He well avenged his eyes.
I love thy gentle influence, Rowe,
Thy gentle influence like the sun,
Only dissolves the frozen snow,
Then bids our thoughts like rivers flow,
And choose the channels where they run.
And here we may say farewell to the tutor; he lived just long enough to see his scholar settled in the ministry; but for his companion pupils he occupied a solitary home; he was never married, and in 1705, riding through the city on horseback, he was seized with a fit, fell from his horse, and instantly died. He was one of those men of whom the world makes little mention, and finds little recorded; he was a comparatively young man. We have dwelt upon the furniture of his mind, the attractiveness of his manners, the docility and beauty of his disposition; to these it may be added that he was also probably possessed of an engaging manner in the pulpit, as he retained what was then considered a large congregation to the time of his death.
While referring to the Dissenting academies of those days, it may be interesting to notice that from one of them in Gloucester, beneath the tutorship of the Rev. Samuel Jones, two eminent men received their first training for the ministry of the Church of England, although intended for the Nonconformist communion—Samuel Butler, the distinguished author of the “Analogy,” and Bishop of Durham; and Thomas Secker, Bishop of Oxford, and afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury. The Archbishop probably found one of his earliest patrons in Dr. Watts, by whom, as the following letter testifies, he was introduced to the academy. The biographers of the Archbishop, Dr. Porteus and Dr. Stinton, pass over the Archbishop’s first studies, as conducted by “one Mr. Jones, who kept an academy at Gloucester;” but the following letter from Secker, written when about the age of eighteen to Dr. Watts, gives a very admirable idea of the manner in which he directed the work of study in the academy:
“Gloucester: Nov. 18th, 1711.
“Rev. Sir,