in his last will, by a direction that his advice should be taken concerning the publishing or suppressing of his manuscript treatises.

The collection of voyages and travels entitled "Purchas's Pilgrimage," (9) was about this time publishing, and the marginal notes annexed are cited by Gataker as Selden's. He also in 617 communicated to Purchas a short tract of the Jews sometimes living in England. It is remarkable that a man so free in general from prejudice and credulity should mention as an "usual crime" committed by that people, the calumnious charge of their stealing a christian boy at Easter, circumcising, and then crucifying him-a tale manifestly invented to serve as a pretext for the detestable cruelties and extortions occasionally in former times practised upon that much-injured people.

Our learned writer had hitherto displayed his erudition chiefly on subjects connected with his profession and with the antiquities of his own country; but in his next publication he entered a field of literature, the culture of which placed him at once in the rank of the first scholars of the age, and in

troduced

troduced him to the men of letters throughout Europe. This was his celebrated work entitled De Diis Syris, Syntagmata duo; of which the primary purpose was to treat on the false deities mentioned in the Old Testament, but with which he joined an enquiry into the Syrian idolatry in general, and occasional illustrations of the ancient theology of other heathen nations. It first appeared in 1617; and the curiosity of the learned having exhausted this edition in a few years, the Elzevirs in Holland were preparing to reprint the book, when the Rev. Louis de Dieu, a pastor and professor in the Walloon college at Leyden, wrote to Selden, requesting him to communicate his additions and corrections for the purpose, and offering his aid, and that of Daniel Heinsius, in conducting it through the press. This was brought to effect in 1627, and Selden inscribed the new and much improved edition to Heinsius.

This very learned treatise begins with Prolegomena, on the geography of Syria, on the Hebrew tongue, and on the origin and progress of the worship of a plurality of

gods.

gods. It then proceeds to a separate discussion of all the Syrian deities recorded in scripture and history, distributed into two syntagmata. That such a man as Selden would derive his materials for an enquiry of this kind from the original sources, will scarcely admit of a doubt; yet after he had raised a host of enemies by his book on Tythes, next to be mentioned, one of the fiercest of them, Dr. Richard Mountagu, charged him with having borrowed the greatest part of his matter from the "Semestria" of Peter Faber. Selden, in the preface to his second edition, takes notice of the charge, and after solemnly denying the plagiarism, he refers to a comparison of the two works for his justification. From the letters of Louis de Dieu to him, prefixed to this edition, it appears how highly his work was esteemed by the learned on the continent; yet some mistakes, which naturally intruded themselves in such a mass of recondite erudition, were the subject of criticism. judicious Le Clerc (Biblioth. Choisie, t. vII.) has pointed out three particular sources of error in his work: 1. That in his illustrations

The

of

of the history and theology of the Orientals he has cited without distinction authors conversant with and ignorant of the subject, among the latter of whom are especially the rabbinical writers, who make no scruple of supplying their deficiencies by falsehoods of their own invention: 2. that he, as well as other writers on the same topics, confounds the indigenous gods of the Greeks with those which they imported from the Babylonians and Egyptians: 3. that these writers sometimes adduce allegorical explanations of Grecian fables, and attach certain mysteries to them, as if derived from the original historians.

Besides the Leyden edition of this treatise, two others, printed at Leipzig in 1662 and -1680, attested its reputation among foreigners.

We are now to proceed to a memorable occurrence in the life of Selden, affecting him both as a writer and a citizen; being the first occasion on which, besides the usual warfare incurred by those who write on topics liable to controversy, he exposed himself to a contest with "the powers that be"

a con

a contest always formidable to those whose only weapons are pen and ink, and whose only alternative becomes apology or patient endurance.

The clergy, naturally solicitous to render their maintenance as secure as possible, had not been content to rest it upon the sense the laity might entertain of the utility of their profession, and the reasonableness of an adequate remuneration for their services, but had endeavoured to implicate their claims with the sanctity of a religious obligation. They had therefore advanced the doctrine of the divine right of tythes, as inherited by the Christian priesthood from the Jewish, and derived to the latter from the patriarchal ages. This doctrine had been maintained by several English divines, and was beginning to be regarded as fundamental to the establishment of a national church. Every claim by divine right is a limitation of human right, and must of consequence be regarded with jealousy by those who are the depositaries and guardians of the latter. The body of lawyers, for this reason, seems never to have been favourable to this clerical doctrine;