man's redemption, spoke of Jesus as the uscitys of the new covenant; on my expressing a doubt as to the quantity of the middle syllable, he said no more; but on his going to Eton (that noble mart of metre) be sent me word that it ought to be proBounced petits, from its analogy to coirs, for which he had found anthority." Pp. 5, 6. Dr. Watson acknowledges (p. 7), the care of his mother in imbuing his mind with principles of religion, which never forsook him. The portion which his father left him was only £300, which was barely safficient to carry him through his education. He commenced his academic studies, he says, (ib.) with the more eagerness, from knowing that his future fortune was to be wholly of his own fabricating. The biographer attaches some importance to the following incident: "I had not been six months in college, before a circumstance happened to me, trivial in itself, and not fit to be noticed, except that it had some influence on my fature life, inasmuch as it gave me a turn to metaphysical disquisition. It was then the custom in Trinity College (I am sorry it is not the custom still) for all the undergraduates to attend immediately after morning-prayers, the college-lecturers, at different tables in the hall, during term time. The lecturers explained to their respective classes, certain books, such as Puffendorf de Oficio Hominis et Civis; Clarke on the Attributes; Locke's Essay; Duncan's Logic, &c. and once a week, the headlecturer examined all the students. The question put to me by the head-lecturer was, Whether Clarke had demonstrated the absurdity of an infinite succession of changeable and finite beings? I answered, with blushing hesitation, Non. The headlecturer, Brocket, with great good-nature, mingled with no small surprise, encouraged me to give my reasons for thinking So. I stammered out in barbarous Latin (for the examination was in that language), That Clarke had inquired into the origin of a series which, being from the supposition eternal, could have no origin; and into the first term of a series which, being from the supposition infinite, could have no first. From this circumstance, I was soon eried up, very undeservedly, as a great metaphysician. When, four years afterwards, I took my bachelor's degree, Dr. Law, the master of Peterhouse, and one of the best metaphysicians of his time, sent for me, and desired that we might become acquainted. From my friendship with that excellent man, I derived much knowledge and liberality of sentiment in theology; and I shall ever continue to think my early intimacy with him a fortunate event in my life." Pp 7, 8. Metaphysics must have been at a low ebb at Cambridge, when the lucky answer of an acute boy caused him to be "cried up as a metaphy sician." In May, 1757, Mr. Watson offered himself for a scholarship, before the which he reckons to have been adusual time, and succeeded; a step vantageous, as it introduced him to the notice of Dr. Smith, the Master of the College, who gave a spur to his industry and wings to his ambition. He gives the following lively picture of his studies at this period :— "I had, at the time of being elected a scholar, been resident in college for two years and seven months, without having gone out of it a single day. During that period I had acquired some knowledge of Hebrew; greatly improved myself in Greek and Latin; made considerable proficiency in Locke's Works, King's Book on the Origin of Evil, Puffendorf's Treatise De Officio Hominis et Civis, and some other books on similar subjects; I thought myself, therefore, entitled to a little relaxation; under this persuasion I set forward, May 30th, 1757, to pay my elder and only brother a visit at Kendal. "He was the first curate of the new chapel there, to the structure of which he had subscribed liberally. He was a man of lively parts, but being thrown into a situation where there was no great room for the display of his talents, and much temptation to convivial festivity, he spent his fortune, injured his constitution, and died when I was about the age of thirtythree; leaving a considerable debt, all of which I paid immediately, though it took almost my all to do it. "My mind did not much relish the country, at least it did not relish the life I led in that country town; the constant reflection that I was idling away my time, mixed itself with every amusement, and poisoned all the pleasures I had promised myself from this visit; I therefore took an hasty resolution of shortening it, and returned to college in the beginning of September, with a determined purpose to make my Alma Mater, the mother of my fortunes. That, I well remember, was the expression I used to myself, as soon as I saw the turrets of King's College Chapel, as I was jogging on a jaded nag between Huntingdon and Cambridge. "I was then only a junior soph; yet two of my acquaintance, of the year below me, thought that I knew so much more of mathematics than they did, that they importuned me to become their private tutor. To one of them (Mr. Luther) it will be seen hereafter how much I am indebted; and with the other (Dr. Strachey) I have maintained through life an uninterrupted friendship. May I meet them both in heaven! I undoubtedly wished to have had my time to myself, especially till I had taken my degree; but the narrowness of my circumstances, accompanied with a disposition to expense, or, more properly speaking, with a desire to appear respectably, induced me to comply with their request. From that period, for above thirty years of my life, and as long as my health lasted, a considerable portion of my time was spent in instructing others without much instructing myself, or in presiding at disputations in philosophy or theology, from which, after a certain time, I derived little intellectual improvement. Whilst I was an under-graduate, I kept a great deal of what is called the best company that is, of idle fellow-commoners, and other persons of fortunebut their manners never subdued my prudence; I had strong ambition to be distinguished, and was sensible that, though wealth might plead some excuse for idleness, extravagance and folly in others, the want of wealth could plead none for me. "When I used to be returning to my room at one or two in the morning, after spending a jolly evening, I often observed a light in the chamber of one of the same standing with myself; this never failed to excite my jealousy, and the next day was always a day of hard study. I have gone without my dinner a hundred times on such occasions. I thought I never entirely understood a proposition in any part of mathematics or natural philosophy, till I was able in a solitary wark, obstipo capite atque exporrecto labello, to draw the scheme in my head, and go through every step of the demonstration without book or pen and paper. I found this was a very difficult task, especially in some of the perplexed schemes, and long demonstrations of the Twelfth Book of Euclid, and in L'Hopital's Conic Sections, and in Newton's Principia. My walks for this purpose were so frequent, that my tutor, not knowing what I was about, once reproached me for being a lounger. I never gave up a difficult point in a demonstration till I had made it out proprio Marte; I have been stopped at a single step for three days. This perseverance in accomplishing whatever I undertook, was, during the whole of my active life, a striking feature in my character, so much so, that Dr. Powell, the Master of St. John's College, said to a young man, a pupil of mine, for whom I was prosecuting an appeal which I bad lodged with the visiter against the College, -Take any advice, Sir, and go back to * The Doctor expresses great satisfaction in finding amongst his papers two declamations, which he composed as a voluntary exercise at college. They shew, he says, that a long commerce in the public world only tended to "confirm that political bent of his mind in favour of civil liberty, which was formed in it before he knew of what selfish and low-minded materials the public world was made." They were suggested to his mind from the perusal of Vertot's Roman Revolutions. "Were such kind of books," he remarks, “put into the hands of Kings during their boyhood, and Tory trash at no age recommended to them, Kings in their manhood would scorn to aim at arbitrary power through corrupted parliaments." P. 13. Dr. Watson seems to have been of his friend Dr. Law's opinion concerning the human soul. He was led to consider the subject, by being obliged, as an opponent in the philosophical schools at Cambridge, in 1758, to find arguments against the question, Anima est suâ naturâ immortalis. Speaking of his "school-boy's faith," "that the soul was a substance distinct from the body," he says, "this notion of the soul was, without doubt, the offspring of prejudice and ignorance, and I must own that my knowledge of the nature of the soul is much the same now that it was then. I have read volumes on the subject, but I have no scruple in saying, that I know nothing about it." P. 15. Notwithstanding this avowed scepticism, we apprehend that he could not have described his Christian belief in the words that follow, and the sentiment is frequently repeated in the course of the narrative, unless he had strongly inclined at least to the material hypothesis: "Believing as I do in the truth of the Christian religion, which teaches, that men are accountable for their actions, I trouble not myself with dark disquisitions concerning necessity and liberty, matter and spirit; hoping as I do for eternal life through Jesus Christ, I am not disturbed. at my inability clearly to convince myself that the soul is, or is not, a substance distinct from the body. The truth of the Christian religion depends upon testimony: now man is competent to judge of the weight of testimony, though he is not able, I think, fully to investigate the nature of the soul and I consider the testimony concerning the resurrection of Jesus, (and that fact is the corner-stone of the Christian church,) to be worthy of entire credit." P. 15. In January, 1759, Mr. Watson took his Bachelor of Arts' degree. He was the second Wrangler of his year, but it was the general opinion that he ought to have been made senior Wrangler. He was elected a Fellow of Trinity College, in 1760, when he became assistant tutor to Mr. Backhouse. At the commencement in 1762, he took his Master of Arts' degree, and was soon after made Moderator for Trinity College. During his year of office the following occurrence took place, interesting from the person and the subject involved in it: "Paley, I remember, had brought me for one of the questions he meant for his act, Eternitas pœnarum contradicit Divinis attributis. I had accepted it; and indeed I never refused a question either as moderator or as professor of divinity. A few days afterwards, he came to me in a great fright, saying that the master of his college (Dr. Thomas, Dean of Ely), had sent to him, and insisted on his not keeping on such a question. I readily permitted him to change it, and told him, that if it would lessen his master's apprehensions, he might put in non, before contradicit, and he did so. Dr. Thomas, I had little doubt, was afraid of being looked пpon as a heretic at Lambeth, for suffering a member of his college to dispute on such a questiou, notwithstanding what Tillotson had published on the subject many years before." Pp. 19, 20. By some remarks that are here made, it appears that Dr. Watson was sceptical on the duration of future punishment. He asks, with uner pected simplicity, "But how is it proved that the everlasting punishment of the wicked may not answer a benevolent end, may not be the mean of keeping the righteous in everlasting holiness and obedience?" P. 20. On the death of Dr. Hadley, in 1764, he was elected Professor of Chemistry, under circumstances, as he himself explains, not a little extraordinary. "At the time this honour was conferred upon me, I knew nothing at all of Chemistry, had never read a syllable on the subject, nor seen a single experiment in it; but I was tired with mathematics and natural philosophy, and the vehementissima gloriæ cupido stimulated me to try my strength in a new pursuit, and the kindness of the University (it was always kind to me) animated me to very extraordinary exertions. I sent immediately after my election for an operator to Paris; I buried myself as it were in my laboratory, at least as much as my other avocations would permit; and in fourteen months from my tures to a very full audience, consisting election, I read a course of chemical lecof persons of all ages and degrees in the University." Pp. 28, 29. Naming Mr. (afterwards Dr.) Jebb, as bringing on the subject of annual examinations in 1774, the biographer honest and intelligent, but unpopular coldly describes him as a "a very man." P. 30. In 1766, the professorship of Chemistry, at Cambridge, was endowed, through Mr. Watson's exertions, with a stipend from the Crown of £ 100. per annum. He became, in 1767, one of the Head Tutors in Trinity College. He printed, in 1768, his Institutiones Metallurgica, and about the same time was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. In 1769, he preached an Assize Sermon at Cambridge, which he afterwards published, dedicated “to the only person to whom" he "owed any obligation, Mr. Luther. I made it a rule, (he adds,) never to dedicate to those from whom I expected favours, but to those only from whom I had received them. The dedication of my Collection of Theological Tracts to the Queen did not come under either of these descriptions; it proceeded from the opinion I then entertained of her merit, as a wife and a mother." P. 34. In 1771, Dr. Watson succeeded Dr. Rutherforth as Regius Professor of Divinity, being created a doctor by royal mandate the day before his election. He found the professorship not worth quite £330. a-year, and he takes credit to himself for having made it worth £1000. at the least. In this situation Dr. Watson was at the head of a theological school, which, we trust, still subsists; the character of which is well described in his account of himself as Divinity Professor. "I reduced the study of divinity into as narrow a compass as I could, for I dotermined to study nothing but my Bible, being much unconcerned about the opi nions of councils, fathers, churches, bishops and other men, as little inspired as myself. This mode of proceeding being opposite to the general one, and especially to that of the master of Peterhouse, who was a great reader, he used to call me autodidaxros, the self-taught divine. The Professor of Divinity had been nick-named Malleus Hareticorum; it was thought to be his duty to demolish every opinion which militated against what is called the orthodoxy of the Church of England. Now my mind was wholly urbiassed; I had no prejudice against, no predilection for the Church of England; but a sincere regard for the Church of Christ, and an insuperable objection to every degree of dogmatical intolerance. I never troubled myself with answering any arguments which the opponents in the divinity schools brought against the articles of the church, nor ever admitted their authority as decisive of a difficulty; but I used on such occasions to say to them, holding the New Testament in my hand, En sacrum codicem! Here is the fountain of truth, why do you follow the streams derived from it by the sophistry, or polluted by the passions of man? If you can bring proofs against any thing delivered in this book, I shall think it my duty to reply to you; articles of churches are not of divine authority; have done with them; for they may be true, they may be false; and peal to the book itself. This mode of disputing gained me no credit with the hierarchy, but I thought it an honest one, and it produced a liberal spirit in the University." P. 39. ap Such language as this is worthy of a Protestant Divine: why has Cambridge ever abandoned this, her proper tongue? In 1772, Dr. Watson published two short Letters to the members of the House of Commons, under the feigned name of A Christian Whig, dedicated to Sir George Saville, on the subject of the Clerical Petition; and in 1773, a small tract entitled, A brief State of the Principles of Church Authority:" this latter he read verbatim as a Charge to his Clergy, in 1803, and republished it, at their request, with a Preface and Appendix. He maintains in it the right of every church, conceding the same to every voluntary assembly of Christians, "of explaining to its ministers what doctrines it holds, and of permitting none to minister in it who do not profess the same belief with itself." He avows that he was once of opinion, that "the majority of the members of any civil community have a right to compel all the members of it to pay towards the maintenance of a set of teachers appointed by the majority;" but he confesses that he is staggered when he considers "that a case may happen in which the established religion may be the religion of a minority of the people, that minority, at the same time, possessing a majority of the property, out of which the ministers of the establishment are to be paid." He professes his satisfaction in finding that his thoughts on many points, both religious and civil, were in perfect coincidence with those of Bishop Hoadley (Hoadly); and he says "I glory in this, notwithstanding the abuse that eminent prelate experienced in his own time, and notwithstanding he has been in our time sarcastically called, and what is worse, injuriously called by Bishop Horseley (Horsley) a republican Bishop." P. 43. Dr. Watson married, in 1773, the eldest daughter of Edward Wilson, Esq. of Dallum Tower, in Westmoreland: in speaking of his wife he uses terms of high, but we presume not extravagant, eulogy. At this time he received the presentation of a sinecure rectory in North Wales, procured for him from the Bishop of St. Asaph by the late Duke of Grafton: this sinecure he immediately exchanged, through the Duke's unsolicited influence, for a prebend in the church of Ely. He speaks of the Duke's patronage with warm gratitude, since he thought differently from that nobleman, on politics, having always condemned the American war and predicted its disastrous issue. When the Duke abandoned the administration, in 1775, and adopted principles more congenial to Dr. Watson's, our author addressed a letter to him anonymously, in the public papers, to defend him against "the mighty malice" of Junius. Of the Duke, he says, "At the time I published this letter, I knew very litle of the Duke of Grafton as an acquaintance; I had afterwards more intimacy with him, and I was for many years, indeed as long as he lived, happy in his friendship. It appears from some hundreds of his letters which he had or dered at his death to be returned to me, that we had not always agreed either in our political or religious opinions; but we had both of us too much sense to suffer a diversity of sentiment to deaden the activity of personal attachment. I never attempted either to encourage or to discourage his profession of Unitarian principles, for I was happy to see a person of his rank, professing with intelligence and with sincerity Christian principles. If any one thinks that an Unitarian is not a Christian, I plainly say, without being myself an Unitarian, that I think otherwise " Pp. 46, 47. The Doctor published another anonymous letter to the Duke, in the newspapers, protesting against his recommending, as Chancellor, an obscure country gentleman to represent the University in Parliament. As tutor at Trinity College, Dr. Watson had the important office of instructing several young noblemen, amongst whom was Lord Granby, in whose education he says (p. 49), he took singular pains. A correspondence with his lordship is here preserved, which is highly creditable to both tutor and pupil. Lord Granby vows eternal attachment to Whig principles, and Dr. Watson charges him to "be a Whig in domestic as well as political life," adding, that "the best part of whiggism is, that it will neither suffer nor exact domination." P. 54. In November 1775, the University of Cambridge "played the second fiddle to the Tory University of Oxford," in voting an address to the King, approving of the American war. On this occasion Dr. Watson, who manfully exerted himself on the side of peace and liberty, received a letter from the Marquis of Rockingham, which he leaves behind him in this narrative," as one proof amongst a thousand of the Marquis's patriotism and good sense." The letter is, however, the production of a mere politician; while the Doctor's answer is replete with philosophic patriotism. "Let the pensioners and placemen say what they will," writes Dr. Watson, Whig and Tory are as opposite to each other as Mr. Locke and Sir Robert Filmer, as the soundest sense and the profoundest nonsense; and I must always conclude that a man has lost his honesty or his intellect, when he attempts to confound the ideas." P. 57. He concludes his letter with a passage which he himself puts in italics, and on which he makes a short comment: “It is an infatuation in the minister, next to a crime, to suppose that the House of Bourbon, however quiescent and indifferent it may appear at present, will not avail itself of our dissensions sible extent; and the moment America in every possible way and to every pos is compelled to open her ports and to refuge her distress under foreign protection, there will be an end of our history as a great people." On this he remarks, "How fully this prediction respecting the conduct of the House of Bourbon, was verified by the event, every one kuows; and our children will know, whether the other part of it was a groundless prediction." P. 58. Dr. Watson now assumed a decided political character; of what cast and with what effect the following lively narrative will shew: "In 1776, it came to my turn to preach the Restoration and Accession sermons before the University: I published them both, calling the first The Principles of the Revolution vindicated.' "This sermon was written with great boldness and respect for truth. In London. caution, and at the same time with great it was reported, at its first coming out, to be treasonable; and a friend of mine, Mr. Wilson, (the late judge,) who was anxious for my safety, asked Mr. Dunning (afterwards Lord Ashburton), what he thought of it; who told him, that it contained such treason as ought to be preached once offence to the Court; and was at the time, a month at St. James's. It gave great and has continued to be, an obstacle to my promotion. "I knew nothing of either Lord George Germaine or the Archbishop of Armagh; but Mr. Cumberland, Lord George's secretary, told Mr. Higgs, one of the Fellows of Trinity College, with a view of what he said being repeated to me, that these two personages had intended to propose me to the King, for the Provostship of made them abandon their intention? It Dublin University. I asked what had was answered, 'your Sermon on the Principles of the Revolution.' I hastily replied, 'Bid Mr. Cumberland inform his principal, that I will neither ask or (nor) accept preferment from Lord George Germaine, or from any other person to whom these principles have rendered me obnoxious.' The loss of so great a piece of preferment would have broken the spirit of many an academic; and the desire of regaining lost favour would have made him a suppliant to the court for life. It had no such effect on me. The firmness of this reply was too much for Mr. Cumberland's political virtue; for he afterwards, in two sorry pamphlets, shewed himself mine enemy. I call them sorry pamphlets; be |