either afraid to avow, or ashamed to confess, that he admired the same liberality of view, the same boldness in pioneering amongst the entanglements of learning, and opening the approach to the true spirit of all institutions. As far as this might be considered the design of the liberal party in the university, he would not be unlikely to engage in it with all his might; but though it might incline him to adopt some views at first, the tendency of which he neither saw nor looked for, it gave no twist to his mind at all sufficient to make him valuable to a party. It might lead him, indeed, not by any means to be "an overturner of churches, and spoiler of temples," but to take the obvious and first impressions of their use and abuse, to compare institutions and establishments as they exist, with the first intention of them, rather than to reason in favour of them, merely because they were existing institutions, or to follow them from their rise through the several steps of improvement. A young and ardent mind, little able, or at best not much inclined, to take hold of the chain on which many of our institutions and established forms depend, nor observing the links by which it is connected, each more polished than the last, might easily be tempted to join in any wish for reform or revision, from detecting some roughnesses and blunders. From his natural taste for rubbing off any artificial guise, together with a certain reluctance in courting discretion, he might have been led hastily, and, with his early impression, to a rashness in finding fault

with what more matured deliberation would have induced him to allow for; and so he might be more than partially involved in any public charge of heterodoxy, or at least a suspicion of being bent on innovation of some kind. But we may easily imagine that he scarcely supposed himself able to hold a decided opinion on matters of grave doctrine or political sentiment, or to stand forth as the advocate, and much less the champion of any party, since neither the complexion of his mind, nor the general temperament of his after-life, was at all worse for it. It was certainly not tinctured with any decided opposition either to church or state, nor does he seem to have been prevented from balancing between the advantages and disadvantages, the probability and improbability, of many points, which in later periods of his life came to him under a more important character.

In the estimation of all parties in the university, he seems to have been singularly honest, and strictly upright; a strong-minded, substantial, yet discriminating reasoner; a stanch advocate for discipline; liberal, modest, and independent; decisive, but not determined against improvement in his sentiments on subjects of religion and morality; wise enough to discriminate between a passionate and a rational prosecution of his object, yet always holding that object to be a bold and manly discharge of his duty*.

For these characteristics I am much indebted to the stories so aptly brought forward by Meadley, to the communication of

He was associated, too, more in sentiment than by any strenuous exertion in discussing, if not improving the system of education then in the university; but he never took any office but that of taxor, nor did he assume much authority in his college, except on points to which the substantial aims of discipline might be directed. He did not tease with demanding any little observances, nor did he easily yield to any requisition for licence and relaxation on substantial points. In conjunction with a man of very congenial views, and with the same grasp of mind, he was able at once to enter upon such a course of steady, and, as it is well termed*, old-fashioned discipline, as to leave on the minds of some of his pupils a lasting personal respect for himself, and in others, though at the time unwilling to submit, a fear and reverence, which never afterwards seemed to diminish, or appear ridiculous to themselves. He opposed, along with his fellow-tutor, Law, the grant of the college-hall to Lord Sandwich, who was strongly favoured and supported by Dr. Shepherd. This gentleman was probably too much interested in his lordship's behalf to be very scrupulous on that occa

many of his acquaintance, to my own conclusions, from throwing together many recollections, and to the general estimation which appears to have been attached to his memory. Nor can I give any authority for gainsaying it, except one that I do not choose to follow-Hazlitt, that literary Thersites, who appears little acquainted with the character he so unsparingly bespatters. Ep. * Quarterly Review, vol. 9.

sion, till it was suggested to him by the other tutors, that it would be so much for the interests of good order and discipline to oppose the unconditional grant of it, that they were resolved to stand firm against the whole proceeding, unless the offensive part of it was removed. Dr. Shepherd upon this claimed a promise from Lord Sandwich, that nothing but what was consistent with college discipline and strict propriety should take place, and they withdrew all opposition. There was no squabble of party in this, nor was Mr. Paley at all concerned in the contest between Lords Hardwicke and Sandwich.

The offer to go into Poland to superintend the education of Prince Poniatowski's relative, the young Prince Czartorinski, was communicated to his friends at home; and though he showed no disinclination to the scheme, yet the reluctance which his mother showed was so much stronger than any wish expressed by his father, who thought it a very advantageous offer for his son, that he declined it.

The offer which is said to have been made to him by Lord Camden's friends, of becoming his lordship's private tutor, but to have been declined on account of his engagements, was never actually brought to his option, though it was talked of; so that he missed nothing by that.

Of his lectures, in addition to what has been so well and fully given*, it may be said, that there was

VOL. I.

* Meadley.

G

little of the popery of education, as it is called,little of precomposed forms of lectures. His plan, as far as he was sensible of plan, seems to have been to teach his pupils to think for themselves. He entered upon his subject not with a view of polishing what was known, but of teaching others to find out what was unknown, by observing the steps by which he had discovered it. As he seems to have employed much of that part of life, in which he first began to think and act for himself, in giving instruction, it may readily be conceived, that the habit of communicating it would continue long after his lectures were past. Accordingly we shall presently find him employing the same mode of instruction in his family which he used at college, and it was characteristic enough of his powers to deserve mention by itself. Of his lectures on the Greek Testament, which some of his biographers have unfortunately praised "for being free from sectarian disputes," and in which he is said to have recommended his pupils "rather to listen to God than to man," there seems no authority whatever for speaking in this language, as his Greek Testament, from which he lectured, which is even yet to be found, is chiefly filled with notes critical and explanatory, in the manner adopted since by Elsley. These explanations are taken principally from Bowyer's Conjectures on the New Testament, which came out just at that time, and are very consistent with the design he proposed to himself, as appears by the first page of his Lecture Book: