Page:Meditations of the Emperor Marcus Antoninus - Volume 1 - Farquharson 1944.pdf/54

 even Hallam writes of Gataker's edition as the first English commentary upon Marcus Aurelius.

This train of events will explain how it is that Gataker, in his notes, refers to Casaubon's English translation, not to his Greek text, and is often in doubt as to what text Casaubon intended to adopt. It makes obvious too the reason why Gataker published as his own many emendations already, when his book came out, made by Casaubon and actually printed.

Casaubon, as a High Churchman, was deprived of his ecclesiastical preferments by the faction in power in 1644; but Gataker, though one of the Puritan clergy who signed the address (18 Jan. 1649) against the trial of King Charles, did not relinquish his benefice. In 1652 the energy of his Cambridge friends procured the publication by the University of his master work.

Of this judicious and masculine performance it is difficult to speak with sober moderation. It is a monument of vast and fastidious erudition in the four tongues, and (like his Cinnus, 1651, and posthumous Adversaria Miscellanea, 1659) a magazine of comprehensive and precise knowledge. Gataker wrote much besides, not least his balanced contribution to the vexed problem of the Style of the New Testament, 1648; and posterity has praised his commentaries on Isaiah, 1645, and Jeremiah and the Lamentations, 1651, his share in the puritan Notes upon the Bible. For ten years Preacher to Lincoln's Inn, he was Rector of Rotherhithe, near London, until his death, and was an active and moderate member, from 1643 to 1645, of the Westminster Assembly which drew up the Confession of xlvi