CHAPTER II 



DOWN THE ROAD IN DAYS OF YORE 



I.— A Journey from Ne\vcastle-on-Tyne to London in 1772 



In 1773, the Reverend James Murray, Minister of 

 the High Bridge Meeting House at Newcastle, 

 luihlished a little book Avhich he was pleased to 

 call The Travels of the Imagination; or, a True 

 Journey from Newcastle to London, purporting to 

 he an account of an actual trip taken in 1772. 

 I do not know how his congregation received 

 this performance, hut the inspiration of it was 

 very evidently draAvn from Sterne's Sentimental 

 Journey, then in the heyday of its success and 

 sinffularlv provocative of imitations^ — all of them 



O ft/ X 



extraordinarily thin and poor. Sentimental 

 travellers, without a scintilla of the Avit that 

 jewelled Sterne's pages, gushed and reflected in 

 a variety of travels, and became a public nuisance. 

 Surely no one then read their mawkish products, 

 any more than they do noAV. 



Murray's book Avas, then, obviously, to any one 

 who noAV dips into it, as trite and jejune as the 

 rest of them ; but it has noAV, unlike its felloAVs, 

 an interesting aspect, for the reason that he gives 



