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1Author:  Paulding James Kirke 1778-1860Requires cookie*
 Title:  The Puritan and his daughter  
 Published:  1997 
 Subjects:  University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | University of Virginia Library, Early American Fiction, 1789-1875 | UVA-LIB-EarlyAmFict1789-1875 
 Description: In the reign of King Charles—courteously styled the Martyr—there resided in an obscure corner of the renowned kingdom of England, a certain obscure country gentleman, claiming descent from a family that flourished in great splendor under a Saxon monarch whose name is forgotten. This ancient family, like most others of great pretensions to antiquity, had gone by as many names as certain persons who live in the fear of the law, but finally settled down on that of Habingdon, or Habingden, by which they were now known. They were somewhat poor, but very proud, and looked down with contempt on the posterity of the upstart Normans who usurped the domains of their ancestors. They had resided on the same spot for more than eight hundred years, during which time, not one of them had ever performed an act worthy of being transmitted to posterity, with the single exception of one Thurkill Habingdonne who flourished in the reign of King John—of unblessed memory—and who is recorded to have given one-third of a caracut of land, and a wind-mill, to the priory of Monks Kirby, “to the end,” as he expresses it, “that his obit should be perpetually there observed, and his name written in the Martyrologe.” It hath been a mooted point with that class of philosophical inquirers, which so usefully occupies itself with discussions that can never be brought to a conclusion, whether the age gives the tone to literature, or literature to the age. It is a knotty question, and not being of the least consequence to any practical purpose, it will be passed over with the single remark, that it is quite useless for an author to write in good taste if the public won't read, and equally idle for the public to cherish a keen relish for polite literature, if there are no authors to administer food to its appetite.
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