SELDEN'S TABLE-TALK.* MR. MARX II/77'80N, who, the editor tells us,
suggested this work to him more than thirty years ago, considered Selden to be a " typical Englishman." This we are hardly prepared to concede,—at least, if we are to look upon a type as an ideal. He wanted the deeper sort of insight, for all his shrewdness, and, though he thought much about religion, had nothing of the spiritual in him,—and both these things are wanted, we take it, to make up the true English type. Still, it is easy to see why Mr. Pattison, at least in his later phase of thought, should have an "enthusiasm "—this is Mr. Reynolds's word— for this learned, hard-headed lawyer, with his notable detach- ment from what some people call prejudices and others con- victions. Without sharing that enthusiasm, we are very glad to have the Table-Talk brought out in an attractive form, and with the advantage of a competent editor's annotation. Selden's common-sense should prove a wholesome corrective to certain follies that are current nowadays on subjects social, political, and, it may be added—but with a reservation— religious.
It is, indeed, with ecclesiastical rather than with religious subjects that Selden concerns himself. He was an Erastian of the deepest dye. His opinions, expressed with a frank- ness that did not suit the times, brought him into trouble in the time of King James. He published a History of Tythes, in which, without expressly denying the divine right of ecclesi- astical persons to the possession of them, he made it plain that he set no value on it. With the fear of the Court of High Commission before his eyes he made a retractation, so in- geniously worded however, that, in the author's mind at least, it retracted nothing. He acknowledged his error in publishing, not in arguing, as he did, though it must be confessed that his language, at first sight at least, looks like a recantation. Selden, however, always maintained that he acknowledged his argument to be inopportune only. All contentions for the jus divinum found in him a decided antagonist. He ridiculed the idea that Bishops possessed it, though he has no hesita- tion in saying that "Bishops do stand best with Monarchy," and that, on the whole, the episcopal government of the Church is the most convenient. Anyhow, he thought, it was better to keep it than to change it. " They that would pull down the Bishops and erect a new way of government, do as he that pulls down an old house, and builds another of another fashion. There is a great deal ado, and a great deal of trouble ; the old rubbish must be carried away, and new materials must be brought; workmen must be provided ; and perhaps the old one would have served as well." This kind of language did not please, as may be supposed, either the friends or the enemies of Episcopacy. For the jus divinum of Presbyters Selden had no more regard than he had for that of Bishops. He is very scornful of the de- meanour of the Westminster Assembly when, challenged to produce proofs of their claim to spiritual power, they demanded time for their reply. "Their asking time to answer them [the queries put by Parliament] was a satire upon themselves • They do just as you have seen a fellow do at a tavern reckoning; when be should come to pay his share, he puts his hands into his pockets, and keeps a-grabling and a-fumbling and shaking, at last he tells you he has left his money at home." Nor did Selden please the Independents much better than be pleased their rivals, Episcopalian or Presbyterian. "The lecture in Black-friars, performed by officers of the Army, tradesmen, and ministers, is as if a great man should make a feast, and he would have his cook dress one dish, and his coachman another, his porter a third," &a. The only divine right in which Selden believed was of a man doing his own business. A soldier preaching was as intolerable to him as a layman pleading or judging. He had, indeed, a high standard for the education of the clergy. For preaching they must read Augustine, Ambrose, Chrysostom, both the Gregories, Tertullian, Clement of Alexandria, and Epiphanies, —" which last," he remarks, " have more learning in them than all the rest." For Church history they were to read Baronius and the Magdeburg Centuriators, and judge between the two. " Without school divinity, a divine knows nothing logically ; nor will he be able to satisfy a rational man out of the pulpit." Finally, "The study of the casuists must follow the study of the schoolmen." This is a large programme, * The Table-Talk of John Bolden. Edited, with an Introduction and Notes, by klamuel Harvey Reynolds, M.A. Oxford : The Clarendon Press. 1892. and yet Selden seems to think that it was not altogether over the heads of the class for whom it was intended. He writes : AU confess there uover was a more learned clergy." They could scarcely have been the ignorant boors whom Macaulay describes.
One of the few abstract questions with which we find Selden dealing is the ultimate sanction of morality. "I cannot fancy to myself," he writes, " what the law of Nature means but the law of God. How should I know I ought not to steal, I ought not to commit adultery, unless somebody had told me so P Whence comes the restraint P From a higher power ; nothing else can bind." Selden's general attitude of mind on this subject makes this decided expres- sion of the necessity of a Divine Sanction peculiarly valuable. This sanction, it must be understood, he did not find in con- science, of which indeed he manifestly thinks very little; a scrupulous conscience is like a shying horse, he thinks, and "generally to pretend conscience against law is dangerous," though he allows that there may be cases. The divine sanction which he wanted for morals was a revealed sanction.
The jus divinum of Kings did not fare better with him than that of Bishops and Presbyters. " A King is a thing men have made for their own sakes, for quietness' sake. Just as in a family one man is appointed to buy the meat." And again, "there is no species of Kings." Nevertheless, he clearly held kingship to be a convenient thing. He had stood firm against Royal usurpations, and suffered for his principles. He gave his services as a lawyer in drawing up the Protesta- tion of 1621 (made against the doctrine that the rights of Parliament depended on a Royal grant), and suffered five weeks' imprisonment in consequence. In 1629, again, " Tertio Caroli," as be says more than once in his Table-Talk, he was committed to the Tower, in company with Denzil Holies, Elliot, and others. He was kept there for eight months, transferred to the King's Bench prison, but allowed the liberty of the rules. He was kept in some sort of confinement for two years. But the triumph of the Parliament did not bring him satisfaction. He saw in it the possibility of as great a tyranny as that from which England had been delivered. " The Parliament men are as great princes as any in the world, when whatever they please is privilege of Parliament.
The Senate at Venice are not so much as our Parlia- ment, nor have they that power over the people." One remark under this heading has a curiously close application to present circumstances. "The Parliament party do not play fair-play in sitting up till two of the morning to vote something they have a mind to." Of Cromwell Selden makes no mention. Indeed, the names of contemporaries very seldom occur, though allusions are frequent. The common-sense view that Selden took of tithes might be extended with advantage to many well-meaning people who talk very wildly on that sub- ject. Occasions of modern application are, indeed, not un- frequent. The loose way that has grown up of regarding contracts, for instance, would not have found a supporter in Selden. " Let them look to the making of bargains," he answers to an objection that by keeping a contract certain persons would lose all. " If I sell my lands, and when I have done, one comes and tells me I have nothing else to keep me, I and my wife and children must starve, if I part with my land : must I not therefore let them have my land that bought it and paid for it ?" But little of Selden's own personality comes out in this Table-Talk, and that little is seldom pleasing. He illustrates his remarks now and then with unnecessary coarseness. The good qualities with which Whitelock and others credit him— generosity, greatness of soul, and so forth—do not appear. As far as we know, he was not married, though Aubrey de- clares that he was secretly married to the Countess of Kent. Of women he speaks with but scant respect. " 'Tis reason a man that will have a wife should be at the charge of all her trinkets, and pay all the scores she sets on him. He that will keep a monkey, 'tis fit he should pay for the glasses she breaks." And again, "Marriage is a desperate thing. The frogs in iEsop were extreme wise ; they had an extreme mind to some water, but they would not leap into the well, because they could not get out again." The editor has done his best to clear up the obscurities which occur in Selden's text. The history of this is curious. Written down shortly after Selden's death in 1654, it remained in manuscript till 1688, when the first printed edition appeared. This is full of blunders, and the true reading has to be re- covered by a careful collation of several manuscripts. Mr. Reynolds has had almost as much trouble as if he were editing an ancient classic. He deserves proportionate thanks.
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