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. 159.

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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 his shoulders, when he passed on to the Mint meeting-house at Exeter, not, however-since the brethren there were tinctured with Arianism and demanded a similar leaven in their pastor-until he had been ordained anew. Williams continued to teach and preach at Exeter until 1769, when he resigned, willingly or perforce-he on his side charging the elders with Tartuffism, and they alleging against him a freedom of behaviour unseemly in a spiritual shepherd. What precisely happened is not now to be ascertained, but Williams' own reference to this period of his career, in an autobiographical fragment, written some time after 1802, entitled 'Incidents in my own life which have been often thought of some importance,' recently acquired by the Cardiff Public Library and now quoted for the first time, runs thus:

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

The eye of censure,' however, won; and Williams passed on from Exeter to Highgate, to minister to the congregation in Southwood Lane. We may assume that his conduct was not very flagrant from the fact that he was 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

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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 clergymen 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 a 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 the 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 of John Lee (1733-1793), afterwards Attorney-General, and John Jebb (1736-1786), the theological reformer; but his Deistic tendencies frightened these companions

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 pondering upon educational problems; and, on getting free of the ministry, he determined to devote his energies to the training and teaching of the young. Accordingly, in 1772, he issued the prospectus of a school in Lawrence Street, Chelsea; and it speaks well for the reputation for probity and directness which he had already acquired that, in spite of his very liberal religious views, he instantly obtained a complement of scholars. Realising that a school is the better, in certain of its departments, for a woman to assist in superintendence, he took the romantic course of marrying. That he was, as an educationalist, far in advance of his time may be seen by his 'Plan of an Academy for the Instruction of Youth,' and by his Treatise on Education,' both issued in 1774, wherein he fused the methods of Comenius and Rousseau with ideas of his own; while the Annual Biography' memoir, which clearly was written by an intimate acquaintance, gives other proof.

'He experienced,' says the writer, 'far less obstruction from indocility on the part of children, than from the obstinacy and prejudices of their parents. With a commendable zeal, he insisted as a first principle that a strict adherence to truth should ever be held a sacred as well as immutable rule of conduct; and to attain this practice, setting aside all ideas of duty, in a moral sense, he proved it to be the interest of his pupils to avoid and abhor everything connected with a lie. To procure their confidence, and avoid even the appearance of superiority, he himself would enter into the class with them, and submit himself, like the youngest boy in the school, to the inspection and control of the usher. All personal punishments were prohibited; nothing was effected by authority alone; thus arbitrary proceedings of every kind were most scrupulously avoided.' Moreover, a body of laws was formed, in a general assembly; and these were enforced by means of a trial by jury, every one readily submitting to the verdict of his peers.'