Authenticity of the Poems attributed to Thomas Rowley, and Verses on Sir
Joshua Reynolds's painted window at New College: about the same time,
probably, he was chosen a member of the Literary Club.

In 1785, he edited Milton's minor poems, with very copious
illustrations; and in the year following, was elected to the Camden
Professorship of History, and was appointed to succeed Whitehead, as
Poet Laureate. In his inaugural speech as Camden Professor, subjoined to
the edition of his poetical works by Dr. Mant, he has shewn that the
public duties required at the first foundation of the Professorship,
owing to the improvement in the course of academical studies, are
rendered no longer necessary. From one who had already voluntarily done
so much, it would have been ungracious to exact the performance of
public labours not indispensably requisite. In the discharge of his
function as Laureate, he still continued, as he had long ago professed
himself to be,--

Too free in servile courtly phrase to fawn;

and had the wish been gratified,--expressed by himself before his
appointment, or by Gibbon after it,--that the annual tribute might be
dispensed with, we should have lost some of his best lyric effusions.

Till his sixty-second year, he had experienced no interruption to a
vigorous state of health. Then a seizure of the gout compelled him to
seek relief from the use of the Bath waters; and he returned from that
place to college, with the hope of a recovery from his complaint. But on
the 20th of May, 1790, between ten and eleven o'clock at night, as he
was sitting in the common room with two of the college fellows, and in
higher spirits than usual, a paralytic affection deprived him of his