4. A true discovery of the Conduct of Receivers and Thief-Takers, in and about the City of London, &c., &c. London, 1718.
This pamphlet is “design’d as preparatory to a larger Treatise, wherein shall be propos’d Methods to extirpate and suppress for the future such villanous Practices.” It is by “Charles Hitchin, one of the Marshals of the City of London.”
I now take leave of Harman, with a warm commendation of him to the reader. {xxiv}
The third piece in the present volume is a larky Sermon in praise of Thieves and Thievery, the title of which (p. [93], below) happened to catch my eye when I was turning over the Cotton Catalogue, and which was printed here, as well from its suiting the subject, as from a pleasant recollection of a gallop some 30 years ago in a four-horse coach across Harford-Bridge-Flat, where Parson Haben (or Hyberdyne), who is said to have preached the Sermon, was no doubt robbed. My respected friend Goody-goody declares the sermon to be ‘dreadfully irreverent;’ but one needn’t mind him. An earlier copy than the Cotton one turned up among the Lansdowne MSS, and as it differed a good deal from the Cotton text, it has been printed opposite to that.
Of the fourth piece in this little volume, The Groundworke of Conny-catching, less its reprint from Harman, I have spoken above, at p. [xiv.] There was no good in printing the whole of it, as we should then have had Harman twice over.
The growth of the present Text was on this wise: Mr Viles suggested a reprint of Stace’s reprint of Harman in 1573, after it had been read with the original, and collated with the earlier editions. The first edition I could not find, but ascertained, with some trouble, and through Mr H. C. Hazlitt, where the second and third editions were, and borrowed the 3rd of its ever-generous owner, Mr Henry Huth. Then Mr Hazlitt told me of Awdeley, which he thought was borrowed from Harman. However, Harman’s own words soon settled that point; and Awdeley had to precede Harman. Then the real bagger from Harman, the Groundworke, had to be added, after the Parson’s Sermon. Mr Viles read the proofs and revises of Harman with the original: Mr Wood and I have made the Index; and I, because Mr Viles is more desperately busy than myself, have written the Preface.
The extracts from Mr J. P. Collier must be taken for what they are worth. I have not had time to verify them; but assume them to be correct, and not ingeniously or unreasonably altered from their originals, like Mr Collier’s print of Henslowe’s Memorial, of which {xxv} Dr Ingleby complains,[38] and like his notorious Alleyn letter. If some one only would follow Mr Collier through all his work—pending his hoped-for Retractations,—and assure us that the two pieces above-named, and the Perkins Folio, are the only things we need reject, such some-one would render a great service to all literary antiquarians, and enable them to do justice to the wonderful diligence, knowledge, and acumen, of the veteran pioneer in their path. Certainly, in most of the small finds which we workers at this Text thought we had made, we afterwards found we had been anticipated by Mr Collier’s Registers of the Stationers’ Company, or Bibliographical Catalogue, and that the facts were there rightly stated. {xxvi} That there is pure metal in Mr Collier’s work, and a good deal of it, few will doubt; but the dross needs refining out. I hope that the first step in the process may be the printing of the whole of the Stationers’ Registers from their start to 1700 at least, by the Camden Society,—within whose range this work well lies,—or by the new Harleian or some other Society. It ought not to be left to the ‘Early English Text’ to do some 20 years hence.
F. J. FURNIVALL.