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so that we have not been without a succession of eminent authors 
in Bath from the days of Fielding, Smollett, Hartley, Cogan, 
Herschell, Warburton, and Melmoth, down to the time of Walter 
Savage Landor, and Bishop Thirlwall, who when towards the close 
of along and studious life, settled down in the centre house of 
Pulteney Street, where he stored his large collection of books, and 
surrounded by them wrote his last article within a few days of 
his death. 
One remarkable characteristic of our local literature is the wide 
range of subjects embraced. In History, Philosophy, Philology, 
Natural History, Poetry, Botany, Stenography, Political Economy, 
Travels, Biography, and Topography, several noteworthy books 
have been written by Bath men. 
In ecclesiastical lore and religious controversy there has been 
an overwhelming abundance. In theology, both practical and 
doctrinal, there has been a plethora—no end of essays, treatises, 
lectures, expositions, charges and sermons—more than enough to 
have made the past generations of Bathonians better men than 
they were, and the present race much better than they are. 
The County of Somerset during the 16th and 17th centuries 
was remarkable for the number of eminent divines who were 
distinguished by their learning and renowned for their zeal and 
piety—Ken, Kidder, and Hooper, Bishops of Bath and Wells, 
Allein of Taunton, Bernard of Batcombe, the author of a work 
that suggested Bunyan’s ‘‘Pilgrim’s Progress,” Roberts and 
Crooke, able scholars, who were successively Rectors of Wrington, 
predecessors of our late chairman, Prebendary Scarth ; Jeans of 
Chedzoy, John Norris of Newton St. Loe, Glanvill and Coney, 
Rectors of Bath, and Carte, the distinguished historian and 
lecturer at Bath Abbey Church, besides several others whose 
names will recur to you. 
Moreover in two or three branches of science “and literature 
Bath may fairly claim some notable pioneers. Dr. Turner was 
far in advance of his time. He was the father of English botany, 
