terchange of fentiments, which otherwise had been spent at home in painful reflection. The perfons who composed this little fociety were nine in number: I will mention their names, and, as well as I am able, give a flight sketch of the several characters of fuch of them as cannot now be affected by either praise or blame: they were, the reverend Dr. Salter, father of the late mafter of the Charterhouse,-Dr. Hawkefworth, Mr. Ryland a merchant, a relation of his,Mr. John Payne then a bookfeller, but now or very lately chief accountant of the bank,-Mr. Samuel Dyer a learned young man intended for the diffenting mimistry,-Dr. William M'Ghie a Scots phyfician,-Dr. Edmund Barker, a young physician,-Dr, Richard Bathurst also a young phyfician, and myself.

Dr. Samuel Salter was a Cambridge divine, whom some disagreement between him and his children had driven from his abode at Norwich, at the age of feventy, to fettle in London. Being thus far advanced in years, he could carry his recollection back to the time when Dr. Samuel Clarke was yet a member of that univerfity, and would frequently entertain us with particulars refpecting him. He was a dignitary of the church, I think archdeacon of Norfolk, a man of general reading, but no deep fcholar: he was well-bred, courteous, and affable, and enlivened converfation by the relation of a variety of curious facts, of which his memory was the only register.

Dr. Hawkefworth is a character well known in the literary world: I fhall not attempt a delineation of it, as I find in the biographic dictionary an article for in the words following:

'foft and pleasing caft, was born about the year 1719, though his epitaph, as we find it in the 'Gentleman's Magazine," for August 1781, makes 'him to have been born in 1715. He was brought up to a mechanical profeffion, that of a watch'maker, as is fuppofed*. He was of the fect of prefbyterians, and a member of the celebrated Tom 'Bradbury's meeting, from which he was expelled for fome irregularities. He afterwards devoted ' himself to literature, and became an author of confiderable eminence. In the early part of his life, <his circumstances were rather confined. He refided ⚫ fome time at Bromley in Kent, where his wife kept a boarding-school. He afterwards became known to a lady, who had great property and interest in the Eaft-India company; and, through her means, ' was chosen a director of that body. As an author, his Adventurer' is his capital work; the merits of which, if we mistake not, procured him the degree of L. L. D. from Herring, archbishop of Canter'bury. When the defign of compiling a narrative of the discoveries in the South feas was on foot, he 'was recommended as a proper perfon to be em'ployed on the occafion; but, in truth, he was not a proper perfon, nor did the performance answer ex'pectation. Works of tafte and elegance, where imagination and the paffions were to be affected, were his province; not works of dry, cold, accurate narrative. However, he executed his tafk, and is faid

This is a mistake. He had been taught no art but that of writing, and was a hired clerk to one Harwood an attorney in Grocers' alley, in the Poultry.

'to

to have received for it the enormous fum of 6000l. He died in 1773, fome fay of high living, others, ⚫ of chagrin from the ill reception of his 'Narrative :' for he was a man of the keeneft fenfibility, and ob. ⚫ noxious to all the evils of fuch irritable natures.'

Mr. Samuel Dyer was the son of a jeweller of emi. nence in the city, who, by his ingenuity and industry had acquired a competent fortune. He, as alfo his wife, were diffenters, perfons very religiously disposed, members of Chandler's congregation in the Old Jewry, and this their youngest fon was educated by profeffor Ward, at the time when he kept a private school in one of the alleys near Moorfields; and from thence, being intended by his father for the diffenting minis try, was removed to Dr. Dodderidge's academy at Northampton. After having finished his ftudies in this feminary, he was removed to Glasgow, where, under Dr. Hutchefon, he was inftructed in the writings of the Greek moralifts, and went through feveral courses of ethics and metaphyfics. To complete this plan of a learned education, the elder Mr. Dyer, by the advice of Dr. Chandler, fent his fon to Leyden, with a view to his improvement in the Hebrew literature under Schultens, a celebrated profeffor in that university. After two years' ftay abroad, Mr. Dyer returned, eminently qualified for the exercise of that profeffion to which his ftudies had been directed, and great were the hopes of his friends that he would become one of its ornaments. Το fpeak of his attainments in knowledge, he was an excellent claffical scholar, a great mathematician and natural philofopher, well verfed in the Hebrew, and

mafter of the Latin, French and Italian languages. Added to thefe endowments, he was of a temper fo mild, and in his conversation and demeanour so modest and unaffuming, that he engaged the attention and affection of all around him. In all queftions of fcience, Johnson looked up to him, and in his life of Watts, among the poets, has cited an obfervation of his, that Watts had confounded the idea of space ' with that of empty space, and did not confider that ' though space might be without matter, yet matter being extended, could not be without space.'

It was now expected that Mr. Dyer would attach himself to the profeffion for which fo liberal and expenfive an education was intended to qualify him, and that he would, under all the discouragements that attend non-conformity, appear as a public teacher, and by preaching give a fpecimen of his talents; and this was the more wifhed, as he was a conftant attendant on divine worship, and the whole of his behaviour fuited to fuch a character. But being preffed by myself and other of his friends, he difcovered an averseness to the undertaking, which we conceived to arife from modefty, but fome time after found to have fprung from another caufe.

In this feeming ftate of fufpence, being mafter of his time, his friend Dr. Chandler found out for him an employment exactly fuitable to his talents. Dr. Daniel Williams, a diffenting minifter, who by marriage had become the owner of a very plentiful eftate, and was the founder of the library for the ufe of thofe of his profeffion, in Redcross street, by his will had directed that certain controversial, and other religious

tracts

tracts of his writing, fhould be translated into Latin, and printed the second year after his death, and five hundred of each given away, and this hequest to be repeated when that number was difpofed of.

This part of his will had remained unexecuted from about the year 1715, and Dr. Chandler being a trustee for the performance of it, and empowered to offer an equivalent to any one that he fhould think equal to the undertaking, propofed it to Mr. Dyer, and he accepted it; but small was his progrefs in it before it began to grow irksome, and the completing of the translation was referred to fome one lefs averfe to labour than himself.

Having thus got rid of an employment to which no perfuafions of his friends nor profpects of future advantage could reconcile him, he became, as it were, emancipated from the bondage of puritanical forms and modes of living. Mr. Dyer commenced a man of the world, and with a fober and temperate deliberation resolved on a participation of its pleasures and enjoyments. His company, though he was rather a filent than a talkative man, was courted by many, and he had frequent invitations to dinners, to fuppers, and card-parties. By these means he became infenfibly a votary of pleasure, and to justify this choice, had reasoned himself into a perfuafion that, not only in the moral government of the world but in human manners, through all the changes and fluctuations of fashion and caprice, whatever is, is right. With this and other opinions equally tending to corrupt his mind, it must be fuppofed that he began to grow indifferent to the strict practice of religion, and

the