interesting light on the history of his opinions and on his attitude to the parties of his day.

The early history of the book must be left incomplete on many points. It seems clear, as Mr. Singer has pointed out, that the MS. of it was put together within a few years of Selden's death. He finds proof of this in Milward's introductory letter where he speaks of 'Mr. Justice Hale, one of the Judges of the Common Pleas.' Hale, afterwards Sir Matthew Hale, ceased to be a judge of the Common Pleas in 1658 on Cromwell's death. It is clear too from this introductory letter, that when the MS. was ready it was placed in the hands of Selden's Executors, probably in the hands of Hale, whose name stands first in the list. But what became of it afterwards I do not know. It is not to be found among Sir Matthew Hale's papers in the Lincoln's Inn Library. The collection includes several of Selden's own papers, some of them unpublished as yet, but no part of the Table Talk. I have to thank the Librarian for his courtesy in placing within my reach very full means of information on this point. Now the earliest printed edition did not come out until 1689, more than thirty years after the MS. had been prepared. Of the history of the book in the meanwhile we know little or nothing. In some form or other it must have been accessible, for it is certain that there were copies made from it or from some second-hand rendering of it. But the long time which was suffered to pass before it was sent to press, suggests that there were parts of it which its trustees did not approve, and there are some at which they may have taken very reasonable offence. Religious questions are handled with a freedom of expression not at all to Hale's mind: the political sentiments are not those of Hale himself, and the book is disgraced by the insertion of several indecent references and expressions, which add nothing to the force of the passages in which they occur,

and which Selden himself could hardly have wished should go down to posterity as specimens of his everyday talk.

After the Restoration, and during the whole reigns of Charles II and James II, not even the remainder of the Table Talk could have been received with much approval. The course of opinion and of events was setting another way; and Selden's outspoken words, his attack on the divine right equally of kings and of bishops, his reduction of the Monarchy to a limited constitutional form, his love of liberty, his insistence on obedience to law as part of a contract by which kings and subjects were alike bound—all this would have been very unlike the theory that found favour under the Stuarts. When the book at length appeared, in 1689, it was in a form which leaves much to be desired, replete as it is with blunders and in more than one place making downright nonsense of the passage. The present edition does something to bring the text back to what it must originally have been, and it certainly clears away some gross faults of which neither Selden nor his reporter can have been the originating cause. The Harleian MS., No. 1315, in the British Museum Library, has been taken as the basis of the text. The Library has three MSS. of the Table Talk. To the earliest of these, the Harleian, No. 690, the date assigned by Mr. Warner, the Assistant Keeper of MSS., is circa 1670. Next in order of time and a little later comes the Sloane MS., No. 2513, and latest of the three is the Harleian, No. 1315, for which the posterior limit of date can (for reasons which I shall presently explain) be fixed with certainty as 1689. Mr. Warner's authority as a palaeographist is so high that his opinion may be taken as conclusive. It is certain, however, that no one of these MSS. can have been the original copy of the Table Talk. The Harleian 690, the earliest of the three, leaves blank

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spaces for all the Greek words under the heading 'Descent into Hell,' and besides numerous other faults, blunders badly with the French. The Sloane MS. is even more out of the question. Besides its later date, it abounds throughout with blunders, grammatical and others, of the most obvious kind. Some of these have been corrected by a later hand, but the paper on which the MS. is written is so very like blotting-paper that almost every correction or change involves a deletion of the original text. The Harleian 1315 is of much better stamp than the Sloane. It accords very nearly with the MS. 690, and it has a special authority of its own by reason of an inscription on the back side of the title, which, as Harley's Librarian says, was written in it by Harley himself. The inscription runs thus-'This book was given in 168 (the final figure is unfortunately wanting) by Charles erle of Dorset and Middlesex to a bookseller in Fleet Street, in order to have it printed: but the bookseller delaying to have it done, Mr. Thomas Rymer sold a copy he procured to Mr. Churchill, who printed it as it came out in 169... This inscription is dated February 17, 1697. It thus fixes the date of the MS. as not later than 1689, and gives it an authority of its own, since it stands as proof that, but for the printer's delay, it would have been the basis of the earliest printed edition. The inscription is incorrect on one point, since it implies that the edition of 169... (presumably the edition printed in 1696, by Jacob Tonson and Awnsham and John Churchhill) was the first that had appeared. This, as we have seen, is not so. The first printed edition came out in 1689.

For bringing back the text to some nearer approach to its original and correct form, the choice lay between the Harleian MSS. 690 and 1315. Both contain excellent readings, and the two together, with occasional help from

the Sloane MS. and from the early printed editions, supply material for a fairly satisfactory revision. But where no notice appears to the contrary, the text now printed is that of the Harleian MS. 1315. In all three MSS. several passages which have been detached from the body of the book are misplaced, or are added in an Appendix at the end. These, in the present edition, have been put back to the places to which they properly belong, and as they appear in the edition of 1689. This, and an occasional change of the spelling where it was obsolete or obviously incorrect, are the only changes which have been made without notice. Those who set a value on the vagaries of a half-lettered scribe, will find them in abundance and of all sorts in the Sloane MS. 2513.

With all helps, but in the absence of any conclusive authority, the settlement of the text has been a matter of difficulty and doubt. In deciding between different readings, or in conjectural emendations, I have taken as my guide Selden's own rule. 'A man,' he says, 'must in this case venture his discretion, and do his best to satisfy himself and others in those places where he doubts.' It is safe to assume that Selden did not talk nonsense, and that he was not ignorant of matters with which his published works prove him to have been perfectly conversant. For example, when he is made to say that a suffragan was no bishop, we may conclude with certainty that he did not say this, although the MSS. and the early printed editions agree in putting it into his mouth. When he is made to speak of Sir Richard Weston as the Prior of St. John's, and of Valentine's novels as laying down the limits of episcopal jurisdiction, I have borne in mind Porson's remark that no editor in his senses adopts a reading which he knows to be wrong, and I have changed the text accordingly. But in every instance the reader has notice of the change.

Milward, in his introductory letter, requests the reader to distinguish times, and in his fancy to carry along with him the when and the why many of these things were spoken. The alphabetical arrangement of the matter of the book gives us no help here. There is no attempt at a chronological order. Times are confused throughout, and we pass from subject to subject with no notice of either when or why except such as we can gather from the contents of each paragraph. I have done what I could, in an imperfect tentative way, to supply the want. Out of the great stream of events and writings and speeches which formed, so to say, the environment of Selden's life, I have picked out, here and there, what seemed likely to have suggested some of his remarks. In some instances the reference has been clear and certain; in some his published writings have given the clue, and have served to supplement the imperfect information in the Table Talk as well as to correct mistakes which must have been due to his reporter not to himself. Of his very numerous works, his History of Tithes is the only one to which he makes direct reference in the Table Talk. (See Tithes, sec. 6.)

Selden was born in 1584. In 1600 he entered at Hart Hall, Oxford. In 1602 he was a law-student at Clifford's Inn, and thence migrated to the Inner Temple in 1604. He soon became known as a man of vast and exact learning. So great was his fame as a constitutional lawyer, that before he became a member of Parliament he was often called in to advise the House on questions of prerogative, and he is credited with having had a principal part in framing the Protestation of 1621-a service for which he paid the penalty of five weeks' imprisonment by order of the Council. He was thus already a marked man when, in 1624, he was elected a member of the House, a position which he held in several Parliaments, viz. in 1626, 1628, and in the second Parliament of 1640. It was not