they would yet continue to be read as models of pure and correct English. In 1784, while the propriety of a parliamentary reformation was in agitation, he published some "Thoughts" on that subject, in which he repeated the objections he bad already brought forward in his "Disquisitions," to any of those innovations which, in his opinion, tended to anarchy. This was the last of our author's productions. The infirmities of age were now creeping upon him, and closed his life Dec. 18, 1787, at his house in Tilney-street, Audleysquare. He was interred in Bottisham church, Dec. 27, where, in the parish register, the Rev. Mr. Lort Mansel, now Master of Trinity college, Cambridge, and bishop of Bristol, introduced a very elegant compliment to his memory. Mr. Cole, his biographer, has drawn his character at great length, and with the partiality of a friend. Yet if we except the unsettled state of his opinions, much cannot be deducted from it. As the magistrate, and as the head of a family, he was exemplary in the discharge of all religious and moral duties, and fulfilled his engagements with the strictest integrity, but with a 'punctuality which brought on him sometimes the charge of being penurious. As a politician we have seen him giving his uniform support to a succession of ministers, but as he did not conceal his opinions, they could not always be in unison with those of his party, and his integrity, at least, must have been generally acknowledged, since no party offered to remove him. In private life he was, says Mr. Cole, a man of great mildness, gentleness, and sweetness of temper. His earnest desire was, as far as possible, never to offend any person. This is confirmed by the Rev. Mr. Cole of Milton, who is not remarkable for the lenity of his opinions respecting his contemporaries." Mr. Jenyns was a man of lively fancy and pleasant turn of wit, very sparkling in conversation, and full of merry conceits and agreeable drollery, which was heightened by his inarticulate manner of speaking through his broken teeth, and all this mixed with the utmost humanity and good nature, having hardly ever heard him severe upon any one, and by no means satirical in his mirth and good-humour." Mr. Cumberland, in his Memoirs of his own Life, lately published, gives us some characteristic traits of Mr. Jenyns, *This alludes to his establishment at Bottisham. He had no issue by either of his wives. which correspond with the above: "A disagreement about a name or a date will mar the best story that was ever put together. Sir Joshua Reynolds luckily could not hear an interrupter of this sort: Johnson would not hear, or if he heard him would not heed him: Soame Jenyns heard him, heeded him, set him right, and took up his tale where he had left it, without any diminution of its humour, adding only a few more twists to his snuff-box, a few more taps upon the lid of it, with a preparatory grunt or two, the invariable forerunners of the amenity that was at the heels of them. He was the man who bore his part in all societies with the most even temper and undisturbed hilarity of all the good companions whom I ever knew. He came into your house at the very moment you had put upon your card: he dressed himself, to do your party honour, in all the colours of the jay: his lace indeed had long since lost its lustre, but his coat had faithfully retained its cut since the days when gentlemen wore embroidered figured velvets with short sleeves, boot cuffs, and buckram skirts *. As nature cast him in the exact mould of an ill-made pair of stiff stays, he followed her so close in the fashion of his coat, that it was doubted if he did not wear them: because he had a protuberant wen just under his pole, he wore a wig that did not cover above half his head. His eyes were protruded like the eyes of the lobster, who wears them at the end of his feelers; and yet there was room between one of these and his nose for another wen that added nothing to his beauty: yet I heard this good man very innocently remark, when Gibbon published his History, that he wondered any body so ugly could write a book. "Such was the exterior of a man, who was the charm of the circle, and gave a zest to every company he came into. His pleasantry was of a sort peculiar to himself; it harmonized with every thing; it was like the bread to our dinner, you did not perhaps make it the whole, or principal part of your meal, but it was an admirable and wholesome auxiliary to your other viands. Soame Jenyns told you no long stories, engrossed not much of your attention, and was not angry with those that did. His thoughts were original, and were apt to have a very whimsical affinity to the paradox in them. He wrote verses upon dancing, and *The costume of his latter days was a Bath beaver surtout, with blue worsted boot stockings. prose upon the origin of evil; yet he was a very indifferent metaphysician, and a worse dancer*. III-nature and personality, with the single exception of his lines upon Johnson, I never heard fall from his lips; those lines I have forgotten, though I believe I was the first person to whom he recited them: they were very bad, but he had been told that Johnson ridiculed his metaphysics, and some of us had just then been making extempore epitaphs upon each other. Though his wit was harmless, the general cast of it was ironical; there was a terseness in his repartees that had a play of words as well as of thought; as when speaking of the difference between laying out money upon land or purchasing into the funds, he said, 'One was principal without interest, and the other interest without principal. Certain it is, he had a brevity of expression that never hung upon the ear, and you felt the point in the very moment that he made the push. It was rather to be Jamented that his lady, Mrs. Jenyns, had so great a respect for his good sayings, and so imperfect a recollection of them, for though she always prefaced her recitals of them with As Mr. Jenyns says,' it was not always what Mr. Jenyns said, and never, I am apt to think, as Mr. Jenyns said; but she was an excellent old lady, and twirled her fan with as much mechanical address as her ingenious husband twirled his snuff-box." This old lady was the second wife of Mr. Jenyns. His first died July 30, 1753, and in the month of February following he married Elizabeth, the daughter of Henry Grey, esq. of Hackney, Middlesex. She must at this time have been advanced in life, as she died at the age of ninety-four, July 25, 1796. Mr. Jenyns's poems were added to the second and third editions of Dr. Johnson's Collection. As a prose writer, we have few that can be compared to him for elegance and purity. As a poet he has many equals and many superiors. Yet his poems are sprightly and pleasing; and if we do not find much of that creative fancy which marks the true genius of poetry, there is the spirit, sense, and wit, which have rendered so many modern versifiers popular.' It has been said he was in his young days a good dancer, and very fond of the amusement. This is not accurate. He well knew how Johnson had ridiculed his metaphysics many years before this period. Life prefixed to his Works by Charles Nalson Cole, esq.-Johnson and Chalmers's English Poets, 21 vols. 8vo, 1810. |