THE BARDS AND AUTHORS OF CLEVELAND AND SOUTH DURHAM, AND THE VICINAGE. FIRST SERIES. BY GEORGE MARKHAM TWEDDELL, Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, the Royal Society of Northern itectural and Archaeological Society of Honorary Member of the Man- chester Literary Club, &c. TWEDDELL AND SONS, CLEVELAND PRINTING AND PUBLISHING OFFICES, STOKESLEY. Gough Adds Durham 815. SONNET ΤΟ GEORGE MARKHAM TWEDDELL, Esq., F.S.A. Scor. AND NEWC., ETC. In earnest reference to his very eloquent Treatise on "Shakspere, his Times and Contemporaries," and also to his "Bards and Authors of Cleveland and South Durham." "Thou honour'st Verse, and Verse must lend her wing To honour thee."-MILTON. -:0: TWEDDELL! the grateful incense thou hast shed J. G. GRANT. DEDICATION. TO ROBERT HENRY ALLAN, OF BLACKWELL HALL, &C., ESQ., F.S.A., J.P., D.L., and late High Sheriff for the County of Durham. MY DEAR MR. ALLAN, To you (who may truly be termed the Mecenas of our local literature, without the luxurious dissipation of the ancient Roman) I dedicate this humble attempt to render the people of Cleveland and South Durham better acquainted with the Poets and Prose-writers who, by birth or residence, have been connected with the district. As there has been much delay in the completion of this volume, I may be allowed briefly to state how my connection with the work came about. One morning, in the year 1860, having seen to the breakfasting of the poor juvenile street Arabs whom I had gathered together in the Bury Ragged and Industrial Schools (of which I was the Master or Governor), I was sitting down to my morning cup of coffee, when a Letter from Middlesbrough reached me, enclosing the Prospectus of a Work "shortly to be published, in parts at one shilling each, embellished with local illustrations, crown 8vo.," to be entitled "The Bards and Authors of Cleveland and South Durham, with Sketches Biographical and Critical, and Extracts from their Writings, by Chips," in which I was announced to be honoured with a niche in the local Pantheon. Time rolled on, and I had left Lancashire to commence writing that History of my native Cleveland and its Vicinage for which I had long been collecting the materials,-even before my friend Walker Ord had thought of his, or indeed had studied it himself: and, at the request of "Chips," who declared that he found the work would be too heavy for him, and therefore had never begun it, joined to the entreaties of the proposed printer and publisher, I undertook the labour, with the understanding that I was to have a given number of copies free and to incur no pecuniary risk, and that it was in no way to prejudice a similar work of a more extensive character, which I had long contemplated, as mentioned at page 18. The work was accordingly advertised as "by George Markham Tweddell," and a number of Subscribers' names procured for it, "in twelve parts at one shilling each." After I had borne that "hope deferred" which "makes the heart sick" for some time, the insolvency of the printer, and his removal to a distant part of the country, led me to purchase from him all the illustrations he had procured, and to pay for the engraving of several others, and to publish, at my own risk, a series of the work, in twelve sixpenny instead of shilling parts, rather than to allow the whole to fall to the ground. A poor man, struggling with mortgaged houses in Ironopolis through four years of such deadly panic as ought never to occur in a civilized country, and with great numbers of my Subscribers neglecting to pay for the parts as they received them-forgetting that "many a little," though trifling to them, makes an inconvenient "mickle" to the poor Author who has to print, advertise, and generally pre-pay by post, his own publications-I only wonder that I have been able to complete the volume at all. It is easy, Sir, for editors who draw their salaries regularly to twit us for the irregular appearance of our productions; but if they knew a tithe of the sacrifices we have to make to get them out at all, even the strong temptation to point a paragraph by hammering it upon the anvil of an author's heart would scarcely tempt them to do it.* At present, this is all that I feel at liberty * The ill-natured Critics,--those who dip their pens in gall,—are growing fewer, in proportion to the number of their craft, every day, and are generally the men with the least grasp of thought. Perhaps some of them may have glanced over my books when suffering from an overflow of bile. I don't want puffs: all I desire from any Reviewer is a candid criticism, to to say on so unpleasant a subject; but some day, with a candour equal to Jean Jacques Rosseau in his Confessions, I hope to make a clean breast of it: and the world may then judge whether I have been most to pity or to blame. If I could have done it, I would have burnt every memorandum I possess long ago, and washed my hands altogether of local history. For I feel strongly that if I could have devoted a state fairly the object of the book under notice, and to express his own opinion how far that object has been accomplished. It is capital fun to see how one praises what another blames, and some day I hope to arrange all that has been said of myself cheek by jowl, for the reader's delectation. "Grant me patience, just Heaven!" exclaims STERNE. "Of all the cants which are canted in this canting world, - though the cant of hypocrites may be the worst, the cant of criticism is the most tormenting." After having received the hearty approbation of a few of the choicest spirits of the time, the uncharitable sneers of a few nameless nobodies break no bones, and "pass by me, as SHAKSPERE makes Brutus say of the threats of Cassius, (Julius Caesar, act iv., sc. 3,) "like the idle wind, which I respect not,"--and yet the idlest of all winds, as the will of God, is much more to be respected then they. I have been mightily amused to see clever men belabouring me for trying to do justice to the ability, and if possible to the integrity, of some brother literary labourer, long gone to a more impartial bar, whose opinions "there need no ghost rise from the dead to tell us" were widely different to my own,-a spirit which I will earnestly beseech the Giver of every good Gift to more and more develope within me, as I feel it to contribute to that peace "which passeth all understanding." I would not have wasted space over saying this, but for the sake of showing them that, as I have ever looked upon the vocation of an author as a sacred one, for which a strict account must be rendered up, I am not such "a feather for each wind that blows" as to be deterred from the course that I have marked out for myself either by ridicule or by any other persecution. When the genial THOMAS HOOD, in 1826, published the first series of his Whims and Oddities, he prefixed thereto the following humorous epigram : "What is a modern poet's fate? To write his thoughts upon a slate: Gives it a wipe-and all is gone!" Nevertheless, all the Critics in the world could not wipe out a poet like THOMAS HOOD, even if they were unanimous in the attempt,-and no body of men are more divided in opinion. To those Reviewers and others-and I have great pleasure in saying they are many-who have helped to inspirit me under many difficulties with some cheering word, I am doubly-grateful; and, conscious that several of them have given me credit for much more intellectual strength and learning, though not for greater love of literature, than I am fortunate enough to possess, I feel in honour bound to do my best to make good all the kind things which they have been pleased to say of my humble efforts in local and in our national literature. As JOAB beautifully expressed it nearly three thousand years ago and we need no higher inspiration in the present, though we should fight with holier weapons than those with which he smote the children of Ammon:-"Be of good courage, and let us play the men for our people, and for the cities of our God and the Lord do that which seemeth Him good." (II. Sam., x., 12.) |