and Pliny's Natural History, two goodly folios, full as an egg of meat, and both translated by that old worthy Philemon, who for the service which he rendered to his contemporaries and to his countrymen deserves to be called the best of the Hollands, without disparaging either the Lord or the Doctor of that appellation. The whole works of Joshua Sylvester (whose name, let me tell the reader in passing, was accented upon the first syllable by his contemporaries, not as now upon the second);-Jean Petit's History of the Netherlands, translated and continued by Edward Grimeston, another worthy of the Philemon order; Sir Kenelm Digby's Discourses; Stowe's Chronicle; Joshua Barnes's Life of Edward III.; "Ripley Revived by Eirenæus Philalethes, an Englishman styling himself Citizen of the World," with its mysterious frontispiece representing the Domus Naturæ, to which, Nil deest, nisi clavis: the Pilgrim's Progress: two volumes of Ozell's translation of Rabelais; Latimer's Sermons; and the last volume of Fox's Martyrs, which latter book had been brought him by his wife. The Pilgrim's Progress was a godmother's present to his son: the odd volumes of Rabelais he had picked up at Kendal, at a sale, in a lot with Ripley Revived and Plutarch's Morals: the others he had inherited. Daniel had looked into all these books, read most of them, and believed all that he read, except Rabelais, which he could not tell what to make of. He was not, however, one of those persons who complacently suppose every thing to be nonsense, which they do not perfectly comprehend, or flatter themselves that they do. His simple heart judged of books by what they ought to be, little knowing what they are. It never occurred to him that any thing would be printed which was not worth printing, any thing which did not convey either reasonable delight or useful instruction: and he was no more disposed to doubt the truth of what he read, than to question the veracity of his neighbour, or any one who had no interest in deceiving him. A book carried with it to him authority in its very aspect. The Morte d'Arthur therefore he received for authentic history, just as he did the painful chronicle of honest John Stowe, and the Barnesian labours of Joshua the self-satisfied: there was nothing in it indeed which stirred his English blood like the battles of Cressy and Poictiers and Najara; yet on the whole he preferred it to Barnes's story, believed in Sir Tor, Sir Tristram, Sir Lancelot and Sir Lamorack as entirely as in Sir John Chandos, the Captal de Buche and the Black Prince, and liked them better. Latimer and Du Bartas he used sometimes to read aloud on Sundays; and if the departed take cognizance of what passes on earth, and poets derive any satisfaction from that posthumous applause which is generally the only reward of those who deserve it, Sylvester might have found some compensation for the undeserved neglect into which his works had sunk, by the full and devout delight which his rattling rhymes and quaint collocations afforded to this reader. The silver-tongued Sylvester, however, was reserved for a Sabbath book; as a week-day author Daniel preferred Pliny, for the same reason that bread and cheese, or a rasher of hung mutton, contented his palate better than a syllabub. He frequently regretted that so knowing a writer had never seen or heard of Wethercote and Yordas caves; the ebbing and flowing spring at Giggleswick, Malham Cove, and Gordale Scar, that he might have described them among the wonders of the world. Omne ignotum pro magnifico is a maxim which will not in all cases hold good. There are things which we do not undervalue because we are familiar with them, but which are admired the more the more thoroughly they are known and understood; it is thus with the grand objects of nature and the finest works of art, -with whatsoever is truly great and excellent. Daniel was not deficient in imagination; but no description of places which he had never seen, however exaggerated (as such things always are) impressed him so strongly as these objects in his own neighbourhood, which he had known from childhood. Three or four times in his life it had happened that strangers with a curiosity as uncommon in that age as it is general in this, came from afar to visit these wonders of the West Riding, and Daniel accompanied them with a delight such as he never experienced on any other occasion. But the Author in whom he delighted most was Plutarch, of whose works he was lucky enough to possess the worthier half: if the other had perished Plutarch would not have been a popular writer, but he would have held a higher place in the estimation of the judicious. Daniel could have posed a candidate for university honours, and perhaps the examiner too, with some of the odd learning which he had stored up in his memory from these great repositories of ancient knowledge. Refusing all reward for such services, the strangers to whom he officiated as a guide, though they perceived that he was an extraordinary person, were little aware how much information he had acquired, and of how strange a kind. His talk with them did not go beyond the subjects which the scenes they came to visit naturally suggested, and they wondered more at the questions he asked, than at any thing which he advanced himself. For his disposition was naturally shy, and that which had been bashfulness in youth assumed the appearance of reserve as he advanced in life; for having none to communicate with upon his favourite studies, he lived in an intellectual world of his own, a mental solitude as complete as that of Alexander Selkirk or Robinson Crusoe. Even to the Curate his conversation, if he had touched upon his books, would have been heathen Greek; and to speak the truth plainly, without knowing a letter of that language, he knew more about the Greeks, than nine-tenths of the clergy at that time, including all the dissenters, and than nine-tenths of the schoolmasters also. Our good Daniel had none of that confidence which so usually and so unpleasantly characterizes self-taught men. In fact he was by no means aware of the extent of his acquirements, all that he knew in this kind having been acquired for amusement not for use. He had never attempted to teach him self any thing. These books had lain in his way in boyhood, or fallen in it afterwards, and the perusal of them, intently as it was followed, was always accounted by him to be nothing more than recreation. None of his daily business had ever been neglected for it; he cultivated his fields and his garden, repaired his walls, looked to the stable, tended his cows and salved his sheep, as diligently and as contentedly as if he had possessed neither capacity nor inclination for any higher employments. Yet Daniel was one of those men, who, if disposition and aptitude were not overruled by circumstances, would have grown pale with study, instead of being bronzed and hardened by Isun and wind and rain. There were in him undeveloped talents which might have raised him to distinction as an antiquary, a virtuoso of the Royal Society, a poet, or a theologian, to whichever course the bias in his ball of fortune had inclined. But he had not a particle of envy in his composition. He thought indeed that if he had had grammar learning in his youth like the curate, he would have made more use of it; but there was nothing either of the sourness or bitterness (call it which you please) of repining in this natural reflection. Never indeed was any man more contented with doing his duty in that state of life to which it had pleased God to call him. And well he might be so, for no man ever passed through the world with less to disquiet or to sour him. Bred up in habits which secured the continuance of that humble but sure independence to which he was born, he had never known what it was to be anxious for the future. At the age of twenty-five he had brought home a wife, the daughter of a little landholder like himself, with fifteen pounds for her portion: and the true-love of his youth proved to him a faithful helpmate in those years when the dream of life is over, and we live in its realities. If at any time there had been some alloy in his happiness, it was when there appeared reason to suppose that in him his family would be extinct; for though no man knows what parental feelings are till he has ex perienced them, and Daniel therefore knew not the whole value of that which he had never enjoyed, the desire of progeny is natural to the heart of man; and though Daniel had neither large estates, nor an illustrious name to transmit, it was an unwelcome thought that the little portion of the earth which had belonged to his fathers time out of mind, should pass into the possession of some stranger, who would tread on their graves and his own without any regard to the dust that lay beneath. That uneasy apprehension was removed after he had been married fifteen years, when to the great joy of both parents, because they had long ceased to entertain any hope of such an event, their wishes were fulfilled in the birth of a son. This their only child was healthy, apt and docile, to all appearance as happily disposed in mind and body as a father's heart could wish. If they had fine weather for winning their hay or shearing their corn, they thanked God for it; if the season proved unfavourable, the labour was only a little the more and the crop a little the worse. Their stations secured them from want, and they had no wish beyond it. What more had Daniel to desire? The following passage in the divine Du Bartas he used to read with peculiar satisfaction, applying it to himself: O thrice, thrice happy he, who shuns the cares Never pale Envy's poisony heads do hiss To gnaw his heart: nor Vulture Avarice: His fields' bounds, bound his thoughts: he never sups For sweet ambrosia deadly arsenic : His hand's his bowl (better than plate or glass) False counsellors (concealers of the law) But cheerful birds chirping him sweet good-morrows world, but in the hope that he might become a philosopher, and take as much delight in the books which he would inherit as his father had done before him. Riches and rank and power appeared in his judgment to be nothing when compared to philosophy; and herein he was as true a philosopher as if he had studied in the Porch, or walked the groves of Academus. King's high Dunstable road, Guy had picked up a competent share of Latin, a little Greek, some practical knowledge of physic, and more of its theory; astrology enough to cast a nativity, and more acquaintance with alchemy than has often been possessed by one who never burnt his fingers in its processes. These acquirements were grafted on a disposition as obliging as it was easy; and he was beholden to nature for an understanding so clear and quick that it might have raised him to some distinction in the world if he had not been under the influence of an imagination at once lively and credulous. Five and fifty years had taught him none of the world's wisdom; they had sobered his mind without maturing it; but he had a wise heart, and the wisdom of the heart is It was not however for this, for he was as little given to talk of his opinions as to display his reading, but for his retired habits, and general character, and some odd practices into which his books had led him, that he was commonly called Flossofer Daniel by his neighbours. The appellation was not affixed in derision, but respectfully and as his due; for he bore his faculties too meekly ever to excite an envious or an ill-worth all other wisdom. natured feeling in any one. Rural Flossofers were not uncommon in those days, though in the progress of society they have disappeared like Crokers, Bowyers, Lorimers, Armourers, Running Footmen, and other descriptions of men whose occupations are gone by. But they were of a different order from our Daniel. They were usually Philomaths, Students in Astrology, or the Coelestial Science, and not unfrequently Empirics or downright Quacks. Between twenty and thirty almanacs used to be published every year by men of this description, some of them versed enough in mathematics to have done honour to Cambridge, had the fates allowed; and others such proficients in roguery, that they would have done equal honour to the whipping-post. A man of a different stamp from either came in declining life to settle at Ingleton in the humble capacity of schoolmaster, a little before young Daniel was capable of more instruction than could be given him at home. Richard Guy was his name; he is the person to whom the lovers of old rhyme are indebted for the preservation of the old poem of Flodden Field, which he transcribed from an ancient manuscript, and which was printed from his transcript by Thomas Gent of York. In his way through the world, which had not been along the Daniel was too far advanced in life to fall in friendship; he felt a certain degree of attractiveness in this person's company; there was, however, so much of what may better be called reticence than reserve in his own quiet habitual manners, that it would have been long before their acquaintance ripened into any thing like intimacy, if an accidental circumstance had not brought out the latent sympathy which on both sides had till then rather been apprehended than understood They were walking together one day when young Daniel, who was then in his sixth year, looking up in his father's face, proposed this question: "Will it be any harm, Father, if I steal five beans when next I go into Jonathan Dowthwaites, if I can do it without any one's seeing me?" "And what wouldst thou steal beans for?" was the reply, "when any body would give them to thee, and when thou knowest there are plenty at home?" "But it won't do to have them given, Father," the boy replied. "They are to charm away my warts. Uncle William says I must steal five beans, a bean for every wart, and tie them carefully up in paper, and carry them to a place where two roads cross, and then drop them, and walk away without ever once looking behind me. And then the warts will go away from me, and come upon the hands of the person that pointed hour. Mambrino's helmet, when picks up the beans.” new from the armourer's, or when furbished for a tournament, was not brighter than Guy had rendered the inside of the barber's basin. Schoolmaster, Father and Son retired to a place out of observation, by the side of the river, a wild stream tumbling among the huge stones which it had brought down from the hills. On one of these stones sate Daniel the elder, holding the basin in such an inclination toward the moon that there should be no shadow in it; Guy directed the boy where to place himself so as not to intercept the light, and stood looking complacently on, while young Daniel revolved his hands one in another within the empty basin, as if washing them. "I feel them cold and clammy, Father!" said the boy. (It was the beginning of November) Ay," replied the father, "that's the cold moisture of the moon!" "Ay!" echoed the schoolmaster, and nodded his head in confirmation. Daniel," said the Father, "those can be no lawful charms that begin with stealing; I could tell thee how to cure thy warts in a better manner. There is an infallible way, which is by washing the hands in moonshine," but then the moonshine must be caught in a bright silver basin. You wash and wash in the basin, and a cold moisture will be felt upon the hands, proceeding from the cold and moist rays of the moon." The operation was repeated on the two following nights; and Daniel would have "But what shall we do for a silver basin ?" kept up his son two hours later than his said little Daniel. The Father answered, "a pewter dish might be tried if it were made very bright; but it is not deep enough. The brass kettle perhaps might do better." "Nay," said Guy, who had now begun to attend with some interest," the shape of a kettle is not suitable. It should be a concave vessel, so as to concentrate the rays. Joshua Wilson I dare say would lend his brass basin, which he can very well spare at the hour you want it, because nobody comes to be shaved by moonlight. The moon rises early enough to serve at this time. If you come in this evening at six o'clock I will speak to Joshua in the mean time, and have the basin as bright and shining as a good scouring can make it. The experiment is curious and I should like to see it tried. Where Daniel didst thou learn it?" "I read it," replied Daniel, "in Sir Kenelm Digby's Discourses, and he says it never fails." Accordingly the parties met at the ap But regular time of rest to continue it on the third if the evening had not set in with clouds and rain. In spite of the patient's belief that the warts would waste away and were wasting, (for Prince Hohenlohe could not require more entire faith than was given on this occasion,) no alteration could be perceived in them at a fortnight's end. Daniel thought the experiment had failed because it had not been repeated sufliciently often, nor perhaps continued long enough. the Schoolmaster was of opinion that the cause of failure was in the basin: for that silver being the lunar metal would by affinity assist the influential virtues of the moonlight, which finding no such affinity in a mixed metal of baser compounds, might contrariwise have its potential qualities weakened, or even destroyed when received in a brasen vessel, and reflected from it. Flossofer Daniel assented to this theory. Nevertheless as the child got rid of his troublesome excrescences in the course of three or four months, all parties disregard |