"I was very much surprised with what you tell me, that you had made a
new edition in quarto, of my History of the Tudors, and might probably
do the same with that of the Stuarts. I imagined that the octavo edition
would for a long time supersede the necessity of any quarto edition; and
I wonder that of the ancient history did not first become requisite. You
were in the wrong to make any edition without informing me; because I
left in Scotland a copy very fully corrected, with a few alterations,
which ought to have been followed. I shall write to my sister to send it
you, and I desire you may follow it in all future editions, if there be
any such. I shall send you from here the alterations, which my perusal
of King James's Memoirs has occasioned; they are not many, but some of
them, one in particular, is of importance. I have some scruple of
inserting it, on your account, till the sale of the other editions be
pretty considerably advanced. You have not yet informed me how many you
may have upon hand. I suppose a very considerable number. Father Gordon
of the Scots College, who has an exact memory of King James's Memoirs,
was so kind as to peruse anew my History during the Commonwealth, and
the reigns of the two brothers; and he marked all the passages of fact,
where they differed from the Memoirs. They were surprisingly few; which
gave me some satisfaction; because as I told you, I take that prince's
authority for a plain fact to be very good.
"I never see Mr. Wilkes here but at chapel, where he is a most regular,
and devout, and edifying, and pious attendant; I take him to be entirely
regenerate. He told me last Sunday, that you had given him a copy of my
Dissertations, with the two which I had suppressed;[202:1] and that he,
foreseeing danger, from the sale of his library, had wrote to you to
find out that copy, and to tear out the two obnoxious dissertations.
Pray how stands that fact? It was imprudent in you to intrust him with
that copy: it was very prudent in him to use that precaution. Yet I do
not naturally suspect you of imprudence, nor him of prudence. I must
hear a little farther before I pronounce."[202:2]
Millar, writing on 5th June, gives the following account of his conduct
as to the suppressed dissertations.