It is said by Boswell, that "his temperament was so morbid, that he never knew the natural joy of a free and vigorous use of his limbs: when he walked, it was the struggling gait of one in fetters; when he rode, he had no command or direction of his horse, but was carried as if in a balloon." His daily habits were exceedingly irregular; he took his meals at unusual hours; and either ate voraciously, or abstained rigorously. He studied by fits and starts; but when he did read, it was with such rapidity and eagerness, that, as some one said, it seemed as if he would tear out the heart of the book he was upon. He could with difficulty believe any one who spoke of having read any book from the beginning to the end. His mode of composition was in like manner vigorous and hasty; though his sentences have all the appearance of being measured; but it was his custom to speak no less than to write with a studious attention to the numerousness of his phrase, so that he was enabled to do that by habit which others usually accomplish by a particular effort.

In matters of fact, his regard to truth was so punctilious, that it was observed he always talked as if he was talking upon oath; and he was desirous of exacting the same preciseness from those over whom he had authority or influence. He had, however, a practice that was not entirely consistent with this love of veracity; for he would sometimes defend that side of a question, which he thought wrong, because it afforded him a more favourable opportunity of exhibiting his reasoning or his wit. Thus when he began, "Why, Sir, as to the good or evil of card-playing;" Garrick would make this arch comment on his proem; "Now he is considering which side he shall take." It may he urged that his hearers were aware of this propensity which he had

—To make the worse appear The better argument,

and were therefore in no danger of being misled by it. But an excuse of the same kind will serve for the common liar, that he is known, and therefore disbelieved. It behoved him to be the more scrupulous in this particular, because he knew that Boswell took minutes of his ordinary conversation. Some of his idle sophisms, which thus became current, have, I fear, led to serious mischief; such as the opinion that an author may be at liberty to deny his having written a book to which he has not affixed his name; his extenuation of incontinence in the master of a family, and the gloss he put on the crime of covetousness; which last error was not confined to his conversation, but mingled itself with his writings, though no one could well be freer from any taint of the vice in his own life. Many a man may have indulged his inclinations to evil, with much less compunction, while he has imagined himself sheltered under the sanction of the moralist who watches one side of the entrance into the nave of St. Paul's.

There was, in his mind, a strange mixture of credulity and doubtfulness. He did not disbelieve either in the existence of ghosts, or in the possibility of commuting other metals into gold; but was very slow to credit any fact that was at all extraordinary. He would tell of Cave's having seen an apparition, without much apparent doubt; and, with more certainty, of his having been himself addressed by the voice of his absent mother. The deception practised by the girl in Cock Lane, who was a ventriloquist, is well known to have wrought on him so successfully, as to make him go and watch in the church, where she pretended the spirit of a young woman to be, which had disclosed to her the manner of its having been violently separated from the body. On this occasion, Boswell endeavours in vain to clear him from the imputation of a weakness, which was but too agreeable to the rest of his character. Yet on Hume's argument against miracles, that it is more probable witnesses should lie or be mistaken than that they should happen, he remarked, as I think, very judiciously, that Hume, taking the proposition simply, is right; but that the Christian revelation is not proved by the miracles alone, but as they are connected with prophecies, and with the doctrines in confirmation of which the miracles were wrought.

He was devout, moral, and humane; frequent and earnest in his petitions for the divine succour, anxious to sublime his nature by disengaging it from worldly soil, and prompt to sympathise with the sorrows, and out of his scanty means, to relieve the necessities of others; but such is the imperfection of man, that his piety was apt to degenerate into superstition; his abstinence yielded to slight temptations, and his charity was often not proof against a discrepancy of opinion either in politics or literature.

Among his friends, Beauclerk seems most to have engaged his love, Langton his respect, and Burke his admiration. The first was conspicuous for wit, liveliness of feelings, and gaiety; the next for rectitude of conduct, piety, and learning; the last for knowledge, sagacity, and eloquence. His praise of Reynolds, that he was the most invulnerable of men, one of whom, if he had a quarrel with him, he should find it the most difficult to say any ill, was praise rather of the negative kind. The younger Warton, he contrived to alienate from him, as is related in the life of that poet. There was, indeed, an entire harmony in their political principles; but questions of literature touch an author yet more sensibly than those of state; and the "idem sentire de republica," was an imperfect bond of amity between men who appreciated so differently the Comus and Lycidas of Milton, and the Bucolics of Theocritus. To Savage and Goldsmith he was attached by similarity of fortunes and pursuits. A yet closer bond of sympathy united him with Collins, as the reader will see in the following extracts from letters which he wrote to Dr. Warton.

How little can we exult in any intellectual powers or literary entertainments, when we see the fate of poor Collins. I knew him a few years ago, full of hopes and full of projects, versed in many languages, high in fancy, and strong in retention. This busy and forcible mind is now under the government of those who lately would not have been able to comprehend the least and most narrow of its designs.—March 8, 1754.

Poor dear Collins. Let me know whether you think it would give him pleasure that I should write to him. I have often been near his state, and therefore have it in great commisseration. * * *

What becomes of poor dear Collins? I wrote him a letter which he never answered. I suppose writing is very troublesome to him. That man is no common loss. The moralists all talk of the uncertainty of fortune, and the transitoriness of beauty; but it is yet more dreadful to consider that the powers of the mind are equally liable to change, that understanding may make its appearance, and depart, that it may blaze and expire.—April 15, 1756.[14]

Difference of opinion respecting the American war did not separate him from Burke and Fox; and when the nation was afterwards divided by the struggle between the court and populace on one side and the aristocracy on the other, though his principles determined him to that party in which he found the person though perhaps not the interests of his sovereign, yet his affections continued with the great leader in the House of Commons, who was opposed to it. "I am," said he, "for the King against Fox; but I am for Fox against Pitt. The King is my master; but I do not know Pitt; and Fox is my friend;" and to Burke, when he was a candidate for a seat in the new Parliament, he wished, as he told him with a smile, "all the success that an honest man could wish him." Even towards Wilkes his asperity was softened down into good humour by their meeting together over a plentiful table at the house of Dilly the bookseller.

When he had offended any by contradiction or rudeness, it was seldom long before he sought to be reconciled and forgiven. But though his private enmities were easily appeased, yet where he considered the cause of truth to be concerned, his resentment was vehement and unrelenting. That imposture, particularly, which he with good reason supposed Macpherson to have practised on the world with respect to the poems of Ossian, provoked him to vengeance, such as the occasion seemed hardly to demand.

Of his dry pleasantry in conversation there are many instances recorded. When one of his acquaintances had introduced him to his brother, at the same time telling him that he would find him become very agreeable after he had been some time in his company, he replied, "Sir, I can wait." To a stupid justice of the peace, who had wearied him with a long account of his having caused four convicts to be condemned to transportation, he answered, "I heartily wish I were a fifth;" a repartee that calls to our mind Horace's answer to the impertinent fellow:

Omnes composui; Felices! mine ego resto.

A physician endeavouring to bring to his recollection that he had been in his company once before, mentioned among other circumstances his having that day worn so fine a coat, that it could not but have attracted his notice. "Sir," said Johnson, "had you been dipped in Pactolus, I should not have noticed you." He could on occasion be more polite and complimentary. When Mrs. Siddons, with whom, in a letter to Mrs. Thrale, he expressed himself highly pleased, paid him a visit, there happened not to be any chair ready for her. "Madam," said he, "you who so often occasion the want of seats to others will the more readily excuse the want of one yourself."

His scholarship was rather various than accurate or profound. Yet Dr. Burney, the younger, supposed him capable of giving a Greek word for almost every English one. Romances were always a favourite kind of reading with him. Felixmarte of Hircania was his regular study during part of a summer which he spent in the country at the parsonage-house of Dr. Percy. On a journey to Derbyshire, when he had in view his Italian expedition, he took with him Il Palermino d'Inghilterra, to refresh his knowledge of the language. To this taste he had been heard to impute his unsettled disposition, and his averseness from the choice of any profession. One of the most singular qualities of his mind was the rapidity with which it was able to seize and master almost any subject, however abstruse or novel, that was offered to its speculation. To this quickness of apprehension was joined an extraordinary power of memory, so that he was able to recall at pleasure most passages of a book, which had once strongly impressed him. In his sixty-fourth year, he attempted to acquire the low Dutch language. He had a perpetual thirst of knowledge; and six months before his death requested Dr. Burney to teach him the scale of music. "Teach me," said Johnson to him, "at least, the alphabet of your language." What he knew, he loved to communicate. According to that description of the stu-[**possibly "student"—rest of word(s) missing in original] in Chaucer,

Gladly would he teach, and gladly learn.

These endowments were accompanied with a copiousness of words, in which it would be difficult to name any writer except Barrow that has surpassed him. Yet his prose style is very far from affording a model that can safely be proposed for our imitation. He seems to exert his powers of intellect and of language indiscriminately, and with equal effort, on the smallest and the most important occasions; and the effect is something similar to that of a Chinese painting, in which, though all the objects separately taken are accurately described, yet the whole is entirely wanting in a proper relief of perspective. What is observed by Milton of the conduct of life, may be applied to composition, "that there is a scale of higher and lower duties," and he who confuses it will infallibly fall short of that proportion which is necessary to excellence no less in matters of taste than of morals.

He was more intent in balancing the period, than in developing the thought or image that was present to his mind. Sometimes we find that he multiplies words without amplifying the sense, and that the ear is gratified at the expense of the understanding. This is more particularly the case in the Ramblers, which being called for at short and stated intervals, were sometimes composed in such haste, that he had not leasure even to read them before they were printed; nor can we wonder at the dissatisfaction he expressed some years afterwards, when he exclaimed that he thought they had been better. In the Idler there is more brevity, and consequently more compression.

When Johnson trusts to his own strong understanding in a matter of which he has the full command, and does not aim at setting it off by futile decorations, he is always respectable, and sometimes great. But when he attempts the ornamental, he is heavy and inelegant; and the awkwardness of his efforts is more perceptible from the hugeness of the body that is put in motion to produce them. He is like the animal whom Milton describes as making sport for our first parents in Paradise—

—Th' unwieldy elephant, To make them mirth, used all his might.

It is a good beast for carrying a burden or trampling down a foe, but a very indifferent one at a lavolta or a coranto.

His swelling style is readily counterfeited. Our common advertisements have amply revenged themselves for his ridicule of their large promises in the Idler, by clothing those promises in language as magnificent as his own. It is much less easy to catch the subtle graces of Addison. At the conclusion of the Rambler, he boasts that "he has laboured to refine our language to grammatical purity, and to clear it from colloquial barbarisms, licentious idioms, and irregular combinations."

The result of his labour is awkward stateliness and irksome uniformity. In his dread of incongruous idioms he writes almost without any idiom at all.

He has sometimes been considered as having innovated on our tongue by introducing big words into it from the Latin: but he commonly does no more than revive terms which had been employed by our old writers and afterwards fallen into disuse; nor does he, like them, employ even these terms in senses which scholars only would be likely to understand.

At the time of writing the Dictionary, he had a notion that our language "for almost a century had been departing from its original Teutonic character, and deviating towards a Gallic structure and phraseology, from which it ought to be our endeavour to recall it by making our ancient volumes the ground-work of style, admitting among the additions of later times, only such as may supply real deficiencies, such as are readily adopted by the genius of our tongue, and incorporate easily with our native idiom." But a little reflection will shew us the vanity of this attempt. Since the age of Chaucer, at least, that is for more than 400 years, our language has been increased by continual transfusions from the French. To these have been added, from time to time, similar accessions from other languages, both ancient and modern. Thus a copiousness and a flexibility, which in the instance of the Greek seem to have arisen out of that subtilty of intellect which gave birth to endless subdivision and distinction, have been in some measure compensated in our own by the influxes which it has received from the languages of many other people; and have been yet further improved by that liberty which it is to be hoped we shall always retain, each man, of speaking his thoughts after his own guise, without too much regard to any set mode or fashion.

He had before said, in this same preface, that "our knowledge of the northern literature is so scanty, that of words undoubtedly Teutonic the original is not always to be found in any ancient language; and I have therefore," he adds, "inserted Dutch or German substitutes, which I consider not as radical, but parallel; not as the parents, but sisters of the English." And in his history of the English language, speaking of our Saxon ancestors, to whom we must, I suppose, go for that Teutonic original which he so strongly recommends, he observes that, "their speech having been always cursory and extemporaneous, must have been artless and unconnected, without any modes of transition or involution of clauses, which abruptness and inconnection may be found even in their later writings." Of the additions which have been made to this our original poverty, who shall say what ought to be rejected, and what retained? who shall say what deficiencies are real, and what imaginary? what the genius of our tongue may admit of, and what it must refuse? and in a word, what that native idiom is, a coalition with which is to be thus studiously consulted?

Throughout his Lives of the Poets, he constantly betrays a want of relish for the more abstracted graces of the art. When strong sense and reasoning were to be judged of, these he was able to appreciate justly. When the passions or characters were described, he could to a certain extent decide whether they were described truly or no. But as far as poetry has relation to the kindred arts of music and painting, to both of which he was confessedly insensible, it could not be expected that he should have much perception of its excellences. Of statuary, he said that its value was owing to its difficulty; and that a fellow will hack half a year at a block of marble to make something in stone that nearly resembles a man. What shall be thought of his assertion, that before the time of Dryden there was no poetical diction, no system of words at once refined from the grossness of domestic use, and free from the harshness of terms appropriated to particular arts, and "that words too familiar or too remote, defeat the purpose of a poet?" It might with more show of reason be affirmed, that in proportion as our writers have adopted such a system as he speaks of, and have rejected words for no other cause than that they were either too familiar or too remote, we have been receding from the proper language of poetry. One of the chief ornaments, or more properly speaking, the constituents of poetical language, is the use of metaphors; and metaphors never find their way to the mind more readily, or affect it more powerfully, than when they are clothed in familiar words. Even a naked sentiment will lose none of its force from being conveyed in the most homely terms which our mother tongue can afford. They are the sounds which we have been used to from our infancy, which have been early connected with our hopes and fears, and still continue to meet us in our own homes and by our firesides, that will most certainly awaken those feelings with which the poet is chiefly concerned. As for the terms which Johnson calls remote, if I understand him rightly, they too may be employed occasionally, either when the attention is to be roused by something unusual, or for the sake of harmony; or it may be for no other reason than because the poet chooses thus to diversify his diction, so as to give a stronger relief to that which is familiar and common, by the juxtaposition of its contrary. Of this there can be no doubt, that, whoever lays down such arbitrary rules as Johnson has here prescribed, will find himself mocked at every turn by the power of genius, which meets with nothing in art or nature that it cannot convert to its own use, and which delights to produce the greatest effects by means apparently the most inadequate.

He particularly valued himself on the Life of Cowley, for the sake of those observations which he had introduced into it on the metaphysical poets. Here he has mistaken the character of Marino, whom he supposes to be at the head of them. Marino abounds in puerile conceits; but they are not far-fetched, like those of Donne and Cowley; they generally lie on the surface, and often consist of nothing more than a mere play upon words; so that, if to be a punster is to be a metaphysician, Marino is a poetical Heraclitus. But Johnson had caught the cant of the age, in which it was usual to designate almost any thing absurd or extravagant by the name of metaphysical.

It is difficult to suppose that he had read some of the works on which he passes a summary sentence. The comedy of Love's Riddle, which he says, "adds little to the wonders of Cowley's minority," deserved to be commended at least for the style, which is a specimen of pure and unaffected English. Of Congreve's novel, he tells us, that he had rather praise it than read it. Judging from the letters of Congreve, his only writings in prose which it has been my good fortune to meet with, and which, as I remember, contain some admirable remarks on the distinction between wit and humour, I should conclude that one part of his character as a writer has yet to make its way to the public notice. I have heard it observed by a lady, that Johnson, in his Life of Milton, is like a dog incensed and terrified at the presence of some superior creature, at whom he snarls, then runs away, and then returns to snarl again. If the comparison be a just one, it may be added, in extenuation of Johnson's malignity, that he is at least a dog who thinks himself to be attacking the inveterate foe of his master; for Milton's hostility to a kingly government was the crime which he could not forgive.

The mention of Milton, and of his politics, brings to my mind two sayings of Johnson's that were related to me by Mr. Price, of Lichfield. After passing an evening together at Mr. Seward's, the father of the poetess, where, in the course of conversation, the words "Me miserable!" in Paradise Lost, had been commended as highly pathetic, they had walked some way along the street in silence, which the good man was not likely first to break, when Johnson suddenly stopped, and turning round to him, exclaimed, "Sir! don't you think that 'Me miserable' is miserable stuff?" On another occasion he thus whimsically described the different manner in which he felt himself disposed towards a Whig and a Tory. "If," said he, "I saw a Whig and a Tory drowning, I would first save the Tory; and when I saw that he was safe, not till then, I would go and help the Whig; but the dog should duck first; the dog should duck;" laughing with pleasure at the thoughts of the Whig's ducking.

The principal charm of the Lives of the Poets is in the store of information which they contain. He had been, as he says somewhere of his own father, "no careless observer of the passages of the times." In the course of a long life, he had heard, and read, and seen much; and this he communicates with such force and vivacity, and illustrates by observations so pertinent and striking, that we recur again and again to his pages as we would to so many portraits traced by the hand of a great master, in spite of our belief that the originals were often misrepresented, that some were flattered, and the defects of others still more overcharged. In his very errors as a critic there is often shewn more ability than in the right judgments of most other. When he is most wrong, he gives us some good reason for his being so. He is often mistaken, but never trivial and insipid. It is more safe to trust to him when he commends than when he dispraises; when he enlarges the boundaries of criticism which his predecessors had contracted, than when he sets up new fences of his own. The higher station we can take, the more those petty limits will disappear, which confine excellence to particular forms and systems. The critic who condemns that which the generality of mankind, or even the few of those more refined in their taste, have long agreed in admiring, may naturally conclude the fault to be in himself; that there is in his mind or his organs some want of capacity for the reception of a certain species of pleasure. When Johnson rejected pastoral comedy, as being representative of scenes adapted chiefly "to please barbarians and children," he might have suspected that his own eye-sight, rather than pastoral comedy, was to blame. When he characterized blank verse, "as verse only to the eye," he might reasonably have questioned the powers of his own hearing. But this, and more than this, we may forgive him, for his successful vindication of Shakspeare from the faults objected to him by the French critics.

It is in his biographical works that Johnson is most pleasing and most instructive. His querulousness takes away much both from the agreeableness and the use of his moral writings. Addison has represented our nature in its most attractive forms; but Swift makes us turn with loathing from its deformities, and Johnson causes us to shudder at its misery.

Like most of the writers of that time, he made use of his poetry only as the means of introducing himself to the public. We cannot regret, as in the case of Goldsmith, that he put it to no further service. He took little delight in those appearances either of nature or art, for which the poet ought to have the eye of a painter. Nor had he much more sense of the elegant in numbers and in sound. There were indeed certain rounds of metrical arrangement which he loved to repeat, but he could not go beyond them. How very limited his perceptions of this kind were, we may be convinced by reading his strictures on Dionysius the Halicarnassian in the Rambler, and the opinions on Milton's versification, which in the Idler he has put into the mouth of a minute critic, only to ridicule them, though they are indeed founded in truth. Johnson was not one of those whom Plato calls the [Greek: philaekooi kai philotheamones], "who gladly acknowledge the beautiful wherever it is met with, in sounds, and colours, and figures, and all that is by art compounded from these;" much less had he ascended "to that abstract notion of beauty" which the same philosopher considers it so much more difficult to attain.[15]

In his tragedy, the dramatis personae are like so many statues "stept from their pedestal to take the air." They come on the stage only to utter pompous sentiments of morality, turgid declamation, and frigid similes. Yet there is throughout, that strength of language, that heavy mace of words, with which, as with the flail of Talus, Johnson lays every thing prostrate before him. This style is better suited to his imitations of the two satires of Juvenal. Of the first of these, "the London," Gray, in a letter to Horace Walpole, says that "to him it is one of those few imitations, that has all the ease and all the spirit of an original." The other is not at all inferior to it. Johnson was not insensible to such praise; and, could he have known how favourably Gray had spoken of him, would, I doubt not, have been more just to that poet, whom, besides the petulant criticism on him in his Life, he presumed in conversation to call "a heavy fellow."

In his shorter poems it appears as if nature could now and then thrust herself even into the bosom of Johnson himself, from whom we could scarcely have looked for such images as are to be found in the following stanzas.

By gloomy twilight half reveal'd, With sighs we view the hoary hill, The leafless wood, the naked field, The snow-stopp'd cot, the frozen rill.

No music warbles through the grove, No vivid colours paint the plain; No more with devious steps I rove Through verdant paths, now sought in vain.

Aloud the driving tempest roars, Congeal'd impetuous showers descend; Haste, close the window, bar the doors, Fate leaves me Stella and a friend.

Sappho herself might have owned a touch of passionate tenderness, that he has introduced into another of these little pieces:

—The Queen of night Round us pours a lambent light, Light that seems but just to show Breasts that beat, and cheeks that glow.

His Latin poetry is not without a certain barbaric splendour; but it discovers, as might be expected, no skill in the more refined graces of the Augustan age. The verse he quoted to Thomas Warton as his favourite, from the translation of Pope's Messiah,

Vallis aromaticas fundit Saronica nubes,

evinces that he could be pleased without elegance in a mode of composition, of which elegance is the chief recommendation. If we wished to impress foreigners with a favourable opinion of the taste which our countrymen have formed for the most perfect productions of the Roman muse, we should send them, not to the pages of Johnson, but rather to those of Milton, Gray, Warton, and some of yet more recent date.

It was the chance of Johnson to fall upon an age that rated his great abilities at their full value. His laboriousness had the appearance of something stupendous, when there were many literary but few very learned men. His vigour of intellect imposed upon the multitude an opinion of his wisdom, from the solemn air and oracular tone in which he uniformly addressed them. He would have been of less consequence in the days of Elizabeth or of Cromwell.

FOOTNOTES: [1] Bull's Fifth Sermon. [2] In a note to Johnson's Works, 8vo. Edition, 1810, it is said that this is rendered improbable by the account given of Colson, by Davies, in his life of Garrick, which was certainly written under Dr. Johnson's inspection, and, what relates to Colson, probably from Johnson's confirmation. [3] Nichols's Literary Anecdotes, vol. v. p. 696. [4] Nichols's Literary Anecdotes, vol. v, p. 15 [5] Ibid. vol. viii. [6] Warburton's Letters, 8vo. Edit. p. 369. [7] This defect has probably been remedied by Mr. Todd's enlargement of the Dictionary. [8] Wooll's Life of Joseph Warton, p. 230. [9] The writers, besides Smart, were Richard Holt, Garrick, and Dr. Percy. Their papers are signed with the initials of their surnames. Johnson's are marked by two asterisks.—See Hawkins's Life of Johnson, p.351. [10] Miss Seward's letters, vol. i. p. 117. [11] Nichols's Literary Anecdotes, vol. ii. [12] Vol. xix. p. 71. Ed. 1815. [13] Nichols's Literary Anecdotes, vol. ii. p. 532. [14] Wooll's Memoirs of Dr. Joseph Warton. [15] Plato de Republica, 1. v. 476.

* * * * *

JOHN ARMSTRONG.

John Armstrong, the son of a Scotch minister, was born in the parish of Castleton, in Roxburghshire. The date of his birth has not been ascertained, nor is there any thing known concerning the earlier part of his education. The first we hear of it is, that he took a degree in medicine at Edinburgh, on the fourth of February, 1732; on which occasion he published his Thesis, as usual, and chose De Tabe Purulenta for the subject of it. A copy of a Latin letter, which he sent to Sir Hans Sloane with this essay, is said to be in the British Museum. In an advertisement prefixed to some verses which he calls Imitations of Shakspeare, he informs the reader that the first of them was just finished when Thomson's Winter made its appearance. This was in 1726, when he was, he himself says, very young. Thomson having heard of this production by a youth, who was of the same country with himself, desired to see it, and was so much pleased with the attempt, that he put it into the hands of Aaron Hill, Mallet, and Young. With Thomson, further than in the subject, there is no coincidence. The manner is a caricature of Shakspeare's.

In 1735, we find him in London, publishing a humorous pamphlet, entitled An Essay for abridging the Study of Physic, which, though he did not profess himself the writer, Mr. Nichols says [1], he can, on the best authority, assert to be his. In two years after he published a Medical Essay. This was soon followed by a licentious poem, which I have not seen, and the title of which I do not think it necessary to record.— While thus employed, it was not to be expected that he should rise to much eminence in his profession. The dying man does not willingly see by his couch one who has recently disgraced himself by an open act of profligacy. In January 1741, he solicited Dr. Birch to use his influence with Mead in recommending him to the appointment of Physician to the Forces which were then going to the West Indies. It does not appear that this application was successful; but in five years more, (February 1746,) he was nominated one of the Physicians to the Hospital for Invalid Soldiers behind Buckingham House; and in 1760, Physician to the Army in Germany. Meantime (in 1744) he had published his Art of Preserving Health, a didactic poem, that soon made its way to notice, and which, by the judiciousness of the precepts, might have tended to raise some opinion of his medical skill. At the beginning he addresses Mead:—

—Beloved by all the graceful arts, And long the favourite of the healing powers.

He had now become intimate with Thomson, to whose Castle of Indolence he contributed the three stanzas which conclude the first canto. One of the alterations made in them by Thomson is not for the better. He had written—

And here the gout, half tyger, half a snake, Raged with a hundred teeth, a hundred stings;

which was changed to—

The sleepless gout here counts the crowing cocks, A wolf now gnaws him, now a serpent stings.

When Thomson was seized with the illness of which he died, Armstrong was one of those who were sent for to attend him.

In 1751, he published Benevolence, an Epistle to Eumenes; and in 1753, Taste, an Epistle to a Young Critic. In the next year, he wrote the Forced Marriage, a tragedy, which Garrick did not think fitted for the stage. It was printed in 1770, with such of his other writings as he considered worthy of being collected. In this book, which he entitled Miscellanies, in two volumes, first appeared the second part of Sketches or Essays on Various Subjects, by Launcelot Temple, Esq.; the former had been published in 1758. Wilkes was supposed to have contributed something to these lively trifles, which, under an air of impertinent levity, are sometimes marked by originality and discernment. His poem called Day, an epistle which he had addressed to Wilkes in 1761, was not admitted by the author to take its place among the rest. For the dispute which gave rise to this omission he was afterwards sorry; and in his last illness declared, that what he had got in the army he owed to the kindness of Wilkes; and that although he had been rash and hasty, he still retained a due sense of gratitude. In attacking Wilkes, he contrived to exasperate Churchill also, who was not to be provoked with impunity, and who revenged himself in the Journey. In 1771, he published a Short Ramble through some parts of France and Italy. In the neighbourhood of Leghorn he passed a fortnight with Smollett, to whom he was always tenderly attached. Of his book I regret the more that I cannot speak from my own knowledge, because the journey which it narrates is said to have been made in the society of Mr. Fuseli, with whom it is not easy to suppose that any one could have travelled without profiting by the elegance and learning of his companion. I have no better means of bringing my reader acquainted with some Medical Essays which he published in 1773; but from the manner in which they are spoken of in the Biographical Dictionary [2], it is to be feared that they did not conduce to his reputation or advancement. He died in September, 1779, in consequence, as it is said, of a contusion which he received when he was getting into a carriage. His friends were surprised to find he had laid by three thousand pounds, which had been saved chiefly out of his half-pay.

Armstrong appears to have been good-natured and indolent, little versed in what is called the way of the world, and, with an eagerness of ostentation which looks like the result of mortified vanity, a despiser of the vulgar, whether found among the little or the great.

His Art of Preserving Health is the only production by which he is likely to be remembered. The theme which he has chosen is one, in which no man who lives long does not at some time or other feel an interest; and he has handled it with considerable skill. In the first Book, on Air, he has interwoven very pleasing descriptions both of particular places and of situations in general, with reference to the effects they may be supposed to have on health. The second, which treats of Diet, is necessarily less attractive, as the topic is less susceptible of ornament; yet in speaking of water, he has contrived to embellish it by some lines, which are, perhaps, the finest in the poem.

Now come, ye Naiads, to the fountains lead; Now let me wander through your gelid reign. I burn to view th' enthusiastic wilds By mortals else untrod. I hear the din Of waters thund'ring o'er the ruin'd cliffs. With holy reverence I approach the rocks Whence glide the streams renown'd in ancient song. Here from the desart, down the rumbling steep, First springs the Nile: here bursts the sounding Po In angry waves: Euphrates hence devolves A mighty flood to water half the East: And there, in Gothic solitude reclin'd, The cheerless Tanais pours his hoary urn. What solemn twilight! What stupendous shades Enwrap these infant floods! Through every nerve A sacred horror thrills, a pleasing fear Glides o'er my frame. The forest deepens round; And more gigantic still th' impending trees Stretch their extravagant arms athwart the gloom. Are these the confines of another world? A land of Genii? Say, beyond these wilds What unknown regions? If indeed beyond Aught habitable lies.

This has more majesty, and more to fill the imagination, than the corresponding paragraph in Thomson's Autumn.

Say then where lurk the vast eternal springs, &c.—771.

Yet it is inferior in beauty to some verses in a Latin poem by a writer who is now living.

Quippe sub immensis terrae penetralibus altae Hiscunt in vastum tenebrae: magnarum ibi princeps labitur undarum Oceanus, quo patre liquoris Omnigeni latices et mollis lentor aquai Profluxere, nova nantes aestate superne Aerii rores nebularum, et liquidus imber. Fama est perpetuos illinc se erumpere fontes, Florigerum Ladona, et lubrica vitra Selemni, Crathidaque, imbriferamque Lycaeis vallibus Hagno, Et gelidam Panopin et Peirenen lacrymosam, Illinc et rapido amnes fluere et mare magnum.

In the third book, he once more breathes freely, and in recounting the various kinds of exercise by which the human frame may be invigorated, his poetic faculty again finds room to play. Joseph Warton, in his Essay on Pope, has justly commended the Episode on the Sweating Sickness, with which it concludes. In the fourth and last, on the Passions, he seems to have grown weary of his task; for he has here less compression and less dignity.

His verse is much more compact than Thomson's, whom he resembles most in the turn of the expression; although he has aimed now and then, but with an ill-assured and timid hand, at a Miltonic boldness in the numbers or the phrase. When he takes occasion to speak of the river with which his remembrances in early life were associated, he has, contrary to his usual custom, indulged himself with enlarging on his prototype.

Thomson had mentioned incidentally the Tweed and the Jed:

—The Tweed, pure parent stream, Whose pastoral banks first heard my Doric reed, With sylvan Jed! thy tributary brook.—Autumn, 889.

He has thus expanded it:—

—Such the stream, On whose Arcadian banks I first drew air, Liddal; till now, except in Doric lays Tun'd to her murmurs by her love-sick swains, Unknown in song: though not a purer stream, Through meads more flowery, or more romantic groves, Rolls towards the western main. Hail, sacred flood! May still thy hospitable swains be blest In rural innocence; thy mountains still Teem with the fleecy race; thy tuneful woods For ever flourish; and thy vales look gay With painted meadows, and the golden grain! Oft with thy blooming sons, when life was new, Sportive and petulant, and charm'd with toys, In thy transparent eddies have I lav'd; Oft trac'd with patient steps thy fairy banks, With the well-imitated fly to hook The eager trout, and with the slender line And yielding rod, solicit to the shore The struggling panting prey; while vernal clouds And tepid gales obscur'd the ruffled pool, And from the deeps call'd forth the wanton swarms.

B. iii. v. 96.

What he has here added of his love of fishing is from another passage in the Seasons [3].

But his imitations of other writers, however frequent, have no semblance of study or labour. They seem to have been self-suggested, and to have glided tacitly and insensibly into the current of his thoughts. This is evinced by the little pains he took to work upon and heighten such resemblances. As he did not labour the details injudiciously, so he had a clear conception of his matter as a whole. The consequence is, that the poem has that unity and just subordination of parts which renders it easy to be comprehended at one view, and, on that account, more agreeable than the didactic poems of his contemporaries, which having detached passages of much more splendour, are yet wanting in those recommendations. One objection to his subject is, that it is least pleasing at that period of life when poetry is most so; for it is not till the glow of youth is gone by, and we begin to feel the infirmities and the coldness of age, that we are disposed to bestow much attention on the Art of Preserving Health.

His tragedy is worth but little. It appears from his Essays, that he had formed a contracted notion of nature, as an object of imitation for the tragic poet; and he has failed to give a faithful representation of nature, even according to his own imperfect theory.

The two short epistles on Benevolence and Taste, have ease and vigour enough to shew that he could, with a little practice, have written as well in the couplet measure as he did in blank verse. If Armstrong cannot be styled a man of genius, he is at least one of the most ingenious of our minor poets.

FOOTNOTES [1] Nichols's Literary Anecdotes, Vol. ii. p. 307, &c. [2] Chalmers's Biographical Dictionary, vol. ii. p. 486. [3] Footnote: Spring, v. 376, &c.

* * * * *

RICHARD JAGO

Richard, the third son of Richard Jago, Rector of Beaudesert, in Warwickshire, was born on the 1st of October, 1715. His mother was Margaret, daughter of Wm. Parker, a gentleman of Henley in Arden, a neighbouring town in the same county. He received the earlier part of his education at Solihull, under Mr. Crumpton, whom Johnson, in his life of Shenstone, calls an eminent schoolmaster. Here Shenstone, who was scarcely one year older, and who, according to Johnson, distinguished himself by the quickness of his progress, imparted to Jago his love of letters. As the one, in his Schoolmistress, has delivered to posterity the old dame who taught him to read; the other has done the same for their common preceptor, but with less ability and less kindness, in his Edgehill, where he terms him "Pedagogue morose."

At the usual time he was admitted a servitor of University College, Oxford. His humble station in the University, though it did not break off his intimacy with Shenstone, must have hindered them from associating openly together.

In 1738, he took the degree of Master of Arts, having been first ordained to the curacy of Snitterfield, a village near the benefice of his father, who died two years after. Soon after that event, he married Dorothea Susannah, daughter of John Fancourt, Rector of Kimcote, in Leicestershire. In 1746, he was instituted to Harbury, where he resided; and about the same time was presented, by Lord Willoughby de Broke, to Chesterton, which lay at a short distance; both livings together amounting to about 100l. a year. In 1754, Lord Clare, afterwards Earl Nugent, obtained for him, from Dr. Madox, Bishop of Worcester, the vicarage of Snitterfield, worth about 140l. After having inserted some small poems in Dodsley's Collection, he published (in 1767) Edgehill, for which he obtained a large subscription; and in the following year, the fable of Labour and Genius. In 1771, his kind patron, Lord Willoughby de Broke, added to his other preferment the rectory of Kimcote, worth nearly 300l. in consequence of which he resigned Harbury.

His first wife died in 1751, leaving him seven children. He had known her from childhood. The attention paid her by Shenstone shews her to have been an amiable woman. In eight years after, he married Margaret, daughter of James Underwood, Esq. of Rugeley, in Staffordshire, who survived him. During the latter part of his life, his infirmities confined him to the house. He died, after a short illness, on the 8th of May, 1781, and was buried in the church of Snitterfield. In his person he was above the middle stature. His manner was reserved before strangers, but easy even to sprightliness in the society of his friends. He is said to have discharged blamelessly all the duties of his profession and of domestic life. As a poet, he is not entitled to very high commendation. The distinguishing feature of his poetry is the ease of its diction. Johnson has observed, that if blank verse be not tumid and gorgeous, it is crippled prose. To disprove this, it would be sufficient to quote the greater part of that story from the Tatler [1] of the Young Man restored to Sight, which Jago has introduced into his Edge-hill. Nothing can be described more naturally, than his feelings and behaviour on his first recovery.

The friendly wound was given; th'obstructing film Drawn artfully aside; and on his sight Burst the full tide of day. Surprised he stood, Not knowing where he was, nor what he saw. The skilful artist first, as first in place, He view'd, then seized his hand, then felt his own, Then mark'd their near resemblance, much perplex'd, And still the more perplex'd the more he saw. Now silence first th' impatient mother broke, And, as her eager looks on him she bent, "My son (she cried), my son!" On her he gazed With fresh surprise. "And what!" he cried, "art thou My mother? for thy voice bespeaks thee such, Though to my sight unknown."—"Thy mother I (She quick replied); thy sister, brother, these."— "O! 'tis too much (he said); too soon to part, Ere well we meet! But this new flood of day O'erpowers me, and I feel a death-like damp Chill all my frame, and stop my faltering tongue." Now Lydia, so they call'd his gentle friend, Who, with averted eye, but in her soul Had felt the lancing steel, her aid applied, "And stay, dear youth (she said), or with thee take Thy Lydia, thine alike in life or death!" At Lydia's name, at Lydia's well known voice, He strove again to raise his drooping head And ope his closing eye, but strove in vain, And on her trembling bosom sunk away. Now other fears distract his weeping friends: But short their grief! for soon his life return'd, And, with return of life, return'd their peace.—(B. iii.)

The country which he has undertaken to describe in this poem is fertile and tame. There was little left to him, except to enlarge on its antiquities, to speak of the habitations that were scattered over it, and to compliment the most distinguished among their possessors. Every day must detract something from the interest, such as it is, that arises from these sources. A poet should take care not to make the fund of his reputation liable to be affected by dilapidations, or to be passed away by the hands of a conveyancer.

It would seem as if he had never visited a tract of land much wilder than that in which he was bred and born. In speaking of "embattled walls, raised on the mountain precipice," he particularises "Beaudesert; Old Montfort's seat;"[2]—a place, which, though it is pleasantly diversified with hill and dale, has no pretensions of so lofty a kind. This, he tells us, was "the haunt of his youthful steps;" and here he met with Somerville, the poet of the Chase, to whom both the subject and the title of his poem might have been suggested by that extensive common, known by the name of Cannock Chase,[3] on the border of which Beaudesert is situated.

The digressions, with which he has endeavoured to enliven the monotony of his subject, are sometimes very far-fetched. He has scarcely finished his exordium, when he goes back to the third day of the creation, and then passes on to the deluge. This reminds one of the Mock Advocate in the Plaideurs of Racine, who, having to defend the cause of a dog that had robbed the pantry, begins,

Avant la naissance du monde——

on which the judge yawns and interrupts him,

Avocat, ah! passons an deluge.

Of his shorter pieces, the three Elegies on Birds are well deserving of notice. That entitled the Blackbirds is so prettily imagined, and so neatly expressed, that it is worth a long poem. Thrice has Shenstone mentioned it in his Letters, in such a manner as to show how much it had pleased him. The Goldfinches is only less excellent. He has spoiled the Swallows by the seriousness of the moral.

Nunc non erat his locus.

The first half of Peytoe's Ghost has enough in it to raise a curiosity, which is disappointed by the remainder.

FOOTNOTES [1] No. LV. [2] Edge-Hill, Book I. [3] The author has here fallen into an error in confounding Beaudesert, near Henley in Arden, with a place of the same name, near Cannock Chase. The mistake was pointed out to him a few days after its publication, by his valued friend and relative, the Rev. Thomas Price, Rector of Enville, Staffordshire. Mr. Price's letter will furnish the best explanation. He writes:—

"MY DEAR CARY,

"In your life of Jago, I am afraid you have fallen into a mistake, by confounding the two Beaudeserts. That one of which Jago's father was Rector, and near which Somerville resided, is, as you have stated in the beginning of the life, near Henley, and to that the words, "Old Montfort's seat" must refer, because Dugdale, treating of Beldesert, near Henley, says, 'on the east side of the last mentioned brook runneth a hilly tract, bordered with deep vallies on each part; the point whereof maketh a kind of promontory, whose ascent being somewhat steep, gave occasion of the fortifying thereat first, considering its situation in these woodland parts, where, through the opportunity of so much shelter, advantage was most like to be taken by the disherited English and their offspring, to make head for their redemption from the Norman yoke. Tis not unlike, but this mountainous ground, &c. Thurslem de Montfort, near kinsman of the first Norman Earl of Warwick, erected that strong castle, whereunto, by reason of its pleasant situation, the French name Beldesert, was given, and which continued the chief seat of his descendants for divers ages.'"—ED.

* * * * *

RICHARD OWEN CAMBRIDGE.

Richard Cambridge, the son of a Turkey merchant, descended from a family long settled in Gloucestershire, was born in London, on the fourteenth of February, 1717. His father dying soon after his birth, the care of his education devolved on his mother and his maternal uncle, Thomas Owen, Esq. a lawyer who had retired from practice to his seat in Buckinghamshire, and who, having no children of his own, adopted his nephew. At an early age he was sent to Eton, where, among his schoolfellows and associates, were Gray, West, Jacob Bryant, the Earl of Orford, and others eminent for wit or learning. Here he contracted not only a literary taste and habits of study, but that preference for the quiet amusements of a country life, which afterwards formed a part of his character. In 1734 he was removed from Eton to Oxford, and admitted a gentleman commoner of St. John's College. On the marriage of the Prince of Wales, two years after, he contributed some verses to the Congratulatory Poems from that University. A ludicrous picture, which he draws of academical festivity, betrays the future author of the Scribleriad:—

In flowing robes and squared caps advance, Pallas their guide, her ever-favour'd band; As they approach they join in mystic dance, Large scrolls of paper waving in their hand; Nearer they come, I heard them sweetly sing.

He left the University without taking a degree, and in 1737 became a member of Lincoln's Inn. In four years after he married the second daughter of George Trenchard, Esq. of Woolverton, in Dorsetshire, who was Member of Parliament for Poole, and son of Sir John Trenchard, Secretary of State to King William. Retiring to his family mansion of Whitminster, in Gloucestershire, on the banks of the Stroud, he employed himself in making that stream navigable to its junction with the Severn, in improving his buildings, and in ornamenting his grounds, which lay pleasantly in the rich vale of Berkeley. Here his happiness was interrupted by the death of one among his former playmates at Eton, whom he had most distinguished by his affection. This was Captain Berkeley, an officer, who in those happy times, when military men were not yet educated apart from scholars, had added to his other accomplishments a love of letters, and who fell in the battle of Fontenoy. This affliction discouraged him from proceeding in a poem on Society, which he had intended as a memorial of their friendship. The opening does not promise well enough to make us regret its discontinuance.

At Whitminster he had the honour of entertaining the Prince of Wales, with his consort, and their daughter the late Duchess Dowager of Brunswick, then on a visit to Lord Bathurst at Cirencester. The royal guests were feasted in a vessel of his own constructing, that was moored on a reach of the Severn; and the Prince gratified him by declaring, that he had often made similar attempts on the Thames, but never with equal success. To the exercise of mechanical ingenuity in improving the art of boat-building, he added uncommon skill in the use of the bow and arrow, and had assembled all the varieties of those instruments that could be procured from different countries.

He appears to have possessed in an unusual degree, the power of suddenly ingratiating himself with those who conversed with him. A gentleman who had never before seen him, and who had reluctantly accompanied the Prince in his aquatic expedition, was so much pleased with Cambridge, as to be among the foremost to acknowledge his satisfaction; and having been introduced by William Whitehead, then tutor to the Earl of Jersey's eldest son, into the house of that nobleman, he soon became a welcome guest, and formed a lasting friendship with one of the family, who was afterwards Earl of Clarendon. In the number of his intimates he reckoned Bathurst, afterwards Chancellor, with whom an acquaintance, begun at Eton, had been continued at Lincoln's Inn; Carteret, Lyttelton, Grenville, Chesterfield, Yorke, Pitt, and Pulteney. In order to facilitate his intercourse with such associates, and perhaps in conformity with the advice of his departed friend Berkeley, who had recommended London as the proper stage for the display of his poetical talent, he was induced to pass two of his winters in the capital; but finding that the air of the town was injurious to his health, in 1751 he purchased a residence at Twickenham. He had now another opportunity of showing his taste for rural embellishment, in counteracting the effects of his predecessor's formality, in opening his lawns and grouping his trees with an art that wore the appearance of negligence. An addition to his fortune by the decease of his uncle Mr. Owen, who left him his name together with his estate, enabled him to gratify these propensities. By some of his powerful friends he had been urged to obtain a seat in Parliament, and addict himself to a public life; but he valued his tranquillity too highly to comply with their solicitations. A sonnet addressed to him by his friend Edwards, author of the Canons of Criticism, and which is not without elegance, tended to confirm him in his resolve.

In the year[1] of his removal to Twickenham, the Scribleriad was published, a poem calculated to please the learned, rather than the vulgar, and with respect to which he had observed the rule of the nonum prematur in annum. To The World, the periodical paper undertaken soon after by Moore, and continued for four years, he contributed twenty-one numbers. Though determined against taking an active part in public affairs, yet he shewed himself to be far from indifferent to the interests of his country. Her maritime glory more peculiarly engaged his attention.

Anson, Boscawen, and indeed nearly all the distinguished seamen of his day, were among his intimates or acquaintance; and he assisted some of the principal navigators in drawing up the relations which they gave to the world of their discoveries. In 1761, he was prompted by his apprehensions, that the nation was not sufficiently on her guard against the endeavours making by the French to deprive her of her possessions in the East, to publish a History of the War upon the Coast of Coromandel. The great work undertaken by Mr. Orme prevented him from pursuing the subject.

Continuing thus to pass his days in the enjoyment of domestic happiness and learned ease, surrounded by a train of menials grown grey in his service, exercising the rites of hospitality with uniform cheerfulness, and performing the duties of religion with exemplary punctuality, respected by the good and admired by the ingenious, he reached his eighty-third year with little inconvenience from the usual infirmities of age. His faculties then declining, he was dismissed by a gradual exhaustion of his natural powers, and resigning his breath without a sigh on the seventeenth of September, 1802—

—Like ripe fruit he dropp'd Into his mother's lap ... ...for death mature.

Having always lived in an union of the utmost tenderness with his family, he exhibited a pleasing instance of the "ruling passion strong in death." "Having passed," says his son, "a considerable time in a sort of doze, from which it was thought he had hardly strength to revive, he awoke, and upon seeing me, feebly articulated, 'How do the dear people do?' When I answered that they were well; with a smile upon his countenance, and an increased energy of voice, he replied, 'I thank God;' and then reposed his head upon his pillow, and spoke no more."

He was buried at Twickenham, where, on inquiring a few years ago, I found that no monument had been raised to his memory.

He left behind a widow, a daughter, and two sons. From the narrative of his life written by one of these, the Reverend Archdeacon Cambridge, and prefixed to a handsome edition of his poems and his papers in The World, the above account has been chiefly extracted.

Chesterfield, another of the contributors to The World, inserted in it a short character of him under the name of Cantabrigiensis, introduced by an encomium on his temperance; for he was a water-drinker.

That he was what is commonly termed a news-monger, appears from the following laughable story, told by the late Mr. George Hardinge, the Welch Judge:—

I wished upon some occasion to borrow a Martial. He told me he had no such book, except by heart. I therefore inferred, that he could not immediately detect me. Accordingly I sent him an epigram which I had made, and an English version of it, as from the original. He commended the latter, but said, that it wanted the neatness of the Roman. When I undeceived him, he laughed, and forgave me.

It originated in a whimsical fact. Mr. Cambridge had a rage for news; and living in effect at Richmond, though on the other side of the Thames, he had the command of many political reporters. As I was then in professional business at my chambers, I knew less of public news than he did; and every Saturday, in my way from Lincoln's Inn to a villa of my own near him, called upon him for the news from London. This I told him was not unlike what Martial said, L. iii. 7.

Deciano salutem.

Vix Roma egressus, villa novus advena, ruris Vicini dominum te "quid in urbe?" rogo. Tu novitatis amans Roma si Tibura malles Per nos "de villa quae nova" disce "tua."

Nichols's Illust. of the Literary Hist, of the xviii. Cent. v. i. p. 131.

Of his poems, which are neither numerous, nor exhibit much variety of manner, little remains to be said. Archimage, though a sprightly sally, cannot be ranked among the successful imitations of Spenser's style. Als ne and mote, how often soever repeated, do not go far towards a resemblance of the Faery Queene.

In his preface to the Scribleriad, which betrays great solicitude to explain and vindicate the plan of the poem, he declares that his intention is "to shew the vanity and uselessness of many studies, reduce them to a less formidable appearance, and invite our youth to application, by letting them see that a less degree of it than they apprehend, judiciously directed, and a very few books indeed, well recommended, will give them all the real information which they are to expect from human science." The design was a laudable one. In the poem itself we feel the want of some principal event, on the development and issue of which the interest of the whole may turn; as in those patterns of the mock-heroic, the Secchia Rapita, the Lutrin, and the Rape of the Lock; an advantage, which these poems in some measure derive from having been founded in fact; for however trifling the incident by which the imagination of the poet may have been first excited, when once known or believed to be true, it communicates something of its own reality to all the fictions that grow out of it. The hero too is one of the [Greek: amenaena karaena]; or rather is but the shadow of a shade; for he has taken the character of Martinus Scriblerus, as he found it in the memoirs of that unsubstantial personage. The adventures indeed in which the author has engaged him, though they did not require much power of invention, are yet sufficiently ludicrous; and we join, perhaps, more willingly in the laugh, as it is aimed at general folly and not at individual weakness. The wit is not condensed and sparkling as in the Dunciad; the writer's chief resource consisting in an adaptation of passages from writers, ancient and modern, to the purposes of a grave burlesque; and for the application of these, by a contrivance not very artificial, it is sometimes necessary to recur to the notes. The style, if it be not distinguished by any remarkable strength or elegance, is at least free and unaffected.

The imitations of Horace are often happy: that addressed to Lord Bathurst, particularly towards the latter part, is perhaps the best. Of the original jeux d'esprits, the verses occasioned by the Marriage and Game Acts, both passed the same session, have, I think, most merit. The Fable of Jotham, or the Borough Hunters, does not make up by ingenuity for what it wants in reverence. In the Fakeer, a tale professedly borrowed from Voltaire, the story takes a less humorous turn than as it is told in the extracts from Pere Le Comte's memoirs in the preface.

FOOTNOTE [1] In 1752 appeared his Dialogue between a Member and his Servant. The Intruder in 1754; and the Fakeer in 1756.—MS. addition. ED.

* * * * *

TOBIAS SMOLLETT.

Tobias Smollett was born in the parish of Cardross, in Dumbartonshire, in the year 1721. His father, Archibald, a Scotch gentleman of small fortune, was the youngest son of Sir James Smollett, who was knighted on King William's accession, represented the borough of Dumbarton in the last Scotch Parliament, and was of weight enough to be chosen one of the commissioners for framing the treaty of union between the two countries. On his return from Leyden, where it was then the custom for young Scotchmen to complete their education, Archibald married Barbara, the daughter of Mr. Cunningham, of Gilbertfield, near Glasgow; and died soon after the birth of our poet, leaving him, with another son and a daughter, dependent on the bounty of their grandfather. The place of Smollett's nativity was endeared to him by its natural beauties; insomuch that, when he had an opportunity of comparing it with foreign countries, he preferred the neighbouring lake of Loch Lomond to those most celebrated in Switzerland and Italy. Being placed at the school of Dumbarton, which was conducted by John Love, a man of some distinction as a scholar, he is said to have exercised his poetical talents in writing satires on the other boys, and in panegyrising his heroic countryman Wallace. From hence, at the usual age, he was removed to Glasgow; and there making choice of the study of medicine, was apprenticed to Mr. John Gordon, a chirurgeon, who afterwards took out a diploma, and practised as a physician. His irresistible propensity to burlesque did not suffer the peculiarities of this man, whom he has represented under the character of Potion, in Roderick Random, to escape him. He made some amends for the indignity, by introducing honourable mention of the name of Dr. Gordon in the last of his novels. A more overt act of contumacy to his superiors, into which his vivacity hurried him, trifling as it may appear, is so characteristic, that I cannot leave it untold. A lad, who was apprenticed to a neighbouring chirurgeon, and with whom he had been engaged in frolic on a winter's evening, was receiving a severe reprimand from his master for quitting the shop; and having alleged in his excuse, that he had been hit by a snow-ball, and had gone out in pursuit of the person who had thrown it, was listening to the taunts of his master, on the improbability of such a story. "How long," said the son of Aesculapius, with the confident air of one fearless of contradiction, "might I stand here, and such a thing not happen to me?" when Smollett, who stood behind the pillar of the shop-door, and heard what passed, snatching up a snow-ball, quickly delivered his playmate from the dilemma in which this question had placed him, by an answer equally prompt and conclusive. Not content with this attack, he afterwards made the offender sit for his whole-length portrait, in the person, as it is supposed, of Crab, in the same novel.

In the midst of these childish sallies, he meditated greater things; and the sound of the pestle and mortar did not prevent him from attending to the inspirations of Melpomene. At the age of eighteen he had composed a tragedy on the murder of James I. the Scottish monarch, and about that time losing his grandfather, by whom he had been supported, and discovering that he must thenceforth rely on his own exertions for a maintenance, he set forth with his juvenile production for London. On his arrival there, failing as might be expected, to persuade the managers to bring his tragedy on the stage, he solicited and obtained the place of a chirurgeon's mate, on board the fleet destined for the attack of Carthagena. Of this ill-conducted and unfortunate expedition, he not only made a sketch in his Roderick Random, but afterwards inserted a more detailed account of it in the Compendium of Voyages. After a short time, he was so little pleased with his employment, that he determined to relinquish it, and remain in the West Indies. During his residence in Jamaica, he met with Miss Anne Lascelles, to whom, after a few years, he was married, and with whom he expected to receive a fortune of three thousand pounds. In the islands he probably depended for a subsistence on the exercise of his skill as a chirurgeon. He returned to London in the year 1746; and though his family had distinguished themselves by their revolutionary principles, testified his sympathy with the late sufferings of his countrymen, in their expiring struggle for the house of Stuart, by some lines, entitled the Tears of Scotland. When warned of his indiscretion, he added that concluding stanza of reproof to his timid counsellors:—

While the warm blood bedews my veins, And unimpair'd remembrance reigns, Resentment of my country's fate Within my filial breast shall beat; And spite of her insulting foe, My sympathizing verse shall flow: Mourn, hapless Caledonia, mourn Thy banish'd peace, thy laurels torn!

His first separate publication was, Advice, a satire, in the autumn of this year. At the beginning of the next it was followed by a second part, called Reproof, in which he took an occasion of venting his resentment against Rich, the manager of Covent Garden, with whom he had quarrelled concerning an opera, written by him for that theatre, on the story of Alcestis. In consequence of their dispute the piece was not acted; nor did he take the poet's usual revenge by printing it.

The fallacious prospects of his wife's possessions now encouraged him to settle himself in a better house, and to live with more hospitality than his circumstances would allow him to maintain. These difficulties were in some measure obviated by the sale of a new translation which he made of Gil Bias, and still more by the success of Roderick Random, which appeared in 1748. In none of his succeeding novels has he equalled the liveliness, force, and nature of this his first essay. So just a picture of a sea-faring life especially had never before met the public eye. Many of our naval heroes may probably trace the preference which has decided them in their choice of a profession to an early acquaintance with the pages of Roderick Random. He has not, indeed, decorated his scenes with any seductive colours; yet such is the charm of a highly wrought description, that it often induces us to overlook what is disgusting in the objects themselves, and transfer the pleasure arising from the mere imitation to the reality.

Strap was a man named Lewis, a book-binder, who came from Scotland with Smollett, and who usually dined with him at Chelsea on Sundays. In this book he also found a niche for the exhibition of his own distresses in the character of Melopoyn the dramatic poet. His applications to the directors of the theatre, indeed, continued so unavailing, that he at length resolved to publish his unfortunate tragedy by subscription; and in 1749 the Regicide appeared with a preface, in which he complained grievously of their neglect, and of the faithlessness of his patrons, among whom Lord Lyttelton particularly excited his indignation. In the summer of this year his view of men and manners was extended by a journey to Paris. Here he met with an acquaintance and countryman in Doctor Moore, the author of Zeluco, who a few years after him had been also an apprentice to Gordon, at Glasgow. In his company Smollett visited the principal objects of curiosity in the neighbourhood of the French metropolis.

The canvas was soon stretched for a display of fresh follies: and the result was, his Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, in 1751. The success he had attained in exhibiting the characters of seamen led him to a repetition of similar delineations. But though drawn in the same broad style of humour, and, if possible, discriminated by a yet stronger hand, the actors do not excite so keen an interest on shore as in their proper element. The Memoirs of a Lady of Quality, the substance of which was communicated by the woman herself, whose story they relate, quickened the curiosity of his readers at the time, and a considerable sum which he received for the insertion of them augmented the profits which he derived from a large impression of the work. But they form a very disagreeable interruption in the main business of the narrative. The pedantic physician was intended for a representation of Akenside, who had probably too much dignity to notice the affront, for which some reparation was made by a compliment to his talents for didactic poetry, in our author's History of England.

On his return (in 1749) he took his degree of Doctor in Medicine, and settled himself at Chelsea[1], where he resided till 1763. The next effort of his pen, an Essay on the External Use of Water, in a letter to Dr.——, with particular remarks upon the present method of using the mineral waters at Bath, in Somersetshire, &c. (in 1752) was directed to views of professional advancement. In his profession, however, he did not succeed; and meeting with no encouragement in any other quarter, he devoted himself henceforward to the service of the booksellers. More novels, translation, historical compilation, ephemeral criticism, were the multifarious employments which they laid on him. Nothing that he afterwards produced quite came up to the raciness of his first performances. In 1753, he published the Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom. In the dedication of this novel he left a blank after the word Doctor, which may probably be supplied with the name of Armstrong. From certain phrases that occur in the more serious parts, I should conjecture them to be hastily translated from another language. Some of these shall be laid before the reader, that he may judge for himself. "A solemn profession, on which she reposed herself with the most implicit confidence and faith;" ch. xii. (v. 4. p. 54, of Dr. Anderson's edition.)—"Our hero would have made his retreat through the port, by which he had entered;" instead of the door; ch. xiii. p. 55.—"His own penetration pointed out the canal, through which his misfortune had flowed upon him;" instead of the channel; ch. xx. p. 94.—"Public ordinaries, walks, and spectacles;" instead of places of entertainment; ch. xxv. p. 125.—"The Tyrolese, by the canal of Ferdinand's finger, and recommendation, sold a pebble for a real brilliant;" ch. xxxvii. p. 204.—"A young gentleman whose pride was indomitable;" ch. xlvi. p. 242. In one chapter we find ourselves in a stage-coach, with such a company as Smollett loved to introduce to his readers.

He was about this time prosecuted in the King's Bench, on a charge of having intended to assassinate one of his countrymen, whose name was Peter Gordon. A few blows of the cane, which, after being provoked by repeated insolence, he had laid across the shoulders of this man, appeared to be the sole grounds for the accusation, and he was, therefore, honourably acquitted by the jury. A letter, addressed to the prosecutor's counsel, who, in Smollett's opinion, by the intemperance of his invective had abused the freedom of speech allowed on such occasions, remains to attest the irritability and vehemence of his own temper. The letter was either not sent, or the lawyer had too much moderation to make it the subject of another action, the consequences of which he could have ill borne; for the expense, incurred by the former suit, was already more than he was able to defray, at a time when pecuniary losses and disappointments in other quarters were pressing heavily upon him. A person, for whom he had given security in the sum of one hundred and eighty pounds, had become a bankrupt, and one remittance which he looked for from the East Indies, and another of more than a thousand pounds from Jamaica, failed him. From the extremity to which these accidents reduced him, he was extricated by the kindness of his friend, Doctor Macaulay, to which he had been before indebted; and by the liberality of Provost Drummond, who paid him a hundred pounds for revising the manuscript of his brother Alexander Drummond's travels through Germany, Italy, Greece, &c. which were printed in a folio volume in 1754. He had long anticipated the profits of his next work. This was a translation of Don Quixote, published at the beginning of 1755. Lord Woodhouselee, in his Essay on Translation, has observed, that it is little else than an improvement of the version by Jarvis. On comparing a few passages with the original, I perceive that he fails alike in representing the dignity of Cervantes in the mock-heroic, and the familiarity of his lighter manner. These are faults that might have been easily avoided by many a writer of much less natural abilities than Smollett, who wanted both the leisure and the command of style that were requisite for such an undertaking. The time, however, which he gave to that great master, was not thrown away. He must have come back from the study with his mind refreshed, and its powers invigorated by contemplating so nearly the most skilful delineation that had ever been made of human nature, according to that view in which it most suited his own genius to look at it.

On his return from a visit to Scotland, where a pleasant story is told of his being introduced to his mother as a stranger, and of her discovery of him after some time, with a burst of maternal affection, in consequence of his smiling, he engaged (1756) in an occupation that was not likely to make him a wiser, and certainly did not make him a happier man. The celebrity obtained by the Monthly Review had raised up a rival publication, under the name of the Critical. The share which Smollett had in the latter is left in some uncertainty. Doctor Anderson tells us, that he undertook the chief direction; and Mr. Nichols,[2] that he assisted Archibald Hamilton the printer. Whatever his part might be, the performance of it was enough to waste his strength with ignoble labour, to embitter his temper by useless altercation, and to draw on him contempt and insult from those who, however they surpassed him in learning, could scarcely be regarded as his superiors in native vigour and fertility of mind. "Sure I," said Gray, in a letter to Mason, "am something a better judge than all the man-midwives and presbyterian parsons that ever were born. Pray give me leave to ask you, do you find yourself tickled with the commendations of such people? (for you have your share of these too) I dare say not; your vanity has certainly a better taste. And can then the censure of such critics move you?" And Warburton, who had probably been exasperated in the same way, called his History of England the nonsense of a vagabond Scot.

In the same year was published a Compendium of Authentic and Entertaining Voyages, in seven volumes, which was said to have been made under his superintendence. We have his own word [3], that he had written a very small part of it. In 1757, his Reprisal, or the Tars of Old England, an entertainment in two acts, in which the scene throughout is laid on board ship, and which describes seamen in his usual happy vein, was acted at Drury-lane with tolerable success. In 1758, he published his History of England from the Invasion of Julius Caesar to the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1748, four volumes. Of this work, hasty as it was, having been compiled in fourteen months, ten thousand copies were speedily sold.

Some strictures in the Critical Review, which, in order to screen the printer of it, he generously avowed himself to have written, once more exposed him to a legal prosecution. The offensive passages were occasioned by a pamphlet, in which Admiral Knowles had vindicated himself from some reflections that were incidentally cast on him in the course of Sir John Mordaunt's trial for the failure of a secret expedition on the coast of France, near Rochefort. In his comments on the pamphlet, Smollett had stigmatized Knowles, the author of it, as "an admiral without conduct, an engineer without knowledge, an officer without resolution, and a man without veracity." It can scarcely be wondered, if, after such provocation, the party injured was not deterred by menaces, or diverted by proposals of agreement, from seeking such reparation as the law would afford him. This reparation the law did not fail to give; and Smollett was sentenced to pay a penalty of one hundred pounds, and to be confined for three months in the prison of the King's Bench. Cervantes wrote his Don Quixote in a gaol; and Smollett resolved, since he was now in one, that he would write a Don Quixote too. It maybe said of the Spaniard, according to Falstaff's boast, "that he is not only witty in himself, but the cause that wit is in other men;" and among the many attempts at imitation, to which the admirable original has given rise, Sir Launcelot Greaves is not one of the worst. That a young man, whose brain had been slightly affected by a disappointment in love, should turn knight-errant, at a time when books of chivalry were no longer in vogue, is not, indeed, in the first instance, very probable. But we are contented to overlook this defect in favour of the many original touches of character, and striking views of life, particularly in the mad-house, and the prison into which he leads his hero, and which he has depicted with the force of Hogarth. If my recollection does not mislead me, he will be found in some parts of this novel to have had before him the Pharsamond of Marivaux, another copy of Cervantes. But it does not anywhere like Count Fathom, betray symptoms of being a mere translation. Sir Launcelot Greaves was first printed piecemeal in the British Magazine, or Monthly Repository, a miscellany to which Goldsmith was also a contributor. It has the recommendation of being much less gross and indelicate than any other of his novels.

During the same period, 1761 and 1762, he published, in numbers, four volumes of a Continuation of his History of England; and in 1765, a fifth, which brought it down to that time.

Not contented with occupation under which an ordinary man would have sunk, he undertook, on the 29th of May, 1762, to publish the Briton, a weekly paper, in defence of the Earl of Bute, on that day appointed first commissioner of the treasury; and continued it till the 12th of February in the ensuing year, about two months before the retirement of that nobleman from office. By his patron he complained that he was not properly supported; and he incurred the hostility of Wilkes, who had before been his staunch friend, but who espoused the party in opposition to the Minister, by an attack, the malignance of which no provocation could have justified.

In 1763, his name was prefixed, in conjunction with that of Francklin, the Greek professor at Cambridge, and translator of Sophocles and Lucian, to a version of the works of Voltaire, in twenty-seven volumes. To this he contributed, according to his own account, a small part, including all the notes historical and critical. To the Modern Universal History, which was published about the same time, he also acknowledged himself to be a contributor, though of no very large portion.

His life had hitherto been subjected to the toil and anxiety of one doomed to earn a precarious subsistence by his pen. Though designed by nature for the light and pleasant task of painting the humours and follies of men, he had been compelled to undergo the work of a literary drudge. Though formed to enjoy the endearments of friendship, his criticisms had made those who were before indifferent to him his enemies; and his polities, those whom he had loved, the objects of his hatred. The smile, which the presence of his mother for a moment recalled, had almost deserted his features. Still we may suppose it to have lightened them up occasionally, in those hours of leisure when he was allowed to unbend himself in the society of a wife, with whom he seems always to have lived happily, and of an only daughter, who was growing up to share with her his caresses, and to whom both looked as the future support of their age.

[Greek: Tautae, gegaetha, kapilaethomai kakon' Haed anti pollon esti moi parapsychae, Aeolis, tithaenae, baktron, haegemon hodou]

In her, rejoicing, I forgot mine ills. I have lost much; but she remains, my comfort, My city and my nurse, my staff and guide.

He had bemoaned his distresses as an author; but was now to feel calamity of a different kind. This only daughter was taken from him by death, in her fifteenth year. Henceforward he was, with some short intervals, a prey to querulousness and disease. Soon after this loss (in June, 1763,) being resolved to try what change of climate would do for him, he set out with his disconsolate partner on a journey through France and Italy. On quitting his own country, he describes himself "traduced by malice, persecuted by faction, abandoned by false patrons, and overwhelmed by the sense of a private calamity, which it was not in the power of fortune to repair." The account which he published of this expedition on his return, shews that he did not derive from it the relief which he had expected. The spleen with which he contemplated every object that presented itself to him, was ridiculed by Sterne, who gave him the name of Smelfungus. With this abatement, the narration has much to interest and amuse, and conveys some information by which a traveller might perhaps still profit. When he brings before us the driver pointing to the gibbeted criminal whom he had himself betrayed, and unconsciously discovering his own infamy to Smollett, we might suppose ourselves to be reading a highly wrought incident in one of his own fictions. His prognostics of the approaching Revolution in France are so remarkable, that I am tempted to transcribe them. "The King of France, in order to give strength and stability to his administration, ought to have sense to adopt a sage plan of economy, and vigour of mind sufficient to execute it in all its parts with the most rigorous exactness. He ought to have courage enough to find fault, and even to punish the delinquents, of what quality soever they may be; and the first act of reformation ought to be a total abolition of all the farms. There are undoubtedly many marks of relaxation in the reins of the French government; and in all probability, the subjects of France will be the first to take the advantage of it. There is at present a violent fermentation of different principles among them, which under the reign of a very weak prince, or during a long minority, may produce a great change in the constitution. In proportion to the progress of reason and philosophy, which have made great advances in this kingdom [**kingfrom in original], superstition loses ground; ancient prejudices give way; a spirit of freedom takes the ascendant. All the learned laity of France, detest the hierarchy as a plan of despotism, founded on imposture and usurpation. The protestants, who are very numerous in the southern parts, abhor it with all the rancour of religious fanaticism. Many of the Commons, enriched by commerce and manufacture, grow impatient of those odious distinctions, which exclude them from the honours and privileges due to their importance in the commonwealth; and all the parliaments or tribunals of justice in the kingdom seem bent upon asserting their rights and independence in the face of the king's prerogative, and even at the expense of his power and authority. Should any prince, therefore, be seduced, by evil counsellors, or misled by his own bigotry, to take some arbitrary step that may be extremely disagreable to all those communities, without having spirit to exert the violence of his power for the support of his measures, he will become equally detested and despised, and the influence of the Commons will insensibly encroach upon the pretensions of the crown." (Travels through France and Italy, c. xxxvi. Smollett's Works, vol. v. p. 536.) This presentiment deserves to be classed with that prophecy of Harrington in his Oceana, of which some were fond enough to hope the speedy fulfilment at the beginning of the revolution. Smollett passed the greater part of his time abroad at Nice, but proceeded also to Rome and Florence.

About a year after he had returned from the continent (in June, 1766,) he again visited his native country, where he had the satisfaction to find his mother and sister still living. At Edinburgh he met with the two Humes, Robertson, Adam Smith, Blair, and Ferguson; but the bodily ailments, under which he was labouring, left him little power of enjoying the society of men who had newly raised their country to so much eminence in literature. To his friend, Dr. Moore, then a chirurgeon at Glasgow, who accompanied him from that place, to the banks of Loch Lomond, he wrote, in the February following, that his expedition into Scotland had been productive of nothing but misery and disgust, adding, that he was convinced his brain had been in some measure affected; for that he had had a kind of coma vigil upon him from April to November, without intermission. He was at this time at Bath, where two chirurgeons, whom he calls the most eminent in England, and whose names were Middleton and Sharp, had so far relieved him from some of the most painful symptoms of his malady, particularly an inveterate ulcer in the arm, that he pronounced himself to be better in health and spirits than during any part of the seven preceding years. But the flattering appearance which his disorder assumed was not of long continuance. A letter written to him by David Hume, on the 18th of July following, shews that either the state of his health, or the narrowness of his means, or perhaps both these causes together, made him desirous of obtaining the consulship of Nice or Leghorn. But neither the solicitations of Hume, nor those of the Duchess of Hamilton, could prevail on the Minister, Lord Shelburne, to confer on him either of these appointments. In the next year, September 21, 1768, the following paragraph in a letter from Hume convinced him that he had nothing to expect from any consideration for his necessities in that quarter. "What is this you tell me of your perpetual exile and of your never returning to this country? I hope that, as this idea arose from the bad state of your health, it will vanish on your recovery, which, from your past experience, you may expect from those happier climates to which you are retiring; after which, the desire of revisiting your native country will probably return upon you, unless the superior cheapness of foreign countries prove an obstacle, and detain you there. I could wish that means had been fallen on to remove this objection, and that at least it might be equal to you to live anywhere, except when the consideration of your health gave the preference to one climate above another. But the indifference of ministers towards literature, which has been long, and indeed almost always is the case in England, gives little prospect of any alteration in this particular."