Page:Distinguished Churchmen.djvu/155

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
THE REV. GEORGE BAYFIELD ROBERTS
123

Holborn, Incumbent of St John's, Cheltenham, and Rector of Beechamwell. In 1849 the father published anonymously a vigorous and eloquent satire on the abuses of the administration of the Episcopal system, under the title of Speculum Episcopi. The book, subsequently acknowledged, passed through two editions, and made a profound sensation. This Rev. George Roberts, a double honours man of Trinity College, Cambridge, was well known in the metropolis as a brilliant preacher, and, associated with Mr Henry Hoare, took an active part in promoting the revival of Convocation. He wrote several of the tracts published by the Metropolitan Church Union to further that object, and contributed to the literature on the Education question. He was also a learned antiquary, and wrote several papers for the Archæologia Cambrensis. For some years he was President of the London Sacred Harmonic Society.

Mr Bayfield Roberts, the son, showed decided musical talents as a child, and his earliest recollections are of Sontag, Sims Reeves, Henry Phillips, Clara Novello, and other eminent singers with whom he was brought in frequent contact during his father's presidentship of the Sacred Harmonic Society. To his friends it is known that he can just recall sitting on Sontag's knee at Exeter Hall, and that he has vivid recollections of one evening, in his father's house, when Clara Novello and Henry Phillips sang for what seemed