Reader, hast thou ever seen the old castle of Oakham? If thou hast not, and opportunity will serve, prythee, go thither, and feast thy eyes with the wondrous array—not of breathing sculptures, or matchless pictures; not of antique folios or curiously carven cabinets; not of storied tapestries or blazing heraldries—but of horse-shoes: ay, horse-shoes of all sorts and sizes, that adorn the walls of that singular old Saxon hall,—supported by its "antique pillars massy proof,"—and stretching its primitive roof overhead. A sight it is, pregnant with abundant reflection, that curious monument of feudalism; and many and marvellous are the stories they tell you about its origin: but, chiefly, they report that Ferrers—the Earl now, but simply, the ferrier, or farrier, to the victorious Norman—obtained, with this fief, authority to demand a horse-shoe of any knight, baron, or earl, who rode for the first time through his manor of Oakham. And many a veritable shoe taken from the foot of the steed of proud baron, or chivalrous knight,—his name obliterated by the rust of ages,—you behold on those walls; but therewith now mingle the mock-shoes of the modern great: a semblance, merely, put up at a great price, in some instances, they say. Gigantic shapes, some of these modern things are: such are those bearing the inscriptions "H. R. H. the Prince Regent," and "H. R. H. the Duchess of Kent," which latter hath a more diminutive one beside it, inscribed "the Princess Victoria." Of the judges, who here hold the courts of assize, the modern monuments of this curious kind are the most numerous; and if you listen to a sly Oakhamer he will not fail to tell you how often that model of political consistency, of generosity, liberality, integrity, impartiality, gentleness, and all the enlightened virtues—the ever-to-be-commemorated Abinger—was dunned for his five pounds, and how often he contrived to slip, like an eel, through the fingers of those whose office or privilege it is to claim the shoe or the price of it, before he was finally caught. Yet there is the shoe of the stainless and exalted legal functionary on the wall,—so that he was caught at last!
Pardon, reader, this most unseemly wandering from the illustrious subject of our present biography, the erudite Zerubbabel Dickinson. Now it was in the contemplation of this unique monument of baronial greatness,—it was in the collection and collocation of manuscripts relative to the identity of the several shoes,—it was in the array of the pedigrees of those in whose names they were put up,—it was in brushing away the rust (not from the shoes, for the discerning Dickinson would have adjudged him a pagan, of a verity, and no Christian, who dared to disturb a grain of it!)—the rust of uncertainty that hung about the names and memories of those to whom the more ancient furniture of horses' feet belonged,—it was in this mine profound of all that was important, and noble, and useful, and great, and grand, about the countless catalogue of horse-shoes that were nailed to the walls of the great hall in the castle of Oakham, that the learned and laborious Zerubbabel dug and delved,—it was on these themes, I say (and I scarcely know how to express myself worthily on so magnitudinous a matter), that the indefatigable and magnanimous schoolmaster-antiquary expended the choicest energies of his untiring intellect.
This, courteous reader, was the prime labour—the opus majus of Master Zerubbabel Dickinson. The work was to have been entituled "Tallagium illustrissimum; seu Catalogus solearum ferrearum"—with I know not how many more ums and arums, besides. Was to have been? Yes; for let it not be supposed that so stupendous a work was ever finished. It was the opinion of the laborious Zerubbabel himself that it never could be finished, so transcendent was the beau-idéal of such a work that he had conceived.
But enough of a subject which, in this degenerate age, will never be placed at its right value. This slender fragment of a biographic memorial was not commenced so much with the view of showing how truly great a man was the erudite Master Zerubbabel,—since we would despair as deeply of doing justice to so immense a subject as Zerubbabel himself despaired of completing the leviathan folios of the mighty "Tallagium illustrissimum:" we have a more philosophic purpose in view—namely, the proof, by history, of the striking moral truism, that the greatest men are very little men when you take them out of their accustomed sphere: in other words, that the wisest men are fools when you talk to them about things with which, in spite of their wisdom, they are not conversant. But why prove a truism? Ah, my friend, these same truisms, as the world calls them, for the greater part, are just the very things that want proving——.
"Master Hubby," said a jolly fat farmer who called, with his fat wife and her egg-basket, at the schoolmaster's door, towards five of the clock on a market afternoon, "we've browt ye a queer, odd-fashionedish sort on a thing, here, that we f'un i'th' home clooas tuther day; can ye tell us what it is?" and the farmer produced an ancient fragment of ironwork of a crooked form, but so unlike any modern utensil of any kind, that any one but an antiquary might well be puzzled with it. Nay, the profoundly erudite Zerubbabel himself was nonplused for the moment! He turned it over and over, and put on his spectacles, and then took them off again, and wiped them, and re-adjusted them to the most perfect distance for his natural optics—that is to say, he placed them as near to the very tip of his nose as they would remain without falling off,—but all his delays for consideration would not do: he was compelled to confess that he did not know what it was!
"Why dooant ye, indeed?" cried the farmer with a stare.
"The Lord ha' marcy on us! you dooant say so, Master Hubby, do ye?" echoed the farmer's wife, perfectly electrified with the thought that there was any thing ancient which Hubby did not understand; and she set down her basket of eggs, and drew out her spectacle-case, and put on her spectacles also, to gaze at Hubby in his.
And so there stood the odd trio at the learned schoolmaster's door: the man of ancient learning, barnacled to the nose-tip, and holding up the curious crooked rusty piece of iron with a gaze of indescribable eagerness; and the farmer with open mouth, and hands buried in the profound pockets of the plush waistcoat that enveloped the goodly rotundity of his person; and the farmer's wife, with the basket at her feet, her arms a-kimbo, and her eyes directed with intense earnestness through her spectacles on the movements of the illustrious Zerubbabel's countenance.
There was a perfect silence of full three minutes, and still the trio gazed on.