Peter Heylyn, who speaks thus of his own exactness in a work partaking enough of the same nature as the Polyolbion to be remembered here, though it be in prose, and upon a wider subject, tells a humorous 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, alleging 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?'

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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.

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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 labours on that subject see the light. Though he went a way altogether different from Dr. Fuller; and so both might have shown their faces together in the world; and the younger sister, if we may make comparisons, might have proved the fairer of the two."

It is pleasant to see how liberally and equitably both Lightfoot and Fuller speak upon this matter. But at last," says

the former," I understood that another workman, a far better artist than myself, had the description of the land of Israel, not only in hand, but even in the press; and was so far got before me in that travel that he was almost at his journey's end, when I was but little more than setting out. It was grievous to me to have lost my labour, if I should now sit down; and yet I thought it wisdom not to lose more in proceeding further, when one on the same subject, and of far more abilities in it, had got the start so far before me.

“And although I supposed, and at last was assured, even by that author himself, (my very learned and worthy friend,) that we should not thrust nor hinder one another any whit at all, though we both went at once in the perambulation of that land, because he had not meddled with that rabbinic way that I had gone; yet, when I considered what it was to glean after so clean a reaper, and how rough a Talmudical pencil would seem after so fine a pen, I resolved to sit down and to stir no more in that matter, till time and occasion did show me more encouragement thereunto, than as yet I saw. And thus was my promise fallen to the ground, not by any carelessness or forgetfulness of mine, but by the happy prevention of another hand, by whom the work is likely to be better done. Yet was I unwilling to suffer my word utterly to come to nothing at all, though I might evade my promise by this fair excuse: but I was desirous to pay the reader something in pursuance of it, though it were not in this very same coin, nor the very same sum, that I had undertaken. Hereupon I turned my thoughts and my endeavours to a description of the temple after the same manner. and from the same authors, that I had intended to have described the land; and that the rather, not only that I might do something towards making good my promise; but also, that by a trial in a work of this nature of a lesser bulk, I might take some pattern and assay how the other, which would prove of a far larger pains and volume, would be accepted, if I should again venture upon it."

Lightfoot was sincere in the commendation which he bestowed upon Fuller's diligence, and his felicitous way of

writing. And Fuller, on his part rendered justice in the same spirit to Lightfoot's well-known and peculiar erudition. Far be it from me," he says, "that our pens should fall out, like the herdsmen of Lot and Abraham, the land not being able to bear them both, that they might dwell together. No such want of room in this subject, being of such latitude and receipt, that both we and hundreds more, busied together therein, may severally lose ourselves in a subject of such capacity. The rather, because we embrace several courses in this our description; it being my desire and delight to stick only to the written word of God, while my worthy friend takes in the choicest rabbinical and Talmudical relations, being so well seen in these studies, that it is questionable whether his skill or my ignorance be the greater therein."

Now then, (for now and then go thus lovingly together, in familiar English,) after these preliminaries, the learned Lightfoot, who at seven years of age, it is said, could not only read fluently the biblical Hebrew, but readily converse in it, may tell his own story.

"Here by the way," he says, "I cannot but mention, and I think I can never forget, a handsome and deserved check that mine own heart, meeting with a special occasion, did give me, upon the laying down of the other task, and the undertaking of this, for my daring to enter either upon the one or the other. That very day wherein I first set pen to paper to draw up the description of the temple, having but immediately before laid aside my thoughts of the description of the land, I was necessarily called out, towards the evening, to go to view a piece of ground of mine own, concerning which some litigiousness was emerging, and about to grow. The field was but a mile from my constant residence and habitation, and it had been in mine owning divers years together; and yet till that very time, had I never seen it, nor looked after it, nor so much as knew whereabout it lay. It was very unlikely I should find it out myself, being so utterly ignorant of its situation; yet because I desired to walk alone, for the enjoying of my thoughts upon that task that I had newly taken in hand, I took some direction which way to go, and would venture to find out the field myself alone. I had not gone far, but I was at a loss; and whether I went right or wrong I could not tell; and if right thither, yet I knew not how to do so further; and if wrong, I knew not which way would prove the right, and so in seeking my ground I had lost myself. Here my heart could not but take me to task; and, reflecting upon what my studies were then, and had lately been upon, it could not but call me fool; and methought it spake as true to me as ever it had done in all my life-but only when it called me sinner. A fool that was so studious, and had been so searching about things VOL. I.-15

remote, and that so little concerned my interest-and yet was so neglective of what was near me, both in place and in my particular concernment! And a fool again, who went about to describe to others, places and buildings that lay so many hundred miles off, as from hence to Canaan, and under so many hundred years' ruins-and yet was not able to know, or find the way to a field of mine own, that lay so near me!

"I could not but acknowledge this reproof to be both seasonable, and seasoned both with truth and reason; and it so far prevailed with me, that it not only put me upon a resolution to lay by that work that I had newly taken in hand that morning, but also to be wiser in my bookishness for the time to come, than for it, and through it, to neglect and sink my estate as I had done. And yet within a little time after I know not how, I was fallen to the same studies and studiousness again-had got my laid-up task into my hands again before I was aware-and was come to a determination to go on in that work, because I had my notes and collections ready by me as materials for it; and when that was done, then to think of the advice that my heart had given me, and to look to mine own business.

"So I drew up the description of the temple itself, and with it the history of the temple service."

Lightfoot's heart was wise when it admonished him of humility; but it was full of deceit when it read him a lesson of worldly wisdom, for which his conscience and his better mind would have said to him "Thou fool!" if he had followed it.

CHAPTER XXXVIII. P. I.

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 Polyolbion, 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 phi- . losopher 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.

Oh reader, had you in your mind

Such stores as silent thought can bring,

Oh gentle reader, you would find

A tale in everything!*

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 imbodied!

"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

Wordsworth.