ANECDOTES OF THE LIFE OF RICHARD WATSON, BISHOP OF LANDAFF; WRITTEN BY HIMSELF AT DIFFERENT INTERVALS, AND REVISED IN 1814. PUBLISHED BY HIS SON, RICHARD WATSON, LL.B. PREBENDARY OF LANDAFF AND WELLS. LONDON: PRINTED FOR T. CADELL AND W. DAVIES, STRAND; BY J. M'CREERY, BLACK-HORSE-COURT. L ANECDOTES OF THE LIFE OF RICHARD WATSON, BISHOP OF LANDAFF. IT has been a custom with me, from a very early age, to put down in writing the most important events of my life, with an account of the motives which, on any occasion of moment, influenced my conduct. This habit has been both pleasant and useful to me; I have had great pleasure in preserving, as it were, my identity, by reviewing the circumstances which, under the good Providence of God, have contributed to place me in my present situation; and a frequent examination of my principles of action has contributed to establish in me a consistency of conduct, and to confirm me, I trust, in that probity of manners in my seventy-fifth year with which I entered into the world at the age of seventeen. My health has been for several years precarious; and the faculty have long ago left my constitution to struggle with a disorder which first seized me in 1781. The body and mind, I begin to perceive, are both of them losing their activity; the evil days are coming on in which men usually B say, there is no pleasure in them; may I not be allowed, then, without incurring the imputation of vanity, to live, in a manner, an happy life (for which I am most thankful to its Author) over again, by collecting and arranging some of the detached papers which I have written at different periods? By this means my children, when I am in my grave, may be gratified with knowing the character of their father; and the world, if it has any curiosity concerning him, will have an opportunity of perusing authentic, if not interesting, Memoirs of the Bishop of Landaff. All families being of equal antiquity, and time and chance so happening to all, that kings become beggars, and beggars become kings; no solid reason, I think, can be given, why any man should derive honour or infamy from the station which his ancestors filled in civil society; yet the contrary opinion is so prevalent, that no words need be employed in proving that it is so. German and Welch pedigrees are subjects of ridicule to most Englishmen; yet those amongst ourselves who cannot inscribe on the trunk of their genealogical tree the name of a peer, bishop, judge, general, of any person elevated above the rank of ordinary citizens, are still desirous of showing that they are not sprung from the dregs of the people. Without entering into a disquisition concerning the rise of this general prejudice, I freely own that I am, on this occasion, a slave to it myself. I feel a satisfaction in knowing that my ancestors, as far as I can trace them, have neither been hewers of wood, or drawers of water, but ut prisca gens mortalium-tillers of their own ground, in the idiom of the country, Statesmen. |