A BIOGRAPHICAL DICTIONARY

OF THE

WORTHIES OF IRELAND,

FROM THE

EARLIEST PERIODS TO THE PRESENT TIME,

WRITTEN AND COMPILED

By RICHARD RYAN

LONDON: PUBLISHED BY RICHARD RYAN, No. 339, OXFORD STREET; AND M.N. MAHON; AND R. MILLIKEN, DUBLIN.

1819.

Biography is of all narratives the most valuable. The revolutions of empires would be but a fairy tale to us, if they were not capable of supplying additional principles for our knowledge of human nature. Biography, like all things else, becomes more important as the influence of its subjects has been more extensive; for the future fates of a nation are made by its character, and its character is made by its celebrated men. But the deepest and holiest interest is thrown round Biography, when it is appealed to as the vindicator of an unhappy people; when the fallen are forced to bring in the dead to plead their cause, and find their only trophies in the tomb.

The History of Ireland is the most calamitous moral document since the beginning of society. A government of barbarism was less succeeded than interrupted by a government of conquest; and the evil of this partial subjugation was reinforced by the {iv} subordinate mischiefs of a divided law, a divided language, and a divided religion. The heroic savage of Ireland lost a share of his native virtues, and filled up their place by the arts of a perverted civilization. The arms and laws of England had made a sudden burst into the country, as irresistible as the invasion of the lava into the ocean; but their progress was as suddenly checked, and they only increased the tumult and the dangers of that untamed element into which they had plunged. Ireland was left only a place of desperate rivalry or of desolation, a field of battle, or a grave.

This state of misery continued for a period without example, - longer than the desolation of Egypt, longer than the decay of the Roman empire, longer than the dark ages, longer than any suffering brought - upon a people by misfortune or crime, but that of God’s malediction against the Jews; it lasted for six hundred years! Its history might have been written, like the roll in the Apocalypse, within and without, with “lamentation, and mourning, and woe.” While the knowledge of Right was advancing over the face of Europe, like the sun, from the north, Ireland was still in the darkness, without the quiet of the sepulchre. Every nation, in its turn, made some noble acquisition in freedom, or religion, or science, or dominion. Ireland lay, like the form of the first man, with all the rapid splendours of the new creation rising and glowing round him; but she lay without the “breath in her nostrils”. {v}

But there are in all countries, examples of great individuals, summoned up from time to time, as if to retrieve the standard of human nature, and raise all men’s eyes from the ground by the simple night of their glorious and original altitude.

The finest purpose of Biography is to draw back the curtain of the temple, and give their images to - our wonder, for the vindication of the past, and the lesson of the future. The darkest periods of Ireland have been rich in evidence of such beings - meteors ascending in her dungeon and mine, as if. to remind the obscure dwellers there of the splendour abroad and above them. But it is the distinction of Ireland to have produced more of those eminent existences than almost any other nation in its day of misery. There seems to have been a springing and recuperative spirit in the land that felt the slightest removal of pressure, and rose,- - The vegetation of the national mind was always blossoming out on the edge of winter, - her sunshine was always urging the skirts of the storm. But it is of the nature of the mighty intellect, and the saintly virtue, to pass upward when they have fulfilled their mission, and {vii} roused mankind to a noble emulation, or borne testimony against its abuse of the munificence of heaven.

It is the task of Biography to let such be not forgotten; and, if it cannot reveal them to us in their early grandeur, at least to lead us to the spots hallowed by their presence, - to shew us the memorials of their hands, and point out the sublime track by which they ascended to immortality.

The Work to which we now solicit the public attention, is a volume of the lives of persons who have thus illustrated their country. Of its execution we will not speak. No preface can supersede the judgment of the reader; but it has been compiled with industry, and corrected with care: the old has - been remodelled, and the new has been received upon authority. We now recommend it to a people whose passions and prejudices have been always PATRIOTISM,

TO THE IRISH NATION.

AN eminent presbyterian divine, was born on the 19th of October, 1680, at Coleraine, in the county of Londonderry. His father was a dissenting minister in that town, and his mother of the family of the Walkinshaws, of Renfrewshire in Scotland. After remaining under the care of his parents for nine years, he was separated from them by a chain of circumstances, which, in the end, proved highly favorable [sic]. His father had been employed by the presbyterian clergy to transact some public affairs in London, at a time when his mother, to avoid the tumult of the insurrections in Ireland, withdrew to Derry. Their son was at that period with a relation, who in the general confusion determined to remove to Scotland, and having no opportunity of conveying the child to his mother, carried him off along with him. Thus he providentially escaped the dangers attending the siege of Derry, in which Mrs. Abernethy lost all her other children. Having spent some {2} years at a grammar school, at the early age of thirteen he was removed to the college at Glasgow, where he remained till he had taken the degree of master of arts. His own inclination led him to the study of medicine, but, in conformity with the advice of his friends, he declined the profession of physic, and devoted himself sedulously to the study of divinity, under the celebrated professor Campbell, at Edinburgh; and so great was his success in the prosecution of his studies, that he was licensed to preach by the presbytery of Route, before he had arrived at the age of twenty-one. In 1708, after having been several years at Dublin with a view to farther improvement, he was ordained at Antrim, where his preaching was much admired, and where his general conduct and superior attainments were beheld with respect and esteem. His congregation was large, and he applied himself to the pastoral work with great diligence. His talents likewise gave him a considerable ascendancy in the synod, so that he had a large share in the management of public affairs. As a speaker he was considered as their chief ornament, and he maintained his character and his interest in their esteem to the last, notwithstanding a change im his religious sentiments had excited the opposition of a violent and highly-gifted antagonists.

In 1716, he attempted to remove the prejudices of the native Irish, in the neighbourhood of Antrim, who were of the popish persuasion, and induce them to embrace the protestant religion. His labours in this design. were attended with but moderate success, for notwithstanding several, who were induced to abandon popery, continued firm in their attachment to protestant principles, yet others, to his great discouragement and mortification, reverted to their former persuasion. In the following year he received two invitations, one from Dublin, and sitter from Belfast; and the synod (whose authority at that time was very great) advised his removal to Dublin; but so strong was his attachment to his congregation at Antrim, that he {3} resolved to continue there at the peril of incurring their displeasure. The interference of this assembly was diametrically opposite to those sentiments of religious freedom which Mr. Abernethy had been led to entertain, both by the exercise of his own vigorous faculties, and by an attention to the Bangorian controversy which prevailed in England about this period. Encouraged by the freedom of discussion which it had occasioned, a considerable number of ministers and others in the north of Ireland, formed themselves into a society for improvement in useful knowledge; their professed aim was to bring things to the test of reason and scripture, instead of paying a servile regard to any human authority. This laudable design is supposed to have been suggested by Mr. Abernethy, and as the gentlemen who concurred in the scheme met at Belfast, it was called The Belfast Society. In the progress of this body, and in consequence of the debates and dissensions which were occasioned by it, several persons withdrew from the society, and those who adhered to it were distinguished by the appellation of non-subscribers. Their avowed principles were these, “First, that our Lord Jesus Christ hath in the new testament determined and fixed the terms of communion in his church; that all christians who comply with these have a right to communion, and that no man, or set of men, have power to add any other terms to those settled in the Gospel. Secondly, that it is not necessary as an evidence of soundness in the faith, that candidates for the ministry should subscribe to the‘ Westminster confession, or any uninspired form of articles or confession of faith, as the terms upon which they shall be admitted, and that no church has a right to impose such a subscription upon them. Thirdly, that to call upon men to make declarations concerning their faith, upon the threat of cutting them off from communion if they should refuse it, and this merely upon suspicions and jealousies, while the persons required to purge themselves by such declarations cannot be fairly convicted upon evidence of any error or {4 } heresy, is to exercise an exorbitant and arbitrary power, and is really an inquisition.”

Mr. Abernethy was justly considered as the head of the non-subscribers, and he consequently became a principal object of persecution. In an early stage of the controversy he published a sermon from the 14th chapter of Romans, the Jatter part of the 5th verse; “Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind;” in which he explained in a masterly manner the rights of private judgment, and the foundations of christian liberty. He afterwards published a small tract, entitled “Seasonable Advice to the contending Parties in the North,” to which was prefixed a preface composed by the Reverend Messrs. Weld, Boyse, and Chappin, of Dublin. The design of this publication was to prove that there ought to be no breach of communion among the protestant dissenters on account of their difference of sentiment concerning subscription to the Westminster confession. The controversy on the negative side, of which Abernethy was a principal leader, was brought into the general synod, and terminated in a rupture in 1726, the synod determining that the non-subscribers should no longer remain of their body, and reviving with additional force the act of 1705, which required the candidates for the ministry. to subscribe to the Westminster confession. From that time the excluded members formed themselves into a separate presbytery, and encountered many difficulties and hardships arising from jealousies spread among their people.

Mr. Abernethy now found that his justly acquired reputation, which he had uniformly maintained by a strict and exemplary life, was little security to him against these evils. Some of his congregation forsook his ministry, and, under the influence and encouragement of the synod, formed themselves into a distinct society, and were provided by them with a minister. Deserted thus by the individuals from whom he expected the most constant support, he received an invitation from the congregation {5} of Wood street, Dublin, which he accepted, and removed thither in 1730. At Dublin he prosecuted his studies with unremitting activity, and deviated from a practice which he had adopted in the north, by writing his sermons at full length, and constantly using his notes in the pulpit. The Irish dissenters being at this time desirous of emancipating themselves from the incapacities devolved upon them by the Test Act, Mr. Abernethy, in 1731,.wrote a paper to forward this design, with a view of exhibiting both the unreasonableness and injustice of all those laws, which upon account of mere difference in religious opinions, excluded men of integrity and ability from serving their country, and deprived them of those privileges and advantages, to which they had a natural and just title as freeborn subjects. He insisted strongly that, considering the state of Ireland, it was in point of policy a great error to continue restraints which weakened the protestant interest; and was prejudicial to the government. In 1733, the dissenters of Ireland made a second attempt for obtaining the repeal of this obnoxious act, and Mr. Abernethy again had recourse to the press to favour the scheme; but the heritage miscarried. He continued his labours in Wood street for about ten years with a large share of reputation, and enjoyed great satisfaction in the society and esteem of his friends; and while his associates, from the strength of his constitution, the cheerfulness of his spirits, and the uniform temperance of his life, were in hopes that his usefulness would have been prolonged, a sudden attack of the gout in the head (to which disorder he had ever been subject) frustrated all their hopes, and he expired universally lamented in December 1740, in the 60th year of his age; dying as he had lived, esteemed by all mankind, and with a cheerful acquiescence to the will of an all-wise Creator. Mr. Abernethy was twice married; first, shortly after his settlement at Antrim, to a lady of exemplary piety, whom he lost by death in 1712; and, secondly, after his {6} removal to Dublin to another lady, with whom he lived in all the tenderness of conjugal affection till the time of his decease. The most celebrated of his writings were his two volumes of Discourses on the Divine Attributes, the first of which only was published during his life-time; they were much admired at the period of their publication, and were recommended by the late excellent Archbishop Herring, and are still held in the highest esteem. Four volumes of his posthumous Sermons have also been published, the two first in 1748, and the others in 1757; to which is prefixed the life of the author, supposed to have been written by his countryman, Dr. Duchal. - Another volume was likewise published in London, in 1751, entitled “Scarce and valuable Tracts and Sermons,” &c.

He also left behind him a diary of his life, commencing in February 1712, a short time after his wife’s decease. It consists of six large quarto volumes in a very small hand, and very closely written. His biographers have justly termed it an amazing work, in which the temper of his soul is throughout expressed with much exactness. The whole bearing striking characters of a reverence and awe of the divine presence upon his mind, of a simplicity and sincerity of spirit, and of the most careful discipline of the heart; clearly evincing that however great his worldly reputation was, his real worth was far superior to the esteem in which he was held.

An eminent dissenting minister, highly distinguished by his natural abilities, and extensive acquirements, was born in the commencement of 1736, in Ireland, to which country, his father who had been a dissenting preacher, and master of an academy at Stratford upon Avon, had retired a short period before the birth of his son. His father did not long survive this change of country, and his mother with her family, soon after his decease, returned to Eng{7}land, and settled at Birmingham. Here he went through the common course of grammatical instruction, and was afterwards sent to the academy, at Daventry, which was then under the superintendance of Dr. Caleb Ashworth, who had been appointed tutor on the decease-of that eminent divine, Dr. Philip Doddridge. He pursued his studies in this seminary with commendable diligence, and after having finished his academical and classical education under the care of that excellent instructor, was put under the tuition of Dr. Benson. This gentleman, whose abilities as a sacred critic are generally acknowledged to be very extensive, was in the habit of receiving a few young gentlemen, who had passed through the usual course of education at the schools or in the universities, for the purpose of implanting in them a more critical acquaintance with the sacred writings. It was with this intent that young Alexander was put under his care;. and so delighted was that amiable man with his pupil’s literary acquirements, with his constant and eager desire for improvement, and the prudence and modesty of his personal behaviour, that he gave him his board, and introduced him, with paternal affection, to all his particular acquaintance, expressing the highest regard for him on every occasion.

During his residence in London, Mr. Alexander omitted no opportunity of adding to his stock of knowledge; andy on quitting the metropolis, he retired to Birmingham, where the resided for some time with his mother. He now preached occasionally at that place and in its neighbourhood; and afterwards with more regularity at Longdor, a small village about twelve miles distant. On Saturday, Dec. 28, 1765, he retired to rest, as usual, between eleven and twelve o’clock, with the intention of officiating the next day at Longdor, but, at six on. the following morning, he was found dead in his bed; an event which was sincerely deplored by his friends, as both a private and public loss. {8}

Shortly after his decease, some part of the produce of his. studies was published in London by. the Rev. John Palmer: “A Paraphrase upon the Fifteenth Chapter of the First Epistle to the Corinthians; with Critical Notes and Observations, and a Preliminary Dissertation. A Commentary, with Critical Remarks, upon the Sixth, Seventh, and part of the Eighth Chapters to the Romans. To which is added, A Sermon on Ecclesiastes ix. 10; composed by the author the day preceding his death. By John Alexander.” It is observed by. Mr. Palmer, that Mr. Alexander was no less an object of admiration to his acquaintance for the intenseness of his application, than for the native strength of his mind; by the united force of which he made those advances in knowledge and literature, which are very rarely attained by persons at so early an age. The justness of this encomium is abundantly evident from the work now mentioned, which contains indubitable proofs of great sagacity and learning. The preliminary Dissertation in particular, in which he favours the opinion of there being no state of consciousness between death and the resurrection, may be ranked with the first productions on the subject; though the same side of the question has been maintained by some of the first divines of the last century.

Yet, though the study of religion and the scriptures, as became his profession, was the principal object of Mr. Alexander’s attention, he found leisure for cultivating the other departments of literature. He had a quick turn for observation on common life, and possessed no inconsiderable portion of wit and humour. He had formed his style on the more correct and chaste parts of Dr. Swift’s writings, and had somewhat of the cast of that celebrated author, without his excessive severity. Of this he gave several proofs in a monthly work, “‘The Library,” supposed to have been conducted principally by Dr. Keppis, and which was published in London in 1761 and 1762; in an ironical “Defence of Persecution,” “Essays on Dull{9}ness, Common Sense, Misanthropy, the Study of Man, Controversy, the Misconduct of Parents, Modern Authorship, the Present State of Wit in Great Britain, the Index of the Mind, and the Fate of Periodical Publications.” In some of these he displays a genuine humour, not inferior to that of the most celebrated of our essayists.

Had his life been spared, it has been generally believed that he would have become one of the best scholars and most able writers among the dissenters. His compositions for the pulpit were close, heartfelt, and correct; his delivery clear, distinct, and unassuming; yet, with all these abilities, he would scarcely have become a popular preacher, though his manner and doctrine might deservedly obtain the approbation and esteem of the more judicious among his hearers.

The following is an extract from the letter of an intimate friend of John Alexander’s: “Indeed, his life was only a sketch, but it was a master-piece of its kind. The virtue, learning, and knowledge, which he crowded into it, would have done honour to the longest period of human existence. I think I knew him well; yet I am persuaded half his merit was unknown even to his most intimate friends, It was his talent to conceal his worth.”

EARL OR ANGLESEY, and lord privy seal in the reign of Charles II was the son of Sir Francis Annesley, Bart. Lord Mountnorris, and Viscount Valentia in Ireland; and was born in Dublin on the 10th of July, 1614. At the age of ten years he was sent to England, and at sixteen was entered a fellow commoner of Magdalen College, Oxford; where he pursued his studies with great diligence for about three or four years, and was considered a young man of great promise by all who knew him. From thence, in 1634, he removed to Lincolns Inn, {10} where he applied, with great assiduity to the study of the law, till his father sent him to travel. He made the tour of Europe, and continued some time at Rome; from whence he returned to England in 1640, when he was elected knight of the shire for the county of Radnor in the parliament which sat at Westminster in the November of the same year; but the election being contested, he lost his seat, the votes of the House being against him, and Charles Price, Esq. his opponent, was declared duly elected. At the commencement of the dispute between King Charles I and his parliament, Mr. Annesley inclined towards the royal cause, and sat in the parliament held at Oxford in 1643; but afterwards thought proper to abandon the king’s party and reconcile himself to his adversaries, into the favour and confidence of whom he was soon admitted. In 1645 he was appointed, by the parliament, one of their commissioners in Ulster, where he managed the important business with which he was entrusted to the satisfaction of all parties, and contributed greatly to the benefit of the protestant cause in Ireland. With so much dexterity and judgment did he. conclude his affairs at Ulster, that the famous Owen Roe O’Neil was disappointed in his designs, and the Catholic Archbishop. of Tuam, who was the chief support of his party, and whose counsels had been hitherto very successful, was not only taken prisoner, but all his papers were seized, and his foreign correspondence discovered, whereby vast advantages accrued to the protestants. The parliament had sent commissioners to the Duke of Ormond for the delivery of Dublin without success, and the precarious state of affairs making it necessary to renew their correspondence with him, they made choice of a second committee, and very wisely placed Mr. Annesley’s name.at the head of this second commission. The commissioners landed at Dublin on the 7th day of June, 1647; and, by their prudence and temper, brought their negociations [sic passim] to so happy an issue, that in a few days a treaty was concluded {11} with the Lord-Lieutenant, which was signed on the 19th of that month, and Dublin was put into the hands of the parliament. It is to be lamented, that, when the commissioners were possessed of supreme power, they were guilty of numerous irregularities. Mr. Annesley disapproved of their conduct, but could not prevent them from doing several things quite contrary to his judgment; being, therefore, displeased with his situation, he resolved on returning immediately to England, where he found all things in great confusion. On his return to England, he seems to have steered a kind of middle course between the extremes of party violence - had no concern with the king’s trial or death; and, on account of his strenuous opposition to some of the illegal acts of Cromwell, he was put among the number of the secluded members. After the death of the Protector, Mr. Annesley, though he doubted whether the parliament was not dissolved by the death of the king, resolved to get into the House if possible, and behaved in many respects, in such a manner as clearly evinced what his real sentiments were, and how much he. had at heart the re-settling of the constitution. In the confusion which followed he had little or no share, being trusted neither by the parliament or army. But, when the secluded members began to resume their seats*, and there were appearances of the revival of the old constitution, he joined with those who determined to recal the king, and took a decided part therein; and entered into a correspondence with King Charles, which unfortunately occasioned the death of his younger brother, who was drowned in stepping into a packet-boat with letters for his Majesty.

Soon after the Restoration, he was created Earl of Anglesey, and Baron of Newport Pagnel in Bucks: in the patent of which notice is taken of the signal services

* Which happened on Feb. 21, 1660, Mr. Annesley was chosen President of the Council of State, having at that time opened a correspondence with the exiled Charles. {12}

rendered by him to his Majesty, to whoin he manifested his loyalty and attachment by sitting as one of the judges on the trials of the regicides. He-had always a considerable share in the King’s favour;. and was heard, with great attention, both at the council and in the House of Lords. In 1667, he was made treasurer of the navy, and on the 4th of February, 1672, his Majesty, in council, was pleased to appoint the Duke of Buckingham, the Earl of Anglesey, the Lord Holles, the Lord Ashley Cooper, and Mr. Secretary Trevor, to be a committee to peruse and revise all the papers and writings concerning the settlement of Ireland, from the first to the last; and to make an abstract thereof in writing. Accordingly, on the 12th of June, 1672, they made their report at large, which was the foundation of a commission, dated the Ist of August, 1672, to Prince Rupert, the Dukes of Buckingham and Lauderdale, Earl of Anglesey, Lords Ashley and Holles, Sir Joho Trevor and Sir Thomas Chicheley, to inspect the settlements of Ireland, and all proceedings thereunto. In 1673, the Earl of Anglesey had the office of lord privy seal conferred .upon him, which he held several years, with the favour of his sovereign. Ata time when it was the practice to invent popish plots, he was publicly charged, at the bar of the House of Commons, (in October 1680,) by one Dangerfield, in an information delivered upon oath, with endeavouring to stifle evidence concerning the popish plot, to promote the belief of a presbyterian one. Yet the suspicion he incurred from this attack did not prevent him from being the only lord in the House of Peers who dissented from the vote of the Commons, which asserted the belief of an Irish popish plot.

On account of this conduct, he was unjustly charged with being a secret papist; though there appears to have existed no other ground for the suspicion, than that he was neither a bigoted nor a credulous man.

In 1680, the Earl of Castlehaven wrote Memoirs concerning the affairs of Ireland, wherein he represented the general {13] rebellion in Ireland in the lightest colours possible, as if it had been. At the commencement far from being universal, and at last was rendered so by the measures pursued: by those whose duty it was to suppress the insurrection. The Earl of Anglesey: having!received these memoirs from the author, thought fit; to. write some animadversions upon them in a letter to the Earl of Castlehaven, wherein he delivered his opinion, freely in respect to the Duke of Ormond and his; government in Ireland. The Duke expostulated with .the lord. privy seal on the subject, to which the Earl replied. In 1682, when the succession produced a considerable degree of agitation, the Earl presented a very extraordinary remonstrance to the King; it was very warm and. loyal, yet it was far from being well received. This memorial was entitled, “The account of Arthur Earl of Anglesey, lord privy seal, to your most excellent Majesty, of the true state of your Majesty’s governments and kingdoms,” April 27, 1682. In one part whereof he says, “The fatal cause of all our mischiefs, present or apprehended, and which may cause a fire which may burn and consume us to the very foundations, is the unhappy. perversion of the Duke of York (the next heir to the crown), in one point of religion; which naturally raises jealousy of the power, designs, and practices of the old enemies of our religion and liberties, and undermines and emasculates the courage and constancy even of those and their posterity, who have been as faithful to, and suffered as much for the crown as any the most pleased and contented in. our impending miseries can pretend to have done.’ He concludes with these words: “Though your majesty is in your own person above the reach of the law, and sovereign of all your people, yet the law is your master and instructor how to govern; and your subjects assure themselves you will never attempt the enervating that law by which you are king, and which you have not only by frequent declarations, but by a solemn oath upon your throne, been obliged, in a most glorious presence of your people, to the main{14}tenance of; and that therefore you will look upon any that shall propose or advise to the contrary as unfit persons to be near you, and on those who shall persuade you it is lawful as sordid ffatterers, and the worst and mostdahgerous enemies, you and your kingdoms have. What I have set before your majesty, I have written freely, and like a sworn faithful counsellor, perhaps not like a wise man with regard to myself as things stand; but I have discharged my duty, and will account it a reward if your majesty vouchsafe to read what I durst not but write, and which I beseech God to give a blessing to.”

It was not, however, thought advisable to remove him from his high office on account of his free style of writing to the king, but the Duke of Ormond was easily prevailed upon to exhibit a charge against him on account of his. reflections on the Earl of Castlehaven’s Memoirs, (ia the which, for his own justification, he had been obliged to. reflect on theduke): this produced a severe contest between these two peers, which terminated in the Earl of Anglesey’s losing his place of lord privy seal, being dismissed from the council, and his letter to Lord Castlehaven voted a scandalous libel, though his enemies were obliged to confess he was treated with both severity and injustice. After this overthrow he lived very much in retirement at his country seat at Blechington in Oxfordshire, where he seemingly resigned all ambitious views, and devoted his time to the calm enjoyment of study; but so well versed was he in the mysteries of court intrigues, that he got into favour again in the reign of James Il. and is supposed to have been destined for the high office of lord chancellor, if the design had not been prevented by his death, which happened at his house in Drury-lane, April 6, 1686, in the 73rd year of his age. He left several children by his wife, who was one of the co-heiresses of Sir James Altham.

He was a man endowed with superior talents and extensive learning, was well versed in the Greek and Roman {15} history, and. thoroughly. acquainted with the spirit and policy of those nations. The legal and constitutional history of his country were the objects of his particular study, both of which he had pursued with so much perseverance as to be esteemed one of the first lawyers of his age., He wrote with great facility, and was the author of several political and religious publications and: bistori¢ narratives; but the largest and most valuable of all his works of this description was unfortunately lost, or, as some insinuate, maliciously destroyed; this was A History of the Troubles in: Ireland, from 1641 to 1660.” He was one of the first English peers who distinguished himself by collecting a choice library, which he did with much care and at a great expense, designing it to remain in his family, but owing to some circumstances which have not been explained, his books, a few months after his decease, were exposed to sale by a Mr. Millington, a famous auctioneer of that period. This sale has been rendered memorable by the discovery of the Earl’s famous memorandum in the blank leaf of an [Gk phr.], which was as follows: “King Charles the Second, and the Duke of York did both (in the last session of parliament 1675), when L shewed them in the lords house the written copy of this, wherein are some corrections and alterations (written with the late King Charles the First’s own hand), assure me that this was none of the said King’s compiling, but made by Dr. Gauden, Bishop of Exeter, which here insert for the undeceiving others in this point by attesting thus much under my hand, ANGLESEY:” But perhaps the reader will doubt the genuineness of this memorandum, if he reads “A Vindication of King Charles the Martyr,” published in quarto, in 1711. Indeed Bishop Burnet, in his History of his own Times, vol .i. p. 50, relates pretty near the same foolish story; but if the reader carefully considers that passage, he will evidently see it destroys itself, for, amongst other things that may be justly observed against the veracity of that account, he (Burnet) speaks of the Duke of Somerset and the Earl of Southampton, as living at a time when it {16} is well known they were both dead. His versatility, in regard to his political conduct, has been often censured’; yet even those who have been so ready to blame, have discovered and acknowledged strong gleams of integrity occasionally shining through it. He certainly succeeded, in a great degree, in ingratiating himself with men and parties, as opposite as possible in their opinions and politics; and, if it was true that James II designed him for lord chancellor at a time when he had Jefferies at his command, nothing (as has been observed with much truth) could throw a greater stigma on the Earl’s character.

The following is a list of his Lordship’s writings, published during his life-time: 1. “Truth Unveiled in behalf of the Church of England; being a Vindication of Mr. John Standish’s Sermon, preached before the King, and published by his Majesty’s Command: to which is added, A short Treatise on the Subject of Transubstantiation,” 1676, 4to. 2. “A Letter from.a Person of Honour in the Country, written to the Earl of Castlehaven; being Observations and Reflections on his Lordship’s Memoirs concerning the Wars of Ireland,” 1681, 8vo. 3. “A True Account of the whole Proceedings between James Duke of Ormond, and Arthur Earl of Anglesey, before the King and his Council,” &c. 1682, folio. 4. “A Letter of Remarks upon Jovian,” 1683, 4to. Besides these, he wrote many other things; the following of which were published after his decease: 1. “The Privileges of the House of Lords and Commons argued and stated in Two Conferences between both Houses, April 19 and 22, 1671: to which is added, A Discourse wherein the Rights of the House of Lords are truly asserted; with learned Remarks on the securing Arguments and pretended Precedents offered at that time against their Lordships.” 2. “The King’s Right of Indulgence in Spiritual Matters, with the Equity thereof asserted,” 1688, 4to. 3, “Memoirs intermixed with Moral, Political, and Historical Observations, by way of discourse, in a Letter to Sir Peter Pett,” 1693, 8vo. {17}

AN exemplary divine and learned antiquary, was descended from John Archdall, of Norsom-Hall, in the county of Norfolk, who came into Ireland in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, and settled at Castle Archdall, in the county of Fermanagh, prior to the year 1692.

The subject of the present memoir was born in Dublin, on the 22nd of April, 1723, and was educated in the university in that city; after which period, his passion for collecting coins, medals, and other antiques, and his research into the monastic history of Ireland, introduced him to the celebrated Walter Harris, the learned editor of Ware’s Works; Charles Smith, the author of the Irish County Histories; Thomas Prior (the celebrated patriot), whose relation he married; and, latterly, to Dr. Richard Pocock, Archdeacon of Dublin, who, when he was advanced to the see of Ossory, did not forget the merits of Mr. Archdall, as he bestowed on him the living of Attanah and a prebend, which not only produced him a comfortable support, but enabled him to pursue zealously his Monastic History of Ireland, in which he had already made considerable progress.

It is well known also, that the bishop frequently retired from the incessant noise occasioned by the hurry of visits at his palace in Kilkenny, to Attanah; where he found, in the good sense, learning, and candour of Mr. Archdall, a relaxation rarely to be met with; and there it was that he revised and improved some of his works, and pursued the outline of his Tours through Ireland and Scotland, which Dr. Ledwich informs us are in the British Museum.

Mervyn Archdall, like numberless ingenious men, wanted but the enlivening and maturing warmth of patronage, not only to be highly useful in the different departments of learning, but even to attain eminence in them. The excellent bishop, his patron, whose virtues reflected honour on his exalted station in the church, quitted this tran{18}sitory life in 1765. Mr. Archdall had, at that period, been so indefatigable in his researches that his collections amounted to nearly two folio volumes, and these on a subject interesting to every man of property in Ireland; as the records relating to the monastic foundations, both from the original donors, and the grants of these by the crown to the present possessors, include more than a third of all the land in the island; and yet, invaluable as these records were, for they were the fruits of forty years intense application, there was found no individual of generosity and patriotism enough, to enable the collector to give them to the world. He was, therefore, obliged to abridge the whole, and contract it within one quarto volume, which he published in 1786, under the title of “Monasticon Hibernicum.” It was unlucky for the author, that he existed thirty years ago instead of at the present period, when a refusal of patronage is looked upon in a worse light than heresy; as, instead of his being obliged to abridge his book in a quarto, he would have had (in all probability) to have submitted it to the world in the shape of an elephant folio.

The next of Archdall’s literary labours was an enlarged edition of Lodge’s Peerage of Ireland, which be extended from four to seven volumes octavo. This he printed in 1789; and, of this work, the following curious anecdote is recorded: Mr. Lodge had left numerous additions to his work in MS. but written in a cypher declared to be totally inexplicable by all the short-hand writers in Dublin; these MSS. were about to be given up in despair, when Mrs. Archdall, (his surviving relict,) a woman of considerable ability and ingenuity, applied to the arduous task, and after a short time happily discovered the key, and thereby greatly enriched the edition.

Having married his only daughter to a clergyman, he resigned part of his preferments, in the diocese of Ossory, to his son-in-law; but was advanced to the rectory of Slane, in the diocese of Meath, which he did not long {19} enjoy, as he exchanged this life for a better, on the 6th of August, 1791.

As an antiquary, he was profound; as a divine, exemplary; as a husband and parent, affectionate; and as a friend, liberal and communicative.

An eminent Jesuit, was a native of the county of Kilkenny, and became a member of that society at Mechlin, in Brabant, in 1642, at the age of twenty-three. He taught divinity and philosophy successively at Louvain and Antwerp, and, at the latter place, became rector of the students of the highest class in 1676, and afterwards professor of divinity. He died there about 1690. Peter Talbot gives him the character of “a good father, but an incautious writer;” and the Abbé de Me Berthier, in his parallel of the Doctrines of the Pagans and Jesuits, quarrels with a proposition advanced by him in his under-named Theologia Tripartita, viz. “That absolution is not to be deferred to habitual sinners, till they are actually reformed;” to which he opposes that saying of Horace, Epist. ii. Quo semel est imbuta recens servabit odorem testa diu; and of Catullus, Epigr. lxxvii. Diffcile est longum subito deponere amorem. And from thence humorously makes these two, and other pagan authors, anti-jesuits. He wrote, “Of Miracles, and the new Miracles done by the Relicks of St. Francis Xaviers, in the Jesuits College, at Mechlin.” Louvanii, 1667, 8vo. This piece is in English and Irish.

“Precipue Controversie Fidei ad facilem Methodum redactze; ac Resolutiones Theologica ad omnia Sacerdotis munia, presertim in Missionibus, accommodate, cum apparatu ad Doctrinam sacram. Cui accessitsumma Doctrine Christiane selectis Exemplis elucidata.” The first title is, “Theologia, Polemica, Practice, Sacra.” Louvanii, 1671, 8vo.) {20} “Vite et Miraculorum S. Patricii, Hiberniæ Apostoli, Epitome, cum brevi Notitiâ Hibernia.” Louvanii, 1671, 8vo. printed with the former; which he afterwards revised and enlarged, and published under the title of “‘Theologia Tripartita Universa, sive Resolutiones Polemicæ, Practicæ, Controversiarum et Questionum etiam recentissimarum, que in Scholâ et in Praxi per omnia usum precipuum habent; Missionariis, et aliis Animarum Curatoribus, et Theologiæ Studiasis, solerter accommodatæ, Editio quinta.” Antwerpiæ, 1682, 3 vols. 8vo. If we may judge by the number of editions, this book carried a vast reputation abroad. I have seen the eleventh edition of it printed, Venice 1700, 4to. after the author’s death, and, for what I know, there may be others since. At the time the eight edition was undertaken, there were sixteen thousand of them disposed of, and a great demand for more.

He also wrote and published, “The Lives of Peter Talbot, Archbishop of Dublin, and of Oliver Plunket, Primate of Ireland,” which are printed in the eleventh edidion of his “Theologia Tripartita.”

Sotvellus tells us, that he had a book ready for the press, entitled, “Theologia Apostolica.”

Once Vice-Chancellor of Dublin university, was a native of the county of Roscommon, and received his education in the university of Dublin, of which he was elected a fellow in 1679, and became provost of it in the room of Doctor Robert Huntington, who resigned on the 2nd September, 1692, being then in the thirty-fourth year of his age. Shortly after this he became vice-chancellor, but, prior to that advancement, was obliged to: quit his country, from the tyrannous acts of King James Il. He came to England, and engaged himself in the service of the Lord Paget, who was King William’s embassador ´[sic passim] at the court of Vienna, and to whom he was both chaplain and secretary. In these stations he remained several . years, nor did he meditate a return to his native country, until after the passing of the Acts of Settlement. He {22} was promoted to the bishopric of Cloyne, by letters patent, dated July 15, 1695; and was consecrated the same month, in Christ Church, Dublin, by Narcissus, Archbishop of Dublin, assisted by the Bishops of Meath, Waterford, and Lismore, and, at the same time, was called into the privy council. On the Ist of June, 1697, he was translated, by the King’s letter, to the see of Clogher, and, during the period he held the bishopric thereof, expended near the sum of nine hundred pounds, in repairing and improving the episcopal houses and lands belonging to that see, which, upon due proof, was acknowledged and allowed him, on the 25th of July, 1700, by Michael, Archbishop of Armagh, his metropolitan, in pursuance of an Act of Parliament of King William, which gives a demand of two-thirds of the sum expended, against the next successor. From this see he was advanced to that of Derry, by letters patent, dated the 25th February, 1716, and died in Dublin, on the 27th February, 1717, and was buried in Christ Church, in that city. By his will, he bequeathed all his mathematical books to the college of Dublin, of which he had been successively fellow and provost. He was likewise a member of the Royal Society, in whose Transactions are several articles of his writing. He published, also, four Sermons, and two Mathematical Tracts, and several other minor productions.

It is recorded, on the authority of Mac Mahon, that, on the death of John Vesey, Archbishop of Tuam, in 1706, our prelate had the offer of being advanced to that see; but this he refused, it not being so profitable, although of more honour than the see of Clogher, to which he was translated. {23}

Was a man who fully merited the epithet “worthy;” and truly sorry are we to inform our readers, that, with almost every particular of his life, we are wholly unacquainted.

He was a native of Ireland, and was treasurer of the Ordnance, under the administration of the Earl of Moira. He was the intimate of Moore, Curran, and the rest of the galaxy of Irish genius; and was, himself, a poet of more than ordinary ability, as the following jeu desprit, addressed to his friend Moore, on the birth of his third daughter, will evince:

I’m sorry, dear Moore, there’s a damp to your joy,
Nor think my old strain of mythology stupid,
When I say, that your wife had a right to a boy,
For Venus is nothing without a young Cupid.
But since Fate, the boon that you wish’d for, refuses,
By granting three girls to your happy embraces,
She but meant, while you wander’d abroad with the Muses,
Your wife should be circled at home by the Graces.

He died in Dublin, at the age of 75, in October 1818, and was sincerely regretted by all who knew him; being admired by the young for his conviviality, and respected by the aged for his benevolence and numerous good qualities.

The following beautiful lines, from the pen of his intimate, Moore, are intended to be engraved on his sepulchre:

If ever lot was prosperously cast,
If ever life was like the lengthen’d flow
Of some sweet music, sweetness to the last,
’Twas his, who, mourn’d by many, sleeps below.
The sunny temper, bright where all is strife,
The simple heart that mocks at worldly wiles,
Light wit, that plays along the calm of life,
And stirs its languid surface into smiles,
Pure Charity that comes not in a shower,
Sudden and loud, oppressing what it feeds;
But, like the dew, with gradual silent power,
Felt in the bloom it leaves along the meads. {24}

The happy grateful spirit that improves,
And brightens every gift by Fortune given;
That wander where it will, with those it loves,
Makes every place a home, and home a heaven!
All these were his - Oh! thou who read’st this stone,
When for thyself, thy children, to the sky,
Thou humbly prayest, ask this boon alone,
That ye like him may live, like him may die.

A pious and exemplary prelate, was born in the county of Antrim, in the year 1713, and received his education in Trinity College, Dublin, of which his nephew, Dr. Andrews, was afterwards provost. On the 9th of January, 1771, he was consecrated Dean of Limerick, in Christ Church, Dublin, by the Archbishop of Dublin; but lived not long to enjoy his elevation, as he died on the 14th of September following, at Innismore, in the county of Kerry, being then on his visitation. He was a divine whose worth exhibited itself more in works than words, for, during the short period he was dean, he gave two hundred guineas to be lent in small sums to poor tradesmen; and likewise discovered strong proofs, that he would have expended the greater part of his income in benevolent actions. The primitive church was not possessed of a more worthy pillar than Bishop Averill, from whose precepts: and examples every good consequence might rationally be expected. He was fraught with charity, meekness, and humanity; and laid the foundation for reviving many good institutions in the diocese. He had no ambition but in the service of God; and sought not to possess those luxuries of life which his income would readily have procured for him, but was contented with the bare conveniences of living, and devoted the major part of his affluence to the assistance of the distressed, and the relief of those “‘ that have none to help them.”

His remains were interred with great solemnity on the {25} 18th of September, near the communion table, in St. Mary’s Church; and the following inscription, on a brass plate, has been fixed over them:

For his services to his country, created Lord Aylmer, was the second son of Sir Christopher Aylmer, of Balrath, in the county of Meath. He was, at first, employed in raising soldiers for the service of the states of Holland, against Lewis XIV.; and was afterwards sent to sea by the celebrated Duke of Buckingham. In 1678 he was made lieutenant of the Charles galley; and, passing through various promotions, was made captain of the Swallow, in October 1688. He is said to have been zealously attached to the principles which effected the Revolution; yet, when he commanded the Swallow, he took a ship belonging to the fleet of the Prince of Orange, on board of which were four companies of Colonel Babington’s regiment. He is praised, on this account, by Charnock, as having sacrificed his own political principles rather than. betray his trust; but, if he had considered that he had, for many years, been receiving the pay of his country, and bore his commission for his country’s honour and defence, he need not have scrupled to abandon a prince, whose own children forsook him, and whom it was judged necessary to remove from the throne. If every one had acted like Aylmer, his country’s chains had been riveted instead of broken.{26}

The new government, however, promoted him to the command of the Royal Katherine, of 82 guns; in which he had a share in the battle off Beachy Head. In the following. year, he commanded a squadron of fourteen ships; when he confirmed the peace with the Barbary States, and brought home in safety the Smyrna fleet. After this, he had a share, under Admiral Russell, in the most glorious sea-fight in the whole reign, one which totally annihilated all the hopes entertained by the French of making an attack upon England. This was the battle off Cape La Hogue, in which he greatly distinguished himself. He was rewarded, by being promoted to be rear-admiral of the red, and hoisted his flag on board the Sovereign, of 100 guns.

The following year he went out, under Admiral Russell, with the fleet to the Mediterranean, as vice-admiral of the blue; and, as Admiral Russell fell sick at Alicant, the chief command devolved upon him, They had, however, done their business too effectually at Cape La Hogue, to have any hope of the enemy coming out to meet them at sea. He was afterwards employed in blockading the enemy in the channel; and, in the end of 1698, was sent out as commander-in-chief of the squadron in the Mediterranean. In this capacity he visited Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli; at all these places he was most honourably treated, and was successful in his negociations. In 1699 he retired . from active service; and, in the greater part of Queen Anne’s reign, represented in parliament the borough of Dover. In 1701 he was made governor of Deal Castle; on the 12th of November, 1709, on the death of Prince George of Denmark, he was raised to be admiral and commander-in-chief of the fleet. He held the same rank under George I and in 1716 he had the honour to bring his majesty back from Holland. In reward of his long and faithful services to his country, he was, in 1718, created Baron Aylmer of the kingdom of Ireland; and, in {27} 1720, rear-admiral of Great Britain - which honours he did not long live to enjoy, as he died the same year.

He was a most valuable officer, and if he had not the honour as commander-in-chief to gain any great victory, it arose from the humiliation of the enemy, who dared not encounter the British fleets, after the complete overthrow he had contributed to give them at Cape La Hogue.

Was an ingenious amateur, who acquired a distinguished reputation as an engraver. He was a native of Ireland; was born about the year 1736, and passed the early part of his life in the army, from which he retired with the rank of captain of cavalry. On quitting “the spirit-stirring drum,” &c. &c. Captain Baillie devoted his life entirely to the arts, and was, for many years, considered one of the most enlightened connoisseurs of his time.

By this gentleman there are several plates engraved in various manners, but his most admired productions are those he executed in the style of Rembrandt, and his charming copies after the prints of that master. The works of Captain Baillie consist of about a hundred plates, a list of the principal of which is to be found in Bryan’s Dictionary of Painters.

A young officer of great promise, was the youngest son of John, eleventh Lord Trimlestown. The religion of this family precluding all possibility of his rising to eminence in his native land, he retired in his seventeenth year into Germany, where he entered the imperial service, in which he continued until his decease, in September 1739. The following account of him is given in a letter {29} from a general in the imperial service, to Viscount Mountgarrett: “Amongst all those brave men who have lost their lives at the battle of Crotzka, none is so much lamented by all as Mr. Anthony Barnewall, the Lord Trimleston’s youngest son: he came into Germany in General Hamilton’s regiment of cuirassiers, when his good sense, humility, good nature, and truly honest, worthy principles, gained him the love and esteem of all who had the least acquaintance with him; we have had scarce any action of any note with the Turks that he was not in, and always acquitted himself with uncommon resolution. The day before the said battle he was made a lieutenant; the next fatal day, the regiment in which he had his commission, was one of the first that charged the enemy; at the very first onset, his captain and cornet were killed, when he took up the standard, tore off the flag, tied it round his waist, and commanded the troop; he led out twice to the charge, and was as often repulsed; the third time, he turned himself to his men, and said, Come on, my brave fellows; we shall certainly now do the work: follow me. He then set spurs to his horse, and pursued into the thickest of the enemy, where he was surrounded, defending himself for a considerable time with amazing courage; at last he fell quite covered with wounds, and dying, left such an example of true courage and bravery, as cannot fail of being admired by all who shall hear of it.”

Was of that numerous class of men, who have reflected great honour on Ireland, as the land of their nativity, from the excellence of their conduct and the splendour of their genius, manifested in foreign countries. His original name was Fitz-gerald, being descended from adistinguished family that settled in Ireland soon after the arrival of the English. He was born at Clonmell, in the county of Tipperary. He had the happiness to have his early {30} education directed by the care of his mother’s brother, Luke Wadding, a celebrated Franciscan friar, who, in the seventeenth century, manifested his extraordinary talents, and extensive information, by many works of great labour and genius. When he was of a proper age, he got him admitted into the Franciscan order, and brought him to Rome, where he placed him, in order to complete his education, under his own eye, in the college of St. Isidore. This was a society which he himself had founded in 1625, for the instruction of Irish students in the liberal arts, divinity, and particularly controversies on the doctrines of religion, from which the mission to England, Scotland, and Ireland, might be supplied. Baron grew into great reputation, and was distinguished by the purity with which he wrote the Latin language. His talents were first brought into notice from the circumstance of a cardinal having written a small treatise in Italian, which he wished to get translated into Latin. Baron undertook the performance; but his excellency, from his ignorance, being dissatisfied, it was referred to the learned society of the Jesuits, who expressed themselves highly in Baron’s favour. His enthusiasm for imperial Rome, and the love of the religious and learned society he found there, induced him to settle in that city, where he lived altogether sixty years, during part of which time he lectured on divinity at St. Isidore’s. He died very old and deprived of sight, in March 16th, 1696, and was buried in the church of his own college. His works are, 1. “Orationes Panegyricæ Sacro-Profanæ decem,” Romæ, 1643, 12mo. 2. “Metra Miscellanea, sive Carminum diversorum libri duo; Epigrammatum unas; alter Silvulæ; quibus adduntur Elogia illustrium Virorum,” Romæ, 1645, 24mo, 3. “Prolusiones Philosophicæ,” Romæ, 1651, 12mo, 4. “Harpocrates quinque Ludius; seu Diatriba silenti,” Rome, 1651, 12mo. 5. “Obsidio et Expugnatio Arcis Duncannon in Hiberniâ, sub Thomâ Prestono.” 6, “Boëtius Absolutus; sive de Consolatione Theologiæ, lib. iv.” {31} Romæ, 1653, 12mo. 7. “Controversiæ et Stratagemata,” Lugduni, 1656, 8vo. 8. “Scotus Defensus,” Coloniæ, 1662, folio. 9. “Cursus Philosophicus,” Coloniæ, 1664, folio. 10. “‘Epistolæ Familiares Paræneticæ,” &c. These are among his 11. “Opuscula varia Herbipoli,” 1666; folio, 12. “Theologia,” Paris, 1676, 6 vols. 13. “Joannes Duns Scotus, ordinis minorum, Doctor subtilis de Angelis contra adversantes defensus, nunc quoque Novitate amplificatus,” Florentiæ, 1678. 14. “Annales Ordinis S. S. Trinitatis Redemptionis Captivorum, Fundatoribus S.S. Johanne de Matha, et Felice de Valois,” in .. [sic] vols. folio. The first volume was printed at Rome, in 1686, and begins with the year 1198, in which Pope Innocent III gave habit to the founders, and is carried down to the year 1297, just one hundred years. In this volume we have an account of the foundations of their convents, their privileges, and benefactions, the eminent fathers of their order, their miracles and actions; as also, the number of slaves delivered by them from bondage.

GEORGE BARRET

AN eminent landscape painter, was born in that part of the city of Dublin, called the Liberty, in the year 1728. He was a self-taught genius, and, like his countryman, the celebrated Hugh Kelly, was apprenticed to a staymaker, How long he remained in this situation is not known, but his first attempt in art was in the humble line of print-colouring, in which he was employed by one Silcock, who resided then in Nicholas street, Dublin: from this trifling commencement, he rose to considerable powers as a landscape painter, and at-a very early period attended the drawing academy of Mr. West. He was introduced by his protector, Mr. Burke, to the patronage of the Earl of Powerscourt, where he passed the greater part of his youth in studying and designing the sublime and beautiful scenery around Powerscourt park; and about {32} this time a premium being offered by the Dublin society, for the best landscape in oil, Mr. Barret contended for, and obtained it.

In the year 1762, he arrived in London, where he soon distinguished himself, and, in two years after his arrival, gained the fifty pounds premium given by the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, &c. &c. &c. For the establishment of the Royal Academy, the public were, in a great measure, indebted to the exertions of Mr. Barret, who formed the plan, and became one of its earliest members. He was a chaste and faithful delineator of English landscape, which he viewed with the eye of an artist, and selected with the feelings of a man of taste. He had two decided manners of painting, both with regard to colour and touch: his first was rather heavy in both; his latter, much lighter. Scarcely any painter equalled him in his knowledge or characteristic execution of the details. of nature. His attention was chiefly directed to the true colour of English scenery, its richness, dewy freshness, and that peculiar verdure, especially in the vernal months, which is so totally different from the colouring of those masters who have formed themselves on Italian scenery, or Italian pictures. This strong desire sometimes tempted him to use colours both rich and beautiful when first applied, but which no art could render permanent, and which, in some of his slighter works, prevailed to such a degree as to leave scarcely any traces of the original colouring. This resulted from the immoderate use of glazing. The best pictures of this inestimable artist are to be found in the collections of the Dukes of Buccleuch and Portland, and the great room at Mr. Locke’s, Norbury Park, Surrey, consisting of a large room, painted with a continued scene entirely round it; a performance which will ever rank among the most celebrated productions of the art. The idea, in general, characterises the northern part of this country; and, for composition, breadth of effect, {33} truth of colour, and boldness of manner, in the execution, has not been equalled by any modern painter. He exerted his powers to the utmost in this work, as he entertained the warmest sense of Mr. Locke’s great kindness and friendly patronage.

As a man, he was remarkably kind and friendly, and was much respected, not only by his brethren in the art, but by his patrons, who were pleased with the vivacity of his disposition, and the urbanity of his manners. During the last ten years of his life, he resided (on account of his health) at Paddington, where he painted (in conjunction with Mr. Gilpin, the celebrated animal painter,) some of his best easel-pictures. He died at Paddington, in March 1784, aged fifty-four, and was buried in the church-yard of that parish. He left a widow and nine children. In the latter part of his life he enjoyed the place of master-painter to Chelsea Hospital; an appointment conferred upon him by his friend, Edmund Burke, during his short-lived administration. Barret left some spirited etchings of his performances, the best of which is a view in the Dargles, near Dublin. He also painted in water-colours, in which he greatly excelled.

WAS titular Dean of Killala, and, as we cannot amend the only sketch we have of this truly great and good man, we shall] take the liberty to subjoin it: - He was,” says his panegyrist, “a character as near perfection as the lot of humanity admits of. For upwards of half a century he continued to shew to the world what a clergyman ought to be, and how much real good a hearty lover of mankind may do in that station. If domestic disquisition annoyed any of his flock, the demon was subdued by the precepts that he instilled, and the morality which he inculcated. The writhings of disease were mitigated: by the balm of his divine counsels, and poverty never applied to him in {34} vain. Under his protecting influence, youth found an asylum from vice and wretchedness, and was trained up in the paths of virtue and of truth. The shivering mendicant was prepared to meet the severity of approaching winter, through his bounty and his influence.”

He sunk into the arms of death, in March 1808, at his house in Chapel lane, Ennis. “Upon his decease the shops were all closed, and business completely at a stand in Ennis; while the general gloom which sat on every countenance, more forcibly pourtrayed the character of departed worth, than volumes written on the subject could possibly convey.” Dr. Barrett was in the eighty-sixth year of his age, for forty-six years of which he was the faithful pastor of that parish. Some people imagined that the dean was possessed of money; but those who thought so did not follow his steps into the mansions of misery and distress; if they had, their coffers would be like his - . destitute of a single guinea, and, divine reflection! - their reward, like his, would be - heaven!

Was a brave yet unsuccessful seaman, who, to a perfect knowledge of his profession, united an enthusiastic courage, and whose whole life was an uninterrupted tissue of extraordinary embarrassments, terminated by a calamity, borne with the heroic coolness of a Spartan.

He was a native of the city of Drogheda, and was descended from a respectable family, resident during several centuries in the adjoining county of Louth. At a very early age he exhibited a strong predilection for the naval profession, and in compliance with his repeated solicitations, he was placed under his brave countryman Admiral Caldwell, and under his auspices he continued until his promotion to the rank of lieutenant, towards the close of the year 1793; an advance, which the interest of his patron greatly forwarded, who, on the 1st of February {35} 1793, was himself promoted to the rank of rear-admiral of the white, and was stationed as junior officer in the Channel fleet, under Lord Howe, having hoisted his flag on board the Cumberland, of seventy-four guns, to which ship Lieutenant Barrett removed with him.

In the following year Admiral Caldwell, being promoted to the rank of rear-admiral of the red, hoisted his flag on board the Impregnable, ninety-eight guns, whither Mr. Barrett again accompanied him, and on board which ship he served in the memorable battle of the 1st of June. On the appointment of Admiral Caldwell to a command in the West Indies, he removed with the admiral on board the Majestic, of seventy-four guns, and on the 13th of October, sailed to join Sir John Jervis, (now Earl St. Vincent) on the Leeward Island station, His steady attachment to his patron, and his active services on this station, were rewarded by a promotion successively to the ranks of commander and post-captain, within a short time of each other.

The next period of Captain Barrett’s career which we are to notice, will exhibit him in the strange and unmerited condition of private distress, as a consequence of zeal in his public duty. While in the command, we believe, of the Ethalion, he (independently of some captures,) detained several American and other neutral vessels, under a clause of our treaty with the former power, employed in a contraband trade with the enemy’s and our islands. This circumstance materially contributed to a series of pecu- niary embarrassments, from which he was never altogether relieved.

In addition to this unfortunate occurrence, he was unlucky enough to become acquainted with a widow in one of the adjacent islands, who was said to possess a considerable fortune, and who, deceived by a rumour of our hero’s successes, favoured his advances:

“She was just at the age when beauty begins
To give o’er her reign of delight” - {36}.

And she was apparently rich, but not without some private pecuniary embarrassments. - A marriage however took place, and (like many other married couples) they were mutually deceived; for, previous to the ceremony, the lady being possessed of a more than ordinary share of precaution, settled all her real property on herself. - Scarcely had the honey-moon, that most delicious period in our lives, when all is bright and fair, elapsed, when a discovery was made, and a bitter digestion of its sweets consequently ensued. The addition also of an immense expense for demurrage, by some informality in the proceedings relative to the detained vessels which were cleared, now overwhelmed him with a responsibility considerably beyond his means. He, however, had not yet swallowed the whole of the potion allotted him, the remainder of which awaited him in England, where, on his return, he was not only arrested by his own creditors, but by those of his wife also; and by the union of both powers he speedily became immured in a prison, where he long remained, and thus was excluded from all active service. One circumstance, however, not greatly to be regretted, occurred - a total separation from his wife; - and thus was Captain Barrett’s matrimonial bliss brought to a speedy conclusion. In 1806, being released from his confinement, he was soon after appointed to the Africa of sixty-four guns, at first stationed in the Channel fleet, and afterwards in the Baltic, where she was appointed to superintend the passage of convoys through the Sound, under the immediate orders of Admiral Sir Thomas Bertie.

While lying in the Malmuc passage, an attack was made on him by nearly forty Danish gun-vessels, and other boats. It has been justly observed, that a line-of-battle ship in a calm is like a giant struck with a dead palsy. The African, completely immoveable, received for more than an hour the fire of two divisions stationed a head and a-stern, while the bulk of the ship, and comparative smallness of the foe, rendered it impossible to hit them. - In {37} this situation a dreadfal slaughter ensued on board; a shot having struck the hoisting part of the ensign halyard, the colours came slowly down. The Danes perceiving this, and not thinking it the effect of their fire, believed she had struck, and immediately abandoned their advantageous position, vying with each other for the honour of taking possession. This circumstance must be considered as one of those casual events, which occurring independent of ourselves, should teach us never to relinquish hope even in our greatest perplexities. The mistake being observed by Captain Barrett, a broadside double-shotted was prepared, the colours re-hoisted, and “the whole” (says his biographer) “poured in with so happy a direction, that several of the boats, and near four hundred men perished.” The Danes, mistaking that for treachery, which arose from chance, were extremely irritated, and violent in their threats and censures against Captain Barrett; and this candid relation of the circumstance is justly due to his character, to clear it from the aspersions with which it has in consequence been loaded. The action lasted nearly eight hours; during the time, a shell having fallen on the lower deck of the Abaet the ship was saved from destruction by a boy, who, with great coolness, hove it out of the port while burning, and the concussion caused by its explosion in the water violently shook the vessel.

In the year 1809, Captain Barrett was appointed to the Minotaur, of seventy-four guns, celebrated for the beauty of her model, and stationed in the Gulph of Finland. In the different attacks on the Russian flotillas at Percola and Aspro, the ship’s company severely suffered. On this station the services of the Minotaur were highly creditable to the captain and his company, and under her protection one last convoy of 1809 arrived.

In the spring of the year 1810, the Minotaur sailed again for the Baltic, and was principally employed in escorting the different convoys from Hanno to Deershead, At the {38 close of the season she again took charge of the homeward-bound convoy, (the Plantagenet, seventy-four, Captain Ellis, escorting the rear,) a charge destined to be her final act of service, and in which she was most lamentably to fall by shipwreck. The evening before she struck, the Plantagenet telegraphed to her, and hauled to the westward; but the master and pilots of the Minotaur, too confident of their reckoning, unfortunately stood on. At nine o’clock that night she struck on the Hakes so violently, that it was with great difficulty the midshipmen and quarter-masters gained the deck. The scene of horror that now presented itself can only be conceived by those who witnessed it.

The ship’s company, almost naked, were sheltered from the severe cold and heavy sea by the poop, and the greatest exertions were made to get out the boats, the quarter ones having been stove and washed away. By cutting down the gunnel the launch was got off the booms, into which one hundred and ten men crowded; at this time the appearance of the ship, nearly covered by the sea, and having only the main-mast standing, was truly pitiable. The launch, with great difficulty reached the shore. - The yawl was next got out, but immediately sunk, from the numbers that crowded into her, with the natural desire to avail themselves of the smallest chance of escaping from a state of inevitable destruction.

Thus cut off from all prospect of escape, the only desire apparent in those who remained was, to clothe themselves in their best suits. The captain of marines and surgeon had themselves lashed in a cot that hung in the cabin, and two of the officers followed their example with the utmost composure.

At length came the awful stroke - and the sea washing through the belfry, tolled the funeral knell. The captain of the main-top, who was saved on the main-mast, said, he saw Captain Barrett to the last exhorting the men to {39} patience; he was standing on the poop, surrounded by them, when a dreadful sea destroyed every remnant of the ship, and closed his meritorious and useful life.

Through the whole of this melancholy scene, the conduct of Captain Barrett did honour to his station. From the commencement to its fatal termination, he evinced the most heroic coolness; during which time no possibility of saving the ship had ever existed. The pilots seem to have been deficient in knowledge of the ship’s track, for they opposed the warning of the Plantagenet, and differed, after the ship struck, in opinion, whether she was on the Smith’s Knowl or the Hakes; Captain Barrett decided for the latter, and the ensuing dawn, by a distant view of land, confirmed it. In the course of this dreadful night, an officer, in the eagerness of exertion, occasioned some disturbance; Captain Barrett said to him, “Sir, true courage is better shewn by coolness and composure - - we all owe nature a debt - let us pay it like men of honour.”

The fate of Lieutenant Salsford was distinguished by a singular circumstance, which we cannot forbear recording: A large tame wolf, caught at Aspro, and brought up from a cub by the ship’s company, and exceedingly docile, continued to the last an object of general solicitude. Sensible of its danger, its howls were peculiarly distressing. He had always been a particular favorite of the lieutenant, who was also greatly attached to the animal, and through the whole of their sufferings he kept close to his master. On the breaking up of the ship, both got upon the mast. - At times they were washed off, but by each other’s assistance regained it. - The lieutenant at last became exhausted by continual exertion, and benumbed with cold. - The wolf was equally fatigued, and both held occasionally by the other to retain his situation. When within a short distance of the land, Lieutenant Salsford affected by the attachment of the animal, and totally unable any longer to support himself, turned towards him from the mast; the beast clapped his fore-paws round his neck, while the lieutenant clasped him. in his arms, and they sunk together.

Such was the end of Captain Barrett, and his brave but unfortunate ship’s company. The hero who falls in the arms of victory, has a monument raised by the gratitude of his country; but he, whose destiny has been a watery grave, overcome by the irresistible power of the elements, sinks lamented at the instant, and henceforth is forgotten. To rescue from this unmerited oblivion the name and character of Captain Barrett, has been our object in the publication of these brief memoirs; and let it be remembered in the perusal of them, that although the actions they record are neither splendid or brilliant, opportunities alone were wanting to have made them so; and that if in the battle courage is indisputable, yet in all probability the truest touch-stone of bravery is - the storm. {40}

VISCOUNT BUTTEVANT, was one of the Lords of the Parliament, convened by Sir James Perrott, in 1585; but afterwards took an active share in the rebellion of the Earl of Desmond, for which he received a pardon in the government of Lord Grey. From that time his fidelity to the crown was untainted, and he was appointed one of the council to Sir George Carew, president of Munster; in which capacity he did great service against the rebels in that province, as may be seen by his answer to Tyrone’s letter of invitation to join him, and of which a full account is given in the Pacata Hibernia. In 1601, he was made general of the provincials, and assisted in raising the siege of Kinsale; and, after the defeat of the Spaniards, his lordship, at the head of his forces, attacked O’Guillevan, and routed him with great loss; which, with some prudent measures employed at the same time, reduced the insurgents to complete submission. In 1613, the king, intending to hold a parliament in Dublin, and understand{41}ing that there might arise some debate, whether his lordship ought to have a seat in the upper house, his elder brother, to whom it was alleged that right belonged, being still alive; his majesty, to prevent the delay such debate might occasion, declared that “in regard the Lord Barry hath been always honourably reported of, for his dutiful behaviour to our state, and hath enjoyed, without contradiction, these many years the title of honour and living of his house; and that his brother, who is said to be elder, is both dumb and deaf, and was never yet in possession of the honour or living of his house; we are pleased to command you, if this question, concerning his right to sit in parliament, be stirred by any person, that you silence it by our command; and that you do admit him, according to his degree, to have voice and place in parliament, not taking knowledge of any doubt, which may be moved of his Jegal right thereunto.” He was according present in that parliament; and died April 10, 1617, at Barry’s court.

THE first Earl of Barrymore, was the grandson of the subject of the last article, and was born in 1605. On his grandfather’s decease, he succeeded to his estates, and in the following year a special livery of all his possessions was granted, notwithstanding his minority. In 1627, the king, to reward his fidelity and attachment to the protestant interest, created him Earl of Barrymore, He served against the Scots in 1639; and, in 1641, when the insurgents offered to make him their general, he rejected the proposal with the utmost disdain: “I will first take an offer,” said he, “from my brother Dungarvan, to be hangman-general at Youghall.” Incensed at this, the insurgents threatened to destroy his house at Castle Lyons, on which he sent them word, that “he would defend it while one stone stood upon another;” at the same time desiring {42} them to trouble him no more with their offers, for that he was resolved to live and die a faithful subject of the English crown. He afterwards placed a body of Englishmen in his castle of Shandos, near Cork, for which service he received the thanks of the government; and, by his care and courage, in conjunction with Edmund Fitzgerald, seneschal of Imokilty, he preserved that part of the country free from the incursions of the rebels, and thus ensured the passage between Cork and Youghall. In 1642, his lordship, with Lord Dungarvan, pursued the Cordons, and took the castle of Ballymac-Patrick (now Carey’s villa), the whole of the survivors of the garrison being executed on the spot. In July he took Cloghlea castle, near Kilworth; and was joined, in commission with Lord Inchiquin, to the civil government of Munster. He headed a troop of horse, and two hundred foot, which he maintained at his own charge, at the battle of Liscarroll, on September 3, 1642; and died on the 29th of that month. He was interred in the Earl of Cork’s tomb at Youghall, and left behind him the character of great generosity, humanity (notwithstanding his bloody slaughter at Ballymac-Patrick,) and christian charity; and we are particularly informed that he had sermons at Castle Lyons twice a day on Sundays, Wednesdays, and Fridays.

Afterwards created Lord Santry, was the son of a merchant of Dublin. He was educated for the bar, and by his diligence and eminent talents, raised himself to high offices of trust under government, and to a seat in the upper house of Parliament. The family was originally from Pembrokeshire, in Wales, descended from the princes of the country. Several of them passed over into Ireland, among the first adventurers, in 1169; one of these was Robert de Barry, so highly celebrated by Gerald Barry, commonly called Geraldus Cambrensis. The father of {43} James Barry, whose life we now write, acquired a considerable estate by commerce; and filled the civic honours of the city of Dublin, which he also represented in Parliament. The son, after he was called to the bar, practised for several years with reputation and success. In 1629 the king conferred upon him the office of his majesty’s serjeant-at-law for the kingdom of Ireland, with a yearly fee of twenty pounds ten shillings. Lord Wentworth, afterwards Earl of Strafford, lord deputy of Ireland, soon perceived his talents, and took him under his protection; accordingly, Aug. 5, 1634, he appointed him second baron of the exchequer of Ireland, to hold during pleasure, with such fees, rewards, and profits, as Sir Robert Oglethorpe, Sir Lawrence Parsons, or Sir Gerard Lowther, or any other second baron, did or ought to receive. He soon after had the honour of knighthood conferred on him. This appointment in the exchequer he obtained through Lord Wentworth’s friendship, in opposition to another candidate who had powerful recommendation from England. Of this kindness he was ever after grateful; and, in 1640, when the Parliament of Ireland were about to send over a deputation of their body to England to impeach the Earl of Strafford, he joined all his weight and interest with Sir James Ware, and other members of the House of Commons, to oppose that measure. The torrent was too violent to be withstood; and we hear little more of Sir James Barry, during the civil wars, until a little before the restoration of King Charles II in 1660, when he was chairman of the convention which voted his majesty’s restoration, without any previous conditions. In obtaining this vote, his influence and talents were instrumental; and accordingly we find him experiencing the gratitude of his sovereign, by being made lord chief justice of the King’s Bench of Ireland, the 17th November of the same year. Nor was this the only honour bestowed on him; for, on the 18th of December following, the king issued a privy seal, in consideration of his eminent fidelity {44} and zeal shewn for his majesty’s service, creating him Lord Baron of Santry of the Kingdom of Ireland; and he was soon after called to the privy council.

He died in March 1672, and was buried in Christ Church, Dublin. He left behind him issue to inherit his titles and estate. His only publication was, “The Case of Tenures upon the Commission of Defective Titles, argued by all the Judges of Ireland; with the Resolution, and the Reasons of their Resolution.” Dublin, 1637, folio, dedicated to the Earl of Strafford.

SPRANGER BARRY.

THIS celebrated actor, who so equally divided the laurel with the immortal Garrick, was born on the 20th November, 1719, in the parish of St. Warburgh, Dublin. He was the son of an eminent silversmith of that city, prosperous in trade, and possessing good family connections, who bred this his eldest son to the business; but an early intercourse with the theatres (of which there were two at that period in Dublin) with the solicitation of a remarkably handsome and. finely-proportioned person, melodious and powerful voice, and pleasing address, quickly obliterated every idea relative to business, which the attendance behind the counter between two and three years, might have enabled him to acquire, and he commenced actor in, the year 1744, making his first appearance in the arduous character of Othello.

It has been observed, with some truth, that most first appearances discover more of inclination than real genius. The case was, however, different with Mr. Barry, for he, like our celebrated Roscius, nearly gained the summit of perfection at his outset, and (if we credit the accounts of some of the best theatrical judges of that day) gave evident marks that he required nothing but stage practice to place him at the head of his profession, The summer of 1744 he played in Cork, and acquired fresh fame; and here {45} it was first suggested to him, by his chief patron, Dr. (afterwards Sir) Edward Barry, to visit England, as the soil most congenial to great abilities and superior talent. However, prior to his making this attempt, he returned to Dublin, and joined the company of that year, which stands remarkable in the annals of Irish theatricals, for the finest collection of excellence that ever was known at any one period. Our readers will best judge of this themselves, when they are informed, that the imperishable names of Garrick, Barry, Sheridan, Quin, Woffington, and Cibber, stood first upon the list; and that there was scarce a play that these performers did not change parts, in a praise-worthy contention for rival powers. The public, it is to be regretted, paid a dear price for this mental luxury, as the constant and excessive fulness of the house brought on innumerable colds and fevers, besides dislocations and other odd kind of accidents in abundance, which, terminating in the deaths of many individuals, the saying became common, that Miss - - died of a Quin fever, but Mr. of a Barry fever.

In 1746, Mr. Barry arrived in England, and was engaged at Drury Lane, and, the next year the patent falling into the hands of Messrs. Garrick and Lacy, Mr. Barry took the lead as the principal performer of that house, and here it was that Mr. Garrick and he frequently appeared in the same characters, and divided the applause of admiring audiences; however, Barry, after a short period, feeling an inferiority arising from the joint power exerted against him as actor and manager, quitted Drury Lane, and headed the forces of Covent Garden. Here his gigantic powers had full play, and here he entered the lists of competition against a man, who, till now, had thrown all his competitors at an immeasurable distance. They played all their principal characters against each other with various success, Garrick being allowed to be the best Richard, and Barry the finest Othello; and remained opposing each other till the summer of 1758, when Barry, {46} in conjunction with Woodward of Covent Garden, undertook a journey to the sister kingdom, where they built two elegant and commodious theatres, one in Crow street, Dublin, and the other in Cork; and, as joint managers, exerted their respective abilities, assisted by a very respectable company, part of which they brought with them from England. Unfortunately, however, after giving their scheme a fair trial for some years, on account of the expenses of the building, the great salaries, the increase of performers, and the uncertainty of their nightly receipts, they both found, that far from benefiting themselves by the exchange, they had altered their situations lamentably for the worse. Woodward was the first to discover the error into which they had fallen; and he immediately made the best bargain he could with Barry, to be paid his share in annuities, and, bidding adieu to Ireland, rejoined the corps from which he had deserted; and in a very laughable prologue (which is still well remembered, and is to be found in print,) restored himself once more to the favour of the public.

Barry staid but a few seasons behind him, for, in 1766, both he and Mrs. Barry played at the Opera House in the Haymarket, under Mr. Foot’s management. Here it was Mrs. Barry* made her first appearance before a London {47}

*This lady, whose maiden name was Street, was a native of Bath, and the daughter of an eminent apothecary in that city, who, unwisely preferring temporary gratification to the future prospects of his family, gave into all the extravagant expenses of that fashionable place; so that, although his practice was extensive, it was always balanced by his expenditure. Mrs, Barry, from her childhood, amidst several promising qualifications, expressed a warm and decided preference for theatrical amusements; which, joined to a figure pleasingly feminine, great sweetness of temper, and the fashionable station she filled, made her, as she grew up, an object of general attachment, When she was arrived at the age of seventeen, she was particularly noticed by a young gentleman of large fortune, and the brother of a noble lord, who was then resident at Bath.. From seeing her. casually in the Rooms, he was struck with her manners, &c. and he contrived to drink tea with her at a third person’s house. Here her conversation established what her charms had begun; and, after a few visits to the house, he formally asked permission of the father to become {47}

audience. The character she chose was Desdemona, in which, though there is little for a performer to shew forth in, yet in this she shewed such judgment, tenderness, and

[Ftn., cont.] his son-in-law. So advantageous an offer was readily embraced by all parties: the parent was flattered with the idea of noble connections; and the daughter with being blessed with the object of her affections. Whilst things were in this train of maturation, an unexpected letter arrived, informing the lover of the death of an uncle in Town, which required his immediate attendance. He obeyed unwillingly (of course), after having pledged his adoration for his instant return; but the pernicious air of London (like the human touch to the sensitive leaf) soon dissipated his vows, and banished for ever from his memory all his protestations; whilst the amiable object of them, after waiting two months, in expectation of hearing from him, had nothing but sighs, tears, and painful recollections to comfort her. The chagrin she was thrown into on the ill-fated termination of this love adventure, so visibly impaired her health, that it was thought advisable, by her physicians, to go into the country. A near relation, in Yorkshire, made an offer of his house, which was accepted; and, as individuals sometimes rise from one extreme to another, she entered at first with fictitious gaiety into every species of amusement, till, by degrees, she caught the sprightliness of the place, and perfectly recovered her usual flow of spirits. Amongst the amusements of the county, the Yorkshire playhouse, which was only distant a few miles from where she resided, was not of course overlooked. There it was she first beheld Mr. Dancer, and married him shortly after at Bath; but, as her relations would not suffer her to indulge her theatrical passion in that city, she went, in the summer season, to Portsmouth. The following winter they went to York, where they solicited an engagement, and obtained it; and she became the favourite actress there until Sept. 1758, when they turned their thoughts towards Ireland. Messrs. Barry and Woodward having opened Crow street theatre, they readily got engagements on genteel salaries. Mrs. Dancer had played in York before several genteel audiences, and it was then thought by the best provincial judges, that she would one day become a great acquisition to the stage. Her first appearance in Dublin confirmed this opinion; and she every night proved she was in want of nothing but experience. There was a dancer on the Dublin stage, who, from the intimacy he had with our heroine and her husband, proposed taking an excursion into the country with the former and another lady for a few days, to which the husband consented. She had been away but the second day, when it was hinted to the husband by some malicious person, that they went off together; and he, believing it, instantly pursued them, and at a little village, about twenty miles from town, got intelligence that they were at the principal inn. Here he lost sight of his prudence, and, rushing into the house like a madman, demanded his wife; who, with the other lady and gentleman, were drinking. tea in the dining-room; and, {48}

expression, that Garrick, who was then in the pit, declared her an actress gifted with superior talent; and, as a proof that he was serious in his assertion, he very soon {49}

[Ftn., cont.] alarmed at his threats, threw herself for protection on the gentleman, who imprudently locked her up with himself in a bed-chamber adjoining. The husband assailed the door, and threatened destruction to the parties; whilst the other as resolutely defended the pass. However, the door was at length broke open; but, whether from beholding the partner of his heart in distress, or the fears of receiving the contents of a pistol which his antagonist held in opposition to his, he peaceably conducted her out of the room, placed her in a post-chaise, and drove to town. This anecdote (with a little embellishment) fed, for a while, half the Dublin tea-tables with scandal. All the caricature painters were at work; and every newspaper and magazine produced a fresh pun or epigram. On the night after her arrival in Dublin she played Sylvia, in the Recruiting Officer; where Melissa’s salutation to her, on her first appearance, is “Welcome to town, cousin Sylvia;” the house instantly caught the aptness of the allusion, and bestowed on it the applause usually given on those occasions. Soon after this event her husband died, and left her in the possession of every thing [sic] but money: she had youth, beauty, and great theatrical talent. Nor were the gallant world insensible of them, as she had many suitors in her train; all of whom she rejected, for the Irish Roscius (Mr. Barry) had secured her heart; and, like a second Stella, she drank the delicious poison ef love by the vehicle of tuition, From this period we find her rising to the very top of her profession. Her alliance to the manager secured her all the first-rate parts; and she likewise received so much instruction from him in private rehearsals, that, in a short time, she added all his tire to her own softness. In 1766 Mr. Barry, finding the Irish theatres not answer his expectations, rented them on advantageous terms to Mr. Mossop; and, with Mrs. Barry, arrived in London, where (as has been stated) she made her début in Desdemona, and afterwards performed the parts of Belvidera, Rutland, and Monimia, in tragedy; and Lady Townley, Beatrice, and Rosalind, in comedy. Her first appearance, after Mr. Barry’s death, was in Lady Randolph, when she spoke an occasional address, said to be written by Mr. Garrick; she likewise continued to maintain her former pre-eminence; and was supposed to have accumulated such a fortune as might have rendered her independent; but her improvident marriage with Mr. Crawford quickly dissipated her former savings. She performed soon after this event in Dublin; but frequently with such indifference, that she could only be said to have walked through her characters.

Her husband, in virtue of his conjugal office, became also acting proprietor and manager, not only of the lady but of the theatre, which last did not thrive under his auspices. His civil list was constantly in arrear; his ministers, from the first-rates down to the scene-shifters, murmured for {49}

after engaged Mr, Barry and herself at a very considerable salary, and by that act he shewed his wisdom and judgment, for she afterwards fulfilled his prediction to the very {49}

[Ftn., cont.] lack of salaries; his purveyors out of doors relinquished their contracts and withheld supplies. Retrenchment became the order of the day, and pervaded all departments; and, to mend matters, he struck out a system of œconomicks, in the banquetting scenes, never before heard of in the annals of mock-festivity. The stage-suppers were supplied, not by the cook and wine-merchant, but the property-man; the viands were composed of timber and pasteboard painted in character; and small beer and tinctured water substituted the cheering juice of the grape. The musicians deserted the orchestra; and, in short, the whole system of food and payment were rapidly hastening to a state of as “unreal mockery” as any of the fables of the tragic muse.

In this state of things an Opera was announced; the entertainments to conclude with the farce of “High Life below Stairs.” The harmonies of the first were entirely vocal, for the fiddlers and other minstrels refused to be instrumental to the entertainment of the night. In the farce, the supper scene was supplied from the pantry of the property-man; and all the wines of Philip the butler, “from humble Port to imperial Tokay,” were drawn from the pump or the beer-cask, My Lord Duke complained to Sir Harry, that the champagne and burgundy tasted confoundedly strong of the water; and the Baronet, in turn, deplored the hardness of the wooden pheasants, and the toughness of the pasteboard pies. In the mock minuet, between Sir Harry and Mrs. Kitty, the Baronet observed, “this was the first time he had the honour of dancing at a ball without music; but he would sing the air.”

The gods in the upper gallery took the hint, and called out to the stage company to retreat a little, and they would supply the music. This was done, and in a minute was commenced a concert woful and detrimental, to the great terror of the audience, and the discomfiture of the manager; for such a thunder-storm of benches, bottles, chandeliers, and other missiles, covered the stage, that the remainder of the afterpiece was adjourned sine die, and the theatre closed for several weeks,

On Mrs. Siddons engagement at the rival theatre, she was roused by emulation, and played Belvidera, Isabella, &c. against that lady. The critics, however, were divided in their opinions; in general the competition was thought very unequal, for Mrs, Siddons was then in the zenith, and Mrs. Crawford in the nadir of her powers. It is but justice to her memory to add, that she was universally acknowledged superior to her rival in the pathetic, and inferior to her in the terrific. Her last appearance in London was at Covent Garden theatre in 1797; but the unrelenting hand of time had destroyed those powers that fascinated so many audiences, and she quitted the stage for ever.

Her situation in the close of life, although retired, was by no means {50}

letter, by unquestionably establishing herself the first actress on the British stage.

In the Grecian Daughter they shone with unrivalled lustre, the feeble and affecting part of Evander being well adapted to the venerable figure and fine pathos of this declining great actor, and the filial piety and towering spirit of the Grecian daughter could not have been more happily displayed in all their force than by Mrs. Barry.

Many characters could be mentioned, in which they swayed, at pleasure, the feelings of their audience, and bade sighs and tears alternate rise and flow. Amongst others, Jaffer and Belvidera, in Venice Preserved; but {51}

{Ftn., cont.] obscure; as, since her return to London, she had resided in the house of a relative, a most amiable and respectable lady (her husband, a man eminent in the medical line), in Queen Street, Westminster, who rendered her every attention the nearest connection could have afforded. A few days previous to the last moments of this great actress, she requested her remains to be deposited near those of Mr. Barry, and in as private a manner as possible. Her last wish was strictly attended to, for, after being placed in a leaden coffin, they were conveyed to Westminster Abbey in a hearse decorated with all the mournful ornaments usual upon such occasions. A coach likewise attended, containing the clergyman, physician, apothecary, and her executor, the only surviving son of her brother, the late W. Street, Esq. of Bath.

Thus was obscured for ever one of the brightest planets in the theatric hemisphere; and thus died a woman who united talent with virtue, and the most shining abilities to the most extensive goodness of heart.
It would be a difficult task to mention any station in existence which presents so many strange vicissitudes as that of an actress, who frequently experiences in real life all the varieties of situation which her profession calls upon her to exhibit on the stage; and it often lamentably happens, that, at the close of her career, her woes are not fictitious. The youthful days of this individual were illumined by the sunshine of universal admiration. Lovely herself, both in face and figure, she could not fail to excite the love of others. A few years of professional exertion placed her on the pinnacle of theatric fame, both as a disciple of Thalia and Melpomene; and her bright bark was floating with the tide that “leadeth on to fortune,” when an unfortunate marriage blasted all her hopes, and clouded a prospect seemingly destined remain to bright [sic] for ever. -
It is, however, to be hoped that the judicious and candid, whilst contemplating with delight upon the pleasure her almost unrivalled talents have afforded them, will bury in oblivion those failings to which human nature is ever liable.{51}

none can be named with Essex and Rutland, in Jones’s play of the Earl of Essex; in the celebrated scene in which the ring is mentioned, they fairly “drowned the stage in tears.” And we have heard many a theatric veteran acknowledge, that although he had considered himself stage-hardened, and as immoveable as the bench that he sat upon, that he could not help shedding tears at this memorable scene.

Little remains now to be said of Mr. Barry, than that about the year 1774, he quitted Drury Lane for Covent Garden, and, on signing articles, precured a considerable addition to his income. But an hereditary gout (which occasionally attacked him from his earliest days) rendered his performances not only unfrequent but imperfect; yet it is but justice to the memory of this luminary of the histrionic art, to declare, that even in this exhausted state of his powers, bowed down with infirmity, and cramped with aches, like the great Marius sitting on the ruins of Carthage, he gave his audience an affecting picture of what he once was, His voice, which, to the last period of his theatric life, retained its melodious cadences, and his conception of the poet, being as bold and vigorous as heretofore.

He quitted this earthly stage at the age of fifty-seven, slain by his ancient enemy, the gout, on the 10th of January, 1777, at his house in Norfolk street in the Strand, and was interred privately in the cloisters of Westminster Abbey.

Barry was the easiest man in the world to live with as a companion and friend. He had a gift of pleasing in conversation beyond most men, owing more to the manner than the matter. To those who are conversant with the domestic management of actors, it will create no surprise to find that Barry did not confine himself within the limits of his income, which, from the first, was very considerable. One of his greatest pleasures consisted in giving splendid and sumptuous entertainments; and it is {52} recorded of him, that no man did the honours of the table with more gentlemanly ease and politeness.

Mr. Pelham, who was highly delighted with his style of acting, once invited himself to sup with him, but the profusion of elegant dishes, with the choicest and dearest wines which Barry provided for him, so displeased the statesman, that he never gave him another opportunity of exposing his want of judgment.

This gentleman, besides the splendour of his dramatic talents, possessed, in a very eminent degree, the fascinating powers of polite address and persuasive insinuation. At no period of its history could the Dublin stage boast so powerful a combination of talents as when under the direction of Mr. Barry: and although the salaries of the very best actors in that day bore no sort of comparison to that of very inferior talents in this, yet his receipts were frequently inadequate to his expenditures, and he was, in consequence of that and his style of living, constantly embarrassed. He had, of course, a crowded levy of importunate claimants; but no man ever possessed more eminently the power of soothing, that “horrible monster, hated of gods and men” - a pun. For though most of them were sent empty away, none departed with an aching heart; for he adorned his impunctualities with such witching politeness, and so many satisfactory reasons, and cherished hopes with such encouraging prospects, as reconciled disappointments, and silenced the most rude and determined importunacy. Numberless are the instances related of his management in this respect. One or two specimens may serve to illustrate his talents.

His stage tailor at Dublin had agreed, in order to secure to himself all the profits of his contract, to furnish materials as well as workmanship; but the manager, in process of time, had got so deeply into his books, as to expose him to much embarrassment from his own creditors. Unwilling to offend so good a customer, the man had worn out all patience in the humilities of civil request and pres{53}sing remonstrance. At last, he was determined to put on a bold face, and become quite gruff and sturdy in his demands. But the moment he came into the manager’s presence, his resolution failed him, for he was assailed by such powers of bows, and smiles, and kind inquiries after his family, such pressing invitations to sit in the handsomest chair, take a glass of wine, ern a family dinner, or spend a Sunday at the manager’s villa; and all that he intended to say, in urging his claim, was so completely anticipated by apologies and feasible excuses for non-payment, that he could not find courage to pronounce the object of his visit. And if he betrayed any symptoms of a disposition to reply or remonstrate, the discourse was so agreeably turned in an instant, that he could not venture to urge a disagreeable topic, and he retired under an escort of the manager in person to the stairs head. Descended to the hall, under a shower of kind expressions, was ushered to the door by a brace of liveried footmen, rung up for the very purpose.

On his return home from these visits, his wife, who was of the Xantippean school, failed not to lecture him severely, as a noodle and a ninny, who had not the courage to demand and insist upon his right as a man; asseverating, that “if she had the management of the affair, she would soon have the money, in spite of the manager’s palavering.” The husband acknowledged his weakness, and . said he should cheerfully resign the business to her care, but predicted, that, with all her fierceness, she would be conquered also.

The good lady chose a morning for her purpose; advanced against the manager, attired in all her finery, and armed with all her ferocity and eloquence, reached Barry’s hall door, where her presence was announced by a thundering sonata on the knocker. The footman, guessing the nature of her errand, and anticipating a storm, from the fury of her countenance, said his master was not at home. Just at this moment, however, the voice of Mr. {54} Barry was heard on the staircase, calling to one of his servants, and betrayed the official fib of the lacquey. “There,” said the sphynx, “I knew you were telling me a lie; he is at home, and I must see him directly;” and immediately ran up the stairs. Mr. Barry, who had seen her before, kenned, at a glance, the object of her mission, and met her at the stairs head, with a smile of ineffable kindness, welcomed her to his house, took her politely by both hands; led her into the drawing-room (frowning like a bear), made a thousand kind inquiries about her good, kind husband, and her dear little children; shewed her his pictures; consulted her judgment as to the likeness of his own portrait; lamented her fatigue in walking so far in so cold a morning; rang up his servants; ordered fresh coffee and chocolate; would hear no excuse, but insisted that she should take some refreshment, after so long a ramble. The table was spread with elegancies: preserved fruits, honey-combs, liqueurs, and cordials, courted her palate to fruition, and a large glass of excellent cherry brandy, pressed on her with persuasive kindness, banished from her countenance all the stern array of the morning, and attuned her heart to such kindness, that all debts were forgotten, and all demands rendered quite impossible. The lady, overwhelmed with politeness, was about to depart, but Mr. Barry could not suffer this in an ordinary way, nor leave his victory incomplete. He insisted on giving her a set-down at her house, in his own carriage. He backed his request with another small glass of cherrybrandy, to fortify her stomach against the cold air. The carriage was ordered, and, after a circuit of three miles through the principal streets of the metropolis, he set the lady down at her own door, with the kindest expressions of politeness and respect, and the highest opinion of his person and character.

The husband, who awaited with eagerness the return of his wife, drily asked, “Well, my dear, I suppose you have got the money?” But the lady, finding in her own {55} failure an ample excuse for the former weakness of her husband, fairly owned herself vanquished, and said that, it was impossible to offend so sweet a gentleman, by dunning him for money.

The other instance was in the case of an eminent mercer, named Grogan, to whom the manager owed a large sum for the finery of his tragedy queens and fashionable personages of the drama. He was admitted to be not only an accomplished miser, but one of the most persevering and inexorable duns in Europe. But his importunacy with the manager having failed in Dublin, he followed him to London, with no other purpose than to elicit the amount of his debt by the combined forces of entreaty and menace. Defeated in his first approaches by the usual influence of Barry’s urbanity, he rallied again, and, during the month he continued in London, renewed his attempts by a dozen advances to the charge, but with the like success. Mr. Barry’s irresistible politeness, the cordial suavity of his manners, his hospitable invitations to dinner, his solicitude to procure for his good friend tickets for admission to all the places of public amusement, and his positive determination to accommodate him on those occasions with the use of his own carriage and servants, rendered it quite impossible for Mr. Grogan even so much as once to mention the subject of his debt, and he returned to Dublin to tell the story of his utter defeat by so consummate a master in the science of finesse.

We intended here to have closed this article, but cannot resist the inclination of inserting the following well-written criticism, published in a pamphlet, entitled “Effusions to the Theatrical Memory of Mr. Barry.”

“Barry looked the lover better than any body; for he had the finest person, and smiles became him: nor did he act it worse than he looked it, for he had the greatest melody in his voice, and a most pleasing insinuation in his address. To excite pity by exhibitions of grief and affliction, is one of the most arduous tasks of a tragedian: Is it {56} not monstrous (says Hamlet) that this player here, should, in a fiction, in a dream of passion, so force his soul to his. conceit, that, from his workings all his visage warmed; tears in his eyes, distraction in his aspect, a broken voice, and his whole function suiting with forms to his conceit? These were Barry’s excellencies, and in these he stood unrivalled. His mien and countenance were so expressive of grief, that, before he spoke, we were disposed to pity; but then his broken throb so wrung our soul with grief, that we were obliged to relieve ourselves by tears*. In Macbeth, Barry was truly great, particularly in the dagger-scene: his pronunciation of the words, There’s no such thing, were inimitably fine; he spoke them as if he felt them; In his performance of Lear, he gave considerable marks of his judgment, by throwing a very strong and affecting cast of tenderness into his character: he never lost sight of the father; but in all his rage, even in the midst of his severest curses, you saw that his heart, heavily injured as he was, and provoked to the last excess of fury, still owned the offenders for his children. His figure was so happily disguised, that you lost the man in the actor, and had no other idea in his first appearance, than that of a very graceful, venerable, kingly, old man: but it was not in his person alone he supported the character; his whole action was ofa ein and the breaks in his voice, which were uncommonly beautiful, seemed the effect of real, not counterfeited sorrow.

“The advantage which he had from his person, the variety of his voice, and its particular aptitude to express the differing tones which sorrow, pity, or rage naturally produce, were of such service to him in this character, that he could not fail of pleasing; and his manner of playing Lear appeared perfectly consistent with the whole meaning of the poet. If any performer was ever born for one particular part, Barry was for Othello. There is a {57}

* Of this we have eminent instances in Essex, Jaffier [sic for Jaffeir], and Lear; and almost every character he played.

length of periods, and an extravagance of passion in this part, not to be found in any other for so many successive scenes, to which Barry appeared peculiarly suitable: with equal happiness he exhibited the hero, the lover, and the distracted husband. He rose, through all the passions, to the utmost extent of critical imagination, yet still appeared to leave an unexhausted fund of expression behind. .In the characters of Anthony, Varanes, and in every other, indeed, in which the lover is painted with the most forcible colouring, we shall not look upon his like again*

“I can hardly conceive that any performer of antiquity could have excelled the action of Barry in the part of Othello. The wonderful agony in which he appeared when he examined the circumstance of the handkerchief; the mixture of love that intruded upon his mind, upon the innocent answers which Desdemona makes, betrayed in his gesture a variety and vicissitude of passions sufficient to admonish any man to be afraid of his own heart, and strongly convince him, that by the admission of jealousy into it, he will stab it with the worst of daggers. Whoever reads in his closet this admirable scene, will find that he cannot, except he has as warm an imagination as Shakspeare [sic] himself, perceive any but dry, incoherent, and broken sentences; a reader who has seen Barry act it, observes, that there could not have been a word added; that longer speeches would have been unnatural, nay, impossible, in Othello’s situation.”

* The celebrated Tom Davies speaking, among other characters, of Barry’s Alexander, says, “The vanquisher of Asia never appeared to more advantage in representation, I believe, than in the person of Spranger Barry. He looked, moved, and acted the hero and the lover in a manner so superior and elevated that he charmed every audience that saw him, and gave new life and vigour to a play which had not been seen since the death of Delany. His address to his favourite queen was soft and elegant, and his love ardently passionate. In the scene with Clytus, in his rage he was terrible; and in his penitence and remorse excessive. In his last distracting agony, his delirious laugh was wild and frantic; and his dying groan affecting.” - Dramatic Miscellanies, vol. iii. {58}

Barry had a choice of religions; his father was a protestant, his mother a catholic, and her creed he adopted, as she had probably taken most pains to form his opinions; yet, although this early pre-disposition was confirmed by his own inquiries, for he had made himself by intense investigation, a profound polemic, he appears at one period to have vaccillated [sic], like most other young men, in his religious opinions, and had nearly enrolled himself among that illuminated class of philosophers who modestly deny every thing which they are unable to comprehend; Butler’s Analogy of Religion, put into his hands by Burke, rescued him from the gulph of infidelity; and it had been well if he had imbibed the moderation together with the conviction, which breathes through that admirable treatise; but enthusiastic in all things, he rushed from doubt to bigotry, which in after-life, was confirmed to such a pitch of inveteracy, that he was once heard to consign Pope to everlasting perdition, for the heterodox liberality of his Universal Prayer. At the age of two and twenty, Barry came to Dublin, and exhibited, at the Society of Arts in that capital, an historical picture which he had recently painted, on the subject of a tradition relative to the first arrival of St. Patrick in Ireland. This picture, it may be presumed, was sufficiently defective, but Achilles when brandishing the sword in petticoats, though not, perhaps, evincing all the masterly management, which he afterwards acquired on that instrument, still shewed himself Achilles; and Barry, in this his first appeal to the public, exhibited such proofs of the divinity within him, as induced Burke to take him under his immediate patronage. - His, however, was not that capricious patronage, which delights its vanity with having caught a genius, and discards it as soon as caught, to angle for others. Shortly afterwards, he brought Barry with him to England, provided him introductions

and employments, and in the ensuing year sent him to Rome. {60} Barry’s enthusiastic temper appears, as might have been expected, to have caught new ardour from the contact of congenial minds, during his short residence in London. The following extract from one of his letters during that period, to his friend Dr. Hugh, deserves to be inscribed in characters of adamant, for the edification of all students in all professions: “My hopes are grounded, in a most unwearied intense application; I every day centre more and more upon my art; I give myself totally to it, and, except honour and conscience, am determined to renounce every thing else.”

This power of intense application, Barry did certainly possess; but he was very deficient in another qualification, equally indispensable in the enterprises of genius, - he wanted that cool, abstracted magnaminity [sic], which, while it absorbs the man in his pursuits, secures his temper against petty interruptions, the clamours of enemies, the admonitions of friends, hints, sneers, prognostics, and the whole etcetera of insignificancies, which every man finds himself beset with, who starts forth from the multitude, and marks out for himself a career of ambition beyond their sympathy or comprehension. Barry found at Rome, a set of persons who, at that time at least, were as natural adjuncts to the circles of art, as butterflies and reptiles to a flower garden; wealthy simpletons who came to purchase taste and pictures, and needy knaves who were still more ready to sell those articles. With this latter class of persons, it is a professional maxim to deny merit to all living artists: Barry received this condemnation among the rest; but instead of refuting his calumniators by the silent energies of his pencil, he impoliticly engaged them with their own weapons, and became an infinite sufferer, in a warfare of dispute, sarcasm, and abuse. His friends, the Burkes, indeed, seem to have been suspicious, that Barry, even without the spur of provocation, had a pre-disposition to this species of contest, and Edmund Burke addressed to him at this time, a letter on the subject, which we subjoin, as {61} an invaluable admonition to all persons subjected to similar infirmities: -

“As to any reports concerning your conduct and behaviour, you may be very sure they could have no kind of influence here; for none of us are of such a make, as to trust to any one’s report, for the character of a person, whom we ourselves know. Until very lately, [ had never heard any thing of your proceedings from others; and when I did, it was much less than I had known from yourself, - that you had been upon ill terms with the artists and virtuosi in Rome, without much mention of cause or consequence. If you have improved these unfortunate quarrels to your advancement in your art, you have turned a very disagreeable circumstance to a very capital advantage. However you may have succeeded in this uncommon attempt, permit me to suggest to you, with that friendly liberty which you have always had the goodness to bear from me, that you cannot possibly have always the same success either with regard to your fortune or your reputation. Depend upon it, that you will find the same competitions, the same jealousies, the same arts and cabals, the emulations of interest and of fame, and the same agitations and passions here, that you have experienced in Italy; and if they have the same effect on your temper, they will have just the same effects on your interest, and be your merit what it will, you will never be employed to paint a picture. It will be the same at London as at Rome; and the same in Paris as in London; for the world is pretty nearly alike in all its parts; nay, though it would perhaps be a little inconvenient to me, I had a thousand times rather you should fix your residence in Rome than here, as I should not then have the mortification of seeing with my own eyes, a genius of the first rank, lost to the world, himself, and his friends, as I certainly must, if you do not assume a manner of acting and thinking here, totally different from what your letters from Rome have described to me. That you have had just subjects of indignation always, and of anger often, do no ways doubt; who can {62} live in the world, without some trial of his patience? But believe me, my dear Barry, that the arms with which the ill dispositions of the world are to be combated, and the qualities by which it is to be reconciled to us, and we reconciled to it, are moderation, gentleness, a little indulgence to others; and a great deal of distrust to ourselves, which are not qualities of a mean spirit, as some may possibly think them; but virtues of a great and noble kind, and such as dignify our nature, as much as they contribute to our repose and fortune; for nothing can be so unworthy of a well composed soul, as to pass away life in bickerings and litigations, in snarling and scuffling with every one about us. Again and again, dear Barry, we must be at peace with our species, if not for their sakes, yet very much for our own. Think what my feelings must be, from my unfeigned regard to you, and from my wishes that your talents might be of use, when I see what the inevitable consequences must be, of your persevering in what has hitherto been your course ever since I knew you, and which you will permit me to trace out to you before-hand. You will come here; you will observe what the artists are doing, and you will sometimes speak a disapprobation in plain words, and sometimes in a no less expressive silence. By degrees you will produce some of your own works. They will be variously criticised; you will defend them; you will abuse those that have attacked you; expostulations, discussions, letters, possibly challenges. will go forward; you will shun your brethren, they will shun you. In the mean time gentlemen will avoid your friendship, for fear of being engaged in your quarrels; you will fall into distresses, which will only aggravate your disposition for farther quarrels; you will be obliged for maintenance to do any thing for any body; your very talents will depart for want of hope and encouragement, and you will go out of the world fretted, disappointed, and ruined. Nothing but my real regard for you, could induce me to set these considerations in this light before you. Remember we are born to serve and to adorn our country, and not to contend {63}with our fellow-citizens, and that in particular your business is to paint and not to dispute.”

William Burke appears to have had less faith in the efficacy of advice, for after venturing a little on the same subject to Barry, he consolingly adds, he might as well have spared himself his labour, for if such was Barry’s nature, it would always remain so - the event proved him the better philosopher. Barry, however, when disengaged from these petty contentions, set in vehemently to his studies, and investigated the great works of ancient and modern art, with profound and indefatigable attention, In his modes of study, as in every thing else, he was peculiar; his drawings from the antique were made by means of a patent delineator, a mechanical process which saves all trouble to the eye and hand. Barry considered the spontaneous correctness of drawing, acquired by the habitual exercise of those organs, a thing of small comparative importance; but by minutely dividing and subdividing, enlarging and diminishing, the studies made by the above-named method, he sought to establish in his mind an abstract canon of proportion. - Barry, indeed, delighted in the idealities of his art, and shrunk from the grossness of executive excellence: nevertheless, he made some copies of Titian, which satisfied his ambition, on the subject of colour; and if he was mistaken in supposing that the copyings of Titian alone can make a colourist, without perpetual recurrence to nature, be by no means stands alone in that error. But of his ardour and success in the study of those masters, whose qualities were more congenial to his own, Raphael and Michael Angelo, his subsequent works furnish an illustrious evidence.

He remained in Rome five years, and was elected during that period, a member of the Clementine Academy at Bologna, on which occasion he painted as his picture of reception, Philoctetes in the island of Lemnos. He returned to England in 1770, destitute of all but art, yet elate in the consciousness of his talents and acquirements, and panting for an opportunity of executing some great public work, {64} which should serve at once as his own monument, and as a vindication of his country against the aspersions of metaphysical drivellers (Winckelman and others), who had asserted its utter incapacity for the historical branch of the fine arts: A design was however formed of decorating St. Paul’s Cathedral, with the works of our most eminent painters and sculptors, and Barry was to have been employed on the subject of, “The Jews rejecting Christ when Pilate entreats his release;” but the scheme was discouraged, and its probable success can now be only a subject of speculation.

The year after his return, he exhibited his picture of Adam and Eve, and in the year following, his Venus Anadyomene; this picture is unquestionably, in all that relates to form and character, an exquisite personification of female grace and beauty. In 1775, he published an Inquiry into the real and imaginary Obstructions to the Acquisition of Arts in England; this work is equally valuable for its research, its acuteness, and its patriotism; but Barry hastened to the practical proof, that neither fog nor frost can repress the aspirations of genius. He proposed to the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce, to paint gratuitously, a series of pictures, allegorically illustrating the culture and progress of human knowledge, which now decorate the great room of the Society; he persisted in this great work amidst poverty and privation*, and completed it in seven years. Whatever may be its deficiencies in colour and execution, it exhibits a mastery of design, a grasp of thought, and a sublimity of conception; with such an appropriation of those powers to the purposes of ethical utility, as secures to the Author a triple wreath of immortality as an artist, a philanthropist, and a philosopher. In a country like England, when an individual was found who had devoted himself to a protracted martyrdom, in an attempt to add the last gem to her diadem, to crown her pre-eminence in literature and {65}

* Subsisting the greater part of the time on bread and apples,

arms, with the honours of historic art, it might have been expected, that such an individual had some slight claim on her gratitude, and that from the plethoric superabundance of her wealth, she would have dropped a mite, which, however insignificant in itself, would have secured her enthusiastic champion from future indigence and embarrassment) Barry’s performance passed before the public vision, with as little observance as the last new pantomime, and was certainly less productive; the profits of the exhibition amounted to £500 to which 2001. were added by a vote of the Society, for whose rooms they had been painted, and this sum comprises nearly the whole produce of Barry’s professional career. Aman of more constitutional placidity than Barry, might havefelt irritated, that after having expended on a public work all the fruits of his study, and the energies of his youth, his labours had left him no chance of independence, unless that independence should be purchased by a sacrifice of all the comforts and conveniences of life. We regret to add what truth extorts from us, that Barry’s natural irritability seems to have increased from) this period, even to a degree of exasperation; and that his powers of mind, at least in what relates to the exercise of his art, seem to have sunk in a gradual declension. His picture of Pandora, which we gladly refrain from commenting on, is too explicit a proof of this last assertion; and his disputes with the Academy are as strong an evidenceof the former. He had been elected professor of painting in 1782, and almost from the period of his instalment, he had been engaged ina perpetual contest. with his fellow-academicians: these dissensions became at last so insufferable, that the council preferred against him a formal body of charges, and in a general assembly of the Academics, the offences of the professor were considered of such magnitude, that he was divested of his and expelled the Academy.

Soon after this event, the Earl of Buchan set on foot a subscription, which amounted to about £1000. with which {66} his friends purchased an annuity for his life; but his death prevented his reaping any benefit from this design. The manner of his death is thus related by his biographer: “On the evening of Thursday, Feb. 6, 1806; he was seized, as he entered the house where he usually dined, with the cold fit of a pleuritic fever, of so intense a degree, that all his faculties were suspended, and he unable to articulate or move. Some cordial was administered to him; and, on his coming a little to himself, he was taken in a coach to the door of his own house*, which, the keyhole being plugged with dirt and pebbles, as had. been often done before by the malice, or perhaps the roguery of boys in the neighbourhood, it was impossible to open, The night being dark, and he shivering under the progress of his disease, his friends thought it advisable to drive away, without loss of time, to the hospitable mansion of Mr. Bononni. By the kindness of that good family, a bed was procured in a neighbouring house, to which he was immediately conveyed. Here he desired to be left, and locked himself up, unfortunately, for forty hours, without the least, medical assistance. What took place in the mean time, he could give but little account of, as he represented himself to be delirious, and only recollected his being tortured with a burning pain in his side, and with difficulty of breathing. In this short time was the death-blow given, which, by the prompt and timely aid of copious bleedings, might have been averted; but, with this aid, such had been the re-action of the hot fit in succeeding the rigours, and. the violence of the inflammation on the pleura, that an effusion of lymph had taken place, as appeared afterwards upon dissection. In the afternoon of Saturday, Feb. 8, he rose and crawled forth to relate his complaint to the writer of this account. He was. pale, breathless, and tottering, as he entered the room, with a dull pain in his side, a cough, short and {67}

* A lithographic sketch of which, from an original drawing, we present the reader with.

[66 facing - unnum. page with plate; verso unnum.]

incessant, and a pulse quick and feeble. Succeeding remedies proved of little avail. With exacerbations and remissions of fever, he lingered to the 22nd of February, when he expired.” His remains, after lying in state in the great room of the Society of Arts, Adelphi, were interred in St. Paul’s Cathedral, with due solemnity, and the attendance of many of his friends and admirers, among whom was not one artist,

When we consider Barry’s style, in comparison with other works of art, it is difficult to assign it a specific place or degree. He is the proselyte of no particular master, the disciple of no particular school. That stamp of originality which marked every feature of his character, is strongly conspicuous in his works. His works, indeed, are but an amplification of his character, for he did not possess that protean faculty of genius which can assume the form and colour of the object it creates; that faculty by which Shakspeare [sic] identified himself with Falstaff, Hamlet, and Hotspur: Barry’s genius; in this particular, bore a nearer resemblance to that of Dante and Milton. The artist is perpetually present in his work; but this species of obstinate personality has an interest of its own, and is never insipid, though it wants the charm of versatility.

Barry, with the mind of a philosopher, had little of the feelings of a painter. He delighted to construct magnificent systems of ethics; and he employed his pencil to illustrate those systems, sometimes with as little reference to the natural and intrinsic capabilities of drt, ds? the herald painter, when arranging his quarterings, gives to the harmony of colours. The picture of “Final Retribution” is a sufficient evidence of this: that composition, in whatever relates to the philosophy of it, is undoubtedly admirable. Infinite judgment, and a most prolific invention, are displayed in the selection, association, and employment of its multitudinous groups; but, surely, nothing in painting was ever so utterly unpicturesque as {68} this work in its general effect. The picture is rather an index to the book of explanation, than the book to the picture; and the eye wanders in vain amidst a promiscuous throng of kings, quakers, legislators, and naked Indians, for a centre of interest and a point of unity. If it be objected that this defect was inherent in the subject, the inference is, that the subject ought not to have been chosen; but, even when such incongruities were no natural adjuncts, Barry sometimes went in search of them. He stopped at nothing in the shape of an illustration; and, in the picture of the “Triumph of the Thames,” considering music a necessary accompaniment on that occasion; he has thrown a musician in his wig into the water, who, luckily for himself, being an expert swimmer, is seen coquetting among the naiads.

Barry’s inadequacy, in the peculiar qualifications of a painter, is still more evident in his colouring and execution. His works at the Adelphi are stained designs rather than pictures. Ina work of such extent, the artist may, perhaps, be excused for a deficiency in some qualities which are indispensable in smaller performances; but, if the absence of tone and surface be permitted on the score of oitude, that extenuation cannot apply to the want of clear and characteristic colouring. . If the figures of Rubens are said to have fed on. roses, those of Barry may be pronounced to have battened on bricks. One frowsy red pervades his flesh tones, and, consequently, there is little or no complexional distinction of age, sex, or character; certainly, the eye is not offended by any glaring obtrusion of tints; and, so far, the pictures are in harmony. There can be no discord where there is no opposition.

We have particularised Barry’s defects without compunction, because, giving them their full force, he stands on an eminence which bids defiance to criticism. If Socrates had been a painter instead of a sculptor [sic], and had chosen to illustrate his doctrines by a graphical, rather {69} than a rhetorical exhibition, we may imagine that he would have selected such subjects, and have treated them precisely in the manner which Barry has done. Admitting some trifling derelictions, he was great in every part of his art which is abstractedly intellectual. The conception of the work on “Human Culture” could only have originated in a mind of gigantic order; nor is the general grandeur of the design more extraordinary than the skill with which so large a mass of components has been bent to the illustration of one particular idea. Nor is it to be inferred that he was deficient in all the essentials of manual performance: though not a great painter, he was certainly a great designer. He was scientifically acquainted with the human figure, and his drawing, if not always graceful, is invariably bold and energetic. In composition, whenever the subject was well chosen, he takes a still higher ground. The picture of “The Victors at Olympia,” (his finest production,) is at once, a personification of history, and the vision of a poet. It is a gorgeous assemblage of classical imagery; the whole seems inspired by one spirit, and that, the spirit of ancient Greece. In expression, though seldom intense, he was never inappropriate. The Angelic Guard in the “Final Retribution” may. be adduced as an instance of accurate discrimination in this particular. The countenance of the angel who holds the balance of good and evil is pregnant with divine intelligence; and his, who leans over the brink of Tartarus, commiserating the condemned, has always struck us as an image of exquisite pathos and beauty.

Barry’s deficiency in executive skill is more extraordinary, since he seems to have had a strong relish, and a keen perception of it, in the works of the old masters. Any one who should have formed an opinion of his pictures from a previous perusal of his writings, would expect to find in them all the refinements and delicacies of surface and of colour. But this disparity between the faculties of criticism and performance is not peculiar to Barry, and it {70} proves at least the fallacy of that theory which affirms “genius” to be the operation of “(a mind of large general powers accidentally directed to a particular pursuit,” - This was the hypothesis of Sir J. Reynolds, who likewise confuted it in his practice; for while in his discourses he spoke with comparative contempt of colouring, he made it in his practice the chief object. of his ambition; and who, though he lauded the style of Michael Angelo. with rapturous enthusiasm, yet never attempted a picture in that style. The fact is, the abstract reasonings of this great artist were borne down by the strong influence of his particular temperament, What accidental influence, or system of discipline could have given Rubens delicacy, or Rembrandt grace? could have made Hogarth an epic painter, or Barry a humorous one? - We do not. consider these observations irrelevant, because we think the hypothesis pernicious; nothing is more essential in all pursuits of taste and intellect than that the student should ascertain as speedily as possible, the exact direction of his powers - that he may not be led by a misconception of his own character to waste the energies of his application, in attempting to force a passage through regions which Apollo has barricaded against him.

There have been so many anecdotes told of Barry, all of which have been “highly authenticated,” that we almost despair of presenting the reader with one which he has not heard before. The following, however, has never been given, to the public in all the detail its merits, deserve, and is moreover so graphically characteristic, that. we could not answer its omission to our conscience.

He resided in a little house, in Little St. Martin’s Lane, with no companions but a venerable cat, and an old Irishwoman who served him in the capacity of factotum. He was too much of the stoic philosopher to be over solicitous in the articles of furniture, or the style of neatness; and his house-keeper was of a character little disposed to annoy {71} him, by the troublesome operations of domestic cleanliness. His time was chiefly spent in the company of a few excellent pictures, and a few choice books, chiefly histories, enveloped, like himself, in smoke and dust; his culinary operations were of a piece with the rest, and in his ardour for his favourite pursuits, so far was he from being a man who lived only to eat, that he scarcely ate to live.

Sauntering one day alone in St. James’s Park, he accidentally met Burke, who accosted him in a most kind and friendly manner; expressing much pleasure on seeing him, and gently chiding him for not having called to see him for so many years. Barry, with great freedom and cheerfulness, recognised their old acquaintance and friendship in earlier years; but he said it was a maxim with him whet atty of his old friends soared into regions so far above his sphere, seldom to trouble them with his visits or obsolete recollections; he considered therefore his old friend Burke, as now too great a man for intercourse with a groundling like himself.. Mr. Burke, rather hurt at this unmerited taunt, (for no man was less proud, more kind, or assumed so little on the score of rank and talents,) pressed Barry to a friendly visit at his house: but Barry insisted off precedence in the march of hospitality, and invited the statesman to come next day, and take with him a friendly beef-steak, at his house in Little St. Martin’s Lane; to which Mr. Burke agreed, and kept his appointment. When he rapped at the door, however, Dame Ursula who opened it, at first denied that her master was at home; but on Mr. Burke’s expressing some surprise and announcing his name, Barry overheard his voice, and ran down stairs in the usual triai of abstracted genius, utterly regardless of his personal appearance: his scanty grey hair, unconscious of the comb, sported in disordered ringlets round his head; a greasy green silk shade over his eyes, served as air auxiliary to a pair of horn-mounted spectacles, to strengthen his vision. His linen was none of the whitest, and a sort of roquelaure served the purposes of {72} a robe de chambre; but it was of the composite order, for it was neither jockey-coat, surtout, pelisse, nor tunic, but a mixture of all four; and the chronology of it might have puzzled. the Society of Antiquarians to develop. After a welcome greeting, he conducted his eloquent countryman to his dwelling-room on the first floor, which served him for kitchen, parlour, study, gallery, and painting room; but it was at that moment so befogged with smoke, as almost to suffocate its phthisicky owner, and was quite impervious to the rays of vision. Barry apologized; d——d the bungling chimney doctors; hoped the smoke would clear up, as soon as the fire burned bright; and was quite at a loss to account for “such an infernal smother,” until Mr. Burke, with some difficulty convinced him he was himself the cause: for, in order to remedy the errors of his chimney, he had removed the old stove grate from the fire-place into the centre of the room, where it was sustained by a large old dripping pan, by way of a platform, to save the carpet from ignition; and he had been occupied for half an hour with the bellows to cheer up the coals toa blaze. He was now prevailed on to assist his guest in removing the grate to its proper situation, and the windows being thrown open, the smoke soon vanished. He now proceeded to conduct his guest to see his pictures in certain apartments on the higher story, where many exquisite pieces without frames, stood edgewise on the floor, with their fronts to the walls, to guard them from injury; and by the aid of a sponge and water, their coats of dust were removed, and their beauties developed, much to the delight of the guest. - Having lectured con amore upon the history and merits of the paintings, his next object was to display to his guest the economy of his bed-room: the walls of this apartment, too, were occupied by frameless pictures, veiled in perennial dust, which was likewise sponged off, to develop their beauties, and display some first-rate gems of the art. In a sort of recess between the fire-place and the wall, stood a stump bedstead. {73} without curtains, and counterpaned by a rug, bearing all the vestiges of long and arduous service, and tinted only by the accumulated soil of half a century, which no scourer’s hand had ever prophaned., “That, Sir,” said the artist, “is my bed; I use no curtains, because they are unwholesome, and [ breathe more freely, and sleep as soundly as if, reposed on down, and snored under. velvet. - But there, my friend,” continued he, pointing to a broad shelf, fixed high above the bed, and fortified on three sides by the walls of the recess, “that is my chef-d’oeuvre. - Ecod [ have outdone them at last.” - ‘“Out-done whom?” said Mr. Burke. - “The rats, the d--d rats, my dear friend,” replied Barry, rubbing his palms in ecstacy, “they beat me out of every other security in the house - could not keep any thing for them, in cupboard or closet; they devoured my cold meat, and bread and cheese, and bacon: but there they. are now, you see, all safe and snug, in defiance of all the rats in the parish.” Mr. Burke could not do less than highly commend his invention, and congratulate him on its success. They now descended to the first room; Barry, whose only clock was his stomach, felt it was his dinner hour, but totally forgot his invitation, until Mr. Burke reminded him of it: “Ods-oh! my dear friend,” said he, “I beg your pardon: so I did invite you, and it totally escaped my memory: but if you will sit down here and blow the fire, I’ll step out and get a charming beef-steak in a minute.” Mr. Burke took the bellows to cheer up the fire - and Barry his departure to cater for the banquet. And shortly after, he returned with a comely beef-steak, enveloped in cabbage leaves, crammed into one pocket; the other was filled with potatoes; under each arm was 2 bottle of port, procured at Slaughter’s coffee-house; and in each hand a French brick. An antique gridiron was placed on the fire, and Mr. Burke performed the office of cook; while Barry as butler, set the table, which he covered with a table cloth, perfectly geographical; for the stains of former soups and gravies had given it the {74} appearance of a Map of the World. The knives and forks were veterans brigaded from different sets, for no two of them wore the same uniform, in blades, handles, or shapes. Dame Ursula cooked the potatoes in Tipperarian perfection, and by five o’clock, the hungry friends sat down like Eneas and Achates to make a hearty meal: after having dispatched the pinguem ferinam,” they whiled away the time till nine o’clock, over their two flaggons “veteris Bacchi,” -

“And jok’d, and laugh’d, and talk’d of former times.”

Mr. Burke has often been heard to declare, that this was one of the most amusing and delightful days of his whole life.

An eminent Jesuit, was born in Dublin, in 1564. The Bathes were formerly of considerable eminence in the ~ counties of Dublin and Meath, but by extravagance, misfortunes, and injudicious intermeddling in civil dissensions, they were so reduced that no branch of any note remains in the country. The parents of William Bathe were citizens of Dublin, and of the protestant religion: but not feeling a very anxious regard as to the religious principles of their son, they put him under the tuition of a zealous catholic schoolmaster, through whose early instruction his mind was imbued with such a predilection for that persuasion, as fitted him for the course of life he afterwards embraced. From Dublin he removed to Oxford, where he studied several years; but the historian of that university, Anthony Wood, was unable to discover at what college or hall he sojourned, or whether he took any university degree. Afterwards, being weary of the heresy professed in England (as he usually called it) he went abroad; and, in 1596, was initiated into the society of the Jesuits. After remaining some time in Flanders, he was sent to Padua, in Italy; and from thence to Spain, where he presided over the Irish seminary at Salamanca, {75} “ad formationem spirites.” He is said to have been actuated by a very strong zeal for the propagation of the catholic faith, and to have been much esteemed for the integrity of his life; but it is on record, that his natural temper was gloomy, and far from sociable. In 1614 he took a journey to Madrid to transact some business on account of his order, and died in that city, and was buried in the Jesuit’s convent. He had a high character for learning; and one of his works proves him entitled to it - ”Janua Linguarum, ceu Modus maxime accommodatus quo parebit aditus ad omnes Linguas. intelligendas,” Salamanca, 1611. It was published by the care of the Irish fathers of the Jesuits at Salamanca, and became a standard book for the instruction of youth. He also wrote, in Spanish, “A Preparation for the administering of the Sacrament with greater Facility, and Fruit of Repentance, than hath been already done,” Milan, 1604. It was published by Joseph Creswell, under the name of Peter Maurique. He wrote in English and Latin, and published, but without his name, “A Methodical Institution concerning the chief Mysteries of the Christian Religion.” He published another religious work, “A Method for the performing of general Confession.”

In his youth, at Oxford, he was much delighted with the study of music; on which he wrote a treatise. It was entitled “A Brief Introduction to the True Art of Music, wherein are set down exact and easy Rules, with arguments and their solution, for such as seek to know the reason of the truth,” London, 1584, 4to.

A MAN endowed with both learning and courage, and celebrated for his vindication of the catholics of Ireland, from the aspersions cast upon them by the historians of the great rebellion, was descended from an old English family long settled in Ireland; and was born at Belingstown, in the barony of Balrothe, in the county of Dublin, in 1613. He was the son of Sir Henry Beling, Knight, and received the early part of his education at a grammar-school in the city of Dublin, but afterwards was put under the tuition of some priests of the popish persuasion, who sedulously cultivated his natural talents, and taught him to write Latin in a fluent and elegant style. Thus grounded in the polite parts of literature, his father transplanted him to Lincoln’s inn, where he pursued his studies for several years, and returned home a “very accomplished gentleman;” but it does not appear that he ever made the law a profession, His natural inclination being warlike, he early engaged in the rebellion of 1641; and, although he had not attained his twenty-ninth year, was then an officer of considerable rank, as, in the February of the same year, he appeared at the head of a strong body of the Irish before Lismore, and summoned the castle to surrender; but the Lord Broghill, who commanded it, having a body of a hundred new raised forces, and another party coming to his relief, Beling thought it prudent to retire, and quitted the siege.

He afterwards became a leading member in the supreme council of the confederated Roman catholics at Kilkenny; to which he was principal secretary, and was sent embassador to the pope and other Italian princes, in 1645, to beg assistance for the support of their cause. He, unluckily, brought back with him a fatal present in the person of the nuncio, John Baptist Rinencini [sic for Rinuccini], Archbishop and Prince of Fermo, who was the occasion of reviving {77} the distinctions between the old Irish of blood and the old English of Irish birth, which divided that party into factions, prevented all peace with the Marquis of Ormond, and finally ruined the country he was sent to save. When Mr. Beling had fathomed the mischievous schemes of the nuncio and his party, and perceived that they had other views than merely to obtain toleration for the free exercise of their religion, nobody was more zealous than he in opposing their measures, in promoting the peace then in agitation, and submitting to the king’s authority, which he did with so much sincerity, that) he became very acceptable to the Marquis of Ormond, who entrusted him with many negociations both before and after the Restoration, all of which he executed with great fidelity. In 1647 he was commissioned to transact the negotiation for the junction of the Irish army with that of the Marquis of Ormond, before the surrender of Dublin to the parliament; and, after the Restoration, the Marquis, then created Duke of Ormond, employed him three several times to endeavour to prevail on the synod of the catholic clergy assembled, by connivance, at Dublin, in 1666, to sign a remonstrance of their loyalty, which he had himself subscribed in 1662. These negotiations, however, were entirely fruitless, the synod abruptly breaking off before any business was concluded.

When the parliament army had vanquished the royalists, Mr. Beling withdrew to France, where he continued several years; during which period he employed himself in composing several works in Latin, in opposition to such writings of the Romish party as had been written to clear them from being the instruments of the rebellion, and to lay the blame thereof on the severity of the English government. His account of the transactions of Ireland, during the period of the rebellion, is esteemed, by judicious readers, more worthy of credit than any written by the Romish party, and yet he is not free from a partiality to the cause he at, first embarked in. {78}

He returned home upon the Restoration, and was repossessed of his estate by the favour and interest of the Duke of Ormond. He died in Dublin, in September 1677; and was buried in the church-yard of Malahidert, about five miles from that city, where there is a tomb erected to his memory, but without any inscription that is apparent or legible.

During his retirement in France, he wrote, in Latin, in two books, “Vindiciarum Catholicorum Hibernæ,” under the name of Philopater Irenæus. The first of which gives a pretty accurate history of Irish affairs, from 1641 to 1649; and the second is a confutation of an epistle written by Paul King, a Franciscan friar and a nunciotist, in defence of the Irish rebellion. This book of Mr. Beling’s being answered by John Ponce, a Franciscan friar also, and a most implacable enemy to the protestants of Ireland, in a tract entitled, “Belingi Vindicæ eversæ,” our author made a reply, which he published under the title of “Annotationes in Johannes Poncii Librum; cui titulus, Vindiciæ Eversæ: accesserunt Belingi Vindiciæ,” Parisiis, 1654, 8vo. He wrote also a vindication of himself against Nicholas French, titular bishop of Ferns, under the title of “Innocentiæ suæ impetitæ per Reverendissimum Fernensem vindicæ, Paris, 1652, 12mo. dedicated to the clergy of Ireland; and is reported to have written a poem, called “‘The Eighth Day,’ which has escaped our searches. When a student, however, at Lincoln’s inn, he wrote and added a sixth book to Sir Philip Sidney’s Arcadia, which was printed with that romance, London, 1633, folio, with only the initials of his name.

Is a name of which Ireland may justly boast, both for the brilliancy of his genius and his extensive stores of knowledge; but still more for the warmth of his benevolent {79} heart, which he manifested by a life honourable to himself and highly useful to mankind. He was born March I2, 1684, at Kilcrin, near Thomastown, in the county of Kilkenny. His father, William Berkeley of Thomastown, was the son of a loyal, adherent of Charles I who, after the Restoration, in 1660, went over to Ireland, and was made collector at Belfast.

George Berkeley received the elements of his education at the school of Kilkenny, under Dr. Hinton, where: he gave early proofs of his industry and capacity, and made such extraordinary progress, that, at the age of fifteen, he was found qualified to be admitted pensioner of Trinity College, Dublin, under Dr. Hall. In that learned society he acquired distinction; and, after a most rigorous examination, which he went through with great credit, he was elected to a fellowship of the college, June the 9th, 1707, when a few days older than twenty years.

He did not now relax into indolence, and sit down quietly to enjoy learned) ease, but proved to the world his intention to increase his own knowledge, and to communicate the fruits of his industry to others. His first publication was “Arithmetica absque Algebra aut Euclide, demonstrata.” It proves the solid foundation of mathematical knowledge which he had laid in his mind. It appears from the preface to have been written before he was twenty years of age, though it did not appear till 1707. It is dedicated to Mr. Palliser, son to the Archbishop of Cashel; and is followed by a mathematical miscellany, containing observations and theorems, inscribed to his pupil, Mr. Samuel Molineux, whose father was the friend and correspondent of Mr. Locke. This work is so far curious, as it shews the early vigour of his mind, his genius for the mathematics, and his attachment to those more subtle and metaphysical studies, in which he was peculiarly qualified to shine.

In 1709 came forth the Theory of Vision;” a work which does infinite credit to his sagacity, being, as Dr. Reid observes, the first attempt that ever was made to distinguish the immediate-and natural objects of sight, from the conclusions which we have been accustomed from our infancy to draw from them. . He draws a boundary between the senses of sight and touch; and he shews clearly, that the connection which we form in our minds between sight and touch, is the effect of habit; insomuch that a person born blind, and suddenly made to see, would be unable at first to foretel [sic] how the objects of sight would affect the sense of touch, or, indeed, whether: they were tangible or not; and, until experience had taught him, he would not from sight receive any idea of distance, or of external space, but would imagine all objects to be in his eye, or rather in his mind. These, and other interesting positions, have since been completely! verified by actual experiment, as may be seen more particularly in the case of a young man born blind, who, at the age of fourteen, was couched by Mr. Cheselden, in 1728, and received his sight.. An account of his sensations and ideas is given in Cheselden’s Anatomy; and has been considered sufficiently interesting to be transcribed into the works of numerous writers on the science of the human mind. In 1733 he published a “Vindication of the Theory of Vision.” {80}

In 1710 appeared “The Principles of Human Knowledge;” and in 1713, “Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous.” But of these works we cannot speak with the same degree of praise: they are, indeed, one of the most astonishing proofs how far a strong and energetic mind may be carried away by the pursuit of an absurd and delusive theory. The object of both works is to prove, that the commonly received notions of the existence of matter are absolutely false; that there are no external objects, no world, or any thing in it; but that all things merely exist in the mind or ideas, and are nothing more than impressions produced there, by the immediate act of the Deity, according to certain rules termed laws of {81} nature; which the Supreme Being has been pleased to observe, and from which, in the ordinary course of nature, he does not deviate. In justice, to the author, it ought to be recollected, that he was then only twenty-seven years of age; that the science of metaphysics was then more imperfectly understood than at present; and that many theories and doctrines then offered to the world, though less singular, were as little capable of defence. Whatever sceptical inferences may have been drawn from these works, the good intentions of the writer are undoubted; and he intended them to oppose the opinions of sceptics and atheists: and he has attempted to inquire into the cause of error and difficulty in the sciences, with the grounds of scepticism, atheism, and irreligion, which cause and grounds he conceived to be the doctrines of the existence of matter.

He seems persuaded that men would never have, been led to believe in the existence of matter, if they had not fancied themselves invested with a. power of abstracting substance from the qualities. under which it is perceived; and hence he is led to combat an opinion entertained by. Locke, and by most metaphysicians since that time, of there being a power in the mind of abstracting general ideas. Other writers, of a sceptical principle, embracing Mr. Berkeley’s doctrines, and giving them a different tendency, have endeavoured to sap the foundations of natural and revealed religion. Mr. Hume says, that “these works form the best lessons of scepticism, which are to be found. either among the ancient or modern philosophers - Bayle himself not excepted. Dr. Beattie comments on the sceptical tendency of these doctrines; and adds, that if Berkeley’s argument be conclusive, it proves that to be false which every one must necessarily believe every moment of his life to be true, and that to be true, which no -man since the foundation of the world was ever capable of believing for a single moment. Berkeley’s doctrine attacks the most incontestible [sic] dictates of common sense {82} and pretends to demonstrate, that the clearest principles of human conviction, and those which have determined the judgment of men in all ages, and by which the judgment of all reasonable men must be determined, are certainly fallacious. It may, after all, be safely asserted, that Berkeley’s errors were such that none but a man of the most vigorous and independent mind could have fallen into; that they demonstrate strong original powers; that they have done no harm in society; - but, on the contrary, by the discussion which they excited, tended to enlarge the boundaries of human knowledge.

In 1712, by the perusal of Locke’s two treatises on Government, Berkeley’s attention was directed to the doctrine of passive obedience; and conceiving the opposite opinion was at the time too prevalent, he preached three sermons on the subject in the college chapel, which he committed to the press. This at a future period was likely to be injurious to his interests, as it caused him to be considered a Jacobite, and hostile to the principles which drove out the Stuarts, and brought the house of Hanover to the throne. His friend and pupil, Mr. Molineux, who had been secretary to the Prince of Wales, afterwards George II took care to remove that impression, and was the means of making him known to Queen Caroline. In 1718 he published a defence of his System of Immaterialism. His amiable manners, his highly respectable private character, and the acuteness of his talents, established his reputation, and made his company sought even by those who opposed his metaphysical speculations. Two men of the most opposite political sentiments introduced him to the society of the learned and the great, Sir Richard Steele and Dr. Swift. He lived on terms of strict intimacy and friendship with Pope, during the remainder of that poet’s life. He wrote several papers for Steele in the Guardian, and, it is said, had from him a guinea and a dinner for each. Dean Swift recommended him to Lord Berkeley; and procured for him the appoint{83}ment of chaplain and secretary to the famous Earl of. Peterborough, who was sent out embassador to the king of Sicily, and the Italian States in 1713, On his return to England in August 1714, he found his former friends, the ministers of Queen Anne, now in disgrace; and men of opposite principles forming the administration of George I. All hopes of preferment were therefore at an end; and he therefore willingly embraced the offer of accompanying Mr. Ashe, the son of the Bishop of Clogher, in a tour through Europe. Soon after his return to England in 1714 he had a dangerous fever, which gave occasion to Dr. Arbuthnot to indulge little pleasantry on Berkeley’s system: “Poor philosopher Berkeley,” says he to his friend Swift, “has now the idea of health, which was very hard to produce in him; for he had an idea of a strange fever on him so strong, that is was very hard to destroy it by introducing a contrary one.”

Mr. Berkeley spent altogether four years on his tour, and besides performing what is called the grand tour, he visited countries less frequented. He stopped some time on his way to Paris, and availed himself of the leisure he had there, to pay a visit to his rival in metaphysical speculations, the celebrated Père Malebranche. He found this ingenious father in the cell of his own convent, cooking in a pipkin a medicine for a disorder with which he was troubled - an inflammation on the lungs. The conversation turning on our author’s system, of which the French philosopher had received an account from a translation which had lately been published, a discussion took place between them, of which the result was fatal to Père Malebranche. In the course of the debate, he became heated; raised his voice to an unnatural elevation, and gave in to that violent gesticulation and impetuosity, so natural to Frenchmen; the consequence of which was, an increase of his disorder, which carried him off in a few days.

From Apulia Mr. Berkeley wrote an account of the {84} Tarantula to Dr. Freind, such as was there usually told to strangers, but which more accurate investigation has since discovered to contain much of imposition and exaggeration. He passed through Calabria to Sicily, which latter country he examined with so much attention as to collect materials for a new natural history of it; but which were unfortunately lost in his voyage to Naples. The loss the world has sustained by this accident may be estimated from the interesting description of the island of Inarime, now called Ischia, in a letter to Pope, dated 22nd October, 1771, published in Pope’s works; and from another letter from Naples, addressed to Dr. Arbuthnot, giving an account of an eruption of Mount Vesuvius. On his way homeward, as he stopped at Lyons, he drew up a curious tract, “De Motu,” which was inserted in the Memoirs of the Royal Academy of Sciences at Paris, which had proposed the subject, and which he afterwards printed on his arrival in London in 1721. The nation was at this time in great agitation and distress from the failure of the famous South Sea scheme, which induced him to publish in the same year “An Essay towards preventing the Ruin of Great Britain.”

He now found access to the best company in the metropolis. By Mr. Pope he was introduced to Lord Burlington, and by his lordship recommended to the Duke of Grafton, who being lord-lieutenant of Ireland, took him over in 1721 as one of his chaplains, and in November the same year he had both the degrees of bachelor and doctor in divinity conferred upon him, A writer in the Gentleman’s Magazine, in 1776, however, denies that he ever went to Ireland as chaplain to any lord-lieutenant, and asserts that his degree of D. D. was given by his college, in 1717, when he was in Italy. In 1722 he had a very unexpected increase of fortune from Mrs, Vanhomrigh, the celebrated Vanessa, to whom he had been introduced by Swift. This lady, who had so long entertained a romantic passion for the Dean, and had intended {85} making him her heir, finding herself slighted, altered her intentions, and left about £8000 between her two executors, Dr. Berkeley and Mr. Marshal. In his life, in the Biographia Britannica, it. is said, that Swift had often taken him to dine at this lady’s house; but Mrs. Berkeley, his widow, asserts that he never dined there but once, and that by chance. In the discharge of his office as executor, Dr. Berkeley destroyed as much of Vanessa’s correspondence as he could find; not, as he declares, because he had found any thing criminal in her connection with the Dean, but because he had found in the lady’s letters a warmth and ardour of expression which might have been turned into ridicule, and which delicacy required him to conceal from the public. Her other executor did not act with equal tenderness to her memory, and published the “Cadenus and Vanessa” - which Dr. Delany asserts proved fatal to Swift’s other lady, Stella.

In 1717 he had been elected senior fellow of his college, and on 18th May, 1724, he resigned this preferment, being appointed to the deanery of Derry, with about 11004. a year.

He was now about to enter on a new scene of life, in which sabe ll aig) as the benevolent, disinterested philanthropist, and warm supporter of Christianity, in a manner in which he has seldom been equalled. He had turned his attention to the miserable condition of the native Indians on the vast continent of North America, and felt anxious to promote their civilization, and advance their temporal and spiritual benefits. The most likely means which appeared to the Dean, was to erect a college for the education of young men, who might afterwards be employed as missionaries. He accordingly published in 1725 “A Proposal for converting the Savage Americans to Christianity, by a College to be erected in the Summer Islands, otherwise called the Isles of Bermuda.” - With so much zeal did he enter into this plan, that he actually offered to resign all his own church preferments, and {86} devote the remainder of his life in directing the studies of the college, for only £100 a year. Such was the influence of his great example, that three junior fellows of Trinity College, Dublin, concurred with him in his design, and proposed to exchange for a settlement in the Atlantic Ocean, of only £40 a year, all their flattering, prospects in their own country. The proposal was enforced on the attention of the ministry, not merely by considerations of natural honour, and a regard to the interests of humanity and Christianity, but also by the immediate advantage, likely - to accrue from it to the government. Having by diligent research estimated the value of the lands in the Island of St. Christopher, in the West Indies, ceded to Great Britain by France at the treaty of Utrecht, he proposed to dispose of them for the public use, and thus to raise a sum of money, part of which was to be applied to the establishment of his college. The scheme was communicated by the Abbé Gualtieri, or Altieri, to his Majesty King George l., and by the royal command laid before the House of Commons, by the minister Sir Robert Walpole. A charter was granted by the King, for erecting the college, to-be called “St, Paul’s College, in Bermuda,” and which was to consist of a president and nine fellows, who were obliged to maintain and educate Indian children at the rate of £10 per annum each. The first president Dr. George Berkeley, and the three first fellows named in the charter, those already noticed of Trinity College, Dublin, were licensed to hold their preferments in these kingdoms, for a year and a half after their arrival in Bermuda. The Commons, in the year 1726, voted an address to his majesty, praying a grant of such a sum, to effect the above purpose, out of the land of St. Christopher’s already mentioned, as his majesty might think proper. The minister accordingly promised to advance £10,000 and considerable private subscriptions were made, to forward so pious a purpose. With such a fair prospect of completing his undertaking, Dr. Berkeley made preparations {87} for leaving the-kingdom, and married on the 1st of August, 1728, the daughter of John Foster, Esq., speaker of the Irish House of Commons; and he actually sailed in September following for Rhode Island, taking with him his wife, a single lady, and two gentlemen of fortune, and having a large sum of money, his own property, and a collection of books for the use of his intended college. Upon his arrival at Newport, in Rhode Island, he. contracted for the purchase of lands on the adjacent continent, entertaining a full expectation, that the money, according to the original grant, would be immediately paid. His hopes were, however, disappointed; the minister had never heartily embraced the project, and probably deemed it chimerical and unlikely to be attended with any benefit. The money was accordingly turned into another channel. After a variety of excuses, Dr. Berkeley was at last informed, in a letter from Bishop Gibson, who at that time presided over the diocese of London, in which the whole of the West Indies is included, that having waited on Sir Robert Walpole, and made application for the money, he had received the following honest answer, “If you put this question to me as a minister,” says Sir Robert, “I must and can assure you, that the money shall most undoubtedly be paid, as soon as suits with public convenience; but if you ask me as a friend, whether Dean Berkeley should continue in America, expecting the payment of £10,000, I advise him by all means to return to Europe, and to give up his present expectations.” The scheme was therefore necessarily abandoned. During the time of his residence in America, when he was not employed as an itinerant preacher, which was impossible in winter, be preached every Sunday at Newport, where was the nearest episcopal church, and to that church he gave an organ. When the season, and his health permitted, he visited the neighbouring continent, and penetrated far into the inte~ rior, having his mind constantly bent on forwarding the benevolent views with which he had crossed the Atlantic. {88}

The missionaries from the English Society, who resided within a hundred miles of Rhode Island, agreed among themselves to hold a sort of synod at Dr. Berkeley’s house, twice in a year, in order to enjoy the advantages of his advice and exhortations. Four of those meetings were accordingly held. He was uniformly anxious to impress upon the minds of the missionaries, the necessity and advantage of conciliating by all means the affections of their hearers, and persons of other religious persuasions. In his own example he exhibited, in a remarkable degree, the mildness and benevolence becoming a christian: and the sole bent of his mind seemed to be, to relieve distress and diffuse happiness to all around him. Before leaving America, he gave a farm of a hundred acres, which lay round his house, and his house itself, as a benefaction to Yale and Havard Colleges; and the value of that land, then not insignificant because cultivated, became afterwards very considerable. He also gave much of his own property to one of these colleges, and to several missionaries books to the value of £500. To the other college he gave a large collection of books, purchased by others, and trusted to his disposal. He took a reluctant leave of a country where the name of Berkeley was long revered, more than that of any other European. On his return to England, he restored all the private subscriptions which had been advanced, in furtherance of his plan.

In 1732 he published his “Minute Philosopher,” a work of great talent, and at once amusing and instructive. It consists of a series of dialogues, in the manner of Plato, in which he attacks with most complete success, the various systems of atheism, fatalism, and scepticism. He pursues the freethinker through the various characters of atheist, libertine, enthusiast, scorner, critic, metaphysician, fatalist, and sceptic, and shews ia a most agreeable and convincing manner the folly of his principles, and the injury they do to himself and society.

Of the company which at this time engaged in the philosophical conversations which were carried on in presence of {89} Queen Caroline, according to a practice which had commenced when she was Princess of Wales, some of the principal persons were Doctors Clarke, Hoadley, Berkeley, and Sherlock. The debates which occurred were chiefly conducted by Clarke and Berkeley, and Hoadley adhered to the former,and Sherlock to the latter.. Hoadley affected to consider the immaterial system of Berkeley, and his scheme of founding a college at Bermuda as satisfactory proofs of his being a visionary. Dr. Sherlock carried a copy of the “Minute Philosopher” to the Queen; and left it to her majesty to decide, if such a work could have been produced by a man of a disordered understanding. The Queen honoured Berkeley by admitting him to frequent visits, and took much pleasure in his conversation on subjects relating to America. That discerning princess had such a value for him, that on a vacancy in the deanery of Derry, he was nominated to it; but as Lord Burlington had neglected to give proper notice in time to the Duke of Dorset, then lord-lieutenant, and to obtain his concurrence, the Duke was offended, and the appointment was not urged any further. Her majesty, however, did not lose sight of Dr. Berkeley’s interests, and declared, that as he could not be made a “dean” in Ireland, he should be made a “‘ bishop;” and accordingly, on a vacancy in the see of Cloyne, in March 1733, he was promoted by letters patent to that bishopric, and consecrated at St. Paul’s Church, in Dublin, by Theophilus Archbishop of Cashel, and by the Bishops of Raphoe and Killaloe. His lordship attended diligently to the duties of his episcopal office; revived the useful office of rural dean, which had gone into disuse; visited frequently the different parishes, and confirmed in several parts of his see. He constantly resided at his manse-house at Cloyne, except one winter that he attended the business of parliament at Dublin. He-was anxious to promote the industry, and advance the prosperity of the remote part of the country from which he derived his revenues, and would purchase nothing for {90} his family but what was bought within his diocese. When Plutarch was asked why he resided in his native town, so obscure and small, he replied, “I stay lest it should grow less.” Bishop Berkeley was actuated by a similar feeling, which we could wish were strongly impressed on the breasts of every Irishman of rank and fortune, and that they would reside in their own country, encourage it by the expenditure of their fortune, improve the moral and peaceable habits of the people by their example, “be a terror to them that do evil, and a praise to them that do well.”

The active mind of Bishop Berkeley even in this retirement could not slumber: he continued his studies with unceasing application: and a circumstance which occurred amongst his friends engaged him in a controversy with the mathematicians. Mr. Addison had some years before given him an account of the behaviour of their common friend, Dr. Garth, in his last illness, which was equally distressing to both these advocates of revealed religion; for when Mr. Addison went to see the doctor, and began to talk to him seriously of another world; “Surely, Addison,” replied he, “I have good reason not to believe these trifles, sinee my friend Dr. Halley, who has dealt so much in demonstration, has assured me, that the doctrines of Christianity are incomprehensible, and the religion itself an imposture.” Bishop Berkeley therefore addressed to him, as to an infidel mathematician, a discourse entitled the “Analyst,” in order to shew that mysteries in faith were unjustly objected to by mathematicians, since they themselves admitted greater mysteries in their science, and even falsehoods, of which the bishop attempted to shew that the doctrine of fluxions furnished an example. Various papers were written on the subject of fluxions, and the chief answer to the bishop was by Philalethes Cantabrigiensis, generally supposed to have been Dr. Jurin, who published a treatise, called “Geometry no Friend to Infidelity,” 1734. In reply to this appeared {91}

“A Defence of Freethinking in Mathematics,” 1735; which drew from Philalethes a second work, “The Minute Mathematician; or, the Freethinker no Just Thinker,” Here this controversy ended, in which it is clear the bishop had the worst. Mathematical science is, however, highly obliged to him, as the dispute called into action the talents of Maclaurin, whose treatise on fluxions explains the doctrine with more fulness and precision, than ever it was before, or perhaps ever might have been, if no attack had been made upon it.

The interest which he felt in all that concerned the happiness of mankind, kept his mind in his retirement engaged on the events occurring in the world, and induced him to publish, in 1735, the “Querist,” and in 1736, “A Discourse addressed to Magistrates,” occasioned by the enormous licentiousness of the times; as also various smaller tracts.

In 1745, during the time of the rebellion in Scotland, he published a letter to the Roman catholics of his diocese; and, in 1749, another to the clergy of that persuasion in Ireland; which letter, from its candour, moderation, and good sense, had so striking an effect on the gentlemen to whom it was addressed, that they returned him their public thanks for the same in terms of the highest admiration of his christian charity, discernment, and patriotism.

The disinterested spirit of Bishop Berkeley would not allow him to look forward to any farther promotion in the church, after he was appointed to the diocese of Cloyne. He declared to Mrs. Berkeley, that his intention was never to change his see, because, as he afterwards confessed to the Archbishop of Tuam, and the late Earl of Shannon, he had very early in life got the world under his feet, and he hoped to trample on it to his last moments. He was much pressed by his friends to think of a translation; but he thought such a step wrong in a bishop: and it afforded {92} an opportunity to the world (which has not much faith in clerical disinterestedness) to suspect him of mercenary views. When the Earl of Chesterfield sought out Bishop Berkeley, and pressed him to accept the vacant bishopric of Clogher, of much higher annual value, and where he was told he might immediately receive fines to the amount of ten thousand pounds, he consulted Mrs. Berkeley, and with her full approbation declined the valuable offer, as well as that which had accompanied it, of any other see which might become vacant during Lord Chesterfield’s administration. The primacy was vacant before the expiration of that period, and he said, “I desire to add one more to the list of churchmen, who are evidently dead to ambition, and to avarice.” He had long before that time given a decisive proof of this exalted feeling; for when before his departure for America, Queen Carolin had tempted him with the offer of an English mitre, he assured her majesty in reply, that he chose rather to be president of St. Paul’s college in Bermuda, than primate of all England.

If indeed we may consider him as having any remarkable failing, it was a want of ambition, and too great a love of learned retirement, which prevented him from rising to a more eminent station, where he might have had more influence, and been of more service to mankind in the active duties of life. This induced him in 1752 to wish to retire to Oxford to superintend the education of his son: and having a clear sense of the impropriety of a bishop’s non-residence in his diocese, he endeavoured to obtain an exchange of his see for some canonry or headship at Oxford. Failing in this, he actually wrote over to the secretary of state, for permission to resign his bishopric, worth at that time about 1400/. per annum. - - So extraordinary a petition exciting the curiosity of his majesty, he made inquiry, who the man was who had presented it, and finding it was his old acquiantance, Dr. {93} Berkeley, declared he should die a bishop in spite of himself; but gave him full liberty to reside where he pleased. His last act before he left Cloyne, was to settle £200 from the revenues of his lands, to be distributed, yearly, until his return, amongst the poor housekeepers of Cloyne, Youghal, and Aghadda. In July 1752, he removed with his lady and family to Oxford, where he lived highly respected: and where he printed in the same year, all his smaller pieces in octavo.

He had been, ever since 1744, troubled with a nervous cholic, brought on by his sedentary course of life; but from which he experienced considerable relief from drinking tar-water. He wished, therefore, to impart to mankind a knowledge of this simple and useful medicine; and published a curious book, entitled “Siris; a Chain of Philosophical Reflections and Inquiries concerning the Virtues of Tar-water.” This work, he has been heard to declare, cost him more pains than any other in which he had ever been engaged. A second edition appeared in 1747, with additions and emendations; and in 1752, came out “Farther Thoughts on Tar-water.” He brought this medicine into extensive use, so that it became fashionable - to drink it; and many more virtues were ascribed to it than the good bishop had ever thought of - as, in the cure of many diseases, the concurrence of the mind has a wonderful and unknown mode of action; and many beneficial effects may arise from the use of a medicine which its physical properties have little effect in producing.

The bishop did not long survive his removal to Oxford, for, on the Sunday evening of January 14, 1753, as he was in the midst of his family, listening to the lesson on the burial service, which his lady was reading to him, he was seized with what was called a palsy of the heart, and instantly expired. This event was so sudden, that his joints were stiff, and his body cold, before it was observed; as he lay upon a couch, and seemed to be asleep, until his daughter, {94} presenting to him a cup of tea, first perceived his insensibility. Whoever leads a life like him, need be the less anxious at how short a warning it is taken from him!

His remains were interred at Christ Church, Oxford; where there is an elegant marble monument over him, with a Latin inscription by Dr. Markham, then head master of Westminster school, and late Archbishop of York. In this inscription he is said to have been born in 1679, and his age to be 73; whereas his brother, who furnished the particulars of his life, states the year of his birth to have been 1684, and his age consequently 69.

As to his person, he was handsome, with a countenance full of meaning and benevolence; he was possessed of great muscular strength, and of a robust constitution until he impaired it by his sedentary and too close application to his studies.
The almost enthusiastic energy of his character, which is displayed in his public works, was also apparent in his - private life and in his conversation: but notwithstanding this animation and spirit, his manners were invariably mild, unaffected, and engaging. At Cloyne he generally rose between three and four in the morning, and summoned his family to a lesson on the bass viol, from an Italian master whom he liberally kept for their instruction, though he himself did not possess an ear for music. - He spent the rest of the morning, and often a great part of the day in study. Few persons were ever held in higher estimation by those who knew his worth, than Bishop Berkeley. After Bishop Atterbury had been introduced to him, he lifted up his hands in astonishment, and said, “So much understanding, so much knowledge, so much innocence, and such humility, 1 did not think had been the portion of any but angels, till 1 saw this gentleman.” This testimony may well excuse the well-known line of his friend Mr. Pope, in which he ascribes

“To Berkeley every virtue under Heaven.” {95}

The opinion of the world, as to the literary and philosophical character of Bishop Berkeley, has long since been settled. In metaphysical speculation, in early youth his ardour led him to embrace, and to form theories more fanciful than just. Although he still retained his partiality for the study of Plato, yet towards the latter part of his life, he is said to have doubted the solidity and utility of his metaphysical studies, and turned his attention towards those of politics and medicines, as being of more practical advantage to mankind. Various learned men, and in particular Bishop Hoadley, have censured his works as corrupting the natural simplicity of Christianity, by blending it with the subtilty and obscurity of metaphysics: and Mr. Hume asserts, that “his writings are the best lessons of scepticism which are to be found, either among the ancient or modern philosophers - Bayle himself not excepted;” and that “all his arguments against sceptics as well as against atheists and freethinkers, though otherwise intended, are in reality merely sceptical, appears from this, that they admit of no answer, and produce no conviction.” This remark is not correct; and the utility of his “Minute Philosopher,” and several other works, is certainly very great. That his knowledge extended to the minutest objects, and included the arts and business of common life, is testified by Dr. Blackwell in his “Court of Augustus.” The industry of his research, and the acuteness of his observations, extended not only to the mechanic arts, but to the various departments of trade, agriculture, and navigations and that he possessed poetical talents in an eminent degree, if he had thought: proper to cultivate them, appears from his animated letters, which are published in the works of Mr. Pope, and also from several compositions in verse, particularly some beautiful stanzas, written on the prospect of realizing his benevolent scheme, relating to his college in Bermuda. The classical romance, entitled “The Adventures of Signor Gaudentio di Lucca,” has been {96} frequently attributed to him, but certainly was not his composition.

“The Works of George Berkeley, D.D. late Bishop of Cloyne, to which is added an account of his life, and several letters,” &c. were published in 2 vols. 4to. in 1784.

Was the second son of Francis, Lord of Athunry, in the kingdom of Ireland, being the twenty-first who held the rank of baron in descent from Pierce de Bermingham, summoned to parliament by the title already stated, in the reign of King Henry Il. His mother was: the Lady Mary Nugent, eldest daughter of Thomas, Earl of Westmeath. The year of his birth we have not been informed of, nor are we in possession of any particulars of the early part of his life.

Being bred to the sea service, he was appointed lieutenant of the Romney; from which he was afterwards removed to the Phoenix. In the beginning of the year 1745 he commanded the Falcon sloop of war; in which he captured, in the month of February, close in with Dunkirk, a French privateer, of eight guns, called the Union; as he did a-‘second, of the same force, in the month of March. On the 14th of May following, he was promoted to be captain of the Glasgow frigate. He died, according to Mr. Hardy’s account, on the 8th of May, 1746; but, in Lodge’s Irish Peerage, he is said to have been killed somewhat earlier, in an engagement with a French privateer. This assertion is in some degree explained by the following extract of a letter from Newcastle, dated. May the 18th, 1745.

“His majesty’s ship the Falcon, the honourable John Bermingham. commander, of.fourteen six-pounders, and about seventy men, fell in last Tuesday, off Flamborough {97}Head, with a French privateer of eighteen nine-pounders, six six-pounders, and about two hundred men. The Falcon fought her several glasses; but night coming on, they both lay to, and in the morning renewed the engagement; when the privateer, having lost a great many men, thought proper to sheer off. The Fox man-of-war, of twenty guns, soon after falling in with the Falcon, immediately gave chace [sic] to the privateer, who had not, got out of sight; so that we expect shortly to have a good account of her. The captain of the Falcon had his leg shot off above the knee in the engagement; but none of crew were killed, and only two hurt.”

The fact probably is, that he was promoted to the Glasgow immediately on his arrival in port, as a reward for his gallantry on the preceding occasion; but did not long survive the wounds he sustained on the event which caused his well-deserved advancement.

COUNTESS OF BANNON: Her ladyship was the only daughter of Richard Boyle, second Earl of Shannon, born January 12, 1768, and married, February 12, 1784, Francis Bernard, Earl of Bandon, by whom she had eleven children, of whom eight survive her. This lady’s excellent qualities threw a lustre on her high descent, and a peculiar brilliancy on her surrounding relatives, In the immediate neighbourhood of Castle Bernard, she will long be gratefully and affectionately remembered for her munificent charities. Her excellent understanding directed her to the most useful pursuits, and in the cultivation of botanical and agricultural knowledge, she was induced to forward many desirable undertakings, and aided most essentially many of the most useful establishments in Dublin, as well as the Cork Institution and Farming {98} Society in the neighbourhood. Her improvements. at Castle Bernard, conducted under her immediate direction, are sufficient, evidences of the correctness of her judgment; and, in the formation of her valuable library, she has left a monument of her taste, and a declaration of the pure principles of her heart. By her sole bounty she supported for many years a school for twenty-four young women, now united to the general school of Bandon, of which she was the patroness and foundress, and which is conducted on such an ample scale of liberality, as would do credit to any place in the United Kingdom. She “delivered the poor that cried, and the fatherless and him that had none to help him; she caused the widow’s heart to sing for joy, and the blessing of him that was ready to perish, came upon her.” She died in her 48th year. Her death appears to have been accelerated by the susceptible feelings of maternal tenderness, in the anxiety for the fate of a much-loved son, who fell in Portugal in the 24th year of his age. She expired before that event was confirmed, and the following inscription to her memory was engraved on a monument erected in the church of Ballymodan, in the county of Cork.

“Near this place are deposited the mortal remains of Harriett Catherine, Countess of Bandon, daughter of Richard, Earl of Shannon, and wife of Francis, Earl of Bandon, by whom this monument is erected. In her the dignified graces of superior life were, by a rare felicity of combination, united with the unremitting exercise of virtues truly christian. May her unaffected piety, conjugal affection, parental tenderness, and charity alive to every call of distress, prove as beneficial in their example as they have been lamented in their loss! She died at Castle Bernard, on the 7th of July, 1815, in the 48th year of her age.”

The same monument is also destined to record the memory of two of her sons, the Honourable Francis {99} Bernard, lieutenant of the 9th Light Dragoons, who died in Portugal, in the service of his country, the 24th of January, 1813, in the 24th year of his age; and the Honourable Henry; Boyle Bernard, cornet of the King’s Dragoon Guards, who gloriously fell in the battle of Waterloo, on the sth,, of June, 1815, in gis 18th year of his age.

A Dramatist of much ingenuity, was born in Dublin about the year, 1732. His father held the situation of groom porter in the Castle, which place was abolished during the lord-lieutenancy of Lord Chesterfield in 1745. The services of the father, however, were rewarded with a pension, and the son Isaac was made a page. After the departure of the Earl of Chesterfield, Bickerstaff gota commission in a marine corps, which it is said he left in disgrace, Notwithstanding, he continued to write for the stage for several years, when in all probability the charge was renewed by his enemies, which drove hiin at last into banishment. 2
He was known to be living in obscurity in London in 1811, but he is supposed to bane died towards the close of the year 1816.
Bickerstaff’s “Love in a Village,” and “Lionel and Clarissa,” aided by the delightful music of Doctor Arne, still keep possession of the stage; but the most popular of his productions is his alteration from the Nonjuror of Cibber, an imitation of the Tartuffe of Molière, entitled “The Hypocrite.” This comedy, from the admirable situations it affords for the actors, independent of the sarcastic humour that runs throughout it against the pretenders to religion, has been, and ever will be, a distinguished favourite with the public. As a song writer, Bickerstaff cannot be allowed to rank {100} very high; for although possessed of the art of jingling his lines . well together, yet they are always mawkish and insipid; and the following may fairly be instanced as a proof of that assertion, and a specimen of the author’s powers of versification:

“Oh! had I been by fate decreed
Some humble cottage swain,
In fair Rosetta’s sight to feed
My sheep upon the plain,
What bliss had I been born to taste,
Which now I ne’er must know;
Ye envious powers! why have ye plac’d
My fair one’s lot so low?”
LOVE IN A VILLAGE.

Far be it, however, from us to insinuate, that even Bickerstaff has been outdone in dramatic song-writing of late years; no, with the exception of those casual fits of good nature with which the managers are seized, (about as often as light occurs at the Poles,) and we are treated with one of the heart-cheering effusions of Burns or Moore; we have just as much affectation, stupidity, and sickly sensibility as heretofore.

Afterwards created Earl of Louth, made an important figure in Ireland in the time of Edward II. After the disastrous battle of Bannockburn, the Scots not only made many irruptions into England, committing terrible devastations, but also united with a party in Ireland, who chose for their king, Edward Bruce, brother of Robert, king of Scotland, and had: him crowned .at Knocknemelan, near Dunkald. Against these Sir John Birmingham was appointed general, and by his valour and military skill, put an end to the war, and to a civil faction, which, though too weak to hope for complete success, might yet have {101} for many years disturbed the peace and happiness of the kingdom. After the death of Edward Bruce, he again encountered the Scots, and defeated their army with a very great slaughter. In reward of his services, he was created Earl of Louth, and had lands bestowed upon him to support his rank. He afterwards suppressed various banditti, who, with the aid of the Scots, were harassing the kingdom. He manifested his regard for religion in the manner of that age, by founding the Franciscan Friary of Thetnay, in King’s County. He was afterwards murdered by a combination of families, who hated his virtues, and envied his honours and possessions.

It would be an act. of flagrant injustice, not only to the individual, but to posterity, to exclude the imperishable name of Black, from the trivial circumstance of Ireland not having been the spot of his birth: a chemist, the mere record of whose discoveries is sufficient to entitle him both to the admiration and esteem of all succeeding ages.

He was born in France on the banks of the Garonne*, in 1728. His father, Mr. John Black, was a native of Belfast, and descended from a Scotch family which had been settled there for many years. His connections with the wine trade induced him to reside at Bourdeaux, where he formed a matrimonial connection with a daughter of Mr. Robert Gordon, of the family of Halhead, in Aberdeenshire, who was also engaged in the same trade at that place. Mr. Black was a man of considerable information, which he communicated with so much candour and liberality, that his acquaintance and conversation were eagerly

* Walsh, however (in his History of Dublin) states, “that it is generally believed that Belfast was the place of his birth.” {102}

sought after by many of the first literary characters of the country! in which he had fixed his, abode. Among others who esteemed: him as a) friend and companion, may; be mentioned the-celebrated, president, Montesquieu, whose strong partiality for the laws and constitution of England, was owing, in a great measure, to the information derived from, this gentleman, and who, on Mr. Black’s retiring from trade to his native country, expressed the most friendly sentiments of regret for the loss he was about to sustain, in several letters which are still preserved by that gentleman’s family.

The earlier years of the life of Joseph Black, were passed at his father’s house at Bourdeaux, where he was attended by proper masters to instruct him in the rudiments of the usual branches of education. His father, however, desirous that he should be educated as a British subject, sent him at the age of twelve to Belfast, where he continued till 1746. Being now required to make choice of a profession, he preferred that of medicine, the studies connected with that science being most congenial to his disposition. In consequence of this determination, he was sent at the age of eighteen to the university of Glasgow, where he arrived and commenced his studies at the time that Dr. Cullen had just entered on his career as professor of chemistry. The gigantic powers of mind which that great man possessed; quickly became sensible of the low state in which chemical knowledge then existed; he felt conscious of his strength, and entered the lists with an ardour which raised the attention of the students at the university, and inspired them with a portion of that zeal for the improvement of the science with which himself was actuated.

Delighted with the study, which, under the auspices of this great man, was gradually rising to the rank of a liberal science; young Black attached himself with so much attention to the professor, that Cullen, who took great {103} pleasure in noticing and assisting the efforts of his pupils, took him: under his particular direction. Mr. Black was unwilling to trust to the reports of chemical. processes, until he had himself repeated them; the accuracy and dexterity: with which he performed his experiments, together with the:attachment of the professor, caused him to be regarded as Cullen’s assistant, in..which capacity he frequently acted, and his experiments at this early age were often referred to as good authority. His notebooks, which are: still preserved, point out the comprehensive plan of study which he had laid down for himself, and are particularly curious, as they exhibit the germs of his ideas, and their after-progress, until they ripened into those great discoveries which produced so complete a revolution in chemical science.

The action of lithontriptics on the human frame, at that time excited great attention, and the professors in the university of Edinburgh were much divided in their opinions on the subject. The pupils then engaged in their studies, of course warmly entered into the contest, and when Black left Glasgow to finish his medical education at Edinburgh, in 1750, the differences of opinion were at their height. The natural bent of his inclination engaged him in the controversy, and, during his residence at the house of his cousin-german, Mr. Russell, professor of natural philosophy in the university, he entered into a course of experiments to investigate the cause of causticity, a property in which all the lithontriptics then in-use, agreed. He at first adopted the doctrine of the older chemists, that lime, during the burning of it, absorbs something from the fire, which, entering into combination with it, renders caustic what was before mild and innocuous. This he attempted to separate, and collect from the caustic lime, but without effect; and, in the prosecution of his experiments, he found reason to conceive that causticity depended on the removal, rather than the addition, of some other substance. This suspicion took possession of {104} his mind in 1752, and he continued his observations till 1754, when he published “Dissertatio Inauguralis de Humore Acido a Cibis Orto et Magnesia Alba.” His observations and reasonings on the subject, were more fully developed in “Experiments upon Magnesia Alba, Quicklime, and some other Alkaline Substances,” which were read. before the Literary Society of Edinburgh, and afterwards. inserted in the second volume of the Essays Physical and sic published by that Society.

The experiments in this paper are althple; but ingeniously devised; it is concise, yet perspicuous; and the deductions are so just, that it is considered a most excellent model of composition, reasoning, and arrangement. The facts it develops are now so well known to everyone as forming one of the first elements of chemistry, that it would be unnecessary to detail them, were it not to exemplify the history of the science as far as it relates tothe discovery of that immense class of substances known by the name of gasses.

Magnesia had hitherto, been confounded with the other absorbent earths, being conceived to, be merely a modification of lime. The experiments of Dr. Black, proved, that it was distinct from that substance; and he then proceeded to investigate its affinity to acids.

In endeavouring to convert magnesia into quicklime by fire, he discovered that. a subtile [sic] part was extricated in the form of air, which had been imprisoned under a solid form. This accounted for the effervescence of magnesia, with acids before, but-not after, calcination. Calcined magnesia, by a very happily-conceived experiment, was discovered. to absorb from common. vegetable, alkali (potass) as much air as it had lost by exposure, to fire, thus the same air which was contained in magnesia, was detected in alkali, and in limestone unburnt. From these, discoveries the author acutely concluded, that, the cause, of the causticity of quicklime was the separation of the above air by fire from calcareous earth; and that lime {105} became mild calcareous earth by re-uniting with this air. This theory was demonstrated by plain and incontrovertible experiments; and it is not to be wondered at, that it should immediately supplant the then received hypothesis, that the causticity of lime depended on a union of igneous particles.

Lime being discovered to take this air from alkalies, and thereby render them caustic, the same beautiful theory of causticity was extended to these substances, and thus the true reason of alkalies being rendered caustic by lime was given. Lime was also observed to attract this air from magnesia.

This air was shewn to be different from the common atmospheric air; and he concluded that it was either a peculiar species of elastic fluid dispersed through the atmosphere, or an exceedingly subtle powder. This newly discovered substance he named fixed air; improperly, indeed, as he was himself aware, but the name was naturally enough applied to a substance which he looked upon as having been fixed in the substance of the bodies with which it was combined.

Such is a brief sketch of the luminous experiments of Dr. Black, by which were demonstrated the peculiar nature of magnesia; the existence of a new species of air, in mild alkalies, magnesia, and calcareous earth; the cause of the effervescence of these substances with acids; the cause of the loss of weight in these substances by acids or fire; that the causticity of alkalies and lime depended on the separation of this new air; and the relative affinities of this air to alkalies and earths.

Important as these facts were, considered merely as belonging to the substance discovered and investigated by Dr. Black, they were infinitely more so, on account of the new field they opened to the view of chemical philosophers, of substances of different species, ina gaseous form, of which they had no idea before; the opinion of Hales and others being, that aeriform matter was of the same species as {106} that of the atmosphere, under various modifications. These experiments, at the same time opened to the view of observers, the transition of elastic fluids to a concrete state, by uniting to different bodies, and the change from a solid to an elastic form on their extrication; and as these elastic fluids were probably of many species, it was begun to be considered that aeriform. bodies might possess affinities, and have as great a share in the composition of bodies as acids, alkalies, &c., of which, the first instances had been shewn by the above paper of Dr. Black.

This celebrated professor in his lectures, afterwards shewed that the inflammable air was totally different from fixed air; but never having published those experiments, he has never enjoyed the honour of the discovery of this elastic inflammable fluid.
The first offspring of these discoveries was Brownrigg’s experiments on the air of Pyrmont water, in which was shewn the existence of the fixed air discovered by Dr. Black. These were succeeded by the accurate and profound experiments of Mr. Cavendish on fixed and inflammable air, with an excellent description of the apparatus for chemical experiments on aeriform bodies. Dr. Priestley next extended the knowledge of pneumatic chemistry; and the investigation into this branch of chemical philosophy, soon after began in Sweden, Germany, and France. In this latter country, the knowledge resulting from the investigation of the properties of aeriform bodies, suggested the new system of chemistry, so sublimely simple in its theory; and the fountain from which it sprung was the above set of experiments by Dr. Black.

To return, however, from this digression, in which the pursuit of the history of the science has led us away from that of the individual. In 1755, Dr. Cullen was removed from the chemical chair at Glasgow, toa professorship at Edinburgh; and the abilities which Black had displayed in the assistance he had afforded to that great man, together with his recent and splendid discoveries, pointed him out {107} as the fittest person to succeed his former teacher. He. was therefore appointed professor of chemistry and anatomy, in the university of Glasgow. Early in the ensuing year; but not conceiving himself sufficiently qualified to undertake, public lectures on anatomy, he obtained the concurrence of the university to exchange that task with the professor of medicine. . His time was now devoted to delivering lectures on chemistry: and the institutes of medicine, and. his reputation as a professor increased every year. The situation he held, and the anxious attention he paid to his patients, have been adduced to account for the little progress he made in that) fine career of experimental investigation; which he had so auspiciously commenced, This inactivity must be much regretted as highly injurious to the science, and it displayed an indolence or carelessness. of reputation, not easily. to be justified.

He still, however, continued to pursue his chemical researches, though they were directed to a different object. He engaged. in a series of experiments relative to heat, which had, occupied, his attention at intervals, from the earliest period of his philosophical investigations. On this subject he prosecuted his inquiries with so much success, as to lay down some primary axioms, which he established beyond. the power of controversy to shake them, His account of his experiments and reasoning on this subject was comprised in a paper drawn up with his usual accuracy and) perspicuity, and which was. read, April 23, 1762, before a literary society, consisting of the members of the university, and such gentlemen as manifested a taste for philosophy and literature, and who met every Friday in the Faculty Room of the college. His discoveries in this department of science were perhaps the most important he ever made, and may be reckoned among the most valuable of the eighteenth century.

The experiments by which ’his opinions on this subject were established, were at once simple and decisive; but to enter into the subject at sufficient length to ensure per{108} spicuity would be improper. The axioms, however, which he established, were usually expressed by him in the following terms:

1. When a solid body is converted into a fluid, there enters into it, and unites with it, a quantity of heat, the presence of which is not indicated by the thermometer; and this combination is the cause of the fluidity which the body assumes. On the other hand, when a fluid body is converted into a solid, a quantity of heat separates from it, the presence of which was not formerly indicated by the thermometer; and this separation is the cause of the solid form the fluid assumes.
2. When a liquid body is raised to the boiling temperature by the continued and copious application of heat, its particles suddenly attract to themselves a great quantity of heat, and by this combination their mutual relation - is so changed, that they no longer attract each other, but are converted into an elastic fluid like air. On the other hand, when these elastic fluids, either by condensation or by the application of cold bodies, are re-converted into liquids, they give out a vast quantity of heat, the presence of which was not formerly indicated by the thermometer.

Thus water, when it assumes the solid form, or is converted into ice, gives out 140° of heat; and ice, in becoming water, absorbs 140° of heat. Thus again, water in being converted to steam, absorbs about 1000° of heat, without becoming sensibly hotter than 212°. The thermometer had long been considered by chemical philosophers as the only method of discovering the degree of heat in bodies; yet this instrument gives no indication of the presence of the 140° of heat which combine with ice to convert it into water, nor of the 1000° which combine with water when it is converted into steam. Dr. Black, therefore, said that the heat is concealed (latet) in the water and steam, and he briefly expressed this fact by applying to the heat, in this case, the term of latent heat. It may, however, be necessary to observe, that though {109} Dr. Black’s theory has been adopted by every modern chemist, yet great differences have existed with respect to the quantity of heat thus absorbed. This doctrine was immediately applied by its author to the explanation of a vast number of natural phenomena, and in his experimental investigations he was greatly assisted by his two celebrated pupils, Dr. Irvine and Mr. Watt; the latter of these gentlemen afterwards adding great improvements to the steam-engine of Bolton, from the circumstance of his understanding so well the theory of that powerful agent.

This theory was explained in his lectures every year to a vast concourse of students from all parts of Europe; yet the criminal negligence of the author in not favouring the world with a printed account of his discovery, has caused the credit of it to be assigned to various persons, whose ideas on the subject were obtained from him alone.

Laplace, in his Investigations concerning Heat, published many years after, obviously borrowed largely from Dr. Black, and indeed exhibited little more than the experi-ments which he had suggested. He, however, never mentions Dr. Black at all; every thing in his dissertation assumes the air of originality; he rather appears to have taken some pains to prevent the opinions and discoveries of our celebrated chemist from being known or attended to by his countrymen. The observations of Dr. Crawford on the capacities of different bodies for heat, were also borrowed in a great measure from Dr. Black, who first pointed out the proper method of investigating that subject.

The most extraordinary proceeding, however, was that of De Luc, which exhibits an audacity unparelleled in the annals of scientific or literary plagiarism. He expressed to Dr. Black his unbounded admiration of his beautiful theory of latent heat, and offered with much zeal to become his editor. Averse to trouble and exertion, he after much difficulty consented to furnish De Luc with the necessary materials to prepare the work for the public eye. {110} At length, in 1788, De Luc published his “Idées sur‘la Metèorologie;” and it was indeed with astonishment that Black and his friends perceived the doctrine claimed by De Luc as his own discovery; coolly informing the reader that he had great satisfaction in understanding that Dr. Black coincided with his opinions!

In 1766, his friend Dr. Cullen being appointed professor of medicine in the university of Edinburgh, a vacancy occurred in the chemical chair, and Dr. Black was again appointed his successor with general approbation. The great concourse of pupils which the deservedly high reputation of that celebrated school of medicine brought to his lectures, was highly gratifying to a mind like Dr. Black’s, which delighted in attracting attention to his favourite science. As the demands on his talents increased, they became more conspicuous and more extensively useful. Impressed with a strong sense of the importance of his duties as a professor, he directed his whole attention to his lectures, and his object was to make them so plain, that they should be comprehended by the meanest and most illiterate capacity among his hearers. Never did any man succeed more completely. His pupils were not only instructed, but delighted, and many became his pupils merely to be amused. This pleasing style, and the numerous and well-conducted experiments by which he illustrated every point of the science, contributed greatly to extend the knowledge of chemistry, and it became in Edinburgh a necessary and fashionable part of the accomplishment of a gentleman.

This attention, however, to simplifying his lectures had an effect, which perhaps was, on the whole, rather unfortunate. The improvement of the science appears to have been entirely laid aside by him. Perhaps also the delicacy of his constitution precluded his exertions. The slightest. cold, the most trifling approach to repletion, occasioned feverishness, affected his breath, and, if not speedily removed by relaxation of thought and gentle {111} exercise, brought on a spitting of blood. His natural tendency to these complaints was materially increased. by the sedentary life to which study confined him, and he always found them aggravated by intense thinking. In addition to this, he was so particular in his notions of the manner in which a work intended for publication should be executed, that the pains he took in arranging the plan never failed to affect his health, and oblige him to desist. This. completely prevented him from proceeding in what his friends had strenuously recommended, in consequence of the disingenuous treatment he had met with, - an account of his observations and discoveries. As an author, he is known only by his “Dissertatio Inauguralis,” which was the work of duty; his Experiments on Magnesia,” &c. mentioned above, which was necessary to explain and establish what he had asserted in his inaugural dissertation. His “Observations on the more ready Freezing of Water that has been boiled,” were extorted from him, and published in the Philosophical Transactions for 1774; and the “Analysis of the Waters of some boiling Springs in Iceland,” which exhibits much ability in explaining the formation of siliceous earth, was written at the request of his friend T. J. Stanley, Esq. and read before the Royal Society at Edinburgh, and published by their Council. These are the only works which have appeared front the pen of Dr, Black. His lectures were published after his death, in 1803, by his friend and pupil, Professor Robison, in two volumes, quarto.

His only apprehension, we are informed, was that of a long-continued sick bed; less, perhaps, from any selfish feeling, than from the consideration of the trouble and distress which it would occasion to his friends; and never was so generous a wish more completely gratified. On the 26th of November, 1799, in the 71st year of his age, he expired without convulsion, shock, or stupor; sitting at table with his usual fare, some bread, a few prunes, and a measured quantity of milk diluted with water, having the {112} cup in his hands, and feeling the vital powers quickly ebbing, he set it down on his knees, which were joined together, and kept it steady with his hand. In this attitude he expired without struggle or groan, or even a writhe in his countenance; and as though an experiment had been required to prove to his friends the facility with which he departed, not a drop of his drink was spilled. His servant opened the door to tell him that some friend had left his name, but seeing him in that easy posture, supporting his bason on his knees, he supposed that he had fallen asleep, as he sometimes did after his meals. He therefore went back and shut the door; but, before he went down stairs, an anxiety, which he could not account for, induced him to return again. He went up pretty near to his master, and turned to go away perfectly satisfied; but returning again and coming close to him, he found that the vital spark had fled.

Such was the end of Dr. Black, similar to his life, mild, gentle, and easy. A man, whose singular suavity of manners and obligingness of disposition, ensured him the hearts of all who knew him, and who never lost a friend, except by the stroke of death. His appearance was interesting, and his countenance exhibited that expression of inward satisfaction, which, by giving ease to the beholder, never fails to please. His manners were unaffected and graceful, and he readily entered into conversation, whether: with the man of science, or with society in general, in which he delighted, for he was beloved in it. He was acquainted with all the elegant accomplishments; his ear was highly musical; his voice was fine and well-managed; and he performed on the flute with great taste and feeling, He had never studied drawing as an art, yet his pencil possessed strong powers of expression, even approximating to the talents af an historical painter. His eye, indeed, was ever on the alert, and even a retort or a crucible, was to him an example of beauty or deformity. In business, every thing was done properly and correctly, every thing {113} had its time appointed for it, and he had always leisure in store.

As a chemist, he deservedly ranks high in the estimation of his brethren; his discoveries were wonderful in themselves, and immense in the applications which have resulted from them. Yet we cannot avoid regretting that his health or indolence prevented him from pursuing that glorious experimental career which he opened to the view of others, adapted as he was in every respect to have extended our acquaintance with that art. His perspicuity in his writings and lectures can never be sufficiently admired; his principles are so clearly expressed, that they cannot be misunderstood even by ignorance, nor misrepresented by malice. His reputation had extended to the continent, where he was no less esteemed than in the country in which he resided; and he had latterly the honour of being appointed one of the eight Foreign Associates of the Royal Academy of Sciences at Paris, on the recommendation of the celebrated chemist, Lavoisier, whose liberality in this respect is worthy of admiration, when we consider the mean and heartless envy which too frequently exists between distinguished literary and scientific characters.