Mathias, who was an eloquent preacher, wrote: 1. ‘An Inquiry into the Doctrines of the Reformation and of the United Church of England and Ireland, respecting the Ruin and Recovery of Mankind,’ 2 pts. 8vo, Dublin, 1814, which evoked replies by W. Eames in 1817, and a ‘Clergyman of the Church of England’ in 1818. 2. ‘Vindiciæ Laicæ, or the Right of the Laity to the unrestricted Reading of the Sacred Scriptures vindicated,’ 8vo, Dublin, 1827. 3. ‘A Compendious History of the Council of Trent,’ 8vo, Dublin, 1832. 4. ‘Popery not Catholicism, in Two Parts,’ 8vo, Liverpool, 1851, edited by his son, the Rev. W. B. Stewart Mathias. Part ii. is a reprint of ‘Vindiciæ Laicæ.’
His portrait, engraved after Martin Cregan, R.H.A., by J. Horsburgh, was prefixed to his ‘Twenty-one Sermons,’ 8vo, Dublin, 1838.
[Information from the Rev. John W. Stubbs, D.D.; Brief Memorials of the Rev. B. W. Mathias, 8vo, Dublin, 1842.]
MATHIAS, THOMAS JAMES (1754?–1835), satirist and Italian scholar, belonged to a family connected with the English court, several members of which are mentioned in the fragments of the ‘Journal’ of Charlotte Burney (Early Diary of Frances Burney, ii. 306–12). His father, Vincent Mathias, sub-treasurer in the queen's household and treasurer of Queen Anne's Bounty, died 15 June 1782, aged 71; his mother, Marianne, daughter of Alured Popple, secretary to the board of trade and governor of Bermuda, was born 8 Nov. 1724 and died 6 Jan. 1799 (Gent. Mag. 1782 pt. ii. p. 311, 1799 pt. i. p. 82). He is said to have been educated at Eton, and the long passage in the notes to the ‘Pursuits of Literature’ appears to corroborate this statement, but he was entered at Trinity College, Cambridge, on 2 July 1770, at the age of sixteen, as coming from the school at Kingston-on-Thames kept by the Rev. Richard Woodeson. He took an ægrotat degree in 1774 and proceeded M.A. in 1777, having gained, as a middle bachelor, in 1775 one of the members' prizes for the best dissertation in Latin prose, and in 1776, as a senior bachelor, another of the same prizes. He was admitted scholar of his college on 26 April 1771, elected as a minor fellow in 1776—the Latin letter which he sent to the electing fellows for their suffrages on this occasion is given in Nichols's ‘Literary Anecdotes,’ ii. 676–8—became major fellow in 1776, and acted as third, second, and first sublector respectively in 1777–8, 1779, and 1780. Latin exercises, written by him in 1775 and 1776, probably as tests for a fellowship, are preserved at the British Museum, and in 1779 he printed a Latin oration which he had delivered in the chapel of his college at Trinitytide. While at college he was very intimate with Spencer Perceval, afterwards prime minister, and a letter from one of Perceval's sons speaks of Mathias as his father's private tutor at Cambridge. In 1782 he succeeded to the post of sub-treasurer to the queen, when he probably quitted Cambridge; he afterwards became her treasurer, and about 1812 he appears to have been librarian at Buckingham Palace. For many years he lived in London on the emoluments of these posts, and engaged in literary pursuits, but his edition of the works of Gray in 1814 proved a severe loss to him, and would have been still more disastrous but for the assistance of the authorities at Pembroke College, Cambridge, under whose auspices it was undertaken, and by whom many copies were purchased. It was published at the enormous price of seven guineas, and consequently had no sale, so that most of the volumes were locked up in a warehouse for years. His straitened means, combined with an ‘alarming stroke and attack’ (Madame d'Arblay's Diary, vii. 307), decided him to make his way to Italy ‘on a desperate experiment of health.’ Southey met him at Paris in May 1817, when he was ‘outward bound’ (Letters, iv. 437–8); and he remained in Southern Italy, ‘in love with the climate and the language,’ for the rest of his life. When Sir Walter Scott was at Naples in his last illness, Mathias contributed to his ‘comfort and amusement,’ and a description of him in his lodgings in an old palace on the Pizzofalcone is given by N. P. Willis in his ‘Pencillings by the Way,’ i. 100–2. Another account of his life in Italy is given in the ‘Athenæum,’ 22 Aug. 1835, p. 650. He was a royal associate of the Royal Society of Literature, and so long as its funds allowed he was in receipt of one of its pensions. He died at Naples in August 1835. His books and manuscripts were sold by R. H. Evans in 1820 and 1837. He was at one time the owner of a picture of his family by Hogarth (Dobson, Hogarth, ed. 1891, p. 346). He was elected F.R.S. in March 1795, and F.S.A. in January 1795.
The first dialogue of the ‘Pursuits of Literature’ came out in May 1794, the second and third in June 1796, and the fourth in July 1797. The ‘fifth edition, revised and corrected,’ was published in 1798, and in the same year there appeared three editions of ‘Translations of the passages quoted in the Pursuits of Literature.’ The eleventh edition, ‘again revised, and with the citations translated,’ is dated in 1801, and the sixteenth
