1804.) 
how much foever differing in opinion from 
the deceafed, will refrain from emba!m- 
ing his memory with a tear, and crying 
6* Peace be with him!” 
In Dr. Prieftley’s mental conftitution 
were united ardour and vivacity of intel- 
le&, with placidity and mildnefs of tem- 
per.. With a zeal for the propagation of 
truth, that would have carried him 
through fire and water, he joined a calm 
patience, an. unruffled ferenity, which 
rendered him proof againft all. obftruétions 
and difappointments. It has been fug- 
gefted, that a man fo much in earneft, 
and fo vigorous in controverfial warfare, 
could not fail of being a perfecutor, fhould 
his party gain the fuperiority : but this 
was an erroneous fuppofition. Not only 
were the rights of private judgment ren- 
dered facred to him by every principle of 
Fromthe Port-folia of a Man of Letters. 
363. 
his underftanding, but his heart would 
not have fuffered him to have injured his 
bitterefi enemy. He was naturally dif- 
pofed to chearfulnefs, and when his mind 
was not occupied with ferivus thoughts, 
could unbend, with even playful eafe and 
negligence, in the private circle of friends, . 
In large and mixed companies he~ufu- 
ally {poke little. In the domeftic relations 
of lite he was uniformly kind and affec- 
tionate. His parental feelings (alas! 
how keenly were they excited!) were 
thofe of the tendereft and beft of fathers. 
Not malice itfelf could ever fix a ftain on 
his privateconduct, or impeach his integrity. 
Such was the man who adds one more 
imperifhable name to the illuitrious dead 
of his country. 
Stoke Newtugton, 
2oth April, 1804. 
J. AIKIN, 
Extras from the Port-folio of a Man of Letters. 
ewe GE, 
BEN JONSON. 
L noon of night,a poetical expreffion 
now focommon,was firft introduced in- 
to our language by Ben Jonfon, who appears 
to have been fo difident of the reception 
it might meet with, or whether the licence 
he had taken would be approved by cuf- 
ton, that he refers, in the margin, to the 
author of whom he borrowed it. The 
phrafe is Varro’s; in Latin, meridies 
_ aoétis ; and it occurs in the fixth chapter 
of Nonius Marcellus. 
DINNER. 
Tez o'clock was, in this country, the 
ancient hour of dining, and continued fo 
in the Univerfity of Cambridge even in 
the reign of Edward VI. as appears from: 
a very remarkable paffage in a fermon of 
Thomas Lever, at Paul’s Crofs, Dec. 14, 
¥550. About the middle of Queen Eli- 
zabeth’s reign, the dining hour was fome- 
what later, though even then it was fill 
kept up to ten o’clock in the univeriities, 
where the eftablithed fyftem is not fo ea- 
fily altered asin private families. «* With 
us (fays the author of the Defcription of 
England, in the Preface to Holinthed) 
the nobilitie, gentry, and ftudents, do or- 
dinarilye go to dinner at eleven before 
noone, and to fupper at five, or between 
five and fix, at afterncone. The mer- 
chants dine and fup feldome before ¢welve 
at noone and at fx at night, efpecially in 
London. The hufbandmen dine alfo at 
high-noone, as they call it, and fup at 
feven or eight; but out of the terme, in 
our univerfities, the fcholars dine at ten.” 
Such was the cuftom till the middle of the 
feventeenth century ; and even fo fate as 
fifty years ago, many of the colleges, in 
both our univerfities, dined at tavelve.— 
At Cambridge, in term-time, the dinner. 
hour of many of the colleges is, at this 
time, fzvo; and, at Oxford, three and 
four. The few colleges that fup in pub- 
lic, make the hour, in fome eight, in 
others zie. 
EDUCATION, 
In the fifteenth century, and very pro- 
bably much earlier, one of the principal 
modes of education in ufe was, the refi- 
dence of children in the houfes of he bi- 
fhops and nobility, where they were in- 
ftruéted in learning, and occafionally filled 
up the reiinue of their mafters. Pace, 
the friend of Erafmus, and one of the 
principal reftorers of letters in England, 
imbibed the rudiments of learning in the 
palace of Langton, bifhop of Winchef- 
ter; and Croke, one of the firft reftorers 
of the Greek language, in that of Arch- 
bifhop Warham. Sir Thomas More, too, 
was educated as a page with Cardinal 
Morton, archbifhop of Canterbury, aboug 
1490, who was {o ftruck withhis genius, 
that he would oftenfay, at dinner, “* This 
child here, waiting at table, is fo very 
ingenious, that he wil] one day prove an 
extraordinary man.” 
CRITICISM. 
The famous Boccalini, in his Adver- 
tifements from Parnafius, tells us, a cri- 
3B2 z tics, 
% 
