importance, and by which every man is enabled to relate his own actions better than another's. The difficulties through which this work has struggled into light, and the delays with which our hopes have been long mocked,1 naturally lead the mind to the consideration of the common fate of posthumous compositions. He who sees himself surrounded by admirers, and whose vanity is hourly feasted with all the luxuries of studied praise, is easily persuaded that his influence will be extended beyond his life; that they who cringe in his presence will reverence his memory, and that those who are proud to be numbered among his friends, will endeavour to vindicate his choice by zeal for his reputation. 1 Lord Hyde, the heir to the Earldom of Clarendon, had left by his will this work, "and the other remains of his great-grandfather, in the hands of trustees, to be printed at the Clarendon Press, and directed that the profits arising from the sale should be employed towards the establishing a riding-school in the University. But dying before his father [they both died in 1753], the property of these papers never became vested in him, and consequently this bequest was void." The heiresses of the Earl fulfilled Lord Hyde's intention, and left them to the University on condition that the profits be applied as a beginning for a fund for supporting a Manage, or Academy for Riding, and other useful exercises in Oxford."-Life of the Earl of Clarendon, ed. 1759, Preface. Johnson took much interest in this scheme, but nothing " came of it.-Boswell's Johnson, ii. 424. "On Feb. 4, 1868, a scheme for the appropriation of the accumulated fund (now amounting to about £12,000) which had been approved by the Clarendon trustees was accepted by Convocation. The money is to be applied to the erection of laboratories, etc., at the University Museum." Macray's Annals of the Bodleian, p. 163. The Clarendon Laboratory indicates its origin by its name. With hopes like these, to the executors of Swift was committed the history of the last years of Queen Anne,1 and to those of Pope, the works which remained unprinted in his closet. The performances of Pope were burnt by those whom he had perhaps selected from all mankind as most likely to publish them2; and the history had likewise perished, had not a straggling transcript fallen into busy hands.3 The papers left in the closet of Peiresc supplied his heirs with a whole winter's fuel; and many of 1 This work had been published the year before. Johnson, in his Life of Swift, doubts its genuineness (Johnson's Works, viii. 207); but, it should seem, without reason.-See Craik's Life of Swift, ed. 1882, p. 518. 2 "Pope left the care of his papers to his executors. . . . undoubtedly expecting them to be proud of the trust, and eager to extend his fame. But let no man dream of influence beyond his life. After a decent time Dodsley, the bookseller, went to solicit preference as the publisher, and was told that the parcel had not been yet inspected; and whatever was the reason, the world has been disappointed of what was 'reserved for the next age.""-Johnson's Works, viii. 306. 3 According to the Advertisement prefixed to Swift's History, a manuscript copy, which he had lent to a friend, had never been reclaimed. When this man learnt that the Dean's executors "had suppressed, perhaps destroyed the original copy," he printed the one which he had. 4"A chamber in his house was filled with letters from the most eminent scholars of the age. The learned in Europe had addressed Peiresc in their difficulties, who was hence called the avocat-général of the republic of letters." His niggardly niece, though entreated to permit them to be published, preferred to use these learned epistles occasionally to light her fires.-D'Israeli's Curiosities of Literature, ed. 1834, i. 78. "Peiresc's death (said Johnson) was lamented, I think, in forty languages."-Boswell's Johnson, ii. 371. the labours of the learned Bishop Lloyd were consumed in the kitchen of his descendants.1 Some works, indeed, have escaped total destruction, but yet have had reason to lament the fate of orphans exposed to the frauds of unfaithful guardians. How Hale would have borne the mutilations which his Pleas of the Crown have suffered from the editor, they who know his character will easily conceive.2 The original copy of Burnet's history, though promised to some public library, has been never 1 "He (Lloyd) had read the most books, and had made the most copious abstracts out of them, of any in this age; so that Wilkins used to say, he had the most learning in ready cash of any he ever knew."-Burnet's History of his own Times, ed. 1818, i. 210. He was one of the Seven Bishops sent to the Tower in 1688; but the kitchen of his descendants perhaps did no great mischief, if Macaulay's statement is true, that he was "half crazed by his persevering endeavours to extract from the Book of Daniel and from the Revelations some information about the Pope and the King of France."-History of England, ed. 1873, iii. 84. 2 Burnet, at the end of his Life of Hale, says that "the reason that made that Judge so unwilling to have any of his works printed after his death was, that he apprehended in the licensing them some things might have been struck out or altered. This in matters of law, he said, might prove to be of such mischievous consequences that he thereupon resolved none of his writings should be at the mercy of licensers." 8 It would be proper to reposit, in some public place, the manuscript of Clarendon, which has not escaped all suspicion of unfaithful publication.-Johnson. The manuscript is in the Bodleian Library, having been deposited there, as it seems, in 1759.-Macray's Annals, p. 163. From it Mr. Bandinel printed the Oxford edition of 1826. He states, in the Preface, that though the first editors sometimes softened certain parts, or omitted an unfavourable given1; and who then can prove the fidelity of the publication, when the authenticity of Clarendon's history, though printed with the sanction of one of the first universities in the world, had not an unexpected manuscript been happily discovered, would, with the help of factious credulity, have been brought into question by the two lowest of all human beings, a scribbler for a party, and a commissioner of excise. 2 part of a character not absolutely necessary to illustrate any particular transaction, they in no one instance added, suppressed, or altered any historical fact." A perfect, and therefore a final collation, of the text has been made by the Rev. W. D. Macray for his edition printed last year at the Clarendon Press. 1 The original MS. or "copy" of Burnet's History of his Own Times was purchased, with some other papers, for the Bodleian Library in 1835 for £210.-Macray's Annals of the Bodleian, p. 252. 2 "The persons to whom Johnson alludes (writes Boswell) were Mr. John Oldmixon and George Duckett, Esq."Boswell's Johnson, i. 295. "Duckett informed Oldmixon that Clarendon's History was before publication corrupted by Aldrich, Smalridge, and Atterbury, and that Edmund Smith before he died confessed to having helped them, and pointed out some spurious passages. A bitter controversy resulted; Duckett's charge entirely broke down, and it is now unknown who was primarily responsible. Duckett was one of the commissioners of excise from 1722 to 1732.”—Dict. of Nat. Biog., xvi. 91. In the "advertisement" to the Oxford edition of Clarendon's History of 1732, it is stated :—“ Tho' the improbable story handed into the world by one Oldmixon deserves no farther notice, yet to prevent any person's being imposed upon by so gross and bold a fiction, there is part of the Life of the Lord Chancellor Clarendon, written ALL in his Lordship's OWN HAND, lodged in the Bodleian Library, to remain there for twelve months." This part contained Vanity is often no less mischievous than negligence or dishonesty. He that possesses a valuable manuscript, hopes to raise its esteem by concealment, and delights in the distinction which he imagines himself to obtain, by keeping the key of a treasure which he neither uses nor imparts. From him it falls to some other owner, less vain but more negligent, who considers it as useless lumber, and rids himself of the incumbrance. Yet there are some works which the authors must consign unpublished to posterity, however uncertain be the event, however hopeless be the trust. He that writes the history of his own times, if he adheres steadily to truth, will write that which his own times will not easily endure. He must be content to reposite his book till all private passions shall cease, and love and hatred give way to curiosity. But many leave the labours of half their life to their executors and to chance, because they will not send them abroad unfinished, and are unable to finish them, having prescribed to themselves such a degree of exactness as human diligence can scarcely attain. Lloyd, says Burnet, did not lay out his learning with the same diligence as he laid it one of the passages which Oldmixon had asserted was not in the original. Johnson had defined excise as a hateful tax levied upon commodities, and adjudged not by the common judges of property, but by wretches hired by those to whom excise is paid. In the Rambler, No. 12, he makes the wife of a Commissioner of Excise a very brutal woman. |