Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 10.djvu/493

 2 S.X.MAY 27, 1022.] NOTES AND QUERIES. 403 the lay rector of the church, and the patron ! of j the living but not the squire, by the j way ; he was William Whitmore of Apley, Co. I Salop, but then residing, I think, at Nether I Slaughter, Co. Glos., of which manor his! family, sprung from an ancient Staffordshire stock, were then also lords. CHABLES SWYNNERTON. MARAT IN ENGLAND. (See ante, p. 381.) IN the same year Jean Paul published, again anonymously and in English, the first and perhaps most ambitious of all his political manifestos, ' The Chains of Slavery,' wherein, the title page announces, " the clandestine and villainous attempts of Princes to ruin liberty are pointed out and the dreadful scenes of despotism dis- closed." To this was prefixed an ' Address to the Electors of Great Britain ' designed to influence their choice of representatives at the General Election in the autumn of that year. The work itself had been an- nounced in London early in May, both in Wood/all's Public Advertizer and The Gen- tleman's Magazine, at the price of 12s., and on^the 28th of that month The Newcastle Chronicle reports the receipt there of several copies " presented by an unknown donor to the Bricklayers' Company, the Goldsmiths' Company, and the Lumber Troop." Previous to its arrival, Mr. Clephan r states, there had been organized in Newcastle three Reformatory Clubs : the Constitutional, the Independent (meeting at Shelville's in the Bigg Market), and a third Society of Patriots (meeting at Hume's in the Close), and no doubt these associations were also among the recipients of the book. In a notice prefixed to the French edition of this work, published in Paris in 1792, Jean Paul supplies his admirers with a highly coloured account of its advent in England 18 years earlier. After assuring them that it was the product of " 21 hours' toil a day and the excessive use of black coffee," he relates that Lord North and the British Government, recognizing its political importance, had from the first left no stone unturned to hinder its publication and thwart its success. Persecuted by the authorities, his footsteps dogged, and even his private correspondence seized, he was forced, he declares, to sleep for six weeks with pistols under his pillow to avoid arrest. After this, to mislead his pursuers, he journeyed to Holland, returning from whence, some time later, he stayed three weeks at Carlisle, Berwick and Newcastle, in order to visit the various clubs to which he had previously sent his book. Every- where, we are told, he was feted. Letters of affiliation to these institutions were pre- sented to him in a golden casket, and in particular Newcastle subscribed and returned to him the entire cost of his magnum opus. But alas, his golden box was stolen by the myrmidons of the Government, which latter, he learns, had already disbursed more than 8,000 guineas in order to get his work hung up until the General Election was over (' Les Chaines de 1'Esclavage,' p. 10). It would have been highly satisfactory, needless to say, if some indication, however slight, of these spectacular happenings had managed to filter into the columns of the local Press, or other records of the day ; but unfortunately no trace of them exists, and even his most benevolent biographers are constrained to admit that here Jean Paul probably drew largely upon his imagina- tion (Cabanes, pp. 58-60; De Witt, pp, 31- 2). The true chronicle of ' The Chains,' indeed, appears to have been a very different affair. Received in chilling silence, unsold, and even unreviewed, the whole edition, the author elsewhere confesses, was practi- cally given away to the various patriotic societies which had sprung up in the north of England, largely, perhaps, through his own initiative (' Les Chaines de 1'Esclavage, p. 9). On the other hand, the journey to Holland, which did, apparently, occur, was in all probability undertaken not to evade arrest, but to arrange for the publication by Rey of Amsterdam of the French edition of ' The Philosophical Essay on Man,' which duly appeared in the following spring. Rey had been Rousseau's publisher, and was no doubt chosen for that special reason. The above events bring us to the end, or nearly the end, of 1774. There still remains, however, to chronicle the sojourn of Jean Paul in Edinburgh, which is said to have occurred in this year. In a former issue of the ' Encyclopaedia Britannica ' it is remarked : " We find him in Edinburgh in 1774, supporting himself by giving lessons in French " (8th ed., vol. xiv. p. 294) ; and Lord Brougham, in a note upon Marat ('Historical Sketches/ vol. iii., p. 108), Lamartine in his ' History of the Girondins, and the ' Biographic Universelle ' all make similar assertions, but without in any case giving their authorities or a more precise date. In the Farington ' Diary,' too, the writer, quoting Bonomi, who apparently