72 PRIESTLEY. 



one of them against the atonement. I say a little 

 natural philosophy ; for he confesses that when nine 

 years later he began to write his ' History of Electri- 

 city,' he was but imperfectly acquainted with the sub- 

 ject. It is a careless and superficial work, hastily 

 written, as is his ' History of Vision ;' and the original 

 experiments afforded no new information of any value. 

 In 1761 he removed to Warrington Academy, in 

 which he succeeded Dr. Aikin as tutor in the belles 

 lettres. On settling at Warrington he married the 

 daughter of Mr. Wilkinson, a respectable iron master 

 in Wales. She was an amiable woman, and endowed 

 with great strength of mind, which was destined after- 

 wards to be severely tried. By her he had several 

 children, one of whom survived them both. 



He appears to have chiefly devoted himself to theo- 

 logical studies, and hence the great disproportion which 

 his Hebrew and Greek learning bears to his other ac- 

 quirements. Metaphysical speculations, next to these, 

 engaged his attention ; and the influence produced on 

 his mind, and even his conduct, by Dr. Hartley's cele- 

 brated work (' Observations on Man'), has been re- 

 corded by himself. u I hardly know, " he says, 

 " whether it more enlightens the understanding or 

 improves the heart." He says he also had studied 

 composition, and mainly by the help of writing poetry, 

 of no merit, but according to him the best means of 

 learning to write good prose. That his taste, however, 

 was somewhat deficient in this respect, we may fairly 

 affirm, when we find him pronouncing, many years 

 after, a decided opinion that Belsham's * History ' is 

 written in a better style than Robertson's or Hume's.* 

 The universality of his attempts may be judged from 

 his delivering at Warrington a course of lectures on 

 anatomy. He sought relaxation from music, and 

 learnt to play on the flute. He strongly recommends 



* Mem. and Cor. 1796, vol i., part ii., p. 358. 



