not; there being no orders left (as is alleged) for disposing of them that way.

This, I confess, has an ill glance on your affairs. Yet I cannot but hope all will succeed well, though a generous and public spirit (such as our most honoured Lord's was,) is a blessing but rarely dispensed to the world; and, I doubt, never entailed on any family, notwithstanding the fawning flights of panegyrics and epistles dedicatory.

"I have one thing more to tell you, which must be whispered into the ears of your worthy society, and in my opinion (considering what may possibly be the event of it) ought to be reckoned one of your indiscoverable secrets. It is this:-When the world began its storm against his Grace, about seven years since, he actually assigned over all his books to his nephew, (his steward,) and the legal right was in him, then, when you received that part of them which is in your possession. This my Lord never told me till I was last at Fresingfield: and he was very intent upon having a written instrument, signed by his nephew, making them over from him to me, for the use and benefit of our College. Clerks were not at hand: but I drew up one, and his Grace was pleased to contrive another form; and we were once at work to finish one, out of both, which might come up to that exactness and extent of expression which his Grace always used. But this seeming to be owing only to an opinion that Mr. March, of Lambeth, (with whom the steward had lodged the books,) would not readily deliver the books to me, without such a writing; and the wording it so nicely, as my Lord seemed to wish, being somewhat troublesome to him, in that weak condition in which he then was, the steward interposed, assuring us that the books would be forthwith delivered to me, upon any short note under his hand, which he gave me accordingly, and it had its effect.

"Now this, I conceive, gives you title enough to what you are already possessed of. But, if confidence in his executors,

or other accident of his sickness, has prevented his Grace from revoking that assignment, I fear a common lawyer would give you but very slender hopes, if ever you should call in his assistance, to recover by law, what was really designed to be yours without your expending one farthing upon it. And, if zeal to fulfil my Lord Grace's will take its steps forward or backward, only according to lines figured upon paper or parchment in form of law, I should fear greatly for the College's interest, and the honour of his Grace's family. But I will hope more comfortably and I tell you this only to give you aim as to that sort of address and management towards the executors, which you know very well to judge of, in such circumstances as these, which do not give so fast hold of the remaining part of the library, as yourselves, and, I am sure, our most honoured patron and benefactor, would have wished you to have.

"As to the structure, which his Grace designed for the books, I don't know that he came to any fixed resolution about it; neither had he laid aside the thoughts of it, when I received his last blessing; his mind still running on a new fabric, though of less dimensions than the ground which was measured by his first command to me. It was, I think, that very morning I left him, that he caused me to be let into his study, (all his books being then placed together in that one room, great part of which he had formerly shown me in two garrets,) that I might view them, and give him my opinion, whether that share, which I judged would come to the college, would crowd your library too full, if there were new shelves put up under the windows, and half classes erected betwixt the whole ones? I told him I thought they might stand so not inconveniently; but he still took time to consider, whether it should be so, or a new fabric; and I have heard nothing further since that time."

APPENDIX.

No. I.

THE following is copied from a MS. in the Lambeth library, hitherto unpublished, containing copious extracts made by Dr. Birch from the life of the learned Henry Wharton, written by himself. It is entitled, Excerpta ex Vitâ MS. Henrici Wharton a seipso scriptâ. At the beginning is a note in the handwriting of Archbishop Secker to this effect, Given me by Dr. Birch, his own handwriting." It is dated by Dr. Birch, in March, 174.

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The entire original has never been published, and is now probably lost. Dr. Birch, in his life of Tillotson,* mentions that at the time he wrote, it was in the possession of the Rev. Mr. Calamy; and he gives some short extracts from it in his notes. But the loss of the original is in great measure compensated by the following copious abstract of it, containing not only the substance of the whole, but all the more important parts of it extracted in the author's own words.

This piece of self-biography must be considered a great literary curiosity, as well from the celebrity of the person who has thus recorded

*P. 143.

the events of his own life, as from the classical character of the style, and the interesting nature of many of the remarks, and of the matter contained in it.

It is remarkable that a short passage from this same life of Mr. Wharton, not given by Dr. Birch in the following extracts, is preserved in a work where a quotation from it would least be expected. In the Philosophical Transactions for 1748, (p. 232.) is a short paper, communicated by a medical person, Dr. Mortimer, in which he states that," in a MS. account of the life of the Rev. H. Wharton, chaplain to Archbishop Sancroft, written by himself," he found the following passage, describing his having been born with two tongues. He manifestly quotes it as a curious fact in natural history.

"Mihi quidem ex utero materno exeunti duplex erat lingua, utraque ejusdem figuræ ac magnitudinis; inferiorem exscindendam esse clamârunt mulieres obstetrices; verum id noluit mater puerpera. Pietati ejus obsecundavit fortuna. Lingua enim inferior paulatim emarcuit, et in exiguam pisoque haud majorem lingulam, quæ hodienum manet, contracta est. Lingua interim superior ad justam crevit magnitudinem, quamplurimis longis profundisque sulcis distincta, an vulneribus laniata, dicam : quæ parallelo situ posita unà cum linguâ creverunt, neque unquam coitura esse videntur."