TABLE-TALK OF JOHN SELDEN.

INTRODUCTION.

BOOK of Apothegms is an armoury of thoughts more or lefs felicitoufly expreffed. Rightly read, it acts as a tonic on the mind. The subjects are so difconnected and follow the one the other fo rapidly the opinions and arguments are fo incifively expreffed, and are often fo apparently contradictory and paradoxical: that the whole work becomes hard to read, and still harder to digeft. Rapid reading of fuch condenfed thought is unproductive; careful study, however, makes it both enjoyable and fruitful: and that in proportion to the activity of the reader's mind.

It is clear, therefore, that Apothegms are rather fubjects for confideration than articles for belief. They must be thoroughly examined. They must be, fo to speak, unravelled and unfolded, that their inwrapped principles may be understood in their nature, applications, and confequences; in order that concinnated speech may not beguile us from truth, or aphorifms charm us into injustice and error.

It is further evident, that our final judgment of the opinions of the Author must be fufpended until we thus poffefs his whole work. In particular, in the prefent inftance, we should not forget that we have but ftray fragments of talk, separated from the context of cafual and unrestrained converfations; collected -probably without the Speaker's knowledge-one, two, or three at a time, over a period of twenty years; and claffified long afterwards, as feemed beft to their Preserver.

EPILOG U E.

He Play is at an end, but where's the Plot?
That circumftance our Poet Bayes forgot,
And we can boaft, though 'tis a plotting Age,

No place is freer from it than the Stage.
The Ancients Plotted, though, and ftrove to please
With fence that might be understood with ease;
They every Scene with so much wit did store
That who brought any in, went out with more:
But this new way of wit does so surprise,
Men lose their wits in wond'ring where it lyes.
If it be true, that Monftrous births prefage
The following mischiefs that afflicts the Age,
And fad disasters to the State proclaim;
Plays, without head or tail, may do the fame.
Wherefore, for ours, and for the Kingdoms peace,
May this prodigious way of writing cease.
Let's have, at least, once in our lives, a time
When we may hear some Reason, not all Rhyme :
We have these ten years felt its Influence;
Pray let this prove a year of Profe and Sence.

FINIS

Affociate, King's College, London, F.S.A., F.R.G.S., &c.

These Sayings were published thirty-five years after Selden's death, and nine years after their recorderthe Rev. Richard Milward, S.T.P., who died Canon of Windfor, Rector of Great Braxted, and Vicar of Ifleworth-had paffed away. While they are, therefore, thus doubly pofthumous in publication, they must be long antedated in utterance. Table-Talk belongs chiefly, if not entirely, to 1634-1654, and therefore appertains to the first rather than the fecond half of the Seventeenth century.

These Discourses fhow fomewhat of the mind, but not the whole mind of Selden, even in the fubjects treated of. What must have been the fulness of information, the aptness of illustration, the love of truth, the justness of reasoning, when fuch fragments as these could be picked up by a casual hearer? Bacon's Effays are most carefully finished compositions: Selden's Table-Talk is the fpontaneous incidental outpouring of an overflowing mind; and yet it may not unworthily compare with the former.

Paffing by acute infight into human nature, and great antiquarian research, can we gather, however imperfectly, from the prefent work, any idea as to what Selden's main opinions were? We think we may.

In this work, as elsewhere, John Selden is the Champion of Human Law. It fell to his lot to live in a time when the life of England was convulfed, for years together, beyond precedent; when men searched after the ultimate and effential conditions and frames of human fociety; when each ftrove fiercely for his rights, and then as dogmatically afferted them.

Amidst immenfe, prepofterous, and inflated affump'ions; through the horrid tyranny of the fyftem of the Thorough; in the exciting debates of Parliament; in all the ftorm of the Civil War; in the ftill fiercer jarring of religious fects; amidst all the phenomena of that age; Selden clung to the Law of the Kingdom.' All is as the State pleases.' He advocates the

fupremacy of Human Law against the fo-called doctrine of Divine Right. He thrufts out the Civil Power against all Ecclefiaftical pretenfions, and raifing it to be the highest authority in the State, denies the existence of any other co-ordinate power. So ftrongly does he affert the power of the Nation to do or not to do, that, for the purpose of his argument, he reduces Religion almost to a habit of thought, to be affumed or caft off, like a fashion in drefs, at will. 'So Religion was brought into kingdoms, fo it has been continued, and fo it may be caft out, when the State pleases.' * 'The Clergy tell the Prince they have Phyfick good for his Soul, and good for the Souls of his People, upon that he admits them: but when he finds by Experience they both trouble him and his People, he will have no more to do with them, what is that to them or any body else if a King will not go to Heaven't "The State still makes the Religion and receives into it, what will beft agree with it.'§

Selden lodges the Civil Power of England, in the King and the Parliament. He fhews that our Englifh Conftitution is but one great Contract between two equal Princes, the Sovereign and the People; and that if that Contract be broken, both parties are at parity again. That, by a like confent, the majority in England governs; the minority affenting to the judgement of the majority, and being involved in their decifion. Finally, reducing all relationships to like mutual Agreements, he urges the keeping of Contracts, as the effential bond of Human fociety. Keep your Faith.'

The way these views are enforced, fully juftifies Lord Clarendon's opinion of him, that 'in his Conversation He was the most clear Difcourfer, and had the best Faculty in making hard Things easy, and presenting them to the Understanding, of any Man that hath been known.' ‡