when it first appeared, he was much pleased, he marked all those with whom he had maintained any acquaintance, and his marks are very numerous. He was a member of the Hyson Club, which had been first formed by the wranglers of Dr. Thorpe's year, about five years before he took his degree; and which was at that time celebrated in the university as containing among its members some of very shining talents, among whom are to be enumerated, Dr. Beadon, the late bishop of Gloucester, Dr. Tomline, the present bishop of Winchester, Dr. Milner, the late dean of Carlisle, Dr. Waring, professor of mathematics, Mr. Vince, &c. It is well known that this system of clubbing has long prevailed in both of our universities; and as well used for rubbing off any little asperities, or the stiffness of more severe studies, he made it an object, as will be seen, in almost every place where he afterwards resided, either to promote or join a sociable meeting of the kind. In this Hyson Club, however, he seems to have contributed largely to the general stock of brilliancy and merriment which generally attends the relaxation of powerful minds, without at the same time entering into that sort of childishness which is sometimes affected for the sake of persuading others that the mind is unbending from graver pursuits. His powers of affording entertainment in general society were, it seems, at that time distinguished; and he must be eminently possessed of a talent for adapting himself, and of materials fit for being adapted to general use, who can parties in society preserve the same character with all during the course of a whole life. sented of his detaining the Fellows' table by his wit and drollery till he had eaten his own dinner, and being the life and spirit of a combination-room, deserves notice, not only as giving a strong mark of his mind at that time, but as continuing through stages of pain and sickness, when mere animal spirits must have failed. He had one excellence in a high degree in after-life, which even then he seems to have been possessed of, that of always being able to impress his company with some apophthegm or witticism that would bear repetition; some stroke of wit on things of ordinary occurrence, which would be recollected as often as the same thing occurred: his family even at this time are seldom long in any company or society in places where he lived, without having occasion to trace him by means of such memoranda. With Dr. Waring, who, in his preface to Miscellanea Analytica, seems to have hit upon what was a great characteristic of his friend's mind "in veritatis investigatione ingenii maxime pollentis," he was more intimate than is generally represented. Of his goodness of heart, simplicity, genius, and learning, he coincides in opinion with the anonymous author in the Public Characters; but his manners and conversation he estimates much more highly. Dr. Waring indeed appears, according to the testimony of one very little junior to Paley, to have been as eminently distinguished by a general knowledge as by a characteristic simplicity of manners*. With Mr. (afterwards, on changing his profession from divinity to physic, Dr.) Jebb, he joined freely on subjects of scientific and speculative inquiry, and used often to talk over with an intimate friend in private, thirty years after, his pleasant intercourse with Jebb and Waring. But both these were his seniors. Though he esteemed them much, as possessed of independent and acute habits of thought, and rather looked up to them as pleasant and warm friends, there is but little reason to believe that he ranged himself on their side, or on any side, either in religion or politics. He read, and thought, and acted for himself on every occasion of his life. Of the warm-heartedness, indeed, and disinterestedness of his friendships, scarcely enough can be said, but much more than enough has been insinuated in various quarters, as to his heterodox principles and views, tending to innovation both in church and state, from his connexion with what is termed their "party." Merely to hazard conjectures against a generally received opinion is but a hopeless undertaking, but in the absence of all facts which point out any more intimate admiration of the principles of any party, and with the possession of an experience which plainly speaks the contrary, it may be fairly and fearlessly said, that he never in his life * Gilbert Wakefield. There are many marginal—" No-Nounjust, foolish paragraph, I do not remember any such anecdote," added to a story about Mr. Waring, inserted in the Public Characters.-ED. was a party man. On all questions, he was the advocate of liberal principles, and the most liberal discussion, but he never went one step beyond the bounds of fair and candid conclusions, or of established order. What his biographer* says of him on this subject, viz. that he was of a liberal party in the university, is just as true of him at any other period of his life. He was more properly a liberal man of any party. He brought great interest and eagerness to any party, and advocated any set of arguments by which good was to be done, or truth forwarded; but to say he was a secret advocate for ecclesiastical reform, or a political dabbler, from the circumstance of his having very slightly engaged in a question of the day which made considerable noise, or from having entered on a course of lecturing which involved all duties, moral and political, is to confound party with opinion, and to make every man a partisan who expresses his sentiments for or against any side of a question. It must be remembered that there was at that day, and perhaps is still, a certain aptitude in receiving, as well as readiness in affixing the name of party to men of any public note, according as their cast of mind or their abilities seem favourable to a certain way of treating particular subjects. Yet they are not to be called liberal, either in spirit or in letter, though they are equally eager for the character of liberality. Gilbert Wakefield, who adds a good deal * Meadley. to the weight of what might be called the liberal party at that time in the university, though by the selfishness and disappointed vanity which runs through his Memoirs, he gives occasion for doubting the purity of his motives on many occasions, says, "No man of any age, of any sect or denomination, has been so much a practical dissenter as myself, but as to party I will be of none, nor fight under any standard but that of truth and liberty." Yet this same was a reviler of church establishments, at the same time that he was called by Dr. Priestley an enemy to dissenters. He acknowledges himself indeed an enemy to most of the dissenters of that day, but not to the cause; and says, that ecclesiastical power in the hands of some of them would be a tyranny. One difference between these two, and probably many more of the same party, seems to have been, that Wakefield was not pleased with any party, and could not be; for his maxim, of which he says he made an excellent use on numerous occasions, was “ παντων δε μαλις' αιχυνει Mr. Paley was of every party, and friendly with men of all parties, but never exclusively attached to any. Wakefield's general account of this age of the university, and the questions at that time agitated, if they form a sort of right to his correcting "a mistake of those censorious surmisers who had imagined him to have been brought over to the same party," may serve equally on this occasion. He says, "It is not improbable that the example of such respectable characters, occupied in the pursuit and the profession. σαυτον. |