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TO JOHN NICHOLS, Esq.

Walton Grove,

MY INVALUABLE FRIEND, Mar. 26, 1816.

I am delighted with your Ninth Volume, which contains many interesting articles; and shall send you some Comments and Corrections.

From the nature of your Work, much of it will not interest or entertain any but us Antiquaries ; and may be thought, even as to them, or other and more popular Heroes, too minute. I answer, as your Champion, that all branches of Literature fall within your plan-that where you dig up, as it were, obscure men, it is the most benevolent office, and the most useful to the policy of encouraging the Pursuit of Literature, by the recompence of making the adventurers, who act upon the noblest principles, not as mercenaries, better known.

But you owe to me some recompence for the heavy disappointment I have experienced from the delay of the publication of WRAY*; and that recompence is, though it should produce more delay, that you should confer upon my ambition the honour of accompanying Doctor PARR in the same volume. I

* The Memoirs of Mr. WRAY were intended (both by Mr. Hardinge and myself) to have formed a prominent part of the Ninth Volume of the "Literary Anecdotes;" and with that view were begun at the press in the Autumn of 1814; but, from a variety of unexpected disappointments experienced by Mr. Hardinge in his indefatigable researches, it was more than nine months before the first sheet was actually printed off, and nearly nine months more before the whole was finished. In the mean time the Ninth Volume had been completed by other articles.

"By no means publish WRAY till it is complete," was the injunction of more than one Letter.

That illustrious Luminary of Learning has kindly undertaken to favour me with what I shall consider as the brightest ornament of these Volumes; and I still flatter myself that Mr. Hardinge's wishes may be indulged, by the appearance of Dr. PARR'S very interesting communication in the same volume with Mr. HARDINGE's Memoirs of Sir JOHN PRATT, Earl CAMDEN, and Mr. NICHOLAS HARDINGE.

will bribe you, if I can; though I have been impudent enough to think our friendship ensured your coincidence in all my wishes that are ingenuousand I think, if I know myself, the ambition to which I allude is that of being accredited as an admirer of Genius and Virtue. My wish to accompany Dr. PARR, and you may tell him so, arises from the enthusiasm which I entertain for his powerful intellect, for his classical taste, for his depth of learning, and for his eloquence.

I have still treasures upon treasures for you; particularly an admirable composition by Dr. Hardinge, my uncle, in Latin lambics. I also mean to give you (apart from Lord Camden's Life) Memoirs of his wonderful Father Sir John Pratt. They are finished, and wait your commands.

I could give you some characteristic traits of Dr. Glynn, whom I intimately knew, and of whom I possess many Letters to me, but all of them on a subject of business.

'Remind me of Athenian Stuart and Dr. Good.

Yours affectionately,

G. HARDINGE.

The REV. JOHN CLARKE *, M. A.

John Clarke, the subject of this Memoir, derived no distinction from the splendour of hereditary de scent. Born at Kirby-Misperton, otherwise called Kirby Over-Car, in the North Riding of Yorkshire, May 3, 1706, he discovered, in his earliest years, the strongest propensities to Literature. He was the son of an honest and industrious mechanic, whose extreme anxiety to give him a liberal education deserves every encomium. The Rector of his parish, quick to discern and willing to encourage merit, placed him in the school of Thornton, a village in the neighbourhood, near Pickering, from whence he afterwards obtained a small exhibition to the University.

Having been thoroughly grounded in the elementary parts of learning, he was removed, first to the school of Wakefield, in the West Riding of Yorkshire, and then to that of Kirkleatham in Cleveland. The celebrity of Thomas Clark, successively master of both those schools, is too well known to be here recorded. To his care the sons of the principal gentry of the county of York were entrusted.

* This excellent Memoir was first published in 1798, under the title of "The Good Schoolmaster, exemplified in the Character of the Rev. John Clarke, M. A. formerly Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, and successively Master of the Schools of Shipton, Beverley, and Wakefield, in the County of York, by Thomas Zouch, M. A. F. L. S. ;" and was kindly communicated by the truly benevolent Author a very short time before his death. See a brief account of him in the " Literary Anecdotes," vol. VII. p. 720.

+ Mr. Peter Dubordieu, a French Refugee, educated in Clare Hall, Cambridge, B. A. 1692; M. A. 1697. He published a Treatise on the Theban Legion.

Formerly of Jesus College, Cambridge; B. A. 1696; M. A. 1700. At his instance a room was built, contiguous to the school at Wakefield, for the reception of books.

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From the instructions of this eminent preceptor our John Clarke acquired the most solid advantages; an improved taste-a chastised judgment-a regulated method of study.

He was admitted in 1723 a sizar of Trinity College, in Cambridge. He took his first degree in 1726, was elected Fellow of his College October 1, 1729, and proceeded Master of Arts in 1730.

The annual stipend of a Fellowship was, in those days, much inferior to its present value. A young man, who had not to boast of the emoluments of an enlarged patrimony, was under the necessity of forming an immediate intercourse with the world, merely to ensure to himself a comfortable subsistence. However grateful to a studious and contemplative mind the life of an Academician might be, he was often obliged to abandon the agreeable prospect before him, to adapt himself to the exigences of society, and thus to become the architect of his own fortune. John Clarke left the University with regret. During his residence there, he had distinguished himself by the propriety of his moral conduct, by his rapid proficiency in classic erudition. He had richly improved the golden opportunity of searching into all the storehouses of ancient learning. Though he possessed not the singular and almost incredible industry of a Castell*, who declared that to be an idle day in which he did not employ sixteen or eighteen hours in the pursuit of his biblical studies, yet his application was truly exemplary: He seems to have had the observation of Horace perpetually before him:

The youth, who hopes the Olympic prize to gain,
All arts must try, and ev'ry toil sustain†. FRANCIS.

* Dr. Edmund Castell, Professor of the Arabic Language in the University of Cambridge. See the Dedication of his incomparable Lexicon to Charles II. Memoirs of him are given in the Literary Anecdotes," vol. IV. p. 22.

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+ Qui studet optatam cursu contingere metam

Multa tulit fecitque puer.

HOR.

He

He had repeatedly read the best Latin and Greek Authors with a nice and critical discernment. With the incomparable beauties of the three great Dramatic Poets he was intimately acquainted. He had indeed attentively examined, and no one knew better how to explain

What the lofty grave Tragedians taught

In chorus or iambic, teachers best

Of moral prudence, with delight received
In brief sententious precepts.

MILTON'S P. R. lib. IV. 1. 264. Nor had he neglected the cultivation of his own language, in which he always expressed his ideas in a polished, flowing, and perspicuous style.

Fully accomplished for the purpose, he undertook the important province of educating youth. His first appointment was at Shipton *, near York, where is a school endowed with a yearly stipend of forty pounds. Being now in holy orders, he was presented to the Perpetual Curacy of Nunmonkton, the annual income of which did not at that time exceed sixteen pounds. While he remained in this situation, he married Mrs. Meek, a widow lady, the mother of three sons and one daughter, the care of whose education devolved upon him.

In 1735, the Mayor and Aldermen of Beverley, in the East Riding of Yorkshire, nominated him to their Grammar School. All his scholars followed him from Shipton to Beverley.

In 1751 he was solicited to accept the Mastership of the School at Wakefield, then vacated by the promotion of the Rev. Benjamin Wilson, one of the first Greek scholars of the age, to the vicarage of that town. Of this school it has been remarked, that it is "as famous as any whatsoever in these kingdoms, except those of Westminster, Winchester, and Eton." It is justly celebrated for the edu

*Mrs. Anne Middleton, of the City of York, endowed this school by her will, dated August 24, 1655. 3c2

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