I, fuge, sed poteras tutior esse domi. Mart.
To MAURICE JOHNSON, Jun. Esq.
Barrister at Law of the Inner-Temple.
THE amity that long subsisted between our families giving birth to an early acquaintance, a certain sameness of disposition, particularly a love to antient learning, advanced our friendship into that confidence, which induces me to prefix your name to this little summary of what has occurred to me worth mentioning in our native country, HOLLAND, in Lincolnshire; but chiefly intended to provoke you to pursue a full history thereof, who have so large a fund of valuable papers and collections relating thereto, and every qualification necessary for the work. That these memoirs of mine are so short, is because scarce more time than that of childhood I there spent, and when I but began to have an inclination for such enquiries: that the rest which follow are grown to such a bulk as to become the present volume, is owing to my residence at London. Great as are the advantages of this capital, for opportunities of study, or for the best conversation in the world, yet I should think a confinement to it insupportable, and cry out with the poet,
Invideo vobis agros, formosaque prata. Virg.
I envy you your fields and pastures fair.
which engages me to make an excursion now and then into the country: and this is properly taking a review of pure nature; for life here may be called only artificial, especially when fixed down to it; like the gaudy entries upon a theatre, where a pompous character is supported for a little while, and then makes an exit soon forgotten. My ancestors, both paternal and maternal, having lived, from times immemorial, in or upon the edges of our marshy level, perhaps gave me that melancholic disposition, which renders the bustlings of an active and showy life disagreeable. The fair allurements of the business of a profession, which have been in my road, cannot induce me wholly to forsake the sweet recesses of contemplation, that real life, that tranquillity of mind, only to be met with in proper solitude; where I might make the most of the pittance of time allotted by Fate, and if possible doubly over enjoy its fleeting space. I own a man is born for his country and his friends, and that he ought to serve them in his best capacity; yet he confessedly claims a share in himself: and that, in my opinion, is enjoying one’s self; not, as the vulgar think, in heaping up immoderate riches, titles of honour, or in empty, irrational pleasures, but in storing the mind with the valuable treasures of the knowledge of divine and human things. And this may in a very proper sense be called the study of Antiquities.
Of the study of Antiquities.
I need not make an apology to you for that which some people of terrestrial minds think to be a meagre and useless matter; for truly what is this study, but searching into the fountain-head of all learning and truth? Some antient philosophers have thought that knowledge is only reminiscence. If we extend this notion no further than as to what has been said and done before us, we shall not be mistaken in asserting that the past ages bore men of as good parts as we: enquiry into their thoughts and actions is learning; and happy for us if we can improve upon them, and find out things they did not know, by help of their own clue. All things upon this voluble globe are but a succession, like the stream of a river: the higher you go, the purer the fluid, less tainted with corruptions of prejudice or craft, with the mud and soil of ignorance. Here are the things themselves to study upon; not words only, wherein too much of learning has consisted. If we examine into the antiquities of nations that had no writing among them, here are their monuments: these we are to explore, to strike out their latent meaning; and the more we reason upon them, the more reason shall we find to admire the vast size of the gigantic minds of our predecessors, the great and simple majesty of their works, and wherein mainly lies the beauty and the excellence of matters of antiquity. But more especially it is not without a happy omen, that the moderns have exerted themselves in earnest, to rake up every dust of past times, moved by the evident advantages therefrom accruing, in the understanding their invaluable writings, which have escaped the common shipwreck of time. It is from this method we must obtain an accurate intelligence of those principles of learning and foundations of all science: it is from them we advance our minds immediately to the state of manhood, and without them the world 5000 years old would but begin to think like a child. Nothing more illustrates this than looking into the comments that were wrote upon them 200 years ago, voluminous enough, but barbarous, poor, and impertinent, when compared to the solid performances of learned men since, whose heads were enriched with an exact search into the customs, manners and monuments of the writers. Hence it is, that history, geography, mathematics, philosophy, the learned professions, law, divinity, our own faculty, and the muses in general, flourish like a fresh garden richly watered and cultivated, weeded from rubbish of logomachy and barren mushrooms, gay with thriving and beautiful plants of true erudition, inoculated upon the stocks of the antients.