Several Fellows of the Royal Society resented these warm acknowledgments. [Sidenote: _Letter of Misogallus_, 1802 (privately printed).] They thought them both unpatriotic, and uncomplimentary to themselves. The mathematical malcontents, with Bishop HORSLEY at their head, eagerly profited by so favourable an opportunity of renewing the expression of their old and still lurking dissatisfaction with the choice of their President. HORSLEY addressed to Sir Joseph a letter of indignant and angry remonstrance. Somewhat discreditably, the Bishop chose a pseudonymous signature instead of manfully affixing his own. ‘_Misogallus_’[22] was the mask under which he made an appeal to those anti-Gallican prejudices which so many of us imbibe almost with our mother’s milk, and have in after-years to get rid of. He aimed a poisoned dart at his old antagonist, when pointing one of his many passionate sentences in a way which he knew would arrest the special attention of the King. The shaft hit the mark. But the King was presently appeased. He knew BANKS, and he knew the Bishop of St. Asaph. [Sidenote: SIR JOSEPH BANKS AS AN AUTHOR.] From time to time Sir Joseph BANKS contributed many interesting articles to the _Philosophical Transactions_, and to the _Annals of Agriculture_. His able paper on the Blight in Wheat did service in its day, and was separately published. But it is not as an author that this illustrious man will be remembered. He knew how to fructify the thoughts and to disseminate the wisdom of minds more largely gifted than his own. Necessarily, space and prominence in the public eye is—more especially after a man’s death—a good deal determined by authorship. Hence, in our _Biographical Dictionaries_, a crowd of small writers occupy a disproportionate place, and some true and illustrious public benefactors remain almost unnoticed. Undeniably, the fame of one such benefactor as a Joseph BANKS ought to outweigh, and must, intrinsically, outweigh, that of many scores of minor penmen. His benefactions were world-wide. And by them he, being dead, yet speaks, and will long continue to speak, to very good and lofty purpose. He died in London on the ninth of May, 1820, at the venerable age of eighty-one years completed. He died without issue, and was succeeded in his chief Lincolnshire estates by the Honourable James Hamilton STANHOPE (afterwards Mr. STANHOPE BANKS), and by Sir Henry HAWLEY. [Sidenote: DEATH.] [Sidenote: BEQUESTS.] His Kentish estates were bequeathed to Sir Edward KNATCHBULL. [Sidenote: _Will and Codicils_, Jan. 7 and 21; and March 7, 1820.]