Chapter XXXIII · (continued 2)

60. In these early letters, I am ready to admit, the scheme of the Turkish Spy may be entirely traced. Marana appears not only to have planned the historical part of the letters, but to have struck out the more original and striking idea of a Mohammedan wavering with religious scruples, which the English continuator has followed up with more philosophy and erudition. The internal evidence for their English origin, in all the latter volumes, is to my apprehension exceedingly strong; but I know the difficulty of arguing from this to convince a reader. The proof we demand is the production of these volumes in French, that is, the specification of some public or private library where they may be seen, in any edition anterior to 1691, and nothing short of this can be satisfactory evidence.[1059]

“In the Life of Mrs. Manley, published under the title of ‘The Adventures of Rivella,’ printed in 1714, in pages 14 and 15, it is said, That her father, Sir Roger Manley, was the genuine author of the first volume of the Turkish Spy. Dr. Midgley, an ingenious physician, related to the family by marriage, had the charge of looking over his papers, among which he found that manuscript, which he easily reserved to his proper use: and both by his own pen and the assistance of some others, continued the work until the eighth volume, without ever having the justice to name the author of the first.” MS. note in the copy of the Turkish Spy (edit. 1732), in the British Museum.

Another MS. note in the same volume gives the following extract from Dunton’s Life and Errors. “Mr. Bradshaw is the best accomplished hackney writer I have met with; his genius was quite above the common size, and his style was incomparably fine.... So soon as I saw the first volume of the Turkish Spy, the very style and manner of writing convinced me that Bradshaw was the author.... Bradshaw’s wife owned that Dr. Midgley had engaged him in a work which would take him some years to finish, for which the Doctor was to pay him 40s. per sheet.... So that ’tis very probable (for I cannot swear I saw him write it), that Mr. William Bradshaw was the author of the Turkish Spy; were it not for this discovery, Dr. Midgley had gone off with the honour of that performance.” It thus appears that in England it was looked upon as an original work; though the authority of Dunton is not very good for the facts he tells, and that of Mrs. Manley much worse. But I do not quote them as evidence of such facts, but of common report. Mrs. Manley, who claims for her father the first volume, certainly written by Marana, must be set aside; as to Dr. Midgley and Mr. Bradshaw, I know nothing to confirm or refute what is here said.

Swift’s Tale of a Tub. 61. It would not, perhaps, be unfair bring within the pale of the seventeenth century an effusion of genius, sufficient to redeem our name in its annals of fiction. The Tale of a Tub, though not published till 1704, was chiefly written, as the author declares, eight years before; and the Battle of the Books subjoined to it, has every appearance of recent animosity against the opponents of Temple and Boyle, is the question of Phalaris. The Tale of a Tub is, in my apprehension, the masterpiece of Swift; certainly Rabelais has nothing superior, even in invention, nor anything so condensed, so pointed, so full of real meaning, of biting satire, of felicitous analogy. The Battle of the Books is such an improvement of the similar combat in the Lutrin, that we can hardly own it is an imitation.