Page images
PDF
EPUB

of these has been supposed to be surreptitious. The paper and print are greatly inferior to the edition of 1652, and it is ridiculously inaccurate. In the title-page, fo is printed for of, and imrimatur for imprimatur; and in the short dedication, father for farther, and wroth for worth. Ex pede disce-The fact that four editions, even though they should not have been large ones, were required in seventeen years, and one of these it may be a pirated one,1 distinctly indicates that the work at its appearance had a considerable measure of popularity. Since 1669, I am not aware that the volume has been reprinted. An edition of the White Stone was printed some years ago.

The book can scarcely be called rare in the bibliographers' sense, for it frequently appears in booksellers'

1 On comparing carefully the second, and third, and fourth editions, I think the probability is that they are all genuine. In the second edition, notwithstanding its press blunders, some more important oversights of editing in the first are corrected. Both the second and third editions are printed with the same letter, not however page for page; the paper of the third and fourth is even inferior to that of the second. Some, only some of the archaisms of the spelling are corrected; while in other cases a worse spelling is adopted, as Cambridg for Cambridge. The imprint of the second edition is, 'LONDON, printed by T. R. and E. M. for John Rothwel, at the Fountain and Bear in Cheap-side, in Gold-smiths-row. 1654:' of the third edition, 'LONDON, printed by Tho. Roycroft for Mary Rothwell, at the Bear and Fountain, in Gold-smiths-row, in Cheapside, 1661:' of the fourth edition, 'OXFORD, printed for Tho. Williams, and are to be sold by Henry Dymock, Bookseller in Oxford. Anno Dom. 1669.' In the second edition, the discourse extends to 183 pages; in the third, it only reaches 175. The pagination of the fourth edition corresponds with that of the third. There is no substantial difference in the four editions, though the first is incomparably superior in appearance to the other three. From there being a change made in the close of Richard Culverwel's address 'To the Reader,' in the third edition, such as would have occurred to none but an author, I think it likely that that edition was printed under his care. The four editions have been carefully compared in preparing the present edition for the press.

catalogues; but it has been little noticed, and is very generally unknown. I have an indistinct recollection of meeting with a commendatory mention of the book in some writer of a period not long subsequent to that of the author; but after tasking my faculty of reminiscence to the uttermost, I cannot call up the name. I am not aware of having seen it quoted but by myself,' though it abounds in passages well worthy of being quoted, and singularly fit for quotation; nor of seeing it referred to in later writings, except in one instance, where the name of the author is not given, by one who, with a wider and yet more distinct view of the whole subject of Culverwel's principal work, has given so powerful a delineation of The Claims and Conflicts of Reason and Faith."2 The only bibliographical sketch of the work is that excellent one in The Evangelist, by the Rev. Henry More, already referred to.

Many of the minor articles in the volume are of high merit. In every one of them are to be found passages of great beauty and power; but there can be no doubt, that the Discourse of the Light of Nature, which now, after an interval of nearly two hundred years, we reproduce, as it is the longest, is, both as to thought and composition, by far the best of Culverwel's works.

That this work should have, on its first appearance, excited the degree of interest, which three editions in ten years, four in less than twenty, indicate, is not at all wonderful. It may seem more difficult to account for its having so soon sunk into comparative oblivion, and so long continued so. Evidence that it has so sunk is abun1 Expos. of 1st Peter, i. 368. 2 Rogers's Essays, iii. 174.

dant. It is not referred to by Baxter in his Life and Times. Doddridge does not mention it in his list of books on Christian Ethics, nor Kippis his editor. It does not appear in the ample list appended to Dr. Edward Williams's Christian Preacher. It is not noticed by either Dugald Stewart or Sir James Mackintosh, in their dissertations. And Hallam, who has seen and read so many books, does not seem to have met with this, else he could hardly have said, that 'Cumberland,' whose work De Legibus was not published till 1672, was 'the first Christian writer who sought to establish systematically the principles of moral right independent of revelation.'1

What is perhaps still more remarkable, Nathanael Culverwel's name does not appear in Fuller's History in the list of the learned writers' of Emanuel College, whether 'Fellows' or 'no Fellows,' though, as we have remarked, that of Ezekiel, an immeasurably inferior man, does. I have not found his name in any biographical dictionary; nor is he mentioned by Brook or Calamy, or Palmer or Bogue and Bennet. Dyer and Granger, and Noble and Brydges, have been examined in vain. His posthumous work is noticed by Watt and Darling, and that is all.

The causes why a book so instinct with literary life—a book which, if the world were but aware of its worth, they certainly would not willingly let die' should have run so obvious a risk of being forgotten, are not however far to seek. There was but little taste for such disquisitions among the body of theologians with whom Culverwel's Calvinism, Puritanism, and deep spiritual religion con

1 Hallam, iii. 400.

b

nected him. Among the great men of that party, I do not know of more than Howe, and perhaps Bates, who could completely sympathize with him. Among their Dii Minorum Gentium, I can think only of Trueman, and still more of Shaw (whose Immanuel breathes a spirit very like John Smith's, only more thoroughly baptized into the name of Christ), as men who would have found in Culverwel's peculiarities a recommendation of his writings.

It is not indistinctly intimated, both by Dr. Dillingham and Mr. Richard Culverwel, that Nathanael was an object of suspicion with some of his party; and I think there are symptoms of this feeling in Dr. Tuckney's letters to Whichcote, though the name of Culverwel, who was just dead when these letters were written, is not mentioned. On the other hand, those who, from their literary tastes and philosophical leanings, were most likely to take an interest in The Discourse, and were capable of appreciating and relishing its rare excellences, were divided from the author by a great gulf of difference in religious and political opinion, widened by prejudices, of the strength of which we, whose lot has been cast in better times, can form but an inadequate estimate.

The book, besides, from the strangely mosaic appearance it exhibits, in consequence of the innumerable Greek and Latin citations, to say nothing of Hebrew, with which the text is inlaid, was singularly unattractive. The

1 Trueman, Shaw, and Bates, were all Cambridge men; the first of Clarehall, and the second of St. John's College; Dr. Bates's college is not mentioned. They entered the University between 1640 and 1650, so that they probably might be among Culverwel's hearers, and imbibe in some measure his spirit.

familiarity the author discovers equally with the classics, the fathers, and the schoolmen, is marvellous:

'He knew each lane, and every alley green,

Dingle, or bushy dell, of this wide wood;
And every bosky bourne from side to side,

His daily walks, and ancient neighbourhood.'

As but few of these citations are translated, to the ordinary English reader The Discourse was a sealed book;' while so recondite are many of them, especially as separated from their context, that even a scholar, in perusing the book, would require such frequent recourse to his lexicon, as to make it anything but light and pleasant reading.

Add to all this, the work bears proof that it is posthumous, and obviously has owed but little to editorial care. Perhaps the proper duty of an editor was at that time not so well understood as it now is. But assuredly Dr. Dillingham appears to have taken his work very easily. With the exception of the Latin and the Greek, which, generally speaking, are accurately printed, little attention appears to have been paid to the correction of the press. Sentences and paragraphs are often divided from, or run into, one another, in a way which at once injures the beauty of the composition, and obscures the course and connexion of thought.

The design of the treatise is well enough described by the original editor thus: 'The design of the Discourse of the Light of Nature was, on the one hand, to vindicate the use of reason, in matters of religion, from the aspersions and prejudices of some weaker ones in those times, who,

« EelmineJätka »