to see you; therefore this is to invite and summon you to meet me at his house on Wednesday morning, to breakfast there, and to settle such points as may arise. Your most obedient, &c.
“J. Jortin.”
Eleven years later, on “Saturday, 25th September 1762,” he wrote to the same friend:—
“Dear Sir, — I am in some uncertainty about the future operations of my campaign, but yet not without hopes of doing my business on Tuesday. I need not use any apologies for begging the favour of you, who are an early man, to come to me, dressed, on Tuesday morning, between eight and nine, to go with me to the Bishop, and dine with him, and after dinner to induct me at Kensington. This was Dr. Parker’s advice to me this morning.”
“J. J.”[1]
Another letter, still preserved in the mansion of New Hailes, shows that Dr. Jortin corresponded with the literati of Scotland. The letter was written to the admirable Lord Hailes, when much concerned about the grief of a brother judge, Lord Auchinleck, whose son, James Boswell, then in his twentieth year (afterwards Dr. Johnson’s Boswell), had declared his intention to become a Roman Catholic. Lord Hailes had given the young man, on his going to London, a letter of introduction to Jortin, who replied thus:—
“London, 27th April 1760.
“Your young gentleman called at my house on Thursday noon, April 3. I was gone out for the day, and he seemed to be concerned at the disappointment, and proposed to come the day following. My daughter told him I should be engaged at church, it being Good Friday. He then left your letter, and a note with it for me, promising to be with me on Saturday morning. But from that time to this I have heard nothing of him. He began, I suppose, to suspect some design upon him; and his new friends and fathers may have represented me to him as a heretic and an infidel, whom he ought to avoid as he would the plague. I should gladly have used my best endeavours upon this melancholy occasion, but, to tell you the truth, my hopes of success would have been small. Nothing is more intractable than a fanatic. I heartily pity your good friend. If his son be really sincere in his new superstition, and sober in his morals, there is some comfort in that; for surely a man may be a papist and an honest man. It is not to be expected that the son should feel much for his father’s sorrows. Religious bigotry eats up natural affection, and tears asunder the dearest bonds. Yet, if I had an opportunity I should have touched that string, and tried whether there remained in his breast any of the veteris vestigia flammae.”[2]
His readiness in conversation is illustrated by the following anecdote connected with Bowyer’s Greek Testament, published in 1763:—
Whilst Mr. Bowyer’s edition of the Greek Testament was preparing, and when it was ready for the press, that incomparable scholar and divine, Dr. Jortin, mentioned the work in a mixed company, and in terms of warm approbation. A gentleman present, who was a stranger to Mr. Bowyer’s literary abilities, expressed some surprise that a printer should engage in so arduous a task, and with great simplicity asked Who helped him? Jortin, with his usual spirit, immediately answered, Who helped him? why, he helps himself, and where can he meet with a better assistant?” — (Gentleman’s Magazine, vol. vi.)
Archdeacon Jortin’s celebrity arises from his learned works published both during his life and after his death. His best known performance is his elaborate Life of Erasmus, which, though it incorporated Le Clerc’s authentic compilations, was substantially a new work (vol. i., 1758; ii., 1760). The volumes most characteristic of the man contained his “Remarks on Ecclesiastical History” (of which volume i. appeared in 1751, volume ii. in 1752, volume iii. in 1754, and volumes iv. and v. posthumously in 1773 — all founded on his Boyle Lectures, which he had not printed), in which we see the preciseness and gaiety of the Frenchman combined with the judgment and directness of an Englishman. This book startled many excellent divines as dealing rather unceremoniously and flippantly with “trifles which persons of greater zeal than discretion would obtrude upon the world as golden relics of primitive Christianity.” Southey said (in a letter to John May, Esq., dated Christchurch, Hampshire, 4th June 1797): —
