Communion service, having obtained permission from the Bishop to stand or sit, as their consciences directed.—STOWELL, HUGH, 1819, The Life of Bishop Wilson.

As far as man can judge of man, few persons ever went out of this world more thoroughly prepared for the change than Bishop Wilson, not only in heart and conscience, but in comparatively trifling arrangements. He had even provided his coffin long before hand.-KEBLE, JOHN, 1863, Life of Thomas Wilson.

No name in the long history of the English episcopate is more honourable than

that of Thomas Wilson. For no less than fifty-nine years, from 1696 to 1755, he administered the see of Sodor and Man in a way which excited, as it well might the amazement and admiration of all church

men to whom his fame was known. Nor was his repute confined to England. Cardinal Fleury, shortly before his death in 1743, sent a special messenger to him. He had heard, he said, about him, and he felt the more interest in the account because they were the oldest, and he believed also the two poorest bishops in Europe. He hoped that it might be possible he would accept an invitation from him, and pay him a visit in France. Fleury likewise procured an order that no French privateer for the war of the Austrian succession was then at his height -should ravage the Isle of Man. Queen Anne and George I. both offered him bishoprics, and Queen Caroline was specially anxious to keep him in England. "Nay," said the bishop, "I will not leave. my wife in my old age, because she is poor." In his own diocese he was honoured with a reverence which sometimes almost bordered upon superstition. -ABBEY, CHARLES J., 1887, The English Church and its Bishops, 1700-1800, vol. I, p. 138.

GENERAL

Bishop Wilson's "Maxims" deserve to be circulated as a religious book, not only by comparison with the cartloads of rubbish circulated at present under this designation, but for their own sake, and even by comparison with the other works of the same author. Over the far better known "Sacra Privata" they have this advantage, that they were prepared by him for his own private use, while the "Sacra Privata" were prepared

by him for the use of the public. The "Maxims''were never meant to be printed, and have on that account,-like a work of, doubtless, far deeper emotion and power, the "Meditations" of Marcus Aurelius, something peculiarly sincere and first-hand about them. Some of the best things from the "Maxims" have passed into the "Sacra Privata;" still, in the "Maxims," we have them as they first arose; and whereas, too, in the "Sacra Privata" the writer speaks very often as one of the clergy, and as addressing the clergy, in the "Maxims" he almost always speaks soley as a man. I am not saying a word against the "Sacra Privata," for which I have the highest respect; only the "Maxims" seem to me a better and a more

edifying book still.-ARNOLD, MATTHEW, 1869, Culture and Anarchy, Preface, p. iv.

.66

Wilson, the Apostolic," was a man of the old sacerdotal type, full of simplicity, tenderness, devotion, and with a sincere belief, inoffensive because alloyed by no tincture of pride or ambition, in the sacred privileges of the Church. Amongst his scattered reflections there are many of much beauty in expression as in sentiment. They imply a theology of that type of which à-Kempis is the permanent representative; less ascetic, inasmuch as Wilson had the good fortune to be a married man instead of a monk; and, of course, less vivid, as he was one born out of due time. His superstitions-for he is superstitious

-no more provoke anger than the simple fancies of a child; and we honour him as we should honour all men whose life and thoughts were in perfect harmony, and guided by noble motives. To read him is

to love him; he helps us recognise the fact. that many of the thoughts which supported his noble nature in its journey through life may be applicable in a different costume to the sorrows and trials which also change their form rather than their character; but we see with equal clearness that he has little or nothing to say upon the speculative difficulties of the time. He may be passed over with the remark that his example proves conclusively that a genuine Christian theologian in the most characteristic sense of the term might still be found under the reign of George II. in the Isle of Man.-STEPHEN, LESLIE, 1876, History of English Thought in the Eighteenth Century, vol. II, p. 384.

PERSONAL

Round him much Embryo, much Abortion lay,

Much future Ode, and abdicated Play; Nonsense precipitate, like running Lead, That slipp'd through Cracks and Zigzags of the Head;

All that on Folly Frenzy could beget,

Fruits of dull Heat, and Sooterkins of wit, Next, o'er his Books his eyes begin to roll, In pleasing memory of all he stole,

How here he slipp'd, how there he plunder'd snug,

And suck'd all o'er, like an industrious Bug.

High on a gorgeous seat, that far outshone Henley's gilt tub, or Fleckno's Irish throne, Or that where on her Curls the public pours, All-bounteous, fragrant grains and golden showers,

Great Cibber sate: The proud Parnassian sneer,

The conscious simper, and the jealous leer, Mix on his look: All eyes direct their rays On him, and crowds turn coxcombs as they gaze.

-POPE, ALEXANDER, 1743, The Dunciad, bks. i, ii.

Colley Cibber, Sir, was by no means a blockhead; but by arrogating to himself too much, he was in danger of losing that degree of estimation to which he was entitled. His friends gave out that he intended his birth-day Odes should be bad: but that was not the case, Sir; for he kept them many months by him, and a few years before he died he shewed me one of them, with great solicitude to render it as perfect as might be, and I made some corrections, to which he was not very willing to submit.-JOHNSON, SAMUEL, 1763, Life by Boswell, ed. Hill, vol. 1, p. 464.

Though his voice as an actor was occasionally harsh and unmusical, more particularly in tragedy, he was a fine reciter of comedies in private. Foote and Murphy, both excellent judges, have given testimony of this; particularly the latter, who heard him read the scenes of Lord and Lady Townly in "The Provoked Husband" to Mrs. Woffington. It is true, his voice partook of the old school, and therefore differed in some respect from that familiarity in modern dialogue which

Garrick introduced; but it was, upon the whole, a fine picture of the manners of the age in which the play was written, and had a very impressive effect.-FOOTE, SAMUEL, 1777? Memoirs, ed. Cooke, vol. II, p. 201.

But

Colley, we are told, had the honour to be a member of the great club at White's; and so, I suppose, might any other man, not quite unknown, who wore good cloaths, and paid his money when he lost it. on what terms did Cibber live with this society? Why, he feasted most sumptuously, as I have heard his friend Victor say with an air of triumphant exultation, with Mr. Arthur and his wife, and gave eighteen pence for his dinner. After he had dined, when the clubroom door was opened, and the laureate was introduced, he was saluted with the loud and joyous acclamation of "O King Coll! Come in, King Coll! Welcome, welcome, King Colley!" And this kind of gratulation, Mr. Victor thought, was very gracious and very honourable.-DAVIES, THOMAS, 1780, Memoirs of the Life of David Garrick, vol. II, p. 353.

For my part, I can almost believe that Cibber was a modest man! as he was most certainly a man of genius. Cibber had lived a dissipated life, and his philosophical indifference, with his careless gaiety, was the breastplate which even the wit of Pope failed to pierce. During twenty years' persecution for his unlucky Odes, he never lost his temper; he would read to his friends the best things pointed against them, with all the spirit the authors could wish; and would himself write epigrams for the pleasure of hearing them repeated while sitting in coffeehouses; and whenever they were applauded as "Palpable hits!"-"Keen!"-"Things with a spirit in them!"-he enjoyed these attacks on himself by himself. If this be vanity, it is at least "Cibberian." It was, indeed, the singularity of his personal character which so long injured his genius, and laid him open to the perpetual attacks of his contemporaries, who were mean enough to ridicule undisguised foibles, but dared not be just to the redeeming virtues

of his genius.-DISRAELI, ISAAC, 1814, Pope and Cibber, Quarrels of Authors.

He flourished in wig and embroidery, player, poet, and manager, during the Augustan age of Queen Anne, somewhat earlier and somewhat later. A most egregious fop, according to all accounts, he was, but a very pleasant one notwithstanding, as your fop of parts is apt to be. Pope gained but little in the warfare he waged with him, for this plain reason, that the great poet accuses his adversary of dulness, which was not by any means one of his sins, instead of selecting one of the numerous faults, such as pertness, petulance, and presumption, of which he was really guilty.-MITFORD, MARY RUSSELL, 1851, Recollections of a Literary Life, p. 264.

Of Colley Cibber it is sufficient here to state that he was not merely a popular actor, but one of the most remarkable men of his age. His professional cleverness was so great that it can be described as only falling short of genius; and as a dramatist, his admirable judgment made up for his deficiencies in the art of composition, so that few writers of comedy have achieved greater temporary triumphs. With all his talents, however, it was his fate to earn the hearty contempt of most of his contemporaries whose good opinion was worth having, and in the fulness of his fame his self-sufficiency and arrogance exposed him to all the shafts of satire. . . . If the character of Cibber were as contemptible as "The Dunciad" and Fielding's writings represent it, much printer's ink was thrown away in blackening it.-LAWRENCE, FREDERICK, 1855, The Life of Henry Fielding, pp. 15, 123.

Worn-out, tawdry, with a shabby fine. laced coat, and dirty tattered ruffles, taking snuff vehemently, and applauding as if he were in the stage-box one moment, weeping as if he were on the stage the next,-behold Colley Cibber; now in the very yellowest and searest of the leaf, to which old age is likened; still writing, still acting his own plays, and still frequenting the table of Samuel Richardson, to eat at another man's expense, and to pay back the coin of flattery. But he is Poet Laureate; and that office imposes on the worthy, but somewhat tuft-hunting Samuel Richardson.-THOMSON, KATHERINE (GRACE WHARTON), 1862, The Literature of Society, vol. II, p. 240.

Among them all, Colley kept his own to the last. A short time before the last hour arrived, Horace Walpole hailed him on his birthday with a good-morrow, and "I am glad, sir, to see you looking so well." "Egad, sir," replied the old gentleman, all diamonded and powdered and dandified, "at eighty-four it is well for a man that he can look at all."

And so

And now he crosses Piccadilly and passes through Albemarle Street, slowly but cheerfully, with an eye and a salutation for any pretty woman of his acquaintance, and with a word for any "good fellow" whose purse he has lightened, or who has lightened his, at dice or whist. he turns into the adjacent square; and as his servant closes the door, after admitting him, neither of them wots that the master has passed over the threshold for the last time, a living man. In December, 1757, I read in contemporary publications that "there died at his house in Berkeley Square, Colley Cibber, Esq., Poet Laureate."-DORAN, JOHN, 1863, Annals of the English Stage, vol. II, ch. ii.

No life illustrates more curiously the history of the stage than that of Colley Cibber, and no figure stands out more conspicuously in that sort of turbulence and war which the actor of his era had to wage. His strange career shows us that the actor was as marked a figure off the stage as upon it.-FITZGERALD, PERCY, 1882, A New History of the English Stage, vol. I, p. 320.

DRAMAS

Cibber has written a great many comedies; and though in several of them there be much sprightliness, and a certain pert vivacity peculiar to him, yet they are so forced and unnatural in the incidents, as to have generally sunk into obscurity, except two which have always continued in high favour with the public, "The Careless Husband," and "The Provoked Husband." The former is remarkable for the polite and easy turn of the dialogue; and, with the exception of one indelicate scene, is tolerably moral, too, in the conduct and in the tendency. The latter, "The Provoked Husband," (which was the joint production of Vanbrugh and Cibber), is, perhaps, on the whole, the best comedy in the English language. It is liable, indeed, to one critical objection, of having a double plot; as the incident of the