Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 13.djvu/256

 ing unfortunately appear questionable by adding the Greek sentence, ἀρχὴν ἀπαντων καὶ τελος ποίει Θεον. In 1736 he began his ‘Concordance,’ and must have laboured at it with great assiduity, as the next year saw its publication, with a dedication to the queen, to whom it was presented on 3 Nov.; but unfortunately for the author his patroness died on the 20th of the same month. On 7 Nov. he writes to Sir H. Sloane, telling him that the book will be published that week, and soliciting the purchase of a copy. The publication price was eighteen shillings. Disappointed, as it seems, in his expectation of profit from his great task, he gave up business, and his mind became so unhinged that, in consequence of his persistently paying unwelcome addresses to a widow, he was confined for ten weeks, from 23 March to 31 May, in a private madhouse in Bethnal Green, from which he escaped by cutting through the bedstead to which he was chained. Of this confinement he wrote an account in a curious pamphlet of sixty pages, entitled ‘The London Citizen exceedingly Injured, or a British Inquisition Display'd.’ The pamphlet was dedicated to Lord H——, apparently Lord Harrington, then secretary of state. He brought an action for damages on this account in the following year, in which, as was to be expected, he had no success. He published an account of the trial itself, dedicated to the king. In December 1740 he writes to Sir H. Sloane, saying that he had then been employed since July as Latin usher in a boarding-school kept by Mr. Blaides at Enfield, a place which he describes as being very fashionable, near fifty coaches being kept in the parish. His chief subsequent employment was as a corrector of the press for works of learning, and several editions of Greek and Latin classics are said to have owed their accuracy to his care. He also superintended the printing of one of the folio editions of Matthew Henry's ‘Commentary,’ and in 1750 printed a small ‘Compendium’ (or abstract of the contents of each chapter) ‘of the Holy Bible,’ which has been reprinted in the larger editions of his ‘Concordance.’ His employment in this capacity of corrector of the press suggested to him the adoption of the title ‘Alexander the Corrector,’ as significant of the office which he thenceforward assumed of correcting the morals of the nation, with especial regard to swearing and the neglect of Sunday observance; for this office he believed himself to be specially commissioned by heaven, and his success to be assured by prophecies. He petitioned parliament for a formal appointment as a corrector for the reformation of the people, and in April 1755 printed a ‘Letter to the Speaker and the other Members,’ and about the same time an ‘Address to the King and Parliament;’ but in 1756 he complains that he cannot get any M.P. to present another petition for assistance to his scheme. Having in September 1753 become involved (how, does not clearly appear) in some street brawl at his lodgings, he was, by means of his sister (married in the previous year to a Mr. Wild), confined in an asylum at Chelsea for seventeen days. After his release he brought an unsuccessful action against her and the other persons concerned, and made grave proposals to them to go into like confinement as an atonement. He published an account of this second restraint in ‘The Adventures of Alexander the Corrector’ (see Gent. Mag. xxiv. 50); he also wrote an account of his trial, dedicated to the king, and made vain attempts by attendance at court to present it in person, and to obtain the honour of knighthood, which, with other distinctions, he believed to have been foretold. In 1754, with a view to the furtherance of his self-assumed work, he procured nomination as a candidate for the representation of the city of London in parliament, but did not go to the poll, and in 1755 pertinaciously paid his unwelcome addresses to the daughter of Sir Thomas Abney of Newington (1640–1722) [q. v.], publishing his letters and the history of his repulse in a third part of his ‘Adventures.’ In the month of June 1755 he visited Oxford, and in July went to Cambridge. At Oxford he tells us that he was placed on the vice-chancellor's left hand in the theatre at the commemoration on 2 July, ‘received a loud clap,’ and dined twice with the librarian of the Bodleian (Owen). ‘A pious preacher of the gospel of great learning, a fellow of Magdalen College’ (perhaps George Horne, afterwards bishop of Norwich), told him that by the Bible and his ‘Concordance’ he had been taught to preach. At Cambridge he was also received with much respect, and of his visit some curious particulars are given in two letters from J. Neville of Emmanuel College to Dr. Cox Macro, preserved in the British Museum. Neville, writing on 18 July 1755, says: ‘We have here at present a very extraordinary man, Mr. Cruden, the author of a very excellent book of the kind, “The Concordance to the Bible.” The poor man (I pity him heartily) is supposed now not to be quite in his right mind.’ In a subsequent letter he mentions that Cruden was warmly entertained by Mr. Jacob Butler, an old and eccentric lawyer, who took him to Lord Godolphin's, and accompanied him when he went on missionary visits to Barnwell, and distributed handbills on sabbath observance on Sunday. One of these printed papers,