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.