them, but that they do not like to Charter-House is.* They may be fall under my censure or displeasure." Dr. Hessey thinks that his system is on the whole successful. If his own account of it be a fair one, it at least deserves to be:

* Evidence, 1502.

which was perpetually flowing from the late Archbishop, fired the soul and stirred the ambition of Mr. William John Fitzpatrick. Was he not conversant with not a few of the reputed sayings and doings of the late Archbishop? Could he not, by a little diligence in applying to His Grace's chaplains and

taken the measure of their correspondent, the latter entirely his

TOWARDS the construction of a biography which is to repay the trouble of reading, two incidents are absolutely necessary. First, there must be proper materials with which to work, and next, the biographer should be capable of making use of these materials when he gets them. We are sorry to say that we can discover little trace of flatterers, make himself master of the presence of either incident in more? It was evident that the the volumes now before us. To do point of view in which the public him justice, Mr. Fitzpatrick makes desired to look at Dr. Whately no pretence of fitness in any re- was the comic point. Only let spect for the task which he has un- him succeed in collecting jokes dertaken. "I cannot say," he ob- enough, and he might certainly serves, in his preface, "that I was hope to describe a Merry-Andrew at the Archbishop's elbow through as well as anybody else. To work life." In point of fact, his ac- therefore he went, and so the requaintance with the Archbishop sults are two volumes post octavo, was of the slightest kind. They made up of scraps and anecdotes, bowed when they passed each other the former evidently supplied by in the street, and perhaps shook ladies and gentlemen who had hands if by chance they happened to meet in a room. Access to Archbishop Whately's unpublished correspondence he certainly had none; and judging from the results, seems to have held little confidential communication with persons in this respect more fortunate than himself. To be sure we are told that "some able men who possessed that great advantage, but whose names our author is not at liberty to disclose, have supplied that deficiency [what deficiency?] by placing at his disposal much valuable memoranda and notes." And to get possession of "much notes," whether they be really valuable or not, is a feat worth achieving. But the true spur to action on the present occasion was neither knowledge of the subject, nor the "much notes and memoranda" here alluded to. On the contrary, "A letter from Oxford," in 'Notes and Queries,' requesting illustrations of the inexhaustible fund of wit and humour

own.

"The able men who possessed that great advantage," and "who placed at Mr. Fitzpatrick's disposal much valuable memoranda and notes," had reasons of their own for keeping their names out of sight. What these names may have been we shall not stop to inquire, but this judgment at least may safely be hazarded; they gave him no assistance in the compilation of his introductory chapter. That is his own throughout; and we learn from it that "when George IV. lay in his cradle, there lived at Nonsuch Park a young cleric named Joseph Whately; that "Nonsuch Park was begun by Henry VIII. and finished by Queen Elizabeth ;" that "Queen Anne, and subsequently James the First, occupied it;" that "in 1730 the Duke of Grafton sold it to Joseph Thompson, Esq. ;" that "by-and

'Memoirs of Richard Whately.' By William John Fitzpatrick, J.P.

liaments, prematurely died some fiveand-forty years ago."

Is Joseph Whately dead? and if he be, what has become of him? "Having assumed a new name, sat in two parliaments, and died"what next? As to William he may still be officiating, for aught we know to the contrary, as vicar or rector-or what not-if not in Berkshire, somewhere else. We ask for explanations on these heads, and hope that when Mr. Fitzpatrick prepares a new edition of his work he will supply them.

by, in 1591, Lord Lumley conveyed it to the Crown." We admit the importance as well as the peculiarity of this information; but what connection it has with the late Archbishop Whately is not quite so evident. Richard Whately was not born at Nonsuch Park, nor yet in the prebendal house at Bristol "which is still pointed out." Moreover, his father was not a prebend, but a prebendary. But this is not all. "Richard," we are assured, was the youngest of eight children, most of whom died 'unsung,' though neither unwept nor' It is not, however, solely on unhonoured.'" It is satisfactory to points like these that Mr. Fitzknow that among the Whatelys the patrick is carried, by the power of good old custom still prevails of his own genius, out of the common singing dirges, or dragees, over the course of mundane affairs. We are coffins of such members of the informed, for example, that under family as die at home. The un- the care of a Mr. Phillips, who kept fortunates to whom Mr. Fitzpatrick a school in Bristol, and was always alludes so touchingly paid the debt referred to by Dr. Whately as a of nature, we presume, far from the skilful and judicious teacher, Richpaternal roof. Had circumstances ard Whately received a comprehenbrought them back to die in their sire course of general instruction. own beds, their wakes would have This is at least curious. Neither been kept with all the fervour among men nor among horses were which marks similar proceedings we aware till now that it was possiin the Liberties of Dublin, or ble to receive a course either of inamong poteen-inspired mourners struction or running. The former of St. Giles in London. However, were supposed to receive or acquire we are consoled by the informa- some amount of knowledge, greater tion that they were neither unwept or less, by going through a course nor unhonoured. But here a of instruction; the latter, to win or fresh trouble awaits us. We can lose plates according as they were not quite see, from Mr. Fitzpatrick's first or last in getting over the account of the matter, which of the course. But Mr. Fitzpatrick knows eight Whatelys are really dead, and better, and is, besides, singularly inwhich still alive. Of the four daugh- structed, in his own way, respecting ters he disposes satisfactorily Oxford and its usages. Thus we enough. Only one, Lady Rony, learn from him not only that Rich"the relict of a physician,' sur- ard Whately was placed, at the age vives; the other three sickened, of eighteen, in Oriel College, but died, were waked, and, we suppose, that Oriel was then the great school buried. But over the fates of the of speculative philosophy; that brothers a veil of mystery is Whately at once attracted attention. spread. because of his originality; "that notwithstanding this originality, and the notoriety incident to it, his undergraduate course is said to have been quiet;" that obtaining a double second, he was still, "in the scholars' race, more than once tripped;" and that "from the time he entered Oxford, Whately was remarkable for a

"The Rev. Thomas Whately, rector of Chetwynd, and the senior of the late Archbishop by fifteen years, is also still alive. William Whately officiated for some time as a vicar in Berkshire; and Joseph, who having assumed the name of Hasley by royal sign-manual, and represented St. Albans in two par

We began this paper by confessing that we could discover little trace in Mr. Fitzpatrick's pages of either of the incidents a happy combination of which is necessary to the production of a readable biography. No letters, no papers, no journals of the man about whom he proposed to write, appear to have been placed at Mr. F.'s disposal. A little gossip more or less trustworthy, with a few curt answers to questions asked, appear to comprise the sum total of his stock in trade; if we except newspaper articles, notices in magazines or annual registers, and here and there a county history. But it is too evident that, had the whole wealth of Whately's private diaries been handed over to Mr. Fitzpatrick, and all who were deepest in Whately's confidence stood at his elbow to prompt him, the reading public, so far as this biography is concerned, would have gained little from the circumstances. Mr. Fitzpatrick and Archbishop Whately have nothing in common. The former is not only incapable of understanding what the latter was, but he cannot always express in intelligible English the ideas, such as they are, which fill his own mind. What, for example, does he mean to say in sentences like these: "The choice of a profession was now the ques

certain amount of originality, both exercised for good or for evil no of thought and action, which some- little influence over the minds of times amounted to rank eccentric- the rising generation. ity." In spite of all this, however— in spite of the eccentricity which caused his "undergraduate course to be quiet," and his frequent trips in the scholar's race, Whately "at last made good his footing, and turned the corner cleverly. "In 1808 he graduated, and in 1810 he won a twenty-guinea prize." In 1811, the highest honours which it was possible to confer, unless the Provost's chair of Oriel, reached Whately in the shape of a Fellowship; and in 1812, he became a Bachelor of Divinity." In estimating the value of these triumphs," continues our author, "it must be remembered that Whately, even at this early period of life, was beset with enemies, who first reviled him as an impudent pretender, and at a later date stigmatised him as an object of grave suspicion." A second class in classics and mathematics, and election to a Fellowship of his College, were, equally with a prize for the English essay, legitimate grounds of triumph to Whately; but they must have shrunk into nothing in comparison with such a premature elevation to the dignity of Bachelor of Divinity as is vouched for here. We are sorry to say, however, that we doubt the fact of the elevation. We suspect that in 1812 Whately attained, as other men do, by length of standing the right to take his Master's degree, and that the tion. It is impossible to doubt, Bachelorship of Divinity came later. Be this, however, as it may, Mr. Fitzpatrick, we are afraid, allows a lively imagination to run away with him when he describes Oriel, in the days of Whately's freshmanship, as the great school of speculative philosophy in Oxford. If Oriel ever deserved to be so considered, in contradistinction to other colleges, it was after Newman, Keble, and Whately himself had become fellows; and their own tastes, as well as the course of events elsewhere, led them into speculations which, whether philosophical or not,

from the deep thought evinced in his able lecture On the Influence of the Professions on the Character,' that the adoption of the clerical was other than the result of mature consideration. We do not think that Whately was likely to have been unduly dazzled by the many brilliant minds which flung their light around him, and had already fired the ambition of numbers, who soared merely to fall."

We are inclined to believe that our readers, like ourselves, have by this time had enough of Mr. Fitzpatrick and his crudities. That

worthy but misguided man writes exercise the halo of a poetic himself, we perceive, J.P. on his mind. Neither can it be said of title-page; and asks us to bear in him that he was popular with his mind that he is "author of Lady contemporaries. A tall gaunt figure, Morgan; her Career, Literary and manners rude, sometimes bordering Personal,' and of The Life, Times, upon boorishness, and an aptitude and Contemporaries of Lord Clon- in saying sharp things in season curry, &c.'" The letters J.P. stand, and out of season, offended the we presume, here as elsewhere, for multitude, who seldom care to look Justice of the Peace. Let us ex- far into the characters of those who press the hope that the Justice's tread upon their corns. But belaw is better than his literature. neath this rough exterior there As to Lady Morgan; her Career, Literary and Personal,' and 'The Life, Times, and Contemporaries of Lord Cloncurry,' we confess that we never saw one or other of them. But if to Lady Morgan and Lord Cloncurry Mr. Fitzpatrick has meted out the same measure of injustice which he has dispensed to Archbishop Whately, then he will have contrived to render two very silly, and, to the utmost extent of their poor ability, very pestilent people, even more ridiculous after death than they made themselves in their lifetime.

Richard Whately, the hapless victim of an Irish J.P's. attempt at authorship, was the youngest son of the Rev. Joseph Whately, one of the Prebendaries of Bristol. He was born on the first of February, 1786, in Cavendish Square, London, during one of those temporary sojourns in the capital with which his family were accustomed to refresh themselves. After passing through a good private school, he was entered at Oriel College, Oxford, of which Mr. Copplestone, subsequent ly Provost, and by-and-by Dean of St. Paul's and Bishop of Llandaff, was then the classical tutor. Mr. Whately's career as an undergraduate was respectable, but by no means brilliant. He maintained a fair place in the lecture-room, and generally acquitted himself well at collections; but he neither astonished his teachers, as the late Sir William Hamilton did, by the extent and accuracy of his scholarship, nor, like Keble, won both their admiration and affection by throw ing over the commonest College

were qualities which gradually worked to the surface and did their owner yeoman's service. Copplestone, in particular, found out ere long that his queer-mannered pupil was no common man; and the pupil, not much accustomed in those days to be treated kindly, opened his heart to the tutor, and they became fast friends. Certainly there were few points of resemblance between the constitutions, moral and intellectual, of the two men. But the attachment thus commenced remained unbroken to the last; they shared each other's confidence through life.

We are not prepared to say that Whately ever deserved to be regarded as a great man; but he was, throughout the whole of a career which extended beyond the average duration of human life, an able and industrious man. As an undergraduate he lived a good deal alone, and was never idle. Besides holding his own in classics and mathematics, he studied French, German, and Italian, and read a great deal of history, annoting as he went along. Logic, metaphysics, and, above all, political economy, likewise, attracted his attention, for his talents were as discursive as his capacity of labour was immense. His powers of conversation, also, though very peculiar, were always great. general he harangued somewhat after the fashion of Coleridge, but controversy never came amiss to him, and he was especially bril liant when provoked to support a fallacy or maintain a paradox. How far his possession of these qualities may have helped him to the Fellow

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