1826] Seo Re GierG20 ral . cont 
THR CHRONOLOGER:* °'\" 
Poor Dick Robinson!. So he is dead at last? And you do not re- 
member the day exactly on which he departed this mortal life? Well, 
it is evident that if he has dropped his mantle, it has not fallen upon 
ou. 
_ A fig for your dates;.say the punsters; | but: suchywas never Dick’s 
creed. They were ‘his: food++thevery aliment-he lived on. Various 
are the ways by which men fancy to achieve themselves fame. One 
gentleman makes a vow of catching the ball on the ivory spike six 
hundred and sixty-six thousand six hundred and sixty-six times, and 
accomplishes the noble feat:, another spits through his teeth; a third 
protrudes a wig of whisker on either cheek ; a fourth wears a black-silk 
shirt, with pink gauze frills;,and so on, ad infinitum. Mental feats are 
altogether as varied. One learned man spends twenty-five years over 
three or four square yards of scratches on a pyramid, and at the end of 
the time finds that he can decypher three words and.a quarter, of the 
meaning of which he is ignorant. A pair of literati fiercely contest for 
a whole life the proper position of a dochmius in a verse, which, if it 
were arranged in the most correct manner conceivable, would not be 
worth any thing after all. Another gathers tulips ; a fourth collects un- 
readable and unread books. My poor friend had none of these pen- 
chants, nor indeed had he any affectations about him at all; but he too 
had his strong point. 
. Men about the turf know the Racing Calender for years after years, 
and will give you the history and genealogy of any given horse at a 
moment’s notice, Squintum got by Charlatan, own brother to the Great 
Humbug, &c. &c. ad infinitum. All people comme il faut are bound to 
know the peerage. .I have an acquaintance, a fat» parson, who was 
never within fifty yards of lordly company in his life, who yet has made 
it his regular and constant.study for many years. Mention in his com 
any Lady Amelia Hubbledeshuff, and he starts at once: “ Oh—yes— 
Rady Amelia, third daughter of the 4th Earl of Mundungus, married to 
Jonathan Hubbledeshuff, Esq., of Hubbledeshuff Hall, in Bucks, by 
whom she has issue five ,children—first,. John, a cornet in the Guards; 
second, Mary, married to the Reverend Zachary Fogrum, rector of 
Gobble-cum-Gaster, in Durham, &c. &c.. Now the-good man would not 
know the face of one of those people with whose history he was thus mi- 
nutely acquainted. All his knowledge came from Debrett ; and I still 
recollect the look of horror which came over his countenance, when the 
eternal blunders of that valuable work were disclosing to the rude gaze of 
the public. It was striking at the root of all his information, giving a 
mortal blow to his importance. In the army a steady Major, a man who 
has seen much service over innumerable rounds of beef and bottles of 
port, is minutely acquainted with the Army List—and a dry-baked Lieu- 
tenant in the Navy, floundering in a sea-port town, has no bad notion of 
the contents of that quarterly publication of Mr. John Murray’s, which 
he—the aforesaid lieutenant —prizes far above Mr. Murray's other Quar- 
terly—to say nothing of his Journal of Science. 
JAI these are* good in their way, but Dick was an encyclopedia of 
dates of all kinds. _He was not confined to this branch or that ; -he was 
chronological throughout. But, as 
“eneoro = © What ean we talk on, but on what we know ?”” 
