This person was the once celebrated Desnoyers, an especial favourite of the then heir to the throne, Frederick, Prince of Wales. The hopes, however, thus raised by Desnoyers's friendship were destined to be frustrated; first of all by the death of Prince Frederick, who died in March, 1751, and, not long afterward, by the death of Desnoyers himself. The prince, it may be casually mentioned, expired in Desnoyers's arms; nor may it be impertinent further to point out that the court dancing-master and the scholar have been severally immortalised by the pencil of Hogarth, the former as dancing in a grand ballet (Fig. 20, Plate 1, in the "Analysis of Beauty"), and the scholar as a cynic philosopher. The latter likeness is said to be admirable.

The now veteran scholar had, in his more hopeful days, repudiated the notion of publishing his works by subscription; but necessity, as he subsequently discovered, has but little choice. To Boswell, for instance, David Garrick writes, on September the 14th, 1773: "Shall I recommend to you a play of Eschylus (the Prometheus'), published and translated by poor old Morell, who is a good scholar, and an acquaintance of mine? It will be but half a guinea, and your name shall be put in the list I am making for him. You will be in very good company." At all events, the old man would seem to have borne his distresses with equanimity. "Old as I am," he writes, in preparing his "Seneca's Epistles" for publication, "I never

knew an injury that was not easily forgiven, nor a distress but what was tolerable, and, as the world goes, rather required a contemptuous smile than a tear."

At length, though not, apparently, till he was in his seventy-third year, fortune cast a gleam or two of sunshine across the scholar's path. In 1775 he was appointed chaplain to the garrison at Portsmouth; the Society of Antiquaries about the same time creating a new office for him as one of its secretaries. His death took place on the 19th of February, 1784, when he had nearly completed the eighty-first year of his age. His body was interred at Chiswick, thus giving additional interest to gronnd which already contained the remains of Hogarth.

CHAPTER V.

WILLIAM BATTIE, M. D.

THE character of this distinguished scholar, physician, and humourist, is sketched in a few words by Judge Hardinge in his Latin fragment of the life of his father: "Battius, faber fortunæ suæ, vir egregiæ fortitudinis et perseverantiæ, medicus perspicax, doctus et sapiens, in scientiis liberalibus diligens et eruditus, integritatis castissimæ, fideique in amicitiis perspectæ." William Battie, the son of parents who seem to have been of good birth, though of small fortune, was born at Medbury, in Devonshire, in 1704. He was educated on the foundation at Eton, where he is said to have manifested much industry and desire for advancement. His father, the Rev. Edward Battie, had formerly been an assistant master at Eton, but died rector of Medbury, on the 6th of September, 1714, leaving his child only ten years old. After his death, his widow, loath to be separated from her promising son, fixed her residence at Eton, where, in due time, we not only find her rendering herself conspicuous by declaring war against Mrs. Morell, the mother of her son's

equally clever form-fellow, but having the hardihood to beard to his face the formidable head master and eminent polemical divine, Doctor Snape. Believing that, owing to the latter having "delayed a remove" for a few days till the recovery of young Morell from an illness, he had deprived her son of the chance of passing over his schoolfellow's head, she boldly taxed the doctor, if not with injustice, at least with favouritism. In the meantime, the two young men, following the example set them by their mothers, had contracted a feud of their own. It should be mentioned that the late head master, Doctor Bland, had recently introduced amongst the scholars a system of argumentative controversy, which, with whatever advantages to learning it may have been fraught, was obviously not without a tendency to engender jealousy, if not quarrels, between the rival disputants. In the instance of Battie and Morell, not only was this the case, but it appears that one day, although they were both old enough to have reached the sixth form, they came to blows. After a fair set-to, writes Morell, "I knocked his head against the chapel, and this put an end to the affair for the present." So indignant, it may be remarked, was Mrs. Battie at the turn affairs had taken, that, two or three days afterward, happening to encounter young Morell as he was going into chapel, she gave him, to use his own words, a swingeing slap in the face."

In 1722 young Battie was transferred to King's College, where Morell had preceded him, and whither he was either accompanied or followed by his devoted mother. Doubtless, when, three or four years afterward, her son carried off the Craven Scholarship from half a dozen accomplished competitors, it was no slight satisfaction to her that the son of her old foe, Mrs. Morell, was among the discomfited candidates. The proceeds of this scholarship, combined with those of his fellowship at King's, not only afforded Battie the means of living comfortably at the university, but were indirectly the occasion of his acquiring an influence which, in after years, enabled him to found at Cambridge a scholarship of his own, still well known as the "Battie Scholarship." In 1726 he took his degree as B. A., and in 1730 as M. A. In 1729 he increased his reputation for scholarship by publishing at Cambridge his edition of the "Orations of Isocrates," the only one, perhaps, of his literary productions by which he is at present remembered.

The profession which Doctor Battie, had he followed his own predilections, would have adopted, was the law. His pecuniary means, however, not being sufficient to enable him to reside in one of the Inns of Court, he turned his attention to medicine, and in due time set up as a medical practitioner at Cambridge. Here, if we may judge from the early period at which Horace Walpole mentions his having attended "Doctor Battie's anatomical lec