Crotchet Castle Part 9

FIRST COMMISSIONER. The manorial farm of Hautbois, now occupied by Farmer Seedling, is charged with the endowment and maintenance of an almshouse.

REV. DR. FOLLIOTT (to the Churchwarden). How is this, Mr.

Bluenose?

FIRST CHURCHWARDEN. I really do not know, sir. What say you, Mr.

Appletwig?

MR. APPLETWIG (parish clerk and schoolmaster; an old man). I do remember, gentlemen, to have been informed, that there did stand, at the end of the village, a ruined cottage, which had once been an almshouse, which was endowed and maintained, by an annual revenue of a mark and a half, or one pound sterling, charged some centuries ago on the farm of Hautbois; but the means, by the progress of time, having become inadequate to the end, the almshouse tumbled to pieces.

FIRST COMMISSIONER. But this is a right which cannot be abrogated by desuetude, and the sum of one pound per annum is still chargeable for charitable purposes on the manorial farm of Hautbois.

REV. DR. FOLLIOTT. Very well, sir.

MR. APPLETWIG. But, sir, the one pound per annum is still received by the parish, but was long ago, by an unanimous vote in open vestry, given to the minister.

THE THREE COMMISSIONERS (una voce). The minister!

FIRST COMMISSIONER. This is an unjustifiable proceeding.

SECOND COMMISSIONER. A misappropriation of a public fund.

THIRD COMMISSIONER. A flagrant perversion of a charitable donation.

REV. DR. FOLLIOTT. G.o.d bless my soul, gentlemen! I know nothing of this matter. How is this, Mr. Bluenose? Do I receive this one pound per annum?

FIRST CHURCHWARDEN. Really, sir, I know no more about it than you do.

MR. APPLETWIG. You certainly receive it, sir. It was voted to one of your predecessors. Farmer Seedling lumps it in with his t.i.thes.

FIRST COMMISSIONER. Lumps it in, sir! Lump in a charitable donation!

SECOND AND THIRD COMMISSIONER. Oh-oh-oh-h-h!

FIRST COMMISSIONER. Reverend sir, and gentlemen, officers of this parish, we are under the necessity of admonis.h.i.+ng you that this is a most improper proceeding: and you are hereby duly admonished accordingly. Make a record, Mr. Milky.

MR. MILKY (writing). The clergyman and church-wardens of the village of Hm-ra-m-m- gravely admonished. Hm-m-m-m.

REV. DR. FOLLIOTT. Is that all, gentlemen?

THE COMMISSIONERS. That is all, sir; and we wish you a good morning.

REV. DR. FOLLIOTT. A very good morning to you, gentlemen.

"What in the name of all that is wonderful, Mr. Bluenose," said the Reverend Doctor Folliott, as he walked out of the inn, "what in the name of all that is wonderful, can those fellows mean? They have come here in a chaise and four, to make a fuss about a pound per annum, which, after all, they leave as it was: I wonder who pays them for their trouble, and how much."

MR. APPLETWIG. The public pay for it, sir. It is a job of the learned friend whom you admire so much. It makes away with public money in salaries, and private money in lawsuits, and does no particle of good to any living soul.

REV. DR. FOLLIOTT. Ay, ay, Mr. Appletwig; that is just the sort of public service to be looked for from the learned friend. Oh, the learned friend! the learned friend! He is the evil genius of everything that falls in his way.

The Reverend Doctor walked off to Crotchet Castle, to narrate his misadventures, and exhale his budget of grievances on Mr. Mac Quedy, whom he considered a ringleader of the march of mind.

CHAPTER IX: THE VOYAGE

[Greek text]

Mounting the bark, they cleft the watery ways.--Homer.

Four beautiful cabined pinnaces, one for the ladies, one for the gentlemen, one for kitchen and servants, one for a dining-room and band of music, weighed anchor, on a fine July morning, from below Crotchet Castle, and were towed merrily, by strong trotting horses, against the stream of the Thames. They pa.s.sed from the district of chalk, successively into the districts of clay, of sand-rock, of oolite, and so forth. Sometimes they dined in their floating dining-room, sometimes in tents, which they pitched on the dry, smooth-shaven green of a newly-mown meadow: sometimes they left their vessels to see sights in the vicinity; sometimes they pa.s.sed a day or two in a comfortable inn.

At Oxford, they walked about to see the curiosities of architecture, painted windows, and undisturbed libraries. The Reverend Doctor Folliott laid a wager with Mr. Crotchet "that in all their perl.u.s.trations they would not find a man reading," and won it. "Ay," said the reverend gentleman, "this is still a seat of learning, on the principle of--once a captain, always a captain.

We may well ask, in these great reservoirs of books whereof no man ever draws a sluice, Quorsum pertinuit stipere Platona Menandro?

What is done here for the cla.s.sics? Reprinting German editions on better paper. A great boast, verily! What for mathematics? What for metaphysics? What for history? What for anything worth knowing? This was a seat of learning in the days of Friar Bacon.

But the Friar is gone, and his learning with him. Nothing of him is left but the immortal nose, which, when his brazen head had tumbled to pieces, crying "Time's Past," was the only palpable fragment among its minutely pulverised atoms, and which is still resplendent over the portals of its cognominal college. That nose, sir, is the only thing to which I shall take off my hat, in all this Babylon of buried literature.

MR. CROTCHET. But, doctor, it is something to have a great reservoir of learning, at which some may draw if they please.

REV. DR. FOLLIOTT. But, here, good care is taken that n.o.body shall please. If even a small drop from the sacred fountain, [Greek text], as Callimachus has it, were carried off by any one, it would be evidence of something to hope for. But the system of dissuasion from all good learning is brought here to a pitch of perfection that baffles the keenest aspirant. I run over to myself the names of the scholars of Germany, a glorious catalogue: but ask for those of Oxford,--Where are they? The echoes of their courts, as vacant as their heads, will answer, Where are they? The tree shall be known by its fruit: and seeing that this great tree, with all its specious seeming, brings forth no fruit, I do denounce it as a barren fig.

MR. MAC QUEDY. I shall set you right on this point. We do nothing without motives. If learning get nothing but honour, and very little of that; and if the good things of this world, which ought to be the rewards of learning, become the mere gifts of self- interested patronage; you must not wonder if, in the finis.h.i.+ng of education, the science which takes precedence of all others, should be the science of currying favour.

REV. DR. FOLLIOTT. Very true, sir. Education is well finished, for all worldly purposes, when the head is brought into the state whereinto I am accustomed to bring a marrow-bone, when it has been set before me on a toast, with a white napkin wrapped round it.

Nothing trundles along the high road of preferment so trimly as a well-bia.s.sed sconce, picked clean within and polished without; totus teres atque rotundus. The perfection of the finis.h.i.+ng lies in the bias, which keeps it trundling in the given direction.

There is good and sufficient reason for the fig being barren, but it is not therefore the less a barren fig.

At G.o.dstow, they gathered hazel on the grave of Rosamond; and, proceeding on their voyage, fell into a discussion on legendary histories.

LADY CLARINDA. History is but a tiresome thing in itself: it becomes more agreeable the more romance is mixed up with it. The great enchanter has made me learn many things which I should never have dreamed of studying, if they had not come to me in the form of amus.e.m.e.nt.

REV. DR. FOLLIOTT. What enchanter is that? There are two enchanters: he of the north, and he of the south.

MR. TRILLO. Rossini!

REV. DR. FOLLIOTT. Ay, there is another enchanter. But I mean the great enchanter of Covent Garden: he who, for more than a quarter of a century, has produced two pantomimes a year, to the delight of children of all ages; including myself at all ages. That is the enchanter for me. I am for the pantomimes. All the northern enchanter's romances put together would not furnish materials for half the Southern enchanter's pantomimes.

LADY CLARINDA. Surely you do not cla.s.s literature with pantomime?

REV. DR. FOLLIOTT. In these cases, I do. They are both one, with a slight difference. The one is the literature of pantomime, the other is the pantomime of literature. There is the same variety of character, the same diversity of story, the same copiousness of incident, the same research into costume, the same display of heraldry, falconry, minstrelsy, scenery, monkery, witchery, devilry, robbery, poachery, piracy, fishery, gipsy-astrology, demonology, architecture, fortification, castrametation, navigation; the same running base of love and battle. The main difference is, that the one set of amusing fictions is told in music and action; the other in all the worst dialects of the English language. As to any sentence worth remembering, any moral or political truth, anything having a tendency, however remote, to make men wiser or better, to make them think, to make them ever think of thinking; they are both precisely alike nuspiam, nequaquam, nullibi, nullimodis.

LADY CLARINDA. Very amusing, however.

REV. DR. FOLLIOTT. Very amusing, very amusing.

MR. CHAINMAIL. My quarrel with the northern enchanter is, that he has grossly misrepresented the twelfth century.

REV. DR. FOLLIOTT. He has misrepresented everything, or he would not have been very amusing. Sober truth is but dull matter to the reading rabble. The angler, who puts not on his hook the bait that best pleases the fish, may sit all day on the bank without catching a gudgeon.