Jacob Bryant, Sir William Draper, and the eminent physician, scholar, and critic, Sir George Baker, having been among his pupils. When, some years afterwards, he became a candidate for the provostship of King's College, it seems to have afforded no indifferent evidence of his popularity and merits, that it was only after a severe contest that he was defeated, notwithstanding his rival competitor was no other than the famous scholar, Dr. George.1

The powerful friend to whom Mr. Chapman was mainly, if not entirely, indebted for his promotion in the Church was Dr. Potter, Archbishop of Canterbury, by whom he was not only appointed to be his domestic chaplain, but was presented to the rectories of Mersham in Kent, and of Alderton with the chapel of Smeeth. In 1741, he was instituted Archdeacon of Sudbury, about which time also the University of Oxford, in acknowledgment of his literary labours in the cause of religion, conferred on him a diploma of D.D. Another Church preferment which he held, though only for a short time, was that of Precentor of Lincoln, to which, as executor to Archbishop Potter, he had considered he was entitled to present himself. A decision, however, of the House of Lords, after a hearing which lasted three days, deprived him of the preferment."

The literary work by which Dr. Chapman seems to have been best known to his contemporaries was

1

1 Nichols's 'Literary Anecdotes,' vol. ix. p. 581. 2 Ibid., vol. ii. p. 193.

his Eusebius,' published in two volumes octavo, in which he attacked the deistical principles of Morgan and Tindal. In addition to this, and to other publications enumerated in Watt's Bibliotheca Britannica,' he wrote against Anthony Collins on the Prophecies of Daniel, and against Dr. Conyers Middleton in defence of Dr. Waterland; besides entering into a controversy with Dr. Sykes on the subject of the celebrated eclipse recorded by Phlegon. Notwithstanding, however, Dr. Chapman's acknowledged talents and learning, the circulation of his works would seem to have been less extensive than either their merits deserved or than their author perhaps had anticipated. "I remember," writes his old pupil, Horace Walpole, "a story of poor Dr. Chapman, one of Dr. Middleton's antagonists, but I have so entirely forgotten his works that I shall tell it very tamely. He went to his bookseller, and asked how his last work had sold. Very indifferently indeed, sir.' 'Ah! why, how many copies are gone off?'- Only five, sir!' 'Alack! and how many of my" Eusebius" (I think it was) have you left ?'-Two hundred, sir!' 'Indeed! well, but my book on (I don't know what), how many have you of them ?'— 'Oh! the whole impression, sir!'-'Good now! good now! that is much. Well! Mr. —, I cannot help it; I do my duty, and satisfy my conscience."

Dr. Chapman died at Mersham on the 14th of October, 1784, in the eightieth year of his age.

DR. JOHN SUMNER,

HEAD MASTER OF ETON, AND PROVOST OF KING'S COLLEGE.

ABLY and zealously as Dr. Sumner may very possibly have discharged the arduous duties of Head Master of Eton School, we miss in the story of his career those incidents of interest and those talents of a high order which would otherwise have insured him a more prominent place in our gallery of Eton worthies. He was born at Windsor about the year 1704. In 1723, he was elected from the foundation at Eton, to King's College, Cambridge, and, having obtained his fellowship at that College, returned to Eton as an assistant master. In 1734, he became Lower Master, and in January, 1745, on the resignation of Dr. William Cooke, was elected to succeed him in the Head Mastership, which he filled till 1754. In the mean time, in 1750, he had been appointed a Canon of Windsor; the same year he was presented by Lord Edgecombe to the Rectory of Berwick-inElmet, Yorkshire, and, in 1753, to the living of Castleford, in the same county. On the 18th of October, 1756, he was elected Provost of King's College, and in 1772, about the age of sixty-eight, he died.' ' Nichols's 'Literary Anecdotes,' vol. viii. p. 211. VOL. I.

D

HENRY FOX, LORD HOLLAND.

WHEN, on the memorable 30th of January, 1649, Charles I. stepped through the broken wall of his own beautiful banqueting-room at Whitehall upon the fatal scaffold, there is said to have been in attendance upon him, besides two of his Gentlemen of the Bedchamber, Harrington and Herbert, a young Page in Waiting, whose name, as Sir Stephen Fox, subsequently became a familiar and an honoured one during the reigns of four successive monarchs. Three years after the tragical fate of his royal master, we find the young man attaching himself to the almost ruinous fortunes of his exiled sovereign, Charles II., at whose small Court in the Low Countries he faithfully and ably filled the unremunerative post of Cofferer of the household. He returned with Charles to England at his restoration; and, after having there filled with great credit a succession of honourable and lucrative public employments, married in 1703, at the mature age of seventy-six, a second wife, by whom he became the father of two

sons, Stephen, subsequently created Earl of Ilchester, and Henry, afterwards Lord Holland, the subject of the present memoir.

Henry Fox, the future political rival of the illustrious Chatham, was born in 1705, and had probably already become an Eton scholar when, at the age of eleven, he lost his venerable father, who died on the 28th of October, 1716, in his eightyninth year. His nature was quick and ardent, and accordingly, when thus left unfettered by paternal advice or control, our surprise is the less at finding that the first two or three years which he passed after his removal from Eton, were given up by him to the pursuit of dissipation and wild frolic; most of that time having been passed by him on the Continent, and most of his patrimony during that period having been squandered at the gaming-table. Happily, however, libertine as he was, the desire of knowledge, a taste for the classical writings of antiquity, and a love of the fine arts, went far to preserve him from entire demoralization. Moreover, such was the versatility of his genius, that the pursuit of politics, to which it inclined him, came no less easy to him than the pursuit of pleasure; and accordingly, it was not surprising that he should have turned his attention betimes to the House of Commons, as alike offering him a rare opportunity of gratifying an ambition of no ordinary intensity, and of repairing his embarrassed fortunes. Happily, too,