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"He used to say, that, throwing the books into heaps for general divisions, he saw one whose title-page mentioned somewhat of height, and another of salt; the first he cast among those of Mensuration, the other to those of Chemistry or Cookery; that he was startled, when he came to examine them, to find that the first was 66 Longinus de Sublimitate," and the other "A Theological Discourse on the salt of the World, that good Christians ought to be seasoned with."-One day shewing the Library to the late Lord B. who was recommended to him, but of whose understanding the reports were unfavourable, he began by producing such articles as might be most likely to amuse such a person; but, observing him very attentive, though silent, he ventured to go a little farther, and at last, as the jewel of the whole, put Beza's MS. of the Gospels into his Lordship's hands, and began telling his story; but, in the midst of it his Lordship broke his long silence by desiring to know whether they were then in the county of Cambridge or Hertford. The Doctor added, that he snatched the MS. from him, and was very glad when it was in its proper place, as thinking it not unlikely but that it might have got tossed out of the window the next minute." P. ix.

In 1739 he published his edition of Lysias, a work too well appreciated to need any comment here. On taking his degree of Doctor of Laws, he wrote an ingenious Thesis, which removed the stain of a most atrocious cruelty from a Roman edict, which had long been misunderstood on the authority of Aulus Gellius. The Thesis is entitled, Commentarius ad Legem Decemvirorum de inope Debitore in partes dissecando; and undertakes to prove that it was the property not the person of the debtor which was liable to this dissec

tion.

In 1742 he was admitted an advocate in Doctors' Commons, and Lord Carteret had serious thoughts of employing him as Under Secretary of State. In the following year he published Marmor Sandvicense, a commentary on the celebrated inscription brought by Lord Sandwich from Delos. In 1751, having previously taken orders, he was presented to the valuable college rectory of Lawford, in Essex. His subsequent preferments were the archdeaconry of Backingham, in 1753, and a residentiaryship of St. Paul's, in 1757. In the same year he filled the honourable office of prolocutor to the Lower House of Convocation.

In 1755 he published his Elements of Civil Law,' a work replete with learning, which might easily have been put into

*

"The HEIGHT of Eloquence, by Longinus, translated by John Hall, Esq. of St. John's College, Cambridge, Lond. 1614." Svc.-Of Mr. Hall, and his various publications, see "Nicholls's Select Collection of Poems," vol. VII. p. 49.

a more agreeable form. Some expressions in this book, and an unguarded conversation, involved him in an abusive controversy with Warburton and his Achates, if that can be called controversy in which the assailed party made no attempt to ward off the bitterest repeated attacks. Taylor knew his inferiority in talent to the author of the Divine Legation, and he was wisely quiet at the time, trusting to the effect one day to be produced by his own heavier weight of learning..

One volume (the 3d) of Demosthenes appeared in 1748: the second was published nine years afterwards; the remainder of Taylor's life was employed in collecting materials for the first volume: but death arrested him before it was prepared for the press. He died after a long and severe illness on the 4th of April, 1766, and was buried in a vault under St. Paul's. His library, which was large and valuable, and the little money which his liberal mode of life had permitted him to save out of a considerable income, he bequeathed with becoming gratitude, to the school which had first raised him in society.

The anecdote recorded of Dr. Taylor by Boswell, is well known; Johnson pronounced him to be the most silent man he had ever met, for that, during a whole evening, he had uttered no word but Richard.-(Boswell's Life of Johnson, III. 340.) There is something so opposite in this, to the account given by Mr. Ashby, that we cannot help citing the latter. We are tempted to do this moreover by the pleasant style of the narrative itself, which gives almost an Addisonian picture of what academical manners were two thirds of a century ago.

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"If you called on him in College after dinner, you were sure to find him sitting at an old oval walnut-tree table entirely covered with books, in which, as the common expression runs, he seemed to be buried; you began to make apologies for disturbing a person so well employed; but he immediately told you to advance, taking care to disturb, as little as you could, the books on the floor; and called out, John, John, bring pipes and glasses;' and then fell to procuring a small space for the bottle just to stand on, but which could hardly ever be done without shoving off an equal quantity of the furniture at the other end; and he instantly appeared as chearful, good-humoured, and degagé, as if he had not been at all engaged or interupted.. Suppose now you had staid as long as you would, and been entertained by him most agreeably, you took your leave, and got half-way down the stairs; but, recollecting somewhat that you had more to say to him, you go in again: the bottle and glasses were gone, the books had expanded themselves so as to

re occupy the whole table, and he was just as much buried in them as when you first broke in on him. I never knew this convenient faculty to an equal degree in any other scholar. He loved a game at cards, and we are told that he played well. He was also an excellent relater of a story-of which he had a large and entertaning collection; but, like most story-tellers, was somewhat too apt to repeat them. His friend, the facetious and good-humoured Henry Hubbard of Emanuel, with whom he greatly associated, would sometimes, in the evenings which they used to pass alone together, use the freedom of jocosely remonstrating with him upon the subject; and, when the Doctor began one of his anecdotes, would ery out, Ab, dear Doctor, pray do not let us have that story any more, I have heard it so often:' to which Taylor often humourously replied, Come, Harry, let me tell it this once more,' and would then go on with his narration." P. xxxi.

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“He was of remarkable sang froid in very trying cases. Once being got into a coach and four with some friends, for a scheme as we call it, the gentleman driver, the late Rev. Roger Mostyn, who was remarkably short-sighted, picked up the reins as he thought, but left those of the leaders below, who being smartly whipped to make them go off at an handsome rate, soon found they were at liberty, and went off with a speed beyond what the rest of the party could desire. They proposed to the Doctor to jump out, who replied with the utmost coolness, Jump out! way jump out? have I not hired the coach to carry me?' This looks more like the language of Jack Tar, than of one bred in the softening shade of Academus' grove; yet I have little doubt of its being literally true, as he used much the same language to me when the fore-wheel of the post-chaise came off twice in one stage. He also told me himself, that when the last of the two earthquakes at London happened, (I mean that at six in the morning,) he was waked by it, and said, This is an earthquake!' turned himself, and went to sleep instantly.

"When talking of any married friend who had a good collection of books, he would say, ' It is easy to know when a man is master of his own house; as in that case the library always occupies the principal room in it.'” P. xxxv.

Roger Long was educated at Pembroke Hall, Cambridge, where he graduated A.B. in 1700, A.M. 1704. Though an eminent divine and astronomer, he appears to have been a wag also; a fact which those who believe that superiority in graver pursuits is reserved only for the juvenes arcadici, cannot any longer doubt if they open Mr. Nichols's volume. We will not spoil the following anecdotes by divesting them of any of their solemnity.

"At the Public Commencement in July 1714, (Dr. Greene, Master of Bene't College, and afterwards Bishop of Ely, being then

Vice Chancellor) Mr. Long was pitched upon for the Tripos-performance; which was witty and humorous, much in the manner of Swift, and has passed through divers editions.

"Some who remembered the delivery of it told Mr. Jones *, that in addressing the Vice Chancellor (whom the University wags usually styled Miss Greene), the Tripos-orator, assuming his native Norfolk dialect, instead of saying, Domine Procancellarie, did very archly pronounce the words thus, Domina Procancellaria; which occasioned a general smile in that grave auditory." P. liv.

"A very ingenious person, and sometimes very facetious, his friend the late Mr. Bonfoy of Ripton, told me this little incident; That he and Dr. Long walking together in Cambridge, in a dusky evening, and coming to a short post fixed in the pavement, which Mr. Bonfoy in the midst of chat and inattention, took to be a boy standing in his way, he said in a hurry, Get out of my way, boy.' That boy, Sir,' said the Doctor very calmly and slily,' is a postboy, who turns out of his way for nobody.' I could recollect several other ingenious repartees if there were occasion." P. lvii.

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Dr. Long was vicar of Cherry Hinton, in Cambridgeshire, in 1728; Master of Pembroke Hall, 1733; Professor of Astronomy, 1749; and Rector of Braswell, in Essex, in 1751. He died in 1770.

We do not know that there is any thing particularly worth extracting from the occasional verses preserved in this volume, nor indeed that there was any thing particularly worth recording in the lives of the two academics by whom they were produced; yet there is so agreeable an air in all the minute biography and literary gossip, which, from time to time, 'Mr. Nichols has laid before the public, that we have insensibly allowed ourselves to slide into this article without very well knowing how we are to get out of it.

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As for Dr. Long's Music Speeches, it would have been quite as well if the Orator had veiled in the obscurity of a learned language, all that which the more than Saturnalian licence of the university at that time permitted him to append to it, in doggrel English verse. If we have not gained in morality (and we are inclined to contend that we have so done), in the last century, we have at least advanced in refinement; and no man at present, who had written M.A. after his name, would dare to pronounce in public a composition to which no woman would dare to listen.

Of the sort of wit in which it was customary to indulge at these seasons, our readers will best judge by the following

* The Rev. John Jones, Rector of Abbots Ripton in Huntingdonshire, and some time Curate to Dr. Young at Welwyn.

specimen, taken from the Speech itself. It appears that in former commencements at Cambridge, ladies had been allowed to sit in the throne at St. Mary's. In the year 1714, they were removed into the chancel. This key is necessary to make the passage below intelligible.

"Vellum aurem, uti video, Sophista ægrè ferentes se tam diu lactatos esse, et vanâ jocorum spe productos, at quid agam, aut quò me vertam? Ex quo enim sensi Procancellarium in animo habere lucidissimas hasce fœminarum constellationes de proprio cœlo deturbare, atque Cancellis cogere, et decus Theatro nostro, et sales perorantibus, et acumen opponentibus, et calcar, quo nonnunquam opus habent, Doctoribus defore videbam: nam quum commituntur inter se hostiles disputantium acies, ubi Cupita omnes ingenii vires exhauserint, quas sensistis, quàm sint exiguæ, ubi inter dumeta spinasque Theologiæ non sine multo sudore versantur, in quibus se non inficiantur mediocriter esse versatos, quam fortitudinem, quos animos adderet in Turneamento Academico digladiantibus Quixotis nostris tot Dulcinearum aspectus; at in præsentiâ (pro dolor!) è longinquo tantùm atque id limis aspectare cogimur. Adeò ut plurimos existimem Regio Theologiæ Professori sua invidere conspicilla hoc in loco non uures solùm adjuvantia. Nam plerisque vestrum sat scio confusa ista lux è Cancellis emissa hîc viam quandam lacteam repræsentare videtur, illic nebulosum præsepe. Verum Galileus ille noster singulas stellas, seu fixæ sint, sive erraticæ, seu nativâ luce splendeant, seu mutuatitiâ, distinctè rimatur, satellites, siquos habeant, detegit; varios observat motus, nunc directas, nunc retrogradas, nupc stationarius conspicit; nunc veloces, nunc tardas. Varias Phases notat, quasdam plenas, quasdam gibbosas. Varios aspectus et positiones deprehendit, alias in oppositione, alias in conjunctione, nonnullas etiam ex aliarum interpositione eclipsin patientes. Quod ad maculas attinet, major est distantia, quàm ut per crassam hanc Atmosphæram possint detegi. "Quod siquid mea valuissent vota, pro veteri more his etiam Comittiis supra Doctorum capita tanquam tot auspicata sidera fulsissent fœminæ, sed Procancellarius cæteroquin humanissimus his precibus aures præbuit penitus obseratas.

"Non saxa nudis surdiora navitis

Neptunus alto tundit hybernus salo."

"Si causam quæritis, cur stellæ hæ adeo longè à Meridiano nostro sint deductæ, ut tantùm non infra horizontem occultentur, paucis accipite. Deprehendit Procancellarius, quâ est in Astrologiâ peritiâ, postremis Comitiis cum erant in summâ altitudine, seu, ut loquuntur Astrologi, culminatione, multas calamitates toti Academiæ inflixisse. Nam quædam earum erant calidæ et siccæ, et intolerabili æstu sitique torrebant sophistas ; quædam aqueæ et humi dæ, et imbre salso irrigabant Oxonienses; quædam terreæ et melancholicæ, et seniores Collegiorum Socios inclinabant ad morbum

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