Robert Pocock: The Gravesend Historian, Naturalist, Antiquarian And Printer

PREFACE. IT is fifty-two years to-day since Robert Pocock found an obscure grave away from his native town, and it seems just that some tribute should be paid to his memory. He was eminently a student of nature, and not only an acquirer of useful information but its indefatigable disseminator. The toilsome search for a fossil, the active pnrsuit of any new butterfly, the unwearied scanning of the heavens, the discovery of a rare plant, -these were his recreations. Ever accessible at his humble shop-one day to a waterman freighted with some outlandish fish, on another to a countryman laden with a curious bird or some unusual plant-it was his delight to supply their names and classification but student of nature as he was, he knew that well-nigh every parish in his ancient county-Kent-is decorated with a hundred memories of historical interest, and hence his antiquarian pursuits kept pace with his study of natural history. . . . Vlll If he had evinced less of these qualities and had been more of the shopkeeper, he might have accumulated money in lieu of dying houseless and a wanderer. But his higher instincts ever led him to seek knowledge, and to publish it even in its most elementary form, so much so that his place of honour is among the very pioneers of elementary literature, in the production of the Easy Reading Books for the Young, which supplanted the old Horn Books of less lettered generations, while his Navy List and his Companions the origin of the modern Guide Book, are proofs that there was existing in Pocock not only the apt and ready detection of a public want, but the energy and skill to supply it, so far as his limited means enabled. Let me add, that at the age of twenty-sixhe first introduced to his native town that mighty engine of literature the printing press, and I think I have advanced enough to justify this attempt to honour Pococks memory. 1 True it is, that the retrospect of his trials, his museum broken up and dispersed, himself ejected witiout money or furniture from his shop, his last clays of discouragement and death at his sons house at Dartford, present reflections sufficiently depressing and yet, as he says in an epitaph which he drew up for himself, he produced a History of Gravesend and Milton, with other works, which will perpetuate his memory. To secure him some of this posthumous honour is the object of my present effort. And therein I have endeavoured to give only such of his published matter as could not properly be dispensed with, and as much of his unpublished writings as I fairly could. Nevertheless I have collected all I could reach that seemed to bear upon his life and character, so as to make the biography as complete as possible yet, probably this would have appeared to higher advantage if it had been set forth by greater literary experience than the arduous duties of a laborious profession have allowed me to acquire...