222 LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF THE [1785 



have had richly performed. I never heard of his objecting to 

 music as he heard it in the cathedrals, chapels-royal and collegi- 

 ate churches of England. On the contrary, he tells us himself 

 that at Magdalen College, Oxford, where he was invited to go to 

 hear the music — which appears to have been especially fine at that 

 college — " the music was as delightful as can be imagined." No 

 doubt he would have had music just like it if he could have had 

 it in our own larger churches ; and would have said : 



''There let the pealing organ blow 

 To the full-voiced quire below, 

 In service high and anthems clear 

 As may with sweetness through mine ear 

 Dissolve me into ecstasies 

 And bring all Heaven before mine eyes." 



What he abhorred were the attempts so common in our churches 

 to perform, with means wholly incompetent to produce them, great 

 concerted pieces that only made the organ-loft sometimes ridicu- 

 lous, sometimes disgusting, and sometimes distressing, and which 

 tended almost of necessity to such indecent and irreverent per- 

 formance as profaned the service of the sanctuary. 



Indeed, while, no doubt, Dr. White ardently desired the ex- 

 tension of the Church, his means of extending it were never of 

 any very popular sort. The Church, though it grew surely and 

 fairly well, did not grow rapidly in his day. I think that he con- 

 sidered "that what made our Church so slow of growth was in its 

 favor, and that what accommodates so many in the Roman, Metho- 

 dist and other dissenting churches, was not in favor of theirs." 

 No greater mistake has been made by the low churchmen of this 

 day than to suppose that because his temper was sweet and his 

 manners and character lovely, and because in matters of mere 

 taste or feeling he was always ready to give way, rather than to 

 create a disturbance, therefore he was a man of accommodating 

 tempers in the larger and more important concerns of the Church. 

 Like the great Chatham, in all that concerned great principles, 

 either of religion, or morals, or public polity, he was as ?/;/accom- 

 modating as he was original, and we might add that the features 

 of his mind had "the hardihood of antiquity." 



The character of Dr. White has been described by the late Dr. 



