In 1642 Charles I. erected the royal standard at York, and from this time the castle of Pontefract was an object of great importance: it was seized by the royalists, and defended by them with a steadiness, and valour, highly honourable to their loyalty and skill; and it had the glory of being the last strong hold that struck the royal colours. Many of the families that distinguished themselves in this defence, yet remain in the vicinity and from one of these Mr. B. has been favoured with a very circumstantial history of the siege, composed by an ancestor, who appears to have held an office of considerable trust. We cannot follow this history closely, but the fidelity of political friendship, and the means taken to provide for the safety of six persons who were excepted from the benefit of the capitulation, to the Parliament army, demands our attention. The troops in the garrison were sensibly affected when they heard the names of those excepted. They sent again the commissioners to Lambert, and requested that he would allow them six days, in which time the unfortunate victims might endeavour to escape, aud that it might be lawful for the rest of the gar rison to assist them. To this proposal General Lambert consented, provided the rest would surrender at the expiration of the time, and engage never again to advise or take up arms against the parliament," to which the commissioners agreed. On the first day after this agreement, the garrison appeared twice or thrice as if they were resolved to make a sally, but retired every time without charging. On the second day, they made a strong and vigorous sally in a different direction, and drove the enemy from their post with the loss of several men. Although the attempt was made at the time the guards were relieving, and when the number of men was doubled, yet such was the resolution with which the charge was made, that Col. Morrice and Cornet Blackburn, two of the excepted persons, pushed through the troops of the enemy and made their escape. The other four were compelled to retreat with their friends to the castle. The garrison now remained still for two whole days; but early on the night of the 4th day they made another attempt. In this attempt they were wholly unsuccessful. They were driven back to the castle, having ensign Smith, another of the excepted persons, killed. His friends conveyed his body into the castle, and he was interred in the chapel of St. Clement. VOL. IV. [Lit. Pan. August, 1808.] The three excepted persons who now remained, considered it in vain to make any more sallies in order to escape. Several lives had already been lost in the attempts made; and they contrived a different method in order castle were large and extensive, and owing to to secure themselves. The buildings of the the sieges, some of these had become ruins. Among the ruins, they found a place, where the three excepted persons might be concealed, and from whence they might easily make their escape. Accordingly their friends walled up the place after they had entered, leaving them apertures sufficient for the admission of air, and furnishing them with provisions for a month, in which time, it was not doubted, but they would be able to make their escape. The next morning (24th March, 1648-9) the garrison pretended to rejoice, and sent the governor word, that as their six friends had made their escape, they would surrender the next day. At the hour appointed, the garri son marched out of the castle. Lambert narrowly inspected each individual, not believing that any of the six excepted persons had escaped; but being satisfied, that they were treated them with great civility, and punc not among those who now surrendered, he tually performed all his promises; nor did he seem displeased "that the brave soldiers had happily escaped." Lambert did not pay any attention to the castle, so that the three excepted persons, the night after threw down their inclosure, and securely decamped.* The parliament ordered the castle to be demolished: and this being effected with perseverance; its ruins are now all that shew what it has been. This history is a curious document. The plates annexed, shewing the construction of the castle, exhibit the prevalent ideas of a mode of fortification very different from that of the present time. The history of the Priory, naturally claims a place in a work like the present: but we do not perceive that any peculiar or distinguishing customs were attached to it. We may say of others, as Mr. B. of this, says One part of the annual expences of these houses consisted in presents made to the great, whose favour they wished to conciliate. What ever was delicious to the taste or fashionable in dress, they purchased for this purpose. Another part consisted in their hospitality and charity. As such houses were furnished with provisions of all kinds from the produce of their lands, herds and flock, it was as usual * Austwick and Floyd, lived till after the restoration. > 21 then for gentlemen and travellers to go to such houses as it is now for them to go to an inn. Here also the poor, the sick, the aged and infirm resorted, and their wants were regularly supplied. It was surrendered to the king, Nov. 24, 31, Hen. VIII. We have some doubts whether the following exclamation is well founded; might not a modern copyhold, be subject to the same comment, unless the nature of the tenure were explained? Did the party give more than the services of these men? Two brothers of Dodworth, Richard and William, sons of Ulf de Doddewrda, gave to the convent, for the love of God and the salvation of their own souls, all the men they had on the land, with their houses and chattels for ever. How degraded was the state of these men, who could be transferred like cattle | from one proprietor to another! The love of God ought to have prompted these devotees rainer to have given liberty to their villani, than to have transferred them to a convent. Such was then the state of society, and such then the spirit of the age. The friars must not be omitted, Ponte fract had Dominicans, black or preaching friars, Carmelites, or white friars, Austin friars, &c. Mr. B. next describes the churches gives a list of incumbents, &c. and these are followed by other charitable institutions, bequests and donations. Such were the component parts of an ancient burgh! A cross, a church, a castle, a market, a bridge, a mill, convents, friars, hospitals, and establishments for the good of the founders' souls! Modern manners demand a race ground, and a theatre, and to balance these, dissenting congregations of several denominations. The author is minister to the independant church. A struggle for parliamentary freedom, is the most inter esting exploit in which the town has been engaged of late; after a ten years duration the contest was decided in 1791, in favour of the rights and liberties of the inhabitants. Licorice has been long cultivated with success; and Pontefract licorice cakes are well known throughout the British empire. The population of the town, as taken in 1808, is as follows; houses inhabited 693, houses not inhabited 48, families 702, males 1394, females 1703. Total 3097. The populaaign has, increased near six-hundred since the year 1764. The number of families then was 538, and of persons 2515. We do not perceive that the author has enumerated the Volunteers; which in times like the present he ought to have done. ` On the whole we commend the diligence exerted by Mr. B. He has taken an ample range for observation in the early part of his volume, and in his notes: we think it may be useful to many into whose hands his labours may fall. He has executed his task respectably. The plates are an agreeable accompaniment: but, speaking by recollection, we think the plan of the attack on the castle by the parlia ment army, exhibits also the modern town; why was it not so expressed on the plate? The following ballad, as it is called, composed by Earl Rivers, in Pontefract Castle, is too curious to be omitted. It will shew, among other evidences, the state of the Eng lish language in the time of Richard III, It is contained in a history of the kings of England, by John Ross, the Warwick antiquary. He introduces it in the following terms: Dominus Comes de Rivers Antonins Woodvyle... in tempore incarcerationis apud Pontenifraetum edidit unum balet in Anglicis, ut nihi monstratum est, quod subsequitur sub hiis verbis: Sumwhat musyng-and more mornyng I now to sese-my woful chaunce, Wyllyng to dye-me thynkys truly Welcome fortune. We suspect that the transcriber has mistaken between the letters m and w, which in ancient writings are very similar: we should read-at least; such is our conjecture But I ne ment-thus to be shent, Mr. B. has inserted two poems; one writ ten, in 1759, by Dr. Drake, on Pomfret Cas tle, the other by Dr. Langhorn, written among the ruins of Pontefract Castle, 1756. They form a complete contrast to the preceding The Preceptor and his Pupils; or, Dialogues, Examinations, and Exercises on Grammar in General and the English Grammar in Particular. By G. Crabb. Part the first. 12mo. pp. 210. Price 3s. 6d. 1807. Part the second pp. 238. Price 4s. 6d. Boosey, London, 1808. We ought to have noticed the first part of this work, some time ago; of which we are reminded by the appearance of the second part, which has very lately reached us. The writer avails himself of the dialogue form, which he manages with considerable address: nevertheless in his introductory conversation he has not, in our apprehension, sufficiently lowered himself to the capacity of youth, suppos ed to be under the necessity of studying the elements of language. Mr. Crabb himself understands what is intended by the Greek terms mono-syllable, and dipthong, but children can scarcely be thought to use them with comprehension and readiness: they should have been translated. We therefore, recommend the contents of these volumes rather to young men who have not had opportunity of acquiring in early life an accurate knowledge of their native tongue. Mr. C.'s instances of improper English are in our opinion, well calculated for usefulness, we would moreover hint to our author, that his work affords him a very fair op portunity of exposing and correcting, actual errors of speech, whether cockney isms, or vulgarisms. We know persons deservedly esteemed polite, who yet incautiously drop phrases that are not correct English. Were they exposed in works like that before us, the lessons of the Preceptor would be found beneficial to many who may take up his work casually. In his second part Mr. Crabb takes a wider range, and derives many advantages from his acquaintance with va rious languages. He acknowledges himself indebted to M. Adelung the German grammarian, and to the speculations of late writers on the formation of speech. The Theory of Dreams: in which an Inquiry is made into the Powers and Faculties of the human Mind, as they are illustrated in the most remarkable Dreams recorded in sacred and profane History. 2 Vols. 12mo. pp. 850, Price 8s. Rivington, London, 1808. Of all the perplexing subjects which teaze the thinking mind, scarcely any is equal to that of the Theory of Dreams. To treat it as trifling, or unworthy of attention, is absurd: it is not trifling, it is not unworthy of attention. It is a proof of the existence of a something distinct from matter, and of faculties, of which mere matter is not susceptible: yet when we attempt sedately to investigate the na ture of this proof, and the properties of this something, we find ourselves rather deluded than satisfied. Often have we sat down with little confidence to di-quisitions, and have risen up without conviction. Willing to be satisfied, if we could meet with any thing satisfactory: yet not willing to become the sport of fantastic imagination, or the dupes of credulity. We have never yet seen that simple arrangement of the subjects under enquiry, from which we might anticipate decided results. If our advice were asked, we should recommend, three distinctions of dreams: those which are evident repetitions of past (usually recent) events: those which are mixtures of events that have passed at different times; and therefore appear to be perplexed and intricate, when, in fact they are, to use a Shakesperian simile, "like a tangled chain, nothing impaired, but all disordered." The third distinction should be formed of those which contain ideas, that never before visited the mind of the party. There would be little reluctance to admit the first class of these, as acts of the memory: and this, in proportion to the nature of the event repeated, and to the interval of time elapsed since it ocurred. A man who yesterday beheld a murder, and dreamed of it last night, who saw in his dream the same attendant circumstances as the fact had presented, could hardly doubt, but his memory was in activity, during this repetition, however his senses might be locked As Mr. C. intends to publish on some future occasion," a small work which will serve to accompany and explain these two volumes, we hope he will take our hint in good part: and improve it to the bene-up in sleep. The second division, is of a fit of the present, as well as of a future generation. more puzzling nature. Many thousands of ideas have entered the mind of an obr vant person in the course of his life, and have been unnoticed, or completely forgotten, they have made no sensible impression on him, have had no discernible effect, yet nevertheless, have actually existed, have presented themselves, and have been, more or less, admitted ;-but his recollection may be tortured to no purpose to recover them, or he may have no inducement to acknowledge them, when presented again with that strange intermixture of accompaniments, and uncontroulable wandering of fancy, which characterize the faculty of dreaming. Moreover, there is in man a principle which we call foresight, improved and strengthened, certainly, by reasoning and experience; may this also, be in exercise when the external senses are suspended? May ideas derived from former, and forgotten, sources, their origin being undetected, pass for new, while, in fact, they are so, in no other acceptation than rational inductions are, which from a number of given data infer a number of consequences? The most important, as it is also the most embarrassing, is the third class: do ideas absolutely new enter the mind in dreams? -and if this question be answered in the affirmative, whence do they originate This order of treating the subject, has appeared to us to bid the fairest for attaining to some fixed principles on the subject. have passed very current as predictive of those events, but, if such events had neveɛ. happened, where then had been their predictive power? We believe that dreams.. capable of only one interpretation, but of that clearly, and indubitably, are rare. Such however, as they are upon record, ' a compiler must collect them: and this the author of the volumes before us appears : to have done, with considerable diligence, and learning. He does not, indeed, introduce much that is new, or peculiarly his own; he relates what others have said and thought. He is therefore safe from censure, but is less entitled to praise. He professes to treat first of dreams and their distinctions; on these he reports the opinions, principally, of Macrobius, with which modern philosophers may be content, if they can. Then he relates several dreams' found in ancient history: these occupy three or four chapters: dreams recorded in Scripture, follow; then modern dreams, with general reflections on sleep, on the nature and cause of dreams, on the operations of mind, on the influence of the body on mind in sleep, &c. These might have been treated with greater depth of thought, greater physical, and anatomical knowledge. Perhaps Dr. Gall may favour us with a new theory of sensations while asleep. As he has detected on the outside of the skull, those protuberances and configurations which indicate the daydreams of the energetic sons of men, we should not be surprized if he discovered within that capacious repertory, the residences and causes of those nocturnal vaga ries which mislead the buman fancy. We are clearly of opinion, that, under The work under review is a pretty assemblage enough of dreams, or reported dreams, collected from authors antient as well as modern. The dreams of great men have been thought of most importance, and history has amused herself with recording them for the information of posterity. But, we have our doubts, whe-certain circumstances, the state of the bother these were always told in the simple language of truth: whether they were not sometimes bended a little to existing, or expected circumstances: whether the same interpretation could have been given to them had they occurred to persons in hunibler stations of life, and therefore, whether they were not understood politically, as they were politically coloured in narration. The dreams of a statesman in deep meditation on projected schemes, those of a woman in a state of pregnancy, those of gloomy, or superstitious persons, those of persons labouring under disease, may be more nearly allied in nature, than is usually supposed. These, when told after certain events had occurred, may dily organs does actually influence dreams: that it always does so demands proof by more cogent circumstances than present themselves to us, at this time: but we are partly serious when we compare our nightly conceptions, to a parcel of schoolboys, who during school time have been kept under restraint and authority by the pedagogue, but no longer afraid of the cane, at a dismissal, or at a breaking up, they follow their own frolicksome fancies, and with uncontrouled glee indulge themselves in rambles after every butterfly that crosses their path. Or to change the simile, as the lamine of the brain, says Dr. Gall, resenible leaves in a book, may.we sup pose that these leaves having received certain Historians report of Antorius, or, as some style him, of Marcus Antonius Musa, the physician of Octavianus, afterwards Augustus, night before the battle of Philippi, enjoining that Minerva appeared to him in a dream the him to warn Octavianus not to omit being present at the battle, notwithstanding his se vere disorder. In consequence of which Oc tavianus, being carried in his litter into the field, escaped from the soldiers of Brutus, who gained possession of his camp with the expectation of killing him. The presence of Augustus at the battle of Pharsalia, must have been of so much advantage in encouraging the soldiers, and perhaps so much better for the patient than the anxiety of absence, that the physician might conceive it essential to success or recovery, and really imagine in his sleep, or politically fabricate the dream. We conceive that most of the appearances of Minerva in antiquity, are allegori.. cal, or figurative, importing the dictates of prudence, or sagacity. Though we are not such complete dormice as "the whole people of LucomoIt was customary for those who wished ria, country of farther Sarmatia, who to obtain inspired dreams, to lie down after are related to die on the twenty-seventh of the performance of religious rites upon the November like swallows, in consequence skins of beasts sacrificed, in expectation of of the intense cold, and not to awake the divine suggestions, as was the case at the again till the twenty-fourth of April." temples of Amphiaraus in Attica, Esculapius When Croesus dreamed that his accomplish-in Pergamos, of Serapis in Canopus, and ed son Atys was transfixed by a javelin head-others; as also at that of Faunus, as we ed by iron, he did all that parental solicitude learn from Virgil. could suggest, in removing him from the Brizo, the goddess of sleep or dreams, command of the Lydian forces, and in giving was worshipped with divine honors and sacrihim a wife whose affection might conspire, infices, and her votaries slept in her temple, all precautions, to secure him from injury; at Delos with their heads bound with laurel, and when the prince was accidentally killed by or other fatidical appendages. The Sun was the javelin of a faithful attendant at the hunt- addressed with conciliating prayers, as its ing of a boar,, we perceive that the fatal pre-beams dispersed the dreams of the night. diction of the dream could be calculated only Supplications were offered up to Mercury at to disturb the mind of Croesus, and to aggrathe conclusion of festivals for a hight of good vate the affliction which drove the unhappy dreams, and images of that deity with his Adrastus to suicide. While Caduceus was placed at the feet of beds, trations were practised as auspicious; and hence called Epuives Bathing also, and lusEschylus, in Aristophanes, directs the attendants to prepare a lamp and warm water taken from the river, which were to be employed in some ceremonies designed to avert the influence of divine dreams. In a fragment of Euripides we see Priam, on occasion of the dream of Hecuba, in which she brought forth a flaming torch: "The wretched mortal did not 'scape the blow," Nay, sometimes attention to dreams seems to have been the cause of crimes and misfortunes, if we receive the accounts which are given to us thus Paris is said to have eloped with Helen under the encouragement of a dream, in which Venus promised him her assistance. Hamilcar, when he beseiged Syracuse, is reported to have dreamed that he should sup the next night in the town. Encouraged by the vision he attempted the assault; but a mutiny having arisen in his army, the townsmen made a sally and took him prisoner. + Herod. L. i. Sophocles Consult. Tertull. Lib. de Anim. C. 46. Plin. L. xxv. C. 2. |