who expressly asserts what before seemed doubtful, I have not hesitated to supply the wanting link in the person of John Copleston, of Nash, in the county of Dorset, a royalist who forfeited his estates as a delinquent, circa 1643. From him the line goes back unbroken to the head of the main Devonshire stock, Copleston of Copleston. It is hoped that these notices of a subject, in which the bishop was at this time so much interested, will not be deemed impertinent, and yet I have a few words more before concluding this genealogical episode. The ancient honours and possessions of the family of Copleston have for generations passed away-the greatest wreck having taken place so far back as the reign of Elizabeth, when Christopher Copleston slew his nephew in a fit of rage, and then procured a pardon from the crown at the cost of some thirteen manors.* To this personage his posterity are clearly nothing indebted, unless it be for a safe obscurity, in which they are free to solace themselves with the old distich that marks their Saxon origin Crocker, Cruwys, and Copleston, When the Conqueror came, were at home. 1804. The pursuits of the genealogist and the antiquary are so nearly allied, that we can account at once for the close juxtaposition of the two following entries in the diary:-'January 19. Re * A copy of the original pardon, granted ivo Eliz., is amongst the papers collected by the bishop, whose own Branch, I wish to observe, comes off from the main line far above the worthy to whom this document relates. ELECTED SENIOR TREASURER. 19 sumed searches in the Tower, Doctors' Commons, &c.' 'March 5. Elected Fellow of the Antiquarian Society.' 1806. The election of Mr. Copleston to the office of Senior Treasurer in his college was one of more importance, and led to results very beneficial to his society. He was not content with discharging the routine duties of that office respectably and carefully, but bent the energies of his active mind towards effecting an important change in the financial arrangements of his college -with what good results, may best appear in his own words, which I take from his diary for 1806: 'Obtained the consent of the college to a plan for improving the revenues, by borrowing fines instead of taking them from the lessees at renewals, and increasing the reserved rents instead.-N.B. Being continued six years in the office, contrary to the usual custom of electing for one year only, succeeded in establishing this plan, by means of which the income of the college has been trebled, all its debts liquidated, and the estates better tenanted.' The versatility of those mental powers which could thus successfully engage with subjects so distinct and so uncongenial to each other as poetical criticism and financial calculation, is sufficiently obvious; and I would only suggest further, that now probably Mr. Copleston began to work out those philosophical principles which enabled him afterwards to write with so much effect upon the monetary affairs of the nation. 1807. The Advice to a Young Reviewer, which I need not hesitate to describe as a most happy specimen of playful satire, appeared about this time. In the British Review of that day, it is spoken of as 'the inimitable critique upon the Allegro by one John Milton,' and recommended to all those who are disposed occasionally to indulge in a hearty laugh.' Though but a fugitive jeu d'esprit, it bears the true stamp of a superior intellect, and I have accordingly printed it entire in the Appendix. The pointed vigour of Mr. Copleston's pen is so strikingly exemplified in his next publication, The Examiner Examined, that I cannot allow myself to pass it over without notice, although the occasion of its appearance was such as we would willingly forget. In order to make the extracts intelligible, it seems necessary to state thus much: that a member of the university had been so ill advised as to publish a book entitled Logic made Easy, himself being in gross ignorance of the subject, while, by way of recommending his book and giving it a show of authority, he had the further temerity to remind people of his having formerly been one of the public examiners for degrees. Upon the strength of this unfortunate fact, the Logic made Easy, and some other publications of an equally flimsy character, were puffed into a certain degree of popularity. Mr. Copleston, speaking of the writer of these boarding-school treatises, says, (p. 3,)— 'If, indeed, he had confined himself to that class of writing with which Oxford, as a place of education, is not concerned, we might have suffered them to pass in THE EXAMINER EXAMINED. 21 silence. I at least, for one, should not have interrupted him in the enchanting occupation of rearing an accomplished female from the nursery, as I do not pretend to any knowledge or experience in those matters. I might, perhaps, have pitied the poor motherless Emily, who, without any fault of hers, and believing firmly her gallant father that the Porte was so called from its convenient harbour, should go and seek for Constantinople in the broad and azure Hellespont; who should expect to find Geneva and Lausanne on different lakes, and to see glaciers towering over her head. 'All these mistakes might be inconvenient to a traveller, but as most well-educated females remain at home, no great harm would have been done to the world. But when an elementary book of instruction is studiously recommended to the unwary, containing errors Thick as leaves that strew the vales when every art of book-making chicanery is tried, by ad- The following lively and instructive passages, the first on the Organon of Bacon, the second upon the uses of Logic, are taken from the same pamphlet, and are assuredly such specimens of a clear, vigorous, and classical style as are not often to be met with : No one, however, till the immortal author of the Novum Organon, ventured to renounce his allegiance altogether to this unconstitutional and usurped authority. He planned an entire revolution in the whole fabric and economy of the state. He may be regarded as the inheritor of some antiquated mansion, upon which, from its first building, its successive owners had neither made nor attempted any improvement; but had only sought, by temporary expedients, to keep it weather-tight, and hand it down as little altered as they could to their next descendants. Despising the ignoble work of patching, propping, and plastering over, he determined upon a vigorous and decisive measure. He was unwilling to trust the interested and prejudiced surveyors of the old school; and accordingly he made a thorough inspection of the state of the building, from top to bottom, himself: when, finding the foundation unsound, the main beams ill laid, the timbers rotten, the roof falling in, the apartments and passages awkwardly contrived and inconvenient, he made up his mind at once to pull the whole to pieces, and to begin, as well as he was able, a new edifice from the ground. He had laid in a large stock of materials himself, before he made known his chief design. He then redoubled his diligence, and, pointing out the likeliest places, and the best way of searching, he called upon his friends to help him in bringing together what he wanted. 'Still, for a time, the family were worse lodged than before. Temporary sheds were run up, which did not stand the first winter. Many people made heavy complaints of his want of reverence for antiquity, and for the judgment of those who had gone before him. 'The old house was good enough for his ancestors; and why could not he re |