3. "Some original Notes on Hudibras *." 4. "Memoirs of Robert Harley, Earl of Oxford," which I still possess.

are quite demolished; others have extremely weakened their interest; and others are terrified from going the lengths they incline to. On the other hand, the Old Lights (thus are they distinguished) have been many of them forced to town, and some have lost their congregations; for they will soon raise up a new conventicle in any new town where they are opposed; and I don't know but we have 50 in one place or other, and some of them large and much frequented.—When Mr. Whitefield first arrived here, the whole town was alarmed. He made his first visit to Church on a Friday, and conversed first with many of our Clergy together, and belyed them, me especially, when he had done. Being not invited into our pulpits, the Dissenters were highly pleased, and engrossed him; and immediately the bells rung, and all hands went to lecture; and this show kept on all the while he was here. The town was ever alarmed; the streets filled with people, with coaches and chaises, all for the benefit of that holy man. The conventicles were crowded; but he chose rather our common, where multitudes might see him in all his awful postures; besides that, in one crowded conventicle, before he came in, six people were killed in a fright. The fellow treated the most venerable with an air of superiority. But he for ever lashed and anathematized the Church of England; and that was enough.—After him came one Tennent, a minister impudent and saucy; and told them all they were damned, damned, damned! This charmed them; and, in the dreadfulest winter I ever saw, people wallowed in the snow night and day for the benefit of his beastly braying; and many ended their days under those fatigues. Both of them carried more money out of these parts than the poor could be thankful for.-Many others visited us; but one Davenport was a nonpareil-the wilder the better, the less reason the more spiritual. But, Sir, I stop here, and leave you to find out a little more by what I now send you. The book I have obtained for you as a present from my reverend brother Davenport in this town. The author, Dr. Chauncey, told me, that he could have printed more flagrant accounts, if his intelligencers would have allowed him.-This has turned to the growth of the Church in many places, and its reputation universally, and it suffers no otherwise than as Religion does, and that is sadly enough. I am sorry to hear that the Rev. Dr. Ashton is very much broken with infirmity. Include in your prayers, worthy Sir, &c."-6. Mr. Ebenezer Miller, from Braintree in New England, Oct. 6. "You know by Mr. Whitefield's Journals that he has been here. The Clergy of the Church of England

* These were principally by Mr. Montague Bacon; and were given by me to Mr. Isaae Reed; who presented them, I believe, to Dr. Nash, previous to his publishing his very splendid edition of Hudibras in three quarto volumes 1793. NN 2

wer

Dr. Grey was twice married. His first wife was a Miss Tooley. By his second wife (who was re

were unanimous in their resolution not to suffer him to go into their pulpits; so that a Dissenting Preacher of considerable note, in a paragraph of a letter that was printed, said, that “he came to his own, and his own received him not; but we (the Dissenters) received him as an angel of God." The effects of his and his followers' preaching in this country are extravagant beyond description, and almost beyond belief. I think the party is on the decline: but Whitefield is soon expected here; and how he may revive the dying work I cannot say. But I believe he will not be received with the same respect as formerly by the Dissenters themselves; he having raised such contentions and caused such divisions among them, as has much weakened them, and inclined many of the more wise and thinking among them to the Churcht."-In several of his other letters Dr. Cutler mentions his obligations to Dr. Grey for having published Dean Moss's Sermons. "I thank God for the great good you do both as an author and an editor." "It is no wonder," he adds, "that the Dean's Sermons are re-printing. Their reputation must last as long as that of Learning, Eloquence, or Reliligion. Nor need any wonder that Daniel Neal is in request with the Dissenters in New England. The more venomous a Book is, the more sweetly do the Dissenters suck at it. Neal was never in New England; but, having written an History of it, was complimented with the degree of A. M. by Harvard College."- "I have very lately received your valuable present of the Answer to Sir Isaac Newton and Neal. I humbly thank you for your great and many services to Religion and our excellent Church." Mr. John Cutler (the son of the above Dr. Timothy) was sent to England, under the protection of Dr. Grey ; who, with Dr. Dickens, Dr. Ashton, &c. patronized him. Sept. 2, 1742, we find hira asking Dr. Grey, if it should be in his way, to mention his name to Mr. Potter. "I have served," he says, "his Grace's Peculiar above five years, and hope I have not behaved myself so as to forfeit all favour from him. Stisted is a living adjoining to Bocking, a peculiar in his Grace's gift The incumbent (Mr. Wagener) is a man in years and infirm; but

+ [The Rev. George Stonhouse, vicar of Islington, it appears by the Journals both of Whitefield and Wesley, was a favourer of the original Methodists; to whom he used occasionally to lend his pulpit; a circumstance which so materially affected Mr. South, the then lecturer, that it was supposed to hasten his death, which happened July 18, 1741. This circumstance is here the rather mentioned, as it has been erroneously stated, in p. 122, that it was Mr. Stonhouse who was so affected.]

Peter Wagener, of Trinity College, Cambridge; B.A. 1701; M.A. 1710. He was presented to Stisted in 1707; died in 1742; and was succeeded by Samuel Jackson, M. A.

lated to Dean Moss, and whom he married in 1720, he had a son, who died in 1726, and two daughters; one of whom was married to the Rev. William Cole of Ely*; the other to the Rev. Mr. Lepipre, rector of Aspley Guise in Bedfordshire. Dr. Grey died Nov. 25, 1766, at Ampthill, in the 79th year of his age; and was buried at Houghton Conquest.

Some few MS volumes, which were in Dr. Grey's Collection, relating to miscellaneous articles, were, in 1782, in the possession of his son-in-law, Mr. Cole. I am afraid it is too good a living for me to expect." And on the 18th of May following he says, "I am much obliged to you for your kind mention of my name to Mr. Potter. The preferment I mentioned was promised some time beforehand to a family acquaintance of the Archbishop. However, I hope I shall not be quite forgot."

*Fellow of St. John's college, Cambridge, B. A. 1743; M. A. 1747, B. D. 1754; and rector of Alberghe near Harlestone and Bungay in Norfolk. There were two contemporaries, both literary characters, of the name of William Cole, both Cambridge men, and both Clergymen. They each of them wrote a neat Antiquarian kind of hand. I have seen books that have belonged to each of them, and have been sometimes at a loss to know which was which; and, as this difficulty will increase with time, but may now be prevented by a proper discrimination of them, will take a future opportunity of noticing them.-The Library of Mr. Cole of Ely was sold by auction, by Mr. King, a few years ago; that of Mr. Cole of Milton, in a regular Shop Catalogue, by Mr. White, in 1784.

+ Who sold them to Mr. Burnham of Northampton; see p. 545.

No. VI.

CHARLES COMPTON, ESQ.

of Grendon in Northamptonshire, is here mentioned as one of the early members of the Society of Antiquaries, where he was elected Nov. 18, 1736, and succeeded Samuel Gale, esq. as their treasurer in 1742. He was son of General Hatton Compton *, nephew to Mr. William Nicholas, and great nephew to Dr. Compton, bishop of London; and died Nov 21, 1761, at his house in Poland-street.

*This gentleman was Lieutenant of the Tower in 1715, under his relation George Compton, fourth earl of Northampton, who then held the office of Constable. He possessed a considerable estate at Grendon, and was impropriator of that rectory.

No. VII.

No. VII.

JOHN JORTIN, D. D. [AND DR. JOHNSON.]

Of this eminent Divine and very excellent Scholar the materials in my former edition came from sources so authentic, having been principally supplied by the kind friendship of Dr. Jortin's son, that I think it right to preserve the article (as entirely as is consistent with correctness) in its original form; and the rather, as it originally was sanctioned by the approbation of Dr. Johnson * ; and forms the basis of the subsequent Memoirs by Dr.Heathcote and Dr.Disney.

*This is not the proper place for introducing any regular Memoir of Dr. Johnson; nor, after the elaborate volumes of Mr. Boswell, is such a task necessary. My intimate acquaintance with that bright Luminary of Literature did not commence till he was advanced in years; but it happens to have fallen to my lot (and I confess that I am proud of it) to have been present at many interesting conversations in the latest periods of the life of this illustrious pattern of true piety.

In the progress of his "Lives of the Poets," I had the good fortune to conciliate his esteem, by several little services; though, at the same time, I was perpetually goading him to furnish the press with copy. Many of his short notes during the progress of that work are printed in the Gentleman's Magazine, vol. LV. pp. 5--9; and in one of his Letters to Mrs. Thrale he says, "I have finished the Life of Prior-and now a fig for Mr. Nichols!" Our friendship, however, did not cease with the termination of those volumes; and I hope I shall be excused the vanity of recording in these pages a few kind letters from Dr. Johnson; and some parts of his interesting conversation at a period when his accurate Biographer was absent from London.

1. "SIR, Oct. 10, 1782. "While I am at Brighthelmston, if you have any need of consulting me, Mr. Strahan will do us the favour to transmit our papers under his frank. I have looked often into your 'Anecdotes; and you will hardly thank a lover of literary history for telling you, that he has been informed and gratified. I wish you would add your own discoveries and intelligence to those of Dr. Rawlinson, and undertake the Supplement to Wood. Think on it. I am, Sir, your humble servant, SAM. JOHNSON." Oct. 28, 1782. "What will the Booksellers give me for the new Edition [of the Lives of the Poets]? I know not what to ask. I woul

. “ DEAR SIR,

1

have 24 sets bound in plain calf, and figured with the number of the volumes. For the rest, they may please themselves. — I wish, Sir, you could obtain some fuller information of Jortin, Markland, and Thirlby. They were three Contemporaries of great learning."It was in consequence of this request that I drew up the account of Thirlby, in the Gentleman's Magazine for 1784, p. 260 (see vol. IV. p. 264); which having been shewn to Dr. Johnson in the state of a proof-sheet, he added to it nearly half of what is there printed. The Doctor's MS. is now before me, and begins with "What I can tell of Thirlby, I had from those who knew him; I never saw him in my life." The communication concludes with "This is what I can remember." I will take this opportunity also of adding, that, on my shewing Dr. Johnson Archdeacon Blackburne's "Remarks on the Life of Milton," which were published, in Svo, 1780, he wrote on the margin of p. 14, "In the business of Lauder, I was deceived; partly by thinking the man too frantick to be fraudulent." "Of this quotation from the ["Literary] Magazine" [a poetical scale, supposed to have been Johnson's], I was not the author. I fancy it was put in after I had quitted that work; for I not only did not write it, but do not remember it."

Jan. 10, 1783.

3. "SIR, "I am much obliged by your kind communication of your account of Hinckley †. I knew Mr. Carte as one of the prebendaries of Lichfield, and for some time Surrogate of the Chancellor. Now I will put you in a way of shewing me more kindness. I have been confined by illness a long time; and sickness and solitude make tedious evenings. Come sometimes, and see, Sir, your humble servant, SAM. JOHNSON."

4. "Feb. 4, 1784, Mr. Johnson, having been for many [weeks] confined, is very cheerless; and wishes that Mr. Nichols would now and then bestow an hour upon him.”

5. "SIR, Lichfield, Oct. 20, 1784. "When you were here, you were pleased, as I am told, to think my absence an inconvenience. I should certainly have been very glad to give so skilful a Lover of Antiquities any information about my native place, of which however I know not much, and have reason to believe that not much is known. — Though I have not given you any amusement, I have received

amuse

↑ For the account of Hinckley, Dr. Johnson had contributed several hints towards the life of Anthony Blackwall, to whom, when very young, he had been some time an usher at Market Bosworth-school. Blackwall died in April 1730, before Johnson was one-and-twenty.

On his return to London, he gave me a large Map of Lichfield, with some corrections on it in his own hand-writing. This I have carefully placed in my copy of Shaw's Staffordshire.--He afterwards wrote to Lichfield, Dec. 2, desiring that a plain stone might be placed over the bodies of his father, mother, and broher, who were buried in St. Michael's Church; and hoped "it might be done while he was yet alive."