ardly formed, but with
something of a slouch in his gait. His eyes were black and piercing,
with an expression of sensibility somewhat bordering on melancholy;
except when engaged in cheerful and social intercourse with his friends,
when they were exceedingly animated." In a portrait of him, taken in
middle life by Reynolds, and given to him as a mark of his regard by the
painter, he is represented with his Essay on Truth under his arm. At a
little distance is introduced the allegorical figure of Truth as an
angel, holding in one hand a balance, and with the other thrusting back
the visages of Prejudice, Scepticism, and Folly.

He is, I believe, the solitary instance of a poet, having received so
much countenance at the Court of George the Third; and this favour he
owed less to any other cause than to the zeal and ability with which he
had been thought to oppose the enemies of religion. The respect with
which he was treated, both at home and abroad, was no more than a just
tribute to those merits and the excellence of his private character. His
probity and disinterestedness, the extreme tenderness with which he
acquitted himself of all his domestic duties, his attention to the
improvement of his pupils, for whose welfare his solicitude did not
cease with their removal from the college; his unassuming deportment,
which had not been altered by prosperity or by the caresses of the
learned and the powerful, his gratitude to those from whom he had
received favours, his beneficence to the poor, the ardour of his
devotion, are dwelt on by his biographer with an earnestness which
leaves us no room to doubt the sincerity of the encomium. His chief
defect was an irritability of temper in the latter part of his life,
which shewed itself principally towards those who differed from him on
speculative questions.

In his writings, he is to be considered as a philosopher, a critic, and
a poet. His pretensions in philosophy are founded on his Essay on Truth.
This book was of much use at its first appearance, as it contained a
popular answer to some of the infidel writers, who were then in better
odour among the more educated classes of society than happily they now
are. If (as I suspect to have been the case) it has prevented men, whose
rank and influence make it most desirable that their minds should be
raised above the common pitch, from pursuing those studies by which they
were most likely so to raise them, the good which it may hav