[25]. Candler was seven years older than Thirlwall. He was junior assistant in a draper’s shop at Ipswich, and afterwards set up in business on his own account at Chelmsford, where he became a leading member of the Society of Friends. He died, nearly eighty years of age, in 1872. We have not been able to ascertain how he became acquainted with Thirlwall.
[26]. Letters, &c., p. 7.
[27]. Letters, &c., p. 17.
[28]. Ibid. p. 8.
[29]. Letters to a Friend, p. 225.
[30]. Letters, &c., p. 21. The letter is dated December, 1813, when the writer was sixteen years old.
[31]. Professor Monk, who had examined Thirlwall on one of these occasions, was so much struck with the vigour and accuracy of his translations that he remarked to a friend, who had also had experience of his worth as a scholar, ‘Had I been sitting in my library, with unlimited access to books, I could not have done better.’ ‘Nor so well,’ was the reply.
[32]. Cooper’s Annals of the Town and University of Cambridge, iv. 516. The words between inverted commas in our text are from a pamphlet entitled ‘A Statement regarding the Union, an Academical Debating Society, which existed at Cambridge from February 13, 1815, to March 24, 1817, when it was suppressed by the Vice-Chancellor.’ The ‘statement’ is evidently official, and is thoroughly business-like and temperate. The Vice-Chancellor was Dr Wood, Master of S. John’s College; the officers of the society were: Mr Whewell, President; Mr Thirlwall, Secretary; Mr H. J. Rose, Treasurer. The late Professor Selwyn, in a speech at the opening of the new Union building, October 30, 1866, stated that on the entrance of the proctors the President said, ‘Strangers will please to withdraw, and the House will take the message into consideration.’
[33]. Autobiography of John Stuart Mill, p. 125. Mill is describing a debate at ‘a society of Owenites called the Co-operation Society,’ in 1825. ‘It was a lutte corps à corps between Owenites and political economists, whom the Owenites regarded as their most inveterate opponents; but it was a perfectly friendly dispute.... The speaker with whom I was most struck, though I dissented from nearly every word he said, was Thirlwall, the historian, since Bishop of S. David’s, then a Chancery barrister, unknown except by a high reputation for eloquence acquired at the Cambridge Union before the era of Austin and Macaulay. His speech was in answer to one of mine. Before he had uttered ten sentences, I set him down as the best speaker I had ever heard, and I have never since heard anyone whom I placed above him.’
[34]. Letters, &c., p. 31.