young gentlewomen, and to Mr. Guilford. I beseech God to make us wife for eternity. My good Lord, "Your Lordshipp's most affectionate Friend and B', "THO. KEN, L. B. & W. There was in every thing that Hooper did the favour of a sweet and obliging temper; and it is difficult to fay which of the two friends through life had manifested the more exemplary and disinterested love for the other. They were equally unselfish and liberalhearted. Hooper, having been but a few months Bishop of St. Afaph, when he was tranflated to Bath and Wells," generously refused the ufual mortuaries or penfions, then fo great a burthen to the clergy of Wales, faying, they should never pay fo dear for a fight of him.' His prudent, courteous, and liberal behaviour in his Diocefe, fecured the esteem both of the laity and clergy. To the latter he was a faithful friend. His difpofal of the preferments in his Diocese was judicious and difinterested. Those who served, or who were zealous in their endeavour to ferve the cause of the Church, were dignified without any expectation, and the diligent were always advanced without being permitted to undergo the pain of folicitation."† We should defire to speak lefs of his accomplishments—(often the result of natural gifts, or of careful cultivation), than of his truly Christian principles, in * Profe Works of Ken, by Round, p.79. + Lives of the Bishops of Bath and Wells, by the Rev. S. H. Caffan, P. 170. which he fet an example worthy the imitation of all Bishops: but these qualities were so happily blended together, as to form a very eminent character. "This prelate aftonished even his most accomplished guests with his learning; he was an Universalist in the best fense of the word, and not a smatterer in various sciences, but a perfect master of them all; the lawyer, the casuist, the divine, the antiquary, the linguift, the philofopher, the claffical scholar; yet always the refined and accomplished gentleman. He blended the gravity of the Bishop with the pleasantry of the Wit; but the former always restrained the latter, so that the gracefulness of piety ever kept the brilliancy of imagination in chastened reftraint. He was the Father of his Diocese, known to, beloved, and esteemed by the good and wife. He was not a man to patronife Clergymen of doubtful liberal, or low church principles, because they were his nephews or cousins. His Clergy were his family—his spiritual fons: to them he was all gentleness. He drew no line against applicants for preferments, because they were applicants: he encouraged them to reveal their wants, and, when necessary, his patronage and purse raised the diftreffed, laborious, zealous, or orthodox Paftor to ease and competence."* Such men as Hooper, and his friend Ken, were worthy of each other: their attachment began in the warmth of youth; for fifty years was conftantly ftrengthened by a mutual respect and confidence; it was fundered only by death, and we cannot doubt, that Ken's pious anticipations expreffed in the following lines, are now realized in the Everlasting Manfions: Lives of the Bishops of Bath and Wells, by the Rev. S. H. Caffan, pp. 171, 172. "Our love, which at Heaven's gate firft mutual grew, God here below took pleasure to renew ; The Works of the Right Reverend, Learned, and Pious Thomas Ken, D.D., late Lord Bishop of Bath and Wells. 4 vols. 8vo, 1721, vol. ii. p. 290. Their portraits hang fide by fide in the Palace at Wells;-where Hooper's charities vied with thofe of Ken. CHAPTER XXVI. Refemblance of Ken, in fome particulars of his life, to St. Gregory of Nazianzum. Ken's Poems-Death of Frampton, Bishop of Gloucefter: his Character. F the reader has felt an interest in Ken's previous life, dedicated, as it was, to God's fervice, and to alleviating the woes of others, he will be prepared to fympathize with him in the anguish he had to endure, in his own perfon, as he verged towards the grave. Alas! his infirmities were increafing upon him: he fuffered from the rheumatism, the cholic, and an internal ulcer, which caufed him perpetual agony. In this, as in feveral other refpects, his life and character remind us of Gregory of Nazianzum, the great ornament of the Church in the time of the Council of Conftantinople. In a like fpirit, if with unequal fteps, Ken followed in the fame path of holiness. Both despised riches, except as the means of doing good: they employed their revenues in fupplying themselves with bare neceffaries for an abftemious and flender fubfiftence, and difpofed of the remainder in behalf of the poor. Both were pre-eminent in their day for an intimate knowledge of the holy Scriptures: both left behind them monuments of Chriftian eloquence: the greater praise of each was a fervent love of God and man, which prompted them in their felf-denying and laborious lives. St. Gregory was afflicted with many fharp fits of fickness, which often did not permit him to fleep. Ken thus defcribes his own fufferings: “Pain keeps me waking in the night; Forgets he this day's courfe must run. "I feel my watch,* I tell the clock,† Ev'n Egypt, when three days, And again, "As in the Night I restless lie, I the Watch-Candle keep in eye; For the flow wasting of its flame. Ah!-you are not my Bed-but Rack. "His watch was purposely fo contrived, as that he could by his finger difcover the time, to half a quarter of an hour." The Works of the Right Reverend, Learned, and Pious Thomas Ken, D.D., late Lord Bishop of Bath and Wells. 4 vols. 8vo, 1721, vol. iii. p. 396, note. This is clearly not the watch, now in the poffeffion of Mr. Serjeant Merewether, which is a small, thick watch, in a Tortoise-shell case, set in filver (the maker, "Th. Tompion, London"), with a little common fteel chain, and three metal keys of rude workmanship. It was once the property of Dr. Hawes, a descendant from the family, who left it to Serjeant Merewether, -the lineal defcendant of the worthy Physician of Devizes, Dr. Merewether, who attended the Bishop in his laft illness. This was probably the "Pendulum Repeating Clock" which had been bequeathed to Ken, by Dr. Fitzwilliam. |