As the duties of his office left him ample opportunity to turn the active powers of his mind to account, he again attempted to establish a school, and this time with a success far beyond his anticipations.
“My school,” he states, “consisted of about thirty boys, and I had a separate room for about half a dozen young ladies. Thus I was employed from seven in the morning until four in the afternoon, without any interval except one hour for dinner, and I never gave a holiday on any consideration, the red-letter days, as they are called, excepted. I had, therefore, but little leisure for reading or for improving myself in any way, except what necessarily arose from my employment.”
Priestley, in truth, was an excellent teacher, and with the success which his efforts brought him there passed away the last traces of the aversion with which he had entered on that calling. He made it his study to regulate his business as a schoolmaster in the best manner, and he was able to say with truth that in no school was more business done, or with more satisfaction, either to the master or the scholars, than in this school of his.
He was no longer haunted, as at Needham, with the fear of debt, and he was able to add to his stock of books and to gratify his wish to possess some philosophical instruments, such as a small air-pump and an electrical machine, which he taught his pupils to use and to keep in order, and by entertaining their parents and friends with experiments he added greatly to the reputation of his school. At that time, however, he had no leisure to make any original observations.
Such leisure as he had he gave to literature, recomposing his Observations on the Character and Reasoning of the Apostle Paul, which he began at Needham, and compiling an English grammar for the use of his school, on a new plan. This work, which was printed in 1761, had a considerable reputation in its day. David Hume acknowledged to Griffith, the bookseller, that he was made sensible of the Gallicisms and peculiarities of his style on reading it.
Priestley remained three years at Nantwich. His success there as a teacher induced the trustees of the newly-founded academy at Warrington to reconsider the desirability of engaging him as tutor in the Classical Languages and in what used to be called Polite Literature. His name had already been mentioned in connection with the Warrington Academy by his friend, Clark of Daventry, at the time of its establishment and whilst he was at Needham.
“But,” says Priestley, “Mr (afterwards Dr) Aikin, whose qualifications were superior to mine, was justly preferred to me.” On the death, on March 5, 1761, of Dr John Taylor of Norwich, the learned author of A Hebrew Concordance and other theological works, and a well-known classical scholar, the head of the academy and its tutor of divinity, Dr Aikin was appointed to succeed him, and Priestley was invited to take Dr Aikin’s place.
“This,” says Priestley, “I accepted, though my school promised to be more gainful to me. But my employment at Warrington would be more liberal and less painful. But, as I told the persons who brought me the invitation, I should have preferred the office of teaching the Mathematics and Natural Philosophy, for which I had at that time a great predilection.”
Priestley’s removal to Warrington, in September 1761, was one of the turning-points in his career, and no single circumstance in it exercised a greater influence on his life and fortunes. “The Warrington Academy for the education of young men of every religious denomination for the Christian ministry, or as laymen,” and the men who formed its tutors, played a notable part in the history of Nonconformity in England. In Taylor of Norwich; in Aikin, the father of the well-known physician and lecturer on Natural History, and of Anna Lætitia, better known as Mrs Barbauld, the poetess; in John Reinhold Forster, the naturalist, who accompanied Cook in his second voyage; in Nicholas Clayton, who succeeded Aikin as divinity tutor; in William Enfield, the author of the History of Liverpool and the well-known compiler of The Speaker, who afterwards became Rector Academicæ; in Pendlebury Houghton, and in Gilbert Wakefield, the accomplished editor of Lucretius, Priestley had for colleagues or successors as eminent a set of teachers as any place of learning at that time could boast of. It was at the Warrington Academy, the successor of the older academies belonging to the English Presbyterian body at Findern and Kendal, and the direct ancestor of the Manchester College at Oxford, that the free thought of English Presbyterianism first began to crystallise into the Unitarian theology, and for a time it was the centre of literary taste and activity, and of political liberalism of the district in which it was placed—the Areopagus in the Athens of Lancashire, as it was called.
The Transactions of the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire (vol xi. p. I, 1858-59) contain “A Historical Sketch of Warrington Academy,” by Mr Henry A. Bright, compiled in great measure from a parcel of papers, letters and memoranda which had belonged to the Rev. J. Seddon, and which had been rescued from the hands of a Liverpool cheesemonger, who was using them for the ordinary purposes of his shop. Among these papers were letters of Priestley, Kippis, Aikin and others of lesser note, all of interest as throwing light on the history of the academy. I am indebted to Mr Bright’s paper for the following account of the character and fortunes of the academy. Mr John Seddon, we learn, was its virtual founder. The letters referred to, as well as the testimony of contemporaries, bear witness to “the concern which he had ever expressed for its support, honour, success; the indefatigable pains which he took for this purpose; the indifference which he showed to fame or censure, to good or evil report, so that he might serve the general designs of the institution.”