Sir Joseph Banks, Bart. 21 



he made of his influence in supporting whatever was useful ; the 

 exemplary assiduity with which he performed the duties of an 

 honourable office ; the amenity which he introduced into the 

 intercourse of the lovers of science ; and the generous solicitude 

 he displayed for those pursued by misfortunes: And when we re- 

 flect how, in reality, and in spite of impotent attacks, he was re- 

 compensed by the esteem of the public, and how happy he must 

 have been in the very exercise of so unremitting a benevolence, 

 and to which he had given so wide a range, we consider it as an 

 urgent duty, to present him as an example to many rich men, who 

 pass in an indolence, fatiguing to themselves and to others, a hfe 

 which their condition in the world might enable them so easily 

 to render useful to mankind. 



His domestic happiness equalled all his other sources of en- 

 joyment. He did not lose his respectable mother till 1804 ; 

 an accomplished and intelligent sister lived nearly as long as 

 himself; an amiable wife always formed the charm of his so- 

 ciety. Nature herself seemed to have been equally favourable 

 to him as fortune. His person was tall and finely formed ; his 

 constitution vigorous ; and if the gout troubled his latter years, 

 and even deprived him for some time of the use of his hmbs, it 

 could neither alter his intellect nor his disposition. 



The last moments of a life entirely devoted to the improve- 

 ment of science, were employed in forwarding its interests after 

 he should cease to live. In dying, he bequeathed to the British 

 Museum his rich library of Natural History, a collection formed 

 by fifty years of assiduous research, and which the Catalogue 

 drawn up under the eye of Mr Dryander has rendered celebrated 

 over all Europe, and even useful to those who have not the power 

 of visiting the Library, from the regularity with which not only 

 the works of which it is composed, but even the particular memoirs 

 which enter into these works, are there enumerated and arranged 

 under the diff*erent subjects to which they belong. He made rather 

 a slender provision for the great botanist Mr Brown, who had 

 sacrificed to him hopes greatly superior to all that he could ex- 

 pect from him, but who himself thought that science, and the 

 friendship of a man hke Sir Joseph Banks, merited such a sa- 

 crifice. He also assigned funds for continuing the execution of 



