108 J. MATTHEWS ON THE HISTORY AND 



occasion to urge, in one of the addresses which I have had the 

 honour of delivering in this place. 



It runs thus : You probably all recollect the good old knight, Sir 

 Roger de Coverley ? Indeed you ought all to know him well. He 

 has a domestic chaplain, whom he has made the parson of the parish. 

 He had, " being afraid of being insulted with Greek and Latin at 

 his own table . . . desired an old friend of his to find him out a 

 clergyman, rather of plain sense than much learning, of a good 

 aspect, a clear voice, a sociable temper, and, if possible, a man that 

 understood a little of backgammon." 



He proceeds to say — " At his first settling with me, I made him 

 a present of all the good sermons (both by living and dead authors) 

 that have been printed in English, and only begged of him that 

 every Sunday he would pronounce one of them in the pulpit. 

 Accordingly he has digested them into such a series that they 

 follow one another naturally, and make a continuous system of 

 practical Divinity." He continues — i.e., the ' Spectator ' — not Sir 

 Roger : — 



" I could heartily wish that more of our country clergy would 

 follow his example . . . and would thus enforce what has been 

 penned by greater masters. This would not only be more easy to 

 themselves, but more edifying to the people." 



This, Gentlemen, is the second motive to which I just now 

 referred, and, heartily coinciding as I do with the principle so 

 genially laid down by the " Spectator," feel that it is equally appli- 

 cable to the works of the great writers on Natural Science. I do 

 not, however, propose to follow it literally on the present occasion, 

 except so far as to endeavour to make you fairly well acquainted, as 

 well as myself, with some j^art of the literature of the very fasci- 

 nating subject now before us. 



Men who have been labouring hard in their daily avocations often 

 dislike the labour of reading, and yet the mind though needing rest, 

 is at least receptive ; 1 therefore venture to think that they will 

 gladly listen to any one who will narrate to them, or at least set 

 before them in some lucid way, an account of the labours of our 

 masters in science as occasion may suggest. 



What I have done, then, and propose to do in the future — if the 

 effort prove successful and acceptable to you — is to collect and 

 collate, as succinctly as I can, all that I can gather on a given 

 subject, together with such additions of my own as I may have been 



