Life and correspondence of Richard Whately, D.D., late archbishop of Dublin

Preface

THE SECOND EDITION.

It m'7 be necessary to add a few words in explanation of what has been changed, and what left unchanged, in this Second Edition.

For a book published in a smaller and cheaper form, it was important to condense as much as possible; and therefore a considerable number of Letters on political and other subjects, whose immediate interest has in some degree passed away, have been omitted, as less likely to interest general readers. Those who are desirous of fuller information on these subjects are referred to the larger work.

A few additional pages of ' Table Talk,' which have been recently communicated to the Editor, are appended to this edition, to which she has added some recollections of her own.

The Editor wishes distinctly to state that she is alone responsible for the Letters retained or omitted.

E. Jane Whately.

Contents

CHAPTEK I.

1787—1821.

PAGE

Chapter I. 1787—1821

His parentage and birth — Premature development of his tastes for mathematics and castle-building — His school days — Keeps a Commonplace Book — His absence of mind early displayed — His intellectual characteristics — Enters Oriel College, Oxford — Influence of Dr. Copleston — Takes his degrees — His habits of intimacy with his pupils, and early friendships — Reminiscences of his pupils — Ordained deacon in 1814, and first public preaching — Bishop Hinds' recollections of Mr. Whately, and interesting anecdotes — Dialogue in a stage-coach with a Roman Catholic farmer — Visits the Continent, and passes the winter in Portugal with his sisters — Resumes his college duties on his return — His mode of teaching — Reminiscences of the Rev. R. N. Boultbee — A table anecdote.

• The subject of this memoir was the youngest of the nine children of the Eev. Dr. Joseph Whately, of Nonsuch Park, Surrey, and Prebendary of Bristol — also Vicar of Widford 5 and Lecturer at G-resham College. Before proceeding to detail his personal history, a few words respecting his family may not be out of place. The Whately family numbered in its ancestry some persons of note ; among them was the famous ' painful preacher' of Banbury, a puritan divine of some eminence, whose Treatise on the New Birth is still extant.

The father of Dr. Joseph Whately connected himself by marriage with the Thompson family, of which Lord Haversham 1 was the head, and some members of which had

1 Sir John Thompson, Bart., created Baron Haversham, Bucks, in 1696. Extinct in his son, 1745.

B been distinguished, on the side of the Parliament, in the civil wars. His wife appears to have been a remarkable woman ; her portrait by Eomney, now in the possession of one of her great-grandsons, gives the impression of a mind of no ordinary stamp; and she was regarded by her children with deep reverence. She had three sons. *One of them (Thomas) was private secretary and confidential friend to Greorge Grenvilie, and afterwards Under-Secretary of State, M.P. for Castle Eising, and (to use the singular title of his office given in the ' Gentleman's Magazine') ' Keeper of His Majesty's private Roads, and Guide to the Eoyal Person in all Progresses.' It was He to wiioni Hutchinson and v Oliver addressed from Massachusetts those celebrated letters which got, by unfair means, into the hands of Franklin, and produced so great an effect at the outbreak of American discontent. On his death, in 1772, his brother William became lawful owner of these papers, and thought himself obliged to fight a duel with Mr. John Temple on account of them. 1 Thomas Whately was the author of an 'Essay on Modern Gardening' (1770) of which the Archbishop says that he believes 2 him to have been 'the earliest writer on the subject. From his work subsequent writers have borrowed largely, and generally without acknowledgment. The French poet De Lille, however, in his poem " Des Jardins," does acknowledge him his master.' 3 He also wrote ' Remarks on some of the Characters in Shakspeare,' re-edited by the Archbishop.*

Dr. Joseph Whately (the third) was married to Miss Jane Plumer, one of the three daughters of W. Plumer, Esq., of Gilston, and also of Blakesware Park, Herts. This last, an ancient dower-house, where the widow of Mr. Plumer resided with her daughters, is interesting from the notice of it in Charles Lamb's Essays. Lamb's grand-

1 See Lord Stanhope's ' History of England,' c. 50.

* This appears to be an error. A work on the subject was published in London in 1728, by Batley Langley.

3 'Annotations on Bacon,' Essay xlvi. ' On Gardens.'

Mt. 1] HIS PAREXTAGE AND BIRTH.

mother, Mrs, Field, was the housekeeper, and every reader of ' Elia ' will remember the allusions in it to early recollections of this place, now pulled down.

Dr. and Mrs. Joseph Whately were the parents of nine children, five daughters and four sons, all of whom lived to maturity, and most of them to old age.

The eldest son, William, was early engaged in business, afterwards turned his attention to law, married late in life, and died without children a few years after. The second, Thomas, was appointed to the living of Cookham, near Maidenhead, and afterwards to Chetwynd in Shropshire; he married a sister of Charles first Earl of Cottenham, and survived his brother Eichard only six months, dying at the age of ninety-one, and leaving a numerous family.

The third, Joseph Thompson, married an heiress, the daughter of T. Halsey, Esq., of Gaddesden, Herts, took the name of his w 7 ife, and died in 1818, leaving four children.

Of the five daughters, the eldest died in the prime of life; the fourth and only surviving one is the widow of the late Sir David Barry, 1 an eminent physician; the three others died unmarried at an advanced age.

Eichard, the youngest child, w^as born on the 1st of February 1787, in Cavendish Square, at the house of his maternal uncle, Mr. Plumer, then M.P. for Hertfordshire. His birth took place six years after that of the next youngest child, w T hen the family had been long supposed complete, and the c nursery ' in the house had ceased to exist. The arrival of the new-comer was an unlooked-for and scarcely a welcome event. He w T as feeble in health, and his slight and puny appearance must have strangely contrasted with the powerful, tall, and well-proportioned form of his maturer age. His friends have often heard him remark, that the earliest event of his life was his being weighed against a turkey, to the advantage of the bird ; and that he never in childhood knew what a really healthy appetite w r as ; the sensation of hunger w r as to him something new and strange, when he first felt it as a boy of eleven or twelve.

1 Since deceased.

B 2

4 LIFE OF AKCHBISHOP WHATELY. [L793

In disposition he was shy, timid, and retiring ; he knew little of the high spirits and playfulness of early childhood, and the society of children of his own age was actually distasteful to him. From all company he shrank with a nervous dread; and would often in after-life express wonder at the pleasure which children and young people usually take in social intercourse, and the desire of notice which they manifest.

In his own family he met with most attentive personal care from his elder sisters ; but none of his brothers were sufficiently near him in age to be his companions, and his early tastes and pursuits were not likely to meet with general sympathy or appreciation. He learned to read and write very early, and read with avidity ; but his great delight was in the observation of nature. He would spend hours in the garden, watching the habits of spiders, taming young ducklings, and carrying them in his hand to pick snails from the cabbages, learning to distinguish notes of birds, &c. And to the results of these early observations he would often allude in after-years.

But his most remarkable early passion was for arithmetic. In this he displayed a singular precocity. At six years old he astonished his family by telling the celebrated Parkhurst, his father's near neighbour and intimate friend, and a man of past sixty, how many minutes he was old. His calculations were tested, and found to be perfectly correct. But an extract from his Commonplace Book will best give an idea of this curious episode of his early life.

Q There certainly was,' he writes, 6 something peculiar in my calculating faculty. It began to show itself between five and six, and lasted about three years. One of the earliest things I can remember is the discovery of the difference between even and odd numbers, whose names I was highly delighted to be told ; I soon got to do the most difficult sums, always in my head, for I knew nothing of figures beyond numeration, nor had I any names for the different processes I employed. But I believe my sums were chiefly in multiplication, division, and the rule of jEt. 6] HIS EARLY PASSION FOR FIGURES. 5

three. In this last point I believe I surpassed the famous American boy, though I did not, like him, understand the extraction of roots. I did these sums much quicker than any one could upon paper, and I never remember committing the smallest error. I was engaged either in calculation or in castle-building (which I was also very fond of) morning, noon, and night; and was so absorbed as to run against people in the streets, with all the other accidents of absent people.

6 My father tried often, but in vain, to transfer my powers to written figures ; and when I went to school, at which time the passion was worn off, I was a perfect dunce at cyphering, and so have continued ever since. Thus w 7 as I saved from being a Jedediah Buxton, by the amputation, as it were, of this overgrown faculty. For valuable as itis in itself, it would have been a heavy loss to have it swallow up the rest. It was banished by a kind of ostracism, as the best of the Athenian citizens were, for the benefit of the community.'

Thus far his own words. He has often remarked that he would at that time have been perfectly happy shut up in the Bastile, if permitted to follow his favourite pursuit undisturbed.

At the time he went to school, which was at about nine years old, this passion died away, and, as he subsequently thought, he then learned arithmetic slowly and with difficulty. He alwa3^s looked on himself as a dunce in that line, though the readiness with which he solved curious problems and arithmetical puzzles would often surprise and baffle first-class mathematicians. The clearness of his explanations of the processes of arithmetic was always remarkable; but he never was distinguished as a mathematician at college.

But the other taste which he alludes to in the fragment given above — that for ' castle-building ' — remained, and became more fully developed. His were not the usual childish flights of fancy, but rather visionary speculations on a variety of abstract subjects, metaphysical, political, and ethical; fancied schemes for ameliorating the world, ideal republics, &c In those early days, when his absence of mind excited laughter, and it would be. half pityingly, half sontemptuousty, prophesied by his friends that he would f never be able :; make his way in the world.' the mind of the boy was preoccupied with conjectures and speculations, which have ;:;en found place in the writings :: philosophers :: maturei age. He himself has related how, while still a child, it occurred to him that the consciousness :: brutes must be analogous to that of human beings in a dream, when the " : wei :: : )stn ;:ion at pleasure is gone.

This view he confirmed in later life : but with regard ;

_

many theories of government, civilisation, &c, he was accustomed to remark. •' I went through that when I was twelve; such a systei n I thought out when I was thirteen ;: fourteen, 5 and so on. His family afterwards regretted that he had not been sent to a public school; but whether this would have suited his peculiar cast >f mind so well as the training he was thus unconsciously giving himself. may perhaj - . e 1c ul

At the age of nine he was se nt _ : ~1- school of a ZNIr. Philips, in the neighbourhood of Bristol. This school in great measure determined the friendships and connections of his subsequent life. With one of hi- schoolfel in particular (Mr. J. Parsons, afterwards son-in-law - Mr. Philips) he formed a close intimacy, which was only dissolved by death; and through this early friend he ~ afterwards brought into intimate relations with others who attended the same school after he left; among the principal of these were Mr. Rowe and Dr. Hinds. Mr. Philips's school was much resorted to by West Indians, and this gave him a familiarity with the customs and habits of the West Indies, which often appeared in his conversation and writings. The smallest incident which tended to throw light on national peculiarities, climate, w institutions, had always a peculiar interest for him. and was stored \ in his memory from the time he heard it. his master he often spoke afterwards his personal influence over hi - — an influence

&t. 9] SCHOOL DAYS. 7

which did not spring from any extraordinary talent, but from some nameless power or quality in him, which certainly conduced in no small degree to the general good conduct and order of the school.

In his Commonplace Book allusions will be found to his leading the sports of his companions ; but, on the whole, his school-life does not appear to have been a happy one. His thoughtful and meditative turn of mind was hardly fitted for ordinary schoolboy contact. Much of his leisure time was spent, as it had been at home, in solitary wanderings and observations in natural history ; he would delight in straying over a common near the playground, watching the habits of the sheep, and trying to tame them, and other similar occupations.

At ten years old he lost his father, the one of his family best able to appreciate his powers and peculiar turn of mind. This early bereavement he always deplored, and ever retained a lively recollection of conversations with his father, even at that early period.

Mrs. Whately removed with her five daughters and youngest son to Bath, where she passed the remainder of her life.

Of the period just preceding his entrance into college scarcely any records remain. His habits of solitary reflection and his interest in natural science appear to have been the same all along. Of fishing he was particularly fond. Throughout life, he retained his love for active exercise in the open air. His only surviving sister recollects another trait — the kind and unselfish consideration which made him, then and later, take pains to procure her horses and to ride with her, horse exercise being recommended for her health.

Though a most acute and watchful observer, where any principle was to be illustrated or induction made, he saw little at other times of what passed around him. His mind was eminentlv concentrative, and he often remarked in later life that, inconvenient as this habit was to him, he still owed everything in life to it. It enabled him to bring all his mental powers to bear on the subject before hirn, but, on the other hand, it made the operation of turning from one topic to another more intensely and painfull)" difficult ; and thus naturally produced the absence of mind referred to, which was one of his most remarkable characteristics, especially in the early period of his life. *He speaks with regret, in his Commonplace Book (1812), of his deficiency in the quality which he terms Curiosity. 6 By this means/ he says, 'I believe I lose more amusement, and suffer more inconvenience, than if I was indifferent to many dignified and excellent subjects of enquiry which I delight in. I have no relish for ordinary chat, which consists in the reciprocal gratification of the above - passion ; nor, consequently, for the company of a great part of the world, who have little to say that has anything but novelty to recommend it. It gives me no pleasure to be told who is dead, and who married, and what wages my neighbour gives his servants. Then, for the inconvenience, I am ignorant of the streets, and shops, and neighbouring villages of the town where I live. I very often know a man, without being able to tell any more about his country, family, etc., than if he had dropt from the skies. Nor do I even know, unless I enquire and examine diligently, and with design, how far it is from one place to another, what hour the coach starts, or what places it passes through. I am frequently forced to evade questions in a most awkward manner, from not daring to own, nor indeed able to convince any one of, my own incredible ignorance. If I had had no uncle or aunt, I should, probably, have been ignorant of my mother's maiden name.' * These prefatory remarks may serve to introduce the reader to a few of those peculiar characteristics of his mind and of his labours, which will be more fully developed in the course of the correspondence now laid before him. From the beginning, and emphatically, Whately was a thinker. His favourite authors were few: Aristotle, Thucydides, Bacon, Bishop Butler, Warburton, Adam Smith ; these were, perhaps, his principal intimates among great writers; and it will be easily seen that they are among the most ' suggestive ;' among those who could

Mr. 16-18] INTELLECTUAL CHARACTERISTICS. 9

furnish the most ready texts on which his ruminating powers might be expended. But one unavoidable result of this comparative want of reading, in one who thought and wrote so much, was, that he continually stumbled upon the thoughts of others, and reproduced them in perfect honesty as his own. This was one of his characteristics through life. It is singular to read one of his early critics 1 commenting on his tendency to reproduce the ' commonplace of other writers, not unfrequently, without an apparent consciousness of their ever having seen the light before ;' while one of his latest, Mr. Stuart Mill, . speaking of his philosophical investigations, says that 'of all persons in modern times, entitled to the name of philosophers, the two, probably, whose reading was the scantiest, in proportion to their intellectual capacity, were Archbishop Whately and Dr. Brown. But though indolent readers they were both of them active and fertile thinkers. 5 *

*Activity and fertility were certainly, beyond all others, the characteristics of Whately 5 s intellect. As in the early school and Oxford days, of which we are now writing, so down to his latest times, the daily occupation of his brain was to seize on some notion of what he considered a practical order, belonging to any one of the various subjects with which his mind occupied itself ; to follow it out to its minutest ramifications, and to bring it home with him, turned from the mere germ into the complete production. And this perpetual ' chopping logic with himself he carried on not less copiously when his usually solitary walks were enlivened by companionship. His talk was rather didactic than controversial ; which naturally rendered his company unpopular with some, while it gave him the mastery over other spirits of a different mould. ' His real object, or his original objects, 5 writes one of his earliest and ablest friends, ' was to get up clearly and beat out his ideas for his own use. Thus he wrote his books. Mr. R., lately dead, who was junior to Whately as a fellow of Oriel, told me that, in one of his walks with him, he was

1 'British Critic,' 1828, on his < Difficulties of St. Paul.'

so overcome by Whately' s recurrence, in conversation, to topics which he had already on former occasions insisted on, that he stopped short, and said, " Why, Whately, you said all this to me the other day;" 5 to which Whately replied to the effect that he would not be the worse for hearing it many times over.' *

In the company of a few chosen friends he delighted ; but the intercourse with general society, and the ordinary routine of a town life, were to him irksome in the extreme. He was then, and even later, most painfully shy ; and the well-meant efforts of his friends to correct this defect, by constantly reminding him of the impression he was likely to make on others, served to increase the evil they were intended to combat. In the pages of his Commonplace Book he records how at last he determined to make a bold effort, and care nothing for what others might be thinking of him ; and, to use his own words, ' if he must be a bear, to be at least as unconscious as a bear.' And the effort succeeded. The shyness passed away; and though his manners might have still a certain abruptness and peculiarity about them, the distressing consciousness which made life a misery was gone. That this was no trifling hindrance removed from his path, was attested by his frequent emphatic remark in later years : ' If there were no life but the present, the kindest thing that one could do for an intensely shy youth would be to shoot him through the head ! ' * 6 He could be most touchingly gentle in his manner,' says an old friend, ' to those whom he liked ; but I recollect a lady saying she would not for the world be his wife, from the way in which she had seen him put Mrs. Whately' (the object, all his life, of his strongest affection) ' into a carriage.' *

In 1805 he entered Oriel College, Oxford. That college was then, and for some vears afterwards, the most distinguished in the whole University. Dr. Copleston, afterwards Dean of Chester and Bishop of Llandaff, who was a college tutor at Oriel at the time of his entrance, and subsequently became Provost, was one of those who most eminently contributed to raise the character of his

2Et. 18] INFLUENCE OF DE. COPLESTON. 11

college to the height it retained during the early part of this century.

To Richard Whately, whose intellectual life had hitherto been so entirely solitary, the lectures and converse of Dr. Copleston were like a new spring of life. For the first time he found himself brought into immediate communication with one who could enter into his aspirations, and draw out the latent powers of his mind. And under that new and genial influence the young student's powers expanded like a plant in sunshine. Often has he described in after-life those lectures which were to form the turning point in his intellectual career. As Copleston's penetrating eye glanced round the lecture room in search of an answering and understanding look, it rested with satisfaction on the one pupil who was always sure to be eagerly drinking in his every word. The Archbishop often dwelt on the thrill of pleasure with which he heard the first words of calm discriminating commendation of his theme from his tutor's lips : f That is well, Mr. Whately ; I see you understand it.'

*The influence which these two men reciprocally exercised on each other was very great, and to a certain extent coloured the subsequent lives of both. Bishop Copleston was more the man of the world of the two. But in him, under a polished and somewhat artificial scholarlike exterior, and an appearance of even overstrained caution, there lurked not only much energy of mind and precision of judgment, but a strong tendency to liberalism in Church and State, and superiority to ordinary fears and prejudices. It was in this direction that he especially trained Whately's character ; while he learnt to admire, if too staid to imitate, the uncompromising boldness and thorough freedom from partizanship of the younger man. But the ideas of both were too uncongenial with those which prevailed among the large majority of Oxford residents at the time to be in favour ; and ' Oriel ' in general, with its pretensions to dissect, by searching logic, the preconceived notions of the little world around it, was not popular. The great dispenser of patronage in those days, Lord Liverpool thought to have been prejudiced against Copleston by Oxford advisers. And Whately, whose disposition was always a little too ready to lend itself to impressions of injustice done to a friend, seems early in life to have regarded his tutor as something of a martyr."

His constitutional tendency was to indolence : but this was conquered by his earnest desire to profit by what he was learning. He often remarked in after-years that the mere thirst for knowledge might not have been in itself sufficient to accomplish this ; but his anxious wish to be independent, and no longer a burden on his widowed mother, was a stimulus to him to advance in those studies which alone held out to him a prospect of attaining his object. And manfully and resolutely he set himself to work.

Though naturally one who shook off sleep with difficulty. it was his college habit to arouse himself by the help of an alarum in his room, at five o'clock, summer and winter, light his own fire, and study for two hours or more : then sally forth for an early walk, from which he returned in time to meet the band of late risers hurrying from their beds to the eight o'clock chapel. He has described, in his 6 Annotations on Bacon, 5 the results of the observations of natural phenomena that he made in these early morning walks ; and also his experience as a student with respect to hours. He found it best to pursue the early- rising plan when engaged only in the acquirement of knowledge : but whenever he had to compose a theme or essay, he found his ideas did not flow as freely in the morning as at night: he therefore changed his habits, and sat up at night while occupied in any original work.

His intercourse with his tutor. Copleston, soon ripened into a steady and solid friendship, which lasted till death dissolved it. It was in their long walks together, in the woods and meadows near Oxford, that they discussed and worked out such subjects as form much of the groundwork of the ' Logic*

In 1S09 he commenced a plan which was continued ilp to within a few months of his death. — viz.. that of noting

2Et. 22] HE KEEPS A COMMONPLACE BOOK. 13

down his thoughts in a Commonplace Book. A considerable portion of this has now been brought before the public. It is interesting to see his earty aspirations in the first pages, written in a youthful and unformed hand. They can be best described by quoting his own words: — 'When I consider the progress I have made in the improvement of my mind since I have been at college, I cannot help thinking that by perseverance almost any one may do more than at first sight appears possible ; and I regret more than ever the same I formerly lost. But the past cannot be recalled ; the future is in my power, and I resolve, through God's help, to make the best use of it; and though I am very likely to fail of my main object, I shall at least satisfy my conscience by doing my best. When I call to mind the independent spirit and thirst for improvement which I admired in my beloved tutor Copleston, I am stimulated to double exertions, that I may be enabled, as in other things, so in this, to imitate his virtues ; and as the improvement of my mind is one of my objects, though not the principal one, I have begun the plan recommended by Miss E. Smith, 1 of keeping a register of my thoughts.'

In this preface, if so we may call it, to all his subsequent literary labours, we catch a glimpse of those religious sentiments to which the reserve of his character and habits rarely permitted an expression ; and the spirit in which he began this, which many would have considered a purely secular work, is shown further by the full-length quotation of the last verse of Psalm xix. in the fly-leaf of his first notebook : 6 Let the words of my mouth, and the meditations of my heart, be acceptable in Thy sight, Lord, my strength, and my redeemer ! '

The details of this interesting period of his life are necessarily few and scanty ; and they must be chiefly drawn from recollections of his conversation in later life, and from the pages of his Commonplace Book.

1 He alludes to a little volume of the ' Eemains of Elizabeth, Smith,' published by Miss Bowdler, and giving an interesting account of the efforts at self-improvement under difficulties of a young person of very remarkable powers.

14 life of afaab:s:a<:<? whately. jsh

The time now came for him to take his degree. Ht

nt up for honours in 1808, and took a double second- - __ — ed :; : Li: :aii\ire :: AAain ;. 6rst-class in classics was owing to the circumstance that the examiners at that time were inclined to lay more stress on the graces of language and proficirA in the minute points of elegant scholarship than on the branches is which he more peculiarly excelled. But, although a very good scholar, he was never what, in the estimation of fastidious Oxonians, is accounted an accomplished one.