abstained himself [from], and discountenanced in others, all scoffs at
Christianity. His subsequent habits and intimacies must have familiarised
him with great freedom of conversation on such topics; and it was
generally supposed that he was a sceptic or freethinker. As a scholar
and critic, in which capacities his authority will ever be greatest, his
testimony was manifestly unfavourable to the Trinitarian interpretation
of Scripture. His masterly letters to Archdeacon Travis finally exploded
the verse of St. John—the only text approaching to a direct assertion of
three persons in the Godhead.[352] His conviction that the New Testament
never predicates in positive terms, nor implies by fair inference from
language the existence of the Trinity, seems almost acknowledged in
his writings. It was not, I apprehend, concealed, much less denied, by
him in conversation. The Trinitarians, who are disposed to stigmatise
their Arian and Unitarian adversaries as dishonest and ignorant, must be
prepared to maintain some strong paradoxes with respect to celebrated
men. They must question the sincerity of Lardner, and deny the learning
of Milton, Clarke, Porson, and Wakefield.[353]
Porson had more particles of pride than vanity, and more principle
than affection, in his composition. But had it not been for the vice
of drunkenness in which he indulged in a manner that degraded him, he
would have been a respectable man in character as well as abilities
and acquirements. He could never have been an amiable one. Yet was he
a friend to liberty, and by no means indifferent to the improvement of
mankind. In that respect he was the reverse of Swift, whom in other
points he resembled and in some little degree rivalled. Swift said he
could love Jack or Jem, but hated and despised the human race. Porson, on
the contrary, had some benevolence for the species, but seemed incapable
of loving Jack, Jem, or any individual. His English verses (fragments
rather than poems) seem, from their extreme exactness in rhyme, rhythm,
and expression, to have cost as much pains as those of Swift himself.
They are to the full as biting and malignant.
In the two most successful efforts of his muse, _viz._, his verses on the
fellows of Trinity College, and his address to Cambridge on the admission
of the young Duke of Gloucester, there is so much indecency blended with
the satire that, although among the best lampoons in our language, I
shall not venture to insert them....
Specimens of his repartees are more common and have more merit; but I am
afraid of repeating things elsewhere preserved and generally known. When
some enthusiastic admirer of the knot of writers called “Lake Poets,” in
extolling Wordsworth, Southey, and the rest _qui pauperes esse volunt
et pauperes sunt_, emphatically predicted that they would be read when
Virgil, Milton, Dryden, and Pope were forgotten, “I agree with you, and
_not till then_,” was the dry and contemptuous answer of Porson. When
pressed, after a tiresome metaphysical disquisition by Dr. Parr, to give
his opinion on the origin of moral and physical evil: “Why, I think,”
said he, “Doctor, we should have done very well without them.”
There was a project for sending him with Lord Elgin’s[354] Embassy
to Constantinople, in the hope that he might discover, decipher, and
elucidate manuscripts, inscriptions, documents, and other remains of
antiquity. Whether the objections to such an appointment originated
with himself or Lord Elgin, I know not. The latter has been reproached
with it. But it is just to remark that Porson, scholar and wit as
he was, would, from the intemperance of his habits and the perverse
susceptibility of his temper, have been rather a troublesome inmate,
especially in a residence where during the war there was no resource for
society but within the walls of the Embassy. His place was supplied by
Mr. Carlyle[355] and Dr. Hunt. The former translated and published some
very pretty specimens of Arabic poetry; the latter, who was afterwards
chaplain to the Duke of Bedford in Ireland, became a very useful
magistrate in Bedfordshire, without neglecting the studies of antiquity
and _virtu_ in which he had made great proficiency in Greece and Asia
Minor.
To return to the worthies of Oxford during my residence there. I knew
few of the professors, nor did many of them give the undergraduates
opportunity or inclination to cultivate their acquaintance by the
frequency or excellence of their lectures. Mr. Wooddeson,[356] who
filled the Vinerian Chair, had ceased to deliver the lectures (which he
published) before my time. They have merit and learning, and though not
so complete nor so eloquent as those of his predecessor, Blackstone,[357]
they are certainly less tinged with the peculiar tenets of the place
in which they were delivered than the commentaries of that perspicuous
writer and learned but somewhat obsequious judge.
Dr. Wenman,[358] the professor of Civil Law, both from his connections
and his subject, was likely to maintain tenets more congenial to the
Metropolis of Toryism. But his lectures attracted so little notice and
made so faint an impression on his auditors that I have forgotten their
character, and believe that I never heard their merits even discussed.
The Professor of Mathematics was Mr. Robison or Mr. Robinson,[359]
a Scotchman. He had taken his degree, or at least had acquired his
science, at Glasgow; and Mr. Windham, before his hostility to the French
Revolution had weaned him from the practice of irreverent jokes and
excited in him some hopes of representing the University in Parliament,
used to make himself merry at the expense of his Alma Mater, who, finding
such a dearth of science among her own sons, had been compelled to send
to a northern and Presbyterian nursery for a mathematician capable of
filling her own chair.[360] The duties required, however, by the office
were either very light or the northern luminary very scandalously
neglected them. I never heard of his lectures, his pupils, or his
examinations, and I shrewdly suspect he had none.
Dr. Hornsby,[361] Professor of Astronomy, did give lectures, and they
were not ill-attended. Yet they were such as many a lad in a Scotch or
foreign University, and many an itinerant teacher unmatriculated in any,
could have easily supplied. Those on divinity by Dr. Randolph[362] were
probably distinguished by more talent, and certainly possessed learning
seldom found and perhaps not often sought for out of the walls of a
college. Yet they were no favourites with the public, nor even with
those young men who were destined to Holy Orders. This was owing to the
slovenly delivery, awkward and obscure phraseology, and rude, unpolished
manners of the lecturer. Under that exterior, however, the ungraceful and
ungracious priest, narrow-minded Tory as he was, concealed a kind heart
and a disinterested, compassionate, and generous disposition. He became
first Bishop of Oxford, and afterwards of London, where he died soon
after his elevation to the see.
In the Medical or Anatomical Chairs there was no professor of superior,
or even equal, eminence. Grosvenor,[363] a very able surgeon, resident
in Oxford, was not, I believe, a member of the University, and certainly
filled no office in it. Sir Christopher, then _Doctor_ Pegge,[364] is
chiefly remarkable for having been the successful competitor of Dr.
Vaughan, afterwards Sir Henry Halford.[365] That more distinguished and
fortunate man thus owed to defeat the advantage of settling in the only
place where practice as extensive as that which he exercised for more
than thirty years could have been obtained. If he did not derive from
his academical studies that physical activity and cheerfulness and those
qualities of sagacity and attractions of manner which were the real
causes of his success in London and at Windsor, he at least brought from
Oxford that taste for pure Latinity and classical composition, which he
loved to display with some degree of self-complacency in the College of
Physicians.
In the meanwhile the protection of the Dean and tutors of Christ Church,
which had raised Pegge to the Chair, could never render his anatomical
school famous beyond the walls of the University or popular with the
young men within them.[366] There was a whisper among them that his
science was superficial; and even in judging of his diction and delivery,
which I am assured were above mediocrity, they unfairly persisted in
contrasting them with those of his predecessor, Dr. Thompson, a man who
had been expelled the University, but the memory of whose ready eloquence
and extraordinary perspicuity survived the ruin of his moral character
and his consequent retirement in Italy. He died after a residence of a
few years in that country, where his medical attainments so far expiated
his religious and other heresies that the Pope condescended to consult
him, and, if I mistake not, to appoint him Physician-in-Ordinary. He
was a great mineralogist, and left a valuable collection of specimens,
which he directed by his will to be, in the first instance, offered
to Christ Church, and if refused by that college to be transferred
to the University of Glasgow. Christ Church, as he foresaw, declined
the bequest. They could not do otherwise. They could not question by
implication the justice of that expulsion inflicted by the University, to
which their representatives in the _Caput_ had been a party. Glasgow had
no reason and probably no inclination to be so scrupulous. She accepted
cheerfully a donation from a stranger whose conduct had never either
directly or indirectly come under her cognizance.
Respect or gratitude to John Hunter, who came from the neighbourhood
of Glasgow, may have induced Dr. Thompson to confer such a favour on
that Northern University.[367] Hunter,[368] possibly from reliance on
some partial representation or from the prepossessions of friendship,
but more probably from a zeal for science, which deemed the protection
of its interests and of those capable of promoting it paramount to all
other considerations, had loudly arraigned the justice of the proceedings
against Thompson at Oxford, had strongly dissuaded and lamented his
precipitate retreat, and was, even after that event, hardly prevailed
upon to suppress a pamphlet he had written in his vindication. This
proceeded from that same ardour or intrepidity of mind, which was the
mainspring of John Hunter’s actions throughout life, and the real cause
of his inquiries, discoveries, and celebrity; but which nevertheless
betrayed him occasionally into acts of imprudence and passion, and
subjected him, even in his professional practice, to the imputation
of sacrificing his patients to his theory. His enemies, who were many
and virulent, no doubt took some pains to blacken him; but there is no
denying that his judgment was occasionally clouded by an irascible and
tenacious temper.
Even on subjects unconnected with his pursuits, and where he had no
right to assume authority, he was apt to be positive, dogmatical, and
angry. If such instances of intemperate behaviour had been confined to
those which arose from his horror, real or affected, of revolutionary
principles, I should not have alluded to them, even though they led
him to exclude well-qualified persons from professional advantages and
scientific Societies where their merits entitled them to admission. Such
prejudices were not only common, but almost universal, during the unhappy
epoch of the French Revolution, with all persons who had attained a
certain station in society. They were the vices of the time, not of the
individual. Every man, especially if not a professed politician, was a
tyrant or an incendiary at his heart, either disposed from feverish alarm
for his property to restrain, imprison, and persecute his neighbour, or
eager from envy, curiosity, or enthusiasm to subvert all established
order and to realise the visionary theory of perfect equality among men.
If any one had a grain of candour or moderation, it became his interest
to conceal it. Consequently those who, like John Hunter, were not opposed
to the Government of the day, appeared zealots and partizans in its
favour, and from real contagion or selfish compliance exhibited all the
symptoms of earnestness and injustice belonging to that character. But
such and other defects in John Hunter were deducible from causes not
connected with the violence of the times.
Perhaps in his dogmatical spirit, and certainly both in the obscurity
of his style and in his unbounded self-applause and vanity, he betrayed
the infirmities which are often described as the invariable concomitants
of a late education, followed by a sudden elevation to eminence and
distinction. He told me once in so many words that he thought himself a
greater man than Isaac Newton. The superiority he had acquired in his own
branch demanded, he said, a more extraordinary union of qualities than
any proficiency in mathematics or astronomy; and discoveries leading to
a perfect knowledge of the human frame were infinitely more useful to
mankind than any observation of the heavenly bodies could be.
A childish love of paradox, or an obstinate adherence to an opinion
hastily enounced, made him deny the efficacy of mineral springs. He
contended that an artificial mixture of the same ingredients, or even
the pure element alone heated to the same degree of temperature, would
produce the same effects as Bath waters taken at the spot. Whenever
they failed to do so, it was, he maintained, the fault of imagination.
He assured me, in proof of this opinion, that to one patient in London
(I think his own wife) he had prescribed common hot water, allowing it
to be so, without any success; but that when he had filled Bath bottles
with the same water and pretended that they were received by the coach,
she, after boiling them, derived all the benefit from them that she had
expected from a course of the real waters drunk fresh at the Pump Room.
He had always a large belief in the influence of the mind over the body,
and recounted many singular instances within his own observation where
physical phenomena were to be traced exclusively to mental weakness or
mental exertion. I know not whether he considered the following incident,
which I had from his own lips, as any confirmation of his theory in
his own person. While engaged in inquiries in Natural History, he kept
a tiger or lion (I forget which) chained to a cage or kennel at the
bottom of the yard. As he was sitting one hot day, as was his custom,
slipshod in his back parlour, with the window door half open before him,
he perceived the fierce animal disencumber his neck of his collar, and,
finding himself unrestrained, prepared to spring over the wall of the
adjoining yard. John Hunter, alarmed at the mischief which might ensue,
and without any consideration of what he was doing, issued from the room,
seized the beast by his neck or mane, and quietly reconducted him to
his place of confinement, where the animal permitted him to refix the
chain without the least symptom of resistance. When this feat was thus
fortunately accomplished, John Hunter returned to the house; but he had
scarcely passed the threshold when the recollection of the danger he had
voluntarily encountered and miraculously escaped suddenly rushed on his
mind, and overpowered him with such terror and amazement that he fell
senseless on the floor, and did not recover for some minutes. He laboured
under a disease particularly alarming to a person subject to such violent
emotions, _viz._, an affection of the heart, which he told me and others
would one day kill him going upstairs or in a passion. The prediction
was, it is said, verified in the latter shape; he expired in the act of
repelling a contradiction which had provoked him.[369]
Whatever were his foibles and imperfections as a man, a surgeon, and a
writer, his inventive genius and unremitting zeal in the investigation
of anatomical truths rendered his life highly useful to the world, and
promoted the science which tends more directly than any other to mitigate
the sufferings incident to our species. He left several MSS. Many think
that they should have been conveyed to Surgeons’ Hall, together with the
Museum, and were in equity, at least, included in the purchase. The fact
that they have been destroyed has excited some disappointment and more
indignation among men of science, some of whom, however, have insinuated
that the benefit of any discoveries they may have contained has not been
lost to the world, but may be found in the papers and publications of his
brother-in-law and executor, who destroyed them in their original shape
without any acknowledgment to the inventor.
John Hunter was neither polished in his manner nor refined in his
expression, but from originality of thought and earnestness of mind
he was extremely agreeable in conversation; at least, to me, in whom
he somewhat hastily and very erroneously inferred a turn for studies
congenial to his own, from the very unfeigned homage he perceived me to
pay to his talents and celebrity. His countenance was indeed full of
genius. The observation of Lavater on the engraving from the admirable
portrait of him by Sir Joshua Reynolds, “That man thinks for himself,”
must have occurred to less professed physiognomists in every casual
intercourse with the original.
I visited Lavater himself[370] in 1791 in Switzerland. He then enjoyed
great celebrity throughout Europe. His fanciful theories, though never
admitted by men of reflection, were yet the subject of some study and
more curiosity, especially among artists. If it was a rash attempt in him
to reduce physiognomy to a science, he had himself some good personal
reasons for inculcating a faith in the impressions produced by the
countenance and figure of a man. His own bespoke no little intelligence
and yet greater benevolence. He was, I believe, an enthusiast in
religion, and probably, in his pretended science, the sincere dupe of
his own ingenuity. However, like other professors of similar sciences,
he delighted in delineating the characters of those whose qualities had
been reported to him by common fame or were actually known to him by
familiar intercourse, rather than of those to whose peculiarities he had
no guide but such as their features furnished him with. He gave, for
instance, a sketch of Mr. Fox, whom he had seen at Berne in 1788; but of
Mr. Windham, who was with him at that time, and who was remarkable for a
characteristic countenance and appearance, he made no delineation. The
fame of Mr. Fox’s eloquence and abilities had reached Lavater, but Mr.
Windham’s celebrity as an orator was, at that time, confined to England,
and the philosopher thought it indiscreet to trust to his visionary
prognostics of disposition and talents, when he had no previous clue
from public notoriety or private information to guide him in his
researches.
There was, indeed, one celebrated Englishman then resident in the
same country, whose appearance would have baffled him—Mr. Gibbon, the
historian. His friends, with more zeal to gratify public curiosity
than kindness to him, have been at great pains to preserve drawings
and descriptions of his disgusting figure and revolting features. They
are not caricatures. His countenance expressed neither quickness nor
reflection. No man could have surmised from his inanimate yet hideous
face that he possessed such powers of application and such faculties of
wit and reasoning as his works unquestionably display, and as observant
persons might have discovered, though in much fainter lines, in his
conversation. His devotion to letters was the most estimable part of his
character. It gives great interest to his memoirs, which are entertaining
and instructive. As to affections, he seems to have had none. He was more
like what he admired and produced, a large book, than a living member of
society.
He was affected in his manner and sometimes ludicrously vain. I have
been told that he imagined himself handsome. When somebody, presuming on
that foible, ventured to try the extent of his conceit by telling him
he was like Mr. Fox, whose face, full of kindness and intelligence, had
nothing in common with his but a sallow complexion and dark eyebrows,
Gibbon pettishly replied, “that any likeness to Mr. Fox in understanding
or disposition he should deem an honour, but he could not be flattered
with a supposed, and he hoped a mistaken, resemblance to his person.”
Even in the latter period of his life he occasionally hinted at his
amorous propensities, and invited his friends to banter him on supposed
but impossible debaucheries. More human senses than one must have been
suspended in his favour, to render his enormous and disgusting complaint
imperceptible to his friends and acquaintance.
His want of principle in politics was obvious enough from the incidents
of his life, but it was an odd act of friendship in Lord Sheffield[371]
to furnish the public with so many proofs of it from his correspondence.
There is an anecdote respecting his acceptance of a seat at the Board of
Trade, which, though rather of a political than literary cast, I will
relate here. Mr. Fox wrote in a presentation copy of the first volume
of the _Roman History_ words to this effect: “This gentleman told me
on the Monday that no good would be done till the heads of Lord North
and his colleagues were laid on the table of the House of Commons, and
on the Saturday the same gentleman accepted a place under Lord North.”
Some years afterwards an execution took place in Mr. Fox’s house. He had
consigned his books to another person; but the creditors contended the
books were his, and the question was tried in the Common Pleas, where
Lord Loughborough, a particular friend of Mr. Gibbon, presided. The
counsel for the creditors argued that the books really belonged to Mr.
Fox, from notes in his handwriting being found in the blank leaves. Some
question arose on the admissibility of the notes as evidence; the Court
seemed inclined to admit them. But when, in the course of the argument,
the book had been handed up to Lord Loughborough, the friend prevailed
over the judge, and he earnestly, if not peremptorily, prevented the
public perusal of them.
The song on Gibbon’s acceptance of office,[372] which begins:
King George in a fright
Lest Gibbon should write
The story of Britain’s disgrace, etc.
was erroneously ascribed by common report to Mr. Fox. It was, I believe,
one among the many effusions of General FitzPatrick, who, if he fell at
all short in bitter, sarcastic humour, equalled in wit and excelled in
taste and refinement, as well as in harmony, the political poet of the
preceding generation, Sir Charles Hanbury Williams.
Gibbon had lived in some familiarity with the society that surrounded
Mr. Fox, although they were neither sparing of their censures on his
political tergiversation nor very indulgent to his affectations in
writing and conversation. It was he who first introduced Mr. Sheridan to
Mr. Fox, after the former had written _The Rivals_.[373]
During the two days I had the advantage of passing with Mr. Gibbon at
Lausanne, he dwelt with much complacency on a variety of anecdotes and
_bon mots_ of persons with whom I had been familiar from my childhood.
Many of them I had heard before from others, and most, if not all of
them, I should judge by his studied manner of relating them, adjusting,
as he did most carefully, the rap of his snuff-box and the twist of his
finger and thumb to the point of the jest, he had been in the habit of
frequently repeating. They were, however, diverting, instructive, and
well told. I remember that among them he recited some verses of Mr. Hare.
Full of vivacity, humour, and fancy as was that most ready and brilliant
of all fashionable wits, he seldom committed any specimen of his talents
to paper, either in verse or prose.
From the variety, therefore, if not the merit, of such a performance,
the rhymes which Gibbon recollected and I afterwards ascertained to be
authentic, may be acceptable to my reader. Mr. Hare, from the want of a
better office, had been destined by his friend and early schoolfellow,
Mr. Fox, during one of his short Ministries, to the mission to Warsaw;
and he thereupon vented his sense of the necessity but disagreeableness
of the appointment, almost extempore, in the following lines:
Having been born to no land,
’Tis thought that I must go to Poland;
So having long exhausted all tick,
I soon, alas! must cross the Baltic.
Of all the towns I read of or saw,
I least expected seeing Warsaw:
And now _’tisn’t ten to one_[374] I a’nt sick
Before I ever get to Dantzic.
With the exception of some very trifling _jeux d’esprit_, the above
are, I believe, the only verses Mr. Hare ever wrote, or at least
acknowledged, after he had left school, where, if I mistake not, he
distinguished himself by an English exercise.