A literary life, like adversity, introduces a man to strange and
opposite acquaintance. Genius, talent, and learning, are not limited to
rank or station, and the ingenuous desire of receiving, as well as of
communicating information, induces an individual of such propensities to
put aside those prejudices, which marked differences of opinion in creeds
and in politics, have an inavoidable tendency to excite. That such were
the feelings, and such the circumstances of our venerable friend, at a
certain period of his life, appear from the following loose memoranda,
which he evidently intended, at some period or other, to arrange and
methodize.
What shall that individual alledge, to ward off and repel the charge
of inconsistency, who began his career in life under the auspices of
James Townsend, of Bruce Castle, of the patriotic Aldermen Sawbridge
and Oliver; who confesses that he spent agreeable hours with Price
and Priestley, and Horne Tooke, and Major Cartwright; and Kippis; and
afterwards with a well known popular Baronet, and Dr. Disney, and
Walker of Liverpool, and very many others of this description. The same
person in the decline of life, had no friends, associates, or indeed
acquaintance, but with individuals whose principles, sentiments, and
conduct, were as diametrically opposite, to those of the characters above
named, as light to darkness.
The fact is to be thus explained:—The first entrance into life must
be incidental altogether; our first connexions are unavoidably those
of our relatives, and their friends and associates; principles are
unfolded only by time and experience, and then it is, that intimacies and
attachments are formed and confirmed by similarity of taste, sentiments,
and pursuits. Our Sexagenarian, as appears from his notes, first lived,
where almost the whole of what might properly be denominated taste and
learning, was confined to the Dissenters. Mark, reader, not Methodists;
never was much taste or learning visible among these sectaries, but among
the old Presbyterians, who constituted, in the place alluded to, both a
numerous and respectable class. Neither did the word Presbyterian by any
means imply “an immoral man, a pestilent citizen, or a disloyal subject.”
He was therefore and of necessity compelled, though firm and immoveable
in his own religious tenets, to associate much and familiarly with them
in order to participate in common in the literary barter, which was
carried on with much fairness and liberality on all sides.
Afterwards having formed a tender domestic connection, the ramification
from which, drew him not unwilling to the metropolis; his family
engagements threw him abruptly, and in the heat of the American war,
amidst “a croud of patriots,” many of whose names have before been
mentioned. Young and inexperienced, dazzled with the name of liberty,
confounded by subtleties of argument, which, if he could not accurately
analyze, he was still unable to confute; and lastly, with the prospect
placed before him of ease and independence, can it excite surprise, that
he should get entangled in a net, of which the meshes were at the same
time so fine, as to elude detection, and too strong to allow of escape?
Politics, however, was not the subject for which he was best qualified,
nor did they ever interest his affections, or exercise the better
powers of his mind. He was rather the instrument than the operator,
and he confesses that he has often looked back with a sort of shame
and compunction, at having been, sometimes, the means of circulating
ingredients, of the full tendency of which he was then unconscious, but
which he has since ascertained to have developed some of those poisonous
seeds, the pernicious effects of which, Europe, nay the whole world, has
for the last five and twenty years experienced.
He derives, however, some consolation from the hope, indeed the confident
belief, that many of those individuals, to whom a chain of fortuitous
circumstances thus introduced him, were not themselves aware of the
ultimate consequences of their conduct. The spirit of distrust and
suspicion, which, in our free country, always follows with unremitting
vigilance, the measures and the ministers of government, the emotions
of wounded pride, of disappointed ambition, and, in some instances of
personal enmity, combined to form the stimulus which actuated the conduct
of many of the best and ablest characters among them. Many also, it is
apprehended, discovered the illusion in time, and retracted their errors,
before they had operated to the injury of their country.
Be the above as it may, the whole of the junta has disappeared like “the
baseless fabric of a vision,” and of the individuals more particularly
alluded to, the writer of these pages was, when this was recorded, the
“only rack which was left behind.”
It may not be altogether unentertaining to say a little on some of these
worthies, the result of personal knowledge.
What variety of herbs soever are shuffled together in the dish,
yet the whole mass is swallowed up in one name of sallet. In
like manner, under the consideration of names, I will make a
hodge-podge of differing articles.