viii PREFACE. 



If he had evinced less of these qualities and had been 

 more of the shopkeeper, he might have accumulated 

 money in lieu of dying houseless and a wanderer. But 

 his higher instincts ever led him to seek knowledge, 

 and to publish it even in its most elementary form, so 

 much so that his place of honour is among the very 

 pioneers of elementary literature, in the production of 

 the " Easy Heading Books for the Young," which 

 supplanted the old Horn Books of less lettered genera- 

 tions, while his Navy List and his " Companions " 

 (the origin of the modern Guide Book), are proofs that 

 there was existing in Pocock not only the apt and 

 ready detection of a public want, but the energy and 

 skill to supply it, so far as his limited means enabled. 



Let me add, that at the age of twenty-six he first 

 introduced to his native town that mighty engine of 

 literature the printing press, and I think I have 

 advanced enough to justify this attempt to honour 

 Pocock's memory. 



True it is, that the retrospect of his trials, his 

 museum broken up and dispersed, himself ejected 

 without money or furniture from his shop, his last 

 days of discouragement and death at his son's house 

 at Dartford, present reflections sufficiently depressing ; 

 and yet, as he says in an epitaph which he drew 

 up for himself, " he produced a History of Gravesend 

 and Milton, with other works, which will perpetuate 

 his memory/' To secure him some of this posthumous 

 honour is the object of my present effort. 



