66 9948 Serpents, those greedy Tenants of the Grave, who will never be satisfied till they have eat up the Ground-Landlord." His philosophy of the resurrection had undergone a corresponding modification. He was still positive he should "rise with the same Individual Body" he now possessed; but it would probably not contain one of the same Individual Atomes" of its present ingredients, for it would not be "Decorous to put the Angels on the Drudgery of Scavengers; as if it should at that Day be their Employment to sweep the Graves and Charnel-houses, to sift the Elements, and rake in all the Receptacles of the Dead, for mans divided Dust." 49 Why did Dunton announce in The Life and Errors that this virtuoso treatise had been finished after a labor of ten years but describe it on the title-page as a second edition? The explanation involves another case of typical duplicity. He was very careful not to mention that the book had actually been published thirteen years earlier under a different title. He himself had boldly appropriated a long passage from it, without acknowledgment, in the essay written in memory of his wife. It had first appeared, in 1691, as Religio Bibliopolae, written by Benjamin Bridgwater." The address "To the Reader" contains the information, however, that the author had lacked the necessary leisure to complete his task and that the work had been finished by another hand, "yet with all the care possibly to reach the Air, and Stile of the Author, which is of that neatness and facility as must needs recommend it (were there nothing else considerable) to the taste of such an Age as this." Who was the elegant author? Arber apparently considered him a myth. As editor of the Term Catalogues he treats "Benjamin Bridgwater" as merely one of the numerous pseudonyms employed by Dunton. In this way he assigns to Dunton both Religio Bibliopolae and The Secret History of the Calves Head Club (1703), which bears the initials B. B.51 This assumption is adopted also in the catalogue of the British Museum. On what ground this conclusion was reached is not clear. According to the records of Trinity College, Cambridge, Benjamin 48 P. 19. 49 P. 20. Bo Licensed by Dunton June, 1691 (T. C. п, 370). Bridgwater was granted his Bachelor's degree in 1682.52 Dunton himself gives the following account of him in the Who's Who of contemporary hacks drawn up in The Life and Errors: Mr. Ben Bridgwater. He was of Trinity College in Cambridge, and M. A. His genius was very rich, and ran much upon Poetry, in which he excelled. He was, in part, Author of Religio Bibliopolae.' But alas! in the issue, Wine and Love were the ruin of this ingenious Gentleman.5* Of his poetical talent we have a specimen in A Poem Upon the Death of Her Majesty Queen Mary, of Blessed Memory. Occasioned by an Epistle to the Author from Mr. J. Tutchin (1695). Since this elegy was not licensed, Arber had no occasion to pass judgment upon the authorship, and the British Museum does not own the poem. Is this also by Dunton? It is difficult to think so. Surely the Athenian projector was not the man to conceal himself under anonymity on this propitiously melancholy occasion when poets big and little were straining themselves hoarse in Pindaricks, pastorals, and all the other known forms of elegy to express the national sorrow and to attract favorable notice from the great. It may seem strange that Dunton did not swell the chorus; but it would be more difficult to explain that he did take part but concealed the fact. This was not Dunton's habit. If Benjamin Bridgwater was the bona fide author of this elegy, in 1695, why should we assume that he was not the author also of a book published four years earlier under his name? The mere fact that Dunton laid claim to it may be thrown out of consideration. That he was dishonest about the book in some measure is certain, and it is not unlikely that he was wholly so. The indications are that most of Religio Bibliopolae was written for Dunton by this Cambridge hack and that the final touches had to be added by the publisher or some scribbler in his employ. By 1704 "Wine and Love" had done their work on this ingenious gentleman author and Dunton saw his way, though somewhat doubtfully, to annexing the book to his own credit. He hesitated for a time between ascribing it to the Society, which no longer existed, and arrogating entire honor to himself. In the end he adopted the bolder course. But had the original performance been forgotten? For fear that 2 Graduati Cantabrigienses, 1659-1823, p. 63. 53 I, 77. this ghost might arise to rebuke him, he complied with the truth merely to the extent of calling the first issue of The New Practice of Piety a second edition. His reason for resurrecting the treatise, whether his or not, is obvious. At this point in his career he desired to put in a word for the moderate or occasional conformists-a very perilous undertaking as Defoe had discovered by writing The Shortest Way (1702). Defoe had come to grief with his misunderstood irony. Dunton adopted a safer course. By posing as a liberal and dedicating his book to Locke, he hoped to give his plea for religious toleration a note of complete disinterestedness. The catholicity of The New Practice of Piety was a mere shield for an attack on the intolerant attitude of the High Flyers towards the dissenters. With the exception of a few very slight changes in the original text, the revision of 1704 consists entirely in the addition of an introduction and a conclusion, both warmly denouncing the penal laws as an unreasonable interference with private judgment in the nonessentials of religion. The attack seems to have passed unnoticed. The Dedication prefixed to Athenianism announces a fourth edition, to be called Dunton's Creed: or, the Religion of a Bookseller; but so far as I can discover no evidence exists that the revised form was ever printed more than once.5 On the other hand, the original Religio Bibliopolae was republished-in 1728, 1742, and 1790-but now without the name Benjamin Bridgwater. It was also translated into German (1737). From the confessional intent of The Life and Errors (1705), composed while the author was evading the consequences of debt by a life of "solitude," we should expect a copious flow of penitential gloom. In order to confirm himself in his plans of amendment, the contrite debtor is habitually envisaging his windingsheet in the darkness of the tomb. Solemnity of mood is more prominent still in parts of The Whipping Post, of the next year (1706). One division of this, "The Living Elegy: Or, Dunton's Letter, Being a Word of Comfort to his Few Creditors," attains a 54 The New Practice of Piety was first entered May, 1704 (T. C. ш, 397) as printed for S. Malthus. License for a second edition was obtained Feb., 1705 (III, 444) and for a third June, 1705 (III, 474) and also May-June, 1708 (III, 598). But these entries do not prove, necessarily, that the work was actually republished. pathetic climax in a poem reminding Wesley and other creditors that even an insolvent debtor will be rescued by death. Nowhere else has Dunton handled the old theme so effectively. But neither the fear of the law nor contrite abasement for former dereliction had changed the leopard's spots. For his "Living Elegy in Verse" he was apparently indebted to three separate sources, only one of which I have identified. Bishop King's My Midnight Meditation reads: 55 Ill busi'd man! Why shouldst thou take care Each drooping season and each flower doth cry, And all those leaves which nightly fall, This emerges from Dunton's hands uncontaminated and entire with only such exceptions as appear in the following extract: Then crazy Dunton, why dost take such care Dunton's star had now set. When at the height of his success as a publisher and dealer, he had "abdicated" on the mistaken supposition that he had accumulated a competence. This premature retirement and his mistaken calculation that he should come into a fortune through his second marriage had reduced him to what he himself describes as the ignoble life of a scribbler. His mind was beginning to fail. Even when judged by his own low standard, Dunton's later religious works are of minor importance, most of them the pathetic efforts of a defeated man to regain his lost position. The Hazard of a Death-Bed-Repentance (1708) is 55 The English Poems of Henry King, D. D., ed. Lawrence Mason, Ph. D., 1914, p. 114. 50 Included by Nichols, Life and Errors, II, 480. a courageous attack on a funeral sermon preached by Dr. Kennet in honor of the Duke of Devonshire, a titled sinner notorious for his "adulterous life." To swell the size of the pamphlet to saleable proportions, the author added the dying utterances of Rochester and some other distinguished rake-hells and then attempted to resolve "that nice question," one of perennial interest to him, "How far a Death-bed-Repentance is possible to be sincere?" There is much religious material also in Athenianism (1710), the last voluminous production "writ with his own Hand." This is described on the title-page as "an Entire Collection of all his Writings, both in Manuscript, and such as were formerly Printed." The announcement is correct only in saying that most of the material had appeared before. In An Essay on Death-Bed-Charity (1723) he returns to his favorite topic. When Thomas Guy, the wealthy bookseller, bequeathed money for the founding of Guy's Hospital, tender consciences had scruples about the acceptance of the gift because of the testator's well-known failings of character. Dunton seized upon this and the similar case of Francis Bancroft to bring into question again all eleventh-hour repentance. The real purpose of his pamphlet was to expose the sinful conduct of Mrs. Jane Nichols, who had omitted her son-in-law John Dunton from her will and left most of her estate to charity. Upon this Moment depends Eternity: or; Mr. John Dunton's Serious Thoughts upon the Present and Future State, in a Fit of Sickness that was judg'd Mortal (1720?) contains a suggestion of the projector in his better days. This was to have been another thesaurus. Part I is described in the title as "A New Directory for Holy Living and Dying." Part II, "The Sick-Man's Passing Bell," promises: (1) "God be Merciful to me a Sinner: Or, Dunton at Confession, in which he discovers the Secret Sins of his whole Life"; (2) "Dunton's Legacy to his Native Country: Or, A dying farewell"; (3) "A Living Man following his own Corpse to the Grave: Or, Dunton Represented as Dead and Buried, in an Essay upon his own Funeral-To which is added (for the oddness and singularity of it) A Copy of his last Will and Testament-His living Elegy writ with his own Hand-And the Epitaph designed for his Tombstone, in the New Burying Place"; (6) "The Real Period of Dunton's Life." Only a small part of this huge threat is executed, only enough in fact to afford the |