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by myself, and not by Mr. Guest,) is caught at by him, as a proof of my "In the present tense the first person, as in Francic, often ends in n."-Lay. i. xlix.

But how is it that Mr. Guest, who complains so much of my unfairness of quotation, did not think proper to add to my remark the words which followed and belong to it," the usage of which is still to be found in the German, Dutch, and Friesic bin, I am.' Did I borrow this also from Mr. Guest? The truth is, that this peculiarity was known to me, and noted down from Michaeler's "Tabulæ parallelæ Antiquissimarum Teutonicæ linguæ Dialectorum," &c. 12mo. 1776, many years

before I saw Mr. Guest's work.

Mr. Guest states that he has other grounds of complaint against me. What they are I know not, but they cannot be greater than I have against himself. As editor of several works illustrative of early and middle English literature, it has been my task to notice what I conceived were errors committed by Mr. Guest and others, and I have done so without unfairness or discourtesy. The list of errors, I beg to add, is far from exhausted, for many more still remain untouched. At the same time I entirely repudiate any spirit of hostility towards Mr. Guest (whom it never has been my fortune even to meet) or his writings, and have always testified among my literary friends my just sense of the value of his publication on English rhythms. In the notes to Syr Gawayne I refer to it as a "valuable work," and ⚫ in the preface to Layamon I mention or refer to it no less than eight times.

Mr. Guest complains bitterly of his literary services not having been sufficently acknowledged by other writers, but he is not the only one who may have reason to make a similar complaint.* It would seem, however, that

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plagiarism, and he parallels the passages thus:

"The en of the first person of the present reminds one of the Frankish."-E.R. ii. 112.

Mr. Guest, in his morbid feeling of resentment against myself, is angry with me for repeating in print the correction of an error called by him "of merely biographical interest," but which, I take the liberty to think, is something more. He says of me,—

An

"Every correction of a date, though of merely biographical interest, is watched over with paternal anxiety, and obtruded upon the reader's notice whenever an opportunity offers, or can be made. amusing instance occurs in the work before us. Sir Frederic Madden calls Layamon our English Ennius,' and then chooses to assume that other persons give this title to Robert of Gloucester. As no one in his senses ever

But Sir

questioned the priority of Layamon, the dispute might be easily settled, if any one were simple enough to raise it. Frederic Madden is determined not to lose his opportunity,"† &c.

After writing a paragraph like this, Mr. Guest is the last man who should complain of unfairness. I did not assume

that Robert of Gloucester has been It is called the English Ennius. Hearne who bestows this epithet on him, in his edition of that writer, and he is re-echoed by Ellis, in his Specimens of Early English Poetry; and by Campbell, in his essay prefixed to his edition of the English Poets.

But what is this date of "merely biographical interest," which Mr. Guest in his spleen accuses me of obtruding

It is this.

on the reader's notice? Every one must be aware, who has studied the history of our early poetry, how prominently the Chronicle of Robert of Gloucester figures in the writers on the subject, as the earliest author of any extent who uses a language which may be called English. Ilearne and his satellites had placed the composition of this Chronicle after the year 1278 (the latest date he could

his preface he has omitted wholly to mention even my name, the only return he could make for the assistance I had given him! I could adduce other instances, but refrain.

+ See Gent. Mag. for May, p. 494.

find), or, in general terms, "about 1280." It was obviously of considerable importance to fix the period of this work with more precision, and I was the first to do so in 1828 in the preface to Havelok, by pointing out the mention of the canonisation of St. Louis, which took place in 1297; thus bringing the monk of Gloucester within seren years of the date of the succeeding chronicler Robert Mannyng, who began his Manuel de Peches in 1303. The limited circulation of Harelok, of which only 61 copies were printed, and with few exceptions restricted to the members of the Roxburghe Club, prevented this correction from being known so widely as, I conceive, it was entitled to be, and several writers of reputation continued to repeat the erroneous date given by Hearne and Warton. In my preface to Layamon, therefore, it was in justice to myself that I again pointed out this correction, not merely in reference to Mr. Guest, but to three other wellknown authors, all of whom had contributed to renew and spread more widely the long-founded error. Mr. Guest tells his readers † without any

"hesitation,"

"The latest fact mentioned in his [Robert of Gloucester's] Chronicle occurred in 1278, when it was probably written."-E. R. ii. 412.

Now, is this intended for information or not? If Robert of Gloucester wrote after 1297, as I have shown, what is this paragraph worth? If such a difference in point of date is really of no consequence, and only of "biographieal interest," it is time both for Mr. Guest and myself to give up all trouble about such matters, and take whatever dates happen to come first. It would seem, indeed, according to Mr. Guest's notions, that successive

*To these may be added Le Roux de Lincy, in his edition of the Brut of Wace, Analyse, p. 39, 8vo. 1838, and Thorpe's English translation of Lappenberg, vol. i. p. Iviii. 8vo. 1845. This is what Mr. Guest calls my paternal anxiety for correction !

+ Mr. Guest elsewhere refers to Havelok; therefore he ought to have known the correction above referred to. But it was easier to copy Ritson than to read critically the text of Robert of Gloucester.

writers may serrilely repeat a prored error over and over again, without blame or remark; but if another writer venture to repeat the correction of this error, he is to be accused of ab truding himself on the reader. Talk of unfairness! why, this is its essence. I contend therefore that if prior claims are to be so strictly acknowledged, I am entitled to the credit of this discovery, as well as of having been the first to distinguish clearly the dates of Robert Mannyng's biography, which had previously been so confused; and, in spite of Mr. Guest's comment, I con sider I have done quite as good service in correcting such errors, as in endea vouring to determine the feet of a line in Cadmon or Chaucer.

I shall add no more, except that I trust I have proved Mr. Guest to have attacked me unfairly, acrimoniously, and undeservedly, and that his charges are void of foundation.

Yours, &c. F. MADDEN.

MR. URBAN,

Charterhouse Square,
May 20.

MY attention has been called to the

following passage in Mr. GUEST's strictures on Sir F. MADDEN's edition of Layamon, in your Number for May, p. 498.

book

"For more than eight years I have seen my works treated as though they were a common property, a kind of Lammas land, on which every maker had right of pasturage:" then, after alluding to some instances, which he does not particularly specify, Mr. Guest adds, "Lastly, I have gone through an edition of Warton in which one-third of the additional matter is the result of my labours, and my name is not once mentioned."

I am certainly much surprised at this charge, as I am conscious of having been scrupulously anxious to make acknowledgment for whatever assistance I received, and to quote every source from which I had derived information, both in the Advertisement to my edition of Warton, and in the Notes throughout the work; claiming nothing as my own y initials are not affixed

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of English Rhythms, 1838, with his
reasons for differing in many par-
ticulars from Mr. Price's construction.
"In Mr. Richard Taylor's edition," he
adds, "though my translation and
notes are never alluded to, they are
freely made use of; and my version of
one difficult passage is introduced,
though Price's text will not support it."

I am thus, Sir, constrained to clear
myself from this unexpected charge,
and to remove Mr. Guest's suspicions,
by assuring him that I had not seen
his work when my edition of Warton
was published (early in 1840), and,
therefore, can have borrowed nothing
from it. In truth, I am almost ashamed
to confess that I have never yet looked
into it, nor was I aware of the labour
that he had bestowed on the poem re-
ferred to, and which I had begun to
pay some attention to more than thirty
years ago. As he has not stated the

passage to which he alludes I am unable to answer more fully; but he will find that what has been added in regard to the version of the poem, and notes upon it, was not at all meant to be restricted to the text which Mr. Price had given. The suggested emendations, placed in the margin in italics, have all been adopted in Dr. Giles's late publication, but without one word of acknowledgment.

I believe I may confidently add, that to no work could the charge of bookmaking be less justly applied than to the last edition of Warton.

Yours, &c. RICHARD TAYLOR.

P.S. On referring to dates, I find that, although not published till 1840, the first volume was put to press in 1836, and the second and third in 1837, before Mr. Guest's work had appeared.

SIR KENELME DIGBY.-II. WRITINGS.
SUBJOINED is a list of Digby's
works. It is to be observed that the
dates of production, in some cases, long
preceded the dates of publication.

1. A Conference with a Lady about
the choice of a Religion. Paris, 1638,
London, 1654.

2. Letters between the Lord George Digby and Sir Kenelme Digby concerning Religion. London, 1651.

3. Observations upon Religio Medici, occasionally written by Sir Kenelme Digby. London, 1643.

4. Observations on the 22nd stanza in the 9th canto of the 2nd book of Spenser's Faery Queen. London, 1644.

5. A Treatise on the Nature of Bodies. Paris, 1644. Three times reprinted in London.

6. A Treatise declaring the Operation and Nature of Man's Soule, out of which the Immortality of Reasonable Souls is evinced. Paris, 1644. Three times reprinted in London.

7. Institutionum Peripateticarum
Libri Quinque, cum Appendice Theolo-
gica de Origine Mundi. Paris, 1651.
8. A Treatise of adhering to God.
London, 1654.

9. Of the Cure of Wounds by the
Powder of Sympathy. London, 1660.
10. Discourse concerning the Vege-
tation of Plants. London, 1661. Se-
ver. "+i
printed.

Temoirs of Sir Kenelme

Digby, written by himself. Now first published from the original manuscript by Sir N. H. Nicolas]. London, 1827.

We proceed to afford our readers a notion of Digby's merits and demerits as a philosopher, moral, physical, and psychological, by a selection, from the above-named works, of what have appeared to us to be the most characteristic passages. It has been already seen that, as a moralist and theologian, Digby was chargeable with the most ruinous defect, namely, want of fairness. We have his own word for it that, in the course of study which preceded his conversion to Romanism, all his reading had been on one side. But, notwithstanding this defect, it is in theology and in theological metaphysics that he shines most. Few controversialists have succeeded so well as he has done in being at once profound and engaging. Over all his argu mentations there is an air of good breeding, which is the more attractive for its singularity under the circum

stances.

Sir Kenelme, in his Letters to Lord George Digby concerning religion, explains and defends the authority of the Fathers by arguments, delivered with an amount of heartiness which proves that they were original for himself, however doubtful may have been their novelty. He says that we ought to

"rely upon them (the Fathers) more for what they were taught than for what they teach.... I say that, letting passe what they writ as commentators upon the Scriptures, and as philosophers, and all which is but as divines and scho. lars, we are generally to take hold of what they deliver to us as pastors of the Church, which appeareth briefly by what they writ against those they brand with heresie, which they could not do were not those poynts which they censure against the known and generall traditions of the Church and next when they deliver us dogmatically and professedly any doctrine in such sort as we may reasonably conceive they intended we should take it as matter of faith... In all which a free and good judgement will easily discern by reading them which way to incline; which I knowing your lordship to be, doe beseech you to apply it a little industriously to collect throughout their sense, and by what they say to frame a modell of the government, beliefe, and practise of the Church wherein they lived, and then tell me whether it be like yours or ours."

No careful reader of these words would require to be informed by Digby that his theological learning was "all on one side." He does not seem to have been aware that the Church of England, as we find it expressed, while yet its doctrines were unobscured and its discipline unneglected, in the writings of such men as Latimer, Tindal, Jewell, Hooper, and in the Homilies, recognised, in the early Fathers, precisely the kind and amount of authority which is demanded for them in the above passage.

Digby continues his advocacy as follows:

"Criticks labour to get some knowledge of the manners and customes of ages long since past, by little fragments of antiquity that have hardly 'scaped into their hands; and lawyers get a knowledge of the government and frame of the state in kings' reignes long agoe by broken and disjoynted records that they meet with scattered in severall files; and these maimed evidences, by chance fallen into their hands, do serve to beget a fairer body of knowledge when they know how to make a right use of them, and such as will convince an indifferent and equall hearer; much more certainly the Fathers' works, that handle professedly and at large the affairs of the Church and religion, and whereof we have such plenty, will fairly inform a rational and discorsi man of the true state of them in times, and what they conceived, an

been taught, imported heaven of hell in man's beliefe and practise, which I am sure your lordship will allow to carry a great stroke in ours, and from which it is madness, if not impiety, to depart upon lesse grounds than a demonstration to convince the contrary....

"One thing more I shall adde in generall, which is, that a large and great soule, like yours, expresseth itself more to its advantage in weighing in the powerfull scale of reason that it hath the main bulk of what it is to judge of rather than to dwell with too scrupulous a diligence upon little quillets and niceties which admit argument on both sides, and in the mean time let slide away unnoted that great deale which is uncontroulable and plaine, as though one were but to declame in schoole to exercise one's wit, and therefore he maketh choice of some ingenious paradox against a known and received truth, and to impugne it can bring but cavils of wit, without being able to grapple with the main body of it, and seeks rather to puzzle and embroil his adversary, than weightily to establish the solid truth.... Therefore, good my lord, apply that great dowed withall, to build as well as to pull understanding you are so excellently en down, and read not the Fathers with a fore-laid designe to enerve their autho rity, but with an indifferency to yeeld your assent to what upon the whole matters you shall judge reasonable so to doe. And, since I know that your judgement must, in all things that are controverted before it of this nature, tend to settlement one way or other (for only sciolous wits float onely in uncertainty, as delighting to make objections and raise a dust which afterward their weak eyes cannot look through), let me recommend to you not onely to examine whether the opinion you meet with in your reading, repugnant to what you were formerly imbued with, be concludingly demonstrated or no, but likewise examine as strictly the reason you have for your own; and when the scale weighs heaviest give your assent.”

Unfair as Digby's course in coming to a determination concerning the Roman Church must be confessed to have been, it cannot be denied that, in handling and comparing the arguments with which his one-sided studies had made him acquainted he was generally very manly and judicious. The "judicious" Hook himself might have owned a senter and in the en

Digby

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in the above

d modera kworthy "Ob

servations on Religio Medici." We quote an example or two of the exercise of these rare and useful faculties -faculties so much more rare and so much more useful than the most surprising acuteness and subtlety can be without them.

ASTROLOGY.

"As for what he [Sir T. Browne] saith of astrologie, I do not conceive that wise men reject it so much for being repugnant to divinity as for having no solid rules or ground in nature. To rely too far upon that vain art I judge to be rather folly than impiety." (Observations on Religio Medici.)

WITCHES.

"Neither do I deny there are witches. I only reserve my assent till I meet with stronger motives to carry it." (The same.)

CONTRADICTIONS.

Digby corrects Browne's ultra-fidianism (as Coleridge called it), in complaining that there were not contradictions enough for him in religion, by the following profound remark:

"Who understand the nature of contradiction will find non-entity in one of the terms, which of God were impiety not to deny peremtorily." (The same.)

AN UNIVERSAL SPIRIT.

"I doubt his discourse of an universall It is a spirit is but a wilde fancie weake argument from a common nature that subsisteth only in our understanding (out of which it hath no being at all) to inferre, by parity, an actuall existence of the like, in reality of nature." (The same.)

FIRST MATTER.

The above remark and that which follows are invaluable arguments against the pantheism at present in fashion among a large class of thinkers. He complains of Browne for giving

"an actual subsistence and being to first matter without a form. He that will allow that a real existence in nature is as superficially tincted in metaphysicks as another would be in mathematicks that should allow the like to a point, a line, or a superficies in figures. These, in their strict notions, are but negations of further extension, or but exact terminations of that quantity which falleth under the consideration of the understanding in the present purpose; no real entities in themselves: so likewise, the notions of matter, form, act, power, existence, and the like, that are with truth considered by the understanding, and have there each of them

ad

utility, are nevertheless no where
xes in nature. They are terms

which we must use in the negociations of our thoughts, if we would discover consequently and conclude knowingly. . . . In a word, all these words are but artificial terms, not real things: and the not right understanding of them is the dangerousest rock that scholars suffer shipwreck against." (The same.)

The

Sir Kenelme Digby is one of the very few philosophers who have attained the golden medium in the questions of Predestination and Free-will. following passage is from the "Private Memoirs," and contains as true a statement of the matter in hand as any with which we are acquainted.

"... For my instruction give me leave to oppose you in that you say the stars are the books of fate; which seemeth to imply such a necessity in human actions as well as in other natural ones, that it overthroweth quite the liberty of the will, which certainly is the only pre-eminence that man can glory in, and that we are taught to believe, and see evidently to be "This objection of yours," antrue." swered the Brachman, "is the subject of a large dispute, which is too long now to be handled; but for your satisfaction I will briefly run over some of the heads of it; from which you may of yourself draw many other conclusions. Know then that the infinite wisdom of Him who created all things, and disposed them with admirable sweetness, did frame this world and all that is in it in such an artificial order that contrariety and disagreeing qualities is the only knot of this perfect concord; in the ... as also in all elements it is apparent, things whatsoever of this sublunary world, which, consisting of several creatures of differing degrees of perfection, do serve us as so many steps to ascend to the

knowledge of what is above us. A more

admirable order and fuller of divine wisdom cannot be conceived; therefore God hath also used it in the superior creatures, the noblest of which are human souls; in which one may consider an entire liberty together with a constrained necessity, which in no way impeach or hinder one another; for to those he gave a capacity of the greatest perfection that any creature may possess, to wit, the power of uniting themselves by blessed vision to His eternal and infinite essence; the means of attaining to the which is due only to free actions; which liberty, as it hath relation to us and to our actions, is entire in the highest degree, and without any constraint at all; but if we have relation to this prescience of God, who from all eternity knoweth all earthly things, and to whom nothing is past or to come, but all present, thus I say that our actions are included

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