[5] Tooke’s “Diversions of Purley,” p. 141.
[6] In “Anecdotes of the English Language,” by Samuel Pegge, an antiquary, who called himself “an old modern,” the reader will find several curious exemplifications of the vulgar dialect, sometimes fancifully, but often satisfactorily ascertained. It is amusing to detect what we call vulgarisms composing the language of Chaucer and Shakspeare, and even our Bibles and Liturgies.
[7] Ray was the first who collected “Local Words, North Country and South and East Country.” “The Exmoor Scolding and Courtship” is an authentic specimen of the Exmoor Language. The words were collected by a blind fiddler, and the dialogues were written by a clergyman with the fiddler’s assistance, before 1725. We have a glossary of Lancashire words and phrases, contained in the humorous works of Tim Bobbin. Other county glossarists have appeared within the last fifteen years:—Brockett’s “North Country Words;” “Suffolk Words and Phrases,” by Major Moor; Mr. Roger Wilbraham’s “Attempt at a Glossary of Cheshire Words;” Mr. Jennings’ “Dialect of the West of England,” particularly the Somersetshire words; Mr. Britton on those of Wiltshire; and the Rev. Joseph Hunter has given “The Hallamshire Glossary,” to which are appended “Words used in Halifax,” by the Rev. John Watson, and also an addition to the “Yorkshire Words,” by Thoresby, the Leeds antiquary.
An investigation of the origin, nature, and history of Dialects was proposed by the late Dr. Boucher for a complete glossary of all the dialects of the kingdom. But these precious stores, not only of the vocables but of the domestic history of England—its manners, occupations, amusements, diet, dress, buildings, and other miscellaneous topics—rich in all the affluence of the laborious readings of more years than the siege of Troy, was but bread cast away on the waters, and was never given to the public for want of public support. After the author’s death, two eminent editors zealously resumed the work, which was already prepared; but the public remained so little instructed of its value, it suddenly ceased! Works of national utility should be consecrated as national property, and means should be always ready to avert such a calamity to the literature of England, and to the information of Englishmen, as was the suppression of the labours of Boucher.
MANDEVILLE; OUR FIRST TRAVELLER.
Mandeville was the Bruce of the fourteenth century, as often calumniated and even ridiculed. The most ingenuous of voyagers has been condemned as an idle fabulist; the most cautious, as credulous to fatuity; and the volume of a genuine writer, which has been translated into every European language, has been formally ejected from the collection of authentic travels. His truest vindication will be found by comprehending him; and to be acquainted with his character, we must seek for him in his own age.
At a period when Europe could hardly boast of three leisurely wayfarers stealing over the face of the universe; when the Orient still remained but a Land of Faery, and “the map of the world” was yet unfinished; at a time when it required a whole life to traverse a space which three years might now terminate, Sir John Mandeville set forth to enter unheard-of regions. Returning home, after an absence of more than thirty years, he discovered a “mervayle” strange as those which he loved to record—that he was utterly forgotten by his friends!
He had returned “maugre himself,” for four-and-thirty years had not satiated his curiosity; his noble career had submitted to ordinary infirmities—to gout and the aching of his limbs; these, he lamentably tells, had “defined the end of my labour against my will, God knoweth!” The knight in this pilgrimage of life seems to have contracted a duty with God, that while he had breath he should peregrinate, and, having nothing to do at home, be honourable in his generation by his enterprise over the whole earth. And earnestly he prays “to all the readers and hearers of my book,” (for “hearers” were then more numerous than “readers,”) “to say for him a Pater-Noster with an Ave-Maria.” He wrote for “solace in his wretched rest;” but the old passion, the devotion of his soul, finally triumphed over all arthritic pangs. The globe evidently was his true home; and thus Liege, and not London, received the bones of an unwearied traveller, whose thoughts were ever passing beyond the equator.