John Donne, Sir Henry Wotton, Mr. Richard Hooker, Mr. George Herbert, and Dr. Robert Sanderson by Isaac Walton,' with copious Notes and a Life of the Author. Of this valuable work a second edition appeared, in two volumes octavo, in 1798; and a third, with additions, in 1817. In 1798, Mr. Pitt expressed to some of his friends his intention of appointing him to the Mastership of Trinity College; but, for reasons now probably unknown, the design was set aside in favour of the present Bishop of Bristol. From the modest self-appreciation, with which Dr. Zouch subsequently shrunk from a still loftier appointment, it may perhaps be concluded that he judged himself, after nearly thirty years of rustication, unequal to presiding over a body of scholars at once so polished and so profound. The Premier however, to his own high credit as well as that of his noble friend the Earl of Lonsdale, who was fully sensible of his uncle's literary and professional pretensions, in 1805 conferred upon him a less arduous honour in the second Prebend of the Church of Durham; upon which occasion, he took his degree of D.. His tender feelings with respect to pastoral duty were, about this time, called into painful exertion by the consciousness of his continued non-residence upon his rectory of Scrayingham. From the fragments of Reflexions found among his papers, may be inferred the anxiety of his mind upon this important subject. In them he states, that he had always kept a resident Curate, and had annually visited his parish in person for the interval between Easter and Trinity-Sunday inclusive, and again at Michaelmas, notwithstanding considerable inconveniences of lodging, &c. which however, though he received only £15 for dilapidations, he had not a little enlarged, and should have readily still farther improved at a much heavier VOL. I. d expense, had he been younger or in better health. But for some years (he observes) his constitution, which was never strong, had been greatly shattered; his nights being oppressive and disturbed, his days wearisome and languid, and his general ailments "only not laying him under a physical necessity of declining to officiate.” His deafness in particular, to his great perplexity, was such as to prevent his hearing the responses of the clerk and the congregation.* Having likewise, after the exertions of a long and active ministry, † succeeded to a small paternal estate, he hoped he might not unreasonably, under a view of his heavy and increasing infirmities, assert his claim to the privileges of a Miles Emeritus; more especially, since in 1804 he had to his bitter sorrow lost Mrs. Zouch, who for above thirty years had conducted all his concerns. In such forlorn and desolate circumstances to migrate, at the age of sixty-seven, to a new place of residence, remote from medical assistance and from his few surviving relatives, and where he would have displaced a deserving tenant with a numerous family and a lease of the tithes, and have engaged in all the discomfort of building a competent mansion, secanda marmora locans sub ipsum funus, must have been a melancholy anticipation. When therefore to all this he could subjoin, that his Curate was a worthy and vigilant clergyman, and eminently attentive to the catechising of the children of the two schools, in which a certain number of poor boys and girls were educated at the Rector's expense, it will scarcely be thought, even by the most * He once, it is said, began his sermon in St. Mary's, Cambridge, before the organ had ceased to play! He was ordained Deacon in 1761. rigid enforcers of ecclesiastical duties, that he asked too much in craving permission to linger out the poor remainder of his years in his native village. In 1808 Dr. Zouch, in conjunction with his old schoolfellow Dr. Swire, Rector of Melsonby, with whom he had walked hand in hand through life, published at York, in 8vo, a tract drawn up by Mr. Sampson George,* solicitor, of Middleton Tyas, and entitled Reflexions of a Layman on the Divinity of Christ, the Unity of the Deity, and the Doctrine of the Trinity.' It was prefaced by the following brief advertisement: 'The Editors of this short tract, written by a Layman, flatter themselves that, by presenting it to the public, they essentially promote the interests of religion. They reflect with peculiar pleasure that the embarrassments of secular engagements, and the intricacy of legal disquisitions, have not precluded the respectable author from contemplating the great truths of Revelation with that aweful attention, which their vast importance requires.' * Mr. George, who has been dead for some years, published in 1784 (as I am informed by Dr. Zouch's friend, Mr. Headlam, the present Rector of Wycliffe) a Scheme for Reducing and finally Redeeming the National Debt, and for gaining Half a Million of Revenue by extinguishing a Tax!' This double difficulty, the solution of which has not been facilitated by the intervening years of expensive warfare, was to be conquered by the Sale of the Land-Tax, a measure subsequently adopted by Mr. Pitt. Mr. George's pamphlet went through a second edition in the same year. Like other and greater names, who have affected to prophesy of the ne plus ultra beyond which all accumulation of debt must overpower and break down the vital spring of the Constitution, he was fortunately disappointed in his anticipations. The debt of 1784 has been more than tripled, and we yet survive the burthen. But as to redeeming it, that (it may be feared) is a project to be classed with the chimæras of science-the squaring of the circle; or the discovery of the longitude, the perpetual motion, and the philosopher's stone. This is mentioned, rather as proving his indefatigable attention to whatever concerned the general welfare of the Church, whether in doctrine or in discipline, than as in other respects of much consequence. The same motive will excuse my introducing, in this place, a favourite passage of his from Isaac Walton's Love and Truth,' which (as above stated) he republished in 1795. "I shall next endeavour to satisfie your desire, or rather your challenge, why I go so constantly to the church-service, and my answer shall be all in love, and in sincerity. "I go to adore and worship my God, who hath made me of nothing, and preserved me from being worse than nothing. And this worship and adoration I do pay him inwardly in my soul, and testifie it outwardly by my behaviour: as namely, by my adoration, in my forbearing to cover my head in that place dedicated to God, and only to his service; and also, by standing up at profession of the Creed, which contains the several articles that I and all true Christians profess and believe; and also by my standing up at giving glory to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, and confessing them to be three persons and but one God. "And (secondly) I go to church to praise my God for my creation and redemption, and for his many deliverances of me from the many dangers of my body, and more especially of my soul in sending me redemption by the death of his Son my Saviour, and for the constant assistance of his Holy Spirit; a part of which praise I perform frequently in the Psalms, which are daily read in the publick congregation. "And (thirdly) I go to church publickly to confess and bewail my sins, and to beg pardon for them for his merits who died to reconcile me and all mankind unto God, who is both his and my Father; and as for the words in which I beg this mercy, they be the Letany and Collects of the Church, composed by those learned and devout men, whom you and I have trusted to tell us which is and which is not the written word of God, and trusted also to translate those Scriptures into English. And in these Collects you may note, that I pray absolutely for pardon of sin, and for grace to believe and serve God: but I pray for health, and peace, and plenty conditionally, even so far as may tend to his glory and the good of my soul, and not farther. And this confessing my sins, and begging mercy and pardon for them, I do in my adoring my God, and by the humble posture of kneeling on my knees before him. And in this manner, and by reverend sitting to hear some chosen parts of God's word read in the publick assembly, I spend one hour of the Lord's Day every forenoon; and half so much time every evening. And since this uniform and devout custom, of joyning together in publick confession, and praise, and adoration of God, and in one manner, hath been neglected, the power of Christianity and humble piety is so much decayed, that it ought not to be thought on but with sorrow and lamentation; and, I think, especially by the Non-conformists." We come now to the last of that series of well-earned rewards and honours, which accompanied the progress of this venerable divine through the course of his protracted and studious life. The See of Carlisle, which had become vacant in 1807 by the translation of the Hon. Dr. Edward Venables Vernon * to the Arch * To this Prelate, during his possession of the see in question, Dr. Paley was indebted not only for a benefice in that diocese (the first which his Lordship had it in his power to bestow) but also indirectly even for his more valuable pre |