transmitting him a copy of each of his own works immediately after its publication. No notice whatever had been taken of these presents for some years, till at length the reverend translator was one day agreeably surprised by the receipt of a short note from the chancellor, thanking him with one sweep of the pen for them all, and offering, at the same time, to his acceptance something more substantial than thanks, namely, a prebendal stall in the cathedral of Norwich. With Horsley, Lord Thurlow had never had any acquaintance, and knew him only by the repute of his edition of Newton, and his controversy with Priestly, when he gave him a prebend at Gloucester. They afterwards became intimate, and in consequence the prebendary became Bishop of St. David's. It was in the dedication of an anonymous treatise on the prosody of the Greek and Latin languages, that Horsley paid those compliments to his patron's classical learning to which (and to the value that may reasonably be set upon them) we have already made allusion. "Although," he says, "I wish at present to be concealed, I cannot persuade myself to send this tract abroad, without an acknowledgment which perhaps may betray me, of how much my mind has been informed, and my own opinions upon this subject have been confirmed, by conversations which many things in this essay will bring to your recollection." It is but fair to add, that this was published after the lord chancellor's retirement from office.

There is another case on record of Lord Thurlow's patronage of literary merit which does him great honour; we mean that of Dr. Johnson. Though little personally known to each other, they always professed, and doubtless felt, a mutual respect and esteem, which the similarity of their manners, not to say of their characters, may probably have done much to encourage. Johnson more than once declared there was but one man in England for whose conversation he should think it necessary to prepare himself, and that was Lord Thurlow; a high compliment certainly, coming as it did from one who dealt not much in compliments of any kind. Had this been said of Johnson by Thurlow, there would have been little to remark, though the one was hardly more given to flattering speeches than the other. However, the peer had it in his power to proffer something better than compliments, and

he certainly used the power with much delicacy and generosity. He had been applied to by Johnson's friends to solicit from the government a sum sufficient to cover the expences of a foreign journey, which they considered necessary for his health, and he readily undertook the task. The application failed of success; and Lord Thurlow immediately volunteered to furnish the means required, to the amount of five or six hundred pounds, taking care to instruct Sir Joshua Reynolds, who was the bearer of this offer, that, to make the obligation sit light upon Johnson, the gift (for as such it was intended) should have the appearance of a loan, of which payment was to be secured by the mortgage of the doctor's pension. The letter, in which Johnson expresses his gratitude for the offer, though at the same time he declines it, has, we have no doubt, been perused and admired by every one of our readers; but as it may not be present to the recollection of every one, we subjoin it at the foot of the page.1

What makes it singular that Johnson should always have professed such esteem for Lord Thurlow, is, that the latter was very well known to entertain opinions upon the subject of religion, such as in many other cases were wont to kindle in the breast of the great lexicographer the flames of that direst of all sorts of hatred, the odium theologicum. This inconsistency he committed in common with George the Third, who also made the chancellor an exception to his general dislike against those who openly transgressed the bounds of

"My Lord-After a long and not inattentive observation of mankind, the generosity of your lordship's offer raises in me not less wonder than gratitude. Bounty so liberally bestowed I should gladly receive, if my condition made it necessary; for to such a mind who would not be proud to owe his obligations? But it has pleased God to restore me to so great a measure of health, that, if I should now appropriate so much of a fortune destined to do good, I should not escape from the charge of advancing a false claim. My journey to the Continent, though I once thought it necessary, was never much encouraged by my physicians; and I was very desirous that your lordship should be told of it by Sir Joshua Reynolds, as an event very uncertain: for if I grew much better, I should not be willing; if much worse, not able to migrate. Your lordship was first solicited without my knowledge; but when I was told that you were pleased to honour me with your patronage, I did not expect to hear a refusal; yet as I have had no long time to brood hope, and have not rioted on imaginary opulence, this cold reception has been scarce a disappointment; and from your lordship's kindness I have received a benefit, which only men like you are able to bestow. I shall now live, mihi carior, with a higher opinion of my own merit."

morality and decorum, by indulging themselves with the conveniences of matrimony, without calling upon the church to sanctify their connubial proceedings. Of both of these crimes Lord Thurlow was guilty; and made no secret of his guilt, at least with respect to the latter, since he lived for many years with a mistress, and with an illegitimate family till the time of his death. As to his notions on the subject of religion, it is probable he did not proclaim them quite so openly. Whether he did so or not, there were some, at all events one person, who took great pains to make it be believed that his opinions were within the pale of orthodoxy. That person was his brother, the Bishop of Durham; and our readers, we think, are likely to be amused, if not edified, by an account of the mode in which he once set about proving his position. A very learned and excellent dignitary of the church and of the university of Oxford (who still lives to tell the story) was lamenting to the bishop that his brother, the chancellor, who had so much church patronage in his gift, and might indeed, in some respects, be said to possess the attributes of an ecclesiastic, should be insensible to the great truths of christianity, and in fact be notoriously neither more nor less than a professed deist. "Ah! my dear doctor," responded the prelate, “I regret, indeed, to find that you too labour under this very common misapprehension. I know very well the public believes my brother to be in the deplorable condition you describe; but I can confidently assure you, and indeed give you full proof, that he is not so. I myself can safely vouch that in the extremities of pain and suffering he always looks for consolation where alone it is to be found; for I have often sat with him in his chamber when he was enduring the acutest torments of the gout, and he scarcely ever underwent a particularly excruciating twinge that he did not loudly cry out, 'Oh! Christ Jesus!'

Such a defender of character was worth rewarding with some of the good things in the chancellor's disposal; and the Reverend Thomas Thurlow, who had begun his ecclesiastical career as a simple fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford, passed successively through the easy stages of rector of the great living of Stanhope, Master of the Temple, Dean of Rochester, Dean of St. Paul's, and Bishop of Lincoln, (the two last at one time) until at length he settled

down in that much coveted resting-place, the Bishopric of Durham. His son also was made to feel the comforts and advantages of having an uncle upon the Woolsack, being appointed clerk of the hanaper, and putting into his pocket (if the statements lately made in the House of Lords be correct) no less than nine thousand a year of the public money. Another nephew of the chancellor, the son of his younger brother who was a trader and alderman of Norwich, contented himself with a prebend in the cathedral of that city.

Lord Thurlow himself had contrived to amass a very respectable portion of the pecuniary gifts of fortune in the course of his official career. He had purchased property at or near his native place in Suffolk, and he also became master of an estate in another part of the same county, namely, at Thurlow, on the borders of Essex and Cambridgeshire. In the second patent of his peerage, which he procured shortly after his last resignation of the seal, for the purpose of having it entailed on the issue male of his two brothers, he was designated as Lord Thurlow, of Thurlow, in Suffolk, though he had not at the time entirely completed the purchase there. We believe he never had a residence either at Ashfield or Thurlow. His principal abode, especially after he had entirely quitted office, was a house he erected himself, at the cost of a considerable outlay of temper and money expended in debates with the builder, near Dulwich, at the distance of a very few miles from town. This place he called Knights' Hill. Though he constantly kept up an establishment in London, first in St. James's Square, and afterwards in George Street, Westminster, he made use of his town residence merely for the convenience of its proximity to the House of Lords. He never resided, nor, indeed, even slept in town, but used to drive down at night to Dulwich after his attendance in parliament. His family consisted of three illegitimate daughters. He had also had a són by the daughter of a dean of Canterbury, to whom some supposed he had been married in early life, but the young man had died while completing his studies at Cambridge. The daughters always resided with him till they married, and to two of them he left by his will the sum of seventy thousand pounds each. The third, Mrs. Brown, offended him by contracting a match against his consent, and though he forgave her so far as to take her

back into his house on her separation from her husband, he did not provide for her so liberally, bequeathing her only an allowance of fifty pounds a month, to be paid so long as she continued to live apart from him, and no longer. The object of this arrangement evidently was to prevent the obnoxious Mr. Brown from being a gainer by his marriage. With these ladies he used to make frequent visits to Brighton, Bognor, and other places on the coast, as well as to Buxton, and Scarborough, and Bath, where the state of his health rendered it advisable for him to pass a considerable portion of his time. It is especially recorded of him, that being once at the last mentioned place, and having walked into the rooms booted and spurred, the master of the ceremonies came up to him, and gave him to understand that, by the rules he had the honour to administer, spurs were a forbidden appendage to the person. His lordship did not attempt to dispute such authority, but immediately caused the offensive weapons to be taken off, good-humouredly remarking, that the rules of Bath were not to be disputed, and desiring the autocrat of the pump-room to make an apology in his name to the rest of the company for the involuntary breach of etiquette. Such prompt obedience to the lex loci was warmly applauded by the bye-standers, the rather that it contrasted favourably with a recent instance of mutinous conduct on the part of a bishop's lady, to whom it was possibly intended as a wholesome rebuke. This is one of very few specimens we could quote of his amenity of manner; of his gruffness and rudeness there is no lack. It is but justice, however, to add, that he seldom displayed these qualities towards his inferiors in rank; but reserved them almost entirely for the society of such as it is to be presumed were least accustomed to meet with them in others. Whether this was done from an affectation of eccentricity, or from a morbid desire to make it apparent, even in the most trivial matters, that he stood in no awe of rank and station however elevated, we do not pretend to determine. Certain it is that, in the presence of his equals, he often chose to emancipate himself altogether from the restraints of politeness. For example, he was visiting once at the mansion of a nobleman in Yorkshire, and as he was being conducted by the host, together