which may sometimes be expedient in comparing the history of men who have borne an active part in the world. Such thorough knowledge of the good and the bad qualities of these latter, as can only be obtained by a scrutiny of their private lives, conduces to explain not only their own public conduct, but that of those with whom they have acted. Nothing of this applies to authors, considered merely as authors. Our business is with their books-to understand, and to enjoy them.” Condemning, as I do, the worse-than-idle industry here complained of, which rakes into the warm ashes of the dead in order to furnish perhaps topics for scandal or victims to malignity, I have yet no need, in the case of Dr. Zouch, to protest against any scrutiny however severe. Devout in his feelings, simple in his habits, and correct in his demeanour, he appears never to have ..........known a thought but all the world might know. The more his history is explored in the cherished recollections of his friends, or in his own memoranda of duties, engagements, and meditations, the more will his name be held in honour. The scantiness, therefore, of the following narrative has nothing to do with the principle of discreet suppression. Honestè factis veritas sufficit. A career of integrity shrinks not from the inquisition of the most babbling biographer. But the annals of a literary country clergyman, simple like those of the humblest of his flock, must also, like theirs, be short. In "the noiseless tenor of his way" there is, usually, little of moment either to withhold or to impart. Barren of incident for the most part, his life is characterised by pursuits, with which the mob of society feel no sympathy. One day telleth another; and Ab uno disce omnes might furnish a motto for the solitary page of his unvarying journal. Yet has such a scholar his joys, with which a stranger intermeddleth not. Aloof from the ennui of the gay, and the passions and perils of the powerful, he is to be traced round the modest circle of his parochial functions, amidst the endearments of his family, or in the tranquil seclusion of his library. Spizelius has dilated, with grateful consciousness, upon these hallowed enjoyments: and he found his text in the Пoppa Aos TE NAI nepavve, the Aade Boas, the Benè qui latuit benè vixit, the Fallentis semita vitæ, &c. &c. of Grecian and Roman antiquity. Numerous passages also, to the same purport, might be gathered from the writings of Dr. Zouch himself, who in proof of his sincerity, with the seducing option before him, preferred to the proffered glories of greatness his κεραυνε, elegant sufficiency, content, Retirement, rural quiet, friendship, books, Progressive virtue, and approving heaven. The name of ZOUCH, connected recently by marriage with one of the most ancient of English families,† was borne of old by the titled of the land. Amidst the ra * See, in the Preface to his Felix Literatus, the passage beginning; Magne sunt Literati Hominis in assiduâ studiorum tractatione voluptates, siquidem præ his vix ullæ aliæ ipsi arrideant, non epulorum aut ludorum aut aliarum quarumcunque illecebrarum delicia: imò, nihil propemodùm delectabilius fingi possit, &c. + The late Rev. Sir William Lowther, Bart. Rector of Swillington, married Anne, sister of Dr. Zouch; and the first of the Lowthers recorded by heralds is stated to have married a Daincourt, in the time of Edmund I., about the middle of the Tenth Century. vages of time, however, pedigrees often become mutilated. It is, therefore, rather suggested as a strong presumption founded on the infrequency of the name, than asserted as a fact, that in the veins of the subject of this Memoir ran the blood of the Zouches, Barons of Harringworth.* That he conceived himself to be of honourable descent, and took an honest pride in the consideration, may I think be inferred from some passages in his commonplace books:† and with equal pleasure he appears to have regarded himself as allied to scholarship in the per * There were also Zouches, Barons of Ashby, and of Codnor; but both these families appear to be wholly extinct. The late Sir William Lowther, in a short Manuscript Memoir of himself and his connexions, represents his wife as descended from the Zouches of Ashby de la Zouch, from whom Sir Cecil Bishopp derives his barony. This appears to be conclusive. + Particularly from an interesting extract made out of Strype's Ecclesiastical Memorials,' relative to an attachment between "Mr. George Zouch, father to Sir John Zouch, of a comely sweet person, a Zouch indeed," and "a fair young gentlewoman named Mrs. Gainsford" (both in the service of the Lady Anne Boleyn) and the way in which his plucking from her Tyndal's obedience,' among "other love-tricks," led to Henry VIII.'s knowledge of that book; whence, perhaps, in conjunction with other impulses, Reformation might be said to beam from Boleyn's eyes. Immediately beneath this transcript occurs another, which seems to prove that, in making the antecedent one, Dr. Zouch had personal reference to himself :"The subject of the Middle Bachelors' Prizes at Cambridge, in 1809, was; Anne Historia Vera (ex. gr. SIDNÆI, à Zouch scripta, atque nuper edita) plùs valet quàm Fabulosa (ex. gr. GRANDISONI à Richardsono confictă) ad hominum mores benè formandos ? And the first of them was adjudged to T. S. Hughes, of St. John's College, who argued in favour of real history.-Huic meae sententiæ eò pertinaciùs adhærco (he observes) quia nuperrimè Sidnæi Vitam ab ornatissimo quodam celeberrimæ nostræ Academiæ alumno conscriptam, et in lucem editam evolvi; opus sanè laudatissimum quod, nisi me fallit animus, auctoris nomen cum herois immortalitate consociatum ad seculorum omnium memoriam transmittet." The whole Essay is printed in the Classical Journal' for December, 1811 (VIII. 446—454.) son of the distinguished civilian Dr. Richard Zouch, of whom he has given a copious account in a note to his Life of Bishop Sanderson.* Upon the subject of birth, a late eminent Prelate of our Church, who will be venerated by remote posterity for his masterly Defences of the Christian and Jewish Scriptures against the subtilty of learned and the coarseness of vulgar unbelief, has said: "All families being of equal antiquity, and time and chance so happening to all, that kings become beggars and * See Walton's 'Lives,' p. 444. note (k) edit. 4to, York, 1796; and Beloe's 'Anecdotes,' II. 72-76. Richard Zouch was the author of The Dove, or Passages of Cosmography (12mo, Lond. 1613) a poem, like the 'Periegesis' of Dionysius, describing the three parts of the Old World. From this thin volume, of which not more than one or two copies are known to exist, the stanzas upon Henry Prince of Wales (then recently deceased) and the marriage of his sister Elizabeth, may be quoted as a sufficient specimen: Too soone our IVLIAN-STARRE late Prince of Light, Too soone expir'd, ô worthy long to proue The world's great Wonder, and his Countries Loue. And faire ELISA midst the glistering crew, Which as our glorious Cynthia seemes renew’d, Lately remouing from our fainting view, Her presence with all graces bright endew'd, For Latmus shade, doth spend her precious houres (Sign. E. 1.) The Poet seems to have contemplated the Princess' marriage with more pleasure than her mother Queen Anne, who (according to Lilly, in his ⚫ Observations on the Life and Death of King Charles I.') used to call her, in contempt of her husband, "Goody Palsgrave." Upon this subject, Hewytt has attached to his Ecclesia Liberata an Alcaic Ode MynμovuTixn, beginning Quem finem acutis, Dana, dabis jocis ? beggars become kings, no solid reason I think can be given, why any man should derive honour or infamy from the station which his ancestors filled in civil society." His Lordship owns, at the same time, that the contrary opinion is generally predominant: in representing his own ancestry to have been what are called, in the language of Westmorland, Statesmen' (the prisca gens mortalium, who cultivated their own fields with their own cattle) he ingenuously admits himself to be a slave to the popular prejudice; and to him is ascribed the assertion, that "No man will attack rank, except he who has it not; no man will presume upon it, except he who has nothing else." The Were it even true, that honour is not transmissible as an inheritance,' in these unsettled times the doctrine can hardly be deemed an innocent one. That Quicquid recipitur ad modum recipientis recipitur, is justly affirmed by the Quadragesimal Bards of Christ-Church: and be must be little acquainted with the frailties of his fellow-creatures, who would contend that truth is at all times, and under all circumstances, to be disclosed. simpleton, who fancies himself to be undeceiving the world by teaching, that the titles of Kings and Nobles and Bishops and Judges are merely. 'specious words' invented to cajole the lower orders, and with this captivating nonsense ensnares the unthinking, serves deeper and darker minds as a powerful engine in convulsing the very foundations of society. Opinion, to adopt an expression from Lord Bacon, rides upon the neck of reason. The peasant, dissatisfied with the station in which he has been placed by Providence, aspires to become a legislator, or at least once a-year (no matter how little qualified by nature, or prepared by education) a maker of legislators. Let the modern annals of France, |