SIR JOSEPH BANKS. 373 



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 representa- 

 tions 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 sagacity, never leaving him long 

 to seek for the point of any argument, nor ever suffering 

 him to be deceived by plausible errors or designing par- 

 ties; 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 Ulyssera. 



. ', . . . 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.) 



He was thus for upwards of forty years the great 

 promoter of philosophical pursuits ; and it may fairly be 

 said, that no one, either before or since his time, ever 

 occupied the high station in which he was placed with 

 such eminent advantage to the interests of the scientific 

 world. 



His own studies continued, as they always had 

 been, devoted to natural history; and botany was the 

 portion of it which he chiefly loved to cultivate. He 



