Mary Astell, John Norris, and a Small Mystery

Abstract

Mary Astell, John Norris, and a Small Mystery E. Derek Taylor and Melvyn New Recently Dr. Michael Ponsford, Marlborough College, purchased from a used book shop in Salisbury, a few miles from Bemerton (where John Norris lived throughout his clerical career), a first edition of Norris and Mary Astell’s Letters Concerning the Love of God (1695). Tucked inside were two slips containing almost verbatim renderings of two separate passages that would be among the changes made to the second edition, “Corrected by the Authors, with some few Things added,” published in 1705. The binding is early Georgian (perhaps 1720–30) and the slips were sewn in, probably inadvertently, the binder not realizing they were there. The first slip (see figure 1), laid facing a3v of Norris’s preface “To the Reader” is marked with two crosses in the printed text at the words “Christ tells us.” In the modern edition, edited by E. Derek Taylor and Melvyn New (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2005; hereafter Letters), the passage appears on p. 60, l. 28. As explained in the annotation to this passage, “In the second edition Norris adds a marginal note to this quoted passage from Bishop Lake: “I shall not conceal from the Reader, that Bishop Lake goes off again from this afterward: But ’tis plain that he is thus far very express to our Purpose. And if he knew not how to be consistent with himself, I cannot help it.” Norris is likely responding to Daniel Whitby, who, in his Discourse of the Love of God (1696) had quoted other portions of Lake’s seventh sermon that ‘shew that Excellent Prelate is an Adversary to the [End Page 51] Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 1. [End Page 52] Exposition of Mr. N . . .” (143). The text on the slip is almost verbatim (“I shall not conceal from the Reader that BP Lake goes off again from this afterwards but it’s plain that he is thus far express to our purpose and if he knew not how to be consistent with himself I cannot help it”). It has several changes in punctuation and other accidentals but only one substantive change, the addition of “very” to “express.” This manuscript slip also has a legend attached: “To Put into the 2d Edition.” The second slip (see figure 2) is twice the length of the first, laid facing the verso of the leaf numbered 49–50 of the first edition (Letters, 80) and again accompanied in the printed text with two crosses for insertion after the words, “more than pure Benevolence” (l. 30). In this instance, the Ashgate editors, using the second edition as their copy-text, included the footnote (Letters, 80). This is Astell’s letter III, and again the printed note, almost a verbatim rendering of the text on the slip, reads as follows: The Writer of this Letter, who does not think her self oblig’d to persist in a Mistake because she once fell into it, but shall always be glad to be convinc’d of an Error, and to retract it, as she confesses she was mistaken, and express’d her self crudely in several places of this Letter, so she desires to retract what is said in this: For she owns ’tis her Opinion that next to Sorrow for our own Sins, our Neighbours refusing to receive the Spiritual Good we wish them, is the justest, greatest, and most lasting Cause of Grief; and that though Death, or some Temporary Calamities, may excuse a few Temporary Tears, yet that only can challenge a deep and settled Concern. (Letters, 80, ll. 36–43) Astell had changed her mind concerning her earlier argument that disappointment over the failure of friends to accept the “Good” is selfish, now believing instead that it is a legitimate cause of lasting sorrow. Again, the text on the slip is almost verbatim, with only one substantive variant, wherein “convinc’d of her error” reads “convinc’d of an error.” Again, there is a legend added: the passage concludes after a dash with “this was put into the margin in the second edition by the Lady I suppose.” The slips are written...