MEMOIRS

OF THE

LIFE AND WRITINGS

OF

DR. HORNE.

Doctor GEORGE HORNE, late bishop of Norwich, and for several years president of Magdalen College in Oxford, and dean of Canterbury, was born at Otham, a small village near Maidstone in Kent, on the first of November, in the year 1730. His father was the reverend Samuel Horne, M.A. rector of Otham, a very learned and respectable clergyman, who for some years had been a tutor at Oxford. This gentleman had so determined with himself, to preserve the integrity of his mind against all temptations from worldly advantage, that he was heard to say, and used often to repeat it, he had rather be a toad-eater to a mountebank, than flatter any great man against his conscience. To this he adhered through the whole course of his life; a considerable part of which was spent in the education of his children, and in a regular performance of all the duties of his parish. He married a daughter of Bowyer Hendley, Esq. by whom he had seven children, four sons and three daughters. The eldest son died very young. The late bishop was the next. His younger brother, Samuel, was a fellow of University College, where he died, greatly respected and lamented. He inherited the integrity of his father and was an " Israelite indeed," who never did or wished harm to any mortal. Yet his character was by no means of the insipid kind: he had much of the humour and spirit of his elder brother; had a like talent for preaching; and was well attended to as often as he appeared in the university pulpit. His death was an

*He died in 1768, aged 75.

nounced to an intimate friend by his elder brother in the following short and pathetic-letter:

MY DEAR FRIEND,

(No Date.)

"Last night, about half an hour past eight, it pleased God to take from us, by a violent fit of the stone in the gall-bladder, my dear brother Sam. He received the blessed sacrament, with my mother and myself, from the hands of Dr. Wetherell *; and, full of faith, with the most perfect resignation, departed in peace with God, the world and himself. It is a heavy stroke to my poor mother; but she and my sisters bear up with great fortitude. I have lost a very dear friend and pleasant companion! Pray for us-All join in every affectionate wish for the happiness of you and yours, with

G. H."

The youngest brother, the reverend William Horne, was educated at Magdalen College in Oxford, and is the present worthy rector of Otham, in which he succeeded his father, as also in the more valuable rectory of Brede in the county of Sussex.

Mr. Horne, the father of the family, was of so mild and quiet a temper, that he studiously avoided giving trouble on any occasion. This he carried so far, that, when his son George was an infant, he used to wake him with playing upon a flute, that the change from sleeping to waking might be gradual and pleasant, and not produce an outcry; which frequently happens when children are awakened suddenly. What impression this early custom of his father might make upon his temper, we cannot say: but certainly he was remarkable, as he grew up, for a tender feeling of music, especially that of the church.

Under his father's tuition, he led a pleasant life, and made a rapid progress in Greek and Latin. But some well-meaning friend, fearing he might be spoiled by staying so long at home, advised the sending of him to school. To this his good father, who never was given to make much resistance, readily consented; and he was accordingly placed in the school at Maidstone, under the care of the reverend Deodatus Bye, a man of good principles, and well learned in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew; who, when he had received his new scholar, and examined him at the age of thirteen, was so surprised at his proficiency, that he asked him why he came to school, when he was rather fit to go from school? With this gentleman he continued two years; during which he added much to his stock of learn

* The then master of University College, and dean of Hereford,&c.

ing, and among other things a little elementary knowledge of the Hebrew, on the plan of Buxtorf, which was of great advantage to him afterwards. I am a witness to the high respect with which he always spoke of his master; whom he had newly left when my acquaintance with him first commenced at University College, to which he was sent when he was little more than fifteen years of age. When servants speak well of a master or mistress, we are sure they are good servants; and when a scholar speaks well of his teacher, we may be as certain he is, in every sense of the word, a good scholar.

I cannot help recounting, on this occasion, that there was under the said Deodatus Bye another scholar, very nearly related to Mr. Horne, of whom the master was heard to say, that he never did any thing which he wished him not to have done. But, when the lad was told of this, he very honestly observed upon it, that he had done many things which his master never heard of. He is now in an office of great responsibility. They who placed him in it, supposed him still to retain the honesty he brought with him from Maidstone school; and I never heard that he had disappointed them.

While Mr. Horne was at school, a Maidstone scholarship in University College became vacant; in his application for which he succeeded, and, young as he was, the master recommended his going directly to college.

Soon after he was settled at University College (where he was admitted on the 15th of March, 1745-6,) Mr. Hobson, a good and learned tutor of the house, gave out an exercise, for a trial of skill, to Mr. Horne and the present writer of his life, who was also in his first year. They were ordered to take a favourite Latin ode of Boëtius, and present it to the tutor in a different Latin metre. This they both did as well as they could: and the contest, instead of dividing them, united them ever after, and had also the effect of inspiring them with a love of the lyric poetry of that author; which seems not to be sufficiently known among scholars, though beautiful in its kind. The whole work was once in such esteem, that king Alfred, the founder of University College, and of the English constitution, translated it.

His studies, for a time, were in general the same with those of other ingenious young men; and the vivacity of his mind, which never was exceeded, and made his conversation very desirable, introduced him to many gentlemen of his own standing, who resembled him in their learning and their manners, particularly to Mr. Jenkin

son, earl of Liverpool, Mr. Moore, afterwards archbishop of Canterbury, Mr. Cracherode, Mr. Benson, the honourable Hamilton Boyle, son of lord Orrery, the reverend Jasper Selwin, and many others. Mr. Denny Martin, afterwards Dr. Fairfax, of Leeds Castle, in Kent, was from the same school with Mr. Horne; and has always been very nearly connected with him, as a companion of his studies, a lover of his virtues, and an admirer of his writings.

To show how high Mr. Horne's character stood with all the members of his college, old and young, I need only mention the following fact. It happened about the time when he took his bachelor's degree, which was on the 27th of October 1749, that a Kentish fellowship became vacant at Magdalen College; and there was, at that time, no scholar of the house who was upon the county. The senior fellow of University College, having heard of this, said nothing of it to Mr. Horne, but went down to Magdalen College, told them what an extraordinary young man they might find in University College, and gave him such a recommendation as disposed the society to accept of him. When the day of election came, they found him such as he had been represented, and much more; and in 1750 he was accordingly chosen a fellow of Magdalen College, and on the first of June 1752 he took the degree of master of arts.

If we look back upon our past lives, it will generally be found, that the leading events which gave a direction to all that followed, were not according to our own choice or knowledge, but from the hand of an overruling Providence, which acts without consulting us; putting us into situations which are either best for ourselves, or best for the world, or best for both; and leading us, as it led the patriarch Abraham, of whom we are told that he "knew not whither he was going." This was plainly the case in Mr. Horne's election to Magdalen College. A person took up the matter, unsolicited and in secret he succeeded. When fellow, his character and conduct gave him favour with the society; and, when Dr. Jenner died, they elected him president: the headship of the college introduced him to the office of vice-chancellor, which at length made him as well known to lord North as to the earl of Liverpool: this led to the deanery of Canterbury, and that to the bishopric of Norwich.

If we return to the account of his studies, we shall there find something else falling in his way which he never sought after, and attended with a train of very important consequences. While he was deeply engaged in the pursuits of oratory, poetry, philosophy, and history, and making himself well acquainted with the Greek

tragedians, of which he was become a great admirer, an accident, of which I shall relate the account as plainly and faithfully as I can, without disguising or diminishing, drew him into a new situation in respect of his mind, and gave a new turn to his studies, before he had arrived at his bachelor's degree. I may indeed say of this, that it certainly gave much of the colour which his character assumed from that time, and opened the way to most of his undertakings and publications, as he himself would witness if he were now alive.

It is known to the public that he came very early upon the stage as an author, though an anonymous one, and brought himself into some difficulty under the denomination of an Hutchinsonian; for this was the name given to those gentlemen who studied Hebrew and examined the writings of John Hutchinson, esq. the famous Mosaic philosopher, and became inclined to favour his opinions in theology and philosophy.

About the time of which I am speaking, there were many good and learned men of both universities, but chiefly in and of the university of Oxford, who, from the representation given to the public, some years before, by the right honourable Duncan Forbes, then lord president of the Court of Session in Scotland, and from a new and more promising method of studying the Hebrew language, independently of Jewish error, and from a flattering prospect also of many other advantages to the general interests of religion and learning, were become zealous advocates in favour of the new scheme of Mr. Hutchinson. Mr. Horne was led into this inquiry, partly by an accident which had happened to myself.

An attachment to some friends, then well known in the university for their abilities in music, of whom the principal were, Mr. Phocion Henly, of Wadham College, Mr. Pixel of Queen's, and Mr. Short of Worcester, drew me often to Wadham College, which society has two Hebrew scholarships, on one of which there was a gentleman, a Mr. Catcott of Bristol, whose father, as I afterwards understood, was one of those authors who first distinguished themselves as writers on the side of Mr. Hutchinson. He possessed a very curious collection of fossils, some of which he had digged and scratched out of the earth with his own hands at the hazard of his life; a pit near Wadham College, which would have buried him, having fallen in very soon after he was out of it. This collection* I was invited to see, and

It is now deposited in the public library at Bristol, to the corporation of which city he left that and his MSS. on a principle of gratitude for the preferment they had given him; and there I saw it in the year 1790, with many large and valuable additions of