West

From Samuel Johnson's Lives of the Poets series, published in 3 volumes between 1779 and 1781.

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Gilbert West is one of the writers of whom I regret my inability to give a sufficient account; the intelligence which my inquiries have obtained is general and scanty. He was the son of the Rev. Dr. West; perhaps him who published "Pindar" at Oxford about the beginning of this century. His mother was sister to Sir Richard Temple, afterwards Lord Cobham. His father, purposing to educate him for the Church, sent him first to Eton, and afterwards to Oxford; but he was seduced to a more airy mode of life, by a commission in a troop of horse, procured him by his uncle. He continued some time in the army, though it is reasonable to suppose that he never sunk into a mere soldier, nor ever lost the love, or much neglected the pursuit, of learning; and afterwards, finding himself more inclined to civil employment, he laid down his commission, and engaged in business under the Lord Townshend, then Secretary of State, with whom he attended the King to Hanover.

His adherence to Lord Townshend ended in nothing but a nomination (May, 1729) to be Clerk-Extraordinary of the Privy Council, which produced no immediate profit; for it only placed him in a state of expectation and right of succession, and it was very long before a vacancy admitted him to profit.

Soon afterwards he married, and settled himself in a very pleasant house at Wickham, in Kent, where he devoted himself to learning and to piety. Of his learning the late Collection exhibits evidence, which would have been yet fuller if the dissertations which accompany his version of "Pindar" had not been improperly omitted. Of his piety the influence has, I hope, been extended far by his "Observations on the Resurrection," published in 1747, for which the University of Oxford created him a Doctor of Laws, by diploma (March 30, 1748), and would doubtless have reached yet further had he lived to complete what he had for some time meditated--the "Evidences of the Truth of the New Testament." Perhaps it may not be without effect to tell that he read the prayers of the public Liturgy every morning to his family, and that on Sunday evening he called his servants into the parlour and read to them first a sermon and then prayers. Crashaw is now not the only maker of verses to whom may be given the two venerable names of Poet and Saint. He was very often visited by Lyttelton and Pitt, who, when they were weary of faction and debates, used at Wickham to find books and quiet, a decent table, and literary conversation. There is at Wickham a walk made by Pitt; and, what is of far more importance, at Wickham, Lyttelton received that conviction which produced his "Dissertation on St. Paul." These two illustrious friends had for a while listened to the blandishments of infidelity; and when West's book was published, it was bought by