��Anecdotes by Joseph Cradock.
��But these days of friendly communication were, from various causes, speedily to pass away, and worse than indifference to succeed ; for, one morning Dr. Percy said to Mr. Cradock, 1 1 have not seen Dr. Johnson for a long time. I believe I must just call upon him, and greatly wish that you would accompany me. I intend,' said he, 'to tease him a little about Gibbon's pamphlet.' ' I hope not, Dr. Percy,' was my reply. ' Indeed I shall ; for I have a great pleasure in combating his narrow prejudices.' We went together; and Dr. Percy opened with some anecdote from Northumberland House x , mentioned some rare books that were in the library ; and then threw out that the town rang with applause of Gibbon's Reply to Davis]' that the latter 'had written before he had read,' and that the two
- confederate doctors,' as Mr. Gibbon termed them, c had fallen
into some strange errors 2 .' Johnson said, he knew nothing of
��1 He had an apartment in North umberland House, ' in which,' says Boswell, ' I have passed many an agreeable hour. 3 Life, iii. 420, n. 5.
2 H. E. Davis, a Bachelor of Arts of Oxford, published in 1778 An Examination of the \$th and \6th Chapters of Mr. Gibbon's History. Gibbon, in A Vindication, answered at the same time the attacks of two Doctors of Divinity Randolph and Chelsum. He describes how, 'op pressed with the same yoke, covered with the same trappings, they heavily move along, perhaps not with an equal pace, in the same beaten track of prejudice and preferment. ... It was the misfortune of Mr. Davis that he undertook to write before he had read. But the two confederate doctors appear to be scholars of a higher form and longer experience ; they enjoy a certain rank in their academical world ; and as their zeal is enlightened by some rays of know ledge, so their desire to ruin the credit of their adversary is occasion ally checked by the apprehension of
��injuring their own.' Gibbon's Misc. Works, iv. 604.
Gibbon, in his Autobiography (ib. i. 231) writes : ' At the distance of twelve years I calmly affirm my judgment of Davis, Chelsum, &c. A victory over such antagonists was a sufficient humiliation. They, how ever, were rewarded in this world. Poor Chelsum was, indeed, neglected . . . but I enjoyed the pleasure of giving a royal pension to Mr. Davis.' Ib. i. 231.
Horace Walpole wrote to Gibbon (Letters, vii. 158): 'Davis and his prototypes tell you Middleton, &c. have used the same objections, and they have been confuted j answering, in the theologic dictionary, signifying confuting?
'How utterly,' wrote Macaulay, ' all the attacks on Gibbon's History are forgotten ! this of Whitaker ; Randolph's ; Chelsum's ; Davies's ; that stupid beast Joseph Milner's ; even Watson's.' Trevelyan's Mac aulay, ed. 1877, ii. 285.
Davis's
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