the University of Oxford, but revoked the legacy on account of some disgust taken at being required to give a bond as security for the loan of a manuscript: it was therefore left at the disposal of his executors, but he directed it not to be sold. They had intended bestowing it on the society of the Inner Temple, and it actually remained for five years in chambers hired for the purpose; but no preparations being made for building a room to contain it, the executors placed it at length in the Bodleian Library, where it remains, with his other collections.

He was buried, by his own direction, in the Temple church, on the south side of the round walk: his funeral was splendid, and attended by all the judges, benchers, and great officers, with a concourse of the most distinguished persons of the time.

Mr. Richard Johnson, Master of the Temple, buried him, according to the Directory, and said in his speech, that "when a learned man dies, a great deal of learning dies with him," and added, that "if learning could have kept a man alive, our brother had not died."

"Mr. Selden," says the Earl of Clarendon, " was a person whom no character can flatter, or transmit in any expressions equal to his merit and virtue. He was of so stupendous learning in all kinds and in all languages, (as may appear in his excellent and transcendent writings,) that a man would have thought he had been entirely conversant amongst books, and had never spent an hour but in reading and writing; yet his humanity, courtesy, and affability was such, that he would have been thought to have been bred

in the best courts, but that his good nature, charity, and delight in doing good, and in communicating all he knew, exceeded that breeding. His style in all his writings seems harsh, and sometimes obscure; which is not wholly to be imputed to the abstruse subjects of which he commonly treated, out of the paths trod by other men, but to a little undervaluing the beauty of style, and too much propensity to the language of antiquity; but in his conversation he was the most clear discourser, and had the best faculty of making hard things easy, and presenting them to the understanding, of any man that hath been known. Mr. Hyde was wont to say, that he valued himself upon nothing more than upon having had Mr. Selden's acquaintance from the time he was very young, and held it with great delight as long as they were suffered to continue together in London; and he was very much troubled always when he heard him blamed, censured, and reproached, for staying in London and in the parliament, after they were in rebellion, and in the worst times, which his age obliged him to do; and how wicked soever the actions were which were every day done, he was confident he had not given his consent to them, but would have hindered them if he could with his own safety, to which he was always enough indulgent. If he had some infirmities with other men, they were weighed down with wonderful and prodigious abilities and excellencies in the other scale."

To Lord Clarendon's delineation of his character may be added what Whitelocke says of him; "that his mind was as great as his learning, being very

generous and hospitable, and a good companion, especially where he liked." Dr. Wilkins says, "he was naturally of a serious temper, which was somewhat soured by his sufferings; so that he was free only with a few."

While in parliament Selden took an active and useful part in many important discussions and transactions. He appears to have been regarded somewhat in the light of a valuable piece of national property, like a museum, or great public library, resorted to, as a matter of course and a matter of right, in all the numerous cases in which assistance was wanted from any part of the whole compass of legal and historical learning. He appeared in the national council, not so much the representative of the contemporary inhabitants of a particular city, as of all the people of all past ages; concerning whom and whose institutions, he was deemed to know whatever was to be known, and to be able to furnish whatever, within so vast a retrospect, was of a nature to give light and authority in the decision of questions arising in a doubtful and hazardous state of the national affairs.

"After all," says one of his biographers, “the most endearing part of Mr. Selden's character is elegantly touched by himself in the choice of his motto:

Περὶ παντὸς τὴν ἐλευθέριαν.

LIBERTY ABOVE ALL THINGS.

It must be considered highly interesting to be admitted into the confidence, and to learn the private sentiments of so distinguished an individual; to hear

him conversing in the midst of his friends, and delivering his opinion on a great variety of topics, literary, political, and theological. We find ourselves thus admitted to Selden's domestic society, by the reverential zeal of his secretary or amanuensis, Richard Milward. This person professes to have enjoyed opportunities of listening to his conversation for twenty successive years; and "lest all those excellent things that usually fell from him might be lost," he from time to time committed some of them to writing, and the collection was sent to the press in 1689, thirty-five years after the death of his patron.

Dr. Wilkins, the learned editor of Selden's works, has expressed a doubt with respect to the genuineness of at least some part of this very curious volume. It certainly contains opinions which a zealous churchman could not be expected to relish; but the texture of the whole is too remarkable to have originated from any obscure fabricator. Here we at once recognise the characteristics of Selden's conversation, as described by his friend Lord Clarendon ; namely, the clearness of his conceptions, and the faculty of presenting abstruse subjects in a familiar manner to the understanding; and if all his writings had perished, this casual record of his thoughts would alone have been sufficient to recommend him to posterity as a person of a very inquisitive and sagacious mind. It is highly probable, that the apprehension or memory of his amanuensis may occasionally have deceived himself, but we must not rashly presume that he had any intention of deceiving others. Some of the sentiments imputed to Selden

have an appearance of moral laxity; but it must be recollected that only fragments of his conversation are here recorded, and that in the warmth of debate, or the freedom of familiar intercourse, speculative men are too apt to propose opinions to which they do not deliberately adhere.

It is true, likewise, that the familiar, and sometimes coarse manner, in which many of the subjects discussed are illustrated, is not such as might have been expected from a profound scholar; but Selden, with all his learning, was a man of the world, familiar with the ordinary scenes of common life, and knew how to bring abstruse subjects home to the business and bosoms of men of ordinary capacity, in a manner at once perspicuous and agreeable.