known,—where, or how would my immortal part have existed at this time, or in what shape would these bodily elements have been compounded with which it is invested? A single miscarriage among my millions of grandmothers might have cut off the entail of my mortal being! Quid non evertit primordia frivola vitæ ? Tot dominis mundum numinibusque novis. Bucephalam è vestris, Indica Fata, libris.* The snuff of a candle,-a fall,-a fright, nay, even a fit of anger! Such things are happening daily, yea, hourly, upon this peopled earth. One such mishap among so many millions of cases, millions ten million times told, centillions multiplied beyond the vocabulary of numeration, and ascending το ψαμμακόσια, — which word having been coined by a certain Alexis (perhaps no otherwise remembered) and latinised arenaginta by Erasmus, is now Anglicised sandillions by me;-one such among them all! I tremble to think of it! Again. How often has it depended upon political events! If the Moors had defeated Charles Martel; if William instead of Harold had fallen in the Battle of Hastings; if bloody Queen Mary had left a child; or if blessed Queen Mary had not married the Prince of Orange! In the first case the English might now have been Musselmen; in the second they would have continued to use the Saxon tongue, and in either of those cases the Ego could not have existed; for if Arabian blood were put in, or Norman taken out, the whole chain of succession would have been altered. The two latter * COWLEY. eases, perhaps, might not have affected the bodily existence of the Ego; but the first might have entailed upon him the curse of Popery, and the second, if it had not subjected him to the same curse, would have made him the subject of a despotic government. In neither case could he have been capable of excogitating lucubrations, such as this high history contains: for either of these misfortunes would have emasculated his mind, unipsefying and unegofying the Ipsissimus Ego. Another chance must be mentioned. One of my ancestors was, as the phrase is, out in a certain rebellion. His heart led him into the field and his heels got him out of it. Had he been less nimble, or had he been taken and hanged, and hanged he would have been if taken, there would have been no Ego at this day, no history of Dr. Daniel Dove. The Doctor would have been like the heroes who lived before Agamemnon, and his immortaliser would never have lived at all. CHAPTER XLVI. P. I. DANIEL DOVE'S ARRIVAL AT DONCASTER. THE ORGAN IN SAINT 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. Ir was in the Mayoralty of Thomas Pheasant (as has already been said) and in the year of our Lord 1739, that Daniel Dove the younger, having then entered upon his seventeenth year, first entered the town of Doncaster, and was there delivered by his excellent father to the care of Peter Hopkins. They loved each other so dearly, that this, which was the first day of their separation, was to both the unhappiest of their lives. The great frost commenced in the winter of that year; and with the many longing lingering thoughts which Daniel cast towards his home, a wish was mingled that he could see the frozen waterfall in Weathercote Cave. It was a remarkable era in Doncaster also, because the Organ was that year erected, at the cost of five hundred guineas, raised by voluntary subscription among the parishioners. Harris and Byfield were the builders, and it is still esteemed one of the best in the kingdom. When it was opened, the then curate, Mr. Fawkes, preached a sermon for the occasion, in which, after having rhetorised in praise of sacred music, and touched upon the cornet, flute, harp, sackbut, psaltery, dulcimer and all kinds of instruments, he turned to the organ and apostrophised it thus; "But O what O what what shall I call thee by? thou divine Box of sounds!" That right old worthy Francis Quarles of quaint memory, -and the more to be remembered for his quaintness,—knew how to improve an organ somewhat better than Mr. Fawkes. His poem upon one is the first in his Divine Fancies, and whether he would have it ranked among Epigrams, Meditations, or Observations, perhaps he could not himself tell. The Reader may class it as he pleases. Observe this Organ: mark but how it goes! They both concur; each acts his several part; The question whether instrumental music may lawfully be introduced into the worship of God in the Churches of the New Testament, has been considered by Cotton Mather and answered to his own satisfaction and 66 that of his contemporary countrymen and their fellow puritans, in his "Historical Remarks upon the discipline practised in the Churches of New England.”—“The Instrumental Music used in the old Church of Israel," he says, was an Institution of God; it was the Commandment of the Lord by the Prophets; and the Instruments are called God's Instruments, and Instruments of the Lord. Now there is not one word of Institution in the New Testament for Instrumental Music in the Worship of God. And because the holy God rejects all he does not command in his worship, he now therefore in effect says to us, I will not hear the melody of thy Organs. But, on the other hand, the rule given doth abundantly intimate that no voice is now heard in the Church but what is significant, and edifying by signification; which the voice of Instruments is not." Worse logic than this and weaker reasoning no one would wish to meet with in the controversial writings of a writer from whose opinions he differs most widely. The Remarks form part of that extraordinary and highly interesting work the Magnalia Christi Americana. Cotton Mather is such an author as Fuller would have been if the old English Worthy, instead of having been from a child trained up in the way he should go, had been calvinisticated till the milk of human kindness with which his heart was always ready to overflow had turned sour. 66 Though Instrumental Music," he proceeds to say, 66 were admitted and appointed in the worship of God under the Old Testament, yet we do not find it practised in the Synagogue of the Jews, but only in the Temple. It thence appears to have been a part of the ceremonial Pedagogy which is now abolished; nor can any say it was a part of moral worship. And whereas the common usage now hath confined Instrumental Music to Cathedrals, it seems therein too much to Judaise,-which to do is a part of the Anti-Christian Apostacy,-as well as to Paganise. If we admit Instrumental Music in the worship of God, how can we resist the imposition of all the instru ments used among the ancient Jews? Yea, Dancing as well as playing, and several other Judaic actions?" ing to it, as disengaged from the body, and "rising and falling with its wings." Harris, the chief builder of the Doncaster During the short but active reign of the Organ, was a contemporary and rival of Puritans in England, they acted upon this Father Smith, famous among Organists. preposterous opinion, and sold the Church | Each built one for the Temple Church, and organs, without being scrupulous concerning Father Smith's had most votes in its the uses to which they might be applied. favour.* The peculiarity of the Doncaster A writer of that age, speaking of the pre- Organ, which was Harris's masterpiece, is, valence of drunkenness, as a national vice, its having, in the great organ, two trumpets says, “that nothing may be wanting to the and a clarion, throughout the whole comheight of luxury and impiety of this abo- pass; and these stops are so excellent, that mination, they have translated the organs a celebrated musician said every pipe in out of the Churches to set them up in them was worth its weight in silver. taverns, chaunting their dithyrambics and bestial bacchanalias to the tune of those instruments which were wont to assist them in the celebration of God's praises, and regulate the voices of the worst singers in the world, which are the English in their churches at present." Our Doctor dated from that year, in his own recollections, as the great era of his life. It served also for many of the Doncastrians, as a date to which they carried back their computations, till the generation which remembered the erecting of the organ was extinct. It cannot be supposed that the Organs This was the age of Church improvement which were thus disposed of, were instru- in Doncaster,-meaning here by Church, ments of any great cost or value. An old the material structure. Just thirty years pair of Organs,-(for that was the customary before, the Church had been beautified and mode of expression, meaning a set, and in the ceiling painted, too probably to the like manner a pair of cards, for a pack ;)— disfigurement of works of a better architecan old pair of this kind belonging to Lam-tural age. In 1721 the old peal of five bells beth Church was sold in 1565 for 17. 10s. Church Organs, therefore, even if they had not been at a revolutionary price, would be within the purchase of an ordinary vintner. "In country parish Churches," says Mr. Denne the Antiquary, "even where the district was small, there was often a choir of singers, for whom forms, desks and books were provided; and they probably most of them had benefactors who supplied them with a pair of organs that might more properly have been termed a box of whistles. To the best of my recollection there were in the chapels of some of the Colleges in Cambridge very, very, indifferent instruments. That of the chapel belonging to our old house was removed before I was admitted." The use of the organ has occasioned a great commotion, if not a schism, among the methodists of late. Yet our holy Herbert could call Church music the "sweetest of sweets;" and describe himself when listen was replaced with eight new ones, of new metal, heretofore spoken of. In 1723 the church floor and church-yard, which had both been unlevelled by Death's levelling course, were levelled anew, and new rails were placed to the altar. Two years later the Corporation gave the new Clock, and it was fixed to strike on the watch bell, that clock which numbered the hours of Daniel Dove's life from the age of seventeen till that of seventy. In 1736 the west gallery was put up, and in 1741, ten years after the organ, a new pulpit, but not in the old style; for pulpits, which are among the finest works of art in Brabant and Flanders, had degenerated in England, and in other protestant countries. See Lord Campbell's Lives of the Chancellors, vol. iii. p. 591. He states that Judge Jeffreys decided in favour of Smith's, and that Harris's went to Wolver hampton. I have often heard it there, and he who played on it had Music in his soul. If I recollect aright, his name was Rudge. 66 This probably was owing, in our own country, as much to the prevalence of puritanism, as to the general depravation of taste. It was for their beauty or their splendour that the early Quakers inveighed with such vehemence against pulpits, "many of which places," saith George Keith in his quaking days, as we see in England and many other countries, have a great deal of superfluity, and vain and superfluous labour and pains of carving, painting and varnishing upon them, together with your cloth and velvet cushion in many places; because of which, and not for the height of them above the ground, we call them Chief Places. But as for a commodious place above the ground whereon to stand when one doth speak in an assembly, it was never condemned by our friends, who also have places whereupon to stand, when to minister, as they had under the Law."* In 1743 a marble Communion Table was placed in the Church, and―(passing forward more rapidly than the regular march of this narration, in order to present these ecclesiastical matters without interruption,)—a set of chimes were fixed in 1754-merry be the memory of those by whom this good work was effected! The north and south galleries were re-built in 1765; and in 1767 the church was white-washed, a new readingdesk put up, the pulpit removed to what was deemed a more convenient station, and Mrs. Neale gave a velvet embroidered cover and cushion for it,-for which her name is enrolled among the benefactors of St. George's Church. That velvet which, when I remember it, had lost the bloom of its complexion, will hardly have been preserved till now even by the dyer's renovating aid: and its embroidery has long since passed through the goldsmith's crucible. Sic transit excites a 66 more melancholy feeling in me when a recollection like this arises in my mind, than even the "forlorn hic jacet" of a neglected tombstone. Indeed such is the softening effect of time upon those who have not been rendered obdurate and insensible by the world and the world's law, that I do not now call to mind without some emotion even that pulpit, to which I certainly bore no good will in early life, when it was my fortune to hear from it so many somniferous discourses; and to bear away from it, upon pain of displeasure in those whose displeasure to me was painful, so many texts, chapter and verse, few or none of which had been improved to my advantage. Public sermons" (hear! hear! for Martin Luther speaketh!)—" public sermons do very little edify children, who observe and learn but little thereby. It is more needful that they be taught and well instructed with diligence in schools; and at home that they be orderly heard and examined in what they have learned. This way profiteth much; it is indeed very wearisome, but it is very necessary." May I not then confess that no turn of expression however felicitous-no collocation of words however emphatic and beautiful—no other sentences whatsoever, although rounded, or pointed for effect with the most consummate skill, have ever given me so much delight, as those dear phrases which are employed in winding up a sermon, when it is brought to its long-wishedfor close. It is not always, nor necessarily thus; nor ever would be so if these things were ordered as they might and ought to be. Hugh Latimer, Bishop Taylor, Robert South, John Wesley, Robert Hall, Bishop Jebb, Bishop Heber, Christopher Benson, your hearers felt no such tedium! when you reached that period it was to them like the cessation of a strain of music, which "By his order, the Reading-Pew and Pulpit "-(of the while it lasted had rendered them insensible Church of Layton Ecclesia in the County of Huntingdon) "were a little distant from each other, and both of an equal height, for he would often say, They should neither have a precedency or priority of the other; but that Prayer and Preaching, being equally useful, might agree like brethren, and have an equal honour and estimation.” ISAAC WALTON'S LIFE OF MR. GEORGE HERBERT. to the lapse of time. "I would not," said Luther, "have preachers torment their hearers and detain them with long and tedious preaching." CHAPTER XLVII. there is one there can hardly, I think, be doubted; for if he left no relations who DONCASTRIANA. GUY'S DEATH. SEARCH FOR regarded him, nor perhaps effects enough of HIS TOMBSTONE IN INGLETON CHURCH YARD. Go to the dull church-yard, and see TIXALL POETRY. THE first years of Daniel's abode in Doncaster were distinguished by many events of local memorability. The old Friar's bridge was taken down, and a new one with one large arch built in its stead. Turnpikes were erected on the roads to Saltsbrook and to Tadcaster; and in 1742 Lord Semple's regiment of Highlanders marched through the town, being the first soldiers without breeches who had ever been seen there since breeches were in use. In 1746 the Mansion House was begun, next door to Peter Hopkins's, and by no means to his comfort while the work was going on, nor indeed after it was completed, its effect upon his chimneys having heretofore been noticed. The building was interrupted by the rebellion. An army of six thousand English and Hessians was then encamped upon Wheatley Hills; and a Hessian general dying there, was buried in St. George's Church; from whence his leaden coffin was stolen by the gravedigger. Daniel had then completed his twentysecond year. Every summer he paid a month's visit to his parents; and those were happy days, not the less so to all parties because his second home had become almost as dear to him as his first. Guy did not live to see the progress of his pupil; he died a few months after the lad had been placed at Doncaster, and the delight of Daniel's first return was overclouded by this loss. It was a severe one to the elder Daniel, who lost in the Schoolmaster his only intellectual companion. I have sought in vain for Richard Guy's tombstone in Ingleton church-yard.* That • "Grave-stones tell truth scarce forty years." his own to defray this last posthumous and not necessary expense; and if Thomas Gent of York, who published the old poem of Flodden Field from his transcript, after his death, thought he required no other monument; Daniel was not likely to omit this last tribute of respect and affection to his friend. But the church-yard, which, when his mortal remains were deposited there, accorded well with its romantic site, on a little eminence above the roaring torrent, and with the then retired character of the village, and with the solemn use to which it was consecrated, is now a thickly-peopled burial-ground. Since their time, manufactures have been established in Ingleton, and though eventually they proved unsuccessful, and were consequently abandoned, yet they continued long enough in work largely to increase the population of the church-yard. Amid so many tombs the stone which marked poor Guy's resting-place might escape even a more diligent search than mine. Nearly a century has elapsed since it was set up in the course of that time its inscription not having been re-touched, must have become illegible to all but an antiquary's poring and practised eyes; and perhaps to them also unless aided by his tracing tact, and by the conjectural supply of connecting words, syllables, or letters; indeed, the stone itself has probably become half interred, as the earth around it has been disturbed and raised. Time corrodes our epitaphs, and buries our very tombstones. Returning pensively from my unsuccessful search in the church-yard, to the little inn at Ingleton, I found there, upon a sampler, worked in 1824 by Elizabeth Brown, aged 9, and framed as an ornament for the room which I occupied, some lines in as moral a strain of verse as any which I had that day perused among the tombs. And I transcribed them for preservation, thinking it not improbable that they had been originally composed by Richard Guy, for the use of his female scholars, and handed down for a |