that the promise should be recalled, unless satisfactory assurance was given that a lady then living with his lordship, and who had been openly distributing tickets, should not be permitted to attend. At first the senior tutor, who was in habits of intimacy with Lord Sandwich,' (a very reputable connexion for a divine and an institutor of youth,) ́ objected to the idea of excluding any lady from a public concert: but afterwards when they urged that standing in a public situation as the instructors of youth, it was their duty to discountenance every sort of immorality, and threatened to appeal to the Society in case of his refusal, the assurance was given, and the arrangement suffered to proceed.' Be it remembered, that of these two champions of morality and decorum, the older was then no more than twenty-eight!

It was about the same time, and by means of the same early connexion, that Mr. Paley was introduced as chaplain into the family of Dr. Law, then newly appointed to the bishopric of Carlisle, who like other scholarlike men elevated to these high situations in the decline of life, wanted an active and skilful coadjutor. Neither party had reason to repent of this connexion. The chaplain lived in his patron's family as an equal; their confidence was reciprocal; his services merited all which a see richer in patronage than that of Carlisle could bestow, and they received from the limited resources which it did afford more than his disinterested and

unambitious temper aspired to. Beside a series of parochial preferment of no great value, he became successively Prebendary of the Cathedral, and Archdeacon and Chancellor of the diocese.

We stop the progress of the narrative for a moment, in order to notice, before they are left too far behind, some particulars in the early character of Paley as a scholar and a writer. It is not a little diverting that the first known composition of a man who never afterwards discovered a glimpse of poetical taste or imagination, should have been A Poem in the manner of Ossian. Had we been assured that the first work of Mr. Gray had been a solution of some mathematical problem in the Lady's Diary, we should scarcely have been more astonished. His next performance, of which more than one copy appears to be extant, is his Prize dissertation, written when senior Bachelor of Arts, where, in a style somewhat uncouth and rugged but with great vigour of thought, and a promise of all his future excellence as a reasoner, he supports the cause of the Epicurean philosophy, disencumbered by him with great skill from the load of calumny with which it had been oppressed by its enemies, against the impracticable and unnatural dogmata of Zeno. Of this original performance Mr. Meadley has given a short specimen from the conclusion, to which we shall subjoin the exordium.

Cum e Græcia jamdudum cesserit philosophia atque serò admodum

apud

pud nostros expetita lacertos tandem porrexisse videatur, utile profecto erit atque huic certè loco accommodatum, disjecta philosophorum monumenta respicere eorumque ita conferre utilitates, ut habeamus aliquando quo lare et nos tutemur et civitatem. Quæ quidem utilitatum comparatio et quasi contentio cum ipsa per se sit fructuosa et frugifera,, tum maxime nostris eò studiis commendatur quod materiam hancce veteres integram omninò intactamque reliquere. Quamdiu enim viguit Athenis philosophia, quisque suæ sunt astricti disciplinæ, eamque ad augendam totos sese penitusque tradidere; inde propriis delectati studiis, aliena aut omninò contempsere aut parum studiose prosecuti sunt. Affectibus planè præpediti ad dogmata diversarum scholarum excutienda accessere, magistros interea suos superstitiose venerantes."

This composition, in the midst of the drudgery of a school, to which the talents of Paley had then been condemned, is said to have been the work of a fortnight; but the materials, of which there is a copious suppellex in the notes, must have been the result of long and previous research. Paley had not yet begun to disdain a parade of ancient authorities; but from this time, he employed himself much better in drawing from the stores of his own mind than in borrowing the best sense of antiquity on moral subjects, far inferior for the most part to his own.

In the pulpit,' says his biographer of him, at the same period, 'he was less admired, his early discourses being verbose and florid, a fault by no means rare in men of genius, before they have acquired a purer and more simple style.' And again—' It was probably his present experience which led him afterwards to remark, in reference to those who had two sermons to preach every week, that they had better steal one of them; for though a sermon occupied the preacher only about twenty minutes in the delivery, it took, or ought to take him, more than half a week in the composition. And yet few men could compose more rapidly than himself. He seems to have entertained a very low opinion of that kind of vapid declamation which imposes so much upon the multitude.' And truly so does every man, even of ordinary taste or understanding. But, if Mr. Meadley wishes it to be understood that the earlier discourses of Paley partook of that vapid declamation' which his better taste condemned, we must be allowed to differ from him. Several of these discourses are known to be extant; and more perhaps are remembered as delivered from the pulpit. They were indeed declamatory: they certainly wanted the closeness and cogency of his later compositions; but they were neither verbose, nor florid, nor vapid: they were the forcible and animated effusions of a young orator, who by a due severity to his own luxuriances was shortly to attain to excellence.

It is only minds of great elasticity and vigor, conscious of their ability

VOL. IX. NO. XVIII.

CC

ability to enlighten mankind, and aware of the responsibility attached to great talents, which, after having quitted the great scenes of learning, continue to pursue their studies for the purpose of systematic. instruction in the country-Paley was one of these: wherever settled or however employed, it was impossible for him not to observe or reflect; with such internal resources he wanted no library; and, with him, to compose was as easy as to converse. The series of works which a retirement of about twenty years produced is happily well known to the public; with them we have no immediate concern, and Mr. Meadley might have spared himself the trouble of analyzing their contents: but some invidious remarks on those splendid rewards which his author merited for his services in the cause of religion, and the spirit of rancour displayed by him towards the memory of Mr. Pitt, whose disposition towards Dr. Paley he has either misrepresented, or not understood, call for correction and reprehension-And first, with respect to his refusal of the mastership of Jesus College- The whole of his motives for this refusal have never yet been clearly ascertained; nor perhaps were they fully communicated even to his most intimate friends' (here we agree with the biographer) to one gentleman indeed, he stated a conviction that he should be scarcely able to remain a single month in office' (meaning probably the vice-chancellorship, which would have followed the other) without quarrelling with Mr. Pitt-Mr. Paley, who was no timeserver, seems to have been unwilling to place himself in a situation in which unworthy compliances might be either expected or required.'-This is a foul libel on the dead and the living-on the minister and on the heads of houses-the first as an haughty tyrant; the second as a set of unprincipled and self-interested slaves. It is neither a duty incumbent on ministers nor men to heap rewards on those who thwart and oppose their measures; but independence and hostility are not convertible terms, and in that station we undertake to say, that a man like Paley, with all his independence of spirit, would have held no such course, as to debar him from preferment. sides, the surmise is negatived by facts; as it is well known that, about the same time, a man of far less merit, and by principle as well as connexion actively hostile to the court, was promoted by the crown to the mastership of another college, with an express reservation of his party and his principles: and the biographers might have known, that when Paley's first and best friend heard of the refusal, his observation was, that he had missed a mitre.'

Be

Dull and shallow men are not always fit to be trusted with the loose talk of their betters; and these words, if ever uttered at all, were probably spoken in that careless and jocular manner so pecu-

liar

liar to the speaker, and which was sometimes turned to his disadvantage.

Again- It had long been a reproach to the chief dispersers of ecclesiastical patronage, though certainly with some honourable exceptions, that so comparatively small a portion of preferment in a very opulent establishment had been bestowed on so deserving a divine. The minis ters of the crown had neglected the instructive moralist, and the bench of bishops seemed almost equally inattentive to the theologian who had supplied so new and satisfactory a demonstration of the authenticity of the Epistles of St. Paul. After the publication of the Evidences of Christianity, however, any farther forbearance on the part of the great episcopal patrons was scarcely possible. Whatever subordinate ditlerence of opinion might be supposed to distinguish the creed of Dr. Paley from that of some of his more dignified brethren, his merit as a defender of the Christian Revelation was indisputable and too prominent to be neglected at so critical a time.'

That exalted order are too much accustomed to obloquy suffer themselves to be scared into acts of bounty; they are not, and they ought not to be, the slaves of popular opinion: but differing as they all did, from some subordinate tenets which Dr. Paley was known or suspected to hold, they maintained a dignified reserve towards him till his general services to the cause of Revelation had overborne every subordinate scruple, and awed even bigotry into silence. Four of the most illustrious prelates of the English church, to one alone of whom perhaps he was personally known, then spontaneously interposed to gild the later days of such a man with the sunshine of their favour, and to enable him to close an active and useful life in ease and opulence.

And this is the reward to which Mr. Meadley thinks the benefactors of his friend entitled! their bounty, as he would have it believed, was drawn forth by a feeling of self-reproach and a consciousness of having neglected transcendent merit: the time was critical, and any farther inattention to the merits of Paley might have endangered the establishment.-It were better even that a man like Paley were neglected, than that the chief dispensers of ecclesiastical patronage' should once give way to such a spirit: let the principle of concession to popular opinion but be carried a little farther, and their studies would be filled with libels in the shape of petitions; their houses would be surrounded by mobs clamouring for factious declaimers, and they would be no longer masters of their patronage or themselves. If judgment in selecting be the first qualification of a great patron, fortitude in refusing is the second. Had Dr. Paley thought on these occasions with his biographer, he would have received the bounty of his patrons in sullen silence: nay perhaps have told them that he owed it not to

them but to himself, or at least to the general sense of the nation on his behalf. On the contrary, his expressions of gratitude were public, affectionate and sincere.

These testimonies, however, flattering and valuable as they were, came late: but they contributed to sooth the painful decline of an useful life now drawing rapidly to its termination. That final scene Dr. Paley contemplated with cheerful anticipation, and endured with unaffected composure: the period of self-enjoyment on earth he felt was at an end, he had lived to accomplish a great and beneficial system of instruction for mankind, and he saw nothing in the prospect before him to dismay-nothing indeed which did not animate and cheer him under his temporary sufferings. Thus disposed and prepared, died this great and excellent man, May 25,

1805.

His mind was of a very original cast, and of that universal comprehension which is able to adapt itself to every subject. To a consummate knowledge of his own faculty together with its kindred sciences of morality and rational metaphysics, he added two accomplishments never perhaps united before, (certainly not with the third,) physiology and the law of England. It seemed indifferent to what profession he should originally have applied himself. He would have raised himself to the summit of any one. Yet, though indefatigably industrious, he was not a learned man. He disdained the pedantry of quotation, and never wasted on tedious research into antiquity those precious moments which were better occupied in original observation and reflection. Accordingly no English divine or philosopher has ever attained to the same or to any considerable degree of eminence with so small a portion of what may be called erudition. In this respect he most resembled his master, Locke. His classical learning was that of a school-boy just discharged from a country seminary: of the oriental languages he appears to have known nothing. His citations from the Fathers were made to his hand, but it has never been discovered that in applying and reasoning upon them he mistook their meaning. His biographer admits perhaps too readily and too universally that he had no taste-for poetry indeed he had none. Imagination was not his province, and argument and induction he well knew could best be managed in prose. For the supposed inelegance of his style we are not disposed to admit the apologies of his injudicious friends. The imputation ought to have been denied. It was not inelegant. Traces indeed of his provincial dialect may now and then be detected when he did not intend it; but he frequently used a strong and coarse expression purposely and for the sake of impression. In fact his style was formed on the manner of Johnson, with many of his hard words, but with sentences less involved. Perspicuity