The frontispiece to the 1793 edition of Gasts History of Greece.

The engraver Henry Brocas (1766-1837) was a prominent Dublin artist,

chiefly known for his portraits and caricatures of public figures in late
eighteenth-century Dublin. He often worked for the publisher John Exshaw.
See P. J. Raftery, The Brocas family, notable Dublin artists, Dublin
Historical Review 17, No 1 (December 1961) pp. 25-34; Patricia Butler,
Introducing Mr. Brocas: A Family of Dublin Artists, Irish Arts Review
Yearbook 15 (1999) pp. 80-86.
 Ireland invents Greek history: the lost
historian John Gast
by Oswyn Murray

The growing interest in historical studies observable throughout

much of western Europe in the eighteenth century is apparent in
Ireland also.

J. C. Beckett, Eighteenth century Ireland

Introduction to T. W. Moody, W. E. Vaughan (eds.),
A New History of Ireland IV Eighteenth Century Ireland
1691-1800 (Oxford 1986) p. lx.

This discovery, indeed, is almost of that kind which I call

Serendipity, a very expressive word, which, as I have nothing better
to tell you, I shall endeavour to explain to you: you will understand
it better by the derivation than by the definition. I once read a silly
fairy tale, called the three Princes of Serendip: as their Highnesses
travelled, they were always making discoveries, by accidents and
sagacity, of things which they were not in quest of: for instance, one
of them discovered that a mule blind of the right eye had travelled
the same road lately, because the grass was eaten only on the left
side, where it was worse than on the right now do you understand
Serendipity?

Horace Walpole letter to Horace Mann, 28 January

1754 (Walpoles Correspondence vol 20 pp. 407-11).

The Search
One of my more innocent occupations in retirement is a
fortnightly duty as a room steward in the decayed National
Trust property of Chastleton House. It was built just after 1600
by Walter Jones, an immensely wealthy lawyer in the Star
Chamber, the Court of High Treason, under Queen Elizabeth
and James I, who had managed (by whatever means) to obtain
the estate of Robert Catesby shortly before he was executed for
his part in Guy Fawkess Gunpowder Plot. Jones built a
uniquely ostentatious house with craftsmen diverted from the
Oxford colleges, which is today the most unchanged Jacobean
house in England. The reason is that the family of Walter Jones
completely failed to match up to their grand house: for four
24 Oswyn Murray

hundred years they simply vegetated in indigent obscurity, often

on the verge of bankruptcy. They acquired or married no title
and no fortune; the name of Jones does not resound through
British history; scarcely a single member of the family pursued a
respectable or rewarding profession; there are no successful
lawyers after Walter, or members of the armed forces, no
clergymen, and few of them seem even to have gone to
university. Their diaries are full of the price of turnips and the
number of crows shot. They claimed to have lost their money in
the war, by which they meant the Civil War (one of them had
fought at the battle of Worcester); and they excused their
idleness by saying that as Stuart royalists they were excluded
from the benefits of Hanoverian patronage. In the nineteenth
century they showed their level of occupation by inventing the
rules of croquet, and several card games. They slowly lost
whatever land they had; but they loved the house, their only
claim to gentility, and they kept it in repair as best they could.
Finally in 1991 after nearly 400 years the last owner departed
with her twenty-four cats, and the National Heritage Fund
presented the house and its contents to the National Trust,
which after essential repairs opened the house to the public in
1996.
It is a numinous place, full of dust and neglect, almost
unchanged since its creation, the grandest room of all, the Long
Gallery in the attic, still unfinished. The contents (apart from
some wonderful early tapestries) are of little value, and so the
task of a steward is a peaceful one, to sit in a different room on
each occasion, chatting to visitors and reflecting on the minute
changes wrought over four hundred years of uneventful history.
The library (apart from housing the Bible that was reputedly
used by Charles I on the scaffold, donated by the family of
Archbishop Juxon of Little Compton, just down the road), is a
relatively modern creation and quite unremarkable; it represents
the quiet silting-up of the pastimes of unbookish generations,
whose chief reading was the Gentlemans Magazine, the novels of
Walter Scott, or works on estate management and local
antiquities. I had spent many happy afternoons staring at the
spines of the books (which are protected from being inspected
by piano wire) before slowly one of them began to impinge on
my consciousness: it was labelled Gasts History of Greece, in
 The lost historian John Gast 25

an obviously eighteenth-century binding. This was a book I had

never heard of: what could it possibly contain? At that point I
little knew that I was about to overturn the fundamental picture
of eighteenth-century historical writing.
This nagging question drove me finally in March 2008 to
investigate John Gast on the web. There is no information
available in any current biographical dictionary (another
eighteenth-century John Gast, the first trade unionist in the
dockyards, captures all the attention). I turned to the ultimate
source for all serious bibliomaniacs, the website Abebooks,
which lists all books for sale in the English-speaking world and
most of the continent of Europe. To my delight there were
several copies of Gasts History for sale, with various dates and
different titles, and with different publishers, all in the
eighteenth century. I ordered the cheapest obviously, I
thought, a pirated edition, being printed in Dublin, that
notorious centre of book pirates, and published later than all but
one of the others, in 1793.
But I was wrong. It arrived as two volumes, and the title
page revealed that the work was written by John Gast D.D.,
Archdeacon of Glandelagh and vicar of Newcastle, a tiny hamlet
just within the Pale near Dublin. This two volume edition had
been seen through the press by his friend and former pupil
Joseph Stock after Gasts death in 1788, and it was published by
John Exshaw, a very respectable publisher and bookseller, twice
Lord Mayor of Dublin.1 Most valuable of all, the editor had
included a personal memoir of the author as a preface, which
contained a description of how the work had been created in its
various versions, to arrive at its final form as a grand narrative of
more than twelve hundred pages.2

1
See Mire Kennedy, Printer to the City: John Exshaw, Lord Mayor of Dublin,
1789-90 on the website of Gallery C, Raleigh, North Carolina. From the 1730s
Exshaw had published a literary journal, Exshaws Magazine, which focussed
significantly on European and especially French literature: see Geraldine Sheridan,
Irish Literary Review Magazines and Enlightenment France 1730-1790 in G.
Gargett and G. Sheridan, Ireland and the French Enlightenment 1700-1800 (Dublin
1999) pp. 21-46.
2
Reprinted with other biographical material in Appendix 1.
26 Oswyn Murray

John Gast, historian of Greece

The first version of Gasts History was entitled The rudiments of
the Grecian history, from the first establishment of the states of
Greece to the overthrow of their liberties in the days of Philip the
Macedonian. In thirteen dialogues. It was published in Dublin by
private subscription in 1753,3 a generation earlier than any other
known serious history of Greece, and the year before the
publication of the first volume of Humes History of England,
potentially a far more popular subject, which however as Hume
said after the first ebullitions of .... fury .. seemed to sink into
oblivion, only 45 copies being sold in a twelvemonth. Until
recently there were two copies of this edition of Gast known to
me: one is in the British Library, and one is in the library of
Trinity College Dublin, which I was able to inspect in 2008 on
a visit to Dublin; there is also a distant report of a copy in
Williamsburg.4 But in the summer of 2009 a copy which had
once belonged to Erasmus Darwin appeared on the antiquarian
market, and I was unable to resist the temptation to buy it: it is
autographed Dr. Darwin and contains a number of manuscript
notes.5 This book covers the history of Greece from the mythical
period to the death of Philip of Macedon in approximately 650
pages a substantial work compared to anything before the
early nineteenth century.
The book was apparently occasioned by Gasts work as a
teacher (he ran a school of great reputation in Fishamble Street
alongside his clerical duties),6 and is written in dialogue form.
There are three characters, a master, a scholar who has made
some progress in ancient history, and a novice. This
catechistical style of teaching goes back in Irish education as far
as Saint Patrick and early Anglo-Latin; it was fascinating to find

3
Dublin, printed by S. Powell for the author, 1753.
4
The William and Mary Quarterly 15 (1906) p. 103. The text is (I subsequently
discovered) available on the Web.
5
It also contains the autograph of J. Freer; there are a number of marginal notes
and underlinings in the early pages as far as p. 53; but it is not clear which of the two
owners is responsible for which of these. The bookseller, Dr. Christian White of
Ilkley, could only tell me that it had come ultimately from a private collection in
Lincoln, and that interestingly the boards are covered with marbled paper that
resembles that used in a volume of medical notes owned by Erasmus Darwin in the
1750s and now in the Library of St Johns College, Cambridge.
6
See John Gilbert, History of the City of Dublin (Dublin 1854-9) i p. 90, quoted
below in Appendix 1, no. 3.
 The lost historian John Gast 27

it still in use in Dublin as late as the eighteenth century. As a

result of this publication the University of Dublin conferred on
the author the degree of D.D. without any expence. But later
his friends persuaded him that in the age of David Hume the
dialogue form was too antiquated for the modern world, and he
undertook to turn the text into a straightforward narrative.

John Gast and John Murray

Before doing so, however, he wished to continue his history
from the age of Alexander to the present day. This took him
many years; finally in the early 1780s John Murray, the famous
London publisher, in contact with Joseph Stock, who was
editing for him the works of Bishop Berkeley, got wind of other
histories of Greece being prepared, those of John Gillies in
Edinburgh and of William Mitford in England. Murray urged
Gast through Stock to publish at least this second part of the
work separately to forestall competition, and the book The
History of Greece, from the Accession of Alexander of Macedon, till
its final subjection by the Roman Power was finally issued by John
Murray in London in 1782. This book is available in the
Bodleian Library in a fine quarto volume, in the same format as
the original edition of Gibbons Decline and Fall, whose first
volume was published by Thomas Cadell in 1776, and the
remainder between 1781 and 1788; and, as I later verified, this
is the volume in the Chastleton library. On my visit to Dublin I
also had the pleasure of inspecting the copy presented by the
author himself to Archbishop Marshs Library of St Patricks
Cathedral.
The Chastleton copy shows little sign of having been
opened, but it does contain the autograph on the flyleaf of J.H.
Whitmore. John Henry Whitmore (1795/6-1853) was great-
grandson of Sir William Whitmore, whose sister had married
the fourth owner of Chastleton; and he inherited the house in
1828 on the demise of the direct line of Joneses, taking the
name Whitmore-Jones; he came with money and ideas: he was
responsible for buying much of the antique furniture in the
house, and for rearranging its internal layout, creating for
instance the first dining-room, installing a modern range in the
kitchen, and probably bricking up most of the fireplaces to take
coal, now available in the Banbury region with the opening of
28 Oswyn Murray

the Birmingham-Oxford canal. To judge from the way he signs

his name, this book, like many in the library, came with him
from his own family. In view of the relationship between
Gibbon and Gast (discussed below), it is interesting that the
Chastleton library contains a set of Gibbon with Gibbon
Decline Fall Roman Empire on the spine, the first volume in
the third edition of 1777, the last five volumes in the first
editions of 1781 and 1788; and it also contains the separately
published first volume in the first edition of 1776, with
Gibbons Roman Empire on the spine. None of these books
gives the impression of having been opened, and none contains
an autograph.
Joseph Stocks introduction of 1793 gives a number of
letters about the competition for primacy between Gast, Gillies
and Mitford; and in the autumn of 2008 I visited the John
Murray Archive, recently deposited in the National Library of
Scotland, Edinburgh.7 This contains a series of manuscript
books into which all letters written by John Murray were copied
in longhand, as a record of the publishers dealings with his
authors. To my delight these letters reveal in great detail the
entire publishing history of the volume of 1782; they offer
indeed one of the most complete records of the publication of
any book before the modern age, and I have therefore decided
with the permission of the National Library to publish all the
relevant documents as an appendix to this article.8
In fact, from the John Murray Archive, it appears that the
connection with Gibbon is far more than accidental. John
Murray had been impressed by the huge success of the first
volume of Gibbons Decline and Fall (which of course ended
with the controversial chapters XV and XVI on the role of
Christianity in the decline and fall), published in 1776 by one of
his main competitors in publishing, Thomas Cadell; and he was
searching for a response. From the correspondence it emerges
that he had heard through Joseph Stock, one of his authors,
7
I am grateful to my friend Grant McIntyre, former editor at John Murray, for
drawing my attention to the archive, and to Dr. Toby Barnard of Hertford College
Oxford for confirming to me its importance for Gast.
8
See Appendix 2. Compare The Letters of David Hume to William Strachan ed.
G. Birkbeck Hill (Oxford 1888). The best general account of the publishing industry
in this period known to me is William St Clair, The Reading Nation in the Romantic
Period (Cambridge 2004).
 The lost historian John Gast 29

about his friend John Gasts work, and the idea of a rival history
of Greece much attracted him. Gast replied that the entire work
would consist of three volumes quarto, but he was not yet ready
to publish, and not worried about forestalling other writers,
notably John Gillies. He did however suggest the possibility of
publishing separately as a thick quarto ten of his books which
were already finished, from the beginning of Alexanders reign
to the final subjection of the Grecian people to the Roman
power. The rest could follow later. This idea of a decline and
fall of Greece was even more attractive to John Murray, who
wrote with suitable advice on how to approach such a theme:

I have observed that all our successful historical writers, particularly

Hume, Gibbon and Robertson, have reduced their works to the
level of the understanding of common readers. They interrupt not
their narratives either with deep learning or with profound
criticism. They preserve the thread of their story from interruptions
of all kinds; they heighten its interest, and carry their readers to the
conclusion impatient to unwind the chain of events, and to enjoy
the catastrophe ... I do not mean that references to Authorities
should not be given; these we find in the authors I have mentioned
and should be given in a similar manner. I only contend that an
historian should render his work as interesting to the reader as truth
will permit. Affect the heart properly, and the business is
accomplished.

But when the first sections of Gasts manuscript arrived, Murray

began to have doubts: he wrote confidentially to Joseph Stock,
If the performance is deficient in anything it is in elegance and
correctness of style. This work was clearly never going to
compete with the great triumvirate of historians. Nevertheless he
was impressed with the subject matter and the way that Mr
Gast writes more from the heart than any of the Historians. He
proceeded to enlist the help of half a dozen literary friends to
rewrite Gast in more elegant English. Then he got cold feet at
this tampering with the manuscript, and decided to send Gast
22 sheets printed up, for him to agree to the corrections, made
by a few learned Friends who approved of the intrinsic Merit of
the performance, but recommended, as indispensibly necessary,
a little more polish to be made in the Style in order to
accommodate the Work to the Taste of the Times.
Unfortunately he sent the packet through William Hallhead, a
30 Oswyn Murray

publisher in Dublin, who went bankrupt and never delivered it.

When Murray received no reply, he became very anxious; and
when the next batch of proofs was ready, he persuaded his
brother-in-law, Mr John Ormston of Dublin, to deliver them
personally to Gasts house. Only then was the reason for Gasts
silence revealed, and the packet was retrieved from the bankrupt
publisher. But the damage had been done: Gast now had over
400 printed pages of his corrected text and it was far too late to
object.
Gast was a dilatory author, and the last sections arrived very
slowly. Murray had heard that Gilliess as yet unpublished
volume enlarged a good deal upon the manners, customs,
weapons, literature, philosophy etc of the Ancient Greeks ....It
may be advanced that you mean to perform what I require in
the first part of your History, which is to follow the present
publication it may be answered that it is necessary to do it in
both, the Age of Miltiades and Aristides etc being very different
from the successors of Alexander down to the final reduction of
Greece to the Roman yoke. So Murray asked for a preface and
an introduction giving some account of manners, Customs etc
etc of the periods of people whose history you record. On the
14th January 1782 he asked plaintively if the work was to finish
with Book VIII, since Gast had indicated more sections, but had
not sent them. Finally on 26th February he gave up, and decided
to publish what he had, rewriting the preface and leaving the
introduction, an index and the fragments of books IX-X which
Gast had finally released to a possible future edition.
He tried to mollify Gast who (he imagined) would naturally
object to his treatment of the text:

Now that the business is thus far advanced, I have to assure you that
if my nearest relation had been the author of the work I could not
have attended to it more diligently, or taken more pains to
introduce it with reputation into the world. Some errors it is
impossible but you should discern, but I flatter myself that these are
but few compared with the improvements (and these without
altering intentionally a single idea of the authors) which have been
made. But were the errors derived from my management to be
much more numerous than at present I can conceive them to be,
you have this consolation that 500 copies only are printed, and that
if the book is in request you will soon have an opportunity of
removing all errors in a new edition.
 The lost historian John Gast 31

In April Murray was busy pushing the book: he sent 60 copies

to Gast in Dublin, to be sold for his benefit and in an attempt to
forestall a pirated edition from Dublin publishers; he asked
Stock to contact his important friends in Ireland, and himself
proposed delivering copies to the two most famous Irishmen in
London, Edmund Burke and Edmund Malone. There is no
record of any response from Burke; but Malone, the friend of
Johnson and Boswell, first scholarly editor of Shakespeare and
schoolfellow of Gibbons great patron Lord Sheffield, was
complimentary.9 Murray arranged for a review in the new
European Magazine for May, which remarked on the previous
lack of any serious history of Greece and the fact that the
learned author of this work, belongs to a country which is now
rising to eminence in every path of national glory, and
compared Gast favourably with Gibbon:

Dr Gast is equally a friend to religion, and to the liberties of

mankind; and, unlike to the historian of the Roman empire
(Gibbon) the zeal of our historian is uniformly directed to promote
the best interests of human society.

One suspects indeed that Murray had a hand in the actual

writing of the review; for he had asked Gast or Stock to supply
some biographical information for the section of Anecdotes of
the Author which (despite their apparent failure to comply)
duly appeared in the June issue of the magazine, clearly invented
by the publisher.10
There was also a long review of the work in The Monthly
Review for 1782; the review is anonymous, but was in fact
written by William Enfield, a prolific reviewer with no special
expertise in antiquity.11 He begins by commenting on the
originality of Gasts subject:

9
Malone was also one of the subscribers to the Dublin edition of 1793.
10
European Magazine May 1782, pp. 354-5; June 1782, pp. 429-30; I give
excerpts from this review in Appendix 2 no. 24.
11
See Appendix 2 no. 25 from The Monthly Review (1st Series London 1749-89)
lxvii (1782) pp. 424-32. For William Enfield see the entry in the old DNB. The
Review was edited by the well known literary figure and publisher Ralph Griffiths,
whose set of volumes I have used: it is in the Bodleian Library, and is marked with the
names of his reviewers; see B.C. Nangle, The Monthly review, first series 1749-1789:
indexes of contributors and articles (Oxford 1934).
32 Oswyn Murray

It is somewhat surprising, that, although there is no portion of

history which seems to invite the labours of the historian with fairer
promise of success, than that of ancient Greece, this undertaking
has never yet been executed in the English language, in a manner
which has commanded any high degree of attention or applause.
From the valuable materials for such a work, preserved in records
which always lie open to the examination of the learned, it was
natural to expect that some able and industrious writer, for the
reputation of his country, and his own, would, long before this
time, have produced a history of Greece, which might have
appeared with credit on the same shelf with our modern histories of
Rome, England, and Scotland.
This, we presume, is the undertaking which, with respect to a
part of the Grecian History, Dr. Gast has here attempted. For what
reason he has chosen to write the history of the Decline and Fall of
the Greek states, rather than that of their Rise and Progress, we are
uninformed. In the latter, he would certainly have found a greater
variety of interesting facts, and a richer collection of excellent
models: and there seems no ground to apprehend that the execution
would have been attended with greater difficulty, or that the work
would have been less acceptable to the Public. That part of the
Grecian history of which Dr. Gast has chosen to treat, is, however
sufficiently splendid and instructive to merit the labour he has
bestowed upon it.

These comments show the reviewers independence from John

Murrays promotional efforts, and the originality of Gasts
theme of Greek history, as well as the evident oddity of starting
with the Decline and Fall. The reviewer continues with a brief
account of the contents of the work, before passing judgment on
it:

Such, in a general view, is the field of history which Dr. Gast has
gone over. The materials (except perhaps that, in some cases, he
leans towards the side of credulity, particularly in retailing so much
at large the marvellous tales of Quintus Curtius respecting
Alexander) are judiciously selected; and the arrangement is clear and
perspicuous. If the Author discovers no peculiar depth of
penetration in his reflections, he neither offends his reader with
novelties, nor dazzles him with subtleties. In this respect, a pretty
close resemblance may be observed between his manner and that of
the popular Rollin. His style, if not highly ornamented, is, in
common correct and perspicuous.

After several pages of quotation, the review concludes:

 The lost historian John Gast 33

On the whole, we are so well satisfied with the execution of this

History, that we recommend it to our Readers, without scruple, as a
work of real merit and utility. A judicious Index would have been
a valuable addition to so large a work.

Despite this somewhat lukewarm reception, the publication was

by no means a failure; but equally it was not a great success, as
Murrays final letter to Gast reveals. In 1784 Gast asked for
100 in royalties, and offered a further volume of the History to
be prepared in return. Murray was not willing to meet his
demands:

I attend to what you mention of the first part of the Grecian

History that you have nearly ready, and which you have been
induced to proceed in from the flattering reception given to the
part already published, and at the earnest solicitations of several
perhaps too flattering friends It will not be supposed that I have an
Interest in opposing your Book, for next to the Author I believe I
possess the greatest Affection for it, but this affection were it even
greater would not permit me to shut my Eyes to facts. The
flattering reception a book meets with is ascertained according to
the Ideas of a Bookseller by its sale. The Sale is the touchstone of its
reception. Your book has not been reprinted at Dublin, now sixty in
all were sent there, are those sold if they were, it would be no very
flattering reception for the Kingdom of Ireland to purchase Sixty
copies of any one Book but if they are not sold believe not too
much in the flattering reception your Book has met with.

Nevertheless Murray was willing to accept further volumes on

the same conditions as before, to split all profits fifty-fifty. But
he was frank about the problems that he had experienced with
Gasts style:

The little Omissions and alterations in the Volume published which

you complain of I admit may have happened, but in no great
degree. You was at too great a distance to consult in every
Emergency, and it is to be hoped that the correction given to the
Style much more than Compensates for these. The truth is that in
the dress you sent it your MS. could not have been printed with the
remotest Prospect of success. This was not particularly my own
Opinion, but that of every Gentleman of learning and taste to
whom it was submitted. In this situation what was to be done the
reputation of the author as well as the Sale of the Book were
concerned and I must either have returned your Work, or venture
on the step I took, the first must have mortified you exceedingly,
34 Oswyn Murray

and the second was dangerous, as few Authors chuse to have their
MSS. corrected even to their advantage. I ventured however on the
last at the expense of 50 guineas which it cost me and this money
which I paid will convince you how essentially necessary I thought
the Improvement. Nor perhaps will your Pride suffer upon the
Occasion when I tell you that Dr Stuart Author of the History of
Queen Mary, Mr Richardson Author of a dissertation on the
Manners and Literature of Eastern Nations as well as of a Persian
and English Dictionary Mr Liston whom I expect in Town from
Madrid as he is now superseded at that Court by Lord Chesterfield
and some other Gentlemen of Taste and Learning are the persons to
whom your history is obliged for the alterations and I hope
Improvements made in its Language. If ever your facts and
sentiments were altered it must have been done inadvertently as
they studied always to preserve these religiously. After this narrative
let me not conceal one thing the last Book was by far the best
written and stood in need of the least Correction and I hope the
Improvement Exhibited in it will be continued in that portion of
the work which you are now finishing you should however be
active for a history of Greece by Dr Gillies which I formerly
mentioned is not abandoned. The Author is expected in Town from
Lausanne about this time, if he is not already arrived and his Work I
should think will be published early in the next Winter.

After this verdict it cannot have surprised the author that the
accounts presented up to April 6th 1784 revealed that although
350 copies had been sold out of 500 printed, there remained a
loss of 6-15-2 on an expenditure of 286-15-2.12 Of that cost a
huge 52 was attributed To Paid Sundries Correcting and
Improving the Language. Nor can it have surprised the
publisher that the author continued to fail to produce the
promised new volume.

12
See W. Zachs, The First John Murray and the Late Eighteenth-Century London
Book Trade (London 1998) pp. 72-4; p. 209 no. 306: on Murrays death in 1793, 56
copies were unsold, and in 1807 the book could still be bought in a London
remainder shop.
 The lost historian John Gast 35

The Afterlife of Gasts History of 1782

The volume of 1782 had a respectable afterlife on the continent
of Europe. It was reprinted by the notorious book pirate J.J.
Tourneisen of Basel in 1797, and was simultaneously translated
into German by L.T. Kosegarten as Geschichte der Griechenland
seit Alexander des Macedoniers Thronbesteigung bis zur endlichen
Unterjochung durch die Rmer (Weidmann, Leipzig 1796 and
1798).13 In 1812 it was used for an Histoire de la Grce which
combined Oliver Goldsmith for the early history with Gast for
the later, translated by the Duchesse de Villeroy and published
in Paris. Thereafter it fell into obscurity; although I fear that it
may well have given John Gillies of Edinburgh the idea of
continuing his own very boring History of Greece (1786) with a
further pedestrian volume in 1807 entitled The History of the
World from the reign of Alexander to that of Augustus.14 In Britain
the last reference I have so far been able to find is its use as a
source in the 12th edition (1837) of the standard schoolbook of
the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, Oliver
Goldsmiths History of Greece.15

The Rudiments of the Grecian History of 1753

In the preface to his later works16 Gast divides Greek history
into five periods. The first is from the earliest accounts to the
expulsion of the Pisistratidae, the second is the age of glory
from the Pisistratidae to the death of Cimon; the third the
decline from the death of Cimon to that of Philip of Macedon;
the fourth from the succession of Alexander the Great to the
first interference of the Romans in the affairs of Greece; and

13
L.T. Kosegarten (1758-1818), poet and translator, also translated Adam
Smith, Goldsmiths History of Rome, and John Gillies History of Greece; these
references are drawn from the digital archive of the Bibliotheca Academica
Translationum.
14
There are brief references to Gast in later German handbooks by Arnold
Heeren, son-in-law and successor of Christian Gottlob Heyne as professor at
Gttingen University, and August Boeckh.
15
Pinnocks Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmiths History of Greece, abridged for the
use of schools, 12th edition by W.C. Taylor, A.B. of Trinity College Dublin (London
1837) p. iii: perhaps Taylors use of Leland and Gast is due to his Dublin connection.
16
This is repeated at the start of the 1782 (pp. viii-xiii) and 1793 (pp. xxviii-
xxxii) volumes, and already prefigured in Rudiments p. 7 note h. It seems original to
Gast: the division offered by Tourreil (see below n. 41) is quite different, involving
four ages till at last she sunk under the power of the Romans (Eng. trans. p. 4).
36 Oswyn Murray

finally the period which closes the melancholy prospect of the

Grecian decline, comprehends the several plans of avowed
hostility and of disguised perfidiousness, which the Romans
employed in order to subject and accustom this illustrious
people to the yoke of servitude. This stage has lasted until the
present age and the condition in which the abject race, who
now bear the name of Greeks, are to be found at this day, under
the cruel and humiliating scourge of despotism.
The volume of 1753 is devoted to the first three of these
periods; and despite its curious dialogue form it is a work of very
considerable originality.17 Indeed it is the pedagogical device of
the dialogue itself that enabled Gast to write the first truly
critical account of Greek history in terms both of scholarship
and of personal and political opinions. For the pupils are made
to repeat and defend the conventional narrative as it appears
from a careful but literal study of the ancient sources, while their
Master continually explains to them that there is another reality
behind the texts that they have misunderstood. Not all Gasts
rationalising interpretations would command widespread assent
today, but there is no doubt that they represent critical attempts
to discover the truth behind the ancient sources. Thus the view
of the Second Trojan War as a trade dispute is nowadays held
only by a few dim archaeologists; and only modern producers of
Hollywood epics believe that Achilles was treacherously
murdered while attempting to change sides, tricked by the offer
of the hand in marriage of Priams daughter even if Gast can
produce a footnote referring this information to two apparently
reputable ancient sources, Dictys Cretensis and Hyginus.18
Nevertheless the Master in these dialogues is attempting to
introduce modern French rational standards of historical

17
The dialogue form was used more appropriately for philosophical argument by
Lord Shaftesbury in The Moralists (1709) and Bishop Berkeley in his Three Dialogues
(1713) and Alciphron (1732), as later by David Hume in his Dialogues concerning
Natural Religion (1779). In antiquarian studies it had been used by Joseph Addison in
his Dialogues upon the Usefulness of Ancient Medals (written c. 1703, published 1721);
but none of these had the didactic purpose of Gast.
18
Gast, Rudiments Dialogue IV p. 132 But even Gast sometimes nods: in the
1753 edition in a moment of pure hallucination he calls the girl Iphigenia; this is
silently corrected in 1793 (vol. I p. 119) to Polyxena. Who on earth persuaded
Wolfgang Petersen, the director of Troy (2004) the greatest sword and sandal epic of
all time, to revive this forgotten ancient fantasy? I fear someone must have been
reading Robert Graves.
 The lost historian John Gast 37

criticism to his rather conventional and text-ridden students, in

the style that, according to Joseph Stock, Gast himself practised
on his own pupils: we are indeed privileged with a view directly
into the eighteenth-century Irish classroom.19
In the 1753 version the first four dialogues are taken up with
the historical treatment of Greek myth, based on French and
English antiquarian scholarship of the early eighteenth century.
One example of Gasts method, the account of the myth of
Saturn and his children, will illustrate how he approaches his
task:

The Poets have feigned, that his Father Saturn attempted to devour
all his male Children; but that three of them, Jupiter, Neptune, and
Pluto, being saved by the Artifice of their Mother Rhea, made War
on their Father, dethroned him, and banished him to the remotest
and most dreary Regions of the Earth. The Universe was afterwards
divided among the three Brothers; Jupiter had the Heavens for his
Portion, Neptune the Sea, and Pluto the Dominion of the Infernal
World What is the Key to this monstrous Tale, the Learned have
not yet agreed. Some will have it, that the whole Account is
allegorical, and that these Gods are only the Parts and Powers of
Nature represented under sensible forms. Others will tell you, that
it is the History of Noah and his Children. And others as
strenuously insist that it contains nothing but the Revolutions of
the Royal Family of Crete, which now appear covered with so much
Obscurity, through the Ignorance and Love of Fiction of the first
Ages. I should be tempted to say, that the greatest mistake is, to seek
the Interpretation of all the Parts of the Fable either in History or
Allegory: some, it is likely, belong to the one, and some to the other.
The main Parts of the History of the Grecian Jupiter may be true,
that he reigned in Crete, that he was a victorious and happy Prince,
and that, after his Death. his grateful Subjects advanced him to
divine Honours. But as for his father Saturn, his devouring his
Children, and his being cast from his Throne, etc. it may be
conjectured, that the Allegory comes in: perhaps by this the Wise
Men of old mean to say, that the Beauty and Order of Things owe
their Rise to the eternal Jupiter, and that the Misrule and Confusion
of jarring Principles, which had prevailed before, were expelled by
his Almighty Will. (1753 pp. 26-8; 1793 pp. 29-33)20

19
See the memories of Gasts method of teaching given by Joseph Stock in his
1793 edition, pp. xxii-xxiv (below Appendix 1).
20
This explanation is largely derived from Banier. For comparison in each case I
give references to Gasts works in both the original volumes and the later combined
edition of 1793.
38 Oswyn Murray

Gast continues But it is the History of Greece which we are to

consider, and I am leading you into the Fairy-Land of Allegory.
The footnotes to this section refer to Vossius, Bochart, Huet,
Stillingfleet, Banier, Richard Pococks Travels and Cicero De
Natura Deorum; elsewhere he cites regularly Newtons
Chronology, Potter, Dodwell, Selden, Prideaux and Usher among
the English, and Dacier among the French.
In this account perhaps the most important source is the
famous work of the Abb Antoine Banier, whose work
Explication Historique des Fables is cited by Gast from the second
French edition, although there already existed an English
translation of the longer third French edition.21 It is surely
significant that this second edition of Banier had been written in
dialogue form as twenty-five entretiens: this was probably the
literary model that Gast chose for his own work, with its three
interlocutors:

Au reste, pour rendre moins ennuieuse la lecture dun Livre qui

traite dune matiere assez sche, on a prfr le style de Dialogue
celui des Dissertations. La maison de campagne dEliante est le lieu
o se passent les scenes; lAbb Thophile est comme le Docteur de
la piece, qui parle presque toujours; Alcidon son ami joint ses
conjectures celles de lAbb, et Eliante y mle quelques reflexions,
telles quune femme desprit peut fournir.
(Preface)

But Gasts interpretations are a good deal more imaginative than

Baniers rather pedestrian versions of mythistory.
In this section Gasts abiding religious preoccupation is how
the Greeks, having descended from the Descendants of Japhet,
could fall from the knowledge of One Supreme Being Creator
of the World into Idolatry and Ignorance (p. 11). The answer
for him lies in the confusion brought into Greece by early
migrations, especially the Egyptian migration which came with
its own priesthood and rituals, and its allegorical forms of

21
Explication historique des Fables (2nd edn. Paris 1715). Banier was the standard
euhemerist interpretation of ancient mythology, first published in 1711, and popular
deep into the nineteenth century. By 1738 the third edition extended to three
volumes under the title La Mythologie et les Fables expliques par lhistoire. An English
translation of this edition was published as The Mythology and Fables of the Ancients,
explaind from history (London 1739-40).
 The lost historian John Gast 39

explanation, and in the Greek habit of divinising great historical

figures.

These Fables are a Mixture, not only of antient Religious Truths, of

Natural Philosophy, and Metaphysical Learning, but also of
Egyptian, Phoenician, Grecian, and I may add Jewish, History: so
that really it is extremely difficult to arrive at any certain well-
grounded Solution concerning any of them. And let me tell you,
they, who are most earnest in this kind of Enquiry, oftentimes, after
all their Labour, find that they have been pursuing a Phantom, and
their whole Reward is to embrace a Shadow. Let us therefore take
our leave of these dim Regions: if I am ever obliged to bring you
back to them, it shall only be, when it is easy to find out the Event,
disguised under the fictitious Story. (p. 33)

The fourth Dialogue ends with a long essay on the several

Causes of that Love of Fable, which the Grecians were possessed
with (pp. 143-53).22
Gast (we shall see) was a member of an enterprising Irish
Huguenot community, and he was very interested in the
development of civilization through migration. The Egyptians
introduced agriculture and the Eleusinian Mysteries; it was
Phoenician settlers who brought Commerce, which naturally
enlarges the Mind, and opens more extensive Views; they also
brought the Use of Letters as opposed to Egyptian
Hieroglyphics, which were not Letters of a determinate
Signification, but Symbols and Enigmatical Representations,
and, as a very ingenious Modern calls them, a System of Natural
Similes,23 extremely obscure, and which might be employed to
signify different Things. It was from these immigrants that the
Greeks learned Commerce, Navigation, and several other
valuable Sciences such as bronze and iron working; only the
skills of carpentry, statuary and architecture, invented by the
Athenian Daedalus, are allowed to be indigenous:

22
This fascinating account is best studied in the expanded version that appears as
a long appendix in the 1793 edition (vol. I, pp. 539-85), called a Dissertation on the
love of the marvellous so prevalent among the ancient Greeks; the editor had relegated it
to this position as too prolix for its intended place in the first book.
23
Here he cites Thomas Blackwells Enquiry into the Life and Writings of Homer
(London 1735) p. 169.
40 Oswyn Murray

Those Strangers, especially, were in Truth all adding to the Strength

of Greece: they formed her Manners, they encreased her Wealth,
and by Degrees made her Mistress of the Improvements of other
wise and cultivated Nations. And also, happily for her, they soon
forgat their Native Home, they incorporated into one People, and
shewed themselves as sollicitous for her Prosperity as if this had
been their original Country ... And possibly to this Mixture it was
owing, that she ever attained to that extraordinary Proficiency in
Arts and Sciences, and that her Institutions are to this Day the
Subject of Admiration.
(1753 p. 66; 1793 pp. 59-60)

After this long discussion of the mythical period, Dialogue the

Fifth (1793 Book III [misnumbered as II] Section 1) offers a
somewhat stilted account of the geography of Greece. The
section on Greek history proper begins with Dialogue the
Sixth (1793 Book IV Section 1) and presents what was to
become a typical Enlightenment view: there is of course no
conception of an archaic period, which had to wait for its
discovery until a century and a half later with Jacob
Burckhardt.24 The references given are mainly to the ancient
sources, although Dialogue the Sixth begins with a discussion of
Newtons views on Attic and Spartan chronology (p. 230), and
quotes Rollin (pp. 233-4), before offering a long account of
Lycurgus derived largely from Plutarchs Life of Lycurgus. This
ends with a discussion of his Institutions, some of which may
be censured without Injustice:

I have, in the first Place, a Difficulty about the Spartans becoming

merely a Military Nation. Was not Liberty to be purchased, but at
the Expense of the Liberal Sciences, and of all the gentler
Ornaments of the Mind? Is it not possible, that a People should be
brave, virtuous, happy; and be also a Literate, Polite, Accomplished
People?
(1753 p. 255; 1793 p. 195)

Dialogue the Seventh (1793 Book IV Section 2) presents a

history of Sparta from the Messenian to the Persian wars, with
the customary emphasis on the romance of Aristomenes drawn
from Pausanias; it includes a learned discussion of the date of

24
See my article, Burckhardt and the Archaic Age, Jacob Burckhardt und die
Griechen ed. L. Burckhardt, H.-J.Gehrke (Basel 2006) pp. 247-61.
 The lost historian John Gast 41

Pheidon of Argos (omitted in the 1793 edition) and an account

of Cleomenes and Clisthenes of Athens. Chronology it is clear is
an abiding interest of Gast, as it had been of the great
chronographers from Scaliger and Kepler to Newton and
beyond.25
Dialogue the Eighth (1793 Book IV Section 3) is concerned
with Athens. There is a full account of Solon and his
constitution, derived mostly from Plutarch, but with a detailed
account of the Athenian constitution drawn from earlier French
and English antiquarians. Again the importance of trade is
emphasised: The Advancement of Industry and Virtue was
likewise consulted by many excellent and well devised Laws.
Trade and every kind of industrious Occupation was declared
honourable (1753 p. 332; 1793 p. 253).
Dialogue the Ninth (1793 Book V Section 1) records one
of the most memorable Periods of Ancient History, the Age of
Glory of the Athenian People, from Harmodius and Aristogiton
to the death of Cimon when The Laurel-Crown and the Ivy-
Wreath were both theirs. And those Men, who yielded to none
in the Day of Battle, were also foremost in every refined
Improvement(1753 p. 355: 1793 p. 271).26 The explanation for
this development is their unshaken Resolution in the defence of
the noblest Cause, the Cause of LIBERTY and the PUBLIC
WEAL.
More surprising is Gasts extended praise of Athenian
democracy and especially of the Athenian assembly:

There was also the Great Assembly, in which every Citizen, not
declared Infamous, had a Suffrage. So that in Athens the poorest
Member of the Commonwealth was immediately interested in the
Public Fortune. In despotic States, it matters not, at least to the
meaner Ranks of Men, who has the Power; and Revolutions of
Government only bring on a Change of Masters. But here, the
lowest Athenian had a Country, in the properest sense, to fight for;
he was one of the Lords of the Commonwealth; he had real Rights
and Privileges; and could not give up the Constitution without
being a Traitor to himself.
(1753 p. 359; 1793 p. 274)

25
A. Grafton, Joseph Scaliger II Historical Chronology (Oxford 1993); F.E.
Manuel, Isaac Newton Historian (Cambridge 1963).
26
By the 1793 edition this praise of Athens had become what cannot surely be
esteemed an uninteresting digression (pp. 272-81)
42 Oswyn Murray

Liberty ...was also the principal Cause of this; for Science and Arts
are always the Attendants of Liberty. Genius is, as it were, licentious;
it loves to sport itself after its own wanton manner, neither exposed
to the Jealousies of Tyrants, nor to the Threats of Laws. It is then
only, that the Mind becomes capable of the wide-expatiating View,
and of the bold-towering Thought. Thus it was at Athens. There,
Imagination knew no bounds; and all the Excess of Liberty was fully
indulged, except when the Religion of the Superstitious People
happened to be wounded.
(1753 p. 363; 1793 p. 274)

Another Cause, that contributed to the Advancement of Literature

at Athens, was the Form of Polity. All Matters were referred to the
great Assembly of the People; and, as I have told you, neither
Domestic Regulations, nor Foreign Alliances, neither Peace, nor
War, could be ultimately determined on, till their Consent had
given ratification. On these accounts, Persuasion was among the
principal Instruments of the Athenian Government; and the lowest
Citizens were accustomed to be addressed by Persons, exercised in
all the Arts of Speech. Now this not only made Oratory necessary
for those, who were desirous of appearing to advantage in the Public
Councils; but also by these means the People themselves were
rendered nice and critical Hearers.
(1753 p. 365; 1793 p. 279)

This is the earliest favourable account of Athenian democratic

institutions known to me, and is a forerunner of the later radical
emphasis on the importance of Athens for the modern history of
liberty from Bulwer Lytton to George Grote.
In Dialogue the Tenth (1793 Book V Sect. 2) the story of
Xerxes expedition is told with dramatic and heightened colour.
In Dialogue the Eleventh (1793 Book VI Sect. 1) Culture and
Peace now succeeded to the horrors and desolation, which had
afflicted Greece; and Athens began to rise from her Ruins in far
greater Splendor, than even before her Destruction (1753 p.
448; 1793 p. 345). The divide between zenith and decline
comes with the age of Cimon, the last great Athenian; with
Ephialtes and Pericles, Athens entered a period of luxury and
decline: What a Patriot, what a Blessing might this Man have
been! but Ambition is a treacherous guide. (1753 p. 471; 1793
p. 365):
 The lost historian John Gast 43

Thus affairs went on, till at length the growing vanity, the
haughtiness, and ambition of the Athenians, on the one hand, and
the envy and various resentments of the Grecian States, on the
other, brought on a war, which tried the strength of this specious
Fabric, and has left to succeeding Ages this instructive lesson, that
there is not any Empire can be lasting, but what is founded on
Moderation, Justice, and Virtue.
(1753 p. 492; 1793 p. 385)

In the last two Dialogues (1793 Books VII Sect. 2 and Book
VIII) Gast resorts for the most part to following the narrative of
Thucydides and other ancient historians; the twelfth covers the
Peloponnesian War, the thirteenth the whole period from its
end to the death of Philip. There are few notes apart from
source references, and those there are concern mostly problems
of chronology discussed by Newton and Dodwell. On the other
hand the narrative is lively and full of moral judgments, on
Pericles and his successors; and Epaminondas for instance
receives a footnote quoting the eulogy of Le Chevalier de Folard
(p. 623; cf. 1793 p. 513).
The one significant departure in this section from
straightforward narrative is Gasts long account of the trial and
death of Socrates (1753 pp. 569-92; 1793 pp. 460-83), whom
he portrays as a believer in a GOD, One, Supreme, Arbiter of
Events, of a Spiritual Nature, Infinite, Eternal, sole Source of Being
and Happiness to all, possessing in himself every thing that is Lovely,
Great and Good (1753 p. 575; 1793 p. 466).

Thus died, says Plato, the best, the wisest, the most just of Men,
and safely may we say, the Greatest of the Pagan World, a Man who
far exceeded all the Heathen that went before him, and whom none
of those, that followed, ever equalled, even with the advantage of
that train of light he left behind him. In whom it seemeth as if
Providence meant to shew, what the mere strength of Reason could
avail towards rescuing Human Nature from its depraved state, and
restoring the Empire of Truth and Virtue.
(1753 p. 588; 1793 p. 480)

As Gast draws to a close his moral stance becomes ever clearer;

referring to Alexander the Great he says So has History falsely
called him, as if Martial Fury, and the wanton Invasion of
Nations, were the excellence of Princes (p. 647). And he
concludes his History with the following sentiment:
44 Oswyn Murray

Such are the Effects of Upright and of Degenerate Manners; the

latter always ending in Weakness and Servitude; the former
productive of Liberty, Wealth and Empire. Never, my Eudoxus, never
my Cleanthes, may ye forget the instructive Lesson; The Ways of
Virtue are the Ways of Happiness. Have it in rememberance. Make
the trial. And certainly shall ye find the one, if ye sincerely pursue
the other.
(1753 p. 647; 1793 pp. 537-8)

Apart from its mild Christian colouring, Gasts account is

remarkable for its liveliness and free judgments, and for its
liberal sentiments. The approval of Athenian democratic
institutions and the criticism of many aspects of Sparta
distinguishes his story from most of the later eighteenth-century
histories of Greece. The independence of judgment and
narrative skill are superior to any other work on Greek history of
the period; the emphasis on the importance of trade and
migration reflect the preoccupations of the age of the Scottish
enlightenment, and the moral attitude towards the duties of
empire is characteristic of the age of Edmund Burke.27 Gast is
not indeed seeking to change the world in his portrayal of Greek
history, but rather to understand those constants that are for
him reflected in all periods of history.

The History of Greece of 1782

To the modern reader the most original and most interesting
part of Gasts History is his account of the last two periods of
Grecian history, which constitute the independent work of 1782
and the second volume of the edition of 1793, and which covers
Greek history from Alexander to the Roman conquest, or
alternatively the present day. In his article in the Monthly Review
William Enfield had compared this volume of Gast with that of
Charles Rollins account of the period published in 1738;28 but
27
The best contextual analysis of this imperialist strand is by the young Turkish
scholar, C Aka Ata, Imperial Lessons from Athens and Sparta, History of Political
Thought 27 (2006) pp. 642-60, who discusses Gast in passing.
28
Above p. 32. On Rollin, whose popular Ancient History was published from
1730-38, see now the excellent survey paper by Giovanna Ceserani entitled Modern
Histories of Ancient Greece: Genealogies, Contexts and Eighteenth-Century
Narrative Historiography, that I had the privilege of commenting on at a Cambridge
conference on Ancient History and Modern Historicities in May 2005; this is shortly
to be published in Ancient History and Western Political Thought: The Construction of
Classical Time(s), ed. Alexandra Lianeri (Cambridge University Press).
 The lost historian John Gast 45

whereas Rollin merely provides a simple narrative accompanied

by the superficial moral judgments much criticised by his
contemporaries, Gasts account offers much more. At first sight
it seems indeed an excellent full-length narrative political history
of Hellenistic Greece, based on a careful comparison of Arrian,
Curtius, Diodorus, Polybius, Livy and Plutarch, with few
references to earlier modern authorities (which scarcely existed
for this period). At least this shows how much could be
extracted from the ancient literary sources, and Gasts judgment
in discussing and choosing between alternative accounts of
events is impeccable: for instance on Alexander the Great he has
a very low opinion of Curtius, and always prefers Arrian. It
contains some excellent biographical summaries of the character,
defects and achievements of Alexander, his successors down to
Demetrius Poliorcetes, Aratus, Philopoemen, Philip V,
Cleomenes and Nabis of Sparta, and Flamininus, Perseus of
Macedon, Mummius and Sulla. But as you read on a deeper
argument emerges. Gast is interested (like Gibbon) in the theme
of the decline and fall of mainland Greece. He attributes this to
two main causes on which he expatiates throughout the
narrative. The first is the inability of the Greeks to unite, and
their constant appeals to Macedon, the Egyptian Ptolemies and
the Romans to intervene: again and again he takes a particular
historical moment and discusses what Aratus or Philopoemen
should have done, or why the activities of the Aetolian League
were so detrimental to the Greeks. The second theme is the
insidious imperialism of the Romans, who emerge as the real
villains. He is especially opposed to Flamininus, whom he
accuses of deliberately fostering disunity among the Greeks in
order to provide future opportunities for Roman intervention;
but all other Romans are also attacked. In contrast the figure of
Philip V emerges in a highly sympathetic portrayal, as
condemned by Roman intransigence to lose his kingdom and
his family. This perception of Roman imperialism is of course
opposed to that given in our sources, who take the view that the
Romans always acted from the best of motives, and actively
promoted the freedom of the Greeks; it is also opposed to the
modern orthodoxy which tries to see Roman imperialism as an
accidental by-product of a series of random interventions. I
confess that I find Gasts view infinitely more persuasive than
46 Oswyn Murray

either alternative as a long term analysis of Roman intentions.

The real villain in the end turns out to be the Roman senate,
whose active pursuit of the interests of their ruling military class
created an empire which destroyed the freedom of all peoples
elsewhere, and ultimately their own. The final conclusion is
therefore that, despite all the mistakes and inadequacies of the
Greeks, the fall of free Greece to the Romans was a deliberate
consequence of an aggressive imperialism on the part of the
Romans. On the death of Philip Rome exulted in her success:
she beheld with joy all his bold and well-concerted projects at an
end, and in the future vassalage of Macedon, contemplated one
more prostrate kingdom groaning under Roman domination
(1782 p. 505; 1793 II p. 451).
It is history presented as tragedy, and it contains such
magnificent scenes as the final end of Perseus, the last king of
Macedon in 168 B.C., who, despite his superior power, having
lost the war with incompetent Roman commanders because of
his cowardice and meanness with his wealth, is finally left by the
Cretan captain who had promised to save him, weeping for his
lost gold cups as the night fades, alone on a deserted beach in
Samothrace (1782 p. 580; 1793 II p. 517).
The verdict is a powerful condemnation of Rome: finally the
great kingdom of Macedon comes to an end:
A more severe humiliation can hardly have been devised: indeed, a
more complete debasement almost baffles imagination. Must we not
then turn with disgust and indignation from those writers, who,
after the narration of such facts, wish to convey the idea, that the
Roman conquest bestowed liberty on Macedon?
(1782 p. 584; 1793 II pp. 520-1)

Or a little later:
In this manner did Rome establish her dominion on the ruins of
every national constitution. At first her yoke was for the most part
laid on with an affectation of gentleness; but afterwards, repeated
arbitrary and oppressive proceedings having provoked resistance,
every manly effort against them became an excuse for additional
exertion of power; until the system was by degrees completed, and
appeared in all the stern severity of despotism.
(1782 p. 618; 1793 II p. 552)
 The lost historian John Gast 47

No Roman ever acts with anything but cruelty and slaughter,

massacring whole populations and sending women and children
into slavery. The sole redeeming feature of the brutal and
philistine Mummius is that he recognises the corrupting dangers
of culture when he orders the sack of Corinth: To save Rome he
burned Corinth (1782 p. 628; 1793 II p. 560).
The decline of Greece is attributed to five causes (we may
note the keenness on the number five five periods of history
and five causes): competition between small states; endless
jealousies; perpetual revolutions and competing constitutional
forms; the natural vices of democracy; and finally the fatal
prevalence of atheistical tenets spread by Epicureanism (1782
pp. 636-45; 1793 pp. 567-76).29

The final edition of Gasts History of Greece (1793)

By the time of the final composite publication in 1793 both
author and John Murray the publisher were dead; John Gast
had died of gout in 1788 aged 72 without ever finishing the
revision of his dialogue volume of 1753. That was done by
Joseph Stock, with the final publication of the combined work
in two volumes in 1793; and it is this version of the text that I
had originally bought. According to Stocks preface (pp. xx-xxi)
the dialogue of 1753 had been revised by Gast as far as the
second book, when Gast changed his plan in favour of a more
discursive treatment of myth; but after his death Stock returned
to the original text, and was himself responsible for the editorial
work of creating a narrative out of the dialogue. This version of
the first part of Gasts work is in fact less interesting than the
original published dialogue; for it has been reduced to a plain
narrative which omits the digressions and the learned footnotes
that in the text of 1753 often take up all but three lines of the
page, and are so important and so curious a feature of the
original. But the volume of 1782 seems faithfully transcribed in
the new edition. Stocks edition does not seem to have been well
received in at least one contemporary review, where it was
criticised for its lack of an index or chronological charts, and for
the absence of ancient citations.30 Some of these faults are due to

29
See below p. 54 for the origin of this (at first sight) curious view.
30
Anthologia Hibernica ii (Dublin August 1793) p. 128.
48 Oswyn Murray

Stocks editing, and others to the failure of the author to carry

his project through to completion; but by the end of the century
many of the views that Gast had espoused forty years earlier
were indeed superseded. It is perhaps symptomatic that my own
copy, purchased by someone who is not listed among the 427
subscribers, had never been bound, but is still in its original
boards.

Gast and Ireland

Despite his dilatoriness and alleged insufficiencies as a writer the
virtually complete disappearance of Gast from the historical
record is a gross injustice.31 In his 1952 inaugural lecture at
University College London Arnaldo Momigliano, the greatest
expert on the history of ancient history, had begun from these
famous words:

May I remind you that it is uncertain whether Greek history was

invented in England or in Scotland?

But Momiglianos claim is not in fact true: Greek history was

invented in Ireland thirty years before either John Gillies of
Edinburgh or William Mitford of England had published a
word. Moreover, although Mitfords work is still of great
31
Momigliano does indeed give a reference to the work of 1782 in a footnote to
his inaugural lecture (George Grote and the Study of Greek History, Studies in
Historiography [London 1966] p. 72 n. 7), but without any comment; he is not
mentioned in his 1977 essay, Eighteenth-Century Prelude to Mr. Gibbon, Sesto
Contributo I (Roma 1980) pp. 249-63 (see esp. the list on p. 254). In his own country
Gast was not entirely forgotten: his 1753 dialogue is briefly mentioned in W.B.
Stanford, Ireland and the Classical Tradition (Dublin 1976) pp. 148-9 as now more of
a curiosity than a work to be consulted seriously; although when Stanford claims that
the 1793 edition was widely read in [Irish] schools until Goldsmiths history
supplanted it, it is not clear how long the alleged period of its use as a school
textbook can have been, given that Goldsmiths educationally far more useful
narrative compendium The Grecian History was published in 1774, and specifically
abridged for the use of schools at least as early as 1787. Recent work on the
eighteenth century has begun to recognise the existence of Gast; there are passing
references in C Aka Ata o.c. (n. 27 above); and Giovanna Ceserani, Narrative,
Interpretation, and Plagiarism in Mr. Robertsons 1778 History of Ancient Greece,
Journal of the History of Ideas 66 (2005) pp. 413-36, mentions Gasts 1753 volume in
a footnote (n. 15). A.J. Bayliss uses Gast more extensively in his survey of eighteenth-
century perceptions of Macedonia: Greek but not Grecian? Macedonians in
Enlightenment Histories in Reinventing History: The Enlightenment Origins of Ancient
History ed. J.Moore, I. Macgregor Morris, A.J. Bayliss (London 2008; published
2009) pp. 219-46.
 The lost historian John Gast 49

interest, not least for provoking the early nineteenth-century

radicals into writing their own histories of Greece, as a work of
critical history Gasts work is superior to both Gillies and
Mitford. And above all it was he who first wrote a serious
history of the Hellenistic age, eighty years before Droysen
(1833-43), whose account while more enthusiastic offers little
historical advance on Gast, as far as the history of Greece
properly so called is concerned (though Droysens work of
course covers also Syria and Egypt);32 for Droysen was blinded
by his Prussian nationalism to the dangers of Roman aggression.
Gasts volumes are a learned and passionate account of
Greek history: what are they doing in mid-eighteenth-century
Dublin? How could they be so far in advance of any of his
contemporaries in both Greek and Roman history? Gasts only
significant predecessor had been Temple Stanyans pioneering
Grecian History, whose first volume was published in 1707, with
a second volume in 1739, reaching to the death of Philip; this
offered a substantial but uncritical narrative, which remained
largely oblivious of antiquarian scholarship, although it had been
translated into French by the young Diderot in 1743, and
gained considerable influence in France.33 John Gast (1715-88)
belongs rather to the dawn of the new age of critical and
engaged narrative history: Hume began publishing his History of
England in 1754; William Robertson began his great series of
histories of Scotland, Charles V, and America from 1759; and
Gibbon (1737-94) is a younger contemporary.Yet the early
beginning of Gasts works and his choice of the history of
Greece mark him out in this generation.
The idea of a History of Greece was indeed in the air: in
1759, six years after the publication of Gasts initial volume,
David Hume wrote two letters to William Robertson after the
publication of his History of Scotland, suggesting to him that he
might try his hand at the ancient history, particularly that of

32
According to Stock, Gast had indeed originally intended to discuss Syria and
Egypt, but was persuaded to postpone them to a third volume (Appendix1).
33
See Ceserani (o.c. n.28).
50 Oswyn Murray

Greece, and discussing the problems that he might encounter in

seeking to improve on Rollins brief and superficial account.34

The antient Greek History has several recommendations,

particularly the good Authors from which it must be drawn: But
this same Circumstance becomes an Objection, when more
narrowly considered: For what can you do with these Authors but
transcribe & translate them? No Letters or State Papers from which
you could correct their Errors, or authenticate their Narration, or
supply their Defects. Besides Rollin is so well wrote with respect to
Style, that with superficial People it passes for sufficient.35

One at least of his English contemporaries was known to Gast;

in his account of Greece under the Roman Empire he mentions
chapter VI of Gibbons Decline and Fall in a footnote:

With particular pleasure I take the opportunity of acknowledging

my obligations to the elegant work, from which the above quotation
is borrowed. I have had frequent recourse to it in this part of my
history. If I have attempted to place some matters in a different light
from that in which this ingenious writer seems to have considered
them, I shall hope, from the liberality of sentiment which his
writings assure me he possesses, that he will not disapprove of a
freedom of enquiry, always serviceable to the cause of truth.
(1782 p. 672; 1793 II p. 600)

And there are scattered references to Gibbon thereafter. But all

these references are to volume I, published in 1776; Gast hardly
had time to take account of the next two volumes published in
1781, which end with Gibbons famous General Observations on
the Fall of the Roman Empire in the West.36
In Ireland this was the age of the Protestant Ascendancy
(1691-1801), also known as the long peace. Dublin was at the
height of its prosperity; it was a largely tolerant society

34
New Letters of David Hume (Oxford 1954) ed. R. Klibansky and E.C.
Mossner, nos. 27 and 28, pp. 47-8. I owe this reference to Ceserani (see previous
note). But neither Hume nor Ceserani mention Gast.
35
Letter 28, April 7th 1759 p. 48.
36
For this section, which constitutes the original plan of Gibbons work see P.R.
Ghosh, Gibbon Observed, Journal of Roman Studies 81 (1991) pp. 132-56; and The
Conception of Gibbons History, in R. McKitterick & R. Quinault (ed.), Gibbon and
Empire (1996) c.12. Gibbon took great care in planning the conclusion of each
section of his History as they were separately published, as can be seen from the first
scholarly edition of Gibbon by David Womersley (London 1994).
 The lost historian John Gast 51

concerned with social justice: during the 1770s and 1780s the
penal laws were gradually relaxed and Henry Grattans reforms
of 1782 won major concessions for Catholics, until in the
1790s Wolfe Tones United Irishmen brought Non-
Conformists, Catholics and patriots together in agitation for
reform, which resulted in the disastrous Irish Rebellion of 1798,
the Act of Union of 1801, and the end of Irish parliamentary
independence. The most famous Irishman of the day was
Edmund Burke, champion of the American Revolution,
opponent of the French Revolution, prosecutor of Warren
Hastings for his corruption in India and founder of the theory
of empire as a trust, as more generally of modern English
conservative political thought. Gasts evident political
enthusiasms sit easily in this age: he composed various
pamphlets addressed to the Catholic majority in his parish,
writing in a conciliatory vein; and after his death his
parishioners composed a fine memorial to his good work as a
pastor; it is clear that he was instinctively more comfortable with
toleration and non-confessional philanthropy than many earlier
Huguenots had been. But that scarcely explains his interest in
Greek history and the rise and decline of liberty.
I think there is more to be gathered from his ancestry. For
he is an outstanding example of cultural transference. According
to Joseph Stocks memoir, his parents were Huguenot refugees
who came to Dublin after the renewed persecution surrounding
the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685; at this time
Huguenots were settled in large numbers in Ireland: the Duke of
Ormond, who had been himself an exile in France during the
English Civil War, was especially active as Lord Deputy in
promoting immigration (1662), and many came over with the
army of William of Orange.37 Gasts father, Daniel Gast, had
left Saintonge in Guyenne in 1684 to escape persecution, and
served as an officer under Queen Anne; he was a doctor by
training, and settled in Dublin, where John Gast was born in
1715. Gast was bilingual in French and English, and his clerical
career began as chaplain to the important Huguenot military
colony at Portarlington, founded by Henri de Massue, Marquis

37
Ruth Whelan, The Huguenots and the Imaginative Geography of Ireland: a
Planned Immigration in the 1680s Irish Historical Studies 35 (2007) pp. 477-95.
52 Oswyn Murray

de Ruvigny, a prominent Huguenot courtier in the court of

Louis XIV, who had become a supporter of William III, and was
created Earl of Galway. In the early eighteenth century
Portarlington was a largely French-speaking town composed of
veterans divided between Calvinism and the established Church;
it possessed a French church and school.38 Most importantly of
all for our present purposes, John Gasts mother, Elizabeth
Grenoilleau, is described as a close relative of the Baron de
Montesquieu, and later in life he received a large inheritance
from his French relatives.
In the period before the French Revolution all the English
historians of the ancient world acquired their learning from
France. Gibbon was a trivial and careless student at Oxford:
everything he learned came from his sojourn in Lausanne, and
his purchase of the twenty volumes of the Acadmie des
Inscriptions:

I cannot forget the joy with which I exchanged a bank-note of

twenty pounds for the twenty volumes of the Memoirs of the
Academy of Inscriptions; nor would it have been easy by any other
expenditure of the same sum to have procured so large and lasting a
fund of rational amusement.
(Edward Gibbon, Memoirs of My Life [1796])

His first publication, the Essai sur ltude de la littrature, was

written in French. His fellow officer in the Hampshire militia,
William Mitford (who had similarly failed to acquire any
learning at Oxford) discovered his vocation for history on an
extended stay in France in 1776, where he met various
aristocratic rudits M. de Meusnier, M. de Villoison and the
Baron de Sainte Croix, with whom he lived for some time at his
chateau near Avignon.39 It is plain from his footnotes that the
origins of John Gasts intellectual and historical power lie in
France. It was France and Ireland that together made him a
great historian. I have spent many years in tracing the fortunes

38
Raymond Hylton, The Huguenot Settlement at Portarlington in C.E.J.
Caldicott, H. Gough, J-P Pittion (eds.), The Huguenots and Ireland: Anatomy of an
Emigration (Dun Laoghaire: Glendale, 1987) pp. 297-320.
39
See my article British Sparta in the Age of Philhellenism, in The Contribution
of Ancient Sparta to Political Thought ed. N. Birgalias, K. Buraselis, P. Cartledge
(Athens 2007) pp. 345-89, esp. pp. 361-8.
 The lost historian John Gast 53

of the translation of scholarship between the various European

languages: the main traffic is of course between France and
England in the ancien rgime, and outwards from Germany in
the 19th century. But translation is only a small part of the
phenomenon of cultural transference (transferts culturels as
Michel Espagne calls them).40 Emigration, personal contact, and
bilingualism are equally important, as the example of John Gast
shows.
It was France and Ireland that together created the new Irish
school of ancient history. Thomas Leland of Trinity College
Dublin, translator of Demosthenes and author of the first full-
length biography of an ancient figure, the History of the Life and
Reign of Philip of Macedon (1758), had begun his historical
career with a long introduction to his translation of
Demosthenes speeches, following the famous example of
Jacques de Tourreil (1701).41 For his biography of Philip of
Macedon he borrowed the entire structure and much of his
material from a French author, Claude-Mathieu Olivier, Histoire
de Philippe 1736 (Paris 1740); every division of the narrative in
Leland is identical to those in Oliviers book, and only the brief
comparison between Philip and Alexander at the end of Olivier
is missing, with an explicit refusal to follow this practice.42
It is plain from his footnotes that the learning in Gasts
earlier volume rested largely on French antiquarian scholarship.
His philosophical ideas derive from Montesquieu, who was
indeed a dominant influence in eighteenth century Ireland.43
For Gasts second volume the grand historical theme of decline
and fall had first been adumbrated by Montesquieu in his
Considrations sur les causes de la grandeur des Romains et de leur
dcadence (1734), a book that was published simultaneously in

40
Michel Espagne, Les Transferts culturels franco-allemands (Paris 1999).
41
Tourreils work was translated into English in The Orations of Demosthenes, to
which is prefixd the Historical Preface of Monsieur Tourreil (London 1702). See
Ceserani o.c. (n. 28).
42
Leland is mentioned as a forerunner of Gillies by Momigliano, and he notes
that the interest in Greek history was stimulated by a discussion on the decline of
Greece in the fourth century B.C. which started in France and continued in Ireland
before passing to England or Scotland (o.c. [n. 31] p. 58); these remarks show what
a pity it was that he failed to comment on John Gast, whose life as an exile so closely
reflected his own experience.
43
See Seamus Deane, Montesquieu and Burke, Gargett and Sheridan o.c. (n.
1), pp. 47-66.
54 Oswyn Murray

French and in English translation, and was the most

immediately popular of all his works.44 Thus Gast and Gibbon
have no relationship of interdependence: they rather shared a
common model in Gasts relative, the Baron de Montesquieu;
both applied antiquarian scholarship to a philosophical model
derived from him. Montesquieu also provided the moral
dimension for Gasts view of Greek history; this is evident from
the one direct quotation of Montesquieu in the work: The vital
principle of democracy, as a celebrated writer justly observes, is
virtue. (Esprit des lois [1748] 3.3; quoted by Gast 1793 vol. II p.
571). It comes therefore as no surprise to discover that the entire
theoretical structure of Gasts picture of Hellenistic Greece is
derived from chapter VI of Montesquieus Considrations, De la
conduite que les Romains tinrent pour soumettre tous les
peuples: it was Montesquieu who attributed the growth of
Romes power overseas to the perfidy and double-dealing of its
leaders in the interests of the Roman state. Even Gasts
apparently idiosyncratic connection of the decline and fall of
Greece with the influence of Epicureanism is to be found at the
start of Montesquieus chapter X in relation to Roman decline,
De la corruption des Romains: Je crois que la secte dpicure,
qui sintroduisit Rome sur la fin de la rpublique, contribua
beaucoup gter le coeur et lesprit des Romains.
Long before Gibbons or his own version of the theme of
decline and fall, Gast had already adopted this view of
Montesquieu. In his 1753 account of Thessaly he describes the
Pharsalian Plain:

That fatal Plain, where Caesar triumphed over the Liberties of

Rome. Long ere this happened, had the Romans imposed the Yoke
on Greece: and now Greece saw the Day, when Rome herself lost her
Freedom, and felt the Scourge of Tyrants. Such, Cleanthes, is the
Fate of the Kingdoms of the Earth. Liberty and Empire are
obtained, and lost again, as Nations rise to Virtue, or sink into
Dissoluteness. When once Greece was enervated thro Luxury and
Vice, she fell an easy Prey to the Power of Rome; and when Rome,
venal and corrupted, was no longer able to preserve her Liberties,
Caesar stepped in, and inslaved her, as she had inslaved the World
before. (Dialogue V, 1753 pp. 218-9; 1793 p. 167)

44
Gibbon himself owned a copy of the Paris edition of 1755: Geoffrey Keynes,
The Library of Edward Gibbon (London 1950) p. 201.
 The lost historian John Gast 55

Conclusion
Reinhart Koselleck has shown how the end of the eighteenth
century is the bridge or Sattelzeit between the static conception
of historia magistra vitae and the conception of history as a
dynamic living process in human society. But we still need to do
much work on the way that this transition occurred: in
particular, what were the stages in the emergence of narrative
history as a dominant literary form in the mid 18th century, and
how was this transformed by Walter Scott and the German
Romantics from Herder to Hegel, into the phenomenon of the
new historicism of the nineteenth-century and the triumph of
national history in the age of historicism? John Gast stands at
the start of the older tradition of the eighteenth-century: for him
the truths of history are eternal and unchanging; and yet the
conception of a decline and fall, the potential corruption or
destruction of apparently stable human societies is (as for
Gibbon) the underside of the age of Enlightenment, the morbid
fear of and preparation for the revolution that was indeed to
destroy their world. Gast had experienced the intolerance as well
as the benefits of the ancien rgime, and he lived in an Irish
society poised between urban prosperity and rural poverty: as
many as 400,000 may have died in the first Great Irish Famine
of 1740-1, while the 1780s saw an unprecedented economic
boom in Dublin.45 The classical parklands created by the Irish
aristocracy, which were celebrated in the paintings of one of
Irelands greatest artists, Thomas Roberts (1748-1777),46
involved extensive enclosures and improvements, with
consequent dispossession for the Irish peasantry, as Oliver
Goldsmith revealed in his moving lament for a vanished world,
The Deserted Village (1770):47

45
See the chapters by L.M. Cullen (Economic Development 1750-1800 pp,
159-95) and J.H. Andrews (Land and People, c.1780 pp. 236-64) in T.W. Moody,
W.E. Vaughan (eds.), A New History of Ireland IV Eighteenth Century Ireland 1691-
1800 (Oxford 1986).
46
It was hard not to recall this in the Dublin of 2009, when the National Gallery
of Ireland mounted the magnificent exhibition Thomas Roberts 1748-1777; see
William Laffan and Brendan Rooney, Thomas Roberts: Landscape and Patronage in
Eighteenth-Century Ireland (Dublin 2009).
47
The imagined village of Auburn that Goldsmith described became a symbol of
exile and loss for generations of Irish migrants to the New World and Australia: three
townships of Auburn are listed in Australia, two in Canada, and no less than 23 in the
United States.
56 Oswyn Murray

Ill fares the land, to hastning ills a prey,

Where wealth accumulates and men decay.
Princes and lords may flourish, or may fade;
A breath can make them, as a breath has made.
But a bold peasantry, their countrys pride,
When once destroyed, can never be supplied.
(lines 51-6)

A reflective spirit might indeed detect something unhealthy in

the great age of Irish classicism; and the Huguenot refugee John
Gast, however much he was a member of the Ascendancy
ministering to the education of the lite of his day, was in a
position to understand well the insecurities of human society.
His final sentence reads:

Of how uncertain a tenure are even the advantages of human

genius! Greece, famed for arts and arms, from whose horizon
beamed forth those rays of science, which have gradually illumined
our European world, now stands in need of the instruction she was
wont to give. From those nations, whom she held most in
contempt, she is at this day to learn what Greece once was. And
were it not for the learned researches of those very barbarians,
whom in her age of glory she had deemed it a reproach to have
numbered among her denizens, the fierce German, the unlettered
Caledonian, the barbarous Briton, the rude Gaul, many of her most
highly valued marble records had remained unread, and some of her
noblest memorials had been buried in oblivion.
(1782 pp. 710-2; 1793 II pp. 635-6)

He adds a footnote recording the glory of Britain, the Society of

Dilettanti, and Chandlers Travels (1776) and the Ionian
Antiquities (1769) that it produced. But in what category I
wonder does Gast include himself is he the barbarous Briton
or the rude Gaul?
***
 The lost historian John Gast 57

The complex story of the fortunes of John Gasts historical

works requires us to rethink the origins of the modern
historiography of the ancient world. It is not just a personal
story: his heritage in Irish and French culture exemplifies the
importance of migration and of the Huguenot refugees in the
creation of a unified European culture. Many strands in his
historical thinking lead back to that fusion of the older
seventeenth-century rudit tradition with the French philosophes,
of the combination of antiquarianism and philosophical history
that Gibbon celebrated in his early Essai sur ltude de la
littrature, and that Momigliano showed still stands as the basis
of all modern historical study.48 In his earlier volume Gast offers
an excellent example of the fusion of religious and secular
antiquarianism with its special interest in chronology, in the
service of history.49 The typically eighteenth-century theme of
decline and fall is seen to derive from the earliest and most
influential of the Enlightenment figures, Montesquieu himself.
The importance of history as narrative seems indeed to have
been invented or rediscovered in the British isles; but the
combination of narrative and antiquarianism to create the idea
of a critical history demanded authors like Gast and Gibbon
who had immediate access to the whole range of continental
scholarship. This was the solution to Humes problem of how to
create a modern narrative from ancient texts whose authority
could not directly be questioned.
Nor should we forget the importance of wider social
phenomena. The drive towards the rediscovery of ancient
history represented a revolution in the educational aims of a new
generation: no longer was the study of the classics confined to
the construing and explication of ancient texts in the service of
philology. The classical past was expected to explain and provide
models for the gentry and the bourgeoisie of an ever widening
ruling class, in commerce, manufacture and trade as well as
agriculture. This movement can be seen throughout Europe in
schools and universities, and it brought a response from authors
and their publishers. From 1764 the many editions of Oliver

48
A. Momigliano, Ancient History and the Antiquarian and Gibbons
Contribution to Historical Method, Studies in Historiography (o.c. n. 31) chs. 1-2.
49
See above all the studies of Anthony Grafton in Defenders of the Text (Harvard
1991) and Worlds Made by Words (Harvard 2009).
58 Oswyn Murray

Goldsmiths pedestrian histories published in Britain and the

United States, together with their translation into almost all
European languages,50 show how enterprising publishers spread
the interest in narrative history from polite society into schools.
Even women were included in this educational development:
the little Abrg de lhistoire grecque of Pons-Augustin Alletz of
1763 was designed lusage des collges et de tous les lieux o lon
instruit la jeunesse tant de lun que de lautre sexe. This work was
plagiarised by the lesser William Robertson, again for use
specifically in schools.51 Charles Rollins prolix and encyclopedic
Histoire ancienne (1730-8), covering all the ancient civilizations,
was itself intended for schools; and, although it was too long to
have much success here, it nevertheless became the standard
reference work for educated readers across Europe. Publishers
were well aware of these new trends. With their plans for multi-
volume critical histories, men like Thomas Cadell, William
Strachan and John Murray were feeding the same audience at a
different stage of life. Gast had the misfortune to be continually
revised by those who objected to his style if not his content or
his scholarship; but despite this, he deserves a place alongside the
great triumvirate of Hume, Robertson and Gibbon.
The political message of such works is muted, but clear.
Behind the development of modern historiography on the
ancient world lies the cultural context of an age of free trade,
manufacture and commerce, steeped in Montesquieu, and
which accepted Burkes views of the morality of empire based on
the concepts of the reward for civic virtue and a duty towards
the subjects: Gasts Greeks belong to a world of Huguenot
enterprise and free trade that lay at the foundation of
eighteenth-century mercantilism. Overt political stances are of
minor importance in these eighteenth-century histories, which
reflect the opinions of the age rather than seeking to transform it
through the reinterpretation of the past. It was not until the
nineteenth century that a truly politically engaged history
emerged, inspired by the American and French revolutions; and

50
The Grecian History was later than his histories of England and Rome, being
posthumously published in 1774; but it was no exception in its subsequent
popularity.
51
See Ceserani o.c. (n. 31).
 The lost historian John Gast 59

Greek history became directly partisan with the works of

William Mitford, Bulwer Lytton and George Grote.52

OSWYN MURRAY
Banbury, Oxfordshire

52
The research for this paper was begun in March 2008; the discovery of John
Gast was first presented in May of that year at a graduate seminar on eighteenth
century historiography in Corpus Christi College Oxford, and subsequently at a
meeting of the European Network for Greek History in Trento, and at a BAT
colloquium at the Centre Louis Gernet in Paris. It was finally and most appropriately
given under its present title in April 2009 as the annual Auditorial Lecture to the
Trinity College Dublin Classical Society. I am grateful to the undergraduate President
of the Society, Hannah Collins, for inviting me to deliver this lecture, and to the
enthusiastic response of the various audiences who discussed it.
I also thank Dr.Toby Barnard of Hertford College, Oxford, Dr. Charles Benson,
librarian of Trinity College Dublin, Prof. Marie Therese Flanagan of Queens
University Belfast, Grant Macintyre (formerly of the publisher John Murray) , Dr.
Muriel McCarthy, librarian of Dr. Marshs Library, Dublin, Dr. David McClay of the
National Library of Scotland, and Dr. Christian White (bookseller of Ilkley) for
permissions and bibliographical help. At a late stage Professor David Dickson of
Trinity College Dublin read the manuscript, and offered detailed and generous advice
on Irish and Huguenot history. It is finally a great pleasure to see the article published
in its natural home, the venerable Irish classical journal Hermathena.
60 Oswyn Murray

Appendix 1: Materials for a Biography of

John Gast
Apart from Joseph Stocks 1793 Preface to the History of
Greece the only other printed biographical accounts of Gasts
life that I have been able to discover are 1) Richard Ryan,
Biographia Hibernica II (1822) pp. 177-9 (rhetorical, but the
information is derived from Stocks preface); 2) Robert Watt,
Bibliotheca Britannica (1824) p. 402 (very brief); 3) Nouvelle
Biographie Gnrale 19 (1857) pp. 598-9, with a couple of
references to earlier works; this last, which attests French
knowledge of Gast, is reproduced as item 2 at the end of this
Appendix. There are also brief obituaries or notices of John Gast
in Anthologia Hibernica ii (Dublin September 1793) pp. 186-8
and in Richard Mant, History of the Church of Ireland (London
1839) i, pp. 639-40; these add little to Stocks memoir.

1. John Gast, History of Greece (Dublin 1793): Preface of

Joseph Stock

PREFACE BY THE EDITOR

One advantage at least, amidst a number of inconveniences,

attends the publication of a posthumous work, that an
opportunity is furnished, without hurting the feelings of the
author, of giving to the world a just account of his life, and of
his services to the cause of literature. A long and intimate
acquaintance with the person and family of the late Dr, Gast has
enabled the editor to gratify curiosity with the following
information.

JOHN GAST, D.D. archdeacon of Glandelagh, was born in

Dublin July 29, 1715. His father Daniel Gast, a protestant of
Saintonge, in the province of Guyenne, was a regular bred
physician, and followed his profession in his own country, till he
was obliged by the persecution of 1684 to escape into Ireland,
where he entered into the service of Q. Anne, obtained a
cornets commission in Col. Joseph de Salanders regiment of
 The lost historian John Gast 61

dragoons, and after the peace of Utrecht, resuming his original

profession, settled in Dublin for the remainder of his life. This
gentleman was naturalized in 1712, took a doctors degree in
medicine, and is said to have had good success in his business.
He married a lady of Bourdeaux, Elizabeth Grenoilleau, a very
near relation of the celebrated Baron de Montesquieu. It
deserves to be remembered here, to the honour of the French
nation in general, as well as of that part of it in particular which
adopted the reformed religion, that property was considered
there as a thing so sacred and unalienable, notwithstanding the
strongest prejudices of education, that more than half a century
after the retreat of Dr.Gasts family from France, his right to an
inheritance which then devolved to him was acknowledged, and
a sum not much short of 1000l. was transmitted to him from his
relations at Bourdeaux, through the hands of his warm friend
and admirer, the late Alderman George Sutton.

Our author received the early part of his education in the

diocesan school of St. Patricks, Dublin, under a severe but able
schoolmaster, the Rev. Dr. Lloyd, from whose ferula he passed
to the tuition of the Rev. Dr. Gilbert, vice provost of Trinity-
college, Dublin. He obtained his bachelors degree with honour
in that university in 1735, and was prevented only by an early
matrimonial engagement53 from standing candidate for a
fellowship, a preferment to which it is well known that none but
scholars of the most eminent industry have any pretensions to
aspire.

ENTERING into holy orders, he began his career by serving as

chaplain to the French congregation at Portarlington. Thence he
removed to Dublin, and about the year 1744 became curate of
the parish of St. John, first under the Rev. Dean Maturin, and
then under the Rev. John Owen dean of Clanmacnois. To the
labours of this important and fatiguing cure a growing family
made it necessary for him to add a weekly lecture at St. Johns,
daily prayers at six in the morning in St. Marys chapel Christ-
church, and the business of a schoolmaster.

53
He married Felicia, only daughter of Andrew Huddleston, an English
gentleman, a younger son of a good family in Cumberland. She is still living.
62 Oswyn Murray

In the discharge of this last duty he was certainly not

exceeded by any one master that has ever appeared in Dublin.
Besides the learned languages, he taught French to perfection;
was particularly attentive to prosody and composition, both
English and Latin; and possessed a singular ability in conveying
the rudiments of history and geography. He was not anxious to
augment the number of his scholars, which at no time exceeded
thirty; so that, for several years, he continued to support the
burden of a school without the assistance of an usher. The
parish of St. Johns abounds with poor; and the care of the
prisoners in the four-courts marshalsea, which is annexed to the
cure, would appear of itself a sufficient employment for one
clergyman. Yet in the midst of fatigues almost beyond belief, our
author had the happiness to preserve a flow of chearfulness,
which made his company delightful to the whole parish, and to
all that had the pleasure of his acquaintance.

IT was under the heaviest pressure of these multiplied

employments, that he composed a history of ancient Greece in
the form of a dialogue, and gave it to the public in one octavo
volume in the year 1753. The work, which being published
chiefly by the aid of a moderate subscription is now become
scarce, is not a mere exchange of question and answer, but a
dramatic dialogue between three characters a master, a scholar
who has made some progress in ancient history, and a novice.
The university of Dublin was so well pleased with this
performance54, that they conferred on the author the degree of
D.D. at the instance of the late Provost Andrews, without any
expence. He took this degree in Feb. 1765.

HOWEVER, the dialogue form, which Dr. Gast had made

choice of to relieve the tediousness of history, he found many of
his readers agree in considering as too great an interruption to
the course of the narrative. Guided by their opinion, he was

54
Copy from the Registry-book of T.C.D.
Trinity College, Dublin, Feb.7, 1760
By order of the Provost and Senior Fellows, I certify, that they approve of the
Rudiments of Grecian History published by the Rev. Mr. Gast, as a book very proper to
be read by young gentlemen at school, for their instruction in the History of Greece.
FRAN. STO. SULLIVAN, Register.
 The lost historian John Gast 63

induced to new-model his work; and in compliance with the

same advice, he undertook the more arduous task of drawing
out a complete history of the Grecian people, from the earliest
accounts of time, to their final humiliation under the Othman
yoke. It was an enterprise, which, in the manner he was
determined to conduct it, required an uncommon share both of
industry and leisure; and although leisure was never permitted to
a man in his situation, yet for the concluding ten years of his
life, every hour that he could by any exertion make his own was
devoted to the attainment of this great object of his wishes.

IN the prosecution of his labour he changed his plan more

than once, but had at last fixed on the following arrangement.
The entire history was to be extended to the size of three
volumes in quarto, the London edition. Of these the first
volume, deducing the history to the accession of Alexander the
great, was to be formed chiefly from his original work, thrown
out of a dialogue into a continued narrative. The second was to
have traced the fortunes of Greece proper from Alexanders time
to the present day: and this part he actually published in
London in 1782, prompted, it is likely, to the premature
exhibition of this second volume, as a separate work, by the
representation of his printer there, who reported to him (and
with truth, as the event proved) that two writers of considerable
ability55 were actually engaged in a similar undertaking. In the
last volume, it was his intention to give to his readers the history
of Alexanders successors in Egypt and Asia; a theme, which is so
far from having been exhausted by the labours of modern writers
in any country, that on the contrary it may almost advance a
claim to the title of novelty. Of this truth the diligence of the
excellent historian Dr. Robertson has furnished one very
manifest proof, in his late ingenious discovery of the state of
European commerce with India under the reign of the
Ptolemies.

IT is but justice to the memory of Dr. Gast to observe, that

in complying with the printers desire to have the volume which
came out in 1782 brought forward to public view at that early

55
Mr. Mitford and Dr. Gillies.
64 Oswyn Murray

season, he himself was influenced by no jealousy or dread of the

success of a fellow-labourer. The editor has before him two
letters, in which our author, after thanking him for the concern
which he had expressed lest the intended republication in
Dublin of Gillies and Mitfords histories should injure the sale
of his own, speaks with so much candour on the delicate subject
of a competitor for literary honour, that it is hoped the public
will not be displeased to see an extract from each letter, from
whence a judgment may be formed of the temper of mind with
which he received the first report of the approaching appearance
of his two rivals.

Newcastle, Nov. 24, 1780

AS to Dr Gillies, I question not in the least the

excellence of his performance. But our Plans may differ.
It is likely, he may not take in as extensive a period as I
have in view. And should we even follow the same line,
and draw exactly from the same sources, yet he may not
see matters in the same light that I do. Were there even
to be no other difference, yet the manner and style of
two writers, who have anything of originality and are not
merely copyers, must give to the work of each of them a
peculiar and distinguishing cast. So that, how justly
soever he may be deserving of the public approbation, it
does not certainly follow, that your friend must be sent
to the pastry cooks. Not to say, that, if the only
advantage I have a chance for is to have my work issue
abroad before Dr. Gillies can make his appearance, it is
an advantage of no great value. The last comer is not
always the worst off, unless a turtle-feast is the business.
And Mr. Murray knows well how little resemblance
there is between a turtle-feast and literary diet.

January 8, 1785

WITH respect to Mr. Mitfords publication, I am

altogether easy about it. In London the publication of a
history, even of the English nation, has not prevented
the publication and favourable reception of another such
 The lost historian John Gast 65

history. Concerning the history of Greece, especially the

earlier ages of that country, various schemes may be
adopted, and the same transactions may be placed in
different lights, according to the genius and principles of
the writer, and the impression made on his mind .... In
consequence, however of your advice respecting a
republication of Mitford here, where we move in a more
confined sphere, I called on Alderman Exshaw: but, on
my way to him, it occurred to me, what an improper
part I should act, were I to prevent the publication of a
work, merely because it might clash with my private
interest. A printer is properly a trustee for the public.
And if a work is really worthy of the public perusal, and
may contribute to the improvement of the public
manners, shall a printer, from pique or favour, withhold
such a work from the community, to whose instruction
he is by his profession bound to administer? Upon this
principle, I barely mentioned to Mr. Exshaw my
intention of publishing my whole history in Ireland in
the course of the year now current, and left it to him to
judge how far my scheme, should it be attended with
success, might lower the value of that edition of Mitford
which he had in view. Was I right? What he has done, I
know not.

To these extracts I shall venture to subjoin a third, taken

from the beginning of the last letter, because it furnishes a short
and authentic explanation of the reason, why the publication of
the whole history was deferred so long, that the hand of fate at
length arrested the worthy author before he had the satisfaction
of seeing it completed.

MY Grecian history, at present my grand object, I

thought to have ready for the press by March at farthest.
A very important law-suit, which affects some near
friends of mine, and in which I had taken an active part
these two years past, has since the beginning of October
required my attention in a very particular manner. A
reference, under the sanction of the court of exchequer,
had been agreed to, for the purpose of adjusting the
66 Oswyn Murray

accounts in question. And in order to bring these

accounts to the fullest and fairest point of view before
the referees, it was found necessary to unravel the
intricacies of a long and complicated account of thirty
years. And this labour, at the expence of ten hours a day
writing for two months, have I been obliged to go
through. The ground is now tolerably open, and the
referees, I trust, will have a complete exhibition of the
true state of things. This, you may judge, has delayed
me.

AND delay him it did, unfortunately for others besides

himself, till the final close of an active and well-spent life obliged
him to leave to his family the settling of an account, which,
there is reason to fear, is not to this day adjusted.

DR. GAST had continued a curate in the diocese of Dublin

for the space of seventeen years, when his acknowledged merit
was at length rewarded by archbishop Cobbe, who in 1761
presented him to the living of Arklow, in the county of
Wicklow, worth in the gross about 300l. yearly. His graces
bounty did not stop here: for in June 1764 he was pleased to
add to Arklow the archdeaconry of Glandelagh with the parish
of Newcastle, about eight miles from Dublin, annexed, which
nearly doubled his income. Between the date of this last
preferment and the former, our author had recommended
himself to the particular regard of the archbishop by the
attention he paid to the education of his graces grandson, the
present Charles Cobbe, Esq. who was trusted to his care in his
rural retirement near Arklow. After he had removed to the
parsonage house at Newcastle, he continued for some years to
educate a few boarders, but at a charge so moderate, that the
advantage rested too much on their side; so that encrease of
years, conspiring with very moderate desires, induced him at
length to relinquish the profession of a classical teacher entirely.
Archbishop Cradock had besides made it necessary for him to
devote a considerable share of his time to a town parish, by
giving him in exchange for Arklow, which lies at too great a
distance from the corps of the archdeaconry, the cure of St.
Nicolas-without in Dublin, in value nearly equal to what he
 The lost historian John Gast 67

resigned for it, but in weight of duty much more considerable.

He was appointed curate of St. Nicolas-without in the year
1775; and in this station, among many other beneficial
exertions, he planned and had the pleasure of carrying into
execution a scheme of weekly contributions for the relief of the
numerous poor in that great resort of manufacturers; a scheme,
which was and is still productive of incredible good.

INDEED to his able and exemplary conduct, in the several

offices to which he was called in the church, the most ample
testimony of facts may be adduced. In the parish of St. John,
where he spent the most active part of his life, he was so entirely
beloved, that they presented him, on his departure, with a piece
of plate of uncommon value in proportion to the ability of that
parish, with an inscription expressing in the most honourable
terms their sense of his long and faithful services. A similar
compliment, and the first of its kind that was paid to one of its
members by that corporation, was made to Dr. Gast by the dean
and chapter of St. Patricks, Dublin the year that he served the
office of proctor. To the Roman Catholics, who form a large
majority of the parish of Newcastle, he was not the less
acceptable for being known to be the author of a well-meant
attempt to reconcile them to protestantism, in a tract to which
he did not affix his name, intitled, a Letter from a clergyman of
the established church of Ireland to those of his parishioners who are
of the popish communion: Dublin, Sleater, 1767: a work which
deserves to be preserved in the library of every protestant, for the
sake of its reasoning; and of every christian, for the spirit of
benevolence that may be imbibed from it.
WHEN the life of their much respected pastor was
terminated at length by the gout in the year 1788, a subscription
was immediately opened among his parishioners of every
description, to erect a handsome marble monument to his
memory in the parish church of Newcastle, which, by some
unlucky accidents, though long in the sculptors hands, is not
yet ready to be set up. An epitaph, said to be from the pen of his
immediate successor in that parish, was ordered to be inscribed
on the monument, which does so much justice to the character
of the deceased, that the editor, conscious of his own inability to
68 Oswyn Murray

draw up a better, has been tempted to annex it entire to this

account.

EPITAPH

In the adjoining chancel lie the remains of

JOHN GAST, D.D.
Late Archdeacon of Glandelagh, and
Curate of St. Nicolas without:
Who departed this life the 25. of Feb. 1788,
Aged 72 years and six months.
For 23 years and upwards,
This parish was happy in the fruits
Of his ministerial labours.
Affable, chearful, learned, zealous, charitable,
He conciliated the affections of all;
And his life presented
An engaging example of that christian practice,
Which with persuasive energy he recommended,
As a minister of the gospel.
______________

In grateful remembrance of his services,

His parishioners have placed this stone,
A memorial to posterity:
Desirous, that their children may venerate
The beauty of religion exemplified in a good life,
And aspire after the attainment of those virtues,
Which are acceptable with GOD,
And cause the dead to be remembered
With affection and respect.

THE public has a right to ask, by what means the office of

collecting and laying before them the materials that compose the
first volume of the following history (for the second came out, as
we have said, in 178256, in the authors lifetime) has devolved
upon the editor.

56
In London, but not in Dublin. The entire history was never published till
now.
 The lost historian John Gast 69

THE most important benefit, which one human creature

can receive from another, is the blessing of a good education. It
is a service, which, if faithfully executed, can never be
compensated by money; and to the man, and to the whole
family of the man, from whom I learned to speak, and think,
and feel as a cultured mind will help us to do, would I labour, as
long as God should grant me life and means, to testify my
gratitude. I was his scholar, and the first with whom he opened
his school. He cherished me as a parent, till my literary toils
were overpaid with the attainment of a Fellowship in Dublin
college, and he loved me as a friend ever after. For he was not
the character that Dr. Johnson had in view, when he remarked, I
fear with too good authority from daily experience, that among
the evils which arise from the vicissitudes of life, one of the most
common is the mutability of friendships.

IN the unreserved confidence to which the author admitted

me, I was of course a party to his scheme of altering that
dialogue-history, which had been my instructor when I was a
boy; and he condescended also to listen to my advice as to
separating the story of the Macedonian kings from that of the
other successors of Alexander, the intermixture of which parallel,
yet distinct, histories is a heavy incumbrance on the memory
and patience of a young reader. If it be now a subject of just
concern, that he did not live to fill up his outline by the
addition of a third volume to the work here offered to public
view, it is at least a consolation to me to reflect, that in
persuading him to keep clear of the transactions of Syria and
Egypt, I put it into his power to give the finishing hand to his
second volume, and to be himself a witness to its favourable
reception.

SEVENTY years of life, together with frequent visits of the

gout, did not discourage his ardent spirit from looking forward
to the consummation of his enterprise: but especially he always
persuaded himself, the new casting of his first work would be a
matter of so little difficulty, that he might count upon its
execution by a coup de main at any time: and what may be done
at any time is very apt, we know, to be done at no time. He
began, however, as I have ended, by adopting the greatest part of
70 Oswyn Murray

his original Rudiments (as he modestly called them) of the

Grecian history, without their dramatic form; and he had
advanced as far as the second book, when he appears to have
made a great alteration, as well in the plan itself of his work, as
in his manner of writing; and such an alteration, as, I must take
leave to say, I do not think an improvement. As if he had been
apprehensive of a defect of matter, or was carried away by the
success of some late refiners, who choose to give us the spirit of
history instead of facts, with which last they seem to take it for
granted the reader is already perfectly acquainted, he grew
diffusive, and argumentative, and conjectural; insomuch that he
had, in his first book, (as he began it anew) discovered not less
than twenty-one reasons why the ancient Greeks were so addicted
to mythology. All this superfluity however, we may reasonably
presume, his after judgment would have rejected; for the writer
must have plenty before him, who wishes to make a selection.
Neither should I have mentioned the circumstance here, if some
apology had not appeared necessary to such of the authors
friends as may chance to be in possession hereafter of his papers,
for my not adopting his second thoughts.

IN one of his serious alarms from the gout, he sketched out,

in faltering and for the most part scarcely legible characters, the
form of a last will, in which I found, after his decease, very
plainly the following words: As to my Grecian history, perhaps
Dr. Stock What followed, I could not read; nor in truth was
it necessary.

THE invocation of a beloved friend, at the moment when

the tomb is closing upon him, is solemn and irresistible. I might
have urged, that I had as little leisure as most people. I might
have said, with equal adherence to fact, that I have never been
able even to approach to the enviable faculty of doing more
things than one at a time. But I knew, that with some pains-
taking, and some encroachment on my own business, there was
a chance, that I might serve at once the memory of the dead and
the interests of the living; for a widow and daughter, not left in a
state of independence, may profit considerably from the
indulgence of a generous public to this work. I undertook the
 The lost historian John Gast 71

task, therefore, without foreseeing how much of my reward I

was to receive in the very prosecution of it.

TRANSCRIBING those well-known pages, which had

afforded to my opening mind a mingled delight, as well from
the interesting nature of the story (for surely there is no history
more interesting than the Grecian) as from my veneration of its
narrator, carried a pleasure along with it, which I had not looked
for. Memory brought back, at almost every paragraph, the
golden days of childhood, when I was encouraged, not to read
only, but to animadvert on, every incident that supplied matter
of disquisition, to question the authenticity of a fact, and even
to dispute with the author himself on the judgment he had
passed upon it. For such was his method of continuing
instruction to us, when the regular hours of teaching were over.
HE would propose a query on the historical lesson of the
day: Was it probable, that Lycurgus took an oath of his Spartans
to observe his laws for the time that he should be absent from
them? and if that legislator believed they would keep the oath,
was he to blame for killing himself? What are we to think of the
genius of Socrates? was it real, or the illusion of a heated fantasy?
Who was the wiser counsellor for Athens, Demosthenes or
Phocion? with many more of the like nature. And it was a
triumph, if he could provoke us to consign our puny arguments
to writing. Indeed he would himself give no little animation to
the debate by the sallies of a natural vivacity, which overleaping
place and time would set him down, as it were, in the midst of
the people he was descanting upon; and to hear him talk of the
scoundrel Flamininus, or the villain Paulus Aemilius, you could
imagine no less, than that the speaker himself was one of the
thousand hostages from Achaia57, whom a perfidious policy
detained, till they became fine old Grecians in Italy.

HOW far the pleasurable association of ideas I have now

described may have influenced my judgment, when I subjoin
my earnest testimony, such as it is, to the merit of the following
history, it is not for me to determine: assuredly I please myself
with the hope, that it will be found a valuable accession to the

57
See Vol. 2, p. 534.
72 Oswyn Murray

library, at least, of the young reader. The language is simple,

neither turgid nor creeping. Curiosity is kept awake by a
judicious and well connected detail, where nothing seems to
have been omitted that is material, nothing is introduced to
swell the size of the volume, or to shew off the writer more than
his subject. Moral instruction, the most precious fruit of the
study of history, is not forgotten, wherever there is an open for
it; and the lesson is such, as might have been expected to
proceed out of a heart, that overflowed with love towards God
and man.

JOSEPH STOCK
Delgany, 24 June, 1793.

2. Nouvelle Biographie Gnrale publi par MM Firmin Didot

sous la direction de M. le Dr Hoefer, 19 (1857) Paris pp. 598-
9:

Gast (John) historien thologien irlandais, n Dublin, de

parents franais, en 1715, mort en 1788. lev dans le collge de
La Trinit Dublin, il entra dans les ordres. Il fut
successivement vicaire de Saint-John, recteur dArklow, puis de
Saint-Nicholas Dublin. Il obtint aussi larchidiaconat de
Glandelough et la prbende de Newcastle. On a de lui: The
Rudiments of Grecian History; 1753, in 8o. Ce petit ouvrage, qui
fut dabord publi sous forme de dialogue, tait destin des
coliers; il atteste chez Gast une rudition tendue et prcise; il a
t traduit en franais par Mme de Villeroy, et insr par
Leuliette dans son Histoire de la Grce, traduite de plusieurs
auteurs anglais; Paris, 1807, 2 vol. in 8o; A Letter from a
clergyman of the Irish established Church to his popish parishioners.

Rose, New general biographical Dictionary. Qurard, Le France

littraire
 The lost historian John Gast 73

3. John Gilbert, History of the City of Dublin (Dublin 1854-9),

I p. 90:

A school of great reputation was kept in this street [Fishamble

street] by John Gast, D.D., who became curate of St Johns in
1744, and while officiating here published his Grecian History,
a work recommended by the University of Dublin. In 1761 he
was removed from St Johns to the living of Arklow, to which
was added the Archdeaconry of Glendalough and the parish of
Newcastle. He exchanged Newcastle for the parish of St
Nicholas Without in 1775, and died in the year 1788. Gast was
of French extraction; his father, Daniel Gast, a Huguenot
physician, left Saintoinge, in Guienne, in 1684, to escape the
persecution, and settled in Dublin with his wife, Elizabeth
Grenoilleau, a near relative of the author of LEsprit de Lois.
74 Oswyn Murray

Appendix 2: Correspondence and other

material related to the publication of
John Gasts History of Greece (1782) by
John Murray
The main source for this correspondence is the John Murray
Archive in the National Library of Scotland, whose holdings are
here reproduced with the permission of the Trustees. The
outgoing correspondence of John Murray is preserved as copies
in a series of large quarto bound volumes. I have as far as
possible retained the original spelling, abbreviations and
punctuation.
Additional and confirmatory material is to be found in
Joseph Stocks preface to the 1793 Dublin edition of the
complete History (Appendix 1). I have inserted these extracts
from John Gasts letters to Stock (nos. 3 and 23) at the
appropriate points in the correspondence.

MS 41903
1. (pp. 243-4):

My Dear Sir London 2d Oct. 1780

I would hope that our acquaintance is not worn out,

altho our correspondence has suffered an interruption. I hear of
you sometimes from different Gentlemen who visit London;
And I am at all times happy to know of your healthy prosperity.

When you were here, you mentioned a History of

Greece which Mr Ghast had undertaken, and which he had then
been writing for many years. My Letter is principally upon this
subject, to intimate to you that two Gentlemen of Scotland are
writing the same history. (I am personally acquainted with one
of them) I should therefore think that Mr. Ghast should be
expeditious if he would give his work a chance for success. If he
delays it, till the others are published, he will come to [sic] late
to market, and find difficulty in engaging a bookseller at all in
the Concern. In what forwardness Mr. Ghasts performance is, I
 The lost historian John Gast 75

am ignorant, you mentioned I think that he designed two vols

in Quarto. If his plan is not all finished I would advise him to
come forward with one volume, rather than be forestalled. If the
execution of this gives satisfaction, his work will have the
preference enjoy the advantage of being known, & will not be
forgot when the rest is ready. Whereas if Another history of
Greece gets the start of him, his merit must be that of a Gibbon
or Hume to attract notice.

I shall esteem it obliging if you write me on this matter,

and tell me if Mr. Ghast is alive, or if he has relinquished his
design.

I am Yours etc.

The Revd. Dr. Stock / Dublin

2. (pp. 256-7):

Dear Sir, London 15th Nov 1780

I have a very high opinion of Dr. Gast both from your

character of him & his former book. Nevertheless his present
book will not be worth to a Bookseller one half of what it would
fetch, provided it were published without a competitor. the
majority of readers are not possessed of the greatest learning; if
they have one history of Greece they will not purchase another,
if even, that other is the best.

Dr. Gilliess history has been perused by Mr. Gibbon,

and will appear with his approbation of recommendation. Dr.
Gibbon is fashionable, fashionable people in their taste of books
rest upon him; and fashion is all in all in London. Therefore I
continue to recommend it to Dr. Gast, if he wishes for a chance
of success, immediately to send his first volume to London. I am
interested in opposing the other. Your demands to know upon
what terms Dr. Gast is to part with his Ms. are fair and
equitable. Here however you will consider one thing, that the
work should be exhibited. The terms in the authors favour,
76 Oswyn Murray

depend upon the merit of his work & the size of the volume.
Most Booksellers have friends to consult upon such occasions.
But what friend can speak of a work which is not before them.

If Dr. Gast therefore will send his first volume with all
the expedition he can, I promise to speak plainly to the terms of
publication in 10 days after I receive it. For the reasons I have
given (in which I dare say you will co-incede) it is for the
Authors advantage in every respect that he uses no delay.

I am sorry your time will not admit of your visiting

London, Here I could give you a history, when two pages will
hardly admit of the abridgement of an Abridgement.

I Remain

Yours etc
Revd Dr Stock
Bath

3. (pp. 273-4):

Copy of a letter from Archdeacon Gast to Dr Stock 58

Newcastle Novr 24 1780

You have obliged me exceedingly, my dearest friend,

yours received on Wednesday evening. & with all the expedition
this place admits of I send you my answer.

To hurry off my work, so as to answer Mr Murrays

wishes, is absolutely impracticable. and far from promising
myself any advantage from such precipitation I think it might
injure me considerably, as much inaccuracy would probably be
the consequence. As to Dr Gillies I question not in the least the
excellence of his performance but our Plans may differ It is

58
The second and third paragraphs of this letter are also printed in Joseph
Stocks preface to the 1793 Dublin edition of Gasts History, pp. xi-xii.
 The lost historian John Gast 77

likely, he may not take in as extensive a period as I have in view

and should we even follow the same line, & draw exactly from
the same sources, yet he may not see matters in the same light
that I do And were there to be no other difference, yet the
manner & style of two writers, who have anything of originality
& are not merely copyers, must give the works of each of them a
peculiar & distinguishing cast. So that how justly soever he may
be deserving of the public approbation, it does not certainly
follow then that your friend must be sent to the pastrycooks,
not to say that, if the only advantage I have a chance for is to
have my work issue abroad before Dr Gillies can make his
appearance, it is an advantage of no great Value.

The last comer is not always the worst off, unless a

Turtle feast is the business. & Mr Murray knows well how little
resemblance there is between a turtle feast & literary diet.

My situation is in fact this. The intended work is to

consist of eighteen books, which I am certain will make three
volumes quarto Ten of these books viz from the beginning of
Alexanders reign to the final subjection of the Grecian people to
the Roman power are finished. The eight first books which are
to contain the History of the fabulous times of Greece, the
establishment of the fortunes of the Grecian commonwealths;
and the reign of Philip of Macedon who planned their
overthrow, are partly done already. My present business is, to
change the Dialogue of my former work into narrative, & to
give to some points the finishing they wanted; a considerable
portion of which I have done, & am now employed in
completing it. So you may see why I cannot send out my first
volume. It is the very part I am now finishing.

With the blessing of Providence the whole will be

completed, written fair, and ready for the press, before the end
of summer, possibly some time in August, but certainly early in
September. If therefore your friend thinks it will suit his purpose
to have the work put into his hands by that day, whatever terms
you settle with him I shall subscribe, and if he accounts it of
such moment to get the start of Dr Gillies, he may easily affect
it, when he will have the whole work completely finished. In
78 Oswyn Murray

specifying the terms be so good as to have it expressly mentioned

whether in case a subsequent edition of the work should take
place sure the benefit if any is to be Mr Murrays or mine. At the
time of Publication I hope to be in London in person, as I
propose to be the bearer of my Manuscript: in that case, the
Printer may be assured of my services as to the correcting
business.

I have just thought of an expedient, which might in the

same measure fall in with Mr Murrays views to publish that
part of the Grec: History which takes in the Macedonian line
from the accession of Alexander the Great to the death of the
second Philip: it is intended for my second Vol. It would
certainly make a thick Quarto, & forms a kind of distinct
period. It must be done. But I like it not. However think of it

Your account of Mrs Stock gave Betty & me infinite

pleasure our most sincere compliments & best wishes attend
her. Adieu my dearest friend &

believe me

Ever yours

(Signed) John Gast

4. (pp. 276-8):

London 15th Decr 1780

Dear Sir

I am favoured with your letter of the 2d inst. covering

Dr Gasts to you of the 24th Ulto. upon the subject of his book,
and which is written with great good sense & judgement.

I observe the authors objection to the finishing of the

first part of his work (which is, what remains of it) hastily; he
wishes to come correct to the press, which I greatly approve of,
 The lost historian John Gast 79

nor shall I ever advise to disturb him in such intention. I could

wish him however to see, that a history of Greece published
before him, will certainly in some degree contract the sale of his.
Were I in terms with Dr Gillies I would assuredly press him to
publish before Dr Gast, and for similar reasons that I now press
Dr Gast to publish before him. Let me believe that Dr. Gast is
sensible that there may be some propriety in my advice, &
would follow it if he could, without hastening his work to
Carelessness. He has suggested indeed an expedient to meet my
idea: to publish that part of the Grecian history which takes
in the Macedonian line from the succession of Alexander the
Great to the death of the second Philip, intended for the second
Volume & would make a thick 4to and forms a kind of distinct
period.

This expedient I like exceedingly. The period chosen is exactly,

what, if I am rightly informed Dr Gillies treats of. And I would
strenuously advise Dr. Gast to publish it first. It is a shining
period of the history. And is perhaps what is least known. The
pulse of the public will be felt, and from the Criticisms that will
be made upon the portion of the work the author will receive
hints for the improvement of the remainder. Indeed I am of
opinion that everything recommends the publication of this part
of the work, and that no objection can be formed against it.
Hume, Gibbon, Lyttleton & others have published at first but
portions of greater works which afterwards have been finished.
And were Dr Gasts Work all finished, I am not certain that I
would not nevertheless recommend to publish a distinct part of
it at first. As I am very serious in what I say, should the authors
sentiments coincide with mine he will no doubt take measures
for transmitting the Ms which I could print in 6 weeks after I
receive it by the exertion I should make.

Dr. Gasts queries concerning the mode of disposing this

property are very proper. And I would recommend to him to
treat only at first for one impression not to exceed 750 copies;
the property or copyright after that is sold to revert to the
author. This will be greatly in his favour should the book meet
with success, nor be objected to by any honest bookseller who
cannot be injured by this mode of dealing.
80 Oswyn Murray

****

[there follow other matters concerning the publication of Stocks

book on Bishop Berkeley]

5. (pp. 295-8):

London 11th Jany 1781

Dear Sir

I have the favour of your letter of the 11th inst. stating

the nature of your work, and proposing to publish the 2d Part
first, viz from the accession of Alexr to the final subjection of
the Grecian settlement to Rome. I think this Idea is judicious,
and if executed bids fairer to promote the success of the whole
work than if it was all to be published at once. The 9th and 10th
books also which you mention, must be included, if possible, in
the volume. They promise to be curious & entertaining, and I
should not like to see them omitted. But I shall write to you my
sentiments more fully upon this and all other points concerning
your history when I am favoured with your manuscript. The
mode of transmitting it, thro the post office, will be very
convenient, and I shall duly acknowledge the receipt of every
portion of it, as it comes. In the mean time it may not be amiss
to repeat, that as a bookseller, I would not exceed an impression,
at first, of more than 750 Copies, and to secure the copy, I shall
enter it (in the terms of the statute) in Stationers Hall, as the
property of the Author. Your idea of printing an octavo edition
at Dublin in order to protect the property in Ireland, is well
suggested; and I am convinced from what I know of the
booksellers in your City that they will not oppose you. They did
not reprint Dr Macbrides quarto without his permission, and Dr
Leland, if I am rightly informed, actually disposed of the Irish
property of his history for a valuable consideration. The Trade
therefore, will not place you on a worse footing, and when
things are a little more forward, I shall advise you in what
manner to put this business in a train.
 The lost historian John Gast 81

To transmit the sheets to you for correction, altho to be

desired, would protract the printing to such a degree that it
would be 4 Months or 5 in finishing. For this reason the utmost
care shall be taken to correct them here. The sheets also shall be
despatched to you as printed, that you may note the errata, and
send them at the end of the work, for insertion on a separate
leaf. The sheets will also give you an opportunity of forming an
index, if it is agreeable for you to take the trouble. If you do not,
this shall be executed here.

To your question if I am willing to take charge of your

manuscript you will naturally suppose, after what I have
written, that I answer in the affirmative. In another question,
proposed by Dr Stock, you are more materially interested,
Upon what terms do I mean to take the manuscript. To this I
answer that I must see it first, for without seeing it, no
bookseller can pronounce any thing upon the subject; But I
promised after this satisfaction was obtained not to be dilatory
with my proposals. You are, I see, obliging enough to leave this
consideration for your bookseller on a future day. I could wish
however to settle it earlier. Before I conclude, I beg to mention a
few things, which I am of opinion if attended to, would
promote the popularity of your work. If they have no other
merit my pains will at least prove that I am interested in the fate
of your book.

I have observed that all our successful historical [added

above the line] writers, particularly Hume, Gibbon, &
Robertson, have reduced their works to the level of
understanding of common readers. They interrupt not their
narrations either with deep learning or with profound criticism.
They preserve the thread of their story from interruptions of all
kinds; they heighten its interest, and carry their readers to the
conclusion impatient to unwind the chain of events, and to
enjoy the catastrophe. Critical discussions of matter of every
kind tending to weary the readers or divide his attention (which
nevertheless it may be necessary to notice) are either thrown into
the margin, to be found in an appendix, formed into an episode,
or in separate books which are confined to them alone. I do not
mean that references to Authorities should not be given; these
82 Oswyn Murray

we find in the authors I have mentioned & should be given in a

similar manner. I only contend that an historian should render
his work as interesting to the reader as truth will permit. Affect
the heart properly, & the business is accomplished. I am with
great Regard and respect

Yours etc

The Revd Dr Gast

6. (p. 321):

London 23d Feby 1781

Dear Sir

I have to acknowledge the receipt of three sections of

your first book. I have already carefully perused them all, but
wish to have the book complete before I say any thing further.
They are transcribed in a very fair hand and intelligible.

I shall expect the other sections with your usual

conveniency, and I Remain Yrs etc J

Rev.d Archdeacon Gast

Dear Sir

[financial transactions]

I have received 3 sections of Dr. Gasts work; it appears

to be clear, distinct, and well arranged; his authorities also I take
for granted are good. If the performance is deficient in anything
it is in elegance & correctness of style. Of this however you must
say nothing till you hear from me again upon the subject. This
letter goes under the Archdeacons cover.

Your commands I shall at all times be proud of and am Dr

Sir Yours etc J
Revd. Dr. Stock
 The lost historian John Gast 83

7. (p. 359):

London 5th June 1781

Dear Sir,

I admire your patience in not writing to me, as you must

be very Anxious to hear what I am about with your
performance. I have to assure you it has not been neglected, and
in my next I hope to be able to transmit you some printed
sheets; at the same time that I shall write to you much fuller
upon the subject.

I beg to inform you that the last portion of Ms. which I

have received is the Second Section of Book V, and this portion
arrived so long ago that I am surprized to have got no more
since. I shall expect more with your conveniency. In the mean
time be under no anxiety for your Work till my next Letter.

I am Sir your very obt & Hble Servt

J, Murray

N:B I have just got your favour of 21 May & Sect.I of Book VI

Revd Dr. Ghast [sic] Dublin

8. (pp. 385-6):

[undated, but ? 10th Augt 1781, as previous letter in the ms.]

Dear Sir

This will be accompanied with 22 printed Sheets of your

Work & the rest is executing with all convenient expedition. In
going over what is performed you will occasionally observe some
small Variations from your Modes of expression. This was
suggested to me by a few learned Friends who approved of the
intrinsic Merit of the performance, but recommended, as
84 Oswyn Murray

indispensibly necessary, a little more polish to be made in the

Style in order to accommodate the Work to the Taste of the
Times. The alterations made will speak for themselves, & I
flatter myself they will have your approbation, when their sole
purpose has been to convey your ideas & sentiments to the
public, with, if possible, additional force & propriety.

In a former letter I said that I admired your patience.

For there is no Author of my acquaintance that would not in a
similar situation have written fifty letters to know what the
Bookseller was about. Upon receipt of this however you will see
that I have not been idle; at the same Time you are entitled to
my warmest thanks, for your confidence in me, & your candour
in the whole Business.

I would not wish you as yet to make your book more

public among your Friends than you have already done. When it
is in a more advanced State, I shall propose several things to you
concerning the Means of ensuring its success, & making it
known with good effect.

The last Portion of Manuscript which I have received is

B. VII Sect. 2

I Remain etc

PS. The 22 printed Sheets referred to above, are addressed to

Mr John Ormston Queens bridge Dublin (for I intended that
Gentleman to have sent them to you, & this letter at the same
Time; but have altered my Mind) in a parcel to Mr Hallhead
bookseller in Dame Street sent 11th inst. by way of Chester. Mr
Hallhead will deliver your package when it arrives
notwithstanding the direction to Mr Ormston.

The Revd. Archdeacon Gast

 The lost historian John Gast 85

9. (p. 395):

London 3d Sept 81

Dr Sir

[The first part of the letter concerns the printing of Bp Berkeley

150 copies]

There is also in your package a small parcel to

Archdeacon Gast (tho directed by mistake to Mr. J. Ormston) I
flatter myself the Archdeacon has received it very safe.

Pray let me hear from you that I may send you a list of
my publication.

I remain Yours etc J

Mr Wm Hallhead
Dublin

10. (pp. 403-5):

London 27th Sepr 1781

Dear Sir

I wrote you the 10th Augst. advising my having forwarded

22 printed sheets in a parcel to Mr Hallhead. My lre as well as
parcel I will suppose you have reced. Yet if this is the case it
surprises me that no notice has been taken of them, and no
more copy of Ms forwarded since Book VII Sec 2d. I flatter
myself that no illness has occasioned the delay And that I shall
hear from you with more of your Work.

This will be deld. to you by my Bror Mr. Ormston

together with a parcel containing a continuation of your Work
printed to page 400 inclusive. Altho I am in hourly expectation
of hearing from you, yet you have been so long silent I could not
86 Oswyn Murray

refrain from asking Mr. Ormston to wait personally upon you

that I may at least have intelligence of your health

+ + + + +

I refer you to my last for what I have said there. I shall now add
a few matters for your consideration.

As the Work draws on to a conclusion, I am of opinion

it will be necessary for you to think of a preface, or rather
Introduction. I advised you before that Dr Gillies was upon the
same subject. This is a certain truth; And but for his now being
abroad with a Noblemans son his performance would infallibly
have had the start of yours, as he has left behind him nearly One
Volume finished He has I am told enlarged a good deal upon
the manners, customs, weapons, literature, philosophy etc of the
Ancient Greeks.

As much of this is not interwoven in your narrative I

think they might with propriety be treated of in an
Introduction. It is of very great moment that you will appear
before Dr Gillies; and I dare say you will be fond (?) to avail
yourself of every hint to supercede if possible, the necessity of
another publication upon the same subject. If therefore you are
full upon the Matters I have mentioned which the philosophy &
learning of this age in reality requires you will leave the less for
your follower to perform, and acquire an establishment I am
hopeful with the public, which a competitor will not be able to
shake.

It may be advanced that you mean to perform what I

require in the first part of your History, which is to follow the
present publication It may be answered that it is necessary to
do it in both; the Age of Miltiades & Aristides etc being very
difft from the successors of Alexr. down to the final reduction of
Greece to the Roman yoke

+ + + + +
 The lost historian John Gast 87

I have some other matters upon my Mind to mention,

which however I shall defer till I am favoured with a letter from
you. In the mean time I beg to assure you that I feel myself
concerned in the success of your work, and I continue to take
every pains to make it worthy of the public eye.

Permit me to Introduce Mr Ormston to your civilities &

believe me to remain - - J M

You will prepare an errata in order to communicate when you

are in possession of the whole

Revd Archdeacon Gast

11. (pp. 405-6):

London 27th Sep.r 1781

Dear Sir

I trouble you upon a piece of literary business

concerning myself.

Archdeacon Gast of your city has composed a history of

Antient Greece a portion of which I am printing. Upon
examination of his Ms: after I recd it , it was found to contain
good enough matter but the language in which it was composed
so obsolete & faulty that it could not in its present state be
offered to the public with the smallest chance for advancing the
Authors reputation.

To have refused it must have mortified Mr Gast, and to

have returned it to him for correction, would have incurred a
great delay and been ineffectual. In this situation I ventured
to have the Ms corrected here, & on the 10th ulto sent him 22
sheets printed mentioning to him as tenderly as I could, the
liberty that had been taken. To my letter I have got no Answer
which rather surprises me.
88 Oswyn Murray

By Mr Buller [?] of Parliament Street I have sent the

Author a continuation of his Work which when it comes to
hand you will do me a favour in personally delivering with the
inclosed letter to him; As I am somewhat anxious to know how
the Author does, and if he approves of my proceedings.

I never saw the Archdeacon; but I have a great opinion

of his understanding & liberal ideas from the few letters he has
written to me wherein he shows both frankness & confidence. I
am indeed well aware how ticklish it is to take liberties with an
Authors Manuscript without his consent, whether absolutely
necessary (as in the present) or not. Yet had the Archdeacon
been offended he would not have kept a silence, which tacitly
permitted me to go on, as I had begun; but have written
instantly to stop the licence taken. Yet I cannot well account for
his silence in any shape; as it would be natural for him, I think,
to say something to me upon the sight of his Work in print.
Upon the whole I shall suspend further solicitude till I hear
from you upon the subject. At any rate, whether Mr Gast is
pleased, or displeased, I am very confident his book is more
indebted to my care than he will be willing to own. Seal his
letter carefully, & keep the present business to yourself which
will oblige Yrs most J

I refer to my letter of yesterday. Do me the favour to give Mr

Gast a franked cover with my Address

Mr Jn Ormston
 The lost historian John Gast 89

12. (p. 417):

London 11 Oct 1781

Dear Sir

[notes on other business]

+ + + + +

By Mr Morley I transmit a few more printed Shts: to

Archdeacon Gast directed to your care; and I will flatter myself
that Mr Gasts reception of you will make you depart from your
general censure of the cloth. .....

Mr John Ormston Dublin

13. (pp. 430-1):

London 1.st Nov.r 1781

My dear Sir

Your pacquet containing Sects 1 & 2 of Book VIII

accompanied with your letter of the 17th Octr arrived but
yesterday; and I shall now be in daily expectation of more Ms:
As today will finish the printing of book VII.

I was no stranger to the indolence & neglect of Mr

Hallhead, but thought they extended only to things of little
moment. His behaviour with regard to your work, exceeds any
opinion I had formed of him. Mr O: thinks his conduct meant
something improper, besides your disappointment; of this, I
own, I can form but an imperfect Judgement. It gives at least
some satisfaction that the lost Sheep is restored. And considering
you would have 450 pages of your work printed, to peruse
without interruption, I am impatient to hear in what manner
you relish it, and if you think we have any merit on this side for
the few Corrections in point of Language bestowed upon it.
90 Oswyn Murray

Your proposal of an Index is perfectly to my mind, and

the sooner executed the better. Leave the size of the volume to
my care, and do not be afraid of making the Index competently
copious.

I wish you also to think of the preface I formerly

mentioned, and some account of manners, Customs etc etc of
the periods of people whose history you record. Have you seen
Gilliess translations of the Orations of Lysias & Isocrates 4to.
His introductory books are worthy your perusal.

Your old map of Greece may be used on this occasion.

Correct a copy of it, which send me with the plate, & it shall be
improved accordingly. Can you recommend me a good map
of Antient Asia comprehending the scene of Alexanders
Conquests.

I offer my best Comt to Dr Stock and I remain Yours etc

Revd Archdeacon Gast

14. (pp. 458-9):

London 18 Dec.r 1781

Dear Sir

I have your letter of the 15th Nov.r with your errata

upon what is printed of your volume. Of these a proper use shall
be made, before publication: and the Candour you have
discovered throughout, merits my best thanks.

I need not inform you that I am impatient for the

remainder of the Copy, which indeed if not speedily sent, will I
am apprehensive, delay the publication of the work till next
Season, which will prove a considerable loss to me, as the paper
& print, two heavy articles must be discharged long before that
period.
 The lost historian John Gast 91

At present I have nothing further to trouble you unless it

is to repeat that I am Dr Sir

Yours etc.

Mr Gast

15. (p. 468):

London 14 Jany 1782

Dear Sir

I am favoured with your pacquet of the 2d ins.t

containing Section 3 of Book VIII

Permit me to ask if this finishes the History. To

appearance it does: but it is necessary to ask the Question; as in
a former letter upon the subject to Dr Stock you mentioned that
the History from the Accession of Alexander to the subjection
of the Greeks to the Roman Power was contained in ten books.
Nor do you put the word Finis, to the conclusion of B. 8

I shall now expedite the printing as much as possible. In

the mean time, do me the favour to answer this letter, and also
to say what progress you have made with the Introduction,
and what points are meant for illustration in it.

My next will contain an idea of the steps to be taken to

insure the success upon publication. Management will be
necessary and we must both exert ourselves

I am yours etc

Revd Mr Gast at Mr Wm Sleaters No 51 Castle Street Dublin

92 Oswyn Murray

16. (pp. 478-9):

London 24 Jany 1782

Dear Sir

I make no doubt but that you have seen the printed sheets of Mr
Gasts work as far as I have furnished the Author with them.
You will also, I flatter myself, have observed the pains taken
upon my part to render it worthy of the public eye. I have not
wearied in my attention, but shall continue it to the conclusion
of the performance.

As this will be effected I hope in a few weeks; it will

become very necessary for the authors friends to pave the way
for its favourable reception by introducing it to the notice of
some great men previous to publication whose report may do it
good and render it popular. I could wish Lord Carlisle and his
secretary to be influenced in this Cause. I wish also that the
Patrons of Letters on your side made M.r Gasts book a national
concern, and held up the author as a competitor for Literary
fame in the historical Walk with Gibbon and Robertson &
Hume. I am serious in this idea: I know the Irish to be equally
national with the English & Scotch. And as Mr Gast writes more
from the heart than any of the Historians aforementioned, and
is otherwise entitled to very considerable merit I see not any
reason why he should not be particularly noticed by his
Country. He must however have an Introduction; and if a few
great men on your side can see the propriety of giving the word,
I am convinced that every thing favourable to the authors
reputation will follow.

On this side, Mr Burke and some other well wishers to

Ireland should be interested. I shall take care to have Copies
enough in Dublin for the purpose of handing them round to its
patrons before publication. The like shall be done here could I
have the proper Gentlemen pointed out to me & letters of
introduction to accompany the book.
 The lost historian John Gast 93

This matter I wish you to revolve in your mind. I have

pointed out the track which more or less must be followed
otherwise our success will be blighted; at least by no means so
brilliant as would be if my method was followed.

I am Dear Sir Yours etc.

[PS offering to attend a book auction on behalf of Dr Stock]

Revd Dr Stock

17. (pp. 486-7*): [duplicate numbering]

London 26 Feby 1782

Dear Sir

I am favoured with your letter of the 21st inst this day,

and am sorry to tell you in answer to it, that no part of the 9th or
10th books of your history has reached me. I flatter myself
however that the Ms dispatched by you for me is not lost. It
may be lying by some accident at the Post Office at Dublin and
you should immediately make inquiries after it. If dispatched
thence you may give assurances that it has never come to my
hands, & search should be made at the Post Office here.

Situated as we are, I concur in your idea of finishing our

Vol with Book 8. The vol is already sufficiently large, and
concludes at present with great propriety. On this account, and
as time presses, I am inclined to waive for the present the
Introduction. A short Advertisement of one or two pages may
do in its stead, which you can execute in a couple of hours, &
lose no time in transmitting advertisement. This indeed is of so
little moment that it may be written here to incur no delay.

The Errata shall be attended to as much as we can

possible [sic] do so without the authors assistance. But besides
the emandation [sic] in this way of particulars, a General
Apology shall be made for all other errors on account of your
94 Oswyn Murray

distance from the press, and the not having seen many of the
printed sheets before publication.

The idea of an Introduction and your books 9 & 10

must be dropped. You will no doubt have them finished in time
to add to a new edition, provided our success is so great as to
bring your performance to be reprinted, which I heartily wish
we may do.

Upon the whole, therefore, I mean to publish the

volume, as I now have it, as expeditiously as I can. And wishing
your health to see many impressions of it, I Remain Yours etc

Revd Archdeacon Gast

18. (p. 488*):

London 1st March 1782

Dear Sir

I wrote to you on the 26th Feby, and now I have the

pleasure to advise that I have this day received Two sections of
B. 9 and 1 Sect. of B. 10 by post in one cover very safe.

Notwithstanding this, I continue to be of opinion that

we should finish the present volume with book 8. It concludes
better than if we took in the other Two Books: and in the last
section of Book 8 your stile rises above its usual tone. This, and
the proper period with which that book ends, cannot fail of
having a better impression on the mind of the reader than if we
continued the work with new matter. When it is further
considered that new matter would enlarge the volume to [sic]
much, I dare say you will have no hesitation in agreeing with me
that it is proper to conclude the volume without it. I shall
therefore think of publishing as expeditiously as I conveniently
can.

For other matters I refer to my former and am Yours etc

 The lost historian John Gast 95

The correction you have noticed shall be taken care of. I have
this Post sent under Mr Moncrieffes Cover (of Capell Street)
printed Sheets to the conclusion of B. 7 Pray send a handsome
Card to Mr M for the pacquet, & thank him for his care of [sic]

Revd Archdeacon Gast.

19. (pp. 501-3):

London 14th Apl 1782

Dear Sir

I have this instant sent your letter inclosed in one from

myself together with a copy of Dr Gasts History Complete to Mr
Malone who I flatter myself will exert himself in our favour. I
mean to wait upon him personally in two days and if he gives
me an opportunity to enter at large upon the subject of the
performance & to point out steps proper to be taken for
ensuring success to your friend and I shall take the liberty from
time to time of advising you of particulars. In the interim as you
have interested yourself from the beginning in this business I
beg to have your assistance in what follows. The Irish
Booksellers did not reprint Dr Lelands history without the
authors permission. and the late Dr Macbride experienced the
same compliment from them. With such examples of their
politeness I cannot suppose they will act in a different manner to
Dr Gast. I could therefore wish that the author & yourself would
state the case to them to prevent an impression of surprise. I
have printed but 500 copies, and I mean to be at the sole risk of
paper, print, advertising, & incidents, if the Book should prove
unsuccessful, and to divide profits with the author if successful.
This will prove more advantageous to Dr Gast if his history sells
than any money I could afford to offer for the property in our
present state of uncertainty as to its fate. and I am confident
that neither you nor himself would wish me to lose more than
the expenses attending the publication (which when you see a
copy of the book you will admit have not been spared) if it is
not favourably received. Upon the supposition therefore that it
96 Oswyn Murray

will not be reprinted on your side I have put the names of some
booksellers of Dublin to the Title and mean to send by Captain
Heard who is now here 60 or 80 copies for the Irish sale and to
place them under the management of the author who shall be
empowered to receive the produce. The work is printed on a
very fine paper and makes a large handsome volume in quarto
and even at Dublin will not be esteemed too dear at a guinea to
Gentlemen in boards and at that price will fall to be stated at 16s
this Currency to Booksellers in sheets. I shall not publish here
for ten days in order to give Mr Malone time to mention the
performance to his friends, and that it may be the subject of
some conversation in literary circles before its public appearance.
I propose sending a copy this letter to Dr Gast and I conclude
with recommending it to you & him not to fail to guard against
reprinting at Dublin & to mention the matter without delay to
the Booksellers there.

Dear Sir
Your obliged &
very obedient
Servant
J Murray

[The article in Stuarts catalogue sold dearer than your order I

shall endeavour to]

To the Revd Dr Stock Dublin

l r
15 Ap 1782 Sent D Gast copy of the above

20. (p. 509):

London 29 Apl 1782

Dear Sir

According to your desire I have sent to Miss Eliza Gast at Bath

the two sections of yr ninth & the first section of your 10th
Books. In the parcel I have put up the remaining printed Sheets
that are wanting to complete the copy in your hands.
 The lost historian John Gast 97

Tomorrow I shall ship in the London, Capt Heird Sixty

Copies of the work for the Dublin sale Directed to you in one
large Bale. You will therefore when they arrive, put them in such
booksellers hands as you are advised are most able to account to
you for the amount when they are sold. Perhaps Moncrief,
White Exshaw & Faulkner are the most proper. You must state
them to the trade at 16/s each this currency in sheets, to be sold
to Gentlemen for one Guinea in boards. You will observe that
I have sent you these Copys upon the presumption that in
consequence of my former letter, you immediately took steps for
preventing the reprinting of your book at Dublin. No time was
to have been lost in settling this point with your booksellers,
who I am convinced wanted only proper information to be
made to them of the facts to act honourably by you

+ + + + +

When a complete copy of your work reaches you, you

will observe that your preface is not retained. The preface in
every literary work is generally the most finished part of it. But
you was hurried to [sic] much to give yours the finishing that
was essentially necessary for adding to your reputation. No
improper liberties have however been taken. Your ideas are alone
used, and it is not imagined that you will observe one intended
deviation to be made from them; nay your own words are
retained as much as possible. No mention however is made of
your former performance on Grecian Affairs. It would have been
wrong, it was thought to refer the reader for his knowledge of
you to a book which, never having been reprinted here, is almost
wholly unknown in England. Nor is any mention made in the
preface of your intention of completing the history of Greece.
The present work is given to the Public as a whole. If they relish
it they will not be displeased to have more of it; and it will be
more agreeable, the more it is unexpected: Whereas to promise a
continuation might induce the public to suspend making a
purchase of the present portion till the history was completed.

Now that the business is thus far advanced, I have to

assure you that if my nearest relaton had been the author of the
work I could not have attended to it more dilligently, or taken
98 Oswyn Murray

more pains to introduce it with reputation into the world. Some

errors it is impossible but you should discern, but I flatter myself
these are but few compared with the improvements (and these
without altering intentionally a single idea of the authors) which
have been made. But were the errors derived from my
management to be much more numerous than at present I can
conceive them to be, you have this consolation that 500 Copies
only are printed, and that if the book is in request you will soon
have an opportunity of removing all errors in a new edition I
remain Yrs etc

PS I send you inclosed the ships receipt for the 60 copies.

Yesterday the parcel was transmitted to Miss Eliza Gast to the
Coach from the Bolt & Son Chelsea. Pray do not fail to settle
the sale of your book without loss of time with the Dublin
Booksellers

The Revd Dr Gast

21. (pp. 519-21):

London 6 June 1782

Dear Sir

I had a very handsome written answer from Mr Malone

to the letter which accompanied the copy of Gasts Greece sent
to him. And in an interview which took place betwixt us
afterwards he appeared to be fond of the work as far as he had
read it, and promised to use his influence in promoting its
success, as far as that influence extended. I made a present of the
book to two gentlemen more, viz Lord Shelburne & Mr Burke
inscribed simply from the author.

I have no reason to be discouraged with what has yet

happened respecting the sale here. But I must endeavour to
manage the Reviews, for their approbation is of great moment.
This is in a train & I would fain hope we shall come off
decently.
 The lost historian John Gast 99

The European Magazine, a new monthly publication

proposes to give reviews & anecdotes of living authors. I have
got Dr Gasts work introduced for May, and a continuation is
promised with anecdotes of the author for June. Now I wish you
to furnish me with a short memoir of the author viz his family,
where he studied, when he took university degrees, his first &
subsequent rise in the Church, his present situation, his early
predilection for the Greek history his character etc. This you
will be able to perform in one hour, and it will prevent an
erroneous account of your friend from being circulated abroad
& extended all over Ireland. I rather wish for expedition than
you should bestow extraordinary pains upon this little sketch;
because it can be dressed up here: and I wish the Dr to be
mentioned with credit.

He will have told you that I have sent 60 Copies for sale
to Dublin. When you peruse the volume pray let me have your
opinion.
I Remain yours etc

Revd Dr Stock
Dublin

MS 41904
22. (pp. 308-10):

London 5th April 1784

Dear Sir,

I am favoured with your Letter of 27th March and shall be

always happy to hear from you the Terms upon which I took
your Grecian History were these. Primo to pay all expences:
Paper, Print and Advertising, of which no part of the risk was to
fall upon you. If the Adventure proved unsuccessfull, and if
Successfull to divide Profits after defraying Charges. But I did
more than I engaged to do for I sent you Immediately, Sixty
Copies of the Book at all Events to be sold for your own benefit
& advised you of this at the Time, and that the Booksellers into
100 Oswyn Murray

whose hands you delivered them were to account to you for

their Sale at 16/s Per Book in Sheets. if you have not inquired
after these Copies you should immediately do it, either by
yourself or some friend. I told you from the beginning that they
were for you, and I have taken no further account of them nor
will The Edition of this Book Consisted of 500 Copies of
which you have a Stated Account Inclosed and from it you
will be able to judge of the success, and what further dividend is
to be expected at present on your part. Notwithstanding
however the unfavourable Prospect, I would chearfully from my
Opinion of your Personal Character advance the 100.0.0 you
want were it not at this moment totally out of my power from
some recent unexpected losses I have met with a detail of which
to you would answer no Purpose I attend to what you
mention of the first part of the Grecian History that you have
nearly ready, and which you have been induced to proceed in
from the flattering reception given to the part already
published, and at the earnest solicitations of several perhaps too
flattering friends It will not be supposed that I have an
Interest in opposing your Book, for next to the Author I believe
I possess the greatest Affection for it, but this affection were it
even greater would not permit me to shut my Eyes to facts.
The flattering reception a book meets with is ascertained
according to the Ideas of a Bookseller by its sale. The Sale is the
touchstone of its reception. Your Book has not been reprinted at
Dublin, now sixty in all were sent there, are those sold if they
were, it would be no very flattering reception for the Kingdom
of Ireland to purchase Sixty copies of any one Book but if they
are not sold believe not too much in the flattering reception
your Book has met with. by this Statement however I mean
rather to give you an honest view of your expectations than to
discourage you from finishing the entire history of Greece, and I
have even no Objection to embark with you in it, but it would
be in the same Manner and on the same terms I did with the
part already published The Little Omissions & alterations in
the Volume published which you complain of I admit may have
happened, but in no great degree. You was at too great a
distance to consult on every Emergency, and it is to be hoped
that the correction given to the Style much more than
Compensates for these. The truth is that in the dress you sent it
 The lost historian John Gast 101

your MS. could not have been printed with the remotest
prospect of success. This was not particularly my own Opinion,
but that of every Gentleman of learning and taste to whom it
was submitted. In this situation what was to be done the
reputation of the author as well as the Sale of the Book were
concerned and I must either have returned your Work, or
venture on the step I took, - the first must have mortified you
exceedingly, and the second was dangerous, as few Authors
chuse to have their MSS. corrected even to their advantage. I
ventured however on the last at the expense of 50 guineas which
it cost me and the money which I paid will convince you how
essentially necessary I thought the Improvement. Nor perhaps
will your Pride suffer upon the Occasion when I tell you that Dr
Stuart Author of the History of Queen Mary, Mr Richardson
Author of a dissertation on the Manners and Literature of
Eastern Nations as well as of a Persian and English Dictionary
Mr Liston whom I expect soon in Town from Madrid as he is
now superseded at that Court by Lord Chesterfield and some
other Gentlemen of Taste and Learning are the persons to
whom your history is obliged for the alterations and I hope
Improvements made in its Language. If ever your facts or
sentiments were altered it must have been done inadvertently as
they studied always to preserve them religiously After this
narrative let me not conceal one thing the last Book was by far
the best written and stood in need of the least Correction and I
hope the Improvement Exhibited in it will be continued in that
portion of the work which you are now finishing you should
however be active for a history of Greece by Dr Gillies which I
formerly mentioned is not abandoned. The Author is expected
in Town from Lausanne about this time, if he is not already
arrived and his work I should think will be published early in
the next Winter I beg of you to accept my best Compliments
and wishes and to believe that I remain with respect and regard
Dear Sir your very obed-t and humble servant
J. Murray

To the Revd Archdeacon Gast. No.5 York Street Dublin

102 Oswyn Murray

Gasts History of Greece from Alexander etc

The Author one Half J Murray one half

Expences
1782
April To 15 Copies In presents to various In boards 14.19.2
To Paid Sundries Correcting & Improving the Language 52.10.0
To Printers Acc 92 Sheets and Great Corrections 97.10.0
To 92 reams very fine Demy at 21/sh 96.12.0
To Advertising in Various Papers 14. 4.0
To Publishing, Warehouse and Interest of Money 10.10.0

286.15.2

Receipts

By 500 copies
150 On hand
350 Sold at 16/sh 280. 0.0
Loss at the Settlement 6.15.2

April 6th 1784 286.15.2

23. Extracts from a letter of John Gast to Joseph Stock,

printed in the preface to Stocks Dublin edition of the 1793
reprint of Gasts History (pp. xii-xiii):

January 8, 1785

My Grecian history, at present my grand object, I

thought to have ready for the press by March at farthest. A very
important law-suit, which affects some near friends of mine, and
in which I had taken an active part these two years past, has
since the beginning of October required my attention in a very
particular manner. A reference, under the sanction of the court
of exchequer, had been agreed to, for the purpose of adjusting
the accounts in question. And in order to bring these accounts
to the fullest and fairest point of view before the referees, it was
found necessary to unravel the intricacies of a long and
complicated account of thirty years. And this labour, at the
expence of ten hours a day writing for two months, have I been
 The lost historian John Gast 103

obliged to go through. The ground is now tolerably open, and

the referees, I trust, will have a complete exhibition of the true
state of things. This, you may judge, has delayed me.

* * *

With respect to Mr. Mitfords publication, I am altogether easy

about it. In London the publication of a history, even of the
English nation, has not prevented the publication and
favourable reception of another such history. Concerning the
history of Greece, especially the earlier ages of that country,
various schemes may be adopted, and the same transactions may
be placed in different lights, according to the genius and
principles of the writer, and the impression made on his mind
.... In consequence, however of your advice respecting a
republication of Mitford here, where we move in a more
confined sphere, I called on Alderman Exshaw: but, on my way
to him, it occurred to me, what an improper part I should act,
were I to prevent the publication of a work, merely because it
might clash with my private interest. A printer is properly a
trustee for the public. And if a work is really worthy of the
public perusal, and may contribute to the improvement of the
public manners, shall a printer, from pique or favour, withhold
such a work from the community, to whose instruction he is by
his profession bound to administer? Upon this principle, I barely
mentioned to Mr. Exshaw my intention of publishing my whole
history in Ireland in the course of the year now current, and left
it to him to judge how far my scheme, should it be attended
with success, might lower the value of that edition of Mitford
which he had in view. Was I right? What he has done, I know
not.

* * * *
104 Oswyn Murray

24. Extracts from the European Magazine May-June 1782:

May 1782 pp. 354-5:

A general History of Ancient Greece, executed with fidelity and

spirit, in the English tongue, has been long anxiously desired in
the Republic of Letters. Modern historians, conscious, perhaps,
of their inferiority to the great masters from whom they must
derive their materials in such an undertaking, have not chosen to
hazard a comparison, by delineating the annals of these ancient
governments ... And it is with pleasure we now congratulate the
public on the appearance of a History of Ancient Greece, which,
to speak with moderation, is certainly superior to any former
attempt of this kind, that our language can boast. Dr. Gast, the
learned author of this work, belongs to a country which is now
rising to eminence in every path of national glory; and this
historical production will probably be received by his
countrymen, at this crisis, with peculiar marks of approbation.
The Doctor has, indeed, the merit of filling up an important
vacancy in the libraries of the elegant and polite, throughout the
British empire.

June 1782 pp. 429-30:

Dr. Gast is equally a friend to religion, and to the liberties of
mankind; and, unlike to the historian of the Roman empire
(Gibbon) the zeal of our historian is uniformly directed to
promote the best interests of human society. It deserves,
however, to be remarked, that while our author differs from Mr.
Gibbon in some material points of discussion, he acknowledges
his obligation to that writer in a note, which we shall beg leave
to lay before the reader, as it sets the modesty and candour of
our historian in a favourable light....

In the conclusion of this work, Dr. Gast gives an admirable

summary of the state of the Greeks in the period of deepest
debasement, and has described that phantom of an empire (as he
very properly terms it) which subsisted from the Gothic invasion
to the year 1453, when the very name of the Greeks was
annihilated by the Ottoman arms. He admits, however, that the
 The lost historian John Gast 105

modern Greeks, amidst all the vicissitudes of fortune, and the

cruelty of their destiny, retain some characteristics, which seem
to connect them with their immortal progenitors. In this
opinion Dr. Gast coincides with the account given by modern
travellers, with the sentiment of Mr. Harris, Lord Montboddo,
and others; and with that theory concerning hereditary genius,
which is maintained by Dr. Dunbar in the History of Mankind.

25. Extracts from anonymous review (by William Enfield) in

The Monthly Review: 1st Series (1749-89):

Vol. LXVII (1782) 424-32:

It is somewhat surprising, that, although there is no portion of

history which seems to invite the labours of the historian with
fairer promise of success, than that of ancient Greece, this
undertaking has never yet been executed in the English
language, in a manner which has commanded any high degree
of attention or applause. From the valuable materials for such a
work, preserved in records which always lie open to the
examination of the learned, it was natural to expect that some
able and industrious writer, for the reputation of his country,
and his own, would, long before this time, have produced a
history of Greece, which might have appeared with credit on the
same shelf with our modern histories of Rome, England, and
Scotland.
This, we presume, is the undertaking which, with
respect to a part of the Grecian History, Dr. Gast has here
attempted. For what reason he has chosen to write the history of
the Decline and Fall of the Greek states, rather than that of their
Rise and Progress, we are uninformed. In the latter, he would
certainly have found a greater variety of interesting facts, and a
richer collection of excellent models: and there seems no ground
to apprehend that the execution would have been attended with
greater difficulty, or that the work would have been less
acceptable to the Public. That part of the Grecian history of
which Dr. Gast has chosen to treat, is, however sufficiently
splendid and instructive to merit the labour he has bestowed
upon it.
106 Oswyn Murray

[There follows a description of the contents]

Such, in a general view, is the field of history which Dr.

Gast has gone over. The materials (except perhaps that, in some
cases, he leans towards the side of credulity, particularly in
retailing so much at large the marvellous tales of Quintus
Curtius respecting Alexander) are judiciously selected; and the
arrangement is clear and perspicuous. If the Author discovers no
peculiar depth of penetration in his reflections, he neither
offends his reader with novelties, nor dazzles him with subtleties.
In this respect, a pretty close resemblance may be observed
between his manner and that of the popular Rollin. His style, if
not highly ornamented, is, in common correct and perspicuous.

[After several pages of quotation, the review concludes:]

On the whole, we are so well satisfied with the execution

of this History, that we recommend it to our Readers, without
scruple, as a work of real merit and utility. A judicious Index
would have been a valuable addition to so large a work.