wards Lord Dudley), with whom he continued to correspond; and in 1841 he published a selection of his letters, which are full of interest.
Copleston, together with the head of his college, Dr. Eveleigh, whom he described as the author and prime mover of the undertaking, was a warm supporter of the new examination statute which was promulgated in 1800, and he volunteered to be one of the first examiners in the new schools. In the same year he became vicar of St. Mary's, Oxford, and in 1802 professor of poetry, in which capacity he showed himself an accomplished critic, as well as a master of Latinity. His Prælections were greatly admired by Newman, who said, however, that the style was ‘more Coplestonian than Ciceronian.’ His ‘Advice to a Young Reviewer,’ a parody of the method of criticism adopted in the earlier numbers of the ‘Edinburgh Review,’ is a marvellous piece of imitation, full of the finest irony. The review soon afterwards published an attack on the Oxford system of education, to which Copleston at once replied and completely demolished his antagonist, whom he convicted not only of stark ignorance of what he had undertaken to condemn, but of much bad Latin besides. Lord Grenville wrote to thank him for his able defence of Latin versification against the swords of the barbarians. The reviewer answered him, and Copleston wrote three ‘replies’ in all, which contain in a small compass the whole case in favour of a classical education as then understood. This defence is the more valuable as Copleston's own intellect was of an order capable of grappling with tougher questions than the value of elegant scholarship. In 1819 he published two letters to Sir Robert Peel, one on the currency and one on pauperism, showing a mastery of political economy. The mischievous effects of a variable standard of value was the subject of the first, which was spoken of in the most flattering terms by Tierney, Baring (afterwards Lord Ashburton), and Sir James Mackintosh in the House of Commons. He advocated the immediate resumption of cash payments, and considered that when this had been effected, then, and not till then, it would be just to repeal the corn laws; paper currency being a concession to the commercial world as protection duties were to the agricultural. In the letters on pauperism he traced the condition of the labouring classes in England to the decline in the value of money, and held that the true remedy was a corresponding increase in the rate of wages. He disliked the principle of a poor law altogether, and seems not to have discerned the real utility of the allotment system, for which it was proposed, in a bill brought in by the government in 1819 but never carried, to enable the parochial authorities to acquire land. Before quitting Copleston's connection with literature we may mention his notice in the ‘Quarterly Review’ of a book very little known, namely, a Latin history of the insurrection of 1745, written by a Scotchman, which Copleston pronounced to be in some parts almost equal to Livy.
Proctor in 1807, Copleston became prebendary of Hoxton in St. Paul's Cathedral 1812. In 1814, on the death of Dr. Eveleigh, he was appointed provost of Oriel. He had been dean for some years, and to him, perhaps more than to any other, is to be attributed the high character which the college acquired during the first quarter of the nineteenth century. The best description of it during the twenty years after Copleston's appointment is in Cardinal Newman's ‘History of his Religious Opinions,’ and in Mozley's ‘Reminiscences of Oriel.’ But in the ‘Memoir of Bishop Copleston,’ published in 1851, is to be found a very interesting letter from Mr. John Hughes, formerly a member of the college, containing a picture of Oriel men and manners during the time when Copleston's influence was supreme, which shows that in those days the whole body of Oriel undergraduates held their heads higher than their fellows.
Copleston was a tory of the Pitt and Canning, not of the Eldon and Perceval, school; and in the contest for the chancellorship of the university in 1814 he threw his whole influence into the scale of Lord Grenville, who was elected by a small majority. Lord Liverpool had a just apprehension of his merits, and in 1826 made him dean of Chester. In 1827 he was further promoted to the bishopric of Llandaff and deanery of St. Paul's. In parliament he supported the bill for the removal of Roman catholic disabilities. But he opposed the Reform Bill, his dislike of which he explained at some length in a letter to Lord Ripon in November 1831. In Copleston's opinion the better plan would have been to revive the royal prerogative as to issuing and discontinuing writs, a practice by which the processes of enfranchisement were adjusted to the changes of population without any parliamentary agitation. As a politician he is classed by Archbishop Whately as ‘a decided tory.’ But he was certainly more liberal than the bulk of the tory party fifty years ago. He was in favour of the admission of dissenters to the universities. He supported Dr. Hampden; and we may therefore attach to his disapproval of the Maynooth grant, and of the Jew Declaration Bill, more than ordinary weight. The protest against the third read-
