Chapter XVI: Book THE FOURTH (4)

But whatever were his peculiarities, Walpole’s published and unpublished works are mines which abound in brilliant, and do not fail in solid, materials for history and biography. No one employed as I have been in editing and, as I now am, in imitating his labours,[315] can seriously wish to disparage one whom he shows himself willing and perhaps unequal to copy and to emulate. The scandalous chronicle reported him to be son of a Lord Hervey.[316] In affected humour, laborious application to trifles, occasional and unprovoked malignity, and whimsical ingenuity of understanding, he certainly bore some resemblance to that family. He felt, or pretended to feel, great disgust at the practice adopted by the bookmaking admirers of Johnson, who scrupled not to commit to print whatever they heard in private conversation. Hence he would suddenly purse up his mouth in a pointed but ludicrous manner whenever Boswell came into the room, and sit as mute as a fish till that angler for anecdote and repartee had left it. It is more than probable that he dreaded and disliked Dr. Johnson himself. Whig principles, Republican affectations, and loose notions of religion, were all likely to invite an attack; and I much suspect that Walpole practised some artifice or resorted to some meanness to elude the notice or disarm the hostility of that formidable enemy of fashionable philosophy. In conversation and private correspondence, as well as in his posthumous works, he was by no means sparing of sneers and sarcasms on the priesthood and the Church. I well remember that, on the publication of _The Microcosm_,[317] Lady Ossory enclosed to me a letter she had received from Horace Walpole, in which he humorously but earnestly exploded a prevalent notion that the juvenile authors were assisted by the masters. Walpole urged the incapacity, ignorance, and sycophancy of the tutors and parsons in terms highly offensive to clerical ears. I, in truth, did not understand the force of many of his allusions; but, vain of possessing the handwriting of an eminent wit, ran to communicate the panegyric of my schoolfellows to my tutor, Dr. Langford. He, though “Etonian to the backbone,” was far from relishing such a compliment to the scholars, but, nettled at the irreverence or truth of the remarks, made me feel that I had not risen in his favour by becoming the depositary of so heterodox a document.

Walpole’s conjectures were not, however, unfounded, nor his sarcasms unmerited. The fellows, masters, and tutors were in my time, a period of nearly ten years, singularly deficient in common sense and experience, and by no means distinguished even in that narrow path of learning which they are expected most earnestly to pursue. Dr. Goodall[318] was perhaps an exception to the last clause of this censure. He was a showy scholar and quick man, but with as little usage of the world or solidity of judgment as his colleagues. I was diverted, when I met him at our Ambassador’s many years afterwards, at the good-humoured simplicity with which he acknowledged what had delighted him most in Parisian society. It was, forsooth, the precedence given to the Nuncio, the red stockings, imposing dress, and dignified carriage of an ecclesiastic, who from perhaps a pedagogue like himself had risen to be a diplomat and a Cardinal, and walked before nobles, generals, and Princes. Dr. Roberts,[319] the Provost, who for a short time had been tutor to Mr. Fox, was something more of a literary character. He had published a volume of verses, and was supposed to have assisted Dr. Glynn[320] (an abler man than himself) in his Seatonian Prize on the Day of Judgment, which is a poetical composition of unquestionable merit and full of happy imitations both of Milton and of Virgil. I suspect, however, that Dr. Roberts is now better remembered in “Colleges and Halls” for a speech to the King, highly characteristic of his profession, than for the truth or taste of his poetry. In thanking His Majesty for his Provostship, he added, “And I am the more sensible of the favour conferred, Sir, as it is tenable with any other preferment.”

Among the fellows was a Dr. Barford,[321] who passed for a great scholar. I could never discover on what his reputation was founded, except a Greek translation of Gray’s _Elegy_. The boys affirmed that he could read a newspaper off-hand into classical Greek, a common hyperbole to express a scholar’s familiarity with that language. George Selwyn used the same to me of his Master, Dr. George: he added that he knew the Greek for every English word except _Mutton cabobbed_, that he had taught his wife also many words, but that he reproved her for using them ungrammatically, as, when in playing whist she said, “I lead ὁ βασιλέυς,” he would turn up his eyes and earnestly exclaim, “τὸν βασιλέα, τὸν βασιλέα, my dear.”[322] I know not why I repeat so silly a story, especially as I cannot vouch for its truth. I might, however, have asked the lady herself, for I remember seeing her at Mrs. Hewitt’s (who was, I think, her granddaughter) at the age of one hundred and one—the oldest person I ever met in company. Of this same Dr. George, it is related, that on hearing the King of Prussia, then a young military hero, extolled for his abilities, he observed, “I should like to have him up in my school to a verb in μί.”

Similar notions of excellence might be brought home to the pedants and masters of my own time. My schoolfellows, however, aspired even during their education to a better kind of literary fame, and not without success. _The Microcosm_ was published while I was at Eton. I was myself too young, idle, and ignorant to contribute to the work. The four chief conductors were John or Joseph Smith, usually called by a nickname Easley; Robert Percy Smith, yet more generally designated by his nickname Bobus—both collegers, but unconnected by blood—and George Canning and John Hookham Frere—Oppidans. Among the occasional contributors were Lord Henry Spencer,[323] who, notwithstanding his constitutional shyness and reserve, would have distinguished himself by his wit and ingenuity, but died at the early age of twenty-four when employed on a mission to Berlin; and Mr. Mellish, who passed an adventurous life chiefly abroad, and translated many German works for the booksellers in London.

The elder Smith, surnamed Easley, was nephew of Sir Nathaniel Grove, the Puisne Judge, and, through the interest of his uncle or of Mr. Canning, obtained some places in the Courts of Justice and the Colonies, in which he silently enjoyed the profits, without offence, but without rising or aspiring to any eminence in his profession or in literature.[324] His numbers, in which there was rather an ostentatious display of learning and a dash of unintelligible metaphysics, were great favourites with the schoolboys. They passed with us for prodigies of learning and profound speculation. Boys generally form a very correct prognostic of the temper, disposition, and courage, and a very erroneous one of the prudence, sense, and abilities of their schoolfellows.

Of Robert Percy Smith,[325] elder brother of Sydney; married to my aunt, Miss Vernon; first, Advocate-General of Calcutta, and afterwards, representative for Lincoln in two successive Parliaments, I shall probably speak more than once in the course of these pages: but, having mentioned him as an Eton boy, I cannot withhold my testimony to his early proficiency and extraordinary promise. He was clearly the soundest scholar of his day; he had not only by his own unaided exertions mastered the Italian language and literature, but had already read and reflected on as many and as profound works, both ancient and modern, on ethics, politics, and divinity, as would have enabled an ordinary student in either of our Universities to set up for an accomplished metaphysician. Yet nature had done more for him than study. He was a descendant of a sister of Sir Isaac Newton, and his powers of application and reasoning, though never directed to science, seemed to claim and justify the relationship. He had, too, a wonderful command of language. If he seldom displayed his pleasantry and imagination, enough escaped him to satisfy even a superficial observer that he had in store, though he perhaps disdained to use it, as much of both of those commodities as glittered in the conversation of his brother and attracted the applause of fashionable society in London. Perhaps the strict discipline to which Robert Smith had inured his mind even at Eton perverted rather than directed, encumbered rather than enriched it. Notions not very friendly to our species and crudely adopted from books when a boy, though quite foreign from his natural character, which was sanguine and gay as well as ambitious, checked him in the career of his profession, aggravated many little unavoidable but not insuperable disappointments, dimmed the brilliancy of his spirits, and though they could not extinguish the native warmth of his heart, confined its influence to too small a circle, and gave up, not to party, but to the parlour and the fireside, what was meant and admirably formed for mankind.

The early inclinations of George Canning destined him to another career than that of letters. His success in it renders it superfluous to say much of him as a writer or companion, though in both those capacities he rose far beyond mediocrity. In all, his quick sense of ridicule, his readiness and exuberance, both in fancy and in expression, were conspicuous. Perhaps his characteristic excellence when a boy, viz., prodigious facility of composition, is more necessary in this country to the success of an orator or a Minister than depth and originality of thought. He was, indeed, when compared with some of his fellow labourers in _The Microcosm_, more showy than solid, but it does not follow from thence that he was for that early age in any degree superficial. His papers in that work were the most lively, and his verses more easy and sonorous than those of his associates. His Latin exercises and English effusions excelled in splendour of diction and brilliancy of wit, rather than in the expression of passion or truth of poetical feeling.

_Sir M. A. Shee Pinx._

_Emery Walker Ph. Sc._]

Considering the station[326] he now occupies and the events that are passing, it is curious to reflect that his first copy of English verses (written, as he assured me, before he came to Eton, and consequently ere he was twelve years of age) was on the Slavery of Greece, and contains a fervent exhortation and prayer for the liberation of its inhabitants. It is to be found in the 5th number of _The Microcosm_.

The least successful in that juvenile work was John Hookham Frere; yet he had a genius better adapted to letters than any of his coadjutors. Although indistinct or, at least, inconsistent in his reasoning, he excelled them all in originality of thought, humour, and expression. His merits (to use a happy phrase of his own) were of a manufacture less suited to foreign export than to home consumption. It was therefore mistaken friendship in Mr. Canning to engage him in diplomacy. His artless temper, his ill-directed suspicions, his absence, occasional rudeness, and habitual indolence and singularity, all obviously disqualified him for that line. Had he been employed in England, his devotion to his friends, the ardour of his mind, and the stores of his memory, but, above all, the originality of his humour, would doubtless have made him a first-rate political writer. Had he yet more fortunately confined himself to literature, his genius might have raised him to the character of an original critic and moralist, and perhaps have placed him on the same form with those poets who have furnished the best models of excellence in our language. As it was, the very habits which disqualified him for serious business added a zest to his conversation and gave a relish to all private intercourse with him in society. You laughed with him when he was facetious, you smiled at him when he was odd. He had warm and generous affections, but it was shrewdly observed of him that his attachments, like those of a cat, were stronger to places than to persons.

He was the only man ever so enamoured of quarantine, as to linger beyond his time in a _Lazaretto_, and quit it with reluctance and almost by compulsion. I have known him detained in a house for more than a fortnight, by a secret plot with his servant to neglect his orders and not to drive round the carriage, pack up his things, or announce the hour of his departure. He has been in his carriage on the eve of a long journey, and suddenly induced to get out of it in search of a book left behind in the room, where, finding and beginning to read it, he has thrown himself into a chair, and insensibly allowed the day to pass, and almost as imperceptibly postponed his intended departure for a week. The peculiar character of his humour is not easily described. His repartees or sayings, when deliberately recounted, do not preserve it. There was a playful archness in his sarcasms, keen but not offensive. There was a felicity in his phraseology (though he was not fluent) which, without exceeding the tone of familiar conversation, displayed a reach of fancy and strength of feeling delightful and unusual. He was a superstitious admirer of past times. He loved to sneer at the self-complacency with which our generation contemplates its real or supposed improvements in philosophy and the arts of life. When the unproductive state of the Peninsula was objected to his exaggerated praises of Spain and Portugal, he replied that “he loved a country where God Almighty kept large portions of land in his own hands.”

He had read little or nothing systematically, but he devoured every book that fell within his reach, and remembered all he met with in such desultory studies with an accuracy almost miraculous. Such facility of emotion, combined with a strong propensity to exercise his faculties on every subject presented to his mind, made him a very indulgent critic. He not only saw much more in a book than the author ever intended to convey, but he frequently built systems on foundations created by his own imagination and in no degree warranted by the work in which he fancied that he had discovered them.

What Montesquieu said of Voltaire is true of him, “Tous les livres qu’il lit, il les fait; après quoi il approuve ou critique ce qu’il a fait.” Hence he delighted in authors who deal in obscure allusions, whimsical images, and fanciful theories. Rabelais and Aristophanes were among his favourites. He was not only capable of tasting the satire, poetry, and wit of the latter, but he lent most of those qualities to every indifferent passage of his plays, discerning in every word more than struck the ear, and ascribing to the whole composition a systematic and patriotic design which was certainly never professed, and probably never harboured, by the writer. According to Frere, it was not gaiety, vanity, or malignity, which induced the great Athenian comic poet to libel the best man of his country and expose the first tragedian of his time to the ridicule of the rabble; it was, forsooth, a due sense of the pernicious effects of a mistaken theory of morals, and a deliberate apprehension of the consequences of an enervated and effeminate taste in composition. His scurrility and buffoonery were patriotic endeavours to rescue his countrymen from the persuasive philosophy of Socrates and the seductive poetry of Euripides.

In the interval between school and college I made a tour in Scotland, but I missed, on that and some subsequent occasions, the advantage of making acquaintance with the Principal, Robertson, the historian,[327] to whom I had letters of introduction. In truth, I heard very little conversation on literature in that northern land of letters, except strictures on the spirit and criticisms on the details of Dr. Johnson’s _Tour to the Hebrides_. That work and the poems of Ossian were then comparatively recent publications. They had not ceased to excite, in a different manner though nearly to an equal degree, the passions of the _literati_ in Scotland, where society, though divided on other topics, is and ever will be singularly tenacious on such as in any way affect their national character or reputation. Boswell was accused of having sacrificed his country to his authorship, of having led the English philosopher into the least attractive regions and least polished society he could find, with the view of provoking epigrams and extorting sarcasms wherewith to season his narrative and give a zest to tales otherwise insipid and uninteresting. It was Henry Erskine,[328] afterwards Lord Advocate, who termed Boswell “the Bear Leader,” and pretended that on being introduced to Dr. Johnson in the streets of Edinburgh, he had simply bowed to the stranger, but turned round to his countryman and slipped half-a-crown into his hand with thanks for the show.

In no town in which I ever resided did I see less of men distinguished for learning and literature than in Oxford during the two years I spent in that University. Tom Warton[329] was dead before I was entered, and his place in Trinity College was ill supplied by a gentleman of the name of Kett,[330] as an epigram very current in those days attests, _viz._,

The glorious sun of Trinity is set,
And naught shines now but farthing candle Kett.

Mr. Crowe,[331] the public orator, a fellow of New College, had more merit. As a Latin scholar he was without a rival, as a poet he was not despicable. Mr. Rogers has so unfeigned an admiration for his works that he seldom travels without a copy of them, as well as of Gray, in his chaise pocket. His verses on the installation of the Duke of Portland[332] contain an invective against war worthy of Milton himself. But his Whig, not to say Republican, propensities, which peep forth in that very poem, were so offensive in Oxford that blemishes in his moral character were remembered, and perhaps invented, to justify the neglect he experienced from successive Governments and the little store set by the University on his productions and lectures. His manners, it must be acknowledged, as well as his habits, were somewhat coarse and unsocial.

Dr. Sibthorp,[333] who, I believe, succeeded his father in the Botanical Chair, and who travelled and died in Greece, had acquired some celebrity in his humble walk of science. An awkward circumstance was said to have occurred on his application for the professorship. To qualify, the candidate must be furnished with testimonials not only of having studied, but of having actually practised, physic. Dr. Sibthorp had, indeed, attended the sick, but then there were none alive to attest it; so that in adducing proof of his having exercised his profession, he was compelled to raise a strong presumption of his unfitness for it, and to divulge the mortifying fact that not one of his few patients had survived his prescriptions.

Dr. Cyril Jackson,[334] Dean of Christ Church, enjoyed and deserved great reputation as the head of a college. He had some general knowledge, was a good scholar, and by some little artifices of manner, as well as by many real acts of benevolence, contrived to excite in the young men much respect for the institutions of the University and great notions of his dignity, abilities, and virtues. He was, in truth, a very honourable, disinterested, and warm-hearted man. He taught, however, and, I believe, felt, so indiscriminate a veneration for all received opinions because they were received, that he became, without meanness, a worshipper of rank, and, although not destitute of sagacity and utterly exempt from the mean passions of envy or jealousy, a favourer of mediocrity. The effect, though not intention, of his system, could it have prevailed, would have been to leave all prejudices unmolested, and thereby to slacken exertion and discourage improvement, to inculcate caution on his pupils till he had damped their genius, and to reduce all political and literary merit to deference for authority and prudent admiration of acknowledged excellence. He had been employed under Markham, Archbishop of York, in the education of the Prince of Wales and Frederick, Duke of York. That circumstance gave him access to both those Princes throughout his life: and he affected more than he actually enjoyed, recounting to his listeners at Oxford, at one time, the blunt reproofs, at others, the friendly advice he had given to his Royal pupils. From compliance with George III.’s partiality, or from a genuine preference of manly character over quickness of parts, he always professed more attachment to the Duke of York than the Prince of Wales. The latter, aware of his predilections and nettled at them, took an odd method of revenging himself by retaliation. In all companies he launched forth in commendation of William Jackson, younger brother of the Dean.[335] He would extol his merits as a companion, friend, and scholar, though he well knew him to be a dull, selfish, and ordinary man; and he studiously represented him as superior to his brother, though he owed to the celebrity and friendship of that brother what little credit or reputation he enjoyed at college, as well as all the preferment, including the Bishopric of Oxford, that he obtained in the Church.

Dr. Beddoes[336] had not closed his lectures when I first went to college, but I never attended them; nor did I become acquainted with the lecturer till he had retired from the University in consequence of some disgust arising either from his opinions in politics and religion, or from the peculiarities of his temper, which was neither conciliatory nor tractable.[337] He was a man of science and of genius, but by no means successful as a lecturer. His figure and delivery were ungraceful, his language inflated and ambitious, and he was so singularly awkward in the mechanical part of his experiments that they generally failed, and he was then compelled to proceed in his discourse on the hypothesis that the result had been the reverse of that which the eyes of his audience would have led them to believe. He contributed, however, to the advancement both of chemistry and medicine, and had the merit of discovering the talents and directing the labours and studies of an indigent youth who afterwards became Sir Humphry Davy. All his writings, whether on politics or science, are eloquent and original, but they betray great want of taste, judgment, and prudence. He was rash and paradoxical in the extreme. He above once announced discoveries which he was obliged to retract; and Dr. Ingenhousz[338] (who somewhat enjoyed his discomfiture) blamed him more for his ignominious candour in abandoning, than his hasty presumption in publishing, such crude and erroneous conjectures. As an instance of his bad taste in language and conversation, I remember that when asked by Lord Lansdown[339] how an election at Bristol was likely to go, he began his reply with these words, “My Lord, when the floodgates of the human mind are once opened....” I believe Lord Lansdown and his audience were not much disposed to await the torrent of eloquence and metaphysical reasoning which was to ensue. In proof of the wildness of his theories, suffice it to mention that he seriously maintained the non-existence of bodily pain. It was the mere effect of education: and a child properly trained for that purpose would find it a pleasurable sensation, and what we consider as pleasurable sensations might, by an opposite system of discipline from that usually practised, be rendered odious and disagreeable and abhorrent to our desires. He afterwards undertook the tuition of young men; and the acquirements of his pupils (of whom Mr. Lambton was one), as well as their attachment to the memory of their preceptor, do much credit to his head and heart.

The same commendation may be bestowed on the person next presented to my recollection, Dr. Parr.[340] Though a Cambridge man, he frequently visited Oxford, where he lodged at the house of his friend Dr. Routh,[341] Principal of Magdalen, a quiet, learned, and benevolent man, a Tory in his principles and a recluse in his habits. Dr. Parr’s reputation for scholarship and his zeal for Whig politics, together with the singularity of his countenance, dress, habits, and manners, rendered him an object of much curiosity and some little dread, both to the tutors and undergraduates. His visits formed a sort of era in Oxford. His sayings were repeated, his appearance, his monstrous wig, his velvet coat, his lisping speech and penetrating eye, his love of smoking, and affected laugh with his shoulders, were the topics of conversation in all the Common rooms and wine parties in the University.

This was precisely what he sought for. It was the sort of celebrity that delighted him. He panted, indeed, for opportunities of conflict with the High Churchmen of the place, with the hope of astonishing the undergraduates by the boldness of his paradoxes, the variety of his quotations, and the wit of his retorts. But the heads of Houses and professors were by no means disposed to indulge him in such intellectual gymnastics. They are seldom inclined to court notoriety, and they seemed somewhat afraid of Dr. Parr. At Christ Church, our superiors refrained from courting him with any ostentation of civility, but they were wonderfully cautious not to offend by any remarks on his maxims in scholarship, politics, and divinity, though printed in sermons and pamphlets and circulated very freely in conversation by his admirers in the University. A distant sneer or an arch inquiry was the utmost symptom of hostility ever hazarded against this active champion of every cause they disapproved.[342]

Among the professors at Oxford there was indeed one who had good cause for fear, and yet more for resentment, against Dr. Parr, had he had the ability to gratify it. This was Dr. White,[343] the Arabic Professor. He had signalised himself a few years before by the publication of his Bampton lectures, which were hailed by the orthodox as a triumph for Christianity over Islamism achieved by a member of the Church of England, and by the Oxonians as a proof of the success with which the Oriental languages were studied in their University.

But short-lived was their exaltation. It was soon discovered that a Nonconformist minister, of the name of Badcock, had, for a stipulated sum (which, I think, the professor in an evil hour disputed with his executors), furnished much of the reasoning and of the Arabic of that vaunted publication. Upon that detection, Dr. Parr, with more eagerness and less generosity than was usual in him, exclaimed, “I, too, could pluck a feather from the crest of that Oxford Phœnix”; and he accordingly made good his claim to several Greek quotations and other admired passages in the lectures. Thus were the hopes of orthodoxy and Oxford suddenly blighted, or rather, the harvest they expected to reap cruelly wrested from them and divided between Nonconformity and Cambridge. Poor Dr. White, stripped of his borrowed plumes, was hooted at and reviled by all the satirists and witlings of the day.

Cui color _albus_ erat, nunc est contrarius _albo_.

The obvious punning quotation of George Selwyn was repeated by every schoolboy, and the professor, though he had raised himself from a low condition in life by learning only, and was, in truth, a good Arabic scholar, a studious, simple,[344] and inoffensive man, could never re-establish his credit or advance his fortune. He edited, in vain, some Oriental works; he acquired no fame and obtained little preferment.[345]

To return to Dr. Parr, I was introduced to him by Mr. Canning, who had made his acquaintance at Mr. Sheridan’s or at Crewe Hall. I do not enlarge on his moral, intellectual, or political virtues, all which were very great, because the publications devoted to his memory will be full of them. My task is only to preserve some diverting but harmless foibles in his manners and conversation, which the dignity of graver biographers will very probably suppress.

I should, however, be sorry, were my reader to imagine that I was really insensible to Dr. Parr’s many excellent qualities of head and heart, his learning, his eloquence, his political consistency and integrity, his warm affections, disinterestedness, and generosity. Of the latter virtue especially, I have known many instances in his conduct to his pupils. None, however, but such as have seen him in a society of undergraduates, surrounded by old pupils and young admirers over whom he exercised unlimited jurisdiction in all matters of taste and learning, can believe the liberties he took or the absurdities into which his vanity betrayed him. So little was any interchange of ideas necessary to gratify him that he launched forth in praise of the extraordinary _erudition_ of his neighbour at a public dinner on a Gaudy day, who turned out to be neither more nor less than the beadle of the college, admitted by old usage to a seat at the table on such solemn occasions, but aspiring to no further academical attainments than the sweeping[346] the quadrangles, or, at the utmost, writing down the name of the students for whom the gates were opened after sunset. He had, however, no doubt earned the panegyric bestowed upon him, by listening with profound silence and veneration to the Latin and Greek which Dr. Parr had poured into his ears. The Doctor enlarged with great complacency on the effect, as well as Latinity, of his preface to Bellendenus.[347] He had introduced into that work some severe strictures on the character of Mr. Pitt’s eloquence, and he observed that his friend Mr. Horner thought it would “turn that Minister out”; but then he would add, with an appearance of overstrained humility, “But Horner is a sanguine man.”

He told us, I well remember, that he suspected Pitt of a settled design of subverting the idiom of the language, as well as overturning the constitution. “The dog talks grammar,” he said, “but it is an insidious masked battery under which he may better assail our idiom.” Then he would relate how he had sat in the gallery of the House of Commons and thrown his “whole grammatical mind” upon the orator, a process which he acted with most significant gestures, and then added, “The dog caught my eye, and chastised his faulty phraseology.”

There was a report at that time that our late fellow-collegian, Mr. Jenkinson (afterwards Lord Liverpool and Prime Minister), had been entrusted with a mission to the French Princes, who had taken refuge and were then meditating war against their country at Coblentz. Dr. Parr inveighed against such an appointment, but we were all somewhat startled upon discovering that it was not the mission but the choice of the envoy alone which scandalised him. So young a man, he observed, could not be equal to it; and although he would himself never serve Billy (for so he contemptuously termed Mr. Pitt), that Premier would do well to look out for a clergyman of such habits, sagacity, and scholarship as himself, to ascertain the views and fathom the designs of those revolted Princes on the Rhine.

In speaking of living scholars, metaphysicians, and writers, he would frequently name those whom he thought the first and the third in each department of excellence; but he always omitted the second, manifestly reserving that place for himself, and as manifestly pluming himself on his modesty in not asserting his right to the first, which he hoped his auditors would in their hearts assign him. In this scale of excellence he always placed Mr. Porson[348] at the head of our Greek scholars. It was just and prudent to do so. The concurrent testimony of all his contemporaries would have granted to that gentleman the same pre-eminence that Dr. Parr, perhaps rather reluctantly, assigned him.

Porson was in scholarship _facile princeps_; in memory he was a prodigy; in wit and understanding a much more extraordinary man than such prodigies usually are. Persons intimate with him have assured me that he not only knew most of the ancient poets and all the Greek tragedians by heart, but would repeat nearly _verbatim_ the notes of the most approved editions. He usually did so when any passage was quoted in his presence, specifying the page, the column, and the place of the respective editions, where the passage itself and the notes he had repeated were to be found. His recollection of words was certainly not confined to poetry or eloquence. He could, and did often, recite long and dull comments in Greek, Latin, and English, _verbatim_. He knew all the notes of Gibbon by heart; and when sentences of the text of that historian or of any of his favourite works (among which Foote’s Farces must be reckoned) were read or alluded to, he usually finished the paragraph or scene without omitting a word. He was not, like Napoleon, a great proficient in mathematics; but he had, like him, a memory as retentive of numbers as of everything else. He occasionally took an unaccountable pleasure in repeating large sums, and had a tiresome trick of counting them aloud, especially after he had drunk much wine, and was disposed by such a test to prove to himself that his faculties were not sensibly impaired thereby.

Such peculiarities did not add to his charms as a companion. I never saw him but twice, and on both occasions in a club, where he was a visitor and not a member,[349] and where he had little opportunity of display, except indeed by long quotations from Hickes’ _Thesaurus_ and other singular rather than agreeable proofs of the extent and accuracy of his memory. When I asked him to my house he peremptorily declined coming; on my repeating my invitation, he sent me word that he had “broken his leg and could not come,” though he was frequently met about the same time walking in the streets. Perhaps he was affronted at my sending the invitation by a common friend, instead of calling myself, or perhaps he was on that, as on other occasions, extremely jealous of being invited as a show. Such, at least, was the interpretation frequently put by him on the marks of homage which slight acquaintances, and even strangers, were naturally disposed to pay to his extraordinary talents and celebrity.

In recording such misplaced pride and false notions of independence, it is just to add that in the more important concerns of life his sense of honour was to the full as susceptible and his spirit as inflexible. He sacrificed without ostentation great advantages of station and prospects of fortune to conscience. Having eluded the manœuvres and rejected the solicitations of those who urged him to qualify for a clerical fellowship in his college, as well as subsequent preferment by taking holy orders, he, from the same scruple and dislike of the Thirty-nine Articles, was willing to forego the favourite object of his ambition, the Greek Professorship at Cambridge. His sarcastic letter to Dr. Postlethwaite,[350] on that occasion, establishes beyond dispute both his disapprobation of those Articles and his conscientious adherence to truth at the expense of interest and advancement. When one reflects that he had no private fortune, no rich connections,[351] no expectations whatever, such inflexibility of principle and self-respect must extort one’s admiration and applause. His conduct is the more praiseworthy, as it was dictated neither by the vanity of fanaticism nor the zeal of making proselytes. What his particular opinions on religion were is not known; at least, he never took much pains to promulgate them. He speaks of himself as not a “sound believer” in the Church sense of that word. Whether he confined his objections to the peculiar creed of the Church of England, or denied revelation altogether, I have never ascertained.

While resident at the University, although avowedly not orthodox, he abstained himself [from], and discountenanced in others, all scoffs at Christianity. His subsequent habits and intimacies must have familiarised him with great freedom of conversation on such topics; and it was generally supposed that he was a sceptic or freethinker. As a scholar and critic, in which capacities his authority will ever be greatest, his testimony was manifestly unfavourable to the Trinitarian interpretation of Scripture. His masterly letters to Archdeacon Travis finally exploded the verse of St. John—the only text approaching to a direct assertion of three persons in the Godhead.[352] His conviction that the New Testament never predicates in positive terms, nor implies by fair inference from language the existence of the Trinity, seems almost acknowledged in his writings. It was not, I apprehend, concealed, much less denied, by him in conversation. The Trinitarians, who are disposed to stigmatise their Arian and Unitarian adversaries as dishonest and ignorant, must be prepared to maintain some strong paradoxes with respect to celebrated men. They must question the sincerity of Lardner, and deny the learning of Milton, Clarke, Porson, and Wakefield.[353]

Porson had more particles of pride than vanity, and more principle than affection, in his composition. But had it not been for the vice of drunkenness in which he indulged in a manner that degraded him, he would have been a respectable man in character as well as abilities and acquirements. He could never have been an amiable one. Yet was he a friend to liberty, and by no means indifferent to the improvement of mankind. In that respect he was the reverse of Swift, whom in other points he resembled and in some little degree rivalled. Swift said he could love Jack or Jem, but hated and despised the human race. Porson, on the contrary, had some benevolence for the species, but seemed incapable of loving Jack, Jem, or any individual. His English verses (fragments rather than poems) seem, from their extreme exactness in rhyme, rhythm, and expression, to have cost as much pains as those of Swift himself. They are to the full as biting and malignant.

In the two most successful efforts of his muse, _viz._, his verses on the fellows of Trinity College, and his address to Cambridge on the admission of the young Duke of Gloucester, there is so much indecency blended with the satire that, although among the best lampoons in our language, I shall not venture to insert them....

Specimens of his repartees are more common and have more merit; but I am afraid of repeating things elsewhere preserved and generally known. When some enthusiastic admirer of the knot of writers called “Lake Poets,” in extolling Wordsworth, Southey, and the rest _qui pauperes esse volunt et pauperes sunt_, emphatically predicted that they would be read when Virgil, Milton, Dryden, and Pope were forgotten, “I agree with you, and _not till then_,” was the dry and contemptuous answer of Porson. When pressed, after a tiresome metaphysical disquisition by Dr. Parr, to give his opinion on the origin of moral and physical evil: “Why, I think,” said he, “Doctor, we should have done very well without them.”

There was a project for sending him with Lord Elgin’s[354] Embassy to Constantinople, in the hope that he might discover, decipher, and elucidate manuscripts, inscriptions, documents, and other remains of antiquity. Whether the objections to such an appointment originated with himself or Lord Elgin, I know not. The latter has been reproached with it. But it is just to remark that Porson, scholar and wit as he was, would, from the intemperance of his habits and the perverse susceptibility of his temper, have been rather a troublesome inmate, especially in a residence where during the war there was no resource for society but within the walls of the Embassy. His place was supplied by Mr. Carlyle[355] and Dr. Hunt. The former translated and published some very pretty specimens of Arabic poetry; the latter, who was afterwards chaplain to the Duke of Bedford in Ireland, became a very useful magistrate in Bedfordshire, without neglecting the studies of antiquity and _virtu_ in which he had made great proficiency in Greece and Asia Minor.

To return to the worthies of Oxford during my residence there. I knew few of the professors, nor did many of them give the undergraduates opportunity or inclination to cultivate their acquaintance by the frequency or excellence of their lectures. Mr. Wooddeson,[356] who filled the Vinerian Chair, had ceased to deliver the lectures (which he published) before my time. They have merit and learning, and though not so complete nor so eloquent as those of his predecessor, Blackstone,[357] they are certainly less tinged with the peculiar tenets of the place in which they were delivered than the commentaries of that perspicuous writer and learned but somewhat obsequious judge.

Dr. Wenman,[358] the professor of Civil Law, both from his connections and his subject, was likely to maintain tenets more congenial to the Metropolis of Toryism. But his lectures attracted so little notice and made so faint an impression on his auditors that I have forgotten their character, and believe that I never heard their merits even discussed.

The Professor of Mathematics was Mr. Robison or Mr. Robinson,[359] a Scotchman. He had taken his degree, or at least had acquired his science, at Glasgow; and Mr. Windham, before his hostility to the French Revolution had weaned him from the practice of irreverent jokes and excited in him some hopes of representing the University in Parliament, used to make himself merry at the expense of his Alma Mater, who, finding such a dearth of science among her own sons, had been compelled to send to a northern and Presbyterian nursery for a mathematician capable of filling her own chair.[360] The duties required, however, by the office were either very light or the northern luminary very scandalously neglected them. I never heard of his lectures, his pupils, or his examinations, and I shrewdly suspect he had none.

Dr. Hornsby,[361] Professor of Astronomy, did give lectures, and they were not ill-attended. Yet they were such as many a lad in a Scotch or foreign University, and many an itinerant teacher unmatriculated in any, could have easily supplied. Those on divinity by Dr. Randolph[362] were probably distinguished by more talent, and certainly possessed learning seldom found and perhaps not often sought for out of the walls of a college. Yet they were no favourites with the public, nor even with those young men who were destined to Holy Orders. This was owing to the slovenly delivery, awkward and obscure phraseology, and rude, unpolished manners of the lecturer. Under that exterior, however, the ungraceful and ungracious priest, narrow-minded Tory as he was, concealed a kind heart and a disinterested, compassionate, and generous disposition. He became first Bishop of Oxford, and afterwards of London, where he died soon after his elevation to the see.

In the Medical or Anatomical Chairs there was no professor of superior, or even equal, eminence. Grosvenor,[363] a very able surgeon, resident in Oxford, was not, I believe, a member of the University, and certainly filled no office in it. Sir Christopher, then _Doctor_ Pegge,[364] is chiefly remarkable for having been the successful competitor of Dr. Vaughan, afterwards Sir Henry Halford.[365] That more distinguished and fortunate man thus owed to defeat the advantage of settling in the only place where practice as extensive as that which he exercised for more than thirty years could have been obtained. If he did not derive from his academical studies that physical activity and cheerfulness and those qualities of sagacity and attractions of manner which were the real causes of his success in London and at Windsor, he at least brought from Oxford that taste for pure Latinity and classical composition, which he loved to display with some degree of self-complacency in the College of Physicians.

In the meanwhile the protection of the Dean and tutors of Christ Church, which had raised Pegge to the Chair, could never render his anatomical school famous beyond the walls of the University or popular with the young men within them.[366] There was a whisper among them that his science was superficial; and even in judging of his diction and delivery, which I am assured were above mediocrity, they unfairly persisted in contrasting them with those of his predecessor, Dr. Thompson, a man who had been expelled the University, but the memory of whose ready eloquence and extraordinary perspicuity survived the ruin of his moral character and his consequent retirement in Italy. He died after a residence of a few years in that country, where his medical attainments so far expiated his religious and other heresies that the Pope condescended to consult him, and, if I mistake not, to appoint him Physician-in-Ordinary. He was a great mineralogist, and left a valuable collection of specimens, which he directed by his will to be, in the first instance, offered to Christ Church, and if refused by that college to be transferred to the University of Glasgow. Christ Church, as he foresaw, declined the bequest. They could not do otherwise. They could not question by implication the justice of that expulsion inflicted by the University, to which their representatives in the _Caput_ had been a party. Glasgow had no reason and probably no inclination to be so scrupulous. She accepted cheerfully a donation from a stranger whose conduct had never either directly or indirectly come under her cognizance.

Respect or gratitude to John Hunter, who came from the neighbourhood of Glasgow, may have induced Dr. Thompson to confer such a favour on that Northern University.[367] Hunter,[368] possibly from reliance on some partial representation or from the prepossessions of friendship, but more probably from a zeal for science, which deemed the protection of its interests and of those capable of promoting it paramount to all other considerations, had loudly arraigned the justice of the proceedings against Thompson at Oxford, had strongly dissuaded and lamented his precipitate retreat, and was, even after that event, hardly prevailed upon to suppress a pamphlet he had written in his vindication. This proceeded from that same ardour or intrepidity of mind, which was the mainspring of John Hunter’s actions throughout life, and the real cause of his inquiries, discoveries, and celebrity; but which nevertheless betrayed him occasionally into acts of imprudence and passion, and subjected him, even in his professional practice, to the imputation of sacrificing his patients to his theory. His enemies, who were many and virulent, no doubt took some pains to blacken him; but there is no denying that his judgment was occasionally clouded by an irascible and tenacious temper.

Even on subjects unconnected with his pursuits, and where he had no right to assume authority, he was apt to be positive, dogmatical, and angry. If such instances of intemperate behaviour had been confined to those which arose from his horror, real or affected, of revolutionary principles, I should not have alluded to them, even though they led him to exclude well-qualified persons from professional advantages and scientific Societies where their merits entitled them to admission. Such prejudices were not only common, but almost universal, during the unhappy epoch of the French Revolution, with all persons who had attained a certain station in society. They were the vices of the time, not of the individual. Every man, especially if not a professed politician, was a tyrant or an incendiary at his heart, either disposed from feverish alarm for his property to restrain, imprison, and persecute his neighbour, or eager from envy, curiosity, or enthusiasm to subvert all established order and to realise the visionary theory of perfect equality among men. If any one had a grain of candour or moderation, it became his interest to conceal it. Consequently those who, like John Hunter, were not opposed to the Government of the day, appeared zealots and partizans in its favour, and from real contagion or selfish compliance exhibited all the symptoms of earnestness and injustice belonging to that character. But such and other defects in John Hunter were deducible from causes not connected with the violence of the times.

Perhaps in his dogmatical spirit, and certainly both in the obscurity of his style and in his unbounded self-applause and vanity, he betrayed the infirmities which are often described as the invariable concomitants of a late education, followed by a sudden elevation to eminence and distinction. He told me once in so many words that he thought himself a greater man than Isaac Newton. The superiority he had acquired in his own branch demanded, he said, a more extraordinary union of qualities than any proficiency in mathematics or astronomy; and discoveries leading to a perfect knowledge of the human frame were infinitely more useful to mankind than any observation of the heavenly bodies could be.

A childish love of paradox, or an obstinate adherence to an opinion hastily enounced, made him deny the efficacy of mineral springs. He contended that an artificial mixture of the same ingredients, or even the pure element alone heated to the same degree of temperature, would produce the same effects as Bath waters taken at the spot. Whenever they failed to do so, it was, he maintained, the fault of imagination. He assured me, in proof of this opinion, that to one patient in London (I think his own wife) he had prescribed common hot water, allowing it to be so, without any success; but that when he had filled Bath bottles with the same water and pretended that they were received by the coach, she, after boiling them, derived all the benefit from them that she had expected from a course of the real waters drunk fresh at the Pump Room.

He had always a large belief in the influence of the mind over the body, and recounted many singular instances within his own observation where physical phenomena were to be traced exclusively to mental weakness or mental exertion. I know not whether he considered the following incident, which I had from his own lips, as any confirmation of his theory in his own person. While engaged in inquiries in Natural History, he kept a tiger or lion (I forget which) chained to a cage or kennel at the bottom of the yard. As he was sitting one hot day, as was his custom, slipshod in his back parlour, with the window door half open before him, he perceived the fierce animal disencumber his neck of his collar, and, finding himself unrestrained, prepared to spring over the wall of the adjoining yard. John Hunter, alarmed at the mischief which might ensue, and without any consideration of what he was doing, issued from the room, seized the beast by his neck or mane, and quietly reconducted him to his place of confinement, where the animal permitted him to refix the chain without the least symptom of resistance. When this feat was thus fortunately accomplished, John Hunter returned to the house; but he had scarcely passed the threshold when the recollection of the danger he had voluntarily encountered and miraculously escaped suddenly rushed on his mind, and overpowered him with such terror and amazement that he fell senseless on the floor, and did not recover for some minutes. He laboured under a disease particularly alarming to a person subject to such violent emotions, _viz._, an affection of the heart, which he told me and others would one day kill him going upstairs or in a passion. The prediction was, it is said, verified in the latter shape; he expired in the act of repelling a contradiction which had provoked him.[369]

Whatever were his foibles and imperfections as a man, a surgeon, and a writer, his inventive genius and unremitting zeal in the investigation of anatomical truths rendered his life highly useful to the world, and promoted the science which tends more directly than any other to mitigate the sufferings incident to our species. He left several MSS. Many think that they should have been conveyed to Surgeons’ Hall, together with the Museum, and were in equity, at least, included in the purchase. The fact that they have been destroyed has excited some disappointment and more indignation among men of science, some of whom, however, have insinuated that the benefit of any discoveries they may have contained has not been lost to the world, but may be found in the papers and publications of his brother-in-law and executor, who destroyed them in their original shape without any acknowledgment to the inventor.

John Hunter was neither polished in his manner nor refined in his expression, but from originality of thought and earnestness of mind he was extremely agreeable in conversation; at least, to me, in whom he somewhat hastily and very erroneously inferred a turn for studies congenial to his own, from the very unfeigned homage he perceived me to pay to his talents and celebrity. His countenance was indeed full of genius. The observation of Lavater on the engraving from the admirable portrait of him by Sir Joshua Reynolds, “That man thinks for himself,” must have occurred to less professed physiognomists in every casual intercourse with the original.