Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 20.djvu/127

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Nottingham description in 1649), the hair curls, and it seems a fancy picture. When lent to the National Portraits Exhibition in 1866, it was in the possession of Mrs. Watkins. A small and rude woodcut without date (reissued by Joseph Smith) is probably an authentic contemporary likeness of Fox in middle age; the visage is homely, massive and dignified. It is evidently the source of later portraits, such as the neat engraving published by W. Darton (1822), of which there is an enlarged reproduction in lithography by Thomas Fairland [q. v.] about 1835. An engraving by Samuel Allen, from a painting by S. Chinn, was published in 1838 (Notes and Queries, 1st ser. vi. 156).

The bibliography of Fox's writings fills fifty-three pages of Smith's ‘Catalogue.’ Most modern readers will be contented with 1. ‘A Journal, or Historical Account of the Life … of … George Fox,’ &c., 1694, fol., a work of the highest interest. A shorter journal, preserved among the manuscripts at Devonshire Square, is described by Barclay (Inner Life, p. 277 sq.). The published journal was revised by a committee, under the superintendence of Penn, and transcribed for the press by Thomas Ellwood [q. v.] Fox had himself (in a paper dated 24 June 1685) named a committee for this purpose, including Ellwood; he says, ‘And ye great jornall of my Life, Sufferings, Travills, and Imprisonments, they may bee put together, they Lye in papers; and ye Little Jornall Books, they may bee printed together in a Book’ (autograph in Spence Collection). The original manuscript (wanting sixteen folios at the beginning) is in the possession of Robert Spence, esq., North Shields; it is not in autograph, but has been dictated to successive amanuenses. After publication, a further revision (24 Sept. 1694) substituted a new leaf for pp. 309–10 (story of Justice Clark); copies with the uncancelled leaf are very scarce. Wilson Armistead's edition, 1852, 2 vols. 8vo, with notes, and divided into chapters, is handy for reference; but it has ‘improvements’ (some of them from Phipps's ‘third edition,’ 1765, fol.) which sometimes miss the sense. An abridgment, by Henry Stanley Newman, ‘Autobiography of George Fox,’ &c. (n.d., preface dated Buckfield, Leominster, 1886), is rather a partisan selection. 2. ‘A Collection of … Epistles,’ &c., 1698, fol. (called ‘the second volume,’ the ‘Journal’ being considered the first). 3. ‘Gospel-Truth … a Collection of Doctrinal Books,’ &c., 1706, fol. This forms a third volume, though it is not so designated. In this and the preceding Fox's principal works will be found, the most important omission being 4. ‘The Great Mistery,’ &c., 1659, fol. There is no complete collection of Fox's writings, the fullest being the Philadelphia edition of the ‘Works,’ 1831, 8 vols. 8vo.

Macaulay's epigram on Fox, as ‘too much disordered for liberty, and not sufficiently disordered for Bedlam,’ is well known. De Morgan admits (Budget of Paradoxes) that, though not a ‘rational,’ Fox was certainly a ‘national’ man. Marsden has done more justice to the intellectual merit of Fox's doctrine of the inner light, which ‘rested upon one idea, the greatest that can penetrate the mind of man: God is a spirit, and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and truth’ (Hist. of the Later Puritans, 1872, p. 240). There can be no question of the healthiness and strength of his moral fibre. It is remarkable that Wesley, who was acquainted with Barclay's ‘Apology,’ never mentions Fox. Yet the early quakerism anticipated methodism in many important points, as well as in the curious detail of conducting the business of meetings by means of answers to queries. The literary skill of the ‘Apology’ has drawn readers to it rather than to Fox's amorphous writings; but for pure quakerism, not yet fixed (1676) in scholastic forms, it is necessary to go to Fox; and the student will be rewarded, as Professor Huxley observed (Nineteenth Century, April 1889), by passages of great beauty and power.

George Fox, called for distinction ‘the younger,’ not in years, but ‘the younger in the truth,’ was of Charsfield, Suffolk. He reached independently (about 1651) similar views to those of his namesake, and joined his society, in which he was a preacher. He began to write in 1656. He died at Hurst, Sussex, on 7 July 1661, and was buried at Twineham. His works were collected in a small volume, 1662, 8vo; 2nd edition, enlarged, 1665, 8vo.

[For the facts of Fox's life the great authority is the Journal. Gerard Croese's Historia Quakeriana, 1695; 2nd edit. 1696; English translation, 1696, is based on materials supplied by William Sewel. Sewel's own History, 1722, embodies some few fresh particulars from a paper by Fox, ‘in his lifetime drawn up by his order, at my request, and sent to me.’ Besse's Collection of the Sufferings, 1753; Gough's History, 1789. Among the numerous biographies may be mentioned those of Henry Tuke (1813), William and Thomas Evans (1837), Josiah Marsh (1847) from an Anglican point of view, Samuel M. Janney (1853) a Hicksite friend, John Selby Watson (1860), and A. C. Bickley (1884), with a facsimile letter (2 Oct. 1680) from Fox to Barclay. The Swarthmoor MSS. were first employed by Maria Webb in The Fells of Swarthmoor