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    and it is admitted that he was eager to acquire and retain it . But his love of gain was never gratified at the expense of his integrity , and the charge of

    parsimony , though partly just , was in a great measure founded upon his conscientious refusal to give charity in the common and obvious ways . He would never remit his fees to poor students , as other professors did : and he made it a rule

    to give nothing to public beggars . He had probably observed that many young men wish to intrude themselves i nto learned professions , from mere dislike to mechanical

    labour ; that those who could not aftbrd to pay the fees of a lecturer , had not in general been able to purchase that previous education , without which lectures would be

    of little service to them ; and he perhaps thought it a vulgar error , that genius is lost to the possessor and the world , if it cannot be devoted , exclusively to literature . Micliaelis was not free from

    vanity , and wished to appear as a man of universal knowled ge * He was charged with preferring English writers to those of his own country ; if the charge be true , it may have arisen from the absence of rivalry between himself

    and foreigners , or from the circumstance of his owing his earliest light to the authors of our country . He appears to have been jealous of Semler , but after opposing his theory of the latinizing MSS . for many years , he declared himself a convert to it in the last edition

    of his Introduction . His integrity and adherence to truth weie scrupulous ^; and in personal morals he was Strict , even to rigour . A profile of him is prefixed to

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    the volume of Memoirs , which Hassencamp declares to be a most striking likeness . It is a fine head , very characteristic of his penetrating , lively and satirical mind .

    rC The high forehead and spread - ing occiput" says Hassencamp , ' * show that he had room to take in a large stock of knowledge ; the history of his life will prove that even the smallest crevices were filled with erudition . "

    Michaeiis was not a hard student , in the common acceptation of the words . He had many occupations besides study , and he neither sat up very late nor rose very early . When this was

    noticed to him , he used to reply in the words of the 127 th Psalm , 2 d verse , whom the Lord loveth , to

    them he giveth sleep . The vigour of his mind compensated for the shortness of his application , and he enjoyed the benefit of his temperance in a life prolonged to 74 , with the full use of his

    faculties . He died Aug . 22 , 1791 * His admirers were mortified that his death occasioned no great public sensation . But it cannot

    be expected that grief will be vio ^ lerit , where there is not some actual loss of good enjoyed or anticipated . The public had received from Michaeiis all that

    they could hope for ; there was nothing for expectation to magnify ; and they beheld his re . moval with less emotion than they would have felt at the death of a younger man , though of inferior talenU . K-

    [ The Second Part of the * Sketch" will be given in the next number . ']

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    8 Sketch of the Life of Michaeiis .

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Jan. 2, 1811, page 8, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2412/page/8/