we may suppose, was dressed in suitable hangings, and all the sad solemnity observed which is usual in the Roman catholic worship on such occasions. A charge is extant for green wax for the making of flowers round the candles. A distribution of forty shillings yearly, on his anniversary, was decreed by the president and senior fellows. We fit.d the executors busied in settling their concerns with the college. Fees

were given to counsel for advice, and Dr. Mayew attended parliament on the business of the society.

"It has been observed, that three, prelates in succession held the same bishopric an hundred and nineteen years, the time between the consecration of Wykeham and the death of Wainflete. The last had it thirty-eight years and twelve days, (one year less than Wykeham, and three than Beaufort,) according to Budden, who computes from his installation, which was on the 30th of August 1448; or thirty-nine years, if we follow Godwin. He was elected, we have seen, on the 15th of April 1447, and consecrated on the 13th of July following. The see continued vacant until the 29th of January 1487, when Courtney bishop of Exeter was translated to it by a bulle of Pope Innocent.

"I have met with no accusation of, or reflection on, Waynflete, which

I have not produced into open view. Humane and benevolent in an uncommon degree, he appears to have had no enemies but from party, and to have disarmed even these of their malice. His devotion was fervent without hypocrisy: his bounty unlimited except by his income. As a bishop, he was a kind father revered by his children: as a founder, he was magnificent and munificent. He was ever intent on alleviating distress and misery. He dispensed largely by his almoner to the poor. He enfranchised several of his vassals from the legal bondage to which they were consigned by the feudal system. He abounded in works of charity and mercy. Amiable and affable in his whole deportment, he was as generally beloved as respected. The prudence, fidelity, and innocence, which preserved him when tossed about on the variable waves of inconstant fortune, during the long and mighty tempest of the civil war, was justly a subject of wonder to his biographer, Dr. Budden. It is remarkable, that he conciliated the favour of successive sovereigns of opposite principles and characters; and that, as this author tells us, the kings his benefactors were, by his address in conferring obligations on them in his turn, converted from being his creditors into his debtors.

North America. They were both

during their residence in that colony, were on a footing with its prin. cipal inhabitants, to many of whom they were allied. His father was

of

nued under-graduate, was directed chiefly to mathematical studies; and in these he gave the best proof of industry and ability, by the situation he obtained of tenth wrangler amongst the honorary degrees of his year. After having taken his Bachelor of Arts degree in 1752, he became a candidate for one of the gold medals, instituted not long before by His Grace the Duke of New castle, on his election to the chancellorship, as the reward of eminence in classical literature: and on this, the first occasion of their being adjudged, he had the merit, after a long and severe examination, of obtaining the second; the other successful competitor being Mr. Maseres, then a student at Clare Hall, and now Cursitor Baron of the Exchequer, a man of great erudition in every department of learning, and more particularly distinguished by his uncommon depth and acuteness in the abstruser parts of analytical acience.

"In the spring of the same year, Mr. Porteus was elected fellow of his college, and became a resident in Cambridge. This, as I have frequently heard him say, was one of the happiest periods of his life. By a series of unlooked for occurrences, he had been placed in a situation which of all others he most coveted; he had leisure to prosecute at his own discretion those pursuits which were best suited to his taste and disposition; and during the intervals of study he was passing his time in the society of friends whom he respected and loved.

"The happiness however which the thus experienced, was not long without alloy; for about this time he was called suddenly into Yorkshire by the death of his mother; an event which filled him with the deepest grief, and, together with a

1811.

severe cold which he caught in trayelling, brought on a most serious illness, the effects of which he felt occasionally during his whole life.

On his return to college, he found that without his knowledge, his friends had been soliciting for him the situation of Esquire Beadle, which had become vacant by the premotion of Mr. Burroughs, afterwards Sir James Burroughs, to the Headship of Caius College. It was an office but ill suited with his turn of mind, and he was at first disinclined to accept it; but in consequence of the kind exertions which had been made in his favour, and, above all, his anxiety to relieve his father from any further expense, he at last complied. He kept it bowever little more than two years, hav ing determined to make up the deficiency in his income in a way more agreeable to himself, by taking private pupils. These, with his established character and acknowledged talents, were easily obtained: and, amongst others, was the late Lord Grantham, afterwards ambassador to Spain, and, for a short time, as his father had been before him, Secretary of State. He was a man of the most amiable disposition, of uublemished integrity, and a highly cultivated understanding; and his death, which happened prematurely in 1785, was generally, and deeply lamented; by none however more sincerely than by his early friend and tutor, who had conceived the highest opinion of his abilities, and had lived with him for nearly thirty years on terms of mutual intimacy, confidence, and regard.

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Mr. Porteus had been long destined for the church, as well by his own deliberate choice, as the wishes of his family; and accordingly, at the age of twenty-six, he took or ders, being ordained deacon at Buck

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den

den in the year 1757 by Dr. Thomas then Bishop of Lincoln, and, not long after, priest by Archbisop Hut ton at York, where he preached the 'ordination sermon. On his return to the University he resumed the charge of his pupils; but, amidst the cares of tuition, he found time for other pursuits, and more particularly for the exercise of his poetical talents, which were certainly of no ordinary stamp. Of this indeed he soon after gave a public proof, by obtaining Mr. Seaton's prize for the best English poem on a sacred subject. The subjeet fixed upon was "Death;" and it was one perhaps at that time better suited than any other to his feelings, in consequence of his father's death, which had occurred a little before. The loss of so kind a parent, whom he most sincerely loved, had very deeply af. flicted him; and he was therefore well prepared to describe in the language of the heart the sad and solemn scenes of human mortality. How admirably he has done it, those who know and can feel the poem, are best able to judge. It has been long in print, and, I believe, has been uniformly considered as a very able composition. Undoubtedly, as a juvenile performance, there are few su perior; for it displays a correctness of taste combined with a sublimity of thought, and a power and justness of expression, which have seldom been exhibited in the first effusions of poetry.

"In the mean time he was not inattentive to the duties of his profession, nor unmindful of the engagement into which he had entered, w to banish and drive away all erroneous and strange doctrines contrary to God's word." A profane and very licentious pamphlet, entitled, "The History of the Man after God's own Heart," was about

that time much in circulation, and had made a dangerous impression on the public mind. Its object wat to strike a secret blow at revelation by ridiculing the habits, manners, and religion of the Jews, and, particularly, by representing the character of David in a most odious point of view. Mr. Porteus saw at once the fallacy and mischief of this publication; and, with the view of checking its pernicious tendency, composed and preached before the University a sermon in answer to it, in which he forcibly exposed its many errors and misrepresentations; vindicated the Mosaic Law from the charges brought against it; and gave the clearest and most satisfactory reasons for the high and peculiar nanie by which David was distinguished, namely, "The man after God's own heart," Nothing indeed can be more strictly just than the character which he has there given of the royal penitent, or more impressive than the moral application; and it is therefore no wonder that the sermon should have been heard, as it was, with great attention at the time, and afterwards, when in print, most favourably received. It is now the fifth in his second volume of Discourses; with the omis sion however of some passages of a polemical nature, in order, as he has himself observed," to render it more practical, and of course more generally useful."

"Before the appearance of this sermon, he stood high in the estimation of the University for literary attainment; but it tended undoubte edly to raise him still higher in the public opinion; and, as a proof of it, he was not long after appointed by Archbishop Secker, one of his domestic chaplains. This appointment took place early in 1762, and in the course of that summer he quitted

college,