCCUPATIONS WHICH ARE DEEMED HONOURABLE ARE NOT ALWAYS HONEST.
J'ai peine à concevoir pourquoi le plûpart des hommes ont une si forte envie d'être heureux, et une si grande incapacité pour le devenir.
VOYAGES DE MILORD CETON.
CHAPTER LXXI.—p. 295.
TRANSITION IN OUR NARRATIVE PREPARATORY TO A CHANGE IN THE DOCTOR'S LIFE. A SAD STORY SUPPRESSED. THE AUTHOR PROTESTS AGAINST PLAYING WITH THE FEELINGS OF HIS READERS. ALL ARE NOT MERRY THAT SEEM MIRTHFUL. THE SCAFFOLD A STAGE. DON RODRIGO CALDERON. THISTLEWOOD. THE WORLD A MASQUERADE, BUT THE DOCTOR ALWAYS IN HIS OWN CHARACTER.
This breaks no rule of order.
If order were infringed then should I flee
From my chief purpose, and my mark should miss.
Order is Nature's beauty, and the way
To Order is by rules that Art hath found.
GWILLIM.
CHAPTER LXXII.—p. 313.
IN WHICH THE FOURTH OF THE QUESTIONS PROPOSED IN CHAPTER II. P. I. IS BEGUN TO BE ANSWERED; SOME OBSERVATIONS UPON ANCESTRY ARE INTRODUCED, AND THE READER IS INFORMED WHY THE AUTHOR DOES NOT WEAR A CAP AND BELLS.
Boast not the titles of your ancestors, Brave youths! they're their possessions, none of yours. When your own virtues equall'd have their names, 'Twill be but fair to lean upon their fames, For they are strong supporters; but till then The greatest are but growing gentlemen.
BEN JONSON.
CHAPTER LXXIII.—p. 318.
RASH MARRIAGES. AN EARLY WIDOWHOOD. AFFLICTION RENDERED A BLESSING TO THE SUFFERER; AND TWO ORPHANS LEFT, THOUGH NOT DESTITUTE, YET FRIENDLESS.
Love built a stately house; where Fortune came,
And spinning fancies, she was heard to say
That her fine cobwebs did support the frame;
Whereas they were supported by the same.
But Wisdom quickly swept them all away.
HERBERT.
CHAPTER LXXIV.—p. 324.
A LADY DESCRIBED WHOSE SINGLE LIFE WAS NO BLESSEDNESS EITHER TO HERSELF OR OTHERS. A VERACIOUS EPITAPH AND AN APPROPRIATE MONUMENT.
Beauty! my Lord,—'tis the worst part of woman! A weak poor thing, assaulted every hour By creeping minutes of defacing time; A superficies which each breath of care Blasts off; and every humorous stream of grief Which flows from forth these fountains of our eyes, Washeth away, as rain doth winter's snow.
GOFF.
CHAPTER LXXV.—p. 331.
A SCENE WHICH WILL PUT SOME OF THOSE READERS WHO HAVE BEEN MOST IMPATIENT WITH THE AUTHOR, IN THE BEST HUMOUR WITH HIM.
There is no argument of more antiquity and elegancy than is the matter of Love; for it seems to be as old as the world, and to bear date from the first time that man and woman was: therefore in this, as in the finest metal, the freshest wits have in all ages shewn their best workmanship.
ROBERT WILMOT.
CHAPTER LXXVI.—p. 337.
A STORY CONCERNING CUPID WHICH NOT ONE READER IN TEN THOUSAND HAS EVER HEARD BEFORE; A DEFENCE OF LOVE WHICH WILL BE VERY SATISFACTORY TO THE LADIES.
They do lie,
Lie grossly who say Love is blind,—by him
And Heaven they lie! he has a sight can pierce
Thro' ivory, as clear as it were horn,
And reach his object.
BEAUMONT and FLETCHER.
CHAPTER LXXVII.—p. 346.
MORE CONCERNING LOVE AND THE DREAM OF LIFE.
Happy the bonds that hold ye;
Sure they be sweeter far than liberty.
There is no blessedness but in such bondage;
Happy that happy chain; such links are heavenly.
BEAUMONT and FLETCHER.
THE DOCTOR, &c.
CHAPTER XXXIII. P. I.
DONCASTRIANA. THE RIVER DON.
Rivers from bubbling springs Have rise at first; and great from abject things.
MIDDLETON.
How would it have astonished Peter Hopkins if some one gifted with the faculty of second sight had foretold to him that, at the sale of Pews in a new Church at Doncaster, eighteen of those Pews should produce upwards of sixteen hundred pounds, and that one of them should be bought at the price of £138,—a sum for which in his days lands enough might have been purchased to have qualified three men as Yorkshire Freeholders! How would it have surprized him to have been told that Doncaster races would become the greatest meeting in the North of England; that Princes would attend them, and more money would annually be won and lost there than might in old times have sufficed for a King's ransom! But the Doncaster of George the fourth's reign is not more like the Doncaster of George the second's, than George the fourth himself, in manners, habit, character and person is like his royal Great Grandfather;—not more like than to the Doncaster of the United States, if such a place there be there; or to the Doncaster that may be in New South Wales, Van Diemen's or Swan-river-land. It was a place of considerable importance when young Daniel first became an inhabitant of it; but it was very far from having attained all the advantages arising from its well-endowed corporation, its race-ground, and its position on the great north road.
It is beyond a doubt that Doncaster may be identified with the Danum of Antoninus and the Notitia, the Caer Daun of Nennius, and the Dona-cester of the Saxons: whether it were the Campo-Donum of Bede,—a royal residence of the Northumbrian Kings, where Paulinus the Romish Apostle of Northumbria built a Church, which with the town itself was burnt by the Welsh King Cadwallon, and his Saxon Ally the Pagan Penda, after a battle in which Edwin fell,—is not so certain; antiquaries differ upon this point, but they who maintain the affirmative appear to have the strongest case. In the charter granted to it by Richard Cœur de Lion the town is called Danecastre.
The name indicates that it was a Roman Station on the river Dan, Don or Dun, “so called,” says Camden, “because 'tis carried in a low deep channel, for that is the signification of the British word Dan.” I thank Dr. Prichard for telling me what it was not possible for Camden to know,—that Don in the language of the Ossetes, a Caucassian tribe, means water; and that in a country so remote as New Guinea, Dan has the same meaning. Our Doctor loved the river for its name's sake; and the better because the river Dove falls into it. Don however, though not without some sacrifice of feeling, he was content to call it, in conformity to the established usage. A more satisfactory reason to him would have been that of preserving the identity of name with the Don of Aberdeenshire and of the Cossacks, and the relationship in etymology with the Donau, but that the original pronunciation which was, as he deemed, perverted in that latter name was found in Danube; and that by calling his own river Don it ceased to be homonymous with that Dan which adds its waters, and its name to the Jor.
But the Yorkshire Don might be liked also for its own sake. Hear how its course is described in old prose and older verse! “The River Don or Dun,” says Dodsworth in his Yorkshire collections, “riseth in the upper part of Pennystone parish near Lady's Cross (which may be called our Appennines, because the rain water that falleth sheddeth from sea to sea;) cometh to Birchworth, so to Pennystone, thence to Boleterstone by Medop, leaveth Wharncliffe Chase (stored with roebucks, which are decayed since the great frost) on the north (belonging to Sir Francis Wortley, where he hath great iron works. The said Wharncliffe affordeth two hundred dozen of coal for ever to his said works. In this Chase he had red and fallow deer and roes) and leaveth Bethuns, a Chase and Tower of the Earl of Salop, on the south side. By Wortley to Waddsley, where in times past Everingham of Stainber had a park, now disparked. Thence to Sheffield, and washeth the castle wall; keepeth its course to Attercliffe, where is an iron forge of the Earl of Salop; from thence to Winkebank, Kymberworth and Eccles, where it entertaineth the Rother; cometh presently to Rotherham, thence to Aldwark Hall, the Fitzwilliams' ancient possession; then to Thriberg Park, the seat of Reresbyes Knights; then to Mexborough, where hath been a Castle; then to Conisborough Park and Castle of the Earls of Warrens, where there is a place called Horsas Tomb. From thence to Sprotebrough, the ancient seat of the famous family of Fitzwilliam who have flourished since the conquest. Thence by Newton to Donecastre, Wheatley and Kirk Sandal to Barnby-Dunn; by Bramwith and Stainforth to Fishlake; thence to Turnbrig, a port town serving indifferently for all the west parts, where he pays his tribute to the Ayre.”
Hear Michael Drayton next, who being as determined a personificator as Darwin himself, makes “the wide West Riding” thus address her favorite River Don;
Thou first of all my floods, whose banks do bound my south And offerest up thy stream to mighty Humber's mouth; Of yew and climbing elm that crown'd with many a spray, From thy clear fountain first thro' many a mead dost play, Till Rother, whence the name of Rotherham first begun, At that her christened town doth lose her in my Don; Which proud of her recourse, towards Doncaster doth drive, Her great and chiefest town, the name that doth derive From Don's near bordering banks; when holding on her race, She, dancing in and out, indenteth Hatfield Chase, Whose bravery hourly adds new honors to her bank: When Sherwood sends her in slow Iddle that, made rank With her profuse excess, she largely it bestows On Marshland, whose swoln womb with such abundance flows, As that her battening breast her fatlings sooner feeds, And with more lavish waste than oft the grazier needs; Whose soil, as some reports, that be her borderers, note, With water under earth undoubtedly doth float, For when the waters rise, it risen doth remain High, while the floods are high, and when they fall again, It falleth: but at last when as my lively Don Along by Marshland side her lusty course hath run, The little wandering Trent, won by the loud report Of the magnific state and height of Humber's court, Draws on to meet with Don, at her approach to Aire.
Seldon's rich commentary does not extend to that part of the Polyolbion in which these lines occur, but a comment upon the supposed rising and falling of the Marshland with the waters, is supplied by Camden. “The Don,” he says after it has passed Hatfield Chase “divides itself, one stream running towards the river Idel which comes out of Nottinghamshire, the other towards the river Aire; in both which they continue till they meet again, and fall into the Æstuary of Humber. Within the island, or that piece of ground encompassed by the branches of these two rivers are Dikemarsh, and Marshland, fenny tracts, or rather river-islands, about fifteen miles round, which produce a very green rank grass, and are as it were set round with little villages. Some of the inhabitants imagine the whole island floats upon the water; and that sometimes when the waters are encreased 'tis raised higher; just like what Pomponius Mela tells us of the Isle of Autrum in Gaul.” Upon this passage Bishop Gibson remarks, “as to what our author observes of the ground being heaved up, Dr. Johnston affirms he has spoke with several old men who told him, that the turf-moor between Thorne and Gowle was so much higher before the draining, especially in winter time, than it is now, that before they could see little of the church steeple, whereas now they can see the church-yard wall.”
The poet might linger willingly with Ebenezer Elliott amid
——rock, vale and wood,— Haunts of his early days, and still loved well,— And where the sun, o'er purple moorlands wide, Gilds Wharncliffe's oaks, while Don is dark below; And where the black bird sings on Rother's side, And where Time spares the age of Conisbro';
but we must proceed with good matter of fact prose.
The river has been made navigable to Tinsley, within three miles of Sheffield, and by this means Sheffield, Rotherham and Doncaster carry on a constant intercourse with Hull. A cut was made for draining that part of Hatfield Chase called the Levels, by an adventurous Hollander, Cornelius Vermuyden by name, in the beginning of Charles the first's reign. Some two hundred families of French and Walloon refugees were induced to colonize there at that time. They were forcibly interrupted in their peaceful and useful undertaking by the ignorant people of the country, who were instigated and even led on by certain of the neighbouring gentry, as ignorant as themselves; but the Government was then strong enough to protect them; they brought about twenty-four thousand acres into cultivation, and many of their descendants are still settled upon the ground which was thus reclaimed. Into this new cut, which is at this day called the Dutch river, the Don was turned, its former course having been through Eastoft; but the navigation which has since proved so beneficial to the country, and toward which this was the first great measure, produced at first a plentiful crop of lawsuits, and one of the many pamphlets which this litigation called forth, bears as an alias in its title, “the Devil upon Don.”
Many vestiges of former cultivation were discovered when this cut was made,—such (according to Gibson's information) as gates, ladders, hammers and shoes. The land was observed in some places to lie in ridges and furrows, as if it had been ploughed; and oaks and fir trees were frequently dug up, some of which were found lying along, with their roots still fastened; others as if cut, or burnt, and severed from the ground. Roots were long to be seen in the great cut, some very large and standing upright, others with an inclination toward the east.
About the year 1665 the body of a man was found in a turf pit, some four yards deep, lying with his head toward the north. The hair and nails were not decayed, and the skin was like tanned leather; but it had lain so long there that the bones had become spongy.
CHAPTER XXXIV. P. I.
MORAL INTEREST OF TOPOGRAPHICAL WORKS. LOCAL ATTACHMENT.
Let none our Author rudely blame
Who from the story has thus long digrest;
But for his righteous pains may his fair fame
For ever travel, whilst his ashes rest.
SIR WILLIAM DAVENANT.
Reader, if thou carest little or nothing for the Yorkshire river Don and for the town of Doncaster, and for the circumstances connected with it, I am sorry for thee. My venerable friend the Doctor was of a different disposition. He was one who loved, like Southey
———uncontrolled, as in a dream
To muse upon the course of human things;
Exploring sometimes the remotest springs,
Far as tradition lends one guiding gleam;
Or following upon Thought's audacious wings
Into Futurity the endless stream.
He could not only find
———tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, Sermons in stones, and good in every thing,—[1]
but endeavoured to find all he could in them, and for that reason delighted to enquire into the history of places and of things, and to understand their past as well as their present state. The revolutions of a mansion house within his circuit were as interesting to him as those of the Mogul Empire; and he had as much satisfaction in being acquainted with the windings of a brook from its springs to the place where it fell into the Don, as he could have felt in knowing that the Sources of the Nile had been explored, or the course and termination of the Niger.
[Footnote 1: SHAKESPEAR.]
Hear, Reader, what a journalist says upon rivers in the newest and most approved style of critical and periodical eloquence! He says, and he regarded himself no doubt with no small complacency while so saying,
“An acquaintance with” Rivers “well deserves to be erected into a distinct science. We hail Potamology with a cordial greeting, and welcome it to our studies, parlours, schools, reading-rooms, lecture-rooms, mechanics' institutes and universities. There is no end to the interest which Rivers excite. They may be considered physically, geographically, historically, politically, commercially, mathematically, poetically, pictorially, morally, and even religiously—In the world's anatomy they are its veins, as the primitive mountains, those mighty structures of granite, are its bones; they minister to the fertility of the earth, the purity of the air, and the health of mankind. They mark out nature's kingdoms and provinces, and are the physical dividers and subdividers of continents. They welcome the bold discoverer into the heart of the country, to whose coast the sea has borne his adventurous bark. The richest freights have floated on their bosoms, and the bloodiest battles have been fought upon their banks. They move the wheels of cotton mills by their mechanical power, and madden the souls of poets and painters by their picturesque splendor. They make scenery and are scenery, and land yields no landscape without water. They are the best vehicle for the transit of the goods of the merchant, and for the illustration of the maxims of the moralist. The figure is so familiar, that we scarcely detect a metaphor when the stream of life and the course of time flow on into the ocean of Eternity.”
Hear, hear, oh hear!
_Udite—
Fiumi correnti, e rive,—
E voi—fontane vive!_[2]
Yet the person who wrote this was neither deficient in feeling, nor in power; it is the epidemic vice prevailing in an age of journals that has infected him. They who frame their style ad captandum fall into this vein, and as immediate effect is their object they are wise in their generation. The public to which they address themselves are attracted by it, as flies swarm about treacle.
[Footnote 2: GIUSTO DE' CONTE.]
We are advanced from the Age of Reason to the Age of Intellect, and this is the current eloquence of that age!—let us get into an atmosphere of common sense.
Topographical pursuits, my Doctor used to say, tend to preserve and promote the civilization of which they are a consequence and a proof. They have always prospered in prosperous countries, and flourished most in flourishing times when there have been persons enough of opulence to encourage such studies, and of leisure to engage in them. Italy and the Low Countries therefore took the lead in this branch of literature; the Spaniards and Portugueze cultivated it in their better days; and beginning among ourselves with Henry 8th, it has been continued with encreasing zeal down to the present time.
Whatever strengthens our local attachments is favorable both to individual and national character. Our home,—our birth place,—our native land,—think for a while what the virtues are which arise out of the feelings connected with these words; and if thou hast any intellectual eyes thou wilt then perceive the connection between topography and patriotism.
Shew me a man who cares no more for one place than another, and I will shew you in that same person one who loves nothing but himself. Beware of those who are homeless by choice! You have no hold on a human being whose affections are without a tap-root. The laws recognize this truth in the privileges which they confer upon freeholders; and public opinion acknowledges it also, in the confidence which it reposes upon those who have what is called a stake in the country. Vagabond and rogue are convertible terms; and with how much propriety any one may understand who knows what are the habits of the wandering classes, such as gypsies, tinkers and potters.
The feeling of local attachment was possessed by Daniel Dove in the highest degree. Spurzheim and the crazyologists would have found out a bump on his head for its local habitation;—letting that quackery pass, it is enough for me to know that he derived this feeling from his birth as a mountaineer, and that he had also a right to it by inheritance, as one whose ancestors had from time immemorial dwelt upon the same estate. Smile not contemptuously at that word, ye, whose domains extend over more square miles than there were square roods upon his patrimony! To have held that little patrimony unimpaired, as well as unenlarged, through so many generations implies more contentment, more happiness, and a more uniform course of steadiness and good conduct, than could be found in the proudest of your genealogies!
The most sacred spot upon earth to him was his father's hearth-stead. Rhine, Rhone, Danube, Thames or Tyber, the mighty Ganges or the mightier Maranon, even Jordan itself, affected his imagination less than the Greta, or Wease as he was wont to call it, of his native fields; whose sounds in his boyhood were the first which he heard at morning and the last at night, and during so many peaceful and happy years made as it were an accompaniment to his solitary musings, as he walked between his father's house and his schoolmaster's, to and fro.
Next to that wild river Wease whose visible course was as delightful to the eye and ear, as its subterranean one was to the imagination, he loved the Don. He was not one of those refined persons who like to lessen their admiration of one object by comparing it with another. It entered as little into his mind to depreciate the Don because it was not a mountain stream, as it did into Corporal Trim's or Uncle Toby's to think the worse of Bohemia because it has no sea coast. What if it had no falls, no rapids or resting-places, no basins whose pellucid water might tempt Diana and the Oreades to bathe in it; instead of these the Don had beauties of its own, and utilities which give to such beauties when combined with them an additional charm. There was not a more pleasing object in the landscape to his eyes than the broad sail of a barge slowly moving between the trees, and bearing into the interior of England the produce of the Baltic, and of the East and West.
The place in the world which he loved best was Ingleton, because in that little peaceful village, as in his childhood it was, he had once known every body and every body had known him; and all his recollections of it were pleasurable, till time cast over them a softening but a pensive hue. But next to Ingleton he loved Doncaster.
And wherefore did he thus like Doncaster? For a better reason than the epigrammatist could give for not liking Dr. Fell, though perhaps many persons have no better than that epigrammatist had in this case, for most of their likings and dislikings. He liked it because he must have been a very unreasonable man if he had not been thankful that his lot had fallen there—because he was useful and respected there, contented, prosperous, happy; finally because it is a very likeable place, being one of the most comfortable towns in England: for it is clean, spacious, in a salubrious situation, well-built, well-governed, has no manufactures, few poor, a greater proportion of inhabitants who are not engaged in any trade or calling, than perhaps any other town in the kingdom, and moreover it sends no members to parliament.
INTERCHAPTER III.
THE AUTHOR QUESTIONS THE PROPRIETY OF PERSONIFYING CIRCUMSTANCE, DENIES THE UNITY AND INDIVISIBILITY OF THE PUBLIC, AND MAY EVEN BE SUSPECTED OF DOUBTING ITS OMNISCIENCE AND ITS INFALLIBILITY.
_Ha forse
Testa la plebe, ove si chiuda in vece
Di senno, altro che nebbia? o forma voce
Chi sta più saggia, che un bebù d'armerito?_
CHIABRERA.
“What a kind of Being is circumstance!” says Horace Walpole in his atrocious tragedy of the Mysterious Mother.—A very odd kind of Being indeed. In the course of my reading I remember but three Beings equally remarkable,—as personified in prose and verse. Social-Tie was one; Catastrophe another; and Inoculation, heavenly Maid! the third.
But of all ideal Beings the most extraordinary is that which we call the Public. The Public and Transubstantiation I hold to be the two greatest mysteries in, or out of nature. And there are certain points of resemblance between them.—For as the Priest creates the one mystery, so the author, or other appellant to the said Public, creates the other, and both bow down in worship, real or simulated, before the Idol of their own creation. And as every fragment of the wafer break it into as many as you may, contains in itself the whole entire mystery of Transubstantiation, just in the same manner every fractional part of the Public assumes to itself the powers, privileges and prerogatives of the whole, as virtually, potentially and indefeasably its own. Nay, every individual who deems himself a constituent member of the said Public arrogates them also, and when he professes to be acting pro bono publico, the words mean with him all the good he can possibly get for himself.
The old and famous illustration of Hermes may be in part applied to the Public; it is a circle of which the centre is every where: in part I say, for its circumference is defined. It is bounded by language, and has many intercircles. It is indeed a confused multiplicity of circles intersecting each other, perpetually in motion and in change. Every man is the centre of some circle, and yet involved in others; he who is not sometimes made giddy by their movements, has a strong head; and he who is not sometimes thrown off his balance by them, stands well upon his legs.
Again, the Public is like a nest of patent coffins packed for exportation, one within another. There are Publics of all sizes, from the genus generalissimum, the great general universal Public, whom London is not large enough to hold, to the species specialissima, the little Thinking Public, which may find room in a nutshell.
There is the Fashionable Public, and the Religious Public, and the Play-going Public, and the Sporting Public, and the Commercial Public, and the Literary Public, and the Reading Public, and Heaven knows how many Publics more. They call themselves Worlds sometimes,—as if a certain number of worldlings made a World!
He who pays his homage to any or all of these Publics, is a Publican and a Sinner.
“Nunquam valui populo placere; nam quæ ego scio non probat populus; quæ probat populas, ego nescio.”[1]
“_Bene et ille, quisquis fuit, (ambigitur enim de auctore,) cum quæreretur ab illo, quo tanta diligentia artis spectaret ad paucissimos perventuræ? Satis sunt, inquit, mihi pauci; satis est unus; satis est nullus._”[2]
[Footnote 1: SENECA, 2, 79.]
[Footnote 2: IB, ib. 17.]
CHAPTER XXXV. P. I.
DONCASTRIANA. POTTERIC CARR. SOMETHING CONCERNING THE MEANS OF EMPLOYING THE POOR, AND BETTERING THEIR CONDITION.
Why should I sowen draf out of my fist
When I may sowen wheat, if that me list?
CHAUCER.
Doncaster is built upon a peninsula, or ridge of land, about a mile across, having a gentle slope from east to west, and bounded on the west by the river; this ridge is composed of three strata; to wit,—of the alluvial soil deposited by the river in former ages, and of limestone on the north and west; and of sandstone to the south and east. To the south of this neck of land lies a tract called Potteric Carr which is much below the level of the river, and was a morass, or range of fens when our Doctor first took up his abode in Doncaster. This tract extends about four miles in length and nearly three in breadth, and the security which it afforded against an attack on that side, while the river protected the peninsula by its semicircular bend on the other, was evidently one reason why the Romans fixed upon the site of Doncaster for a station. In Brockett's Glossary of North-Country words, Carr is interpreted to mean “flat marshy land; a pool or lake;” but the etymology of the word is yet to be discovered.
These fens were drained and enclosed pursuant to an Act of Parliament which was obtained for that purpose in the year 1766. Three principal drains were then cut, fourteen feet wide, and about four miles long, into which the water was conducted from every part of the Carr, southward, to the little river Torne at Rossington Bridge, whence it flows into the Trent. Before these drainings the ground was liable to frequent inundations; and about the centre there was a decoy for wild ducks: there is still a deep water there of considerable extent, in which very large pike and eels are found. The soil, which was so boggy at first that horses were lost when attempting to drink at the drains, has been brought into good cultivation (as all such ground may be) to the great improvement of the district; for till this improvement was effected intermittent fevers and sore throats were prevalent there, and they have ceased from the time that the land was drained. The most unhealthy season now is the Spring, when cold winds from the North and North East, usually prevail during some six weeks; at other times Doncaster is considered to be a healthy place. It has been observed that when endemic diseases arrive there, they uniformly come from the south; and that the state of the weather may be foretold from a knowledge of what it has been at a given time in London, making an allowance of about three days, for the chance of winds. Here, as in all places which lie upon a great and frequented road, the transmission of diseases has been greatly facilitated by the increase of travelling.
But before we leave Potteric Carr, let us try reader, whether we cannot improve it in another way, that is in the dissenting and, so called, evangelical sense of the word, in which sense the battle of Trafalgar was improved, in a sermon by the Reverend John Evans. Gentle Reader, let you and I in like manner endeavour to improve this enclosure of the Carr.
Four thousand acres of bog whereof that Carr consisted, and upon which common sand, coal ashes, and the scrapings of a limestone road were found the best manure, produce now good crops of grain and excellent pasturage.
There are said to be in England and Wales at this time 3,984,000 acres of uncultivated but cultivable ground; 5,950,000 in Scotland; 4,900,000 in Ireland; 166,000 in the smaller British Islands. Crags, woods, and barren land are not included in this statement. Here are 15,000,000 acres, the worst of which is as good as the morass which has been reclaimed near Doncaster, and the far greater part very materially better.
I address myself now to any one of my readers who pays poor rates; but more especially to him who has any part in the disposal of those rates; and most especially to a clergyman, a magistrate, and a member of Parliament.
The money which is annually raised for poor-rates in England and Wales has for some years amounted to from five to six millions. With all this expenditure cases are continually occurring of death from starvation, either of hunger or cold, or both together; wretches are carried before the magistrates for the offence of lying in the streets or in unfinished houses, when they have not where to hide their heads; others have been found dead by the side of limekilns, or brickkilns, whither they had crept to save themselves from perishing for cold; and untold numbers die of the diseases produced by scanty and unwholesome food.
This money moreover is for the most part so applied, that they who have a rightful claim upon it, receive less than in justice, in humanity, and according to the intent of a law wisely and humanely enacted, ought to be their portion; while they who have only a legal claim upon it, that claim arising from an evil usage which has become prescriptive, receive pay where justice, policy, and considerate humanity, and these very laws themselves if rightly administered, would award restraint or punishment.
Thus it is in those parts of the United Kingdom, where a provision for the poor is directly raised by law. In Scotland the proportion of paupers is little less, and the evils attendant upon poverty are felt in an equal or nearly equal degree. In Ireland they exist to a far greater extent, and may truly be called terrible.
Is it fitting that this should be while there are fifteen millions of cultivable acres lying waste? Is it possible to conceive grosser improvidence in a nation, grosser folly, grosser ignorance of its duty and interest, or grosser neglect of both, than are manifested in the continuance and growth and increase of this enormous evil, when the means of checking it are so obvious, and that too by a process in which every step must produce direct and tangible good?
But while the Government is doing those things which it ought not to have done, and leaves undone those which it ought to do, let Parishes and Corporations do what is in their power for themselves. And bestir yourselves in this good work ye who can! The supineness of the Government is no excuse for you. It is in the exertions of individuals that all national reformation must begin. Go to work cautiously, experimentally, patiently, charitably, and in faith! I am neither so enthusiastic as to suppose, nor so rash as to assert, that a cure may thus be found for the complicated evils arising from the condition of the labouring classes. But it is one of those remedial means by which much misery may be relieved, and much of that profligacy that arises from hopeless wretchedness be prevented. It is one of those means from which present relief may be obtained, and future good expected. It is the readiest way in which useful employment can be provided for the industrious poor. And if the land so appropriated should produce nothing more than is required for the support of those employed in cultivating it, and who must otherwise be partly or wholly supported by the poor-rates, such cultivation would even then be profitable to the public. Wherever there is heath, moor or fen,—which there is in every part of the Island,—there is work for the spade; employment and subsistence for man is to be found there, and room for him to encrease and multiply for generations.
Reader, if you doubt that bog and bad land may be profitably cultivated, go and look at Potteric Carr; (the members of both Houses who attend Doncaster Races, may spare an hour for this at the next meeting). If you desire to know in what manner the poor who are now helpless may be settled upon such land, so as immediately to earn their own maintenance, and in a short time to repay the first cost of their establishment, read the account of the Pauper Colonies in Holland; for there the experiment has been tried, and we have the benefit of their experience.
As for the whole race of Political Economists, our Malthusites, Benthamites, Utilitarians or Futilitarians, they are to the Government of this Country such counsellors as the magicians were to Pharaoh; whosoever listens to them has his heart hardened.—But they are no conjurors.
CHAPTER XXXVI. P. I.
REMARKS ON AN OPINION OF MR. CRABBE'S. TOPOGRAPHICAL POETRY. DRAYTON.
Do, pious marble, let thy readers know
What they and what their children owe
To Drayton's name, whose sacred dust
We recommend unto thy trust.
Protect his memory, and preserve his story;
Remain a lasting monument of his glory;
And when thy ruins shall disclaim
To be the Treasurer of his name,
His name that cannot fade shall be
An everlasting monument to thee.
EPITAPH IN WESTMINSTER ABBEY.
The Poet Crabbe has said that there subsists an utter repugnancy between the studies of topography and poetry. He must have intended by topography when he said so, the mere definition of boundaries and specification of land-marks, such as are given in the advertisement of an estate for sale; and boys in certain parts of the country are taught to bear in mind by a remembrance in tail when the bounds of a parish are walked by the local authorities. Such topography indeed bears as little relation to poetry as a map or chart to a picture.
But if he had any wider meaning, it is evident, by the number of topographical poems, good, bad and indifferent, with which our language abounds, that Mr. Crabbe's predecessors in verse, and his contemporaries also, have differed greatly from him in opinion upon this point. The Poly-olbion, notwithstanding its common-place personifications and its inartificial transitions, which are as abrupt as those in the Metamorphoses and the Fasti, and not so graceful, is nevertheless a work as much to be valued by the students and lovers of English literature, as by the writers of local history. Drayton himself, whose great talents were deservedly esteemed by the ablest of his contemporaries in the richest age of English poetry, thought he could not be more worthily employed than in what he calls the Herculean task of this topographical poem; and in that belief he was encouraged by his friend and commentator Selden, to whose name the epithet of learned was in old times always and deservedly affixed. With how becoming a sense of its dignity and variety the Poet entered upon his subject, these lines may shew:
Thou powerful God of flames, in verse divinely great, Touch my invention so with thy true genuine heat, That high and noble things I slightly may not tell, Nor light and idle toys my lines may vainly swell; But as my subject serves so high or low to strain, And to the varying earth so suit my varying strain, That Nature in my work thou mayest thy power avow; That as thou first found'st art, and didst her rules allow, So I, to thine own self that gladly near would be, May herein do the best in imitating thee. As thou hast here a hill, a vale there, there a flood, A mead here, there a heath, and now and then a wood, These things so in my song I naturally may show; Now as the mountain high, then as the valley low; Here fruitful as the mead; there as the heath be bare, Then as the gloomy wood I may be rough, tho' rare.
I would not say of this Poet, as Kirkpatrick says of him, that when he
———————his Albion sung
With their own praise the echoing vallies rung;
His bounding Muse o'er every mountain rode
And every river warbled where he flowed;
but I may say that if instead of sending his Muse to ride over the mountains, and resting contented with her report, he had ridden or walked over them himself, his poem would better have deserved that praise for accuracy which has been bestowed upon it by critics who had themselves no knowledge which could enable them to say whether it were accurate or not. Camden was more diligent; he visited some of the remotest counties of which he wrote.
This is not said with any intention of detracting from Michael Drayton's fame: the most elaborate criticism could neither raise him above the station which he holds in English literature, nor degrade him from it. He is extolled not beyond the just measure of his deserts in his epitaph which has been variously ascribed to Ben Jonson, to Randolph, and to Quarles, but with most probability to the former, who knew and admired and loved him.
He was a poet by nature, and carefully improved his talent;—one who sedulously laboured to deserve the approbation of such as were capable of appreciating, and cared nothing for the censures which others might pass upon him. “Like me that list,” he says,
my honest rhymes,
Nor care for critics, nor regard the times.
And though he is not a poet virûm volitare per ora, nor one of those whose better fortune it is to live in the hearts of their devoted admirers, yet what he deemed his greatest work will be preserved by its subject; some of his minor poems have merit enough in their execution to ensure their preservation, and no one who studies poetry as an art will think his time mis-spent in perusing the whole,—if he have any real love for the art which he is pursuing. The youth who enters upon that pursuit without a feeling of respect and gratitude for those elder poets, who by their labours have prepared the way for him, is not likely to produce any thing himself that will be held in remembrance by posterity.
CHAPTER XXXVII. P. I.
ANECDOTES OF PETER HEYLYN AND LIGHTFOOT, EXEMPLIFYING THAT GREAT KNOWLEDGE IS NOT ALWAYS APPLICABLE TO LITTLE THINGS; AND THAT AS CHARITY BEGINS AT HOME, SO IT MAY WITH EQUAL TRUTH SOMETIMES BE SAID THAT KNOWLEDGE ENDS THERE.
A scholar in his study knows the stars,
Their motion and their influence, which are fix'd,
And which are wandering; can decypher seas,
And give each several land his proper bounds:
But set him to the compass he's to seek,
Where a plain pilot can direct his course
From hence unto both the Indies.
HEYWOOD.
There was a Poet who wrote a descriptive poem, and then took a journey to see the scenes which he had described. Better late than never, he thought; and thought wisely in so thinking. Drayton was not likely to have acted thus upon after consideration, if in the first conception of his subject he did not feel sufficient ardour for such an undertaking. It would have required indeed a spirit of enterprize as unusual in those days as it is ordinary now. Many a long day's ride must he have taken over rough roads, and in wild countries; and many a weary step would it have cost him, and many a poor lodging must he have put up with at night, where he would have found poor fare, if not cold comfort. So he thought it enough, in many if not most parts, to travel by the map, and believed himself to have been sufficiently “punctual and exact in giving unto every province its peculiar bounds, in laying out their several land-marks, tracing the course of most of the principal rivers, and setting forth the situation and estate of the chiefest towns.”
Peter Heylyn who speaks thus of his own exactness in a work partaking enough of the same nature as the Poly-olbion to be remembered here, though it be in prose and upon a wider subject, tells a humourous anecdote of himself, in the preface to his Cosmography. “He that shall think this work imperfect,” says he, “(though I confess it to be nothing but imperfections) for some deficiencies of this kind, may be likened to the country fellow, (in Aristophanes, if my memory fail not,) who picked a great quarrel with the map because he could not find where his own farm stood. And such a country customer I did meet with once, a servant of my elder brother, sent by him with some horses to Oxford, to bring me and a friend of mine unto his house; who having lost his way as we passed through the forest of Whichwood, and not being able to recover any beaten track, did very earnestly entreat me to lead the way, till I had brought him past the woods to the open fields. Which when I had refused to do, as I had good reason, alledging that I had never been there before, and therefore that I could not tell which way to lead him; ‘that's strange!’ said he; ‘I have heard my old master, your Father, say that you made a book of all the world; and cannot you find your way out of the wood?’”
Peter Heylyn was one who fell on evil times, and on whom, in consequence, evil tongues have fallen. But he was an able, honest, brave man who “stood to his tackling when he was tasted.” And if thou hast not read his Survey of the State of France, Reader, thou hast not read one of our liveliest books of travels in its lighter parts; and one of the wisest and most replete with information that ever was written by a young man.
His more learned contemporary Lightfoot, who steered a safer but not so straight a course, met with an adventure not unlike that of Heylyn's in the forest; but the application which in the cosmographist's case was ridiculously made by an ignorant and simple man was in this instance self-originated.
Lightfoot had promised to set forth as an accompaniment to his Harmony of the Evangelists, “A chorographical description of the land of Canaan, and those adjoining places, that we have occasion to look upon as we read the Gospels.”—“I went on in that work,” he says, “a good while, and that with much cheerfulness and content; for methought a Talmudical survey and history of the land of Canaan, (not omitting collections to be taken up out of the Scripture, and other writers) as it would be new and rare, so it might not prove unwelcome nor unprofitable to those that delighted in such a subject.”—It cost him as much pains to give the description as it would have done to travel thither; but says one of his Editors “the unhappy chance that hindered the publishing this elaborate piece of his, which he had brought to pretty good perfection, was the edition of Doctor Fuller's Pisgah Sight; great pity it was that so good a book should have done so much harm; for that book, handling the same matters and preventing his, stopped his resolution of letting his labors on that subject see the light. Though he went a way altogether different from Dr. Fuller; and so both might have shown their face together in the world; and the younger sister, if we may make comparisons, might have proved the fairer of the two.”