quired; but, with less than this, my reader will not expect to solve the problem which has hitherto set at defiance the learning and talent of all scientific inquirers. When my reader comes to this part of my work he will find, that to make my calculations come right, I have constantly been obliged to make a peculiar use of the number 2160, and in many cases to deduct it. For this he will find no quite satisfactory reason given. But though I could not account for it, the coincidence of numbers was so remarkable, that I was quite certain there could, in the fact, be no mistake. In the second volume this will be satisfactorily accounted for; and I flatter myself it will be found to form, not a blemish, but the apex, necessary to complete the whole building.
How I may be treated by the critics on this work, I know not; but I cannot help smiling when I consider that the priests have objected to admit my former book, the Celtic Druids, into libraries, because it was antichristian; and it has been attacked by Deists, because it was superfluously religious. The learned deist, the Rev. R. Taylor, has designated me as the religious Mr. Higgins. But God be thanked, the time is come at last, when a person may philosophise without fear of the stake. No doubt the priests will claim the merit of this liberality. It is impossible, however, not to observe what has been indiscreetly confessed by them a thousand times, and admitted as often both in parliament and elsewhere by their supporters, that persecution has ceased, not because the priests wished to encourage free discussion, but because it is at last found, from the example of Mr. Carlile and others, that the practice of persecution, at this day, only operates to the dissemination of opinion, not to the secreting of it. In short, that the remedy of persecution is worse than the disease it is meant to cure.
On the subject of criticism Cleland has justly observed, “The judging of a work, not by the general worth of it, but by the exceptions, is the scandal of criticism and the nuisance of literature; a judgment that can dishonour none but him who makes it.”[1] In most cases where I have known the characters of the priests who have lost their temper, and taken personal offence at what I have said against the order, in that work, I have thought I could discover a reason for it which they did not assign. As the subjects there treated of may be considered to be continued here, the objections of my opponents will be found to be refuted without the odious appearance of a polemical dispute. As for those attacks which were evidently made by the priests merely for the purpose, as far as possible, of preventing their followers from reading the Celtic Druids, and not for the purpose of refuting that work, they are of no consequence. Although it was published in great haste, I am happy to have it in my power to state, that no error of any importance has been pointed out, some few overlooked-errors of the press excepted. Various attacks upon it are characterized by the obvious vexation and anger of my opponents, rather than by argument. But the attack of one gentleman I think it right to notice.
The Rev. Hugh James Rose, B. D., Christian Advocate of Cambridge, has honoured
- ↑ Preface to Specimen, p. xi.
