[110] Toland was born in Ireland, in 1669, of Roman Catholic parents,
but became a zealous opponent of that faith before he was
sixteen; after which he finished his education at Glasgow and
Edinburgh; he retired to study at Leyden, where he formed the
acquaintance of Leibnitz and other learned men. His first
book, published in 1696, and entitled "Christianity not
Mysterious," was met by the strongest denunciation from the
pulpit, was "presented" by the grand jury of Middlesex, and
ordered to be burnt by the common hangman by the Parliament of
Ireland. He was henceforth driven for employ to literature;
and in 1699 was engaged by the Duke of Newcastle to edit the
"Memoirs of Denzil, Lord Hollis;" and afterwards by the Earl
of Oxford on a new edition of Harrington's "Oceana." He then
visited the Courts of Berlin and Hanover. He published many
works on politics and religion, the latter all remarkable for
their deistical tendencies, and died in March, 1722, at the
age of 53.--ED.
[111] These letters will interest every religious person; they may be
found in Toland's posthumous works, vol. ii. p. 295.
[112] Toland pretends to prove that "there is nothing in the Christian
Religion, not only which is contrary to reason, but even
which is above it."--He made use of some arguments (says
Le Clerc) that were drawn from Locke's Treatise on the
Human Understanding. I have seen in MS. a finished treatise by
Locke on Religion, addressed to Lady Shaftesbury; Locke
gives it as a translation from the French. I regret my
account is so imperfect; but the possessor may, perhaps, be
induced to give it to the public. The French philosophers have
drawn their first waters from English authors; and Toland,
Tindale, and Woolston, with Shaftesbury, Bolingbroke, and
Locke, were among their earliest acquisitions.
[113] In examining the original papers of Toland, which are preserved,
I found some of his agreements with booksellers. For his
description of Epsom he was to receive only four guineas in
case 1000 were sold. He received ten guineas for his pamphlet
on Naturalising the Jews, and ten guineas more in case Bernard
Lintott sold 2000. The words of this agreement run thus:
"Whenever Mr. Toland calls for ten guineas, after the first of
February next, I promise to pay them, if I _cannot show_ that
200 of the copies remain unsold." What a sublime person is an
author! What a misery is authorship! The great philosopher who
creates systems that are to alter the face of his country,
must stand at the counter to count out 200 unsold copies!
[114] Des Maiseaux frees Toland from this calumny, and hints at his
own personal knowledge of the author--but he does not know
what a foreign writer authenticates, that this blasphemous
address to Bacchus is a parody of a prayer in the Roman
ritual, written two centuries before by a very proper society
of _Pantheists_, a club of drunkards!
[115] Warburton has well described Des Maiseaux: "All the Life-writers
we have had are, indeed, strange insipid creatures. The
verbose tasteless Frenchman seems to lay it down as a
principle that every life must be a book, and what is worse,
it proves a book without a life; for what do we know of
Boileau, after all his tedious stuff?"
[116] One of these philosophical conferences has been preserved by
Beausobre, who was indeed the party concerned. He inserted it
in the "Bibliotheque Germanique," a curious literary journal,
in 50 volumes, written by L'Enfant, Beausobre, and Formey. It
is very copious, and very curious, and is preserved in the
General Dictionary, art. Toland. The parties, after a warm
contest, were very wisely interrupted by the Queen, when she
discovered they had exhausted their learning, and were
beginning to rail at each other.
[117] A political society which obtained its name from the malt
liquors consumed at its meetings, and which was popularly
termed October from the month when it was usually brewed. This
club advocated the claims of the House of Hanover, and may
have originated the Mughouses noted in p. 32.--ED.
[118] I subjoin, for the gratification of the curious, the titles of a
few of these books. "Spanhemii Opera;" "Clerici Pentateuchus;"
"Constantini Lexicon Graeco-Latinum;" "Fabricii Codex
Apocryphus Vet. et Nov. Test.;" "Synesius de Regno;" "Historia
Imaginum Coelestium Gosselini," 16 volumes; "Caryophili
Dissertationes;" "Vonde Hardt Ephemerides Philologicae;"
"Trismegisti Opera;" "Recoldus, et alia Mahomedica;" all the
Works of Buxtorf; "Salviani Opera;" "Reland de Relig.
Mahomedica;" "Galli Opuscula Mythologica;" "Apollodori
Bibliotheca;" "Palingenius;" "Apuleius;" and every classical
author of antiquity. As he was then employed in his curious
history of the Druids, of which only a specimen is preserved,
we may trace his researches in the following books: "Luydii
Archaeologia Britannica;" "Old Irish Testament," &c.;
"Maccurtin's History of Ireland;" "O'Flaherty's Ogygia;"
"Epistolarum Hibernicarum;" "Usher's Religion of the ancient
Irish;" "Brand's Isles of Orkney and Zetland;" "Pezron's
Antiquites des Celtes."
There are some singular papers among these fragments. One
title of a work is "Priesthood without Priestcraft; or
Superstition distinguished from Religion, Dominion from Order,
and Bigotry from Reason, in the most principal Controversies
about Church government, which at present divide and deform
Christianity." He has composed "A Psalm before Sermon in
praise of Asinity." There are other singular titles and works
in the mass of his papers.
[119]
A lover of all literature,
and knowing more than ten languages;
a champion for truth,
an assertor of liberty,
but the follower or dependant of no man;
nor could menaces nor fortune bend him;
the way he had chosen he pursued,
preferring honesty to his interest.
His spirit is joined with its ethereal father
from whom it originally proceeded;
his body likewise, yielding to Nature,
is again laid in the lap of its mother:
but he is about to rise again in eternity,
yet never to be the same TOLAND more.