To a stranger, I am sure, they would be
full of meaning; but to me, who lived so near him through so much of the
time, how truly pregnant does each briefest entry seem.
To Messrs. Oldbuck and Sons they, alas! often came to be but so many
accounts rendered; to you, being a philosopher, they would, as I have
said, mean more; but to me they mean all that great sunrise, the youth
of Narcissus.
Many modern poets, still young enough, are fond of telling us where
their youth lies buried. That of Narcissus--would ye know--rests among
these old accounts. Lo! I would perform an incantation. I throw these
old leaves into the _elixir vitae_ of sweet memory, as Dr. Heidegger
that old rose into his wonderful crystal water. Have I power to make
Narcissus' rose to bloom again, so that you may know something of the
beauty it wore for us? I wonder. I would I had. I must try.
CHAPTER II
STILL INTRODUCTORY, BUT THIS TIME OF A GREATER THAN THE WRITER
On the left-hand side of Tithefields, just as one turns out of Prince
Street, in a certain well-known Lancashire town, is the unobtrusive
bookshop of Mr. Samuel Dale. It must, however, be a very superficial
glance which does not discover in it something characteristic,
distinguishing it from other 'second-hand' shops of the same size and
style.
There are, alas! treatises on farriery in the window; geographies,
chemistries, and French grammars, on the trestles outside; for Samuel,
albeit so great a philosopher as indeed to have founded quite a school,
must nevertheless live.
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