Memorials and Other Papers — Volume 1De Quincey, Thomas
General
Memorials and Other Papers — Volume 1
De Quincey, Thomas
English essays
eloquent and the subtlest of Christian philosophers, was the son of
a barber, and the son-in-law of a king,"--alluding to the tradition
(imperfectly verified, I believe) that he married an illegitimate
daughter of Charles I. But this sketch was begun more than thirty years
ago; and I retired from the labor as too overwhelmingly exacting in
all that related to the philosophy and theology of that man so
"myriad-minded," and of that century so anarchical.] must be aware
of that religious Lady Carbery, who was the munificent (and, for her
kindness, one might say the filial) patroness of the all-eloquent and
subtle divine. She died before the Restoration, and, consequently,
before her spiritual director could have ascended the Episcopal throne.
The title of Carbery was at that time an earldom; the earl married
again, and his second countess was also a devout patroness of Taylor.
Having no peerage at hand, I do not know by what mode of derivation the
modern title of the nineteenth century had descended from the old one of
the seventeenth. I presume that some collateral branch of the original
family had succeeded to the barony when the limitations of the original
settlement had extinguished the earldom. But to me, who saw revived
another religious Lady Carbery, distinguished for her beauty and
accomplishments, it was interesting to read of the two successive ladies
who had borne that title one hundred and sixty years before, and whom no
reader of Jeremy Taylor is ever allowed to forget, since almost all
his books are dedicated to one or other of the pious family that had
protected him. Once more there was a religious Lady Carbery, supporting
locally the Church of England, patronizing schools, diffusing the most
extensive relief to every mode of indigence or distress. A century and a
half ago such a Lady Carbery was in South Wales, at the "Golden Grove;"
now such another Lady Carbery was in central England, at Laxton. The two
cases, divided by six generations, interchanged a reciprocal interest,
since in both cases it was young ladies, under the age of thirty, that
originated the movement, and in both cases these ladies bore the
same title; and I will therefore retrace rapidly the outline of that
contemporary case so familiarly known to myself.
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