3. _Letters to a Friend._ By CONNOP THIRLWALL, late Lord Bishop of S. David’s. Edited by the Very Rev. ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY, D.D. 8vo. (London, 1881.)
4. _Letters, Literary and Theological, of Connop Thirlwall, late Lord Bishop of S. David’s._ Edited by the Very Rev. J. J. STEWART PEROWNE, D.D., Dean of Peterborough, and the Rev. LOUIS STOKES, B.A. Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. With Annotations and Preliminary Memoirs by the Rev. LOUIS STOKES. 8vo. (London, 1881.)
5. _Letters to a Friend._ New Edition. (London, 1882.)
Dr Perowne’s Preface to _Letters_, &c., p. vi.
_Primitiæ_, p. 52. The essay is endorsed: ‘Composed 1st January, 1806. Eight years old.’
_Primitiæ_, p. 224. The piece is dated October 28, 1808.
_Letters to a Friend_, p. 155. As a matter of fact the Bishop did buy and destroy all the copies that he could.
Dean Perowne mentions (Preface, p. viii.) that ‘at school he did not care to enter into the games and amusements of the other boys, but was to be seen at play-hour withdrawing himself into some corner with a pile of books under his arm.’
Candler was seven years older than Thirlwall. He was junior assistant in a draper’s shop at Ipswich, and afterwards set up in business on his own account at Chelmsford, where he became a leading member of the Society of Friends. He died, nearly eighty years of age, in 1872. We have not been able to ascertain how he became acquainted with Thirlwall.
_Letters_, &c., p. 21. The letter is dated December, 1813, when the writer was sixteen years old.
Professor Monk, who had examined Thirlwall on one of these occasions, was so much struck with the vigour and accuracy of his translations that he remarked to a friend, who had also had experience of his worth as a scholar, ‘Had I been sitting in my library, with unlimited access to books, I could not have done better.’ ‘Nor so well,’ was the reply.
Cooper’s _Annals of the Town and University of Cambridge_, iv. 516. The words between inverted commas in our text are from a pamphlet entitled ‘A Statement regarding the Union, an Academical Debating Society, which existed at Cambridge from February 13, 1815, to March 24, 1817, when it was _suppressed by the Vice-Chancellor_.’ The ‘statement’ is evidently official, and is thoroughly business-like and temperate. The Vice-Chancellor was Dr Wood, Master of S. John’s College; the officers of the society were: Mr Whewell, _President_; Mr Thirlwall, _Secretary_; Mr H. J. Rose, _Treasurer_. The late Professor Selwyn, in a speech at the opening of the new Union building, October 30, 1866, stated that on the entrance of the proctors the President said, ‘Strangers will please to withdraw, and the House will take the message into consideration.’