460 



Monthly Review of Literature, 



[APRIL; 



dlah Walker, Bishops Nicholson and 

 EL'arne, make frequent acknowledgement 

 of favours. At his death, or soon after, 

 his collections of letters from celebrated 

 persons found their way to the British Mu- 

 seum ; but his own museum, to the oppro- 

 brium of the town, was dispersed, partly by 

 auction, while his personal correspondence 

 and his diary went no one knew whither. 

 The portions of the diary now published, 

 with the correspondence which will imme- 

 diately follow, were discovered a few years 

 ago in a garret in the city, and rescued by 

 Mr. Upcott, of the London Institution, 

 whose corrasioHS of the autographic remains 

 of eminent persons exceed those of any man 

 living. During the printing, another vo- 

 lume of the Diary was found in the library 

 of Christ's Hospital. 



The Diary commences witli the year 

 1678, when Thoresby was in his twentieth 

 year, and was continued, probably without 

 any interruption, till 1724, within a year of 

 his death. Two gaps, one of eight, and the 

 other of six years, are supplied briefly by a 

 ." review," in his own hand, which he seems 

 to have made every ten years ; and a third 

 of about five years, for which there is no 

 substitute. This is not, we think, very 

 deeply to be lamented ; nor can we at all 

 sympathize with the editor in his regrets. 

 Satis superque. Thoresby's life was un- 

 eventful and uniform ; he records no public 

 matters ; or if now and then he alludes to 

 them, it is only with a prayer that evils may 

 be averted. The whole Diary, in short, is 

 strictly of a private character, presenting 

 frequent notices of his family circumstances 

 and temporal concerns ; but chiefly record- 

 ing his studies, his readings, his correspon- 

 dence, his times, and his religious exercises. 

 It was designed, he observes incidentally, 

 not for the inspection of others, but for pri- 

 vate direction and reproof. Nothing so at- 

 tractive as a peep into such a sanctum, where 

 the individual is anything above mediocrity, 

 with an unfettered spirit, and disposed to 

 expatiate. Thoresby had no intellectual 

 superiorities ; he was evidently an honest, 

 well-meaning man, not calculated for the 

 tumults of life or the tricks of business ; 

 and therefore wisely, at the end of twenty 

 years of unproductive conflict with more 

 successful competitors, abandoned the at- 

 tempt, retired on a slender competency, and 

 devoted the rest of his days to his museum 

 and his pen. For a diary prosecuted nearly 

 fifty years, the uniformity of the tone is 

 most remarkable ; no one can question his 

 identity ; he was the same man from first 

 to last ; his habits as steady and unchang- 

 ing in youth as in age; his pursuits the 

 same ; the same piety, the same profound 

 respect for the clergy, the same fondness for 

 sermons and securing the "heads" of them, 

 the same constant attendance on public 

 prayers, the same observance of private; 

 the same credulity the same bonhnmrnie 

 the same phraseology and sentiments, 



coupled with a complete absence of all 

 desire to point his inquiries in any direc- 

 tion but that which, by some early bias, 

 they insensibly took and kept. Any thing 

 like enlightenment the reader must not 

 look for; he had no general or original 

 views ; he never broke out of the lines of 

 prescription ; and the bigotry of his senti- 

 ments, inseparable from narrowness of 

 spirit, is softened only by the kindliness of 

 his nature. 



His self-censures, which frequently recur, 

 chiefly concern the waste of time that is, 

 of time abstracted from his particular pur- 

 suits. " Can find time for anything but 

 what I should do," he observes in one place, 

 when he had spent some part of an evening 

 at a tavern. " Too merry for our circum- 

 stances too many profane words, and much 

 precious time spent idly, if not sinfully" . 

 upon an occasion when he had entertained 

 some friends (JEt. 24). Once on a Sunday, 

 when on a visit, after attending service 

 " the rest of the day and evening spent very 

 unsuitably to the duties of the day, though 

 we enjoyed the modest parson's good com- 

 pany and Squire Dyke's ; evening, sat too 

 late, or rather early, with the young gen- 

 tlemen, and was foolishly cheerful, and vain 

 in my expressions ; too compliant, &c." 

 (jEt. 37') Going once to a play, he notes 

 " Curiosity took me there, but fear 

 brought me back ;" the first, and he hopes 

 the last time he shall be found upon such 

 ground. At his parish church once some 

 sensible stranger preached " I was espe- 

 cially vexed at these words : ' Precise per- 

 sons, now-a-days, will cry out of innocent 

 plays and honest comedies, &c., when in the 

 meantime themselves are the greatest actors 

 in the world ;' a speech, in my opinion, 

 very unbecoming a minister of the gospel at 

 any time, much more in the pulpit ; leading 

 to the encouragement of those insatiable 

 devourers of precious time." Yet very 

 much of this precious time was spent, ap- 

 parently, in very frivolous employments 

 copying tomb-stone inscriptions especially ; 

 or, when the forenoon, which he mentions 

 without any disapprobation, was employed 

 in cementing the broken pieces of a large 

 ancient figure of Seneca's head, that worthy 

 philosopher (^Et. 24, when he probably 

 knew nothing of him but by report) after 

 writing some pedigrees. Once he went a 

 hunting, " the first time," he writes, " and 

 I think the last, being of Sir Philip Syd- 

 ney's mind, next to hawking I like hunting 

 worst." One Sunday, ladies of rank were 

 introduced to see his collections of " rarities 

 and coins :" ;" which with reluctance I re- 

 fused, because of the unseasonableness, with 

 pioffer of service the next day, whereby I 

 avoided the outward breach of the com- 

 mand. But alas," he adds, " my vain 

 thoughts, like tinder, are easily inflamed ; 

 and any good notion, like a spark, quickly 

 extinguished." 



" Showing collections" often occurs 



