First Edition. 4to. 412 leaves; [ ]
2, B-Z, Aa-Zz, 3A-3Z, 4A-4Z, 5A-5Z, 6A-6Z, 7A-7Z, 8A-8Z, 9A-9X
2, [ ]
2; the last 2 leaves for the list of Subscribers; engraved frontispiece and numerous plates after Ryley and others, text printed in double columns. The book is numbered in 50 parts, 5 signatures to each part. The paper is watermarked
1794, 1795, 1796, and several of the plates are dated 1796. The text ends on page 830, sig. 9X
2, at the year 1796, with the word FINIS at the foot of the page.
Jefferson’s letter to Duane below proves that there were two issues of this book, of which his was the second. The copy collated
above ends at the year 1796, page 830. Jefferson’s copy had two more leaves, paged 831-834, and carried the history to 1801.
Not in Lowndes.
Not in Watt.
No copy in the British Museum Catalogue.
Jefferson’s copy was bound in calf, gilt, by John March, on April 26, 1806, price $3.00; the bill for this and other bindings receipted by Joseph Milligan for T. March on May 30, 1806.
The book was bought for Jefferson by Mr.
Tunnicliffe from
W. & S. Jones, London (see no. 678), billed to Jefferson by that firm on August 3, 1805 (received by him on November 12), price £
2. 2. 0.
Jefferson wrote from Washington to Tunnicliffe on April 25, 1805, and appended a list of “
Articles which I ask the favor of mr. Tunnicliff to procure for me in London,” of which the first was “
Baxter’s history of England, an 8
vo. edition, if any, preferred to the 4
to.
”
Jefferson not only frequently wrote his opinion of Baxter’s History to his friends, but, according to the Journal of Francis
Calley Gray, expressed it to visitors to his library. Baxter’s work is included in all Jefferson’s lists of recommended historical
reading, usually with the explanation that it was Hume’s text republicanized.
Many times in his correspondence he contrasts the work of Baxter with that of Hume, as for instance in a letter to John Norvell,
of Danville, Kentucky, written on June 11, 1807, in answer to one requesting advice on reading: “
. . . there is however no general history of that country [i.e. Britain]
which can be recommended. the elegant one of Hume seems intended to disguise & discredit the good principles of the government.
. . Baxter has performed a good operation on it. he has taken the text of Hume as his ground work, abridging it by the omission
of some details of little interest, and wherever he has found him endeavoring to mislead, by either the suppression of a truth
or by giving it a false colouring, he has changed the text to what it should be, so that we may properly call it Hume’s history
republicanised. he has moreover continued the history (but indifferently) from where Hume left it, to the year: 1800. the
work is not popular in England, because it is republican, & but a few copies have ever reached America. it is a single 4
to. volume . . .
”
One year before his death, in his letter to George Washington Lewis, suggesting a course of historical reading for the University
of Virginia, dated from Monticello October 25, 1825, Jefferson wrote: “
. . . Hume, with Brodie, should be the last histories of England to be read. if first read, Hume makes an English tory, from
whence it is an easy step to American toryism.--but there is a History, by Baxter, in which, abridging somewhat by leaving
out some entire incidents as less interesting now than when Hume wrote, he has given the rest in the identical words of Hume,
except that when he comes to a fact falsified, he states it truly, and when to a suppression of truth he supplies it; never
otherwise changing a word. it is in fact an editio expurgata of Hume. those who shrink from the volume of Rapin, may read
this first and from this lay a first foundation in a basis of truth . . .
”
Jefferson tried without success to have Baxter’s History reprinted in the United States.
On August 12, 1810, in a letter to William Duane, written for this purpose, Jefferson gave a complete description of the book:
“
I have been long intending to write to you as one of the associated company for printing useful works. Our laws, language,
religion, politics, and manners are so deeply laid in English foundations, that we shall never cease to consider their history
as a part of ours, and to study ours in that as it’s origin. every one knows that judicious matter & charms of stile have
rendered Hume’s history the Manual of every student . . . it is this book which has undermined the free principles of the
English government . . . and the book will still continue to be read here as well as there. Baxter, one of Horne Tooke’s associates
in persecution, has hit on the only remedy the evil admits. he has taken Hume’s work, corrected in the text his misrepresentations,
supplied the truths which he sup-
”
