7 A 1874, Apeil 28. Hon. Cha's, Summer, "THERE is more weighty bullion sense in this book, than I ever found in the same number of pages of any uninspired writer." COLERIDGE. 29-13 Li ADVERTISEMENT. HE flattering reception and rapid sale of the former edition of this little book given by the late Mr. Pickering in 1847, has encouraged the present publisher to solicit me to superintend this re-impression; and I have spared no pains to make it at least equally worthy of public favour. The text has been again carefully revised, and the notes, with some augmentation, are now placed beneath it, instead of at the end of the volume. It has been a source of infinite satisfaction to me to be called upon in the evening of life to revise the text of the dramas of our great poet and that of this little golden manual, and to renew my intercourse with the minds of Shakespeare and Selden. Mickleham, November 19, 1855. S. W. S. OTHING can be more interesting than this little book, containing a lively picture of the opinions and conversation of one of the most eminent scholars and most distinguished patriots England has produced; living at a period the most eventful of our history. There are few volumes of its size so pregnant with sense, combined with the most profound learning; it is impossible to open it without finding some important fact or discussion, something practically useful and applicable to the business of life. It may be said of it, as of that exquisite little manual, Bacon's Essays, after the twentieth perusal one seldom fails to remark in it something overlooked before. Such were my feelings and expressions upwards of thirty years since, in giving to the world an edition of Selden's Table Talk, which has long been numbered in the list of scarce books, and that opinion time has fully confirmed. It was with infinite satisfaction therefore I found that one whose opinion may be safely taken as the highest authority, had as fully appreciated its worth. b Coleridge thus emphatically expresses himself: "There is more weighty bullion sense in this book, than I ever found in the same number of pages of any uninspired writer." And in a note on the article Parliament, he writes: "Excellent! O! to have been with Selden over his glass of wine, making every accident an outlet and a vehicle of wisdom."* Its merits had not escaped the notice of Johnson, though in politics opposed to much that it inculcates, for in reply to an observation of Boswell, in praise of the French Ana, he said: "A few of them are good, but we have one book of that kind better than any of themSelden's Table-talk."+ The collector and recorder of these Aurea Dicta, the Reverend Richard Milward, was for many years Selden's Amanuensis; he had graduated at Trinity College, Cambridge, and subsequently became Rector of Little Braxted, in Essex, upon the presentation of its then patron, the Earl of Pembroke. He was also installed a Canon of Windsor, in 1666, and died in 1680. From the dedication to Selden's Executors, it will be obvious that Milward intended it for publication, but it did not issue from the press until nine years after his death. Among the Harleian MSS. in the British Museum (1315, pl. 42. 6.) is a written copy of this work, on which * Coleridge's Literary Remains, vol. ii. pp. 361-2. Boswell's Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, p. 321. It appears that it was once intended to translate it into French, and publish it under the title of SELDENIANA. See Mélanges de Littérature, par Vigneul Marville (i. e. Noel d'Argonne) tome i. p. 48 |