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Notes
I am grateful to the Trustees of the National Library of Scotland for permission to print the text of these letters. Olive Geddes and Dr. Brian Hillyard of the NLS, Dr. John Cairns of the University of Edinburgh and William Barker of Memorial University have offered much helpful advice.
For an account of Dalrymple's literary journalism, see Robert Hay Carnie, 'Lord Hailes's Contributions to Contemporary Magazines', Studies in Bibliography, 9 (1957), 233-244. See also Professor Carnie's series of 'Lord Hailes's Notes on Johnson's "Lives of the Poets"', Notes and Queries, 201 (1956), 73-75, 106-108, 174-176, 343-346, 486-489. Although not made explicit in these letters, Dalrymple shared with Warburton an interest in the text of Shakespeare. In 'Lord Hailes, Shakespeare Critic', Shakespeare Quarterly, 40 (1989), 175-185, Arthur Sherbo reproduced Dalrymple's 1786 Edinburgh Magazine article, 'Critical Remarks on the late Editions of Shakespeare's Plays'. Published seven years after Warburton's death under the nom de plume of Lucius, Dalrymple took Warburton to task over offering twenty-two illustrative quotations where two would have sufficed, resulting in 'superfluous anxiety' (177).
Oddly, Warburton's two letters of 9 May 1762 would appear to come from his two residences: Prior Park ('P.P.'), near Bath, and Grosvenor Square, London. The most probable explanation is that Warburton sent his first letter to Dalrymple from Prior Park via Becket and put down Grosvenor Square as the address to which Dalrymple should reply. (On April 17, he sent a letter to Thomas Newton from Prior Park and on July 28 he sent another to John Nourse from Gloucester.)
David Dalrymple, Memorials and Letters Relating to the History of Britain in the Reign of James the First (Glasgow, 1762); Gaskell 405.
John Hales (1584-1656). Dalrymple sought Warburton's advice in preparation for publication of his edition of The Works of the Ever Memorable Mr. John Hales of Eaton, 3 vols. (Glasgow, 1765); Gaskell 443.
The frontispiece of Hales's Golden Remains (London, 1659), containing his sermons and letters, depicts two figures: one is Reason wearing a crown, holding a compass, with a finger pointing towards his head; the other is Revelation dressed like a monk, holding a Bible, with a finger pointing towards the sky. The panel below them is a cave scene with miners and devils. The motto reads: 'Controversers of the Times like Spirits in the Mineralls with all their labor nothing is don [sic]'.
Hugo de Groot (1583-1645). His De veritate religionis christianœ was translated by John Clarke as The Truth of the Christian Religion, 4th ed. (London, 1743; 5th ed. 1754). The NLS has an interleaved copy of de Groot's In questionis redacti de jure belli ac Paris, lib. III (1688), inscribed 'Dav. Dalrymple, April 4 1746' in quarto (NLS: MSS 25331-2). William Lauder also translated some of de Groot's works, in connection with the Milton controversy, in 1752.
Denison Cumberland (1705/6-74), Bishop of Clonfert (1763), translated to Kilmore (1772), was the grandson of Richard Cumberland, Bishop of Peterborough, and father of the playwright by the same name. Denison Cumberland's wife, Joanna, whom he married in 1728, was the daughter of Richard Bentley.
Richard Cumberland, De legibus naturœ disquisitio philosophica (1672). This was reprinted (London, 1701; Dublin, 1720) and translated by John Maxwell as A Treatise of the Laws of Nature (London, 1727) and by John Towers as A Philosophical Enquiry into the Laws of Nature (Dublin, 1750 [1751]). The edition proposed here does not seem to have materialized.
'eo dulciùs quo secretiùs': the Latin phrase occurs in John Hales' sermon, '2 Pet. 3. 16.', in Golden Remains, p. 1: see 30 March 1764. Dalrymple translated the full passage as: "except those internal and sweet lessons of divine inspiration, where truth speaks without words or writing, and where the more secret the information the more delightful" (2: 2).
'Coli Deos sanctè magis quam scitè': Golden Remains, p. 7. "The Gods ought to be worshipped, not curiously, but in the simplicity of a pious mind" (2: 12-13).
Pierre Des Maizeaux, An Historical and Critical Account of the Life and Writings of the Ever-memorable Mr. John Hales, fellow of Eton College (London, 1719). Pierre Bayle's Dictionnaire historique et critique (1695-97) was the model for many British biographies, including Biographia Britannica.
John Campbell (1708-75) was a contributor to the first edition of Biographia Britannica (1747-66) under the general editorship of William Oldys. Campbell's lives are signed E and X. Previously, he had compiled Lives of the Admirals, 4 vols. (London, 1742-44).
The biography of John Hales appears in volume 4 of Biographia Britannica (1757), pp. 2481-90, signed 'P' for Philip Nichols; Des Maizeaux's 1719 biography is cited.
Dalrymple prefixed the edition with testimonies from the Earl of Clarendon, Lord Say, Andrew Marvell and others.
Thomas Birch wrote most of the English biographies in General Dictionary, Historical and Critical, 10 vols. (1734-41).
If Dalrymple intended to dedicate his edition of Hales to Warburton, he evidently changed his mind.
Selina Hastings, Countess of Huntingdon (1707-91), devoted a good deal of energy and money to Methodism; she appointed a number of its clergymen as her chaplains.
John Williams, Bishop of Lincoln (1621-41), translated to Archbishop of York (1641-50), The Holy Table, Name & Thing ([London?], 1637); and Samuel Harsnett (1561-1631), Archbishop of York (1629-31), A Declaration of Egregious Popish Impostures (London, 1603), a work from which Shakespeare borrowed devil names like 'Flibbertigibbet' and 'Modo' for Edgar's ravings on the heath as Poor Tom in King Lear (3.4.115, 135).
George Digby (1612-77), Letters Between Ld George Digby and Sr Kenhelm Digby Kt concerning Religion [1651]; and Lucius Cary, 2nd Viscount Faulkland (1610?-43), A View of some Exceptions made by a Romanist (London, 1646).
Cornelii Nepotis excellentium imperatorum vitae (Lives of the Emperors) (1761; Gaskell 397), and De rerum naturae (1759; Gaskell 370), were both printed in Glasgow by Robert and Andrew Foulis. On 27 December 1761, Warburton wrote to Hurd: 'I think the Booksellers have an intention of employing Baskerville to print Pope in 4to; so they sent me the last Octavo to look over' (Literary Anecdotes of the Eighteenth Century, ed. John Nichols, 9 vols. [London, 1812-15], 5: 653). According to William Shenstone, on 16 May 1762, 'Baskerville has of late been seized with a violent Inclination to publish Hudibras, his favourite Poem, in a pompous Quarto, with an entire new sett of Cutts.—Dr Warburton has, I hear, also engaged Him to publish a Quarto Edition of Mr Pope' (The Letters of William Shenstone, ed. Marjorie Williams [Oxford, 1939], p. 62).
William Samuel Powell (1717-75) was elected master of St John's College, Cambridge, on 25 January 1765 upon the death of John Newcome. John Ratcliffe (1700-75) was master of Pembroke College, Oxford, from 1739 to 1775; Thomas Birch (1705-66) was a well-known editor and compiler.
The underlined quotation is to be found in Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon, The History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in England (Oxford, 1704), 3 vols., vol. 1, p. 271. The History is divided into sixteen books.
Millar may have read the story of Dalrymple's appointment in The Scots Magazine, 28 (February 1766), 111-112: 'Sir David Dalrymple of Hailes, Bt., one of the Lords of Session, in the room of Lord Nisbet, deceased.—P.S. His commission arrived at Edinburgh by express in the morning of March 4. he entered on his trials as Lord Probationer that day, and was received on the 6th, taking the title of Lord Hailes'.
Ètienne de Silhouette translated Pope's Essay on Criticism (1737; reprinted 1741) and Essay on Man (1736; reprinted 1741, 1745, 1762, 1772) in prose. Some letters between Warburton and de Silhouette are held by the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris.
According to the account on Warburton in the Dictionary of National Biography, Philip Nichols stole books from Cambridge. After the proprietors of Biographia Britannica cancelled the leaf in the article on Smith in 1763, volume 6, part i, Nichols published The Castrated Sheet, in the Sixth Volume of Biographia Britannica by a proprietor of that work: see Warburton's letter to an unidentified bookseller, dated 29 January 1761, in Pope's Literary Legacy: the Book-Trade Correspondence of William Warburton and John Knapton with other letters and related documents (1744-1780), ed. Donald W. Nichol, Oxford Bibliographical Society, ns XXIII, 1992, pp. 140-145.
Daines Barrington, Observations on the Ancient Statutes (London, 1766). The first edition is not to be found in the British Library or National Library of Scotland. However, the words Warburton refers to may be found in the much expanded third edition Observations on the more Ancient Statutes, from Magna Charta to the Twenty-First of James I (London, 1769): for example, 'sallett' (p. 307), 'pele' (p. 376), 'Pipowder' (p. 382).
'In mediæval armour, a light globular headpiece, either with or without a visor, and without a crest, the lower part curving outwards behind', OED, which also gives Warburton's Italian and French derivations.
'Metaphorical; not literal', Johnson, Dictionary (1755); 'characterized by transference; esp. of words or phrases, metaphorical, figurative', Oxford English Dictionary.
According to the DNB, Barrington bought up remaining copies of the earlier edition when the next one was ready for publication.
When Lady Jane Douglas (1698-1753) died, her brother, Archibald, Duke of Douglas (1694-1761), refused to acknowledge her surviving son, whose legitimacy was disputed. Shortly before his death, the Duke was persuaded to revoke his will in which he bequeathed his estates to the Hamiltons in favour of his nephew. The House of Lords had decided in favour of Douglas on 27 February 1769. See Frederick A. Pottle, James Boswell: The Earlier Years, 1740-1769 (London, 1966), pp. 311-317, passim, for a discussion of the Douglas Cause, 'which has been called the greatest trial in Scottish history affecting civil status' (311-312).
Dalrymple's Historical Memorials concerning the Provincial Councils of the Scottish Clergy (Edinburgh, 1769).
By 1772, James Beattie (1735-1803), the poet and professor of Moral Philosophy at Marischal College, Aberdeen University, had published An Essay on the Nature and Immutability of Truth (1770) and the first canto of The Minstrel (1771). For the popular reception of these works, see Everard H. King, James Beattie (Boston, 1977), pp. 24-25.
Richard Hurd (1720-1808), Bishop of Worcester. He delivered the first Warburton lecture, published as, An Introduction to the Study of the Prophecies concerning the Christian Church (1772; 5th ed. 1788).
The NLS also has a collection of 115 letters, dating from 28 December 1773 to 3 July 1792, from Richard Hurd, Bishop of Worcester and Warburton's editor, to Dalrymple (MS 25297), which were examined by Francis Kilvert in Bath in 1860 for his biography of Hurd. Dalrymple and Warburton shared numerous correspondents, including Thomas Balguy, Thomas Birch, John Jortin, Thomas Warton, and Charles York.
The Bereans were a sect 'based on scripture in the Acts (xvii.11) where they of Berea are commended for searching the Scriptures to see if the things spoken by Paul were so'. The Bereans were founded by John Barclay (1734-98) of Crieff (The Scottish National Dictionary, vol. 1, ed. William Grant [Edinburgh, (1929)]).
Two letters between this letter and the next in the present series (October 1774), old reference numbrs Acc. 7228/18, ff. 167-168 (7 May 1774) and ff. 169-170 (20 June 1774), have recently gone missing.
According to Margaret Forbes in Beattie and his Friends (Westminster, 1904), 'Sir W[illiam]. Forbes had shown to Lord Hailes Beattie's letter of the former autumn [1773], in which the reason upon which he had chiefly dwelt for declining all thought of accepting an Edinburgh professorship was his unwillingness to be associated with those who had shown themselves hostile to him on account of his writings . . .' (p. 105).
Beside Warburton's error in the year, Dalrymple jotted the notes: 'Oct. 1774 scripsit imbecilli et incertâ manu, annis fractius & sui paulatium . . .' [He has written with an imbecilic hand, broken by years and by degrees . . .].
Specimens of Dalrymple's Annals of Scotland, 2 vols. (Edinburgh, 1776/79). The Advertisement to the second volume states, 'THE Author once proposed to have continued The Annals of Scotland to the Restoration of James I. But there are various and invincible reasons which oblige him to terminate his Work at the accession of the House of Stewart.' Johnson also received specimens of Dalrymple's Annals of Scotland. See his letter to Boswell, 1 October 1774, in The Letters of Samuel Johnson, ed. Bruce Redford, vol. II, 1773-1776 (Princeton, 1992), p. 150. On 27 August 1775, Johnson told Boswell, 'I have now three parcels of Lord Hailes's History . . .' (p. 266) and on 10 January 1776 Johnson received the first published volume of Annals of Scotland (p. 284). Johnson reported receiving 'more copy' from Dalrymple on 28 June 1777 (III [1992]: 33). Boswell's Life of Johnson, ed. R. W. Chapman, rev..J. D. Fleeman (Oxford, 1980), is peppered with references to Dalrymple and his Annals (pp. 565, 567, 569, passim). In The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides (with Samuel Johnson, A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland), ed. Peter Levi (London, 1984), Boswell recorded introducing Johnson to Dalrymple in Edinburgh on 17 August 1773 (p. 181).
Presumably Margaret, wife of Malcolm III (m. 1070; d. 1093), mentioned in Dalrymple's Annals, vol. 1, pp. 12, 25, 33-41 (little is written on Margaret, daughter of Henry III and queen of Alexander III).
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