(George, D.D.), late Lord Bishop of Norwich, was a man of such amiable dispositions, primitive piety, and exemplary morals, that we wish it were in our power to do justice to his character. His life, it is true, has been already written, at considerable length, by two authors, possessed of erudition and of unquestionable integrity; but mere erudition is by no means sufficient to fit a man for discharging the duties of a biographer. It was not the learning of Johnson, but his sagacity, and intimate acquaintance with human nature, that placed him so far above his contemporaries in this department of literature.

Of Bishop Horne's biographers, one possessed, indeed, the great advantage of having lived in habits of intimacy with him from his boyish years. In the authenticity of his narrative, therefore, the fullest confidence may be placed; and that narrative we shall faithfully follow; referring, however, to ourselves the liberty of sometimes making reflections on the various incidents recorded, widely different from those of the author.

George Horne was, in 1735, born at Oatham in Kent, a village near Maidstone, giving the name to a parish, of which his father was the rector. He was the second of four sons; of whom the eldest died in very early life, and the youngest, who is still alive, succeeded his father both in the rectory of Oatham and in that of Breda in the county of Sussex. He had likewise three sisters, of whose fortunes we know nothing.

Mr Horne, the father of the family, was of a temper so remarkably averse from giving pain or trouble upon any occasion, that he used to awake his son George, when an infant, by playing upon a flute, that the change from sleeping to awaking might be gradual and pleasant. Having been for some years a tutor at Oxford, he took upon himself the early part of the classical education of this favourite son; an office of which he was well qualified to discharge the duties. Under such an instructor, the subject of this memoir led a very pleasant life, and made a rapid progress in the Greek and Latin languages. By the persuasion of a friend, however, he was, at the age of thirteen, placed in the school of Maidstone, then under the care of Mr Bye, eminent for his knowledge of ancient literature. And remaining with this gentleman two years, he added much to his stock of learning; and, among other things, a little elementary knowledge of the Hebrew tongue, which Mr Bye taught on the plan of Buxtorf. Though Dr Horne afterwards rejected that plan, he readily admitted, that the knowledge of it was of great advantage to him.

At the age of fifteen, he was removed from Maidstone school to University college Oxford, where his father had happily obtained for him a scholarship. At college his studies were, in general, the same with those of other virtuous and ingenious youths; while the vivacity of his conversation, and the propriety of his conduct, endeared him to all whose regard was creditable. About the time of his taking his bachelor's degree, he was chosen a fellow of Magdalen College; and soon afterwards, if not before, commenced author.

The history of his authorship is curious, and we shall give it at some length. While he was deeply engaged in the study of oratory, poetry, and every branch of polite literature, he was initiated by his faithful friend Mr Jones in the mysteries of Hutchinsonianism; but Mr Jones was not his preceptor. Indeed that gentleman informs us, that when he first communicated to Mr Horne the novelties with which his own mind was filled, he found his friend very little inclined to consider them; and had the mortification to see, that he was himself losing ground in Mr Horne's esteem, even for making the attempt to convert him. At this we are not to be much surprised. Mr Horne, though, by his biographer's account, no deep Newtonian, saw, or thought he saw, the necessity of a vacuum to the possibility of motion; and as we believe that every man, who knows the meaning of the words motion and vacuum, and whose mind is not biased in favour of a system, sees the same thing, it was not to be supposed, that a youth of sound judgment would hastily relinquish so natural a notion. By Mr Horne, however, it was at length relinquished. Mr Jones introduced him to Mr George Watson, a fellow of University college, whom he represents as a man of very superior accomplishments; and by Mr Watson Mr Horne was made a Hutchinsonian of such zeal, that at the age of nineteen he implicitly adopted the wild opinion of the author of that system, that Newton and Clarke had formed the design of bringing the Heathen Jupiter, or Stoical anima mundi, into the place of the God of the universe. With such a conviction impressed upon his mind, it is not wonderful that he should endeavour to discredit the system of Newton. This he attempted, by publishing a parallel between that system and the Heathen doctrines in the Somnium Scipionis of Cicero. That publication, which was anonymous, we have never seen; but Mr Jones himself admits it to have been exception- able; and the amiable author seems to have been of the same opinion, for he never republished it, nor, we believe, replied to the answers which it provoked.

He did not, however, desert the cause, but published, soon afterwards, a mild and serious pamphlet, which he called *A Fair, Candid, and Impartial State of the Cause between Sir Isaac Newton and Mr Hutchinson*. Even of this pamphlet we have not been able to procure a sight; but Mr Jones assures us, that the author allows to Sir Isaac the great merit of having settled laws and rules in natural philosophy, and of having measured forces as a mathematician with sovereign skill; whilst he claims for Mr Hutchinson the discovery of the true physiological causes, by which, under the power of the Creator, the natural world is moved and directed.

If this be a fair view of the state of the case, it allows to Newton more than ever Newton claimed, or has been claimed for him by his fondest admirers; for the laws and rules, which he so faithfully followed in the study of philosophy, were not settled by him, but by the illustrious Bacon. With respect to the true causes here mentioned, we have repeatedly had occasion, during the course of this Work, to declare our opinion, that all men are equally ignorant of them, if they be considered as anything distinct from the general laws by which the operations of nature are carried on. To the discovery of other physiological causes, Newton, in his greatest work, made indeed no pretension; but it may be worth while, and can hardly be considered as a digression, to consider what are the pretensions of Hutchinson, to which Messrs Horne and Jones gave so decided a preference.

Mr Hutchinson himself writes so obscurely, that we dare not venture to translate his language into common English, lest we should undignifiedly misrepresent his meaning; but according to Mr Jones, who has studied his works with care, his distinguishing doctrine in philosophy is, that "The forces, of which the Newtonians treat, are not the forces of nature; but that the world is carried on by the action of the elements on one another, and all under God." What is here meant by the elements, we are taught by another eminent disciple of that school, "The great agents in nature, which carry on all its operations, are certainly (says Mr Parkhurst) the fluid of the heavens; or, in other words, the fire at the orb of the sun, the light issuing from it, and the spirit or gross air constantly supporting, and concurring to the actions of the other two." (See *Cherubim* in this Supplement). Mr Horne adopted this system in preference to the Newtonian; because, says his biographer, "It appeared to him nothing better than raving, to give active powers to matter, supposing it capable of acting where it is not; and to affirm, at the same time, that all matter is inert, that is, inactive; and that the Deity cannot act but where he is present, because his power cannot be but where his substance is."

That much impious arrogance has been betrayed, not by Newtonians only, but by philosophers of every school, when treating of the *modus operandi* of the Deity, we feel not ourselves inclined to controvert; but we never knew a well-informed Newtonian, who spoke of the active powers of matter but in a metaphorical sense; and such language is used, and must be used, by the followers of Hutchinson. Mr Jones speaks of the action of the elements; and Mr Parkhurst calls the fluid of the heavens, which, according to him, consists of fire, light, and air, agents; but it would surely be uncandid to accuse these two pious men of animating the elements, though we know that action and activity, in the literal sense of the words, can be predicated only of living beings. With respect to giving active powers to matter, therefore, the followers of Hutchinson rave just as much as those of Newton; and we see not the raving of either in any other light than as the necessary consequence of the poverty of language.

But the Newtonian makes matter act upon matter at a distance! No; the genuine Newtonian does not make matter act (in the proper sense of the word) at all; but he believes, that God has so constituted matter, that the motions of different masses of it are affected by each other at a distance; and the Hutchinsonian holds the very same thing. As this celestial fluid of Mr Parkhurst's consists partly of air, we know, by the test of experiment, that it is elastic. The particles of which it is composed are therefore distant from each other; and yet they resist compression. How does the Hutchinsonian account for this fact? Perhaps he will say, that as matter is in itself equally indifferent to motion and rest, God has so constituted the particles of this fluid, that though they possess no innate power or activity of their own, they are affected by each other at a distance, in consequence of his fiat at the creation. This we believe to be the only solution of the difficulty which can be given by man; but it is the very answer given by the Newtonians to those who object to them the absurdity of supposing matter to be affected by matter at a distance. That the motions of the heavenly bodies are affected by the presence of each other is a fact, say they, which appears incontrovertible. "We have ascertained with precision the laws by which these motions are regulated; and without troubling ourselves with the true physiological causes, have demonstrated the agreement of the phenomena with the laws. The interposition of this celestial fluid removes not a single difficulty with which our doctrine is supposed to be clogged. To have recourse to it can therefore serve no purpose, even were the phenomena consistent with the nature of an elastic fluid considered as a physical cause; but this is not the case. It is demonstrable (see Astronomy and Dynamics in this Supplement), that the motions of the heavenly bodies are not consistent with the mechanism of an elastic fluid, considered as the cause of these motions; and therefore, whether there be such a fluid or not diffused through the solar system, we cannot allow that it is the great agent in nature by which all its operations are carried on."

Such might be the reasoning of a well-informed Newtonian in this controversy; and it appears so conclusive against the objections of Hutchinson to the Newtonian forces, as well as against the agents which he has substituted in their stead, that some of our readers may be disposed to call in question the soundness of that man's understanding who could become a Hutchinsonian so zealous as Mr Horne. But to these gentlemen we beg leave to reply, that the soundest and most upright mind is not proof against the influence of a system, especially if that system has novelty to recommend it, and at the same time consists of parts, of which, when taken separately, mate friend, he concluded the letter with the following reflections, which, even in an abstract like this, it would be unpardonable to omit:

"May he, who ordered Peter three times to feed his lamb, give me grace, knowledge, and skill, to watch and attend to the flock which he purchased upon the cross, and to give rest to those who are under the burden of sin and sorrow. It hath pleased God to call me to the ministry in very troublesome times indeed, when a lion and a bear have broken into the fold, and are making havoc among the sheep. With a firm, though humble confidence, do I purpose to go forth; not in my own strength, but in the strength of the Lord God; and may he prosper the work of my hands!"

This was in the year 1753, when the pious author was hardly 23 years of age; and he had not been many months in orders, when one of the most celebrated preachers in the metropolis pronounced, that "George Horne was, without exception, the best preacher in England."

In the year 1756, he was again involved in controversy. A pamphlet had been published at Oxford, supposed by Mr Kennicott, who afterwards gained such fame as a collator of Hebrew manuscripts, entitled A Word to the Hutchinsonians, in which Mr Horne was personally struck at. To this work our author replied in a small tract, called An Apology for certain Gentlemen in the University of Oxford, Asperfed in a late Anonymous Pamphlet; and whatever may be thought of the question at issue, all men must admire the temper with which the apologist conducted himself under very great provocation.

But it was not about Hutchinsonianism alone that these two illustrious men were doomed to differ. Mr Horne took a decided part against Mr Kennicott's proposal for collating the text of the Hebrew bible, with such manuscripts as could be found, for the purpose of reforming the text, and preparing it for a new translation into the English language; and in the year 1760, he published A View of Mr Kennicott's Method of Correcting the Hebrew Text, with three Queries formed thereon, and humbly submitted to the Christian world.

That his alarm was on this occasion too great, experience has shown; but that it was not groundless, is evident from the View, in which the reader will find above 20 instances from Mr Kennicott's dissertations (see Kennicott, Encycl.), to show what an inundation of licentious criticism was breaking in upon the sacred text. Indeed there is reason to believe, that this tract, together with another on the same side of the question by Dr Rutherforth of Cambridge, contributed to repress the collator's rashness, and to make the Bible of Dr Kennicott the valuable work which we find it. Be this as it may, such was the moderation of the Drs Kennicott and Horne, that though their acquaintance commenced in hostility, they at length contracted for each other a friendship, which lasted to the end of their lives, and still subsists between their families.

In what year Mr Horne was admitted to the degree of D.D. and when he was chosen president of his college, Mr Jones has not informed us; but, if our memory does not deceive us, he had obtained both these preferments when, in the year 1772, he gave to the public a small work, 8vo, intitled Considerations on the Life and Death of St John the Baptist. This tract was the substance of a course of sermons, which he had many years before, in conformity to an established custom at Magdalen College, preached before the university of Oxford. Mr Jones, speaking of it, says, that "he is persuaded, there was no other man of his time, whose fancy as a writer was bright enough, whose skill as an interpreter was deep enough, and whose heart as a moralist was pure enough, to have made him the author of that little work." By most readers this strain of panegyric will be thought extravagant, and of course it will defeat its own purpose; but the work is certainly a work of merit.

In the year 1776, when the author was vice-chancellor, was published, in two volumes 4to, Dr Horne's Commentary on the Psalms. It is a work of which very different opinions have been formed, though it was the result of the labour of twenty years. That it will always be a favourite companion of the devout Christian, we are as much inclined to believe as Mr Jones; but we cannot, without belying our own judgment, say that it appears to us calculated to produce much general good in an age like the present. Granting it to be true, which we believe will not be granted without some exceptions, that Clarke, and Hoadley, and Hare, and Middleton, and Warburton, and Sherlock, and South, and William Law, and Edmund Law, had turned the public attention, of which they had got the entire command, too much to the letter of the Bible to the neglect of the spirit of it; should not Dr Horne, after the example of St Paul, have let in the light gradually upon such weak organs as those of the public thus diseased, rather than pour it upon them at once in a flood of splendor. The apostle "fed his Corinthian converts with milk and not with meat;" when he found them unable to bear the latter food; and there is reason to suspect that the carnal followers of Warburton, and Sherlock, and South, were unable to bear, at once, such strong meat, as that which makes the fifteenth psalm a portrait of our Saviour. Indeed, we think it not improbable that the mind of Sherlock would have recoiled with horror from the very conception of the possibility of Jesus Christ "swearing to his neighbour and disappointing him," though that conception must have passed through a mind which was certainly as pure as his. The commentary, however, though truth thus compels us to say that, in our opinion, it is far from perfect, is certainly a work of great learning, great genius, and fervent piety, and such as the devout Christian will peruse again and again with much advantage.

Dr Horne's next work was of a different kind, and, we think, of a superior order. In the year 1776 was published a letter of Dr Adam Smith's, giving an account of the death of Mr David Hume. The object of the author was to show that Mr Hume, notwithstanding his sceptical principles, had died with the utmost composure, and that in his life as well as at his death he had conducted himself as became one of the wisest and best men that ever existed. The letter is very much laboured, and yet does no honour either to the author or his friend. It could not represent Mr Hume as supporting himself under the gradual decay of Nature with the hopes of a happy immortality; but it might have represented him as taking refuge, with other sinners, in the eternal sleep of death. This, though but a gloomy prospect, would not have been childish; but the hero of the tale is exhibited as talking like a schoolboy of his conferences with Charon, and his reluctance to go into the Stygian ferry-boat, and as confounding himself with the thought of leaving all his friends, and his brother's family in particular, in great prosperity!!! The absurdities of this letter did not escape the watchful and penetrating eye of Dr Horne; and as he could not mistake its object, he held it up to the contempt and scorn of the religious world in A Letter to Adam Smith, L.L.D., on the Life, Death, and Philosophy of his Friend David Hume, Esq.; by one of the People called Christians. The reasoning of this little tract is clear and conclusive, while its keen, though good-humoured wit is imitable; and it was, some years afterwards, followed by a series of Letters on Infidelity, composed on the same plan, and with much of the same spirit. This small volume, to the second edition of which the letter to Dr Smith was prefixed, is better calculated than almost any other with which we are acquainted, to guard the minds of youth against the insidious strokes of infidel ridicule, the only dangerous weapon which infidelity has to wield.

When the letters on infidelity were published, their author had for some time been Dean of Canterbury, where he was beloved by the chapter and almost adored by the citizens. He was a very frequent preacher in the cathedral and metropolitical church, where the writer of this short sketch has listened to him with delight, and seen thousands of people of very various descriptions hang with rapture on his lips. As a preacher indeed he excelled; and notwithstanding the shortness of his flight, which deprived him of some of the graces of a pulpit orator, such were the excellence of his matter, the simple elegance of his style, and the sweetness of his voice, that, when at the primary visitation of the present archbishop, he preached his admirable sermon on the Duty of Contending for the Faith, the attention of more than 2000 people was so completely fixed, that the smallest noise was not to be heard through the whole crowded choir. Of the importance of preaching, and of the proper mode of performing that duty, he had very just notions; and though he never had himself a parochial cure of souls, it was the desire and pleasure of his life to make himself useful in the pulpit wherever he was, whether in town or in the most obscure corner of the country. Four or five volumes of his sermons have been published since his death.

In the year 1787 he published, under the name of an undergraduate of the university of Oxford, a letter to Dr Priestley, in which he made that oracle of Socinianism almost as ridiculous as, in the letter to Dr Smith, he had formerly made the hero of modern scepticism.

The merits of Dr Horne, which had made him president of Magdalen College, a king's chaplain, and dean of Canterbury, raised him, we think in the year 1790, to the see of Norwich; and he had soon an opportunity of shewing that he had not lost sight of his spiritual character in the splendor of the peer of parliament. The Scotch Episcopalians had for some time been soliciting the legislature to repeal certain penal laws of uncommon severity, under which they had groaned for upwards of forty years; but they found it a work of no little difficulty to make the equity of their claim generally understood*. In removing this difficulty no man was more afflicting to them than the Dean of Canterbury. bury, to whom their religious and political principles were well known; and he continued his affluence after he was bishop of Norwich. Indeed the whole bench shewed, on this occasion, a zeal for the interests of true religion every way becoming their character of Christian bishops; and after Dr Horne was removed to a better world, the Scotch Episcopalians found among his surviving brethren friends as zealous and active as he.

Dr Horne, though a very handsome man, was not naturally of a strong constitution; and from the disadvantage of being uncommonly near sighted, he had not been able to increase its strength by the practice of any athletic exercise. The only amusement in which he took delight was agreeable conversation; and his life was therefore what is called sedentary. The consequence of this was, that the infirmities of age came fast upon him; and when the design was formed of making him a bishop, he felt himself little inclined to undertake the charge of so weighty an office. He was, however, prevailed upon to accept of the see of Norwich; but he enjoyed his new dignity for a very short period, if he can with truth be said to have enjoyed it at all. His health declined rapidly; and, in the autumn of 1791, he suffered, while on the road from Norwich to Bath, a paralytic stroke, the effects of which he never recovered. He lingered a month or two, with such apparent changes in the state of his health as sometimes gave delusive hopes to his family, till the 14th of January 1792, when he died in the 62nd year of his age, with those hopes which can be excited only by the consciousness of a well spent life, and by a firm trust in the promises of the gospel.

In this short sketch of the life of bishop Horne we have taken the liberty to express our dissent from some of his opinions, and to state the reasons on which that dissent rests. By himself we know that this part of our conduct would have been applauded; but it is possible that by some of his friends it may be deemed disrespectful to his memory. To these gentlemen we beg leave to observe, that if Johnson made the praise of Kyrl, Pope's man of Roa, really more solid by making it more credible, it will be difficult to persuade us that we have done any injury to Dr Horne's fame by avoiding the extravagant panegyric of those who seem to have considered him as a man exempted from error. He was first induced to favour the Hutchinsonians because he thought he perceived danger to religion in the Newtonian doctrines of attraction and repulsion; and we very readily admit that many Newtonians, not understanding the doctrines of their matter, have expressed themselves in such a manner as could not render a religious man partial to their system. But from the dangers of mistake no system, whether religious or philosophical, was ever free; and the atheistical purposes which the agency of others and celestial fluids has lately been made to serve, must induce every man of piety to pause before he admits such agency. Dr Horne lived to witness some of its pernicious effects; and we have reason to believe that they made a deep impression on his mind; but he spent his latter years, as indeed he had spent the greater part of his life, in nobler pursuits than the study of human science; he spent them in the proper employments of a Christian, a clergyman, and a bishop. His faith was founded on a rock; and it was that genuine faith which worketh by love; for though his preferments were rich, his charity kept pace with them; and it has been proved that, notwithstanding his proper economy, he hoarded not one shilling of his annual income. This was an elevation of character above all literary, above all philosophic fame. The author of this article had the honour to be known to Dr Horne, to enjoy, if he mistook not, a share in his friendship, and to correspond with him regularly for many years; and there is not one of his rational admirers who more fully admits the truth of the character given of him by Dr Thurloe late bishop of Durham when succeeding him in the office of proctor in the University. "As to the last proctor (said he) I shall speak of him but in few words, for the truth of which I can appeal to all that are here present. If ever virtue itself was visible and dwelt upon earth, it was in the person who this day lays down his office."

Soon after he was advanced to the presidencyship of Magdalen college, this great and good man married the only daughter of Philip Burton, Esq; a gentleman of considerable fortune. By this lady he had three daughters, of whom the eldest was married to a clergyman a short time before the death of her father, and the two younger were, in 1796, residing with Mrs Horne in Hertfordshire.