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.
Fear not, my patient reader, that I should lose myself and bewilder
you, either in the Holy land, or Whichwood forest, or in the wide
fields of the Poly-olbion, or in Potteric Carr, or in any part of the
country about Doncaster, most fortunate of English towns for
circumstances which I have already stated, and henceforth to be the
most illustrious, as having been the place where my
never-to-be-forgotten Philosopher and friend, passed the greater part
of his innocent and useful and happy life. Good patient reader, you
may confide in me as in one who always knows his whereabout, and whom
the Goddess Upibilia will keep in the right way.
In treating of that flourishing and every way fortunate town, I have
not gone back to visionary times, like the author who wrote a
description and drew a map of Anglesea, as it was before the flood.
Nor have I touched upon the ages when hyenas prowled over what is now
Doncaster race-ground, and great lizards, huge as crocodiles, but with
long necks and short tails, took their pleasure in Potteric Carr. I
have not called upon thee, gentle and obsequious reader, to accompany
me into a Præadamite world, nor even into the antediluvian one. We
began with the earliest mention of Doncaster—no earlier; and shall
carry our summary notices of its history to the Doctor's time,—no
later. And if sometimes the facts on which I may touch should call
forth thoughts, and those thoughts remind me of other facts, anecdotes
leading to reflection, and reflection producing more anecdotes, thy
pleasure will be consulted in all this, my good and patient reader,
and thy profit also as much as mine; nay, more in truth, for I might
think upon all these things in silence, and spare myself the trouble
of relating them.
O Reader, had you in your mind
Such stores as silent thought can bring,
O gentle Reader, you would find
A Tale in every thing![1]
[Footnote 1: WORDSWORTH.]
I might muse upon these things and let the hours pass by unheeded as
the waters of a river in their endless course. And thus I might live
in other years,—with those who are departed, in a world of my own, by
force of recollection;—or by virtue of sure hope in that world which
is theirs now, and to which I shall ere long be promoted.
For thy pleasure, Reader, and for thy improvement, I take upon myself
the pains of thus materializing my spiritual stores. Alas! their
earthly uses would perish with me unless they were thus embodied!
“The age of a cultivated mind,” says an eloquent and wise and
thoughtful author, “is often more complacent, and even more luxurious,
than the youth. It is the reward of the due use of the endowments
bestowed by nature: while they who in youth have made no provision for
age, are left like an unsheltered tree, stripped of its leaves and its
branches, shaking and withering before the cold blasts of winter.
“In truth nothing is so happy to itself and so attractive to others,
as a genuine and ripened imagination, that knows its own powers, and
throws forth its treasures with frankness and fearlessness. The more
it produces, the more capable it becomes of production; the creative
faculty grows by indulgence; and the more it combines, the more means
and varieties of combinations it discovers.
“When Death comes to destroy that mysterious and magical union of
capacities and acquirements which has brought a noble genius to this
point of power, how frightful and lamentable is the effect of the
stroke that stops the current which was wont to put this mighty
formation into activity! Perhaps the incomprehensible Spirit may have
acted in conjunction with its corporeal adherents to the last. Then in
one moment, what darkness and destruction follows a single gasp of
breath!”[2]
[Footnote 2: SIR EGERTON BRYDGES.]
This fine passage is as consolatory in its former part, as it is
gloomy at the conclusion; and it is gloomy there, because the view
which is there taken is imperfect. Our thoughts, our reminiscences,
our intellectual acquirements, die with us to this world,—but to this
world only. If they are what they ought to be, they are treasures
which we lay up for Heaven. That which is of the earth, earthly,
perishes with wealth, rank, honours, authority, and other earthly and
perishable things. But nothing that is worth retaining can be lost.
When Ovid says in Ben Jonson's play
We pour out our affections with our blood,
And with our blood's affections fade our loves,
the dramatist makes the Roman Poet speak like a sensualist, as he was,
and the philosophy is as false as it is foul. Affections well placed
and dutifully cherished; friendships happily formed and faithfully
maintained; knowledge acquired with worthy intent, and intellectual
powers that have been diligently improved as the talents which our
Lord and Master has committed to our keeping; these will accompany us
into another state of existence, as surely as the soul in that state
retains its identity and its consciousness.
INTERCHAPTER IV.
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.
That the lost ten Tribes of Israel may be found in London, is a
discovery which any person may suppose he has made, when he walks for
the first time from the city to Wapping. That the tribes of Judah and
Benjamin flourish there is known to all mankind; and from them have
sprung the Scripites, and the Omniumites and the Threepercentites.
But it is not so well known that many other tribes noticed in the Old
Testament are to be found in this Island of Great Britain.
There are the Hittites, who excel in one branch of gymnastics. And
there are the Amorites, who are to be found in town and country; and
there are the Gadites who frequent watering places, and take
picturesque tours.
Among the Gadites I shall have some of my best readers, who being in
good humour with themselves and with every thing else, except on a
rainy day, will even then be in good humour with me. There will be
Amorites in their company; and among the Amorites too there will be
some, who in the overflowing of their love, will have some liking to
spare for the Doctor and his faithful memorialist.
The Poets, those especially who deal in erotics, lyrics, sentimentals
or sonnets, are the Ah-oh-ites.
The gentlemen who speculate in chapels are the Puh-ites.
The chief seat of the Simeonites is at Cambridge; but they are spread
over the land. So are the Man-ass-ites of whom the finest specimens
are to be seen in St. James's Street, at the fashionable time of day
for exhibiting the dress and the person upon the pavement.
The free-masons are of the family of the Jachinites.
The female Haggites are to be seen, in low life wheeling barrows, and
in high life seated at card tables.
The Shuhamites are the cordwainers.
The Teamanites attend the sales of the East India Company.
Sir James Mackintosh, and Sir James Scarlett, and Sir James Graham,
belong to the Jim-nites.
Who are the Gazathites if the people of London are not, where any
thing is to be seen? All of them are Gettites when they can, all would
be Havites if they could.
The journalists should be Geshurites, if they answered to their
profession: instead of this they generally turn out to be Geshuwrongs.
There are however three Tribes in England, not named in the Old
Testament, who considerably out number all the rest. These are the
High Vulgarites, who are the children of Rahank and Phashan: the
Middle Vulgarites, who are the children of Mammon and Terade, and the
Low Vulgarites, who are the children of Tahag, Rahag, and Bohobtay-il.
With the Low Vulgarites I have no concern; but with the other two
tribes, much. Well it is that some of those who are _fruges consumere
nati_, think it proper that they should consume books also: if they
did not, what a miserable creature wouldst thou be, Henry Colburn, who
art their Bookseller! I myself have that kind of respect for the
consumers which we ought to feel for every thing useful. If not the
salt of the earth they are its manure, without which it could not
produce so abundantly.