LORD HAILES TO MR. PINKERTON.

Dec. 26th, 1785.

I doubt much whether Barbour's manuscript will be allowed to go out of Scotland: perhaps Lord Buchan may procure that permission; for his brother, Mr. Henry Erskine, is just now elected Dean of the Faculty of Advocates; and his interest may accomplish what nothing else can.

I have neither eyes nor leisure to collate manuscripts: the transcripts made from Bannatine were by myself, before the inflammation of my eyes began to distress me. Your Lives of Scottish Saints is on a good plan: perhaps Turgot's work * is fuller in Papenbroch than in Surius; † and perhaps, in the same enormous work, there may be a fuller account of David the First, by Ailred, than what Twisden published.

Your Collection of Poems came to my hands a few days ago I thank you for it. I have not had leisure to read much of it. I wish that the indecent poems had been omitted: the obscurity of the language, however, will make them less offensive.

It surprised me not a little to see you, in your Essay, declare war against the Old Testament,

Turgot, a monk at Durham, and afterwards Primate of Scotland, is said to have been the author of the Historia Ecclesiæ Dunhelmensis, published under the name of Simeon of Durham.

+ Papenbroch is one of the principal writers in the voluminous Acta Sanctorum: Surius published a work in 6 vols. folio, entitled De probatis Sanctorum Historiis.'

but what you say will do little harm; for it is plain that you have not studied the subject sufficiently. What you say of the similarity of style throughout the Old Testament convinces me that you have never read Lowth de Hebraicâ Pocsi, or his Translation of Isaiah:-it is not incumbent on me to enter into a discussion of that subject, or of others of the like nature.

But I would seriously recommend it to you to set down what you have said in the shape of queries, and then subjoin your answers: this will show you that you have been in too great a hurry. The queries to be thus: who was Bayle? who were the wisest Rabbis? when did they live? how should their authority be the best?

This is for yourself, and not written with any view of obtaining an answer.

I have only to beg, that, in your future publications, my name may not be mentioned as a correspondent of yours: at least, while you can perceive no difference between Jehovah and the Demons of barbarous nations; or between the religion of the Jews, and that of the Hottentots.

MR. DOUCE TO MR. PINKERTON.*

1786.

I have read over the Preface to Le Grand very attentively all that he says relating to your

* Francis Douce, Esq. author of Illustrations of Shakspeare, and Ancient Manners, a man than whom no one possesses a

inquiry, is, that the circumstance of the Saracens being in possession of Spain, some provinces in France, and the Holy Land, gave rise to the productions of the three earliest "Ouvrages Romanesques," in each of which Charlemagne is the hero. One makes him undertake an expedition into Spain; another into Languedoc; and the third into Palestine. He says the authors of these romances were monks; but he omits to say who they were, or when the romances were written. He afterwards speaks of four devotional romances by the Troubadours, one of which is Philumena, composed by a monk under the name of a pretended secretary to Charlemagne. This contains the exploits of the Emperor against the Saracens in Spain, and the miracles of the Abbey of Grasse, of which place the author was a monk. The authors of "l'Histoire Littéraire de la France,” he says, carry the date of it as high as 1015; the Count de Caylus places it in the reign of Saint Louis; and, however well founded Mr. Le G. thought this latter opinion, he still meant to refer to the romance as one of the three Ouvrages Romanesques" before mentioned, for fear of being suspected of an inclination to diminish the glory of the Provençals.

Although I do not think the above will answer your purpose, yet I have hazarded the communication of it, lest you might hercafter accuse me

richer fund of knowledge connected with ancient customs, poetry, and history, and than whom, certainly, no one is more ready and more disinterestedly liberal in offering his treasures to the use of any one disposed to profit by them.

of inattention, from a difference in opinion. I should have almost doubted of the existence of any specimen of the French language so early as 1100 (for the laws of William are dubious), if I had not recollected something that Massieu,* I think, has said. Massieu misled me, and I had then never seen Otfrid's work, which is Francic. Will not the writings of Wicliffe, and the Translation of the Polychronicon by Trevisa, fill up the chasm between Maundeville and Caxton ?

GENERAL CHARLES VALLANCEY TO

MR. PINKERTON.‡

Feb. 1st, 1786.

I am favored with yours of the 28th ult. with the list of Pictish Kings inclosed, desiring an interpretation of their names. I shall endeavor to perform the task on my return to Ireland. At the first view of the list, I cannot avoid

* Histoire de la Poésie Française. Paris, 1739.

+ Hickes, in his Grammatica Franco-Theotisca, p. 5, gives a long and interesting account of Otfrid and his works, among which he particularly mentions tria magna Volumina of a Commentary upon the Psalms, and a Volumen Pseudo-Rythmicum Evangeliorum, divided into five books, both written in the Francic tongue. He also speaks of Otfrid, as the man, maximè omnium perpolivit et eliminavit patriam linguam.'

qui

↑ Author of a Grammar of the Irish Language, the Collectanca Hibernica, &c., one of the most profound scholars, and, let me add from my own experience, one of the most friendly and obliging men of his day.