TO THE HONOURABLE AND RIGHT REVEREND JAMES YORK, D.D. LORD BISHOP OF ELY. MY LORD, WHEN, five years ago, an important station in the University of Cambridge awaited your Lordship's disposal, you were pleased to offer it to me. The circumstances under which this offer was made, demand a public acknowledgment. I had never seen your Lordship; I possessed no connexion which could possibly recommend me to your favour; I was known to you, only by my endeavours, in common with many others, to discharge my duty as a tutor in the University; and by some very imperfect, but certainly well-intended, and, as you thought, useful publications since. In an age by no means wanting in examples of honourable patronage, although this deserve not to be mentioned in respect of the object of your Lordship's choice, it is inferior to none in the purity and disinterestedness of the motives which suggested it. How the following work may be received, I pretend not to foretell. My first prayer concerning it is, that it may do good to any: my second hope, that it may assist, what it hath always been my earnest wish to promote, the religious part of an academical education. If in this latter view it might seem, in any de gree, to excuse your Lordship's judgment of its author, I shall be gratified by the reflection, that, to a kindness flowing from public principles, I have made the best public return in my power. In the mean time, and in every event, I rejoice in the opportunity here afforded me, of testifying the sense I entertain of your Lordship's conduct, and of a notice which I regard as the most flattering distinction of my life. I am, MY LORD, With sentiments of gratitude and respect, Your Lordship's faithful And most obliged servant, W. PALEY. THE LIFE OF THE AUTHOR. OF WILLIAM PALEY, whose writings have exerted no inconsiderable influence on the moral and theological opinions of the more enlightened part of the English community, no life has yet appeared that is worthy of the subject, or that gives us a full and satisfactory insight into his character. Though he was known to so many scholars, and had enjoyed a rather enlarged intercourse with the world, but few particulars of his conduct, his manners, and habits, have been detailed, and but few of his sayings recorded. Yet there are few men whose conversation was more varied and instructive; and as he always expressed himself with cogency and perspicuity, our regret is increased that we possess such scanty details of his familiar hours, when the internal state of his mind was exihibited without disguise, when he spoke what he felt, and felt what he spoke. The best account of Mr. Paley's life, with which we have been hitherto favoured, is by Mr. Meadley, who had not known him till late in life; and who, if he had known him longer and earlier, was hardly capable of analysing his mind, or of estimating his character. Mr. Meadley was a man neither of very enlarged mind, very refined taste, nor very ample in formation. What he knew he could relate; but he did not know enough to enable him to give much vivacity to his narrative, or to exhibit in his memoirs the living identity of the writer to whom we are indebted for some of the best moral and theological productions of the last century. But whatever may be the scantiness of Mr. Meadley's information, his narrative is the most copious which we possess; and as we are not likely soon to be furnished with a richer store, we must be contented with taking his memoirs for our principal guide in the present biographical sketch. We make no boast of novelty. All that we can do is to give a new form to old materials. William Paley was born at Peterborough, in July 1743. His father was a minor canon in that cathedral; but he relinquished this situation upon being appointed head-master of the grammar school at Giggleswick, in Craven, in the West Riding of Yorkshire. Here the family had long resided on a small patrimonial estate. His mother is described as a woman of strong and active mind. At school young Paley soon surpassed the other boys of his age, by superior diligence and abilities. A mind, like his, could not but profit of the opportunities which he possessed for acquiring classical knowledge; but he appears to have been at all times more ambitious of enriching himself with knowledge of other kinds. He was curious in making inquiries about mechanism, whenever an opportunity occurred. His mind was naturally contemplative; and he mingled intellectual activity with corporeal indolence. He never |
