SELDEN'S TABLE-TA.LK. * THE brief form and varied topics of "
table-talk " create for it an interest over more elaborate productions, even if of greater value and emanating from the same mind, because its demand on the attention is less. It exceeds what are called " ana " by its greater freshness and reality. The talk flows spontaneously from the oc- casion; the " ana " have about them a literary character, and indeed often consist of selections from a man's reading or thoughts jotted down originally for some literary use. In the " talk," too, there is an autobiographical interest, which the other wants ; in the last, indeed, we are admitted to the author, but much as we are admitted to him in a book.
The dramatis personae, mostly men of mark, to whom Boswell introduces his reader, give to his dramatic reports of Johnson's conversation the foremost rank in this class of literature, apart from any higher merit in Johnson's discourse. The great conver- sationist himself assigned the highest place to Selden among the different " table-talkers " from Luther downwards, though in some points Ben Jonson's discourse as reported by Drummond would seem to surpass Selden in its subjects. To enter fully into Selden, he must be read with a critical eye to the man and his times. Then, it is, no doubt, a curious and singular collection, without reference to the substance or quality of the discourse it- self. We have before us a man of vast learning, especially in all that concerns law or forms of law in every age or country, throwing off the very essence of his learning in a style of greater pith and ease than he attained in his more elaborate works. We also see how these legal and antiquarian studies have operated upon a mind not perhaps narrow in itself, but certainly, as Clarendon ex-
• The Table-Talk of John Belden: with Notes by David Irving, LL.D. Pub- lished by Constable, Edinburgh. presses it, " enough indulgent to his own safety," till it seems to have reduced right and wrong to a question of enactment. In his last illness, Selden is' said to have spoken piously and with orthodox belief ; his friend and executor Sir Matthew Hale told Baxter the Nonconformist divine, that he considered Seven " a resolved se- rious Christian, and a great adversary to Hobbes's errors." The Table-Talk, recorded by the speaker's amanuensis, Richard Milward, was not published till thirteen years after the death of Hale; who might not have heard the profound scholar and lawyer talk as he is there reported to have done. It has been argued, too, that a man's real opinions are not always to be judged by his conver- sation, where he may be provoked by opposition or speak jocosely, This is true to some extent ; but a man does not utter a ripe thought involving large principles without having previously arrived at the conclusion. Selden's opinions in most matters of religion and government seem counterparts of Hobbes ; resolving every- thing into a question of state enactment, either by direct con- clusion or indirect inference. His book on Tithes, which excited so much clerical odium, went only to divine right: tithes were quite valid by law. In reading Selden's opinions on religion, theo- logy, and the claims of the different priesthoods, consideration must be had for the state of the times, in which various offensive novel- ties were broached. Yet after every allowance, his opinions are strangely heterodox. This notion as to the ultimate judge of re- ligion seems conclusive as to his real ideas.
" Question. Whether is the Church or the Scripture judge of religion ? Answer. In truth neither, but the State. I am troubled with a boil : I call a company of chirurgeons about me ; one prescribes one thing, another an- other: I single out something I like, and ask you that stand by and are no chirurgeon, what you think of it ? You like it too ; you and I are judges of the plaster, and we bid them prepare it ; and there's an end. Thus 'fis in religion : the Protestants say they will be judged by the Scriptures; the Papists say so too ,•• but that cannot speak. A judge is no judge except he can both speak and command execution."
A similar opinion will be found in other places, though not so very plainly expressed. Throughout, indeed, where questions of religion are touched upon, there is a laxity or indifference such as would now be held to characterize a well-bred sceptic.
" Disputes in religion will never be ended, because there wants a measure by which the business would be decided. - The Puritan would be judged by the Word of God : if he would speak clearly, he means himself, but he is ashamed to say so • and he would have me believe him before a whole church, that has read the Word of God as well as he. One says one thing, and another another ; and there is, I say, no measure to end the con- troversy. 'Tis just as if two men were at bowls, and both judged by the eye : one says 'tis his cast, the other says 'tis my cast; and having no mea- sure, the difference is eternal."
Something of an old grudge appears in this, though the warning against clerical politicians is sound enough.
A clergyman goes not a dram further than this, you ought to obey your prince in general. If he does, he is lost. How to obey him, you must be informed by those whose profession it is to tell you. 'The parson of the Tower, a good discreet man, told Dr. Mosely (who was sent to me and the rest of the gentlemen committed the 3d Caroli, to persuade us to submit to the King) that they found no such words as parliament, habeas corpus, re- turn, Tower, &c., neither in the fathers, nor the achoolmen, nor in the text ; and therefore, for his part, he believed he understood nothing of the business : a satire upon all those clergymen that meddle with matters they do not understand.'
Though suffering, as we have just seen, for liberty, it must have been in his idea a legal liberty : Selden does not seem to have had a belief in natural freedom, or what at the time of the American and French Revolutions was called the "rights of man." There is surely a good deal of legal narrowness here.
" If our fathers have lost their liberty, why may not we labour to regain it ? Answer. We must look to the contract ; if that be rightly made we must stand to it : if we once grant we may recede from contracts upon any inconveniency that may afterwards happen, we shall have no. bargain kept. If I sell you a horse and do not like my. bargain, I will have my horse again. " Keep your contracts. So far a divine goes ; but how to make our con- tracts is left to ourselves; and as we agree upon the conveying of this horse or that land, so it must be. If you offer me a hundred pounds for my glove, I tell you what my glove is, a plain glove, pretend no virtue in it, the glove is my own, I profess not to sell gloves, and we agree for an hundred pounds I do not know why I may not with a safe conscience take it."
In some topics he recurred to the nature of things, but not always with a true perception.
" All those mysterious things they observe in numbers come to nothing upon this very ground, because number in itself is nothing, has nothing to do with nature, but is merely of human imposition—a mere sound. For example, when I cry one o'clock, two o'clock, three o'clock, that is but man's division of time; the time itself goes on, and it had been all one in nature
if those hours had been called nine, ten, and eleven." •
There seems a little confusion here. Day and night are names, but light and darkness, the space from one sunrise to 'another, or from one annual revolution to another, are zeal durations; the names or modes of the divisions may be arbitrary, but the divi- sions exist. The superstition alluded to did not respect names, but numbers themselves. The " seventh son of a seventh son," still believed by some of the vulgar to be medically endowed, is an instance. The fact is, that though politics, his profesional practice, and his native good sense, prevented Selden's vast antiquarian and legal learning from turning him into a pedant, it, conjoined perhaps with some natural deficiency, prevented him from rising to a phi- losopher. The present edition is handsomely printed by Mr. Constable, and well edited by Dr. Irving. Besides annotations explanatory and corrective of some of Selden's heterodoxies, the notes have occa- sionally a substantive quality,--as that on legal torture. The in- troduction would have borne a more complete biographical account of Selden, with advantage.
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