William Prideaux Courtney

“ Every one who came within Buller's presence was amused by the keenness of a wit which never wounded, and impressed by the sincerity of his purpose for good. Carlyle styled him 'a fine honest fellow,' and again, 'the genialest radical I have ever met,' pouring out in the columns of the 'Examiner' an elegy on his death. ”

“ He had now established an extensive business, and occupied such a prominent position in commercial life at Lucknow that he was sent to Lord Wellesley as a delegate of the traders in that city. For a time viceroy and merchant were on good terms, but they soon parted in anger. Paull was a little man, of a ‘fiery heart,’ and in a duel in India with some one who taunted him with the meanness of his birth, he was so wounded as at the close of his life to lose the use of his right arm. ”

“ Henderson accordingly matriculated at Pembroke College, Oxford, on 6 April 1781, and occupied the rooms which had been tenanted by Dr. Johnson. He was an omnivorous student, and endowed with a marvellous memory. As a linguist he was skilled in Persian, Arabic, Hebrew, Greek, and Latin, and among European languages he knew Spanish, Italian, and German. Every branch of knowledge fascinated him. His temper was unruffled, and his benevolence led him, after he had acquired a knowledge of medicine, and an epidemic of fever was raging in Oxford, to practise gratuitously among its poor. ”

“ I am going to sea for four or five months with my cousin, Captain Bettesworth, who commands the Tartar, the finest frigate in the navy ... We are going probably to the Mediterranean or to the West Indies, or to the devil; and if there is a possibility of taking me to the latter, Bettesworth will do it, for he has received four-and-twenty wounds in different places, and at this moment possesses a letter from the late Lord Nelson stating that Bettesworth is the only officer in the navy who had more wounds than himself.' The promised voyage never took place. ”

“ In his progress to London Carew was often insulted, by the mob, some of whom cried out, ‘This is the rogue who will have no king but Jesus,' and as he was especially obnoxious to parliament on account of the fervour with which he held the religious opinion of the fifth monarchists, he was, by eighty votes to seventy, excluded from the Indemnity Bill. ”

“ The commerce of America was so much extended under his direction that he was sometimes styled the ‘Father of the Colonies,’ and the town of Halifax in Nova Scotia was called after him in 1749, in commemoration of his energy in aiding the foundation of the colony. In June 1751 he tried, says Horace Walpole, to get the West Indies entirely placed under the rule of the board of trade, and to secure his own nomination as ‘third secretary of state for that quarter of the world,’ but the king refused his consent to the scheme. ”

“ Francis Baring was born at Larkbear 18 April 1740, and sent to London to study commerce in the firm of Boehm. Though deaf from his youth, his indomitable energy enabled him to overcome all obstacles, and to establish his business on the firmest foundations. At the time of his death it was calculated that he had earned nearly seven millions of money; and Sir Francis Baring stood forth, in the words of Lord Erskine, as ‘the first merchant in Europe.’ His advice was often sought on financial questions connected with the government of India. ”

“ At Christ Church Jackson soon became famous. He possessed a genius for government, and enforced discipline without any distinction of persons. He took a large share in framing the ‘Public Examination Statute,’ and always impressed upon his undergraduates the duty of competing for exhibitions and prizes. Every day he entertained at dinner some six or eight members of the foundation, and on his annual travel in some part of the United Kingdom took the most promising pupil of the year for his companion. ”

“ From early life he had been attached to the doctrines of unitarianism, and during the first part of his residence at Exeter actively supported the unitarian congregation which met at George's Chapel, Exeter. After a time he expressed an aversion to all dogmatic theology, as well as to the adoption of any sectarian name, and embodied his views on these points in a pamphlet entitled ‘Christian Union in Churches without Dogmatism.’ He moved to Newton Abbot, where he conducted religious service for himself, adhering in the main to the religious tenets of his old sect. ”

“ Spence met Holdsworth at Florence in 1732, and in the ‘Polymetis’ (2nd edit. pp. 174, 277) praises him for understanding Virgil best of any man that he ever knew, and for being ‘better acquainted with Italy as classic ground than any man’ then living. It was the habit of Holdsworth to study Virgil's works on the spot where they were written, and he always carried some interleaved editions with him to jot down the observations as they arose in his mind. He was especially fond of the ‘Georgics,’ and long meditated a new edition with copious notes. ”

“ Lord Eldon acknowledged that he ‘hesitated for weeks and months’ before bestowing it, and the common belief was that the prince went alone to the chancellor's house in Bedford Square, forced his way into the bedroom, and exclaimed, ‘How I do pity Lady Eldon; she will never see you again, for here I remain until you promise to make Jekyll a master in chancery.’ After several years of service he retired on a pension, and at the age of eighty-four died at 22 New Street, Spring Gardens, London, on 8 March 1837, being then the senior king's counsel and senior bencher. ”

“ By a universal consensus of opinion Earl Bathurst is pronounced to have been the least efficient lord chancellor of the last century, his successor, Lord Campbell, not shrinking from the statement that the building of Apsley House was ‘perhaps the most memorable act in the life of Lord Chancellor Bathurst;’ but it is recorded to his honour that his patronage was distributed fairly and judiciously, both in the law and the church. ”

“ In Williams, says Palmer, there was a deficiency of the strong and manly qualities requisite for a tutor, but he possessed many acquirements and an intense vein of morality. His ‘shy but warm temperament’ was allied with ‘great modesty and humility.’ The collge historian styles him as a tutor ‘too good for this world. His rule was too strict and his standard too high to work with’ (Blakiston, Trinity College, Oxford, p. 221) . ”

“ Throughout his long life Jerningham dabbled in poetry. His first production was the ‘Nunnery,’ a close imitation of Gray's elegy, but he did not hit the taste of the public until he wrote a poem in recommendation of the Foundling Hospital, which Jonas Hanway [q. v.] declared to have greatly promoted its establishment. Miss Burney met him in 1780, and pronounced him ‘a mighty delicate gentleman: looks to be painted, and is all daintification in manner, speech, and dress;’ and Horace Walpole more than once speaks of him as ‘the charming man.’ His poems were severely satirised. ”

“ They were hospitable people, and to young persons with literary tastes their house and conversation were ever open. Southey says: ‘I knew him well, and met Adam Clarke at his house. I have profiles of him, his wife, and the parrot, &c.’ Claudius James Rich, author of a memoir on the ruins of Babylon and other works, was attracted to the study of the oriental languages when a boy by accidentally seeing some Arabic manuscripts in Fox's library, and by constant access to these books, and the loan of an Arabic grammar and lexicon, he soon made himself master of the language. ”

“ Fortunately for his children's sake the widow had two rich brothers in the West Indies, and one of them, Zachary Bayly of Jamaica, took the family under his protection. Edwards had been placed at the school of William Foot, a dissenting minister of Bristol, and a good instructor, though forbidden to teach his pupil Latin and Greek; but after his father's death the boy was removed to a French boarding-school in the same city, where he learnt the French language, and, having access to a circulating library, acquired a passion for books. ”

“ His rise in parliament was so rapid that when Pitt was summoned by the king to form a ministry in August 1763 he had it in contemplation to enlist Grafton as a member of his cabinet. In December of that year Horace Walpole records in his letters that the Duke of Grafton is much commended, and, although he had never been in office, he was now in the front rank of politics. Pitt was again called upon to form a ministry, when he named Grafton and himself as the principal secretaries of state ; but the projected administration fell through in consequence of Lord Temple's refusal to take office. ”

“ Through Lord Carteret's influence, and to the chagrin of the Prince of Wales, he was appointed a lord of the admiralty on 19 March 1742, and when Carteret lost his place of secretary of state, Lee refused the oners of his opponents and followed him into retirement. In the little band of advisers of Frederick, prince of Wales, at Leicester House his opinion was most frequently adopted, and the prince often toasted him in social life as the future chancellor of the exchequer and leader of the House of Commons. ”

“ From February 1784 to November 1787 the Duke of Rutland was lord-lieutenant of Ireland, with Orde as his chief secretary and a member of the privy council in Ireland. They endeavoured in 1786 to form a 'commercial union' between England and Ireland, their object being to 'reunite the two countries by the chain of mutual benefits and an equal participation of the advantages of trade. The propositions put forward by Orde in the Irish parliament were duly assented to, and were then introduced by Pitt into the English House of Commons. ”

“ In the course of his life he had amassed the choicest specimens of the earliest editions in classical and biblical literature, the rarest coins and gems, and the most exquisite prints which money could purchase. He left behind him 4,500 volumes, all of which were remarkable either for the rareness or the excellence of the impression, seven portfolios of drawings, one hundred portfolios of prints, with coins and gems, 'worthy of an imperial cabinet.' The whole of these collections were left by his will to the British Museum ”

“ The amendment which led to the downfall of the liberal government was the motion of Lord Dunkellin, that a rating franchise should be substituted for that of net rental as proposed in the bill (19 June 1866) . In the tory ministry which was thereupon formed, Lowe declined a place. He had united with them in opposition to the Liberal Reform Bill, but on all other matters his views were those held by the large majority of the liberal party. The new government found itself unable to resist the influence of public opinion in favour of electoral reform, and among its measures was a new Reform Bill. ”

“ On the nomination of Francis Annesley, then master of Downing College, Cambridge, he obtained the post of professor of common law, and by a grace of that university the title of professor of laws of England was conferred upon him on 1 Nov. 1788. Christian was for many years one of the counsel in the long-contested case between the university and the heirs of Sir Jacob Downing, and in the charter of the new incorporation of Downing College in 1800 he was named the first professor of laws, and received a stipend of 200l. per annum. ”

“ Peter in the East, Oxford, for Hamilton, afterwards bishop of Salisbury. He was a thorough student of theology and history. His religious views were those of Hooker, and he gloried in the traditions of the old high church party, but his hatred of Romanism, deepened by his Huguenot descent, made him a fierce opponent of ritualism. Even opponents admitted his deep religious feelings and his frank fearlessness. He was friendly with men of every division of thought, and his charity was unbounded and unostentatious. ”

“ Masson extracted from the college records and ublished in his life of Milton the names of many other youths entered under Chapppll and his fellow-tutors. John Shaw, the well-known vicar of Rotherham, styled him ‘a very acute learned man, and a most painfull and vigilant tutor.’ Hieron, a well-known puritan divine, gives him the highest character as ‘a learned, painfull, careful tutor.’ He was called ‘a rich magazine of rational learning,' and was praised by Fuller as ‘a most subtle disputant.’ An instance of Chappell’s excellence in disputation occurred in 1615. ”

“ He belonged to the Literary Club, and several of his sayings are recorded in 'Boswell.' He brought under Johnson's notice the account of Lord Peterborough in Captain Carleton's 'Memoirs,' and the introduction was repaid with the remark: 'I did not think a young lord could have mentioned to me a book in English history that was not known to me.' Bentham described him as 'a modest, civil, good kind of man, sensible enough, but without those pretensions which one would expect to find in a man whose station in his country is so commanding and political influence so great. ”

“ After the accession of William III to the English throne, Churchill entered upon military life, and he was present at the siege of Cork in 1690. At the battle of Landen, or Neerwinden, in 1693, he had the good fortune to take captive his nephew, the Duke of Berwick. He was then a brigadier, but in March 1694 he was elevated to the dignity of major-general of the foot forces, and was also created governor of Kinsale. In May 1702 he was raised still higher in the service, being appointed a lieutenant-general and master to the queen’s buckhounds. ”

“ DYSON, JEREMIAH (1722–1776) , civil servant and politician, has been tersely described as ‘by birth a tailor, by education a dissenter, and from interest or vanity in his earlier years a republican.’ His father, whether a tailor or not, left considerable means to his son, who, it is established by many witnesses, professed in early life the extremest principles of whiggism. ”

“ So long as life lasted Clift used to call him a truly honest man, and to ridicule the slanders that envy endeavoured to fasten on his character. For six years he was engaged by Hunter's executors to watch over the collections, living with an old housekeeper in the house in Castle Street, his pay being limited to 'seven shillings a week,' although bread had risen to war prices. For the safety of these specimens he was solely responsible, and he kept zealous guard over his charge, copying and preserving many, probably a half, of Hunter's manuscripts which would otherwise have perished. ”