Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 03.djvu/417

Bathurst men, who generally respond to the affection of their elders. Among his young protégés were, the author of the ‘Splendid Shilling,’ and the famous Lord Somers, who never lost his affection for Trinity and its genial head, and at Bathurst's request was a liberal contributor to the improvements of the college buildings; it was through Lord Somers's influence that the bishopric was offered to Bathurst. It gives us a curious picture of the times when we hear that Bathurst ‘liked to surprise scholars walking in the grove at unseasonable hours, on which occasion he frequently carried a whip.’ He regularly attended the early prayers (5 a.m.) in the college chapel up to the age of eighty-two. In his last years he became blind, but was still able to walk alone in the college gardens; this, however, was the cause of his death, for one day while walking there he stumbled over an obstacle, fractured his thigh-bone, and never recovered from the accident.

Dr. Bathurst is termed in biographical notices ‘a distinguished wit, philosopher, poet, and theologian;’ but his ‘Literary Remains,’ published by Thomas Warton, who was a fellow of Trinity some years after Bathurst's time, contain all that is extant of his writings, and they are not very extensive or important. They consist of several ‘Orationes’ in Latin, most of them held in the Oxford Theatre; some ‘Prælectiones et Quæstiones Medicæ,’ also in Latin; some ‘Poemata Latina,’ chiefly in the hexameter, but some in the iambic, and some in the elegiac metre. All these prove him, as he is reported to have been, a good Latin scholar, with a considerable fund of humour; a few short English poems of not a very high order of merit make up the volume. Denham attributes to him a curious work entitled ‘News from the Dead’ (1651?), which gives an account of a certain Anne Green, who had been hanged at Oxford for child-murder, and was restored to life by Drs. Petty (afterwards Sir William), Willis, Clark, and Bathurst. The real author was Richard Watkins of Christ Church. Bathurst only prefixed some verses to the tract. He is also said to have been the author of ‘Prælectiones tres de Respiratione’ (1654). He projected, as we learn from a letter of his own to his friend, Seth Ward, a ‘History of Ceremonies, together with their usefulness, or rather necessity, in divine worship,’ and a ‘History and genuine Notion of Preaching, which,’ he adds, ‘perhaps might serve a little to take off that erroneous and superstitious conceit of sermons which obtains so among the vulgar that it has almost cast all other religion out of doors;’ but the projects were never carried out. He would never allow any sermons of his own to be published, and inserted a special clause in his will, forbidding the publication of his manuscript sermons. He left some coins and portraits to the Bodleian. Several of his poetical pieces are published in the ‘Musæ Anglicanæ.’

[Life and Literary Remains of Ralph Bathurst, &c. by Thomas Warton (1761).]  BATHURST, RICHARD (d. 1762), essayist, was born in Jamaica, and sent to England to study medicine. His father, Colonel Bathurst, brought to England in 1750 the negro, Francis Barber, who became famous as Dr. Johnson's black servant. ‘My dear friend, Dr. Bathurst,’ said Dr. Johnson, with a warmth of approbation, ‘declared he was glad that his father, who was a West India planter, had left his affairs in total ruin, because, having no estate, he was not under the temptation of having slaves’ (, vii. 375). He took the degree of M.B. at Peterhouse, Cambridge, in 1745, and afterwards studied medicine in London, where he made the acquaintance of Dr. Johnson, and was a member of the club at the King's Head. ‘Dear Bathurst,’ Johnson used to say ( Anecdotes) ‘was a man to my heart's content; he hated a fool and he hated a rogue, and he hated a whig: he was a very good hater.’ Bathurst was a contributor to the ‘Adventurer,’ conducted by Hawkesworth, with the assistance of Johnson and Joseph Warton. In September 1754 Bathurst was elected physician to the Middlesex Hospital, but went to Barbadoes, whence he wrote two letters to Johnson in 1757 (published by Croker), and became an army physician in the expedition against Havannah, where he died of fever in 1762. ‘The Havannah is taken; a conquest too dearly obtained,’ exclaimed Johnson, ‘for Bathurst died before it. Vix Priamus tanti totaque Troja fuit.’ Boswell says, on Mrs. Williams's authority, that Dr. Johnson dictated the essays in the ‘Adventurer’ signed ‘T.’ to Bathurst, who wrote them down and sold them for two guineas each to his own benefit. Johnson would not acknowledge them, but smiled when he said he did not write them. It is curious fact that Dr. Johnson often named Bathurst in his prayers after the death of the latter.

[Boswell's Life of Johnson; Hawkins's Johnson, pp. 219, 234.]  BATHURST, THEODORE (d. 1651), Latin poet, descended from an ancient family of Hothorpe in Northamptonshire, and a relative of Dr. Ralph Bathurst [q. v.], the famous English physician, scholar, and divine, was a student of Pembroke College, Cam-