In 'Sir Charles Grandison,' the clergyman who is called in to perform the marriage which Sir Hargrave Pollexfen tries to force upon Harriet Byron is thus described by her, “A vast, tall, big-boned, splay-footed man. A shabby gown as shabby a wig, a huge and pimply face; and a nose that hid half of it when he looked on one side, and he seldom looked foreright when I saw him. He had a dog-eared Common Prayer-book in his hand, which once had been gilt, opened, horrid sight! at the page of matrimony. The man snuffled his answer through his nose. When he opened his pouched mouth, the tobacco hung about his great yellow teeth. He squinted upon me, and took my clasped hands which were buried in his huge hand." In 'Tom Jones,' Mrs. Honour, Sophia Western's maid, says, I am a Christian as well as he, and nobody can say that I am base born: my grandfather was a clergyman, and would have been very angry, I believe, to have thought any of his family should have taken up with Molly Seagrim's dirty leavings." To this passage Fielding appends a note: "This is the second person of low condition whom we

of the rural clergy at the time when he wrote."--Shaw's ' History of English Literature,' p. 343.

have recorded in this history to have sprung from the clergy. It is to be hoped that such instances will, in future ages, when some provision is made for the families of the inferior clergy, appear stranger than they can be thought at present." A writer before the middle of the last century thus describes the conduct and occupation of a clergyman in a country house in Somersetshire. "There was indeed a clergyman in the house, who had quite laid aside his sacerdotal character, but acted in several capacities, as valet de chambre, butler, gamekeeper, pot-companion, butt, and buffoon, who never read prayers, or so much as said grace in the family while I was in it."*

In his preface to the 'Spiritual Quixote,' a novel written in the middle of the last century by a clergyman named Graves, he makes his imaginary landlord thus describe a jolly plump gentleman, who lodged "not far from the celebrated seat of the Muses called Grub Street," and left behind him the manuscript containing the story in the book. "By his dress, indeed, I should have taken him for a country clergyman, but that he never drank ale or smoked tobacco."

*The Contempt of the Clergy Considered,' 1739; quoted in Mr. Jeaffreson's 'Book of the Clergy,' vol. ii. 272.

A distinction was of course allowed to exist between the town and country parson, and the former might be a gentleman, while the latter was a boor. There is a paper in the Connoisseur' (1756), which was written to entertain "town readers, who can have no other idea of our clergy than what they have collected from the spruce and genteel figures which they have been used to contemplate here in doctors' scarfs, pudding-sleeves, starched bands, and feathertop grizzles." It purports to be a letter from Doncaster, and describes a Yorkshire parson, who is a jovial fox-hunter, and to whom Sunday is as dull and tedious "as to any fine lady in town." He takes his friend with him on horseback on a Sunday, to serve a church twenty miles off, lamenting all the while that so fine and soft a morning should be thrown away upon a Sunday. "At length we arrived full gallop at the church, where we found the congregation waiting for us; but as Jack had nothing to do but to alight, pull his band out of the sermon case, give his brown scratch bob a shake, and clap on the surplice, he was presently equipped for the service. In short, he behaved himself both in the desk and pulpit, to the entire satisfaction of all the parish, as well as the Squire of it."

K

This kind of clergyman was called a "buckparson," and one of them, who was chaplain to Lord Delacour, in Miss Edgeworth's novel of 'Belinda,' is thus described by Lady Delacour : "It was the common practice of this man to leap from his horse at the church door after following a pack of hounds, huddle on his surplice, and gabble over the service with the most indecent mockery of religion. Do I speak with acrimony? I have reason; it was he who first taught my lord to drink. Then he was a wit-an insufferable wit! His conversation, after he had drank, was such as no woman but Harriet Freke could understand, and such as few gentlemen could hear. I have never, alas! been thought a prude, but in the heyday of my youth and gaiety, this man always disgusted me. In one word, he was a

buck parson.

It is difficult to decide whether the contempt in which the clergy were held ought to be considered as the cause or the effect of such habits,

* The term 66 parson" is generally used in a contemptuous sense. But not so originally. He is the clergyman, qui PERSONAM gerit ecclesiæ, and 'Blackstone' says, book i. c. 2:— "The appellation of parson (however it may be depreciated by familiar, clownish, and indiscriminate use) is the most legal, most beneficial, and most honourable title that a parish-priest can enjoy; because such a one (Sir Edward Coke observes) is said vicem seu personam ecclesiæ gerere.”

but most certainly contempt is the word which best expresses the estimation in which their calling was very generally regarded.

Dr. Wolcott, the well known Peter Pindar, was for many years a physician, and in that capacity, in 1767, accompanied Sir William Trelawny to Jamaica, of which that officer was appointed Governor. But Trelawny thought that he could promote his interests better in the church, and recommended him to take orders, saying, "Away then for England. Get yourself japanned, but remember not to return with the hypocritical solemnity of a priest. I have just bestowed a good living on a parson who believes not all he preaches, and what he really believes he dares not preach. You may very conscientiously declare that you have an internal call, as the same expression will equally suit a hungry stomach and the soul."

Although all the parsons in the novels of the century are not low, vulgar, or simple-minded fools, it is undeniable that those to whom such epithets are applicable leave by far the strongest impression on the mind of the reader. Dr. Bartlett, the family chaplain in Sir Charles Grandison,' is a respectable colourless person, quite unexceptionable as regards language and