Oldalképek
PDF
ePub

Thus in accusing mood the Image cried,
Milles heard-and thus in choler's tone replied:

[ocr errors]

Ungrateful Caducan! unkind amends!

"Why blame compassion? why calumniate friends? "For this-had Bateman's kind and gen'rous care

Brought thee from darkness into light and air? "From killing damps and charnel vaults obscene, "From walls in mossy distillations green?

"Plac'd thee in decent state, a welcome guest, "Brush'd off thy dirt, and scower'd thy tatter'd vest? "Was it for this repairing arts were spread, "And lab'ring skill reform'd thy shatter'd head? "Go, and lament, ingrate, the varied scene; "Go and complain that Bateman made thee clean; "Go to the silent gloom, and be forgot;

66

Enjoy thy solitude ;—prefer to rot;

"Go to the Dorian vale, or Cambrian shore!" Abash'd, the Idol slept, and spoke no more.

VERSES ADDRESSED TO OLD CAMDEN'S PICTURE, AT LORD CAMden's, in kent.

An extract from a gay little feather of DR. DAVIES, addressed to his friend John Dodd, has been given in p. 504; and I shall now transcribe the lines alluded to in pp. 487. 675.

Father of Britain! (late restor’d) a while
Attend, and cast a venerable smile!

Know'st thou these walls, these walks, this woody brow?
Blush, good old man, and see its glories now.

* I have obtained, by the favour of Lady Knowles, the original picture of DAVIES, from which the keepsake to LORD CAMDEN was a copy; and I send it you that it may be engraved.— I know from the first Lord Camden that it was the very man alive; but I should guess at a younger age, not much above the eighth lustre.

Know'st

Know'st thou the MAN

Whom neither fear nor favour can controul,
His inborn worth, and probity of soul:
Mild as the vernal gale, or softest lay;

Firm as the rock that spurns the roaring sea;
"Inflexible, and steady to his trust:"

Barely to say he 's upright, is unjust.
Father, be proud; assume thy later fame :
Hear, and rejoice: he bears thy honour'd name.
Do I then flatter? what! for dirt and pence?
'Tis false, ye hirelings! wretches, get ye hence.
What! for some meed!—with me as light as air:
Trifles and toys beneath my serious care.
Where interest, trifles, and ev'n power are weak,
Freely I draw; and what I feel, I speak.

Ask, ask the People's, ask the Sovereign's choice,
Ask thy own Britain-she confirms my voice.

I shall conclude my account of this excellent man, by transcribing his Epitaph:

"To the memory of

SNEYD DAVIES, D. D.
Archdeacon of Derby,

Canon Residentiary of the Cathedral Church of
Lichfield, and Rector of this Parish.
Born with natural abilities,

and furnished with acquired endowments,
equal to the highest station;

his modest disposition withheld him from the pursuit
of that degree and advancement in the Church
to which his merits
peculiarly entitled him.

He died 20th day of January, 1769,
aged 59."

P. S.

P. S. As a proper appendage to the preceding article, I proceed to transcribe, from Mr. Coxe's Memoirs of Stillingfleet*, an excellent sketch of the Character of the REV. JOHN WILLIAMSON, by MR. ALDWORTH NEVILLE:

"If ever man lived to fifty, and died without having lost a friend, or made an enemy, it was Johnny Williamson.

Pope drew his character in a single line,

'In wit a man, simplicity a child.'

Had he sat for the picture, it could not have been more like however, this is only a great outline, and I must be more minute. With the most acute understanding, and infinite discernment, any dull scoundrel might have duped him any hour of his life; some did, and they always escaped with impunity; for he was as careful to conceal their iniquity as they could be themselves: without vice himself, he could not bear the thought of punishing it in others.

"The gentleness of his manners could only be equalled by the depth of his genius: no sickness could ruffle the one, or blunt the other. Bad health indeed checked the flight of the latter, and hindered its attaining those heights in philosophy and mathematics to which he would otherwise have soared; as I heard from Professor Bradley, when I was a Student at Oxford, and had not the happiness of knowing Williamson; and many times have I heard it since from some of the first men in those sciences

* Of that entertaining Work I have already spoken in p. 506, and shall only now observe that I think Mr. Stilling fleet's prose most elegant, easy, and beautiful; his thoughts, at once, ingenious, and chaste; but his Charge, and Sermon, to Windham, his Botanical Memoirs, and his Tour, could have been spared.— I have seen him at Lord Dacre's, and have heard him, but thought him rather amiable than interesting. He generally accompanied his friend Marsham, who was of the same cast. When I read his Letters to Mrs. Montagu I was charmed. Indeed all his Letters are pleasing and lively, as well as clever. I should have thought it impossible for him to have loved any thing but a Linnæan flame. By the way, I think his pittance of 100l. a year shamefully inadequate. G. H.

here

here and at Geneva; from Robins, Earl Stanhope, Stevens, Stilling fleet, Professors Calandrini and Cramer of Geneva, to whom I may, from report, add Simson of Glasgow. These are the illustrious witnesses of Williamson's inventive genius and ac curate judgment; and well might they judge of both, for none of them ever published any mathematical work, when he was within reach, without first submitting it to his censure and correction. When Dr. Frewen, the celebrated physician at Oxford, had obtained his promise not to think of mathematics for a twelvemonth at least, he employed that time in making himself thorough master of Greek, which he did without any fatigue of mind; and afterwards, when his bad health had entirely stopped his mathematical career, he applied himself to the study of his own profession, which he enforced and adorned with every argument and ornament that could be drawn from antient philosophy, history, poetry, or belles lettres. Superior as his genius was, it was nothing to his heart: that was literally without a spot; for I will not call by that name a thoughtless indolency, the child of innocence and generosity.

"He was in the strictest sense of the word a true Christian, made up of faith, meekness, and charity. Generous to such a degree as never to look on the solitary guinea in his pocket as his own, whilst any object struck him that seemed to want it more than himself: no wonder, therefore, he was always poor. I asked him one day, why he was not of the Royal Society? His answer was, that he had never found himself worth £20 to pay the fees. This, amongst other marks of his character, I mentioned to the Duke of Bedford, in my recommendation of him to the Chaplaincy of Lisbon; and such an union of merit and poverty weighed more with his Grace, than the efforts of very powerful solicitors in favour of other competitors: he was appointed to that employment. How he discharged his duty, the universal veneration and affection of every rank of every Na

tion with which he had any concern, best certified. Sir Benjamin Keene, Mr. Castres, and Mr. Hay, His Majesty's Ministers at the Courts of Spain and Portugal, together with the whole British Factory, adored him. The Portuguese Nobility and Clergy treated him with a respect never paid to his Predecessors; and, what flattered him more than all the rest, the common people of Lisbon, forgetting he was a Heretick, never once offered him the least insult; but, on the contrary, were ever ready to assist him in finding out the huts of the sick or dying English sailors.

He escaped the Earthquake miraculously; but it left such a horror on his gentle mind, that he frequently requested his friends to wave their curiosity on that subject. He happened to have received fifty moidores the day before the Earthquake, and had them in his pocket the next morning; reflecting on this circumstance, he was saying some time afterwards, that he believed he had been at one time the richest man in Lisbon: "True," said Mr. Castres, "but how much had you left the next night?" He had given it all away; and soon afterwards insisted, and from a perseverance very unusual in him, prevailed with the Factory to abate 130 moidores of the stipend they had themselves fixed upon him. He, however, continued to remit a handsome allowance to his mother and sisters in Scotland, to his dying day. All his books and papers, which last was an irreparable loss to the publick, as well as to himself, were buried in the general ruin. The horrid executions on account of the King's assassination wrought deeply likewise on his gentle disposition; and the more so, as he had personally known the Marquis de Tavora, and others of the sufferers.

"Early in the year 1793, this godlike man was, about his 50th year, relieved from all his infirmities, and gathered to his kindred angels. He left just enough to bury him, and would have left no more if he had been Archbishop of Canterbury."

My

« ElőzőTovább »