GENERAL

I mention with pleasure the labours of a respectable prelate, who in this, ["Translation of Isaiah"] as well as in a former work, has very happily united the most critical judgment, with the taste and spirit of poetry.-GIBBON, EDWARD, 1779, A Vindication of Some Passages in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Chapters of the History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.

Lowth had the amiable accomplishments of a man of parts and a scholar; but in no transcendent degree of eminence in either character.-HURD, RICHARD, 1808? Commonplace Book, ed. Kilvert, p. 249.

Lowth is one of the most judicious commentators on the prophets. He never prophesies himself: adheres strictly to the literal meaning of the inspired writer, and is yet generally evangelical in his interpretations. There is not much appearance of criticism; but the original text and other critical aids were doubtless closely studied by the respectable author. It is often quoted by Scott, and, along with Patrick and Whitby (with whom he is associated, though a writer of more spirituality than either), is pronounced by Bishop Watson the best commentary in the English language.-ORME, WILLIAM, 1824, Bibliotheca Biblica.

His piety, his diligence, his hospitality, and his beneficence, rendered his life highly exemplary, and greatly enforced his public ministrations.-MILLS, ABRAHAM, 1851, The Literature and the Literary Men

of Great Britain and Ireland, vol. II, p. 238.

Distinguished for his classical and theological attainments, and the liberality with which he communicated his stores to others. His learning is said to have been equally extensive and profound, and he accompanied all his reading with critical and philological remarks.CHAMBERS, ROBERT, 1876, Cyclopædia of English Literature, ed. Carruthers.

The value of his commentary was never very great, and it has been long since entirely superseded. Its tone is pious but cold, and he fails to appreciate the spiritual and poetical character of the prophetical writings, while he is far too eager to discover Messianic interpretations. His knowledge of Hebrew was moreover inadequate. At the same time his exegesis, if shallow, is simple, direct, and brief. The commentary has been highly praised by Bishop Richard Watson and by William Orme. Though less eminent than his son, Robert Lowth, the bishop of London, he was believed to be the profounder scholar. But he was too diffident to undertake any considerable original work, and the wide range and accuracy of his learning was chiefly shown in his contributions to the publications of others. We are told that he carefully read and annotated almost every Greek and Latin author, classical or ecclesiastical, and the stores he had thus collected he lected he dispensed ungrudgingly.VENABLES, EDMUND, 1893, Dictionary of National Biography, vol. XXXIV, p. 217.

PERSONAL

I know not what to think of your uneasiness. It shews unlike a Christian, and savours neither of temper nor consideration. I am troubled to remember it is habitual. . . . You make your friends You make your friends and yourself uneasy: cannot trust Providence. Do your duty and serve God in your station.-ATTERBURY, LEWIS,

1690, To his Son, Nov. 1.

Urim was civil, and not void of sense, Had humour, and a courteous confidence. . . . But see how ill mistaken parts succeed! He threw off my dominion, and would read; Engaged in controversy, wrangled well, In convocation language could excel,

In volumes proved the Church without defence

By nothing guarded but by Providence. -GARTH, SAMUEL, 1699-1714, The Dispensary, canto i.

He has so much regard to his congregation, that he commits to his memory what he has to say to them; and has so soft and graceful a behaviour, that it must attract your attention. His person, it is to be confessed, is no small recommendation; but he is to be highly commended for not losing that advantage, and adding to the propriety of speech, which might pass the criticism of Longinus, an action which would have been approved by Demosthenes. He has a peculiar force in his way, and has many of his audience who could not be intelligent hearers of his discourse, were there not explanation as well as grace in his action. This art of his is used with the most exact and honest skill: he never attempts your passions till he has convinced your reason. All the objections which he can form are laid open and dispersed, before he uses. the least vehemence in his sermon; but when he thinks he has your head, he very soon wins your heart: and never pretends

While yet I can write to you, I must and will correspond with you, till the very moment that it is felony; and when I can no longer write to you, I will write of you. To tell you that my heart is full of your defence is no more than I believe, the worst enemy you have must own of his. You have really without a figure, had all the triumph that ancient eloquence boasts of. Their passions and consciences have done you right, though their votes will not. You have met with the fate, frequent to great and good men, to gain applause where you are denied justice. Let me take the only occasion I have had in the whole series of your misfortunes to congratulate you, and not you alone, but posterity, this noble defence. I already see in what lustre that innocence is to appear to other ages, which this has overborne and oppressed. I know perfectly well what a share of credit it will be to have appeared on your side, or to have been called your friend. I am far prouder of that word you publickly spoke of me than of anything I have yet heard of myself in my whole life.-POPE, ALEXANDER, 1723, Letter to Bishop Atterbury, May.

He could hardly account for the

inveterate hatred and malice which some persons bore to the ingenious Bishop of Rochester, unless it was that, infatuated like the wild Americans, they fondly hoped to inherit not only the spoils, but even the abilities of the man they should destroy. -BATHURST, LORD, 1723, State Trials.

His behaviour in every station in life has shown him to be a person of the greatest wit, built upon the foundation of good sense and directed by the strictest rules of religion and morality. He was always for maintaining the dignity and privileges of the several offices he bore in the Church, and the just way of behaviour enforced by that steadiness which was natural to him, created him many enemies among the Canons of Christ Church and Prebendaries of Westminster, who naturally must, by their own interest, be obliged to oppose any dean who should maintain the undoubted rights which he ought to enjoy; but it is hoped all those feuds will be at an end in this last-men

tioned chapter, by the prudent and just choice his Majesty has made of Dr. Bradford to succeed him. His [Atterbury's] piety towards his children, and his sincerity to his friends, made him justly beloved and respected by both. No other crime can be laid to his charge but that for which he now suffers, which overbalances all his virtues.-WHARTON, DUKE OF? 1723, True Briton, No. VIII.

His temper was made up of irascible qualities, and had very little in it of the

mild and merciful. His resentment of injuries was quick and lasting, his remembrance of favours done him soon gone. There are few or none of his friends and

patrons but what at one time or other he quarrelled with.-STACKHOUSE, THOMAS, 1727, Memoirs of the Life of Atterbury,p. 63. Hail, happy Sire! the pain of life is o'er, Stranger and wandering pilgrim no more, At home, at rest, secure in blissful skies, Where envy drops its snakes, and Fraud its guise.

See seraph guards the starry crown prepare!
See smiling angels fly to greet thee there!

When pyramids, unfaithful to their trust,
Crumble to atoms with their founder's dust;
When solid marble mould'ring, wastes away,
And desert lies the monumental clay;
Thou shalt live, to deathless Fame consign'd,
Live like the best and bravest of mankind!

Atterbury was of a restless aspiring temper, and eager to obtain the highest honours of the church, which he would certainly have acquired, had not queen Anne died. If we may judge

from the inflexibility of his character, there is reason to believe that he rejected all offers of promotion, and was never inclined to desert his party.-COXE, WILLIAM, 1798, Memoirs of Sir Robert Walpole, vol. 1, p. 168.

A man distinguished for his learning and his wit, and obnoxious only by his religious bigotry and false ambition. -MACKINTOSH, WALLACE, AND BELL, 1840, History of England, vol. x, p. 120.

Worthy of high appreciation must be the man who was warmly loved by Pope, revered by Wesley, admired by Steele, and honoured by Swift; who was the centre of the brilliant social circle that included Busby, Dryden, Addison, Prior, Congreve, Gay, Arbuthnot, Garth, RadDean Aldrich, Lords Orrery and Stanhope, cliffe, Parnell, Rowe, Dr. William King, Drs. John and Robert Freind, Locke, Newton, Bentley, the able critic, and Bingham, the learned divine. Nor was he less an object of regard to the rival interests struggling for pre-eminence at court, represented by Marlborough, Shaftesbury, Landsdowne, Dorset, Harcourt, Bathurst, Sunderland, Godolphin, Halifax, Somers, Bolingbroke, Oxford, Buckingham, Walpole, Carteret, Townshend, and Pulteney -not forgetting the fair candidates for power, the Duchesses of Marlborough, Buckingham, and Queensberry, and Lady Masham. In his own profession he was honoured with the affection of Bishops Trelawney, Gastrell, and Smalridge, and Dr. Sacheverell; though he excited the hostility of Hoadly, Wake, Burnet, and Tenison. Such were his coadjutors and opponents to the period of his arbitrary banishment, when he was obliged to mingle in a new set of associates, who endeavoured to support the claims of the son of James II.—the Dukes of Ormonde and Wharton, Lord Marischal Keith, Lochiel, and the rest of that brilliant staff of adventurers and enthusiasts who sacrificed their fortunes or their lives in his service-including the traitors who took bribes to betray its secrets. Partic

Atterbury's relations with his home circle;

for as he was honoured as a prelate, and esteemed as a statesman, he was loved as a parent. The episode in his career in which his daughter figures, must be classed amongst the most touching ever narrated. WILLIAMS, FOLKESTONE, 1869, Memoirs and Correspondence of Francis Atterbury, Preface, vol. 1, p. ix.

Francis Atterbury, the most accomplished and eloquent of the Tory clergymen, became Bishop of Rochester, though sorely against the wishes of Anne who, while sympathizing with his doctrine, held in abhorrence the factiousness of his temper.-WYON, FREDERICK WILLIAM, 1876, The History of Great Britain During the Reign of Queen Anne, vol. II, p. 465.

The most brilliant tribune, orator, and pamphleteer of the High Church party. -LECKY, WILLIAM EDWARD HARTPOLE, 1877, A History of England in the Eighteenth Century, vol. 1, p. 272.

There is no Churchman of the day

whose virtues as well as faults stand out in lineaments so clearly marked as those of Atterbury. . . There is no doubt now as to Atterbury's guilt: but it was then concealed from his friends by a process of Jesuitical prevarication, which leaves on Atterbury's character a worse stain even than that of treason, especially in a case where treason might be so far conscientious, and was at least not But Jesuitical as he was in this episode of his life, insincerity was not Atterbury's common failing. He had left amongst the circle a memory which was not without its lasting effect. From him they had imbibed that refusal to subscribe to the tenet of the Whigs which regarded the Revolution as the beginning and end of the Constitution. From his

uncommon.

whole character, his love of extremes, his anxiety to play a sensational part in some exciting drama, his resolute refusal to regard prudence or expediency in his bigoted attachment to a cause, even from his fiery vanity, the Bishop was fitted to make a deep and lasting impression upon those amongst whom his life had lain. Warm and loving in all his private relations, with the tenderness of a woman, and the courage, if not the calm judgment, of a man, he held his place in the hearts of his friends, and made it impossible for them to believe that his public acts could be stained by duplicity and treason: and

not a little of their indignant protest against the Government of Walpole, not a little of their claim to be the assertors of liberty in an age which bowed before a political autocrat, is to be traced to the work, to the spirit, to the trial, and to the banishment of Atterbury.-CRAIK, HENRY, 1882, The Life of Jonathan Swift, pp. 97, 375.

At Marlborough's funeral we see for the last time in high public estate one of the few Englishmen of the day who could properly be named in the same breath with Marlborough. This was Francis Atterbury, the eloquent and daring Bishop of Rochester. His was not a

very reverential spirit. There was as little of the temper of pious sanctity in Atterbury as in Swift himself. The allusion to the last scene of pompous vanity might have had another significance, as well as that which Atterbury meant to give to it. Amid the pomp in which Marlborough's career went out the career of Atterbury went out as well, although in a different way, and not closed sublimely by death. Francis Atterbury

may rank among the most conspicuous public men of his time. He stands only just beneath Marlborough, and Bolingbroke, and Walpole. Atterbury had, however, among his many gifts a dangerous gift of political intrigue. Like Swift, and Dubois, and Alberoni, he was at least as much statesman as churchman. He had mixed himself up in various intrigues-some of them could hardly be called conspiracies-for the restoration of the Stuarts, and when at last something like a new conspiracy was planned, it was not likely that he would be left out of it. -MCCARTHY, JUSTIN, 1884, A History of the Four Georges, vol. 1, pp. 278, 281, 282.

Atterbury cannot be regarded as a perfect character or as a great divine, but he was a very able man, and in his way a brave, faithful son of the church. If he mingled politics too much with religion it must be remembered in justice to him that the two subjects were so strangely mixed up in that eventful time that it was all but impossible for a public character to disentangle the one from the other. His name will always be a prominent one in the complicated history of the church and nation of England, in the later part of the seventeenth and the early part of