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DIFFICULTIES OF THE PUBLISHERS OF CONTEMPORARY MEMOIRS.

THE editors of contemporary memoirs have often suffered an impenetrable mystery to hang over their publications, by an apparent suppression of the original. By this studious evasion of submitting the manuscript to public inspection, they long diminished the credit of the printed volumes. Enemies whose hostility the memorialists had raised up, in the mean while, practised every artifice of detraction, racking their invention to persuade the world that but little faith was due to these pretended revelations; while the editors, mute and timorous, from private motives which they wished to conceal, dared not explain, in their lifetime, the part which they had really taken in editing these works. In the course of years, circumstances often became too complicate to be disentangled, or were of too delicate a nature to be nakedly exposed to the public scrutiny; the accusations grew more confident, the defence more vague, the suspicions more probable, the rumors and the hearsays more prevalent the public confidence in the authenticity of these contemporary memoirs was thus continually shaken.

Such has been the fate of the history of the Earl of Clarendon, which during a long interval of time, had to contend with prudential editors, and its perfidious opponents. And it is only at this late day that we are enabled to draw the veil from the mystery of its publication, and to reconcile the contradictory statements, so positively alleged by the assertors of the integrity of the text, and the impugners of its genuineness. We now can adjust with certainty so many vague protestations of its authenticity, by those who could not them

selves have known it, with the skeptical cavils which at times seemed not always doubtful, and with one infamous charge which was not less positive that it proved to be utterly fictitious. The fate and character of this great historical work was long involved in the most intricate and obscure incidents; and this bibliographical tale offers a striking illustration of the disingenuity alike of the assailants and the defenders.

The history of Lord Clarendon was composed by the express desire of Charles the First. This prince, in the midst of his fugitive and troubled life, seemed still regardful of posterity; and we might think, were it not too flattering to his judgment, that by his selection of this historian, he anticipated the genius of an immortal writer. We know the king carefully conveyed to the noble author many historical documents, to furnish this vindication or apology, of the calamitous measures to which that fated sovereign was driven. The earnest performance of this design, fervid with the eloquence of the writer, proceeding on such opposite principles to those of the advocates of popular freedom, and bearing on its awful front the condemnatory title of "The Rebellion," provoked their indignant feelings; and from its first appearance they attempted to blast its credit, by sinking it into a mere party production. But the elevated character of "The Chancellor of Human Nature," as Warburton emphatically described him, stood almost beyond the reach of his assailants; it was by a circuitous attack that they contrived to depreciate the work, by pointing their assault on the presumed editors of the posthumous history. And though the genius of the historian, and the peculiarity of his style, could not but be apparent through the whole of this elaborate work, yet rumors soon gathered from various quarters, that the text had been tampered with by "the Oxford editors;" and some, judging by the preface, and the heated and party dedication to the queen, which, it has

been asserted, afterward induced the tory phrensy of Sacheverell, imagined that the editors had converted the history into a vehicle of their own passions. The History of Clarendon was declared to be mutilated, interpolated, and, at length, even forged; the taint of suspicion long weakened the confidence of its general readers. Even Warburton suspected that the editors had taken the liberty of omitting passages; but, with a reliance on their honor, he believed they had never dared to incorporate any additions of their own.

The history of Lord Clarendon, thus from its first appearance, was attended by the concomitant difficulties of contemporary history, as we shall find the editors soon discovered when they sat down to their task; difficulties which occasioned their peculiar embarrassments. Even the noble author himself had considered that " a piece of this nature, wherein the infirmities of some, and the malice of others, both things and persons, must be boldly looked upon and mentioned, is not likely to appear in the age in which it was written." Lord Clarendon seems to have been fully aware that the freedom of the historical pen is equally displeasing to all parties. A contemporary historian is doomed to the peculiar unhappiness of encountering living witnesses, prompt to challenge the correctness of his details, and the fairness of his views; for him the complaints of friends will not be less unreasonable than the clamors of foes. And this happened to the present work. The history was not only assailed by men of a party, but by men of a family. They whose relatives had immolated their persons, and wrecked their fortunes, by their allegiance to the royal cause, were mortified by the silence of the historian; the writer was censured for omissions which had never entered into his design; for he was writing less a general history of the civil war, than a particular one of "the Rebellion," as he deemed it. Others eagerly protested against the misrepresent

ation of the characters of their ancestors; but as all family feelings are in reality personal ones, such interested accusers may not be less partial and prejudiced than the contemporary historian himself. He, at least, should be allowed to possess the advantage of a more immediate knowledge of what he narrates, and the right of that free opinion, which deprived of, he would cease to be "the servant of posterity." Lord Lansdowne was indignant at the severity of the military portrait of his ancestor, Sir Richard Greenvill, and has left a warm apology to palliate a conduct which Clarendon had honestly condemned; and recently, the late Earl of Ashburnham wrote two agreeable volumes to prove that Clarendon was jealous of the royal favor which the feeble Ashburnham enjoyed, and to which the descendant ascribed the depreciation of that favorite's character.

The authenticity of the history soon became a subject of national attention. The passions of the two great factions which ruled our political circles had broken forth from these kindling pages of the recent history of their own day. They were treading on ashes which covered latent fires. Whenever a particular sentence raised the anger of some, or a provoking epithet for ever stuck to a favorite personage, the offended parties were willing to believe that these might be interpolations; for it was positively affirmed that such there were. Twenty years after its first publication, we find Sir Joseph Jekyl, in the house of commons, solemnly declaring that he had reason to believe that the "History of the Rebellion" had not been printed faithfully.

An incident of a very singular nature had occurred, even before the publication of the history, which assuredly was unknown to the editors. Dr. Calamy, the historian of the non-conformists, at the time that Lord Clarendon's history was printing at Oxford, was himself on the point of publishing his narrative of Baxter, and was anxious to ascertain the statements of

his lordship on certain matters which entered into his own history. This astute divine, with something of the cunning of the serpent, whatever might be his dove-like innocence, hit upon an extraordinary expedient, by submitting the dignity of his order to pass through a most humiliating process. The crafty doctor posted to Oxford, and there, cautiously preserving the incognito, after ingratiating himself into the familiarity of the waiter, and then of the perruquier, he succeeded in procuring a secret communication with one of the printers. The good man exults in the wonders which sometimes may be opened to us, by what he terms “a silver key rightly applied." The doctor had invented the treason, and now had only to seek for the traitor. A faithless workman supplied him with a sight of all the sheets printed, and, with a still grosser violation of the honor of the craft, exposed the naked manuscript itself to the prying eyes of the critical dissenter. To the honor of Clarendon, as far as concerned Calamy's narrative, there was no disagreement; but the aspect of the manuscript puzzled the learned doctor. It appeared not to be the original, but a transcript, wherein he observed "alterations and interlineations;" paragraphs were struck out, and insertions added. Here seemed an important discovery, not likely to remain buried in the breast of the historian of the non-conformists; and he gradually let it out among his literary circle. The appearance of the manuscript fully warranted the conviction of him who was not unwilling to believe that the history of Clarendon had been moulded by the hands of those dignitaries of Oxford who were supposed to be the real editors. The history was soon called in contempt, "The Oxford History." The earliest rumors of a corrupt text probably originated in this quarter, as it is now certain, since the confession of Dr. Calamy appears in his diary, that he was the