being over, he gave me a sheet of paper written through in Greek with his own hand, which he ordered me to turn either into Latin or English, and I was shewn into a room, containing nothing but a table furnished with materials for writing, and one chair, and I was required to use dispatch. The passage was maliciously enough selected in point of construction, and also of character, for he had scrawled it out in a puzzling kind of hand with abbreviations of his own devising: it related to the arrangement of an army for battle, and I believe might be taken from Polybius, an author I had then never read. When I had given in my translation in Latin, I was remanded to the empty chamber with a subject for Latin prose and another for Latin verse, and again required to dispatch them in the manner of an impromptu. The chamber, into which I was shut for the performance of these hasty productions, was the very room, dismantled of the bed, in which I was born. The train of ideas it revived in my mind were not inappositely woven into the verses I gave in, and with this task my examination concluded.

Doctor Smith, who so worthily succeeded to the mastership of Trinity on my grandfa ther's decease, was unquestionably one of the most learned men of his time, as his works, especially his System of Optics, effectually demonstrate. He led the life of a student, abstemious and recluse, his family consisting of a sister, advanced in years, and unmarried like himself, together with a niece, who in the course of her residence there was married to a fellow of the college. He was a man, of whom it might be said-Philosophy had marked him for her own; of a thin spare habit, a nose prominently aquiline, and an eye penetrating as that of the bird, the semblance of whose beak marked the character of his face: the tone of his voice was shrill and nasal, and his manner of speaking such as denoted forethought and deliberation. How deep a theorist he was in harmony his treatise will evince; of mere melody he was indignantly neglectful, and could not reconcile his ear to the harpsichord, till by a construction of his own he had divided the half tones into their proper flats and sharps. Those who figured to themselves a Diogenes in Mason, might have fancied they beheld an

Aristotle in Smith, who, had he lived in the age and fallen within the eye of the great designer of The School of Athens, might have left his image there without discrediting the groupe.

1

The next day the election was announced, and I was chosen together with Mr. John Orde, now one of the masters in Chancery, who was of the same year with myself, and next to me upon the list of Wranglers. This gentleman had also gained the prize adjudged to him for his Latin declamation; for his private worthiness he was universally esteemed, and for his public merits deservedly rewarded. By our election two candidates of the year above us for ever lost their chance; the one of these a Mr. Briggs, the other Mr. Penneck, a name well known and a character much esteemed he filled a situation in the British Museum with great respectability, was a very Jamiable worthy man, highly valued by his friends when living, and much lamented after death. His disappointment on this occasion was very generally regretted, and I think I can answer for the feelings of Mr. Orde as confidently as for my own.

When I waited upon the electing seniors to return my thanks, of course I did not omit to pay my compliments to Doctor Mason.

"You owe me no compliment, he replied, "for I tell you plainly I opposed your election, "not because I have any personal objection to

you, but because I am no friend to innova

tions, and think it hard upon the excluded "candidates to be subjected on a sudden to a "regulation, which according to my calcula"tion gives you two chances to their one, and "takes away, as it has proved, even that one. "But you are in; so there's an end of it, and I 'give you joy."

Having staid as long in college as in gratitude and propriety I conceived it right to stay, I went home to Stanwick, and from thence paid my duty in a short visit to Lord Halifax. This was certainly a moment, of which I could have availed myself for returning into the line of life, which I had stept out of, and as neither now, nor in any day of my long attendance upon Lord Halifax, there ever was an hour, when my father would not have lent a ready ear to my appeal, the reasons, that prevailed with me for persisting, were not dictated by him.

In the mean time the life I led in town during the first years of my attendance was almost as much sequestered from the world, as if I had been resident in college: in my lodging in Mount Street I had stocked myself with my own books, some of my father's, and those, which Doctor Richard Bentley had bestowed upon me; I sought no company, nor pushed for any new connexions amongst those, whom I occasionally met in Grosvenor-Square; one or two of my fellow collegiates now and then looked in upon me, and about this time I made my first small offering to the press, following the steps of Gray with another church-yard elegy, written on Saint Mark's eve, when according to rural tradition the ghosts of those, who are to die within the year ensuing, are seen to walk at midnight across the churchyard. I believe the public were very little interested by my plaintive ditty, and Mr. Dodsley, who was publisher, as little profited. I had written it at Stanwick in one of my college vacations, some time before I belonged to Lord Halifax, and had affixed to my title page the following motto with which I sent it into the world