Thomas Beddoes to William Reynolds, March 1789
In 1789 he appears to have made some exertions, in order to place the situation of the chemical reader in Oxford, on a more eligible footing. In a letter to his friend Reynolds, dated in March of that year, he expresses a wish that a statement could be made to some member of administration, of the situation of the Professorships held in Oxford by medical men. To all of these, although some were perfect sinecures, a fixed salary was annexed; while the chemical reader, whose services were necessarily active and regular, derived no other emolument from his situation, than the fees of such students as voluntarily attended his lectures; and these he had found by experience, although his class was considered as numerous, barely sufficient to defray the expences attendant upon the course. He states the delicacy that he felt in requesting any person to undertake this office; remarking, that as he ‘certainly thinks that he should himself be extremely unwilling to solicit favors from the great, he should be very slow in imposing such a task upon another’. He afterwards expresses his desire that any person who should undertake that office should confine himself to a simple statement of facts, ‘So much only,’ says he, ‘I would wish to have said, when the occasion comes: as for any further solicitation, I abjure and despise it, both from principle and pride’.
Published: Stock, p. 21