338 



NOTES AND QUERIES^ 



[No. 105. 



event of the year 1851 owes its brilliant conception, its 

 happy execution, its triumphant success. 



The rc.'ii;n of the Illustrious Lady who now fills with 

 so much dignity the Throne of these Realms, has hap- 

 pily been pre-eminently distinguished (and long may 

 it be so ! ) by an unexampled progress made in all the 

 Arts of Peace. Her Majesty has been pre-eminently a 

 Patron of all such Arts. How graceful then, on the 

 part of Her Majesty, would be the immediate institu- 

 tion of an Order of Civil Merit ! How gratifying to 

 those accomplished and v.'orthy men on whom Her 

 Majesty might be pleased to confer it I 



S3atr^. 



DANIEL DEFOE AND TUE " MEBCATOR." 



"Wilson, in Lis Life of Defos, vol. iii. p. 334., 

 gives an account from Tin<lal, Oldiuixou, Eoyur, 

 and Chalmers, of the Mercator and its anta;fonist, 

 the British Merchant. He conunenees by ob- 

 serving that Defoe "had but little to do with this 

 work" (the Mercutor), and quotes Chalmers, who 

 seems totally to mistake the passage in Defoe's 

 Appeal to Honour and Justice, pp. 47 — 50., in which 

 the Mercator is mentioned, and to consider it as a 

 denial on his ])art of having had any share in the 

 work. Defoj's words are — 



"What part 1 had in the Mercator is well knnwn, 

 and would men answer with argumcjit and not witli 

 persona! abus.', [ would at any tune defend any part of 

 the Mercator which was of my writing. But to say the 

 Mercator is mine is falsj. I never was the author of it, 

 nor had the property, printing, or profit of it. I had 

 never any jjaymcnt or reward fjr writing any part of it, 

 nor had I the power of putting what I would into it, 

 yet the whole clamour fjll upon me." 



Defoe evidently means only to deny that he was 

 the originator and pro|)rietor of the Mercator, not 

 that he was not the principal writer in it. The 

 Mercator was a government paper set on foot by 

 Harley to support the proposed measure of the 

 Treaty of Commerce with France ; and the Revieic, 

 which Defoe had so long and so ably conducted, 

 being brought to a close in the beginning of May, 

 1713, he was retained to follow np the opinions 

 he had maintained in the Revieiv as to the 

 treaty in this new periodical. He had not the 

 control of the work undoubtedly, otherwise, cau- 

 tiously abstaining as he does himself from all 

 personal attacks upon his opponents, the remarks 

 on Henry Martin would not have appeared, which 

 led to a severe and very unjust retaliation in the 

 British Merchant, in which Defoe's misfortunes are 

 nnfeeliniilv introduced. There cannot, however, 

 be the slightest doubt to any one at all actjuainted 

 with Defoe's style, or who conifiares the Mercator 

 with the commercial articles in the Revieiv, that 

 the whole of the Mercator, except such portion as 



appears in the shape of letters, and which consti- 

 tutes only a small part of the work, was written 

 by Defoe. The princii)al of these letters were 

 probably written by William Brown. 



The excessive rarity of the Mercator, which Wil- 

 son could never obtain, and of which jirobably 

 very few copies exist, has rendered it the least 

 known of Defoe's publications. Even Mr. M'Ciil- 

 loch, from the mode in which he speaks of it 

 {Litei'oture of Political Economy, p. 142.), would 

 appear not to have seen it. And therefore, whilst 

 the British Merchant, " the shallow sophisms and 

 misstatements" of which we now treat with con- 

 tempt, is one of the most common of commercial 

 books, having gone through at least three editions, 

 besides the original folio, the Meixator, re])lete as 

 it is with the vigour, the life and animation, the 

 various and felicitous power of illustration, which 

 this great and truly Englisli atithor could impart 

 to any subject, still exists only in probably four or 

 five copies of the original folio numbers. How 

 many of the advocates ibr free trade are ac- 

 quainted with a production in which one of the most 

 gifted minds that this country ever produced, 

 exerts his delightful powers and most effectual 

 " unadorned elocpience " in the support of their 

 favourite doctrine ? 



I do not see any copy of the Mercator noticed 

 in the printed catalogue of the British Museum. 

 I owe my own to the kindness of Mr. Bolton 

 CoRNEY, who allowed me to possess it, having 

 piu'chased it, I believe, at Mr. Heber's sale. 



Jas, Crosslet. 



PUNISHMENT OF EDWARD PRINCE OF WALES, BY 

 KING EDWARD I., FOR DISRESPECT TO A JUDGE. 



Mr. Foss has lately shown, in his valuable 

 lives of The Judges of England, that historical 

 accuracy has been sacrificed in representing 

 Henry V., on his accession, to have re-invested 

 Sir William Gascoigne with " the balance and the 

 sword." Lord Campbell, warned that chroniclers, 

 historians, moralists, and poets had, without his- 

 torical warrant, taken for true the story which 

 Shakspeare has made so familiar to us, has, in his 

 Lives of the Chief Justices, examined the evidence 

 for attributing to the young king this act of mag- 

 nanimity, and has affirmed (vol. i. p. 131.) not 

 only that Sir William connnitted the prince, but 

 that he actually filled the office of Chief Justice 

 under him when he became Henry V. The noble 

 and learned lord has been at some pains to authen- 

 ticate the story of the commital of the prince, and 

 has shown that there is no sufficient reason for 

 disbelieving that the dauntless judge did make 

 " princely power submit " to justic^e ; and he has 

 brought forward also the probable sources of 

 Shakspeare's information. But these are silent as 

 to the reinstatement of the illustrious judge ; and 



