he was weighed down with poverty and embarrassment, and knew not how to help himself; he turned to Fothergill with a heavy heart and timid asking eye, expecting no more than the means to ward off a pressing assault of penury, an importunate and threatening dun, or an old and merciful creditor as poor as himself, or it may be, he was at a loss for the morrow's meal. We do not correctly remember whether he made any direct application to Fothergill or not, but however the doctor understood his need, talked cheerfully to him, and in fine, gave him a piece of paper, which he probably supposed to be a five pound note, but which turned out to be a check for £1000. In what a new state of existence, what a renovation of youth and hope must this poor man have felt at that moment. But Fothergill was not only beneficent, he was munificent. In his charity he had regard chiefly to necessity; and as necessity is rarely to be found in that fold of Christians of which he was a member, his donations were freely given to the needy of all denominations. But the remarkable instances of munificence which we are about to mention had a more especial reference to the interest of the Society of Friends. These were, his patronage of Anthony Parver, and the part he took in the foundation and endowment of Ackworth School. Anthony Parver was a Quaker, poorer and less educated than most of his brethren, by trade a shoe maker. Can any one assign a reason why so many shoe makers have become eminent for their genius or their enthusiasm? The employment is still, often solitary, and allows a man to be meditative. Anthony Parver as he worked with his awl, was over-mastered with an idea that he was called and commanded to translate the Scriptures. His faith attributed the impulse, whose origin he could not trace in his own will, or in the concatenation of his human thoughts, to the Divine Spirit. But if he was an enthusiast, he was an enthusiast of much sanity; for he sought the accomplishment of his end by the necessary means, and did not begin to translate till he had mastered the original tongues. We know not what assistance he received in this great undertaking, which was commenced when he had long outlived the years of physical docility; but if it be true, as stated, that he began with the Hebrew first (and it was the natural course to occur to his mind), he must have had some, for there was then no Hebrew and English lexicon or grammar. However he did acquire a competent knowledge of the Hebrew, Chaldee, and Syriac. He afterwards learned Greek, aad Latin last of all. But still he could not have accomplished his purpose without pecuniary aid, and that aid was liberally afforded by Dr. Fothergill, at whose sole expense, Parver's Translation of the Old and New Testaments, with notes critical and explanatory, in two volumes folio, was printed, and appeared in 1765. The cost of the work is stated at not less than £200. A short account of this extraordinary effort of faith and perseverance may be found in Southey's Omniana. It is said to be remarkable for a close adherance to the Hebrew idiom. It has not apparently attracted as much notice among biblical scholars as the curiosity, to say no more, of its production would seem to challenge. We never saw it but once, and that was in the library of a Friend.* We doubt, indeed, whether any new translation, however learned, exact, or truly orthodox, will ever appear to English Christians to be the real Bible. The language of the authorized version is the perfection of English, and it can never be written again, for the language of prose is one of the few things in which the English have really degenerated. Our tongue has lost its holiness. The peculiarities of the Quaker discipline, and the rigid purity in which it requires the youth of that church to be educated, render it essential to their consistency to have seminaries proper to themselves. They do not, indeed, require colleges, for they have no priesthood, no order that is especially their own, requiring a certificate of qualification, but they needed a school, where they might see their children reared to a stature of intellect commensurate to their station, their duties, and their intellectual desires. This desideratum Dr. Fothergill was anxious to supply, and he availed himself of the first opening that offered to make a beginning. We cannot record the conception and nativity of Ackworth better than in the words of Dr. Hird, related by Dr. Elliot. "On his return from Cheshire, through Yorkshire, in the year 1778, he did me the favour of being my guest a few days, during which time he was visited by many of his friends in those parts. In one of these interviews, the conversation turned on an institution at Gildersome, a small establishment for the education of poor children amongst the society. The Doctor was inquiring into its state and management, and how far it might serve for a larger undertaking. A just description being given of it, with the following remark, that not only this but all others, however laudable the motives from which they took their rise, must fail of success without a constant superintending care, and unremitting attention to the first great object of the institution; this idea was exemplified by the then present state of the Foundling Hospital at Ackworth, which, although originating from the most humane principle, and erected at a vast expense, was, from repeated inattentions to the first design, in danger of delapidation, and ready for public sale." The The late Charles Lloyd, banker, of Birmingham, a man whom I should be thankful to Heaven for having known. relation struck the Doctor forcibly. "Why may not this," said he, "serve the very purpose I am in pursuit of?" To be short, the building and an estate of thirty acres of land were purchased, improved, and furnished by subscription. The Doctor set a generous example, by his own contribution, and a permanent endowment by his will in perpetuity. It is the duty, and therefore the right of every religious body to educate their own children in their own principles. A national religious education which could comprehend all sects must be the organ of a new and impracticable heresy, and could only be maintained by inforcing a body of negative cannons more multitudinous than all the articles of faith, of all the orthodoxies, and heterodoxies that have sprung up since man took upon himself to improve revelation. Reading, writing, and arithmetic may be taught without instructing the pupils in any theological creed, and it is better so to do, than to teach a creed which, by the universal agreement of all sects, denominations and churches is a caput mortuum without life, truth, authority, or efficiency. We therefore think the Quakers right in founding schools for themselves; and we are always glad to see the Catholics, the Methodists, the Arminians, or the Socinians doing the same. They ought not to find fault if the Episcopalians follow their example. But we must return to the Doctor, only observing, en passant, that his liberality to Ackworth has not been thrown away. More than one poet has been trained at that seminary. It is sufficient to mention William Howitt, Jeremiah Wiffin, and (we believe) Bernard Burton. Dr. Fothergill's constitution was not of the most robust order, and as he advanced in years he found a temporary secession from the toil and anxiety of consultation necessary to recruit his health and spirits. His villa at Upton was too near London to allow of his calculating upon many weeks of repose there. He ever retained an affection for Cheshire, his grandfather's country, and the land of his opening thought, which induced him to make it the scene of his summer retirement. During the latter years of his life he used to spend the interval from July to September at Lea Hall, a pleasant seat in the neighbourhood of Middlewich, the property of Sir John Leicester, of whom he rented it from year to year. In this vicinity he is still remembered with gratitude. His arrival was always a joyful æra to the poor, to the sick, and to the circle of his friends. He never took fees during his vacation, but went every week to Middlewich, and prescribed gratis to all who came, at an inn. Such men are not readily forgotten. It was a goood omen or as good, to meet him on his morning rides. When in town, his ordinary practice was computed to amount to £7000 a year, but on some occasions it much exceeded that sum. In the year 1775 and 1776, when an influenza prevailed, he numbered, on an average, sixty patients a day, and his practice was supposed worth £8000 annually. His property at his death was estimated at £80,000. He was doubtless a fortunate as well as a good man. Among his services to literature, we must not omit his patronage of the voyager Sidney Parkinson, the introduction to whose voyage he drew up himself. About two years before his death, he was afflicted with a troublesome disorder, which he mistook at first for irregular gout; though he never earned that gentlemanlike disease, taking much exercise, and was remarkably abstemious, seldom exceeding two glasses of wine after dinner or supper. His pains are said to have been aggravated, and perhaps his dissolution hastened, by his extreme delicacy. In his last illness he was attended by Dr. Warren, Dr. Watson, Dr. Reynolds, and Mr. Pott, whose efforts produced a temporary relief; but the symptoms returned with increased violence, and finally terminated his existence on the 26th of December, 1780, in the 69th year of his age, at his house in Harpur Street. On the 5th of January following, his remains were deposited in the Friends' burial ground, at Winchmore Hill. Though only ten coaches were ordered to convey his relations and more immediate connections, upwards of seventy carriages attended the funeral, and some Friends came from a distance of a hundred miles to pay the last token of respect, to a man who had made their garb and discipline so honourable in the world's eye. Dying a bachelor, he left the bulk of his property to his sister, who was joined with Mr. Chorley in the executorship. By his will he directed that his collections in Natural History should be offered to Dr. Hunter, at 5007. less than the valuation. The doctor purchased them for 12001. His choice selection of English portraits which he bought for 801. sold for 200 guineas; the house at Upton brought 10007. As a professional man he was principally noted for the intuitive skill with which he divined the true character of a disease—when the diagnosis was most perplexing, and administered the remedy which the idi. osyncracy of the case required. He was well-grounded in medical learning, not given to novelties; a careful observer of facts-and one that practised his art at once with the caution and the courage of benevolence. In politics he was the friend of peace and liberty; in religion, he was firm to the principle in which he was brought up. Neither wealth nor science, nor his own philosophical liberality, nor his widely extended friendship, ever estranged him from the simple piety of a Quaker. END OF VOL. I. |