THE

QUARTERLY REVIEW.

No. 459.-APRIL, 1919.

Art. 1.-THE FOUNDER OF THE ROYAL LITERARY FUND.

THE Royal Literary Fund, which is just entering upon its hundred and thirtieth year of usefulness, sprang from rather an odd brain. Sprang,' however, is not the word, for its evolution was difficult and slow, sixteen years at least intervening between the first public suggestion of such an institution and its formal organisation. in 1790. Let us see what manner of man was the fount and origin of this good thing: a not untimely proceeding, as it happens, for the Committee of the Fund are now celebrating, some little while after the event, the centenary of his death, in 1816; by the erection of a commemorative tablet.

David Williams was born in 1738 at Watford, Caerphilly, in Glamorganshire, South Wales, but had not, according to a biographical notice by a friend, either from Nature or habit any of the provincial peculiarities of that country.' As we shall, however, see later he was, in his own conceit, a true Welshman. His father, who kept a store for miners, lost money in unsuccessful speculation and left Mrs Williams and a large family in embarrassments which, but for the filial piety of the young David, would have terminated in extreme distress'; but precisely how the boy can have helped her is unknown. All that is known is that, after a grammarschool education, he was, much against his own inclination, but in obedience to a death-bed wish of his Methodist father, who was set upon having a divine in the family, placed, at the age of sixteen, in the Dissenting Academy at Carmarthen, with the idea of his becoming a minister. Vol. 231.-No. 459.

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Although an unwilling student ('gay, ardent and sprightly, with a bosom languishing for pleasure,' is the description of him at this time), he was a very receptive and intelligent one; so much so that on becoming ordained, at the age of twenty, he was appointed to the care of a small congregation at Frome at a yearly stipend exceeding by five pounds that of the Rev. Dr Primrose of Wakefield. At Frome he remained until 1761, with much of the burden of his family on hi shoulders, when he passed on to the Mint meeting-hous at Exeter, not, however—since the brethren there wer tinctured with Arianism and demanded a similar leave in their pastor-until he had been ordained anew Williams continued to teach and preach at Exeter unti 1769, when he resigned, willingly or perforce—he on hi side charging the elders with Tartuffism, and the alleging against him a freedom of behaviour unseeml in a spiritual shepherd. What precisely happened is no now to be ascertained, but Williams' own reference t this period of his career, in an autobiographical fragment written some time after 1802, entitled 'Incidents in m own life which have been often thought of some import ance,' recently acquired by the Cardiff Public Librar and now quoted for the first time, runs thus:

'It was that distress [i.e. of his mother and her childrer which induced me to remove to Exeter, for I was happy a Frome, and it was that distress which kept me [this is cryptic from seeking an advantageous marriage, though I spen 19 parts in 20 of my time among women. This seduce me into the paths of pleasure, which the eye of censure soo observed, and which soon led me, it does not signify how, ou of the narrow inclosures of my profession.'

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The eye of censure,' however, won; and Williams passe on from Exeter to Highgate, to minister to the congrega tion in Southwood Lane. We may assume that his con duct was not very flagrant from the fact that he wa warmly welcomed there. Rumours of impropriety move in such circles, so fast, and are normally so repugnant that had there been anything serious he would hardly have received this new call.

At Highgate the young teacher, on his own avowal continued to be addicted to pleasure, although whether

he modified the allowance of time which he had been accustomed to allot to the other sex he does not state. Acquiring now a taste for literature, he produced some compositions that 'pleased or affected' his audience. He also took advantage of his contiguity to London to 'mingle,' as the memoir in the Annual Biography' says, 'freely with the world at large.' He even often frequented the playhouses,' wrote theatrical criticisms, and engaged in 'discussions on various important subjects. That he entered with some thoroughness into these new scenes may be deduced from the circumstance that his characteristically Quixotic anonymous open letter to David Garrick, questioning his genius and accusing him, as a manager, of petty and detrimental jealousy, in particular of Mossop the actor, appeared in 1772. At this time the inquirer and reformer was thirty-four-a tall thin man with deep-set eyes and a large aquiline nose, wearing (whatever might have been his garb at Southwood Lane) in London, when on Bohemian adventure bent, a deep purple velvet suit.

Williams tells us nothing of the causes which led him to resign the Highgate ministry, merely remarking that, while there, he was a stranger to moral and religious controversy; but we know that it was in the Southwood Lane chapel that he preached the first of the sermons On Religious Hypocrisy' which were collected and -published in 1774; and it has been stated that it was while he was still there, but probably at a very late period in his engagement, that he joined a number of elergymen of the Church of England who, wishing to be rid of certain conscientious scruples,' met at the Feathers Tavern in Leicester Fields and prepared there petition for relief in respect to subscription to the Thirty-nine Articles. But Williams himself, a born rebel, having once set his foot in the paths of suspicious Investigation, quickly advanced far beyond the bulk of he company, and, embracing Deism, forsook orthodoxy altogether. According to the memoir in the 'Dictionary of National Biography,' he even went so far as to prepare an expurgated prayer-book, with the co-operation f John Lee (1733-1793), afterwards Attorney-General, nd John Jebb (1736-1786), the theological reformer; ut his Deistic tendencies frightened these companions

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away. His own account is that his chief instigator was Mr Serjeant Adair (ob. 1798), the friend of Wilkes and afterwards Recorder of London, who had been impressed by his book 'The Philosopher' (1771). Williams set forth his reforming views in a series of letters in the 'Morning Advertiser,' which were republished in book form in 1773 under the title Essays on Public Worship. It seems that his active mind had long been ponderin upon educational problems; and, on getting free of the ministry, he determined to devote his energies to th training and teaching of the young. Accordingly, i 1772, he issued the prospectus of a school in Lawrenc Street, Chelsea; and it speaks well for the reputatio for probity and directness which he had already acquired th that, in spite of his very liberal religious views, b instantly obtained a complement of scholars. Realisin that a school is the better, in certain of its department for a woman to assist in superintendence, he took the romantic course of marrying. That he was, as an educ tionalist, far in advance of his time may be seen by h 'Plan of an Academy for the Instruction of Youth,' an by his Treatise on Education,' both issued in 177 wherein he fused the methods of Comenius and Roussea with ideas of his own; while the 'Annual Biography memoir, which clearly was written by an intima acquaintance, gives other proof.

'He experienced,' says the writer, 'far less obstruction fro indocility on the part of children, than from the obstina and prejudices of their parents. With a commendable ze he insisted as a first principle that a strict adherence to tru should ever be held a sacred as well as immutable rule conduct; and to attain this practice, setting aside all ide of duty, in a moral sense, he proved it to be the interest his pupils to avoid and abhor everything connected with lie. To procure their confidence, and avoid even the appes ance of superiority, he himself would enter into the cla with them, and submit himself, like the youngest boy in t school, to the inspection and control of the usher. All pe sonal punishments were prohibited; nothing was effected authority alone; thus arbitrary proceedings of every ki were most scrupulously avoided.' Moreover, a body of lay was formed, in a general assembly; and these were enforc by means of a trial by jury, every one readily submitting the verdict of his peers.'

Again (one seems to get a shadowy glimpse of the headmaster of Dotheboys Hall as one reads):

'It was his wish to connect and combine familiar objects with every branch of science. Thus, he is represented as teaching geography by gradual surveys of a house, a neighbourhood or a district, while the previous view of a blacksmith's shop or a kitchen garden led to a study of mineralogy and botany. The principles of drawing and mensuration were taught at the desk; but the practice of both was afterwards elucidated and endeared by little excursions, for the purpose of effecting the execution in a practical point of view.'

Williams held that globes and maps should be made by the pupils themselves.

'He deemed the age of thirteen or fourteen fitted to comprehend the doctrine of air, the construction of pumps, the science of hydrostatics, and the pursuits of chemistry. Mr Williams considered the essays of the late Dr Watson, Bishop of Llandaff, as among the most useful and entertaining books for children. In short, 'he pursued, in practice, the plan which Rousseau had sketched from imagination'; and he thought that the fruitless efforts of the mind, in infancy, to understand the subtleties of grammar, the ambiguities of poetry, or the mysteries of metaphysics, were generally succeeded by an indolent acquiescence fatal to all great or manly exertions.'

There is some uncertainty as to how long the school continued to prosper. Its sudden collapse, probably in 1776, is stated in the memoirs to have been due to the death of Mrs Williams, which plunged her husband into such disorder that he completely vanished for a while, returning only to find his scholars dispersed; but, according to Williams' own autograph MS., it was the result of his sudden decision to leave her. The cessation, whatever the cause, was probably a public misfortune, for Williams, even if a little fantastic, cannot have had any but a stimulating influence on his pupils. A schoolmaster, however odd some of his devices for the imparting of information and obtaining the confidence of his boys might be, cannot be much amiss when he is written of in such words as these:

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