An Autobiography of an Ancient Athlete & Antiquarian

50 AUTOBIOGRAPHY On pp. 85-6 of the latter paper I took occasion to refer to Dean Goulburn's account of the Jurnepin affair in his "Ancient Sculptures on the roof of Norwich Cathedral," a work which I pointed out literally teems with errors. Some of those I specified, e.g., his translation of bacyno as– a bag, fus!:>elitis as wisps ofligbted straw, and his misreading of interficient for interfuissent. Six historical errors were also shown up by me, and I remember one reviewer said be paused for the Dean's answer to my statements. He is still pausing, for no answer ever came for the best of all reasons. The secret history of the Dean's book is rather a painful one. The descriptive part was written by John L'Estrange, whose MS. I have seen, and which was wisely bought by the late Dr. Bensly (I presume on the Dean's behalf) when I sold L'Estrange's MSS. on bis widow's behalf, and the historical part by a man named Symonds, who could not read the old hands, and was ignorant of mediceval fa.tin .. The whole was then published by the Dean, who having done so was unable to disclaim the errors of his assistant. Tbe only parts he wrote were the religious dissertations, for the penning of which he had a fatal facility ; there are at least 48 religious works, many of which ran to several editions, by him in the Norwich Public Library, and I expect many more exist, and yet in 1881 he described him– self as a" reticent" dean ! Prebendary Compton's memoir of him (1899) gives only very few (28), of which about ten are new to our list. The British Museum Catalogues have 137 items under his name. The new year of 1881 I spent at Norwich (St. Peter's bells not ringing the old year out for the first time in living memory), and on to orth Walsham, on the way to which a young drunken sailor stepping out of the train at Wroxbam was drowned in a pulk hole. I well remember everyone in the train hearing the splashing he made to free himself from the mud into which he had pitched head first, but none of us realized the cause of the noise till it was too late. The year 1881 was m~morable for the great snow– storm, deep drifts blocking the road at Croydon. I never before or since saw such deep snow. In February I first made the acquaintance of Dr. F. J. Furnivall in connection with a discovery I had made as to whom Chaucer's grandfather really was. I bad written a