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Letter 13
26 October
1768
NLS: MS 25295, ff. 144-145
My Lord,
I have the honour to receive of your Lordship, a very curious Specimen of a work, which I hope you will not long delay to give the Public. I foresee it will be extremely learned & usefull. — An ingenious Person, one Mr Barrington a welch-Judge has attempted something of the same kind, on our old Statutes. It is intitled Observations on the Ancient Statutes 4°.[37] It is done with taste. But he is defective in the old English Language. And without
But to return to the Specimen, which I truly think admirable in its kind. I was surprised at what is said p. 8 of your Lawyers, who interpret bruarium fr. Bruiere to signify a brewery. The word perpetually abounds in our old Charters, and our Lawyers never took the change. The common people have done it. When I lived in Lincolnshire near the Great Heath there, and in the neighbourhood of a ruin called Temple bruiere or the Temple on the Heath, an old Hospitalary of the Knights Templars, the Common people, who had preserved the Tradition of the luxury of those Knights, [deletion] call it, Temple Brewery. for that they were famous for brewing the best ale in all the County
Your Lordship's justly expressed aborrence of the Writ de haretico comburendo p. 10. does honour to your station. You brand it by an ingenious comparison. Yet, it is certain, that, altho the running or passing thro' the fire be amongst the common lustrations of the ancient World, yet the passing thro' the fire to Moloch in Scripture, signifies a real sacrifice or immolation, being always made equivalent to [deletion] ∧those∧ other expressions—they burnt their sons & daughters in the fire to their Gods.—they sacrificed their sons & daughters to Devils and Ezekiel [deletion] uses one of these expressions to
In a word, my Dear Lord, let me repeat my best wishes for your health not only for your own sake, but for the sake of literature in general, and for the public justice of Scotland in particular. I have the pleasure to know that two of my most intimate Friends, the great Lawyers, Ld Mansfield and Mr Charles Yorke, have, with me, the highest opinion of your Lordship's Virtues. The latter (who always gives me what leasure he can spare) had but just left me, when the Specimen came, which would have afforded much pleasure to a man whose knowlege is universal.
While he was with me he was much busied in a morning with the Speeches of the Lords of Session in the Douglas cause in which he is to appear before us, after Christmas, for the House of Hamilton.
We both admired the elegance, the great sense, & the legal precision of Ld Hailes's speech: and I have an equal contempt for Ld Kames's. I have read the great 4° Factum of both Parties; and I will tell you, inter nos, my present sentiments. I think there is but a base Physical possibility that the pretended Son is the real Son of Lady Jane: and further, that had Lady Jane, by one of the perverse caprices of pregnant women, set upon contriving the means of discrediting [deletion] ∧her own Son's∧ pretensions, she could not have done it more effectually.[41]
Let me continue my good Lord to have your esteem, and believe me to be with the truest regard, your affectionate and faithfull humble Servant
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