1829.]

Mr. URBAN,

IN

New Kent-road, May 5. N the portion of the Archæologia lately published by the Society of Antiquaries, will be found a detailed account of the excavations begun by Mr. Croker, and continued by myself, at War-bank, in the parish of Keston, Kent. The spot which bears the above remarkable name lies at a short distance from the strong entrenchments known by the name of Caesar's Camp, on Holwood Hill, in the same parish. I devoted about three weeks to my researches at War-bank, for the purpose of accurately defining the structure and dimensions of the tomb, the circular building or ædicula, mentioned, I believe, by you in a former number, and in endeavouring to detect any other vestiges of the old Noviomagus, which has been generally supposed to have been situated at Keston. My endeavours were successful; for I discovered numerous fragments of foundations south-west of the sepulchral and sacred edifices in War-bank Field; and on the 21st of October last, my workmen laid open a solid foundation wall of flint and cement extending from east to west about 30 feet, and two feet and half in thickness. wall, from having some projections (apparently constructed for flues), and from several coarse red tesseræ found about its ruins, I felt confident, was a vestige of a Roman dwelling. War bank Field and two or three other contiguous are covered with masses of rubbish which constantly obstruct the plough; but from the earth being very shallow on the bed of natural chalk, and from the foundations of the buildings having been generally placed on the surface of the solid rock, without digging into it, the constant operation of ploughing has in the course of time broken them up. Where they formed any very material obstruction, no doubt they were more carefully removed by the cultivators of the land. Sufficient indications, however, remain to prove the former existence of a Roman colony at this place.

This

A few days since, by the kindness of my friend Mr. Nichols, I was in formed of some further discoveries on the southern side of Holwood Hill, made by the labourers of J. Ward, esq. the proprietor of Holwood Park, at a spot which he has selected for a vineGENT. MAG. May, 1829.

401

yard; a novel experiment in this country, but which, from the healthy ap pearance of the young vines, when I saw them last autumn, will, I trust, answer the intentions of the worthy proprietor.

Mr. Ward says, that his workmen, in February last, discovered a skeleton deposited in a grave formed in the solid chalk rock, and at a short distance from it some fragments of pottery; also that, near the same place, two or three years since another skeleton was found. This spot Mr. Ward states to be three-eighths of a mile S.S.E. from Cæsar's Camp; and about the same space from War-bank Field, which lies also at the same distance from the Camp. I have not yet had an opportunity of visiting the spot, since the last-mentioned discovery; but on referring to the Ordnance map of Kent, I strongly conjecture that some public Roman way ran along the southern base of Holwood Hill from west to east, and that the sepulchres at Warbank and at Mr. Ward's vineyard were on the line of it.

terrâ

Quâ facit assiduo tramite vulgus iter.".

This, however, is merely a hazarded conjecture, nor shall I at present endeavour to trace such a vicus or way from London over the Norwood range of hills through Wickham to Noviomagus, although I know that discoverers of ancient ways have often proceeded upon slighter grounds than I might be able in this instance to adduce. For the present be pleased to accept some pen and ink sketches by my daughter of various relics chiefly found during the progress of my excavation at Warbank Field, which were by an accident omitted in my account forwarded to the Society of Antiquaries. The fragments of pottery mentioned by Mr. Ward are restored, as well as their fractured and disjointed nature would allow. (See fig. 9.) Perhaps some of the zig-zag and wavy lines may be transposed; but the general style of the vessel is correctly given.

In order briefly to distinguish the places near which the delineated relics were found, I have affixed the following initials, -C. B. circular building; T. tomb; F. W. B. foundations in War-bank Field.

References to the Plate.

1. A circular ear-ring of brass, foreshortened, notched like a graduated scale, found with the ashes contained in urn, No. 7. (T.)

2. An amulet or ticket of coarse earthen ware. (T.)

3. An iron key, found in making a

dyke near the sepulchres.

4. A portion of some brass ornament, found with urn No. 7.

5. A silver stylus. C. B.

6. Tongue of a brass fibula. F. W. B. 7. A sepulchral urn. (T.)

8. The sepulchral urn found near Mr. Ward's vineyard, Feb. 1829. (Red pottery.)

9. A deer's horn deeply notched by some sharp instrument; a conjec

ture has been hazarded that it was done by a missing blow of the Victimarius. C. B.

10. Vessel of coarse brown earth, found in making a dyke some years since near the sepulchres in War-bank Field.

11. Fragment of pottery ornamented with a Greek scroll united by animal's heads. (c. B.)

12. Roof tile impressed with a dog's

foot, red. (c. B.)

13. Ridge tile (light brown,) F. W. B. 14. Roman wall tile. c. B.

15. A schistose stone or slate, halfinch thick, supposed to have covered an urn. C. B.

16. Roof tile, much bowed, built into the walls of the tomb near the circular building.

tives, are yet the subjects of very recent biography. Their domestic life, and those passions and weaknesses which often chequer some of the greatest characters, are green in the recollection of society, and often treasured up to the prejudice of even a first-rate order of intellect.

Such peculiarities of life and character, from the comparatively recent date of their existence, will influence our views and retrospections,—for example, with regard to Warburton, Johnson, or Goldsmith. Such is the contexture of the human mind, that we sometimes imbibe a bias derogatory to the flow and standard of that genius which, were its æra more remote, would be perhaps the theme of more unmingled recollections.

But Johnson and Goldsmith,—and we may, perhaps, be permitted to offer a few remarks upon them,-although they respectively shine as stars in our literary firmament, are lights which have only, it may still be said, recently emerged from the dark hori

zon

to irradiate their country and mankind. That fame, sanctioned by the lapse of centuries, has not yet played round their heads; and although it will, by some not altogether without reason, be thought that their fame will in a subsequent century occupy a higher range of ground than it has in this; yet for the last age or two their familiar and eccentric social intercourse with the world, their weaknesses, and the tenor of their colloquial life, are alike with the million and the philosophic reader the subject of lively reminiscence. "A philosopher," says Dr. Priestley, in one of his Prefaces," ought to be something greater and better than another man. The contemplation of the works of God should give a sublimity to his virtue,-should expand his benevolence, extinguish every thing selfish, base, and mean, in his nature,-give a dignity to all his sentiments, and teach him to aspire to the moral perfections of the great Author of all things."— The student of history, and observer of life, well knows that every great writer, either in morals or in physics, far from being characterized exactly by this description, and Johnson and Goldsmith particularly, may rank in many respects as anomalies. Johnson and Goldsmith, however, may each rank in a foremost place among the spirits

who contributed by their genius to animate and brighten the Eighteenth century, a period in our literature which, rich as it is in original genius, has too much incurred the neglect of contemporary critics of the present or of the last age. If most of the branches of science to which intellect has an especial reference, can boast of having at its head an individual of first-rate abilities, the two writers here named may with reason be placed respectively at the head of the moral and imaginative departments of classical literature; and though their eulogy can never be celebrated in the same terms as that of Shakspeare, yet, like him, they made human nature the basis of their pictured delineations, and instituted their moral inquiries with a sole reference to its innumerable varieties and gradations. Their success in exploring those springs which animate and direct mankind, has been long and universally acknowledged. The philosophic view with which they each contemplated and analysed human passion and human frailty, have been duly recognized, and the singular felicity, the powerful combinations, and the elevated moral spirit, which forms an essential feature in their varied writings, accompany us throughout their perusal.

Possessing in common these attributes, however, no two writers can in point of genius, it has long been_acknowledged, be more dissimilar. The lessons by which they instructed and pleased mankind, proceeded respectively from a different order of talent; and if half a century has scarcely yet elapsed from the period which witnessed the close of their labours,-a period which, while it removes them from all collision with contemporary critics, is, however, too short to stamp upon them the rust of any thing like antiquity; if the eccentricities which marked their life and character as attendant satellites, and the various incidents of their social and domestic career, as treasured in the testimonials of almost recent publications, impart perhaps some secret though almost unconscious bias to our judgment of their works, it must still be owned that, looking at these works, they have each a claim on all posterity pre-eminent over many of the favoured sons of British genius. A comparative analysis of the general features, or the distinc

tive traits of thinking, which ruled in Johnson or Goldsmith, would at this time, perhaps, be impertinent. Yet in this age, new views of old writers, and accumulated eulogiums alike on certain contemporaries, or the especial favourites of a past age, are so much the fashion as almost to excuse renewed criticism on standards of an age or two removed.

But if on these contemporary orna ments of British literature much has been said concerning their claims upon all succeeding posterity, it will strike every mind, upon contemplating their writings, that their genius is sufficiently contrasted in their two admirable novels which have respectively obtained their permanent and distinguished rank in the classics of their native country. It may seem too a somewhat trite and backnied amusement to exercise critical analysis on tales so long and so well known as "Rasselas," and the "Vicar of Wakefield;" but in the course of our recreative reading (and these desultory hours will at intervals intervene), the mind, intent on literary pleasures, will crop a flower on the enamelled mead, which has already a thousand times been contemplated and analysed. "Rasselas " and the "Vicar of Wakefield," then, may be taken as fair and characteristic transcripts of the flow and order of that genius which distinguished these two eminent contemporaries; and if the sum of their authors' respective merits has often been decided from the mouths of discriminating judges, their contrasted capacities, whilst illustrating the features and combinations of human character, may in this age of Novels at least justify a remark or two. "Rasselas" is the production of a writer of vigorous energies, habitually exercising lofty views of mankind, sought out indeed from that unerring teacher EXPERIENCE, but wearing the hue or garb of his own peculiar mind. His views of human nature, as unfolded in this tale, are perhaps accurate, so far as the grand pervading principle is involved, that man is ever restless after some indefinite good; but they are wrought up with that habitual temperament of melancholy, that the reader, while he acquiesces in the general lessons which his positions inculcate, stands sometimes appalled at the gloom of his moral pictures. John

son knew human nature, the springs which actuate it, and the laws by which it is generally regulated; he knew the dispositions and the workings of his own mighty mind over the moralities of life, and rose to the sublime in depicting the familiar incidents of social intercourse. Goldsmith, in his nalysis of human nature, has nothing of all this. If Johnson, in his admirable tale of "Rasselas," frequently swells his moral sentiments to sublimity; if, while delineating the varying characters and circumstances of life, he has with the kindling glance of a great philosopher surveyed it with views at once accurate and elevated, if he has clothed the simple incidents of a narrative in all the sublime sentiments which we look for in the great masters of ethical disquisition, the latter seeks to instruct through the philosophy of a domestic fire-side. He addresses the heart through the inlets of a common sympathy, and by a series of incidents in which all can recognize the features of reality and of truth.Respectively the hurried productions of a few intervals of leisure devoted to immediate and pressing necessities, they both of course in common exhibit frequent marks of haste and imperfection. That, however, these delinquencies are not more frequent and more glaring, is much less an object of surprise than that these novels should under the circumstances exhibit such crowning strokes of genius and talent, especially that of Goldsmith, which was imagined and written surrounded by poverty, and even

want.

The "Vicar of Wakefield" is, all its readers feel, in its general features very far indeed from indicating symptoms of the peculiar state and destitution of its author. Abounding frequently in that genuine humour, which in the writings of its author formed a peculiar characteristic, this production stands also distinguished by an accurate knowledge of life and character.

The lofty and majestic features of Rasselas," which constrain admiration while they solicit sympathy, give place here to a fascination wholly diverse in all its characteristics; if in literary pretension it yields, in most particulars, to that beautiful tale, it earries, it must be owned, occasionally to the breast of its reader appeals of so

genuine and powerful a nature, connected with the chords which vibrate within us, as touched upon by the varieties of human allotment, that we are free to confess such power to proceed only from the hand of a master. Slovenly in its occasional style, and indulging in puerilities which good taste can scarcely tolerate in a tale of any pretensions,-if he offend in these, his readers feel the honest glow of sympathy in the artless pathos of his moral pictures. In the high tone of sentiment which runs through this and most of the other writings of Goldsmith, in which he attempts to delineate character, although few needed more the patronage of the great, a dignity of mind_like_that which ruled the sentiments of Johnson is indicated, which scorned to truckle to the vices of those who might administer to their necessities. By cringing within the halo of courtly favour, genius has frequently been drawn from obscurity; but the poverty which long hovered round the muse of Goldsmith, proclaimed that he preferred rather an honest though scanty independence; and that he considered, with Pope,

"All praise is foreign but of true desert;" or that as Sterne once expressed it, "titles are like the impressions on coins; they add no real value to gold and silver, but they make brass pass

current."

Those then who wish to read the diverse characters, the contrasted temperament of genius which prevailed in these celebrated writers, will find it eminently displayed in these productions; although amid the blaze of Novels which has stamped our present age with a peculiar epoch, a shade may be momentarily thrown over these isolated productions, they will yet retain their pretension to high and preeminent genius, inasmuch as the one is a simple transcript of unadorned nature, as she rules in every breast, drawn by the hand of original genius; and the other, which in its way stands alone without a rival, is a vigorous and successful attempt to familiarize, through the medium of an interesting and well-delineated narrative, the high and dignified truths of philosophy. Melksham,

ALCIPHRON.

(To be continued.)