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point of revenue, and bringing with it little of parochial responsibility, yet desirable as an introduction to clerical duty. I shall have occasion to refer again to the following entry in the diary, and only notice it now, to show the accurate and methodical beginnings of one who was remarkable in after life for a munificent liberality: Jan. 1, 1800. Upon settling accounts, found myself possessed of 217.'

No one, probably, had a greater contempt for money, regarded simply as a possession, than the late Bishop of Llandaff, while no one understood better the practice of a rational economy, or valued it more in others.

1802. To follow him on in his rising honourswe find him elected Poetry Professor when he had just completed the twenty-sixth year of his age; and in the following October reading his inaugural lecture, the first of a series of thirty-five. It must be matter of regret that the whole plan of these lectures was not finally completed. Nevertheless, the 'Prælectiones,' as they stand, will never cease to delight those who can appreciate clear development of principles, just criticism, discriminating delicacy of taste, and, perhaps, above all, Latinity of such pure and brilliant water, that when, in our recollections, we compare it with Ciceronian gems, it loses none of its lustre. No scholar will be likely to underrate the labour of a production so finished, and so richly illustrated; but it is interesting to hear what the author himself says about it, in a letter written to his

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friend, the Rev. J. Penrose, towards the close of his professional course. He thus expresses himself:-' My poetry lectures bring a greater trouble with them than you can well imagine. The search for apposite examples, after one's principles are well settled, is more laborious and harassing than any other employment I have yet engaged in. My own experience in this case has brought to my knowledge a circumstance in the constitution of my own mind, humiliating enough, although it is probable others may not feel it to the same extent that is, when I am reading through a book, with a view to catch examples illustrative of one principle, none present themselves to my mind which are applicable to another. Hence the labour of composing lectures is multiplied beyond all ordinary calculation; to which must be added, the constant secret persuasion, that by perseverance and further search something better might be found.'

A part of the following letter to his friend the Rev. W. N. Darnell bears upon this subject, and I therefore give it a place here:

My dear Darnell,

Oriel College, Nov. 16, 1813.

How soon I may have the means of returning your MS. I don't know, probably not till Christmas, and I cannot wait so long without thanking you for the kind remembrance, and telling you how much I was pleased with the bagatelle. It is, I presume, lawful to use this word when speaking of the lighter effusions of a pen generally employed on higher themes. The poem is a very pretty thing of the

romaunt kind, a species of composition of which I apprehend the world will soon get tired, as they are nearly tired of the cow-stalls and ruinous alms-houses which have been of late the favourite subjects of the pencil. You, however, are free from any blame in chusing this style; the subject itself determined you, and could not have been treated well in any other. I admire the facility and flow of your diction; if there had been somewhat less of the antiquated phraseology I think it would have been still better. For instance, are wend and wimple of that class of words to which Horace's observation applies-Multa renascentur quæ jam cecidêre? To simplicity and to some quaintness there can be no objection; but it may be doubted whether words that require a glossary are admissible into a new poem. On the subject of the picture I don't know what to say. With your request I am certainly much gratified, and inclined to comply, but sitting is no trifle. I have tried it twice, and was rather in hopes I was free for life. It is not likely that I shall be in town next (this) winter; but if I am, you will not be out of my mind. I owe you thanks, also, for your favourable and friendly mention of my Prælections. The contents ought, as you say, to have been collected under one view. If I had been a 'book-maker,' this would probably have been done. One never finds out such things except by experience. I wonder, indeed, that the printers did not suggest it, for I used to confer with them on all questions of technical arrangement; even the contents themselves they never suggested. I wrote them sudante prælo, and you have no conception what harassing work it was. If there is any part of the volume upon which I pique myself more than another, it is that. To be serious, however, I will mention my own favourite lecture, of which, if you do not approve, I shall be greatly disappointed. It is the thirtythird, On Antiquity and Prophecy, as materials for affecting

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the imagination. You and P- will be amused at the idea of my having Madame de Staël here as a lioness. It was not so, but very near it. Ward was going to give her a letter to me; but thinking, very justly, that it might be more plague than pleasure, he abstained. Sir James Macintosh I have become acquainted with, through the same introduction, and find all that has been said of his wonderful powers, especially in conversation, not beyond the truth. He is the readiest and the most pleasing talker I know-perfectly unassuming, free from pedantry, and, what is a still rarer virtue, free from the apprehension of being thought a pedant, so that his conversation is enriched by all the stores of his reading, without stiffness and without ostentation.

My friends in the West, about whom you kindly inquire, are all pretty well; one great and irreparable loss you know we have sustained.* My mother will, I fear, never quite recover from the effects of it. Adieu; possibly I may before I hear from you.

see you

Yours affectionately,

E. COPLESTON.

1802-4. During this and the two following years, Mr. Copleston employed much of his leisure time in genealogical inquiries relating to his own family; nor was it among the least proofs of his vigorous mind, that, amidst a variety of intellectual occupations, a subject like this, of nice and often tedious investigation, was to him matter of pure relaxa

*He refers to the death of his brother, William James, Lieutenant of Artillery, who perished on his way out to Gibraltar. It is supposed the ship in which he sailed foundered in the open sea, as it was never heard of, nor any of the crew.

tion.*

His particular object was to trace up his own line of descent through a junior branch to the ancient stock of Copleston, of Copleston, in the county of Devon;† and for this purpose he made during these years various searches at the Tower, the Rolls Chapel, and Doctors' Commons, hunting between whiles over parish registers, and monuments in different parish churches. The fruit of this diligence, exercised in his horæ subseciva, appears in a large collection of papers, some of them not a little curious, and among them a pedigree of his own branch, worked out by himself, and ascending up to the year 1574, where it commences with the grandfather of John Copleston, D.D., provost of King's College, Cambridge, 'from whose younger brother William,' says the bishop, in his memoranda concerning this provost, 'I am myself descended.' His epitaph,' it is added, 'which is on a floor-stone in King's College Chapel, but still in

* Izaac Walton, of Bishop Sanderson ::-'But though he would not be always loaden with these knotty points and distinctions, yet the study of old records, genealogies, and heraldry, were a recreation, and so pleasing, that he would say they gave rest to his mind.'

† Sir William Pole, who died 1635, in his County History, written about the year 1616, p. 225, has the following notice: 'Copleston, which gave the name to an emynent family in this shire lyeth in this Parish [Colbrooke] whose name I first find in the deede of Grant of Hugh de Sancto Vedasto made unto Mathew de Wodeton before named, unto which William de Coplestona is sett downe as a witness betwixt him and Richard Copleston, in Kinge Edw. ii. tyme. But afterward they grew unto greatness, and albeit they had great marriages in lands, yet hath not any of that famyly bine knighted, and therefore they received the name of Silver Spurr, and for their great revenue were called the Great Copleston.'

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