Mr. URBAN, HE parish of Stotfold, in the T county of Bedford, and diocese of Lincoln, is forty miles from London, and lies about five miles south-east of Shefford, on the borders of Hertfordshire; the road from Shefford to Baldock going through it. The population taken in 1821 was 695. A manor in Stotfold, which was parcel of the barony of Bedford, and descended by female heirs to the Mowbrays and Berkeleys, was given by the Marquis of Berkeley. to Sir Reginald Bray. This, by the name of Lord Bray's manor, is the property of Isaac Hindley, esq. who purchased it in 1786 of the Dentons, whose ancestor acquired it in like manner of the Ansell's, in the year 1617. Another manor in Stotfold was given by one of the Beauchamps, barons of Bedford, to the priory of Newnham, and after the Reformation was granted in 1546 to Richard Kyrke. After having been for a short time in fle families of Butler and Ansell, it passed to the Lyttons, of whose descendants it was purchased in 1795 by the present proprietor, John Williamson, esq. The Church (see Plate II.) is dedicated to St. Mary, and is a handsome Gothic structure; it consists of a nave, chancel, and side ailes, with a square tower 63 feet high, embattled; the whole of the Church is covered with lead. Having been lately repaired, the inside walls were found to contain a number of curious fresco paintings. I send you drawings of two of them, viz. St. George and the Dragon, and the Angel Gabriel with the golden Scales and Satan, as mentioned in the fourth Book of Milton's Paradise Lost, line 998. The master and scholars of Trinity College, Cambridge, are patrons of the Vicarage, and impropriators of the great tithes, which with the rectorial manor, now vested in the College, was given by Simon de Beauchamp to the priory of Chicksands. GENT. MAG. November, 1827. In an ancient book of Endowments of Vicarages in the time of Hugh Wells, formerly Bishop of Lincoln, who began to preside over that See in the year 1209, remaining in the registry of the Lord Bishop of Lincoln, It is recorded that "the Vicarage of Stotfaud, which belongs to the 40% Account of Stotfold, Bedfordshire. Priory and Convent of Chickesand— by the authority of a general council is endowed with all altarage and all small tithes, besides flax-and with a competent parsonage house to be assigned to it by the Prior; and the Vicar shall pay to the Prior three pounds annually and the Prior shall defray all the regular and usual expences of that Church. The total value of the Vicarage is 15 marks." A copy of the original endowment in Latin was taken by Mr. John Fardell, Deputy Register at Lincoln, and is copied in the Parish Register of Stotfold. The following is an account of the various benefactions given at different times for the poor of the parish, and the augmentation of the Vicarage. Benefactions to the poor.-William Field, of Furnival's Inn, London, gent. gave a sum of money which was invested in the purchase of a close of ground containing one acre and a half, situate in Up End in Stotfold, called With's Close, the rent of which is divided the Vicar and the poor. John Fitzakerly, by his will dated 3d Sept. 1610, proved in Doctors' Commons, gave to the poor five pounds yearly, for ever, payable out of his farm and lands in Stotfold, and which was granted and confirmed by indenture, bearing date 1st Oct. 1628, by William Ford the devisee. The estate is now the property of Malcolm Macqueen, esq. and the same yearly sum of five pounds is paid by him. William Trimer, alias Eaton, by his will dated 27th June, 1713, proved at Bedford, gave five shillings out of a close called Morrell's, in Stotfold, to be paid to the overseers yearly, for ever, to buy shoes for poor children. This is now paid by Edward Sanders, the proprietor of the same close. There are eight acres of land lying in the common fields of Stotfold, belonging to the poor, the rent of which is laid out yearly in bread, and given to the poor; but the donor's name is not known. Jane Brooks, by will dated 4th April, 1795, proved at Hitchin, gave to Joseph Parker one hundred and sixty pounds, upon trust, to pay one fourth part of the interest to the Minister and Churchwardens of Stotfold, to be distributed to the poor in bread twice a year, on Christmas-day and Good Friday for ever. [Nov Henricus Octavus Roe, of Baldock, gent. purchased a piece of land at Stotfold, adjoining the Church-yard, containing one rood, which was conveyed by indenture, inrolled in Chancery 12th. March, 1808, in trust for a school for instructing poor children in reading, writing, the Church Catechism, &c. Benefactions for augmenting the Vicarage: The Rev. Dr. Adams gave £.100 300 200 The Governors of Queen Anne's Bounty 200 SOME SPECULATIONS ON LITERARY a retrospective view of the Elizabethan period of our literature, it must not be denied that in the singular variety and excellence of its dramatists, setting aside Shakspeare, who stands alone, considerable claims on the side of poetry will be urged in its favour. To deny this, would be to advance an opinion flagrantly opposed to the opinions of all subsequent ages. At the present day, to pronounce for the fiftieth time a suffrage on the merits of the Massingers, the Jonsons, the Beaumonts, the Fletchers, the Fords, the Shirleys, may be deemed a needless or a hackneyed process. It is admitted that, together, they form a phalanx which reflects considerable reputation on the age to which they belonged. But it is another thing perhaps to assume that this age was generally productive of bright intellects in the speculative departments of literature. This, as already intimated, has been assumed, and from the mouth of authority; though when it is recollected that it is not so much the existence of one, or even two transcendantly bright intellects, either in poetry or philosophy, which can justify in an extended sense the character of a high literary age, but rather a more general diffusion of talent, the opinion will appear not supported by very much of evidence. The human mind, it must still be borne in view, had then just began to think with originality and vigour. Elizabeth was herself propitious to the drama. Hence, the concentration on the one hand, of dramatic talent in her own and the age succeeding; while on the other, the stimulus which had just begun to operate on the human mind, stirred up a mighty spirit in the genius of Bacon. But it may nevertheless be thought, and reason may be adduced for the position, that in play of imagination-in the bright association of classical imagery, the poetical character of the former part of the 17th, engendered and nurtured as it was by the fostering aid of Elizabeth's reign, was, in depth and precision of thinking, eclipsed by the speculations of a century later in our literature, was, in the generous imaginings of poetry, in that rich vagrancy of thought which pleases and delights the mind, attuned to the fascinations of the imaginative worlds which contemplation opens,— rivalled by the thinking and the productions which marked the literary progress of the same period in the 18th. In reviewing the poetry of Eliza beth's reign, we find, it may be said by the way, a classification in the order of merit which, with some, may still admit of question. Shakspeare and Spenser have, following the dictum of our critical authorities, been viewed as the two brilliant luminaries of the æra above-mentioned, yet how unequal their pretensions, as measured by the same abstract principles of superior desert! Shakspeare, we repeat, by the acknowledgment of all, stands alone. At this time of day, and where all are agreed, encomium is unnecessary, and critical analysis impertinent; yet we know that his genius often towered above the boundaries of time and space, and imagined new worlds for the embodyings of his creative spirit. His powerful energy may indeed be said, as Pope once expressed it, to strike upon the mind like a sudden fire from heaven;-but will the readers of Spenser say that any thing either in the "Faerie Queene," or Shepheard's Calendar," affects in a similar way? For the last two centuries, following the progress of our literature and the march of the human mind, if our poesy has, viewed on a wide scale, profited from the national enlightenment which has, in so prodigious a degree, raised our character for scientific attainments, the few early lights, which, like meteoric appearances, blazed forth and eclipsed all surrounding objects, will ever shine with undiminished splendour. These bright stars, however, were rare, and if they rather illumined the zodiac with occasional flashes than marked its line with a steady and increasing brilliancy, so they displayed pretensions which certainly did not place them in the same class. So Dr. Warton, in his classification of these luminaries, constantly places Spenser with Shakspeare and Milton, as individually forming the first order. But if the two last, by the suffrages of all subsequent ages, produced from the crucibles of their imaginations essentially what was sublime, the first, though he marvellously excelled in what was strange," can seldom, if ever, be said to have risen to this faculty. In the celebrated poem of the "Faerie Queene," on which his fame confessedly hangs, Spenser, it will abundantly be owned from age to age, has successfully invoked the visionary and the wild. Considered, as he himself considered it, under the form of an allegory, it leads the mind into an elysium of shadowy forms, and objects dimly seen, -not indeed the Elysium of Danté, but rather a fairy land, if not producing "all monstrous, all prodigious things," yet unfolding to the reader's view things which bespeak, in the imagination of the narrator, a rich and marvellous talent of fecundity. But imagination, it has very long been decided, is not the sole qualification of a poet. And if the continued allegory, or representation of ideal personages and events, bespeak a wild and irregular turn of genius, that alone assuredly does not entitle him to a place in the first class of poets. He justly says, in his famous letter to Sir Walter Raleigh (his joint patron with Sidney)," the methode of a poet historical is not such as of an historiographer. For an historiographer discourseth of affayrs orderly, as they were donne, accounting as well the times as the actions; but a poet thrusteth into the middest, even where it most concerneth him; and there recoursing to the thinges forepaste, and divining of thinges to come, maketh a pleasing analysis of all." Of course, a poet's licence is always tolerated in the generous imaginings of a mind alive to the wild and the beautiful; but whatever be these imaginings, still a degree of order and arrangement should be appa 404 rent. Speculations on Literary Pleasures. While imagination wanders among the scenes which inspire her varied powers, she must be held in keeping with a certain propriety of thought, or her inventious will become monstrous and distasteful. The inventions found in the "Faerie Queene," though designed, as the author informs us, as a series of allegorirical representations in honour of Elizabeth, who herself sustains the chief character at times, luxuriate into the rank fictions of a mind accustomed to indulge, without limitation or selection, all the reveries of his brain. But although amused for a time, the attention of the reader at length forgets to be rivetted by the eternally recurring adventures of love-lorn ladies torn from the arms of a gallant knight by " cruell enchanters," or kept in durance vile through the hellish machinations of fiery dragons; of lions shorn of their native fierceness, assuming the docility of the lamb; of courteous knights who, from gentle lovers" sighing like furnace," are transformed into chivalric champions for the performance of bloody enterprize; of paynim knights and elfin queenes, with all this, and much more of a similar character, though for a time an interest is sustained, it at length becomes languid. The invention of a poet may body forth" all "monstrous, all prodigious things," but if there be not propriety and contrast in the history, the interest can neither be sustained, nor much of admiration excited, although applause may possibly be bestowed where the current of opinions in certain quarters has given it a literary sanction. I am aware that I am here treading on tender ground; critical authorities, including of course the commentators of Spenser, are marshalled against these insinuated inferences. But when we see his pretensions to this classification (with Shakspeare and Milton) are built upon a poem, which some readers, not altogether destitute of taste, would posssibly pronounce rambling, and sometimes in a degree tiresome,-yielding, it is true, occasionally, abundant proofs of a mind saw. [Nov that could with Petrarch utter the finer sentiments of the heart,-could withdraw itself into the generous imaginings of that tender bard; whether uttered in bowers deep sunk in the sequestered vistas. of shady groves, or in the cloistered halls of monastic retirement, dimly reflecting, in the approaches of evening, the romantic forms of a moonlight scene,-I cannot exactly agree in adding a suffrage of quite so high character as that which has generally surrounded his name. Spenser in the temper and complexion Sidney, a genius somewhat allied to of his genius, gave to the world his Arcadia, " be not metrical, contains perhaps some a romance which, if it points of resemblance to the celebrated poem of his friend and literary associate. This once-famed production, however, has long been pronounced to be feeble and tumid, in a degree scarcely sufferable in the present age. Again, Edward Lord Herbert, of Cherbury, who lived and wrote some thirty years after him,-likewise of imaginative character and genius,-stands out, also, among his cotemporaries, for vigorous and original speculation. He was the last in this island who contributed to fan with the flame of his ardour the expiring embers of chivalry. If the age of chivalry only at present lives in the annals of its historians*, this, its last votary, if he sustained the expiring cause of chivalry, certainly also may be said to have adorned the rising cause of letters. But in the early period of the eighteenth century (and we may perhaps, without impropriety, recur to the subject with which a former speculation was closed), the thinking, as it crowned the order of our national poets, was decidedly of a higher cast. We, for instance, luxuriate with a generous abandonment (not exactly with that which we feel-and the allusion is made with every respect for the author's fame, whilst perusing the "Faerie Queene,") over the effusions of Thomson and of Gray; while, also, we find our sympathies powerfully drawn forth by the fine sentiment and Meyrick on "Ancient Armour," and Mills on the "Progress of Chivalry," have both highly merited of their countrymen and the age they live in, for their valuable and interesting works illustrative of the most singular institution which the world perhaps ever If the Crusades have been designated the most extraordinary instances of folly which ever marked the policy of nations, the tilts, jousts, and tournaments, which, for the space of a century and upwards covered the whole of southern Europe with chivalric spectacles, were certainly accelerative in promoting the cause of civilization and letters among our an cestors. |