Spencer Perceval, Lord Moira (afterwards Marquis of Hastings), Sir Joseph Yorke, the late Sir John Reade, the late Sir George Robinson, Sir C. Hudson Palmer, and the late Mr. Henry Drummond, of Charing Cross, some of whose sons were also among his most attached pupils, of a more recent date.

The society of the place was calculated both for relaxation and improvement. Mr. Orde, who had been Secretary in Ireland, and was afterwards created Lord Bolton, from the elegance of his mind and variety of his attainments, might be considered its chief ornament. Sheridan was also, for some

years, about this period, an inhabitant of Harrow; and, with his beautiful and fascinating wife (the celebrated Miss Linley), conferred no small degree of brilliancy on the circle. In the house which he occupied - the Grove (now the residence of Mr. Kennedy), Tickell and his lady (Mrs. Sheridan's sister) were frequent inmates. George Glasse, well known as a playful scholar and amusing companion, lived within two miles' distance. Dr. Demainbray, who was married to a sister of Horne Tooke, was in the habit, when spared from his duties at Windsor, of resorting to a cottage in the immediate neighbourhood. Admiral Meadows (afterwards first Earl Manners), Mr. Page of Wembley, and, later than some of the above, but contemporary with others, Aloysius Pisani, a Venetian nobleman, who had fled from the earlier disturbances of the French revolution, formed, together with the gentlemen engaged in the duties of the school, a society such as is rarely to be found, united within a circle of the same extent, in the country; and in which the subject of our memoir found occasional relaxation of the most agreeable kind, while engaged in the laborious duties of his office. Much of his early vacations was also spent, together with Mrs. Drury, in a manner still more congenial to his disposition, among friends whom his many engaging qualities had first attracted and afterwards united to him by bonds of the closest attachment; the more creditable, when it is remembered that he entered life without any advantages of

family or connection. At the house of the elder Mr. Drummond, the banker, who then resided with his wife, Lady Elizabeth Drummond, at Langley Park, near Uxbridge, and who was the father of one of his earliest pupils, he passed much of this holyday time; and was there in the habit of meeting with some of the first society (including political characters) of the day; such as Lord North, the first Lord Melville (then Mr. Dundas), and others, with whom the kindness of the host always placed him on terms of the most easy or familiar intercourse. Sir Charles Hudson, of Wanlip, in Leicestershire, was another of these early friends, with whose family he subsequently formed a very great intimacy. At his house, in town, the first musical performers of the day were frequently assembled. Mr. and Mrs. Bates and Greatorex were there constantly, on the most familiar footing; a circumstance of no small attraction to an ardent lover of the art, in which he was also himself no mean proficient. The first Lord Harrowby and Mr. Powys, afterwords Lord Lilford, men less remarkable for their rank than their character and ability, were likewise among those who showed him the greatest attention, and reposed a long and unlimited confidence in him in matters regarding his situation. With Sir George Baker, physician to George the Third, he enjoyed a very close intimacy, and esteemed him one of the most finished scholars of his acquaintance.

These rare social and intellectual enjoyments were, however, almost exclusively reserved for the intervals of vacation. During the whole period of school-time his devotion to his professional duties was unremitted, his perseverance unbroken; and, while thus seriously occupied, even the occasional indulgence of a musical evening, protracted to a late hour of the night by the irresistible charm of Mrs. Sheridan's voice, was duly paid for by subtracting an equal portion from the time usually allotted to sleep; so that not even this his strongest temptation had force sufficient to withdraw him, for a single unaccounted moment, from the rigid performance of his allotted task.

When, therefore, on his election to a fellowship in Eton College, in 1785, Dr. Benjamin Heath determined to resign the Mastership of Harrow, the eyes of most of the connections of the school naturally fell on Mr. Drury; and, for the first time for a hundred years or more, it was thought quite unnecessary to look to Eton; nor, indeed, did any gentleman from thence offer himself as a successor. Mr. Drury was, nevertheless, not elected unanimously. For, although Dr. Parr, who had retired to Stanmore on Dr. Heath's election, and who had afterwards removed to Norwich, does not appear to have come forward as a candidate, yet was his name proposed by his friends among the trustees. Both as a native of the place, a pupil, and afterwards an instructor in the school, independent of his great eminence in learning, his claims were undoubtedly great; and, about this time, he either had quitted or was about to quit Norwich, and retire to Hatton. His friends, therefore, made an attempt to seat him in the vacant chair at Harrow; but we are not aware that he used any exertions of his own in aid of their efforts.

Dr. B. Heath had retained the mastership fourteen years, and had educated some very eminent men at Harrow. The present Earl Spencer was his private pupil; and he never received any other in that capacity. The Earls of Hardwicke and Harrowby were among the statesmen whom Harrow sent forth during his supremacy. He abolished the custom of shooting for the silver arrow, so long an ancient observance at the place; and substituted public speaking in its stead. The vicinity of Harrow to the metropolis caused a conflux of disorderly characters at the archery exhibitions, which excited the more curiosity from the strangeness of the spectacle, as archery was very little practised as an English pastime at that period; and its abolition was therefore probably a wise, although not a popular, measure.

Mr. Drury had just completed his thirty-sixth year when he obtained the head mastership. He had been so interwoven with his brother-in-law and predecessor in all their views regarding the studies of the place, that little or no im

mediate change was made in the system; and such improvements as in the progress of time suggested themselves were the fruits of experience, united with observation of those general alterations in manners and sentiments in which the minds even of school-boys participate with those of their elders. As we purpose to recur to this point, we will simply now enumerate the names of those most conspicuous as statesmen, men of rank, or possessing personal claims to distinction, who were brought up at Harrow during the years included in Dr. Drury's mastership, excluding those already incidentally mentioned. Among these we find the Dukes of Devonshire, late of Dorset, Sutherland *, Manchester, Grafton, Hamilton; the Marquises of Headfort, and late of Abercorn; the Earls of Verulam, Ripon *, Aberdeen *, Clare *, Bradford, Powlett, Onslow, Roden, Pembroke, late Plymouth, Delaware, Bandon, Mount Edgecumbe, Winterton, Jersey; Lords Althorp, Palmerston, Duncannon, late Royston *, late Lilford *, Arden *, Calthorpe *, late Byron, Lowther, late Powerscourt, Burghersh, Northland, Poltimore, Rancliffe *, Bury, late Monson, and Macdonald; Bishops of Lichfield and Rochester; Sir Robert Peel, Sir John Richardson*, Sir Edward Hyde East*, Sir Thomas Acland, Sir Charles Lemon, Right Hon. William Hamilton*, Mr. William Spencer, Right Hon. Robert Gordon, Sir George Shee, George Dawson, Henry Ellis, the present Master of the Rolls (Sir Charles Pepys), the present Mr. Spencer Perceval*, Mr. Chandos Leigh *, Mr. Tighe *, late Rev. Robert Bland, and numerous others, of whose names no small proportion will go down to posterity, either in political or in literary history. Of the genius of Lord Byron, Dr. Drury, as may be seen in a letter of his inserted in Moore's Life of the noble poet, took early note; although the indications he gave of it while a school-boy were perceptible to few besides. Of Sir Robert Peel, very soon after his

*

We have marked with an asterisk the names of those who were more particularly under Dr. Drury's superintendence, as his own private pupils, during the time he was master: not many of them, of course, were contemporaneously so.

leaving school, he spoke almost prophetically to the late Mr. Perceval. One of the most promising of his pupils for abilities was the first Lord Royston (for the present Lord Hardwicke has survived two sons), who, had he lived, would probably have been a very remarkable man. He was drowned in the Baltic, soon after he attained full age, not until he had given earnest of a very powerful understanding; and evidenced, especially, his classical attainments by a valuable translation of the Cassandra of Lycophron, executed while he was at Cambridge. His uncle, the Right Hon. Charles Yorke, himself a very accomplished scholar, as well as his father, took very great interest in his progress, and showed many marks of attention to his preceptor. The present Bishop of Lichfield and Sir John Richardson (now retired from the Bench, of which he was late one of the brightest ornaments,) were also pupils who seem to have excited a very strong interest and expectation in their tutor.

Mr. Drury's correspondence was, from the nature of his situation, although very extensive among persons of high literary distinction, yet so mixed up with matters of the most private and confidential description, that, if it had been preserved, it would probably furnish but little available help to the biographer; and, in point of fact, even the little assistance it might have furnished has been lost to him, owing to the almost indiscriminate habit of destroying letters which a high sense of delicacy early engendered, and which he continued to practise after the principal motive had ceased, by his retirement from public life, to have any force. Of his own letters to various friends and correspondents, many, doubtless, exist, which, if collected, would reflect in strong colours the amiable and excellent qualities of his heart and mind. Among such as have come to the knowledge of the writer of the present memoir is a series addressed to the learned and accomplished author of the "Res gestæ Anglorum in Hiberniâ," with whom, during the latter years of his life, he carried on a frequent correspondence on the subject of Ireland; a part of the United Kingdom of which he had»