as he did a theatre. He exacted unquestioning obedience from those dependent upon him, while he took great offence if his superiors required submission from him. He "poured lava," as he said, upon those who had offended him. He was very methodical and precise in all his ways. He had morning prayers regularly, and on Sunday evenings he either commented on the sermon of the day or expounded a passage in the Bible. He was fond of Dr. Johnson's "Ramblers," and his daughters were cften wearied and disheartened with the task of reading them aloud, because he was exacting with regard to enunciation and cadence, and careful in correcting what he

"Unpretending mediocrity is good, and genius is glorious; but the weak flavor of genius in a person essentially common is detestable," so the Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table tells us; and although Thomas Sheridan cannot fairly be called a person essentially common, yet it is not to be denied that he had but a weak flavor of genius.-MATTHEWS, BRANDER, 1886, Actors and Actresses of Great Britain and the United States, eds. Matthews and Hutton, vol. 1, p. 165.

PERSONAL

If the writings of Thomas Amory were at times suggestive of a disturbed brain, the singular habits of his life supported that impression. For, although he had the appearance, manners, honourable conduct of a gentleman, he led a most secluded and bat-like existence, shunning all company, and never stirring abroad until the fall of the evening, when he would. wander in the streets in abstract meditation, possessed of nothing in common with those who surged around him.

A noteworthy feature in Amory's case is that, although he led a life apart from the human family generally, he was not a morose man, nor in any degree a misanthrope; on the contrary, as far as his writings reveal his true character, he was keenly alive to the pleasures of society, love, and friendship. He intensely enjoyed the beauties of nature, and was not in the least indifferent to what are termed the good gifts of Providence; he was full of sympathy and kindly feeling for others, goodwill to man being an essential article of his creed.-BAILEY, JOHN BURN, 1888, Modern Methuselahs, pp. 196, 197.

If this is not a person of whom we would like to know more, I know not what

the romance of biography is. Thomas Amory's life must have been a streak of crimson on the grey surface of the eighteenth century. It is really a misfortune that the red is almost all washed off. GOSSE, EDMUND, 1891, Gossip in a Library, p. 218.

LIFE OF JOHN BUNCLE

1756-66

John Buncle is the English Rabelais. . . . The soul of Francis Rabelais passed into John Amory, the author of the "Life and Adventures of John Buncle." Both were physicians, and enemies of too much gravity. Their great business was to enjoy life. Rabelais indulges his spirit of sensuality in wine, in dried meattongues, in Bologna sausages, in botorgas. John Buncle shows the same symptoms of inordinate satisfaction in tea and breadand-butter. While Rabelais roared with Friar John and the monks, John Buncle gossiped with the ladies.-HAZLITT, WILLIAM, 1817, Round Table, No. xiv.

The "Life of John Buncle, Esq.; containing various Observations and Reflections made in several parts of the World, and many Extraordinary Relations," is a book unlike any other in the language, perhaps in the world; and the introduction

of passages from it into the present volume must be considered as being, like itself, an exception to rules; for it will resemble rather a notice in a review, than our selections in general. John's Life is not a classic; it contains no passage which is a general favourite; no extract could be made from it of any length, to which readers of good taste would not find objections. Yet there is so curious an interest in all its absurdities; its jumble of the gayest and gravest considerations is so founded in the actual state of things; it draws now and then such excellent portraits of life; and above all, its animal spirits are at once so excessive and so real, that we defy the best readers not to be entertained with it, and having had one or two specimens, not to desire more. Buncle would say, that there is "cut and come again" in him, like one of his luncheons of cold beef and a foaming tankard. -HUNT, LEIGH, 1849, A Book for a Corner, p. 137.

In the "Life of John Buncle" and his seven wives, Amory discusses the subject of earthquakes, phlogiston, then a popular theme, fluxions, the Asthanasian Creed, and muscular motion. The whole is such a farrago as Burton or Rabelais might have collected, with something of the odd thoughts and quaint humour that distinguish those writers. One object of both books is to illustrate the truth and the influence of Unitarian principles of religion. The ladies he visits and the ladies he won are all represented as models of beauty and intelligence, who largely owe their high qualities to their religious faith.-ANGUS, JOSEPH, 1865, The Handbook of English Literature, p. 472.

A great part of the work is devoted to the theological disquisition, showing considerable reading, in defence of "Christian deism." Much of his love-making and religious discussion takes place in the north of England, and there is some interest in his references to the beauty of the lake scenery. His impassable crags, fathomless lakes, and secluded valleys, containing imaginary convents of unitarian monks and nuns, suggest the light-headed ramblings of delirium. Amory was clearly disordered in his intellect, though a writer in the "Retrospective Review" is scandalised at the imputation and admires him without qualification.-STEPHEN, LESLIE,

1885, Dictionary of National Biography, vol. I, p. 365.

Hazlitt has said that "the soul of Rabelais passed into John Amory." His name was Thomas, not John, and there is very little that is Rabelaisian in his spirit. One sees what Hazlitt meant the voluble and diffuse learning, the desultory thread of narration, the mixture of religion and animalism. But the resemblance is very superficial, and the parallel too complimentary to Amory. It is difficult to think of the soul of Rabelais in connection with a pedantic and uxorious Unitarian. To lovers of odd books, "John Buncle" will always have a genuine attraction. Its learning would have dazzled Dr. Primrose, and is put on in glittering spars and shells, like the ornaments of the many grottoes that it describes. It is diversified by descriptions of natural scenery, which are often exceedingly felicitous and original, and it is quickened by the human warmth and flush of the love passages, which, with all their It is quaintness, are extremely human. essentially a "healthy" book, as Charles Lamb, with such a startling result, assured the Scotchman. The style of

the book is very careless and irregular, but rises in its best pages to an admirable picturesqueness.-GOSSE, EDMUND, 1891, Gossip in a Library, pp. 225, 226.

The book, which is entirely sui generis, fascinated Hazlitt, and has been reprinted, but never widely read.-SAINTSBURY, GEORGE, 1898, A Short History of English Literature, p. 610.

GENERAL

His works may be said to be unknown to the general reader; they are familiar to those only who delight to wander in the bye-paths of literature, and to seek out the peculiarities and follies of authors. Amory's claims are sufficient, however, to entitle him to a little nook in this gallery of those who have a higher right to be remembered than the mere fact of extraordinary tenure of life confers. As he attained to his ninety-seventh year, and gave to the world several volumes marked by some literary ability, originality of thought, extensive knowledge of theology, and close observation of nature, he has the double qualification demanded of those whose lives are here sketched.BAILEY, J. B., 1888, Modern Methuselahs.

son of a carpenter, and set out in life in the very lowest line of the law. Dyer knew him well at one time, and the bishop heard him give a character of Hawkins once that painted him in the blackest colours; though Dyer was by no means apt to deal in such portraits. Dyer said he was a man of the most mischievous, uncharitable, and malignant disposition, and that he knew instances of his setting a husband against a wife, and a brother against a brother; fomenting their animosity by anonymous letters. Sir Joshua observed that Hawkins, though he assumed great outward sanctity, was not only mean and groveling in disposition but absolutely dishonest. After the death of Dr. Johnson, he as one of his executors laid hold of his watch and several trinkets, coins, etc., which he said he should take to himself for his trouble-a pretty liberal construction of the rule of law, that an executor may satisfy his own demands in the first instance. Sir Joshua and Sir Wm. Scott, the other executors, remonstrated against this, and with great difficulty compelled him to give up the watch, which Dr. Johnson's servant, Francis Barber, now has; but the coins and old pieces of money they could never get. MALONE, EDMOND, 1791, Maloniana, ed. Prior, pp. 424, 425, 426.

Sir John Hawkins was originally bred a lawyer, in which profession he did not succeed. Having married a gentlewoman who by her brother's death proved a considerable fortune he bought a house at Twickenham, intending to give himself up to his studies and music, of which he was very fond. He now commenced a justice of peace; and being a very honest, moral man, but of no brightness, and very obstinate and contentious, he grew hated by the lower class and very troublesome to the gentry, with whom he went to law both on public and private causes; at the same time collecting materials indefatigably for a "History of Music."-WALPOLE, HORACE, 1797 (?), Memoirs of the Reign of King George III., vol. 1, p. 421.

"And Sir John Hawkins," exclaimed Uncle Timothy, with unwonted asperity, "whose ideas of virtue never rose above a decent exterior and regular hours! calling the author of the Traveller' an idiot! It shakes the sides of splenetic disdain to hear this Grub Street chronicler of fiddling

and fly-fishing libelling the beautiful intellect of Oliver Goldsmith!" DANIEL, GEORGE, 1842-81, Merrie England in the Olden Time, p. 233.

He had been an attorney for many years, affecting literary tastes, and dabbling in music at the Madrigal Club; but, four years before the present, so large a fortune had fallen to him in right of his wife, that he withdrew from the law, and lived and judged with severe propriety as a Middlesex magistrate. Within two years he will be elected chairman of the sessions; after seven years more, will be made a knight; and, in four years after that will deliver himself of five quarto volumes of a history of music, in the slow and laborious conception of which he is already painfully engaged. Altogether, his existence was a kind of pompous, parsimonious, insignificant drawl, cleverly ridiculed by one of the wits in an absurd epitaph: "Here lies Sir John Hawkins, Without his shoes and stauckins." To him belonged the original merit, in that age of penal barbarity and perpetual executions, of lamenting that in no less that fourteen cases it was still possible to cheat the gallows. Another of his favorite themes was the improvidence of what he called sentimental writers, at the head of whom he placed the author of "Tom Jones;" a book which he charged with having "corrupted the rising generation," and sapped "the foundation of that morality which it is the duty of parents and all public instructors to inculcate in the minds of young people." This was his common style of talk. He would speak contemptuously of Hogarth as a man who knew nothing out of Covent-garden. Richard

son, Fielding, Smollett, and Sterne, he looked upon as "stuff; and for the last three, as men "whose necessities and abilities were nearly commensurate," he had a special contempt.-FORSTER, JOHN, 1848, The Life and Times of Oliver Goldsmith, vol. 1, p. 312.