653 



WATSON, RICHARD, D.D. 



WATT, JAMES. 



651 



nor B.D., and in truth seems by bis own account to have known little 

 more of divinity than he did of chemistry seven years before. But 

 such was his good 1 uck, or the reputation he had established for carrying 

 hia object, whenever he took one in hand, that no other candidate 

 appeared. The professorship when he got it was worth 330Z. ; but he 

 boasts of having raised it to more than three times that value. Not 

 that he ever had any pretensions to call himself a learned theologian : 

 on the contrary he was rather vain of being spoken of as the Professor 

 avToStSaKiros, the self-taught professor, or rather the professor who 

 was indebted for what he knew neither to masters nor books. His 

 constitution was, he says, " ill fitted for celibacy ; " so in December 

 1773 he married the eldest daughter of Edward Wilson, Esq., of 

 Dallam Tower, in Westmoreland ; and the next day he went to North 

 Wales to take possession of a sinecure rectory, procured for him from 

 the Bishop of St. Asaph by the Duke of Grafton, which after his return 

 to Cambridge he was enabled (also through means of his grace) to 

 exchange for a prebend in the church of Ely. In 1780 he succeeded 

 Dr. Plumptre as archdeacon of that diocese ; the same year he was pre- 

 sented to the rectory of Northwold, in Norfolk ; and in the beginning 

 of the year following he received another much more valuable living, 

 the rectory of Knaptoft, in Leicestershire, ftom the Duke of Rutland, 

 who had been his pupil at the university. He was now therefore 

 tolerably well provided for. 



Meanwhile his publications not already noticed had been, in 1772, 

 two ' Letters to the Members of the House of Commons,' under the 

 name of ' A Christian Whig,' in support of the clerical petition for 

 the abolition of the subscription; in 1773, also without hia name, 'A 

 Brief State of the Principles of Church Authority ; ' in 1776. a 

 restoration sermon entitled ' The Principles of the Revolution Vin- 

 dicated,' which made considerable noise, and, as he conceives, gave 

 great offence at court and in courtly circles, but undoubtedly did him 

 good service with his own party ; the same year his well-known 

 'Apology for Christianity,' in answer to Gibbon; and two or three 

 other sermons and charges. In March 1782 on the appearance of 

 Soame Jenyns's ' Disquisitions on Various Subjects,' the toryism of 

 which annoyed him, he thought it necessary to defend his whig prin- 

 ciples in ' An Answer to the Disquisition on Government ' in that 

 work. 



In July 1782 he was promoted to the bishopric of Llandaff, not 

 exactly, as it would appear, on the application of his friend the Duke 

 of Rutland, but rather by the new prime minister, Lord Shelburne, of 

 his own accord, in the expectation of thereby both gaining an active 

 partisan and gratifying the duke. Watson however proved a very 

 unmanageable bishop. The first thing he did after he found the 

 mitre on his head was to publish, in 1783, 'A Letter to Archbishop 

 Cornwallis on the Church Revenues,' recommending an equalisation 

 of the bishoprics. This he did in spite of all that could be said to 

 make him see that he was doing a thing which would embarrass the 

 government, and at the same time do nothing to forward his object. 

 And so he continued to take his own way, and was very soon allowed 

 to do so without any party or any person seeking either to guide him 

 or stop him. He made some good and effective speeches in the House 

 of Lords, but never originated nor even materially assisted in carrying 

 any legislative measure. For the most part, in general politics, he 

 sided with what was called the whig party ; but he would not come 

 up to vote for Fox's India Bill in 1783, and he had a theory of hia 

 own upon the subject of the treatment of the House of Commons by 

 Pitt which followed. On the occasion of the king's illness in 1788, 

 again, he went with his party in maintaining the right of the Prince 

 of Wales to the regency, for which it was thought at the time that he 

 had a good chance of the bishopric of St. Asaph, then vacant ; but his 

 majesty's recovery dissipated that along with many more such flatter- 

 ing visions. However before this Watson had received a considerable 

 accession to his fortune by the death, in 1786, of his friend and 

 former pupil, Mr. Luther, of Ongar, in Essex, who left him in his will 

 an estate which he sold for 20,500?. He grumbled on about having 

 sacrificed himself to his principles, and being overlooked and left in 

 poverty ; but with his bishopric (the duties of which he had wholly 

 neglected), and his professorship, and his archdeaconry, and his 

 rectory all, by the bye, as he managed the matter, either entire, 01 as 

 nearly as possible, sinecures in addition to this money and the profits 

 of his various publications, his case could not well be expected to 

 excite much commiseration. 



What remains of his biography is little more than the catalogue of 

 his other literary performances. In 1785 he published a useful 

 ' Collection of Theological Tracts selected from various Authors for 

 the Use of the Younger Students in the University,' in 6 vols. 8vo, 

 which went through two large editions. ' An Address to Young 

 Persons after Confirmation,' which he published in 1789, was also 

 extensively sold. In 1790 he published anonymously 'Considerations 

 on the Expediency of revising the Liturgy and Articles of the Church 

 of England, by a consistent Protestant ; ' another of his adventurous 

 proclamations of peculiar views, which brought upon him a good deal 

 of outcry and obloquy. This was followed, in 1792, by 'A Charge 

 delivered to the Clergy of his Diocese in June 1791,' full of vitupera- 

 tion of the Corporation and Test Acts, and laudation of the French 

 Revolution. Upon this latter subject however he soon after cooled 

 considerably, as appeared by his next publication, a sermon published 



in 1793, which he entitled 'The Wisdom and Goodness of God in 

 having made both Rich and Poor,' and which was expressly directed 

 against the very democratic principles out of which the Revolution of 

 France had sprung. He talks of the ' strange ' turn which that great 

 movement had by this time taken, as justifying or accounting for his 

 apparent change of feeling about it ; as if it was the course of events 

 that had been in the wrong not he and his anticipations. In 1798 

 appeared another of his best remembered works, his ' Apology for the 

 Bible, in a Series of Letters addressed to Thomas Paine.' This was 

 followed two years after by ' An Address to the People of Great 

 Britain,' an energetic appeal in support of the war against France, 

 which, the more perhaps by reason of the quarter it came from, 

 excited immense attention. Fourteen regular editions of it, he says, 

 were sold, besides many pirated ones. Some years after, in 1803, he 

 published another tract, entitled 'Thoughts on the intended Invasion,' 

 in the same spirit. Various Charges and single Sermons were also 

 printed by him from time to time, which need not be noticed in detail. 

 His last publication was a selection of his fugitive pieces, in two 

 octavo volumes, which appeared in 1815, under the title of 'Miscel- 

 laneous Tracts on Religious, Political, and Agricultural Subjects.' The 

 latter years of his life he spent mostly in retirement far away from his 

 diocese on his estate of Calgarth Park, in Westmoreland, which he 

 amused himself in ornamenting and improving by building and plant- 

 ing. He died there on the 4th of June 1816. He left several children. 

 After his death appeared, under the superintendence of his son Richard 

 Watson, LL.B., prebendary of Llandaff and Wells, the work from 

 which the above particulars have been principally extracted, entitled 

 ' Anecdotes of the Life of Richard Watson, Bishop of Llandaff, 

 written by himself at different intervals, and revised in 1814.* 



WATSON, ROBERT, a respectable Scotch author of the. age of 

 Hume, Robertson, and Adam Smith. Robert Watson was a native of 

 St. Andrews, where his father combined the profession of brewer and 

 apothecary. Robert completed the usual courses of languages and 

 philosophy, and commenced the study of divinity in the University of 

 St. Andrews. He attended the Divinity Hall in Glasgow for at least 

 one winter, and finished his theological studies in Edinburgh. In 1751 

 Adam Smith having removed to Glasgow, where he had been elected 

 professor of logic, Watson was encouraged by Lord Kames to deliver 

 a course of lectures on rhetoric and belles-lettres, similar to that 

 which had been delivered by Smith. The reception these lectures 

 met with encouraged him to repeat the course every winter during his 

 continuance in Edinburgh. In 1758, having become a licentiate, or, as 

 it is called in Scotland, a ' probationer,' Watson offered himself a can- 

 didate for one of the churches of his native town, which happened to 

 be vacant. The application was unsuccessful, but Mr. Henry Rymer, 

 professor of logic in St. Salvador's college, entertaining thoughts of 

 retiring on account of infirm health, Watson prevailed upon him, by 

 the payment of a sum of money, to resign in his favour. The other 

 professors sanctioned the bargain, and elected Mr. Watson professor of 

 logic, and the Crown soon afterwards constituted him by patent pro- 

 fessor of rhetoric and belles-lettres. Watson effected the same inno- 

 vation in the University of St. Andrews that was effected about the 

 same time in Glasgow by Smith and Reid, in Aberdeen by Beattie, and 

 in Edinburgh by Finlayson. He substituted for a course of lectures 

 on logic, properly so called, a course of lectures on the theory of the 

 human mind, on the exercise of the reasoning faculty, and on literary 

 criticism. 



In 1777 Dr. Watson, stimulated by the success of Robertson's 

 { Charles V.,' published (at London) his history of ' Philip II. of Spain.' 

 The work was favourably received in England, and immediately trans- 

 lated into French, Dutch, and German. This success encouraged the 

 author to commence the history of Philip III., four books of which 

 were completed at the time of his death in 1780. These works are 

 of very little value. Heavy and inelegant in style, and showing no 

 evidence of a comprehensive or philosophic mind, they are worthless 

 even as a collection of materials ; Watson having seldom gone to the 

 original sources of information. The works of Prescott and others have 

 in fact entirely superseded them even for the general reader. A few 

 years before his death Dr. Watson had been promoted to be principal 

 of the united college of St. Leonard and St. Salvador on the death of 

 Principal Tullidelph. Watson left five daughters by his wife, who is 

 said to have been a woman of great beauty, daughter of Dr. Shaw, pro- 

 fessor of divinity in St. Mary's college. The four complete books of 

 the history of Philip III., with two additional, by Dr. William Thomp- 

 son, were published by that gentleman for the benefit of the author's 

 family. 



WATT, JAMES, "who" (to adopt the eloquent language of the 

 inscription placed by Lord Brougham upon his statue in Westminster 

 Abbey), " directing the force of an original genius, early exercised in 

 philosophic research, to the improvement of the steam-engine, 

 enlarged the resources of his country, increased the power of inan, 

 and rose to an eminent place among the illustrious followers of 

 science and the real benefactors of the world," was born at Greenock 

 on the 19th' of January 1736. His father, also named James, was at 

 once a ship-chandler, a builder, and a merchant, and was for upwards 

 of twenty years town-councillor, treasurer, and bailie of Greenock, 

 where he is celebrated for the zeal and intelligence with which he per- 

 formed his duties, and encouraged public improvements. He married 



