And Zed spoke as truly as ever a prophet spoke, and much more truly than many; for, although he got well warmed ere he went to bed, yet his participation of so much extra liquor at the wedding, his foolish freak at money-digging the preceding night, and his cold bath to conclude, operating together upon his aged frame, produced rheumatic effects which never left him.
Zed Marrowby and Phil Garrett left their voyaging at the close of that summer. True, they made all fit and industrious preparation for the next spring; and Zed's heart was gleefully bent on resuming their old cruises on their beloved Trent, and in their beloved old boat; but Phil listened with a foreboding heart to the deep cough which shook Zed's old body through the winter, and often interrupted his fervid utterances of what pleasure he expected when summer should come again. And when Zed Marrowby would exclaim, "We shall have another merry summer's cruise yet, Phil!" Phil Garret would answer with more solemnity, much more, than was his wont to put on, "Don't say so till you're are sure. I think, Zed, we shall cruise no more in this world; and I hope our next port will be in a better land." Zed poohed and pshawed, for some time, at this "solemn way o' talking," as he called it; but at length he began to feel that Phil was right—he grew feebler as the spring drew nearer, and when it came, feeling the expectation to be vain of ever stepping again into the beloved old boat, he took Phil's advice—for he said he always thought it worth more than the parson's—and strove to fix his mind on reaching the happy port in the better land.
Zed Marrowby's end was calm and peaceful; and so was that of Phil Garret, his faithful companion, who was also laid under the green sod in old Torksey churchyard within six months after. The memory of their names and lives is well-nigh lost in the rural locality where they lived; but there is not a saying more common in old Lincolnshire to this day than that quaint caution so often uttered by the blind fiddler to his less grave comrade, "Don't say so till you are sure!"
MASTER ZERUBBABEL,
THE ANTIQUARY;
AND
HOW HE FOUND OUT THE "NOOSE LARNING."
Antiquaries are scarce now-a-days. Don't mistake me, reader; I know that there is an abundance of writers on things which are ancient—ay, and more, that certain pragmatical folk pretend now to know more exactly how every thing went on two thousand years ago, nay four thousand years ago, than was known a few generations since by the first scholars in Europe. But don't say I question the likelihood of people knowing more about the ancients the farther time removes us from them,—because that would be literary heresy, and would bring upon an unlucky wight the hot persecution of the orthodox. But—I repeat it—Antiquaries are scarce now-a-days. I mean, your real thorough-bred ones, if I may say so—the fine old fellows who forgot their breakfasts and dinners, walked out in their night-caps, went to bed in their inexpressibles,—in brief, did all manner of queer absent things by reason that they were ever present, in mind, with the long bearded Druids, or the starched Romans, or the waggish Athenians, or the broth-supping Spartans, or some other of the peoples who have been dead and buried hundreds and hundreds of years ago. Talk of antiquaries!—where are your lean, skeleton, paragons of patience now, who can dwell seven years, with ecstasy, on the contemplation of a nail proven to have been attached to a horse-shoe of ten centuries old,—or who will write you, fasting, twenty folio sheets on the discovery of an urn of Roman coins, or the opening of a British tumulus? The race is now extinct: it has been driven out of existence by the newer and more civilised race of the gentlemen antiquaries,—just as the aborigines of New Holland and North America are following where the Peruvians have already gone, into the realm of nought, before the European grasp-alls.
One of the latest existing specimens of the genuine antiquary was to be found in the little county town of Oakham, in little Rutland, some seventy years bygone. Zerubbabel Dickinson was his name, and he was proud of it;—and many an unwilling and loitering urchin had he whipt through the nouns and verbs, and the "Propria quæ maribus," into the "As in præsenti," in his time, for he kept the best school in the town, during his best days;—and when his vigour declined, and his eyes and ears grew somewhat dim, he still continued to exert his skill and intelligence in the induction of a more contracted number of pupils into the porches of classic learning. But then he no longer enjoyed the high gratification of being addressed in his full, imposing name, alike by peasant, tradesman, or gentleman: Zerubbabel sunk to "Hubby," as the fine old pedagogue's shoulders declined in their stately height, and his slower sense rendered it less certain that he heard distinctly every syllable which was uttered by his acquaintances. Yet there was no acidity of motive, no ill-naturedness, in the use of this familiar abbreviation, for Hubby Dickinson was as much beloved, if he were not quite so stiffly respected, as "Master Zerubbabel" had been. And that shows, almost beyond the necessity of telling, that the fine old antiquary had contracted no rust of the heart among the rusty coins he had turned over so oft and so ecstatically; but, rather, that his excellent nature had mellowed and become more loveable with age, though it had shrunk from its former somewhat pride-blown proportions.
Self-complacence Hubby Dickinson had felt, in his day,—and he must have been a philosopher, indeed, could he have utterly subdued such a feeling,—seeing that his learning was esteemed, by gentle and simple, a thing so ponderous and vast, that every body wondered how Master Zerubbabel's brain could hold it, or his shoulders bear the burthen of it. Certes, there was not even a clergyman in the neighbourhood, despite his Oxford or Cambridge matriculation, but what resorted to the humble abode of the great antiquarian schoolmaster for the interpretation of difficult Greek or Hebrew texts; not an ancient will or parchment ever puzzled a Rutland lawyer, but it was brought to Master Zerubbabel Dickinson to decipher it; and not a ploughboy or a hedger or ditcher found a rust-eaten coin, or an ancient key, or a mysterious-looking fragment of pottery beneath the earth's surface, but they would forthwith journey to the dwelling of the "high-larnt" Oakham schoolmaster to learn the meaning, or the use, or the value of their discovery. Coins the illustrious Zerubbabel possessed of all ages, and almost all countries—at least, so he believed,—and keys of the most ornate Saxon fashion; and spear-heads and arrow-heads of the most primitive Keltic rudeness; beaking-bills of the age of Alfred, and daggers of the reign of Canute; fragments of steel-shirts that had been worn in the Crusades; and hilts and crosses of swords which had done service in Cressy or Agincourt: and all these were so learnedly arranged, that their order, itself, proclaimed the antiquary's incomparable erudition; while the syllables he would utter in illustration of their uses, and ages, and owners, and concomitants innumerable, left you in a perfect whirl of wonder!
Now, of all these, the priceless contents of his precious museum, Zerubbabel had written folio upon folio; and still continued to write thereon, feeling that it behoved him to say all that possibly could be said, on topics of such surpassing magnitude and importance, ere he ventured to give his lucubrations to the world. Nevertheless, these were minor labours, which, compared with one great and grand undertaking that occupied nine-tenths of every leisure hour of his more advanced life, were but as so many ant-hills to a pyramid.