Harry Bingley died in lodgings at Rotherham, whither he had removed
when he felt himself ill, that he might save expence by being nearer a
physician. According to his own directions his body was brought back
from thence to the village, and interred in the churchyard; and he
strictly enjoined that no breast-plate, handles or any ornaments
whatever should be affixed to his coffin, nor any gravestone placed to
mark the spot where his remains were deposited.
Would or would not this godfather-general have been happier in a
convent or a hermitage, than he was in thus following his own humour?
It was Dr. Dove's opinion that upon the whole he would; not that a
conventual, and still less an eremital way of life would have been
more rational, but because there would have been a worthier motive for
chusing it; and if not a more reasonable hope, at least a firmer
persuasion that it was the sure way to salvation.
That Harry Bingley's mind had taken a religious turn, appeared by his
chusing the church for his daily place of promenade. Meditation must
have been as much his object as exercise, and of a kind which the
place invited. It appeared also by the sort of Sunday-schooling which
he gave the children, long before Sunday Schools,—whether for good or
evil,—were instituted, or as the phrase is, invented by Robert Raikes
of eccentric memory. (Patrons and Patronesses of Sunday Schools, be
not offended if a doubt concerning their utility be here implied! The
Doctor entertained such a doubt; and the why and the wherefore shall
in due time be fairly stated.) But Bingley certainly came under the
description of a humourist, rather than of a devotee or religious
enthusiast; in fact he bore that character. And the Doctor's knowledge
of human nature led him to conclude that solitary humourists are far
from being happy. You see them, as you see the blind, at their
happiest times, when they have something to divert their thoughts. But
in the humourist's course of life, there is a sort of defiance of the
world and the world's law; indeed any man who departs widely from its
usages, avows this; and it is, as it ought to be, an uneasy and
uncomfortable feeling, wherever it is not sustained by a high state of
excitement; and that state, if it be lasting, becomes madness. Such
persons when left to themselves and to their own reflections, as they
necessarily are for the greater part of their time, must often stand
not only self-arraigned for folly, but self-condemned for it.
CHAPTER LXIX.
A MUSICAL RECLUSE AND HIS SISTER.
Some proverb maker, I forget who, says, “God hath given to some men
wisdom and understanding, and to others the art of playing on the
fiddle.”
Professor PARK'S Dogmas of the Constitution.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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