The Lives of John Selden, Esq., and Archbishop Usher; With Notices of the Principal English Men of Letters with Whom They Were Connected

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1812. Excerpt: ... upon the authenticity of this compilation, asserting that it contains many things derogatory from Seiden's erudition, and alien from his manners and principles. It is, indeed, not unlikely that the memory of the amanuensis occasionally failed him; and it is still more probable that, as in the case of Boswell's Johnoniana, the recorded sayings are sometimes only notions hazarded in the heat or carelessness of conversation, and such as he would not deliberately maintain--though, indeed, he does not appear to have been of so disputatious a temper as Dr. Johnson. Upon the whole, however, his Table-Talk has a great air of genuineness; and the familiarity of his illustrations and parallels, though it may clash with the idea some would form of so great and grave a scholar, well characterizes the man who had been conversant in the scenes of common life, no less than in the speculations of the closet. That such was his manner of discourse, the editor recals to the recollection of his dedicatees; and the appeal is a presumption of his veracity. 1 shall not hesitate, therefore, to make some extracts from this miscellany, as afford ing a view of his real opinions on certain important topics. There are no two points more difficult to conciliate than the obligation imposed upon christians in general to search and study the scriptures, and the impossibility that this should be done with effect by one unacquainted with the original languages, and with a variety of collateral knowledge. The Roman-catholics elude the difficulty by denying the obligation, and refusing the scriptures to the unlearned; but the protestants, whose strongest ground of attack upon the errors and abuses of popery was placed in an appeal to the words of scripture, made it a great point of their pol...