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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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+<pre>
+
+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, &amp;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: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK JOHNSON'S LIVES OF THE POETS***
+</pre>
+<p>Transcribed from the 1889 Cassell and Company edition by Les
+Bowler.</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">
+<a href="images/coverb.jpg">
+<img alt=
+"Book cover"
+title=
+"Book cover"
+ src="images/covers.jpg" />
+</a></p>
+<p style="text-align: center"><span
+class="GutSmall">CASSELL&rsquo;S NATIONAL LIBRARY.</span></p>
+
+<div class="gapshortline">&nbsp;</div>
+<h1>LIVES<br />
+<span class="GutSmall">OF THE</span><br />
+<span class="smcap">English Poets</span></h1>
+<p style="text-align: center"><b>Gay</b>&nbsp;
+<b>Thomson</b>&nbsp; <b>Young</b>&nbsp; <b>Gray</b>&nbsp;
+etc.</p>
+<p style="text-align: center"><span class="GutSmall">BY</span><br
+/>
+SAMUEL JOHNSON, LL.D.</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">
+<a href="images/tpb.jpg">
+<img alt=
+"Decorative graphic"
+title=
+"Decorative graphic"
+ src="images/tps.jpg" />
+</a></p>
+<p style="text-align: center">CASSELL &amp; COMPANY, <span
+class="smcap">Limited</span>:<br />
+<span class="GutSmall"><i>LONDON</i></span><span
+class="GutSmall">, </span><span
+class="GutSmall"><i>PARIS</i></span><span class="GutSmall">,
+</span><span class="GutSmall"><i>NEW YORK &amp;
+MELBOURNE</i></span><span class="GutSmall">.</span><br />
+<span class="GutSmall">1889.</span></p>
+<h2><a name="page5"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+5</span>INTRODUCTION.</h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">This</span> volume contains a record of
+twenty lives, of which only one&mdash;that of Edward
+Young&mdash;is treated at length.&nbsp; It completes our edition
+of Johnson&rsquo;s Lives of the Poets, from which a few only of
+the briefest and least important have been omitted.</p>
+<p>The eldest of the Poets here discussed were Samuel Garth,
+Charles Montague (Lord Halifax), and William King, who were born
+within the years 1660&ndash;63.&nbsp; Next in age were
+Addison&rsquo;s friend Ambrose Philips, and Nicholas Rowe the
+dramatist, who was also the first editor of Shakespeare&rsquo;s
+plays after the four folios had appeared.&nbsp; Ambrose Philips
+and Rowe were born in 1671 and 1673, and Isaac Watts in
+1674.&nbsp; Thomas Parnell, born in 1679, would follow next,
+nearly of like age with Young, whose birth-year was 1681.&nbsp;
+Pope&rsquo;s friend John Gay was of Pope&rsquo;s age, born in
+1688, two years later than Addison&rsquo;s friend Thomas Tickell,
+who was born in 1686.&nbsp; Next in the course of years came, in
+1692, William Somerville, the author of &ldquo;The
+Chace.&rdquo;&nbsp; John Dyer, who wrote &ldquo;Grongar
+Hill,&rdquo; and James Thomson, who wrote the
+&ldquo;Seasons,&rdquo; were both born in the year 1700.&nbsp;
+They were two of three poets&mdash;Allan Ramsay, the
+third&mdash;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.&nbsp; David Mallet, Thomson&rsquo;s
+college-friend and friend of after-years&mdash;who shares with
+Thomson the curiosity of critics who would decide which of them
+wrote &ldquo;Rule Britannia&rdquo;&mdash;was of Thomson&rsquo;s
+age.</p>
+<p>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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; In Collins, while he lived with loss of reason,
+Johnson, who had fears for himself, took pathetic interest.&nbsp;
+Akenside could not interest him much.&nbsp; Akenside made his
+mark when young with &ldquo;The Pleasures of Imagination,&rdquo;
+a good poem, according to the fashion of the time, when read with
+due consideration as a young man&rsquo;s first venture for
+fame.&nbsp; He spent much of the rest of his life in overloading
+it with valueless additions.&nbsp; The writer who begins well
+should let well alone, and, instead of tinkering at bygone work,
+follow the course of his own ripening thought.&nbsp; He should
+seek new ways of doing worthy service in the years of labour left
+to him.</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">H. M.</p>
+<h2><a name="page9"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+9</span>KING.</h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">William King</span> was born in London in
+1663; the son of Ezekiel King, a gentleman.&nbsp; He was allied
+to the family of Clarendon.</p>
+<p>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&rsquo; standing he had read over,
+and made remarks upon, twenty-two thousand odd hundred books and
+manuscripts.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; He took his degree in the most
+expensive manner, as a <i>grand compounder</i>; whence it is
+inferred that he inherited a considerable fortune.</p>
+<p>In 1688, the same year in which he was made Master of Arts, he
+published a confutation of Varillas&rsquo;s account of Wickliffe;
+and, engaging in the study of the civil law, became Doctor in
+1692, and was admitted advocate at Doctors&rsquo; Commons.</p>
+<p>He had already made some translations from the French, and
+written some humorous and satirical pieces; when, in 1694,
+Molesworth published his &ldquo;Account of Denmark,&rdquo; 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.</p>
+<p>This book offended Prince George; and the Danish Minister
+presented a memorial against it.&nbsp; The principles of its
+author did not please Dr. King; and therefore he undertook to
+confute part, and laugh at the rest.&nbsp; The controversy is now
+forgotten: and books of this kind seldom live long when interest
+and resentment have ceased.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>In 1699 was published by him &ldquo;A Journey to
+London,&rdquo; after the method of Dr. Martin Lister, who had
+published &ldquo;A Journey to Paris.&rdquo;&nbsp; And in 1700 he
+satirised the Royal Society&mdash;at least, Sir Hans Sloane,
+their president&mdash;in two dialogues, intituled &ldquo;The
+Transactioner.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>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.&nbsp; 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.</p>
+<p>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&rsquo;s Tower, and Vicar-General to Dr. Marsh, the
+primate.</p>
+<p>But it is vain to put wealth within the reach of him who will
+not stretch out his hand to take it.&nbsp; 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.</p>
+<p>Here he wrote &ldquo;Mully of Mountown,&rdquo; 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&rsquo;s
+delight in the quiet of Mountown.</p>
+<p>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 &ldquo;Useful
+Transactions.&rdquo;&nbsp; His &ldquo;Voyage to the Island of
+Cajamai&rdquo; is particularly commended.&nbsp; He then wrote the
+&ldquo;Art of Love,&rdquo; a poem remarkable, notwithstanding its
+title, for purity of sentiment; and in 1709 imitated Horace in an
+&ldquo;Art of Cookery,&rdquo; which he published with some
+letters to Dr. Lister.</p>
+<p>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 <i>Examiner</i>.&nbsp; His eyes were open to
+all the operations of Whiggism; and he bestowed some strictures
+upon Dr. Kennet&rsquo;s adulatory sermon at the funeral of the
+Duke of Devonshire.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The History of the Heathen Gods,&rdquo; a book composed
+for schools, was written by him in 1711.&nbsp; The work is
+useful, but might have been produced without the powers of
+King.&nbsp; The same year he published &ldquo;Rufinus,&rdquo; an
+historical essay; and a poem intended to dispose the nation to
+think as he thought of the Duke of Marlborough and his
+adherents.</p>
+<p>In 1711, competence, if not plenty, was again put into his
+power.&nbsp; He was, without the trouble of attendance or the
+mortification of a request, made Gazetteer.&nbsp; Swift, Freind,
+Prior, and other men of the same party, brought him the key of
+the Gazetteer&rsquo;s office.&nbsp; He was now again placed in a
+profitable employment, and again threw the benefit away.&nbsp; 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.</p>
+<p>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&rsquo;s
+political bigotry did not suffer him to be delighted.&nbsp; King
+was resolved to counteract his sullenness, and at the expense of
+a few barrels of ale filled the neighbourhood with honest
+merriment.</p>
+<p>In the autumn of 1712 his health declined; he grew weaker by
+degrees, and died on Christmas Day.&nbsp; Though his life had not
+been without irregularity, his principles were pure and orthodox,
+and his death was pious.</p>
+<p>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.&nbsp; His purpose is to be merry; but perhaps, to enjoy
+his mirth, it may be sometimes necessary to think well of his
+opinions.</p>
+<h2><a name="page13"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+13</span>HALIFAX.</h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">The</span> 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.</p>
+<p>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.&nbsp; He was educated first in the
+country, and then removed to Westminster, where, in 1677, he was
+chosen a King&rsquo;s Scholar, and recommended himself to Busby
+by his felicity in extemporary epigrams.&nbsp; 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.</p>
+<p>It seemed indeed time to wish for a removal, for he was
+already a schoolboy of one-and-twenty.</p>
+<p>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.&nbsp; Here he commenced an acquaintance with the
+great Newton, which continued through his life, and was at last
+attested by a legacy.</p>
+<p>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.&nbsp; In
+1687 he joined with Prior in &ldquo;The City Mouse and the
+Country Mouse,&rdquo; a burlesque of Dryden&rsquo;s &ldquo;Hind
+and Panther.&rdquo;&nbsp; He signed the invitation to the Prince
+of Orange, and sat in the Convention.&nbsp; 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 &pound;1,500 the place of one of the clerks of the
+Council.</p>
+<p>After he had written his epistle on the victory of the Boyne,
+his patron Dorset introduced him to King William with this
+expression, &ldquo;Sir, I have brought a <i>mouse</i> to wait on
+your Majesty.&rdquo;&nbsp; To which the King is said to have
+replied, &ldquo;You do well to put me in the way of making a
+<i>man</i> of him;&rdquo; and ordered him a pension of
+&pound;500.&nbsp; This story, however current, seems to have been
+made after the event.&nbsp; The King&rsquo;s answer implies a
+greater acquaintance with our proverbial and familiar diction
+than King William could possibly have attained.</p>
+<p>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, &ldquo;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.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>After this he rose fast into honours and employments, being
+made one of the Commissioners of the Treasury, and called to the
+Privy Council.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; In
+1696 he projected the <i>general fund</i> 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., <i>had deserved his Majesty&rsquo;s
+favour</i>.&nbsp; In 1698, being advanced to the first Commission
+of the Treasury, he was appointed one of the regency in the
+King&rsquo;s absence: the next year he was made Auditor of the
+Exchequer, and the year after created Baron Halifax.&nbsp; He
+was, however, impeached by the Commons; but the Articles were
+dismissed by the Lords.</p>
+<p>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.&nbsp; In 1704 he wrote an answer to Bromley&rsquo;s
+speech against occasional conformity.&nbsp; He headed the inquiry
+into the danger of the Church.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; He sat as one
+of the judges of Sacheverell, but voted for a mild
+sentence.&nbsp; Being now no longer in favour, he contrived to
+obtain a writ for summoning the Electoral Prince to Parliament as
+Duke of Cambridge.</p>
+<p>At the Queen&rsquo;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.&nbsp; 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.</p>
+<p>Of him, who from a poet became a patron of poets, it will be
+readily believed that the works would not miss of
+celebration.&nbsp; 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&mdash;Swift with slight censure,
+and Pope, in the character of Bufo, with acrimonious
+contempt.</p>
+<p>He was, as Pope says, &ldquo;fed with dedications;&rdquo; for
+Tickell affirms that no dedication was unrewarded.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; In determinations depending not on
+rules, but on experience and comparison, judgment is always in
+some degree subject to affection.&nbsp; Very near to admiration
+is the wish to admire.</p>
+<p>Every man willingly gives value to the praise which he
+receives, and considers the sentence passed in his favour as the
+sentence of discernment.&nbsp; 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.</p>
+<p>To these prejudices, hardly culpable, interest adds a power
+always operating, though not always, because not willingly,
+perceived.&nbsp; 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.</p>
+<p>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.&nbsp; 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.</p>
+<h2><a name="page18"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+18</span>PARNELL.</h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">The</span> 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.</p>
+<p>What such an author has told, who would tell again?&nbsp; 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.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>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.&nbsp; 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.</p>
+<p>At the ejection of the Whigs, in the end of Queen Anne&rsquo;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.&nbsp; 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&rsquo;s staff in his hand, to inquire for him, and to
+bid him welcome; and, as may be inferred from Pope&rsquo;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.</p>
+<p>Parnell, who did not want ambition or vanity, was desirous to
+make himself conspicuous, and to show how worthy he was of high
+preferment.&nbsp; 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&rsquo;s death putting an
+end to his expectations, abated his diligence; and Pope
+represents him as falling from that time into intemperance of
+wine.&nbsp; 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.</p>
+<p>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.&nbsp; 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 &pound;400 a year.&nbsp; 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.</p>
+<p>But his prosperity did not last long.&nbsp; His end, whatever
+was its cause, was now approaching.&nbsp; 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.</p>
+<p>He seems to have been one of those poets who take delight in
+writing.&nbsp; He contributed to the papers of that time, and
+probably published more than he owned.&nbsp; He left many
+compositions behind him, of which Pope selected those which he
+thought best, and dedicated them to the Earl of Oxford.&nbsp; Of
+these Goldsmith has given an opinion, and his criticism it is
+seldom safe to contradict.&nbsp; He bestows just praise upon
+&ldquo;The Rise of Woman,&rdquo; &ldquo;The Fairy Tale,&rdquo;
+and &ldquo;The Pervigilium Veneris;&rdquo; but has very properly
+remarked that in &ldquo;The Battle of Mice and Frogs&rdquo; the
+Greek names have not in English their original effect.&nbsp; He
+tells us that &ldquo;The Bookworm&rdquo; is borrowed from Beza;
+but he should have added with modern applications: and when he
+discovers that &ldquo;Gay Bacchus&rdquo; is translated from
+Augurellus, he ought to have remarked that the latter part is
+purely Parnell&rsquo;s.&nbsp; Another poem, &ldquo;When Spring
+Comes On,&rdquo; is, he says, taken from the French.&nbsp; I
+would add that the description of &ldquo;Barrenness,&rdquo; 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.&nbsp; &ldquo;The Night Piece on Death&rdquo; is
+indirectly preferred by Goldsmith to Gray&rsquo;s
+&ldquo;Churchyard;&rdquo; but, in my opinion, Gray has the
+advantage in dignity, variety, and originality of
+sentiment.&nbsp; He observes that the story of &ldquo;The
+Hermit&rdquo; is in More&rsquo;s &ldquo;Dialogues&rdquo; and
+Howell&rsquo;s &ldquo;Letters,&rdquo; and supposes it to have
+been originally Arabian.</p>
+<p>Goldsmith has not taken any notice of &ldquo;The Elegy to the
+Old Beauty,&rdquo; which is perhaps the meanest; nor of
+&ldquo;The Allegory on Man,&rdquo; the happiest of
+Parnell&rsquo;s performances.&nbsp; The hint of &ldquo;The Hymn
+to Contentment&rdquo; I suspect to have been borrowed from
+Cleveland.</p>
+<p>The general character of Parnell is not great extent of
+comprehension or fertility of mind.&nbsp; Of the little that
+appears, still less is his own.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; If there is some appearance of
+elaboration in &ldquo;The Hermit,&rdquo; the narrative, as it is
+less airy, is less pleasing.&nbsp; 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.</p>
+<p>This criticism relates only to the pieces published by
+Pope.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; They stand upon
+the faith of the compilers.</p>
+<h2><a name="page22"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+22</span>GARTH.</h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">Samuel Garth</span> 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.&nbsp; He was
+examined before the College at London on March the 12th,
+1691&ndash;2, and admitted Fellow June 26th, 1693.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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 &ldquo;The Dispensary;&rdquo; an undertaking of
+which some account, however short, is proper to be given.</p>
+<p>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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; This edict was
+sent to the Court of Aldermen; and, a question being made to whom
+the appellation of the <i>poor</i> 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.</p>
+<p>After a year&rsquo;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.</p>
+<p>It was now expected that the apothecaries would have
+undertaken the care of providing medicines; but they took another
+course.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp;
+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.</p>
+<p>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 <i>poor</i>.&nbsp; This likewise was granted by the
+College.</p>
+<p>It was then considered who should distribute the medicines,
+and who should settle their prices.&nbsp; The physicians procured
+some apothecaries to undertake the dispensation, and offered that
+the warden and company of the apothecaries should adjust the
+price.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.</p>
+<p>The physicians still persisted; and in 1696 a subscription was
+raised by themselves according to an agreement prefixed to
+&ldquo;The Dispensary.&rdquo;&nbsp; The poor were, for a time,
+supplied with medicines; for how long a time I know not.&nbsp;
+The medicinal charity, like others, began with ardour, but soon
+remitted, and at last died gradually away.</p>
+<p>About the time of the subscription begins the action of
+&ldquo;The Dispensary.&rdquo;&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.</p>
+<p>In 1697 Garth spoke that which is now called &ldquo;The
+Harveian Oration;&rdquo; which the authors of &ldquo;The
+Biographia&rdquo; mention with more praise than the passage
+quoted in their notes will fully justify.&nbsp; Garth, speaking
+of the mischiefs done by quacks, has these expressions:
+&ldquo;Non tamen telis vulnerat ista agyrtarum colluvies, sed
+theriaca qu&acirc;dam magis pernicios&acirc;, non pyrio, sed
+pulvere nescio quo exotico certat, non globulis plumbeis, sed
+pilulis &aelig;que lethalibus interficit.&rdquo;&nbsp; This was
+certainly thought fine by the author, and is still admired by his
+biographer.&nbsp; In October, 1702, he became one of the censors
+of the College.</p>
+<p>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.&nbsp; 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
+<i>Examiner</i>, and so successfully either defended or excused
+by Mr. Addison that, for the sake of the vindication, it ought to
+be preserved.</p>
+<p>At the accession of the present family his merits were
+acknowledged and rewarded.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; He then
+undertook an edition of Ovid&rsquo;s &ldquo;Metamorphoses,&rdquo;
+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.&nbsp;
+This was his last work.&nbsp; He died January 18th,
+1717&ndash;18, and was buried at Harrow-on-the-Hill.</p>
+<p>His personal character seems to have been social and
+liberal.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; He
+was an early encourager of Pope, and was at once the friend of
+Addison and of Granville.&nbsp; He is accused of voluptuousness
+and irreligion; and Pope, who says that &ldquo;if ever there was
+a good Christian, without knowing himself to be so, it was Dr.
+Garth,&rdquo; seems not able to deny what he is angry to hear and
+loth to confess.</p>
+<p>Pope afterwards declared himself convinced that Garth died in
+the communion of the Church of Rome, having been privately
+reconciled.&nbsp; 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.</p>
+<p>His poetry has been praised at least equally to its
+merit.&nbsp; In &ldquo;The Dispensary&rdquo; there is a strain of
+smooth and free versification; but few lines are eminently
+elegant.&nbsp; No passages fall below mediocrity, and few rise
+much above it.&nbsp; The plan seems formed without just
+proportion to the subject; the means and end have no necessary
+connection.&nbsp; Resnel, in his preface to Pope&rsquo;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.&nbsp; The general design is, perhaps, open to
+criticism; but the composition can seldom be charged with
+inaccuracy or negligence.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; It
+was remarked by Pope, that &ldquo;The Dispensary&rdquo; had been
+corrected in every edition, and that every change was an
+improvement.&nbsp; 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.</p>
+<h2><a name="page27"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+27</span>ROWE.</h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">Nicholas Rowe</span> was born at Little
+Beckford, in Bedfordshire, in 1673.&nbsp; His family had long
+possessed a considerable estate, with a good house, at Lambertoun
+in Devonshire.&nbsp; The ancestor from whom he descended in a
+direct line received the arms borne by his descendants for his
+bravery in the Holy War.&nbsp; 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&rsquo;s and
+Dallison&rsquo;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.&nbsp; He was made a serjeant, and died April 30,
+1692.&nbsp; He was buried in the Temple church.</p>
+<p>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&rsquo;s Scholars.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; At sixteen he had, in his
+father&rsquo;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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; At
+twenty-five he produced the <i>Ambitious Step-Mother</i>, which
+was received with so much favour that he devoted himself from
+that time wholly to elegant literature.</p>
+<p>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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp;
+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.&nbsp; Tamerlane has for a long time been acted
+only once a year, on the night when King William landed.&nbsp;
+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.</p>
+<p><i>The Fair Penitent</i>, 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.&nbsp; 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.</p>
+<p>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.&nbsp; Lothario, with gaiety which
+cannot be hated, and bravery which cannot be despised, retains
+too much of the spectator&rsquo;s kindness.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp;
+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.</p>
+<p>His next (1706) was <i>Ulysses</i>; which, with the common
+fate of mythological stories, is now generally neglected.&nbsp;
+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.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;<i>The Royal Convert</i>&rdquo; (1708) seems to have a
+better claim to longevity.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; The scene lies among
+our ancestors in our own country, and therefore very easily
+catches attention.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; The motto seems to tell that this play
+was not successful.</p>
+<p>Rowe does not always remember what his characters
+require.&nbsp; In <i>Tamerlane</i> 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.</p>
+<p>This play discovers its own date, by a prediction of the
+Union, in imitation of Cranmer&rsquo;s prophetic promises to
+Henry VIII.&nbsp; The anticipated blessings of union are not very
+naturally introduced, nor very happily expressed.&nbsp; He once
+(1706) tried to change his hand.&nbsp; He ventured on a comedy,
+and produced the <i>Biter</i>, 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.&nbsp; But finding that he and the public had no sympathy of
+mirth, he tried at lighter scenes no more.</p>
+<p>After the <i>Royal Convert</i> (1714) appeared <i>Jane
+Shore</i>, written, as its author professes, <i>in imitation of
+Shakespeare&rsquo;s style</i>.&nbsp; In what he thought himself
+an imitator of Shakespeare it is not easy to conceive.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; This play, consisting chiefly of domestic
+scenes and private distress, lays hold upon the heart.&nbsp; The
+wife is forgiven because she repents, and the husband is honoured
+because he forgives.&nbsp; This, therefore, is one of those
+pieces which we still welcome on the stage.</p>
+<p>His last tragedy (1715) was <i>Lady Jane Grey</i>.&nbsp; This
+subject had been chosen by Mr. Smith, whose papers were put into
+Rowe&rsquo;s hands such as he describes them in his
+preface.&nbsp; This play has likewise sunk into oblivion.&nbsp;
+From this time he gave nothing more to the stage.</p>
+<p>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.&nbsp;
+His works were finished to his own approbation, and bear few
+marks of negligence or hurry.&nbsp; 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.</p>
+<p>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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; He at least
+contributed to the popularity of his author.&nbsp; He was willing
+enough to improve his fortune by other arts than poetry.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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, &ldquo;Then, sir, I envy you the pleasure of
+reading &lsquo;Don Quixote&rsquo; in the original.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>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.&nbsp; Pope, who told the story, did not say
+on what occasion the advice was given; and, though he owned
+Rowe&rsquo;s disappointment, doubted whether any injury was
+intended him, but thought it rather Lord Oxford&rsquo;s <i>odd
+way</i>.</p>
+<p>It is likely that he lived on discontented through the rest of
+Queen Anne&rsquo;s reign; but the time came at last when he found
+kinder friends.&nbsp; At the accession of King George he was made
+Poet-Laureate&mdash;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.&nbsp; He was made likewise one of the
+land-surveyors of the customs of the Port of London.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; Such an
+accumulation of employments undoubtedly produced a very
+considerable revenue.</p>
+<p>Having already translated some parts of Lucan&rsquo;s
+&ldquo;Pharsalia,&rdquo; which had been published in the
+<i>Miscellanies</i>, and doubtless received many praises, he
+undertook a version of the whole work, which he lived to finish,
+but not to publish.&nbsp; It seems to have been printed under the
+care of Dr. Welwood, who prefixed the author&rsquo;s life, in
+which is contained the following character:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;As to his person, it was graceful and well
+made; his face regular, and of a manly beauty.&nbsp; As his soul
+was well lodged, so its rational and animal faculties excelled in
+a high degree.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp;
+After the duke&rsquo;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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; He died like
+a Christian and a philosopher, in charity with all mankind, and
+with an absolute resignation to the will of God.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; He was
+twice married&mdash;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.&nbsp; By the first he
+had a son; and by the second a daughter, married afterwards to
+Mr. Fane.&nbsp; 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.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>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, &ldquo;Mr. Rowe accompanied me, and passed a
+week in the Forest.&nbsp; 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.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Pope has left behind him another mention of his companion less
+advantageous, which is thus reported by Dr. Warburton:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;Rowe, in Mr. Pope&rsquo;s opinion,
+maintained a decent character, but had no heart.&nbsp; Mr.
+Addison was justly offended with some behaviour which arose from
+that want, and estranged himself from him, which Rowe felt very
+severely.&nbsp; Mr. Pope, their common friend, knowing this, took
+an opportunity, at some juncture of Mr. Addison&rsquo;s
+advancement, to tell him how poor Rowe was grieved at his
+displeasure, and what satisfaction he expressed at Mr.
+Addison&rsquo;s good fortune, which he expressed so naturally
+that he (Mr. Pope) could not but think him sincere.&nbsp; Mr.
+Addison replied, &lsquo;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.&rsquo;&nbsp; Mr. Pope said he
+could not deny but Mr. Addison understood Rowe well.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>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.&nbsp; Addison can hardly be supposed to have meant all
+that he said.&nbsp; 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.</p>
+<p>Rowe is chiefly to be considered as a tragic writer and a
+translator.&nbsp; In his attempt at comedy he failed so
+ignominiously that his <i>Biter</i> 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.&nbsp; In the construction of his dramas there is not much
+art; he is not a nice observer of the unities.&nbsp; He extends
+time and varies places as his convenience requires.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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&mdash;pass and be
+gone&mdash;the scene closes, and Pembroke and Gardiner are turned
+out upon the stage.</p>
+<p>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.&nbsp; Nor does he much interest or affect
+the auditor, except in Jane Shore, who is always seen and heard
+with pity.&nbsp; Alicia is a character of empty noise, with no
+resemblance to real sorrow or to natural madness.</p>
+<p>Whence, then, has Rowe his reputation?&nbsp; From the
+reasonableness and propriety of some of his scenes, from the
+elegance of his diction, and the suavity of his verse.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; His
+translation of the &ldquo;Golden Verses,&rdquo; and of the first
+book of Quillet&rsquo;s poem, have nothing in them
+remarkable.&nbsp; The &ldquo;Golden Verses&rdquo; are
+tedious.</p>
+<p>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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; This character Rowe has very
+diligently and successfully preserved.&nbsp; His versification,
+which is such as his contemporaries practised, without any
+attempt at innovation or improvement, seldom wants either melody
+or force.&nbsp; His author&rsquo;s sense is sometimes a little
+diluted by additional infusions, and sometimes weakened by too
+much expansion.&nbsp; But such faults are to be expected in all
+translations, from the constraint of measures and dissimilitude
+of languages.&nbsp; The &ldquo;Pharsalia&rdquo; of Rowe deserves
+more notice than it obtains, and as it is more read will be more
+esteemed.</p>
+<h2><a name="page38"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+38</span>GAY.</h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">John Gay</span>, 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.&nbsp; Under such a master he was likely to form a taste
+for poetry.&nbsp; Being born without prospect of hereditary
+riches, he was sent to London in his youth, and placed apprentice
+with a silk mercer.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.</p>
+<p>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.&nbsp; Of his leisure he made
+so good use that he published next year a poem on &ldquo;Rural
+Sports,&rdquo; and inscribed it to Mr. Pope, who was then rising
+fast into reputation.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.</p>
+<p>Next year he published &ldquo;The Shepherd&rsquo;s
+Week,&rdquo; 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.&nbsp; Steele, in some papers of the
+<i>Guardian</i>, had praised Ambrose Philips as the pastoral
+writer that yielded only to Theocritus, Virgil, and
+Spenser.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; Not
+content with this, he is supposed to have incited Gay to write
+&ldquo;The Shepherd&rsquo;s Week,&rdquo; 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.&nbsp; So
+far the plan was reasonable; but the pastorals are introduced by
+a <i>Proeme</i>, 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.&nbsp;
+But the effect of reality and truth became conspicuous, even when
+the intention was to show them grovelling and degraded.&nbsp;
+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.</p>
+<p>In 1713 he brought a comedy called <i>The Wife of Bath</i>
+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
+<i>Beggar&rsquo;s Opera</i>, had the mortification to see it
+again rejected.</p>
+<p>In the last year of Queen Anne&rsquo;s life Gay was made
+secretary to the Earl of Clarendon, Ambassador to the Court of
+Hanover.&nbsp; This was a station that naturally gave him hopes
+of kindness from every party; but the Queen&rsquo;s death put an
+end to her favours, and he had dedicated his
+&ldquo;Shepherd&rsquo;s Week&rdquo; to Bolingbroke, which Swift
+considered as the crime that obstructed all kindness from the
+House of Hanover.&nbsp; He did not, however, omit to improve the
+right which his office had given him to the notice of the Royal
+Family.&nbsp; 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 <i>What D&rsquo;ye Call It</i>, 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.</p>
+<p>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 &ldquo;The Key to the What D&rsquo;ye
+Call It,&rdquo; &ldquo;which,&rdquo; says Gay, &ldquo;calls me a
+blockhead, and Mr. Pope a knave.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>But fortune has always been inconstant.&nbsp; Not long
+afterwards (1717) he endeavoured to entertain the town with
+<i>Three Hours after Marriage</i>, a comedy written, as there is
+sufficient reason for believing, by the joint assistance of Pope
+and Arbuthnot.&nbsp; One purpose of it was to bring into contempt
+Dr. Woodward, the fossilist, a man not really or justly
+contemptible.&nbsp; It had the fate which such outrages
+deserve.&nbsp; 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.</p>
+<p>Gay is represented as a man easily incited to hope, and deeply
+depressed when his hopes were disappointed.&nbsp; This is not the
+character of a hero, but it may naturally imply something more
+generally welcome, a soft and civil companion.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; He had been simple
+enough to imagine that those who laughed at the <i>What
+D&rsquo;ye Call It</i> would raise the fortune of its author,
+and, finding nothing done, sunk into dejection.&nbsp; His friends
+endeavoured to divert him.&nbsp; 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&rsquo;s
+&ldquo;Letters.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>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.&nbsp; 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.</p>
+<p>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.&nbsp; His friends persuaded him to sell
+his share; but he dreamed of dignity and splendour, and could not
+bear to obstruct his own fortune.&nbsp; He was then importuned to
+sell as much as would purchase a hundred a year for life,
+&ldquo;which,&rdquo; says Penton, &ldquo;will make you sure of a
+clean shirt and a shoulder of mutton every day.&rdquo;&nbsp; This
+counsel was rejected; the profit and principal were lost, and Gay
+sunk under the calamity so low that his life became in
+danger.&nbsp; 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 <i>The
+Captives</i>, which he was invited to read before the Princess of
+Wales.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; The Princess
+started, the ladies screamed, and poor Gay, after all the
+disturbance, was still to read his play.</p>
+<p>The fate of <i>The Captives</i>, which was acted at Drury Lane
+in 1723&ndash;4, I know not; but he now thought himself in
+favour, and undertook (1726) to write a volume of
+&ldquo;Fables&rdquo; for the improvement of the young Duke of
+Cumberland.&nbsp; 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.</p>
+<p>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.&nbsp; By this offer he thought himself insulted,
+and sent a message to the Queen that he was too old for the
+place.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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 <i>Beggar&rsquo;s Opera</i>.&nbsp; 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 <i>rich</i> and Rich <i>gay</i>.&nbsp; 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&rsquo;s words:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;Dr. Swift had been observing once to Mr.
+Gay what an odd pretty sort of a thing a Newgate Pastoral might
+make.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; This was what gave rise to the
+<i>Beggar&rsquo;s Opera</i>.&nbsp; He began on it, and when first
+he mentioned it to Swift, the doctor did not much like the
+project.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; When
+it was done, neither of us thought it would succeed.&nbsp; We
+showed it to Congreve, who, after reading it over, said it would
+either take greatly or be damned confoundedly.&nbsp; 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, &lsquo;It will do&mdash;it
+must do!&nbsp; I see it in the eyes of them.&rsquo;&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>Its reception is thus recorded in the notes to the
+&ldquo;Dunciad&rdquo;:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;This piece was received with greater
+applause than was ever known.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; It made its progress
+into Wales, Scotland, and Ireland, where it was performed
+twenty-four days successively.&nbsp; The ladies carried about
+with them the favourite songs of it in fans, and houses were
+furnished with it in screens.&nbsp; The fame of it was not
+confined to the author only.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; Furthermore,
+it drove out of England (for that season) the Italian Opera,
+which had carried all before it for ten years.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>Of this performance, when it was printed, the reception was
+different, according to the different opinions of its
+readers.&nbsp; Swift commended it for the excellence of its
+morality, as a piece that &ldquo;placed all kinds of vice in the
+strongest and most odious light;&rdquo; 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.&nbsp; It has been even said that after the exhibition
+of the <i>Beggar&rsquo;s Opera</i> the gangs of robbers were
+evidently multiplied.</p>
+<p>Both these decisions are surely exaggerated.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; The Duke, considering his want of economy,
+undertook the management of his money, and gave it to him as he
+wanted it.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; He died on the 4th of December,
+1732, and was buried in Westminster Abbey.&nbsp; 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.</p>
+<p>After his death was published a second volume of
+&ldquo;Fables,&rdquo; more political than the former.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; There have appeared likewise under his name a
+comedy called the <i>Distressed Wife</i>, and the <i>Rehearsal at
+Gotham</i>, a piece of humour.</p>
+<p>The character given him by Pope is this, that &ldquo;he was a
+natural man, without design, who spoke what he thought, and just
+as he thought it,&rdquo; and that &ldquo;he was of a timid
+temper, and fearful of giving offence to the great;&rdquo; which
+caution, however, says Pope, was of no avail.</p>
+<p>As a poet he cannot be rated very high.&nbsp; He was, I once
+heard a female critic remark, &ldquo;of a lower
+order.&rdquo;&nbsp; He had not in any great degree the <i>mens
+divinior</i>, the dignity of genius.&nbsp; Much, however, must be
+allowed to the author of a new species of composition, though it
+be not of the highest kind.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.</p>
+<p>His first performance, the <i>Rural Sports</i>, is such as was
+easily planned and executed; it is never contemptible, nor ever
+excellent.&nbsp; <i>The Fan</i> is one of those mythological
+fictions which antiquity delivers ready to the hand, but which,
+like other things that lie open to every one&rsquo;s use, are of
+little value.&nbsp; The attention naturally retires from a new
+tale of Venus, Diana, and Minerva.</p>
+<p>His &ldquo;Fables&rdquo; seem to have been a favourite work;
+for, having published one volume, he left another behind
+him.&nbsp; Of this kind of Fables the author does not appear to
+have formed any distinct or settled notion.&nbsp; Ph&aelig;drus
+evidently confounds them with Tales, and Gay both with Tales and
+Allegorical Prosopopoeias.&nbsp; 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,
+<i>arbores loquuntur</i>, <i>non tantum fer&aelig;</i>, are, for
+the purpose of moral instruction, feigned to act and speak with
+human interests and passions.&nbsp; To this description the
+compositions of Gay do not always conform.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.</p>
+<p>To &ldquo;Trivia&rdquo; may be allowed all that it claims; it
+is sprightly, various, and pleasant.&nbsp; The subject is of that
+kind which Gay was by nature qualified to adorn, yet some of his
+decorations may be justly wished away.&nbsp; An honest blacksmith
+might have done for Patty what is performed by Vulcan.&nbsp; The
+appearance of Cloacina is nauseous and superfluous; a shoe-boy
+could have been produced by the casual cohabitation of mere
+mortals.&nbsp; Horace&rsquo;s rule is broken in both cases; there
+is no <i>dignus vindice nodus</i>, no difficulty that required
+any supernatural interposition.&nbsp; A patten may be made by the
+hammer of a mortal, and a bastard may be dropped by a human
+strumpet.&nbsp; On great occasions, and on small, the mind is
+repelled by useless and apparent falsehood.</p>
+<p>Of his little poems the public judgment seems to be right;
+they are neither much esteemed nor totally despised.&nbsp; The
+story of &ldquo;The Apparition&rdquo; is borrowed from one of the
+tales of Poggio.&nbsp; Those that please least are the pieces to
+which Gulliver gave occasion, for who can much delight in the
+echo of an unnatural fiction?</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Dione&rdquo; is a counterpart to &ldquo;Amynta&rdquo;
+and &ldquo;Pastor Fido&rdquo; and other trifles of the same kind,
+easily imitated, and unworthy of imitation.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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?&nbsp; 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.</p>
+<h2><a name="page49"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+49</span>TICKELL.</h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">Thomas Tickell</span>, the son of the Rev.
+Richard Tickell, was born in 1686, at Bridekirk, in Cumberland,
+and in 1701 became a member of Queen&rsquo;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.&nbsp; He held his fellowship till 1726, and then vacated
+it by marrying, in that year, at Dublin.</p>
+<p>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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; It may deserve observation that when
+Pope wrote long afterwards in praise of Addison, he has
+copied&mdash;at least, has resembled&mdash;Tickell.</p>
+<blockquote><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&ldquo;Let joy salute fair
+Rosamonda&rsquo;s shade,<br />
+And wreaths of myrtle crown the lovely maid.<br />
+While now perhaps with Dido&rsquo;s ghost she roves,<br />
+And hears and tells the story of their loves,<br />
+Alike they mourn, alike they bless their fate,<br />
+Since Love, which made them wretched, made them great.<br />
+Nor longer that relentless doom bemoan,<br />
+Which gained a Virgil and an Addison.&rdquo;&mdash;<span
+class="smcap">Tickell</span>.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&ldquo;Then future ages with delight shall
+see<br />
+How Plato&rsquo;s, Bacon&rsquo;s, Newton&rsquo;s, looks agree;<br
+/>
+Or in fair series laurelled bards be shown,<br />
+A Virgil there, and here an Addison.&rdquo;&mdash;<span
+class="smcap">Pope</span>.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>He produced another piece of the same kind at the appearance
+of <i>Cato</i>, with equal skill, but not equal happiness.</p>
+<p>When the Ministers of Queen Anne were negotiating with France,
+Tickell published &ldquo;The Prospect of Peace,&rdquo; a poem of
+which the tendency was to reclaim the nation from the pride of
+conquest to the pleasures of tranquillity.&nbsp; 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.</p>
+<p>Mr. Addison, however he hated the men then in power, suffered
+his friendship to prevail over his public spirit, and gave in the
+<i>Spectator</i> such praises of Tickell&rsquo;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.&nbsp; But
+the hope excited by a work of genius, being general and
+indefinite, is rarely gratified.&nbsp; It was read at that with
+so much favour that six editions were sold.</p>
+<p>At the arrival of King George, he sang &ldquo;The Royal
+Progress,&rdquo; which, being inserted in the <i>Spectator</i>,
+is well known, and of which it is just to say that it is neither
+high nor low.</p>
+<p>The poetical incident of most importance in Tickell&rsquo;s
+life was his publication of the first book of the
+&ldquo;Iliad,&rdquo; as translated by himself, an apparent
+opposition to Pope&rsquo;s &ldquo;Homer,&rdquo; of which the
+first part made its entrance into the world at the same
+time.&nbsp; Addison declared that the rival versions were both
+good, but that Tickell&rsquo;s was the best that ever was made;
+and with Addison, the wits, his adherents and followers, were
+certain to concur.&nbsp; Pope does not appear to have been much
+dismayed, &ldquo;for,&rdquo; says he, &ldquo;I have the
+town&mdash;that is, the mob&mdash;on my side.&rdquo;&nbsp; But he
+remarks &ldquo;that it is common for the smaller party to make up
+in diligence what they want in numbers.&nbsp; 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&rsquo;s.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Pope did not long think Addison an impartial judge, for he
+considered him as the writer of Tickell&rsquo;s version.&nbsp;
+The reasons for his suspicion I will literally transcribe from
+Mr. Spence&rsquo;s Collection:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;There had been a coldness,&rdquo; said Mr.
+Pope, &ldquo;between Mr. Addison and me for some time, and we had
+not been in company together, for a good while, anywhere but at
+Button&rsquo;s Coffee House, where I used to see him almost every
+day.&nbsp; 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).&nbsp; He went accordingly, and after dinner Mr. Addison
+said &lsquo;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.&rsquo;&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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&rsquo;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.&nbsp; Accordingly I sent him
+the second book the next morning, and Mr. Addison a few days
+after returned it, with very high commendations.&nbsp; 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&rsquo;s having had such a translation so long
+by him.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp;
+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.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>Upon these suspicions, with which Dr. Warburton hints that
+other circumstances concurred, Pope always in his &ldquo;Art of
+Sinking&rdquo; quotes this book as the work of Addison.</p>
+<p>To compare the two translations would be tedious; the palm is
+now given universally to Pope, but I think the first lines of
+Tickell&rsquo;s were rather to be preferred; and Pope seems to
+have since borrowed something from them in the correction of his
+own.</p>
+<p>When the Hanover succession was disputed, Tickell gave what
+assistance his pen would supply.&nbsp; His &ldquo;Letter to
+Avignon&rdquo; stands high among party poems; it expresses
+contempt without coarseness, and superiority without
+insolence.&nbsp; It had the success which it deserved, being five
+times printed.</p>
+<p>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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.</p>
+<p>Of the poems yet unmentioned, the longest is &ldquo;Kensington
+Gardens,&rdquo; of which the versification is smooth and elegant,
+but the fiction unskilfully compounded of Grecian deities and
+Gothic fairies.&nbsp; Neither species of those exploded beings
+could have done much; and when they are brought together, they
+only make each other contemptible.&nbsp; 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
+<i>Spectator</i>.&nbsp; 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.</p>
+<h2><a name="page55"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+55</span>SOMERVILE.</h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">Of</span> Mr. Somervile&rsquo;s life I am
+not able to say anything that can satisfy curiosity.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; He tells of himself that he was born near the
+Avon&rsquo;s banks.&nbsp; He was bred at Winchester school, and
+was elected fellow of New College.&nbsp; It does not appear that
+in the places of his education he exhibited any uncommon proofs
+of genius or literature.&nbsp; 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.</p>
+<p>Of the close of his life, those whom his poems have delighted
+will read with pain the following account, copied from the
+&ldquo;Letters&rdquo; of his friend Shenstone, by whom he was too
+much resembled:&mdash;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;&mdash;Our old friend Somervile is dead!&nbsp; I did
+not imagine I could have been so sorry as I find myself on this
+occasion.&nbsp; <i>Sublatum qu&aelig;rimus</i>.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.&rdquo;&mdash;He died July 19, 1742, and was buried at
+Wotton, near Henley on Arden.</p>
+<p>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.&nbsp; His mother, indeed, who lived
+till ninety, had a jointure of six hundred.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>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 &ldquo;he writes very well
+for a gentleman.&rdquo;&nbsp; His serious pieces are sometimes
+elevated; and his trifles are sometimes elegant.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; His subjects are commonly such as require
+no great depth of thought or energy of expression.&nbsp; His
+Fables are generally stale, and therefore excite no
+curiosity.&nbsp; Of his favourite, &ldquo;The Two Springs,&rdquo;
+the fiction is unnatural, and the moral inconsequential.&nbsp; In
+his Tales there is too much coarseness, with too little care of
+language, and not sufficient rapidity of narration.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; To
+this poem praise cannot be totally denied.&nbsp; 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.</p>
+<p>With still less judgment did he choose blank verse as the
+vehicle of &ldquo;Rural Sports.&rdquo;&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; One excellence of the &ldquo;Splendid Shilling&rdquo;
+is, that it is short.&nbsp; Disguise can gratify no longer than
+it deceives.</p>
+<h2><a name="page58"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+58</span>THOMSON.</h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">James Thomson</span>, 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.&nbsp; His mother, whose name was Hume,
+inherited as co-heiress a portion of a small estate.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; He was taught the common
+rudiments of learning at the school of Jedburgh, a place which he
+delights to recollect in his poem of &ldquo;Autumn;&rdquo; 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&rsquo;s Day he threw into
+the fire all the productions of the foregoing year.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>The design of Thomson&rsquo;s friends was to breed him a
+minister.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; At his arrival he found his way to Mr.
+Mallet, then tutor to the sons of the Duke of Montrose.&nbsp; 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.</p>
+<p>His first want was a pair of shoes.&nbsp; For the supply of
+all his necessities, his whole fund was his &ldquo;Winter,&rdquo;
+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.&nbsp; 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.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Winter&rdquo; 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.&nbsp; Thomson then received a
+present of twenty guineas, of which he gives this account to Mr.
+Hill:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;I hinted to you in my last that on Saturday
+morning I was with Sir Spencer Compton.&nbsp; A certain
+gentleman, without my desire, spoke to him concerning me: his
+answer was that I had never come near him.&nbsp; Then the
+gentleman put the question, if he desired that I should wait on
+him?&nbsp; He returned, he did.&nbsp; On this the gentleman gave
+me an introductory letter to him.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>Thomson&rsquo;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.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Winter&rdquo; 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.&nbsp; Why the dedications
+are, to &ldquo;Winter&rdquo; and the other Seasons, contrarily to
+custom, left out in the collected works, the reader may
+inquire.</p>
+<p>The next year (1727) he distinguished himself by three
+publications: of &ldquo;Summer,&rdquo; in pursuance of his plan;
+of &ldquo;A Poem on the Death of Sir Isaac Newton,&rdquo; which
+he was enabled to perform as an exact philosopher by the
+instruction of Mr. Gray; and of &ldquo;Britannia,&rdquo; a kind
+of poetical invective against the Ministry, whom the nation then
+thought not forward enough in resenting the depredations of the
+Spaniards.&nbsp; By this piece he declared himself an adherent to
+the Opposition, and had therefore no favour to expect from the
+Court.</p>
+<p>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 &ldquo;Summer;&rdquo; 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.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Spring&rdquo; 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.&nbsp; This honour was one summer
+conferred on Thomson, who took more delight in carousing with
+Lord Hertford and his friends than assisting her ladyship&rsquo;s
+poetical operations, and therefore never received another
+summons.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Autumn,&rdquo; the season to which the
+&ldquo;Spring&rdquo; and &ldquo;Summer&rdquo; are preparatory,
+still remained unsung, and was delayed till he published (1730)
+his works collected.</p>
+<p>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.&nbsp; It was observed, however, that
+nobody was much affected, and that the company rose as from a
+moral lecture.&nbsp; It had upon the stage no unusual degree of
+success.&nbsp; Slight accidents will operate upon the taste of
+pleasure.&nbsp; There is a feeble line in the play:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p style="text-align: center">&ldquo;O Sophonisba,
+Sophonisba, O!&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>This gave occasion to a waggish parody&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p style="text-align: center">&ldquo;O, Jemmy
+Thomson, Jemmy Thomson, O!&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>which for a while was echoed through the town.</p>
+<p>I have been told by Savage, that of the prologue to
+<i>Sophonisba</i>, the first part was written by Pope, who could
+not be persuaded to finish it; and that the concluding lines were
+added by Mallet.</p>
+<p>Thomson was not long afterwards, by the influence of Dr.
+Rundle, sent to travel with Mr. Charles Talbot, the eldest son of
+the Chancellor.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp;
+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.</p>
+<p>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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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&rsquo;s performances were so little
+regarded.&nbsp; 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.</p>
+<p>The poem of &ldquo;Liberty&rdquo; does not now appear in its
+original state; but, when the author&rsquo;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.&nbsp; I wish to see it exhibited as its
+author left it.</p>
+<p>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&rsquo;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.&nbsp; 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 &ldquo;that they were in a more poetical posture
+than formerly,&rdquo; and had a pension allowed him of one
+hundred pounds a year.</p>
+<p>Being now obliged to write, he produced (1738) the tragedy of
+<i>Agamemnon</i>, which was much shortened in the
+representation.&nbsp; It had the fate which most commonly attends
+mythological stories, and was only endured, but not
+favoured.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp;
+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.</p>
+<p>About this time (1737) the Act was passed for licensing plays,
+of which the first operation was the prohibition of <i>Gustavus
+Vasa</i>, a tragedy of Mr. Brooke, whom the public recompensed by
+a very liberal subscription; the next was the refusal of
+<i>Edward and Eleonora</i>, offered by Thomson.&nbsp; It is hard
+to discover why either play should have been obstructed.&nbsp;
+Thomson likewise endeavoured to repair his loss by a
+subscription, of which I cannot now tell the success.&nbsp; When
+the public murmured at the unkind treatment of Thomson, one of
+the Ministerial writers remarked that &ldquo;he had taken a
+<i>Liberty</i> which was not agreeable to <i>Britannia</i> in any
+<i>Season</i>.&rdquo;&nbsp; He was soon after employed, in
+conjunction with Mr. Mallet, to write the masque of
+<i>Alfred</i>, which was acted before the Prince at Cliefden
+House.</p>
+<p>His next work (1745) was, <i>Tancred and Sigismunda</i>, the
+most successful of all his tragedies, for it still keeps its turn
+upon the stage.&nbsp; It may be doubted whether he was, either by
+the bent of nature or habits of study, much qualified for
+tragedy.&nbsp; It does not appear that he had much sense of the
+pathetic; and his diffusive and descriptive style produced
+declamation rather than dialogue.&nbsp; 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.</p>
+<p>The last piece that he lived to publish was the &ldquo;Castle
+of Indolence,&rdquo; which was many years under his hand, but was
+at last finished with great accuracy.&nbsp; The first canto opens
+a scene of lazy luxury that fills the imagination.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; He was buried in the church
+of Richmond, without an inscription; but a monument has been
+erected to his memory in Westminster Abbey.</p>
+<p>Thomson was of stature above the middle size, and &ldquo;more
+fat than bard beseems,&rdquo; 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.&nbsp; He left behind him the tragedy of
+<i>Coriolanus</i>, 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 &ldquo;to be,&rdquo; on that occasion, &ldquo;no
+actor.&rdquo;&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p style="text-align: right">&ldquo;Hagley in
+Worcestershire, October the 4th, 1747.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;<span class="smcap">My dear Sister</span>,&mdash;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.&nbsp;
+Don&rsquo;t imagine, because I am a bad correspondent, that I can
+ever prove an unkind friend and brother.&nbsp; 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.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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!&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; That it was in my power to ease it a little, I
+account one of the most exquisite pleasures of my life.&nbsp; But
+enough of this melancholy, though not unpleasing, strain.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I esteem you for your sensible and disinterested advice
+to Mr. Bell, as you will see by my letter to him.&nbsp; As I
+approve entirely of his marrying again, you may readily ask me
+why I don&rsquo;t marry at all.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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?&nbsp; Some of them, it is true, are wise enough to return
+for a wife.&nbsp; You see, I am beginning to make interest
+already with the Scots ladies.&nbsp; But no more of this
+infectious subject.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; Remember me kindly to your husband,
+and believe me to be</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">&ldquo;Your most affectionate
+Brother,<br />
+&ldquo;<span class="smcap">James Thomson</span>.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>(Addressed) &ldquo;To Mrs. Thomson in Lanark.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>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.&nbsp; The
+affairs of others, however, were not more neglected than his
+own.&nbsp; 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 &ldquo;Of the Man who Loved
+to be in Distress.&rdquo;&nbsp; Among his peculiarities was a
+very unskilful and inarticulate manner of pronouncing any lofty
+or solemn composition.&nbsp; 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.</p>
+<p>The biographer of Thomson has remarked that an author&rsquo;s
+life is best read in his works; his observation was not well
+timed.&nbsp; 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 &ldquo;a great
+lover, a great swimmer, and rigorously abstinent;&rdquo;
+&ldquo;but,&rdquo; said Savage, &ldquo;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.&rdquo;&nbsp; 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.</p>
+<p>As a writer, he is entitled to one praise of the highest kind:
+his mode of thinking and of expressing his thoughts is
+original.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; His numbers, his pauses, his diction, are
+of his own growth, without transcription, without
+imitation.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; The reader of the &ldquo;Seasons&rdquo; wonders
+that he never saw before what Thomson shows him, and that he
+never yet has felt what Thomson impresses.&nbsp; His is one of
+the works in which blank verse seems properly used.&nbsp;
+Thomson&rsquo;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.&nbsp; His
+descriptions of extended scenes and general effects bring before
+us the whole magnificence of Nature, whether pleasing or
+dreadful.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; The great defect of the
+&ldquo;Seasons&rdquo; is want of method; but for this I know not
+that there was any remedy.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; His
+diction is in the highest degree florid and luxuriant, such as
+may be said to be to his images and thoughts &ldquo;both their
+lustre and their shade;&rdquo; such as invests them with
+splendour, through which, perhaps, they are not always easily
+discerned.&nbsp; It is too exuberant, and sometimes may be
+charged with filling the ear more than the mind.</p>
+<p>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.&nbsp; They are, I think, improved in general; yet
+I know not whether they have not lost part of what Temple calls
+their &ldquo;race,&rdquo; a word which, applied to wines in its
+primitive sense, means the flavour of the soil.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Liberty,&rdquo; when it first appeared, I tried to
+read, and soon desisted.&nbsp; I have never tried again, and
+therefore will not hazard either praise or censure.&nbsp; 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</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">&ldquo;No line which, dying, he
+could wish to blot.&rdquo;</p>
+<h2><a name="page72"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+72</span>WATTS.</h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">The</span> 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.</p>
+<p>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.&nbsp; He
+appears, from the narrative of Dr. Gibbons, to have been neither
+indigent nor illiterate.</p>
+<p>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&mdash;I suppose, at home.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; Such he
+was as every Christian Church would rejoice to have
+adopted.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; He was, as he
+hints in his &ldquo;Miscellanies,&rdquo; a maker of verses from
+fifteen to fifty, and in his youth he appears to have paid
+attention to Latin poetry.&nbsp; His verses to his brother, in
+the glyconic measure, written when he was seventeen, are
+remarkably easy and elegant.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.</p>
+<p>With the congregation of his tutor, Mr. Rowe, who were, I
+believe, Independents, he communicated in his nineteenth
+year.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.</p>
+<p>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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; Sir Thomas died about eight years afterwards, but
+he continued with the lady and her daughters to the end of his
+life.&nbsp; The lady died about a year after him.</p>
+<p>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&rsquo;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:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;Our next observation shall be made upon
+that remarkably kind Providence which brought the Doctor into Sir
+Thomas Abney&rsquo;s family, and continued him there till his
+death, a period of no less than thirty-six years.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; In
+this distressing season, doubly so to his active and pious
+spirit, he is invited to Sir Thomas Abney&rsquo;s family, nor
+ever removes from it till he had finished his days.&nbsp; Here he
+enjoyed the uninterrupted demonstrations of the truest
+friendship.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; Here he dwelt
+in a family which, for piety, order, harmony, and every virtue,
+was a house of God.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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&rsquo;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.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>From the time of his reception into this family his life was
+no otherwise diversified than by successive publications.&nbsp;
+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.&nbsp; He was one of the first authors that
+taught the Dissenters to court attention by the graces of
+language.&nbsp; Whatever they had among them before, whether of
+learning or acuteness, was commonly obscured and blunted by
+coarseness and inelegance of style.&nbsp; He showed them that
+zeal and purity might be expressed and enforced by polished
+diction.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp;
+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.&nbsp; At the conclusion of weighty sentences he
+gave time, by a short pause, for the proper impression.</p>
+<p>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.&nbsp; By his natural temper
+he was quick of resentment; but by his established and habitual
+practice he was gentle, modest, and inoffensive.&nbsp; His
+tenderness appeared in his attention to children, and to the
+poor.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; A voluntary descent from the
+dignity of science is perhaps the hardest lesson that humility
+can teach.</p>
+<p>As his mind was capacious, his curiosity excursive, and his
+industry continual, his writings are very numerous and his
+subjects various.&nbsp; With his theological works I am only
+enough acquainted to admire his meekness of opposition, and his
+mildness of censure.&nbsp; It was not only in his book, but in
+his mind, that orthodoxy was united with charity.</p>
+<p>Of his philosophical pieces, his &ldquo;Logic&rdquo; 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.</p>
+<p>In his metaphysical disquisitions it was observed by the late
+learned Mr. Dyer, that he confounded the idea of <i>space</i>
+with that of <i>empty space</i>, and did not consider that though
+space might be without matter, yet matter being extended could
+not be without space.</p>
+<p>Few books have been perused by me with greater pleasure than
+his &ldquo;Improvement of the Mind,&rdquo; of which the radical
+principle may indeed be found in Locke&rsquo;s &ldquo;Conduct of
+the Understanding;&rdquo; 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.&nbsp; Whoever has the care of
+instructing others may be charged with deficiency in his duty if
+this book is not recommended.</p>
+<p>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.&nbsp; As piety predominated in his mind, it is diffused
+over his works.&nbsp; Under his direction it may be truly said,
+<i>Theologi&aelig; philosophia ancillatur</i> (Philosophy is
+subservient to evangelical instruction).&nbsp; It is difficult to
+read a page without learning, or at least wishing, to be
+better.&nbsp; The attention is caught by indirect instruction;
+and he that sat down only to reason is on a sudden compelled to
+pray.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; Academical honours
+would have more value if they were always bestowed with equal
+judgment.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.</p>
+<p>Few men have left behind such purity of character, or such
+monuments of laborious piety.&nbsp; He has provided instruction
+for all ages&mdash;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.&nbsp; 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.</p>
+<p>As a poet, had he been only a poet, he would probably have
+stood high among the authors with whom he is now
+associated.&nbsp; For his judgment was exact, and he noted
+beauties and faults with very nice discernment; his imagination,
+as the &ldquo;Dacian Battle&rdquo; proves, was vigorous and
+active, and the stores of knowledge were large by which his fancy
+was to be supplied.&nbsp; His ear was well tuned, and his diction
+was elegant and copious.&nbsp; But his devotional poetry is, like
+that of others, unsatisfactory.&nbsp; The paucity of its topics
+enforces perpetual repetition, and the sanctity of the matter
+rejects the ornaments of figurative diction.&nbsp; It is
+sufficient for Watts to have done better than others what no man
+has done well.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; He writes too often without regular measures,
+and too often in blank verse; the rhymes are not always
+sufficiently correspondent.&nbsp; He is particularly unhappy in
+coining names expressive of characters.&nbsp; 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?&nbsp;
+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.</p>
+<h2><a name="page81"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 81</span>A.
+PHILIPS.</h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">Of</span> the birth or early part of the
+life of Ambrose Philips I have not been able to find any
+account.&nbsp; His academical education he received at St.
+John&rsquo;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.&nbsp;
+From this time how he was employed, or in what station he passed
+his life, is not yet discovered.&nbsp; He must have published his
+&ldquo;Pastorals&rdquo; before the year 1708, because they are
+evidently prior to those of Pope.&nbsp; He afterwards (1709)
+addressed to the universal patron, the Duke of Dorset, a
+&ldquo;Poetical Letter from Copenhagen,&rdquo; which was
+published in the <i>Tatler</i>, and is by Pope, in one of his
+first Letters, mentioned with high praise as the production of a
+man &ldquo;who could write very nobly.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>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 &ldquo;Persian Tales&rdquo; for Tonson, for which
+he was afterwards reproached, with this addition of contempt,
+that he worked for half-a-crown.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; He was employed in promoting
+the principles of his party, by epitomising Hacket&rsquo;s
+&ldquo;Life of Archbishop Williams.&rdquo;&nbsp; The original
+book is written with such depravity of genius, such mixture of
+the fop and pedant, as has not often appeared.&nbsp; The epitome
+is free enough from affectation, but has little spirit or
+vigour.</p>
+<p>In 1712 he brought upon the stage <i>The Distressed
+Mother</i>, almost a translation of Racine&rsquo;s
+<i>Andromaque</i>.&nbsp; 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
+<i>Spectator</i>, none indeed of the best, was devoted to its
+praise; while it yet continued to be acted, another
+<i>Spectator</i> 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.&nbsp; It was concluded with
+the most successful Epilogue that was ever yet spoken on the
+English theatre.&nbsp; 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.</p>
+<p>The propriety of Epilogues in general, and consequently of
+this, was questioned by a correspondent of the <i>Spectator</i>,
+whose letter was undoubtedly admitted for the sake of the answer,
+which soon followed, written with much zeal and acrimony.&nbsp;
+The attack and the defence equally contributed to stimulate
+curiosity and continue attention.&nbsp; It may be discovered in
+the defence that Prior&rsquo;s Epilogue to <i>Ph&aelig;dra</i>
+had a little excited jealousy, and something of Prior&rsquo;s
+plan may be discovered in the performance of his rival.&nbsp; Of
+this distinguished Epilogue the reputed author was the wretched
+Budgell, whom Addison used to denominate &ldquo;the man who calls
+me cousin;&rdquo; and when he was asked how such a silly fellow
+could write so well, replied, &ldquo;The Epilogue was quite
+another thing when I saw it first.&rdquo;&nbsp; It was known in
+Tonson&rsquo;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.</p>
+<p>Philips was now high in the ranks of literature.&nbsp; His
+play was applauded; his translations from Sappho had been
+published in the <i>Spectator</i>; 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.&nbsp; The work which had procured him the first
+notice from the public was his &ldquo;Six Pastorals,&rdquo;
+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.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>Petrarch entertained the learned men of his age with the
+novelty of modern pastorals in Latin.&nbsp; Being not ignorant of
+Greek, and finding nothing in the word <i>eclogue</i> of rural
+meaning, he supposed it to be corrupted by the copiers, and
+therefore called his own productions <i>&AElig;glogues</i>, by
+which he meant to express the talk of goat-herds, though it will
+mean only the talk of goats.&nbsp; This new name was adopted by
+subsequent writers, and among others by our Spenser.</p>
+<p>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.&nbsp; Mantuan was read, at least in some of the inferior
+schools of this kingdom, to the beginning of the present
+century.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; The Italians soon transferred
+pastoral poetry into their own language.&nbsp; Sannazaro wrote
+&ldquo;Arcadia&rdquo; in prose and verse; Tasso and Guarini wrote
+&ldquo;Favole Boschareccie,&rdquo; or Sylvan Dramas; and all
+nations of Europe filled volumes with Thyrsis and Damon, and
+Thestylis and Phyllis.</p>
+<p>Philips thinks it &ldquo;somewhat strange to conceive how, in
+an age so addicted to the Muses, pastoral poetry never comes to
+be so much as thought upon.&rdquo;&nbsp; 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&rsquo;s death, between Tityrus and
+Corydon, or Mopsus and Menalcas.&nbsp; A series or book of
+pastorals, however, I know not that anyone had then lately
+published.</p>
+<p>Not long afterwards Pope made the first display of his powers
+in four pastorals, written in a very different form.&nbsp;
+Philips had taken Spenser, and Pope took Virgil for his
+pattern.&nbsp; Philips endeavoured to be natural, Pope laboured
+to be elegant.</p>
+<p>Philips was now favoured by Addison and by Addison&rsquo;s
+companions, who were very willing to push him into
+reputation.&nbsp; The <i>Guardian</i> 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.&nbsp; With this
+inauguration of Philips his rival Pope was not much delighted; he
+therefore drew a comparison of Philips&rsquo;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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; Published however it was
+(<i>Guardian</i>, No. 40), and from that time Pope and Philips
+lived in a perpetual reciprocation of malevolence.&nbsp; 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&rsquo;s approbation, as
+disaffected to the Government.&nbsp; Even with this he was not
+satisfied, for, indeed, there is no appearance that any regard
+was paid to his clamours.&nbsp; He proceeded to grosser insults,
+and hung up a rod at Button&rsquo;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
+&ldquo;rascal,&rdquo; and in the last still charges him with
+detaining in his hands the subscriptions for &ldquo;Homer&rdquo;
+delivered to him by the Hanover Club.&nbsp; 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.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>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.&nbsp; He was only made a
+commissioner of the lottery (1717), and, what did not much
+elevate his character, a justice of the peace.</p>
+<p>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) <i>The Briton</i>, 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.&nbsp; He had not been idle though he had
+been silent, for he exhibited another tragedy the same year on
+the story of <i>Humphry</i>, <i>Duke of Gloucester</i>.&nbsp;
+This tragedy is only remembered by its title.</p>
+<p>His happiest undertaking was (1711) of a paper called <i>The
+Freethinker</i>, 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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; It has been reprinted in volumes,
+but is little read; nor can impartial criticism recommend it as
+worthy of revival.</p>
+<p>Boulter was not well qualified to write diurnal essays, but he
+knew how to practise the liberality of greatness and the fidelity
+of friendship.&nbsp; When he was advanced to the height of
+ecclesiastical dignity, he did not forget the companion of his
+labours.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; In December,
+1726, he was made secretary to the Lord Chancellor, and in
+August, 1733, became Judge of the Prerogative Court.</p>
+<p>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.&nbsp; He found, however, the Duke of Newcastle
+still living, and to him he dedicated his poems collected into a
+volume.</p>
+<p>Having purchased an annuity of &pound;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.</p>
+<p>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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; &ldquo;Philips,&rdquo; said he,
+&ldquo;was once at table, when I asked him, &lsquo;How came thy
+king of Epirus to drive oxen, and to say, &ldquo;I&rsquo;m goaded
+on by love&rdquo;?&rsquo;&nbsp; After which question he never
+spoke again.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Of <i>The Distressed Mother</i> 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.&nbsp; Among the poems comprised in the late Collection, the
+&ldquo;Letter from Denmark&rdquo; may be justly praised; the
+Pastorals, which by the writer of the <i>Guardian</i> were ranked
+as one of the four genuine productions of the rustic Muse, cannot
+surely be despicable.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; In
+his other poems he cannot be denied the praise of lines sometimes
+elegant; but he has seldom much force or much
+comprehension.&nbsp; The pieces that please best are those which,
+from Pope and Pope&rsquo;s adherents, procured him the name of
+&ldquo;Namby-Pamby,&rdquo; the poems of short lines, by which he
+paid his court to all ages and characters, from Walpole the
+&ldquo;steerer of the realm,&rdquo; to Miss Pulteney in the
+nursery.&nbsp; The numbers are smooth and sprightly, and the
+diction is seldom faulty.&nbsp; 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.</p>
+<p>In his translations from &ldquo;Pindar&rdquo; 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.&nbsp; 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.</p>
+<h2><a name="page89"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+89</span>WEST.</h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">Gilbert West</span> 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.&nbsp; He was the son of the Rev. Dr. West; perhaps him
+who published &ldquo;Pindar&rdquo; at Oxford about the beginning
+of this century.&nbsp; His mother was sister to Sir Richard
+Temple, afterwards Lord Cobham.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>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.&nbsp; Of his learning the late Collection
+exhibits evidence, which would have been yet fuller if the
+dissertations which accompany his version of &ldquo;Pindar&rdquo;
+had not been improperly omitted.&nbsp; Of his piety the influence
+has, I hope, been extended far by his &ldquo;Observations on the
+Resurrection,&rdquo; 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&mdash;the
+&ldquo;Evidences of the Truth of the New Testament.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+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.&nbsp; Crashaw
+is now not the only maker of verses to whom may be given the two
+venerable names of Poet and Saint.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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
+&ldquo;Dissertation on St. Paul.&rdquo;&nbsp; These two
+illustrious friends had for a while listened to the blandishments
+of infidelity; and when West&rsquo;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.</p>
+<p>Mr. West&rsquo;s income was not large; and his friends
+endeavoured, but without success, to obtain an
+augmentation.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.</p>
+<p>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.&nbsp; He does not confine himself
+to his author&rsquo;s train of stanzas; for he saw that the
+difference of languages required a different mode of
+versification.&nbsp; The first strophe is eminently happy; in the
+second he has a little strayed from Pindar&rsquo;s meaning, who
+says, &ldquo;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.&rdquo;&nbsp; He is
+sometimes too paraphrastical.&nbsp; Pindar bestows upon Hiero an
+epithet which, in one word, signifies <i>delighting in
+horses</i>; a word which, in the translation, generates these
+lines:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;Hiero&rsquo;s royal brows, whose care<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Tends the courser&rsquo;s noble breed,<br />
+Pleased to nurse the pregnant mare,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Pleased to train the youthful steed.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>Pindar says of Pelops, that &ldquo;he came alone in the dark
+to the White Sea;&rdquo; and West&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;Near the billow-beaten side<br />
+Of the foam-besilvered main,<br />
+Darkling, and alone, he stood:&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>which, however, is less exuberant than the former passage.</p>
+<p>A work of this kind must, in a minute examination, discover
+many imperfections; but West&rsquo;s version, so far as I have
+considered it, appears to be the product of great labour and
+great abilities.</p>
+<p>His &ldquo;Institution of the Garter&rdquo; (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.</p>
+<p>His &ldquo;Imitations of Spenser&rdquo; 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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; An imitation of Spenser is
+nothing to a reader, however acute, by whom Spenser has never
+been perused.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp;
+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.</p>
+<p>There is in the <i>Adventurer</i> a paper of verses given to
+one of the authors as Mr. West&rsquo;s, and supposed to have been
+written by him.&nbsp; It should not be concealed, however, that
+it is printed with Mr. Jago&rsquo;s name in Dodsley&rsquo;s
+Collection, and is mentioned as his in a letter of
+Shenstone&rsquo;s.&nbsp; 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.</p>
+<h2><a name="page93"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+93</span>COLLINS.</h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">William Collins</span> was born at
+Chichester, on the 25th day of December, about 1720.&nbsp; His
+father was a hatter of good reputation.&nbsp; He was in 1733, as
+Dr. Warton has kindly informed me, admitted scholar of Winchester
+College, where he was educated by Dr. Burton.&nbsp; His English
+exercises were better than his Latin.&nbsp; He first courted the
+notice of the public by some verses to a &ldquo;Lady
+weeping,&rdquo; published in <i>The Gentleman&rsquo;s
+Magazine</i> (January, 1739).</p>
+<p>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.&nbsp; He became a Commoner of Queen&rsquo;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&rsquo;s degree, and then suddenly left
+the University; for what reason I know not that he told.</p>
+<p>He now (about 1744) came to London a literary adventurer, with
+many projects in his head, and very little money in his
+pocket.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp;
+A man doubtful of his dinner, or trembling at a creditor, is not
+much disposed to abstracted meditation or remote inquiries.&nbsp;
+He published proposals for a &ldquo;History of the Revival of
+Learning;&rdquo; and I have heard him speak with great kindness
+of Leo X., and with keen resentment of his tasteless
+successor.&nbsp; But probably not a page of his history was ever
+written.&nbsp; He planned several tragedies, but he only planned
+them.&nbsp; He wrote now and then odes and other poems, and did
+something, however little.&nbsp; About this time I fell into his
+company.&nbsp; His appearance was decent and manly; his knowledge
+considerable, his views extensive, his conversation elegant, and
+his disposition cheerful.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; On this
+occasion recourse was had to the booksellers, who, on the credit
+of a translation of Aristotle&rsquo;s &ldquo;Poetics,&rdquo;
+which he engaged to write with a large commentary, advanced as
+much money as enabled him to escape into the country.&nbsp; He
+showed me the guineas safe in his hand.&nbsp; Soon afterwards his
+uncle, Mr. Martin, a lieutenant-colonel, left him about
+&pound;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.&nbsp; But man is
+not born for happiness.&nbsp; 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&mdash;disease and
+insanity.</p>
+<p>Having formerly written his character, while perhaps it was
+yet more distinctly impressed upon my memory, I shall insert it
+here.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Mr. Collins was a man of extensive literature, and of
+vigorous faculties.&nbsp; He was acquainted not only with the
+learned tongues, but with the Italian, French, and Spanish
+languages.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; Yet, as diligence is never
+wholly lost, if his efforts sometimes caused harshness and
+obscurity, they likewise produced in happier moments sublimity
+and splendour.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;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.&nbsp;
+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.&nbsp; 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.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The latter part of his life cannot be remembered but
+with pity and sadness.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; When his friend took it into his hand, out of
+curiosity to see what companion a man of letters had chosen,
+&lsquo;I have but one book,&rsquo; said Collins, &lsquo;but that
+is the best.&rsquo;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Such was the fate of Collins, with whom I once delighted to
+converse, and whom I yet remember with tenderness.</p>
+<p>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 &ldquo;Oriental Eclogues,&rdquo; as not
+sufficiently expressive of Asiatic manners, and called them his
+&ldquo;Irish Eclogues.&rdquo;&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; His disorder was no
+alienation of mind, but general laxity and feebleness&mdash;a
+deficiency rather of his vital than his intellectual
+powers.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; The
+approaches of this dreadful malady he began to feel soon after
+his uncle&rsquo;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.&nbsp; But his health
+continually declined, and he grew more and more burthensome to
+himself.</p>
+<p>To what I have formerly said of his writings may be added,
+that his diction was often harsh, unskilfully laboured, and
+injudiciously selected.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp;
+His lines commonly are of slow motion, clogged and impeded with
+clusters of consonants.&nbsp; As men are often esteemed who
+cannot be loved, so the poetry of Collins may sometimes extort
+praise when it gives little pleasure.</p>
+<p>Mr. Collins&rsquo;s first production is added here from the
+<i>Poetical Calendar</i>:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p style="text-align: center">TO MISS AURELIA
+C&mdash;R,<br />
+<span class="GutSmall">ON HER WEEPING AT HER SISTER&rsquo;S
+WEDDING.</span></p>
+<p>&ldquo;Cease, fair Aurelia, cease to mourn;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Lament not Hannah&rsquo;s happy state;<br />
+You may be happy in your turn,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; And seize the treasure you regret.<br />
+With Love united Hymen stands,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; And softly whispers to your charms,<br />
+&lsquo;Meet but your lover in my bands,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; You&rsquo;ll find your sister in his
+arms.&rsquo;&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<h2><a name="page98"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+98</span>DYER.</h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">John Dyer</span>, of whom I have no other
+account to give than his own letters, published with
+Hughes&rsquo;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.&nbsp; He passed through Westminster school
+under the care of Dr. Freind, and was then called home to be
+instructed in his father&rsquo;s profession.&nbsp; 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.</p>
+<p>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 &ldquo;Grongar
+Hill&rdquo; in Lewis&rsquo;s Miscellany.&nbsp; Being, probably,
+unsatisfied with his own proficiency, he, like other painters,
+travelled to Italy; and coming back in 1740, published the
+&ldquo;Ruins of Rome.&rdquo;&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; He therefore entered
+into orders; and, it seems, married about the same time a lady of
+the name of Ensor; &ldquo;whose grandmother,&rdquo; says he,
+&ldquo;was a Shakspeare, descended from a brother of
+everybody&rsquo;s Shakspeare;&rdquo; by her, in 1756, he had a
+son and three daughters living.</p>
+<p>His ecclesiastical provision was for a long time but
+slender.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; His condition now began to
+mend.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; He complains that the
+repair of the house at Coningsby, and other expenses, took away
+the profit.&nbsp; In 1757 he published &ldquo;The Fleece,&rdquo;
+his greatest poetical work; of which I will not suppress a
+ludicrous story.&nbsp; Dodsley the bookseller was one day
+mentioning it to a critical visitor, with more expectation of
+success than the other could easily admit.&nbsp; In the
+conversation the author&rsquo;s age was asked; and being
+represented as advanced in life, &ldquo;He will,&rdquo; said the
+critic, &ldquo;be buried in woollen.&rdquo;&nbsp; He did not
+indeed long survive that publication, nor long enjoy the increase
+of his preferments, for in 1758 he died.</p>
+<p>Dyer is not a poet of bulk or dignity sufficient to require an
+elaborate criticism.&nbsp; &ldquo;Grongar Hill&rdquo; 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.&nbsp; The idea of the &ldquo;Ruins of Rome&rdquo; strikes
+more, but pleases less, and the title raises greater expectation
+than the performance gratifies.&nbsp; Some passages, however, are
+conceived with the mind of a poet; as when, in the neighbourhood
+of dilapidating edifices, he says,</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&ldquo;The
+Pilgrim oft<br />
+At dead of night, &rsquo;mid his orison hears<br />
+Aghast the voice of Time, disparting tow&rsquo;rs<br />
+Tumbling all precipitate down dashed,<br />
+Rattling around, loud thund&rsquo;ring to the Moon.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>Of &ldquo;The Fleece,&rdquo; which never became popular, and
+is now universally neglected, I can say little that is likely to
+recall it to attention.&nbsp; The woolcomber and the poet appear
+to me such discordant natures, that an attempt to bring them
+together is to <i>couple the serpent with the fowl</i>.&nbsp;
+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&rsquo;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.</p>
+<p>Let me, however, honestly report whatever may counterbalance
+this weight of censure.&nbsp; I have been told that Akenside,
+who, upon a poetical question, has a right to be heard, said,
+&ldquo;That he would regulate his opinion of the reigning taste
+by the fate of Dyer&rsquo;s &lsquo;Fleece;&rsquo; for, if that
+were ill-received, he should not think it any longer reasonable
+to expect fame from excellence.&rdquo;</p>
+<h2><a name="page101"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+101</span>SHENSTONE.</h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">William Shenstone</span>, 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.&nbsp; He learned to read of an old dame, whom his
+poem of the &ldquo;Schoolmistress&rdquo; 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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>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.&nbsp; Here it appears that he
+found delight and advantage; for he continued his name in the
+book ten years, though he took no degree.&nbsp; After the first
+four years he put on the civilian&rsquo;s gown, but without
+showing any intention to engage in the profession.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; At Oxford he employed himself upon English
+poetry; and in 1737 published a small Miscellany, without his
+name.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; He published in 1741 his &ldquo;Judgment of
+Hercules,&rdquo; addressed to Mr. Lyttelton, whose interest he
+supported with great warmth at an election: this was next year
+followed by the &ldquo;Schoolmistress.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.</p>
+<p>This praise was the praise of Shenstone; but, like all other
+modes of felicity, it was not enjoyed without its
+abatements.&nbsp; Lyttelton was his neighbour and his rival,
+whose empire, spacious and opulent, looked with disdain on the
+<i>petty state</i> that <i>appeared behind it</i>.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; Where there is emulation there will
+be vanity; and where there is vanity there will be folly.</p>
+<p>The pleasure of Shenstone was all in his eye; he valued what
+he valued merely for its looks.&nbsp; Nothing raised his
+indignation more than to ask if there were any fishes in his
+water.&nbsp; His house was mean, and he did not improve it; his
+care was of his grounds.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; In time
+his expenses brought clamours about him that overpowered the
+lamb&rsquo;s bleat and the linnet&rsquo;s song, and his groves
+were haunted by beings very different from fauns and
+fairies.&nbsp; He spent his estate in adorning it, and his death
+was probably hastened by his anxieties.&nbsp; He was a lamp that
+spent its oil in blazing.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.</p>
+<p>He was never married, though he might have obtained the lady,
+whoever she was, to whom his &ldquo;Pastoral Ballad&rdquo; was
+addressed.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; His life was unstained by any crime.&nbsp; The
+&ldquo;Elegy on Jesse,&rdquo; 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&rsquo;s &ldquo;Pamela.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>What Gray thought of his character, from the perusal of his
+Letters, was this:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;I have read, too, an octavo volume of
+Shenstone&rsquo;s Letters.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; His
+correspondence is about nothing else but this place and his own
+writings, with two or three neighbouring clergymen, who wrote
+verses too.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>His poems consist of elegies, odes, and ballads, humorous
+sallies, and moral pieces.&nbsp; His conception of an Elegy he
+has in his Preface very judiciously and discriminately
+explained.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp;
+His compositions suit not ill to this description.&nbsp; His
+topics of praise are the domestic virtues, and his thoughts are
+pure and simple, but wanting combination; they want
+variety.&nbsp; The peace of solitude, the innocence of
+inactivity, and the unenvied security of an humble station, can
+fill but a few pages.&nbsp; That of which the essence is
+uniformity will be soon described.&nbsp; His elegies have,
+therefore, too much resemblance of each other.&nbsp; 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.</p>
+<p>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.&nbsp; From these, however, &ldquo;Rural
+Elegance&rdquo; has some right to be excepted.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; Of the rest I cannot think any excellent;
+the &ldquo;Skylark&rdquo; pleases me best, which has, however,
+more of the epigram than of the ode.</p>
+<p>But the four parts of his &ldquo;Pastoral Ballad&rdquo; demand
+particular notice.&nbsp; I cannot but regret that it is pastoral:
+an intelligent reader acquainted with the scenes of real life
+sickens at the mention of the <i>crook</i>, the <i>pipe</i>, the
+<i>sheep</i>, and the <i>kids</i>, which it is not necessary to
+bring forward to notice; for the poet&rsquo;s art is selection,
+and he ought to show the beauties without the grossness of the
+country life.&nbsp; His stanza seems to have been chosen in
+imitation of Rowe&rsquo;s &ldquo;Despairing
+Shepherd.&rdquo;&nbsp; In the first are two passages, to which if
+any mind denies its sympathy, it has no acquaintance with love or
+nature:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;I prized every hour that went by,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Beyond all that had pleased me before:<br />
+But now they are past, and I sigh,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; And I grieve that I prized them no more.</p>
+<p>When forced the fair nymph to forego,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; What anguish I felt in my heart!<br />
+Yet I thought (but it might not be so)<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; &rsquo;Twas with pain that she saw me depart.</p>
+<p>She gazed, as I slowly withdrew,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; My path I could hardly discern;<br />
+So sweetly she bade me adieu,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; I thought that she bade me return.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>In the second this passage has its prettiness; though it be
+not equal to the former:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;I have found out a gift for my fair:<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; I have found where the wood pigeons breed:<br />
+But let me that plunder forbear,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; She will say &rsquo;twas a barbarous deed:</p>
+<p>For he ne&rsquo;er could be true, she averred,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Who could rob a poor bird of its young;<br />
+And I loved her the more when I heard<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Such tenderness fall from her tongue.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>In the third he mentions the common-places of amorous poetry
+with some address:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;&rsquo;Tis his with mock passion to
+glow!<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; &rsquo;Tis his in smooth tales to unfold,<br />
+How her face is as bright as the snow,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; And her bosom, be sure, is as cold:</p>
+<p>How the nightingales labour the strain,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; With the notes of this charmer to vie:<br />
+How they vary their accents in vain,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Repine at her triumphs, and die.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>In the fourth I find nothing better than this natural strain
+of Hope:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;Alas! from the day that we met,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; What hope of an end to my woes,<br />
+When I cannot endure to forget<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; The glance that undid my repose?</p>
+<p>Yet Time may diminish the pain:<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; The flower, and the shrub, and the tree,<br />
+Which I reared for her pleasure in vain,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; In time may have comfort for me.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>His &ldquo;Levities&rdquo; 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.</p>
+<p>Of the Moral Poems, the first is the &ldquo;Choice of
+Hercules,&rdquo; from Xenophon.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; His &ldquo;Fate of Delicacy&rdquo; has an air
+of gaiety, but not a very pointed and general moral.&nbsp; His
+blank verses, those that can read them, may probably find to be
+like the blank verses of his neighbours.&nbsp; &ldquo;Love and
+Honour&rdquo; is derived from the old ballad, &ldquo;Did you not
+hear of a Spanish Lady?&rdquo;&mdash;I wish it well enough to
+wish it were in rhyme.</p>
+<p>The &ldquo;Schoolmistress,&rdquo; of which I know not what
+claim it has to stand among the Moral Works, is surely the most
+pleasing of Shenstone&rsquo;s performances.&nbsp; 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.</p>
+<p>The general recommendation of Shenstone is easiness and
+simplicity; his general defect is want of comprehension and
+variety.&nbsp; Had his mind been better stored with knowledge,
+whether he could have been great, I know not; he could certainly
+have been agreeable.</p>
+<h2><a name="page109"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+109</span>YOUNG.</h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">The</span> 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:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;Dear Sir,&mdash;In consequence of our
+different conversations about authentic materials for the Life of
+Young, I send you the following details:&rdquo;&mdash;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>Of great men something must always be said to gratify
+curiosity.&nbsp; Of the illustrious author of the &ldquo;Night
+Thoughts&rdquo; 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.</p>
+<p>Edward Young was born at Upham, near Winchester, in June,
+1681.&nbsp; 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,
+<i>gentleman</i>.&nbsp; In September, 1682, the poet&rsquo;s
+father was collated to the prebend of Gillingham Minor, in the
+church of Sarum, by Bishop Ward.&nbsp; When Ward&rsquo;s
+faculties were impaired through age, his duties were necessarily
+performed by others.&nbsp; We learn from Wood that, at a
+visitation of Sprat&rsquo;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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; Jacob, who wrote in 1720, says, &ldquo;he
+was Chaplain and Clerk of the Closet to the late Queen, who
+honoured him by standing godmother to the poet.&rdquo;&nbsp; His
+Fellowship of Winchester he resigned in favour of a gentleman of
+the name of Harris, who married his only daughter.&nbsp; The Dean
+died at Sarum, after a short illness, in 1705, in the sixty-third
+year of his age.&nbsp; On the Sunday after his decease, Bishop
+Burnet preached at the cathedral, and began his sermon with
+saying, &ldquo;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.&nbsp; But he still lives in the many excellent directions
+he has left us both how to live and how to die.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The dean placed his son upon the foundation at Winchester
+College, where he had himself been educated.&nbsp; At this school
+Edward Young remained till the election after his eighteenth
+birthday, the period at which those upon the foundation are
+superannuated.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; By chance, or by choice, New College cannot claim
+the honour of numbering among its fellows him who wrote the
+&ldquo;Night Thoughts.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>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&rsquo;s lodgings, who was a particular friend of his
+father&rsquo;s, till he should be qualified to stand for a
+fellowship at All Souls.&nbsp; In a few months the warden of New
+College died.&nbsp; He then removed to Corpus College.&nbsp; The
+president of this society, from regard also for his father,
+invited him thither, in order to lessen his academical
+expenses.&nbsp; In 1708 he was nominated to a law-fellowship at
+All Souls by Archbishop Tenison, into whose hands it came by
+devolution.&nbsp; Such repeated patronage, while it justifies
+Burnet&rsquo;s praise of the father, reflects credit on the
+conduct of the son.&nbsp; The manner in which it was exerted
+seems to prove that the father did not leave behind him much
+wealth.</p>
+<p>On the 23rd of April, 1714, Young took his degree of bachelor
+of civil laws, and his doctor&rsquo;s degree on the 10th of June,
+1719.&nbsp; Soon after he went to Oxford he discovered, it is
+said, an inclination for pupils.&nbsp; Whether he ever commenced
+tutor is not known.&nbsp; None has hitherto boasted to have
+received his academical instruction from the author of
+&ldquo;Night Thoughts.&rdquo;&nbsp; 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&rsquo;s degree, Young
+was appointed to speak the Latin oration.&nbsp; This is at least
+particular for being dedicated in English &ldquo;To the Ladies of
+the Codrington Family.&rdquo;&nbsp; To these ladies he says
+&ldquo;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.&rdquo;&nbsp; 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, &ldquo;I have not the &lsquo;Epistle to
+Lord Lansdowne.&rsquo;&nbsp; If you will take my advice, I would
+have you omit that, and the oration on Codrington.&nbsp; I think
+the collection will sell better without them.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; But
+Wharton befriended in Young, perhaps, the poet, and particularly
+the tragedian.&nbsp; If virtuous authors must be patronised only
+by virtuous peers, who shall point them out?&nbsp; Yet Pope is
+said by Ruffhead to have told Warburton that &ldquo;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.&nbsp; This made him pass a <i>foolish youth</i>,
+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.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>They who think ill of Young&rsquo;s morality in the early part
+of his life may perhaps be wrong; but Tindal could not err in his
+opinion of Young&rsquo;s warmth and ability in the cause of
+religion.&nbsp; Tindal used to spend much of his time at All
+Souls.&nbsp; &ldquo;The other boys,&rdquo; said the atheist,
+&ldquo;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.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>After all, Tindal and the censurers of Young may be
+reconcilable.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; We shall soon
+see that one of his earliest productions was more serious than
+what comes from the generality of unfledged poets.</p>
+<p>Young perhaps ascribed the good fortune of Addison to the
+&ldquo;Poem to his Majesty,&rdquo; 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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; In order to
+reconcile the people to one, at least, of the new lords, he
+published, in 1712, &ldquo;An Epistle to the Right Honourable
+George Lord Lansdowne.&rdquo;&nbsp; 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.&nbsp;
+The poem seems intended also to reconcile the public to the late
+peace.&nbsp; This is endeavoured to be done by showing that men
+are slain in war, and that in peace &ldquo;harvests wave, and
+commerce swells her sail.&rdquo;&nbsp; If this be humanity, for
+which he meant it, is it politics?&nbsp; Another purpose of this
+epistle appears to have been to prepare the public for the
+reception of some tragedy he might have in hand.&nbsp; His
+lordship&rsquo;s patronage, he says, will not let him
+&ldquo;repent his passion for the stage;&rdquo; and the
+particular praise bestowed on <i>Othello</i> and <i>Oroonoko</i>
+looks as if some such character as Zanga was even then in
+contemplation.&nbsp; The affectionate mention of the death of his
+friend Harrison of New College, at the close of this poem, is an
+instance of Young&rsquo;s art, which displayed itself so
+wonderfully some time afterwards in the &ldquo;Night
+Thoughts,&rdquo; of making the public a party in his private
+sorrow.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; The booksellers, in the late body of
+English poetry, should have distinguished what was deliberately
+rejected by the respective authors.&nbsp; This I shall be careful
+to do with regard to Young.&nbsp; &ldquo;I think,&rdquo; says he,
+&ldquo;the following pieces in <i>four</i> volumes to be the most
+excusable of all that I have written; and I wish <i>less
+apology</i> was less needful for these.&nbsp; As there is no
+recalling what is got abroad, the pieces here republished I have
+revised and corrected, and rendered them as <i>pardonable</i> as
+it was in my power to do.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Shall the gates of repentance be shut only against literary
+sinners?</p>
+<p>When Addison published &ldquo;Cato&rdquo; in 1713, Young had
+the honour of prefixing to it a recommendatory copy of
+verses.&nbsp; This is one of the pieces which the author of the
+&ldquo;Night Thoughts&rdquo; did not republish.</p>
+<p>On the appearance of his poem on the &ldquo;Last Day,&rdquo;
+Addison did not return Young&rsquo;s compliment; but &ldquo;The
+Englishman&rdquo; of October 29, 1713, which was probably written
+by Addison, speaks handsomely of this poem.&nbsp; The &ldquo;Last
+Day&rdquo; was published soon after the peace.&nbsp; The
+Vice-Chancellor&rsquo;s <i>imprimatur</i> (for it was printed at
+Oxford) is dated the 19th, 1713.&nbsp; From the exordium, Young
+appears to have spent some time on the composition of it.&nbsp;
+While other bards &ldquo;with Britain&rsquo;s hero set their
+souls on fire,&rdquo; he draws, he says, a deeper scene.&nbsp;
+Marlborough <i>had been</i> considered by Britain as her
+<i>hero</i>; but, when the &ldquo;Last Day&rdquo; was published,
+female cabal had blasted for a time the laurels of
+Blenheim.&nbsp; This serious poem was finished by Young as early
+as 1710, before he was thirty; for part of it is printed in the
+<i>Tatler</i>.&nbsp; It was inscribed to the queen, in a
+dedication, which, for some reason, he did not admit into his
+works.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; Of this obligation nothing is
+now known, unless he alluded to her being his godmother.&nbsp; He
+is said indeed to have been engaged at a settled stipend as a
+writer for the Court.&nbsp; In Swift&rsquo;s &ldquo;Rhapsody on
+Poetry&rdquo; are these lines, speaking of the Court:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;Whence Gay was banished in disgrace,<br />
+Where Pope will never show his face,<br />
+Where Y&mdash; must torture his invention<br />
+To flatter knaves, or lose his pension.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>That Y&mdash; means Young seems clear from four other lines in
+the same poem:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;Attend, ye Popes, and Youngs, and Gays,<br
+/>
+And tune your harps and strew your bays;<br />
+Your panegyrics here provide;<br />
+You cannot err on flattery&rsquo;s side.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>Yet who shall say with certainty that Young was a
+pensioner?&nbsp; In all modern periods of this country, have not
+the writers on one side been regularly called Hirelings, and on
+the other Patriots?</p>
+<p>Of the dedication the complexion is clearly political.&nbsp;
+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.</p>
+<p>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.&nbsp; If Young thought the
+dedication contained only the praise of truth, he should not have
+omitted it in his works.&nbsp; Was he conscious of the
+exaggeration of party?&nbsp; Then he should not have written
+it.&nbsp; The poem itself is not without a glance towards
+politics, notwithstanding the subject.&nbsp; The cry that the
+Church was in danger had not yet subsided.&nbsp; The &ldquo;Last
+Day,&rdquo; written by a layman, was much approved by the
+ministry and their friends.</p>
+<p>Before the queen&rsquo;s death, &ldquo;The Force of Religion,
+or Vanquished Love,&rdquo; was sent into the world.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; The dedication of it to the Countess of Salisbury
+does not appear in his own edition.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; &ldquo;To behold,&rdquo; he
+proceeds, &ldquo;a person <i>only</i> virtuous, stirs in us a
+prudent regret; to behold a person <i>only</i> 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.&rdquo;&nbsp; His flattery was as ready for the other sex as
+for ours, and was at least as well adapted.</p>
+<p>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&rsquo;s death, but that no panegyrics are ready yet
+for the king.&nbsp; 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&rsquo;s death, and
+his Majesty&rsquo;s accession to the throne.&nbsp; It is
+inscribed to Addison, then secretary to the Lords Justices.&nbsp;
+Whatever were the obligations which he had formerly received from
+Anne, the poet appears to aim at something of the same sort from
+George.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; To discover, at the very onset of a
+foreigner&rsquo;s reign, that the gods bless his new subjects in
+such a king is something more than praise.&nbsp; Neither was this
+deemed one of his excusable pieces.&nbsp; We do not find it in
+his works.</p>
+<p>Young&rsquo;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.</p>
+<p>To the Dean of Sarum&rsquo;s visitation sermon, already
+mentioned, were added some verses &ldquo;by that excellent
+poetess, Mrs. Anne Wharton,&rdquo; upon its being translated into
+English, at the instance of Waller by Atwood.&nbsp; Wharton,
+after he became ennobled, did not drop the son of his old
+friend.&nbsp; In him, during the short time he lived, Young found
+a patron, and in his dissolute descendant a friend and a
+companion.&nbsp; The marquis died in April, 1715.&nbsp; In the
+beginning of the next year, the young marquis set out upon his
+travels, from which he returned in about a twelvemonth.&nbsp; The
+beginning of 1717 carried him to Ireland: where, says the
+Biographia, &ldquo;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.&rdquo;&nbsp; With this
+unhappy character it is not unlikely that Young went to
+Ireland.&nbsp; From his letter to Richardson on &ldquo;Original
+Composition,&rdquo; it is clear he was, at some period of his
+life, in that country.&nbsp; &ldquo;I remember,&rdquo; says he,
+in that letter, speaking of Swift, &ldquo;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.&nbsp; Pointing at it, he said,
+&lsquo;I shall be like that tree, I shall die at
+top.&rsquo;&rdquo;&nbsp; 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?</p>
+<p>From &ldquo;The Englishman&rdquo; it appears that a tragedy by
+Young was in the theatre so early as 1713.&nbsp; Yet
+<i>Busiris</i> was not brought upon Drury Lane stage till
+1719.&nbsp; It was inscribed to the Duke of Newcastle,
+&ldquo;because the late instances he had received of his
+grace&rsquo;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.&rdquo;&nbsp; The Dedication he
+afterwards suppressed.</p>
+<p><i>Busiris</i> was followed in the year 1721 by <i>The
+Revenge</i>.&nbsp; He dedicated this famous tragedy to the Duke
+of Wharton.&nbsp; &ldquo;Your Grace,&rdquo; says the Dedication,
+&ldquo;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.&rdquo;&nbsp; That his grace should have
+suggested the incident to which he alludes, whatever that
+incident might have been, is not unlikely.&nbsp; 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.</p>
+<p>Dryden dedicated &ldquo;Marriage a la Mode&rdquo; to
+Wharton&rsquo;s infamous relation Rochester, whom he acknowledges
+not only as the defender of his poetry, but as the promoter of
+his fortune.&nbsp; Young concludes his address to Wharton
+thus&mdash;&ldquo;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.&rdquo;&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; He should have remembered that he at the
+same time concealed his obligation to Wharton for <i>the most
+beautiful incident</i> in what is surely not his least beautiful
+composition.&nbsp; The passage just quoted is, in a poem
+afterwards addressed to Walpole, literally copied:</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;Be this thy partial smile from censure
+free!<br />
+&rsquo;Twas meant for merit, though it fell on me.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>While Young, who, in his &ldquo;Love of Fame,&rdquo; complains
+grievously how often &ldquo;dedications wash an &AElig;thiop
+white,&rdquo; was painting an amiable Duke of Wharton in
+perishable prose, Pope was, perhaps, beginning to describe the
+&ldquo;scorn and wonder of his days&rdquo; in lasting
+verse.&nbsp; To the patronage of such a character, had Young
+studied men as much as Pope, he would have known how little to
+have trusted.&nbsp; Young, however, was certainly indebted to it
+for something material; and the duke&rsquo;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
+<i>The Revenge</i>.</p>
+<p>It will surprise you to see me cite second Atkins, Case 136,
+Stiles <i>versus</i> the Attorney-General, March 14, 1740, as
+authority for the life of a poet.&nbsp; But biographers do not
+always find such certain guides as the oaths of the persons whom
+they record.&nbsp; Chancellor Hardwicke was to determine whether
+two annuities, granted by the Duke of Wharton to Young, were for
+legal considerations.&nbsp; One was dated the 24th March, 1719,
+and accounted for his grace&rsquo;s bounty in a style princely
+and commendable, if not legal&mdash;&ldquo;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,
+&amp;c.&rdquo;&nbsp; The other was dated the 10th of July,
+1722.</p>
+<p>Young, on his examination, swore that he quitted the Exeter
+family, and refused an annuity of &pound;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&rsquo;s assurances of providing for him in a much more
+ample manner.&nbsp; It also appeared that the duke had given him
+a bond for &pound;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&rsquo;s desire, and in consideration of his not
+taking two livings of &pound;200 and &pound;400 in the gift of
+All Souls College, on his grace&rsquo;s promises of serving and
+advancing him in the world.</p>
+<p>Of his adventures in the Exeter family I am unable to give any
+account.&nbsp; The attempt to get into Parliament was at
+Cirencester, where Young stood a contested election.&nbsp; His
+grace discovered in him talents for oratory as well as for
+poetry.&nbsp; Nor was this judgment wrong.&nbsp; Young, after he
+took orders, became a very popular preacher, and was much
+followed for the grace and animation of his delivery.&nbsp; By
+his oratorical talents he was once in his life, according to the
+Biographia, deserted.&nbsp; As he was preaching in his turn at
+St. James&rsquo;s, he plainly perceived it was out of his power
+to command the attention of his audience.&nbsp; This so affected
+the feelings of the preacher, that he sat back in the pulpit, and
+burst into tears.&nbsp; But we must pursue his poetical life.</p>
+<p>In 1719 he lamented the death of Addison, in a letter
+addressed to their common friend Tickell.&nbsp; For the secret
+history of the following lines, if they contain any, it is now
+vain to seek:</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;<i>In joy once joined</i>, in sorrow, now,
+for years&mdash;<br />
+Partner in grief, and brother of my tears,<br />
+Tickell, accept this verse, thy mournful due.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>From your account of Tickell it appears that he and Young used
+to &ldquo;communicate to each other whatever verses they wrote,
+even to the least things.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>In 1719 appeared a &ldquo;Paraphrase on Part of the Book of
+Job.&rdquo;&nbsp; Parker, to whom it is dedicated, had not long,
+by means of the seals, been qualified for a patron.&nbsp; Of this
+work the author&rsquo;s opinion may be known from his letter to
+Curll: &ldquo;You seem, in the Collection you propose, to have
+omitted what I think may claim the first place in it; I mean
+&lsquo;a Translation from part of Job,&rsquo; printed by Mr.
+Tonson.&rdquo;&nbsp; The Dedication, which was only suffered to
+appear in Mr. Tonson&rsquo;s edition, while it speaks with
+satisfaction of his present retirement, seems to make an unusual
+struggle to escape from retirement.&nbsp; But every one who sings
+in the dark does not sing from joy.&nbsp; It is addressed, in no
+common strain of flattery, to a chancellor, of whom he clearly
+appears to have had no kind of knowledge.</p>
+<p>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.&nbsp; We must then have referred to the poems,
+to discover when they were written.&nbsp; For these internal
+notes of time we should not have referred in vain.&nbsp; The
+first Satire laments, that &ldquo;Guilt&rsquo;s chief foe in
+Addison is fled.&rdquo;&nbsp; The second, addressing himself,
+asks:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;Is thy ambition sweating for a rhyme,<br />
+Thou unambitious fool, at this late time?<br />
+A fool at <i>forty</i> is a fool indeed.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>The Satires were originally published separately in folio,
+under the title of &ldquo;The Universal Passion.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+These passages fix the appearance of the first to about 1725, the
+time at which it came out.&nbsp; 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
+&ldquo;Paraphrase on Job.&rdquo;&nbsp; The last Satire was
+certainly finished in the beginning of the year 1726.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; From the sixth of these poems we
+learn,</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;&rsquo;Midst empire&rsquo;s charms, how
+Carolina&rsquo;s heart<br />
+Glowed with the love of virtue and of art.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>Since the grateful poet tells us, in the next couplet,</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;Her favour is diffused to that degree,<br
+/>
+Excess of goodness! it has dawned on me.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>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&rsquo;s future
+husband.</p>
+<p>The fifth Satire, &ldquo;On Women,&rdquo; was not published
+till 1727; and the sixth not till 1728.</p>
+<p>To these poems, when, in 1728, he gathered them into one
+publication, he prefixed a Preface, in which he observes that
+&ldquo;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.&nbsp; Now to smile at it, and turn it into
+ridicule,&rdquo; he adds, &ldquo;I think most eligible, as it
+hurts ourselves least, and gives vice and folly the greatest
+offence.&nbsp; Laughing at the misconduct of the world will, in a
+great measure, ease us of any more disagreeable passion about
+it.&nbsp; One passion is more effectually driven out by another
+than by reason, whatever some teach.&rdquo;&nbsp; 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
+&ldquo;Last Day.&rdquo;&nbsp; After all, Swift pronounced of
+these Satires, that they should either have been more angry or
+more merry.</p>
+<p>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 &ldquo;Night
+Thoughts!&rdquo;&nbsp; At the conclusion of the Preface he
+applies Plato&rsquo;s beautiful fable of the &ldquo;Birth of
+Love&rdquo; to modern poetry, with the addition, &ldquo;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&rsquo;s family; but
+divides her favours, and generally lives with her mother&rsquo;s
+relations.&rdquo;&nbsp; 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?&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; By &ldquo;The Universal
+Passion&rdquo; he acquired no vulgar fortune&mdash;more than
+three thousand pounds.&nbsp; A considerable sum had already been
+swallowed up in the South Sea.&nbsp; For this loss he took the
+vengeance of an author.&nbsp; His Muse makes poetical use more
+than once of a South Sea Dream.</p>
+<p>It is related by Mr. Spence, in his &ldquo;Manuscript
+Anecdotes,&rdquo; on the authority of Mr. Rawlinson, that Young,
+upon the publication of his &ldquo;Universal Passion,&rdquo;
+received from the Duke of Grafton two thousand pounds; and that,
+when one of his friends exclaimed, &ldquo;Two thousand pounds for
+a poem!&rdquo; he said it was the best bargain he ever made in
+his life, for the poem was worth four thousand.&nbsp; 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&rsquo;s
+Life.</p>
+<p>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.&nbsp; In 1726 he
+addressed a poem to Sir Robert Walpole, of which the title
+sufficiently explains the intention.&nbsp; If Young must be
+acknowledged a ready celebrator, he did not endeavour, or did not
+choose, to be a lasting one.&nbsp; &ldquo;The Instalment&rdquo;
+is among the pieces he did not admit into the number of his
+<i>excusable writings</i>.&nbsp; Yet it contains a couplet which
+pretends to pant after the power of bestowing
+immortality:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;Oh! how I long, enkindled by the theme,<br
+/>
+In deep eternity to launch thy name!&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>The bounty of the former reign seems to have been continued,
+possibly increased, in this.&nbsp; 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:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;My breast, O Walpole, glows with grateful
+fire.<br />
+The streams of royal bounty, turned by thee,<br />
+Refresh the dry remains of poesy.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>If the purity of modern patriotism will term Young a
+pensioner, it must at least be confessed he was a grateful
+one.</p>
+<p>The reign of the new monarch was ushered in by Young with
+&ldquo;Ocean, an Ode.&rdquo;&nbsp; The hint of it was taken from
+the royal speech, which recommended the increase and the
+encouragement of the seamen; that they might be &ldquo;invited,
+rather than compelled by force and violence, to enter into the
+service of their country&rdquo;&mdash;a plan which humanity must
+lament that policy has not even yet been able, or willing, to
+carry into execution.&nbsp; Prefixed to the original publication
+were an &ldquo;Ode to the King, Pater Patri&aelig;,&rdquo; and an
+&ldquo;Essay on Lyric Poetry.&rdquo;&nbsp; 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&rsquo;s own edition is
+reduced to forty-nine.&nbsp; Among the omitted passages is a
+&ldquo;Wish,&rdquo; 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.&nbsp; It stood originally so high in the
+author&rsquo;s opinion, that he entitled the poem, &ldquo;Ocean,
+an Ode.&nbsp; Concluding with a Wish.&rdquo;&nbsp; This wish
+consists of thirteen stanzas.&nbsp; The first runs
+thus:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&ldquo;O may I
+<i>steal</i><br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Along the <i>vale</i><br />
+Of humble life, secure from foes!<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; My friend sincere,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; My judgment clear,<br />
+And gentle business my repose!&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>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:&mdash;</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&ldquo;Prophetic
+schemes,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; And golden dreams,<br />
+May I, unsanguine, cast away!<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Have what I <i>have</i>,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; And live, not <i>leave</i>,<br />
+Enamoured of the present day!</p>
+<p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&ldquo;My hours my own!<br
+/>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; My faults unknown!<br />
+My chief revenue in content!<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Then leave one <i>beam</i><br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Of honest <i>fame</i>!<br />
+And scorn the laboured monument!</p>
+<p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&ldquo;Unhurt my urn<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Till that great <span
+class="GutSmall">TURN</span><br />
+When mighty Nature&rsquo;s self shall die,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Time cease to glide,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; With human pride,<br />
+Sunk in the ocean of eternity!&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>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.&nbsp; Of this he said, in his &ldquo;Essay on Lyric
+Poetry,&rdquo; prefixed to the poem&mdash;&ldquo;For the more
+<i>harmony</i> likewise I chose the frequent return of rhyme,
+which laid me under great difficulties.&nbsp; But difficulties
+overcome give grace and pleasure.&nbsp; Nor can I account for the
+<i>pleasure of rhyme in general</i> (of which the moderns are too
+fond) but from this truth.&rdquo;&nbsp; Yet the moderns surely
+deserve not much censure for their fondness of what, by their own
+confession, affords pleasure, and abounds in harmony.&nbsp; The
+next paragraph in his Essay did not occur to him when he talked
+of &ldquo;that great turn&rdquo; in the stanza just quoted.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;But then the writer must take care that the difficulty is
+overcome.&nbsp; 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.&rdquo;&nbsp; Another part of
+this Essay will convict the following stanza of what every reader
+will discover in it &ldquo;involuntary burlesque:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&ldquo;The
+northern blast,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The shattered mast,<br />
+The syrt, the whirlpool, and the rock,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The breaking spout,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The <i>stars gone out</i>,<br />
+The boiling strait, the monster&rsquo;s shock.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>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?</p>
+<p>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.&nbsp; This surely is
+candid.</p>
+<p>Milbourne was styled by Pope &ldquo;the fairest of
+critics,&rdquo; only because he exhibited his own version of
+&ldquo;Virgil&rdquo; to be compared with Dryden&rsquo;s, which he
+condemned, and with which every reader had it not otherwise in
+his power to compare it.&nbsp; Young was surely not the most
+unfair of poets for prefixing to a lyric composition an
+&ldquo;Essay on Lyric Poetry,&rdquo; so just and impartial as to
+condemn himself.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>Soon after the appearance of &ldquo;Ocean,&rdquo; when he was
+almost fifty, Young entered into orders.&nbsp; In April, 1728,
+not long after he had put on the gown, he was appointed chaplain
+to George II.</p>
+<p>The tragedy of <i>The Brothers</i>, which was already in
+rehearsal, he immediately withdrew from the stage.&nbsp; The
+managers resigned it with some reluctance to the delicacy of the
+new clergyman.&nbsp; The Epilogue to <i>The Brothers</i>, the
+only appendages to any of his three plays which he added himself,
+is, I believe, the only one of the kind.&nbsp; He calls it an
+historical Epilogue.&nbsp; Finding that &ldquo;Guilt&rsquo;s
+dreadful close his narrow scene denied,&rdquo; he, in a manner,
+continues the tragedy in the Epilogue, and relates how Rome
+revenged the shade of Demetrius, and punished Perseus &ldquo;for
+this night&rsquo;s deed.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Of Young&rsquo;s taking orders something is told by the
+biographer of Pope, which places the easiness and simplicity of
+the poet in a singular light.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; With this treasure Young retired from interruption
+to an obscure place in the suburbs.&nbsp; 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
+&ldquo;an irretrievable derangement.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>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.&nbsp; Not long indeed after he took orders he
+published in prose (1728) &ldquo;A True Estimate of Human
+Life,&rdquo; 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, &ldquo;An Apology for Princes; or, the Reverence due to
+Government.&rdquo;&nbsp; But the &ldquo;Second Course,&rdquo; the
+counterpart of his &ldquo;Estimate,&rdquo; without which it
+cannot be called &ldquo;A True Estimate,&rdquo; though in 1728 it
+was announced as &ldquo;soon to be published,&rdquo; never
+appeared, and his old friends the Muses were not forgotten.&nbsp;
+In 1730 he relapsed to poetry, and sent into the world
+&ldquo;Imperium Pelagi: a Naval Lyric, written in imitation of
+Pindar&rsquo;s Spirit, occasioned by his Majesty&rsquo;s return
+from Hanover, September, 1729, and the succeeding
+peace.&rdquo;&nbsp; It is inscribed to the Duke of Chandos.&nbsp;
+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.&nbsp; &ldquo;This I speak,&rdquo; he adds, &ldquo;with
+sufficient candour at my own very great peril.&nbsp; But truth
+has an eternal title to our confession, though we are sure to
+suffer by it.&rdquo;&nbsp; Behold, again, the fairest of
+poets.&nbsp; Young&rsquo;s &ldquo;Imperium Pelagi&rdquo; was
+ridiculed in Fielding&rsquo;s &ldquo;Tom Thumb;&rdquo; but let us
+not forget that it was one of his pieces which the author of the
+&ldquo;Night Thoughts&rdquo; deliberately refused to own.&nbsp;
+Not long after this Pindaric attempt he published two Epistles to
+Pope, &ldquo;Concerning the Authors of the Age,&rdquo;
+1730.&nbsp; 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.</p>
+<p>In July, 1730, he was presented by his College to the Rectory
+of Welwyn, in Hertfordshire.&nbsp; In May, 1731, he married Lady
+Elizabeth Lee, daughter of the Earl of Lichfield, and widow of
+Colonel Lee.&nbsp; His connection with this lady arose from his
+father&rsquo;s acquaintance, already mentioned, with Lady Anne
+Wharton, who was co-heiress of Sir Henry Lee of Ditchley in
+Oxfordshire.&nbsp; Poetry had lately been taught by Addison to
+aspire to the arms of nobility, though not with extraordinary
+happiness.&nbsp; 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.</p>
+<p>The next production of his muse was &ldquo;The
+Sea-piece,&rdquo; in two odes.</p>
+<p>Young enjoys the credit of what is called an &ldquo;Extempore
+Epigram on Voltaire,&rdquo; who, when he was in England,
+ridiculed, in the company of the jealous English poet,
+Milton&rsquo;s allegory of &ldquo;Sin and Death:&rdquo;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;You are so witty, profligate and thin,<br
+/>
+At once we think thee Milton, Death, and Sin.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>From the following passage in the poetical dedication of his
+&ldquo;Sea-piece&rdquo; 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.</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;No stranger, sir, though born in foreign
+climes.<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; On <i>Dorset</i> Downs, when Milton&rsquo;s page,<br
+/>
+&nbsp;&nbsp; With Sin and Death provoked thy rage,<br />
+Thy rage provoked who soothed with <i>gentle</i>
+rhymes?&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>By &ldquo;Dorset Downs&rdquo; he probably meant Mr.
+Dodington&rsquo;s seat.&nbsp; In Pitt&rsquo;s Poems is &ldquo;An
+Epistle to Dr. Edward Young, at Eastbury, in Dorsetshire, on the
+Review at Sarum, 1722.&rdquo;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;While with your Dodington retired you
+sit,<br />
+Charmed with his flowing Burgundy and wit,&rdquo; etc.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>Thomson, in his Autumn, addressing Mr. Dodington calls his
+seat the seat of the Muses,</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;Where, in the secret bower and winding
+walk,<br />
+For virtuous Young and thee they twine the bay.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>The praises Thomson bestows but a few lines before on Philips,
+the second</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;Who nobly durst, in rhyme-unfettered
+verse,<br />
+With British freedom sing the British song,&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>added to Thomson&rsquo;s example and success, might perhaps
+induce Young, as we shall see presently, to write his great work
+without rhyme.</p>
+<p>In 1734 he published &ldquo;The Foreign Address, or the best
+Argument for Peace, occasioned by the British Fleet and the
+Posture of Affairs.&nbsp; Written in the Character of a
+Sailor.&rdquo;&nbsp; It is not to be found in the author&rsquo;s
+four volumes.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; This poem
+concludes with a formal farewell to Ode, which few of
+Young&rsquo;s readers will regret:</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;My shell, which Clio gave, which <i>Kings
+applaud</i>,<br />
+Which Europe&rsquo;s bleeding genius called abroad,<br />
+Adieu!&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>In a species of poetry altogether his own he next tried his
+skill, and succeeded.</p>
+<p>Of his wife he was deprived in 1741.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; Mr. Temple did not long remain after his
+wife, though he was married a second time to a daughter of Sir
+John Barnard&rsquo;s, whose son is the present peer.&nbsp; Mr.
+and Mrs. Temple have generally been considered as Philander and
+Narcissa.&nbsp; 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&rsquo;s
+daughter-in-law.&nbsp; 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 &ldquo;Night Thoughts&rdquo;
+(and who has not read them?) needs to be informed.</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;Insatiate archer! could not one suffice?<br
+/>
+Thy shaft flew thrice, and thrice my peace was slain;<br />
+And thrice, ere thrice yon moon had filled her horn.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>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 &ldquo;Midnight
+Sorrows&rdquo; of his religious poetry?&nbsp; Mrs. Temple died in
+1736; Mr. Temple four years afterwards, in 1740; and the
+poet&rsquo;s wife seven months after Mr. Temple, in 1741.&nbsp;
+How could the insatiate archer thrice slay his peace, in these
+three persons, &ldquo;ere thrice the moon had filled her
+horn.&rdquo;&nbsp; But in the short preface to &ldquo;The
+Complaint&rdquo; he seriously tells us, &ldquo;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.&rdquo;&nbsp; It is probable, therefore,
+that in these three contradictory lines the poet complains more
+than the father-in-law, the friend, or the widower.&nbsp;
+Whatever names belong to these facts, or if the names be those
+generally supposed, whatever heightening a poet&rsquo;s sorrow
+may have given the facts; to the sorrow Young felt from them
+religion and morality are indebted for the &ldquo;Night
+Thoughts.&rdquo;&nbsp; There is a pleasure sure in sadness which
+mourners only know!&nbsp; Of these poems the two or three first
+have been perused perhaps more eagerly and more frequently than
+the rest.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.</p>
+<p>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, &ldquo;in her bridal hour.&rdquo;&nbsp; It is more than
+poetically true that Young accompanied her to the Continent:</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;I flew, I snatched her from the rigid
+North,<br />
+And bore her nearer to the sun.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>But in vain.&nbsp; Her funeral was attended with the
+difficulties painted in such animated colours in &ldquo;Night the
+Third.&rdquo;&nbsp; After her death the remainder of the party
+passed the ensuing winter at Nice.&nbsp; The poet seems perhaps
+in these compositions to dwell with more melancholy on the death
+of Philander and Narcissa than of his wife.&nbsp; But it is only
+for this reason.&nbsp; He who runs and reads may remember that in
+the &ldquo;Night Thoughts&rdquo; Philander and Narcissa are often
+mentioned and often lamented.&nbsp; To recollect lamentations
+over the author&rsquo;s wife the memory must have been charged
+with distinct passages.&nbsp; This lady brought him one child,
+Frederick, now living, to whom the Prince of Wales was
+godfather.</p>
+<p>That domestic grief is, in the first instance, to be thanked
+for these ornaments to our language it is impossible to
+deny.&nbsp; Nor would it be common hardiness to contend that
+worldly discontent had no hand in these joint productions of
+poetry and piety.&nbsp; Yet am I by no means sure that, at any
+rate, we should not have had something of the same colour from
+Young&rsquo;s pencil, notwithstanding the liveliness of his
+satires.&nbsp; In so long a life causes for discontent and
+occasions for grief must have occurred.&nbsp; It is not clear to
+me that his Muse was not sitting upon the watch for the first
+which happened.&nbsp; &ldquo;Night Thoughts&rdquo; 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.&nbsp; In his &ldquo;Last Day,&rdquo; almost his
+earliest poem, he calls her &ldquo;The Melancholy
+Maid,&rdquo;</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&ldquo;whom
+dismal scenes delight,<br />
+Frequent at tombs and in the realms of Night.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>In the prayer which concludes the second book of the same
+poem, he says:</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;Oh! permit the gloom of solemn night<br />
+To sacred thought may forcibly invite.<br />
+Oh! how divine to tread the milky way,<br />
+To the bright palace of Eternal Day!&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>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.&nbsp; What he calls
+&ldquo;The <i>true</i> Estimate of Human Life,&rdquo; 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.&nbsp; 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&rsquo;s
+monkey.&nbsp; Still, is it altogether fair to dress up the poet
+for the man, and to bring the gloominess of the &ldquo;Night
+Thoughts&rdquo; 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?&nbsp; From them who answer
+in the affirmative it should not be concealed that, though
+&ldquo;Invisibilia non decipiunt&rdquo; appeared upon a deception
+in Young&rsquo;s grounds, and &ldquo;Ambulantes in horto
+audierunt vocem Dei&rdquo; on a building in his garden, his
+parish was indebted to the good humour of the author of the
+&ldquo;Night Thoughts&rdquo; for an assembly and a bowling
+green.</p>
+<p>Whether you think with me, I know not; but the famous
+&ldquo;De mortuis nil nisi bonum&rdquo; always appeared to me to
+savour more of female weakness than of manly reason.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; Yet
+censure is not heard beneath the tomb, any more than
+praise.&nbsp; &ldquo;De mortuis nil nisi verum&mdash;De vivis nil
+nisi bonum&rdquo; would approach much nearer to good sense.&nbsp;
+After all, the few handfuls of remaining dust which once composed
+the body of the author of the &ldquo;Night Thoughts&rdquo; feel
+not much concern whether Young pass now for a man of sorrow or
+for &ldquo;a fellow of infinite jest.&rdquo;&nbsp; To this favour
+must come the whole family of Yorick.&nbsp; His immortal part,
+wherever that now dwells, is still less solicitous on this
+head.&nbsp; 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&rsquo;s days,
+saved him the trouble of feigning a character completely
+detestable, and succeeded at last in bringing his &ldquo;grey
+hairs with sorrow to the grave.&rdquo;&nbsp; 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&rsquo;s own son.&nbsp; &ldquo;The Biographia,&rdquo; and
+every account of Young, pretty roundly assert this to be the
+fact; of the absolute impossibility of which, the
+&ldquo;Biographia&rdquo; itself, in particular dates, contains
+undeniable evidence.&nbsp; Readers I know there are of a strange
+turn of mind, who will hereafter peruse the &ldquo;Night
+Thoughts&rdquo; 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&rsquo;s heart.&nbsp; Yet would these
+admirers of the sublime and terrible be offended should you set
+them down for cruel and for savage?&nbsp; 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?&nbsp; Perhaps it is clear from the poems.</p>
+<p>From the first line to the last of the &ldquo;Night
+Thoughts&rdquo; no one expression can be discovered which betrays
+anything like the father.&nbsp; In the &ldquo;Second Night&rdquo;
+I find an expression which betrays something else&mdash;that
+Lorenzo was his friend; one, it is possible, of his former
+companions; one of the Duke of Wharton&rsquo;s set.&nbsp; The
+poet styles him &ldquo;gay friend;&rdquo; an appellation not very
+natural from a pious incensed father to such a being as he paints
+Lorenzo, and that being his son.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; In the &ldquo;First
+Night&rdquo; the address to the poet&rsquo;s supposed son
+is:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;Lorenzo, Fortune makes her court to
+thee.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>In the &ldquo;Fifth Night:&rdquo;&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;And burns Lorenzo still for the sublime<br
+/>
+Of life? to hang his airy nest on high?&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>Is this a picture of the son of the Rector of Welwyn?&nbsp;
+&ldquo;Eighth Night:&rdquo;&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;In foreign realms (for thou hast travelled
+far)&rdquo;&mdash;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>which even now does not apply to his son.&nbsp; In
+&ldquo;Night Five:&rdquo;&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;So wept Lorenzo fair Clarissa&rsquo;s
+fate,<br />
+Who gave that angel-boy on whom he dotes,<br />
+And died to give him, orphaned in his birth!&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>At the beginning of the &ldquo;Fifth Night&rdquo; we
+find:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;Lorenzo, to recriminate is just,<br />
+I grant the man is vain who writes for praise.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>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.&nbsp; The son of the author of the &ldquo;Night
+Thoughts&rdquo; was not old enough, when they were written, to
+recriminate or to be a father.&nbsp; The &ldquo;Night
+Thoughts&rdquo; were begun immediately after the mournful event
+of 1741.&nbsp; The first &ldquo;Nights&rdquo; appear, in the
+books of the Company of Stationers, as the property of Robert
+Dodsley, in 1742.&nbsp; The Preface to &ldquo;Night Seven&rdquo;
+is dated July 7th, 1744.&nbsp; The marriage, in consequence of
+which the supposed Lorenzo was born, happened in May, 1731.&nbsp;
+Young&rsquo;s child was not born till June, 1733.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; An anecdote of this cruel sort, so open to
+contradiction, so impossible to be true, who could
+propagate?&nbsp; Thus easily are blasted the reputation of the
+living and of the dead.&nbsp; &ldquo;Who, then, was
+Lorenzo?&rdquo; exclaim the readers I have mentioned.&nbsp; If we
+cannot be sure that he was his son, which would have been finely
+terrible, was he not his nephew, his cousin?&nbsp; These are
+questions which I do not pretend to answer.&nbsp; For the sake of
+human nature, I could wish Lorenzo to have been only the creation
+of the poet&rsquo;s fancy: like the Quintus of Anti Lucretius,
+&ldquo;quo nomine,&rdquo; says Polignac, &ldquo;quemvis Atheum
+intellige.&rdquo;&nbsp; That this was the case many expressions
+in the &ldquo;Night Thoughts&rdquo; would seem to prove, did not
+a passage in &ldquo;Night Eight&rdquo; appear to show that he had
+somebody in his eye for the groundwork at least of the
+painting.&nbsp; Lovelace or Lorenzo may be feigned characters;
+but a writer does not feign a name of which he only gives the
+initial letter:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;Tell not Calista.&nbsp; She will laugh thee
+dead,<br />
+Or send thee to her hermitage with L&mdash;.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>The &ldquo;Biographia,&rdquo; not satisfied with pointing out
+the son of Young, in that son&rsquo;s lifetime, as his
+father&rsquo;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.&nbsp; How such anecdotes, were they
+true, tend to illustrate the life of Young, it is not easy to
+discover.&nbsp; Was the son of the author of the &ldquo;Night
+Thoughts,&rdquo; indeed, forbidden his college for a time, at one
+of our Universities?&nbsp; The author of &ldquo;Paradise
+Lost&rdquo; is by some supposed to have been disgracefully
+ejected from the other.&nbsp; From juvenile follies who is
+free?&nbsp; But, whatever the &ldquo;Biographia&rdquo; chooses to
+relate, the son of Young experienced no dismission from his
+college, either lasting or temporary.&nbsp; 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&mdash;who would not?&mdash;he would
+certainly be the occasion of less uneasiness to his father.&nbsp;
+But, from the same experience, he would as certainly, in the same
+case, be treated differently by his father.</p>
+<p>Young was a poet: poets, with reverence be it spoken, do not
+make the best parents.&nbsp; Fancy and imagination seldom deign
+to stoop from their heights; always stoop unwillingly to the low
+level of common duties.&nbsp; Aloof from vulgar life, they pursue
+their rapid flight beyond the ken of mortals, and descend not to
+earth but when compelled by necessity.&nbsp; The prose of
+ordinary occurrences is beneath the dignity of poets.&nbsp; He
+who is connected with the author of the &ldquo;Night
+Thoughts&rdquo; 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 &ldquo;nothing that is false than all that is
+true.&rdquo;&nbsp; But the son of Young would almost sooner, I
+know, pass for a Lorenzo than see himself vindicated, at the
+expense of his father&rsquo;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.</p>
+<p>Of the &ldquo;Night Thoughts,&rdquo; notwithstanding their
+author&rsquo;s professed retirement, all are inscribed to great
+or to growing names.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; In &ldquo;Night Eight&rdquo; the politician
+plainly betrays himself:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;Think no post needful that demands a
+knave:<br />
+When late our civil helm was shifting hands,<br />
+So P&mdash; thought: think better if you can.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>Yet it must be confessed that at the conclusion of
+&ldquo;Night Nine,&rdquo; weary perhaps of courting earthly
+patrons, he tells his soul&mdash;</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&ldquo;Henceforth<br
+/>
+Thy <i>patron</i> he, whose diadem has dropped<br />
+You gems of Heaven; Eternity thy prize;<br />
+And leave the racers of the world their own.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>The &ldquo;Fourth Night&rdquo; was addressed by &ldquo;a
+much-indebted Muse&rdquo; 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.&nbsp; The &ldquo;First Night&rdquo; concludes with
+this passage:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;Dark, though not blind, like thee,
+Meonides;<br />
+Or, Milton, thee.&nbsp; Ah! could I reach your strain;<br />
+Or his who made Meonides our own!<br />
+Man too he sung.&nbsp; Immortal man I sing.<br />
+Oh had he pressed his theme, pursued the track<br />
+Which opens out of darkness into day!<br />
+Oh, had he mounted on his wing of fire,<br />
+Soared, where I sink, and sung immortal man&mdash;<br />
+How had it blest mankind, and rescued me!&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>To the author of these lines was dedicated, in 1756, the first
+volume of an &ldquo;Essay on the Writings and Genius of
+Pope,&rdquo; which attempted, whether justly or not, to pluck
+from Pope his &ldquo;Wing of Fire,&rdquo; and to reduce him to a
+rank at least one degree lower than the first class of English
+poets.&nbsp; If Young accepted and approved the dedication, he
+countenanced this attack upon the fame of him whom he invokes as
+his Muse.</p>
+<p>Part of &ldquo;paper-sparing&rdquo; Pope&rsquo;s Third Book of
+the &ldquo;Odyssey,&rdquo; deposited in the Museum, is written
+upon the back of a letter signed &ldquo;E. Young,&rdquo; which is
+clearly the handwriting of our Young.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; The request was a
+prologue, I am told.</p>
+<blockquote><p style="text-align: right">&ldquo;May the 2nd.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;<span class="smcap">Dear Sir</span>,&mdash;Having been
+often from home, I know not if you have done me the favour of
+calling on me.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp;
+I should not urge this thing so much but for very particular
+reasons; nor can you be at a loss to conceive how a &lsquo;trifle
+of this nature&rsquo; 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.&nbsp; I know you are much engaged, and only hope to hear of
+you at your entire leisure.</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">&ldquo;I am, sir, your most
+faithful<br />
+&ldquo;and obedient servant,<br />
+&ldquo;E. <span class="smcap">Young</span>.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>Nay, even after Pope&rsquo;s death, he says in &ldquo;Night
+Seven:&rdquo;&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p style="text-align: center">&ldquo;Pope, who
+could&rsquo;st make immortals, art thou dead?&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>Either the &ldquo;Essay,&rdquo; 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.&nbsp; From this account of Young, two or
+three short passages, which stand almost together in &ldquo;Night
+Four,&rdquo; should not be excluded.&nbsp; 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.</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&ldquo;Ah
+me! the dire effect<br />
+Of loitering here, of death defrauded long;<br />
+Of old so gracious (and let that suffice),<br />
+<i>My very master knows me not</i>.<br />
+I&rsquo;ve been so long remembered I&rsquo;m forgot.</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">* * * * *</p>
+<p>When in his courtiers&rsquo; ears I pour my plaint,<br />
+They drink it as the Nectar of the Great;<br />
+And squeeze my hand, and beg me come to-morrow.</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">* * * * *</p>
+<p>Twice told the period spent on stubborn Troy,<br />
+Court favour, yet untaken, I <i>besiege</i>.</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">* * * * *</p>
+<p>If this song lives, Posterity shall know<br />
+One, though in Britain born, with courtiers bred,<br />
+Who thought, even gold might come a day too late;<br />
+Nor on his subtle deathbed planned his scheme<br />
+For future vacancies in Church or State.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>Deduct from the writer&rsquo;s age &ldquo;twice told the
+period spent on stubborn Troy,&rdquo; and you will still leave
+him more than forty when he sate down to the miserable siege of
+court-favour.&nbsp; He has before told us&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p style="text-align: center">&ldquo;A fool at forty
+is a fool indeed.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>After all, the siege seems to have been raised only in
+consequence of what the general thought his
+&ldquo;deathbed.&rdquo;&nbsp; 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.&nbsp;
+He entitled the four volumes which he published himself,
+&ldquo;The Works of the Author of the Night
+Thoughts.&rdquo;&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp;
+This enviable praise is due to Young.&nbsp; Can it be claimed by
+every writer?&nbsp; His dedications, after all, he had perhaps no
+right to suppress.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; Is
+it to the credit or to the discredit of Young, as a poet, that of
+his &ldquo;Night Thoughts&rdquo; the French are particularly
+fond?</p>
+<p>Of the &ldquo;Epitaph on Lord Aubrey Beauclerk,&rdquo; 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.&nbsp;
+Notwithstanding the farewell which he seemed to have taken in the
+&ldquo;Night Thoughts&rdquo; of everything which bore the least
+resemblance to ambition, he dipped again in politics.&nbsp; In
+1745 he wrote &ldquo;Reflections on the Public Situation of the
+Kingdom, addressed to the Duke of Newcastle;&rdquo; indignant, as
+it appears, to behold</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;&mdash;a pope-bred Princeling crawl
+ashore,<br />
+And whistle cut-throats, with those swords that scraped<br />
+Their barren rocks for wretched sustenance,<br />
+To cut his passage to the British throne.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>This political poem might be called a &ldquo;Night
+Thought;&rdquo; indeed, it was originally printed as the
+conclusion of the &ldquo;Night Thoughts,&rdquo; though he did not
+gather it with his other works.</p>
+<p>Prefixed to the second edition of Howe&rsquo;s &ldquo;Devout
+Meditations&rdquo; is a letter from Young, dated January 19,
+1752, addressed to Archibald Macauly, Esq., thanking him for the
+book, &ldquo;which,&rdquo; he says, &ldquo;he shall never lay far
+out of his reach; for a greater demonstration of a sound head and
+a sincere heart he never saw.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>In 1753, when <i>The Brothers</i> had lain by him above thirty
+years, it appeared upon the stage.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; To this sum
+he hoped the profits of <i>The Brothers</i> would amount.&nbsp;
+In his calculation he was deceived; but by the bad success of his
+play the Society was not a loser.&nbsp; The author made up the
+sum he originally intended, which was a thousand pounds, from his
+own pocket.</p>
+<p>The next performance which he printed was a prose publication,
+entitled &ldquo;The Centaur Not Fabulous, in Six Letters to a
+Friend on the Life in Vogue.&rdquo;&nbsp; The conclusion is dated
+November 29, 1754.&nbsp; In the third letter is described the
+death-bed of the &ldquo;gay, young, noble, ingenious,
+accomplished, and most wretched Altamont.&rdquo;&nbsp; His last
+words were&mdash;&ldquo;My principles have poisoned my friend, my
+extravagance has beggared my boy, my unkindness has murdered my
+wife!&rdquo;&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; Report has been accustomed to
+call Altamont Lord Euston.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The Old Man&rsquo;s Relapse,&rdquo; occasioned by an
+Epistle to Walpole, if written by Young, which I much doubt, must
+have been written very late in life.&nbsp; It has been seen, I am
+told, in a Miscellany published thirty years before his
+death.&nbsp; In 1758 he exhibited &ldquo;The Old Man&rsquo;s
+Relapse,&rdquo; in more than words, by again becoming a
+dedicator, and publishing a sermon addressed to the king.</p>
+<p>The lively letter in prose, on &ldquo;Original
+Composition,&rdquo; addressed to Richardson, the author of
+&ldquo;Clarissa,&rdquo; appeared in 1759.&nbsp; Though he
+despairs &ldquo;of breaking through the frozen obstructions of
+age and care&rsquo;s incumbent cloud into that flow of thought
+and brightness of expression which subjects so polite
+require,&rdquo; yet it is more like the production of untamed,
+unbridled youth, than of jaded fourscore.&nbsp; Some sevenfold
+volumes put him in mind of Ovid&rsquo;s sevenfold channels of the
+Nile at the conflagration:&mdash;</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&ldquo;&mdash;ostia
+septem<br />
+Pulverulenta vocant, septem sine flumine valles.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>Such leaden labours are like Lycurgus&rsquo;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.&nbsp; If there is a famine of invention in the land, we
+must travel, he says, like Joseph&rsquo;s brethren, far for food,
+we must visit the remote and rich ancients.&nbsp; But an
+inventive genius may safely stay at home; that, like the
+widow&rsquo;s cruse, is divinely replenished from within, and
+affords us a miraculous delight.&nbsp; He asks why it should seem
+altogether impossible that Heaven&rsquo;s latest editions of the
+human mind may be the most correct and fair?&nbsp; And Jonson, he
+tells us, was very learned, as Samson was very strong, to his own
+hurt.&nbsp; Blind to the nature of tragedy, he pulled down all
+antiquity on his head, and buried himself under it.&nbsp; Is this
+&ldquo;care&rsquo;s incumbent cloud,&rdquo; or &ldquo;the frozen
+obstructions of age?&rdquo;&nbsp; In this letter Pope is severely
+censured for his &ldquo;fall from Homer&rsquo;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:&rdquo; but we are told that the dying swan talked
+over an epic plan with Young a few weeks before his
+decease.&nbsp; Young&rsquo;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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; In the postscript he writes to Richardson that he
+will see in his next how far Addison is an original.&nbsp; But no
+other letter appears.</p>
+<p>The few lines which stand in the last edition, as &ldquo;sent
+by Lord Melcombe to Dr. Young not long before his
+lordship&rsquo;s death,&rdquo; were indeed so sent, but were only
+an introduction to what was there meant by &ldquo;The
+Muse&rsquo;s Latest Spark.&rdquo;&nbsp; The poem is necessary,
+whatever may be its merit, since the Preface to it is already
+printed.&nbsp; Lord Melcombe called his Tusculum &ldquo;La
+Trappe&rdquo;:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;Love thy country, wish it well,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Not with too intense a care;<br />
+&rsquo;Tis enough, that, when it fell,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Thou its ruin didst not share.</p>
+<p>Envy&rsquo;s censure, Flattery&rsquo;s praise,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; With unmoved indifference view;<br />
+Learn to tread life&rsquo;s dangerous maze,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; With unerring Virtue&rsquo;s clue.</p>
+<p>Void of strong desire and fear,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Life&rsquo;s void ocean trust no more;<br />
+Strive thy little bark to steer<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; With the tide, but near the shore.</p>
+<p>Thus prepared, thy shortened sail<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Shall, whene&rsquo;er the winds increase,<br />
+Seizing each propitious gale,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Waft thee to the Port of Peace.</p>
+<p>Keep thy conscience from offence,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; And tempestuous passions free,<br />
+So, when thou art called from hence,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Easy shall thy passage be;</p>
+<p>Easy shall thy passage be,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Cheerful thy allotted stay,<br />
+Short the account &rsquo;twixt God and thee;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Hope shall meet thee on the way:</p>
+<p>Truth shall lead thee to the gate,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Mercy&rsquo;s self shall let thee in,<br />
+Where its never-changing state,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Full perfection, shall begin.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>The poem was accompanied by a letter.</p>
+<blockquote><p style="text-align: right">&ldquo;La Trappe, the
+27th of October, 1761</p>
+<p>&ldquo;<span class="smcap">Dear Sir</span>,&mdash;You seemed
+to like the ode I sent you for your amusement; I now send it you
+as a present.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; God
+send us health while we stay, and an easy journey!&mdash;My dear
+Dr. Young,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">&ldquo;Yours, most cordially,<br />
+&ldquo;<span class="smcap">Melcombe</span>.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>In 1762, a short time before his death, Young published
+&ldquo;Resignation.&rdquo;&nbsp; Notwithstanding the manner in
+which it was really forced from him by the world, criticism has
+treated it with no common severity.&nbsp; 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?</p>
+<p>To Mrs. Montagu, the famous champion of Shakespeare, I am
+indebted for the history of &ldquo;Resignation.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+Observing that Mrs. Boscawen, in the midst of her grief for the
+loss of the admiral, derived consolation from the perusal of the
+&ldquo;Night Thoughts,&rdquo; Mrs. Montagu proposed a visit to
+the author.&nbsp; From conversing with Young, Mrs. Boscawen
+derived still further consolation; and to that visit she and the
+world were indebted for this poem.&nbsp; It compliments Mrs.
+Montagu in the following lines:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;Yet write I must.&nbsp; A lady sues:<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; How shameful her request!<br />
+My brain in labour with dull rhyme,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Hers teeming with the best!&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>And again&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;A friend you have, and I the same,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Whose prudent, soft address<br />
+Will bring to life those healing thoughts<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Which died in your distress.<br />
+That friend, the spirit of my theme<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Extracting for your ease,<br />
+Will leave to me the dreg, in thoughts<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Too common; such as these.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>By the same lady I was enabled to say, in her own words, that
+Young&rsquo;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&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;&mdash;letting down the golden chain from
+high,<br />
+He drew his audience upward to the sky.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>Notwithstanding Young had said, in his &ldquo;Conjectures on
+Original Composition,&rdquo; that &ldquo;blank verse is verse
+unfallen, uncursed&mdash;verse reclaimed, re-enthroned in the
+true language of the gods;&rdquo; notwithstanding he administered
+consolation to his own grief in this immortal language, Mrs.
+Boscawen was comforted in rhyme.</p>
+<p>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.&nbsp; Of Richardson&rsquo;s death he says&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;When heaven would kindly set us free,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; And earth&rsquo;s enchantment end;<br />
+It takes the most effectual means,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; And robs us of a friend.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>To &ldquo;Resignation&rdquo; was prefixed an apology for its
+appearance, to which more credit is due than to the generality of
+such apologies, from Young&rsquo;s unusual anxiety that no more
+productions of his old age should disgrace his former fame.&nbsp;
+In his will, dated February, 1760, he desires of his executors,
+<i>in a particular manner</i>, that all his manuscript books and
+writings, whatever, might be burned, except his book of
+accounts.&nbsp; In September, 1764, he added a kind of codicil,
+wherein he made it his dying entreaty to his housekeeper, to whom
+he left &pound;1,000, &ldquo;that all his manuscripts might be
+destroyed as soon as he was dead, which would greatly oblige her
+deceased <i>friend</i>.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>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
+<i>friends</i>, 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 &ldquo;Night Thoughts&rdquo; did not blush
+to leave a legacy to his &ldquo;friend Henry Stevens, a hatter at
+the Temple-gate.&rdquo;&nbsp; Of these two remaining friends, one
+went before Young.&nbsp; But, at eighty-four,
+&ldquo;where,&rdquo; as he asks in <i>The Centaur</i>, &ldquo;is
+that world into which we were born?&rdquo;&nbsp; The same
+humility which marked a hatter and a housekeeper for the friends
+of the author of the &ldquo;Night Thoughts,&rdquo; had before
+bestowed the same title on his footman, in an epitaph in his
+&ldquo;Churchyard&rdquo; upon James Baker, dated 1749; which I am
+glad to find in the late collection of his works.&nbsp; Young and
+his housekeeper were ridiculed, with more ill-nature than wit, in
+a kind of novel published by Kidgell in 1755, called &ldquo;The
+Card,&rdquo; under the names of Dr. Elwes and Mrs. Fusby.&nbsp;
+In April, 1765, at an age to which few attain, a period was put
+to the life of Young.&nbsp; He had performed no duty for three or
+four years, but he retained his intellects to the last.</p>
+<p>Much is told in the &ldquo;Biographia,&rdquo; 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&rsquo;s corpse; and a bell
+which was not caused to toll as often as upon those occasions
+bells usually toll.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; They who lament
+that these misfortunes happened to Young, forget the praise he
+bestows upon Socrates, in the Preface to &ldquo;Night
+Seven,&rdquo; for resenting his friend&rsquo;s request about his
+funeral.&nbsp; During some part of his life Young was abroad, but
+I have not been able to learn any particulars.&nbsp; In his
+seventh Satire he says,</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;When, after battle, I the field have <span
+class="GutSmall">SEEN</span><br />
+Spread o&rsquo;er with ghastly shapes which once were
+men.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>The curious reader of Young&rsquo;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.&nbsp; The author of the &ldquo;Night
+Thoughts&rdquo; 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.&nbsp; To satisfy
+curiosity of this kind is, at this distance of time, far from
+easy.&nbsp; The parties themselves know not often, at the
+instant, why they are neglected, or why they are preferred.&nbsp;
+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&rsquo;s.&nbsp; 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, &ldquo;he has a
+pension.&rdquo;&nbsp; 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 &ldquo;Night
+Thoughts&rdquo; solicited preferment:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p style="text-align: right">&ldquo;Deanery of St.
+Paul&rsquo;s, July 8, 1758.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;<span class="smcap">Good Dr. Young</span>,&mdash;I have
+long wondered that more suitable notice of your great merit hath
+not been taken by persons in power.&nbsp; But how to remedy the
+omission I see not.&nbsp; No encouragement hath ever been given
+me to mention things of this nature to his majesty.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">&ldquo;Your loving Brother, <span
+class="smcap">Tho. Cant</span>.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>At last, at the age of fourscore, he was appointed, in 1761,
+Clerk of the Closet to the Princess Dowager.&nbsp; One obstacle
+must have stood not a little in the way of that preferment after
+which his whole life seems to have panted.&nbsp; Though he took
+orders, he never entirely shook off politics.&nbsp; He was always
+the lion of his master Milton, &ldquo;pawing to get free his
+hinder parts.&rdquo;&nbsp; By this conduct, if he gained some
+friends, he made many enemies.&nbsp; Again: Young was a poet; and
+again, with reverence be it spoken, poets by profession do not
+always make the best clergymen.&nbsp; If the author of the
+&ldquo;Night Thoughts&rdquo; composed many sermons, he did not
+oblige the public with many.&nbsp; Besides, in the latter part of
+his life, Young was fond of holding himself out for a man retired
+from the world.&nbsp; But he seemed to have forgotten that the
+same verse which contains &ldquo;oblitus meorum,&rdquo; contains
+also &ldquo;obliviscendus et illis.&rdquo;&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; To the vessel which is sailing from the shore,
+it only appears that the shore also recedes; in life it is truly
+thus.&nbsp; He who retires from the world will find himself, in
+reality, deserted as fast, if not faster, by the world.&nbsp; The
+public is not to be treated as the coxcomb treats his mistress;
+to be threatened with desertion, in order to increase
+fondness.</p>
+<p>Young seems to have been taken at his word.&nbsp;
+Notwithstanding his frequent complaints of being neglected, no
+hand was reached out to pull him from that retirement of which he
+declared himself enamoured.&nbsp; Alexander assigned no palace
+for the residence of Diogenes, who boasted his surly satisfaction
+with his tub.&nbsp; Of the domestic manners and petty habits of
+the author of the &ldquo;Night Thoughts,&rdquo; 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?&nbsp; Upon inquiring for his housekeeper,
+I learned that she was buried two days before I reached the town
+of her abode.</p>
+<p>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.&nbsp; &ldquo;Everything about him shows the
+man, each individual being placed by rule.&nbsp; All is neat
+without art.&nbsp; He is very pleasant in conversation, and
+extremely polite.&rdquo;&nbsp; This, and more, may possibly be
+true; but Tscharner&rsquo;s was a first visit, a visit of
+curiosity and admiration, and a visit which the author
+expected.</p>
+<p>Of Edward Young an anecdote which wanders among readers is not
+true, that he was Fielding&rsquo;s Parson Adams.&nbsp; The
+original of that famous painting was William Young, who was a
+clergyman.&nbsp; 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&rsquo;s
+enemy.&nbsp; Yet the facility with which this report has gained
+belief in the world argues, were it not sufficiently known that
+the author of the &ldquo;Night Thoughts&rdquo; bore some
+resemblance to Adams.&nbsp; The attention which Young bestowed
+upon the perusal of books is not unworthy imitation.&nbsp; When
+any passage pleased him he appears to have folded down the
+leaf.&nbsp; On these passages he bestowed a second reading.&nbsp;
+But the labours of man are too frequently vain.&nbsp; Before he
+returned to much of what he had once approved he died.&nbsp; 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.</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;What though we wade in wealth, or soar in
+fame!<br />
+Earth&rsquo;s highest station ends in <i>Here he lies</i>!<br />
+And <i>dust to dust</i> concludes her noblest song!&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>The author of these lines is not without his &lsquo;<i>Hic
+jacet</i>.&rsquo;&nbsp; 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.</p>
+<blockquote><p style="text-align: center">M. S.<br />
+Optimi parentis<br />
+<span class="smcap">Edwardi Young</span>, LL.D.</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">Hujus Ecclesi&aelig; rect. et
+Elizabeth&aelig; f&aelig;m. pr&aelig;nob<br />
+Conjugis ejus amantissim&aelig;<br />
+Pio &amp; gratissimo animo hoc marmor posuit<br />
+F. Y.<br />
+Filius superstes.</p>
+<p>Is it not strange that the author of the &ldquo;Night
+Thoughts&rdquo; has inscribed no monument to the memory of his
+lamented wife?&nbsp; Yet what marble will endure as long as the
+poems?</p>
+<p>Such, my good friend, is the account which I have been able to
+collect of the great Young.&nbsp; That it may be long before
+anything like what I have just transcribed be necessary for you,
+is the sincere wish of,</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">Dear Sir, your greatly obliged
+Friend,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Herbert
+Croft</span>, Jun.</p>
+<p>Lincoln&rsquo;s Inn, Sept., 1780.</p>
+<p>P.S.&mdash;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.&nbsp; 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
+&ldquo;The Rambler&rdquo; my friend.</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">H. C.</p>
+<p>Oxford, Oct., 1782.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>Of Young&rsquo;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.&nbsp; He began to write
+early and continued long, and at different times had different
+modes of poetical excellence in view.&nbsp; His numbers are
+sometimes smooth and sometimes rugged; his style is sometimes
+concatenated and sometimes abrupt, sometimes diffusive and
+sometimes concise.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; He was not one of those writers whom
+experience improves, and who, observing their own faults, become
+gradually correct.&nbsp; His poem on the &ldquo;Last Day,&rdquo;
+his first great performance, has an equability and propriety,
+which he afterwards either never endeavoured or never
+attained.&nbsp; 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 <span class="smcap">Last Day</span> makes every
+man more than poetical by spreading over his mind a general
+obscurity of sacred horror, that oppresses distinction and
+disdains expression.&nbsp; His story of &ldquo;Jane Grey&rdquo;
+was never popular.&nbsp; It is written with elegance enough, but
+Jane is too heroic to be pitied.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The Universal Passion&rdquo; is indeed a very great
+performance.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp;
+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.&nbsp; To translate he
+never condescended, unless his &ldquo;Paraphrase on Job&rdquo;
+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.&nbsp; 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.</p>
+<p>In his &ldquo;Night Thoughts&rdquo; 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.&nbsp; This is one of the few poems in which blank verse
+could not be changed for rhyme but with disadvantage.&nbsp; The
+wild diffusion of the sentiments and the digressive sallies of
+imagination would have been compressed and restrained by
+confinement to rhyme.&nbsp; 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.</p>
+<p>His last poem was the &ldquo;Resignation,&rdquo; in which he
+made, as he was accustomed, an experiment of a new mode of
+writing, and succeeded better than in his &ldquo;Ocean&rdquo; or
+his &ldquo;Merchant.&rdquo;&nbsp; It was very falsely represented
+as a proof of decaying faculties.&nbsp; There is Young in every
+stanza, such as he often was in the highest vigour.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; In <i>Busiris</i> there are the greatest
+ebullitions of imagination, but the pride of <i>Busiris</i> is
+such as no other man can have, and the whole is too remote from
+known life to raise either grief, terror, or indignation.&nbsp;
+The <i>Revenge</i> approaches much nearer to human practices and
+manners, and therefore keeps possession of the stage; the first
+design seems suggested by <i>Othello</i>, but the reflections,
+the incidents, and the diction, are original.&nbsp; The moral
+observations are so introduced and so expressed as to have all
+the novelty that can be required.&nbsp; Of <i>The Brothers</i> I
+may be allowed to say nothing, since nothing was ever said of it
+by the public.&nbsp; It must be allowed of Young&rsquo;s poetry
+that it abounds in thought, but without much accuracy or
+selection.&nbsp; When he lays hold of an illustration he pursues
+it beyond expectation, sometimes happily, as in his parallel of
+<i>Quicksilver</i> with <i>Pleasure</i>, 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
+&ldquo;Night Thoughts,&rdquo; having it dropped into his mind
+that the orbs, floating in space, might be called the
+<i>cluster</i> of creation, he thinks of a cluster of grapes, and
+says, that they all hang on the great vine, drinking the
+&ldquo;nectareous juice of immortal life.&rdquo;&nbsp; His
+conceits are sometimes yet less valuable.&nbsp; In the
+&ldquo;Last Day&rdquo; he hopes to illustrate the reassembly of
+the atoms that compose the human body at the &ldquo;Trump of
+Doom&rdquo; by the collection of bees into a swarm at the
+tinkling of a pan.&nbsp; The Prophet says of Tyre that &ldquo;her
+merchants are princes.&rdquo;&nbsp; Young says of Tyre in his
+&ldquo;Merchant,&rdquo;</p>
+<blockquote><p style="text-align: center">&ldquo;Her merchants
+princes, and each <i>deck a throne</i>.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>Let burlesque try to go beyond him.</p>
+<p>He has the trick of joining the turgid and familiar: to buy
+the alliance of Britain, &ldquo;Climes were paid
+down.&rdquo;&nbsp; Antithesis is his favourite, &ldquo;They for
+kindness hate:&rdquo; and &ldquo;because she&rsquo;s right,
+she&rsquo;s ever in the wrong.&rdquo;&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; His verses are
+formed by no certain model; he is no more like himself in his
+different productions than he is like others.&nbsp; He seems
+never to have studied prosody, nor to have had any direction but
+from his own ear.&nbsp; But with all his defects, he was a man of
+genius and a poet.</p>
+<h2><a name="page159"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+159</span>MALLET.</h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">Of</span> 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.&nbsp; 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.</p>
+<p>David Malloch was, by the penury of his parents, compelled to
+be <i>Janitor</i> of the High School at Edinburgh, a mean office
+of which he did not afterwards delight to hear.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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&mdash;to
+wits, nobles, and statesmen.&nbsp; Of his works, I know not
+whether I can trace the series.&nbsp; His first production was,
+&ldquo;William and Margaret;&rdquo; 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.&nbsp; Not long afterwards he published the
+&ldquo;Excursion&rdquo; (1728); a desultory and capricious view
+of such scenes of nature as his fancy led him, or his knowledge
+enabled him, to describe.&nbsp; It is not devoid of poetical
+spirit.&nbsp; Many of his images are striking, and many of the
+paragraphs are elegant.&nbsp; The cast of diction seems to be
+copied from Thomson, whose &ldquo;Seasons&rdquo; were then in
+their full blossom of reputation.&nbsp; He has Thomson&rsquo;s
+beauties and his faults.&nbsp; His poem on &ldquo;Verbal
+Criticism&rdquo; (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.&nbsp; There is in
+this piece more pertness than wit, and more confidence than
+knowledge.&nbsp; The versification is tolerable, nor can
+criticism allow it a higher praise.</p>
+<p>His first tragedy was <i>Eurydice</i>, 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.&nbsp; He was not then
+too high to accept a prologue and epilogue from Aaron Hill,
+neither of which can be much commended.&nbsp; 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 <i>Malloch</i> to English <i>Mallet</i>,
+without any imaginable reason of preference which the eye or ear
+can discover.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; About
+this time Pope, whom he visited familiarly, published his
+&ldquo;Essay on Man,&rdquo; but concealed the author; and, when
+Mallet entered one day, Pope asked him slightly what there was
+new.&nbsp; Mallet told him that the newest piece was something
+called an &ldquo;Essay on Man,&rdquo; 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.&nbsp; Pope, to punish his self-conceit, told him the
+secret.</p>
+<p>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 &ldquo;Life of Marlborough,&rdquo;
+Warburton remarked that he might perhaps forget that Marlborough
+was a general, as he had forgotten that Bacon was a
+philosopher.</p>
+<p>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 <i>The Masque of
+Alfred</i>, 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.&nbsp; Mallet, in a familiar conversation with Garrick,
+discoursing of the diligence which he was then exerting upon the
+&ldquo;Life of Marlborough,&rdquo; let him know that in the
+series of great men quickly to be exhibited he should <i>find a
+niche</i> for the hero of the theatre.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; &ldquo;Mr. Mallet,&rdquo; says
+Garrick, in his gratitude of exultation, &ldquo;have you left off
+to write for the stage?&rdquo;&nbsp; Mallet then confessed that
+he had a drama in his hands.&nbsp; Garrick promised to act it;
+and <i>Alfred</i> was produced.</p>
+<p>The long retardation of the life of the Duke of Marlborough
+shows, with strong conviction, how little confidence can be
+placed on posthumous renown.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; While he was in the Prince&rsquo;s service he
+published <i>Mustapha</i> with a prologue by Thomson, not mean,
+but far inferior to that which he had received from Mallet for
+<i>Agamemnon</i>.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; This tragedy was dedicated
+to the Prince his master.&nbsp; It was acted at Drury Lane in
+1739, and was well received, but was never revived.&nbsp; In 1740
+he produced, as has been already mentioned, <i>The Masque of
+Alfred</i>, in conjunction with Thomson.&nbsp; For some time
+afterwards he lay at rest.&nbsp; After a long interval his next
+work was &ldquo;Amyntor and Theodora&rdquo; (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.&nbsp; But
+it is blank verse.&nbsp; This he sold to Vaillant for one hundred
+and twenty pounds.&nbsp; The first sale was not great, and it is
+now lost in forgetfulness.</p>
+<p>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.&nbsp; When it was found that Pope
+clandestinely printed an unauthorised pamphlet called the
+&ldquo;Patriot King,&rdquo; Bolingbroke in a fit of useless fury
+resolved to blast his memory, and employed Mallet (1749) as the
+executioner of his vengeance.&nbsp; Mallet had not virtue, or had
+not spirit, to refuse the office; and was rewarded, not long
+after, with the legacy of Lord Bolingbroke&rsquo;s works.</p>
+<p>Many of the political pieces had been written during the
+opposition to Walpole, and given to Francklin, as he supposed, in
+perpetuity.&nbsp; These, among the rest, were claimed by the
+will.&nbsp; 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.</p>
+<p>In 1775 [<i>sic</i>], his masque of <i>Britannia</i> was acted
+at Drury Lane, and his tragedy of <i>Elvira</i> in 1763; in which
+year he was appointed keeper of the book of entries for ships in
+the port of London.&nbsp; 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 &ldquo;Plain
+Man.&rdquo;&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; He was
+twice married, and by his first wife had several children.&nbsp;
+One daughter, who married an Italian of rank named Cilesia, wrote
+a tragedy called <i>Almida</i>, which was acted at Drury
+Lane.&nbsp; His second wife was the daughter of a
+nobleman&rsquo;s steward, who had a considerable fortune, which
+she took care to retain in her own hands.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; His conversation
+was elegant and easy.&nbsp; The rest of his character may,
+without injury to his memory, sink into silence.&nbsp; As a
+writer, he cannot be placed in any high class.&nbsp; There is no
+species of composition in which he was eminent.&nbsp; His dramas
+had their day, a short day, and are forgotten: his blank verse
+seems to my ear the echo of Thomson.&nbsp; His &ldquo;Life of
+Bacon&rdquo; is known, as it is appended to Bacon&rsquo;s
+volumes, but is no longer mentioned.&nbsp; 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.</p>
+<h2><a name="page165"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+165</span>AKENSIDE.</h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">Mark Akenside</span> was born on the 9th
+of November, 1721, at Newcastle-upon-Tyne.&nbsp; His father Mark
+was a butcher, of the Presbyterian sect; his mother&rsquo;s name
+was Mary Lumsden.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; Whether, when he
+resolved not to be a dissenting minister, he ceased to be a
+dissenter, I know not.&nbsp; 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.</p>
+<p>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.&nbsp; Many of
+his performances were produced in his youth; and his greatest
+work, &ldquo;The Pleasures of Imagination,&rdquo; appeared in
+1744.&nbsp; 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 &ldquo;this was no every-day writer.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>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.&nbsp; The subject which he
+chose was &ldquo;The Original and Growth of the Human
+Foetus;&rdquo; 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.</p>
+<p>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.&nbsp; He adopted Shaftesbury&rsquo;s foolish
+assertion of the efficacy of ridicule for the discovery of
+truth.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; The result of all
+the arguments which have been produced in a long and eager
+discussion of this idle question may easily be collected.&nbsp;
+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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; Both are for a while equally exposed to laughter,
+but both are not therefore equally contemptible.&nbsp; In the
+revisal of his poem, though he died before he had finished it, he
+omitted the lines which had given occasion to Warburton&rsquo;s
+objections.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp;
+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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; Thus supported, he advanced gradually in medical
+reputation, but never attained any great extent of practice or
+eminence of popularity.&nbsp; 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&mdash;they that employ him know
+not his excellence; they that reject him know not his
+deficience.&nbsp; 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 &ldquo;Fortune of
+Physicians.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>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&rsquo;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.&nbsp; His &ldquo;Discourse on the
+Dysentery&rdquo; (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.</p>
+<p>Akenside is to be considered as a didactic and lyric
+poet.&nbsp; His great work is the &ldquo;Pleasures of
+Imagination,&rdquo; a performance which, published as it was at
+the age of twenty-three, raised expectations that were not amply
+satisfied.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp;
+With the philosophical or religious tenets of the author I have
+nothing to do; my business is with his poetry.&nbsp; The subject
+is well chosen, as it includes all images that can strike or
+please, and thus comprises every species of poetical
+delight.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp;
+The parts seem artificially disposed, with sufficient coherence,
+so as that they cannot change their places without injury to the
+general design.&nbsp; His images are displayed with such
+luxuriance of expression that they are hidden, like
+Butler&rsquo;s Moon, by a &ldquo;Veil of Light;&rdquo; they are
+forms fantastically lost under superfluity of dress.&nbsp;
+<i>Pars minima est ipsa puella sui</i>.&nbsp; The words are
+multiplied till the sense is hardly perceived; attention deserts
+the mind, and settles in the ear.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; He remarked little, and laid hold
+on nothing.&nbsp; To his versification justice requires that
+praise should not be denied.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp;
+The sense is carried on through a long intertexture of
+complicated clauses, and, as nothing is distinguished, nothing is
+remembered.</p>
+<p>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.&nbsp; Blank verse will therefore, I fear, be too
+often found in description exuberant, in argument loquacious, and
+in narration tiresome.&nbsp; His diction is certainly poetical,
+as it is not prosaic; and elegant, as it is not vulgar.&nbsp; He
+is to be commended as having fewer artifices of disgust than most
+of his brethren of the blank song.&nbsp; He rarely either recalls
+old phrases, or twists his metre into harsh inversions.&nbsp; The
+sense, however, of his words is strained when &ldquo;he views the
+Ganges from Alpine heights&rdquo;&mdash;that is, from mountains
+like the Alps.&nbsp; And the pedant surely intrudes (but when was
+blank verse without pedantry?) when he tells how &ldquo;Planets
+<i>absolve</i> the stated round of Time.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>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.&nbsp; The reformed work as he left it, and
+the additions which he had made, are very properly retained in
+the late collection.&nbsp; He seems to have somewhat contracted
+his diffusion; but I know not whether he has gained in closeness
+what he has lost in splendour.&nbsp; In the additional book the
+&ldquo;Tale of Solon&rdquo; is too long.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; &ldquo;His picture of man is grand
+and beautiful, but unfinished.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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 &lsquo;Night
+Thoughts,&rsquo; which, with those from Akenside, seem to form a
+complete view of the powers, situation, and end of
+man.&rdquo;&mdash;&ldquo;Exercises for Improvement in
+Elocution,&rdquo; p. 66.</p>
+<p>His other poems are now to be considered; but a short
+consideration will despatch them.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; His thoughts are cold, and his words
+inelegant.&nbsp; Yet such was his love of lyrics that, having
+written with great vigour and poignancy his &ldquo;Epistle to
+Curio,&rdquo; he transformed it afterwards into an ode
+disgraceful only to its author.</p>
+<p>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.&nbsp; 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?</p>
+<h2><a name="page172"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+172</span>GRAY.</h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">Thomas Gray</span>, the son of Mr. Philip
+Gray, a scrivener of London, was born in Cornhill, November 26,
+1716.&nbsp; His grammatical education he received at Eton, under
+the care of Mr. Antrobus, his mother&rsquo;s brother, then
+assistant to Dr. George, and when he left school, in 1734,
+entered a pensioner at Peterhouse, in Cambridge.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; As he intended to profess the common law,
+he took no degree.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; They
+wandered through France into Italy; and Gray&rsquo;s
+&ldquo;Letters&rdquo; contain a very pleasing account of many
+parts of their journey.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; Part they did, whatever was the quarrel; and the rest
+of their travels was doubtless more unpleasant to them
+both.&nbsp; Gray continued his journey in a manner suitable to
+his own little fortune, with only an occasional servant.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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
+&ldquo;Letters&rdquo; and in the &ldquo;Ode to May,&rdquo; which
+Mr. Mason has preserved, as well as by the sincerity with which,
+when Gray sent him part of <i>Agrippina</i>, 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.&nbsp; It was certainly no loss to the English stage that
+<i>Agrippina</i> was never finished.&nbsp; In this year (1742)
+Gray seems to have applied himself seriously to poetry; for in
+this year were produced the &ldquo;Ode to Spring,&rdquo; his
+&ldquo;Prospect of Eton,&rdquo; and his &ldquo;Ode to
+Adversity.&rdquo;&nbsp; He began likewise a Latin poem, &ldquo;De
+Principiis Cogitandi.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; In this retirement
+he wrote (1747) an ode on the &ldquo;Death of Mr. Walpole&rsquo;s
+Cat;&rdquo; and the year afterwards attempted a poem of more
+importance, on &ldquo;Government and Education,&rdquo; of which
+the fragments which remain have many excellent lines.&nbsp; His
+next production (1750) was his far-famed &ldquo;Elegy in the
+Churchyard,&rdquo; which, finding its way into a magazine, first,
+I believe, made him known to the public.</p>
+<p>An invitation from Lady Cobham about this time gave occasion
+to an odd composition called &ldquo;A Long Story,&rdquo; which
+adds little to Gray&rsquo;s character.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; I believe the poems and the
+plates recommended each other so well that the whole impression
+was soon bought.&nbsp; This year he lost his mother.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.</p>
+<p>In 1759 he published &ldquo;The Progress of Poetry&rdquo; and
+&ldquo;The Bard,&rdquo; two compositions at which the readers of
+poetry were at first content to gaze in mute amazement.&nbsp;
+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.&nbsp; Garrick wrote a few lines in their praise.&nbsp;
+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.</p>
+<p>Gray&rsquo;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.&nbsp; 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
+&ldquo;Oblivion&rdquo; and &ldquo;Obscurity,&rdquo; in which his
+lyric performances were ridiculed with much contempt and much
+ingenuity.&nbsp; When the Professor of Modern History at
+Cambridge died, he was, as he says, &ldquo;cockered and spirited
+up,&rdquo; 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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; He naturally contracted a friendship with Dr.
+Beattie, whom he found a poet, a philosopher, and a good
+man.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; What he had formerly
+solicited in vain was at last given him without
+solicitation.&nbsp; The Professorship of History became again
+vacant, and he received (1768) an offer of it from the Duke of
+Grafton.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; Ill-health made another journey necessary,
+and he visited (1769) Westmoreland and Cumberland.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; His travels and his
+studies were now near their end.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;Perhaps he was the most learned man in
+Europe.&nbsp; He was equally acquainted with the elegant and
+profound parts of science, and that not superficially, but
+thoroughly.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; Perhaps it may be said, What
+signifies so much knowledge, when it produced so little?&nbsp; Is
+it worth taking so much pains to leave no memorial but a few
+poems?&nbsp; But let it be considered that Mr. Gray was to others
+at least innocently employed; to himself certainly
+beneficially.&nbsp; 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.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>To this character Mr. Mason has added a more particular
+account of Gray&rsquo;s skill in zoology.&nbsp; He has remarked
+that Gray&rsquo;s effeminacy was affected most &ldquo;before
+those whom he did not wish to please;&rdquo; 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.</p>
+<p>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.&nbsp; His contempt, however, is often employed, where I
+hope it will be approved, upon scepticism and infidelity.&nbsp;
+His short account of Shaftesbury (author of the
+&ldquo;Characteristics&rdquo;) I will insert:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;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.&nbsp; Would you have any more reasons?&nbsp; An interval of
+about forty years has pretty well destroyed the charm.&nbsp; A
+dead lord ranks with commoners; vanity is no longer interested in
+the matter, for a new road has become an old one.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>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.&nbsp; As
+a writer, he had this peculiarity&mdash;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&mdash;a fantastic foppery to which my
+kindness for a man of learning and virtue wishes him to have been
+superior.</p>
+<p>Gray&rsquo;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.&nbsp; His ode
+&ldquo;On Spring&rdquo; has something poetical, both in the
+language and the thought; but the language is too luxuriant, and
+the thoughts have nothing new.&nbsp; There has of late arisen a
+practice of giving to adjectives derived from substantives the
+termination of participles; such as the <i>cultured</i> plain,
+the <i>daisied</i> bank; but I was sorry to see, in the lines of
+a scholar like Gray, the <i>honied</i> Spring.&nbsp; The morality
+is natural, but too stale; the conclusion is pretty.</p>
+<p>The poem &ldquo;On the Cat&rdquo; was doubtless by its author
+considered as a trifle, but it is not a happy trifle.&nbsp; In
+the first stanza, &ldquo;the azure flowers <i>that</i>
+blow&rdquo; show resolutely a rhyme is sometimes made when it
+cannot easily be found.&nbsp; 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</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;What female heart can gold despise?<br />
+What cat&rsquo;s averse to fish?&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>the first relates merely to the nymph, and the second only to
+the cat.&nbsp; The sixth stanza contains a melancholy truth, that
+&ldquo;a favourite has no friend;&rdquo; but the last ends in a
+pointed sentence of no relation to the purpose.&nbsp; If <i>what
+glistered</i> had been <i>gold</i>, the cat would not have gone
+into the water; and if she had, would not less have been
+drowned.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The Prospect of Eton College&rdquo; suggests nothing to
+Gray which every beholder does not equally think and feel.&nbsp;
+His supplication to Father Thames to tell him who drives the hoop
+or tosses the ball is useless and puerile.&nbsp; Father Thames
+has no better means of knowing than himself.&nbsp; His epithet
+&ldquo;buxom health&rdquo; is not elegant; he seems not to
+understand the word.&nbsp; Gray thought his language more
+poetical as it was more remote from common use.&nbsp; Finding in
+Dryden &ldquo;honey redolent of spring,&rdquo; an expression that
+reaches the utmost limits of our language, Gray drove it a little
+more beyond common apprehension by making &ldquo;gales&rdquo; to
+be &ldquo;redolent of joy and youth.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Of the &ldquo;Ode on Adversity,&rdquo; the hint was at first
+taken from &ldquo;O Diva, gratum qu&aelig; regis Antium;&rdquo;
+but Gray has excelled his original by the variety of his
+sentiments, and by their moral application.&nbsp; Of this piece,
+at once poetical and rational, I will not by slight objections
+violate the dignity.</p>
+<p>My process has now brought me to the <i>wonderful</i>
+&ldquo;Wonder of Wonders,&rdquo; 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.&nbsp; I am one of those that are
+willing to be pleased, and therefore would gladly find the
+meaning of the first stanza of the &ldquo;Progress of
+Poetry.&rdquo;&nbsp; Gray seems in his rapture to confound the
+images of spreading sound and running water.&nbsp; A
+&ldquo;stream of music&rdquo; may be allowed; but where does
+&ldquo;music,&rdquo; however &ldquo;smooth and strong,&rdquo;
+after having visited the &ldquo;verdant vales, roll down the
+steep amain,&rdquo; so as that &ldquo;rocks and nodding groves
+rebellow to the roar&rdquo;?&nbsp; If this be said of music, it
+is nonsense; if it be said of water, it is nothing to the
+purpose.&nbsp; The second stanza, exhibiting Mars&rsquo; car and
+Jove&rsquo;s eagle, is unworthy of further notice.&nbsp;
+Criticism disdains to chase a schoolboy to his
+common-places.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; Idalia&rsquo;s
+&ldquo;velvet green&rdquo; has something of cant.&nbsp; An
+epithet or metaphor drawn from Nature ennobles Art; an epithet or
+metaphor drawn from Art degrades Nature.&nbsp; Gray is too fond
+of words arbitrarily compounded.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;Many-twinkling&rdquo; was formerly censured as not
+analogical; we may say &ldquo;many-spotted,&rdquo; but scarcely
+&ldquo;many-spotting.&rdquo;&nbsp; This stanza, however, has
+something pleasing.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; The caverns of
+the North and the plains of Chili are not the residences of
+&ldquo;glory and generous shame.&rdquo;&nbsp; But that poetry and
+virtue go always together is an opinion so pleasing that I can
+forgive him who resolves to think it true.&nbsp; The third stanza
+sounds big with &ldquo;Delphi,&rdquo; and
+&ldquo;&AElig;gean,&rdquo; and &ldquo;Ilissus,&rdquo; and
+&ldquo;Meander,&rdquo; and &ldquo;hallowed fountains,&rdquo; and
+&ldquo;solemn sound;&rdquo; but in all Gray&rsquo;s odes there is
+a kind of cumbrous splendour which we wish away.&nbsp; His
+position is at last false.&nbsp; In the time of Dante and
+Petrarch, from whom we derive our first school of poetry, Italy
+was overrun by &ldquo;tyrant power&rdquo; and &ldquo;coward
+vice;&rdquo; nor was our state much better when we first borrowed
+the Italian arts.&nbsp; Of the third ternary, the first gives a
+mythological birth of Shakespeare.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; Where truth is sufficient to fill the mind,
+fiction is worse than useless; the counterfeit debases the
+genuine.&nbsp; His account of Milton&rsquo;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.&nbsp; But the <i>car</i> of Dryden, with his <i>two
+coursers</i>, has nothing in it peculiar; it is a car in which
+any other rider may be placed.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The Bard&rdquo; appears, at the first view, to be, as
+Algarotti and others have remarked, an imitation of the prophecy
+of Nereus.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; There is in
+&ldquo;The Bard&rdquo; more force, more thought, and more
+variety.&nbsp; But to copy is less than to invent, and the copy
+has been unhappily produced at a wrong time.&nbsp; The fiction of
+Horace was to the Romans credible; but its revival disgusts us
+with apparent and unconquerable falsehood.&nbsp; <i>Incredulus
+odi</i>.&nbsp; To select a singular event, and swell it to a
+giant&rsquo;s bulk by fabulous appendages of spectres and
+predictions, has little difficulty; for he that forsakes the
+probable may always find the marvellous.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; I do not see
+that &ldquo;The Bard&rdquo; promotes any truth, moral or
+political.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; Of the first stanza the abrupt beginning
+has been celebrated; but technical beauties can give praise only
+to the inventor.&nbsp; It is in the power of any man to rush
+abruptly upon his subject that has read the ballad of
+&ldquo;Johnny Armstrong,&rdquo;</p>
+<blockquote><p style="text-align: center">&ldquo;Is there ever a
+man in all Scotland&mdash;?&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>The initial resemblances or alliterations, &ldquo;ruin,
+ruthless,&rdquo; &ldquo;helm or hauberk,&rdquo; are below the
+grandeur of a poem that endeavours at sublimity.&nbsp; In the
+second stanza the Bard is well described, but in the third we
+have the puerilities of obsolete mythology.&nbsp; When we are
+told that &ldquo;Cadwallo hushed the stormy main,&rdquo; and that
+&ldquo;Modred made huge Plinlimmon bow his cloud-topped
+head,&rdquo; attention recoils from the repetition of a tale
+that, even when it was first heard, was heard with scorn.&nbsp;
+The <i>weaving</i> of the <i>winding-sheet</i> 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.&nbsp; Theft is always
+dangerous; Gray has made weavers of slaughtered bards by a
+fiction outrageous and incongruous.&nbsp; They are then called
+upon to &ldquo;Weave the warp and weave the woof,&rdquo; perhaps
+with no great propriety, for it is by crossing the <i>woof</i>
+with the <i>warp</i> that men weave the <i>web</i> or piece, and
+the first line was dearly bought by the admission of its wretched
+correspondent, &ldquo;Give ample room and verge
+enough.&rdquo;&nbsp; He has, however, no other line as bad.&nbsp;
+The third stanza of the second ternary is commended, I think,
+beyond its merit.&nbsp; The personification is indistinct.&nbsp;
+<i>Thirst</i> and <i>hunger</i> are not alike, and their
+features, to make the imagery perfect, should have been
+discriminated.&nbsp; We are told in the same stanza how
+&ldquo;towers are fed.&rdquo;&nbsp; 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.</p>
+<p>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.&nbsp; The mind of the writer seems to work with
+unnatural violence.&nbsp; &ldquo;Double, double, toil and
+trouble.&rdquo;&nbsp; He has a kind of strutting dignity, and is
+tall by walking on tiptoe.&nbsp; His art and his struggle are too
+visible, and there is too little appearance of ease and
+nature.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; When he pleases least, it can
+only be said that a good design was ill directed.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; The &ldquo;Churchyard&rdquo; abounds with images
+which find a mirror in every mind, and with sentiments to which
+every bosom returns an echo.&nbsp; The four stanzas, beginning
+&ldquo;Yet even these bones,&rdquo; 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.&nbsp; Had
+Gray written often thus, it had been vain to blame and useless to
+praise him.</p>
+<h2><a name="page185"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+185</span>LYTTELTON.</h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">George Lyttelton</span>, the son of Sir
+Thomas Lyttelton, of Hagley, in Worcestershire, was born in
+1709.&nbsp; He was educated at Eton, where he was so much
+distinguished that his exercises were recommended as models to
+his schoolfellows.&nbsp; 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
+&ldquo;Blenheim.&rdquo;&nbsp; He was a very early writer both in
+verse and prose.&nbsp; His &ldquo;Progress of Love&rdquo; and his
+&ldquo;Persian Letters&rdquo; were both written when he was very
+young, and, indeed, the character of a young man is very visible
+in both.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; He stayed not long in
+Oxford, for in 1728 he began his travels, and saw France and
+Italy.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; For many years
+the name of George Lyttelton was seen in every account of every
+debate in the House of Commons.&nbsp; He opposed the standing
+army; he opposed the excise; he supported the motion for
+petitioning the king to remove Walpole.&nbsp; 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.</p>
+<p>The Prince of Wales, being (1737) driven from St.
+James&rsquo;s, kept a separate court, and opened his arms to the
+opponents of the Ministry.&nbsp; Mr. Lyttelton became his
+Secretary, and was supposed to have great influence in the
+direction of his conduct.&nbsp; He persuaded his master, whose
+business it was now to be popular, that he would advance his
+character by patronage.&nbsp; Mallet was made Under Secretary,
+with &pound;200, and Thomson had a pension of &pound;100 a
+year.&nbsp; For Thomson, Lyttelton always retained his kindness,
+and was able at last to place him at ease.&nbsp; Moore courted
+his favour by an apologetical poem called the &ldquo;Trial of
+Selim,&rdquo; for which he was paid with kind words, which, as is
+common, raised great hopes, that were at last disappointed.</p>
+<p>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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; Lyttelton supported his friend;
+and replied that he thought it an honour to be received into the
+familiarity of so great a poet.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; At length, after a long struggle, Walpole
+gave way, and honour and profit were distributed among his
+conquerors.&nbsp; Lyttelton was made (1744) one of the Lords of
+the Treasury, and from that time was engaged in supporting the
+schemes of the Ministry.</p>
+<p>Politics did not, however, so much engage him as to withhold
+his thoughts from things of more importance.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; His studies, being honest, ended in
+conviction.&nbsp; He found that religion was true, and what he
+had learned he endeavoured to teach (1747) by &ldquo;Observations
+on the Conversion of St. Paul,&rdquo; a treatise to which
+infidelity has never been able to fabricate a specious
+answer.&nbsp; This book his father had the happiness of seeing,
+and expressed his pleasure in a letter which deserves to be
+inserted:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;I have read your religious treatise with
+infinite pleasure and satisfaction.&nbsp; The style is fine and
+clear, the arguments close, cogent, and irresistible.&nbsp; 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&rsquo;t doubt he will
+bountifully bestow upon you.&nbsp; In the meantime I shall never
+cease glorifying God for having endowed you with such useful
+talents, and giving me so good a son.</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">&ldquo;Your affectionate
+father,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">&ldquo;<span class="smcap">Thomas
+Lyttelton</span>.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>A few years afterwards (1751), by the death of his father, he
+inherited a baronet&rsquo;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.&nbsp; 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&mdash;an office, however,
+that required some qualifications which he soon perceived himself
+to want.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; Bower, whatever was his
+moral character, did not want abilities.&nbsp; 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.</p>
+<p>About this time Lyttelton published his &ldquo;Dialogues of
+the Dead,&rdquo; which were very eagerly read, though the
+production rather, as it seems, of leisure than of
+study&mdash;rather effusions than compositions.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; He has copied Fenelon more than
+Fontenelle.&nbsp; When they were first published they were kindly
+commended by the &ldquo;Critical Reviewers;&rdquo; 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.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>His last literary production was his &ldquo;History of Henry
+the Second,&rdquo; elaborated by the searches and deliberations
+of twenty years, and published with such anxiety as only vanity
+can dictate.&nbsp; The story of this publication is
+remarkable.&nbsp; The whole work was printed twice over, a great
+part of it three times, and many sheets four or five times.&nbsp;
+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.&nbsp; He began to print in 1755.&nbsp;
+Three volumes appeared in 1764, a second edition of them in 1767,
+a third edition in 1768, and the conclusion in 1771.</p>
+<p>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
+&ldquo;Henry the Second.&rdquo;&nbsp; The book was at last
+pointed and printed, and sent into the world.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp;
+Something uncommon was probably expected, and something uncommon
+was at last done; for to the Doctor&rsquo;s edition is appended,
+what the world had hardly seen before, a list of errors in
+nineteen pages.</p>
+<p>But to politics and literature there must be an end.&nbsp;
+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.&nbsp; 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:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;On Sunday evening the symptoms of his
+lordship&rsquo;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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; His lordship&rsquo;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.&nbsp; Though his lordship
+wished his approaching dissolution not to be lingering, he waited
+for it with resignation.&nbsp; He said, &lsquo;It is a folly, a
+keeping me in misery, now to attempt to prolong life;&rsquo; yet
+he was easily persuaded, for the satisfaction of others, to do or
+take anything thought proper for him.&nbsp; On Saturday he had
+been remarkably better, and we were not without some hopes of his
+recovery.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;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.&nbsp; He then
+proceeded to open the fountain of that heart, from whence
+goodness had so long flowed, as from a copious spring.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;Doctor,&rsquo; said he, &lsquo;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.&nbsp; I saw
+difficulties which staggered me, but I kept my mind open to
+conviction.&nbsp; The evidences and doctrines of Christianity,
+studied with attention, made me a most firm and persuaded
+believer of the Christian religion.&nbsp; I have made it the rule
+of my life, and it is the ground of my future hopes.&nbsp; I have
+erred and sinned; but have repented, and never indulged any
+vicious habit.&nbsp; In politics and public life I have made
+public good the rule of my conduct.&nbsp; I never gave counsels
+which I did not at the time think the best.&nbsp; I have seen
+that I was sometimes in the wrong, but I did not err
+designedly.&nbsp; 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.&rsquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>&ldquo;At another time he said, &lsquo;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.&rsquo;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;On the evening, when the symptoms of death
+came on, he said, &lsquo;I shall die; but it will not be your
+fault.&rsquo;&nbsp; When Lord and Lady Valentia came to see his
+lordship, he gave them his solemn benediction, and said,
+&lsquo;Be good, be virtuous, my lord; you must come to
+this.&rsquo;&nbsp; Thus he continued giving his dying benediction
+to all around him.&nbsp; 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&rsquo;clock,
+he expired, almost without a groan.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>His lordship was buried at Hagley, and the following
+inscription is cut on the side of his lady&rsquo;s
+monument:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p style="text-align: center">&ldquo;This unadorned
+stone was placed here by the particular<br />
+desire and express directions of the Right Honourable<br />
+<span class="smcap">George Lord Lyttelton</span>,<br />
+who died August 22, 1773, aged 64.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>Lord Lyttelton&rsquo;s Poems are the works of a man of
+literature and judgment, devoting part of his time to
+versification.&nbsp; They have nothing to be despised, and little
+to be admired.&nbsp; Of his &ldquo;Progress of Love,&rdquo; it is
+sufficient blame to say that it is pastoral.&nbsp; His blank
+verse in &ldquo;Blenheim&rdquo; has neither much force nor much
+elegance.&nbsp; His little performances, whether songs or
+epigrams, are sometimes sprightly, and sometimes insipid.&nbsp;
+His epistolary pieces have a smooth equability, which cannot much
+tire, because they are short, but which seldom elevates or
+surprises.&nbsp; But from this censure ought to be excepted his
+&ldquo;Advice to Belinda,&rdquo; 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.</p>
+<pre>
+
+
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+</pre></body>
+</html>
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+eBook #4678 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/4678)
diff --git a/old/2013-02-05-4678-h.htm b/old/2013-02-05-4678-h.htm
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+<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en">
+  <head>
+    <title>
+      Lives of the Poets: Gay, Thomson, Young, and Others, by Samuel Johnson
+    </title>
+    <style type="text/css" xml:space="preserve">
+    
+    body { margin:5%; background:#faebd0; text-align:justify}
+    P { text-indent: 1em; margin-top: .25em; margin-bottom: .25em; }
+    H1,H2,H3,H4,H5,H6 { text-align: center; margin-left: 15%; margin-right: 15%; }
+    hr  { width: 50%; text-align: center;}
+    .foot { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; text-indent: -3em; font-size: 90%; }
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+    .mynote    {background-color: #DDE; color: #000; padding: .5em; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 95%;}
+    .toc       { margin-left: 10%; margin-bottom: .75em;}
+    .toc2      { margin-left: 20%;}
+    div.fig    { display:block; margin:0 auto; text-align:center; }
+    div.middle { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; }
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+    pre        { font-style: italic; font-size: 90%; margin-left: 10%;}
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+  <body>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Lives of the Poets: Gay, Thomson, Young,
+and Others, by Samuel Johnson
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere 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
+
+
+Title: Lives of the Poets: Gay, Thomson, Young, and Others
+
+Author: Samuel Johnson
+
+Commentator: Henry Morley
+
+Release Date: January 8, 2010 [EBook #4678]
+Last Updated: February 6, 2013
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LIVES OF THE POETS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Les Bowler, and David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h1>
+      <i>LIVES OF THE POETS:</i><br />GAY, THOMSON, YOUNG, and OTHERS
+    </h1>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      By Samuel Johnson
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      Contents
+    </h2>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="#link2H_INTR"> INTRODUCTION. </a><br />
+    </h4>
+    <table summary="" style="margin-right: auto; margin-left: auto">
+      <tr>
+        <td>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2H_4_0002"> KING. </a>
+          </p>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2H_4_0003"> HALIFAX. </a>
+          </p>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2H_4_0004"> PARNELL. </a>
+          </p>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2H_4_0005"> GARTH. </a>
+          </p>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2H_4_0006"> ROWE. </a>
+          </p>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2H_4_0007"> GAY. </a>
+          </p>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2H_4_0008"> TICKELL. </a>
+          </p>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2H_4_0009"> SOMERVILE. </a>
+          </p>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2H_4_0010"> THOMSON. </a>
+          </p>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2H_4_0011"> WATTS. </a>
+          </p>
+        </td>
+        <td>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2H_4_0012"> A. PHILIPS. </a>
+          </p>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2H_4_0013"> WEST. </a>
+          </p>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2H_4_0014"> COLLINS. </a>
+          </p>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2H_4_0015"> DYER. </a>
+          </p>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2H_4_0016"> SHENSTONE. </a>
+          </p>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2H_4_0017"> YOUNG. </a>
+          </p>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2H_4_0019"> MALLET. </a>
+          </p>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2H_4_0020"> AKENSIDE. </a>
+          </p>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2H_4_0021"> GRAY. </a>
+          </p>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2H_4_0022"> LYTTELTON. </a>
+          </p>
+        </td>
+      </tr>
+    </table>
+    <table summary="" border="3" cellpadding="0">
+      <tbody>
+        <tr>
+          <td>
+            &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a
+            href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/4679/4679-h/4679-h.htm"><b>ADDISON,
+            SAVAGE, and SWIFT</b>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</a>
+          </td>
+          <td>
+          </td>
+        </tr>
+      </tbody>
+    </table>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br /> <a name="link2H_INTR" id="link2H_INTR">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      INTRODUCTION.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      This volume contains a record of twenty lives, of which only one&mdash;that
+      of Edward Young&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;Allan
+      Ramsay, the third&mdash;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&mdash;who shares with Thomson the curiosity of critics who
+      would decide which of them wrote "Rule Britannia"&mdash;was of Thomson's
+      age.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      H. M. <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br /> <a name="link2H_4_0002" id="link2H_4_0002">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      KING.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      William King was born in London in 1663; the son of Ezekiel King, a
+      gentleman. He was allied to the family of Clarendon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;at least, Sir Hans Sloane, their
+      president&mdash;in two dialogues, intituled "The Transactioner."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0003" id="link2H_4_0003">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      HALIFAX.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It seemed indeed time to wish for a removal, for he was already a
+      schoolboy of one-and-twenty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 pounds the place of one of the clerks
+      of the Council.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 pounds. 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;Swift with slight censure,
+      and Pope, in the character of Bufo, with acrimonious contempt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0004" id="link2H_4_0004">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      PARNELL.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 pounds 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0005" id="link2H_4_0005">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      GARTH.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 quadam magis perniciosa, non pyrio, sed
+      pulvere nescio quo exotico certat, non globulis plumbeis, sed pilulis
+      aeque 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0006" id="link2H_4_0006">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      ROWE.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "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&mdash;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."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pope has left behind him another mention of his companion less
+      advantageous, which is thus reported by Dr. Warburton:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "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."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;pass
+      and be gone&mdash;the scene closes, and Pembroke and Gardiner are turned
+      out upon the stage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0007" id="link2H_4_0007">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      GAY.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "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&mdash;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."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Its reception is thus recorded in the notes to the "Dunciad":&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "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."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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. Phaedrus
+      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
+      ferae, 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0008" id="link2H_4_0008">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      TICKELL.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;at least, has
+      resembled&mdash;Tickell.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+        "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."&mdash;TICKELL.
+</pre>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+        "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."&mdash;POPE.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      He produced another piece of the same kind at the appearance of Cato, with
+      equal skill, but not equal happiness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;that is, the mob&mdash;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."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "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."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0009" id="link2H_4_0009">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      SOMERVILE.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "&mdash;Our old friend Somervile is dead! I did not imagine I could have
+      been so sorry as I find myself on this occasion. Sublatum quaerimus. 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."&mdash;He died July 19, 1742, and was buried at Wotton, near
+      Henley on Arden.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0010" id="link2H_4_0010">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      THOMSON.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "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:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "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."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Autumn," the season to which the "Spring" and "Summer" are preparatory,
+      still remained unsung, and was delayed till he published (1730) his works
+      collected.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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:&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     "O Sophonisba, Sophonisba, O!"
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      This gave occasion to a waggish parody&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     "O, Jemmy Thomson, Jemmy Thomson, O!"
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      which for a while was echoed through the town.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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:&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     "Hagley in Worcestershire, October the 4th, 1747.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      "My Dear Sister,&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "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
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+           "Your most affectionate Brother,
+                    "James Thomson."
+            (Addressed) "To Mrs. Thomson in Lanark."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "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
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     "No line which, dying, he could wish to blot."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0011" id="link2H_4_0011">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      WATTS.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "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."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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, Theologiae 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Few men have left behind such purity of character, or such monuments of
+      laborious piety. He has provided instruction for all ages&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0012" id="link2H_4_0012">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      A. PHILIPS.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 Phaedra 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 "AEglogues," 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Having purchased an annuity of 400 pounds, 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0013" id="link2H_4_0013">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      WEST.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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:&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     "Hiero's royal brows, whose care
+        Tends the courser's noble breed,
+      Pleased to nurse the pregnant mare,
+        Pleased to train the youthful steed."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Pindar says of Pelops, that "he came alone in the dark to the White Sea;"
+      and West&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     "Near the billow-beaten side
+      Of the foam-besilvered main,
+      Darkling, and alone, he stood:"
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      which, however, is less exuberant than the former passage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0014" id="link2H_4_0014">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      COLLINS.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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).
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 pounds; 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&mdash;disease and insanity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Having formerly written his character, while perhaps it was yet more
+      distinctly impressed upon my memory, I shall insert it here.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "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.'"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Such was the fate of Collins, with whom I once delighted to converse, and
+      whom I yet remember with tenderness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Collins's first production is added here from the Poetical Calendar:&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+            TO MISS AURELIA C&mdash;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.'"
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0015" id="link2H_4_0015">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      DYER.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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,
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                          "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."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0016" id="link2H_4_0016">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      SHENSTONE.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What Gray thought of his character, from the perusal of his Letters, was
+      this:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "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."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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:&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     "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."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      In the second this passage has its prettiness; though it be not equal to
+      the former:&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     "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."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      In the third he mentions the common-places of amorous poetry with some
+      address:&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     "'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."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      In the fourth I find nothing better than this natural strain of Hope:&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     "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."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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?"&mdash;I wish it well enough to wish it were in
+      rhyme.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0017" id="link2H_4_0017">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      YOUNG.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Dear Sir,&mdash;In consequence of our different conversations about
+      authentic materials for the Life of Young, I send you the following
+      details:"&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Shall the gates of repentance be shut only against literary sinners?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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:&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     "Whence Gay was banished in disgrace,
+      Where Pope will never show his face,
+      Where Y&mdash;&mdash; must torture his invention
+      To flatter knaves, or lose his pension."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      That Y&mdash;&mdash; means Young seems clear from four other lines in the
+      same poem:&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     "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."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      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?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;"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:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     "Be this thy partial smile from censure free!
+      'Twas meant for merit, though it fell on me."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      While Young, who, in his "Love of Fame," complains grievously how often
+      "dedications wash an AEthiop 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;"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, etc." The other was
+      dated the 10th of July, 1722.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Young, on his examination, swore that he quitted the Exeter family, and
+      refused an annuity of 100 pounds 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 pounds 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 pounds and 400 pounds
+      in the gift of All Souls College, on his grace's promises of serving and
+      advancing him in the world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     "IN JOY ONCE JOINED, in sorrow, now, for years&mdash;
+      Partner in grief, and brother of my tears,
+      Tickell, accept this verse, thy mournful due."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      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."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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:&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     "Is thy ambition sweating for a rhyme,
+      Thou unambitious fool, at this late time?
+      A fool at FORTY is a fool indeed."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      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,
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     "'Midst empire's charms, how Carolina's heart
+      Glowed with the love of virtue and of art."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Since the grateful poet tells us, in the next couplet,
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     "Her favour is diffused to that degree,
+      Excess of goodness! it has dawned on me."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The fifth Satire, "On Women," was not published till 1727; and the sixth
+      not till 1728.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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:&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     "Oh! how I long, enkindled by the theme,
+      In deep eternity to launch thy name!"
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      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:&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     "My breast, O Walpole, glows with grateful fire.
+      The streams of royal bounty, turned by thee,
+      Refresh the dry remains of poesy."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      If the purity of modern patriotism will term Young a pensioner, it must at
+      least be confessed he was a grateful one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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"&mdash;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 Patriae," 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:&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+        "O may I STEAL
+         Along the VALE
+      Of humble life, secure from foes!
+         My friend sincere,
+         My judgment clear,
+      And gentle business my repose!"
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      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:&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+        "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!"
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;"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:&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+        "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."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      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?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The next production of his muse was "The Sea-piece," in two odes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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:"
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     "You are so witty, profligate and thin,
+      At once we think thee Milton, Death, and Sin."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     "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?"
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      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."
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     "While with your Dodington retired you sit,
+      Charmed with his flowing Burgundy and wit," etc.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Thomson, in his Autumn, addressing Mr. Dodington calls his seat the seat
+      of the Muses,
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     "Where, in the secret bower and winding walk,
+      For virtuous Young and thee they twine the bay."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      The praises Thomson bestows but a few lines before on Philips, the second,
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     "Who nobly durst, in rhyme-unfettered verse,
+      With British freedom sing the British song,"
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      added to Thomson's example and success, might perhaps induce Young, as we
+      shall see presently, to write his great work without rhyme.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     "My shell, which Clio gave, which KINGS APPLAUD,
+      Which Europe's bleeding genius called abroad,
+      Adieu!"
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      In a species of poetry altogether his own he next tried his skill, and
+      succeeded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     "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."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     "I flew, I snatched her from the rigid North,
+      And bore her nearer to the sun."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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,"
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                    "whom dismal scenes delight,
+      Frequent at tombs and in the realms of Night."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      In the prayer which concludes the second book of the same poem, he says:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     "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!"
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;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:&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     "Lorenzo, Fortune makes her court to thee."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      In the "Fifth Night:"&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     "And burns Lorenzo still for the sublime
+      Of life? to hang his airy nest on high?"
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Is this a picture of the son of the Rector of Welwyn? "Eighth Night:"&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     "In foreign realms (for thou hast travelled far)"&mdash;
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      which even now does not apply to his son. In "Night Five:"&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     "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!"
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      At the beginning of the "Fifth Night" we find:&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     "Lorenzo, to recriminate is just,
+      I grant the man is vain who writes for praise."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      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:&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     "Tell not Calista.  She will laugh thee dead,
+      Or send thee to her hermitage with L&mdash;-."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;who would not?&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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:&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     "Think no post needful that demands a knave:
+      When late our civil helm was shifting hands,
+      So P&mdash;- thought:  think better if you can."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Yet it must be confessed that at the conclusion of "Night Nine," weary
+      perhaps of courting earthly patrons, he tells his soul&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                         "Henceforth
+      Thy PATRON he, whose diadem has dropped
+      You gems of Heaven; Eternity thy prize;
+      And leave the racers of the world their own."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      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:&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     "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&mdash;
+      How had it blest mankind, and rescued me!"
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                    "May the 2nd.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      "DEAR SIR;&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+             "I am, sir, your most faithful
+                      "and obedient servant,
+                                  "E. YOUNG."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Nay, even after Pope's death, he says in "Night Seven:"&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     "Pope, who could'st make immortals, art thou dead?"
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                      "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."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     "A fool at forty is a fool indeed."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      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?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     "&mdash;-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."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;"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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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:&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                           "&mdash;ostia septem
+      Pulverulenta vocant, septem sine flumine valles."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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":&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     "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."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      The poem was accompanied by a letter.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+               "La Trappe, the 27th of October, 1761
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      "DEAR SIR,&mdash;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!&mdash;My dear Dr. Young,
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+               "Yours, most cordially,
+                           "MELCOMBE."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      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?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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:&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     "Yet write I must.  A lady sues:
+        How shameful her request!
+      My brain in labour with dull rhyme,
+        Hers teeming with the best!"
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      And again&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     "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."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     "&mdash;letting down the golden chain from high,
+      He drew his audience upward to the sky."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Notwithstanding Young had said, in his "Conjectures on Original
+      Composition," that "blank verse is verse unfallen, uncursed&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     "When heaven would kindly set us free,
+        And earth's enchantment end;
+      It takes the most effectual means,
+        And robs us of a friend."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      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 pounds, "that all his
+      manuscripts might be destroyed as soon as he was dead, which would greatly
+      oblige her deceased FRIEND."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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,
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     "When, after battle, I the field have SEEN
+      Spread o'er with ghastly shapes which once were men."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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:&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                 "Deanery of St. Paul's, July 8, 1758.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      "GOOD DR. YOUNG,&mdash;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
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                  "Your loving Brother, THO. CANT."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     "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!"
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                    M. S.
+              Optimi parentis
+            EDWARDI YOUNG, LL.D.
+Hujus Ecclesiae rect. et Elizabethae faem. praenob
+         Conjugis ejus amantissimae
+   Pio et gratissimo animo hoc marmor posuit
+                    F. Y.
+              Filius superstes.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      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?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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,
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+               Dear Sir, your greatly obliged Friend,
+                              HERBERT CROFT, Jun.
+  Lincoln's Inn, Sept., 1780.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      P.S.&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      H. C. Oxford, Oct., 1782.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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,"
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     "Her merchants princes, and each DECK A THRONE."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Let burlesque try to go beyond him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0019" id="link2H_4_0019">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      MALLET.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0020" id="link2H_4_0020">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      AKENSIDE.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;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."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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"&mdash;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."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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."&mdash;"Exercises for Improvement in
+      Elocution," p. 66.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0021" id="link2H_4_0021">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      GRAY.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "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."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "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."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;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&mdash;a fantastic foppery to which my kindness for a
+      man of learning and virtue wishes him to have been superior.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     "What female heart can gold despise?
+      What cat's averse to fish?"
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "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."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Of the "Ode on Adversity," the hint was at first taken from "O Diva,
+      gratum quae 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 "AEgean," 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "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,"
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     "Is there ever a man in all Scotland&mdash;?"
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0022" id="link2H_4_0022">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      LYTTELTON.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 pounds, and Thomson had a
+      pension of 100 pounds 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "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.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                        "Your affectionate father,
+                                   "THOMAS LYTTELTON."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "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.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "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.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "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."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His lordship was buried at Hagley, and the following inscription is cut on
+      the side of his lady's monument:&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+    "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."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+
+
+
+
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Lives of the Poets: Gay, Thomson, Young,
+and Others, by Samuel Johnson
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere 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
+
+
+Title: Lives of the Poets: Gay, Thomson, Young, and Others
+
+Author: Samuel Johnson
+
+Commentator: Henry Morley
+
+Release Date: November, 2003  [Etext #4678]
+Posting Date: January 8, 2010
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LIVES OF THE POETS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Les Bowler
+
+
+
+
+
+LIVES OF THE POETS: GAY, THOMSON, YOUNG, and OTHERS
+
+By Samuel Johnson
+
+
+Contents.
+
+     Introduction by Henry Morley.
+
+     William King.
+     Charles Montague, Earl of Halifax.
+     Dr. Thomas Parnell.
+     Samuel Garth.
+     Nicholas Rowe.
+     John Gay.
+     Thomas Tickell.
+     William Somervil[l]e.
+     James Thomson.
+     Dr. Isaac Watts.
+     Ambrose Philips.
+     Gilbert West.
+     William Collins.
+     John Dyer.
+     William Shenstone.
+     Edward Young.
+     David Mallet.
+     Mark Akenside.
+     Thomas Gray.
+     George Lyttelton.
+
+
+
+
+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 pounds 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 pounds. 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 pounds 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 quadam magis perniciosa,
+non pyrio, sed pulvere nescio quo exotico certat, non globulis plumbeis,
+sed pilulis aeque 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.
+Phaedrus 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 ferae, 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 quaerimus. 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, Theologiae 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 Phaedra 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
+"AEglogues," 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 pounds, 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 pounds;
+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 AEthiop 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, etc." 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 pounds 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 pounds 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
+pounds and 400 pounds 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
+Patriae," 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 pounds, "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 Ecclesiae rect. et Elizabethae faem. praenob
+         Conjugis ejus amantissimae
+   Pio et 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 quae 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 "AEgean," 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
+pounds, and Thomson had a pension of 100 pounds 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 of Lives of the Poets: Gay, Thomson,
+Young, and Others, by Samuel Johnson
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+The Project Gutenberg Etext of Lives of the Poets: Gay, Thomson, Young etc.
+by Samuel Johnson
+(#4 in our series by Samuel Johnson)
+
+Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the
+copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing
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+
+Title: Lives of the Poets: Gay, Thomson, Young etc.
+
+Author: Samuel Johnson
+
+Release Date: November, 2003  [Etext #4678]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on February 26, 2002]
+[Most recently updated: February 26, 2002]
+
+Edition: 10
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+The Project Gutenberg Etext of Lives of the Poets: Gay, Thomson, Young etc.
+by Samuel Johnson
+******This file should be named lvgay10.txt or lvgay10.zip******
+
+Corrected EDITIONS of our etexts get a new NUMBER, lvgay11.txt
+VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, lvgay10a.txt
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+This etext was produced by Les Bowler, St. Ives, Dorset.
+
+LIVES OF THE POETS (GAY, THOMSON, YOUNG, GRAY ETC)
+
+
+
+
+Contents.
+
+Introduction by Henry Morley.
+
+William King.
+Charles Montague, Earl of Halifax.
+Dr. Thomas Parnell.
+Samuel Garth.
+Nicholas Rowe.
+John Gay.
+Thomas Tickell.
+William Somervil[l]e.
+James Thomson.
+Dr. Isaac Watts.
+Ambrose Philips.
+Gilbert West.
+William Collins.
+John Dyer.
+William Shenstone.
+Edward Young.
+David Mallet.
+Mark Akenside.
+Thomas Gray.
+George Lyttelton.
+
+
+
+
+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 pounds 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 pounds.  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 pounds
+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
+quadam magis perniciosa, non pyrio, sed pulvere nescio quo exotico
+certat, non globulis plumbeis, sed pilulis aeque 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.  Phaedrus 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 ferae, 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
+quaerimus.  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, Theologiae 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 Phaedra 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
+"AEglogues," 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 pounds, 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 pounds;
+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 AEthiop 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, etc."
+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 pounds 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 pounds 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 pounds and 400 pounds 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 Patriae," 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 pounds, "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 Ecclesiae rect. et Elizabethae faem. praenob
+         Conjugis ejus amantissimae
+   Pio et 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 quae 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 "AEgean," 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 pounds, and Thomson had a pension of 100 pounds
+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.
+
+
+
+
+The Project Gutenberg Etext of Lives of the Poets: Gay, Thomson, Young etc.
+by Samuel Johnson
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+End of The Project Gutenberg Etext of Lives of the Poets: Gay, Thomson etc.
+by Samuel Johnson
+
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