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 Sergeant 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, 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 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 Well fare his heart, they say, 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 * Beaumont and Fletcher. 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 anything 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 passed 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 Nichol's Illustrations of the Literary History of the Eighteenth Century: (I honour John Nichols, I honour 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 smallpox, 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. For never in the long and tedious tract Of slavish grammar was I made to plod; 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 time upward. 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 choosing 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." myself I am not so adventurous a horseman as to take the hazards of a steeple chase. For 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 motionby 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's 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 ferula 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 briers and brambles of the grammar and foundered him in its sloughs; Guy led him gently along the greensward. 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 Aurore!" The precept 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 effected,) 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 pronoted 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 granimar school. The pig is allowed to feed upon any kind of offal, however coarse, |