Richard Copley Christie

“ But he had become devoted to his work as a college tutor, and was growing conscious of the possession of that magnetic influence which first affected his pupils, afterwards the college generally, and latterly so many outsiders with whom he came in contact. His appointment as examiner in the school of literæ humaniores in the spring of 1848 seems to have been the turning-point of his life.
His success as an examiner surprised him, and proved both to himself and to the university that his powers and his learning were not only equal to, but greater than, those of men of much higher reputation. ”

“ At first desirous only of getting rid of his visitor, whom he assumed to be a beggar or an adventurer, Sadolet soon became interested in his conversation, and delighted with his learning and modesty. He then sent for the magistrates and other influential citizens of Carpentras, and, with their sanction, appointed him to a tutorship or professorship—probably of eloquence (i.e. Latin composition) —at a yearly salary of one hundred gold pieces (seventy crowns Volusene calls it) , two-thirds paid by the city, and the remaining third by Sadolet himself. ”

“ He sees the hand of the jesuits everywhere, and finds an evident difficulty in doing justice to the opponents of intellectual progress.
Though not in the technical sense of the word a bibliophile, Pattison collected not only the largest private library of his time at Oxford, but one that was extraordinarily complete for the history of learning and philosophy of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries. ”

“ Edward Hawkins (1789–1882) [q. v.] had succeeded Edward Copleston [q. v.] as provost, and had got rid of Newman, Hurrell Froude, and Robert Wilberforce, the tutors to whom the reputation of the college was largely owing, and had replaced them by less able but more subservient men. The college lectures taught Pattison nothing (cf. Mozley, Reminiscences, i. 237) . In his second year he was ‘put into Aristotle's Rhetoric; but such a lecture!—the tutor incapable of explaining any difficulty, and barely able to translate the Greek, even with the aid of a crib’ (Pattison, Memoirs, p. 130) . ”

“ A discreditable intrigue induced the non-resident fellow at the last moment to support an obscure candidate whose single merit was that he would keep out Pattison, and probably, if successful, would reduce the college to the happy condition of mental torpor out of which it had of late been raised. ”

“ About 1782 he, with a few friends of like opinions, founded a unitarian church at Montrose, of which he became the minister. This was the first unitarian congregation established in Scotland. From December 1783 to May 1785 he had as his colleague the well-known Thomas Fyshe Palmer, fellow of Queens' College, Cambridge. In 1784 he published the most popular of his works, ‘Discourses on the Divine Unity.’ It shows a considerable knowledge of the Greek Testament, and of the fathers, critics, and commentators, and was received with much favour by those who were disposed to unitarianism. ”

“ Always earnest in promoting university reform, he contributed to ‘Oxford Essays’ (1855) an article on ‘Oxford Studies,’ now rather of historical and literary than of practical interest, partly owing to the changes since effected, partly because the maturer view of its author is contained in his ‘Suggestions on Academical Organisation’ (1868) , and in the essay which he contributed to the volume ‘On the Endowment of Research’ (1876) . In these three writings he puts forward his views on university reform. ”

“ Born on 10 Oct. 1813 at Hornby in the North Riding, where his father was then curate in charge, Mark was the eldest of twelve children, ten of them daughters, the youngest being well known as Sister Dora [see Pattison, Dorothy] . His father, a strict evangelical, but a fair scholar, gave him, first at Hornby and afterwards at Haukswell, all his education before he proceeded to the university, and grounded him well in Latin, Greek, and mathematics. Literature and learning were his delight from an early age. ”

“ One of his most successful pictures, ‘An Incident in the History of the Great Plague,’ is in the National Gallery of Scotland, which also possesses a copy, by the artist himself, of a large picture painted by him as an altar-piece for the chapel at Murthley Castle, ‘The Apparition of the Cross to Constantine.’ Several of the illustrations of the Abbotsford edition of ‘The Bride of Lammermoor’ are from his designs. Christie delivered several courses of lectures at the Philosophical Institution in Edinburgh, and elsewhere, on various subjects connected with art. ”

“ CHRISTIE, THOMAS (1761–1796) , political writer, was born in 1761 at Montrose, where his father, Alexander Christie (brother of William Christie, unitarian writer [q. v.] ) , was a merchant, holding for several years the office of provost. Alexander was a man of much intelligence and culture, and extremely popular among his fellow-townsmen, who were indebted to his exertions and liberality, and those of his father (also provost) , for the bridge which spans the estuary of the Esk, and for the infirmary and lunatic asylum, the first of the kind established in Scotland. ”

“ CHRISTIE, WILLIAM (1748–1823) , unitarian writer, one of the earliest apostles of unitarianism in Scotland and America, was a son of Thomas Christie, merchant and provost of Montrose, and uncle of Thomas Christie, political writer [q v.] He was born in 1748 at Montrose, and educated at the grammar school there under his kinsman, Hugh Christie [q. v.] Intended for a commercial life, he was for a few years a merchant at Montrose, but early in life he devoted his leisure to theological study. ”

“ VOLUSENE, FLORENCE (1504?–1547?) , scholar and humanist, is called by David Echlin in 1637, in his edition of the ‘De Animi Tranquillitate,’ Wolson or Wolsey, and by modern writers Wilson (for which, however, there is no contemporary or early authority) . ”

“ Thompson in 1861, Pattison obtained the prize he had contended for ten years earlier, and was elected rector of Lincoln. In 1870 he accepted for the third time the office of public examiner, then an unusual post for the ‘head of a house’ to fill. He was also a delegate of the press and of the Bodleian Library, but in 1878 he declined the vice-chancellorship. Although for a time after his election the rector lectured on the ‘Ethics,’ he took a less active part in the administration of the college than might have been expected. ”

“ He showed a keen interest in those undergraduates who possessed a love of study or a desire to succeed in the schools, but he did not much concern himself with the college generally or with the undergraduates.
In the meantime his literary activity was great. His articles in the ‘Quarterly’ on ‘Huet’ (1855) , ‘Montaigne’ (1856) , ‘Joseph Scaliger’ (1860) , ‘The Stephenses’ (1865) ; in the ‘National Review’ on ‘Bishop Warburton’ and ‘Learning in the Church of England’ (1863) ”

“ He gives a far less favourable impression of himself than any impartial outside observer would have done, and draws a portrait not so much of what he really was at the time of which he writes, as of what he seemed to himself through the morbid recollections of the past and the often not less morbid entries in his diary. ”

“ In 1546 Volusene, then contemplating a return to Scotland, wrote to Sadolet asking his advice as to the course he should adopt in his native land in reference to the religious dissensions. The cardinal's reply is among his letters (Sad. Epist. iii. 433) . Soon afterwards he seems to have resigned his appointment at Carpentras, but had hardly commenced his journey to Scotland when he was attacked by illness, and died at Vienne in Dauphiné in 1546 or early in 1547. ”

“ He was born at Garvock, Kincardineshire, in 1710, and educated at King's College, Aberdeen, where he took the degree of M.A. in 1730. He was licensed to reach as a probationer of the church of Scotland, but never held any parochial charge. Soon after taking his degree he was a pointed rector of the grammar school of Brechin, an office which-the held until he was elected rector of the grammar school of Montrose, where he remained until his death (1774) , and where he obtained considerable popularity and success. ”

“ After suffering (as he intimates in one of his letters) some years' imprisonment as a popish recusant, he left England without license in or about 1570, and spent the rest of his life in France, Spain, and the Low Countries, in constant correspondence with Cecil and others of Elizabeth's ministers, and sometimes with the queen herself, desiring pardon and permission to return to England and to enjoy his estates ”

“ In form, this work is an imaginary conversation held in a garden on the heights of Fourvières overlooking Lyons, between the author and two friends. In substance it reminds us of the ‘Consolation of Philosophy’ of Boethius. Without being commonplace, it is full of sense, and at once reasonable and Christian. ”

“ Camden styles him ‘e primariis inter profugos Anglos.’ He was the eldest son of Sir Roger Copley by his wife Elizabeth, daughter of Sir William Shelley of Michelgrove, a judge of the common pleas [q. v.] , and was one of the coheirs of Thomas, last lord Hoo and Hastings, whose title he claimed and sometimes assumed. Lord Hoo's daughter Jane married his great-grandfather, Sir Roger Copley. Another daughter married Sir Geoffrey Boleyn, and was the great-grandmother of Anne Boleyn. ”

“ Soon after we find him residing as a married man at Roughay, in the parish of Horsham, and on 22 June 1592, in a letter from Topcliffe to the queen, he is described as ‘the most desperate youth that liveth. ... Copley did shoot a gentleman the last summer, and killed an ox with a musket, and in Horsham church threw his dagger at the parish clerk. ... There liveth not the like, I think, in England, for sudden attempts, nor one upon whom I have good grounds to have watchful eyes’ (Strype, Annals, vol. iv.) ”

“ His writings, however, breathe fervent loyalty and devotion to the queen. In 1595 he published ‘Wits, Fittes, and Fancies fronted and entermedled with Presidentes of Honour and Wisdom; also Loves Owle, an idle conceited dialogue between Love and an olde Man,’ London, 1595 (Bodleian) . ”

“ This was intended to be in eight languages, but only the English (from the pen of Thomas Christie) and the Italian had appeared (3 vols. 8vo, Paris, 1792) , when the assembly made way for the convention, and the republic took the place of the monarchy. In the meantime he had been induced during his first visit to Paris to join a mercantile house in London — it seems as a sleeping partner — but the result was unsatisfactory. In 1792 he dissolved this partnership, and on 9 Sept. of the same year married Miss Thomson, and became a partner with her grandfather, Mr. ”

“ Epistt. iii. 236) , and in 1544 Claude Baduel was appointed to it (Gaufrès, Cl. Baduel, 1880, p. 129) . Volusene soon returned to Lyons for the purpose of buying books, and again stayed with Bonvisi, and (21 Nov.) wrote an account of his appointment to his friend Starkey (Letters and Papers, ix. 291) . At Carpentras he passed the remainder of his life, varied by visits to Paris, Lyons—where he was on friendly terms with several leading citizens of literary tastes—and possibly, as his biographers think, to Italy and Scotland. That he visited Italy is not certain ”

“ But. his leisure was devoted to literature and science, especially to medicine and natural history, the study of which he pursued with great ardour, and with considerable success. On attaining manhood he gave up commerce, and decidetf to devote himself to medicine as a profession. ”

“ The latter years of his life were passed in retirement, and were devoted to theological study. He died at Long Branch, New Jersey, on 21 Nov. 1823. Of his eight children three only survived him. His works show him to have been a man of wide reading and of some learning, and the Rev. ”

“ Collect. Topog. et Geneal. v. viii.; Hasted's Kent; Life of Father Thomas Copley, a founder of Maryland, by K. C. Dorsey, in the ‘Woodstock Letters,’ 1885 (Baltimore, U.S.A.) ; Proceedings in Kent, Camd. Soc. ”