While he lay in this state of misery he received an account of the promotion of two of his grandsons, and a catalogue of the king of France's library, presented to him by the command of the king himself, and expressed some satisfaction on all these occasions; but soon diverted his thoughts to the more important consideration of his eternal state, into which he passed on the 31st of March, 1741, in the seventy-third year of his age.
He was a man of moderate stature, of great strength and activity, which he preserved by temperate diet, without medical exactness, and by allotting proportions of his time to relaxation and amusement, not suffering his studies to exhaust his strength, but relieving them by frequent intermissions; a practice consistent with the most exemplary diligence, and which he that omits will find at last, that time may be lost, like money, by unseasonable avarice.
In his hours of relaxation he was gay, and sometimes gave way so far to his temper, naturally satirical, that he drew upon himself the ill-will of those who had been unfortunately the subjects of his mirth; but enemies so provoked, he thought it beneath him to regard or to pacify; for he was fiery, but not malicious, disdained dissimulation, and in his gay or serious hours, preserved a settled detestation of falsehood. So that he was an open and undisguised friend or enemy, entirely unacquainted with the artifices of flatterers, but so judicious in the choice of friends, and so constant in his affection to them, that those with whom he had contracted familiarity in his youth, had, for the greatest part, his confidence in his old age.
His abilities, which would probably have enabled him to have excelled in any kind of learning, were chiefly employed, as his station required, on polite literature, in which he arrived at very uncommon knowledge; which, however, appears rather from judicious compilations, than original productions. His style is lively and masculine, but not without harshness and constraint, nor, perhaps, always polished to that purity, which some writers have attained. He was at least instrumental to the instruction of mankind, by the publication of many valuable performances, which lay neglected by the greatest part of the learned world; and, if reputation be estimated by usefulness, he may claim a higher degree in the ranks of learning, than some others of happier elocution, or more vigorous imagination.
The malice or suspicion of those who either did not know, or did not love him, had given rise to some doubts about his religion, which he took an opportunity of removing on his death-bed, by a voluntary declaration of his faith, his hope of everlasting salvation from the revealed promises of God, and his confidence in the merits of our Redeemer, of the sincerity of which declaration his whole behaviour in his long illness was an incontestable proof; and he concluded his life, which had been illustrious for many virtues, by exhibiting an example of true piety.
Of his works we have not been able to procure a complete catalogue: he published, Quintilianus, 2 vols. 4to; Valerius Flaccus; Ovidius, 4 vols. 4to; Poetæ Latini Minores, 2 vols. 4to; cum notis variorum. Buchanani Opera, 2 vols. 4to [51].
SYDENHAM [52].
Thomas Sydenham was born in the year 1624, at Windford Eagle, in Dorsetshire, where his father, William Sydenham, esq. had a large fortune. Under whose care he was educated, or in what manner he passed his childhood, whether he made any early discoveries of a genius peculiarly adapted to the study of nature, or gave any presages of his future eminence in medicine, no information is to be obtained. We must, therefore, repress that curiosity, which would naturally incline us to watch the first attempts of so vigorous a mind, to pursue it in its childish inquiries, and see it struggling with rustick prejudices, breaking, on trifling occasions, the shackles of credulity, and giving proofs, in its casual excursions, that it was formed to shake off the yoke of prescription, and dispel the phantoms of hypothesis.
That the strength of Sydenham's understanding, the accuracy of his discernment, and ardour of his curiosity, might have been remarked from his infancy by a diligent observer, there is no reason to doubt; for there is no instance of any man, whose history has been minutely related, that did not, in every part of life, discover the same proportion of intellectual vigour; but it has been the lot of the greatest part of those who have excelled in science, to be known only by their own writings, and to have left behind them no remembrance of their domestick life, or private transactions, or only such memorials of particular passages as are, on certain occasions, necessarily recorded in publick registers.