366 SIR JOSEPH BANKS. 



him ; and one of these tells me, with grateful recollec- 

 tion, of the kindness he experienced in his younger 

 days from that useful and liberal patron, " who would 

 (says my friend) send all over Europe and further to 



fet either the information or the thing that I wished to 

 ave." Where private aid failed of the desired effects, 

 he had access to the Government; he could obtain coun- 

 tenance and assistance from the public departments, 

 beside removing those many and so often insurmount- 

 able obstacles which the forms of office and the preju- 

 dices of official men plant in the way of literary re- 

 search. 



Many circumstances concurred to give Sir Joseph 

 Banks the power which he so largely exercised of 

 patronizing and promoting the labours of scientific men. 

 His ample fortune; the station which he filled in society; 

 the favour which he enjoyed at Court and with the 

 Ministers of the Crown ; the fame of his voyages ; his 

 indefatigable industry ; his ever-wakeful attention to 

 the representations and requests of the student; his 

 entire freedom from all the meaner feelings which mere 

 literary men are but too apt to entertain one towards 

 another ; his great natural quickness and unerring saga- 

 city, never leaving him long to seek for the point of 

 any argument, nor ever suffering him to be deceived 

 by plausible errors or designing parties ; his large and 

 accurate knowledge of mankind, and of men as well as 

 of man ; the practical wisdom which he had gathered 

 from extensive and varied experience all formed in 

 him an assemblage of qualities, natural and acquired, 

 extrinsic or accidental, and intrinsic or native, so rare 

 as had hardly ever met together in any other individual. 



. . Quid virtus et quid sapientia possit 

 Utile proposuit nobis exemplar Ulyssem. 

 ..... Multorum providus urbes 

 Et mores hominum inspexit ; latumque per sequor 

 Dum sibi, dum sociis reditum parat, aspera multa 

 Pertulit adversis rerum immersabilis undis. (Hor. Ep.) 



