A Great Bishop of One Hundred Years Ago. By Heneage
Horsley Jebb, M.A. (Edward Arnold. 5s. net.)—Mr. Jebb gives this title to Samuel Horsley, who held in succession the Sees of St. David's, Rochester, and St. Asaph. It is not undeserved, though Dr. Horsley was scarcely an ideal Bishop according to modern ideas. He was certainly in advance of his time. He had no doubt that Dissenters ought to be tolerated, but he drew the line short of atheists. He was a diligent Bishop, and a very constant attendant at the House of Lords, where his contributions to the debates were sometimes of a character which would now be thought unbecoming to episcopal dignity. He was, indeed, by temper a fervid controversialist. He first attracted attention by his polemic against Priestley. But his energies were not confined to theology. He had been elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1767—he was then thirty-three years of age—and was made one of the secretaries in 1773. Not long after the appointment of Sir Joseph Banks as President a violent dispute broke out. It was complicated with personal considerations, but substantially it was a case of mathematics v. natural science. Altogether, the book is a vivid picture of the time, and' of one who, whatever his defects, was a worthy representative of it.
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