Page:Two Sussex archaeologists, William Durrant Cooper and Mark Antony Lower.djvu/19

 In 1836 Mr. Cooper published A Glossary of the Provincialisms in use in the County of Sussex. This slim volume, which was "printed for private distribution" only, and probably first appeared in the columns of the Brighton Herald, from the office of which it emanated in its book shape, has since been thrown into the shade by the more comprehensive Glossary, issued a year or two ago, by the Rev. W. D. Parish, the learned Vicar of Selmeston, who, as a diligent labourer in the same field, would certainly be among the first to appreciate the efforts of his predecessor.

In 1842 he published The Sussex Poets, a lecture at Hastings. This little brochure has, in all probability, been long out of print. In the strict order of events, it ought to have been sooner stated, that—if the Law List be correct—previous to the completion of his twenty-first year, namely, in Michaelmas Term, 1832, he was duly admitted an attorney and solicitor.

It would have been strange if, with his peculiar bias, the disgracefully neglected state of our Parish Registers, so much excitement about which prevailed some forty or fifty years ago, had not, even from a professional point of view, forced itself on Mr. Cooper's attention. Accordingly, with his usual activity, he bestirred himself in the matter, and in April, 1833, when he had turned his twenty-first year by three months only, he was called before the House of Commons Committee, then sitting, on Parochial Registration, to give his young, but by no means immature, experience on the condition, mostly, of the registers of his own County; and the state of things disclosed in his evidence, which covers eight printed folio pages, reflected great discredit on the previous contemporary custodians of those precious records. He had seen, in the difficulties thus interposed in the clearing up of titles on the sale or purchase of landed property, proof positive of the evils of the existing system, or rather no-system, and he exposed them most unsparingly. In his evidence as to the reckless carelessness with which the registers were treated, he states that he recollected "an instance where the clerk was about