From having been a King's scholar at Westminster School, he proceeded to Trinity College, Cambridge, where he experienced the same hard lot which had befallen Drs. Johnson and Parr, the being obliged, after a few terms, to leave college, from the straitened circumstances of their respective families. The reader's better recollection may perhaps supply other instances of the kind,-since the very supposition here made implies that the parties became, afterwards, eminent men. His tutor was Bishop Watson; while Parr, though ranked as his contemporary, was some years the senior of Drury. Still the tutor, or rather master, after whom, as a model, Drury formed himself, was that accomplished scholar and gentleman, the then headmaster of Harrow, Dr. Sumner; under whom he was placed by his college, as one of the assistant masters, for three years, from 1769 to 1771, both inclusively, "Sumner was a man of the most brilliant conversation and varied knowledge" (see his character drawn by his great pupil Sir W. Jones, in the first volume of his History of Asiatic Poetry.) "A high tone of feeling, a most ready and persuasive eloquence, a richness of language, and copiousness of illustration, aided by a particularly fine delivery and voice, characterised alike Sumner and Drury. Both equally excelled in suavity of temper and elegance of manners, accompanied with a playfulness of imagination, ever under the controul of good taste." But it was to his connection by marriage with the Heath family (two of whom, brothers, were respectively head-master of Harrow, and head-master and canon of Eton and Windsor, while two other brothers were, one the Admiral, and the other the Judge of that name,) it was owing to this by his union with their

sister, a lady of uncommon and highly cultivated understanding, added to his own first-rate qualifications both of body and mind, together with the joint exemplary conduct and economy of Mrs. D. from first to last, that he was not only enabled to realize a sufficiently independent fortune,-but to enjoy it; partaking of the otium cum dignitate, in company with the cherished partner of his life, for 30 long years after his retirement. He had been 36 years a master at Harrow, 20 of them head-master, when he resigned in the year 1805.

With regard to his system of instruction, he is allowed to have held a very even balance between the branches of classical attainment; for the Greek language has very much taken the place of Latin in our days. He encouraged Latin prose, in which his own style was remarkably chaste. The English essay was also a favourite exercise with him. It was he who introduced the practice of reading over in public the best of these compositions. Such was his command of temper and countenance, that no boy ever saw him laugh, or excited to anger. For his system of governing in his own immediate jurisdiction, the upper classes, and in some measure throughout the whole school, may be said to have been solely by opinion, taste, and discourse. If his style of oratory had any fault, it was that which is imputed to Cicero himself, and even to Plato,-that it verged occasionally upon the Asiaticum genus dicendi. His speeches, terse and flowing, yet pure, might have gone forth to the public from his lips, without other preparation. He was gifted with great acuteness of insight into the minds of youth; he knew well what chords to touch, what sensibilities to arouse, in different individuals. Again, in his private admonitions, by words, he was truly parental,-serious, yet kind; discreet, so as not to expose the delinquents even to themselves; while sparing their feelings of honour from the public expression of his displeasure. Upon this point, see the grateful homage rendered afterwards to him by Lord Byron in his Childe Harold, and elsewhere, in his works, conversations, or letters.

After his retirement from Harrow,

being of as independent a mind as he was of fortune, he never obtained nor asked for any preferment in the church. To those favourites of fortune and preferment, who in a bad taste certainly (and I fear not the most liberal feeling) would now and then invidiously express their wonder, "that he had been overlooked by the distributors of patronage," he ever mildly answered, "he could truly say they had never refused to him any thing, for he had never asked any thing.' He accepted indeed a very small prebend, voluntarily conferred upon him by Perceval, then first minister, as a mere token of what he fully intended to do; to give probably some dignity in the church (and even the very highest Dr. Drury would have worthily filled and adorned,) had not this his most excellent and only patron been cut off by the hand of a maniac. Yet when we run over the illustrious list of statesmen and orators whom Drury had assisted in forming to virtue and eloquence, it is inexcusable that some one or other of his pupils in power did not realize the grateful and just intentions of Perceval. We may remark in passing, that if to that illustrious list of Drury's pupils (given in this memoir of the Obituary,' up to the date of his resignation, which happened thirty years ago,) we add that of those who have proceeded from Harrow since, we shall find that this seminary (being one only of the five institutions for training up the sons of the first nobility and gentry of the realm) has produced more than its proportion of distinguished public men. We need reckon only, during the whole time of Drury, from that of Parr, Sir Wm. Jones, Sotheby, Lord Harrowby, the first Marquis of Hastings, Brinsley Sheridan, Perceval, and the late Earl Spencer, down to the times of Byron, Ripon, Aberdeen, the present Earl Spencer, the Marquis of Westminster, the Lords Duncannon and Palmerston, Sir W. Pepys, Sir Robert Peel, the Lords Calthorpe, Lowther, Burghersh, &c. &c.; with a host more, whose names it would be invidious to mention, and a fatigue to copy out even their bare catalogue. Dr. Drury raised the character of the school to the highest degree of eminence; and

the number of its boys from 150 to between 350 and 400. But if, instead of presiding over a great public school, he had been placed over a small city or state, it would not be too much to say, by those who knew him, that he understood well how to render it great, flourishing, and celebrated.

The bare list, too, of his acquaintance, as given in this memoir, is numerous and splendid. He moved in the most polished circle; he was a welcome guest in the houses of the great for days and weeks at a time, during 36 years before he retired to Cockwood; whenever, that is, the vacations from school-business afforded him leisure. In fact, he was then truly at home whenever he was in the midst of the best company. At Cockwood it was not his custom to go much into general society. But the south coast of Devon drew ever into his neighbourhood and to his house distinguished strangers from all parts of the island, besides his old and valued friends (pupils and others), statesmen, lawyers, and divines, who all carried away the most indelible recollections of Cockwood and of its truly venerable owner. As a specimen of his creative taste in landscape gardening, Cockwood in Devon will be as much visited and celebrated by travellers and poets, as the Leasowes of Shenstone.

It is to be lamented that, though often requested, he never could be prevailed on to sit for his bust or portrait. He would always assign some whimsical excuse or other; but it is certain that, among other proofs of his singular good sense and sterling merit, he was no less remarkable for modesty concerning himself, than for a generosity and a certain happy sagacity in being the first to bring out to notice the latent merit of others. It was this excellent man who first discovered the genius of Kean the tragedian, and who fixed him at Drury-lane. It is true the genius of Kean became fatal to its own possessor; the sunshine of universal admiration was too much for him: but if any thing could save a man from his own weakness, or in spite of himself, the anxious and reiterated, the most pathetic and parental remonstrances of Dr. Drury were not wanting. In

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the absence, however, of all assistance of record, from the arts of sculpture and painting, we may find many a worthy reminiscence of him, of his figure and mien (especially when robed), of his truly Grecian head and features, in several of the antique marbles and medals. In Raphael's school of Athens at the Vatican, I was always reminded of him whenever I contemplated the figure of Plato. And I remember, when a boy reading Tom Jones, Drury, that model for youth to form itself by, as well as its guardian and preceptor, always served in my imagination for Allworthy; and only that Drury made his own fortune, it might alike have been said of both, in the words of Fielding, "he was the favourite of nature and of fortune." But the former proved to be more favourable to him. For nature had endowed "him with an agreeable and dignified mien and countenance, a sound constitution," (with length of days, though this belongs as much to fortune,) a solid understanding, well stored with knowledge of men and books; and what is the best of all, a benevolent, virtuous, and unaffectedly religious, heart. Allworthy indeed was so far unindebted to fortune, that he lost very early the wife of his youth, and died childless. But in other respects we may pursue the parallel, particularly as to the character of their taste, as shown in their country residences. Nothing is said in this memoir (given in the Obituary') of the mansion house at Cockwood. I like therefore to imagine, that if it were not built by him, yet in its additions or decorations, if he made any, that these must have been, from his known taste, in the Gothic style, the domestic or English style, as it is called, of architecture; and further, that from that good sense, as well as good taste, which pervaded whatever he did or wrote or said, that, to use Fielding's words, "it was as commodious within as it was venerable without. The mansion of Allworthy stood on the south-east side of a hill, but nearer the bottom than the top of it; so as to be well sheltered. A fine lawn sloped down towards the house. A river for several miles was seen to meander through an amazing variety GENT. MAG. VOL. III.

the valley opened another landscape of less extent, adorned with several villages, and terminated by one of the towers of some church or ruined abbey. The opposite side presented the view of a fine park, composed of unequal ground, and agreeably varied with hills, lawns, wood, and water, laid out with admirable art; but owing still less to art than to nature. Beyond this the country gradually rose into a ridge of wild mountains, the tops of which were seen above the clouds at the horizon."

Let any one read the description of Cockwood, as given in the 'Obituary' of this year, comprising the interesting memoir of the life of Dr. Drury, and judge whether there be not the same analogy between its late owner's taste and residence, as there runs between his character and that of Fielding's beau ideal of a good, wise, and happy man, in Allworthy.

To conclude, it does not appear that he ever published any thing, or that he was at all ambitious of the fame of an author. He left a MS. journal of one of his tours through Ireland, Cumberland, Wales, and Shropshire, in the romantic landscapes of which he took great delight. "Two or three times every year he would borrow the pulpit of the rector, but in his sermons he exclusively addressed the very younger part of the congregation, leaving the instruction of the adults to their ordinary pastor. He preached a very beautiful funeral sermon over the remains of Lord Lilford in 1800. At Oundle also he preached a learned and very eloquent visitation sermon before the Bishop of Peterborough, which made him favourably known to the clergy of that diocese. He had all his life a great passion for music, in which his taste ever preferred the simple and sublime. His own vocal powers too were very fine; rarely did he pass a day without exercising them, and, when alone, accompanying himself on the piano. But it was in sacred music that he took most pleasure. Those who have 2 K

been present at it will never forget the fine effect, when at his own table, by way of grace before dinner, he would chaunt Non Nobis Domine in concert with the Dean of Raphoe, so well known for his classical or rather canonical taste in music, as well as for his truly stentorian yet harmonious voice. Nor would the good man, at Christmas and the other festivities of the year, disdain to act the harper on the piano to the youthful song and dance of his numerous grandchildren, the offspring of his two elder sons and of his only and cherished daughter Mrs. J. Herman Merivale. His other son, Charles, a bachelor, is Rector of Pontesbury, about seven miles north of Shrewsbury. Out of doors, a still more patriarchal, and no less classical, recreation, he enjoyed in agriculture, retaining in his own hands a farm of some 300 acres, besides his private demesne. To his only brother (who was much younger than him

self), he stood, early in life, in loco parentis; so exemplary was he in all the relations of society. As a county magistrate he was assiduous and punctual in his attendance, exceeded by none in temper, in diligent and patient attention, in judgment with sound discretion, and in the most unblemished integrity. Nor did he wholly retire from the bench, until within the five or six last years of his life." His very death was patriarchal,—life gradually and almost imperceptibly withdrawing, as from company to rest in a long undisturbed night of sleep with his fathers.

At the Harrow anniversary dinner for last year, present above one hundred noblemen and gentlemen, all Harrovians, it was unanimously resolved to raise, in the church of Harrow, a marble cenotaph to his memory.

Yours, &c.

YORICK.

MR. URBAN,

Feb. 10.

PERMIT me to supply you (from the State Paper Office) with a more detailed and accurate account than I communicated to your second Supplement of 1829, of some remarkable facts connected with the detection of the Gunpowder Plot in 1605.

The celebrated anonymous letter has been generally referred to Mrs. Habington, the sister of Lord Monteagle, and the wife of Thomas Habington, the original historian of Worcestershire, and one of the conspirators. It has been long supposed that, aware of what was intended, Mrs. Habington determined by this means, if possible, to save her brother, on the day of the meeting of Parliament. Nash, in his History of Worcestershire (published anno 1781), observes of Mrs. Habington,

"Tradition in this county says she was the person who wrote the letter to her brother, which discovered the Gunpowder Plot. The style of the letter seems to be that of one who had only heard some dark hints of the business, which perhaps was the case of Mrs. Ha

Nash, in a note, then notices the remarkable fact which must strike every one who ever saw the letter; namely, that in the phrase, "the love I bear to you;" the word "you" has been evidently erased by the writer, and that instead of it the phrase "some of your friends" has been substituted in its place, leaving the obvious inference that the alteration was in consequence of an afterthought, under which it was feared that the word "you" might savour too strongly of family affection, and perhaps lead to a discovery.*

Now that the important letter in question to which (under the gracious

* See a fac-simile engraving of the letter in the 12th volume of the Archeologia, p. 200,

Providence of God) we owe the whole detection of this nefarious scheme, originated with Mrs. Habington, there seems little reason to doubt; but a reference to all the original documents yet remaining at the State Paper Office, appears to establish the fact, that, however Mrs. Habington may have been the mind which dictated this letter, it was actually written by the hand of her friend and confidante, Mrs. Ann Vaux,* since I discovered a letter preserved among the correspondence in the writing and under the signature of Ann Vaux, dated the 12th May, 1605, having for its object the vindication of Garnett, and the hand-writing of which bears so exact a resemblance to the peculiar handwriting of the anonymous letter, that it appears impossible to compare them together without observing their identity. This letter of Ann Vaux was among the papers used by Sir Edward Coke (then the Attorney-General), in conducting the prosecution of the traitors, and is indorsed by himself, in which indorsement he calls her "the mayd;" while her signature added to another document, being her examination in the Tower, and affixed twice over to a second examination in the same place, both about to be mentioned, corroborate the identity of the hand with that of the anonymous letter.

The connection that subsisted between the Habington family and Ann Vaux was so well known, that she was at first committed to the Tower as suspected of having been privy to the plot; and two examinations of her when there are extant, one bearing date the 11th March, 1605, and the other the 24th March, 1605. The first examination is both marked and indorsed by Coke as "the mayd;" and she admits in it that she actually "kept the house at White Webbs" (in Enfield-chace, which was notoriously the

She was the fourth child of the first wife of Wm. Lord Vaux of Harrowden, a Roman Catholic Peer, who was Elizabeth, the daughter of John Beaumont, Master of the Rolls; his second wife was Muriel, the daughter of John Tresham the conspirator; and hence the connection of Tresham with the other conspirators. Lord Vaux died in 1595, and his will is dated 25th Aug. 35 Eliz. 1593.

conspirators' place of rendezvous] "at her own charge, with the help of that which she had from such as did sojourn with her" (viz. the conspirators and their adherents); and further, that "after she had left White Webbs, she came from Mrs. Habington's house at Hinlip, where she had remained about a fortnight before her coming with her to London, which was presently after Sir Henry Bromley (the Sheriff) went from the house, and that the first night she lay with Mrs. Habington at her lodging in Fetter-lane." Now we ascertain from the examination of Edward Oldcorn the Jesuit in the Tower, dated the 6th of March, 1605, that Sir H. Bromley had made his search in the January preceding, when Garnet and himself were discovered there, which Nash fixed the date of at the 25th of January; consequently, if Ann Vaux is correct in the date she assigns for her departure from Hinlip in company with Mrs. Habington, their journey to town did not take place until immediately after the 20th January, 1605. From not before adverting to the whole of Ann Vaux's testimony, as to the precise time of the journey to London, 1 had supposed, in a letter written to the Gentleman's Magazine (see Supplement for 1828, p. 601), that the two friends travelled together before the 5th of November, and had therefore imagined that the anonymous letter was probably concocted between them after their arrival in London, and before the intended explosion. This mistake I am now enabled to rectify; and I am confirmed in my supposition that the journey could not have been made at the time when I at first supposed, by observing, that in the Hinlip pedigree, as given by Nash (Hist. of Worcestersh. p. 589), Mrs. Habington is represented as haying a son (Thomas) born in November 1605; while Chalmers in his Biographical Dictionary, says it was on the 5th of November, the very day of the intended explosion; which date, if correct, would at once negative the idea of her having quitted Hinlip for London, just before the delivery of the letter to Lord Monteagle. All, however, that is shown by this particular correction is, that the two friends (Mrs. Habington and Ann Vaux) did