DR FRANCIS, son of Dr Lewis Atterbury, was born at Milton in Buckinghamshire, 1662; educated at Westminster; and from thence elected to Christ-church in Oxford, where he soon distinguished himself by his fine genius and turn for polite literature. The year he was made M. A. 1687, he exerted himself in the controversy with the Papists, vindicated Luther in the strongest manner, and showed an uncommon fund of learning, enlivened with great vivacity. In 1690 he married Miss Osborn, a distant relation of the duke of Leeds; a lady of great beauty, but with little or no fortune, who lived at or in the neighbourhood of Oxford.

In Feb. 1690-1, we find him resolved to "besir himself in his office in the house;" that of censor pro-

bably, an officer (peculiar to Christ-church) who presides over the classical exercises; he then also held the catechetical lecture founded by Dr Bulby.

About this period it must have been that he took orders, and entered into another scene, and another sort of conversation: for in 1691 he was elected lecturer of St Bride's church in London, and preacher at Bridewell chapel. An academic life, indeed must have been irksome and inipid to a person of his active and aspiring temper. It was hardly possible that a clergyman of his fine genius, improved by study, with a spirit to exert his talents, should remain long unnoticed; and we find that he was soon appointed chaplain to King William and Queen Mary.

The share he took in the controversy against Bentley (about the genuineness of Phalaris's Epistles) is now very clearly ascertained. In one of the letters to his noble pupil, dated "Chelsea 1698 (he says), the matter had cost him some time and trouble. In laying the design of the book, in writing above half of it, in reviewing a good part of the rest, in transcribing the whole, and attending the press (he adds), half a year of my life went away."

In 1700, a still larger field of activity opened, in which Atterbury was engaged four years with Dr Wake (afterwards archbishop of Canterbury) and others, concerning "the Rights, Powers, and Privileges of Convocations;" in which, however the truth of the question may be supposed to lie, he displayed so much learning and ingenuity, as well as zeal for the interests of his order, that the lower house of convocation returned him their thanks, and the university of Oxford complimented him with the degree of D. D. January 29, 1700, he was installed archdeacon of Totnes, being promoted to that dignity by Sir Jonathan Trelawney, then bishop of Exeter. The same year he was engaged, with some other learned divines, in revising an intended edition of the "Greek Testament," with Greek "Scholia," collected chiefly from the fathers, by Mr Archdeacon Gregory. At this period he was popular as preacher at the Rolls chapel; an office which had been conferred on him by Sir John Trevor, a great dissembler of abilities, in 1698, when he resigned Bridewell, which he had obtained in 1693. Upon the accession of Queen Anne in 1702, Dr Atterbury was appointed one of her majesty's chaplains in ordinary; and, in October 1704, was advanced to the deanery of Carlisle. About two years after this, he was engaged in a dispute with Mr Hoadly, concerning the advantages of virtue with regard to the present life; occasioned by his sermon, preached August 30, 1706, at the funeral of Mr Thomas Benet a bookeller. In 1707, Sir Jonathan Trelawney, then bishop of Exeter, appointed him one of the canons residentiaries of that church. In 1709, he was engaged in a fresh dispute with Mr Hoadly, concerning "Passive Obedience;" occasioned by his Latin Sermon, entitled "Concio ad Clerum Londinensem, habita in Ecclesia S. Elphigi." In 1710, came on the famous trial of Dr Sacheverell, whose remarkable speech on that occasion was generally supposed to have been drawn up by our author, in conjunction with Dr Smalridge and Dr Freind. The same year Dr Atterbury was unanimously chosen prolocutor of the lower house of convocation, and had the chief management Atterbury, of affairs in that house. May 11, 1711, he was appointed by the convocation one of the committee for comparing Mr Whitton's doctrines with those of the church of England; and in June following, he had the chief hand in drawing up "A Representation of the Present State of Religion." In 1712, Dr Atterbury was made dean of Christ-church, notwithstanding the strong interest and warm applications of several great men in behalf of his competitor Dr Smalridge. The next year saw him at the top of his preferment, as well as of his reputation: for, in the beginning of June 1713, the queen, at the recommendation of Lord Chancellor Harcourt, advanced him to the bishopric of Rochester, with the deanery of Westminster, in commendam; he was confirmed July 4, and consecrated at Lambeth next day.

At the beginning of the succeeding reign, his tide of prosperity began to turn; and he received a sensible mortification presently after the coronation of King George I. when, upon his offering to present his majesty (with a view, no doubt, of standing better in his favour) with the chair of state or royal canopy, his own perquisites as dean of Westminster, the offer was rejected, not without some evident marks of dislike to his person.

During the rebellion in Scotland, when the Pretender's declaration was dispersed, the archbishop of Canterbury, and the bishops in or near London, had published a Declaration of their abhorrence of the present Rebellion, and an Exhortation to the Clergy and People to be zealous in the discharge of their duties to his majesty King George: but the bishop of Rochester refused to sign it; and engaged Bishop Smalridge in the same refusal, on account of some reflections it contained against the high church party. He appeared generally among the protestors against the measures of the ministry under the King, and drew up the reasons of the protests with his own hand.

In 1716, we find him advising Dean Swift in the management of a refractory chapter. April 26, 1722, he sustained a severe trial in the loss of his lady; by whom he had four children; Francis, who died an infant; Osborn, student of Christ-church; Elizabeth, who died September 29, 1716, aged 17; and Mary, who had been then seven years married to Mr Maurice.

In this memorable year, on a suspicion of his being concerned in a plot in favour of the Pretender, he was apprehended August 24, and committed prisoner to the Tower.

Two officers, the under secretary, and a messenger, went about two o'clock in the afternoon to the bishop's house at Westminster, where he then was, with orders to bring him and his papers before the council. He happened to be in his nightgown when they came in; and being made acquainted with their business, he desired time to dress himself. In the mean time his secretary came in; and the officers went to search for his papers; in the sealing of which the messenger brought a paper, which he pretended to have found in his close-stool, and desired it might be sealed up with the rest. His Lordship observing it, and believing it to be a forged one of his own, desired the officers not to do it; and to bear witness that the paper was not found with him. Nevertheless they did it; and though they behaved themselves with some respect to Atterbury, him, they suffered the messengers to treat him in a very rough manner, threatening him, if he did not make haste to dress himself, they would carry him away undressed as he was. Upon which he ordered his secretary to see his papers all sealed up, and went himself directly to the Cock-pit, where the council waited for him. The behaviour of the messengers, upon this occasion, seems to have been very unwarrantable, if what the author of "A Letter to the Clergy of the Church of England," &c. tells us be true, that the persons, directed by order of the king and council to seize his lordship and his papers, received a strict command to treat him with great respect and reverence. However this was, when he came before the council, he behaved with a great deal of calmness, and they with much civility towards him. He had liberty to speak for himself as much as he pleased, and they listened to his defence with a great deal of attention; and, what is more unusual, after he was withdrawn, he had twice liberty to re-enter the council chamber, to make for himself such representations and requests as he thought proper. It is said, that, while he was under examination, he made use of our Saviour's answer to the Jewish council, while he stood before them; "If I tell you, ye will not believe me; and if I also ask you, ye will not answer me, nor let me go." After three quarters of an hour's stay at the Cock-pit, he was sent to the Tower, privately, in his own coach, without any manner of noise or observation.

This commitment of a bishop upon a suspicion of high treason, as it was a thing rarely practised since the Reformation, so it occasioned various speculations among the people. Those who were the bishop's friends, and pretended to the greatest intimacy with him, laid the whole odium of the matter upon the ministry. They knew the bishop so well, they said, his love to the constitution, and attachment to the Protestant succession, his professed abhorrence of Popery, and settled contempt of the Pretender, and his caution, prudence, and circumspection, to be such, as would never allow him to engage in an attempt of subverting the government, so hazardous in itself, and so repugnant to his principles; and therefore they imputed all to the malice and management of a great minister of state or two, who were resolved to remove him, on account of some personal prejudices, as well as the constant molestation he gave them in parliament, and the particular influence and activity he had shown in the late election. The friends to the ministry, on the other hand, were strongly of opinion, that the bishop was secretly a favourite of the Pretender's cause, and had formerly been tampering with things of that nature, even in the queen's time, and while his party was excluded from power; but upon their re-admission, had relinquished that pursuit, and his confederates therein, and became a good subject again. They urged, that the influence which the late duke of Ormond had over him, assisted by his own private ambition and revenge, might prompt him to many things contrary to his declared sentiments, and inconsistent with that cunning and caution which in other cases he was master of. And to obviate the difficulty, arising from the bishop's aversion to Popery, and the Pretender's bigotry to that religion, they talked of a Atterbury. new invented scheme of his, not to receive the Pretender, whose principles were not to be changed, but his son only, who was to be educated a Protestant in the church of England, and the bishop to be his guardian, and lord protector of the kingdom, during his minority. These, and many more speculations, amused the nation at that time; and men, as usual, judged of things by the measure of their own affections and prejudices.

March 23. 1722-3, a bill was brought into the house of commons, for "inflicting certain pains and penalties on Francis Lord Bishop of Rochester;" a copy of which was sent to him, with notice that he had liberty of counsel and solicitors for making his defence. Under these circumstances, the bishop applied by petition, to the house of lords, for their direction and advice as to his conduct in this conjuncture; and April 4, he acquainted the speaker of the house of commons, by a letter, that he was determined to give that house no trouble in relation to the bill depending therein; but should be ready to make his defence against it when it should be argued in another house, of which he had the honour to be a member. On the 9th the bill passed the house of commons, and was the same day sent up to the house of lords for their concurrence.

May 6th being the day appointed by the lords for the first reading of the bill, Bishop Atterbury was brought to Westminster to make his defence. The council for the bishop were, Sir Constantine Phipps and William Wynne, Esq.; for the king, Mr Reeve and Mr Wearg. The proceedings continued above a week; and on Saturday May 11th, the bishop was permitted to plead for himself. This he did in a very eloquent speech: which he feelingly opens by complaining of the uncommon severity he had experienced in the Tower; which was carried to so great a length, that not even his son-in-law Mr Morice was permitted to speak to him in any nearer mode than standing in an open area, whilst the bishop looked out of a two-pair-of-flats window. In the course of his defence he observes, "Here is a plot of a year or two standing, to subvert the government with an armed force; an invasion from abroad, an insurrection at home: just when ripe for execution, it is discovered; and twelve months after the contrivance of this scheme, no consultation appears, no men corresponding together, no provision made, no arms, no officers provided, not a man in arms; and yet the poor bishop has done all this. What could tempt me to step thus out of my way? Was it ambition, and a desire of climbing into a higher station in the church? There is not a man in my office farther removed from this than I am. Was money my aim? I always despised it too much, considering what occasion I am now like to have for it; for out of a poor bishopric of 500l. per annum, I have laid out no less than 1000l. towards the repairs of the church and episcopal palace; nor did I take one shilling for dilapidations. The rest of my little income has been spent, as is necessary, as I am a bishop. Was I influenced by any dislike of the established religion, and secretly inclined towards a church of greater pomp and power? I have, my lords, ever since I knew what Popery was, opposed it; and the better I knew it, the more I opposed it. I began my study in divinity, when the Popish controversy grew hot, with that immortal book of Tillotson's, when he undertook the Protestant cause in general; and as such, I esteemed him above all. You will pardon me, my lords, if I mention one thing: Thirty years ago, I writ in defence of Martin Luther; and have preached, exprefed, and wrote to that purpose from my infancy; and whatever happens to me, I will suffer any thing, and by God's grace, burn at the stake, rather than depart from any material point of the Protestant religion as professed in the church of England. Once more: Can I be supposed to favour arbitrary power? The whole tenor of my life has been otherwise: I was always a friend to the liberty of the subject; and, to the best of my power, constantly maintained it. I may have been thought mistaken in the measures I took to support it; but it matters not by what party I was called, so my actions are uniform." Afterwards, speaking of the method of proceeding against him as unconstitutional, he says: "My ruin is not of that moment to any number of men, to make it worth their while to violate, or even to seem to violate, the constitution in any degree, which they ought to preserve against any attempts whatsoever. Though I am worthy of no regard, though whatsoever is done to me may for that reason be looked upon to be just; yet your lordships will have some regard to your own lasting interests and that of posterity. This is a proceeding with which the constitution is unacquainted; which, under the pretence of supporting it, will at last effectually destroy it. For God's sake, lay aside these extraordinary proceedings; set not up these new and dangerous precedents. I, for my part, will voluntarily and cheerfully go into perpetual banishment, and please myself that I am in some measure the occasion of putting a stop to such precedents, and doing some good to my country: I will live, wherever I am, praying for its prosperity; and do, in the words of Father Paul to the state of Venice, say, eto perpetua. It is not my departing from it I am concerned for. Let me depart, and let my country be fixed upon the immovable foundation of law and justice, and stand for ever." After a solemn protestation of his innocence, and an appeal to the Searcher of Hearts for the truth of what he had said, he concludes thus: If, on any account, there shall still be thought by your lordships to be any seeming strength in the proofs against me; if, by your lordships judgments, springing from unknown motives, I shall be thought to be guilty; if, for any reasons or necessity of state, of the wisdom and justice of which I am no competent judge, your lordships shall proceed to pass this bill against me; I shall dispoze myself quietly and tacitly to submit to what you do; God's will be done: Naked came I out of my mother's womb, and naked shall I return; and, whether he gives or takes away, blest be the name of the Lord!"

On Monday the 13th he was carried for the last time from the Tower to hear the reply of the king's counsel to his defence. These were both men of great knowledge and facility in law, but of different talents in point of eloquence. Their speeches on this occasion were made public; and they seemed to have formed their "Replies," designedly, in a different way. The former sticks close to the matter in evidence, and enforces the charge against the bishop with great strength Atterbury, and perspicuity: The latter answers all his objections, and refutes the arguments brought in his defence, in an easy soft manner, and with great simplicity of reasoning. Mr Reeve is wholly employed in facts, in comparing and uniting together circumstances, in order to corroborate the proofs of the bishop's guilt: Mr Wearg is chiefly taken up in silencing the complaints of the bishop and his counsel, and replying to every thing they advance, in order to invalidate the allegations of his innocence. The one, in short, possesses the minds of the lords with strong convictions against the bishop: The other dispossesses them of any favourable impression that might possibly be made upon them by the artifice of his defence. And accordingly Mr Reeve is strong, nervous, and enforcing; but Mr Wearg, smooth, easy, and insinuating, both in the manner of his expression and the turn of his periods. Mr Atterbury, Wearg pays the highest compliments to the bishop's eloquence: but, at the same time, represents it as employed to impose upon the reason, and misguide the judgment of his hearers in proportion as it affected their passions; and he endeavours to strip the bishop's defence of all its ornaments and colour of rhetoric.

On the 15th the bill was read the third time; and after a long and warm debate, passed on the 16th, by a majority of 83 to 43. On the 27th, the king came to the house, and confirmed it by his royal assent. June 18, 1723, this eminent prelate, having the day before taken leave of his friends, who, from the time of passing the bill against him to the day of his departure, had free access to him in the Tower (b), embarked on board the Aldborough man of war, and landed

(b) The following anecdote was first communicated to the public by the late Dr Maty, on the credit of Lord Chesterfield: "I went (said Lord Chesterfield) to Mr Pope, one morning, at Twickenham, and found a large folio bible, with gilt clasps, lying before him upon his table; and, as I knew his way of thinking upon that book, I asked him, jocosely, if he was going to write an answer to it? It is a present, said he, or rather a legacy, from my old friend the Bishop of Rochester. I went to take my leave of him yesterday in the Tower, where I saw this bible upon his table. After the first compliments, the Bishop said to me, 'My friend Pope, considering your infirmities, and my age and exile, it is not likely that we should ever meet again; and therefore I give you this legacy to remember me by it. 'Take it home with you; and let me advise you to abide by it.'—'Does your Lordship abide by it yourself?'—'I do.' 'If you do, my Lord, it is but lately. May I beg to know what new light or arguments have prevailed upon you now, to entertain an opinion so contrary to that which you entertained of that book all the former part of your life?'—The Bishop replied, 'We have not time to talk of these things; but take home the book; I will abide by it, and I recommend you to do so too; and so God bless you.'

These anecdotes Mr Nichols has inserted in the "Epistolary Correspondence," vol. ii. p. 79, with the professed view of vindicating Atterbury, in the following words of an ingenious correspondent:

"Dr Warton has revived this story, which he justly calls an 'uncommon' one, in his last 'Essay on the Genius and Writings of Pope.' It was indeed very uncommon; and I have my reasons for thinking it equally groundless and invidious. Dr Warton, though he retails the story from 'Maty's Memoirs,' yet candidly acknowledges, that it ought not to be implicitly relied on. That this caution was not unnecessary, will, I apprehend, be sufficiently obvious, from the following comparison between the date of the story itself and Mr Pope's letters to the bishop.

According to Lord Chesterfield's account, this remarkable piece of conversation took place but a few days before the Bishop went into exile: and it is intimated, that Mr Pope, till that period, had not even entertained the slightest suspicion of his friend's reverence for the bible: Nay, it is affeited, that the very recommendation of it from a quarter so unexpected, staggered Mr Pope to such a degree, that in a mingled vein of rillery and serioufness, he was very eager to know the grounds and reasons of the Bishop's change of sentiment.

Unfortunately for the credit of Lord Chesterfield and his story, there is a letter on record, that was written nine months before this pretended dialogue took place, in which Mr Pope seriously acknowledged the Bishop's piety and generosity, in interesting himself so zealously and affectionately in matters which immediately related to his improvement in the knowledge of the holy scriptures. The passage I refer to is a very remarkable one: and you will find it in a letter, dated July 27, 1722. It appears undeniably from this letter, that the Bishop had earnestly recommended to Mr Pope the study of the bible; and had softened his zeal with an unusual urbanity and courtesy, in order to avoid the imputation of ill-breeding, and remove all occasion of disgust from a mind so 'tremblingly alive as Mr Pope's.' I will transcribe the passage at large. 'I ought first to prepare my mind for a better knowledge even of good profane writers, especially the moralists, &c. before I can be worthy of tasting the Supreme of books, and Sublime of all writings, in which, as in all the intermediate ones, you may (if your friendship and charity towards me continue so far) be the best guide to Yours, A. POPE.

'The last letter of Mr Pope to the Bishop, previous to his going into exile, was written very early in June 1723. It must have been about this time that Pope paid his farewell visit to the Bishop in the Tower. But whether such a conversation as that which hath been pretended actually took place, may be left to the determination of every man of common sense, after comparing Lord Chesterfield's anecdote with Mr Pope's letter.

'There must have been a mistake, or a wilful misrepresentation, somewhere. To determine its origin, or to mark minutely the various degrees of its progress, till it issued forth into calumny and falsehood, is impossible. Atterbury landed the Friday following at Calais. When he went on shore, having been informed that Lord Bolingbroke, who had, after the rising of the parliament, received the king's pardon, was arrived at the same place on his return to England, he said, with an air of pleasantry, "Then I am exchanged?" And it was, in the opinion of Mr Pope on the same occasion, "a sign of the nation's being curfeely afraid of being overrun with too much politeness, when it could not regain one great man but at the expence of another." But the severity of his treatment did not cease even with his banishment. The same vindictive spirit pursued him in foreign climes. No British subject was even permitted to visit him without the king's sign manual, which Mr Morice was always obliged to solicit, not only for himself, but for every one of his family whom he carried abroad with him, for which the fees of office were very high.

When Bishop Atterbury first entered upon his banishment, Brussels was the place destined for his residence; but, by the arts and intrigues of the British ministers, he was compelled to leave that place, and retire to Paris. There being solicited by the friends of the Pretender to enter into their negociations, he changed his abode for Montpelier in 1728; and, after residing there about two years, returned to Paris, where he died Feb. 15, 1731-2. The affliction which he sustained by the death of his daughter in 1729, was thought to have hastened his own dissolution. The former event he hath himself related in a very affecting manner, in a letter to Mr Pope: "The earnest desire of meeting one I dearly loved, called me abruptly to Montpelier; where, after continuing two months under the cruel torture of a bad and fruitless expectation, I was forced at last to take a long journey to Toulouse; and even there I had missed the person I sought, had the not, with great spirit and courage, ventured all night up the Garonne to see me, which she above all things desired to do before she died. By that means she was brought where I was, between seven and eight in the morning, and lived 25 hours afterwards; which time was not lost on either side, but passed in such a manner as gave great satisfaction to both, and such as, on her part, every way became her circumstances and character: For the had her senses to the very last gasp, and exerted them to give me, in those few hours, greater marks of duty and love than she had done in all her lifetime, though she had never been wanting in either. The last words she said to me were the kindest of all; a reflection on the goodness of God, which had allowed us in this manner to meet once more, before we parted for ever. Not many minutes after that, she laid herself on her pillow, in a sleeping posture,

Placidique ibi demum morte quieuit.

Judge you, Sir, what I felt, and still feel, on this occasion, and spare me the trouble of describing it. At my age, under my infirmities, among utter strangers, how shall I find out proper reliefs and supports? I can have none, but those with which reason and religion furnish me; and those I laid hold on, and grasp as fast as I can. I hope that He who laid the burden upon me (for wife and good purposes no doubt) will enable me to bear it in like manner, as I have borne others, with some degree of fortitude and firmness."

How far the bishop might have been attached in his inclinations to the Stuart family, to which he might be led by early prejudices of education, and the divided opinions of the times, it is not necessary here to inquire: But that he should have been weak enough to engage in a plot so inconsistent with his station, and so clumsily devised (to say the least of it, and without entering into his solemn affirmation of innocence), is utterly inconsistent with that cunning which his enemies allowed him. The duke of Wharton, it is well known, was violent against him, till convinced by his unanswerable reasoning.

It has been said that Atterbury's wishes reached to the bishopric of London, or even to York or Canterbury. But those who were better acquainted with his views, knew that Winchester would have been much more desirable to him than either of the others. And there are those now living, who have been told from respectable authority, that that bishopric was offered to him whenever it should become vacant (and till that event should happen, a pension of 500l. a-year, besides an ample provision for Mr Morice), if he would cease to give the opposition he did to Sir Robert Walpole's administration, by his speeches and protests in the house of lords. When that offer was rejected by the bishop, then the contrivance for his ruin was determined on.

In his speech in the house of lords, the bishop mentions his being "engaged in a correspondence with two learned men (Bishop Potter and Dr Wall) on settling the times of writing the four gospels." Part of this correspondence is still in being, and will soon be published. The same subject the bishop pursued during his exile, having consulted the learned of all nations, and had nearly brought the whole to a conclusion when he died. These laudable labours are an ample confutation of Bishop Newton's assertion, that Atterbury "wrote little whilst in exile but a few criticisms on French authors."

His body was brought over to England, and interred on the 12th of May following in Westminster abbey, in a vault which in the year 1722 had been prepared by his directions. There is no memorial over his grave; nor could there well be any, unless his friends would have consented (which it is most probable they refused to do) that the words implying him to have died bishop of Rochester should have been omitted on his tomb.

Some

I have simply stated matters of fact as they are recorded; and leave it to your readers to settle other points not quite so obvious and indisputable, as they may think fit. My motives in this very plain narration arose from an honest wish to remove unmerited obloquy from the dead. I should sincerely rejoice if the cloud which in other respects still shades the character of this ingenious prelate could be removed with equal facility and success. I am, dear Sir, your faithful humble servant,

SAMUEL BADCOCK. Atterbury. Some time before his death, he published a vindication of himself, Bishop Smalridge, and Dr Aldrich, from a charge brought against them by Mr Oldmixon, of having altered and interpolated the copy of Lord Clarendon's "History of the Rebellion." Bishop Atterbury's "Sermons" are extant in four volumes in octavo: those contained in the two first were published by himself, and dedicated to his great patron Sir Jonathan Trelawney bishop of Winchester; those in the two last were published after his death by Dr Thomas Moore, his lordship's chaplain. Four admirable "Vitiation Charges" accompany his "Epistolary Correspondence."

As to Bishop Atterbury's character, however the moral and political part of it may have been differently represented by the opposite parties, it is universally agreed, that he was a man of great learning and uncommon abilities, a fine writer, and a most excellent preacher. His learned friend Smalridge, in the speech he made when he presented him to the upper house of convocation, as prolocutor, styles him Vir in nullo literarum genere hospes, in plurifque aribus et studiis diu et feliciter exercitatus, in maxime perfectis litterarum disciplinis perfectissimus. In his controversial writings, he was sometimes too severe upon his adversary, and dealt rather too much in satire and invective; but this his panegyrift imputes more to the natural fervour of his wit than to any bitterness of temper or preposterous malice. In his sermons, however, he is not only every way unexceptionable, but highly to be commended. The truth is, his talent as a preacher was so excellent and remarkable, that it may not improperly be said, that he owed his preferment to the pulpit; nor any hard matter to trace him, through his writings, to his several promotions in the church. We shall conclude Bishop Atterbury's character as a preacher, with the encomium bestowed on him by the author of "the Tatler;" who, having observed that the English clergy too much neglected the art of speaking, makes a particular exception with regard to our prelate; who, says he, "has so particular a regard to his congregation, that he commits to his memory what he has to say to them; and has so soft and graceful a behaviour, that it must attract your attention. His person (continues this author), it is to be confessed, is no small recommendation; but he is to be highly commended for not losing that advantage, and adding to propriety of speech (which might pass the criticism of Longinus) an action which would have been approved by Demosthenes. He has a peculiar force in his way, and has affected many of his audience who could not be intelligent hearers of his discourse were there no explanation as well as grace in his action. This art of his is used with the most exact and honest skill. He never attempts your passions, till he has convinced your reason. All the objections which you can form are laid open and dispersed before he uses the least vehemence in his sermon; but when he thinks he has your head, he very soon wins your heart, and never pretends to show the beauty of holiness, till he has convinced you of the truth of it."—In his letters to Pope, &c. Bishop Atterbury appears in a pleasing light, both as a writer and as a man. In ease and elegance they are superior to those of Pope, which are more studied. There are in them several beautiful references to the classics.

The bishop excelled in his allusions to sacred as well as profane authors.