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JOHN BYROM
95

and candid. Unluckily, Byrom was an inadequate Boswell, and is so anxious to record his own argument on behalf of authority that he does not quite let us know what Butler had to say for reason. Law, however, is by far the most conspicuous figure. Law, when Byrom first went to see him (4th March 1729), was living in the house of old Mr. Gibbon at Putney, and acting as tutor to the younger Gibbon, afterwards father of the historian. He had been at Cambridge in Byrom's time, had got into difficulties for his Jacobite proclivities, and, by refusing to take the oaths, had cut himself off from an active clerical career. Byrom would sympathise with him upon this ground; but it was the recently published Serious Call which led to the new connection. Byrom bought the book in February 1729, and at once felt the influence, which made its perusal a turning-point in the lives of many eminent men of the day. To him it was especially congenial. Law afterwards became a disciple of Jacob Bohme, and Byrom, though he accepted the later utterances with reverence, confessed that they were above his comprehension. Of such matters, I may say that at a later period Law might probably have been, like Coleridge, a follower of Schelling,