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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Johnson's Lives of the Poets, by Samuel
+Johnson, Edited by Henry Morley
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
+other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions 
+whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of
+the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at 
+www.gutenberg.org.  If you are not located in the United States, you'll have
+to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook.
+
+
+
+
+Title: Johnson's Lives of the Poets
+       Gay, Thomson, Young, Gray, &c.
+
+
+Author: Samuel Johnson
+
+Editor: Henry Morley
+
+Release Date: May 31, 2020  [eBook #4678]
+[This file was first released February 26, 2002]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK JOHNSON'S LIVES OF THE POETS***
+
+
+Transcribed from the 1889 Cassell and Company edition by Les Bowler.
+
+                          [Picture: Book cover]
+
+                       CASSELL’S NATIONAL LIBRARY.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+
+
+
+
+                                  LIVES
+                                  OF THE
+                              ENGLISH POETS
+
+
+                     Gay  Thomson  Young  Gray  etc.
+
+                                    BY
+                          SAMUEL JOHNSON, LL.D.
+
+                      [Picture: Decorative graphic]
+
+                       CASSELL & COMPANY, LIMITED:
+                _LONDON_, _PARIS_, _NEW YORK & MELBOURNE_.
+                                  1889.
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION.
+
+
+THIS volume contains a record of twenty lives, of which only one—that of
+Edward Young—is treated at length.  It completes our edition of Johnson’s
+Lives of the Poets, from which a few only of the briefest and least
+important have been omitted.
+
+The eldest of the Poets here discussed were Samuel Garth, Charles
+Montague (Lord Halifax), and William King, who were born within the years
+1660–63.  Next in age were Addison’s friend Ambrose Philips, and Nicholas
+Rowe the dramatist, who was also the first editor of Shakespeare’s plays
+after the four folios had appeared.  Ambrose Philips and Rowe were born
+in 1671 and 1673, and Isaac Watts in 1674.  Thomas Parnell, born in 1679,
+would follow next, nearly of like age with Young, whose birth-year was
+1681.  Pope’s friend John Gay was of Pope’s age, born in 1688, two years
+later than Addison’s friend Thomas Tickell, who was born in 1686.  Next
+in the course of years came, in 1692, William Somerville, the author of
+“The Chace.”  John Dyer, who wrote “Grongar Hill,” and James Thomson, who
+wrote the “Seasons,” were both born in the year 1700.  They were two of
+three poets—Allan Ramsay, the third—who, almost at the same time, wrote
+verse instinct with a fresh sense of outward Nature which was hardly to
+be found in other writers of that day.  David Mallet, Thomson’s
+college-friend and friend of after-years—who shares with Thomson the
+curiosity of critics who would decide which of them wrote “Rule
+Britannia”—was of Thomson’s age.
+
+The other writers of whose lives Johnson here gives his note were men
+born in the beginning of the eighteenth century: Gilbert West, the
+translator of Pindar, in 1706; George Lyttelton, in 1709.  William
+Shenstone, whose sense of Nature, although true, was mixed with the
+conventions of his time, and who once asked a noble friend to open a
+waterfall in the garden upon which the poet spent his little patrimony,
+was born in 1714; Thomas Gray, in 1716; William Collins, in 1720; and
+Mark Akenside, in 1721.  In Collins, while he lived with loss of reason,
+Johnson, who had fears for himself, took pathetic interest.  Akenside
+could not interest him much.  Akenside made his mark when young with “The
+Pleasures of Imagination,” a good poem, according to the fashion of the
+time, when read with due consideration as a young man’s first venture for
+fame.  He spent much of the rest of his life in overloading it with
+valueless additions.  The writer who begins well should let well alone,
+and, instead of tinkering at bygone work, follow the course of his own
+ripening thought.  He should seek new ways of doing worthy service in the
+years of labour left to him.
+
+                                                                     H. M.
+
+
+
+
+KING.
+
+
+WILLIAM KING was born in London in 1663; the son of Ezekiel King, a
+gentleman.  He was allied to the family of Clarendon.
+
+From Westminster School, where he was a scholar on the foundation under
+the care of Dr. Busby, he was at eighteen elected to Christ Church in
+1681; where he is said to have prosecuted his studies with so much
+intenseness and activity, that before he was eight years’ standing he had
+read over, and made remarks upon, twenty-two thousand odd hundred books
+and manuscripts.  The books were certainly not very long, the manuscripts
+not very difficult, nor the remarks very large; for the calculator will
+find that he despatched seven a day for every day of his eight years;
+with a remnant that more than satisfies most other students.  He took his
+degree in the most expensive manner, as a _grand compounder_; whence it
+is inferred that he inherited a considerable fortune.
+
+In 1688, the same year in which he was made Master of Arts, he published
+a confutation of Varillas’s account of Wickliffe; and, engaging in the
+study of the civil law, became Doctor in 1692, and was admitted advocate
+at Doctors’ Commons.
+
+He had already made some translations from the French, and written some
+humorous and satirical pieces; when, in 1694, Molesworth published his
+“Account of Denmark,” in which he treats the Danes and their monarch with
+great contempt; and takes the opportunity of insinuating those wild
+principles by which he supposes liberty to be established, and by which
+his adversaries suspect that all subordination and government is
+endangered.
+
+This book offended Prince George; and the Danish Minister presented a
+memorial against it.  The principles of its author did not please Dr.
+King; and therefore he undertook to confute part, and laugh at the rest.
+The controversy is now forgotten: and books of this kind seldom live long
+when interest and resentment have ceased.
+
+In 1697 he mingled in the controversy between Boyle and Bentley; and was
+one of those who tried what wit could perform in opposition to learning,
+on a question which learning only could decide.
+
+In 1699 was published by him “A Journey to London,” after the method of
+Dr. Martin Lister, who had published “A Journey to Paris.”  And in 1700
+he satirised the Royal Society—at least, Sir Hans Sloane, their
+president—in two dialogues, intituled “The Transactioner.”
+
+Though he was a regular advocate in the courts of civil and canon law, he
+did not love his profession, nor, indeed, any kind of business which
+interrupted his voluptuary dreams or forced him to rouse from that
+indulgence in which only he could find delight.  His reputation as a
+civilian was yet maintained by his judgments in the Courts of Delegates,
+and raised very high by the address and knowledge which he discovered in
+1700, when he defended the Earl of Anglesea against his lady, afterwards
+Duchess of Buckinghamshire, who sued for a divorce and obtained it.
+
+The expense of his pleasures, and neglect of business, had now lessened
+his revenues; and he was willing to accept of a settlement in Ireland,
+where, about 1702, he was made Judge of the Admiralty, Commissioner of
+the Prizes, Keeper of the Records in Birmingham’s Tower, and
+Vicar-General to Dr. Marsh, the primate.
+
+But it is vain to put wealth within the reach of him who will not stretch
+out his hand to take it.  King soon found a friend, as idle and
+thoughtless as himself, in Upton, one of the judges, who had a pleasant
+house called Mountown, near Dublin, to which King frequently retired;
+delighting to neglect his interest, forget his cares, and desert his
+duty.
+
+Here he wrote “Mully of Mountown,” a poem; by which, though fanciful
+readers in the pride of sagacity have given it a poetical interpretation,
+was meant originally no more than it expressed, as it was dictated only
+by the author’s delight in the quiet of Mountown.
+
+In 1708, when Lord Wharton was sent to govern Ireland, King returned to
+London, with his poverty, his idleness, and his wit; and published some
+essays, called “Useful Transactions.”  His “Voyage to the Island of
+Cajamai” is particularly commended.  He then wrote the “Art of Love,” a
+poem remarkable, notwithstanding its title, for purity of sentiment; and
+in 1709 imitated Horace in an “Art of Cookery,” which he published with
+some letters to Dr. Lister.
+
+In 1710 he appeared as a lover of the Church, on the side of Sacheverell;
+and was supposed to have concurred at least in the projection of the
+_Examiner_.  His eyes were open to all the operations of Whiggism; and he
+bestowed some strictures upon Dr. Kennet’s adulatory sermon at the
+funeral of the Duke of Devonshire.
+
+“The History of the Heathen Gods,” a book composed for schools, was
+written by him in 1711.  The work is useful, but might have been produced
+without the powers of King.  The same year he published “Rufinus,” an
+historical essay; and a poem intended to dispose the nation to think as
+he thought of the Duke of Marlborough and his adherents.
+
+In 1711, competence, if not plenty, was again put into his power.  He
+was, without the trouble of attendance or the mortification of a request,
+made Gazetteer.  Swift, Freind, Prior, and other men of the same party,
+brought him the key of the Gazetteer’s office.  He was now again placed
+in a profitable employment, and again threw the benefit away.  An Act of
+Insolvency made his business at that time particularly troublesome; and
+he would not wait till hurry should be at an end, but impatiently
+resigned it, and returned to his wonted indigence and amusements.
+
+One of his amusements at Lambeth, where he resided, was to mortify Dr.
+Tenison, the archbishop, by a public festivity on the surrender of
+Dunkirk to Hill; an event with which Tenison’s political bigotry did not
+suffer him to be delighted.  King was resolved to counteract his
+sullenness, and at the expense of a few barrels of ale filled the
+neighbourhood with honest merriment.
+
+In the autumn of 1712 his health declined; he grew weaker by degrees, and
+died on Christmas Day.  Though his life had not been without
+irregularity, his principles were pure and orthodox, and his death was
+pious.
+
+After this relation it will be naturally supposed that his poems were
+rather the amusements of idleness than efforts of study; that he
+endeavoured rather to divert than astonish; that his thoughts seldom
+aspired to sublimity; and that, if his verse was easy and his images
+familiar, he attained what he desired.  His purpose is to be merry; but
+perhaps, to enjoy his mirth, it may be sometimes necessary to think well
+of his opinions.
+
+
+
+
+HALIFAX.
+
+
+THE life of the Earl of Halifax was properly that of an artful and active
+statesman, employed in balancing parties, contriving expedients, and
+combating opposition, and exposed to the vicissitudes of advancement and
+degradation; but in this collection poetical merit is the claim to
+attention; and the account which is here to be expected may properly be
+proportioned, not to his influence in the State, but to his rank among
+the writers of verse.
+
+Charles Montague was born April 16, 1661, at Horton, in Northamptonshire,
+the son of Mr. George Montague, a younger son of the Earl of Manchester.
+He was educated first in the country, and then removed to Westminster,
+where, in 1677, he was chosen a King’s Scholar, and recommended himself
+to Busby by his felicity in extemporary epigrams.  He contracted a very
+intimate friendship with Mr. Stepney; and in 1682, when Stepney was
+elected at Cambridge, the election of Montague being not to proceed till
+the year following, he was afraid lest by being placed at Oxford he might
+be separated from his companion, and therefore solicited to be removed to
+Cambridge, without waiting for the advantages of another year.
+
+It seemed indeed time to wish for a removal, for he was already a
+schoolboy of one-and-twenty.
+
+His relation, Dr. Montague, was then Master of the college in which he
+was placed a Fellow-Commoner, and took him under his particular care.
+Here he commenced an acquaintance with the great Newton, which continued
+through his life, and was at last attested by a legacy.
+
+In 1685 his verses on the death of King Charles made such an impression
+on the Earl of Dorset that he was invited to town, and introduced by that
+universal patron to the other wits.  In 1687 he joined with Prior in “The
+City Mouse and the Country Mouse,” a burlesque of Dryden’s “Hind and
+Panther.”  He signed the invitation to the Prince of Orange, and sat in
+the Convention.  He about the same time married the Countess Dowager of
+Manchester, and intended to have taken Orders; but, afterwards altering
+his purpose, he purchased for £1,500 the place of one of the clerks of
+the Council.
+
+After he had written his epistle on the victory of the Boyne, his patron
+Dorset introduced him to King William with this expression, “Sir, I have
+brought a _mouse_ to wait on your Majesty.”  To which the King is said to
+have replied, “You do well to put me in the way of making a _man_ of
+him;” and ordered him a pension of £500.  This story, however current,
+seems to have been made after the event.  The King’s answer implies a
+greater acquaintance with our proverbial and familiar diction than King
+William could possibly have attained.
+
+In 1691, being member of the House of Commons, he argued warmly in favour
+of a law to grant the assistance of counsel in trials for high treason;
+and in the midst of his speech falling into some confusion, was for a
+while silent; but, recovering himself, observed, “how reasonable it was
+to allow counsel to men called as criminals before a court of justice,
+when it appeared how much the presence of that assembly could disconcert
+one of their own body.”
+
+After this he rose fast into honours and employments, being made one of
+the Commissioners of the Treasury, and called to the Privy Council.  In
+1694 he became Chancellor of the Exchequer; and the next year engaged in
+the great attempt of the recoinage, which was in two years happily
+completed.  In 1696 he projected the _general fund_ and raised the credit
+of the Exchequer; and after inquiry concerning a grant of Irish Crown
+lands, it was determined by a vote of the Commons that Charles Montague,
+Esq., _had deserved his Majesty’s favour_.  In 1698, being advanced to
+the first Commission of the Treasury, he was appointed one of the regency
+in the King’s absence: the next year he was made Auditor of the
+Exchequer, and the year after created Baron Halifax.  He was, however,
+impeached by the Commons; but the Articles were dismissed by the Lords.
+
+At the accession of Queen Anne he was dismissed from the Council; and in
+the first Parliament of her reign was again attacked by the Commons, and
+again escaped by the protection of the Lords.  In 1704 he wrote an answer
+to Bromley’s speech against occasional conformity.  He headed the inquiry
+into the danger of the Church.  In 1706 he proposed and negotiated the
+Union with Scotland; and when the Elector of Hanover received the Garter,
+after the Act had passed for securing the Protestant Succession, he was
+appointed to carry the ensigns of the Order to the Electoral Court.  He
+sat as one of the judges of Sacheverell, but voted for a mild sentence.
+Being now no longer in favour, he contrived to obtain a writ for
+summoning the Electoral Prince to Parliament as Duke of Cambridge.
+
+At the Queen’s death he was appointed one of the regents; and at the
+accession of George I. was made Earl of Halifax, Knight of the Garter,
+and First Commissioner of the Treasury, with a grant to his nephew of the
+reversion of the Auditorship of the Exchequer.  More was not to be had,
+and this he kept but a little while; for on the 19th of May, 1715, he
+died of an inflammation of his lungs.
+
+Of him, who from a poet became a patron of poets, it will be readily
+believed that the works would not miss of celebration.  Addison began to
+praise him early, and was followed or accompanied by other poets; perhaps
+by almost all, except Swift and Pope, who forbore to flatter him in his
+life, and after his death spoke of him—Swift with slight censure, and
+Pope, in the character of Bufo, with acrimonious contempt.
+
+He was, as Pope says, “fed with dedications;” for Tickell affirms that no
+dedication was unrewarded.  To charge all unmerited praise with the guilt
+of flattery, and to suppose that the encomiast always knows and feels the
+falsehoods of his assertions, is surely to discover great ignorance of
+human nature and human life.  In determinations depending not on rules,
+but on experience and comparison, judgment is always in some degree
+subject to affection.  Very near to admiration is the wish to admire.
+
+Every man willingly gives value to the praise which he receives, and
+considers the sentence passed in his favour as the sentence of
+discernment.  We admire in a friend that understanding that selected us
+for confidence; we admire more, in a patron, that judgment which, instead
+of scattering bounty indiscriminately, directed it to us; and, if the
+patron be an author, those performances which gratitude forbids us to
+blame, affection will easily dispose us to exalt.
+
+To these prejudices, hardly culpable, interest adds a power always
+operating, though not always, because not willingly, perceived.  The
+modesty of praise wears gradually away; and perhaps the pride of
+patronage may be in time so increased that modest praise will no longer
+please.
+
+Many a blandishment was practised upon Halifax which he would never have
+known had he no other attractions than those of his poetry, of which a
+short time has withered the beauties.  It would now be esteemed no
+honour, by a contributor to the monthly bundles of verses, to be told
+that, in strains either familiar or solemn, he sings like Montague.
+
+
+
+
+PARNELL.
+
+
+THE life of Dr. Parnell is a task which I should very willingly decline,
+since it has been lately written by Goldsmith, a man of such variety of
+powers, and such felicity of performance, that he always seemed to do
+best that which he was doing; a man who had the art of being minute
+without tediousness, and general without confusion; whose language was
+copious without exuberance, exact without constraint, and easy without
+weakness.
+
+What such an author has told, who would tell again?  I have made an
+abstract from his larger narrative; and have this gratification from my
+attempt, that it gives me an opportunity of paying due tribute to the
+memory of Goldsmith.
+
+Thomas Parnell was the son of a Commonwealthsman of the same name, who,
+at the Restoration, left Congleton, in Cheshire, where the family had
+been established for several centuries, and, settling in Ireland,
+purchased an estate, which, with his lands in Cheshire, descended to the
+poet, who was born at Dublin in 1679; and, after the usual education at a
+grammar school, was, at the age of thirteen, admitted into the College
+where, in 1700, he became Master of Arts; and was the same year ordained
+a deacon, though under the canonical age, by a dispensation from the
+Bishop of Derry.
+
+About three years afterwards he was made a priest and in 1705 Dr. Ashe,
+the Bishop of Clogher, conferred upon him the archdeaconry of Clogher.
+About the same time he married Mrs. Anne Minchin, an amiable lady, by
+whom he had two sons, who died young, and a daughter, who long survived
+him.
+
+At the ejection of the Whigs, in the end of Queen Anne’s reign, Parnell
+was persuaded to change his party, not without much censure from those
+whom he forsook, and was received by the new Ministry as a valuable
+reinforcement.  When the Earl of Oxford was told that Dr. Parnell waited
+among the crowd in the outer room, he went, by the persuasion of Swift,
+with his Treasurer’s staff in his hand, to inquire for him, and to bid
+him welcome; and, as may be inferred from Pope’s dedication, admitted him
+as a favourite companion to his convivial hours, but, as it seems often
+to have happened in those times to the favourites of the great, without
+attention to his fortune, which, however, was in no great need of
+improvement.
+
+Parnell, who did not want ambition or vanity, was desirous to make
+himself conspicuous, and to show how worthy he was of high preferment.
+As he thought himself qualified to become a popular preacher, he
+displayed his elocution with great success in the pulpits of London; but
+the Queen’s death putting an end to his expectations, abated his
+diligence; and Pope represents him as falling from that time into
+intemperance of wine.  That in his latter life he was too much a lover of
+the bottle, is not denied; but I have heard it imputed to a cause more
+likely to obtain forgiveness from mankind, the untimely death of a
+darling son; or, as others tell, the loss of his wife, who died (1712) in
+the midst of his expectations.
+
+He was now to derive every future addition to his preferments from his
+personal interest with his private friends, and he was not long
+unregarded.  He was warmly recommended by Swift to Archbishop King, who
+gave him a prebend in 1713; and in May, 1716, presented him to the
+vicarage of Finglass, in the diocese of Dublin, worth £400 a year.  Such
+notice from such a man inclines me to believe that the vice of which he
+has been accused was not gross or not notorious.
+
+But his prosperity did not last long.  His end, whatever was its cause,
+was now approaching.  He enjoyed his preferment little more than a year;
+for in July, 1717, in his thirty-eighth year, he died at Chester on his
+way to Ireland.
+
+He seems to have been one of those poets who take delight in writing.  He
+contributed to the papers of that time, and probably published more than
+he owned.  He left many compositions behind him, of which Pope selected
+those which he thought best, and dedicated them to the Earl of Oxford.
+Of these Goldsmith has given an opinion, and his criticism it is seldom
+safe to contradict.  He bestows just praise upon “The Rise of Woman,”
+“The Fairy Tale,” and “The Pervigilium Veneris;” but has very properly
+remarked that in “The Battle of Mice and Frogs” the Greek names have not
+in English their original effect.  He tells us that “The Bookworm” is
+borrowed from Beza; but he should have added with modern applications:
+and when he discovers that “Gay Bacchus” is translated from Augurellus,
+he ought to have remarked that the latter part is purely Parnell’s.
+Another poem, “When Spring Comes On,” is, he says, taken from the French.
+I would add that the description of “Barrenness,” in his verses to Pope,
+was borrowed from Secundus; but lately searching for the passage which I
+had formerly read, I could not find it.  “The Night Piece on Death” is
+indirectly preferred by Goldsmith to Gray’s “Churchyard;” but, in my
+opinion, Gray has the advantage in dignity, variety, and originality of
+sentiment.  He observes that the story of “The Hermit” is in More’s
+“Dialogues” and Howell’s “Letters,” and supposes it to have been
+originally Arabian.
+
+Goldsmith has not taken any notice of “The Elegy to the Old Beauty,”
+which is perhaps the meanest; nor of “The Allegory on Man,” the happiest
+of Parnell’s performances.  The hint of “The Hymn to Contentment” I
+suspect to have been borrowed from Cleveland.
+
+The general character of Parnell is not great extent of comprehension or
+fertility of mind.  Of the little that appears, still less is his own.
+His praise must be derived from the easy sweetness of his diction: in his
+verses there is more happiness than pains; he is sprightly without
+effort, and always delights, though he never ravishes; everything is
+proper, yet everything seems casual.  If there is some appearance of
+elaboration in “The Hermit,” the narrative, as it is less airy, is less
+pleasing.  Of his other compositions it is impossible to say whether they
+are the productions of nature, so excellent as not to want the help of
+art, or of art so refined as to resemble nature.
+
+This criticism relates only to the pieces published by Pope.  Of the
+large appendages which I find in the last edition, I can only say that I
+know not whence they came, nor have ever inquired whither they are going.
+They stand upon the faith of the compilers.
+
+
+
+
+GARTH.
+
+
+SAMUEL GARTH was of a good family in Yorkshire, and from some school in
+his own county became a student at Peter House, in Cambridge, where he
+resided till he became Doctor of Physic on July the 7th, 1691.  He was
+examined before the College at London on March the 12th, 1691–2, and
+admitted Fellow June 26th, 1693.  He was soon so much distinguished by
+his conversation and accomplishments as to obtain very extensive
+practice; and, if a pamphlet of those times may be credited, had the
+favour and confidence of one party, as Radcliffe had of the other.  He is
+always mentioned as a man of benevolence; and it is just to suppose that
+his desire of helping the helpless disposed him to so much zeal for “The
+Dispensary;” an undertaking of which some account, however short, is
+proper to be given.
+
+Whether what Temple says be true, that physicians have had more learning
+than the other faculties, I will not stay to inquire; but I believe every
+man has found in physicians great liberality and dignity of sentiment,
+very prompt effusion of beneficence, and willingness to exert a lucrative
+art where there is no hope of lucre.  Agreeably to this character, the
+College of Physicians, in July, 1687, published an edict, requiring all
+the Fellows, Candidates, and Licentiates to give gratuitous advice to the
+neighbouring poor.  This edict was sent to the Court of Aldermen; and, a
+question being made to whom the appellation of the _poor_ should be
+extended, the College answered that it should be sufficient to bring a
+testimonial from the clergyman officiating in the parish where the
+patient resided.
+
+After a year’s experience the physicians found their charity frustrated
+by some malignant opposition, and made to a great degree vain by the high
+price of physic; they therefore voted, in August, 1688, that the
+laboratory of the College should be accommodated to the preparation of
+medicines, and another room prepared for their reception; and that the
+contributors to the expense should manage the charity.
+
+It was now expected that the apothecaries would have undertaken the care
+of providing medicines; but they took another course.  Thinking the whole
+design pernicious to their interest, they endeavoured to raise a faction
+against it in the College, and found some physicians mean enough to
+solicit their patronage by betraying to them the counsels of the College.
+The greater part, however, enforced by a new edict, in 1694, the former
+order of 1687, and sent it to the Mayor and Aldermen, who appointed a
+committee to treat with the College and settle the mode of administering
+the charity.
+
+It was desired by the aldermen that the testimonials of churchwardens and
+overseers should be admitted; and that all hired servants, and all
+apprentices to handicraftsmen, should be considered as _poor_.  This
+likewise was granted by the College.
+
+It was then considered who should distribute the medicines, and who
+should settle their prices.  The physicians procured some apothecaries to
+undertake the dispensation, and offered that the warden and company of
+the apothecaries should adjust the price.  This offer was rejected; and
+the apothecaries who had engaged to assist the charity were considered as
+traitors to the company, threatened with the imposition of troublesome
+offices, and deterred from the performance of their engagements.  The
+apothecaries ventured upon public opposition, and presented a kind of
+remonstrance against the design to the committee of the City, which the
+physicians condescended to confute: and at last the traders seem to have
+prevailed among the sons of trade; for the proposal of the College having
+been considered, a paper of approbation was drawn up, but postponed and
+forgotten.
+
+The physicians still persisted; and in 1696 a subscription was raised by
+themselves according to an agreement prefixed to “The Dispensary.”  The
+poor were, for a time, supplied with medicines; for how long a time I
+know not.  The medicinal charity, like others, began with ardour, but
+soon remitted, and at last died gradually away.
+
+About the time of the subscription begins the action of “The Dispensary.”
+The poem, as its subject was present and popular, co-operated with
+passions and prejudices then prevalent, and, with such auxiliaries to its
+intrinsic merit, was universally and liberally applauded.  It was on the
+side of charity against the intrigues of interest; and of regular
+learning against licentious usurpation of medical authority, and was
+therefore naturally favoured by those who read and can judge of poetry.
+
+In 1697 Garth spoke that which is now called “The Harveian Oration;”
+which the authors of “The Biographia” mention with more praise than the
+passage quoted in their notes will fully justify.  Garth, speaking of the
+mischiefs done by quacks, has these expressions: “Non tamen telis
+vulnerat ista agyrtarum colluvies, sed theriaca quâdam magis perniciosâ,
+non pyrio, sed pulvere nescio quo exotico certat, non globulis plumbeis,
+sed pilulis æque lethalibus interficit.”  This was certainly thought fine
+by the author, and is still admired by his biographer.  In October, 1702,
+he became one of the censors of the College.
+
+Garth, being an active and zealous Whig, was a member of the Kit-Cat
+Club, and, by consequence, familiarly known to all the great men of that
+denomination.  In 1710, when the government fell into other hands, he
+writ to Lord Godolphin, on his dismission, a short poem, which was
+criticised in the _Examiner_, and so successfully either defended or
+excused by Mr. Addison that, for the sake of the vindication, it ought to
+be preserved.
+
+At the accession of the present family his merits were acknowledged and
+rewarded.  He was knighted with the sword of his hero, Marlborough; and
+was made Physician-in-Ordinary to the King, and Physician-General to the
+army.  He then undertook an edition of Ovid’s “Metamorphoses,” translated
+by several hands; which he recommended by a preface, written with more
+ostentation than ability; his notions are half-formed, and his materials
+immethodically confused.  This was his last work.  He died January 18th,
+1717–18, and was buried at Harrow-on-the-Hill.
+
+His personal character seems to have been social and liberal.  He
+communicated himself through a very wide extent of acquaintance; and
+though firm in a party, at a time when firmness included virulence, yet
+he imparted his kindness to those who were not supposed to favour his
+principles.  He was an early encourager of Pope, and was at once the
+friend of Addison and of Granville.  He is accused of voluptuousness and
+irreligion; and Pope, who says that “if ever there was a good Christian,
+without knowing himself to be so, it was Dr. Garth,” seems not able to
+deny what he is angry to hear and loth to confess.
+
+Pope afterwards declared himself convinced that Garth died in the
+communion of the Church of Rome, having been privately reconciled.  It is
+observed by Lowth that there is less distance than is thought between
+scepticism and Popery; and that a mind wearied with perpetual doubt,
+willingly seeks repose in the bosom of an infallible Church.
+
+His poetry has been praised at least equally to its merit.  In “The
+Dispensary” there is a strain of smooth and free versification; but few
+lines are eminently elegant.  No passages fall below mediocrity, and few
+rise much above it.  The plan seems formed without just proportion to the
+subject; the means and end have no necessary connection.  Resnel, in his
+preface to Pope’s Essay, remarks that Garth exhibits no discrimination of
+characters; and that what any one says might, with equal propriety, have
+been said by another.  The general design is, perhaps, open to criticism;
+but the composition can seldom be charged with inaccuracy or negligence.
+The author never slumbers in self-indulgence; his full vigour is always
+exerted; scarcely a line is left unfinished; nor is it easy to find an
+expression used by constraint, or a thought imperfectly expressed.  It
+was remarked by Pope, that “The Dispensary” had been corrected in every
+edition, and that every change was an improvement.  It appears, however,
+to want something of poetical ardour, and something of general
+delectation; and therefore, since it has been no longer supported by
+accidental and intrinsic popularity, it has been scarcely able to support
+itself.
+
+
+
+
+ROWE.
+
+
+NICHOLAS ROWE was born at Little Beckford, in Bedfordshire, in 1673.  His
+family had long possessed a considerable estate, with a good house, at
+Lambertoun in Devonshire.  The ancestor from whom he descended in a
+direct line received the arms borne by his descendants for his bravery in
+the Holy War.  His father, John Rowe, who was the first that quitted his
+paternal acres to practise any part of profit, professed the law, and
+published Benlow’s and Dallison’s Reports in the reign of James the
+Second, when, in opposition to the notions then diligently propagated of
+dispensing power, he ventured to remark how low his authors rated the
+prerogative.  He was made a serjeant, and died April 30, 1692.  He was
+buried in the Temple church.
+
+Nicholas was first sent to a private school at Highgate; and, being
+afterwards removed to Westminster, was at twelve years chosen one of the
+King’s Scholars.  His master was Busby, who suffered none of his scholars
+to let their powers lie useless; and his exercises in several languages
+are said to have been written with uncommon degrees of excellence, and
+yet to have cost him very little labour.  At sixteen he had, in his
+father’s opinion, made advances in learning sufficient to qualify him for
+the study of law, and was entered a student of the Middle Temple, where
+for some time he read statutes and reports with proficiency proportionate
+to the force of his mind, which was already such that he endeavoured to
+comprehend law, not as a series of precedents, or collection of positive
+precepts, but as a system of rational government and impartial justice.
+When he was nineteen, he was, by the death of his father, left more to
+his own direction, and probably from that time suffered law gradually to
+give way to poetry.  At twenty-five he produced the _Ambitious
+Step-Mother_, which was received with so much favour that he devoted
+himself from that time wholly to elegant literature.
+
+His next tragedy (1702) was Tamerlane, in which, under the name of
+Tamerlane, he intended to characterise King William, and Louis the
+Fourteenth under Bajazet.  The virtues of Tamerlane seem to have been
+arbitrarily assigned him by his poet, for I know not that history gives
+any other qualities than those which make a conqueror.  The fashion,
+however, of the time was to accumulate upon Louis all that can raise
+horror and detestation; and whatever good was withheld from him, that it
+might not be thrown away was bestowed upon King William.  This was the
+tragedy which Rowe valued most, and that which probably, by the help of
+political auxiliaries, excited most applause; but occasional poetry must
+often content itself with occasional praise.  Tamerlane has for a long
+time been acted only once a year, on the night when King William landed.
+Our quarrel with Louis has been long over; and it now gratifies neither
+zeal nor malice to see him painted with aggravated features, like a
+Saracen upon a sign.
+
+_The Fair Penitent_, his next production (1703), is one of the most
+pleasing tragedies on the stage, where it still keeps its turns of
+appearing, and probably will long keep them, for there is scarcely any
+work of any poet at once so interesting by the fable, and so delightful
+by the language.  The story is domestic, and therefore easily received by
+the imagination, and assimilated to common life; the diction is
+exquisitely harmonious, and soft or sprightly as occasion requires.
+
+The character of Lothario seems to have been expanded by Richardson into
+Lovelace; but he has excelled his original in the moral effect of the
+fiction.  Lothario, with gaiety which cannot be hated, and bravery which
+cannot be despised, retains too much of the spectator’s kindness.  It was
+in the power of Richardson alone to teach us at once esteem and
+detestation, to make virtuous resentment overpower all the benevolence
+which wit, elegance, and courage, naturally excite; and to lose at last
+the hero in the villain.  The fifth act is not equal to the former; the
+events of the drama are exhausted, and little remains but to talk of what
+is past.  It has been observed that the title of the play does not
+sufficiently correspond with the behaviour of Calista, who at last shows
+no evident signs of repentance, but may be reasonably suspected of
+feeling pain from detection rather than from guilt, and expresses more
+shame than sorrow, and more rage than shame.
+
+His next (1706) was _Ulysses_; which, with the common fate of
+mythological stories, is now generally neglected.  We have been too early
+acquainted with the poetical heroes to expect any pleasure from their
+revival; to show them as they have already been shown, is to disgust by
+repetition; to give them new qualities, or new adventures, is to offend
+by violating received notions.
+
+“_The Royal Convert_” (1708) seems to have a better claim to longevity.
+The fable is drawn from an obscure and barbarous age, to which fictions
+are more easily and properly adapted; for when objects are imperfectly
+seen, they easily take forms from imagination.  The scene lies among our
+ancestors in our own country, and therefore very easily catches
+attention.  Rodogune is a personage truly tragical, of high spirit, and
+violent passions, great with tempestuous dignity, and wicked with a soul
+that would have been heroic if it had been virtuous.  The motto seems to
+tell that this play was not successful.
+
+Rowe does not always remember what his characters require.  In
+_Tamerlane_ there is some ridiculous mention of the God of Love; and
+Rodogune, a savage Saxon, talks of Venus and the eagle that bears the
+thunder of Jupiter.
+
+This play discovers its own date, by a prediction of the Union, in
+imitation of Cranmer’s prophetic promises to Henry VIII.  The anticipated
+blessings of union are not very naturally introduced, nor very happily
+expressed.  He once (1706) tried to change his hand.  He ventured on a
+comedy, and produced the _Biter_, with which, though it was unfavourably
+treated by the audience, he was himself delighted; for he is said to have
+sat in the house laughing with great vehemence, whenever he had, in his
+own opinion, produced a jest.  But finding that he and the public had no
+sympathy of mirth, he tried at lighter scenes no more.
+
+After the _Royal Convert_ (1714) appeared _Jane Shore_, written, as its
+author professes, _in imitation of Shakespeare’s style_.  In what he
+thought himself an imitator of Shakespeare it is not easy to conceive.
+The numbers, the diction, the sentiments, and the conduct, everything in
+which imitation can consist, are remote in the utmost degree from the
+manner of Shakespeare, whose dramas it resembles only as it is an English
+story, and as some of the persons have their names in history.  This
+play, consisting chiefly of domestic scenes and private distress, lays
+hold upon the heart.  The wife is forgiven because she repents, and the
+husband is honoured because he forgives.  This, therefore, is one of
+those pieces which we still welcome on the stage.
+
+His last tragedy (1715) was _Lady Jane Grey_.  This subject had been
+chosen by Mr. Smith, whose papers were put into Rowe’s hands such as he
+describes them in his preface.  This play has likewise sunk into
+oblivion.  From this time he gave nothing more to the stage.
+
+Being by a competent fortune exempted from any necessity of combating his
+inclination, he never wrote in distress, and therefore does not appear to
+have ever written in haste.  His works were finished to his own
+approbation, and bear few marks of negligence or hurry.  It is remarkable
+that his prologues and epilogues are all his own, though he sometimes
+supplied others; he afforded help, but did not solicit it.
+
+As his studies necessarily made him acquainted with Shakespeare, and
+acquaintance produced veneration, he undertook (1709) an edition of his
+works, from which he neither received much praise, nor seems to have
+expected it; yet I believe those who compare it with former copies will
+find that he has done more than he promised; and that, without the pomp
+of notes or boasts of criticism, many passages are happily restored.  He
+prefixed a life of the author, such as tradition, then almost expiring,
+could supply, and a preface, which cannot be said to discover much
+profundity or penetration.  He at least contributed to the popularity of
+his author.  He was willing enough to improve his fortune by other arts
+than poetry.  He was under-secretary for three years when the Duke of
+Queensberry was Secretary of State, and afterwards applied to the Earl of
+Oxford for some public employment.  Oxford enjoined him to study Spanish;
+and when, some time afterwards, he came again, and said that he had
+mastered it, dismissed him with this congratulation, “Then, sir, I envy
+you the pleasure of reading ‘Don Quixote’ in the original.”
+
+This story is sufficiently attested; but why Oxford, who desired to be
+thought a favourer of literature, should thus insult a man of
+acknowledged merit, or how Rowe, who was so keen a Whig that he did not
+willingly converse with men of the opposite party, could ask preferment
+from Oxford, it is not now possible to discover.  Pope, who told the
+story, did not say on what occasion the advice was given; and, though he
+owned Rowe’s disappointment, doubted whether any injury was intended him,
+but thought it rather Lord Oxford’s _odd way_.
+
+It is likely that he lived on discontented through the rest of Queen
+Anne’s reign; but the time came at last when he found kinder friends.  At
+the accession of King George he was made Poet-Laureate—I am afraid, by
+the ejection of poor Nahum Tate, who (1716) died in the Mint, where he
+was forced to seek shelter by extreme poverty.  He was made likewise one
+of the land-surveyors of the customs of the Port of London.  The Prince
+of Wales chose him Clerk of his Council; and the Lord Chancellor Parker,
+as soon as he received the seals, appointed him, unasked, Secretary of
+the Presentations.  Such an accumulation of employments undoubtedly
+produced a very considerable revenue.
+
+Having already translated some parts of Lucan’s “Pharsalia,” which had
+been published in the _Miscellanies_, and doubtless received many
+praises, he undertook a version of the whole work, which he lived to
+finish, but not to publish.  It seems to have been printed under the care
+of Dr. Welwood, who prefixed the author’s life, in which is contained the
+following character:—
+
+    “As to his person, it was graceful and well made; his face regular,
+    and of a manly beauty.  As his soul was well lodged, so its rational
+    and animal faculties excelled in a high degree.  He had a quick and
+    fruitful invention, a deep penetration, and a large compass of
+    thought, with singular dexterity and easiness in making his thoughts
+    to be understood.  He was master of most parts of polite learning,
+    especially the classical authors, both Greek and Latin; understood
+    the French, Italian, and Spanish languages, and spoke the first
+    fluently, and the other two tolerably well.  He had likewise read
+    most of the Greek and Roman histories in their original languages,
+    and most that are wrote in English, French, Italian, and Spanish.  He
+    had a good taste in philosophy; and, having a firm impression of
+    religion upon his mind, he took great delight in divinity and
+    ecclesiastical history, in both of which he made great advances in
+    the times he retired into the country, which was frequent.  He
+    expressed on all occasions his full persuasion of the truth of
+    revealed religion; and, being a sincere member of the Established
+    Church himself, he pitied, but condemned not, those that dissented
+    from it.  He abhorred the principles of persecuting men upon the
+    account of their opinions in religion; and, being strict in his own,
+    he took it not upon him to censure those of another persuasion.  His
+    conversation was pleasant, witty, and learned, without the least
+    tincture of affectation or pedantry; and his inimitable manner of
+    diverting and enlivening the company made it impossible for any one
+    to be out of humour when he was in it.  Envy and detraction seemed to
+    be entirely foreign to his constitution; and whatever provocations he
+    met with at any time, he passed them over without the least thought
+    of resentment or revenge.  As Homer had a Zoilus, so Mr. Rowe had
+    sometimes his; for there were not wanting malevolent people, and
+    pretenders to poetry too, that would now and then bark at his best
+    performances; but he was so conscious of his own genius, and had so
+    much good-nature, as to forgive them, nor could he ever be tempted to
+    return them an answer.
+
+    “The love of learning and poetry made him not the less fit for
+    business, and nobody applied himself closer to it when it required
+    his attendance.  The late Duke of Queensberry, when he was Secretary
+    of State, made him his secretary for public affairs; and when that
+    truly great man came to know him well, he was never so pleased as
+    when Mr. Rowe was in his company.  After the duke’s death, all
+    avenues were stopped to his preferment; and during the rest of that
+    reign he passed his time with the Muses and his books, and sometimes
+    the conversation of his friends.  When he had just got to be easy in
+    his fortune, and was in a fair way to make it better, death swept him
+    away, and in him deprived the world of one of the best men, as well
+    as one of the best geniuses, of the age.  He died like a Christian
+    and a philosopher, in charity with all mankind, and with an absolute
+    resignation to the will of God.  He kept up his good-humour to the
+    last; and took leave of his wife and friends, immediately before his
+    last agony, with the same tranquillity of mind, and the same
+    indifference for life, as though he had been upon taking but a short
+    journey.  He was twice married—first to a daughter of Mr. Parsons,
+    one of the auditors of the revenue; and afterwards to a daughter of
+    Mr. Devenish, of a good family in Dorsetshire.  By the first he had a
+    son; and by the second a daughter, married afterwards to Mr. Fane.
+    He died 6th December, 1718, in the forty-fifth year of his age, and
+    was buried on the 19th of the same month in Westminster Abbey, in the
+    aisle where many of our English poets are interred, over against
+    Chaucer, his body being attended by a select number of his friends,
+    and the dean and choir officiating at the funeral.”
+
+To this character, which is apparently given with the fondness of a
+friend, may be added the testimony of Pope, who says, in a letter to
+Blount, “Mr. Rowe accompanied me, and passed a week in the Forest.  I
+need not tell you how much a man of his turn entertained me; but I must
+acquaint you, there is a vivacity and gaiety of disposition, almost
+peculiar to him, which make it impossible to part from him without that
+uneasiness which generally succeeds all our pleasure.”
+
+Pope has left behind him another mention of his companion less
+advantageous, which is thus reported by Dr. Warburton:—
+
+    “Rowe, in Mr. Pope’s opinion, maintained a decent character, but had
+    no heart.  Mr. Addison was justly offended with some behaviour which
+    arose from that want, and estranged himself from him, which Rowe felt
+    very severely.  Mr. Pope, their common friend, knowing this, took an
+    opportunity, at some juncture of Mr. Addison’s advancement, to tell
+    him how poor Rowe was grieved at his displeasure, and what
+    satisfaction he expressed at Mr. Addison’s good fortune, which he
+    expressed so naturally that he (Mr. Pope) could not but think him
+    sincere.  Mr. Addison replied, ‘I do not suspect that he feigned; but
+    the levity of his heart is such, that he is struck with any new
+    adventure, and it would affect him just in the same manner if he
+    heard I was going to be hanged.’  Mr. Pope said he could not deny but
+    Mr. Addison understood Rowe well.”
+
+This censure time has not left us the power of confirming or refuting;
+but observation daily shows that much stress is not to be laid on
+hyperbolical accusations and pointed sentences, which even he that utters
+them desires to be applauded rather than credited.  Addison can hardly be
+supposed to have meant all that he said.  Few characters can bear the
+microscopic scrutiny of wit quickened by anger; and, perhaps, the best
+advice to authors would be, that they should keep out of the way of one
+another.
+
+Rowe is chiefly to be considered as a tragic writer and a translator.  In
+his attempt at comedy he failed so ignominiously that his _Biter_ is not
+inserted in his works: and his occasional poems and short compositions
+are rarely worthy either praise or censure, for they seem the casual
+sports of a mind seeking rather to amuse its leisure than to exercise its
+powers.  In the construction of his dramas there is not much art; he is
+not a nice observer of the unities.  He extends time and varies places as
+his convenience requires.  To vary the place is not, in my opinion, any
+violation of nature, if the change be made between the acts, for it is no
+less easy for the spectator to suppose himself at Athens in the second
+act, than at Thebes in the first; but to change the scene, as is done by
+Rowe, in the middle of an act, is to add more acts to the play, since an
+act is so much of the business as is transacted without interruption.
+Rowe, by this licence, easily extricates himself from difficulties; as in
+Jane Grey, when we have been terrified with all the dreadful pomp of
+public execution; and are wondering how the heroine or the poet will
+proceed, no sooner has Jane pronounced some prophetic rhymes than—pass
+and be gone—the scene closes, and Pembroke and Gardiner are turned out
+upon the stage.
+
+I know not that there can be found in his plays any deep search into
+nature, any accurate discriminations of kindred qualities, or nice
+display of passion in its progress; all is general and undefined.  Nor
+does he much interest or affect the auditor, except in Jane Shore, who is
+always seen and heard with pity.  Alicia is a character of empty noise,
+with no resemblance to real sorrow or to natural madness.
+
+Whence, then, has Rowe his reputation?  From the reasonableness and
+propriety of some of his scenes, from the elegance of his diction, and
+the suavity of his verse.  He seldom moves either pity or terror, but he
+often elevates the sentiments; he seldom pierces the breast, but he
+always delights the ear, and often improves the understanding.  His
+translation of the “Golden Verses,” and of the first book of Quillet’s
+poem, have nothing in them remarkable.  The “Golden Verses” are tedious.
+
+The version of Lucan is one of the greatest productions of English
+poetry, for there is perhaps none that so completely exhibits the genius
+and spirit of the original.  Lucan is distinguished by a kind of
+dictatorial or philosophic dignity, rather, as Quintilian observes,
+declamatory than poetical; full of ambitious morality and pointed
+sentences, comprised in vigorous and animated lines.  This character Rowe
+has very diligently and successfully preserved.  His versification, which
+is such as his contemporaries practised, without any attempt at
+innovation or improvement, seldom wants either melody or force.  His
+author’s sense is sometimes a little diluted by additional infusions, and
+sometimes weakened by too much expansion.  But such faults are to be
+expected in all translations, from the constraint of measures and
+dissimilitude of languages.  The “Pharsalia” of Rowe deserves more notice
+than it obtains, and as it is more read will be more esteemed.
+
+
+
+
+GAY.
+
+
+JOHN GAY, descended from an old family that had been long in possession
+of the manor of Goldworthy, in Devonshire, was born in 1688, at or near
+Barnstaple, where he was educated by Mr. Luck, who taught the school of
+that town with good reputation, and, a little before he retired from it,
+published a volume of Latin and English verses.  Under such a master he
+was likely to form a taste for poetry.  Being born without prospect of
+hereditary riches, he was sent to London in his youth, and placed
+apprentice with a silk mercer.  How long he continued behind the counter,
+or with what degree of softness and dexterity he received and
+accommodated the ladies, as he probably took no delight in telling it, is
+not known.  The report is that he was soon weary of either the restraint
+or servility of his occupation, and easily persuaded his master to
+discharge him.
+
+The Duchess of Monmouth, remarkable for inflexible perseverance in her
+demand to be treated as a princess, in 1712 took Gay into her service as
+secretary: by quitting a shop for such service he might gain leisure, but
+he certainly advanced little in the boast of independence.  Of his
+leisure he made so good use that he published next year a poem on “Rural
+Sports,” and inscribed it to Mr. Pope, who was then rising fast into
+reputation.  Pope was pleased with the honour, and when he became
+acquainted with Gay, found such attractions in his manners and
+conversation that he seems to have received him into his inmost
+confidence; and a friendship was formed between them which lasted to
+their separation by death, without any known abatement on either part.
+Gay was the general favourite of the whole association of wits; but they
+regarded him as a playfellow rather than a partner, and treated him with
+more fondness than respect.
+
+Next year he published “The Shepherd’s Week,” six English pastorals, in
+which the images are drawn from real life, such as it appears among the
+rustics in parts of England remote from London.  Steele, in some papers
+of the _Guardian_, had praised Ambrose Philips as the pastoral writer
+that yielded only to Theocritus, Virgil, and Spenser.  Pope, who had also
+published pastorals, not pleased to be overlooked, drew up a comparison
+of his own compositions with those of Philips, in which he covertly gave
+himself the preference, while he seemed to disown it.  Not content with
+this, he is supposed to have incited Gay to write “The Shepherd’s Week,”
+to show that, if it be necessary to copy nature with minuteness, rural
+life must be exhibited such as grossness and ignorance have made it.  So
+far the plan was reasonable; but the pastorals are introduced by a
+_Proeme_, written with such imitation as they could attain of obsolete
+language, and, by consequence, in a style that was never spoken nor
+written in any language or in any place.  But the effect of reality and
+truth became conspicuous, even when the intention was to show them
+grovelling and degraded.  These pastorals became popular, and were read
+with delight as just representations of rural manners and occupations by
+those who had no interest in the rivalry of the poets, nor knowledge of
+the critical dispute.
+
+In 1713 he brought a comedy called _The Wife of Bath_ upon the stage, but
+it received no applause; he printed it, however, and seventeen years
+after, having altered it and, as he thought, adapted it more to the
+public taste, he offered it again to the town; but, though he was flushed
+with the success of the _Beggar’s Opera_, had the mortification to see it
+again rejected.
+
+In the last year of Queen Anne’s life Gay was made secretary to the Earl
+of Clarendon, Ambassador to the Court of Hanover.  This was a station
+that naturally gave him hopes of kindness from every party; but the
+Queen’s death put an end to her favours, and he had dedicated his
+“Shepherd’s Week” to Bolingbroke, which Swift considered as the crime
+that obstructed all kindness from the House of Hanover.  He did not,
+however, omit to improve the right which his office had given him to the
+notice of the Royal Family.  On the arrival of the Princess of Wales he
+wrote a poem, and obtained so much favour that both the Prince and the
+Princess went to see his _What D’ye Call It_, a kind of mock tragedy, in
+which the images were comic and the action grave; so that, as Pope
+relates, Mr. Cromwell, who could not hear what was said, was at a loss
+how to reconcile the laughter of the audience with the solemnity of the
+scene.
+
+Of this performance the value certainly is but little; but it was one of
+the lucky trifles that give pleasure by novelty, and was so much favoured
+by the audience that envy appeared against it in the form of criticism;
+and Griffin, a player, in conjunction with Mr. Theobald, a man afterwards
+more remarkable, produced a pamphlet called “The Key to the What D’ye
+Call It,” “which,” says Gay, “calls me a blockhead, and Mr. Pope a
+knave.”
+
+But fortune has always been inconstant.  Not long afterwards (1717) he
+endeavoured to entertain the town with _Three Hours after Marriage_, a
+comedy written, as there is sufficient reason for believing, by the joint
+assistance of Pope and Arbuthnot.  One purpose of it was to bring into
+contempt Dr. Woodward, the fossilist, a man not really or justly
+contemptible.  It had the fate which such outrages deserve.  The scene in
+which Woodward was directly and apparently ridiculed, by the introduction
+of a mummy and a crocodile, disgusted the audience, and the performance
+was driven off the stage with general condemnation.
+
+Gay is represented as a man easily incited to hope, and deeply depressed
+when his hopes were disappointed.  This is not the character of a hero,
+but it may naturally imply something more generally welcome, a soft and
+civil companion.  Whoever is apt to hope good from others is diligent to
+please them; but he that believes his powers strong enough to force their
+own way, commonly tries only to please himself.  He had been simple
+enough to imagine that those who laughed at the _What D’ye Call It_ would
+raise the fortune of its author, and, finding nothing done, sunk into
+dejection.  His friends endeavoured to divert him.  The Earl of
+Burlington sent him (1716) into Devonshire, the year after Mr. Pulteney
+took him to Aix, and in the following year Lord Harcourt invited him to
+his seat, where, during his visit, two rural lovers were killed with
+lightning, as is particularly told in Pope’s “Letters.”
+
+Being now generally known, he published (1720) his poems by subscription,
+with such success that he raised a thousand pounds, and called his
+friends to a consultation what use might be best made of it.  Lewis, the
+steward of Lord Oxford, advised him to intrust it to the Funds, and live
+upon the interest; Arbuthnot bade him to intrust it to Providence, and
+live upon the principal; Pope directed him, and was seconded by Swift, to
+purchase an annuity.
+
+Gay in that disastrous year had a present from young Craggs of some South
+Sea Stock, and once supposed himself to be master of twenty thousand
+pounds.  His friends persuaded him to sell his share; but he dreamed of
+dignity and splendour, and could not bear to obstruct his own fortune.
+He was then importuned to sell as much as would purchase a hundred a year
+for life, “which,” says Penton, “will make you sure of a clean shirt and
+a shoulder of mutton every day.”  This counsel was rejected; the profit
+and principal were lost, and Gay sunk under the calamity so low that his
+life became in danger.  By the care of his friends, among whom Pope
+appears to have shown particular tenderness, his health was restored;
+and, returning to his studies, he wrote a tragedy called _The Captives_,
+which he was invited to read before the Princess of Wales.  When the hour
+came, he saw the Princess and her ladies all in expectation, and,
+advancing with reverence too great for any other attention, stumbled at a
+stool, and, falling forwards, threw down a weighty Japan screen.  The
+Princess started, the ladies screamed, and poor Gay, after all the
+disturbance, was still to read his play.
+
+The fate of _The Captives_, which was acted at Drury Lane in 1723–4, I
+know not; but he now thought himself in favour, and undertook (1726) to
+write a volume of “Fables” for the improvement of the young Duke of
+Cumberland.  For this he is said to have been promised a reward, which he
+had doubtless magnified with all the wild expectations of indigence and
+vanity.
+
+Next year the Prince and Princess became King and Queen, and Gay was to
+be great and happy; but on the settlement of the household, he found
+himself appointed gentleman usher to the Princess Louisa.  By this offer
+he thought himself insulted, and sent a message to the Queen that he was
+too old for the place.  There seem to have been many machinations
+employed afterwards in his favour, and diligent court was paid to Mrs.
+Howard, afterwards Countess of Suffolk, who was much beloved by the King
+and Queen, to engage her interest for his promotion; but solicitation,
+verses, and flatteries were thrown away; the lady heard them, and did
+nothing.  All the pain which he suffered from neglect, or, as he perhaps
+termed it, the ingratitude of the Court, may be supposed to have been
+driven away by the unexampled success of the _Beggar’s Opera_.  This
+play, written in ridicule of the musical Italian drama, was first offered
+to Cibber and his brethren at Drury Lane and rejected: it being then
+carried to Rich, had the effect, as was ludicrously said, of making Gay
+_rich_ and Rich _gay_.  Of this lucky piece, as the reader cannot but
+wish to know the original and progress, I have inserted the relation
+which Spence has given in Pope’s words:—
+
+    “Dr. Swift had been observing once to Mr. Gay what an odd pretty sort
+    of a thing a Newgate Pastoral might make.  Gay was inclined to try at
+    such a thing for some time; but afterwards thought it would be better
+    to write a comedy on the same plan.  This was what gave rise to the
+    _Beggar’s Opera_.  He began on it, and when first he mentioned it to
+    Swift, the doctor did not much like the project.  As he carried it
+    on, he showed what he wrote to both of us, and we now and then gave a
+    correction, or a word or two of advice; but it was wholly of his own
+    writing.  When it was done, neither of us thought it would succeed.
+    We showed it to Congreve, who, after reading it over, said it would
+    either take greatly or be damned confoundedly.  We were all, at the
+    first night of it, in great uncertainty of the event, till we were
+    very much encouraged by overhearing the Duke of Argyll, who sat in
+    the next box to us, say, ‘It will do—it must do!  I see it in the
+    eyes of them.’  This was a good while before the first act was over,
+    and so gave us ease soon; for that Duke (besides his own good taste)
+    has a particular knack, as any one now living, in discovering the
+    taste of the public.  He was quite right in this, as usual; the
+    good-nature of the audience appeared stronger and stronger every act,
+    and ended in a clamour of applause.”
+
+Its reception is thus recorded in the notes to the “Dunciad”:—
+
+    “This piece was received with greater applause than was ever known.
+    Besides being acted in London sixty-three days without interruption,
+    and renewed the next season with equal applause, it spread into all
+    the great towns of England; was played in many places to the
+    thirtieth and fortieth time; at Bath and Bristol fifty, etc.  It made
+    its progress into Wales, Scotland, and Ireland, where it was
+    performed twenty-four days successively.  The ladies carried about
+    with them the favourite songs of it in fans, and houses were
+    furnished with it in screens.  The fame of it was not confined to the
+    author only.  The person who acted Polly, till then obscure, became
+    all at once the favourite of the town; her pictures were engraved and
+    sold in great numbers; her life written, books of letters and verses
+    to her published, and pamphlets made even of her sayings and jests.
+    Furthermore, it drove out of England (for that season) the Italian
+    Opera, which had carried all before it for ten years.”
+
+Of this performance, when it was printed, the reception was different,
+according to the different opinions of its readers.  Swift commended it
+for the excellence of its morality, as a piece that “placed all kinds of
+vice in the strongest and most odious light;” but others, and among them
+Dr. Herring, afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury, censured it as giving
+encouragement, not only to vice, but to crimes, by making a highwayman
+the hero and dismissing him at last unpunished.  It has been even said
+that after the exhibition of the _Beggar’s Opera_ the gangs of robbers
+were evidently multiplied.
+
+Both these decisions are surely exaggerated.  The play, like many others,
+was plainly written only to divert, without any moral purpose, and is
+therefore not likely to do good; nor can it be conceived, without more
+speculation than life requires or admits, to be productive of much evil.
+Highwaymen and housebreakers seldom frequent the playhouse, or mingle in
+any elegant diversion; nor is it possible for any one to imagine that he
+may rob with safety, because he sees Macheath reprieved upon the stage.
+This objection, however, or some other rather political than moral,
+obtained such prevalence that when Gay produced a second part under the
+name of Polly, it was prohibited by the Lord Chamberlain; and he was
+forced to recompense his repulse by a subscription, which is said to have
+been so liberally bestowed that what he called oppression ended in
+profit.  The publication was so much favoured that though the first part
+gained him four hundred pounds, near thrice as much was the profit of the
+second.  He received yet another recompense for this supposed hardship,
+in the affectionate attention of the Duke and Duchess of Queensberry,
+into whose house he was taken, and with whom he passed the remaining part
+of his life.  The Duke, considering his want of economy, undertook the
+management of his money, and gave it to him as he wanted it.  But it is
+supposed that the discountenance of the Court sunk deep into his heart,
+and gave him more discontent than the applauses or tenderness of his
+friends could overpower.  He soon fell into his old distemper, an
+habitual colic, and languished, though with many intervals of ease and
+cheerfulness, till a violent fit at last seized him and carried him to
+the grave, as Arbuthnot reported, with more precipitance than he had ever
+known.  He died on the 4th of December, 1732, and was buried in
+Westminster Abbey.  The letter which brought an account of his death to
+Swift, was laid by for some days unopened, because when he received it,
+he was impressed with the preconception of some misfortune.
+
+After his death was published a second volume of “Fables,” more political
+than the former.  His opera of Achilles was acted, and the profits were
+given to two widow sisters, who inherited what he left, as his lawful
+heirs; for he died without a will, though he had gathered three thousand
+pounds.  There have appeared likewise under his name a comedy called the
+_Distressed Wife_, and the _Rehearsal at Gotham_, a piece of humour.
+
+The character given him by Pope is this, that “he was a natural man,
+without design, who spoke what he thought, and just as he thought it,”
+and that “he was of a timid temper, and fearful of giving offence to the
+great;” which caution, however, says Pope, was of no avail.
+
+As a poet he cannot be rated very high.  He was, I once heard a female
+critic remark, “of a lower order.”  He had not in any great degree the
+_mens divinior_, the dignity of genius.  Much, however, must be allowed
+to the author of a new species of composition, though it be not of the
+highest kind.  We owe to Gay the ballad opera, a mode of comedy which at
+first was supposed to delight only by its novelty, but has now, by the
+experience of half a century, been found so well accommodated to the
+disposition of a popular audience that it is likely to keep long
+possession of the stage.  Whether this new drama was the product of
+judgment or of luck, the praise of it must be given to the inventor; and
+there are many writers read with more reverence to whom such merit or
+originality cannot be attributed.
+
+His first performance, the _Rural Sports_, is such as was easily planned
+and executed; it is never contemptible, nor ever excellent.  _The Fan_ is
+one of those mythological fictions which antiquity delivers ready to the
+hand, but which, like other things that lie open to every one’s use, are
+of little value.  The attention naturally retires from a new tale of
+Venus, Diana, and Minerva.
+
+His “Fables” seem to have been a favourite work; for, having published
+one volume, he left another behind him.  Of this kind of Fables the
+author does not appear to have formed any distinct or settled notion.
+Phædrus evidently confounds them with Tales, and Gay both with Tales and
+Allegorical Prosopopoeias.  A Fable or Apologue, such as is now under
+consideration, seems to be, in its genuine state, a narrative in which
+beings irrational, and sometimes inanimate, _arbores loquuntur_, _non
+tantum feræ_, are, for the purpose of moral instruction, feigned to act
+and speak with human interests and passions.  To this description the
+compositions of Gay do not always conform.  For a fable he gives now and
+then a tale, or an abstracted allegory; and from some, by whatever name
+they may be called, it will be difficult to extract any moral principle.
+They are, however, told with liveliness, the versification is smooth, and
+the diction, though now and then a little constrained by the measure or
+the rhyme, is generally happy.
+
+To “Trivia” may be allowed all that it claims; it is sprightly, various,
+and pleasant.  The subject is of that kind which Gay was by nature
+qualified to adorn, yet some of his decorations may be justly wished
+away.  An honest blacksmith might have done for Patty what is performed
+by Vulcan.  The appearance of Cloacina is nauseous and superfluous; a
+shoe-boy could have been produced by the casual cohabitation of mere
+mortals.  Horace’s rule is broken in both cases; there is no _dignus
+vindice nodus_, no difficulty that required any supernatural
+interposition.  A patten may be made by the hammer of a mortal, and a
+bastard may be dropped by a human strumpet.  On great occasions, and on
+small, the mind is repelled by useless and apparent falsehood.
+
+Of his little poems the public judgment seems to be right; they are
+neither much esteemed nor totally despised.  The story of “The
+Apparition” is borrowed from one of the tales of Poggio.  Those that
+please least are the pieces to which Gulliver gave occasion, for who can
+much delight in the echo of an unnatural fiction?
+
+“Dione” is a counterpart to “Amynta” and “Pastor Fido” and other trifles
+of the same kind, easily imitated, and unworthy of imitation.  What the
+Italians call comedies from a happy conclusion, Gay calls a tragedy from
+a mournful event, but the style of the Italians and of Gay is equally
+tragical.  There is something in the poetical Arcadia so remote from
+known reality and speculative possibility that we can never support its
+representation through a long work.  A pastoral of an hundred lines may
+be endured, but who will hear of sheep and goats, and myrtle bowers and
+purling rivulets, through five acts?  Such scenes please barbarians in
+the dawn of literature, and children in the dawn of life, but will be for
+the most part thrown away as men grow wise and nations grow learned.
+
+
+
+
+TICKELL.
+
+
+THOMAS TICKELL, the son of the Rev. Richard Tickell, was born in 1686, at
+Bridekirk, in Cumberland, and in 1701 became a member of Queen’s College
+in Oxford; in 1708 he was made Master of Arts, and two years afterwards
+was chosen Fellow, for which, as he did not comply with the statutes by
+taking orders, he obtained a dispensation from the Crown.  He held his
+fellowship till 1726, and then vacated it by marrying, in that year, at
+Dublin.
+
+Tickell was not one of those scholars who wear away their lives in
+closets; he entered early into the world and was long busy in public
+affairs, in which he was initiated under the patronage of Addison, whose
+notice he is said to have gained by his verses in praise of Rosamond.  To
+those verses it would not have been just to deny regard, for they contain
+some of the most elegant encomiastic strains; and among the innumerable
+poems of the same kind it will be hard to find one with which they need
+to fear a comparison.  It may deserve observation that when Pope wrote
+long afterwards in praise of Addison, he has copied—at least, has
+resembled—Tickell.
+
+       “Let joy salute fair Rosamonda’s shade,
+    And wreaths of myrtle crown the lovely maid.
+    While now perhaps with Dido’s ghost she roves,
+    And hears and tells the story of their loves,
+    Alike they mourn, alike they bless their fate,
+    Since Love, which made them wretched, made them great.
+    Nor longer that relentless doom bemoan,
+    Which gained a Virgil and an Addison.”—TICKELL.
+
+       “Then future ages with delight shall see
+    How Plato’s, Bacon’s, Newton’s, looks agree;
+    Or in fair series laurelled bards be shown,
+    A Virgil there, and here an Addison.”—POPE.
+
+He produced another piece of the same kind at the appearance of _Cato_,
+with equal skill, but not equal happiness.
+
+When the Ministers of Queen Anne were negotiating with France, Tickell
+published “The Prospect of Peace,” a poem of which the tendency was to
+reclaim the nation from the pride of conquest to the pleasures of
+tranquillity.  How far Tickell, whom Swift afterwards mentioned as
+Whiggissimus, had then connected himself with any party, I know not; this
+poem certainly did not flatter the practices, or promote the opinions, of
+the men by whom he was afterwards befriended.
+
+Mr. Addison, however he hated the men then in power, suffered his
+friendship to prevail over his public spirit, and gave in the _Spectator_
+such praises of Tickell’s poem that when, after having long wished to
+peruse it, I laid hold of it at last, I thought it unequal to the honours
+which it had received, and found it a piece to be approved rather than
+admired.  But the hope excited by a work of genius, being general and
+indefinite, is rarely gratified.  It was read at that with so much favour
+that six editions were sold.
+
+At the arrival of King George, he sang “The Royal Progress,” which, being
+inserted in the _Spectator_, is well known, and of which it is just to
+say that it is neither high nor low.
+
+The poetical incident of most importance in Tickell’s life was his
+publication of the first book of the “Iliad,” as translated by himself,
+an apparent opposition to Pope’s “Homer,” of which the first part made
+its entrance into the world at the same time.  Addison declared that the
+rival versions were both good, but that Tickell’s was the best that ever
+was made; and with Addison, the wits, his adherents and followers, were
+certain to concur.  Pope does not appear to have been much dismayed,
+“for,” says he, “I have the town—that is, the mob—on my side.”  But he
+remarks “that it is common for the smaller party to make up in diligence
+what they want in numbers.  He appeals to the people as his proper
+judges, and if they are not inclined to condemn him, he is in little care
+about the highflyers at Button’s.”
+
+Pope did not long think Addison an impartial judge, for he considered him
+as the writer of Tickell’s version.  The reasons for his suspicion I will
+literally transcribe from Mr. Spence’s Collection:—
+
+    “There had been a coldness,” said Mr. Pope, “between Mr. Addison and
+    me for some time, and we had not been in company together, for a good
+    while, anywhere but at Button’s Coffee House, where I used to see him
+    almost every day.  On his meeting me there, one day in particular, he
+    took me aside and said he should be glad to dine with me at such a
+    tavern, if I stayed till those people were gone (Budgell and
+    Philips).  He went accordingly, and after dinner Mr. Addison said
+    ‘that he had wanted for some time to talk with me: that his friend
+    Tickell had formerly, whilst at Oxford, translated the first book of
+    the Iliad; that he designed to print it, and had desired him to look
+    it over; that he must therefore beg that I would not desire him to
+    look over my first book, because, if he did, it would have the air of
+    double-dealing.’  I assured him that I did not at all take it ill of
+    Mr. Tickell that he was going to publish his translation; that he
+    certainly had as much right to translate any author as myself; and
+    that publishing both was entering on a fair stage.  I then added that
+    I would not desire him to look over my first book of the Iliad,
+    because he had looked over Mr. Tickell’s, but could wish to have the
+    benefit of his observations on my second, which I had then finished,
+    and which Mr. Tickell had not touched upon.  Accordingly I sent him
+    the second book the next morning, and Mr. Addison a few days after
+    returned it, with very high commendations.  Soon after it was
+    generally known that Mr. Tickell was publishing the first book of the
+    Iliad, I met Dr. Young in the street, and upon our falling into that
+    subject, the doctor expressed a great deal of surprise at Tickell’s
+    having had such a translation so long by him.  He said that it was
+    inconceivable to him, and that there must be some mistake in the
+    matter; that each used to communicate to the other whatever verses
+    they wrote, even to the least things; that Tickell could not have
+    been busied in so long a work there without his knowing something of
+    the matter; and that he had never heard a single word of it till on
+    this occasion.  This surprise of Dr. Young, together with what Steele
+    has said against Tickell in relation to this affair, make it highly
+    probable that there was some underhand dealing in that business; and
+    indeed Tickell himself, who is a very fair worthy man, has since, in
+    a manner, as good as owned it to me.  When it was introduced into a
+    conversation between Mr. Tickell and Mr. Pope by a third person,
+    Tickell did not deny it, which, considering his honour and zeal for
+    his departed friend, was the same as owning it.”
+
+Upon these suspicions, with which Dr. Warburton hints that other
+circumstances concurred, Pope always in his “Art of Sinking” quotes this
+book as the work of Addison.
+
+To compare the two translations would be tedious; the palm is now given
+universally to Pope, but I think the first lines of Tickell’s were rather
+to be preferred; and Pope seems to have since borrowed something from
+them in the correction of his own.
+
+When the Hanover succession was disputed, Tickell gave what assistance
+his pen would supply.  His “Letter to Avignon” stands high among party
+poems; it expresses contempt without coarseness, and superiority without
+insolence.  It had the success which it deserved, being five times
+printed.
+
+He was now intimately united to Mr. Addison, who, when he went into
+Ireland as secretary to the Lord Sunderland, took him thither, and
+employed him in public business; and when (1717) afterwards he rose to be
+Secretary of State, made him Under-Secretary.  Their friendship seems to
+have continued without abatement; for, when Addison died, he left him the
+charge of publishing his works, with a solemn recommendation to the
+patronage of Craggs.  To these works he prefixed an elegy on the author,
+which could owe none of its beauties to the assistance which might be
+suspected to have strengthened or embellished his earlier compositions;
+but neither he nor Addison ever produced nobler lines than are contained
+in the third and fourth paragraphs; nor is a more elegant funeral poem to
+be found in the whole compass of English literature.  He was afterwards
+(about 1725) made secretary to the Lords Justices of Ireland, a place of
+great honour; in which he continued till 1740, when he died on the 23rd
+of April at Bath.
+
+Of the poems yet unmentioned, the longest is “Kensington Gardens,” of
+which the versification is smooth and elegant, but the fiction
+unskilfully compounded of Grecian deities and Gothic fairies.  Neither
+species of those exploded beings could have done much; and when they are
+brought together, they only make each other contemptible.  To Tickell,
+however, cannot be refused a high place among the minor poets; nor should
+it be forgotten that he was one of the contributors to the _Spectator_.
+With respect to his personal character, he is said to have been a man of
+gay conversation, at least a temperate lover of wine and company, and in
+his domestic relations without censure.
+
+
+
+
+SOMERVILE.
+
+
+OF Mr. Somervile’s life I am not able to say anything that can satisfy
+curiosity.  He was a gentleman whose estate lay in Warwickshire; his
+house, where he was born in 1693, is called Edston, a seat inherited from
+a long line of ancestors; for he was said to be of the first family in
+his county.  He tells of himself that he was born near the Avon’s banks.
+He was bred at Winchester school, and was elected fellow of New College.
+It does not appear that in the places of his education he exhibited any
+uncommon proofs of genius or literature.  His powers were first displayed
+in the country, where he was distinguished as a poet, a gentleman, and a
+skilful and useful justice of the peace.
+
+Of the close of his life, those whom his poems have delighted will read
+with pain the following account, copied from the “Letters” of his friend
+Shenstone, by whom he was too much resembled:—
+
+“—Our old friend Somervile is dead!  I did not imagine I could have been
+so sorry as I find myself on this occasion.  _Sublatum quærimus_.  I can
+now excuse all his foibles; impute them to age, and to distress of
+circumstances: the last of these considerations wrings my very soul to
+think on.  For a man of high spirit conscious of having (at least in one
+production) generally pleased the world, to be plagued and threatened by
+wretches that are low in every sense; to be forced to drink himself into
+pains of the body, in order to get rid of the pains of the mind is a
+misery.”—He died July 19, 1742, and was buried at Wotton, near Henley on
+Arden.
+
+His distresses need not be much pitied: his estate is said to be fifteen
+hundred a year, which by his death has devolved to Lord Somervile of
+Scotland.  His mother, indeed, who lived till ninety, had a jointure of
+six hundred.
+
+It is with regret that I find myself not better enabled to exhibit
+memorials of a writer who at least must be allowed to have set a good
+example to men of his own class, by devoting part of his time to elegant
+knowledge; and who has shown, by the subjects which his poetry has
+adorned, that it is practicable to be at once a skilful sportsman and a
+man of letters.
+
+Somervile has tried many modes of poetry; and though perhaps he has not
+in any reached such excellence as to raise much envy, it may commonly be
+said at least, that “he writes very well for a gentleman.”  His serious
+pieces are sometimes elevated; and his trifles are sometimes elegant.  In
+his verses to Addison, the couplet which mentions Clio is written with
+the most exquisite delicacy of praise; it exhibits one of those happy
+strokes that are seldom attained.  In his Odes to Marlborough there are
+beautiful lines; but in the second Ode he shows that he knew little of
+his hero, when he talks of his private virtues.  His subjects are
+commonly such as require no great depth of thought or energy of
+expression.  His Fables are generally stale, and therefore excite no
+curiosity.  Of his favourite, “The Two Springs,” the fiction is
+unnatural, and the moral inconsequential.  In his Tales there is too much
+coarseness, with too little care of language, and not sufficient rapidity
+of narration.  His great work is his Chase, which he undertook in his
+maturer age, when his ear was improved to the approbation of blank verse,
+of which, however, his two first lines give a bad specimen.  To this poem
+praise cannot be totally denied.  He is allowed by sportsmen to write
+with great intelligence of his subject, which is the first requisite to
+excellence; and though it is impossible to interest the common readers of
+verse in the dangers or pleasures of the chase, he has done all that
+transition and variety could easily effect; and has with great propriety
+enlarged his plan by the modes of hunting used in other countries.
+
+With still less judgment did he choose blank verse as the vehicle of
+“Rural Sports.”  If blank verse be not tumid and gorgeous, it is crippled
+prose; and familiar images in laboured language have nothing to recommend
+them but absurd novelty, which, wanting the attractions of nature, cannot
+please long.  One excellence of the “Splendid Shilling” is, that it is
+short.  Disguise can gratify no longer than it deceives.
+
+
+
+
+THOMSON.
+
+
+JAMES THOMSON, the son of a minister well esteemed for his piety and
+diligence, was born September 7, 1700, at Ednam, in the shire of
+Roxburgh, of which his father was pastor.  His mother, whose name was
+Hume, inherited as co-heiress a portion of a small estate.  The revenue
+of a parish in Scotland is seldom large; and it was probably in
+commiseration of the difficulty with which Mr. Thomson supported his
+family, having nine children, that Mr. Riccarton, a neighbouring
+minister, discovering in James uncommon promises of future excellence,
+undertook to superintend his education, and provide him books.  He was
+taught the common rudiments of learning at the school of Jedburgh, a
+place which he delights to recollect in his poem of “Autumn;” but was not
+considered by his master as superior to common boys, though in those
+early days he amused his patron and his friends with poetical
+compositions; with which, however, he so little pleased himself that on
+every New Year’s Day he threw into the fire all the productions of the
+foregoing year.
+
+From the school he was removed to Edinburgh, where he had not resided two
+years when his father died, and left all his children to the care of
+their mother, who raised upon her little estate what money a mortgage
+could afford; and, removing with her family to Edinburgh, lived to see
+her son rising into eminence.
+
+The design of Thomson’s friends was to breed him a minister.  He lived at
+Edinburgh, at a school, without distinction or expectation, till at the
+usual time he performed a probationary exercise by explaining a psalm.
+His diction was so poetically splendid, that Mr. Hamilton, the professor
+of divinity, reproved him for speaking language unintelligible to a
+popular audience; and he censured one of his expressions as indecent, if
+not profane.  This rebuke is reported to have repressed his thoughts of
+an ecclesiastical character, and he probably cultivated with new
+diligence his blossoms of poetry, which, however, were in some danger of
+a blast; for, submitting his productions to some who thought themselves
+qualified to criticise, he heard of nothing but faults; but, finding
+other judges more favourable, he did not suffer himself to sink into
+despondence.  He easily discovered that the only stage on which a poet
+could appear with any hope of advantage was London; a place too wide for
+the operation of petty competition and private malignity, where merit
+might soon become conspicuous, and would find friends as soon as it
+became reputable to befriend it.  A lady who was acquainted with his
+mother advised him to the journey, and promised some countenance or
+assistance, which at last he never received; however, he justified his
+adventure by her encouragement, and came to seek in London patronage and
+fame.  At his arrival he found his way to Mr. Mallet, then tutor to the
+sons of the Duke of Montrose.  He had recommendations to several persons
+of consequence, which he had tied up carefully in his handkerchief; but
+as he passed along the street, with the gaping curiosity of a newcomer,
+his attention was upon everything rather than his pocket, and his
+magazine of credentials was stolen from him.
+
+His first want was a pair of shoes.  For the supply of all his
+necessities, his whole fund was his “Winter,” which for a time could find
+no purchaser; till at last Mr. Millan was persuaded to buy it at a low
+price; and this low price he had for some time reason to regret; but, by
+accident, Mr. Whately, a man not wholly unknown among authors, happening
+to turn his eye upon it, was so delighted that he ran from place to place
+celebrating its excellence.  Thomson obtained likewise the notice of
+Aaron Hill, whom, being friendless and indigent, and glad of kindness, he
+courted with every expression of servile adulation.
+
+“Winter” was dedicated to Sir Spencer Compton, but attracted no regard
+from him to the author; till Aaron Hill awakened his attention by some
+verses addressed to Thomson, and published in one of the newspapers,
+which censured the great for their neglect of ingenious men.  Thomson
+then received a present of twenty guineas, of which he gives this account
+to Mr. Hill:—
+
+    “I hinted to you in my last that on Saturday morning I was with Sir
+    Spencer Compton.  A certain gentleman, without my desire, spoke to
+    him concerning me: his answer was that I had never come near him.
+    Then the gentleman put the question, if he desired that I should wait
+    on him?  He returned, he did.  On this the gentleman gave me an
+    introductory letter to him.  He received me in what they commonly
+    call a civil manner; asked me some common-place questions, and made
+    me a present of twenty guineas.  I am very ready to own that the
+    present was larger than my performance deserved; and shall ascribe it
+    to his generosity, or any other cause, rather than the merit of the
+    address.”
+
+The poem, which, being of a new kind, few would venture at first to like,
+by degrees gained upon the public; and one edition was very speedily
+succeeded by another.
+
+Thomson’s credit was now high, and every day brought him new friends;
+among others Dr. Rundle, a man afterwards unfortunately famous, sought
+his acquaintance, and found his qualities such that he recommended him to
+the Lord Chancellor Talbot.
+
+“Winter” was accompanied, in many editions, not only with a preface and
+dedication, but with poetical praises by Mr. Hill, Mr. Mallet (then
+Malloch), and Mira, the fictitious name of a lady once too well known.
+Why the dedications are, to “Winter” and the other Seasons, contrarily to
+custom, left out in the collected works, the reader may inquire.
+
+The next year (1727) he distinguished himself by three publications: of
+“Summer,” in pursuance of his plan; of “A Poem on the Death of Sir Isaac
+Newton,” which he was enabled to perform as an exact philosopher by the
+instruction of Mr. Gray; and of “Britannia,” a kind of poetical invective
+against the Ministry, whom the nation then thought not forward enough in
+resenting the depredations of the Spaniards.  By this piece he declared
+himself an adherent to the Opposition, and had therefore no favour to
+expect from the Court.
+
+Thomson, having been some time entertained in the family of Lord Binning,
+was desirous of testifying his gratitude by making him the patron of his
+“Summer;” but the same kindness which had first disposed Lord Binning to
+encourage him, determined him to refuse the dedication, which was by his
+advice addressed to Mr. Dodington, a man who had more power to advance
+the reputation and fortune of a poet.
+
+“Spring” was published next year, with a dedication to the Countess of
+Hertford, whose practice it was to invite every summer some poet into the
+country, to hear her verses and assist her studies.  This honour was one
+summer conferred on Thomson, who took more delight in carousing with Lord
+Hertford and his friends than assisting her ladyship’s poetical
+operations, and therefore never received another summons.
+
+“Autumn,” the season to which the “Spring” and “Summer” are preparatory,
+still remained unsung, and was delayed till he published (1730) his works
+collected.
+
+He produced in 1727 the tragedy of Sophonisba, which raised such
+expectation that every rehearsal was dignified with a splendid audience,
+collected to anticipate the delight that was preparing for the public.
+It was observed, however, that nobody was much affected, and that the
+company rose as from a moral lecture.  It had upon the stage no unusual
+degree of success.  Slight accidents will operate upon the taste of
+pleasure.  There is a feeble line in the play:—
+
+                        “O Sophonisba, Sophonisba, O!”
+
+This gave occasion to a waggish parody—
+
+                    “O, Jemmy Thomson, Jemmy Thomson, O!”
+
+which for a while was echoed through the town.
+
+I have been told by Savage, that of the prologue to _Sophonisba_, the
+first part was written by Pope, who could not be persuaded to finish it;
+and that the concluding lines were added by Mallet.
+
+Thomson was not long afterwards, by the influence of Dr. Rundle, sent to
+travel with Mr. Charles Talbot, the eldest son of the Chancellor.  He was
+yet young enough to receive new impressions, to have his opinions
+rectified and his views enlarged; nor can he be supposed to have wanted
+that curiosity which is inseparable from an active and comprehensive
+mind.  He may therefore now be supposed to have revelled in all the joys
+of intellectual luxury; he was every day feasted with instructive
+novelties; he lived splendidly without expense: and might expect when he
+returned home a certain establishment.
+
+At this time a long course of opposition to Sir Robert Walpole had filled
+the nation with clamours for liberty, of which no man felt the want, and
+with care for liberty which was not in danger.  Thomson, in his travels
+on the Continent, found or fancied so many evils arising from the tyranny
+of other governments, that he resolved to write a very long poem, in five
+parts, upon Liberty.  While he was busy on the first book, Mr. Talbot
+died; and Thomson, who had been rewarded for his attendance by the place
+of secretary of the briefs, pays in the initial lines a decent tribute to
+his memory.  Upon this great poem two years were spent, and the author
+congratulated himself upon it as his noblest work; but an author and his
+reader are not always of a mind.  Liberty called in vain upon her
+votaries to read her praises, and reward her encomiast: her praises were
+condemned to harbour spiders, and to gather dust: none of Thomson’s
+performances were so little regarded.  The judgment of the public was not
+erroneous; the recurrence of the same images must tire in time; an
+enumeration of examples to prove a position which nobody denied, as it
+was from the beginning superfluous, must quickly grow disgusting.
+
+The poem of “Liberty” does not now appear in its original state; but,
+when the author’s works were collected after his death, was shortened by
+Sir George Lyttelton, with a liberty which, as it has a manifest tendency
+to lessen the confidence of society, and to confound the characters of
+authors, by making one man write by the judgment of another, cannot be
+justified by any supposed propriety of the alteration, or kindness of the
+friend.  I wish to see it exhibited as its author left it.
+
+Thomson now lived in ease and plenty, and seems for a while to have
+suspended his poetry: but he was soon called back to labour by the death
+of the Chancellor, for his place then became vacant; and though the Lord
+Hardwicke delayed for some time to give it away, Thomson’s bashfulness or
+pride, or some other motive perhaps not more laudable, withheld him from
+soliciting; and the new Chancellor would not give him what he would not
+ask.  He now relapsed to his former indigence; but the Prince of Wales
+was at that time struggling for popularity, and by the influence of Mr.
+Lyttelton professed himself the patron of wit; to him Thomson was
+introduced, and being gaily interrogated about the state of his affairs
+said “that they were in a more poetical posture than formerly,” and had a
+pension allowed him of one hundred pounds a year.
+
+Being now obliged to write, he produced (1738) the tragedy of
+_Agamemnon_, which was much shortened in the representation.  It had the
+fate which most commonly attends mythological stories, and was only
+endured, but not favoured.  It struggled with such difficulty through the
+first night that Thomson, coming late to his friends with whom he was to
+sup, excused his delay by telling them how the sweat of his distress had
+so disordered his wig that he could not come till he had been refitted by
+a barber.  He so interested himself in his own drama that, if I remember
+right, as he sat in the upper gallery, he accompanied the players by
+audible recitation, till a friendly hint frighted him to silence.  Pope
+countenanced Agamemnon by coming to it, the first night, and was welcomed
+to the theatre by a general clap; he had much regard for Thomson, and
+once expressed it in a poetical epistle sent to Italy, of which, however,
+he abated the value by transplanting some of the lines into his Epistle
+to Arbuthnot.
+
+About this time (1737) the Act was passed for licensing plays, of which
+the first operation was the prohibition of _Gustavus Vasa_, a tragedy of
+Mr. Brooke, whom the public recompensed by a very liberal subscription;
+the next was the refusal of _Edward and Eleonora_, offered by Thomson.
+It is hard to discover why either play should have been obstructed.
+Thomson likewise endeavoured to repair his loss by a subscription, of
+which I cannot now tell the success.  When the public murmured at the
+unkind treatment of Thomson, one of the Ministerial writers remarked that
+“he had taken a _Liberty_ which was not agreeable to _Britannia_ in any
+_Season_.”  He was soon after employed, in conjunction with Mr. Mallet,
+to write the masque of _Alfred_, which was acted before the Prince at
+Cliefden House.
+
+His next work (1745) was, _Tancred and Sigismunda_, the most successful
+of all his tragedies, for it still keeps its turn upon the stage.  It may
+be doubted whether he was, either by the bent of nature or habits of
+study, much qualified for tragedy.  It does not appear that he had much
+sense of the pathetic; and his diffusive and descriptive style produced
+declamation rather than dialogue.  His friend Mr. Lyttelton was now in
+power, and conferred upon him the office of Surveyor-General of the
+Leeward Islands; from which, when his deputy was paid, he received about
+three hundred pounds a year.
+
+The last piece that he lived to publish was the “Castle of Indolence,”
+which was many years under his hand, but was at last finished with great
+accuracy.  The first canto opens a scene of lazy luxury that fills the
+imagination.  He was now at ease, but was not long to enjoy it, for, by
+taking cold on the water between London and Kew, he caught a disorder,
+which, with some careless exasperation, ended in a fever that put an end
+to his life, August 27, 1748.  He was buried in the church of Richmond,
+without an inscription; but a monument has been erected to his memory in
+Westminster Abbey.
+
+Thomson was of stature above the middle size, and “more fat than bard
+beseems,” of a dull countenance and a gross, unanimated, uninviting
+appearance; silent in mingled company, but cheerful among select friends,
+and by his friends very tenderly and warmly beloved.  He left behind him
+the tragedy of _Coriolanus_, which was, by the zeal of his patron, Sir
+George Lyttelton, brought upon the stage for the benefit of his family,
+and recommended by a prologue, which Quin, who had long lived with
+Thomson in fond intimacy, spoke in such a manner as showed him “to be,”
+on that occasion, “no actor.”  The commencement of this benevolence is
+very honourable to Quin, who is reported to have delivered Thomson, then
+known to him only for his genius, from an arrest by a very considerable
+present; and its continuance is honourable to both, for friendship is not
+always the sequel of obligation.  By this tragedy a considerable sum was
+raised, of which part discharged his debts, and the rest was remitted to
+his sisters, whom, however removed from them by place or condition, he
+regarded with great tenderness, as will appear by the following letter,
+which I communicate with much pleasure, as it gives me at once an
+opportunity of recording the fraternal kindness of Thomson, and
+reflecting on the friendly assistance of Mr. Boswell, from whom I
+received it:—
+
+                         “Hagley in Worcestershire, October the 4th, 1747.
+
+    “MY DEAR SISTER,—I thought you had known me better than to interpret
+    my silence into a decay of affection, especially as your behaviour
+    has always been such as rather to increase than diminish it.  Don’t
+    imagine, because I am a bad correspondent, that I can ever prove an
+    unkind friend and brother.  I must do myself the justice to tell you
+    that my affections are naturally very fixed and constant; and if I
+    had ever reason of complaint against you (of which, by-the-bye, I
+    have not the least shadow), I am conscious of so many defects in
+    myself as dispose me to be not a little charitable and forgiving.
+
+    “It gives me the truest heart-felt satisfaction to hear you have a
+    good kind husband, and are in easy contented circumstances; but were
+    they otherwise, that would only awaken and heighten my tenderness
+    towards you.  As our good and tender-hearted parents did not live to
+    receive any material testimonies of that highest human gratitude I
+    owed them (than which nothing could have given me equal pleasure),
+    the only return I can make them now is by kindness to those they left
+    behind them.  Would to God poor Lizy had lived longer, to have been a
+    farther witness of the truth of what I say and that I might have had
+    the pleasure of seeing once more a sister who so truly deserved my
+    esteem and love!  But she is happy, while we must toil a little
+    longer here below: let us, however, do it cheerfully and gratefully,
+    supported by the pleasing hope of meeting you again on a safer shore,
+    where to recollect the storms and difficulties of life will not
+    perhaps be inconsistent with that blissful state.  You did right to
+    call your daughter by her name: for you must needs have had a
+    particular tender friendship for one another, endeared as you were by
+    nature, by having passed the affectionate years of your youth
+    together: and by that great softener and engager of hearts, mutual
+    hardship.  That it was in my power to ease it a little, I account one
+    of the most exquisite pleasures of my life.  But enough of this
+    melancholy, though not unpleasing, strain.
+
+    “I esteem you for your sensible and disinterested advice to Mr. Bell,
+    as you will see by my letter to him.  As I approve entirely of his
+    marrying again, you may readily ask me why I don’t marry at all.  My
+    circumstances have hitherto been so variable and uncertain in this
+    fluctuating world, as induce to keep me from engaging in such a
+    state: and now, though they are more settled, and of late (which you
+    will be glad to hear) considerably improved, I begin to think myself
+    too far advanced in life for such youthful undertakings, not to
+    mention some other petty reasons that are apt to startle the delicacy
+    of difficult old bachelors.  I am, however, not a little suspicious
+    that, was I to pay a visit to Scotland (which I have some thought of
+    doing soon), I might possibly be tempted to think of a thing not
+    easily repaired if done amiss.  I have always been of opinion that
+    none make better wives than the ladies of Scotland; and yet who more
+    forsaken than they, while the gentlemen are continually running
+    abroad all the world over?  Some of them, it is true, are wise enough
+    to return for a wife.  You see, I am beginning to make interest
+    already with the Scots ladies.  But no more of this infectious
+    subject.  Pray let me hear from you now and then; and though I am not
+    a regular correspondent, yet perhaps I may mend in that respect.
+    Remember me kindly to your husband, and believe me to be
+
+                                          “Your most affectionate Brother,
+                                                          “JAMES THOMSON.”
+
+    (Addressed) “To Mrs. Thomson in Lanark.”
+
+The benevolence of Thomson was fervid, but not active; he would give on
+all occasions what assistance his purse would supply, but the offices of
+intervention or solicitation he could not conquer his sluggishness
+sufficiently to perform.  The affairs of others, however, were not more
+neglected than his own.  He had often felt the inconveniences of
+idleness, but he never cured it; and was so conscious of his own
+character that he talked of writing an Eastern tale “Of the Man who Loved
+to be in Distress.”  Among his peculiarities was a very unskilful and
+inarticulate manner of pronouncing any lofty or solemn composition.  He
+was once reading to Dodington, who, being himself a reader eminently
+elegant, was so much provoked by his odd utterance that he snatched the
+paper from his hands and told him that he did not understand his own
+verses.
+
+The biographer of Thomson has remarked that an author’s life is best read
+in his works; his observation was not well timed.  Savage, who lived much
+with Thomson, once told me how he heard a lady remarking that she could
+gather from his works three-parts of his character: that he was “a great
+lover, a great swimmer, and rigorously abstinent;” “but,” said Savage,
+“he knows not any love but that of the sex; he was, perhaps, never in
+cold water in his life; and he indulges himself in all the luxury that
+comes within his reach.”  Yet Savage always spoke with the most eager
+praise of his social qualities, his warmth and constancy of friendship,
+and his adherence to his first acquaintance when the advancement of his
+reputation had left them behind him.
+
+As a writer, he is entitled to one praise of the highest kind: his mode
+of thinking and of expressing his thoughts is original.  His blank verse
+is no more the blank verse of Milton, or of any other poet, than the
+rhymes of Prior are the rhymes of Cowley.  His numbers, his pauses, his
+diction, are of his own growth, without transcription, without imitation.
+He thinks in a peculiar train, and he thinks always as a man of genius;
+he looks round on Nature and on Life with the eye which Nature bestows
+only on a poet; the eye that distinguishes in everything presented to its
+view whatever there is on which imagination can delight to be detained,
+and with a mind that at once comprehends the vast and attends to the
+minute.  The reader of the “Seasons” wonders that he never saw before
+what Thomson shows him, and that he never yet has felt what Thomson
+impresses.  His is one of the works in which blank verse seems properly
+used.  Thomson’s wide expansion of general views, and his enumeration of
+circumstantial varieties, would have been obstructed and embarrassed by
+the frequent intersections of the sense, which are the necessary effects
+of rhyme.  His descriptions of extended scenes and general effects bring
+before us the whole magnificence of Nature, whether pleasing or dreadful.
+The gaiety of Spring, the splendour of Summer, the tranquillity of
+Autumn, and the horror of Winter, take in their turns possession of the
+mind.  The poet leads us through the appearances of things as they are
+successively varied by the vicissitudes of the year, and imparts to us so
+much of his own enthusiasm that our thoughts expand with his imagery and
+kindle with his sentiments.  Nor is the naturalist without his part in
+the entertainment, for he is assisted to recollect and to combine, to
+arrange his discoveries, and to amplify the sphere of his contemplation.
+The great defect of the “Seasons” is want of method; but for this I know
+not that there was any remedy.  Of many appearances subsisting all at
+once, no rule can be given why one should be mentioned before another;
+yet the memory wants the help of order, and the curiosity is not excited
+by suspense or expectation.  His diction is in the highest degree florid
+and luxuriant, such as may be said to be to his images and thoughts “both
+their lustre and their shade;” such as invests them with splendour,
+through which, perhaps, they are not always easily discerned.  It is too
+exuberant, and sometimes may be charged with filling the ear more than
+the mind.
+
+These poems, with which I was acquainted at their first appearance, I
+have since found altered and enlarged by subsequent revisals, as the
+author supposed his judgment to grow more exact, and as books or
+conversation extended his knowledge and opened his prospects.  They are,
+I think, improved in general; yet I know not whether they have not lost
+part of what Temple calls their “race,” a word which, applied to wines in
+its primitive sense, means the flavour of the soil.
+
+“Liberty,” when it first appeared, I tried to read, and soon desisted.  I
+have never tried again, and therefore will not hazard either praise or
+censure.  The highest praise which he has received ought not to be
+suppressed: it is said by Lord Lyttelton, in the Prologue to his
+posthumous play, that his works contained
+
+              “No line which, dying, he could wish to blot.”
+
+
+
+
+WATTS.
+
+
+THE poems of Dr. Watts were, by my recommendation, inserted in the late
+Collection, the readers of which are to impute to me whatever pleasure or
+weariness they may find in the perusal of Blackmore, Watts, Pomfret, and
+Yalden.
+
+Isaac Watts was born July 17, 1674, at Southampton, where his father, of
+the same name, kept a boarding-school for young gentlemen, though common
+report makes him a shoemaker.  He appears, from the narrative of Dr.
+Gibbons, to have been neither indigent nor illiterate.
+
+Isaac, the eldest of nine children, was given to books from his infancy,
+and began, we are told, to learn Latin when he was four years old—I
+suppose, at home.  He was afterwards taught Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, by
+Mr. Pinhorne, a clergyman, master of the Free School at Southampton, to
+whom the gratitude of his scholar afterwards inscribed a Latin ode.  His
+proficiency at school was so conspicuous that a subscription was proposed
+for his support at the University, but he declared his resolution of
+taking his lot with the Dissenters.  Such he was as every Christian
+Church would rejoice to have adopted.  He therefore repaired, in 1690, to
+an academy taught by Mr. Rowe, where he had for his companions and fellow
+students Mr. Hughes the poet, and Dr. Horte, afterwards Archbishop of
+Tuam.  Some Latin Essays, supposed to have been written as exercises at
+this academy, show a degree of knowledge, both philosophical and
+theological, such as very few attain by a much longer course of study.
+He was, as he hints in his “Miscellanies,” a maker of verses from fifteen
+to fifty, and in his youth he appears to have paid attention to Latin
+poetry.  His verses to his brother, in the glyconic measure, written when
+he was seventeen, are remarkably easy and elegant.  Some of his other
+odes are deformed by the Pindaric folly then prevailing, and are written
+with such neglect of all metrical rules as is without example among the
+ancients; but his diction, though perhaps not always exactly pure, has
+such copiousness and splendour as shows that he was but a very little
+distance from excellence.  His method of study was to impress the
+contents of his books upon his memory by abridging them, and by
+interleaving them to amplify one system with supplements from another.
+
+With the congregation of his tutor, Mr. Rowe, who were, I believe,
+Independents, he communicated in his nineteenth year.  At the age of
+twenty he left the academy, and spent two years in study and devotion at
+the house of his father, who treated him with great tenderness, and had
+the happiness, indulged to few parents, of living to see his son eminent
+for literature and venerable for piety.  He was then entertained by Sir
+John Hartopp five years, as domestic tutor to his son, and in that time
+particularly devoted himself to the study of the Holy Scriptures; and,
+being chosen assistant to Dr. Chauncey, preached the first time on the
+birthday that completed his twenty-fourth year, probably considering that
+as the day of a second nativity, by which he entered on a new period of
+existence.
+
+In about three years he succeeded Dr. Chauncey; but soon after his
+entrance on his charge he was seized by a dangerous illness, which sunk
+him to such weakness that the congregation thought an assistant
+necessary, and appointed Mr. Price.  His health then returned gradually,
+and he performed his duty till (1712) he was seized by a fever of such
+violence and continuance, that from the feebleness which it brought upon
+him he never perfectly recovered.  This calamitous state made the
+compassion of his friends necessary, and drew upon him the attention of
+Sir Thomas Abney, who received him into his house, where, with a
+constancy of friendship and uniformity of conduct not often to be found,
+he was treated for thirty-six years with all the kindness that friendship
+could prompt, and all the attention that respect could dictate.  Sir
+Thomas died about eight years afterwards, but he continued with the lady
+and her daughters to the end of his life.  The lady died about a year
+after him.
+
+A coalition like this, a state in which the notions of patronage and
+dependence were overpowered by the perception of reciprocal benefits,
+deserves a particular memorial; and I will not withhold from the reader
+Dr. Gibbons’s representation, to which regard is to be paid as to the
+narrative of one who writes what he knows, and what is known likewise to
+multitudes besides:—
+
+    “Our next observation shall be made upon that remarkably kind
+    Providence which brought the Doctor into Sir Thomas Abney’s family,
+    and continued him there till his death, a period of no less than
+    thirty-six years.  In the midst of his sacred labours for the glory
+    of God, and good of his generation, he is seized with a most violent
+    and threatening fever, which leaves him oppressed with great
+    weakness, and puts a stop at least to his public services for four
+    years.  In this distressing season, doubly so to his active and pious
+    spirit, he is invited to Sir Thomas Abney’s family, nor ever removes
+    from it till he had finished his days.  Here he enjoyed the
+    uninterrupted demonstrations of the truest friendship.  Here, without
+    any care of his own, he had everything which could contribute to the
+    enjoyment of life, and favour the unwearied pursuit of his studies.
+    Here he dwelt in a family which, for piety, order, harmony, and every
+    virtue, was a house of God.  Here he had the privilege of a country
+    recess, the fragrant bower, the spreading lawn, the flowery garden,
+    and other advantages, to soothe his mind and aid his restoration to
+    health; to yield him, whenever he chose them, most grateful intervals
+    from his laborious studies, and enable him to return to them with
+    redoubled vigour and delight.  Had it not been for this most happy
+    event, he might, as to outward view, have feebly, it may be
+    painfully, dragged on through many more years of languor, and
+    inability for public service, and even for profitable study, or
+    perhaps might have sunk into his grave under the overwhelming load of
+    infirmities in the midst of his days; and thus the Church and world
+    would have been deprived of those many excellent sermons and works
+    which he drew up and published during his long residence in this
+    family.  In a few years after his coming hither, Sir Thomas Abney
+    dies; but his amiable consort survives, who shows the Doctor the same
+    respect and friendship as before, and most happily for him and great
+    numbers besides; for, as her riches were great, her generosity and
+    munificence were in full proportion; her thread of life was drawn out
+    to a great age, even beyond that of the Doctor’s, and thus this
+    excellent man, through her kindness, and that of her daughter, the
+    present Mrs. Elizabeth Abney, who in a like degree esteemed and
+    honoured him, enjoyed all the benefits and felicities he experienced
+    at his first entrance into this family till his days were numbered
+    and finished, and, like a shock of corn in its season, he ascended
+    into the regions of perfect and immortal life and joy.”
+
+If this quotation has appeared long, let it be considered that it
+comprises an account of six-and-thirty years, and those the years of Dr.
+Watts.
+
+From the time of his reception into this family his life was no otherwise
+diversified than by successive publications.  The series of his works I
+am not able to deduce; their number and their variety show the
+intenseness of his industry and the extent of his capacity.  He was one
+of the first authors that taught the Dissenters to court attention by the
+graces of language.  Whatever they had among them before, whether of
+learning or acuteness, was commonly obscured and blunted by coarseness
+and inelegance of style.  He showed them that zeal and purity might be
+expressed and enforced by polished diction.  He continued to the end of
+his life a teacher of a congregation, and no reader of his works can
+doubt his fidelity or diligence.  In the pulpit, though his low stature,
+which very little exceeded five feet, graced him with no advantages of
+appearance, yet the gravity and propriety of his utterance made his
+discourses very efficacious.  I once mentioned the reputation which Mr.
+Foster had gained by his proper delivery, to my friend Dr. Hawkesworth,
+who told me that in the art of pronunciation he was far inferior to Dr.
+Watts.  Such was his flow of thoughts, and such his promptitude of
+language, that in the latter part of his life he did not precompose his
+cursory sermons, but, having adjusted the heads and sketched out some
+particulars, trusted for success to his extemporary powers.  He did not
+endeavour to assist his eloquence by any gesticulations; for, as no
+corporeal actions have any correspondence with theological truth, he did
+not see how they could enforce it.  At the conclusion of weighty
+sentences he gave time, by a short pause, for the proper impression.
+
+To stated and public instruction he added familiar visits and personal
+application, and was careful to improve the opportunities which
+conversation offered of diffusing and increasing the influence of
+religion.  By his natural temper he was quick of resentment; but by his
+established and habitual practice he was gentle, modest, and inoffensive.
+His tenderness appeared in his attention to children, and to the poor.
+To the poor, while he lived in the family of his friend, he allowed the
+third part of his annual revenue; though the whole was not a hundred a
+year; and for children he condescended to lay aside the scholar, the
+philosopher, and the wit, to write little poems of devotion, and systems
+of instruction, adapted to their wants and capacities, from the dawn of
+reason through its gradations of advance in the morning of life.  Every
+man acquainted with the common principles of human action will look with
+veneration on the writer who is at one time combating Locke, and at
+another making a catechism for children in their fourth year.  A
+voluntary descent from the dignity of science is perhaps the hardest
+lesson that humility can teach.
+
+As his mind was capacious, his curiosity excursive, and his industry
+continual, his writings are very numerous and his subjects various.  With
+his theological works I am only enough acquainted to admire his meekness
+of opposition, and his mildness of censure.  It was not only in his book,
+but in his mind, that orthodoxy was united with charity.
+
+Of his philosophical pieces, his “Logic” has been received into the
+Universities, and therefore wants no private recommendation; if he owes
+part of it to Le Clerc, it must be considered that no man who undertakes
+merely to methodise or illustrate a system pretends to be its author.
+
+In his metaphysical disquisitions it was observed by the late learned Mr.
+Dyer, that he confounded the idea of _space_ with that of _empty space_,
+and did not consider that though space might be without matter, yet
+matter being extended could not be without space.
+
+Few books have been perused by me with greater pleasure than his
+“Improvement of the Mind,” of which the radical principle may indeed be
+found in Locke’s “Conduct of the Understanding;” but they are so expanded
+and ramified by Watts, as to confer upon him the merit of a work in the
+highest degree useful and pleasing.  Whoever has the care of instructing
+others may be charged with deficiency in his duty if this book is not
+recommended.
+
+I have mentioned his treatises of theology as distinct from his other
+productions; but the truth is that whatever he took in hand was, by his
+incessant solicitude for souls, converted to theology.  As piety
+predominated in his mind, it is diffused over his works.  Under his
+direction it may be truly said, _Theologiæ philosophia ancillatur_
+(Philosophy is subservient to evangelical instruction).  It is difficult
+to read a page without learning, or at least wishing, to be better.  The
+attention is caught by indirect instruction; and he that sat down only to
+reason is on a sudden compelled to pray.  It was therefore with great
+propriety that, in 1728, he received from Edinburgh and Aberdeen an
+unsolicited diploma, by which he became a Doctor of Divinity.  Academical
+honours would have more value if they were always bestowed with equal
+judgment.  He continued many years to study and to preach, and to do good
+by his instruction and example, till at last the infirmities of age
+disabled him from the more laborious part of his ministerial functions,
+and, being no longer capable of public duty, he offered to remit the
+salary appendent to it; but his congregation would not accept the
+resignation.  By degrees his weakness increased, and at last confined him
+to his chamber and his bed, where he was worn gradually away without
+pain, till he expired November 25th 1748, in the seventy-fifth year of
+his age.
+
+Few men have left behind such purity of character, or such monuments of
+laborious piety.  He has provided instruction for all ages—from those who
+are lisping their first lessons, to the enlightened readers of
+Malebranche and Locke; he has left neither corporeal nor spiritual nature
+unexamined; he has taught the art of reasoning, and the science of the
+stars.  His character, therefore, must be formed from the multiplicity
+and diversity of his attainments, rather than from any single
+performance, for it would not be safe to claim for him the highest rank
+in any single denomination of literary dignity; yet, perhaps, there was
+nothing in which he would not have excelled, if he had not divided his
+powers to different pursuits.
+
+As a poet, had he been only a poet, he would probably have stood high
+among the authors with whom he is now associated.  For his judgment was
+exact, and he noted beauties and faults with very nice discernment; his
+imagination, as the “Dacian Battle” proves, was vigorous and active, and
+the stores of knowledge were large by which his fancy was to be supplied.
+His ear was well tuned, and his diction was elegant and copious.  But his
+devotional poetry is, like that of others, unsatisfactory.  The paucity
+of its topics enforces perpetual repetition, and the sanctity of the
+matter rejects the ornaments of figurative diction.  It is sufficient for
+Watts to have done better than others what no man has done well.  His
+poems on other subjects seldom rise higher than might be expected from
+the amusements of a man of letters, and have different degrees of value
+as they are more or less laboured, or as the occasion was more or less
+favourable to invention.  He writes too often without regular measures,
+and too often in blank verse; the rhymes are not always sufficiently
+correspondent.  He is particularly unhappy in coining names expressive of
+characters.  His lines are commonly smooth and easy, and his thoughts
+always religiously pure; but who is there that, to so much piety and
+innocence, does not wish for a greater measure of sprightliness and
+vigour?  He is at least one of the few poets with whom youth and
+ignorance may be safely pleased; and happy will be that reader whose mind
+is disposed, by his verses or his prose, to imitate him in all but his
+non-conformity, to copy his benevolence to man, and his reverence to God.
+
+
+
+
+A. PHILIPS.
+
+
+OF the birth or early part of the life of Ambrose Philips I have not been
+able to find any account.  His academical education he received at St.
+John’s College in Cambridge, where he first solicited the notice of the
+world by some English verses, in the collection published by the
+University on the death of Queen Mary.  From this time how he was
+employed, or in what station he passed his life, is not yet discovered.
+He must have published his “Pastorals” before the year 1708, because they
+are evidently prior to those of Pope.  He afterwards (1709) addressed to
+the universal patron, the Duke of Dorset, a “Poetical Letter from
+Copenhagen,” which was published in the _Tatler_, and is by Pope, in one
+of his first Letters, mentioned with high praise as the production of a
+man “who could write very nobly.”
+
+Philips was a zealous Whig, and therefore easily found access to Addison
+and Steele; but his ardour seems not to have procured him anything more
+than kind words, since he was reduced to translate the “Persian Tales”
+for Tonson, for which he was afterwards reproached, with this addition of
+contempt, that he worked for half-a-crown.  The book is divided into many
+sections, for each of which, if he received half-a-crown, his reward, as
+writers then were paid, was very liberal; but half-a-crown had a mean
+sound.  He was employed in promoting the principles of his party, by
+epitomising Hacket’s “Life of Archbishop Williams.”  The original book is
+written with such depravity of genius, such mixture of the fop and
+pedant, as has not often appeared.  The epitome is free enough from
+affectation, but has little spirit or vigour.
+
+In 1712 he brought upon the stage _The Distressed Mother_, almost a
+translation of Racine’s _Andromaque_.  Such a work requires no uncommon
+powers, but the friends of Philips exerted every art to promote his
+interest. Before the appearance of the play a whole _Spectator_, none
+indeed of the best, was devoted to its praise; while it yet continued to
+be acted, another _Spectator_ was written to tell what impression it made
+upon Sir Roger, and on the first night a select audience, says Pope, was
+called together to applaud it.  It was concluded with the most successful
+Epilogue that was ever yet spoken on the English theatre.  The three
+first nights it was recited twice, and not only continued to be demanded
+through the run, as it is termed, of the play, but whenever it is
+recalled to the stage, where by peculiar fortune, though a copy from the
+French, it yet keeps its place, the Epilogue is still expected, and is
+still spoken.
+
+The propriety of Epilogues in general, and consequently of this, was
+questioned by a correspondent of the _Spectator_, whose letter was
+undoubtedly admitted for the sake of the answer, which soon followed,
+written with much zeal and acrimony.  The attack and the defence equally
+contributed to stimulate curiosity and continue attention.  It may be
+discovered in the defence that Prior’s Epilogue to _Phædra_ had a little
+excited jealousy, and something of Prior’s plan may be discovered in the
+performance of his rival.  Of this distinguished Epilogue the reputed
+author was the wretched Budgell, whom Addison used to denominate “the man
+who calls me cousin;” and when he was asked how such a silly fellow could
+write so well, replied, “The Epilogue was quite another thing when I saw
+it first.”  It was known in Tonson’s family, and told to Garrick, that
+Addison was himself the author of it, and that, when it had been at first
+printed with his name, he came early in the morning, before the copies
+were distributed, and ordered it to be given to Budgell, that it might
+add weight to the solicitation which he was then making for a place.
+
+Philips was now high in the ranks of literature.  His play was applauded;
+his translations from Sappho had been published in the _Spectator_; he
+was an important and distinguished associate of clubs, witty and
+poetical; and nothing was wanting to his happiness but that he should be
+sure of its continuance.  The work which had procured him the first
+notice from the public was his “Six Pastorals,” which, flattering the
+imagination with Arcadian scenes, probably found many readers, and might
+have long passed as a pleasing amusement had they not been unhappily too
+much commended.
+
+The rustic poems of Theocritus were so highly valued by the Greeks and
+Romans that they attracted the imitation of Virgil, whose Eclogues seem
+to have been considered as precluding all attempts of the same kind; for
+no shepherds were taught to sing by any succeeding poet, till Nemesian
+and Calphurnius ventured their feeble efforts in the lower age of Latin
+literature.
+
+At the revival of learning in Italy it was soon discovered that a
+dialogue of imaginary swains might be composed with little difficulty,
+because the conversation of shepherds excludes profound or refined
+sentiment; and for images and descriptions, satyrs and fauns, and naiads
+and dryads, were always within call; and woods and meadows, and hills and
+rivers, supplied variety of matter, which, having a natural power to
+soothe the mind, did not quickly cloy it.
+
+Petrarch entertained the learned men of his age with the novelty of
+modern pastorals in Latin.  Being not ignorant of Greek, and finding
+nothing in the word _eclogue_ of rural meaning, he supposed it to be
+corrupted by the copiers, and therefore called his own productions
+_Æglogues_, by which he meant to express the talk of goat-herds, though
+it will mean only the talk of goats.  This new name was adopted by
+subsequent writers, and among others by our Spenser.
+
+More than a century afterwards (1498) Mantuan published his Bucolics with
+such success that they were soon dignified by Badius with a comment, and,
+as Scaliger complained, received into schools, and taught as classical;
+his complaint was vain, and the practice, however injudicious, spread far
+and continued long.  Mantuan was read, at least in some of the inferior
+schools of this kingdom, to the beginning of the present century.  The
+speakers of Mantuan carried their disquisitions beyond the country to
+censure the corruptions of the Church, and from him Spenser learned to
+employ his swains on topics of controversy.  The Italians soon
+transferred pastoral poetry into their own language.  Sannazaro wrote
+“Arcadia” in prose and verse; Tasso and Guarini wrote “Favole
+Boschareccie,” or Sylvan Dramas; and all nations of Europe filled volumes
+with Thyrsis and Damon, and Thestylis and Phyllis.
+
+Philips thinks it “somewhat strange to conceive how, in an age so
+addicted to the Muses, pastoral poetry never comes to be so much as
+thought upon.”  His wonder seems very unseasonable; there had never, from
+the time of Spenser, wanted writers to talk occasionally of Arcadia and
+Strephon, and half the book, in which he first tried his powers, consists
+of dialogues on Queen Mary’s death, between Tityrus and Corydon, or
+Mopsus and Menalcas.  A series or book of pastorals, however, I know not
+that anyone had then lately published.
+
+Not long afterwards Pope made the first display of his powers in four
+pastorals, written in a very different form.  Philips had taken Spenser,
+and Pope took Virgil for his pattern.  Philips endeavoured to be natural,
+Pope laboured to be elegant.
+
+Philips was now favoured by Addison and by Addison’s companions, who were
+very willing to push him into reputation.  The _Guardian_ gave an account
+of Pastoral, partly critical and partly historical; in which, when the
+merit of the modern is compared, Tasso and Guarini are censured for
+remote thoughts and unnatural refinements, and, upon the whole, the
+Italians and French are all excluded from rural poetry, and the pipe of
+the pastoral muse is transmitted by lawful inheritance from Theocritus to
+Virgil, from Virgil to Spenser, and from Spenser to Philips.  With this
+inauguration of Philips his rival Pope was not much delighted; he
+therefore drew a comparison of Philips’s performance with his own, in
+which, with an unexampled and unequalled artifice of irony, though he has
+himself always the advantage, he gives the preference to Philips.  The
+design of aggrandising himself he disguised with such dexterity that,
+though Addison discovered it, Steele was deceived, and was afraid of
+displeasing Pope by publishing his paper.  Published however it was
+(_Guardian_, No. 40), and from that time Pope and Philips lived in a
+perpetual reciprocation of malevolence.  In poetical powers, of either
+praise or satire, there was no proportion between the combatants; but
+Philips, though he could not prevail by wit, hoped to hurt Pope with
+another weapon, and charged him, as Pope thought with Addison’s
+approbation, as disaffected to the Government.  Even with this he was not
+satisfied, for, indeed, there is no appearance that any regard was paid
+to his clamours.  He proceeded to grosser insults, and hung up a rod at
+Button’s, with which he threatened to chastise Pope, who appears to have
+been extremely exasperated, for in the first edition of his Letters he
+calls Philips “rascal,” and in the last still charges him with detaining
+in his hands the subscriptions for “Homer” delivered to him by the
+Hanover Club.  I suppose it was never suspected that he meant to
+appropriate the money; he only delayed, and with sufficient meanness, the
+gratification of him by whose prosperity he was pained.
+
+Men sometimes suffer by injudicious kindness; Philips became ridiculous,
+without his own fault, by the absurd admiration of his friends, who
+decorated him with honorary garlands, which the first breath of
+contradiction blasted.
+
+When upon the succession of the House of Hanover every Whig expected to
+be happy, Philips seems to have obtained too little notice; he caught few
+drops of the golden shower, though he did not omit what flattery could
+perform.  He was only made a commissioner of the lottery (1717), and,
+what did not much elevate his character, a justice of the peace.
+
+The success of his first play must naturally dispose him to turn his
+hopes towards the stage; he did not, however, soon commit himself to the
+mercy of an audience, but contented himself with the fame already
+acquired, till after nine years he produced (1722) _The Briton_, a
+tragedy which, whatever was its reception, is now neglected; though one
+of the scenes, between Vanoc the British Prince and Valens the Roman
+General, is confessed to be written with great dramatic skill, animated
+by spirit truly poetical.  He had not been idle though he had been
+silent, for he exhibited another tragedy the same year on the story of
+_Humphry_, _Duke of Gloucester_.  This tragedy is only remembered by its
+title.
+
+His happiest undertaking was (1711) of a paper called _The Freethinker_,
+in conjunction with associates, of whom one was Dr. Boulter, who, then
+only minister of a parish in Southwark, was of so much consequence to the
+Government that he was made first Bishop of Bristol, and afterwards
+Primate of Ireland, where his piety and his charity will be long
+honoured.  It may easily be imagined that what was printed under the
+direction of Boulter would have nothing in it indecent or licentious; its
+title is to be understood as implying only freedom from unreasonable
+prejudice.  It has been reprinted in volumes, but is little read; nor can
+impartial criticism recommend it as worthy of revival.
+
+Boulter was not well qualified to write diurnal essays, but he knew how
+to practise the liberality of greatness and the fidelity of friendship.
+When he was advanced to the height of ecclesiastical dignity, he did not
+forget the companion of his labours.  Knowing Philips to be slenderly
+supported, he took him to Ireland as partaker of his fortune, and, making
+him his secretary, added such preferments as enabled him to represent the
+county of Armagh in the Irish Parliament.  In December, 1726, he was made
+secretary to the Lord Chancellor, and in August, 1733, became Judge of
+the Prerogative Court.
+
+After the death of his patron he continued some years in Ireland, but at
+last longing, as it seems, for his native country, he returned (1748) to
+London, having doubtless survived most of his friends and enemies, and
+among them his dreaded antagonist Pope.  He found, however, the Duke of
+Newcastle still living, and to him he dedicated his poems collected into
+a volume.
+
+Having purchased an annuity of £400, he now certainly hoped to pass some
+years of life in plenty and tranquillity; but his hope deceived him: he
+was struck with a palsy, and died June 18, 1749, in his seventy-eighth
+year.
+
+Of his personal character all that I have heard is, that he was eminent
+for bravery and skill in the sword, and that in conversation he was
+solemn and pompous.  He had great sensibility of censure, if judgment may
+be made by a single story which I heard long ago from Mr. Ing, a
+gentleman of great eminence in Staffordshire.  “Philips,” said he, “was
+once at table, when I asked him, ‘How came thy king of Epirus to drive
+oxen, and to say, “I’m goaded on by love”?’  After which question he
+never spoke again.”
+
+Of _The Distressed Mother_ not much is pretended to be his own, and
+therefore it is no subject of criticism: his other two tragedies, I
+believe, are not below mediocrity, nor above it.  Among the poems
+comprised in the late Collection, the “Letter from Denmark” may be justly
+praised; the Pastorals, which by the writer of the _Guardian_ were ranked
+as one of the four genuine productions of the rustic Muse, cannot surely
+be despicable.  That they exhibit a mode of life which did not exist, nor
+ever existed, is not to be objected: the supposition of such a state is
+allowed to be pastoral.  In his other poems he cannot be denied the
+praise of lines sometimes elegant; but he has seldom much force or much
+comprehension.  The pieces that please best are those which, from Pope
+and Pope’s adherents, procured him the name of “Namby-Pamby,” the poems
+of short lines, by which he paid his court to all ages and characters,
+from Walpole the “steerer of the realm,” to Miss Pulteney in the nursery.
+The numbers are smooth and sprightly, and the diction is seldom faulty.
+They are not loaded with much thought, yet, if they had been written by
+Addison, they would have had admirers: little things are not valued but
+when they are done by those who can do greater.
+
+In his translations from “Pindar” he found the art of reaching all the
+obscurity of the Theban bard, however he may fall below his sublimity; he
+will be allowed, if he has less fire, to have more smoke.  He has added
+nothing to English poetry, yet at least half his book deserves to be
+read: perhaps he valued most himself that part which the critic would
+reject.
+
+
+
+
+WEST.
+
+
+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 some who
+did not know his change of opinion, in expectation of new objections
+against Christianity; and as infidels do not want malignity, they
+revenged the disappointment by calling him a Methodist.
+
+Mr. West’s income was not large; and his friends endeavoured, but without
+success, to obtain an augmentation.  It is reported that the education of
+the young Prince was offered to him, but that he required a more
+extensive power of superintendence than it was thought proper to allow
+him.  In time, however, his revenue was improved; he lived to have one of
+the lucrative clerkships of the Privy Council (1752); and Mr. Pitt at
+last had it in his power to make him Treasurer of Chelsea Hospital.  He
+was now sufficiently rich; but wealth came too late to be long enjoyed;
+nor could it secure him from the calamities of life; he lost (1755) his
+only son; and the year after (March 26) a stroke of the palsy brought to
+the grave one of the few poets to whom the grave might be without its
+terrors.
+
+Of his translations I have only compared the first Olympic Ode with the
+original, and found my expectation surpassed, both by its elegance and
+its exactness.  He does not confine himself to his author’s train of
+stanzas; for he saw that the difference of languages required a different
+mode of versification.  The first strophe is eminently happy; in the
+second he has a little strayed from Pindar’s meaning, who says, “If thou,
+my soul, wishest to speak of games, look not in the desert sky for a
+planet hotter than the sun; nor shall we tell of nobler games than those
+of Olympia.”  He is sometimes too paraphrastical.  Pindar bestows upon
+Hiero an epithet which, in one word, signifies _delighting in horses_; a
+word which, in the translation, generates these lines:—
+
+    “Hiero’s royal brows, whose care
+       Tends the courser’s noble breed,
+    Pleased to nurse the pregnant mare,
+       Pleased to train the youthful steed.”
+
+Pindar says of Pelops, that “he came alone in the dark to the White Sea;”
+and West—
+
+    “Near the billow-beaten side
+    Of the foam-besilvered main,
+    Darkling, and alone, he stood:”
+
+which, however, is less exuberant than the former passage.
+
+A work of this kind must, in a minute examination, discover many
+imperfections; but West’s version, so far as I have considered it,
+appears to be the product of great labour and great abilities.
+
+His “Institution of the Garter” (1742) is written with sufficient
+knowledge of the manners that prevailed in the age to which it is
+referred, and with great elegance of diction; but, for want of a process
+of events, neither knowledge nor elegance preserves the reader from
+weariness.
+
+His “Imitations of Spenser” are very successfully performed, both with
+respect to the metre, the language, and the fiction; and being engaged at
+once by the excellence of the sentiments, and the artifice of the copy,
+the mind has two amusements together.  But such compositions are not to
+be reckoned among the great achievements of intellect, because their
+effect is local and temporary; they appeal not to reason or passion, but
+to memory, and presuppose an accidental or artificial state of mind.  An
+imitation of Spenser is nothing to a reader, however acute, by whom
+Spenser has never been perused.  Works of this kind may deserve praise,
+as proofs of great industry and great nicety of observation; but the
+highest praise, the praise of genius, they cannot claim.  The noblest
+beauties of art are those of which the effect is co-extended with
+rational nature, or at least with the whole circle of polished life; what
+is less than this can be only pretty, the plaything of fashion, and the
+amusement of a day.
+
+There is in the _Adventurer_ a paper of verses given to one of the
+authors as Mr. West’s, and supposed to have been written by him.  It
+should not be concealed, however, that it is printed with Mr. Jago’s name
+in Dodsley’s Collection, and is mentioned as his in a letter of
+Shenstone’s.  Perhaps West gave it without naming the author, and
+Hawkesworth, receiving it from him, thought it his; for his he thought
+it, as he told me, and as he tells the public.
+
+
+
+
+COLLINS.
+
+
+WILLIAM COLLINS was born at Chichester, on the 25th day of December,
+about 1720.  His father was a hatter of good reputation.  He was in 1733,
+as Dr. Warton has kindly informed me, admitted scholar of Winchester
+College, where he was educated by Dr. Burton.  His English exercises were
+better than his Latin.  He first courted the notice of the public by some
+verses to a “Lady weeping,” published in _The Gentleman’s Magazine_
+(January, 1739).
+
+In 1740 he stood first in the list of the scholars to be received in
+succession at New College, but unhappily there was no vacancy.  He became
+a Commoner of Queen’s College, probably with a scanty maintenance; but
+was, in about half a year, elected a Demy of Magdalen College, where he
+continued till he had taken a Bachelor’s degree, and then suddenly left
+the University; for what reason I know not that he told.
+
+He now (about 1744) came to London a literary adventurer, with many
+projects in his head, and very little money in his pocket.  He designed
+many works; but his great fault was irresolution; or the frequent calls
+of immediate necessity broke his scheme, and suffered him to pursue no
+settled purpose.  A man doubtful of his dinner, or trembling at a
+creditor, is not much disposed to abstracted meditation or remote
+inquiries.  He published proposals for a “History of the Revival of
+Learning;” and I have heard him speak with great kindness of Leo X., and
+with keen resentment of his tasteless successor.  But probably not a page
+of his history was ever written.  He planned several tragedies, but he
+only planned them.  He wrote now and then odes and other poems, and did
+something, however little.  About this time I fell into his company.  His
+appearance was decent and manly; his knowledge considerable, his views
+extensive, his conversation elegant, and his disposition cheerful.  By
+degrees I gained his confidence; and one day was admitted to him when he
+was immured by a bailiff that was prowling in the street.  On this
+occasion recourse was had to the booksellers, who, on the credit of a
+translation of Aristotle’s “Poetics,” which he engaged to write with a
+large commentary, advanced as much money as enabled him to escape into
+the country.  He showed me the guineas safe in his hand.  Soon afterwards
+his uncle, Mr. Martin, a lieutenant-colonel, left him about £2000; a sum
+which Collins could scarcely think exhaustible, and which he did not live
+to exhaust. The guineas were then repaid, and the translation neglected.
+But man is not born for happiness.  Collins, who, while he studied to
+live, felt no evil but poverty, no sooner lived to study than his life
+was assailed by more dreadful calamities—disease and insanity.
+
+Having formerly written his character, while perhaps it was yet more
+distinctly impressed upon my memory, I shall insert it here.
+
+“Mr. Collins was a man of extensive literature, and of vigorous
+faculties.  He was acquainted not only with the learned tongues, but with
+the Italian, French, and Spanish languages.  He had employed his mind
+chiefly on works of fiction, and subjects of fancy; and, by indulging
+some peculiar habits of thought, was eminently delighted with those
+flights of imagination which pass the bounds of nature, and to which the
+mind is reconciled only by a passive acquiescence in popular traditions.
+He loved fairies, genii, giants, and monsters; he delighted to rove
+through the meanders of enchantment, to gaze on the magnificence of
+golden palaces, to repose by the waterfalls of Elysian gardens.  This
+was, however, the character rather of his inclination than his genius;
+the grandeur of wildness, and the novelty of extravagance, were always
+desired by him, but not always attained.  Yet, as diligence is never
+wholly lost, if his efforts sometimes caused harshness and obscurity,
+they likewise produced in happier moments sublimity and splendour.  This
+idea which he had formed of excellence led him to Oriental fictions and
+allegorical imagery, and, perhaps, while he was intent upon description,
+he did not sufficiently cultivate sentiment.  His poems are the
+productions of a mind not deficient in fire, nor unfurnished with
+knowledge either of books or life, but somewhat obstructed in its
+progress by deviation in quest of mistaken beauties.
+
+“His morals were pure, and his opinions pious; in a long continuance of
+poverty, and long habits of dissipation, it cannot be expected that any
+character should be exactly uniform.  There is a degree of want by which
+the freedom of agency is almost destroyed; and long association with
+fortuitous companions will at last relax the strictness of truth, and
+abate the fervour of sincerity.  That this man, wise and virtuous as he
+was, passed always unentangled through the snares of life, it would be
+prejudice and temerity to affirm; but it may be said that at least he
+preserved the source of action unpolluted, that his principles were never
+shaken, that his distinctions of right and wrong were never confounded,
+and that his faults had nothing of malignity or design, but proceeded
+from some unexpected pressure, or casual temptation.
+
+“The latter part of his life cannot be remembered but with pity and
+sadness.  He languished some years under that depression of mind which
+enchains the faculties without destroying them, and leaves reason the
+knowledge of right without the power of pursuing it.  These clouds which
+he perceived gathering on his intellect he endeavoured to disperse by
+travel, and passed into France; but found himself constrained to yield to
+his malady, and returned.  He was for some time confined in a house of
+lunatics, and afterwards retired to the care of his sister in Chichester,
+where death, in 1756, came to his relief.
+
+“After his return from France, the writer of this character paid him a
+visit at Islington, where he was waiting for his sister, whom he had
+directed to meet him.  There was then nothing of disorder discernible in
+his mind by any but himself; but he had withdrawn from study, and
+travelled with no other book than an English Testament, such as children
+carry to the school.  When his friend took it into his hand, out of
+curiosity to see what companion a man of letters had chosen, ‘I have but
+one book,’ said Collins, ‘but that is the best.’”
+
+Such was the fate of Collins, with whom I once delighted to converse, and
+whom I yet remember with tenderness.
+
+He was visited at Chichester, in his last illness, by his learned friends
+Dr. Warton and his brother, to whom he spoke with disapprobation of his
+“Oriental Eclogues,” as not sufficiently expressive of Asiatic manners,
+and called them his “Irish Eclogues.”  He showed them, at the same time,
+an ode inscribed to Mr. John Home, on the superstitions of the Highlands,
+which they thought superior to his other works, but which no search has
+yet found.  His disorder was no alienation of mind, but general laxity
+and feebleness—a deficiency rather of his vital than his intellectual
+powers.  What he spoke wanted neither judgment nor spirit; but a few
+minutes exhausted him, so that he was forced to rest upon the couch, till
+a short cessation restored his powers, and he was again able to talk with
+his former vigour.  The approaches of this dreadful malady he began to
+feel soon after his uncle’s death; and, with the usual weakness of men so
+diseased, eagerly snatched that temporary relief with which the table and
+the bottle flatter and seduce.  But his health continually declined, and
+he grew more and more burthensome to himself.
+
+To what I have formerly said of his writings may be added, that his
+diction was often harsh, unskilfully laboured, and injudiciously
+selected.  He affected the obsolete when it was not worthy of revival:
+and he puts his words out of the common order, seeming to think, with
+some later candidates for fame, that not to write prose is certainly to
+write poetry.  His lines commonly are of slow motion, clogged and impeded
+with clusters of consonants.  As men are often esteemed who cannot be
+loved, so the poetry of Collins may sometimes extort praise when it gives
+little pleasure.
+
+Mr. Collins’s first production is added here from the _Poetical
+Calendar_:—
+
+                             TO MISS AURELIA C—R,
+                   ON HER WEEPING AT HER SISTER’S WEDDING.
+
+    “Cease, fair Aurelia, cease to mourn;
+       Lament not Hannah’s happy state;
+    You may be happy in your turn,
+       And seize the treasure you regret.
+    With Love united Hymen stands,
+       And softly whispers to your charms,
+    ‘Meet but your lover in my bands,
+       You’ll find your sister in his arms.’”
+
+
+
+
+DYER.
+
+
+JOHN DYER, of whom I have no other account to give than his own letters,
+published with Hughes’s correspondence, and the notes added by the
+editor, have afforded me, was born in 1700, the second son of Robert Dyer
+of Aberglasney, in Caermarthenshire, a solicitor of great capacity and
+note.  He passed through Westminster school under the care of Dr. Freind,
+and was then called home to be instructed in his father’s profession.
+But his father died soon, and he took no delight in the study of the law;
+but, having always amused himself with drawing, resolved to turn painter,
+and became pupil to Mr. Richardson, an artist then of high reputation,
+but now better known by his books than by his pictures.
+
+Having studied a while under his master, he became, as he tells his
+friend, an itinerant painter, and wandered about South Wales and the
+parts adjacent; but he mingled poetry with painting, and about 1727
+[1726] printed “Grongar Hill” in Lewis’s Miscellany.  Being, probably,
+unsatisfied with his own proficiency, he, like other painters, travelled
+to Italy; and coming back in 1740, published the “Ruins of Rome.”  If his
+poem was written soon after his return, he did not make use of his
+acquisitions in painting, whatever they might be; for decline of health
+and love of study determined him to the Church.  He therefore entered
+into orders; and, it seems, married about the same time a lady of the
+name of Ensor; “whose grandmother,” says he, “was a Shakspeare, descended
+from a brother of everybody’s Shakspeare;” by her, in 1756, he had a son
+and three daughters living.
+
+His ecclesiastical provision was for a long time but slender.  His first
+patron, Mr. Harper, gave him, in 1741, Calthorp in Leicestershire, of
+eighty pounds a year, on which he lived ten years, and then exchanged it
+for Belchford, in Lincolnshire, of seventy-five.  His condition now began
+to mend.  In 1751 Sir John Heathcote gave him Coningsby, of one hundred
+and forty pounds a year; and in 1755 the Chancellor added Kirkby, of one
+hundred and ten.  He complains that the repair of the house at Coningsby,
+and other expenses, took away the profit.  In 1757 he published “The
+Fleece,” his greatest poetical work; of which I will not suppress a
+ludicrous story.  Dodsley the bookseller was one day mentioning it to a
+critical visitor, with more expectation of success than the other could
+easily admit.  In the conversation the author’s age was asked; and being
+represented as advanced in life, “He will,” said the critic, “be buried
+in woollen.”  He did not indeed long survive that publication, nor long
+enjoy the increase of his preferments, for in 1758 he died.
+
+Dyer is not a poet of bulk or dignity sufficient to require an elaborate
+criticism.  “Grongar Hill” is the happiest of his productions: it is not
+indeed very accurately written; but the scenes which it displays are so
+pleasing, the images which they raise are so welcome to the mind, and the
+reflections of the writer so consonant to the general sense or experience
+of mankind, that when it is once read, it will be read again.  The idea
+of the “Ruins of Rome” strikes more, but pleases less, and the title
+raises greater expectation than the performance gratifies.  Some
+passages, however, are conceived with the mind of a poet; as when, in the
+neighbourhood of dilapidating edifices, he says,
+
+             “The Pilgrim oft
+    At dead of night, ’mid his orison hears
+    Aghast the voice of Time, disparting tow’rs
+    Tumbling all precipitate down dashed,
+    Rattling around, loud thund’ring to the Moon.”
+
+Of “The Fleece,” which never became popular, and is now universally
+neglected, I can say little that is likely to recall it to attention.
+The woolcomber and the poet appear to me such discordant natures, that an
+attempt to bring them together is to _couple the serpent with the fowl_.
+When Dyer, whose mind was not unpoetical, has done his utmost, by
+interesting his reader in our native commodity by interspersing rural
+imagery, and incidental digressions, by clothing small images in great
+words, and by all the writer’s arts of delusion, the meanness naturally
+adhering, and the irreverence habitually annexed to trade and
+manufacture, sink him under insuperable oppression; and the disgust which
+blank verse, encumbering and encumbered, superadds to an unpleasing
+subject, soon repels the reader, however willing to be pleased.
+
+Let me, however, honestly report whatever may counterbalance this weight
+of censure.  I have been told that Akenside, who, upon a poetical
+question, has a right to be heard, said, “That he would regulate his
+opinion of the reigning taste by the fate of Dyer’s ‘Fleece;’ for, if
+that were ill-received, he should not think it any longer reasonable to
+expect fame from excellence.”
+
+
+
+
+SHENSTONE.
+
+
+WILLIAM SHENSTONE, the son of Thomas Shenstone and Anne Pen, was born in
+November, 1714, at the Leasowes in Hales-Owen, one of those insulated
+districts which, in the division of the kingdom, was appended, for some
+reason not now discoverable, to a distant county; and which, though
+surrounded by Warwickshire and Worcestershire, belongs to Shropshire,
+though perhaps thirty miles distant from any other part of it.  He
+learned to read of an old dame, whom his poem of the “Schoolmistress” has
+delivered to posterity; and soon received such delight from books, that
+he was always calling for fresh entertainment, and expected that, when
+any of the family went to market, a new book should be brought him,
+which, when it came, was in fondness carried to bed and laid by him.  It
+is said, that, when his request had been neglected, his mother wrapped up
+a piece of wood of the same form, and pacified him for the night.  As he
+grew older, he went for a while to the Grammar-school in Hales-Owen, and
+was placed afterwards with Mr. Crumpton, an eminent schoolmaster at
+Solihul, where he distinguished himself by the quickness of his progress.
+
+When he was young (June, 1724) he was deprived of his father, and soon
+after (August, 1726) of his grandfather; and was, with his brother, who
+died afterwards unmarried, left to the care of his grandmother, who
+managed the estate.
+
+From school he was sent in 1732 to Pembroke College in Oxford, a society
+which for half a century has been eminent for English poetry and elegant
+literature.  Here it appears that he found delight and advantage; for he
+continued his name in the book ten years, though he took no degree.
+After the first four years he put on the civilian’s gown, but without
+showing any intention to engage in the profession.  About the time when
+he went to Oxford, the death of his grandmother devolved his affairs to
+the care of the Rev. Mr. Dolman, of Brome in Staffordshire, whose
+attention he always mentioned with gratitude.  At Oxford he employed
+himself upon English poetry; and in 1737 published a small Miscellany,
+without his name.  He then for a time wandered about, to acquaint himself
+with life, and was sometimes at London, sometimes at Bath, or any other
+place of public resort; but he did not forget his poetry.  He published
+in 1741 his “Judgment of Hercules,” addressed to Mr. Lyttelton, whose
+interest he supported with great warmth at an election: this was next
+year followed by the “Schoolmistress.”
+
+Mr. Dolman, to whose care he was indebted for his ease and leisure, died
+in 1745, and the care of his own fortune now fell upon him.  He tried to
+escape it awhile, and lived at his house with his tenants, who were
+distantly related; but, finding that imperfect possession inconvenient,
+he took the whole estate into his own hands, more to the improvement of
+its beauty than the increase of its produce.  Now was excited his delight
+in rural pleasures and his ambition of rural elegance; he began from this
+time to point his prospects, to diversify his surface, to entangle his
+walks, and to wind his waters, which he did with such judgment and such
+fancy as made his little domain the envy of the great and the admiration
+of the skilful; a place to be visited by travellers and copied by
+designers.  Whether to plant a walk in undulating curves, and to place a
+bench at every turn where there is an object to catch the view, to make
+the water run where it will be heard, and to stagnate where it will be
+seen, to leave intervals where the eye will be pleased, and to thicken
+the plantation where there is something to be hidden, demands any great
+powers of mind, I will not inquire: perhaps a sullen and surly spectator
+may think such performances rather the sport than the business of human
+reason.  But it must be at least confessed that to embellish the form of
+Nature is an innocent amusement, and some praise must be allowed, by the
+most supercilious observer, to him who does best what such multitudes are
+contending to do well.
+
+This praise was the praise of Shenstone; but, like all other modes of
+felicity, it was not enjoyed without its abatements.  Lyttelton was his
+neighbour and his rival, whose empire, spacious and opulent, looked with
+disdain on the _petty state_ that _appeared behind it_.  For a while the
+inhabitants of Hagley affected to tell their acquaintance of the little
+fellow that was trying to make himself admired; but when by degrees the
+Leasowes forced themselves into notice, they took care to defeat the
+curiosity which they could not suppress by conducting their visitants
+perversely to inconvenient points of view, and introducing them at the
+wrong end of a walk to detect a deception; injuries of which Shenstone
+would heavily complain.  Where there is emulation there will be vanity;
+and where there is vanity there will be folly.
+
+The pleasure of Shenstone was all in his eye; he valued what he valued
+merely for its looks.  Nothing raised his indignation more than to ask if
+there were any fishes in his water.  His house was mean, and he did not
+improve it; his care was of his grounds.  When he came home from his
+walks, he might find his floors flooded by a shower through the broken
+roof; but could spare no money for its reparation.  In time his expenses
+brought clamours about him that overpowered the lamb’s bleat and the
+linnet’s song, and his groves were haunted by beings very different from
+fauns and fairies.  He spent his estate in adorning it, and his death was
+probably hastened by his anxieties.  He was a lamp that spent its oil in
+blazing.  It is said that, if he had lived a little longer, he would have
+been assisted by a pension: such bounty could not have been ever more
+properly bestowed; but that it was ever asked is not certain; it is too
+certain that it never was enjoyed.  He died at Leasowes, of a putrid
+fever, about five on Friday morning, February 11, 1763, and was buried by
+the side of his brother in the churchyard of Hales-Owen.
+
+He was never married, though he might have obtained the lady, whoever she
+was, to whom his “Pastoral Ballad” was addressed.  He is represented by
+his friend Dodsley as a man of great tenderness and generosity, kind to
+all that were within his influence; but, if once offended, not easily
+appeased; inattentive to economy, and careless of his expenses; in his
+person he was larger than the middle-size, with something clumsy in his
+form; very negligent of his clothes, and remarkable for wearing his grey
+hair in a particular manner, for he held that the fashion was no rule of
+dress, and that every man was to suit his appearance to his natural form.
+His mind was not very comprehensive, nor his curiosity active; he had no
+value for those parts of knowledge which he had not himself cultivated.
+His life was unstained by any crime.  The “Elegy on Jesse,” which has
+been supposed to relate an unfortunate and criminal amour of his own, was
+known by his friends to have been suggested by the story of Miss Godfrey
+in Richardson’s “Pamela.”
+
+What Gray thought of his character, from the perusal of his Letters, was
+this:—
+
+    “I have read, too, an octavo volume of Shenstone’s Letters.  Poor
+    man! he was always wishing for money, for fame, and other
+    distinctions; and his whole philosophy consisted in living against
+    his will in retirement, and in a place which his taste had adorned,
+    but which he only enjoyed when people of note came to see and commend
+    it.  His correspondence is about nothing else but this place and his
+    own writings, with two or three neighbouring clergymen, who wrote
+    verses too.”
+
+His poems consist of elegies, odes, and ballads, humorous sallies, and
+moral pieces.  His conception of an Elegy he has in his Preface very
+judiciously and discriminately explained.  It is, according to his
+account, the effusion of a contemplative mind, sometimes plaintive, and
+always serious, and therefore superior to the glitter of slight
+ornaments.  His compositions suit not ill to this description.  His
+topics of praise are the domestic virtues, and his thoughts are pure and
+simple, but wanting combination; they want variety.  The peace of
+solitude, the innocence of inactivity, and the unenvied security of an
+humble station, can fill but a few pages.  That of which the essence is
+uniformity will be soon described.  His elegies have, therefore, too much
+resemblance of each other.  The lines are sometimes, such as Elegy
+requires, smooth and easy; but to this praise his claim is not constant;
+his diction is often harsh, improper, and affected, his words ill-coined
+or ill-chosen, and his phrase unskilfully inverted.
+
+The Lyric Poems are almost all of the light and airy kind, such as trip
+lightly and nimbly along, without the load of any weighty meaning.  From
+these, however, “Rural Elegance” has some right to be excepted.  I once
+heard it praised by a very learned lady; and, though the lines are
+irregular, and the thoughts diffused with too much verbosity, yet it
+cannot be denied to contain both philosophical argument and poetical
+spirit.  Of the rest I cannot think any excellent; the “Skylark” pleases
+me best, which has, however, more of the epigram than of the ode.
+
+But the four parts of his “Pastoral Ballad” demand particular notice.  I
+cannot but regret that it is pastoral: an intelligent reader acquainted
+with the scenes of real life sickens at the mention of the _crook_, the
+_pipe_, the _sheep_, and the _kids_, which it is not necessary to bring
+forward to notice; for the poet’s art is selection, and he ought to show
+the beauties without the grossness of the country life.  His stanza seems
+to have been chosen in imitation of Rowe’s “Despairing Shepherd.”  In the
+first are two passages, to which if any mind denies its sympathy, it has
+no acquaintance with love or nature:—
+
+    “I prized every hour that went by,
+       Beyond all that had pleased me before:
+    But now they are past, and I sigh,
+       And I grieve that I prized them no more.
+
+    When forced the fair nymph to forego,
+       What anguish I felt in my heart!
+    Yet I thought (but it might not be so)
+       ’Twas with pain that she saw me depart.
+
+    She gazed, as I slowly withdrew,
+       My path I could hardly discern;
+    So sweetly she bade me adieu,
+       I thought that she bade me return.”
+
+In the second this passage has its prettiness; though it be not equal to
+the former:—
+
+    “I have found out a gift for my fair:
+       I have found where the wood pigeons breed:
+    But let me that plunder forbear,
+       She will say ’twas a barbarous deed:
+
+    For he ne’er could be true, she averred,
+       Who could rob a poor bird of its young;
+    And I loved her the more when I heard
+       Such tenderness fall from her tongue.”
+
+In the third he mentions the common-places of amorous poetry with some
+address:—
+
+    “’Tis his with mock passion to glow!
+       ’Tis his in smooth tales to unfold,
+    How her face is as bright as the snow,
+       And her bosom, be sure, is as cold:
+
+    How the nightingales labour the strain,
+       With the notes of this charmer to vie:
+    How they vary their accents in vain,
+       Repine at her triumphs, and die.”
+
+In the fourth I find nothing better than this natural strain of Hope:—
+
+    “Alas! from the day that we met,
+       What hope of an end to my woes,
+    When I cannot endure to forget
+       The glance that undid my repose?
+
+    Yet Time may diminish the pain:
+       The flower, and the shrub, and the tree,
+    Which I reared for her pleasure in vain,
+       In time may have comfort for me.”
+
+His “Levities” are by their title exempted from the severities of
+criticism, yet it may be remarked in a few words that his humour is
+sometimes gross, and seldom sprightly.
+
+Of the Moral Poems, the first is the “Choice of Hercules,” from Xenophon.
+The numbers are smooth, the diction elegant, and the thoughts just; but
+something of vigour is still to be wished, which it might have had by
+brevity and compression.  His “Fate of Delicacy” has an air of gaiety,
+but not a very pointed and general moral.  His blank verses, those that
+can read them, may probably find to be like the blank verses of his
+neighbours.  “Love and Honour” is derived from the old ballad, “Did you
+not hear of a Spanish Lady?”—I wish it well enough to wish it were in
+rhyme.
+
+The “Schoolmistress,” of which I know not what claim it has to stand
+among the Moral Works, is surely the most pleasing of Shenstone’s
+performances.  The adoption of a particular style, in light and short
+compositions, contributes much to the increase of pleasure: we are
+entertained at once with two imitations of nature in the sentiments, of
+the original author in the style, and between them the mind is kept in
+perpetual employment.
+
+The general recommendation of Shenstone is easiness and simplicity; his
+general defect is want of comprehension and variety.  Had his mind been
+better stored with knowledge, whether he could have been great, I know
+not; he could certainly have been agreeable.
+
+
+
+
+YOUNG.
+
+
+THE following life was written, at my request, by a gentleman (Mr.
+Herbert Croft) who had better information than I could easily have
+obtained; and the public will perhaps wish that I had solicited and
+obtained more such favours from him:—
+
+    “Dear Sir,—In consequence of our different conversations about
+    authentic materials for the Life of Young, I send you the following
+    details:”—
+
+Of great men something must always be said to gratify curiosity.  Of the
+illustrious author of the “Night Thoughts” much has been told of which
+there never could have been proofs, and little care appears to have been
+taken to tell that of which proofs, with little trouble, might have been
+procured.
+
+Edward Young was born at Upham, near Winchester, in June, 1681.  He was
+the son of Edward Young, at that time Fellow of Winchester College, and
+Rector of Upham, who was the son of Jo. Young, of Woodhay, in Berkshire,
+styled by Wood, _gentleman_.  In September, 1682, the poet’s father was
+collated to the prebend of Gillingham Minor, in the church of Sarum, by
+Bishop Ward.  When Ward’s faculties were impaired through age, his duties
+were necessarily performed by others.  We learn from Wood that, at a
+visitation of Sprat’s, July the 12th, 1686, the prebendary preached a
+Latin sermon, afterwards published, with which the Bishop was so pleased,
+that he told the chapter he was concerned to find the preacher had one of
+the worst prebends in their Church.  Some time after this, in consequence
+of his merit and reputation, or of the interest of Lord Bradford, to
+whom, in 1702, he dedicated two volumes of sermons, he was appointed
+chaplain to King William and Queen Mary, and preferred to the Deanery of
+Sarum.  Jacob, who wrote in 1720, says, “he was Chaplain and Clerk of the
+Closet to the late Queen, who honoured him by standing godmother to the
+poet.”  His Fellowship of Winchester he resigned in favour of a gentleman
+of the name of Harris, who married his only daughter.  The Dean died at
+Sarum, after a short illness, in 1705, in the sixty-third year of his
+age.  On the Sunday after his decease, Bishop Burnet preached at the
+cathedral, and began his sermon with saying, “Death has been of late
+walking round us, and making breach upon breach upon us, and has now
+carried away the head of this body with a stroke, so that he, whom you
+saw a week ago distributing the holy mysteries, is now laid in the dust.
+But he still lives in the many excellent directions he has left us both
+how to live and how to die.”
+
+The dean placed his son upon the foundation at Winchester College, where
+he had himself been educated.  At this school Edward Young remained till
+the election after his eighteenth birthday, the period at which those
+upon the foundation are superannuated.  Whether he did not betray his
+abilities early in life, or his masters had not skill enough to discover
+in their pupil any marks of genius for which he merited reward, or no
+vacancy at Oxford offered them an opportunity to bestow upon him the
+reward provided for merit by William of Wykeham; certain it is, that to
+an Oxford fellowship our poet did not succeed.  By chance, or by choice,
+New College cannot claim the honour of numbering among its fellows him
+who wrote the “Night Thoughts.”
+
+On the 13th of October, 1703, he was entered an independent member of New
+College, that he might live at little expense in the warden’s lodgings,
+who was a particular friend of his father’s, till he should be qualified
+to stand for a fellowship at All Souls.  In a few months the warden of
+New College died.  He then removed to Corpus College.  The president of
+this society, from regard also for his father, invited him thither, in
+order to lessen his academical expenses.  In 1708 he was nominated to a
+law-fellowship at All Souls by Archbishop Tenison, into whose hands it
+came by devolution.  Such repeated patronage, while it justifies Burnet’s
+praise of the father, reflects credit on the conduct of the son.  The
+manner in which it was exerted seems to prove that the father did not
+leave behind him much wealth.
+
+On the 23rd of April, 1714, Young took his degree of bachelor of civil
+laws, and his doctor’s degree on the 10th of June, 1719.  Soon after he
+went to Oxford he discovered, it is said, an inclination for pupils.
+Whether he ever commenced tutor is not known.  None has hitherto boasted
+to have received his academical instruction from the author of “Night
+Thoughts.”  It is probable that his College was proud of him no less as a
+scholar than as a poet; for in 1716, when the foundation of the
+Codrington Library was laid, two years after he had taken his bachelor’s
+degree, Young was appointed to speak the Latin oration.  This is at least
+particular for being dedicated in English “To the Ladies of the
+Codrington Family.”  To these ladies he says “that he was unavoidably
+flung into a singularity, by being obliged to write an epistle dedicatory
+void of commonplace, and such an one was never published before by any
+author whatever; that this practice absolved them from any obligation of
+reading what was presented to them; and that the bookseller approved of
+it, because it would make people stare, was absurd enough and perfectly
+right.”  Of this oration there is no appearance in his own edition of his
+works; and prefixed to an edition by Curll and Tonson, in 1741, is a
+letter from Young to Curll, if we may credit Curll, dated December the
+9th, 1739, wherein he says that he has not leisure to review what he
+formerly wrote, and adds, “I have not the ‘Epistle to Lord Lansdowne.’
+If you will take my advice, I would have you omit that, and the oration
+on Codrington.  I think the collection will sell better without them.”
+
+There are who relate that, when first Young found himself independent,
+and his own master at All Souls, he was not the ornament to religion and
+morality which he afterwards became.  The authority of his father,
+indeed, had ceased, some time before, by his death; and Young was
+certainly not ashamed to be patronised by the infamous Wharton.  But
+Wharton befriended in Young, perhaps, the poet, and particularly the
+tragedian.  If virtuous authors must be patronised only by virtuous
+peers, who shall point them out?  Yet Pope is said by Ruffhead to have
+told Warburton that “Young had much of a sublime genius, though without
+common sense; so that his genius, having no guide, was perpetually liable
+to degenerate into bombast.  This made him pass a _foolish youth_, the
+sport of peers and poets: but his having a very good heart enabled him to
+support the clerical character when he assumed it, first with decency,
+and afterwards with honour.”
+
+They who think ill of Young’s morality in the early part of his life may
+perhaps be wrong; but Tindal could not err in his opinion of Young’s
+warmth and ability in the cause of religion.  Tindal used to spend much
+of his time at All Souls.  “The other boys,” said the atheist, “I can
+always answer, because I always know whence they have their arguments,
+which I have read a hundred times; but that fellow Young is continually
+pestering me with something of his own.”
+
+After all, Tindal and the censurers of Young may be reconcilable.  Young
+might, for two or three years, have tried that kind of life, in which his
+natural principles would not suffer him to wallow long.  If this were so,
+he has left behind him not only his evidence in favour of virtue, but the
+potent testimony of experience against vice.  We shall soon see that one
+of his earliest productions was more serious than what comes from the
+generality of unfledged poets.
+
+Young perhaps ascribed the good fortune of Addison to the “Poem to his
+Majesty,” presented with a copy of verses, to Somers: and hoped that he
+also might soar to wealth and honours on wings of the same kind.  His
+first poetical flight was when Queen Anne called up to the House of Lords
+the sons of the Earls of Northampton and Aylesbury, and added, in one
+day, ten others to the number of Peers.  In order to reconcile the people
+to one, at least, of the new lords, he published, in 1712, “An Epistle to
+the Right Honourable George Lord Lansdowne.”  In this composition the
+poet pours out his panegyric with the extravagance of a young man, who
+thinks his present stock of wealth will never be exhausted.  The poem
+seems intended also to reconcile the public to the late peace.  This is
+endeavoured to be done by showing that men are slain in war, and that in
+peace “harvests wave, and commerce swells her sail.”  If this be
+humanity, for which he meant it, is it politics?  Another purpose of this
+epistle appears to have been to prepare the public for the reception of
+some tragedy he might have in hand.  His lordship’s patronage, he says,
+will not let him “repent his passion for the stage;” and the particular
+praise bestowed on _Othello_ and _Oroonoko_ looks as if some such
+character as Zanga was even then in contemplation.  The affectionate
+mention of the death of his friend Harrison of New College, at the close
+of this poem, is an instance of Young’s art, which displayed itself so
+wonderfully some time afterwards in the “Night Thoughts,” of making the
+public a party in his private sorrow.  Should justice call upon you to
+censure this poem, it ought at least to be remembered that he did not
+insert it in his works; and that in the letter to Curll, as we have seen,
+he advises its omission.  The booksellers, in the late body of English
+poetry, should have distinguished what was deliberately rejected by the
+respective authors.  This I shall be careful to do with regard to Young.
+“I think,” says he, “the following pieces in _four_ volumes to be the
+most excusable of all that I have written; and I wish _less apology_ was
+less needful for these.  As there is no recalling what is got abroad, the
+pieces here republished I have revised and corrected, and rendered them
+as _pardonable_ as it was in my power to do.”
+
+Shall the gates of repentance be shut only against literary sinners?
+
+When Addison published “Cato” in 1713, Young had the honour of prefixing
+to it a recommendatory copy of verses.  This is one of the pieces which
+the author of the “Night Thoughts” did not republish.
+
+On the appearance of his poem on the “Last Day,” Addison did not return
+Young’s compliment; but “The Englishman” of October 29, 1713, which was
+probably written by Addison, speaks handsomely of this poem.  The “Last
+Day” was published soon after the peace.  The Vice-Chancellor’s
+_imprimatur_ (for it was printed at Oxford) is dated the 19th, 1713.
+From the exordium, Young appears to have spent some time on the
+composition of it.  While other bards “with Britain’s hero set their
+souls on fire,” he draws, he says, a deeper scene.  Marlborough _had
+been_ considered by Britain as her _hero_; but, when the “Last Day” was
+published, female cabal had blasted for a time the laurels of Blenheim.
+This serious poem was finished by Young as early as 1710, before he was
+thirty; for part of it is printed in the _Tatler_.  It was inscribed to
+the queen, in a dedication, which, for some reason, he did not admit into
+his works.  It tells her that his only title to the great honour he now
+does himself is the obligation which he formerly received from her royal
+indulgence.  Of this obligation nothing is now known, unless he alluded
+to her being his godmother.  He is said indeed to have been engaged at a
+settled stipend as a writer for the Court.  In Swift’s “Rhapsody on
+Poetry” are these lines, speaking of the Court:—
+
+    “Whence Gay was banished in disgrace,
+    Where Pope will never show his face,
+    Where Y— must torture his invention
+    To flatter knaves, or lose his pension.”
+
+That Y— means Young seems clear from four other lines in the same poem:—
+
+    “Attend, ye Popes, and Youngs, and Gays,
+    And tune your harps and strew your bays;
+    Your panegyrics here provide;
+    You cannot err on flattery’s side.”
+
+Yet who shall say with certainty that Young was a pensioner?  In all
+modern periods of this country, have not the writers on one side been
+regularly called Hirelings, and on the other Patriots?
+
+Of the dedication the complexion is clearly political.  It speaks in the
+highest terms of the late peace; it gives her Majesty praise indeed for
+her victories, but says that the author is more pleased to see her rise
+from this lower world, soaring above the clouds, passing the first and
+second heavens, and leaving the fixed stars behind her; nor will he lose
+her there, he says, but keep her still in view through the boundless
+spaces on the other side of creation, in her journey towards eternal
+bliss, till he behold the heaven of heavens open, and angels receiving
+and conveying her still onward from the stretch of his imagination, which
+tires in her pursuit, and falls back again to earth.
+
+The queen was soon called away from this lower world, to a place where
+human praise or human flattery, even less general than this, are of
+little consequence.  If Young thought the dedication contained only the
+praise of truth, he should not have omitted it in his works.  Was he
+conscious of the exaggeration of party?  Then he should not have written
+it.  The poem itself is not without a glance towards politics,
+notwithstanding the subject.  The cry that the Church was in danger had
+not yet subsided.  The “Last Day,” written by a layman, was much approved
+by the ministry and their friends.
+
+Before the queen’s death, “The Force of Religion, or Vanquished Love,”
+was sent into the world.  This poem is founded on the execution of Lady
+Jane Grey and her husband, Lord Guildford, 1554, a story chosen for the
+subject of a tragedy by Edmund Smith, and wrought into a tragedy by Rowe.
+The dedication of it to the Countess of Salisbury does not appear in his
+own edition.  He hopes it may be some excuse for his presumption that the
+story could not have been read without thoughts of the Countess of
+Salisbury, though it had been dedicated to another.  “To behold,” he
+proceeds, “a person _only_ virtuous, stirs in us a prudent regret; to
+behold a person _only_ amiable to the sight, warms us with a religious
+indignation; but to turn our eyes to a Countess of Salisbury, gives us
+pleasure and improvement; it works a sort of miracle, occasions the bias
+of our nature to fall off from sin, and makes our very senses and
+affections converts to our religion, and promoters of our duty.”  His
+flattery was as ready for the other sex as for ours, and was at least as
+well adapted.
+
+August the 27th, 1714, Pope writes to his friend Jervas, that he is just
+arrived from Oxford; that every one is much concerned for the queen’s
+death, but that no panegyrics are ready yet for the king.  Nothing like
+friendship has yet taken place between Pope and Young, for, soon after
+the event which Pope mentions, Young published a poem on the queen’s
+death, and his Majesty’s accession to the throne.  It is inscribed to
+Addison, then secretary to the Lords Justices.  Whatever were the
+obligations which he had formerly received from Anne, the poet appears to
+aim at something of the same sort from George.  Of the poem the intention
+seems to have been, to show that he had the same extravagant strain of
+praise for a king as for a queen.  To discover, at the very onset of a
+foreigner’s reign, that the gods bless his new subjects in such a king is
+something more than praise.  Neither was this deemed one of his excusable
+pieces.  We do not find it in his works.
+
+Young’s father had been well acquainted with Lady Anne Wharton, the first
+wife of Thomas Wharton, Esq., afterwards Marquis of Wharton; a lady
+celebrated for her poetical talents by Burnet and by Waller.
+
+To the Dean of Sarum’s visitation sermon, already mentioned, were added
+some verses “by that excellent poetess, Mrs. Anne Wharton,” upon its
+being translated into English, at the instance of Waller by Atwood.
+Wharton, after he became ennobled, did not drop the son of his old
+friend.  In him, during the short time he lived, Young found a patron,
+and in his dissolute descendant a friend and a companion.  The marquis
+died in April, 1715.  In the beginning of the next year, the young
+marquis set out upon his travels, from which he returned in about a
+twelvemonth.  The beginning of 1717 carried him to Ireland: where, says
+the Biographia, “on the score of his extraordinary qualities, he had the
+honour done him of being admitted, though under age, to take his seat in
+the House of Lords.”  With this unhappy character it is not unlikely that
+Young went to Ireland.  From his letter to Richardson on “Original
+Composition,” it is clear he was, at some period of his life, in that
+country.  “I remember,” says he, in that letter, speaking of Swift, “as I
+and others were taking with him an evening walk, about a mile out of
+Dublin, he stopped short; we passed on; but perceiving he did not follow
+us, I went back, and found him fixed as a statue, and earnestly gazing
+upward at a noble elm, which in its uppermost branches was much withered
+and decayed.  Pointing at it, he said, ‘I shall be like that tree, I
+shall die at top.’”  Is it not probable, that this visit to Ireland was
+paid when he had an opportunity of going thither with his avowed friend
+and patron?
+
+From “The Englishman” it appears that a tragedy by Young was in the
+theatre so early as 1713.  Yet _Busiris_ was not brought upon Drury Lane
+stage till 1719.  It was inscribed to the Duke of Newcastle, “because the
+late instances he had received of his grace’s undeserved and uncommon
+favour, in an affair of some consequence, foreign to the theatre, had
+taken from him the privilege of choosing a patron.”  The Dedication he
+afterwards suppressed.
+
+_Busiris_ was followed in the year 1721 by _The Revenge_.  He dedicated
+this famous tragedy to the Duke of Wharton.  “Your Grace,” says the
+Dedication, “has been pleased to make yourself accessory to the following
+scenes, not only by suggesting the most beautiful incident in them, but
+by making all possible provision for the success of the whole.”  That his
+grace should have suggested the incident to which he alludes, whatever
+that incident might have been, is not unlikely.  The last mental exertion
+of the superannuated young man, in his quarters at Lerida, in Spain, was
+some scenes of a tragedy on the story of Mary Queen of Scots.
+
+Dryden dedicated “Marriage a la Mode” to Wharton’s infamous relation
+Rochester, whom he acknowledges not only as the defender of his poetry,
+but as the promoter of his fortune.  Young concludes his address to
+Wharton thus—“My present fortune is his bounty, and my future his care;
+which I will venture to say will be always remembered to his honour,
+since he, I know, intended his generosity as an encouragement to merit,
+though through his very pardonable partiality to one who bears him so
+sincere a duty and respect, I happen to receive the benefit of it.”  That
+he ever had such a patron as Wharton, Young took all the pains in his
+power to conceal from the world, by excluding this dedication from his
+works.  He should have remembered that he at the same time concealed his
+obligation to Wharton for _the most beautiful incident_ in what is surely
+not his least beautiful composition.  The passage just quoted is, in a
+poem afterwards addressed to Walpole, literally copied:
+
+    “Be this thy partial smile from censure free!
+    ’Twas meant for merit, though it fell on me.”
+
+While Young, who, in his “Love of Fame,” complains grievously how often
+“dedications wash an Æthiop white,” was painting an amiable Duke of
+Wharton in perishable prose, Pope was, perhaps, beginning to describe the
+“scorn and wonder of his days” in lasting verse.  To the patronage of
+such a character, had Young studied men as much as Pope, he would have
+known how little to have trusted.  Young, however, was certainly indebted
+to it for something material; and the duke’s regard for Young, added to
+his lust of praise, procured to All Souls College a donation, which was
+not forgotten by the poet when he dedicated _The Revenge_.
+
+It will surprise you to see me cite second Atkins, Case 136, Stiles
+_versus_ the Attorney-General, March 14, 1740, as authority for the life
+of a poet.  But biographers do not always find such certain guides as the
+oaths of the persons whom they record.  Chancellor Hardwicke was to
+determine whether two annuities, granted by the Duke of Wharton to Young,
+were for legal considerations.  One was dated the 24th March, 1719, and
+accounted for his grace’s bounty in a style princely and commendable, if
+not legal—“considering that the public good is advanced by the
+encouragement of learning and the polite arts, and being pleased therein
+with the attempts of Dr. Young, in consideration thereof, and of the love
+I bear him, &c.”  The other was dated the 10th of July, 1722.
+
+Young, on his examination, swore that he quitted the Exeter family, and
+refused an annuity of £100 which had been offered him for life if he
+would continue tutor to Lord Burleigh, upon the pressing solicitations of
+the Duke of Wharton, and his grace’s assurances of providing for him in a
+much more ample manner.  It also appeared that the duke had given him a
+bond for £600 dated the 15th of March, 1721, in consideration of his
+taking several journeys, and being at great expenses, in order to be
+chosen member of the House of Commons, at the duke’s desire, and in
+consideration of his not taking two livings of £200 and £400 in the gift
+of All Souls College, on his grace’s promises of serving and advancing
+him in the world.
+
+Of his adventures in the Exeter family I am unable to give any account.
+The attempt to get into Parliament was at Cirencester, where Young stood
+a contested election.  His grace discovered in him talents for oratory as
+well as for poetry.  Nor was this judgment wrong.  Young, after he took
+orders, became a very popular preacher, and was much followed for the
+grace and animation of his delivery.  By his oratorical talents he was
+once in his life, according to the Biographia, deserted.  As he was
+preaching in his turn at St. James’s, he plainly perceived it was out of
+his power to command the attention of his audience.  This so affected the
+feelings of the preacher, that he sat back in the pulpit, and burst into
+tears.  But we must pursue his poetical life.
+
+In 1719 he lamented the death of Addison, in a letter addressed to their
+common friend Tickell.  For the secret history of the following lines, if
+they contain any, it is now vain to seek:
+
+    “_In joy once joined_, in sorrow, now, for years—
+    Partner in grief, and brother of my tears,
+    Tickell, accept this verse, thy mournful due.”
+
+From your account of Tickell it appears that he and Young used to
+“communicate to each other whatever verses they wrote, even to the least
+things.”
+
+In 1719 appeared a “Paraphrase on Part of the Book of Job.”  Parker, to
+whom it is dedicated, had not long, by means of the seals, been qualified
+for a patron.  Of this work the author’s opinion may be known from his
+letter to Curll: “You seem, in the Collection you propose, to have
+omitted what I think may claim the first place in it; I mean ‘a
+Translation from part of Job,’ printed by Mr. Tonson.”  The Dedication,
+which was only suffered to appear in Mr. Tonson’s edition, while it
+speaks with satisfaction of his present retirement, seems to make an
+unusual struggle to escape from retirement.  But every one who sings in
+the dark does not sing from joy.  It is addressed, in no common strain of
+flattery, to a chancellor, of whom he clearly appears to have had no kind
+of knowledge.
+
+Of his Satires it would not have been possible to fix the dates without
+the assistance of first editions, which, as you had occasion to observe
+in your account of Dryden, are with difficulty found.  We must then have
+referred to the poems, to discover when they were written.  For these
+internal notes of time we should not have referred in vain.  The first
+Satire laments, that “Guilt’s chief foe in Addison is fled.”  The second,
+addressing himself, asks:—
+
+    “Is thy ambition sweating for a rhyme,
+    Thou unambitious fool, at this late time?
+    A fool at _forty_ is a fool indeed.”
+
+The Satires were originally published separately in folio, under the
+title of “The Universal Passion.”  These passages fix the appearance of
+the first to about 1725, the time at which it came out.  As Young seldom
+suffered his pen to dry after he had once dipped it in poetry, we may
+conclude that he began his Satires soon after he had written the
+“Paraphrase on Job.”  The last Satire was certainly finished in the
+beginning of the year 1726.  In December, 1725, the King, in his passage
+from Helvoetsluys, escaped with great difficulty from a storm by landing
+at Rye; and the conclusion of the Satire turns the escape into a miracle,
+in such an encomiastic strain of compliment as poetry too often seeks to
+pay to royalty.  From the sixth of these poems we learn,
+
+    “’Midst empire’s charms, how Carolina’s heart
+    Glowed with the love of virtue and of art.”
+
+Since the grateful poet tells us, in the next couplet,
+
+    “Her favour is diffused to that degree,
+    Excess of goodness! it has dawned on me.”
+
+Her Majesty had stood godmother, and given her name, to the daughter of
+the lady whom Young married in 1731; and had perhaps shown some attention
+to Lady Elizabeth’s future husband.
+
+The fifth Satire, “On Women,” was not published till 1727; and the sixth
+not till 1728.
+
+To these poems, when, in 1728, he gathered them into one publication, he
+prefixed a Preface, in which he observes that “no man can converse much
+in the world, but at what he meets with he must either be insensible or
+grieve, or be angry or smile.  Now to smile at it, and turn it into
+ridicule,” he adds, “I think most eligible, as it hurts ourselves least,
+and gives vice and folly the greatest offence.  Laughing at the
+misconduct of the world will, in a great measure, ease us of any more
+disagreeable passion about it.  One passion is more effectually driven
+out by another than by reason, whatever some teach.”  So wrote, and so of
+course thought, the lively and witty satirist at the grave age of almost
+fifty, who, many years earlier in life, wrote the “Last Day.”  After all,
+Swift pronounced of these Satires, that they should either have been more
+angry or more merry.
+
+Is it not somewhat singular that Young preserved, without any palliation,
+this Preface, so bluntly decisive in favour of laughing at the world, in
+the same collection of his works which contains the mournful, angry,
+gloomy “Night Thoughts!”  At the conclusion of the Preface he applies
+Plato’s beautiful fable of the “Birth of Love” to modern poetry, with the
+addition, “that Poetry, like Love, is a little subject to blindness,
+which makes her mistake her way to preferments and honours; and that she
+retains a dutiful admiration of her father’s family; but divides her
+favours, and generally lives with her mother’s relations.”  Poetry, it is
+true, did not lead Young to preferments or to honours; but was there not
+something like blindness in the flattery which he sometimes forced her,
+and her sister Prose, to utter?  She was always, indeed, taught by him to
+entertain a most dutiful admiration of riches; but surely Young, though
+nearly related to Poetry, had no connection with her whom Plato makes the
+mother of Love.  That he could not well complain of being related to
+Poverty appears clearly from the frequent bounties which his gratitude
+records, and from the wealth which he left behind him.  By “The Universal
+Passion” he acquired no vulgar fortune—more than three thousand pounds.
+A considerable sum had already been swallowed up in the South Sea.  For
+this loss he took the vengeance of an author.  His Muse makes poetical
+use more than once of a South Sea Dream.
+
+It is related by Mr. Spence, in his “Manuscript Anecdotes,” on the
+authority of Mr. Rawlinson, that Young, upon the publication of his
+“Universal Passion,” received from the Duke of Grafton two thousand
+pounds; and that, when one of his friends exclaimed, “Two thousand pounds
+for a poem!” he said it was the best bargain he ever made in his life,
+for the poem was worth four thousand.  This story may be true; but it
+seems to have been raised from the two answers of Lord Burghley and Sir
+Philip Sidney in Spenser’s Life.
+
+After inscribing his Satires, not perhaps without the hopes of
+preferments and honours, to such names as the Duke of Dorset, Mr.
+Dodington, Mr. Spencer Compton, Lady Elizabeth Germain, and Sir Robert
+Walpole, he returns to plain panegyric.  In 1726 he addressed a poem to
+Sir Robert Walpole, of which the title sufficiently explains the
+intention.  If Young must be acknowledged a ready celebrator, he did not
+endeavour, or did not choose, to be a lasting one.  “The Instalment” is
+among the pieces he did not admit into the number of his _excusable
+writings_.  Yet it contains a couplet which pretends to pant after the
+power of bestowing immortality:—
+
+    “Oh! how I long, enkindled by the theme,
+    In deep eternity to launch thy name!”
+
+The bounty of the former reign seems to have been continued, possibly
+increased, in this.  Whatever it might have been, the poet thought he
+deserved it; for he was not ashamed to acknowledge what, without his
+acknowledgment, would now perhaps never have been known:—
+
+    “My breast, O Walpole, glows with grateful fire.
+    The streams of royal bounty, turned by thee,
+    Refresh the dry remains of poesy.”
+
+If the purity of modern patriotism will term Young a pensioner, it must
+at least be confessed he was a grateful one.
+
+The reign of the new monarch was ushered in by Young with “Ocean, an
+Ode.”  The hint of it was taken from the royal speech, which recommended
+the increase and the encouragement of the seamen; that they might be
+“invited, rather than compelled by force and violence, to enter into the
+service of their country”—a plan which humanity must lament that policy
+has not even yet been able, or willing, to carry into execution.
+Prefixed to the original publication were an “Ode to the King, Pater
+Patriæ,” and an “Essay on Lyric Poetry.”  It is but justice to confess
+that he preserved neither of them; and that the Ode itself, which in the
+first edition, and in the last, consists of seventy-three stanzas, in the
+author’s own edition is reduced to forty-nine.  Among the omitted
+passages is a “Wish,” that concluded the poem, which few would have
+suspected Young of forming; and of which few, after having formed it,
+would confess something like their shame by suppression.  It stood
+originally so high in the author’s opinion, that he entitled the poem,
+“Ocean, an Ode.  Concluding with a Wish.”  This wish consists of thirteen
+stanzas.  The first runs thus:—
+
+          “O may I _steal_
+          Along the _vale_
+    Of humble life, secure from foes!
+          My friend sincere,
+          My judgment clear,
+    And gentle business my repose!”
+
+The three last stanzas are not more remarkable for just rhymes; but,
+altogether, they will make rather a curious page in the life of Young:—
+
+          “Prophetic schemes,
+          And golden dreams,
+    May I, unsanguine, cast away!
+          Have what I _have_,
+          And live, not _leave_,
+    Enamoured of the present day!
+
+          “My hours my own!
+          My faults unknown!
+    My chief revenue in content!
+          Then leave one _beam_
+          Of honest _fame_!
+    And scorn the laboured monument!
+
+          “Unhurt my urn
+          Till that great TURN
+    When mighty Nature’s self shall die,
+          Time cease to glide,
+          With human pride,
+    Sunk in the ocean of eternity!”
+
+It is whimsical that he, who was soon to bid adieu to rhyme, should fix
+upon a measure in which rhyme abounds even to satiety.  Of this he said,
+in his “Essay on Lyric Poetry,” prefixed to the poem—“For the more
+_harmony_ likewise I chose the frequent return of rhyme, which laid me
+under great difficulties.  But difficulties overcome give grace and
+pleasure.  Nor can I account for the _pleasure of rhyme in general_ (of
+which the moderns are too fond) but from this truth.”  Yet the moderns
+surely deserve not much censure for their fondness of what, by their own
+confession, affords pleasure, and abounds in harmony.  The next paragraph
+in his Essay did not occur to him when he talked of “that great turn” in
+the stanza just quoted.  “But then the writer must take care that the
+difficulty is overcome.  That is, he must make rhyme consistent with as
+perfect sense and expression as could be expected if he was perfectly
+free from that shackle.”  Another part of this Essay will convict the
+following stanza of what every reader will discover in it “involuntary
+burlesque:—
+
+          “The northern blast,
+          The shattered mast,
+    The syrt, the whirlpool, and the rock,
+          The breaking spout,
+          The _stars gone out_,
+    The boiling strait, the monster’s shock.”
+
+But would the English poets fill quite so many volumes if all their
+productions were to be tried, like this, by an elaborate essay on each
+particular species of poetry of which they exhibit specimens?
+
+If Young be not a lyric poet, he is at least a critic in that sort of
+poetry; and, if his lyric poetry can be proved bad, it was first proved
+so by his own criticism.  This surely is candid.
+
+Milbourne was styled by Pope “the fairest of critics,” only because he
+exhibited his own version of “Virgil” to be compared with Dryden’s, which
+he condemned, and with which every reader had it not otherwise in his
+power to compare it.  Young was surely not the most unfair of poets for
+prefixing to a lyric composition an “Essay on Lyric Poetry,” so just and
+impartial as to condemn himself.
+
+We shall soon come to a work, before which we find indeed no critical
+essay, but which disdains to shrink from the touchstone of the severest
+critic; and which certainly, as I remember to have heard you say, if it
+contains some of the worst, contains also some of the best things in the
+language.
+
+Soon after the appearance of “Ocean,” when he was almost fifty, Young
+entered into orders.  In April, 1728, not long after he had put on the
+gown, he was appointed chaplain to George II.
+
+The tragedy of _The Brothers_, which was already in rehearsal, he
+immediately withdrew from the stage.  The managers resigned it with some
+reluctance to the delicacy of the new clergyman.  The Epilogue to _The
+Brothers_, the only appendages to any of his three plays which he added
+himself, is, I believe, the only one of the kind.  He calls it an
+historical Epilogue.  Finding that “Guilt’s dreadful close his narrow
+scene denied,” he, in a manner, continues the tragedy in the Epilogue,
+and relates how Rome revenged the shade of Demetrius, and punished
+Perseus “for this night’s deed.”
+
+Of Young’s taking orders something is told by the biographer of Pope,
+which places the easiness and simplicity of the poet in a singular light.
+When he determined on the Church he did not address himself to Sherlock,
+to Atterbury, or to Hare, for the best instructions in theology, but to
+Pope, who, in a youthful frolic, advised the diligent perusal of Thomas
+Aquinas.  With this treasure Young retired from interruption to an
+obscure place in the suburbs.  His poetical guide to godliness hearing
+nothing of him during half a year, and apprehending he might have carried
+the jest too far, sought after him, and found him just in time to prevent
+what Ruffhead calls “an irretrievable derangement.”
+
+That attachment to his favourite study, which made him think a poet the
+surest guide to his new profession left him little doubt whether poetry
+was the surest path to its honours and preferments.  Not long indeed
+after he took orders he published in prose (1728) “A True Estimate of
+Human Life,” dedicated, notwithstanding the Latin quotations with which
+it abounds, to the Queen; and a sermon preached before the House of
+Commons, 1729, on the martyrdom of King Charles, entitled, “An Apology
+for Princes; or, the Reverence due to Government.”  But the “Second
+Course,” the counterpart of his “Estimate,” without which it cannot be
+called “A True Estimate,” though in 1728 it was announced as “soon to be
+published,” never appeared, and his old friends the Muses were not
+forgotten.  In 1730 he relapsed to poetry, and sent into the world
+“Imperium Pelagi: a Naval Lyric, written in imitation of Pindar’s Spirit,
+occasioned by his Majesty’s return from Hanover, September, 1729, and the
+succeeding peace.”  It is inscribed to the Duke of Chandos.  In the
+Preface we are told that the Ode is the most spirited kind of poetry, and
+that the Pindaric is the most spirited kind of Ode.  “This I speak,” he
+adds, “with sufficient candour at my own very great peril.  But truth has
+an eternal title to our confession, though we are sure to suffer by it.”
+Behold, again, the fairest of poets.  Young’s “Imperium Pelagi” was
+ridiculed in Fielding’s “Tom Thumb;” but let us not forget that it was
+one of his pieces which the author of the “Night Thoughts” deliberately
+refused to own.  Not long after this Pindaric attempt he published two
+Epistles to Pope, “Concerning the Authors of the Age,” 1730.  Of these
+poems one occasion seems to have been an apprehension lest, from the
+liveliness of his satires, he should not be deemed sufficiently serious
+for promotion in the Church.
+
+In July, 1730, he was presented by his College to the Rectory of Welwyn,
+in Hertfordshire.  In May, 1731, he married Lady Elizabeth Lee, daughter
+of the Earl of Lichfield, and widow of Colonel Lee.  His connection with
+this lady arose from his father’s acquaintance, already mentioned, with
+Lady Anne Wharton, who was co-heiress of Sir Henry Lee of Ditchley in
+Oxfordshire.  Poetry had lately been taught by Addison to aspire to the
+arms of nobility, though not with extraordinary happiness.  We may
+naturally conclude that Young now gave himself up in some measure to the
+comforts of his new connection, and to the expectations of that
+preferment which he thought due to his poetical talents, or, at least, to
+the manner in which they had so frequently been exerted.
+
+The next production of his muse was “The Sea-piece,” in two odes.
+
+Young enjoys the credit of what is called an “Extempore Epigram on
+Voltaire,” who, when he was in England, ridiculed, in the company of the
+jealous English poet, Milton’s allegory of “Sin and Death:”
+
+    “You are so witty, profligate and thin,
+    At once we think thee Milton, Death, and Sin.”
+
+From the following passage in the poetical dedication of his “Sea-piece”
+to Voltaire it seems that this extemporaneous reproof, if it must be
+extemporaneous (for what few will now affirm Voltaire to have deserved
+any reproof), was something longer than a distich, and something more
+gentle than the distich just quoted.
+
+    “No stranger, sir, though born in foreign climes.
+       On _Dorset_ Downs, when Milton’s page,
+       With Sin and Death provoked thy rage,
+    Thy rage provoked who soothed with _gentle_ rhymes?”
+
+By “Dorset Downs” he probably meant Mr. Dodington’s seat.  In Pitt’s
+Poems is “An Epistle to Dr. Edward Young, at Eastbury, in Dorsetshire, on
+the Review at Sarum, 1722.”
+
+    “While with your Dodington retired you sit,
+    Charmed with his flowing Burgundy and wit,” etc.
+
+Thomson, in his Autumn, addressing Mr. Dodington calls his seat the seat
+of the Muses,
+
+    “Where, in the secret bower and winding walk,
+    For virtuous Young and thee they twine the bay.”
+
+The praises Thomson bestows but a few lines before on Philips, the second
+
+    “Who nobly durst, in rhyme-unfettered verse,
+    With British freedom sing the British song,”
+
+added to Thomson’s example and success, might perhaps induce Young, as we
+shall see presently, to write his great work without rhyme.
+
+In 1734 he published “The Foreign Address, or the best Argument for
+Peace, occasioned by the British Fleet and the Posture of Affairs.
+Written in the Character of a Sailor.”  It is not to be found in the
+author’s four volumes.  He now appears to have given up all hopes of
+overtaking Pindar, and perhaps at last resolved to turn his ambition to
+some original species of poetry.  This poem concludes with a formal
+farewell to Ode, which few of Young’s readers will regret:
+
+    “My shell, which Clio gave, which _Kings applaud_,
+    Which Europe’s bleeding genius called abroad,
+    Adieu!”
+
+In a species of poetry altogether his own he next tried his skill, and
+succeeded.
+
+Of his wife he was deprived in 1741.  Lady Elizabeth had lost, after her
+marriage with Young, an amiable daughter, by her former husband, just
+after she was married to Mr. Temple, son of Lord Palmerston.  Mr. Temple
+did not long remain after his wife, though he was married a second time
+to a daughter of Sir John Barnard’s, whose son is the present peer.  Mr.
+and Mrs. Temple have generally been considered as Philander and Narcissa.
+From the great friendship which constantly subsisted between Mr. Temple
+and Young, as well as from other circumstances, it is probable that the
+poet had both him and Mrs. Temple in view for these characters; though,
+at the same time, some passages respecting Philander do not appear to
+suit either Mr. Temple or any other person with whom Young was known to
+be connected or acquainted, while all the circumstances relating to
+Narcissa have been constantly found applicable to Young’s
+daughter-in-law.  At what short intervals the poet tells us he was
+wounded by the deaths of the three persons particularly lamented, none
+that has read the “Night Thoughts” (and who has not read them?) needs to
+be informed.
+
+    “Insatiate archer! could not one suffice?
+    Thy shaft flew thrice, and thrice my peace was slain;
+    And thrice, ere thrice yon moon had filled her horn.”
+
+Yet how is it possible that Mr. and Mrs. Temple and Lady Elizabeth Young
+could be these three victims, over whom Young has hitherto been pitied
+for having to pour the “Midnight Sorrows” of his religious poetry?  Mrs.
+Temple died in 1736; Mr. Temple four years afterwards, in 1740; and the
+poet’s wife seven months after Mr. Temple, in 1741.  How could the
+insatiate archer thrice slay his peace, in these three persons, “ere
+thrice the moon had filled her horn.”  But in the short preface to “The
+Complaint” he seriously tells us, “that the occasion of this poem was
+real, not fictitious, and that the facts mentioned did naturally pour
+these moral reflections on the thought of the writer.”  It is probable,
+therefore, that in these three contradictory lines the poet complains
+more than the father-in-law, the friend, or the widower.  Whatever names
+belong to these facts, or if the names be those generally supposed,
+whatever heightening a poet’s sorrow may have given the facts; to the
+sorrow Young felt from them religion and morality are indebted for the
+“Night Thoughts.”  There is a pleasure sure in sadness which mourners
+only know!  Of these poems the two or three first have been perused
+perhaps more eagerly and more frequently than the rest.  When he got as
+far as the fourth or fifth his original motive for taking up the pen was
+answered; his grief was naturally either diminished or exhausted.  We
+still find the same pious poet, but we hear less of Philander and
+Narcissa, and less of the mourner whom he loved to pity.
+
+Mrs. Temple died of a consumption at Lyons, on her way to Nice, the year
+after her marriage; that is, when poetry relates the fact, “in her bridal
+hour.”  It is more than poetically true that Young accompanied her to the
+Continent:
+
+    “I flew, I snatched her from the rigid North,
+    And bore her nearer to the sun.”
+
+But in vain.  Her funeral was attended with the difficulties painted in
+such animated colours in “Night the Third.”  After her death the
+remainder of the party passed the ensuing winter at Nice.  The poet seems
+perhaps in these compositions to dwell with more melancholy on the death
+of Philander and Narcissa than of his wife.  But it is only for this
+reason.  He who runs and reads may remember that in the “Night Thoughts”
+Philander and Narcissa are often mentioned and often lamented.  To
+recollect lamentations over the author’s wife the memory must have been
+charged with distinct passages.  This lady brought him one child,
+Frederick, now living, to whom the Prince of Wales was godfather.
+
+That domestic grief is, in the first instance, to be thanked for these
+ornaments to our language it is impossible to deny.  Nor would it be
+common hardiness to contend that worldly discontent had no hand in these
+joint productions of poetry and piety.  Yet am I by no means sure that,
+at any rate, we should not have had something of the same colour from
+Young’s pencil, notwithstanding the liveliness of his satires.  In so
+long a life causes for discontent and occasions for grief must have
+occurred.  It is not clear to me that his Muse was not sitting upon the
+watch for the first which happened.  “Night Thoughts” were not uncommon
+to her, even when first she visited the poet, and at a time when he
+himself was remarkable neither for gravity nor gloominess.  In his “Last
+Day,” almost his earliest poem, he calls her “The Melancholy Maid,”
+
+                   “whom dismal scenes delight,
+    Frequent at tombs and in the realms of Night.”
+
+In the prayer which concludes the second book of the same poem, he says:
+
+    “Oh! permit the gloom of solemn night
+    To sacred thought may forcibly invite.
+    Oh! how divine to tread the milky way,
+    To the bright palace of Eternal Day!”
+
+When Young was writing a tragedy, Grafton is said by Spence to have sent
+him a human skull, with a candle in it, as a lamp, and the poet is
+reported to have used it.  What he calls “The _true_ Estimate of Human
+Life,” which has already been mentioned, exhibits only the wrong side of
+the tapestry, and being asked why he did not show the right, he is said
+to have replied that he could not.  By others it has been told me that
+this was finished, but that, before there existed any copy, it was torn
+in pieces by a lady’s monkey.  Still, is it altogether fair to dress up
+the poet for the man, and to bring the gloominess of the “Night Thoughts”
+to prove the gloominess of Young, and to show that his genius, like the
+genius of Swift, was in some measure the sullen inspiration of
+discontent?  From them who answer in the affirmative it should not be
+concealed that, though “Invisibilia non decipiunt” appeared upon a
+deception in Young’s grounds, and “Ambulantes in horto audierunt vocem
+Dei” on a building in his garden, his parish was indebted to the good
+humour of the author of the “Night Thoughts” for an assembly and a
+bowling green.
+
+Whether you think with me, I know not; but the famous “De mortuis nil
+nisi bonum” always appeared to me to savour more of female weakness than
+of manly reason.  He that has too much feeling to speak ill of the dead,
+who, if they cannot defend themselves, are at least ignorant of his
+abuse, will not hesitate by the most wanton calumny to destroy the quiet,
+the reputation, the fortune of the living.  Yet censure is not heard
+beneath the tomb, any more than praise.  “De mortuis nil nisi verum—De
+vivis nil nisi bonum” would approach much nearer to good sense.  After
+all, the few handfuls of remaining dust which once composed the body of
+the author of the “Night Thoughts” feel not much concern whether Young
+pass now for a man of sorrow or for “a fellow of infinite jest.”  To this
+favour must come the whole family of Yorick.  His immortal part, wherever
+that now dwells, is still less solicitous on this head.  But to a son of
+worth and sensibility it is of some little consequence whether
+contemporaries believe, and posterity be taught to believe, that his
+debauched and reprobate life cast a Stygian gloom over the evening of his
+father’s days, saved him the trouble of feigning a character completely
+detestable, and succeeded at last in bringing his “grey hairs with sorrow
+to the grave.”  The humanity of the world, little satisfied with
+inventing perhaps a melancholy disposition for the father, proceeds next
+to invent an argument in support of their invention, and chooses that
+Lorenzo should be Young’s own son.  “The Biographia,” and every account
+of Young, pretty roundly assert this to be the fact; of the absolute
+impossibility of which, the “Biographia” itself, in particular dates,
+contains undeniable evidence.  Readers I know there are of a strange turn
+of mind, who will hereafter peruse the “Night Thoughts” with less
+satisfaction; who will wish they had still been deceived; who will
+quarrel with me for discovering that no such character as their Lorenzo
+ever yet disgraced human nature or broke a father’s heart.  Yet would
+these admirers of the sublime and terrible be offended should you set
+them down for cruel and for savage?  Of this report, inhuman to the
+surviving son, if it be true, in proportion as the character of Lorenzo
+is diabolical, where are we to find the proof?  Perhaps it is clear from
+the poems.
+
+From the first line to the last of the “Night Thoughts” no one expression
+can be discovered which betrays anything like the father.  In the “Second
+Night” I find an expression which betrays something else—that Lorenzo was
+his friend; one, it is possible, of his former companions; one of the
+Duke of Wharton’s set.  The poet styles him “gay friend;” an appellation
+not very natural from a pious incensed father to such a being as he
+paints Lorenzo, and that being his son.  But let us see how he has
+sketched this dreadful portrait, from the sight of some of whose features
+the artist himself must have turned away with horror.  A subject more
+shocking, if his only child really sat to him, than the crucifixion of
+Michael Angelo; upon the horrid story told of which Young composed a
+short poem of fourteen lines in the early part of his life, which he did
+not think deserved to be republished.  In the “First Night” the address
+to the poet’s supposed son is:—
+
+    “Lorenzo, Fortune makes her court to thee.”
+
+In the “Fifth Night:”—
+
+    “And burns Lorenzo still for the sublime
+    Of life? to hang his airy nest on high?”
+
+Is this a picture of the son of the Rector of Welwyn?  “Eighth Night:”—
+
+    “In foreign realms (for thou hast travelled far)”—
+
+which even now does not apply to his son.  In “Night Five:”—
+
+    “So wept Lorenzo fair Clarissa’s fate,
+    Who gave that angel-boy on whom he dotes,
+    And died to give him, orphaned in his birth!”
+
+At the beginning of the “Fifth Night” we find:—
+
+    “Lorenzo, to recriminate is just,
+    I grant the man is vain who writes for praise.”
+
+But, to cut short all inquiry; if any one of these passages, if any
+passage in the poems, be applicable, my friend shall pass for Lorenzo.
+The son of the author of the “Night Thoughts” was not old enough, when
+they were written, to recriminate or to be a father.  The “Night
+Thoughts” were begun immediately after the mournful event of 1741.  The
+first “Nights” appear, in the books of the Company of Stationers, as the
+property of Robert Dodsley, in 1742.  The Preface to “Night Seven” is
+dated July 7th, 1744.  The marriage, in consequence of which the supposed
+Lorenzo was born, happened in May, 1731.  Young’s child was not born till
+June, 1733.  In 1741, this Lorenzo, this finished infidel, this father to
+whose education Vice had for some years put the last hand, was only eight
+years old.  An anecdote of this cruel sort, so open to contradiction, so
+impossible to be true, who could propagate?  Thus easily are blasted the
+reputation of the living and of the dead.  “Who, then, was Lorenzo?”
+exclaim the readers I have mentioned.  If we cannot be sure that he was
+his son, which would have been finely terrible, was he not his nephew,
+his cousin?  These are questions which I do not pretend to answer.  For
+the sake of human nature, I could wish Lorenzo to have been only the
+creation of the poet’s fancy: like the Quintus of Anti Lucretius, “quo
+nomine,” says Polignac, “quemvis Atheum intellige.”  That this was the
+case many expressions in the “Night Thoughts” would seem to prove, did
+not a passage in “Night Eight” appear to show that he had somebody in his
+eye for the groundwork at least of the painting.  Lovelace or Lorenzo may
+be feigned characters; but a writer does not feign a name of which he
+only gives the initial letter:—
+
+    “Tell not Calista.  She will laugh thee dead,
+    Or send thee to her hermitage with L—.”
+
+The “Biographia,” not satisfied with pointing out the son of Young, in
+that son’s lifetime, as his father’s Lorenzo, travels out of its way into
+the history of the son, and tells of his having been forbidden his
+college at Oxford for misbehaviour.  How such anecdotes, were they true,
+tend to illustrate the life of Young, it is not easy to discover.  Was
+the son of the author of the “Night Thoughts,” indeed, forbidden his
+college for a time, at one of our Universities?  The author of “Paradise
+Lost” is by some supposed to have been disgracefully ejected from the
+other.  From juvenile follies who is free?  But, whatever the
+“Biographia” chooses to relate, the son of Young experienced no
+dismission from his college, either lasting or temporary.  Yet, were
+nature to indulge him with a second youth, and to leave him at the same
+time the experience of that which is past, he would probably spend it
+differently—who would not?—he would certainly be the occasion of less
+uneasiness to his father.  But, from the same experience, he would as
+certainly, in the same case, be treated differently by his father.
+
+Young was a poet: poets, with reverence be it spoken, do not make the
+best parents.  Fancy and imagination seldom deign to stoop from their
+heights; always stoop unwillingly to the low level of common duties.
+Aloof from vulgar life, they pursue their rapid flight beyond the ken of
+mortals, and descend not to earth but when compelled by necessity.  The
+prose of ordinary occurrences is beneath the dignity of poets.  He who is
+connected with the author of the “Night Thoughts” only by veneration for
+the Poet and the Christian may be allowed to observe that Young is one of
+those concerning whom, as you remark in your account of Addison, it is
+proper rather to say “nothing that is false than all that is true.”  But
+the son of Young would almost sooner, I know, pass for a Lorenzo than see
+himself vindicated, at the expense of his father’s memory, from follies
+which, if it may be thought blameable in a boy to have committed them, it
+is surely praiseworthy in a man to lament and certainly not only
+unnecessary, but cruel in a biographer to record.
+
+Of the “Night Thoughts,” notwithstanding their author’s professed
+retirement, all are inscribed to great or to growing names.  He had not
+yet weaned himself from earls and dukes, from the Speakers of the House
+of Commons, Lords Commissioners of the Treasury, and Chancellors of the
+Exchequer.  In “Night Eight” the politician plainly betrays himself:—
+
+    “Think no post needful that demands a knave:
+    When late our civil helm was shifting hands,
+    So P— thought: think better if you can.”
+
+Yet it must be confessed that at the conclusion of “Night Nine,” weary
+perhaps of courting earthly patrons, he tells his soul—
+
+                         “Henceforth
+    Thy _patron_ he, whose diadem has dropped
+    You gems of Heaven; Eternity thy prize;
+    And leave the racers of the world their own.”
+
+The “Fourth Night” was addressed by “a much-indebted Muse” to the
+Honourable Mr. Yorke, now Lord Hardwicke, who meant to have laid the Muse
+under still greater obligation, by the living of Shenfield, in Essex, if
+it had become vacant.  The “First Night” concludes with this passage:—
+
+    “Dark, though not blind, like thee, Meonides;
+    Or, Milton, thee.  Ah! could I reach your strain;
+    Or his who made Meonides our own!
+    Man too he sung.  Immortal man I sing.
+    Oh had he pressed his theme, pursued the track
+    Which opens out of darkness into day!
+    Oh, had he mounted on his wing of fire,
+    Soared, where I sink, and sung immortal man—
+    How had it blest mankind, and rescued me!”
+
+To the author of these lines was dedicated, in 1756, the first volume of
+an “Essay on the Writings and Genius of Pope,” which attempted, whether
+justly or not, to pluck from Pope his “Wing of Fire,” and to reduce him
+to a rank at least one degree lower than the first class of English
+poets.  If Young accepted and approved the dedication, he countenanced
+this attack upon the fame of him whom he invokes as his Muse.
+
+Part of “paper-sparing” Pope’s Third Book of the “Odyssey,” deposited in
+the Museum, is written upon the back of a letter signed “E. Young,” which
+is clearly the handwriting of our Young.  The letter, dated only May 2nd,
+seems obscure; but there can be little doubt that the friendship he
+requests was a literary one, and that he had the highest literary opinion
+of Pope.  The request was a prologue, I am told.
+
+                                                             “May the 2nd.
+
+    “DEAR SIR,—Having been often from home, I know not if you have done
+    me the favour of calling on me.  But, be that as it will, I much want
+    that instance of your friendship I mentioned in my last; a friendship
+    I am very sensible I can receive from no one but yourself.  I should
+    not urge this thing so much but for very particular reasons; nor can
+    you be at a loss to conceive how a ‘trifle of this nature’ may be of
+    serious moment to me; and while I am in hopes of the great advantage
+    of your advice about it, I shall not be so absurd as to make any
+    further step without it.  I know you are much engaged, and only hope
+    to hear of you at your entire leisure.
+
+                                            “I am, sir, your most faithful
+                                                    “and obedient servant,
+                                                               “E. YOUNG.”
+
+Nay, even after Pope’s death, he says in “Night Seven:”—
+
+             “Pope, who could’st make immortals, art thou dead?”
+
+Either the “Essay,” then, was dedicated to a patron who disapproved its
+doctrine, which I have been told by the author was not the case; or Young
+appears, in his old age, to have bartered for a dedication an opinion
+entertained of his friend through all that part of life when he must have
+been best able to form opinions.  From this account of Young, two or
+three short passages, which stand almost together in “Night Four,” should
+not be excluded.  They afford a picture, by his own hand, from the study
+of which my readers may choose to form their own opinion of the features
+of his mind and the complexion of his life.
+
+                      “Ah me! the dire effect
+    Of loitering here, of death defrauded long;
+    Of old so gracious (and let that suffice),
+    _My very master knows me not_.
+    I’ve been so long remembered I’m forgot.
+
+                                  * * * * *
+
+    When in his courtiers’ ears I pour my plaint,
+    They drink it as the Nectar of the Great;
+    And squeeze my hand, and beg me come to-morrow.
+
+                                  * * * * *
+
+    Twice told the period spent on stubborn Troy,
+    Court favour, yet untaken, I _besiege_.
+
+                                  * * * * *
+
+    If this song lives, Posterity shall know
+    One, though in Britain born, with courtiers bred,
+    Who thought, even gold might come a day too late;
+    Nor on his subtle deathbed planned his scheme
+    For future vacancies in Church or State.”
+
+Deduct from the writer’s age “twice told the period spent on stubborn
+Troy,” and you will still leave him more than forty when he sate down to
+the miserable siege of court-favour.  He has before told us—
+
+                     “A fool at forty is a fool indeed.”
+
+After all, the siege seems to have been raised only in consequence of
+what the general thought his “deathbed.”  By these extraordinary poems,
+written after he was sixty, of which I have been led to say so much, I
+hope, by the wish of doing justice to the living and the dead, it was the
+desire of Young to be principally known.  He entitled the four volumes
+which he published himself, “The Works of the Author of the Night
+Thoughts.”  While it is remembered that from these he excluded many of
+his writings, let it not be forgotten that the rejected pieces contained
+nothing prejudicial to the cause of virtue or of religion.  Were
+everything that Young ever wrote to be published, he would only appear
+perhaps in a less respectable light as a poet, and more despicable as a
+dedicator; he would not pass for a worse Christian or for a worse man.
+This enviable praise is due to Young.  Can it be claimed by every writer?
+His dedications, after all, he had perhaps no right to suppress.  They
+all, I believe, speak, not a little to the credit of his gratitude, of
+favours received; and I know not whether the author, who has once
+solemnly printed an acknowledgment of a favour, should not always print
+it.  Is it to the credit or to the discredit of Young, as a poet, that of
+his “Night Thoughts” the French are particularly fond?
+
+Of the “Epitaph on Lord Aubrey Beauclerk,” dated 1740, all I know is,
+that I find it in the late body of English poetry, and that I am sorry to
+find it there.  Notwithstanding the farewell which he seemed to have
+taken in the “Night Thoughts” of everything which bore the least
+resemblance to ambition, he dipped again in politics.  In 1745 he wrote
+“Reflections on the Public Situation of the Kingdom, addressed to the
+Duke of Newcastle;” indignant, as it appears, to behold
+
+    “—a pope-bred Princeling crawl ashore,
+    And whistle cut-throats, with those swords that scraped
+    Their barren rocks for wretched sustenance,
+    To cut his passage to the British throne.”
+
+This political poem might be called a “Night Thought;” indeed, it was
+originally printed as the conclusion of the “Night Thoughts,” though he
+did not gather it with his other works.
+
+Prefixed to the second edition of Howe’s “Devout Meditations” is a letter
+from Young, dated January 19, 1752, addressed to Archibald Macauly, Esq.,
+thanking him for the book, “which,” he says, “he shall never lay far out
+of his reach; for a greater demonstration of a sound head and a sincere
+heart he never saw.”
+
+In 1753, when _The Brothers_ had lain by him above thirty years, it
+appeared upon the stage.  If any part of his fortune had been acquired by
+servility of adulation, he now determined to deduct from it no
+inconsiderable sum, as a gift to the Society for the Propagation of the
+Gospel.  To this sum he hoped the profits of _The Brothers_ would amount.
+In his calculation he was deceived; but by the bad success of his play
+the Society was not a loser.  The author made up the sum he originally
+intended, which was a thousand pounds, from his own pocket.
+
+The next performance which he printed was a prose publication, entitled
+“The Centaur Not Fabulous, in Six Letters to a Friend on the Life in
+Vogue.”  The conclusion is dated November 29, 1754.  In the third letter
+is described the death-bed of the “gay, young, noble, ingenious,
+accomplished, and most wretched Altamont.”  His last words were—“My
+principles have poisoned my friend, my extravagance has beggared my boy,
+my unkindness has murdered my wife!”  Either Altamont and Lorenzo were
+the twin production of fancy, or Young was unlucky enough to know two
+characters who bore no little resemblance to each other in perfection of
+wickedness.  Report has been accustomed to call Altamont Lord Euston.
+
+“The Old Man’s Relapse,” occasioned by an Epistle to Walpole, if written
+by Young, which I much doubt, must have been written very late in life.
+It has been seen, I am told, in a Miscellany published thirty years
+before his death.  In 1758 he exhibited “The Old Man’s Relapse,” in more
+than words, by again becoming a dedicator, and publishing a sermon
+addressed to the king.
+
+The lively letter in prose, on “Original Composition,” addressed to
+Richardson, the author of “Clarissa,” appeared in 1759.  Though he
+despairs “of breaking through the frozen obstructions of age and care’s
+incumbent cloud into that flow of thought and brightness of expression
+which subjects so polite require,” yet it is more like the production of
+untamed, unbridled youth, than of jaded fourscore.  Some sevenfold
+volumes put him in mind of Ovid’s sevenfold channels of the Nile at the
+conflagration:—
+
+                         “—ostia septem
+    Pulverulenta vocant, septem sine flumine valles.”
+
+Such leaden labours are like Lycurgus’s iron money, which was so much
+less in value than in bulk, that it required barns for strong boxes, and
+a yoke of oxen to draw five hundred pounds.  If there is a famine of
+invention in the land, we must travel, he says, like Joseph’s brethren,
+far for food, we must visit the remote and rich ancients.  But an
+inventive genius may safely stay at home; that, like the widow’s cruse,
+is divinely replenished from within, and affords us a miraculous delight.
+He asks why it should seem altogether impossible that Heaven’s latest
+editions of the human mind may be the most correct and fair?  And Jonson,
+he tells us, was very learned, as Samson was very strong, to his own
+hurt.  Blind to the nature of tragedy, he pulled down all antiquity on
+his head, and buried himself under it.  Is this “care’s incumbent cloud,”
+or “the frozen obstructions of age?”  In this letter Pope is severely
+censured for his “fall from Homer’s numbers, free as air, lofty and
+harmonious as the spheres, into childish shackles and tinkling sounds;
+for putting Achilles into petticoats a second time:” but we are told that
+the dying swan talked over an epic plan with Young a few weeks before his
+decease.  Young’s chief inducement to write this letter was, as he
+confesses, that he might erect a monumental marble to the memory of an
+old friend.  He, who employed his pious pen for almost the last time in
+thus doing justice to the exemplary death-bed of Addison, might probably,
+at the close of his own life, afford no unuseful lesson for the deaths of
+others.  In the postscript he writes to Richardson that he will see in
+his next how far Addison is an original.  But no other letter appears.
+
+The few lines which stand in the last edition, as “sent by Lord Melcombe
+to Dr. Young not long before his lordship’s death,” were indeed so sent,
+but were only an introduction to what was there meant by “The Muse’s
+Latest Spark.”  The poem is necessary, whatever may be its merit, since
+the Preface to it is already printed.  Lord Melcombe called his Tusculum
+“La Trappe”:—
+
+    “Love thy country, wish it well,
+       Not with too intense a care;
+    ’Tis enough, that, when it fell,
+       Thou its ruin didst not share.
+
+    Envy’s censure, Flattery’s praise,
+       With unmoved indifference view;
+    Learn to tread life’s dangerous maze,
+       With unerring Virtue’s clue.
+
+    Void of strong desire and fear,
+       Life’s void ocean trust no more;
+    Strive thy little bark to steer
+       With the tide, but near the shore.
+
+    Thus prepared, thy shortened sail
+       Shall, whene’er the winds increase,
+    Seizing each propitious gale,
+       Waft thee to the Port of Peace.
+
+    Keep thy conscience from offence,
+       And tempestuous passions free,
+    So, when thou art called from hence,
+       Easy shall thy passage be;
+
+    Easy shall thy passage be,
+       Cheerful thy allotted stay,
+    Short the account ’twixt God and thee;
+       Hope shall meet thee on the way:
+
+    Truth shall lead thee to the gate,
+       Mercy’s self shall let thee in,
+    Where its never-changing state,
+       Full perfection, shall begin.”
+
+The poem was accompanied by a letter.
+
+                                     “La Trappe, the 27th of October, 1761
+
+    “DEAR SIR,—You seemed to like the ode I sent you for your amusement;
+    I now send it you as a present.  If you please to accept of it, and
+    are willing that our friendship should be known when we are gone, you
+    will be pleased to leave this among those of your own papers that may
+    possibly see the light by a posthumous publication.  God send us
+    health while we stay, and an easy journey!—My dear Dr. Young,
+
+                                                   “Yours, most cordially,
+                                                               “MELCOMBE.”
+
+In 1762, a short time before his death, Young published “Resignation.”
+Notwithstanding the manner in which it was really forced from him by the
+world, criticism has treated it with no common severity.  If it shall be
+thought not to deserve the highest praise, on the other side of
+fourscore, by whom, except by Newton and by Waller, has praise been
+merited?
+
+To Mrs. Montagu, the famous champion of Shakespeare, I am indebted for
+the history of “Resignation.”  Observing that Mrs. Boscawen, in the midst
+of her grief for the loss of the admiral, derived consolation from the
+perusal of the “Night Thoughts,” Mrs. Montagu proposed a visit to the
+author.  From conversing with Young, Mrs. Boscawen derived still further
+consolation; and to that visit she and the world were indebted for this
+poem.  It compliments Mrs. Montagu in the following lines:—
+
+    “Yet write I must.  A lady sues:
+       How shameful her request!
+    My brain in labour with dull rhyme,
+       Hers teeming with the best!”
+
+And again—
+
+    “A friend you have, and I the same,
+       Whose prudent, soft address
+    Will bring to life those healing thoughts
+       Which died in your distress.
+    That friend, the spirit of my theme
+       Extracting for your ease,
+    Will leave to me the dreg, in thoughts
+       Too common; such as these.”
+
+By the same lady I was enabled to say, in her own words, that Young’s
+unbounded genius appeared to greater advantage in the companion than even
+in the author; that the Christian was in him a character still more
+inspired, more enraptured, more sublime, than the poet; and that, in his
+ordinary conversation—
+
+    “—letting down the golden chain from high,
+    He drew his audience upward to the sky.”
+
+Notwithstanding Young had said, in his “Conjectures on Original
+Composition,” that “blank verse is verse unfallen, uncursed—verse
+reclaimed, re-enthroned in the true language of the gods;”
+notwithstanding he administered consolation to his own grief in this
+immortal language, Mrs. Boscawen was comforted in rhyme.
+
+While the poet and the Christian were applying this comfort, Young had
+himself occasion for comfort, in consequence of the sudden death of
+Richardson, who was printing the former part of the poem.  Of
+Richardson’s death he says—
+
+    “When heaven would kindly set us free,
+       And earth’s enchantment end;
+    It takes the most effectual means,
+       And robs us of a friend.”
+
+To “Resignation” was prefixed an apology for its appearance, to which
+more credit is due than to the generality of such apologies, from Young’s
+unusual anxiety that no more productions of his old age should disgrace
+his former fame.  In his will, dated February, 1760, he desires of his
+executors, _in a particular manner_, that all his manuscript books and
+writings, whatever, might be burned, except his book of accounts.  In
+September, 1764, he added a kind of codicil, wherein he made it his dying
+entreaty to his housekeeper, to whom he left £1,000, “that all his
+manuscripts might be destroyed as soon as he was dead, which would
+greatly oblige her deceased _friend_.”
+
+It may teach mankind the uncertainty of wordly friendships to know that
+Young, either by surviving those he loved, or by outliving their
+affections, could only recollect the names of two _friends_, his
+housekeeper and a hatter, to mention in his will; and it may serve to
+repress that testamentary pride, which too often seeks for sounding names
+and titles, to be informed that the author of the “Night Thoughts” did
+not blush to leave a legacy to his “friend Henry Stevens, a hatter at the
+Temple-gate.”  Of these two remaining friends, one went before Young.
+But, at eighty-four, “where,” as he asks in _The Centaur_, “is that world
+into which we were born?”  The same humility which marked a hatter and a
+housekeeper for the friends of the author of the “Night Thoughts,” had
+before bestowed the same title on his footman, in an epitaph in his
+“Churchyard” upon James Baker, dated 1749; which I am glad to find in the
+late collection of his works.  Young and his housekeeper were ridiculed,
+with more ill-nature than wit, in a kind of novel published by Kidgell in
+1755, called “The Card,” under the names of Dr. Elwes and Mrs. Fusby.  In
+April, 1765, at an age to which few attain, a period was put to the life
+of Young.  He had performed no duty for three or four years, but he
+retained his intellects to the last.
+
+Much is told in the “Biographia,” which I know not to have been true, of
+the manner of his burial; of the master and children of a charity-school,
+which he founded in his parish, who neglected to attend their
+benefactor’s corpse; and a bell which was not caused to toll as often as
+upon those occasions bells usually toll.  Had that humanity, which is
+here lavished upon things of little consequence either to the living or
+to the dead, been shown in its proper place to the living, I should have
+had less to say about Lorenzo.  They who lament that these misfortunes
+happened to Young, forget the praise he bestows upon Socrates, in the
+Preface to “Night Seven,” for resenting his friend’s request about his
+funeral.  During some part of his life Young was abroad, but I have not
+been able to learn any particulars.  In his seventh Satire he says,
+
+    “When, after battle, I the field have SEEN
+    Spread o’er with ghastly shapes which once were men.”
+
+It is known, also, that from this or from some other field he once
+wandered into the camp with a classic in his hand, which he was reading
+intently; and had some difficulty to prove that he was only an absent
+poet, and not a spy.
+
+The curious reader of Young’s life will naturally inquire to what it was
+owing, that though he lived almost forty years after he took orders,
+which included one whole reign uncommonly long, and part of another, he
+was never thought worthy of the least preferment.  The author of the
+“Night Thoughts” ended his days upon a living which came to him from his
+college without any favour, and to which he probably had an eye when he
+determined on the Church.  To satisfy curiosity of this kind is, at this
+distance of time, far from easy.  The parties themselves know not often,
+at the instant, why they are neglected, or why they are preferred.  The
+neglect of Young is by some ascribed to his having attached himself to
+the Prince of Wales, and to his having preached an offensive sermon at
+St. James’s.  It has been told me that he had two hundred a year in the
+late reign, by the patronage of Walpole; and that, whenever any one
+reminded the king of Young, the only answer was, “he has a pension.”  All
+the light thrown on this inquiry, by the following letter from Secker,
+only serves to show at what a late period of life the author of the
+“Night Thoughts” solicited preferment:—
+
+                                     “Deanery of St. Paul’s, July 8, 1758.
+
+    “GOOD DR. YOUNG,—I have long wondered that more suitable notice of
+    your great merit hath not been taken by persons in power.  But how to
+    remedy the omission I see not.  No encouragement hath ever been given
+    me to mention things of this nature to his majesty.  And therefore,
+    in all likelihood, the only consequence of doing it would be
+    weakening the little influence which else I may possibly have on some
+    other occasions.  Your fortune and your reputation set you above the
+    need of advancement; and your sentiments, above that concern for it,
+    on your own account, which, on that of the public, is sincerely felt
+    by
+
+                                         “Your loving Brother, THO. CANT.”
+
+At last, at the age of fourscore, he was appointed, in 1761, Clerk of the
+Closet to the Princess Dowager.  One obstacle must have stood not a
+little in the way of that preferment after which his whole life seems to
+have panted.  Though he took orders, he never entirely shook off
+politics.  He was always the lion of his master Milton, “pawing to get
+free his hinder parts.”  By this conduct, if he gained some friends, he
+made many enemies.  Again: Young was a poet; and again, with reverence be
+it spoken, poets by profession do not always make the best clergymen.  If
+the author of the “Night Thoughts” composed many sermons, he did not
+oblige the public with many.  Besides, in the latter part of his life,
+Young was fond of holding himself out for a man retired from the world.
+But he seemed to have forgotten that the same verse which contains
+“oblitus meorum,” contains also “obliviscendus et illis.”  The brittle
+chain of worldly friendship and patronage is broken as effectually, when
+one goes beyond the length of it, as when the other does.  To the vessel
+which is sailing from the shore, it only appears that the shore also
+recedes; in life it is truly thus.  He who retires from the world will
+find himself, in reality, deserted as fast, if not faster, by the world.
+The public is not to be treated as the coxcomb treats his mistress; to be
+threatened with desertion, in order to increase fondness.
+
+Young seems to have been taken at his word.  Notwithstanding his frequent
+complaints of being neglected, no hand was reached out to pull him from
+that retirement of which he declared himself enamoured.  Alexander
+assigned no palace for the residence of Diogenes, who boasted his surly
+satisfaction with his tub.  Of the domestic manners and petty habits of
+the author of the “Night Thoughts,” I hoped to have given you an account
+from the best authority; but who shall dare to say, To-morrow I will be
+wise or virtuous, or to-morrow I will do a particular thing?  Upon
+inquiring for his housekeeper, I learned that she was buried two days
+before I reached the town of her abode.
+
+In a letter from Tscharner, a noble foreigner, to Count Haller, Tscharner
+says, he has lately spent four days with Young at Welwyn, where the
+author tastes all the ease and pleasure mankind can desire.  “Everything
+about him shows the man, each individual being placed by rule.  All is
+neat without art.  He is very pleasant in conversation, and extremely
+polite.”  This, and more, may possibly be true; but Tscharner’s was a
+first visit, a visit of curiosity and admiration, and a visit which the
+author expected.
+
+Of Edward Young an anecdote which wanders among readers is not true, that
+he was Fielding’s Parson Adams.  The original of that famous painting was
+William Young, who was a clergyman.  He supported an uncomfortable
+existence by translating for the booksellers from Greek, and, if he did
+not seem to be his own friend, was at least no man’s enemy.  Yet the
+facility with which this report has gained belief in the world argues,
+were it not sufficiently known that the author of the “Night Thoughts”
+bore some resemblance to Adams.  The attention which Young bestowed upon
+the perusal of books is not unworthy imitation.  When any passage pleased
+him he appears to have folded down the leaf.  On these passages he
+bestowed a second reading.  But the labours of man are too frequently
+vain.  Before he returned to much of what he had once approved he died.
+Many of his books, which I have seen, are by those notes of approbation
+so swelled beyond their real bulk, that they will hardly shut.
+
+    “What though we wade in wealth, or soar in fame!
+    Earth’s highest station ends in _Here he lies_!
+    And _dust to dust_ concludes her noblest song!”
+
+The author of these lines is not without his ‘_Hic jacet_.’  By the good
+sense of his son it contains none of that praise which no marble can make
+the bad or the foolish merit; which, without the direction of stone or a
+turf, will find its way, sooner or later, to the deserving.
+
+                                    M. S.
+                               Optimi parentis
+                             EDWARDI YOUNG, LL.D.
+
+                Hujus Ecclesiæ rect. et Elizabethæ fæm. prænob
+                          Conjugis ejus amantissimæ
+                   Pio & gratissimo animo hoc marmor posuit
+                                    F. Y.
+                              Filius superstes.
+
+    Is it not strange that the author of the “Night Thoughts” has
+    inscribed no monument to the memory of his lamented wife?  Yet what
+    marble will endure as long as the poems?
+
+    Such, my good friend, is the account which I have been able to
+    collect of the great Young.  That it may be long before anything like
+    what I have just transcribed be necessary for you, is the sincere
+    wish of,
+
+                    Dear Sir, your greatly obliged Friend,
+
+                                                       HERBERT CROFT, Jun.
+
+    Lincoln’s Inn, Sept., 1780.
+
+    P.S.—This account of Young was seen by you in manuscript, you know,
+    sir, and, though I could not prevail on you to make any alteration,
+    you insisted on striking out one passage, because it said that if I
+    did not wish you to live long for your sake, I did for the sake of
+    myself and of the world.  But this postscript you will not see before
+    the printing of it, and I will say here, in spite of you, how I feel
+    myself honoured and bettered by your friendship, and that if I do
+    credit to the Church, after which I always longed, and for which I am
+    now going to give in exchange the bar, though not at so late a period
+    of life as Young took orders, it will be owing, in no small measure,
+    to my having had the happiness of calling the author of “The Rambler”
+    my friend.
+
+                                                                     H. C.
+
+    Oxford, Oct., 1782.
+
+Of Young’s Poems it is difficult to give any general character, for he
+has no uniformity of manner; one of his pieces has no great resemblance
+to another.  He began to write early and continued long, and at different
+times had different modes of poetical excellence in view.  His numbers
+are sometimes smooth and sometimes rugged; his style is sometimes
+concatenated and sometimes abrupt, sometimes diffusive and sometimes
+concise.  His plan seems to have started in his mind at the present
+moment, and his thoughts appear the effect of chance, sometimes adverse
+and sometimes lucky, with very little operation of judgment.  He was not
+one of those writers whom experience improves, and who, observing their
+own faults, become gradually correct.  His poem on the “Last Day,” his
+first great performance, has an equability and propriety, which he
+afterwards either never endeavoured or never attained.  Many paragraphs
+are noble, and few are mean, yet the whole is languid; the plan is too
+much extended, and a succession of images divides and weakens the general
+conception, but the great reason why the reader is disappointed is that
+the thought of the LAST DAY makes every man more than poetical by
+spreading over his mind a general obscurity of sacred horror, that
+oppresses distinction and disdains expression.  His story of “Jane Grey”
+was never popular.  It is written with elegance enough, but Jane is too
+heroic to be pitied.
+
+“The Universal Passion” is indeed a very great performance.  It is said
+to be a series of epigrams, but, if it be, it is what the author
+intended; his endeavour was at the production of striking distichs and
+pointed sentences, and his distichs have the weight of solid sentiments,
+and his points the sharpness of resistless truth.  His characters are
+often selected with discernment and drawn with nicety; his illustrations
+are often happy, and his reflections often just. His species of satire is
+between those of Horace and Juvenal, and he has the gaiety of Horace
+without his laxity of numbers, and the morality of Juvenal with greater
+variation of images.  He plays, indeed, only on the surface of life; he
+never penetrates the recesses of the mind, and therefore the whole power
+of his poetry is exhausted by a single perusal; his conceits please only
+when they surprise.  To translate he never condescended, unless his
+“Paraphrase on Job” may be considered as a version, in which he has not,
+I think, been unsuccessful; he indeed favoured himself by choosing those
+parts which most easily admit the ornaments of English poetry.  He had
+least success in his lyric attempts, in which he seems to have been under
+some malignant influence; he is always labouring to be great, and at last
+is only turgid.
+
+In his “Night Thoughts” he has exhibited a very wide display of original
+poetry, variegated with deep reflections and striking allusions, a
+wilderness of thought, in which the fertility of fancy scatters flowers
+of every hue and of every odour.  This is one of the few poems in which
+blank verse could not be changed for rhyme but with disadvantage.  The
+wild diffusion of the sentiments and the digressive sallies of
+imagination would have been compressed and restrained by confinement to
+rhyme.  The excellence of this work is not exactness but copiousness;
+particular lines are not to be regarded; the power is in the whole, and
+in the whole there is a magnificence like that ascribed to Chinese
+plantation, the magnificence of vast extent and endless diversity.
+
+His last poem was the “Resignation,” in which he made, as he was
+accustomed, an experiment of a new mode of writing, and succeeded better
+than in his “Ocean” or his “Merchant.”  It was very falsely represented
+as a proof of decaying faculties.  There is Young in every stanza, such
+as he often was in the highest vigour.  His tragedies, not making part of
+the collection, I had forgotten, till Mr. Stevens recalled them to my
+thoughts, by remarking, that he seemed to have one favourite catastrophe,
+as his three plays all concluded with lavish suicide, a method by which,
+as Dryden remarked, a poet easily rids his scene of persons whom he wants
+not to keep alive.  In _Busiris_ there are the greatest ebullitions of
+imagination, but the pride of _Busiris_ is such as no other man can have,
+and the whole is too remote from known life to raise either grief,
+terror, or indignation.  The _Revenge_ approaches much nearer to human
+practices and manners, and therefore keeps possession of the stage; the
+first design seems suggested by _Othello_, but the reflections, the
+incidents, and the diction, are original.  The moral observations are so
+introduced and so expressed as to have all the novelty that can be
+required.  Of _The Brothers_ I may be allowed to say nothing, since
+nothing was ever said of it by the public.  It must be allowed of Young’s
+poetry that it abounds in thought, but without much accuracy or
+selection.  When he lays hold of an illustration he pursues it beyond
+expectation, sometimes happily, as in his parallel of _Quicksilver_ with
+_Pleasure_, which I have heard repeated with approbation by a lady, of
+whose praise he would have been justly proud, and which is very
+ingenious, very subtle, and almost exact; but sometimes he is less lucky,
+as when, in his “Night Thoughts,” having it dropped into his mind that
+the orbs, floating in space, might be called the _cluster_ of creation,
+he thinks of a cluster of grapes, and says, that they all hang on the
+great vine, drinking the “nectareous juice of immortal life.”  His
+conceits are sometimes yet less valuable.  In the “Last Day” he hopes to
+illustrate the reassembly of the atoms that compose the human body at the
+“Trump of Doom” by the collection of bees into a swarm at the tinkling of
+a pan.  The Prophet says of Tyre that “her merchants are princes.”  Young
+says of Tyre in his “Merchant,”
+
+              “Her merchants princes, and each _deck a throne_.”
+
+Let burlesque try to go beyond him.
+
+He has the trick of joining the turgid and familiar: to buy the alliance
+of Britain, “Climes were paid down.”  Antithesis is his favourite, “They
+for kindness hate:” and “because she’s right, she’s ever in the wrong.”
+His versification is his own; neither his blank nor his rhyming lines
+have any resemblance to those of former writers; he picks up no
+hemistichs, he copies no favourite expressions; he seems to have laid up
+no stores of thought or diction, but to owe all to the fortuitous
+suggestions of the present moment.  Yet I have reason to believe that,
+when once he had formed a new design, he then laboured it with very
+patient industry; and that he composed with great labour and frequent
+revisions.  His verses are formed by no certain model; he is no more like
+himself in his different productions than he is like others.  He seems
+never to have studied prosody, nor to have had any direction but from his
+own ear.  But with all his defects, he was a man of genius and a poet.
+
+
+
+
+MALLET.
+
+
+OF David Mallet, having no written memorial, I am able to give no other
+account than such as is supplied by the unauthorised loquacity of common
+fame, and a very slight personal knowledge.  He was by his original one
+of the Macgregors, a clan that became, about sixty years ago, under the
+conduct of Robin Roy, so formidable and so infamous for violence and
+robbery, that the name was annulled by a legal abolition; and when they
+were all to denominate themselves anew, the father, I suppose, of this
+author, called himself Malloch.
+
+David Malloch was, by the penury of his parents, compelled to be
+_Janitor_ of the High School at Edinburgh, a mean office of which he did
+not afterwards delight to hear.  But he surmounted the disadvantages of
+his birth and fortune; for, when the Duke of Montrose applied to the
+College of Edinburgh for a tutor to educate his sons, Malloch was
+recommended; and I never heard that he dishonoured his credentials.  When
+his pupils were sent to see the world, they were entrusted to his care;
+and having conducted them round the common circle of modish travels, he
+returned with them to London, where, by the influence of the family in
+which he resided, he naturally gained admission to many persons of the
+highest rank, and the highest character—to wits, nobles, and statesmen.
+Of his works, I know not whether I can trace the series.  His first
+production was, “William and Margaret;” of which, though it contains
+nothing very striking or difficult, he has been envied the reputation;
+and plagiarism has been boldly charged, but never proved.  Not long
+afterwards he published the “Excursion” (1728); a desultory and
+capricious view of such scenes of nature as his fancy led him, or his
+knowledge enabled him, to describe.  It is not devoid of poetical spirit.
+Many of his images are striking, and many of the paragraphs are elegant.
+The cast of diction seems to be copied from Thomson, whose “Seasons” were
+then in their full blossom of reputation.  He has Thomson’s beauties and
+his faults.  His poem on “Verbal Criticism” (1733) was written to pay
+court to Pope, on a subject which he either did not understand, or
+willingly misrepresented; and is little more than an improvement, or
+rather expansion, of a fragment which Pope printed in a miscellany long
+before he engrafted it into a regular poem.  There is in this piece more
+pertness than wit, and more confidence than knowledge.  The versification
+is tolerable, nor can criticism allow it a higher praise.
+
+His first tragedy was _Eurydice_, acted at Drury Lane in 1731; of which I
+know not the reception nor the merit, but have heard it mentioned as a
+mean performance.  He was not then too high to accept a prologue and
+epilogue from Aaron Hill, neither of which can be much commended.  Having
+cleared his tongue from his native pronunciation so as to be no longer
+distinguished as a Scot, he seems inclined to disencumber himself from
+all adherences of his original, and took upon him to change his name from
+Scotch _Malloch_ to English _Mallet_, without any imaginable reason of
+preference which the eye or ear can discover.  What other proofs he gave
+of disrespect to his native country I know not; but it was remarked of
+him that he was the only Scot whom Scotchmen did not commend.  About this
+time Pope, whom he visited familiarly, published his “Essay on Man,” but
+concealed the author; and, when Mallet entered one day, Pope asked him
+slightly what there was new.  Mallet told him that the newest piece was
+something called an “Essay on Man,” which he had inspected idly, and
+seeing the utter inability of the author, who had neither skill in
+writing nor knowledge of the subject, had tossed it away.  Pope, to
+punish his self-conceit, told him the secret.
+
+A new edition of the works of Bacon being prepared (1740) for the press,
+Mallet was employed to prefix a Life, which he has written with elegance,
+perhaps with some affectation; but with so much more knowledge of history
+than of science, that, when he afterwards undertook the “Life of
+Marlborough,” Warburton remarked that he might perhaps forget that
+Marlborough was a general, as he had forgotten that Bacon was a
+philosopher.
+
+When the Prince of Wales was driven from the palace, and, setting himself
+at the head of the opposition, kept a separate court, he endeavoured to
+increase his popularity by the patronage of literature, and made Mallet
+his under-secretary, with a salary of two hundred pounds a year; Thomson
+likewise had a pension; and they were associated in the composition of
+_The Masque of Alfred_, which in its original state was played at
+Cliefden in 1740; it was afterwards almost wholly changed by Mallet, and
+brought upon the stage at Drury Lane in 1751, but with no great success.
+Mallet, in a familiar conversation with Garrick, discoursing of the
+diligence which he was then exerting upon the “Life of Marlborough,” let
+him know that in the series of great men quickly to be exhibited he
+should _find a niche_ for the hero of the theatre.  Garrick professed to
+wonder by what artifice he could be introduced: but Mallet let him know
+that, by a dexterous anticipation, he should fix him in a conspicuous
+place.  “Mr. Mallet,” says Garrick, in his gratitude of exultation, “have
+you left off to write for the stage?”  Mallet then confessed that he had
+a drama in his hands.  Garrick promised to act it; and _Alfred_ was
+produced.
+
+The long retardation of the life of the Duke of Marlborough shows, with
+strong conviction, how little confidence can be placed on posthumous
+renown.  When he died, it was soon determined that his story should be
+delivered to posterity; and the papers supposed to contain the necessary
+information were delivered to Lord Molesworth, who had been his favourite
+in Flanders.  When Molesworth died, the same papers were transferred with
+the same design to Sir Richard Steele, who, in some of his exigencies,
+put them in pawn.  They remained with the old duchess, who in her will
+assigned the task to Glover and Mallet, with a reward of a thousand
+pounds, and a prohibition to insert any verses.  Glover rejected, I
+suppose, with disdain, the legacy, and devolved the whole work upon
+Mallet; who had from the late Duke of Marlborough a pension to promote
+his industry, and who talked of the discoveries which he had made; but
+left not, when he died, any historical labours behind him.  While he was
+in the Prince’s service he published _Mustapha_ with a prologue by
+Thomson, not mean, but far inferior to that which he had received from
+Mallet for _Agamemnon_.  The epilogue, said to be written by a friend,
+was composed in haste by Mallet, in the place of one promised, which was
+never given.  This tragedy was dedicated to the Prince his master.  It
+was acted at Drury Lane in 1739, and was well received, but was never
+revived.  In 1740 he produced, as has been already mentioned, _The Masque
+of Alfred_, in conjunction with Thomson.  For some time afterwards he lay
+at rest.  After a long interval his next work was “Amyntor and Theodora”
+(1747), a long story in blank verse; in which it cannot be denied that
+there is copiousness and elegance of language, vigour of sentiment, and
+imagery well adapted to take possession of the fancy.  But it is blank
+verse.  This he sold to Vaillant for one hundred and twenty pounds.  The
+first sale was not great, and it is now lost in forgetfulness.
+
+Mallet, by address or accident, perhaps by his dependence on the Prince,
+found his way to Bolingbroke, a man whose pride and petulance made his
+kindness difficult to gain or keep, and whom Mallet was content to court
+by an act which I hope was unwillingly performed.  When it was found that
+Pope clandestinely printed an unauthorised pamphlet called the “Patriot
+King,” Bolingbroke in a fit of useless fury resolved to blast his memory,
+and employed Mallet (1749) as the executioner of his vengeance.  Mallet
+had not virtue, or had not spirit, to refuse the office; and was
+rewarded, not long after, with the legacy of Lord Bolingbroke’s works.
+
+Many of the political pieces had been written during the opposition to
+Walpole, and given to Francklin, as he supposed, in perpetuity.  These,
+among the rest, were claimed by the will.  The question was referred to
+arbitrators; but, when they decided against Mallet, he refused to yield
+to the award; and, by the help of Millar the bookseller, published all
+that he could find, but with success very much below his expectation.
+
+In 1775 [_sic_], his masque of _Britannia_ was acted at Drury Lane, and
+his tragedy of _Elvira_ in 1763; in which year he was appointed keeper of
+the book of entries for ships in the port of London.  In the beginning of
+the last war, when the nation was exasperated by ill success, he was
+employed to turn the public vengeance upon Byng, and wrote a letter of
+accusation under the character of a “Plain Man.”  The paper was with
+great industry circulated and dispersed; and he, for his seasonable
+intervention, had a considerable pension bestowed upon him, which he
+retained to his death.  Towards the end of his life he went with his wife
+to France; but after a while, finding his health declining, he returned
+alone to England, and died in April, 1765.  He was twice married, and by
+his first wife had several children.  One daughter, who married an
+Italian of rank named Cilesia, wrote a tragedy called _Almida_, which was
+acted at Drury Lane.  His second wife was the daughter of a nobleman’s
+steward, who had a considerable fortune, which she took care to retain in
+her own hands.  His stature was diminutive, but he was regularly formed;
+his appearance, till he grew corpulent, was agreeable, and he suffered it
+to want no recommendation that dress could give it.  His conversation was
+elegant and easy.  The rest of his character may, without injury to his
+memory, sink into silence.  As a writer, he cannot be placed in any high
+class.  There is no species of composition in which he was eminent.  His
+dramas had their day, a short day, and are forgotten: his blank verse
+seems to my ear the echo of Thomson.  His “Life of Bacon” is known, as it
+is appended to Bacon’s volumes, but is no longer mentioned.  His works
+are such as a writer, bustling in the world, showing himself in public,
+and emerging occasionally from time to time into notice, might keep alive
+by his personal influence; but which, conveying little information, and
+giving no great pleasure, must soon give way, as the succession of things
+produces new topics of conversation and other modes of amusement.
+
+
+
+
+AKENSIDE.
+
+
+MARK AKENSIDE was born on the 9th of November, 1721, at
+Newcastle-upon-Tyne.  His father Mark was a butcher, of the Presbyterian
+sect; his mother’s name was Mary Lumsden.  He received the first part of
+his education at the grammar-school of Newcastle; and was afterwards
+instructed by Mr. Wilson, who kept a private academy.  At the age of
+eighteen he was sent to Edinburgh that he might qualify himself for the
+office of a dissenting minister, and received some assistance from the
+fund which the dissenters employ in educating young men of scanty
+fortune.  But a wider view of the world opened other scenes, and prompted
+other hopes: he determined to study physic, and repaid that contribution,
+which being received for a different purpose, he justly thought it
+dishonourable to retain.  Whether, when he resolved not to be a
+dissenting minister, he ceased to be a dissenter, I know not.  He
+certainly retained an unnecessary and outrageous zeal for what he called
+and thought liberty; a zeal which sometimes disguises from the world, and
+not rarely from the mind which it possesses, an envious desire of
+plundering wealth or degrading greatness; and of which the immediate
+tendency is innovation and anarchy, an impetuous eagerness to subvert and
+confound, with very little care what shall be established.
+
+Akenside was one of those poets who have felt very early the motions of
+genius, and one of those students who have very early stored their
+memories with sentiments and images.  Many of his performances were
+produced in his youth; and his greatest work, “The Pleasures of
+Imagination,” appeared in 1744.  I have heard Dodsley, by whom it was
+published, relate that when the copy was offered him, the price demanded
+for it, which was a hundred and twenty pounds, being such as he was not
+inclined to give precipitately, he carried the work to Pope, who, having
+looked into it, advised him not to make a niggardly offer; for “this was
+no every-day writer.”
+
+In 1741 he went to Leyden in pursuit of medical knowledge; and three
+years afterwards (May 16, 1744) became Doctor of Physic, having,
+according to the custom of the Dutch Universities, published a thesis or
+dissertation.  The subject which he chose was “The Original and Growth of
+the Human Foetus;” in which he is said to have departed, with great
+judgment, from the opinion then established, and to have delivered that
+which has been since confirmed and received.
+
+Akenside was a young man, warm with every notion that by nature or
+accident had been connected with the sound of liberty, and, by an
+eccentricity which such dispositions do not easily avoid, a lover of
+contradiction, and no friend to anything established.  He adopted
+Shaftesbury’s foolish assertion of the efficacy of ridicule for the
+discovery of truth.  For this he was attacked by Warburton, and defended
+by Dyson; Warburton afterwards reprinted his remarks at the end of his
+dedication to the Freethinkers.  The result of all the arguments which
+have been produced in a long and eager discussion of this idle question
+may easily be collected.  If ridicule be applied to any position as the
+test of truth it will then become a question whether such ridicule be
+just; and this can only be decided by the application of truth, as the
+test of ridicule.  Two men fearing, one a real, and the other a fancied
+danger, will be for a while equally exposed to the inevitable
+consequences of cowardice, contemptuous censure, and ludicrous
+representation; and the true state of both cases must be known before it
+can be decided whose terror is rational and whose is ridiculous; who is
+to be pitied, and who to be despised.  Both are for a while equally
+exposed to laughter, but both are not therefore equally contemptible.  In
+the revisal of his poem, though he died before he had finished it, he
+omitted the lines which had given occasion to Warburton’s objections.  He
+published, soon after his return from Leyden (1745), his first collection
+of odes; and was impelled by his rage of patriotism to write a very
+acrimonious epistle to Pulteney, whom he stigmatises, under the name of
+Curio, as the betrayer of his country.  Being now to live by his
+profession, he first commenced physician at Northampton, where Dr.
+Stonehouse then practised, with such reputation and success, that a
+stranger was not likely to gain ground upon him.  Akenside tried the
+contest a while; and, having deafened the place with clamours for
+liberty, removed to Hampstead, where he resided more than two years, and
+then fixed himself in London, the proper place for a man of
+accomplishments like his.  At London he was known as a poet, but was
+still to make his way as a physician; and would perhaps have been reduced
+to great exigencies but that Mr. Dyson, with an ardour of friendship that
+has not many examples, allowed him three hundred pounds a year.  Thus
+supported, he advanced gradually in medical reputation, but never
+attained any great extent of practice or eminence of popularity.  A
+physician in a great city seems to be the mere plaything of fortune; his
+degree of reputation is, for the most part, totally casual—they that
+employ him know not his excellence; they that reject him know not his
+deficience.  By any acute observer who had looked on the transactions of
+the medical world for half a century a very curious book might be written
+on the “Fortune of Physicians.”
+
+Akenside appears not to have been wanting to his own success: he placed
+himself in view by all the common methods; he became a Fellow of the
+Royal Society; he obtained a degree at Cambridge; and was admitted into
+the College of Physicians; he wrote little poetry, but published from
+time to time medical essays and observations; he became physician to St.
+Thomas’s Hospital; he read the Gulstonian Lectures in Anatomy; but began
+to give, for the Croonian Lecture, a history of the revival of learning,
+from which he soon desisted; and in conversation he very eagerly forced
+himself into notice by an ambitious ostentation of elegance and
+literature.  His “Discourse on the Dysentery” (1764) was considered as a
+very conspicuous specimen of Latinity, which entitled him to the same
+height of place among the scholars as he possessed before among the wits;
+and he might perhaps have risen to a greater elevation of character but
+that his studies were ended with his life by a putrid fever June 23,
+1770, in the forty-ninth year of his age.
+
+Akenside is to be considered as a didactic and lyric poet.  His great
+work is the “Pleasures of Imagination,” a performance which, published as
+it was at the age of twenty-three, raised expectations that were not
+amply satisfied.  It has undoubtedly a just claim to very particular
+notice as an example of great felicity of genius, and uncommon aptitude
+of acquisitions, of a young mind stored with images, and much exercised
+in combining and comparing them.  With the philosophical or religious
+tenets of the author I have nothing to do; my business is with his
+poetry.  The subject is well chosen, as it includes all images that can
+strike or please, and thus comprises every species of poetical delight.
+The only difficulty is in the choice of examples and illustrations; and
+it is not easy in such exuberance of matter to find the middle point
+between penury and satiety.  The parts seem artificially disposed, with
+sufficient coherence, so as that they cannot change their places without
+injury to the general design.  His images are displayed with such
+luxuriance of expression that they are hidden, like Butler’s Moon, by a
+“Veil of Light;” they are forms fantastically lost under superfluity of
+dress.  _Pars minima est ipsa puella sui_.  The words are multiplied till
+the sense is hardly perceived; attention deserts the mind, and settles in
+the ear.  The reader wanders through the gay diffusion, sometimes amazed,
+and sometimes delighted; but, after many turnings in the flowery
+labyrinth, comes out as he went in.  He remarked little, and laid hold on
+nothing.  To his versification justice requires that praise should not be
+denied.  In the general fabrication of his lines he is perhaps superior
+to any other writer of blank verse; his flow is smooth, and his pauses
+are musical; but the concatenation of his verses is commonly too long
+continued, and the full close does not occur with sufficient frequency.
+The sense is carried on through a long intertexture of complicated
+clauses, and, as nothing is distinguished, nothing is remembered.
+
+The exemption which blank verse affords from the necessity of closing the
+sense with the couplet betrays luxuriant and active minds into such
+self-indulgence that they pile image upon image, ornament upon ornament,
+and are not easily persuaded to close the sense at all.  Blank verse will
+therefore, I fear, be too often found in description exuberant, in
+argument loquacious, and in narration tiresome.  His diction is certainly
+poetical, as it is not prosaic; and elegant, as it is not vulgar.  He is
+to be commended as having fewer artifices of disgust than most of his
+brethren of the blank song.  He rarely either recalls old phrases, or
+twists his metre into harsh inversions.  The sense, however, of his words
+is strained when “he views the Ganges from Alpine heights”—that is, from
+mountains like the Alps.  And the pedant surely intrudes (but when was
+blank verse without pedantry?) when he tells how “Planets _absolve_ the
+stated round of Time.”
+
+It is generally known to the readers of poetry that he intended to revise
+and augment this work, but died before he had completed his design.  The
+reformed work as he left it, and the additions which he had made, are
+very properly retained in the late collection.  He seems to have somewhat
+contracted his diffusion; but I know not whether he has gained in
+closeness what he has lost in splendour.  In the additional book the
+“Tale of Solon” is too long.  One great defect of this poem is very
+properly censured by Mr. Walker, unless it may be said in his defence
+that what he has omitted was not properly in his plan.  “His picture of
+man is grand and beautiful, but unfinished.  The immortality of the soul,
+which is the natural consequence of the appetites and powers she is
+invested with, is scarcely once hinted throughout the poem.  This
+deficiency is amply supplied by the masterly pencil of Dr. Young, who,
+like a good philosopher, has invincibly proved the immortality of man
+from the grandeur of his conceptions and the meanness and misery of his
+state; for this reason a few passages are selected from the ‘Night
+Thoughts,’ which, with those from Akenside, seem to form a complete view
+of the powers, situation, and end of man.”—“Exercises for Improvement in
+Elocution,” p. 66.
+
+His other poems are now to be considered; but a short consideration will
+despatch them.  It is not easy to guess why he addicted himself so
+diligently to lyric poetry, having neither the ease and airiness of the
+lighter, nor the vehemence and elevation of the grander ode.  When he
+lays his ill-fated hand upon his harp his former powers seem to desert
+him; he has no longer his luxuriance of expression or variety of images.
+His thoughts are cold, and his words inelegant.  Yet such was his love of
+lyrics that, having written with great vigour and poignancy his “Epistle
+to Curio,” he transformed it afterwards into an ode disgraceful only to
+its author.
+
+Of his odes nothing favourable can be said; the sentiments commonly want
+force, nature, or novelty; the diction is sometimes harsh and uncouth,
+the stanzas ill-constructed and unpleasant, and the rhymes dissonant or
+unskilfully disposed, too distant from each other, or arranged with too
+little regard to established use, and therefore perplexing to the ear,
+which in a short composition has not time to grow familiar with an
+innovation.  To examine such compositions singly cannot be required; they
+have doubtless brighter and darker parts; but, when they are once found
+to be generally dull, all further labour may be spared, for to what use
+can the work be criticised that will not be read?
+
+
+
+
+GRAY.
+
+
+THOMAS GRAY, the son of Mr. Philip Gray, a scrivener of London, was born
+in Cornhill, November 26, 1716.  His grammatical education he received at
+Eton, under the care of Mr. Antrobus, his mother’s brother, then
+assistant to Dr. George, and when he left school, in 1734, entered a
+pensioner at Peterhouse, in Cambridge.  The transition from the school to
+the college is, to most young scholars, the time from which they date
+their years of manhood, liberty, and happiness; but Gray seems to have
+been very little delighted with academical gratifications; he liked at
+Cambridge neither the mode of life nor the fashion of study, and lived
+sullenly on to the time when his attendance on lectures was no longer
+required.  As he intended to profess the common law, he took no degree.
+When he had been at Cambridge about five years, Mr. Horace Walpole, whose
+friendship he had gained at Eton, invited him to travel with him as his
+companion.  They wandered through France into Italy; and Gray’s “Letters”
+contain a very pleasing account of many parts of their journey.  But
+unequal friendships are easily dissolved; at Florence they quarrelled and
+parted; and Mr. Walpole is now content to have it told that it was by his
+fault.  If we look, however, without prejudice on the world, we shall
+find that men whose consciousness of their own merit sets them above the
+compliances of servility are apt enough in their association with
+superiors to watch their own dignity with troublesome and punctilious
+jealousy, and in the fervour of independence to exact that attention
+which they refuse to pay.  Part they did, whatever was the quarrel; and
+the rest of their travels was doubtless more unpleasant to them both.
+Gray continued his journey in a manner suitable to his own little
+fortune, with only an occasional servant.  He returned to England in
+September, 1741, and in about two months afterwards buried his father,
+who had, by an injudicious waste of money upon a new house, so much
+lessened his fortune that Gray thought himself too poor to study the law.
+He therefore retired to Cambridge, where he soon after became Bachelor of
+Civil Law, and where, without liking the place or its inhabitants, or
+professing to like them, he passed, except a short residence at London,
+the rest of his life.  About this time he was deprived of Mr. West, the
+son of a chancellor of Ireland, a friend on whom he appears to have set a
+high value, and who deserved his esteem by the powers which he shows in
+his “Letters” and in the “Ode to May,” which Mr. Mason has preserved, as
+well as by the sincerity with which, when Gray sent him part of
+_Agrippina_, a tragedy that he had just begun, he gave an opinion which
+probably intercepted the progress of the work, and which the judgment of
+every reader will confirm.  It was certainly no loss to the English stage
+that _Agrippina_ was never finished.  In this year (1742) Gray seems to
+have applied himself seriously to poetry; for in this year were produced
+the “Ode to Spring,” his “Prospect of Eton,” and his “Ode to Adversity.”
+He began likewise a Latin poem, “De Principiis Cogitandi.”
+
+It may be collected from the narrative of Mr. Mason that his first
+ambition was to have excelled in Latin poetry; perhaps it were reasonable
+to wish that he had prosecuted his design; for though there is at present
+some embarrassment in his phrase, and some harshness in his lyric
+numbers, his copiousness of language is such as very few possess; and his
+lines, even when imperfect, discover a writer whom practice would have
+made skilful.  He now lived on at Peterhouse, very little solicitous what
+others did or thought, and cultivated his mind and enlarged his views
+without any other purpose than of improving and amusing himself, when Mr.
+Mason, being elected Fellow of Pembroke Hall, brought him a companion who
+was afterwards to be his editor, and whose fondness and fidelity has
+kindled in him a zeal of admiration which cannot be reasonably expected
+from the neutrality of a stranger and the coldness of a critic.  In this
+retirement he wrote (1747) an ode on the “Death of Mr. Walpole’s Cat;”
+and the year afterwards attempted a poem of more importance, on
+“Government and Education,” of which the fragments which remain have many
+excellent lines.  His next production (1750) was his far-famed “Elegy in
+the Churchyard,” which, finding its way into a magazine, first, I
+believe, made him known to the public.
+
+An invitation from Lady Cobham about this time gave occasion to an odd
+composition called “A Long Story,” which adds little to Gray’s character.
+Several of his pieces were published (1753) with designs by Mr. Bentley;
+and, that they might in some form or other make a book, only one side of
+each leaf was printed.  I believe the poems and the plates recommended
+each other so well that the whole impression was soon bought.  This year
+he lost his mother.  Some time afterwards (1756) some young men of the
+college, whose chambers were near his, diverted themselves with
+disturbing him by frequent and troublesome noises, and, as is said, by
+pranks yet more offensive and contemptuous.  This insolence, having
+endured it awhile, he represented to the governors of the society, among
+whom perhaps he had no friends; and finding his complaint little
+regarded, removed himself to Pembroke Hall.
+
+In 1759 he published “The Progress of Poetry” and “The Bard,” two
+compositions at which the readers of poetry were at first content to gaze
+in mute amazement.  Some that tried them confessed their inability to
+understand them, though Warburton said that they were understood as well
+as the works of Milton and Shakespeare, which it is the fashion to
+admire.  Garrick wrote a few lines in their praise.  Some hardy champions
+undertook to rescue them from neglect; and in a short time many were
+content to be shown beauties which they could not see.
+
+Gray’s reputation was now so high that, after the death of Cibber, he had
+the honour of refusing the laurel, which was then bestowed on Mr.
+Whitehead.  His curiosity, not long after, drew him away from Cambridge
+to a lodging near the Museum, where he resided near three years, reading
+and transcribing, and, so far as can be discovered, very little affected
+by two odes on “Oblivion” and “Obscurity,” in which his lyric
+performances were ridiculed with much contempt and much ingenuity.  When
+the Professor of Modern History at Cambridge died, he was, as he says,
+“cockered and spirited up,” till he asked it of Lord Bute, who sent him a
+civil refusal; and the place was given to Mr. Brocket, the tutor of Sir
+James Lowther.  His constitution was weak, and, believing that his health
+was promoted by exercise and change of place, he undertook (1765) a
+journey into Scotland, of which his account, so far as it extends, is
+very curious and elegant; for, as his comprehension was ample, his
+curiosity extended to all the works of art, all the appearances of
+nature, and all the monuments of past events.  He naturally contracted a
+friendship with Dr. Beattie, whom he found a poet, a philosopher, and a
+good man.  The Mareschal College at Aberdeen offered him a degree of
+Doctor of Laws, which, having omitted to take it at Cambridge, he thought
+it decent to refuse.  What he had formerly solicited in vain was at last
+given him without solicitation.  The Professorship of History became
+again vacant, and he received (1768) an offer of it from the Duke of
+Grafton.  He accepted, and retained, it to his death; always designing
+lectures, but never reading them; uneasy at his neglect of duty, and
+appeasing his uneasiness with designs of reformation, and with a
+resolution which he believed himself to have made of resigning the office
+if he found himself unable to discharge it.  Ill-health made another
+journey necessary, and he visited (1769) Westmoreland and Cumberland.  He
+that reads his epistolary narration wishes that, to travel, and to tell
+his travels, had been more of his employment; but it is by studying at
+home that we must obtain the ability of travelling with intelligence and
+improvement.  His travels and his studies were now near their end.  The
+gout, of which he had sustained many weak attacks, fell upon his stomach,
+and, yielding to no medicines, produced strong convulsions, which (July
+30, 1771) terminated in death.  His character I am willing to adopt, as
+Mr. Mason has done, from a letter written to my friend Mr. Boswell by the
+Rev. Mr. Temple, rector of St. Gluvias in Cornwall; and am as willing as
+his warmest well-wisher to believe it true:—
+
+    “Perhaps he was the most learned man in Europe.  He was equally
+    acquainted with the elegant and profound parts of science, and that
+    not superficially, but thoroughly.  He knew every branch of history,
+    both natural and civil; had read all the original historians of
+    England, France, and Italy; and was a great antiquarian.  Criticism,
+    metaphysics, morals, politics, made a principal part of his study;
+    voyages and travels of all sorts were his favourite amusements; and
+    he had a fine taste in painting, prints, architecture, and gardening.
+    With such a fund of knowledge, his conversation must have been
+    equally instructing and entertaining; but he was also a good man, a
+    man of virtue and humanity.  There is no character without some
+    speck, some imperfection; and I think the greatest defect in his was
+    an affectation in delicacy, or rather effeminacy, and a visible
+    fastidiousness, or contempt and disdain of his inferiors in science.
+    He also had, in some degree, that weakness which disgusted Voltaire
+    so much in Mr. Congreve: though he seemed to value others chiefly
+    according to the progress they had made in knowledge, yet he could
+    not bear to be considered merely as a man of letters; and, though
+    without birth or fortune or station, his desire was to be looked upon
+    as a private independent gentleman, who read for his amusement.
+    Perhaps it may be said, What signifies so much knowledge, when it
+    produced so little?  Is it worth taking so much pains to leave no
+    memorial but a few poems?  But let it be considered that Mr. Gray was
+    to others at least innocently employed; to himself certainly
+    beneficially.  His time passed agreeably; he was every day making
+    some new acquisition in science; his mind was enlarged, his heart
+    softened, his virtue strengthened; the world and mankind were shown
+    to him without a mask; and he was taught to consider everything as
+    trifling and unworthy of the attention of a wise man except the
+    pursuit of knowledge and practice of virtue in that state wherein God
+    hath placed us.”
+
+To this character Mr. Mason has added a more particular account of Gray’s
+skill in zoology.  He has remarked that Gray’s effeminacy was affected
+most “before those whom he did not wish to please;” and that he is
+unjustly charged with making knowledge his sole reason of preference, as
+he paid his esteem to none whom he did not likewise believe to be good.
+
+What has occurred to me from the slight inspection of his letters in
+which my undertaking has engaged me is, that his mind had a large grasp;
+that his curiosity was unlimited, and his judgment cultivated; that he
+was a man likely to love much where he loved at all; but that he was
+fastidious and hard to please.  His contempt, however, is often employed,
+where I hope it will be approved, upon scepticism and infidelity.  His
+short account of Shaftesbury (author of the “Characteristics”) I will
+insert:—
+
+    “You say you cannot conceive how Lord Shaftesbury came to be a
+    philosopher in vogue; I will tell you: first, he was a lord;
+    secondly, he was as vain as any of his readers; thirdly, men are very
+    prone to believe what they do not understand; fourthly, they will
+    believe anything at all, provided they are under no obligation to
+    believe it; fifthly, they love to take a new road, even when that
+    road leads nowhere; sixthly, he was reckoned a fine writer, and seems
+    always to mean more than he said.  Would you have any more reasons?
+    An interval of about forty years has pretty well destroyed the charm.
+    A dead lord ranks with commoners; vanity is no longer interested in
+    the matter, for a new road has become an old one.”
+
+Mr. Mason has added, from his own knowledge, that though Gray was poor he
+was not eager of money, and that out of the little that he had he was
+very willing to help the necessitous.  As a writer, he had this
+peculiarity—that he did not write his pieces first rudely, and then
+correct them, but laboured every line as it arose in the train of
+composition; and he had a notion, not very peculiar, that he could not
+write but at certain times, or at happy moments—a fantastic foppery to
+which my kindness for a man of learning and virtue wishes him to have
+been superior.
+
+Gray’s poetry is now to be considered; and I hope not to be looked on as
+an enemy to his name if I confess that I contemplate it with less
+pleasure than his Life.  His ode “On Spring” has something poetical, both
+in the language and the thought; but the language is too luxuriant, and
+the thoughts have nothing new.  There has of late arisen a practice of
+giving to adjectives derived from substantives the termination of
+participles; such as the _cultured_ plain, the _daisied_ bank; but I was
+sorry to see, in the lines of a scholar like Gray, the _honied_ Spring.
+The morality is natural, but too stale; the conclusion is pretty.
+
+The poem “On the Cat” was doubtless by its author considered as a trifle,
+but it is not a happy trifle.  In the first stanza, “the azure flowers
+_that_ blow” show resolutely a rhyme is sometimes made when it cannot
+easily be found.  Selima, the cat, is called a nymph, with some violence
+both to language and sense; but there is no good use made of it when it
+is done; for of the two lines
+
+    “What female heart can gold despise?
+    What cat’s averse to fish?”
+
+the first relates merely to the nymph, and the second only to the cat.
+The sixth stanza contains a melancholy truth, that “a favourite has no
+friend;” but the last ends in a pointed sentence of no relation to the
+purpose.  If _what glistered_ had been _gold_, the cat would not have
+gone into the water; and if she had, would not less have been drowned.
+
+“The Prospect of Eton College” suggests nothing to Gray which every
+beholder does not equally think and feel.  His supplication to Father
+Thames to tell him who drives the hoop or tosses the ball is useless and
+puerile.  Father Thames has no better means of knowing than himself.  His
+epithet “buxom health” is not elegant; he seems not to understand the
+word.  Gray thought his language more poetical as it was more remote from
+common use.  Finding in Dryden “honey redolent of spring,” an expression
+that reaches the utmost limits of our language, Gray drove it a little
+more beyond common apprehension by making “gales” to be “redolent of joy
+and youth.”
+
+Of the “Ode on Adversity,” the hint was at first taken from “O Diva,
+gratum quæ regis Antium;” but Gray has excelled his original by the
+variety of his sentiments, and by their moral application.  Of this
+piece, at once poetical and rational, I will not by slight objections
+violate the dignity.
+
+My process has now brought me to the _wonderful_ “Wonder of Wonders,” the
+two Sister Odes, by which, though either vulgar ignorance or common sense
+at first universally rejected them, many have been since persuaded to
+think themselves delighted.  I am one of those that are willing to be
+pleased, and therefore would gladly find the meaning of the first stanza
+of the “Progress of Poetry.”  Gray seems in his rapture to confound the
+images of spreading sound and running water.  A “stream of music” may be
+allowed; but where does “music,” however “smooth and strong,” after
+having visited the “verdant vales, roll down the steep amain,” so as that
+“rocks and nodding groves rebellow to the roar”?  If this be said of
+music, it is nonsense; if it be said of water, it is nothing to the
+purpose.  The second stanza, exhibiting Mars’ car and Jove’s eagle, is
+unworthy of further notice.  Criticism disdains to chase a schoolboy to
+his common-places.  To the third it may likewise be objected that it is
+drawn from mythology, though such as may be more easily assimilated to
+real life.  Idalia’s “velvet green” has something of cant.  An epithet or
+metaphor drawn from Nature ennobles Art; an epithet or metaphor drawn
+from Art degrades Nature.  Gray is too fond of words arbitrarily
+compounded.  “Many-twinkling” was formerly censured as not analogical; we
+may say “many-spotted,” but scarcely “many-spotting.”  This stanza,
+however, has something pleasing.  Of the second ternary of stanzas, the
+first endeavours to tell something, and would have told it, had it not
+been crossed by Hyperion; the second describes well enough the universal
+prevalence of poetry; but I am afraid that the conclusion will not rise
+from the premises.  The caverns of the North and the plains of Chili are
+not the residences of “glory and generous shame.”  But that poetry and
+virtue go always together is an opinion so pleasing that I can forgive
+him who resolves to think it true.  The third stanza sounds big with
+“Delphi,” and “Ægean,” and “Ilissus,” and “Meander,” and “hallowed
+fountains,” and “solemn sound;” but in all Gray’s odes there is a kind of
+cumbrous splendour which we wish away.  His position is at last false.
+In the time of Dante and Petrarch, from whom we derive our first school
+of poetry, Italy was overrun by “tyrant power” and “coward vice;” nor was
+our state much better when we first borrowed the Italian arts.  Of the
+third ternary, the first gives a mythological birth of Shakespeare.  What
+is said of that mighty genius is true, but it is not said happily; the
+real effects of this poetical power are put out of sight by the pomp of
+machinery.  Where truth is sufficient to fill the mind, fiction is worse
+than useless; the counterfeit debases the genuine.  His account of
+Milton’s blindness, if we suppose it caused by study in the formation of
+his poem (a supposition surely allowable), is poetically true, and
+happily imagined.  But the _car_ of Dryden, with his _two coursers_, has
+nothing in it peculiar; it is a car in which any other rider may be
+placed.
+
+“The Bard” appears, at the first view, to be, as Algarotti and others
+have remarked, an imitation of the prophecy of Nereus.  Algarotti thinks
+it superior to its original; and, if preference depends only on the
+imagery and animation of the two poems, his judgment is right.  There is
+in “The Bard” more force, more thought, and more variety.  But to copy is
+less than to invent, and the copy has been unhappily produced at a wrong
+time.  The fiction of Horace was to the Romans credible; but its revival
+disgusts us with apparent and unconquerable falsehood.  _Incredulus odi_.
+To select a singular event, and swell it to a giant’s bulk by fabulous
+appendages of spectres and predictions, has little difficulty; for he
+that forsakes the probable may always find the marvellous.  And it has
+little use; we are affected only as we believe; we are improved only as
+we find something to be imitated or declined.  I do not see that “The
+Bard” promotes any truth, moral or political.  His stanzas are too long,
+especially his epodes; the ode is finished before the ear has learned its
+measures, and consequently before it can receive pleasure from their
+consonance and recurrence.  Of the first stanza the abrupt beginning has
+been celebrated; but technical beauties can give praise only to the
+inventor.  It is in the power of any man to rush abruptly upon his
+subject that has read the ballad of “Johnny Armstrong,”
+
+                   “Is there ever a man in all Scotland—?”
+
+The initial resemblances or alliterations, “ruin, ruthless,” “helm or
+hauberk,” are below the grandeur of a poem that endeavours at sublimity.
+In the second stanza the Bard is well described, but in the third we have
+the puerilities of obsolete mythology.  When we are told that “Cadwallo
+hushed the stormy main,” and that “Modred made huge Plinlimmon bow his
+cloud-topped head,” attention recoils from the repetition of a tale that,
+even when it was first heard, was heard with scorn.  The _weaving_ of the
+_winding-sheet_ he borrowed, as he owns, from the Northern Bards, but
+their texture, however, was very properly the work of female powers, as
+the act of spinning the thread of life in another mythology.  Theft is
+always dangerous; Gray has made weavers of slaughtered bards by a fiction
+outrageous and incongruous.  They are then called upon to “Weave the warp
+and weave the woof,” perhaps with no great propriety, for it is by
+crossing the _woof_ with the _warp_ that men weave the _web_ or piece,
+and the first line was dearly bought by the admission of its wretched
+correspondent, “Give ample room and verge enough.”  He has, however, no
+other line as bad.  The third stanza of the second ternary is commended,
+I think, beyond its merit.  The personification is indistinct.  _Thirst_
+and _hunger_ are not alike, and their features, to make the imagery
+perfect, should have been discriminated.  We are told in the same stanza
+how “towers are fed.”  But I will no longer look for particular faults;
+yet let it be observed that the ode might have been concluded with an
+action of better example, but suicide is always to be had without expense
+of thought.
+
+These odes are marked by glittering accumulations of ungraceful
+ornaments, they strike rather than please; the images are magnified by
+affectation; the language is laboured into harshness.  The mind of the
+writer seems to work with unnatural violence.  “Double, double, toil and
+trouble.”  He has a kind of strutting dignity, and is tall by walking on
+tiptoe.  His art and his struggle are too visible, and there is too
+little appearance of ease and nature.  To say that he has no beauties
+would be unjust; a man like him, of great learning and great industry,
+could not but produce something valuable.  When he pleases least, it can
+only be said that a good design was ill directed.  His translations of
+Northern and Welsh poetry deserve praise; the imagery is preserved,
+perhaps often improved, but the language is unlike the language of other
+poets.  In the character of his Elegy I rejoice to concur with the common
+reader, for by the common sense of readers uncorrupted with literary
+prejudices, after all the refinements of subtlety and the dogmatism of
+learning, must be finally decided all claim to poetical honours.  The
+“Churchyard” abounds with images which find a mirror in every mind, and
+with sentiments to which every bosom returns an echo.  The four stanzas,
+beginning “Yet even these bones,” are to me original; I have never seen
+the notions in any other place, yet he that reads them here persuades
+himself that he has always felt them.  Had Gray written often thus, it
+had been vain to blame and useless to praise him.
+
+
+
+
+LYTTELTON.
+
+
+GEORGE LYTTELTON, the son of Sir Thomas Lyttelton, of Hagley, in
+Worcestershire, was born in 1709.  He was educated at Eton, where he was
+so much distinguished that his exercises were recommended as models to
+his schoolfellows.  From Eton he went to Christchurch, where he retained
+the same reputation of superiority, and displayed his abilities to the
+public in a poem on “Blenheim.”  He was a very early writer both in verse
+and prose.  His “Progress of Love” and his “Persian Letters” were both
+written when he was very young, and, indeed, the character of a young man
+is very visible in both.  The verses cant of shepherds and flocks, and
+crooks dressed with flowers; and the letters have something of that
+indistinct and headstrong ardour for liberty which a man of genius always
+catches when he enters the world, and always suffers to cool as he passes
+forward.  He stayed not long in Oxford, for in 1728 he began his travels,
+and saw France and Italy.  When he returned he obtained a seat in
+Parliament, and soon distinguished himself among the most eager opponents
+of Sir Robert Walpole, though his father, who was Commissioner of the
+Admiralty, always voted with the Court.  For many years the name of
+George Lyttelton was seen in every account of every debate in the House
+of Commons.  He opposed the standing army; he opposed the excise; he
+supported the motion for petitioning the king to remove Walpole.  His
+zeal was considered by the courtiers not only as violent but as
+acrimonious and malignant, and when Walpole was at last hunted from his
+places, every effort was made by his friends, and many friends he had, to
+exclude Lyttelton from the secret committee.
+
+The Prince of Wales, being (1737) driven from St. James’s, kept a
+separate court, and opened his arms to the opponents of the Ministry.
+Mr. Lyttelton became his Secretary, and was supposed to have great
+influence in the direction of his conduct.  He persuaded his master,
+whose business it was now to be popular, that he would advance his
+character by patronage.  Mallet was made Under Secretary, with £200, and
+Thomson had a pension of £100 a year.  For Thomson, Lyttelton always
+retained his kindness, and was able at last to place him at ease.  Moore
+courted his favour by an apologetical poem called the “Trial of Selim,”
+for which he was paid with kind words, which, as is common, raised great
+hopes, that were at last disappointed.
+
+Lyttelton now stood in the first rank of Opposition, and Pope, who was
+incited, it is not easy to say how, to increase the clamour against the
+Ministry, commended him among the other patriots.  This drew upon him the
+reproaches of Fox, who in the House imputed to him as a crime his
+intimacy with a lampooner so unjust and licentious.  Lyttelton supported
+his friend; and replied that he thought it an honour to be received into
+the familiarity of so great a poet.  While he was thus conspicuous he
+married (1741) Miss Lucy Fortescue, of Devonshire, by whom he had a son,
+the late Lord Lyttelton, and two daughters, and with whom he appears to
+have lived in the highest degree of connubial felicity; but human
+pleasures are short; she died in childbed about five years afterwards,
+and he solaced his grief by writing a long poem to her memory.  He did
+not, however, condemn himself to perpetual solitude and sorrow, for after
+a while he was content to seek happiness again by a second marriage with
+the daughter of Sir Robert Rich, but the experiment was unsuccessful.  At
+length, after a long struggle, Walpole gave way, and honour and profit
+were distributed among his conquerors.  Lyttelton was made (1744) one of
+the Lords of the Treasury, and from that time was engaged in supporting
+the schemes of the Ministry.
+
+Politics did not, however, so much engage him as to withhold his thoughts
+from things of more importance.  He had, in the pride of juvenile
+confidence, with the help of corrupt conversation, entertained doubts of
+the truth of Christianity; but he thought the time now come when it was
+no longer fit to doubt or believe by chance, and applied himself
+seriously to the great question.  His studies, being honest, ended in
+conviction.  He found that religion was true, and what he had learned he
+endeavoured to teach (1747) by “Observations on the Conversion of St.
+Paul,” a treatise to which infidelity has never been able to fabricate a
+specious answer.  This book his father had the happiness of seeing, and
+expressed his pleasure in a letter which deserves to be inserted:—
+
+    “I have read your religious treatise with infinite pleasure and
+    satisfaction.  The style is fine and clear, the arguments close,
+    cogent, and irresistible.  May the King of Kings, whose glorious
+    cause you have so well defended, reward your pious labours, and grant
+    that I may be found worthy, through the merits of Jesus Christ, to be
+    an eye-witness of that happiness which I don’t doubt he will
+    bountifully bestow upon you.  In the meantime I shall never cease
+    glorifying God for having endowed you with such useful talents, and
+    giving me so good a son.
+
+                          “Your affectionate father,
+
+                                                       “THOMAS LYTTELTON.”
+
+A few years afterwards (1751), by the death of his father, he inherited a
+baronet’s title, with a large estate, which, though perhaps he did not
+augment, he was careful to adorn by a house of great elegance and
+expense, and by much attention to the decoration of his park.  As he
+continued his activity in Parliament, he was gradually advancing his
+claim to profit and preferment; and accordingly was made in time (1754)
+Cofferer and Privy Councillor: this place he exchanged next year for the
+great office of Chancellor of the Exchequer—an office, however, that
+required some qualifications which he soon perceived himself to want.
+The year after, his curiosity led him into Wales; of which he has given
+an account, perhaps rather with too much affectation of delight, to
+Archibald Bower, a man of whom he has conceived an opinion more
+favourable than he seems to have deserved, and whom, having once espoused
+his interest and fame he was never persuaded to disown.  Bower, whatever
+was his moral character, did not want abilities.  Attacked as he was by a
+universal outcry, and that outcry, as it seems, the echo of truth, he
+kept his ground; at last, when his defences began to fail him, he sallied
+out upon his adversaries, and his adversaries retreated.
+
+About this time Lyttelton published his “Dialogues of the Dead,” which
+were very eagerly read, though the production rather, as it seems, of
+leisure than of study—rather effusions than compositions.  The names of
+his persons too often enable the reader to anticipate their conversation;
+and when they have met, they too often part without any conclusion.  He
+has copied Fenelon more than Fontenelle.  When they were first published
+they were kindly commended by the “Critical Reviewers;” and poor
+Lyttelton, with humble gratitude, returned, in a note which I have read,
+acknowledgments which can never be proper, since they must be paid either
+for flattery or for justice.
+
+When, in the latter part of the last reign, the inauspicious commencement
+of the war made the dissolution of the Ministry unavoidable, Sir George
+Lyttelton, losing with the rest his employment, was recompensed with a
+peerage; and rested from political turbulence in the House of Lords.
+
+His last literary production was his “History of Henry the Second,”
+elaborated by the searches and deliberations of twenty years, and
+published with such anxiety as only vanity can dictate.  The story of
+this publication is remarkable.  The whole work was printed twice over, a
+great part of it three times, and many sheets four or five times.  The
+booksellers paid for the first impression; but the changes and repeated
+operations of the press were at the expense of the author, whose
+ambitious accuracy is known to have cost him at least a thousand pounds.
+He began to print in 1755.  Three volumes appeared in 1764, a second
+edition of them in 1767, a third edition in 1768, and the conclusion in
+1771.
+
+Andrew Reid, a man not without considerable abilities and not
+unacquainted with letters or with life, undertook to persuade Lyttelton,
+as he had persuaded himself, that he was master of the secret of
+punctuation; and, as fear begets credulity, he was employed, I know not
+at what price, to point the pages of “Henry the Second.”  The book was at
+last pointed and printed, and sent into the world.  Lyttelton took money
+for his copy, of which, when he had paid the pointer, he probably gave
+the rest away; for he was very liberal to the indigent.  When time
+brought the History to a third edition, Reid was either dead or
+discarded; and the superintendence of typography and punctuation was
+committed to a man originally a comb-maker, but then known by the style
+of Doctor.  Something uncommon was probably expected, and something
+uncommon was at last done; for to the Doctor’s edition is appended, what
+the world had hardly seen before, a list of errors in nineteen pages.
+
+But to politics and literature there must be an end.  Lord Lyttelton had
+never the appearance of a strong or of a healthy man; he had a slender,
+uncompacted frame, and a meagre face; he lasted, however, sixty years,
+and was then seized with his last illness.  Of his death a very affecting
+and instructive account has been given by his physician, which will spare
+me the task of his moral character:—
+
+    “On Sunday evening the symptoms of his lordship’s disorder, which for
+    a week past had alarmed us, put on a fatal appearance, and his
+    lordship believed himself to be a dying man.  From this time he
+    suffered from restlessness rather than pain; though his nerves were
+    apparently much fluttered, his mental faculties never seemed
+    stronger, when he was thoroughly awake.  His lordship’s bilious and
+    hepatic complaints seemed alone not equal to the expected mournful
+    event; his long want of sleep, whether the consequence of the
+    irritation in the bowels, or, which is more probable, of causes of a
+    different kind, accounts for his loss of strength, and for his death,
+    very sufficiently.  Though his lordship wished his approaching
+    dissolution not to be lingering, he waited for it with resignation.
+    He said, ‘It is a folly, a keeping me in misery, now to attempt to
+    prolong life;’ yet he was easily persuaded, for the satisfaction of
+    others, to do or take anything thought proper for him.  On Saturday
+    he had been remarkably better, and we were not without some hopes of
+    his recovery.
+
+    “On Sunday, about eleven in the forenoon, his lordship sent for me,
+    and said he felt a great hurry, and wished to have a little
+    conversation with me, in order to divert it.  He then proceeded to
+    open the fountain of that heart, from whence goodness had so long
+    flowed, as from a copious spring.  ‘Doctor,’ said he, ‘you shall be
+    my confessor: when I first set out in the world I had friends who
+    endeavoured to shake my belief in the Christian religion.  I saw
+    difficulties which staggered me, but I kept my mind open to
+    conviction.  The evidences and doctrines of Christianity, studied
+    with attention, made me a most firm and persuaded believer of the
+    Christian religion.  I have made it the rule of my life, and it is
+    the ground of my future hopes.  I have erred and sinned; but have
+    repented, and never indulged any vicious habit.  In politics and
+    public life I have made public good the rule of my conduct.  I never
+    gave counsels which I did not at the time think the best.  I have
+    seen that I was sometimes in the wrong, but I did not err designedly.
+    I have endeavoured in private life to do all the good in my power,
+    and never for a moment could indulge malicious or unjust designs upon
+    any person whatsoever.’
+
+“At another time he said, ‘I must leave my soul in the same state it was
+in before this illness; I find this a very inconvenient time for
+solicitude about anything.’
+
+    “On the evening, when the symptoms of death came on, he said, ‘I
+    shall die; but it will not be your fault.’  When Lord and Lady
+    Valentia came to see his lordship, he gave them his solemn
+    benediction, and said, ‘Be good, be virtuous, my lord; you must come
+    to this.’  Thus he continued giving his dying benediction to all
+    around him.  On Monday morning a lucid interval gave some small
+    hopes, but these vanished in the evening; and he continued dying, but
+    with very little uneasiness, till Tuesday morning, August 22, when,
+    between seven and eight o’clock, he expired, almost without a groan.”
+
+His lordship was buried at Hagley, and the following inscription is cut
+on the side of his lady’s monument:—
+
+           “This unadorned stone was placed here by the particular
+            desire and express directions of the Right Honourable
+                            GEORGE LORD LYTTELTON,
+                     who died August 22, 1773, aged 64.”
+
+Lord Lyttelton’s Poems are the works of a man of literature and judgment,
+devoting part of his time to versification.  They have nothing to be
+despised, and little to be admired.  Of his “Progress of Love,” it is
+sufficient blame to say that it is pastoral.  His blank verse in
+“Blenheim” has neither much force nor much elegance.  His little
+performances, whether songs or epigrams, are sometimes sprightly, and
+sometimes insipid.  His epistolary pieces have a smooth equability, which
+cannot much tire, because they are short, but which seldom elevates or
+surprises.  But from this censure ought to be excepted his “Advice to
+Belinda,” which, though for the most part written when he was very young,
+contains much truth and much prudence, very elegantly and vigorously
+expressed, and shows a mind attentive to life, and a power of poetry
+which cultivation might have raised to excellence.
+
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK JOHNSON'S LIVES OF THE POETS***
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