[927]Dr. Robert Sanderson[BD], lord bishop of Lincoln, would confesse to his intimate friends, that 'he studied and mastered only Tully's Offices[LXXX.], Tho. Aquinas's Secunda Secundae and Aristotle's Rhetorique, and that all other bookes he read but cursorily': but he had forgott, by his favour, to speake of Aristot. Organon, etc. (Logique bookes), els he could never have compiled his owne excellent Logique,—from Seth Ward, bishop of Sarum, and <John> Pierson, bishop of Chester, his great friends. And bishop Ward sayd that he[928] would doe the like were he to begin the world again.
[LXXX.] <Samuel> Harsenet, archbishop of Yorke, alwayes carried it in his bosome.
He was a lover of musique, and was wont to play on his base violl, and also to sing to it. He was a lover of heraldry, and gave it in chardge in his articles of enquiry; but the clergie-men made him such a lamentable imperfect returne that it signified nothing. The very Parliamentarians reverenced him for his learning and his vertue, so that he alwayes kept his living, quod N.B. (the information in the Oxon. Antiq.[BE] was false).
He had no great memorie, I am certaine not a sure one; when I was a fresh-man and heard him read his first lecture, he was out in the Lord's Prayer. He alwayes read his sermons and lectures. Had his memorie been greater his judgement had been lesse: they are like two well-bucketts.
In his Logique, he recommends disputation to young men, as the best exercise for young witts. Under his picture, before his booke, is 'Aetat. 76, 1662.'
Notes.
[BD] Aubrey gives in trick the coat, as found under one of Sanderson's engraved portraits:—'See of Lincoln; impaling, paly of six argent and azure, a bend of the first, quartering, ermine, on a canton ..., a cross engrailed ...' a crescent for difference.
[BE] i.e. Anthony Wood's Hist. et Antiq. Univ. Oxon. lib. ii. pag. 167, where Wood says 'his omnibus ... a Parliamento privatus est,' including, i.e., his rectory of Boothby-Pagnall. In the Athenae Wood modified the statement, in accordance with what Aubrey says here.