At the edge of dark, I bade adieu to Tim's cottage, and the comfortable old couple that live in it. As I looked back from the garden-gate, the house wore a plaintive aspect, in my imagination; as if it was thinking of its fine old tenant. Having heard that there was something uncommon to be learnt of him at the Tim Bobbin Inn, I went there again. It is the largest and most respectable public-house in the village, kept in a fine state of homely comfort by a motherly old widow. I found that she could tell me something of the quaint schoolmaster and his wife "Mary," who, as she said, "helped to bring her into th' world." She brought out a folio volume of engravings from designs by Tim, with many pieces of prose and verse of his, in engraved fac-simile of his hand-writing. The book was bound in dark morocco, with the author's name on the side, in gold. I turned it over with pleasure, for there were things in it not found in any edition of his works. The landlady shows this book with some pride to Tim's admirers; by some she had been offered large sums of money for it; and once a party of curious visitors had well-nigh carried it off by stealth in their carriage, after making fruitless offers of purchase; but the plan was detected in time, and the treasure restored to its proper custody. I read in it one of his addresses to his subscribers, in which he says of himself: "He's Lancashire born; and, by the by, all his acquaintance agree, his wife not excepted, that he's an odd-fellow.... In the reign of Queen Anne he was a boy, and one of the nine children of a poor curate in Lancashire, whose stipend never amounted to thirty pounds a-year, and consequently the family must feel the iron teeth of penury with a witness. These indeed were sometimes blunted by the charitable disposition of the good rector (the Rev. Mr. H.–, of W– n): so this T. B. lived as some other boys did, content with water-pottage, buttermilk, and jannock, till he was between thirteen and fourteen years of age, when Providence began to smile on him in his advancement to a pair of Dutch looms, when he met with treacle to his pottage, and sometimes a little in his buttermilk, or spread on his jannock. However, the reflections of his father's circumstances (which now and then start up and still edge his teeth) make him believe that Pluralists are no good Christians; that he who will accept of two or more places of one hundred a-year, would not say I have enough, though he was Pope Clement, Urban, or Boniface,—could affirm himself infallible, and offer his toe to kings: that the unequal distribution of Church emoluments is as great a grievance in the ecclesiastic, as undeserved pensions and places are in the state; both of which, he presumes to prophesy, will prove canker-worms at the roots of those succulent plants, and in a few years cause leaf and branch to shrivel up, and dry them to tinder." The spirit of this passage seems the natural growth, in such a mind as his, of the curriculum of study in the hard college of Tim's early days. In the thrifty home of the poor Lancashire curate, though harrowed by "the iron teeth of penury," Tim inherited riches that wealth cannot buy. Under the tuition of a good father, who could study his reflective and susceptible mind, and teach him many excellent things; together with that hard struggle to keep the wolf from the door of his childhood, which pressed upon his thoughts, he grew up contemplative, self-reliant, and manly, on oatmeal porridge, and jannock, with a little treacle for a god-send. His feelings were deepened, and his natural love of independence strengthened there, with that hatred of all kinds of injustice, which flashes through the rich humour and genial kindness of his nature,—for nature was strong in him, and he relished her realities. Poverty is not pleasant, yet the world has more to thank poverty for than it dreams of. With honourable pride he fought his way to a pair of Dutch looms, where he learned to win his jannock and treacle by honest weaving. Subsequently he endeavoured to support himself honourably, by pursuits no less useful, but more congenial to the bias of his faculties; but, to the last, his heart's desire was less to live in external plenty and precedence among men, than to live conscientiously, in the sweet relations of honourable independence in the world. This feeling was strong in him, and gives dignity to his character. As a politician, John Collier was considerably ahead of the time he lived in, and especially of the simple, slow-minded race of people dwelling, then, in that remote nook of Lancashire, at the foot of Blackstone Edge. Among such people, and in such a time, he spoke and wrote things, which few men dared to write and speak. He spoke, too, in a way which was as independent and pithy as it was quaintly-expressive. His words, like his actions, stood upon their own feet, and looked up. Perhaps, if he had been a man of a drier nature,—of less genial and attractive genius than he was,—he might have had to suffer more for the enunciation of truths, and the recognition of principles which were unfashionable in those days. But Collier was not only a man of considerable valour and insight, with a manly mind and temper, but he was also genial and humourous, as he was earnest and honest. He was an eminently human-hearted man, who abhorred all kinds of cant and seeming. His life was a greater honour to him even than his quaint pencil, or his pen; and the memory of his sayings and doings will be long and affectionately cherished, at least, by Lancashire men.
Eh: Whoo-who-whoo! What wofo wark!
He's laft um aw, to lie i' th' dark.
The following brief memoir, written by his friend and patron, Richard Townley, Esq., of Belfield Hall, near Milnrow, for insertion in Dr. Aiken's "History of the Environs of Manchester," contains the best and completest account of his life and character, which has yet appeared:—
Mr. John Collier, alias Tim Bobbin, was born near Warrington, in Lancashire; his father, a clergyman of the Established Church, had a small curacy, and for several years taught a school. With the joint income of those, he managed so as to maintain a wife and several children decently, and