Another considerable personage belonged to this Symposium, whose entrance
into life was marked with promises, which he subsequently failed to
fulfil. He had every advantage of family, education, connection, and
situation; he had considerable learning, and was by no means destitute
of talent. He was of very elegant and agreeable manners, and must
necessarily have been a very acceptable member of any society, which
assembled for the purpose of indulging enlightened and interesting
conversation.
But he was appointed to some diplomatic situation abroad, and he
continued for many years absent from England. Whether he had put the
poisoned chalice of infidelity to his lips before his departure, is
uncertain; but he appeared to have employed his leisure in searching for
objections and arguments, as they related to Scripture, which had been so
often refuted, that they were considered by the learned and the wise, as
almost exploded. This gentleman, however, collected, and made a book of
them, which certainly has done no honour to his reputation, in any sense
whatever.
He was, moreover, a poet, but here also he discovered a perverted and
fantastical taste, having dramatized one of the most exceptionable and
unnatural tales in the whole collection of Ovid’s Metamorphosis.
Notice is not pretended to be taken, in our memoranda, of the literary
productions of this gentleman with any thing like chronological accuracy;
they seem to have been written down merely as the recollection of them
presented itself. He got considerable credit, and deservedly too, by
a spirited translation of a very crabbed Latin poet, though severer
critics seemed inclined to consider it rather as a paraphrase than as a
translation. However this may be, the version was, undoubtedly, highly
spirited and poetical.
But an earlier, if not absolutely his first literary effort, was a
speculative investigation on the subject of ancient Greek politics.
This was characterized by much sound sense, and very extensive reading,
subject to the imputation of a style somewhat too inflated.
A later production exhibited a metaphysical labyrinth, in which the
author bewildered himself, and confused his readers. Among the more
remarkable paradoxes which this work contained, and it contained a great
many, was the preposterous supposition that Newton’s Principia, was an
Atheistical system, and that the philosophy of Bacon was unsound and
erroneous. His partiality to Helvetius, Delaplace, and the French school,
demonstrate the perverse tendency of his mind, on religious subjects,
which indeed, even in conversation, and it is even said in female
conversation too, he was at no pains to conceal.
As a Symposiast, however, his talents would have done honour to the
Athenian academy itself, and it is hoped that time and reflection may
have meliorated and amended those opinions, which it is impossible that
any religious character can approve.
Two other individuals compleated the number of Symposiasts, of one of
whom some mention has already been made, the other was the Sexagenarian
himself.
To the former, a tribute of affection has been paid, which he who
compiled the heterogeneous matter of these pages, can testify to have
been well-deserved. We are inclined to make some mention of the latter,
as we knew him in the decline of life.
Nunc aliquis dicat mihi—quid tu?
Sum cinis—ossa—nihil.