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- come upon the Title Page, which, in the middle, is ornamented with a
piece of landscape, representing a loosely clad lady in sandals,
pensively seated upon a bleak rock on the sea shore, supporting her
head with one hand, and with the other, exhibiting to the stranger an
oval sort of salver, bearing the figure of a strange bird, with this
motto elastically stretched for a border—_“Deus nobis haec otia
fecit.”_
The bird forms part of the city arms, and is an imaginary
representation of a now extinct fowl, called the _“Liver,”_ said to
have inhabited a _“pool,”_ which antiquarians assert once covered a
good part of the ground where Liverpool now stands; and from that bird,
and this pool, Liverpool derives its name.
At a distance from the pensive lady in sandals, is a ship under full
sail; and on the beach is the figure of a small man, vainly essaying to
roll over a huge bale of goods.
Equally divided at the top and bottom of this design, is the following
title complete; but I fear the printer will not be able to give a
facsimile:—
_The Picture
of Liverpool:
or, Stranger’s Guide
and Gentleman’s Pocket Companion
_ FOR THE TOWN.
Embellished
With Engravings
By the Most Accomplished and Eminent Artists.
Liverpool:
Printed in Swift’s Court,
And sold by Woodward and Alderson, 56 Castle St. 1803.
A brief and reverential preface, as if the writer were all the time
bowing, informs the reader of the flattering reception accorded to
previous editions of the work; and quotes _“testimonies of respect
which had lately appeared in various quarters_ —_the British Critic,
Review, and the seventh volume of the Beauties of England and
Wales”—_and concludes by expressing the hope, that this new, revised,
and illustrated edition might _“render it less unworthy of the public
notice, and less unworthy also of the subject it is intended to
illustrate.”_
A very nice, dapper, and respectful little preface, the time and place
of writing which is solemnly recorded at the end-Hope _Place, 1st
Sept._ 1803.
But how much fuller my satisfaction, as I fondly linger over this
circumstantial paragraph, if the writer had recorded the precise hour
of the day, and by what timepiece; and if he had but mentioned his age,
occupation, and name.
But all is now lost; I know not who he was; and this estimable author
must needs share the oblivious fate of all literary incognitos.
He must have possessed the grandest and most elevated ideas of true
fame, since he scorned to be perpetuated by a solitary initial. Could I
find him out now, sleeping neglected in some churchyard, I would buy
him a headstone, and record upon it naught but his title-page, deeming
that his noblest epitaph.
After the preface, the book opens with an extract from a prologue
written by the excellent Dr. Aiken, the brother of Mrs. Barbauld, upon
the opening of the Theater Royal, Liverpool, in 1772:—
_“Where Mersey’s stream, long winding o’er the plain,
Pours his full tribute to the circling main,
A band of fishers chose their humble seat;
Contented labor blessed the fair retreat,
Inured to hardship, patient, bold, and rude,
They braved the billows for precarious food:
Their straggling huts were ranged along the shore,
Their nets and little boats their only store.”_
Indeed, throughout, the work abounds with quaint poetical quotations,
and old-fashioned classical allusions to the Aeneid and Falconer’s
Shipwreck.
And the anonymous author must have been not only a scholar and a
gentleman, but a man of gentle disinterestedness, combined with true
city patriotism; for in his _“Survey of__ the Town”_ are nine thickly
printed pages of a neglected poem by a neglected Liverpool poet.
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