poor. Yet he was hospitable in his plain and primitive style of living, and had a table ever open to his clergy and his friends: he had a sweetness and placidity of temper, that nothing ever ruffled or disturbed. I know it cannot be the lot of human creature to attain perfection, yet so wonderfully near did this good man approach to consummate rectitude, that unless benevolence may be carried to excess, no other failing was ever known to have been discovered in his character. His chaplain, Archdeacon Payne, who married one of his daughters, and whom I am old enough to remember, makes this observation in the short sketch of the bishop's life, which he has prefixed to his edition of The Sanchoniatho. This and his other works are in the hands of the learned, and cannot need any effort on my part to elucidate what they so clearly display, the vast erudition and patient investigation of their author, The death of this venerable prelate was, like his life, serene and undisturbed: at the extended age of eighty-six years and some months, as he was sitting in his library, he ex pired without a struggle, for he was found in the attitude of one asleep, with his cap fallen over his eyes, and a book in his hand, in which he had been reading. Thus, without the ordinary visitations of pain or sickness, it pleased God to terminate the existence of this exemplary man. He possessed his faculties to the last, verifying the only claim he was ever heard to make as to mental endowments; for whilst he acknowledged himself to be gifted by nature with good wearing parts, he made no pretensions to quick and brilliant talents, and in that respect he seems to have estimated himself very truly, as we rarely find such meek and modest qualities as he possessed in men of warmer imaginations, and a brighter glow of genius with less solidity of understanding, and, of course, more liable to the influences of their pas➡ sions. Bishop Cumberland was the son of a respectable citizen of London, and educated at St. Paul's school, from whence he was admitted of Magdalen College in Cambridge, where he pursued his studies, and was elected fellow of that society, to which I had the honour to present a copy of that portrait from which the print hereunto annexed was taken. In the oriental languages, in mathematics, and even in anatomy, he was deeply learned; in short, his mind was fitted for elaborate and profound researches, as his works more fully testify. It is to be lamented that his famous work, de legibus Nature, was allowed to come before the public with so many and such glaring errors of the press, which his absence and considerable distance from London disabled him from correcting. I had a copy interleaved and corrected and amended throughout by Doctor Bentley, who, being on a visit to my father at his parsonage-house in Northamptonshire, undertook that kind office, and completed it most effectually. This book I gave, when last at Cambridge, to the library of Trinity College; and if, by those means, it shall find a passport to the University press, I shall have cause to congratulate myself for having so happily bestowed it. Of Doctor Richard Bentley, my maternal grandfather, I shall next take leave to speak, Of him I have perfect recollection. His person, his dignity, his language and his love |