* ‘ eM oa't Lr ASe f 
630 The Chronologer. [Dec. 
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and as Dick, tomy certain knowledge, had not read. a,book since his 
schoolmaster dismissed him from his ferula (on the 28th of June 1790, 
as I often heard him say, precisely at two o'clock), and as his Hee lay. 
only in the precincts of a provincial town, his recollections—reminis- 
cences, as Yates and old Michael Kelly would call them, did. not aspire 
to regulating the periods of the four great monarchies. Of the Assyrians, 
Persi ins, Grecians, and Romans, he knew nothing, and cared Tess, 
When Charlemagne lived or died was nothing to him, The date of, the, 
Conquest disturbed not his brains; and, but for the toast, he would ae 
have known that the “ Glorious Revolution” had happened in 1688. 
Keeping neither racers or the company of men of the turf, the sportmg 
records were no part of his concerns; and as for the, affairs, of the. 
Peerage, they came not in his way. The star of a Duke was as_much. 
out of his sphere as the dog-star, and accordingly as seldom tormented 
his cogitations. But in the events of his own circle—in the actual 
adventures of the toewn—who was superior? In them he was, without a 
rival. The adventures of its mayors and sheriffs, the dinners of its, 
corporation, the arrival of bishops, the incumbency of its clergy, the 
succession of its churchwardens, the building and pulling down of its 
houses, the paving and lighting of its streets, the various accidents that 
during his time had happened in it; the robberies, burglaries, larcenies, 
and their consequences, assizes and hangings ; the births, deaths, and 
marriages; the marching in and out of regiments—all these, and many. 
more particulars that I do not immediately recollect, were engraved 
upon the tablets of Dick’s brain, and imparted by his tongue with great 
freedom and volubility. Had a short-hand writer been present at one of 
Dick’s evening lectures, he would have drawn up a history of. the last 
thirty years of the city of , which, for minuteness of. detail, and 
accuracy of chronology in all its departments—ecclesiastical, civil, poli- 
tical, judicial, convivial, military—would put to shame the most elaborate 
of the histories which we owe to the unwearied industry of a, Lysons or 
a Nichols. Sef xeuidst} es 
He had nothing to do, and, as the town was a very, busy one, he was 
to have the carving of a side dish. When a new regiment, marche 
in, he went to meet them some three miles before they came. to 
the town, and: soon found a communicative serjeant, from whom, by 
the persuasive rhetoric of a pot of ale, he sucked the entire news of the. 
regiment. Did a theatrical company make its appearance in ——, he 
was sure to be in the house on their first night; and as he, had for thirty, 
years kept up an acquaintance with every company that visited the place, 
it was odd if three nights had elapsed before he had a mutton, chop with 
the London star annually imported. Lita : aybate 3, 
From this course of study—for such it really was-—Dick had scrape 
