1829.] 
bly through a weakness of nerve—he failed 
in performing an act of justice to his Sove- 
reign. 
The noble Earl continued to hold the 
high office of Premier of England until 1827. 
On the 17th of February, in that year, his 
lordship was attacked by a stroke of apo- 
plexy, from which he never recovered. So 
strong, however, were the hopes of his re- 
covery, and so anxious was his Majesty that 
he might be enabled to resume the functions 
of his office, that the premiership was not 
transferred to Mr. Canning, who had re- 
garded himself as his successor, till the 10th 
of April. His lordship remained until the 
period of his death—which took place on 
Thursday, the 4th of December, 1828—in 
a state incapable of discharging any public 
duty, and seldom able to hold intercourse 
even with his nearest friends. His death, 
however, at Coombe Wood, wassudden and 
unexpected ; as, for some time previously, 
bis lordship had been in rather better health 
than usual. His remains were, on the Mon- 
day following, removed to the family vault 
at Hawkesbury, in Gloucestershire. The 
funeral ceremony was of an unostentatious 
character. A handsome mourning hearse, 
drawn by six horses, preceded by mutes bear- 
ing the coronet and the armorial distinctions 
of the deceased, was followed by three 
mourning-coaches and six, containing the 
domestics of his lordship’s establishment ; 
then came his lordship’s own carriage, fol- 
lowed by those of his brother and the Mar- 
quis of Bristol; afterwards, that of his 
Royal Highness the Duke of Clarence, who, 
unsolicited, paid this mark of respect to his 
deceased neighbour. The carriages of Vis- 
count Sidmouth, and C. N. Pallmer, Esq., 
M.P., closed the procession. 
Of the Earl of Liverpool’s political cha- 
_ racter, it can hardly be necessary to speak. 
His information was extensive, varied, and 
Solid; his abilities were rather sound than 
splendid ; his judgment was perhaps more re- 
markable for its accuracy than for its acute- 
ness. In private life, his lordship, distin- 
guished by benevolence, charity, and every 
amiable quality, was universally beloved. 
He was twice married: first, in 1795, to 
Lady Theodosia Louisa Hervey, daughter 
of the late, and sister of the present Earl of 
_ Bristol ; secondly, in 1822, to Miss Chester, 
the daughter of a clergyman long since de- 
ceased, and sister of Sir Robert Chester. 
is first Countess died in 1821 ; his second 
survives him. Dying without issue, his 
lordship is succeeded by his half-brother, 
Charles Cecil Cope Jenkinson, the son of 
the first earl, by his second wife, daughter of 
Sir Cecil Bishop, of Parham, in the county 
of Sussex, Bart., and widow of Sir Charles 
Cope, of Orton Longueville, Bart. The 
oct nobleman was, some time since, 
nder Secretary in the Colonial and War 
Department. 
ee 
Biographical Memoirs of Eminent Persons. 
215 
THE REV. DR. NICOLL. 
‘The Rey. Alexander Nicoll, D.D., one 
of the Canons of Christ Church Oxford, 
and Regius Professor of Hebrew in that 
University, was born in 1793. He was a 
native of Aberdeenshire : his parents, hum- 
ble in their walk of life, were eminently 
respectable in character. Educated at the 
college of Aberdeen, he was, by the kind- 
ness of the late Bishop Skinner, sent to 
Oxford, at the early age of fifteen, and 
elected to an exhibition in Baliol College. 
There, but for his constitutional shyness, 
he would have cbtained the honours of first 
class degree, in both classics and mathe- 
matics ; but, failing in that object, he took 
pupils, with one of whom he some time tra- 
velied. Weary of that mode of life, how- 
ever, he settled in Oxford, where he ob- 
tained the appointment of under librarian 
in the Bodleian Library. There, availing 
himself of the vast treasure of oriental ma- 
nuscripts, chiefly uncatalogued, he made 
himself complete master of the Hebrew, 
Arabic, Persic, Syrian, Ethiopic, Sanscrit, 
and various other eastern dialects. He 
drew up and published a catalogue of the 
manuscripts brought from the East by Dr. 
E. D. Clarke; and he entered upon the 
Herculean labour of completing the general 
catalogue of the oriental manuscripts in the 
Bodleian Library—more than thirty thou- 
sand in number—which had been com- 
menced a century before by Uri, the cele- 
brated Hungarian. This procured for 
Mr. Nicoll, a splendid literary reputation 
throughout Europe. In the course of his 
frequent visits to the continent, he had 
examined every great collection of oriental 
manuscripts in this quarter of the world. 
His correspondence with foreign literati 
was conducted principally in Latin; but 
he also spoke and wrote, with ease and ac- 
curacy, French, Italian, German, Danish, 
Swedish, and Romaic. 
On Dr. Lawrence’s promotion to the See 
of Cashel, Dr. Nicoll, through the unso- 
licited influence of the late Earl of Liver- 
pool, succeeded to the Hebrew chair at 
Oxford ; a promotion which changed his 
situation in life from £200 a year to nearly 
£2,000; and from an under librarian of 
the Bodleian Library, he took rank, as Re- 
gius Professor, and as Canon of Christ 
Church, to the first dignities of the Uni- 
versity. This event occurred in the sum- 
mer of 1822. 
Dr. Nicoll’s unremitting exertions proved 
too much for a frame not originally vigo- 
rous; and an inflammation in the trachea 
carried him off suddenly, at Oxford, on the 
24th of September. Dr. Nicoll was twice 
married ; first to a Danish lady, who died 
suddenly, in 1815; and, some years after- 
wards, to Sophia, daughter of the Rey. J. 
Parsons, the learned editor of the Oxford 
Septuagint. The latter lady, and one daugh- 
ter, survive. 
