673 



WEAVER, THOMAS, F.R.S. 



WEBER, CARL-MARIA VON. 



674 



influence in the formation of public opinion. His writings have con- 

 tributed much to keep alive the spirit of freedom, toleration, and 

 piety. "It was therefore with great propriety," the opinion is entitled 

 to the greater weight as coming from the high-church Tory, Dr. 

 Johnson, "that, in 1728, he received from Edinburgh and Aberdeen 

 an unsolicited diploma, by which he became a doctor of divinity. 

 Academical honours would have more value if they were always 

 bestowed with equal judgment." 



The conduct of some very near relatives embittered his latter days, 

 and for a while he seemed, being at the time in a state of extreme 

 weakness, stupified by it to such a degree as hardly to take notice of 

 anything about him. The worst part of this behaviour was kept from 

 him. " Lady Abney," says a correspondent of Doddridge, " keeps 

 him in peaceful ignorance, and hia enemies at a becoming distance ; 

 BO that in the midst of this cruel persecution he lives comfortably, and 

 when a friend asks him how he does, answers, ' Waiting God's leave to 

 die.' " In this patient and peaceful state of mind, on the 25th of 

 November 1748, and in the seventy-fifth year of his ag*, he departed. 

 He was buried in Bunhill Fields. Mr. Samuel Chandler delivered a 

 funeral oration at his interment ; Lady Abney and Sir John Hartopp 

 erected a handsome tomb over his grave ; and the number of funeral 

 sermons preached and published on the occasion, bespeak the deep 

 sense of his merits entertained by the dissenters. The texts of some 

 .are strikingly appropriate : that of the Rev. David Jennings was " By 

 it, being dead, he yet speaketh;" that of the Rev. Caleb Ash worth, 

 " Know ye not that there is a prince and a great man fallen this day in 

 Israel." 



(Memoir of Isaac Watts, D.D., by Robert Southey ; Life of Watts, 

 by Dr. Samuel Johnson ; Sermon on the Death of the late Rev. Isaac 

 Watts, D.D., by David Jennings ; Memoirs of the Rev. Isaac Watts, 

 D.D., by Thomas Gibbons.) 



WEAVER, THOMAS, F.R.S., an eminent geologist, was one of the 

 band of scientific men, who, with the late Professor Jameson, the late 

 Leopold von Buch, and Alexander Humboldt, learned the rudiments 

 of mineralogy and geology under the tuition of Werner at Freiberg, 

 where he commenced his studies in 1790. He was long a distinguished 

 and active member of the Geological Society of London, particularly 

 in its earlier days ; and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society on 

 the 9th of March 1826. From 1795 to 1798, and again in 1801, he 

 was concerned, with the gentlemen mentioned below, in the explora- 

 tion, on account of the government, of the deposits of gold which had 

 been discovered at Croughan Kinshella, in the county of Wicklow, in 

 Ireland. An account of the discovery was given by John Lloyd, Esq., 

 F.R.S., and a mineralogical account of the gold itself by Abraham 

 Mills, Esq., both referring to Mr. Weaver, were published in the 

 'Philosophical Transactions' for 1796. A particular history of the 

 proceedings of himself and his colleagues, in reference to the gold 

 workings, was given by Mr. Weaver in his Memoir on the ' Geological 

 Relation of the East of Ireland,' inserted in the ' Transactions of the 

 Geological Society,' first series, vol. v. He afterwards communicated 

 a paper on the Gold-workings to the 'Philosophical Magazine' for 

 July 1835 (Series 3, vol. vii., p. 1,) giving some extracts from the 

 Memoir, with new matter. In the ' Philosophical Transactions ' for 

 1825, is a paper by Mr. Weaver, On the Fossil Elk of Ireland, in 

 which he infers that that animal lived and flourished in the countries 

 in which its remains are now found at a period of time which, in the 

 history of the earth, may be considered as modern. In the Second 

 Series of the ' Trans. Geol. Soc.,' vol. i., is an elaborate memoir by 

 him, entitled ' Geological Observations on Part of Gloucestershire and 

 Somersetshire,' and in vol. v., another, ' On the Geological Relations of 

 the South of Ireland.' He communicated other papers, all on geolo- 

 gical subjects, to the ' Annals of Philosophy,' Old and New Series, and 

 subsequently to the ' Philosophical Magazine,' in which (Series 3, 

 vol. ix.,) appears a paper on the 'Carboniferous Series of the United 

 States of North America,' a portion of the results of the geological and 

 mining researches in Mexico and the United States in which he was 

 engaged from 1831 to 1834. He died at his residence in Stafford- 

 place, Pimlico, London, on the 2nd of July 1855, having retired from 

 the field of science some years before. 



WEBBE, SAMUEL, am eminent composer of that part-music which 

 we may justly claim as national, was born in the year 1740. His 

 father, who held an office under the British government at Minorca, 

 dying suddenly, and leaving his property in such a state that his 

 family never profited by it, his widow was unable to give her son a 

 liberal education, and at the age of eleven he was apprenticed to a 

 cabinet-maker. On the completion of his term however he abandoned 

 a pursuit so little to his taste, and commenced the study of the Latin 

 lauguage. But his mother dying shortly after, he was reduced to the 

 necessity of following the example of J. J. Rousseau, and copied music 

 as a means of subsistence, though knowing but very little of the art. 

 This led to an acquaintance with a German, named JBarbandt, organist 

 of the Bavarian chapel, who initiated him in the principles of music. 

 His unwearied industry and patience enabled him not only to support 

 himself by copying, but to acquire, in addition to the Latin, a know- 

 ledge of the French and Italian languages. He now began to give 

 lessons in music, and soon after to compose, and was so successful in 

 the latter attempt, that, at the age of twenty-six, he gamed a gold 

 prize-medal from the Catch-Club for the best canon. In, 1768 he was 



rewarded by the same society, by a medal for his simple but beautiful 

 glee, ' A generous friendship no cold medium knows,' which imme- 

 diately established his reputation. From the year which first witnessed 

 his success as a composer, to 1792, Mr. Webbe had twenty-seven 

 medals awarded him by the eame club, for glees, catches, canons, and 

 odes. But it is worthy of remark, that four of his finest works, 

 including that matchless production, ' When winds breathe soft,' 

 failed in obtaining the golden honours bestowed on works of far 

 inferior merit. And it must be confessed that some of his medals were 

 given him for compositions now forgotten; among which too many 

 were the reward of useless pieces of musical mechanism, called canons. 



In 1784 Mr. Webbe was appointed to succeed Mr. Warren Home, as 

 secretary of the Catch-Club ; and in 1787, on the establishment of the 

 Glee-Club, he became a professional member and the librarian. It was 

 for this society he wrote both words and music of hia popular glee, 

 ' Glorious Apollo." But amidst his professional avocations he found . 

 time to acquire a considerable knowledge of Greek, and even of 

 Hebrew, and to become conversant in many branches of polite 

 literature. Mr. Webbe's glees, &c. amount to the large number of 

 one hundred and seven. Besides these, he produced masses (being a 

 Roman Catholic), anthems, single songs, &c., some of which are yet 

 well known, particularly ' The Mansion of Peace,' and ' From glaring 

 show.' He died in 1817, leaving a son (named after his father), a 

 sound musician and an accomplished man, who inherited some of his 

 parent's musical talent. 



WEBER, CARL-MARIA VON, one of the most distinguished of 

 the German school of music, left, among other interesting manuscripts, 

 an autobiography, which has supplied us with much of the substance 

 of the following memoir. 



He was born in December 1786, at Eutin in Holstein. His education 

 was liberal, and conducted with the utmost care ; and as his father 

 was a musical man, who had acquired a considerable reputation as a 

 violinist, he, almost unconsciously, led his son in pursuit of music 

 particularly, while he encouraged his study of the fine arts generally. 

 His mind was also rendered contemplative by the retired manner in 

 which his family lived, and by the few visitors at his father's house, 

 who were chiefly middle-aged men of various professions and accom- 

 plishments. Precautions were taken to keep him from associating 

 with wild playmates; and thus he was early taught to find company 

 in his own thoughts to live, as he says, in the little world of his own 

 imagination, and to seek therein his occupation and his happiness. 

 His time was principally divided between painting and music. Of the 

 former he successfully cultivated several branches, working alternately 

 in oil, in water-colours, and in crayons. He likewise acquired some 

 degree of skill in the use of the etching-needle, but he did not follow 

 up these employments with ardour, and they were silently suffered to 

 be discontinued. Music got full possession of his mind before he was 

 conscious of its influence, and at last entirely supplanted her sister art. 

 His father frequently changed his place of residence, and this led to 

 as frequent a change in his son's masters, who too often undid 

 what had been done ; an evil however which Weber, in after life, 

 thought more than compensated by compelling him to become his 

 own instructor, and to depend on his own energies. He analysed, 

 compared, and reflected, and sought to deduce well-grounded princi- 

 ples, especially in music, from what he had heard, read, and thought. 

 To Hauschkel, of Hildburghausen, he was indebted for his skill as a 

 pianoforte player ; and he mentions in warm terms of gratitude the 

 advantages he derived from this master during the years 1796 and 

 1797. 



His father, now observing the great and decided development of 

 his son's musical talents, took him to Salzburg, and placed him under 

 the tuition of Michael Haydn, brother of the illustrious composer, 

 and himself a very learned musician ; but though the pupil laboured 

 with earnestness and industry, his progress was not equal to his 

 expectations. The master was then at an advanced period of life 

 was grave, not to say severe, in his manner. There was in fact too 

 awful a distance between old age and childhood. At Salzburg, in 

 1798, his father, as an encouragement, printed his first production, 

 consisting of six fughetti, which was very favourably noticed in the 

 German ' Musical Gazette ' of that year. Shortly after this he went 

 to Munich, where he received lessons in singing from Valesi, and in 

 composition from the organist of the chapel-royal, M. Kalcher, to 

 whose kind and luminous instructions, he says, he was indebted for 

 much important knowledge, particularly with respect to the treatment 

 of subjects in four parts, the laws of which, he adds, should be as 

 familiar to the composer as those of syntax and metre to the poet ; 

 for it is such knowledge alone that will enable him to present his ideas 

 to his hearers with perspicuity and effect. 



He now applied to his study with unabated vigour, and found a 

 preference for dramatic music growing rapidly on him. Under the 

 eye of his master he composed an opera, ' Die Macht der Liebe und 

 des Weins * (The Power of Love and Wine). He also wrote a grand 

 mass, several sonatas and variations for the pianoforte, violin trios, 

 songs, &c., all of which however he candidly tells us were " wisely 

 committed to the flames." 



About the same time the art of lithography was first discovered, 

 and the restless activity of the youthful mind, which embraces with 

 eagerness all that is novel, again diverted the young composer's 



