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Review of Vieny of the Character, Position, and Prospects of the Edin

burgh Bible Society. In Seven Letters. By Anglicanus. 8vo. pp. vi. and 77. Price is. 6d. Edin. 1827.

BEFORE discussing the merits of this most extraordinary pamphlet, we must say something of its authorship. And on this point we have a very curious and distressing tale to unfold-one which we would have willingly suppressed, had it been at all consistent with the regard that we owe to the cause of truth and justice.

We state it then in plain and unequivocal terms, that the individual who must stand forward to take upon him the guilt and shame of having produced the Letters of Anglicanus, is THE REV. HENRY GREY, Minister of St. Mary's, Edinburgh, and one of the Secretaries to the Corresponding Board. When these Letters were first sent to the Editor of the Caledonian Mercury, they were sent with the name and the responsibility of Mr. Grey. The copy furnished to the printer of the pamphlet, was, to a certain extent, in Mr. Grey's hand-writing. The preface was wholly so ; and it is subscribed “THE AUTHOR.” It was Mr. Grey who regularly corrected and revised the proofs as the work advanced. And it was Mr. Grey who, from first to last, gave directions concerning the publication.

These facts we have obtained without any breach of confidence-SO · stupidly has our opponent managed his own affairs on the part of those by whom they were communicated. We might add, were it at all necessary, various circumstances corroborative of our main statements. And had the matter gone into a court of law, which would have beer far worse for Mr. Grey than either the Police or the Small Debt Couri, we could have extracted from the witnesses that would have been subpoena'd on the occasion, such testimony as must have covered more than one with confusion and disgrace.

VOL. XXVII. NO 1.

B

When we affirm that Mr. Grey is the author of the pamphlet, we do not mean that it is altogether the emanation of his mind. That he composed the feebler portions of it, we have no doubt; and that the whole of it was subjected to the revisal of his pen, is very probable. But there are passages, for producing which, every one who knows him must be satisfied, that he has not the intellectual capacity. We need no declaration, on his part, to convince us of this. An affidavit, asserting that the whole is his, and subscribed by his own hand, we would not, we could not believe. We should as soon believe that the London Committee could have astonished the world with “ Paradise Lost,” or that the Corresponding Board could have brought forth such works as the Analogy of Butler or the Principia of Sir Isaac Newton, as that certain of these pages proceeded from the brain of the Rev. Mr. Grey. Still, however, he is strictly accountable for all that has come forth under the signature of Anglicanus. Though he has not, and cannot have the credit of one clever or vigorous sentence that the book contains,—and that it contains some such we are free to confess, he must answer for its malevolence, its meanness, its falsehoods, its misrepresentations, its insolence, its scurrility, its profaneness, its heresies, its want of principle, its hardened insensibility, its gross insults to individuals, to whole bodies of men, to the very country itself, in which the heartless and ungrateful libeller is permitted to live, and feed, and go at large. Of these we know him to be quite capable. Many of them, we are well persuaded, have no other paternity. And whether they originated in his mind or not, he has at least willingly and formally adopted them, which is am- .ply sufficient for his condemnation. We speak not of argument; for that is a thing to which he is inadequate, and of which indeed, bating · an unsuccessful attempt now and then, the pamphlet is perfectly guiltless.

It is clear to us, and every body in Edinburgh is of the same opinion, that it owes not a few of its pages to a lady, with whom Mr. Grey is on intimate terms, and who has aided him in the same way on many other occasions. One entire letter at least must be ascribed to her, and that the most unprincipled, perhaps, of the whole series-if, indeed, one can be considered as worse than another, where all are so unspeakably bad. We should be sorry to withhold from this female, whether she is to be deemed the principal agent or merely an auxiliary-any portion of that credit which belongs to her, as having a participation in the authorship of these letters. She is no doubt very vain of seeing herself cut a distinguished figure in the arena of debate, in spite of her having the misfortune to disgust far more by her low ribaldry, than she can hope to dazzle with her stolen brilliancies. And though we should not be willing to minister to vanity so mistaken and so insatiable as hers, yet we are compelled, by a sense of justice, to acknowledge her claims, and to show her that we are not unaware of her deserts. Our opinion of her talents was formed long before the appearance of her present efført; and what we observe here only confirms what we previously thought. She has imagination, but it is wild and undisciplined. She has read- ing, but it is crude and undigested. She has command of diction, but it is indescribably loose, verbose, and pedantic. She has no taste, no judgment, no acuteness, no concentration of thought, no power of reasoning. What she has of the positive and negative, may be seen in a sentence which we once quoted from Mr. Grey's Reasons of Dissent, and which is as characteristic of her power and manner as if she herself had written it. It occurs in asserting the insufficiency of provincial

so we

associations to do the work of the British and Foreign Bible Society, and is as follows:

“ Nay, do they not start to the race, with the seeds of dissension in their bowels ? Does not this first breach take its rise in principles that promise fertility in all those niceties of judgment and scrupulosities of feeling, that overtask the springs and check the impetus of associated effort, that stop the machine continually in the full career of har. monious operation, by injected crotchets of individual opinion, that billet themselves upon free associations, only to shackle their movements, and retard their progress.”

We have reason to believe that a third person has been concerned in the concoction of this dish of scandal and impiety. Fancying himself a man of talent, eager to display the gifts he possesses, and very willing to be serviceable to the Apocryphal cause, he had indited some trash to the Newcastle journals, in favour of the London Committee, and by getting praise from his own relatives for the cleverness of his remarks, he has been unhappily encouraged to lend his assistance to the Letters. We have no desire to repress his literary ambition, so far as its gratification is compatible with truth and Christianity. But really, when instead of soothing the personal resentments, and restraining the mad propensities of his friends in Edinburgh, he helps them on in their reckless and self-destroying career, we cannot avoid suggesting that it would be better for him to attend to his cattle and his corn, than to busy himself either in mismanaging the county politics of his chieftain, or in vilifying those who prefer pure to adulterated Bibles.

There are difficulties, we confess, in the adjustment of this three-fold authorship, so as to reconcile it with what the pamphlet contains, and with the Christian profession of those who have combined to produce it. In the first place, the Preface is subscribed « the Author.” So that “ the Author" must be considered as identified with “ Anglicanus," who signs each of the Letters, and whose, therefore, they are all understood to be. And according to the ordinary mode of interpretation, “ Anglicanus, the Author," can scarcely be construed to signify three different individuals. .. .

In the second place, “ Anglicanus" tells us over and over again, that he was present at our Annual Meeting, and saw and heard every thing that was said and done. But Mr. Grey, who would be convicted in a court of law, of being Anglicanus, because the preface was in his hand. writing, not to allude to all the other proofs that could be brought forward, was not present at the meeting, and neither heard nor saw any thing that passed in it. Where he was, we do not pretend to say ; but certain it is, that on the 9th of July 1827, the Assembly Room was not honoured with his personal attendance, so that when he says in the character of Anglicanus, I saw such a thing and I heard such a thing, he says what is altogether untrue.

In the third place, the female partner in this epistolary concern was no doubt at the meeting from its beginning to its conclusion, making herself more conspicuous than a very bashful woman would desire to be, and trying to talk her neighbourhood into a disbelief of all that Dr. Thomson asserted : but then, this lady can scarcely be Anglicanus, for', not to speak of the difference of the gender,-- what genuine lady would choose to assume the masculine title?- she did not know the Rev. Dr. Gordon, who moved the adoption of the Report; and this is rather an unaccountable circumstance, seeing that she had often heard him preach, and had been often in his company, and was equally familiar with his appearance and his voice. We fear that this lady, were it for

no other purpose than that of saving Mr. Grey from being chargeable with the sin for which Ferdinand Mendez Pinto was so illustriousthat of seeing what he never saw, and hearing what he never heardmust be answerable for all the passages in which the author speaks of having personally witnessed the proceedings of the Annual Meeting. No doubt her pretending to be ignorant of the person of Dr. Gordon renders her a great hypocrite ; but there are falsehoods in every page, and we must distribute them according to as fair and charitable a rule as we can adopt, and it is much more tolerable that the lady should be found guilty of one untruth, than that Mr. Grey should be burdened with the guilt of twenty. · In the fourth place, from the pretensions of the author we are led to believe that he resides, as well as had his birth, in England. But though Mr. Grey and the lady were born to the south of the Tweed, they have their abode in Edinburgh, and we feel some difficulty in exonerating them from the double-dealing which this implies, because the pretension of English residence runs throughout the whole course of the pamphlet, and really we cannot think any of the two so clever as to be wholly in England and wholly in Scotland at one and the same time. We once thought of getting them out of this scrape, by imputing the residence, part of the story to the third individual alluded to. Here, however, there is another and a greater stumbling-block in our way, for, not to insist on his absence from the Annual Meeting, we have to state,

In the fifth place, that this individual, though a bona fide residenter in England, does not dwell many miles from the border, whereas Anglicanus would persuade us that he is greatly nearer the sun, and even insinuates that he is altogether beyond the reach of Scotch companionship. And besides, while Anglicanus tells us that the Apocrypha question is completely set at rest in his vicinage, so much so, that the very mention of the word causes the hearers thereof to yawn, which must be very uncommon in the polite company that he affects to keep, the person whom we are at present supposing to be Anglicanus, for the sake of preventing his two copartners from being involved in the charge of mendacity, happens to be an inhabitant of that very district in which the Apocrypha Controversy is carried on with more eagerness and energy than ever attended it even here, and has himself done his best, by speaking and writing, to convince the good people of Northumberland that Earl Street is a perfect paradise for purity, and that all who object to the London Committee are enemies to the Bible Society. .

In the sixth place, some kind friends of Mr. Grey are anxiously whispering that the said Northumbrian dweller is the real author, and that poor Mr. Grey is only a sort of humble agent, who has undertaken to superintend the printing and publication from mere love to his southern correspondent. This will not do. Not only does it leave Mr. Grey laden with the whole demerit of the performance, of which he has taken upon himself the responsibility, and as to which he has acted the part of a'cordial and indefatigable abettor, but it is inconsistent with a variety of particulars that occur in almost every page. It must be obvious to every one that there are a multitude of allusions scattered throughout the pamphlet, indicating a minute acquaintance with localities, individuals, incidents, and gossip, which could never be possessed by a being who is seldom seen on the streets of our metropolis, but is almost constantly occupied in looking after his farming operations, and attending

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