ITINERARIES
Anyone who is teased by the notion that it would be pleasant to be remembered, in the sense of being read, after death, cannot do better to secure that end than compose an Itinerary and leave it behind him in manuscript, with his name legibly inscribed thereon. If an honest bit of work, noting distances, detailing expenses, naming landmarks, moors, mountains, harbours, docks, buildings—indeed, anything which, as lawyers say, savours of realty—and but scantily interspersed with reflections, and with no quotations, why, then, such a piece of work, however long publication may be delayed—and a century or two will not matter in the least—cannot fail, whenever it is printed, to attract attention, to excite general interest and secure a permanent hold in every decent library in the kingdom.
Time cannot stale an Itinerary. Iter, Via, Actus are words of pith and moment. Stage-coaches, express trains, motor-cars, have written, or are now writing, their eventful histories over the face of these islands; but, whatever changes they have made or are destined to make, they have left untouched the mystery of the road, although for the moment the latest comer may seem injuriously to have affected its majesty.
The Itinerist alone among authors is always sure of an audience. No matter where, no matter when, he has but to tell us how he footed it and what he saw by the wayside, and we must listen. How can we help it? Two hundred years ago, it may be, this Itinerist came through our village, passed by the wall of our homestead, climbed our familiar hill, and went on his way; it is perhaps but two lines and a half he can afford to give us, but what lines they are! How different with sermons, poems, and novels! On each of these is the stamp of the author's age; sentiments, fashions, thoughts, faiths, phraseology, all worn out—cold, dirty grate, where once there was a blazing fire. Cheerlessness personified! Leland's anti-Papal treatise in forty-five chapters remains in learned custody—a manuscript; a publisher it will never find. We still have Papists and anti-Papists; in this case the fire still blazes, but the grates are of an entirely different construction. Leland's treatise is out of date. But his Itinerary in nine volumes, a favourite book throughout the eighteenth century, which has graced many a bookseller's catalogue for the last hundred years, and seldom without eliciting a purchaser—Leland's Itinerary is to-day being reprinted under the most able editorship. The charm of the road is irresistible. The Vicar of Wakefield is a delightful book, with a great tradition behind it and a future still before it; but it has not escaped the ravages of time, and I would, now, at all events, gladly exchange it for Oliver Goldsmith's Itinerary through Germany with a Flute!
Vain authors, publisher's men, may write as they like about Shakespeare's country, or Scott's country, or Carlyle's country, or Crockett's country, but—
'Oh, good gigantic smile of the brown old earth!'
the land laughs at the delusions of the men who hurriedly cross its surface.
'Rydal and Fairfield are there,—
In the shadow Wordsworth lies dead.
So it is, so it will be for aye,
Nature is fresh as of old,
Is lovely, a mortal is dead.'
These reflections, which by themselves would be enough to sink even an Itinerary, seemed forced upon me by the publication of A Journey to Edenborough in Scotland by Joseph Taylor, Late of the Inner Temple, Esquire. This journey was made two hundred years ago in the Long Vacation of 1705, but has just been printed from the original manuscript, under the editorship of Mr. William Cowan, by the well-known Edinburgh bookseller, Mr. Brown, of Princes Street, to whom all lovers of things Scottish already owe much.