Mr. Nichols transcribes a letter which he wrote very late in life, dated Nov. 13, 1759: “Good Mr. Owen, This comes to thank you for your favour at Oxford at St. Frideswide’s festival; and as your Bodleian visitation is over, I hope you are a little at liberty to come and see your friends; and as you was pleased to mention you would once more make me happy with your good company, I wish it might be next week, at our St. Martin’s anniversary at Fenny Stratford, which is Thursday se’nnight, the 22d instant, when a sermon will be preached by the minister of Buckingham: the last I am ever like to attend, so very infirm as I am now got; so that I stir very little out of the house, and it will therefore be charity to have friends come and visit me.”
Mr. Gough’s manuscripts relate of Dr. Willis, that “he told Mr. S. Bush he was going to Bristol on St. Austin’s-day to see the cathedral, it being the dedication day.” It is added, that “he would lodge in no house at Bath but the Abbey-house: he said, when he was told that Wells cathedral was 800 years old, there was not a stone of it left 500 years ago.”
Miss Talbot, “in an unprinted letter to a lady of first-rate quality,” dated from the rectory house of St. James’s parish, (Westminster,) January 2, 1739, humorously describes him and says, “As by his little knowledge of the world, he has ruined a fine estate, that was, when he first had it, worth 2000l. per annum, his present circumstances oblige him to an odd-headed kind of frugality, that shows itself in the slovenliness of his dress, and makes him think London much too extravagant an abode for his daughters; at the same time that his zeal for antiquities makes him think an old copper farthing very cheaply bought for a guinea, and any journey properly undertaken that will bring him to some old cathedral on the saint’s day to which it was dedicated.” Further on, Miss Talbot adds, relative to Dr. Willis on St. George’s day, “To honour last Sunday as it deserved, after having run about all the morning to all the St. George’s churches, whose difference of hours permitted him, he came to dine with us in a tie-wig, that exceeds indeed all description. ’Tis a tie-wig (the very colour of it is inexpressible) that he has had, he says, these nine years; and of late it has lain by at his barber’s, never to be put on but once a year, in honour of the Bishop of Gloucester’s (Benson) birth-day.”
These peculiarities of Dr. Willis are in Mr. Nichols’s “Literary Anecdotes,” from which abundant depository of facts, the particulars hereafter related are likewise extracted, with a view to the information of general readers. On the same ground, that gentleman’s collection is mentioned; for—it is not to be presumed that any real inquirer into the “Literary History” of the last or the preceding century can be ignorant, that Mr. Nichols’s invaluable work is an indispensable assistant to every diligent investigator. It is certainly the fullest, and is probably the most accurate, source that can be consulted for biographical facts during that period, and is therefore quoted by name, as all authors ought to be by every writer or editor who is influenced by grateful feelings towards his authorities, and honest motives towards the public.
Dr. Willis was whimsically satirized in the following verses by Dr. Darrell of Lillington Darrell.
AN EXCELLENT BALLAD.
To the Tune of Chevy-Chace.
Whilome there dwelt near Buckingham,
That famous county town,
At a known place, hight Whaddon Chace,
A ’squire of odd renown.—