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A MEMOIR

OF

The Life

OF

THE REV. THOMAS ZOUCH, D. D. F. L. S.

RECTOR OF SCRAYINGHAM, AND PREBENDARY OF DURHAM.

BY

THE REV. FRANCIS WRANGHAM, M. A. F. R. S.

και

Ως γαρ οφθαλμῳ χροα πρόσφορος, ἧς το ανθηρον ἅμα και τερπνον αναζωπυρει τρεφει την οψιν, έτω την διάνοιαν επαγειν δει θεαμασιν & τῳ χαριεντι προς το οικειον αυτην αγαθον εκκαλει ταυτα δ' εςιν εν τοις απ' αρετης εργοις, ά και ζηλον τινα και προθυμιαν αγωγον εις μιμησιν εμποιει τοις ίςορησασιν.

(Plutarch. Vit. Periclis.)

Et ille quidem plenus annis abiit, plenus honoribus, illis etiam qos recusavit. Nobis tamen quærendus et desiderandus est, ut exemplar ævi prioris.

(Plin. Ep. II. 1.)

Non mi parendo di dover senza nota d'una quasi impietà, poter lasciare in oscuro la fama d'uno Compatriote mio, per la sua virtù degnissim● di vivere nella perpetua luce et ricordanza de gli uomini.

(Spino Vita e Fatti di Bart. Coglione, p. 65.)

VoL. I,

b

A MEMOIR, &c.

ON sitting down to record some of the principal passages in the life of a man, who after gaining an University-scholarship at Cambridge in 1760, became Second Wrangler in 1761, and obtained the Middle and Senior Bachelors' Prizes in their respective years for two Latin Essays, beside a Seaton-Prize for his English Poem on the Crucifixion, I cannot but feel that my subject possesses high claims to respect: and those claims are in no degree abated by the consideration of his subsequent literary and professional progress. Yet Biography, unless it has reference to some illustrious Statesman or Warrior, or to some celebrated Scholar mixing largely in public society, excites in general only a circumscribed and transient interest. For a mere Christian student what care they, who are emphatically stiled the world?' It cannot however to any reader, I hope, be wholly unprofitable to be taught, that learning and piety shed a quiet splendor over the paths even of village-privacy, while they gild with peculiar brightness the views of futurity.

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But it is not intended, in the present instance, to invade the recesses of domestic life. "There is no cause,"

"why the lives of

justly remarks Mr. Wordsworth, Authors should be pried into with the same diligent curiosity, and laid open with the same disregard of reserve

*See his Letter to Mr. James Gray, upon the subject of a new Edition of the Poems of Burns.

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