Alexander Cruden
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Alexander Cruden (June 8, 1699 – 1 November 1770), also called (by himself) Alexander the Corrector, was the author of a concordance to the Bible.
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[edit] Concordances
- First edition, 1737
- Second edition, 1761
- Third edition, 1769
Cruden's Bible Concordance became well-known, and further editions were published after his death. It has not been out of print since 1737.
[edit] Life
Alexander Cruden was born in Aberdeen in Scotland (baptised on June 8, 1699, St. Nicholas Kirk, Aberdeen, according to recent research) and was educated at Aberdeen Grammar School and Marischal College, and became an excellent Latin, Greek and Biblical scholar. He took the degree of Master of Arts and was set to enter the church until his mental health was called into question and he was institutionalised. This was the first of several stays in psychiatric hospitals throughout his life.
After a term of confinement he recovered and moved to London. In 1722 he had an engagement as private tutor to the son of a country squire living at Eton Hall, Southgate, and also held a similar post at Ware. Years afterwards, in an application for the title of bookseller to the Queen, he stated that he had been for some years corrector for the press in Wild Court. This probably refers to this time. In 1729 he was employed by the 10th Earl of Derby as a reader and secretary but was discharged on 7 July for his ignorance of French pronunciation. He then lodged in a house in Soho frequented exclusively by Frenchmen, and took lessons in the language in the hope of getting back his post with the Earl, but when he went to Knowsley in Lancashire, the Earl would not see him. He returned to London and opened a booksellers shop in the Royal Exchange. In April 1735 he obtained the title of bookseller to the Queen by recommendation of the Lord Mayor and most of the Whig aldermen. The post was an unremunerative sinecure. In 1737 he finished his Concordance to the Bible, which, he says, was the work of several years.
Cruden presented the first edition of his Concordance on November 3, 1737 to Queen Caroline (wife of George II). However, she died some days later, leaving him in debt from his work and prey to further mental problems.
Although Cruden's biblical labours have made his name a household word among English-speaking people, he was disappointed in his hopes of immediate profit, and his mind again became unhinged. In spite of his earnest and self-denying piety, and his exceptional intellectual powers, he developed idiosyncrasies, and his life was marred by a harmless but ridiculous egotism, which so nearly bordered on insanity that his friends sometimes thought it necessary to have him confined. He paid unwelcome addresses to a widow which resulted in an enforced stay, this time in Matthew Wright's Private Madhouse in Bethnal Green, London.
On his release he published a pamphlet dedicated to Lord H. (probably Harrington, a Secretary of State) entitled The London Citizen exceedingly injured, or a British Inquisition Displayed. He also published an account of his trial, dedicated to the King. In December 1740 he writes to Sir Hans Sloane saying he has been employed since July as Latin usher in a boarding-school at Enfield. He then found work as a proofreader, and several editions of Greek and Latin classics are said to have owed their accuracy to his care. He superintended the printing of one of Matthew Henry's Commentaries, and in 1750 printed a small Compendium of the Holy Bible (an abstract of the contents of each chapter), and also reprinted a larger edition of the Concordance.
He attempted to prosecute those responsible for his confinement, and made a similar attempt when his sister had him institutionalised again in 1753, this time only for a few days. In April 1755 he printed a letter to The Speaker and other Members of the House of Commons, and about the same time an Address to the King and Parliament. He was in the habit of carrying a sponge, with which he effaced all inscriptions which he thought contrary to good morals. In September 1753, through being involved in a street brawl, he was confined in an asylum in Chelsea for seventeen days at the instance of his sister (Mrs. Wild). He brought an unsuccessful action against his friends, and seriously proposed that they should go into confinement as an atonement. The dismissal of his legal claims resulted in another account of his sufferings, titled The Adventures of Alexander the Corrector.
The second edition of the Concordance was dedicated to King George III and presented to him in person. After the slow success of the first Concordance, the second and third editions made Cruden considerable profit.
Cruden attempted to have his self-imposed 'Corrector' title made official and put himself forward for a knighthood, believing he had been divinely chosen to safeguard the nation's moral health. He was particularly concerned with swearing and the keeping of the Sabbath. Both titles were refused.
The self-styled title "Corrector" derived from Cruden's main employment of proofreading, and his desire to "correct" the morals of England.
He made attempts to present to the king in person an account of his trial, and to obtain the honour of knighthood, one of his predicted honours. In 1754 he was nominated as Parliamentary candidate for the City of London, but did not go to the poll. In 1755 he paid unwelcome addresses to the daughter of Sir Thomas Abney, of Newington (1640-1722), and then published his letters and the history of his repulse in the third part of his Adventures. In June and July 1755 he visited Oxford and Cambridge. He was treated with the respect due to his learning by officials and residents in both universities, but experienced some boisterous fooling at the hands of the undergraduates. At Cambridge he was knighted with mock ceremonies. There he appointed deputy correctors to represent him in the university. He also visited Eton, Windsor, Tonbridge, and Westminster schools, where he appointed four boys to be his deputies. (An Admonition to Cambridge is preserved among letters from J. Neville of Emmanuel to Dr. Cos Macro, in the British Museum.) The Correctors Earnest Address to the Inhabitants of Great Britain, published in 1756, was occasioned by the earthquake at Lisbon. In 1762 he saved an ignorant seaman, Richard Potter, from the gallows, and in 1763 published a pamphlet recording the history of the case. Against John Wilkes, whom he hated, he wrote a small pamphlet, and used to delete with his sponge the number 45 wherever he found it, this being the offensive number of the North Briton. In 1769 he lectured in Aberdeen as Corrector, and distributed copies of the fourth commandment and various religious tracts. The wit that made his eccentricities palatable is illustrated by the story of how he gave to a conceited young minister whose appearance displeased him A Mother's Catechism dedicated to the young and ignorant. The Scripture Dictionary, compiled about this time, was printed in Aberdeen in two volumes shortly after his death. Alexander Chalmers, who in his boyhood heard Cruden lecture in Aberdeen and wrote his biography, says that a verbal index to John Milton, which accompanied the edition of Thomas Newton, Bishop of Bristol, in 1769, was Cruden's.
The second edition of the Bible Concordance was published in 1761, and presented to the King in person on 21 December. The third edition appeared in 1769. Both contain a pleasing portrait of the author. He returned to London from Aberdeen, and died suddenly while praying in his lodgings in Camden Passage, Islington, on 1 November 1770. He was buried in the ground of a Protestant dissenting congregation in Dead Man's Place, Southwark. He bequeathed a portion of his savings for a bursary at Aberdeen, which preserves his name on the list of benefactors of the university.
Cruden was never married.
[edit] References
- This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.
[edit] Biography
- Andrews, Jonathan. Undertaker of the mind: John Monro and mad-doctoring in eighteenth century England. University of California Press, 2001.
- Farrow, John F. Alexander Cruden and his concordance. Indexer. 20, Apr. 1996, p. 55-6.
- Ingram, Allan. Voices of madness: four pamphlets 1683-1796. Sutton, 1997.
- Keay, Julie. Alexander the Corrector: the tormented genius whose Cruden's concordance unwrote the bible. Overlook Press, 2005. ISBN 0-00-713195-X
- Olivier, Edith. Alexander the Corrector: the eccentric life of Alexander Cruden. Viking Press, 1934.
- Pearsall, Ronald. Cruden of the concordance. New Blackfriars, 53, Feb. 1971, p. 88-90.
