so large a body of clergy, Bentley replied that ’the Parliamentary accounts showed that six thousand of the clergy had, at a middle rate, not 50_l._ a year;’ and he then added that argument which was subsequently used with so much effect by Sydney Smith—­viz. that ’talent is attracted into the Church by a few great prizes.’[660] Some years later, when Lord Shelburne asked Bishop Watson ’if nothing could be gotten from the Church towards alleviating the burdens of the State,’ the Bishop replied that the whole revenue of the Church would not yield 150_l._ a year to each clergyman, and therefore a diminution would be inexpedient unless Government would be contented to have a beggarly and illiterate clergy, which no wise minister would wish.’[661] He might have added that, even as it was, a great number of the clergy, if not ‘beggarly and illiterate,’ were either weighed down with the pressure of poverty, or, to escape it, were obliged to have recourse to occupations which were more fit for illiterate men.  Dr. Primrose, in his adversity, and Parson Adams are specimens of the better type of this class of clergy, and it is to be feared that Parson Trulliber is not a very unfair specimen of the worst.  There is an odd illustration of the immeasurable distance which was supposed to separate the bishop from the curate in Cradock’s ‘Reminiscences.’  Bishop Warburton was to preach in St. Lawrence’s Church in behalf of the London Hospital.  ‘I was,’ writes Cradock, ’introduced into the vestry by a friend, where the Lord Mayor and others were waiting for the Duke of York, who was their president; and in the meantime the bishop did everything in his power to entertain and alleviate their patience.  He was beyond measure condescending and courteous, and even graciously handed some biscuits and wine in a salver to the curate who was to read prayers!’[662]

So far as one can judge, this wide gulf which divided the higher from the lower clergy was by no means always a fair measure of their respective merits.  The readers of ‘Joseph Andrews’ will remember that Parson Adams is represented not only as a pious and estimable clergyman, but also as a scholar and a divine.  And there were not wanting in real life unbeneficed clergymen who, in point of abilities and erudition, might have held their own with the learned prelates of the period.  Thomas Stackhouse, the curate of Finchley, is a remarkable case in point.  His ‘Compleat Body of Divinity,’ and, still more, his ’History of the Bible,’ published in 1733, are worthy to stand on the same shelf with the best writings of the bishops in an age when the Bench was extraordinarily fertile in learning and intellectual activity.  John Newton wrote most of his works in a country curacy.  Romaine, whose learning and abilities none can doubt, was fifty years old before he was beneficed.  Seed, a preacher and writer of note, was a curate for the greater part of his life.  It must be added, however, that as the eighteenth century advanced, a very decided improvement took place in the circumstances of the bulk of the clergy—­an improvement which would have been still more extensive but for the prevalence of pluralities.