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 the perusal of these volumes as an exercise in ‘swimming in the slop-pails of an extinct generation.’ When occasion offered, it is true that Williams was not averse from license as gross as Wycherley ever indulged in, but such denunciations as these are absurdly beside the mark, and the ‘Quarterly’ is a much better critic when it remarks (in April 1857) that Hanbury Williams had ‘the real vein for writing squibs—he had gaiety—the quality which is found in the lighter verses of Congreve, or the playful pages of the “Twopenny Post Bag.”’ The three volumes of 1822 include a quantity of miscellaneous letters and prose pieces by Williams, including his ‘Sketch of the History of Poland down to 1382,’ written in four letters to Henry Fox. These were written mainly to divert Fox during the long evenings at Holland House, and not as a serious contribution to historical knowledge. The writer's best essay in prose (not included in the collected ‘Works’) was his paper to the ‘World’ (September 1754, No. 37) describing the daily martyrdom of a lady-companion to a fashionable dame. Nichols describes it as the longest and probably the best of the periodical essays of the day.

An oil portrait of Williams by Anton Rafael Mengs was presented to the National Portrait Gallery in November 1873 by the widow of General C. R. Fox (cf. Cat. Second Loan Exhib. Nos. 275, 288, 415). Coxe describes two portraits at the house which Sir Charles built for himself at Coldbrook, a few miles south of Abergavenny. One in full dress, with the insignia of the Bath, painted in 1744 (engraved for the ‘Works’ of 1822, and also for Coxe's ‘Tour’); another smaller portrait, representing him leaning his cheek upon his right hand and holding in his left the poem ‘Isabella’ (Walpole's was a replica of this). At Coldbrook, also, are portraits of Major Hanbury, copied from those at Pontypool. A view of Coldbrook was engraved by W. Byrne after Sir Richard Hoare.



WILLIAMS, CHARLES JAMES BLASIUS (1805–1889), physician, eighth child of the Rev. David Williams (1751–1836), was born on 3 Feb. 1805 in the Hungerford almshouse in Wiltshire; his father was warden of the almshouse and curate of Heytesbury [see under, 1792–1858]. His mother, whose maiden name was also Williams, was daughter of a surgeon in Chepstow, Monmouthshire. His father was a successful private tutor, and educated him at home till he entered the university of Edinburgh in 1820. He was there a resident pupil of Dr. John Thomson (1765–1846) [q. v.], and was influenced in his reading by Dr. Brabant of Devizes, then living in Edinburgh. While a student he published in the ‘Annals of Philosophy’ for July 1823 a paper on the low combustion of a candle. His inaugural dissertation for the degree of M.D., which he took in 1824, was ‘On the Blood and its Changes by Respiration and Secretion.’ He then came to London, but in 1825 went on to Paris, where he worked hard at drawing as well as at medicine. He attended Laennec's clinique at La Charité, and became a master of the new methods of physical examination of the chest which that great teacher had introduced. In 1827 he came back to London, and published in 1828 ‘Rational Exposition of the Physical Signs of the Diseases of the Lungs and Pleura,’ dedicated to Sir [q. v.], of which a third edition appeared in 1835. He travelled with, second earl of Minto [q. v.], to Switzerland, and on his return married, in 1830, Harriet Williams Jenkins, daughter of James Jenkins of Chepstow, and, having received the license of the College of Physicians of London, began practice in Half Moon Street. He wrote in 1833 ten articles for the ‘Cyclopædia of Practical Medicine,’ and in 1835 was elected F.R.S. He lectured in 1836 at