Page:Two Sussex archaeologists, William Durrant Cooper and Mark Antony Lower.djvu/23

 is a potent entity in the estimation of every admirer of Laurence Sterne, for it is the Crazy Castle of that most original (and, perhaps, most plagiaristic) of our great English authors, and his was none other than the castle's then owner, John Hall Stevenson, himself the author of three humorous volumes—a shade too free, it may be, for the present generation—entitled "Crazy Tales."

Mr. Cooper had not long taken upon himself the auditorship of Skelton Castle, before his good genius instinctively led him to its muniment room, where he soon dug down upon some precious relics of "poor Yorick," which he printed, with annotations from his own critical pen, with this title page:, written by and his , hitherto unpublished. by, F.S.A. London. Printed for private circulation, 1844. A happy Sterne-ophilist is he who possesses a copy of this rare fasciculus.

The most ambitious work, in a separate form, published by Mr. Cooper, is his History of Winchelsea, one of the Ancient Towns added to the Cinque Ports. This history appeared in 1850. Its value is testified to by the fact, that, although of so comparatively recent an issue, it is a volume rarely to be obtained. The two papers on Winchelsea, by Mr. Cooper, in Vols. viii. and xxiii. of the Sussex Archaeological Collections, form an apt complement to this volume.

On the 20th of December, 1858, Mr. Cooper was appointed to the office of Solicitor to the Vestry of Saint Pancras, Middlesex. He had previously approved himself a likely person for such an office, by the interest he had taken in, and the assistance he had given to, the passing of the Metropolitan Burials Bill, in 1852—a measure of great importance to so large and densely populated a parish as that of Saint Pancras. The emoluments of this post, consisting partly of a salary and partly of fees, although not very great, were yet not to be despised.

It need scarcely be noted that Mr. Cooper had long been a member of the Reform Club, ever since 1837