A brief and reverential preface, as if the writer were all the time bowing, informs the reader of the flattering reception accorded to previous editions of the work; and quotes "testimonies of respect which had lately appeared in various quarters — the British Critic, Review, and the seventh volume of the Beauties of England and Wales"-and concludes by expressing the hope, that this new, revised, and illustrated edition might "render it less unworthy of the public notice, and less unworthy also of the subject it is intended to illustrate."
A very nice, dapper, and respectful little preface, the time and place of writing which is solemnly recorded at the end-Hope Place, 1st Sept. 1803.
But how much fuller my satisfaction, as I fondly linger over this circumstantial paragraph, if the writer had recorded the precise hour of the day, and by what timepiece; and if he had but mentioned his age, occupation, and name.
But all is now lost; I know not who he was; and this estimable author must needs share the oblivious fate of all literary incognitos.
He must have possessed the grandest and most elevated ideas of true fame, since he scorned to be perpetuated by a solitary initial. Could I find him out now, sleeping neglected in some churchyard, I would buy him a headstone, and record upon it naught but his title-page, deeming that his noblest epitaph.
After the preface, the book opens with an extract from a prologue written by the excellent Dr. Aiken, the brother of Mrs. Barbauld, upon the opening of the Theater Royal, Liverpool, in 1772:-
"Where Mersey's stream, long winding o'er the plain, Pours his full tribute to the circling main, A band of fishers chose their humble seat; Contented labor blessed the fair retreat, Inured to hardship, patient, bold, and rude, They braved the billows for precarious food: Their straggling huts were ranged along the shore, Their nets and little boats their only store."
Indeed, throughout, the work abounds with quaint poetical quotations, and old-fashioned classical allusions to the Aeneid and Falconer's Shipwreck.
And the anonymous author must have been not only a scholar and a gentleman, but a man of gentle disinterestedness, combined with true city patriotism; for in his "Survey of the Town" are nine thickly printed pages of a neglected poem by a neglected Liverpool poet.
By way of apologizing for what might seem an obtrusion upon the public of so long an episode, he courteously and feelingly introduces it by saying, that "the poem has now for several years been scarce, and is at present but little known; and hence a very small portion of it will no doubt be highly acceptable to the cultivated reader; especially as this noble epic is written with great felicity of expression and the sweetest delicacy of feeling."
Once, but once only, an uncharitable thought crossed my mind, that the author of the Guide-Book might have been the author of the epic. But that was years ago; and I have never since permitted so uncharitable a reflection to insinuate itself into my mind.
This epic, from the specimen before me, is composed in the old stately style, and rolls along commanding as a coach and four. It sings of Liverpool and the Mersey; its docks, and ships, and warehouses, and bales, and anchors; and after descanting upon the abject times, when "his noble waves, inglorious, Mersey rolled," the poet breaks forth like all Parnassus with:-
"Now o'er the wondering world her name resounds, From northern climes to India's distant bounds- Where'er his shores the broad Atlantic waves; Where'er the Baltic rolls his wintry waves; Where'er the honored flood extends his tide, That clasps Sicilia like a favored bride. Greenland for her its bulky whale resigns, And temperate Gallia rears her generous vines: 'Midst warm Iberia citron orchards blow, And the ripe fruitage bends the laboring bough; In every clime her prosperous fleets are known, She makes the wealth of every clime her own."
It also contains a delicately-curtained allusion to Mr. Roscoe:-
"And here R*s*o*, with genius all his own, New tracks explores, and all before unknown?"
Indeed, both the anonymous author of the Guide-Book, and the gifted bard of the Mersey, seem to have nourished the wannest appreciation of the fact, that to their beloved town Roscoe imparted a reputation which gracefully embellished its notoriety as a mere place of commerce. He is called the modern Guicciardini of the modern Florence, and his histories, translations, and Italian Lives, are spoken of with classical admiration.
The first chapter begins in a methodical, business-like way, by informing the impatient reader of the precise latitude and longitude of Liverpool; so that, at the outset, there may be no misunderstanding on that head. It then goes on to give an account of the history and antiquities of the town, beginning with a record in the Doomsday-Book of William the Conqueror.
Here, it must be sincerely confessed, however, that notwithstanding his numerous other merits, my favorite author betrays a want of the uttermost antiquarian and penetrating spirit, which would have scorned to stop in its researches at the reign of the Norman monarch, but would have pushed on resolutely through the dark ages, up to Moses, the man of Uz, and Adam; and finally established the fact beyond a doubt, that the soil of Liverpool was created with the creation.
But, perhaps, one of the most curious passages in the chapter of antiquarian research, is the pious author's moralizing reflections upon an interesting fact he records: to wit, that in a.d. 1571, the inhabitants sent a memorial to Queen Elizabeth, praying relief under a subsidy, wherein they style themselves "her majesty's poor decayed town of Liverpool."
As I now fix my gaze upon this faded and dilapidated old guide-book, bearing every token of the ravages of near half a century, and read how this piece of antiquity enlarges like a modern upon previous antiquities, I am forcibly reminded that the world is indeed growing old. And when I turn to the second chapter, "On the increase of the town, and number of inhabitants," and then skim over page after page throughout the volume, all filled with allusions to the immense grandeur of a place, which, since then, has more than quadrupled in population, opulence, and splendor, and whose present inhabitants must look back upon the period here spoken of with a swelling feeling of immeasurable superiority and pride, I am filled with a comical sadness at the vanity of all human exaltation. For the cope-stone of to-day is the corner-stone of tomorrow; and as St. Peter's church was built in great part of the ruins of old Rome, so in all our erections, however imposing, we but form quarries and supply ignoble materials for the grander domes of posterity.
And even as this old guide-book boasts of the, to us, insignificant Liverpool of fifty years ago, the New York guidebooks are now vaunting of the magnitude of a town, whose future inhabitants, multitudinous as the pebbles on the beach, and girdled in with high walls and towers, flanking endless avenues of opulence and taste, will regard all our Broadways and Bowerys as but the paltry nucleus to their Nineveh. From far up the Hudson, beyond Harlem River, where the young saplings are now growing, that will overarch their lordly mansions with broad boughs, centuries old; they may send forth explorers to penetrate into the then obscure and smoky alleys of the Fifth Avenue and Fourteenth-street; and going still farther south, may exhume the present Doric Custom-house, and quote it as a proof that their high and mighty metropolis enjoyed a Hellenic antiquity.