his uncle.

He continued some time in the army; though it is reasonable to suppose
that he never sunk into a mere soldier, nor ever lost the love, or much
neglected the pursuit, of learning; and, afterwards, finding himself
more inclined to civil employment, he laid down his commission, and
engaged in business under the lord Townshend, then secretary of state,
with whom he attended the king to Hanover.

His adherence to lord Townshend ended in nothing but a nomination, May,
1729, to be clerk extraordinary of the privy council, which produced no
immediate profit; for it only placed him in a state of expectation and
right of succession, and it was very long before a vacancy admitted him
to profit.

Soon afterwards he married, and settled himself in a very pleasant house
at Wickham, in Kent, where he devoted himself to learning and to piety.
Of his learning, the late collection exhibits evidence, which would have
been yet fuller, if the dissertations which accompany his version of
Pindar had not been improperly omitted. Of his piety, the influence has,
I hope, been extended far by his Observations on the Resurrection,
published in 1747, for which the university of Oxford created him a
doctor of laws by diploma, March 30,1748, and would, doubtless, have
reached yet further, had he lived to complete what he had for some time
meditated, the Evidences of the Truth of the New Testament. Perhaps it
may not be without effect to tell, that he read the prayers of the
publick liturgy every morning to his family, and that on Sunday evening
he called his servants into the parlour, and read to them first a
sermon, and then prayers. Crashaw is now not the only maker of verses to
whom may be given the two venerable names of poet and saint.

He was very often visited by Lyttelton and Pitt, who, when they were
weary of faction and debates, used at Wickham to find books and quiet, a
decent table, and literary conversation. There is at Wickham a walk made
by Pitt; and, what is of far more importance, at Wickham, Lyttelton
received that conviction which produced his Dissertation on St. Paul.

These two illustrious friends had for awhile listened to the
blandishments of infidelity; and when West's book was published, it was
bought by some who did not know his change of opinion, in expectation of
new objections against christianity; and as infidels do not want
malignity, they revenged the disappointment by calling him a methodist.

Mr. W