BIB_ID
159738
Accession number
MA 3443
Creator
Frere, John Hookham, 1769-1846.
Display Date
1819 June 8 :
Credit line
Purchased, 1980.
Description
1 item (7 pages) ; 22.4 x 18.5 cm
Notes
Frere starts the letter on June 8th and explains that he mislaid it for a fortnight; Frere gives the completion date at the end of the letter as June 26th.
Identity of the recipient from a reference to his most recent work and the work to be published next, "Tentamina Mythologica." A series of essays, to be called "Nova Tentamina Mythologica", was advertised at the back of "A Dissertation on the Disorder of Death."
Written from "Blakes Hotel / Jermyn Street."
Rev. Walter Whiter was a philologist and the Rector at Hardingham, Norfolk from 1797.
Identity of the recipient from a reference to his most recent work and the work to be published next, "Tentamina Mythologica." A series of essays, to be called "Nova Tentamina Mythologica", was advertised at the back of "A Dissertation on the Disorder of Death."
Written from "Blakes Hotel / Jermyn Street."
Rev. Walter Whiter was a philologist and the Rector at Hardingham, Norfolk from 1797.
Provenance
Purchased on the Acquisitions Fund, 1980.
Summary
Thanking him offering to send a copy of his new work ["A Dissertation on the Disorder of Death, or that State called Suspended Animation"] and saying he will give the other copy to [George] Canning "...who recollects with great pleasure the visit which he paid at Hardingham - after your endeavours to prevent us from being buried alive, I shall be glad to see times & things which have been looked upon as dead & buried these thousands of years dug up again & revived, the character & condition & principles of the primitive world are an object of the most envious and interesting & I will venture to say the most useful research - For whatever we may think (in these times) society is not a mere matter of [illegible] & Finance; society was never in any single instance originally constituted by such mechanic agents, nor can it be upheld by those alone, without the aid (unrecognized indeed & unthankfully disclaimed) of those principles upon which in all times it has been in the first instance constructed - What has trade & political economy done for the Natives of North America & Western Africa[;] compare this with what was done by the Jesuits in Paraguay & what is now doing by the Missionaries at Sierra Leone; and we have before us a picture of the principles of the Antient & Modern World (as far as regards their application to the first institution of society) exemplified in recent & familiar examples - To give a true picture of this antiquity of its ceremonious & Claustral character, of its learning (necessarily at first, and afterward by system) wholly oral & traditional, of the ascendancy which the learned & sacred [illegible] exercised over the civil & military branches of the Gov't, would be a task worthy of your style & powers of imagination without the possession of which (whatever small critics may think) the study of antiquity can produce nothing but pedantry & stupefaction...This would be a work which nobody that I ever met with or heard of, could execute so eloquently or so copiously in point of learning & sagacity as yourself - But whatever turn your researches may have taken (for Tentamina Mythologica is a comprehensive word) - I assure you that I look forward to the perusal of them with the greatest eagerness - Whatever comes from you will I am convinced contain not only much demonstrated truth but the seeds of much that may be demonstrated hereafter - for the intuitive faculty of discovering truth is one thing and almost in all instances precedes the possession of that logical form of proof which is necessary for communicating it to others or establishing it in general opinion;" explaining that he laid this letter aside and could not find it for a fortnight but adding that he is very anxious to hear about the "Tentamina" before it comes out which he surmises may not be before next winter or autumn; offering to correct the proof or forward the proof; adding "I am glad to find that you were pleased with Whistlecraft [Frere's nom-de-plume] - The reading public with the exception of all the best judges are pretty unanimously agreed not to understand it - they can not conceive a more ludicrous picture of human nature independent of any particular & personal drift[.] They say they can not see what the 'author is driving at' - I must now date again to my shame June 26th.
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