LITMIR.BIZ

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of the Royal Society, 26th May, 1859.

      〈DESCENT FROM FLINT-WORKERS.〉

      Let us, therefore, take for granted that man and certain extinct races of animals lived together, thousands of years before Adam. We find, at that period, a race who formed knives, and hammers, and arrow-heads out of flint. Now, considering my own inveterate habit of contriving tools, it is more probable that I should derive my passion by hereditary transmission from these original tool-makers, than from any other inferior race existing at that period. {3}

      Many years ago I met a very agreeable party at Mr. Rogers’ table. Somebody introduced the subject of ancestry. I remarked that most people are reluctant to acknowledge as their father or grandfather, any person who had committed a dishonest action or a crime. But that no one ever scrupled to be proud of a remote ancestor, even though he might have been a thief or a murderer. Various remarks were made, and reasons assigned, for this tendency of the educated mind. I then turned to my next neighbour, Sir Robert H. Inglis, and asked him what he would do, supposing he possessed undoubted documents, that he was lineally descended from Cain.

      Sir Robert said he was at that moment proposing to himself the very same question. After some consideration, he said he should burn them; and then inquired what I should do in the same circumstances. My reply was, that I should preserve them: but simply because I thought the preservation of any fact might ultimately be useful.

      〈NOT THROUGH CAIN.〉

      I possess no evidence that I am descended from Cain. If any herald suppose that there may be such a presumption, I think it must arise from his confounding Cain with Tubal Cain, who was a great worker in iron. Still, however he might argue that, the probabilities are in favour of his opinion: for I, too, work in iron. But a friend of mine, to whose kind criticisms I am much indebted, suggests that as Tubal Cain invented the Organ, this probability is opposed to the former one.

      The next step in my pedigree is to determine whence the origin of my modern family name.

      Some have supposed it to be derived from the cry of sheep. If so, that would point to a descent from the Shepherd Kings. Others have supposed it is derived from the name of a place called Bab or Babb, as we have, in the West of England, Bab {4} Tor, Babbacombe, &c. But this is evidently erroneous; for, when a people took possession of a desert country, its various localities could possess no names; consequently, the colonists could not take names from the country to which they migrated, but would very naturally give their own names to the several lands they appropriated: “mais revenons à nos moutons.”

      How my blood was trans­mit­ted to me through more modern races, is quite immaterial, seeing the admitted antiquity of the flint-workers.

      〈SAD OMISSION.〉

      In recent times, that is, since the Conquest, my knowledge of the history of my family is limited by the unfortunate omission of my name from the roll of William’s followers. Those who are curious about the subject, and are idlers, may, if they think it worth while, search all the parish registers in the West of England and elsewhere.

      The light I can throw upon it is not great, and rests on a few documents, and on family tradition. During the past four generations I have no surviving collateral relatives of my own name.

      The name of Babbage is not uncommon in the West of England. One day during my boyhood, I observed it over a small grocer’s shop, whilst riding through the town of Chudley. I dismounted, went into the shop, purchased some figs, and found a very old man of whom I made inquiry as to his family. He had not a good memory himself, but his wife told me that his name was Babb when she married him, and that it was only during the last twenty years he had adopted the name of Babbage, which, the old man thought, sounded better. Of course I told his wife that I entirely agreed with her husband, and thought him a very sensible fellow.

      The craft most frequently practised by my ancestors seems {5} to have been that of a goldsmith, although several are believed to have practised less dignified trades.

      In the time of Henry the Eighth one of my ancestors, together with a hundred men, were taken prisoners at the siege of Calais.

      When William the Third landed in Torbay, another ancestor of mine, a yeoman possessing some small estate, undertook to distribute his proclamations. For this bit of high treason he was rewarded with a silver medal, which I well remember seeing, when I was a boy. It had descended to a very venerable and truthful old lady, an unmarried aunt, the historian of our family, on whose authority the identity of the medal I saw with that given by King William must rest.

      Another ancestor married one of two daughters, the only children of a wealthy physician, Dr. Burthogge, an intimate friend and cor­res­pon­dent of John Locke.

      〈A WILD ANCESTOR.〉

      Somewhere about 1700 a member of my family, one Richard Babbage, who appears to have been a very wild fellow, having tried his hand at various trades, and given them all up, offended a wealthy relative.

      To punish this idleness, his relative entailed all his large estates upon eleven different people, after whom he gave it to this Richard Babbage, who, had there been no entail, would have taken them as heir-at-law.

      Ten of these lives had dropped, and the eleventh was in a consumption, when Richard Babbage took it into his head to go off to America with Bamfylde Moore Carew, the King of the Beggars.

      The last only of the eleven lives existed when he embarked, and that life expired within twelve months after Richard Babbage sailed. The estates remained in possession of the rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the eleventh in the entail. {6}

      If it could have been proved that Richard Babbage had survived twelve months after his voyage to America, these estates would have remained in my own branch of the family.

      I possess a letter from Richard Babbage, dated on board the ship in which he sailed for America.

      〈ACT OF PARLIAMENT.〉

      In the year 1773 it became necessary to sell a portion of this property, for the purpose of building a church at Ashbrenton. A private Act of Parliament was passed for that purpose, in which the rights of the true heir were reserved.

      CHAPTER II. CHILDHOOD.

       Table of Contents

      “The Prince of Darkness is a gentleman.”—Hamlet.

      Early Passion for inquiry and inquisition into Toys—Lost on London Bridge—Supposed value of the young Phi­los­o­pher—Found again—Strange Coincidence in after-years—Poisoned—Frightened a Schoolfellow by a Ghost—Frightened himself by trying to raise the Devil—Effect of Want of Occupation for the Mind—Treasure-trove—Death and Non-appearance of a Schoolfellow.

      FROM my earliest years I had a great desire to inquire into the causes of all those little things and events which astonish the childish mind. At a later period I commenced the still more important inquiry into those laws of thought and those aids which assist the human mind in passing from received knowledge to that other knowledge then unknown to our race. I now think it fit to record some of those views to which, at various periods of my life, my reasoning has led me. Truth only has been the object of my search, and I am not conscious of ever having turned aside in my inquiries from any fear of the conclusions to which they might lead.

      As it may be interesting to some of those who will hereafter read these lines, I shall briefly mention a few events of my earliest, and even of my childish years. My parents being born at a certain period of history, and in a certain latitude and longitude, of course followed the religion {8} of their country. They brought me up in the Protestant form of the Christian faith. My excellent mother taught me the usual forms of my daily and nightly prayer; and neither in my father nor my mother was there any mixture of bigotry and intolerance on the one hand, nor on the other of that unbecoming and familiar mode of addressing the Almighty

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