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A fact from William Melmoth appeared on Misplaced Pages's Main Page in the Did you know column on 14 January 2008, and was viewed approximately 668 times (disclaimer) (check views). The text of the entry was as follows: Did you know... that William Melmoth's 1711 work The Great Importance of a Religious Life Consider'd went through thirty editions and sold over 420,000 copies by the end of the century? A record of the entry may be seen at Misplaced Pages:Recent additions/2008/January.

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Let's start over

I've removed all the WikiProject ratings on this talk page and archived all the old discussions to Talk:William Melmoth/Archive1. Can we get back to focusing on the encyclopedia's articles? giggy _(:O) 08:17, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

For the record: and . Please ignore this and carrying on the discussions below. Or shunt this note into the archive if it might upset anyone. Carcharoth (talk) 13:23, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

Areas needing work

The article as it stands says that the subject wrote anonymously, based on being in the "public life". What exactly does that mean? There is nothing in the article to indicate it. Was he successful in the public life, or not, and to what degree? Did he have any particular achievements in public life? We have no indications of any. Considering that the subject evidently considered his other career(s) more important than his writing career, it is very hard to imagine that at least reasonable information on that career, if it is available, is not something that the article would require to be complete. Did he get paid for the publications or not? If not, how did he acquire money, or even did he? Also, in my own limited experience with the single extant source, the DNB, on the Arthur Bryant article, I found it to be both incomplete and non-neutral. What can be true in one article can be true in another, even if such recurrences are unlikely. On that basis, I believe, even given the reputation of the source used, that there is every reason to believe at least one other source meeting RS standards to any reasonable degree should be reasonably included to make this article more clearly reliable. John Carter (talk) 23:10, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

Don't confuse the current Oxford Dictionary of National Biography with the Dictionary of National Biography and it's supplements. The current ODNB article on Melmoth has been written for the new book (though it draws on the older material to some extent), both old and new articles are avialable from the link I've no winserted in the article (every British library member should have access to the online version). I note that the ODNB also contains a new biography on Bryant - but we must also recognise the essential difference about writing about someone who died almost 300 years ago, as against someone who died less than 15 years ago. With one we've had time to come to a mature assesment of his writings and importance - with the other, opinion is still changing. David Underdown (talk) 09:39, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

I acknowledge the time for reviewing the life of a subject is different. Also, there is the matter not only of his writings and importance, but also of his life itself. This is, first and foremost, a biographical article about the subject, so it is reasonable to expect that it contain the relevant biographical content. Regarding the DNB and new version, in fact, there are two complete sets of the new DNB in the Olin library here, the full 2004 version is available here as per here, as is the 1949 edition here, among others. Also, it should be noted that the existing Oxford version contains additional material which is missing from this article, most of which directly relates to the subject's regular life and should be included as an indication of his activities and would seemingly be required for it to be even remotely complete, unless one were to argue that that source contained superfluous material. Granted, there may be problems using the same source for all the material, but that just means other sources should be consulted. Also, regretably, any human endeavor is subject to error, so, on that basis alone, it is I think generally recommended to consult additional sources. Doing so would also ensure that there is no possible extant bias or lack of information regarding possible recently released material on the subject. John Carter (talk) 13:41, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

We don't seem to be missing anything wildly important from the ODNB, in my judgement, though obviously others might set the bar somewhat higher as to what is really important. It's possible that more may have come to light since the 2004 publication - though not particularly likely, and the online ODNB is regularly updated in any case. Proving a negative is of ourse notoriously difficult. In the absence of readily accessible sources to the contrary, there is no reason to assume that the ODNB article is not as comprehensive as it is possible to be. The ODNB article does give a list of sources, the vast majority of which are pre 20th centruy, so it's possible that soe may be in Project Gutenberg or similar, and so it might be possible to attribute material directly to those. His will for example is avaialble online here (for a fee), which is lsited as one of the ODNB's sources. David Underdown (talk) 13:59, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

The question which begs answering in your comment above is "readily accessible". There is at least one book relating to Christian literature which has a reasonable biographical sketch of the subject. There is also the biography by the subject's son. Part of the question is whether there any readily accessible sources. Another part of that question is whether people wish to make the effort to find the information in those sources which may be available, but are not immediately obviously sources on the subject. In general, from my experience, people may well add content related to a subject based on working on other subjects, and consulting other books which they find contain information on a different subject. Therefore, I think we would have to, reasonably, consider the possibility of improvement from editors who work largely with peripheral subjects. As an example, again, regretably, about the recently deceased, Elizabeth Clare Prophet is stated in at least one theological academic journal to have suffered from epilepsy, and it's argued that some of her "religious experiences" were standard fare for people entering the "aura" stage of epilepsy. I rather doubt that information will be found in any biographies of the subject, although I also believe it could be very important. We have to consider not only the "main" sources about any given subject, but also all the other sources which might contain information on that subject omitted from the "main" sources for whatever reason, as it clearly is the case that at least some sources do have an admitted or unadmitted bias to at least a degree. John Carter (talk) 19:43, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

The question then arises, if you go deeper and beyond the ODNB and DNB and ferret out the primary sources, do you (or we) have the expertise to properly understand the primary material and put it in its context? There is a reason why primary historical research can be problematic. Sometimes that research needs to be published first, or we need to accept what others have done and not try and redo the work. Difficult questions, especially as more and more of the primary sources are made available online. Carcharoth (talk) 13:29, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

In this case, the primary source (meaning in this context, most basic extant source upon which all the others more or less acknowledge being primarily based - my apologies for any confusion arising there), is the biography by his son, which I imagine is probably fairly easily understandable. Certainly, however, it is fairly reasonable to assume that, for instance, if we find that Foo is listed as residing in a certain part of Hamburg according to the 1650 census, that's generally fairly easy to interpret and figure out how to add to the article. Wedding records, records of death, complete medical records, and suchlike are also generally fairly understable. IRS tax records, if and when they become available, and, for instance, surviving records of a single medical visit of many, which also almost certainly will occur sometimes, might be problematic in the way to describe, particularly if used without any other information. Daniel Farson's statement that Bram Stoker had fairly advanced syphyllis at the time of his death was, as I remember, accepted by the community at the time. I imagine a similar surviving contemporary medical report making such a revelation would be as well. Truly trivial primary source material (Daniel Farson skinned his knee skateboarding in 1919, went to the doctor, was sent home with a bandage on his knee), more often than not, isn't going to be mentioned to any great degree, because of the trivial nature of the material, unless it contains some material. In this instance, the skateboarding information might be usable. John Carter (talk) 14:04, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

Though the son has (in our terms) an obvious conflict of interest in writing about his father. That's why we need something that's made a bit of an analysis of the avaialble sources, rather than relying purely on primary sources. David Underdown (talk) 14:16, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

True. However, if it is referring to comparatively noncontroversial material or it is the only source on the subject which can be found, then, if it meets the reliable source threshold (and that source clearly does - it's listed in the DNB biography as the first cited source), it can reasonably be included, perhaps after something like "His son said..." The question you seem to be maybe indicating is, if material is included in a potentially non-neutral but apparently generally reliable source which isn't included in any of the works derived from that source, should it be included? My guess of an answer would be, "yes, if it is of sufficient import to be included in the article and it isn't found to be directly disputed or called into question by others." Justin I includes a full paragraph on Procopius' allegations, so I think there is precedent for such actions elsewhere as well. John Carter (talk) 14:27, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

Some notes

Looking at this source, it uses the initials KC after Melmouth's name to disambiguate him from his son of the same name. I think from context that the initials are referring to him as King's Counsel, but our article on the subject manages to avoid saying what the significance of that position was in the period Melmouth would have held the title and I'd want a better source anyway.

The charter of the SPCK is available in several sources, and shows that he was one of the charter members, but I doubt this is of great significance. More significant is that he was one of the first treasurers of the society.

His son was William Melmoth was also an author, and some writers have considered the son more significant than the father. The son translated the letters of Pliny the Younger into English, and this translation has been reprinted by scholarly imprints as recently as the early 1960s (and appears not to have been superceded through at least 1995.

Editions of The Great Importance of a Religious Life, Consider'd were made through at least 1849.

He was buried in/under the chapel of Lincoln's Inn. GRBerry 04:46, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

It's highly likely he was a King's Counsel, most benchers were according to our article. Announcements of appointment as such are now published in the London Gazette, but I don't know precisely when that started, and from experience they are for some reason often one of the hardest things to track down. In adition some the Gazettes covering this period are not currently available online (though they should be very shortly). Searches on and (restricted to dates from his Bar call to his death]—"one of His/Her Majesty's counsel learned in the law" is the full legal formula for a QC—haven't returned any useful results. There is also an ODNB article for the younger William Melmoth, so there certainly appears to be a good case for notability there. David Underdown (talk) 07:57, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

The fact that at least one local library has 30 volumes of his work, as seen here, despite the age of much of it, is another factor which leads me to think his son would easily qualify as notable. John Carter (talk) 12:59, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

William Melmoth the Younger <waits patiently for link to turn blue>... Carcharoth (talk) 13:30, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

@Carcharoth: Your wait is over. Charles Matthews (talk) 12:43, 24 February 2020 (UTC)

@Charles Matthews: thanks! That brought a smile to my face. :-) Carcharoth (talk) 16:36, 24 February 2020 (UTC)

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