Thou art shrin’d on fame’s bright ray,
Though the stranger’s step is on thy grave
And thy friends be far away.”
We need not cherish illusions. The stranger’s step is on Rowlinson’s grave, but he is not “shrined on fame’s bright ray,” whatever and wherever that may be. No stone marks his grave, his very resting-place is unknown; we cannot even brush aside the grass from the forgotten and moss-grown tomb of William Rowlinson, one who perished in his early prime; whose music, faint, yet melodious, passed into silence before it could be shaped into a song the world would care to hear or to remember.
Footnotes:
[9]. I have to thank the Vicar (Rev. T. E. Powell) for searching the registers. There is no gravestone.
Literary Taste of the Eighteenth Century.
The literary tastes of our great-grandfathers may be supposed to be mirrored in a catalogue of the circulating library established in the middle of the last century at Manchester. The list of the subscribers includes the names of Mr. Edward Byrom, the Rev. Mr. Ethelston, Joseph Harrop, Titus Hibbert, Thomas Henry, Dr. Peploe, Richard Townley, and Dr. C. White. The late president of the Chetham Society had a book-loving predecessor, for the name of Mr. James Crossley is also in the list. The books are of a highly respectable character, and impress one with a favourable opinion of the pertinacity of those who could pursue knowledge tinctured with so slight a flavour of entertainment. Out of 452 books there are but twenty-two professing to be novels, and amongst these are “Don Quixote,” “Gil Blas,” “Devil upon Two Sticks,” “Sir Charles Grandison,” “Tristram Shandy,” and Sir Thomas More’s “Utopia.” The library had faith in “Fingal, an Ancient Epic Poem,” and patronised “Poet Ogden,” who wrote “The British Lion Roused.” Byrom, Deacon, and Callcott were also amongst their local authors. The readers who were tired of Mill’s “Husbandry” and of the “Principles of the Quakers Truly Represented,” might turn to Voltaire’s “Letters Concerning the English Nation,” or amuse themselves with Glanvill’s examination of “The Opinion of Eastern Sages Concerning the Pre-existence of Souls;” and if the daughter of the house obtained by chance the heterodox treatise which declares “Christianity as Old as the Creation,” she might have it changed for the “Young Misses’ Magazine,” or, still better, the “Matrimonial Preceptor.” Another fine avenue for the satisfaction of polite curiosity would be afforded by the study of the wonderful work in which Tobias Swinden discourses at large on the “Nature and Place of Hell,” and proves to his own satisfaction that “the fire of hell is not metaphorical but real,” and shows “the probability of the sun’s being the local hell.” At the end of the catalogue is an advertisement of a proposed musical circulating library, in which the neglect of church music is affirmed; “and if we continue our present fondness for things in the sing-song way, ’tis great odds but our present taste will be entirely changed, and, like some of our modern religious sects, we shall be so distressed as to rob the stage and playhouse to support and enrich our churches.” This is supported by a reference to “the Methodists, as they are call’d,” and their use of song tunes. The volume contains supplementary lists of additions down to June, 1768. These include the first edition of Chaucer and “The Vicar of Wakefield,” then in the early flush of fame. For the members not satisfied with Glanvill’s speculations, there had been added Berrow’s “Lapse of Human Souls in a State of Pre-existence,” and the studious character of the Mancunians received a delicate compliment by the purchase of Tissot’s “Treatise on the Diseases Incident to Literary Persons.” The additional subscribers included Mr. Nathaniel Philips, Rev. Mr. Dauntesey, and the Rev. John Pope. The number of works in the library in June, 1768, was 586, representing perhaps twice that number of volumes.
Hugh of Manchester:
A Statesman and Divine of the Thirteenth Century.[[10]]
“Let me be the remembrancer,” says Fuller when describing the worthies of Lancashire, “that Hugh of Manchester in this county wrote a book in the reign of King Edward the First, intituled, ‘De Fanaticorum Deliriis’ (Of the Dotages of Fanatics). At which time an impostor had almost made Eleanor the queen-mother mad, by reporting the posthume miracles done by her husband, King Henry the Third, till this our Hugh settled her judgment aright. I could wish some worthy divine (with such Lancashire doth abound) would resume this subject, and shew how ancient and modern fanatics, though differing much in their wild fancies and opinions, meet together in a mutual madness and distraction.”