Amenities of Literature Part 62

THE TRUE INTELLECTUAL SYSTEM OF THE UNIVERSE.

It is only in the silence of seclusion that we should open the awful tome of "The True Intellectual System of the Universe" of RALPH CUDWORTH.[1] The history and the fate of this extraordinary result of human knowledge and of sublime metaphysics, are not the least remarkable in the philosophy of bibliography.

The first intention of the author of this elaborate and singular work, was a simple inquisition into the nature of that metaphysical necessity, or destiny, which has been introduced into the systems both of philosophy and religion, wherein man is left an irresponsible agent in his actions, and is nothing more than the blind instrument of inevitable events over which he holds no control.

This system of "necessity," or fate, our inquirer traced to three different systems, maintained on distinct principles. The ancient Democritic or atomical physiology endows inert matter with a motive power. It views a creation, and a continued creation, without a creator.

The disciple of this system is as one who cannot read, who would only perceive lines and scratches in the fairest volume, while the more learned comprehend its large and legible characters; in the mighty volume of nature, the _mind_ discovers what the _sense_ may not, and reads "those sensible delineations by its own inward activity," which wisdom and power have with their divinity written on every page. The absurd system of the atomist or the mere materialist, Cudworth names the atheistic.

The second system of "necessity" is that of the theists, who conceive that the will of the Deity, producing in us good or evil, is determined by no immutability of goodness and justice, but an arbitrary will omnipotent; and therefore all qualities, good and evil, are merely so by our own conventional notions, having no reality in nature. And this Cudworth calls _the divine fate_, or _immoral theism_, being a religion divesting the Creator of the intellectual and moral government of the universe; all just and unjust, according to this hypothesis, being mere fact.i.tious things. This "necessity" seems the predestination of Calvinism, with the immorality of antinomianism.

The third sort of fatalists do not deny the moral attributes of the Deity, in his nature essentially benevolent and just; therefore there is an immutability in natural justice and morality, distinct from any law or arbitrary custom; but as these theists are necessarians, the human being is incapacitated to receive praise or blame, rewards or punishments, or to become the object of retributive justice; whence they deduce their axiom that nothing could possibly have been otherwise than it is.

To confute these three fatalisms, or false hypotheses of the system of the universe, Cudworth designed to dedicate three great works; one against atheism, another against immoral theism, and the third against the theism whose doctrine was the inevitable "necessity" which determined all actions and events, and deprived man of his free agency.

These licentious systems were alike destructive of social virtues; and our ethical metaphysician sought to trace the Deity as an omnipotent understanding Being, a supreme intelligence, presiding over all, in his own nature unchangeable and eternal, but granting to his creatures their choice of good and evil by an immutable morality. In the system of the visible and corporeal world the sage contemplated on the mind which everywhere pervaded it; and his genius launched forth into the immensity of "The Intellectual System of the Universe."

In this comprehensive design he maintains that the ancients had ever preserved the idea of one Supreme Being, distinct from all other G.o.ds.

That mult.i.tude of pagan deities, poetical and political, were but the polyonomy, or the many names or attributes, of one G.o.d, in which the unity of the Divine Being was recognised. In the deified natures of things, the intelligent wors.h.i.+pped G.o.d; the creator in the created. The pagan religion, however erroneous, was not altogether nonsensical, as the atheists would represent it.

In this folio of near a thousand pages, Cudworth opens the occult sources of remote antiquity; and all the knowledge which the most recondite records have transmitted are here largely dispersed. There is no theogony and no cosmogony which remains unexplored; the Chaldean oracles, and the Hermaic hooks, and the Trismegistic writings, are laid open for us; the arcane theology of the Egyptians is unveiled; and we may consult the Persian Zoroaster, the Grecian Orpheus, the mystical Pythagoras, and the allegorising Plato. No poet was too imaginative, no sophist was too obscure, to be allowed to rest in the graves of their oblivion. All are here summoned to meet together, as at the last tribunal of their judgment-day. And they come with their own words on their lips, and they commune with us with their own voices; for this great magician of mind, who had penetrated into the recesses of mythic antiquity to descry its dim and uncertain truths, has recorded their own words with the reverence of a votary to their faiths. "The sweetness of philology allays the severity of philosophy; the main thing, in the meantime, being the philosophy of religion.[2] But for our parts, we neither call Philology nor yet Philosophy our mistress, but serve ourselves of either as occasion requireth." Such are the words of the historian of "The Intellectual System of the Universe."

It is this mine of recondite quotations in their original languages, most accurately translated, which has imparted such an enduring value to this treasure of the ancient theology, philosophy, and literature;[3]

for however subtle and logical was the master-mind which carried on his trains of reasoning, its abstract and abstruse nature could not fail to prove repulsive to the superficial, for few could follow the genius who led them into "the very darkest recesses of antiquity," while his pa.s.sionless sincerity was often repugnant to the narrow creed of the orthodox. What, therefore, could the consequence of this elaborate volume when given to the world be, but neglect or hatred? And long was "The Intellectual System" lost among a thoughtless or incurious race of readers. It appeared in 1678. It was nearly thirty years afterwards, when the neglected author was no more, in 1703, that Le Clerc, a great reader of English writers, furnished copious extracts in his "Bibliotheque Choisie," which introduced it to the knowledge of foreigners, and provoked a keen controversy with Bayle. This last great critic, who could only decide by the translated extracts, proved to be a formidable antagonist of Cudworth. At length, in 1733, more than half a century subsequent to its publication, Mosheim gave a Latin version, with learned ill.u.s.trations. The translation was not made without great difficulty; and a French one, which had been begun, was abandoned.

Cudworth has invented many terms, compound or obscure; and though these may be traced to their sources, yet when a single novel term may allude to metaphysical notions or to recondite knowledge, the learning is less to be admired than the defective perspicacity is to be regretted. It was, however, this edition of a foreigner which awakened the literary ardour of the author's countrymen towards their neglected treasure, and in 1743 "The True Intellectual System" at length reached a second edition, republished by Birch.[4]

The seed of immortal thoughts are not sown to perish, even in the loose soil where they have long lain disregarded. "The Intellectual System"

has furnished many writers with their secondary erudition, and possibly may have given rise to that portion of "The Divine Legation" of Warburton, whose ancient learning we admire for its ingenuity, while we retreat from its paradoxes; for there is this difference between this solid and that fanciful erudition, that Warburton has proudly made his subject full of himself, while Cudworth was earnest only to be full of his subject. The glittering edifice of Paradox was raised on moveable sands; but the more awful temple has been hewn out of rocks which time can never displace. Even in our own days, Dugald Stewart has noticed that some German systems, stripped of their deep neological disguise, have borrowed from Cudworth their most valuable materials. The critical decision of Leibnitz must not, however, be rejected; for if there is some severity in its truth, there is truth in its severity. "Dans 'Le Systeme Intellectuel' je trouve beaucoup de savoir, mais non pas a.s.sez de meditation."

Such is the great work of a great mind! We have already shown its hard fate in the neglect of the contemporaries of the author--that thoughtless and thankless world many a great writer is doomed to address; and we must now touch on those human infirmities to which all systems of artificial theology and speculative notions are unhappily obnoxious.

In stating the arguments of the atheists at full, and opposing those of their adversaries, this true inquirer suffered the odium of Atheism itself! "It is pleasant enough," says Lord Shaftesbury, "that the pious Cudworth was accused of giving the upper hand to the atheist for having only stated their reasons and those of their adversaries fairly together." The truth seems, that our learned and profound author was not orthodox in his notions. To explain the difficulty of the Resurrection of bodies which in death resolve themselves into their separate elements, Cudworth a.s.sumed that they would not appear in their substance as a body of flesh, but in some ethereal form. In his researches he discovered the Trinity of Plato, of Pythagoras, and of Parmenides, and that of the Persian Mithra of three Hypostases, numerically distinct, in the unity of the G.o.dhead; this spread an alarm among his brothers the clergy, and Cudworth was perpetually referred to as an unquestionable authority by the heterodox writers on the mystery of the Christian Trinity. Even his great principle, that the Unity of the Deity was known to the polytheists, was impugned by a catholic divine as derogatory of revelation, he insisting that the Pagan divinities were only a commemoration of human beings. Yet the notion of Cudworth, so amply ill.u.s.trated, was not peculiar to him, for it had already been promulgated by Lord Herbert, and by the ancients themselves.

As all such results contradicted received opinions, this pious and learned man was condemned by some as "an Arian, a Socinian, or at best a deist." Some praised his prudence, while others intimated his dissimulation; on several dogmas he delivers himself with great reserve, and even so ambiguously, that his own opinions are not easily ascertained, and are sometimes even contradictory. There have been more recent philosophers, who, from their prejudices, have hardly done justice to the search for truth of Cudworth; he is depreciated by Lord Bolingbroke, who, judging the philosopher by the colour of his coat, has treated the divine with his keenest severity, as "one who read too much to think enough, and admired too much to think freely." Bolingbroke might envy the learning which he could not rival, and borrow from those recondite stores the knowledge which otherwise might not have reached him.

Our great author had indeed the heel of Achilles. Exercising the most nervous logic, and the most subtle metaphysics, he was also deeply imbued with Platonic reveries. Ambitious, in his inquiries, to discuss subjects placed far beyond the reach of human faculties, he delighted, with his eager imagination, to hover about those impa.s.sable precincts which Providence and Nature have eternally closed against the human footstep. It was this disposition of his mind which gave birth to the wild hypothesis of _the plastic life of Nature_, to unfold the inscrutable operations of Providence in the changeless forms of existence. There is nothing more embarra.s.sing to atheism, in deriving the uninterrupted phenomena of nature from a fortuitous mechanism of inert matter, than to be compelled to ascribe the unvaried formation of animals to a cause which has no idea of what it performs, although its end denotes an intention; executing an undeviating system without any intelligence of the laws which govern it. We cannot indeed conceive every mite, or gnat, or fly, to be the immediate handwork of the ceaseless labours of the Deity, though so perfectly artificial is even its wing or its leg that the Divine Artificer seems visible in the minutest production. Cudworth, to solve the enigma, fancifully concluded that the Deity had given a plastic faculty to matter--"A vital and spiritual, but unintelligent and necessary, agent to execute its purposes." He raised up a sort of middle substance between matter and spirit--it seemed both or neither; and our philosopher, roving through the whole creation, sometimes describes it as an inferior subordinate agent of the Deity, doing the drudgery, without consciousness; lower than animal life; a kind of drowsy unawakened mind, not knowing, but only doing, according to commands and laws impressed upon it.

The consequence deduced by the subtle Bayle from this fanciful system was, that, had the Deity ever given such a plastic faculty, it was an evidence that it is not repugnant to the nature of things, that unintelligent and necessary agents should operate, and therefore a motive power might be essential to matter, and things thus might exist of themselves.[5] It weakened the great objection against atheism.

Philosophers, to extricate themselves from occult phenomena, have too often flung over the gaping chasms which they cannot fill up, the slight plank of a vague conjecture, or have constructed the temporary bridge of an artificial hypothesis; and thus they have hazarded what yields no sure footing. Of this "folly of the wise," the inexplicable ether of Newton, the whirling worlds or vortices of Descartes, and the vibrations and the vibratiuncles of Hartley, among so many similar fancies of other philosophers, furnish a memorable evidence. The _plastic life of Nature_, as explained by Cudworth, only subst.i.tuted a novel term for a blind, unintelligent agent, and could neither endure the ridicule of Bolingbroke nor the logic of Bayle, and is thrown aside among the deceitful fancies of scholastic dreamers.

There was indeed from his earliest days a tinge of Platonic refinement in the capacious understanding of this great metaphysician. The theses he maintained at college were the dawn of the genius of his future works. One was on "The Eternal Differences between Good and Evil," which probably led long after to his treatise on "Eternal and Immutable Morality"--an exposition of the dangerous doctrines of Hobbes and the Antinomians.[6] The other question he disputed was, that "there are incorporeal substances immortal in their own nature"--a topic he afterwards investigated in "The True Intellectual System of the Universe"--against the principles of the Epicurean philosophy. These scholastic exercises are an evidence that the youthful student was already shaping in his mind the matters and the subjects of his future great work. Beautiful is this unity of mind which we discover in every master-genius! Even into his divinity he seems to have carried the same fanciful refinement; he maintained that "the Lord's Supper was a feast upon a sacrifice;" and such was the charm of this mysterious doctrine, that it was adopted by some of the greatest divines and scholars. It is not therefore surprising that Cudworth was held in the highest estimation by the Platonic Dr. MORE, of which I give a remarkable instance. Cudworth, as other divines, wrote on Daniel's prophecy of the seventy weeks, which, he says in a letter, is "A Defence of Christianity against Judaism, the seventy weeks never having yet been sufficiently cleared and improved." Since the days of Cudworth others have "cleared and improved," and his "demonstration" is not even noticed among subsequent "demonstrations;" but Judaism still remains. Yet on this theological reverie, Dr. More has used this forcible language:--"Mr.

Cudworth has demonstrated the manifestation of the Messiah to have fallen out at the end of the sixty-ninth week, and his pa.s.sion in the midst of the seventieth. This demonstration is of as much price and worth in theology, as either the circulation of the blood in physic, or the motion of the earth in natural philosophy." This is not only a curious instance of the argumentative theology of that period, but of the fascination of a most refining genius influencing kindred imaginations.

We now come to record the melancholy fate of this great work, in connexion with its great author. He had arranged it into three elaborate volumes; but we possess only the first--the refutation of atheism; that subject, however, is of itself complete. Although I know not any private correspondence of Cudworth, after the publication of "The Intellectual System," which might more positively reveal the state of his feelings, and the cause of the suppression of his work, in which he had made considerable progress, yet we are acquainted with circ.u.mstances which too clearly describe its unhappy fate. We learn from Warburton that this pious and learned scholar was the victim of calumny, and that, too sensitive to his injuries, he grew disgusted with his work; his ardour slackened, and the ma.s.s of his papers lay in cold neglect. The philosophical divine partic.i.p.ated in the fate of the few who, like him, searched for truth freed from the manacles of received opinions.

Cudworth left his ma.n.u.scripts to the care of his daughter, Lady Masham, the friend of Locke, who pa.s.sed his latter days in her house at Oates.

Her ladys.h.i.+p was literary, but the reverse of a Platonical genius; she wrote against the Platonic Norris' "Love of G.o.d," and admitted in her religion no principles which were not practicable in morals, and seems to have been rather the disciple of the author of "The Human Understanding," than the daughter of the author of "The Intellectual System." For the good sense of Lady Masham erudition lost its curiosity, and imagination its charm; and she probably with some had certain misgivings of the tendency of her father's writings! He had himself been careless of them, for we know of no testamentary direction for their preservation. By her these unvalued ma.n.u.scripts were not placed in a cabinet, but thrown in a heap into the dark corner of some neglected shelf in the library at Oates. And from thence, after the lapse of half a century, they were turned out, with some old books, by the last Lord Masham, to make room for a fas.h.i.+onable library for his second lady. A bookseller purchased them with a notion that this waste paper contained the writings of Locke, and printing a Bible under the editors.h.i.+p of the famous Dr. Dodd, introduced the scripture notes, found among the heap, in the commentary, under the name of Locke. The papers were accidentally discovered to be parts of "The Intellectual System," and after having suffered mutilation and much confusion in the various mischances which they pa.s.sed through, they finally repose among our national collections; fragments on fragments which may yet be inspected by those whose intrepidity would patiently venture on the discoveries which lie amid this ma.s.s of theological metaphysics. They are thus described in Ayscough's "Catalogue," 4983:--"Collection of Confused Thoughts, Memorandums, &c., relating to the Eternity of Torments--Thoughts on Pleasure--Commonplace Book of Motives to Moral Duties, two volumes; and five volumes on Free-will." This description is imperfect; and many other subjects, the groundwork of his future inquiries, will be found in these voluminous ma.n.u.scripts. One volume, still highly valued, was s.n.a.t.c.hed from the wreck, Cudworth's "Treatise Concerning Eternal and Immutable Morality," which was edited by Dr. Chandler many years after the death of the author.

After all, we possess a mighty volume, subject no longer to neglect nor to mischance. "The True Intellectual System of the Universe" exists without a parallel for its matter, its subject, and its manner. Its matter furnishes the unsunned treasures of ancient knowledge, the history of the thoughts, the imaginations, and the creeds of the profoundest intellects of mankind on the Deity. Its subject, though veiled in metaphysics more sublime than human reasoning can pierce, yet shows enough for us to adore. And its manner, brightened by a subdued Platonism, inculcates the immutability of moral distinctions, and vindicates the free agency of the human being against the impious tenets which deliver him over a blind captive to an inexorable "necessity."

FOOTNOTES:

[1] My copy is the folio volume of the first edition, 1678; but they have recently reprinted Cudworth at Oxford in four volumes.

[2] A remarkable expression, which we supposed was peculiar to the more enlarged views of our own age. But who can affix precise notions to general terms? Cudworth'a notion of "the philosophy of religion"

was probably restricted to the history of the ancient philosophies of religion.

[3] In the first edition, the _references_ of its numerous quotations were few and imperfect; Dr. Birch, in the edition of 1743, supplied those that were wanting from Mosheim's Latin translation of the work.

Warburton observed that "all the translations from the Greek are wonderfully exact."

[4] It may be regretted that this valuable ma.s.s of curious erudition is not furnished with an ordinary index. A singular clue to the labyrinth the author has offered, by a running head on every single one of the thousand pages; and a minutely a.n.a.lytical table of the contents is appended to the mighty tome. This indeed impresses us with a full conception of the sublimity of the work itself; but our intimacy with this mult.i.tude of matters is greatly interrupted by the want of a ready reference to particulars which an ordinary index would have afforded.

[5] Continuation des Pensees Diverses, iii. 90.

[6] This volume, still read and valued, was fortunately saved amidst the wreck of the author's ma.n.u.scripts, and was published from his own autograph copy which he had prepared for the press, so late as 1781, 8vo.

DIFFICULTIES OF THE PUBLISHERS OF CONTEMPORARY MEMOIRS.

The editors of contemporary memoirs have often suffered an impenetrable mystery to hang over their publications, by an apparent suppression of the original. By this studious evasion of submitting the ma.n.u.script to public inspection, they long diminished the credit of the printed volumes. Enemies whose hostility the memorialists had raised up, in the meanwhile practised every artifice of detraction, racking their invention to persuade the world that but little faith was due to these pretended revelations; while the editors, mute and timorous, from private motives which they wished to conceal, dared not explain, in their lifetime, the part which they had really taken in editing these works. In the course of years, circ.u.mstances often became too complicated to be disentangled, or were of too delicate a nature to be nakedly exposed to the public scrutiny; the accusations grew more confident, the defence more vague, the suspicions more probable, the rumours and the hearsays more prevalent--the public confidence in the authenticity of these contemporary memoirs was thus continually shaken.

Such has been the fate of the history of the Earl of Clarendon, which, during a long interval of time, had to contend with prudential editors, and its perfidious opponents. And it is only at this late day that we are enabled to draw the veil from the mystery of its publication, and to reconcile the contradictory statements, so positively alleged by the a.s.sertors of the integrity of the text, and the impugners of its genuineness. We now can adjust with certainty so many vague protestations of its authenticity, by those who could not themselves have known it, with the sceptical cavils which at times seemed not always doubtful, and with one infamous charge which was not less positive than it proved to be utterly fict.i.tious. The fate and character of this great historical work was long involved in the most intricate and obscure incidents; and this bibliographical tale offers a striking ill.u.s.tration of the disingenuity alike of the a.s.sailants and the defenders.

The history of Lord CLARENDON was composed by the express desire of Charles the First. This prince, in the midst of his fugitive and troubled life, seemed still regardful of posterity; and we might think, were it not too flattering to his judgment, that by his selection of this historian, he antic.i.p.ated the genius of an immortal writer. We know the king carefully conveyed to the n.o.ble author many historical doc.u.ments, to furnish this vindication, or apology, of the calamitous measures to which that fated sovereign was driven. The earnest performance of this design, fervid with the eloquence of the writer, proceeding on such opposite principles to those of the advocates of popular freedom, and bearing on its awful front the condemnatory t.i.tle of "The Rebellion," provoked their indignant feelings; and from its first appearance they attempted to blast its credit, by sinking it into a mere party production. But the elevated character of "The Chancellor of Human Nature," as Warburton emphatically described him, stood almost beyond the reach of his a.s.sailants: it was by a circuitous attack that they contrived to depreciate the work, by pointing their a.s.sault on the presumed editors of the posthumous history. And though the genius of the historian, and the peculiarity of his style, could not but be apparent through the whole of this elaborate work, yet rumours soon gathered from various quarters, that the text had been tampered with by "the Oxford editors;" and some, judging by the preface, and the heated and party dedication to the queen, which, it has been a.s.serted, afterwards induced the Tory frenzy of Sacheverell, imagined that the editors had converted the history into a vehicle of their own pa.s.sions. The "History of Clarendon" was declared to be mutilated, interpolated, and, at length, even forged; the taint of suspicion long weakened the confidence of general readers. Even Warburton suspected that the editors had taken the liberty of omitting pa.s.sages; but, with a reliance on their honour, he believed they had never dared to incorporate any additions of their own.

The History of Lord CLARENDON thus, from its first appearance, was attended by the concomitant difficulties of contemporary history, as we shall find the editors soon discovered when they sat down to their task; difficulties which occasioned their peculiar embarra.s.sments. Even the n.o.ble author himself had considered that "a piece of this nature, wherein the infirmities of some, and the malice of others, both things and persons, must be boldly looked upon and mentioned, is not likely to appear in the age in which it was written." Lord Clarendon seems to have been fully aware that the freedom of the historical pen is equally displeasing to all parties. A contemporary historian is doomed to the peculiar unhappiness of encountering living witnesses, prompt to challenge the correctness of his details, and the fairness of his views; for him the complaints of friends will not be less unreasonable than the clamours of foes. And this happened to the present work. The history was not only a.s.sailed by men of a party, but by men of a family. They whose relatives had immolated their persons, and wrecked their fortunes, by their allegiance to the royal cause, were mortified by the silence of the historian; the writer was censured for omissions which had never entered into his design; for he was writing less a general history of the civil war, than a particular one of "the Rebellion," as he deemed it. Others eagerly protested against the misrepresentation of the characters of their ancestors; but as all family feelings are in reality personal ones, such interested accusers may not be less partial and prejudiced than the contemporary historian himself. He, at least, should be allowed to possess the advantage of a more immediate knowledge of what he narrates, and the right of that free opinion, which deprived of, he would cease to be "the servant of posterity." Lord Lansdowne was indignant at the severity of the military portrait of his ancestor, Sir Richard Greenvill, and has left a warm apology to palliate a conduct which Clarendon had honestly condemned; and recently, the late Earl of Ashburnham wrote two agreeable volumes to prove that Clarendon was jealous of the royal favour which the feeble Ashburnham enjoyed, and to which the descendant ascribed the depreciation of that favourite's character.

The authenticity of the history soon became a subject of national attention. The pa.s.sions of the two great factions which ruled our political circles had broken forth from these kindling pages of the recent history of their own day. They were treading on ashes which covered latent fires. Whenever a particular sentence raised the anger of some, or a provoking epithet for ever stuck to a favourite personage, the offended parties were willing to believe that these might be interpolations; for it was positively affirmed that such there were.

Twenty years after its first publication, we find Sir Joseph Jekyl, in the House of Commons, solemnly declaring that he had reason to believe that the "History of the Rebellion" had not been printed faithfully.

An incident of a very singular nature had occurred, even before the publication of the History, which a.s.suredly was unknown to the editors.

Dr. Calamy, the historian of the non-conformists, at the time that Lord Clarendon's History was printing at Oxford, was himself on the point of publis.h.i.+ng his Narrative of Baxter, and was anxious to ascertain the statements of his lords.h.i.+p on certain matters which entered into his own history. This astute divine, with something of the cunning of the serpent, whatever might be his dove-like innocence, hit upon an extraordinary expedient, by submitting the dignity of his order to pa.s.s through a most humiliating process. The crafty doctor posted to Oxford, and there, cautiously preserving the incognito, after ingratiating himself into the familiarity of the waiter, and then of the perruquier, he succeeded in procuring a secret communication with one of the printers. The good man exults in the wonders which sometimes may be opened to us by what he terms "a silver key rightly applied." The doctor had invented the treason, and now had only to seek for the traitor. A faithless workman supplied him with a sight of all the sheets printed, and, with a still grosser violation of the honour of the craft, exposed the naked ma.n.u.script itself to the prying eyes of the critical dissenter. To the honour of Clarendon, as far as concerned Calamy's narrative, there was no disagreement; but the aspect of the ma.n.u.script puzzled the learned doctor. It appeared not to be the original, but a transcript, wherein he observed "alterations and interlineations;"

paragraphs were struck out, and insertions added. Here seemed an important discovery, not likely to remain buried in the breast of the historian of the non-conformists; and he gradually let it out among his literary circle. The appearance of the ma.n.u.script fully warranted the conviction, of him who was not unwilling to believe, that the History of Clarendon had been moulded by the hands of those dignitaries of Oxford who were supposed to be the real editors. The History was soon called in contempt, "The Oxford History." The earliest rumours of a corrupt text probably originated in this quarter, as it is now certain, since the confession of Dr. Calamy appears in his diary, that he was the first who had discovered the extraordinary state of the ma.n.u.script.

Some inaccuracies, great negligence of dates, certain apparent contradictions, and some imperfect details--often occasioned by the n.o.ble emigrant's distant retirements, deprived, as we now know, of his historical collections--did not tend to dissipate the prevalent suspicions. The ma.n.u.script was frequently called for, but on inquiry it was not found in the Bodleian Library--it was said to be locked up in a box deposited in the library of the Earl of Rochester, who had died since the publication. Sometimes they heard of a transcript and sometimes of an original; it was reported that the autograph work by Lord Clarendon, among other valuables, had been destroyed in the fire of the Earl of Rochester's house at New Park. The inquirers became more importunate in their demands, and more clamorous in their expostulations.

About this period, Oldmixon, one of the renowned of the Dunciad, stepped forth as a political adventurer in history. He enlisted on the popular side; he claimed the honours of the most devoted patriotism; but in what degree he may have merited these will best appear when we shall more intimately discover the man himself. Oldmixon had wholly engaged with a party, and being an industrious hand, had a.s.signed to himself a good deal of work. Preparatory to his copious History of the Stuarts, he had preluded by two smaller works his "Critical History of England," and his "Clarendon and Whitelocke Compared." He had repeatedly insinuated his suspicions that the "History of the Rebellion" was not the entire work of Clarendon; but the more formal attack, by specifying the falsified pa.s.sages, at length appeared in the preface to his History of the Stuarts. The subject of the genuineness of Clarendon's text had so long engaged public discussion, that it evidently induced this writer to particularise it, among other professed discoveries, on his extensive t.i.tlepage, as one not the least likely to invite the eager curiosity of his readers. The heavy charge was here announced to be at length brought to a positive demonstration. We perceive the writer's complacency, when with an air of triumph he declared, "to all which is prefixed some account of the liberties taken with Clarendon's History _before it came to the press_, such liberties as make it doubtful what part of it is Clarendon's and what not."

It is here we find the anonymous communication of "A gentleman of distinction," who was soon known to be Colonel Ducket, an M.P., and a Commissioner of the Excise. The colonel details a conversation with Edmund Smith, the poet, who died at his seat, that "there had been a fine History written by Lord Clarendon; but what was published under his name was patchwork, and might as properly be called the history of the deans Aldrich, Smalridge, and Atterbury; for to his knowledge it was altered, and he himself was employed to interpolate the original." In a copy of the history, Smith had scored numerous pa.s.sages of this sort, and particularly the famous one of Cinna, which had been applied to the character of Hampden.

We may conceive the sensation produced by this apparently authenticated tale. Oldmixon in triumph confirms it too from another quarter; for he appeals to "A reverend divine now living, who saw the Oxford copy by which the book was printed, altered, and interpolated." This divine was our Dr. Calamy, who could not deny what he had truly affirmed.