Page images
PDF
EPUB

THE ARCHBISHOP OF YORK.

WILLIAM MARKHAM, LL. D. Archbishop of York, was born in Ireland about the year 1720.

He

was educated at Westminster school, and then removed to Christ Church, Oxford, where he took the degree of bachelor of arts in 1742, and that of master in 1745. At school and at college he was distinguished by the elegance of his exercises, and particularly of his Latin verses. A high degree of excellence in writing Latin poetry may be acquired without poetical genius, as it consists in combining detached ideas and sentences of the classical writers and applying them to a proposed subject. This being a mechanical operation is of very general attainment; and accordingly in most of our schools boys may be found able to produce an unexceptionable copy of Latin verses, who are strangers to the elegancies of their native language: it is, however, useful, as it cannot be executed happily without the exercise of taste, and an intimate acquaintance with the works of the most celebrated Latin poets.

About the year 1750 Dr. Markham was appointed first master of Westminster school, and he continued to discharge, with great reputation, the laborious duties of that useful and honourable employment until January 1764. At his present advanced period of life he frequently attends the public exercises of the school; and it can always easily be collected from his manner whether the scholars have pleased him or not by their performances.

An

An able first master of Westminster is too promiment a person to be overlooked by those who have the disposal of preferment. We find accordingly that in 1759 Dr. Markham was promoted to the second stall in Durham cathedral, while he held the mastership, and in 1765 to the deanery of Rochester after he had resigned it. Both promotions were most probably owing to patrons, to whom he had been recommended by his public services.

In 1767 he vacated the deanery of Rochester, and was created dean of Christ Church. The deanery of Christ Church is a dignity of very great importance and responsibility, involving the care both of a college and a cathedral. The college, distinguished by its wealth, by the splendour of its buildings, and the rank and number of its members, towers above the sister institutions of Oxford; and it has long been the endeavour of those who preside over it to justify its claims to superiority by the more solid distinctions of eminence in discipline, in learning, and whatever can add lustre to a religious and literary foundation. But all that can be done by the head of a college is obstinately opposed by the genius of the place. The tutors consist of men who are supported in lazy splendour by independent incomes, who cannot by any exertions increase their advantages, and whose interest it therefore is, as a profound writer has well observed, to use none. The students, corrupted by excessive liberty, are active only in dissipation. No one acquainted with our universities will deny that this, as a general, is a faithful description. Tutors able and industrious

Dd2

industrious, and students who love knowledge, and are ardent and persevering in the pursuit of it, furpish many shining exceptions; but such men owe nothing to the universities, except the honour of being superior to their disadvantages.

of

The advantages to be enjoyed at Oxford or Cambridge consist in leisure and books. The libraries are the property of the senior and less industrious part the bodies, and, at least in one of them, are almost beyond the reach of the junior part. Whether the leisure of a college be favourable to the great efforts of the mind, a leisure which is a vacancy from all that excites pleasing as well as troublesome agitations, from all that is animating as well as all that is depressing, is a question to be decided by comparing what has been produced in universities, with what has been accomplished amidst the tumults and troubles of busy life.

[ocr errors]

If it must be allowed that the retirement of a college is favourable to the acquisition of knowledge, it at least seems natural to suppose that after the mind has been furnished, and the taste formed, the student should be dismissed into the world, where he may catch animation from the busy and active, where he may be roused by opposition, and inspired with emulation by contiguous merit; that it should no longer be his sole occupation to study the works which supplied the former wants of mankind, but that he should rather by actual observation learn what is now necessary to their improvement, and render himself qualified to supply it.

It has been from considering colleges in this light, and from estimating their characters by the senior part of their members, that men of wit and of the world have been induced to represent them as the abodes of pedantry and dullness. Pope, in mention. ing the deputation sent from Oxford to the throne of Dullness, pays a compliment to Christ Church, rather, it is probable, prompted by his regard for Atterbury, than demanded by truth.

"Nor wer't thou, Isis, wanting at that day,

Though Christ Church long kept prudishly away."
DUNCIAD, B. iv.

The occasion of another line was given while Atterbury was a distinguished member of the college (in 1703);

"And fierce logicians still expelling Locke."

*That the effects of such institutions have always been the same, and likewise the opinions entertained of them, appears from the following passage in Horace, which seems to shew that the period of study prescribed at Athens was that which was usual in our universities; for in them the resident student is in statu pupillari till he is master of arts, or during seven years.

Ingenium, sibi quod vacuas desumsit Athenas,

Et studiis annos septem dedit, insenuitque

Libris et curis, statuâ taciturnius exit
Plerumque, et risu populum quatit.

LIB. ii. Ep. 11.

Imitated by Pope, and applied to Oxford.
The man who stretch'd in Isis' calm retreat
To books and study gives seven years complete,
See! strew'd with learned dust his night-cap on,
He walks an object new beneath the sun!

The boys flock round him, and the people stare;
So stiff, so mute! some statue you would swear
Stept from its pedestal to take the air!

[blocks in formation]

The statue of Locke is an ornament of the library from which his works were once excluded with disgrace. So slowly do bodies of this nature learn to endure what they will at length boast that they admire!

With what success Dr. Markham contended against these natural obstacles can, at this distance of time, scarcely be discovered. It is probable that, while he was dean, Christ Church maintained its accustomed pretensions to superiority, as they must be co-existent with its walks and walls. But Blackstone, Horne, and Lowth were his contemporaries in the university, and members of the inferior colleges.

Blackstone is one of the English classics, and is equally celebrated as a profound lawyer and as an elegant writer.. Horne was a man of a most amiable genius, admirable for his taste and learning, and venerable for his piety. His works on subjects of divinity are amongst the most elegant and affecting that our language affords; but in philosophy he has not maintained an equal reputation. He was a favourer of the fanciful opinions of Hutchinson, the famous mosaic philosopher; an error scarcely to have been expected from one who in general displayed so much rectitude of judgment. Lowth was eminently distinguished as an Hebrew scholar and an English grammarian; but perhaps nothing added more to his reputation than the exquisite beauty and propriety of his Latin compositions. Of his English style it is. remarkable, that it is much less ornamented than what he has written in Latin. This is probably owing

to

« ՆախորդըՇարունակել »