Mona on Snowdon calls— Hail, thou harp of Phrygian frame—

and

Hark! heard ye not yon footstep dread—

of which it is scarcely too much to say that in some parts they remind us of the ancient tragedians.

In each of his two Tragedies, the incidents are conducted with so much skill, and there is so much power of moving the affections, that one is tempted to wish he had pursued this line, though he perhaps would never have done any thing much better in it. One great fault is, that the dramatis personae are too much employed in pointing out the Claudes and Salvator Rosas, with which they are surrounded. They seem to want nothing but long poles in their hands to make them very good conductors over a gallery of pictures. When Earl Orgar, on seeing the habitation of his daughter, begins—

How nobly does this venerable wood, Gilt with the glories of the orient sun, Embosom yon fair mansion! The soft air Salutes me with most cool and temperate breath And, as I tread, the flower-besprinkled lawn Sends up a cloud of fragance—

and Aulus Didius opens the other play with a description somewhat more appropriate:

This is the secret centre of the isle: Here, Romans, pause, and let the eye of wonder Gaze on the solemn scene; behold yon oak, How stern he frowns, and with his broad brown arms Chills the pale plain beneath him: mark yon altar, The dark stream brawling round its rugged base, These cliffs, these yawning caverns, this wide circus, Skirted with unhewn stone: they awe my soul, As if the very genius of the place Himself appear'd, and with terrific tread Stalk'd through his drear domain—

we could fancy that both these personages had come fresh from the study of the English garden. The distresses of Elfrida, and the heroism of Caractacus, are in danger of becoming objects of secondary consideration, while we are admiring the shades of Harewood, and the rocks of Mona. He has attempted to shelter himself under the authority of Sophocles; but though there are some exquisite touches of landscape painting in that drama, the poet has introduced them with a much more sparing hand. It is said that Hurd pruned away a great deal more luxuriance of this kind, with which the first draught of the Elfrida was overrun; and we learn from Gray, in his admirable letter of criticism on the Caractacus, that the opening of that tragedy was, as it at first stood, even much more objectionable than at present. Such descriptions are better suited to the Masque, a species of drama founded on some wild and romantic adventure, and of which the interest does not depend on the manners or the passions. It is therefore more in its place in Argentile and Curan, which he calls a legendary drama, written on the old English model. He composed it after the other two, and during the short time that his wife lived; but, like several of his poems, it was not published till the year of his decease. The beginning promises well: and the language of our old writers is at first tolerably well imitated. There is afterwards too much trick and too many prettinesses; such is that of the nosegay which the princess finds, and concludes from its tasteful arrangement to be the work of princely fingers. The subordinate parts, of the Falconer, and Ralph, his deputy, are not sustained according to the author's first conception of them. The story is well put together. He has, perhaps, nothing else that is equal in expression to the following passage.

Thou know'st, when we did quit our anchor'd barks, We cross'd a pleasant valley; rather say A nest of sister vales, o'erhung with hills Of varied form and foliage; every vale Had its own proper brook, the which it hugg'd In its green breast, as if it fear'd to lose The treasur'd crystal. You might mark the course Of these cool rills more by the ear than eye, For, though they oft would to the sun unfold Their silver as they past, 'twas quickly lost; But ever did they murmur. On the verge Of one of these clear streams, there stood a cell O'ergrown with moss and ivy; near to which, On a fall'n trunk, that bridged the little brook A hermit sat. Of him we ask'd the name Of this sweet valley, and he call'd it Hakeness.

(Argentile and Curan, A, 1.)

In two lines more, we are unluckily reminded that this is no living landscape.

Thither, my Sewold, go, or pitch thy tent Near to thy ships, for they are near the scene.

Since the time of Mason, this rage for describing what is called scenery (and scenery indeed it often is, having little of nature in it) has infected many of our play-writers and novelists.

Argentile's intention of raising a rustic monument to the memory of his father, is taken from Shakspeare.

This grove my sighs shall consecrate; in shape Of some fair tomb, here will I heap the turf And call it Adelbright's. Yon aged yew, Whose rifted trunk, rough bark, and gnarled roots Give solemn proof of its high ancientry, Shall canopy the shrine. There's not a flower, That hangs the dewy head, and seems to weep, As pallid blue-bells, crow-tyes and marsh lilies, But I'll plant here, and if they chance to wither, My tears shall water them; there's not a bird That trails a sad soft note, as ringdoves do, Or twitters painfully like the dun martlet, But I will lure by my best art, to roost And plain them in these branches. Larks and finches Will I fright hence, nor aught shall dare approach This pensive spot, save solitary things That love to mourn as I do.

How cold and lifeless are these pretty lines, when compared to the "wench-like words," of the young princes, which suggested them.

If he be gone he'll make his grave a bed With female fairies will his tomb be haunted, And worms will not come to thee.

Arv. With fairest flow'rs, Whilst summer lasts, and I live here, Fidele, I'll sweeten thy sad grave. Thou shalt not lack The flower that's like thy face, pale primrose; nor The azured hare-bell, like thy veins; no, nor The leaf of eglantine, whom not to slander, Out-sweeten'd not thy breath: the ruddock would With charitable bill (O bill, fore-shaming The rich-left heirs, that let their fathers lie Without a monument!) bring thee all this; Yea, and furr'd moss besides, when flowers are none, To winter-ground thy corse.

This is grief, seeking to relieve and forget itself in fiction and fancy; the other, though the occasion required an expression of deeper sorrow, is a mere pomp of feeling.

His blank verse in the English Garden has not the majesty of Akenside, the sweetness of Dyer, or the terseness of Armstrong. Its characteristic is delicacy; but it is a delicacy approaching nearer to weakness than to grace. It has more resemblance to the rill that trickles over its fretted channel, than to the stream that winds with a full tide, and "warbles as it flows." The practice of cutting it into dialogue had perhaps crippled him. As he has made the characters in his plays too attentive to the decorations of the scene-painter, so in the last book of the English Garden he has turned his landscape into a theatre, for the representation of a play. The story of Nerina is too long and too complicated for an episode in a didactic poem. He will seldom bear to be confronted with those writers whom he is found either by accident or design to resemble. His picture of the callow young in a bird's-nest is, I think, with some alteration, copied from Statius.

—Her young meanwhile Callow and cold, from their moss-woven nest Peep forth; they stretch their little eager throats Broad to the wind, and plead to the lone spray Their famish'd plaint importunately shrill.

(English Garden, b. 3.)

—Volucrum sic turba recentum, Cum reducem longo prospexit in aethere matrem, Ire cupit contra, summaque e margine nidi Extat hians; jam jamque cadat ni pectore toto Obstet aperta parens et amantibus increpet alis.

(Theb. lib. x. 458.)

Oppian's imitation of this is happier.

[Greek: Os dhopot aptaenessi pherei bosin dortalichoisi Maetaer, eiarinae Zephurou protangelos ornis, Oi dapalon truzontes epithroskousi kaliae, Gaethusunoi peri maetri, kai imeirontes edodaes Xeilos anaptussousin apan depi doma lelaeken Andros xeinodochoio liga klazousi neossois.]

(Halieut. I. in. 248.)

Hurd, in the letter he addressed to him on the Marks of Imitation, observed, that the imagery with which the Ode to Memory opens, is borrowed from Strada's Prolusions. The chorus in Elfrida, beginning

Hail to thy living light, Ambrosial morn! all hail thy roseate ray:

is taken from the Hymnus in Auroram, by Flaminio.

His Sappho, a lyrical drama, is one of the few attempts that have been made to bring amongst us that tuneful trifle, the modern Opera of the Italians. It has been transferred by Mr. Mathias into that language, to which alone it seemed properly to belong. Mr. Glasse has done as much for Caractacus by giving it up to the Greek. Of the two Odes, which are all, excepting some few fragments, that remain to us of the Lesbian poetess, he has introduced Translations into his drama. There is more glitter of phrase than in the versions made, if I recollect right, by Ambrose Phillips, which are inserted in the Spectator, No. 222 and 229; but much less of that passionate emotion which marks the original. Most of my readers will remember that which begins,

Blest as the immortal Gods is he, The youth who fondly sits by thee, And hears and sees thee, all the while, Softly speak and sweetly smile.

It is thus rendered by Mason:

The youth that gazes on thy charms, Rivals in bliss the Gods on high, Whose ear thy pleasing converse warms, Thy lovely smile his eye.

But trembling awe my bosom heaves, When placed those heavenly charms among; The sight my voice of power bereaves, And chains my torpid tongue.

Through every thrilling fibre flies The subtle flame; in dimness drear My eyes are veil'd; a murmuring noise Glides tinkling through my ear;

Death's chilly dew my limbs o'erspreads, Shiv'ring, convuls'd, I panting lye; And pale, as is the flower that fades, I droop, I faint, I die.

The rudest language, in which there was anything of natural feeling, would be preferable to this cold splendour. In the other ode, he comes into contrast with Akenside.

But lo! to Sappho's melting airs Descends the radiant queen of love; She smiles, and asks what fonder cares Her suppliant's plaintive measures move. Why is my faithful maid distrest? Who, Sappho, wounds thy tender breast? Say, flies he? soon he shall pursue: Shuns he thy gifts? he soon shall give: Slights he thy sorrows? he shall grieve, And soon to all thy wishes bow.

Akenside, b. 1, Ode 13.

This, though not unexceptionable, and particularly in the last verse, has yet a tenderness and spirit utterly wanting in Mason.

What from my power would Sappho claim? Who scorns thy flame? What wayward boy Disdains to yield thee joy for joy? Soon shall he court the bliss he flies; Soon beg the boon he now denies, And, hastening back to love and thee, Repay the wrong with extacy.

In the Pygmalion, a lyrical scene, he has made an effort equally vain, to represent the impassioned eloquence of Jean Jaques Rousseau.

In his shorter poems, there is too frequent a recurrence of the same machinery, and that, such as it needed but little invention to create. Either the poet himself, or some other person, is introduced, musing by a stream or lake, or in a forest, when the appearance of some celestial visitant, muse, spirit, or angel, suddenly awakens his attention.

Soft gleams of lustre tremble through the grove, And sacred airs of minstrelsy divine Are harp'd around, and flutt'ring pinions move. Ah, hark! a voice, to which the vocal rill, The lark's extatic harmony is rude; Distant it swells with many a holy trill, Now breaks wide warbling from yon orient cloud.

Elegy 2.

And,

But hark! methinks I hear her hallow'd tongue! In distant trills it echoes o'er the tide; Now meets mine ear with warbles wildly free, As swells the lark's meridian extacy.

Ode vi.

After the extatic notes have been heard, all vanishes away like some figure in the clouds, which

Even with a thought, The rack dislimns, and makes it indistinct As water is in water.

His abstractions are often exalted into cherubs and seraphs. It is the "cherub Beauty sits on Nature's rustic shrine;" "heaven-descended Charity;" "Constancy, heaven-born queen;" Liberty, "heaven-descending queen." Take away from him these aerial beings and their harps, and you will rob him of his best treasures.

He holds nearly the same place among our poets, that Peters does among our painters. He too is best known by—

The angel's floating pomp, the seraph's glowing grace;

and he too, instead of that gravity and depth of tone which might seem most accordant to his subjects, treats them with a lightness of pencil that is not far removed from flimsiness.

In the thirteenth Ode, on the late Duchess of Devonshire, the only lady of distinguished rank to whom the poets of modern times have loved to pay their homage, and in the sixteenth, which he entitles Palinodia, he provokes a comparison with Mr. Coleridge. One or two extracts from each will shew the difference between the artificial heat of the schools and the warmth of a real enthusiasm.

Art thou not she whom fav'ring fate In all her splendour drest, To show in how supreme a state A mortal might be blest? Bade beauty, elegance, and health, Patrician birth, patrician wealth, Their blessings on her darling shed; Bade Hymen, of that generous race Who freedom's fairest annals grace, Give to thy love th'illustrious head.

Mason.

Light as a dream, your days their circlets ran, From all that teaches brotherhood to man Far, far removed; from want, from hope, from fear, Enchanting music lull'd your infant ear, Obeisant praises sooth'd your infant heart: Emblasonments and old ancestral crests, With many a bright obtrusive form of art, Detain'd your eye from nature; stately vests, That veiling strove to deck your charms divine, Were your's unearn'd by toil.

Coleridge, Ode to Georgiana, Duchess of Gloucester.

Say did I err, chaste Liberty, When, warm with youthful fire, I gave the vernal fruits to thee, That ripen'd on my lyre? When, round thy twin-born sister's shrine I taught the flowers of verse to twine And blend in one their fresh perfume; Forbade them, vagrant and disjoin'd, To give to every wanton wind Their fragrance and their bloom?

Mason.

Ye clouds, that far above me float and pause, Whose pathless march no mortal may controul! Ye ocean waves, that, whereso'er ye roll, Yield homage only to eternal laws! Ye woods, that listen to the night-birds singing, Midway the smooth and perilous steep reclin'd; Save when your own imperious branches swinging, Have made a solemn music of the wind! Where, like a man belov'd of God, Through glooms, which never woodman trod, How oft, pursuing fancies holy, My moonlight way o'er flow'ring weeds I wound, Inspir'd beyond the guess of folly, By each rude shape and wild unconquerable sound! O, ye loud waves, and O, ye forests high, And O, ye clouds, that far above me soar'd! Thou rising sun! thou blue rejoicing sky! Yea, every thing that is and will be free, Bear witness for me wheresoe'er ye be, With what deep worship I have still adored The spirit of divinest liberty.

Coleridge. France, An Ode.

The Elegy written in a churchyard in South Wales, is not more below Gray's.

Of eagerness to obtain poetical distinction he had much more than Gray; but in tact, judgment, and learning, was exceedingly his inferior. He was altogether a man of talent, if I may be allowed to use the word talent according to the sense it bore in our old English; for he had a vehement desire of excellence, but wanted either the depth of mind or the industry that was necessary for producing anything that was very excellent.

FOOTNOTES [1] It is said, that the best likeness of Gray is to be found in the figure of Scipio, in an engraving for the edition of Gil Blas, printed at Amsterdam, 1735, vol. iv. p. 94.—See Mr. Mitford's Gray, vol. i. lxxxi. A copy of this figure would be acceptable to many of Gray's admirers. [2] Essays on English Church Music, Mason's Works, vol. iii. p. 370.

* * * * *

OLIVER GOLDSMITH.

Oliver, the second son of Charles and Anne Goldsmith, was born in Ireland, on the 10th of November, 1728, at Pallas, in the Parish of Forgany or Forney in the County of Longford. By a mistake made in the note of his entrance in the college register, he is represented to have been a native of the county of Westmeath.

His father, who had before resided at Smith-hill in the county of Roscommon, (which has by some been erroneously said to be the birth-place of his son, Oliver,) removed thence to Pallas, and afterwards to his Rectory of Kilkenny West, in the county of Westmeath; and in the latter of these parishes, at Lissoy, or Auburn, he built the house described as the Village-Preacher's modest mansion in the Deserted Village. His mother was daughter of the Rev. Oliver Jones, master of the diocesan school at Elphin. Their family consisted of five sons and three daughters.

In a letter from his elder sister, Catherine, the wife of Daniel Hodson, Esq. inserted in the Life of Goldsmith, which an anonymous writer, whom I suppose to have been Cowper's friend, Mr. Rose, from a passage in Mr. Nichol's Literary Anecdotes, prefixed to his Miscellaneous Works, wonders are told of his early predilection for the poetical art; but those who have observed the amplification with which the sprightly sallies of childhood are related by domestic fondness, will listen to such narrations with some abatement of confidence. It seems probable, that a desire of literary distinction might have been infused into his youthful mind by hearing of the reputation of his countryman, Parnell, with whom, as we learn from his life of that poet, his father and uncle were acquainted.

He received the first rudiments of learning from a school-master who taught in the village where his parents resided, and who had served as a quarter-master during the war of the Succession in Spain; and from the romantic accounts which this man delighted to give of his travels, Goldsmith is supposed, by his sister, to have contracted his propensity for a wandering life. From hence he was removed successively to the school at Elphin, of which the Rev. Mr. Griffin was master, and to that of Athlone; kept by the Rev. Mr. Campbell; and lastly, was placed under the care of the Rev. Patrick Hughes, of Edgeworthstown, in the county of Longford, to whose instruction he acknowledged himself to have been more indebted than to that of his other teachers.

It was probably that untowardness in his outward appearance, which never afterwards left him, that made his schoolfellows consider him a dull boy, fit only to be the butt of their ridicule.

On his last return after the holidays to the house of his master, an adventure befel him, which afterwards was made the ground-work of the plot in one of his comedies. Journeying along leisurely, and being inclined to enjoy such diversion as a guinea, that had been given him for pocket-money, would afford him on the road, he was overtaken by night at a small town called Ardagh. Here, inquiring for the best house in the place, he was directed to a gentleman's habitation that literally answered that description. Under a delusion, the opposite to that entertained by the knight of La Mancha, he rides up to the supposed inn; and having given his horse in charge to the ostler, enters without ceremony; The master of the house, aware of the mistake, resolves to favour it; and is still less inclined to undeceive his guest, when he finds out from his discourse that he is the son of an acquaintance and a neighbour. A good supper and a bottle or two of wine are called for, of which the host, with his wife and daughter, are invited to partake; and a hot cake is providently ordered for the morrow's breakfast. The young traveller's surprise may be conceived, when in calling for his bill, he finds under what roof he has been lodged, and with whom he had been putting himself on such terms of familiarity.

In June, 1745, he was sent a sizer to Trinity College, Dublin, and placed under the tuition of Mr. Wilder, one of the fellows, who is represented to have been of a temper so morose as to excite the strongest disgust in the mind of his pupil. He did not pass through his academical course without distinction. Dr. Kearney (who was afterwards provost), in a note on Boswell's Life of Johnson, informs us, that Goldsmith gained a premium at the Christmas examination, which, according to Mr. Malone, is more honourable than those obtained at the other examinations, inasmuch as it is the only one that determines the successful candidate to be the first in literary merit. This is enough to disprove what Johnson is reported to have said of him, that he was a plant that flowered late; that there appeared nothing remarkable about him when he was young; though when he had got into fame, one of his friends began to recollect something of his being distinguished at college. Whether he took a degree is not known.[1] On one occasion he narrowly escaped expulsion for having been concerned in the rescue of a student, who, in violation of the supposed privileges of the University had been arrested for debt within its precincts: but his superiors contented themselves with passing a public censure on him.

Having been deprived, in 1747, by death, of his father, who had with difficulty supported him at college, he became a dependant on the bounty of his uncle,[2] the Rev. Thomas Contarine; and after fluctuating in his choice of an employment in life, was at length established as a medical student at Edinburgh, in his twenty-fifth year.

Dr. Strean mentions, that he was at one time intended for the church, but that appearing before the Bishop, when he went to be examined for orders, in a pair of scarlet breeches, he was rejected.

From Edinburgh, when he had completed his attendance on the usual course of lectures, he removed to Leyden, with the intention of continuing his studies at that University.

Johnson used to speak with coarse contempt of Goldsmith's want of veracity. "Noll," said he to a lady of much distinction in literature, who repeated to me his words, "Noll, madam, would lie through an inch board." In this instance, Johnson's known partiality to Goldsmith fixes the stigma so deeply, that we can place no reliance on the account he gave of what befel him, when he imagined himself to be no longer within reach of detection. In a letter to his uncle he relates that, before going to Holland, he had embarked in a vessel for Bordeaux, that the ship was driven by a storm into Newcastle-upon-Tyne, that he was there seized on suspicion of being engaged with the rebels, and thrown into prison; that the vessel, meanwhile proceeding on her voyage, was wrecked at the mouth of the Garonne, where all the crew perished; and that, at the end of a fortnight, being liberated, he set sail in a vessel bound for Holland, and in nine days arrived safely at Rotterdam. After a residence of about a twelve-month at Leyden, he was involved in difficulties, occasioned by his love of gambling, a ridiculous inclination that adhered to him for the remainder of his life. He now set out with the resolution of visiting the principal parts of the Continent on foot; and, according to his own report of himself, made his way by a variety of stratagems, sometimes recruiting his finances by the acquisition of small sums proposed in the foreign universities to public disputants; at others, securing himself a hospitable reception by the exercise of a moderate share of skill in playing the flute—his "tuneless pipe," as he calls it, in that passage of The Traveller, where he alludes to this method of supplying his wants.

Thus, if we are to believe him, he passed through the Netherlands, France, and Germany, into the Swiss Cantons; and in that country, so well suited to awaken the feelings of a poet, he composed a part of The Traveller, and sent it to his elder brother, a clergyman in Ireland. Continuing his journey into Italy, he visited Venice, Verona, Florence, and Padua; and having spent six months at the University in the last mentioned city, returned through France to England in 1756. From his Inquiry into the Present State of Learning, we collect, that when at Paris he attended the Chemical Lectures of Rouelle.

In the meantime his uncle had died; and he found himself, on his arrival in London, so destitute even of a friend to whom he could refer for a recommendation, that he with difficulty obtained first the place of an usher to a school, and afterwards that of assistant in the laboratory of a chemist. At last, meeting with Doctor Sleigh, formerly his fellow-student at Edinburgh, he was enabled, by the kindness of this worthy physician, who appears in so amiable a light as the patron of Barry, in the Memoirs of that painter, to avail himself more effectually of his knowledge in medicine, and to earn a subsistence, however scanty, by the practice of that art.

The Bankside in Southwark, and the Temple, or its vicinity, were successively the places where he fixed his residence. To his professional gains he soon added the emoluments arising from his exertions as an author. In 1758, he took a share in the conduct of the literary journal called the Monthly Review: and for the space of seven or eight months, while the employment lasted, lodged in the house of Mr. Griffiths, the proprietor of it. The next year he contributed several papers to the Lady's Magazine, and to the Bee, a collection of essays, and published his Inquiry into the Present State of Polite Learning, in which he speaks of the Monthly Review in terms not very respectful. There is, I doubt, in this little essay more display than reality of erudition. It would not be easy to say where he had discovered "that Dante was persecuted by the critics as long as he lived." The complaints he made of the hard fate of authors, and his censure of odes and of blank verse, were well calculated to conciliate the good will, and to excite the sympathy of Johnson, with whom he soon became intimate.

Poverty and indiscretion were other claims, by which the benevolent commiseration of Johnson could scarcely fail to be awakened; and his acquaintance with Goldsmith had not subsisted long, when an occasion presented itself for rescuing him from the consequences of those evils. One day, calling on our poet, at his lodgings in Wine-office Court, Fleet-street, he found him under arrest for debt, and engaged in violent altercation with his landlady. Taking from him the Vicar of Wakefield, then just written, Johnson proceeded with it to Newbery the Bookseller, from whom he obtained sixty pounds for his friend; and Goldsmith's good humour, and the complaisance of his hostess, returning with this accession of wealth, they spent the remainder of the day together in harmony. In this novel, like Fielding and Smollett, he exhibits a very natural view of familiar life. Inferior to the first in the artful management of his story, and to the latter in the broader traits of comic character, and not equal to either in variety and fertility, he is, nevertheless, to be preferred to both for his power of passing from the ludicrous to the tender, and for his regard to moral decency. It was not printed till some years after, in 1766, when his reputation had been in some degree established by The Traveller. Meanwhile he published, in a periodical work called the Ledger, his Letters from a Citizen of the World to his Friend in the East, in which, under the character of a Chinese philosopher, he describes the customs and manners of Europeans. But this assumed personage is an awkward concealment for the good-humoured Irishman, with his never-failing succession of droll stories. Of these there are too many; and the want of any thing like a continued interest is sensibly felt. I do not know of any book, on the same plan, that is to be compared with the Persian Letters of Montesquieu.

In the spring of 1763 he had lodgings in Islington, and continuing there till the following year, he revised several petty publications for Newbery, and wrote the Letters on English History, which, from their being published as the letters of a nobleman to his son, have been attributed by turns to the Earl of Orrery and Lord Lyttelton.

His next removal was to the Temple, where he remained for the rest of his life, not without indulging a project, equally magnificent and visionary, of making a journey into the East, in order to bring back with him such useful inventions as had not found their way into Britain. He was ridiculed by Johnson, for fancying himself competent to so arduous a task, when he was utterly unacquainted with our own mechanical arts. He would have brought back a grinding barrow, said Johnson, and thought that he had furnished a wonderful improvement. The more feasible plan of returning with honour and advantage to his native country, was held out to him through the patronage of the Earl of Northumberland. That nobleman, who was then the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, sent for him, and made him an offer of his protection. Goldsmith, with his characteristic simplicity, replied, that he had a brother there, a clergyman, who stood in need of help; that, for himself, he looked to the booksellers for support. This reliance happily did not deceive him. By the rewards of his literary labours, he was placed in a comparative state of opulence, in which his propensity for play alone occasioned a diminution.

In 1765, appeared The Hermit, The Traveller, and the Essays.

About this time a club was formed, at the proposal of Reynolds, which consisted, besides that eminent painter and our poet, of Johnson, Burke, Burke's father-in-law, Doctor Nugent, Sir John Hawkins, Langton, Beauclerk, and Chamier, who met and supped together every Friday night, at the Turk's Head, in Gerard-street, Soho. The bookseller's shop belonging to Dr. Griffiths, called the Dunciad, in the neighbourhood of Catherine-street, was another of his favourite haunts.

His comedy of the Good Natured Man, though it had received the sanction of Burke's approval, did not please Garrick sufficiently to induce him to venture it on his theatre. It was, therefore, brought forward by Colman, at Covent Garden, on the 29th of January, 1769; but having been represented for nine nights, did not longer maintain its place on the stage, though it is one of those comedies which afford most amusement in the closet. For his conception of the character of Croaker, the author acknowledged that he was indebted to Johnson's Suspirius, in the Rambler. That of Honeywood, in its undistinguishing benevolence, hears some resemblance to his own.

In the next year he published his Deserted Village; and entered into an agreement with Davies, to compile a History of England, in four octavo volumes, for the sum of five hundred pounds in the space of two years; before the expiration of which period, he made a compact with the same bookseller for an abridgment of the Roman History, which he had before published. The History of Greece, which has appeared since his death, cannot with certainty be ascribed to his pen.

In 1771, he wrote the Life of Bolingbroke, prefixed to the Dissertation on Parties.

The reception which his former play had met did not discourage him from trying his fate with a second. But it was not till after much solicitation that Colman was prevailed on to allow The Mistakes of a Night, or She Stoops to Conquer, to be acted at Covent Garden, on the 15th of March, 1773. A large party of zealous friends, with Johnson at their head, attended to witness the representation and to lead the plaudits of the house; a scheme which Mr. Cumberland describes to have been preconcerted with much method, but to have been near failing in consequence of some mistakes in the execution of the manoeuvres, which aroused the displeasure of the audience. That the piece is enlivened by such droll incidents, as to be nearly allied to farce, Johnson with justice observed, declaring, however, that "he knew of no comedy for many years that had so much exhilarated an audience; that had so much answered the great end of comedy, that of making an audience merry."

The History of the Earth and Animated Nature, in eight volumes, closed the labours of Goldsmith. This compilation, however recommended by the agreeableness of style usual to its author, is but little prized for its accuracy. In a summary of past events, which are often differently related by writers of authority and credit nearly equal, it is in vain to look for certainty. But when we are presented with a description of natural objects that required only to be looked at in order to be known, we are neither amused nor instructed without some degree of precision. History partakes of the nature of romance. Physiology is more closely connected with science. In the one we must often rest contented with probability. In the other we know that truth is generally to be attained, and therefore expect to find it.

Goldsmith had been for some time subject to attacks of strangury; and having before experienced relief from James's powders, had again recourse to that popular medicine. His medical attendants are said to have remonstrated with him on its unfitness in the stage to which his disorder had reached; but he persevered; and his fever increasing, and some secret distress of mind, under which he owned to Dr. Turton that he laboured, aggravating his bodily complaint, he expired on the 4th of April in his forty-fifth year.

He was privately interred in the Temple burying ground. A monument is erected to his memory in Westminster Abbey, with the following epitaph by Johnson, written at the solicitation of their common friends.

Olivarii Goldsmith, Poetae, Physici, Historici Qui nullum fere scribendi genus Non tetigit, Nullum quod tetigit non ornavit: Seu risus essent movendi, Sive lacrymae, Affectuum potens at lenis dominator: Ingenio sublimis, vividus, versatilis, Oratione grandis, nitidus, venustus: Hoc monumento memoriam coluit Sodalium amor, Amicorum fides, Lectorum veneratio. Natus in Hibernia, Forniae Longfordiensis, In loco cui nomen Pallas. Nov. XXIX, MDCCXXXI. Eblanae literis institutus; Obiit Londini, April. IV. MDCCLXXIV.

It has been questioned whether there is any authority for using the word "tetigit" as it is here employed. I have heard it observed by one, whose opinion on such subjects is decisive, that "contigit" would have better expressed the writer's meaning.

Another epitaph composed by Johnson in Greek, deserves notice, as it shows how strongly his mind was impressed by Goldsmith's abilities.

[Greek: Ton taphon eisoraas ton Olibarioio, koniaen Aphrosi mae semnaen, xeine, podessi patei Oisi memaele phusis, metron charis erga palaion, Klaiete poiaetaen, istorikon, phusikon.]

"Thou beholdest the tomb of Oliver; press not, O stranger, with the foot of folly, the venerable dust. Ye who care for nature, for the charms of song, for the deeds of ancient days, weep for the Historian, the Naturalist, the Poet."

Goldsmith's stature was below the middle height; his limbs, sturdy; his forehead, more prominent than is usual; and his face, almost round, pallid, and marked with the small-pox.

The simpleness, almost approaching to fatuity, of his outward deportment, combined with the power which there was within, brings to our recollection some part of the character of La Fontaine, whom a French lady wittily called the Fable Tree, from his apparent unconsciousness, or rather want of mental responsibility for the admirable productions which he was continually supplying. His propriety and clearness, when he expresses his thoughts with his pen, and his confusion and inability to impart them in conversation, well illustrated the observation of Cicero, that it is very possible for a man to think rightly on any subject, and yet to want the power of conveying his sentiments by speech in fit and becoming language to others. "Fieri potest ut recte quis sentiat, sed id quod sentit polite eloqui non possit." Yet Mr. Cumberland, who was one of his associates, has informed us, "that he had gleams of eloquence."

Johnson said of him that he was not a social man; he never exchanged mind with you. His prevailing foible was a desire of shining in those exterior accomplishments which nature had denied him. Vanity and benevolence had conspired to make him an easy prey to adulation and imposture.

His complaints of the envy by which he found his mind tormented, and especially on the occasion of Johnson's being honoured by an interview with the king, must have made those who heard him, lose all sense of the evil passion, in their amusement at a confession so novel and so pleasant.

One day, we are told, he complained in a mixed company of Lord Camden. "I met him," said he, "at Lord Clare's house in the country, and he took no more notice of me than if I had been an ordinary man." The story of his peach-coloured coat will not soon be forgotten. If—

—in some men Their graces serve them but as enemies,

Goldsmith was one of those in whom their, frailties are more likely to serve them as friends; for they were such as could scarcely fail to assist in appeasing malevolence and conciliating kindness. Be this as it will, he must, with all his weaknesses, be considered as one of the chief ornaments of the age in which he lived.

Comparisons have been made between the situation of the men eminent for literature in Queen Anne's time and at the commencement of the reign of George the Third. In the former, beginning to be disengaged from the court, where they were more at home during the reign of the Charleses, they were falling under the influence of the nobility, amongst whom they generally found their patrons, and often their associates. In the latter, they had been insensibly shaken off alike by the court and the nobles, and were come into the hands of the people and the booksellers. I know not whether they were much the worse for this change. If in the one instance they were rendered more studious of elegance and smartness; in the other, they attained more freedom and force. In the former, they were oftener imitators of the French. In the latter, they followed the dictates of a better sense, and trusted more to their own resources. They lost, indeed, the character of wits, but they aspired to that of instructors. Yet in one respect, and that a material one, it must be owned, that they were sufferers by this alteration in affairs. For the quantity of their labours having become more important under their new masters than it was under their old ones, they had less care of selection, and their originality was weakened by diffusiveness. They indulged themselves but sparingly in the luxury of composing verse, which was too thriftless an occupation to be continued long. They used it, perhaps, as the means of attracting notice to themselves at their first entrance on the world, but not as the staple on which they were afterwards to depend. When the song had drawn a band of hearers around them, it had done its duty. The crowd was to be detained and increased, by expectations of advantage rather than of pleasure. A writer consulted Goldsmith on what subjects he might employ his pen with most profit to himself. "It will be better," said the author of The Traveller and the Deserted Village, laughing indeed, but in good earnest, "to relinquish the draggle-tail muses. For my part, I have found productions in prose more sought after and better paid for." This is, no doubt, the reason that his verse bears so small a proportion to his other writings. Yet it is by the former, added to the few works of imagination which he has left besides, that he will be known to posterity. His histories will probably be superseded by more skilful or more accurate compilations; as they are now read by few who can obtain information nearer to its original sources.

In the natural manner of telling a short and humorous story, he is perhaps surpassed by no writer of prose except Addison. In his Essays, the style preserves a middle way between the gravity of Johnson and the lightness of Chesterfield; but it may often be objected to them, as to the moral writings of Johnson, that they present life to us under a gloomy aspect, and leave an impression of despondence on the mind of the reader.

In his poetry there is nothing ideal. It pleases chiefly by an exhibition of nature in her most homely and familiar views. But from these he selects his objects with due discretion, and omits to represent whatever would occasion unmingled pain or disgust.

His couplets have the same slow and stately march as Johnson's; and if we can suppose similar images of rural and domestic life to have arrested the attention of that writer, we can scarcely conceive that he would have expressed them in different language.

Some of the lines in The Deserted Village are said to be closely copied from a poem by Welsted, called the [Greek: Oikographia]; but I do not think he will be found to have levied larger contributions on it, than most poets have supposed themselves justified in making on the neglected works of their predecessors.

The following particulars relating to this poem, which I have extracted from the letter of Dr. Strean before referred to, cannot fail to gratify that numerous class of readers with whom it has been a favourite from their earliest years.

The poem of The Deserted Village took its origin from the circumstance of General Robert Napper (the grandfather of the gentleman who now lives in the house within half a mile of Lissoy, and built by the General), having purchased an extensive tract of the country surrounding Lissoy, or Auburn; in consequence of which, many families, here called cottiers, were removed to make room for the intended improvements of what was now to become the wide domain of a rich man, warm with the idea of changing the face of his new acquisition; and were forced "with fainting steps," to go in search of "torrid tracts" and "distant climes."

This fact alone might be sufficient to establish the seat of the poem; but there cannot remain a doubt in any unprejudiced mind, when the following are added; viz. that the character of the village-preacher, the above-named Henry, (the brother of the poet,) is copied from nature. He is described exactly as he lived; and his "modest mansion" as it existed. Burn, the name of the village-master, and the site of his school-house, and Catherine Giraghty, a lonely widow;

The wretched matron forced in age for bread To strip the brook with mantling cresses spread;

(and to this day the brook and ditches, near the spot where her cabin stood, abound with cresses) still remain in the memory of the inhabitants, and Catherine's children live in the neighbourhood. The pool, the busy mill, the house where "nut-brown draughts inspired," are still visited as the poetic scene; and the "hawthorn-bush" growing in an open space in front of the house, which I knew to have three trunks, is now reduced to one; the other two having been cut, from time to time, by persons carrying away pieces of it to be made into toys, &c. in honour of the bard, and of the celebrity of his poem. All these contribute to the same proof; and the "decent church," which I attended for upwards of eighteen years, and which "tops the neighbouring hill," is exactly described as seen from Lissoy, the residence of the preacher.

I should have observed, that Elizabeth Delap, who was a parishioner of mine, and died at the age of about ninety, often told me she was the first who put a book into Goldsmith's hand; by which she meant, that she taught him his letters: she was allied to him, and kept a little school.

The Hermit is a pleasing little tale, told with that simplicity which appears so easy, and is in fact so difficult, to be obtained. It was imitated in the Ballad of a Friar of Orders Grey, in Percy's Reliques of English Poetry.

His Traveller was, it is said, pronounced by Mr. Fox to be one of the finest pieces in the English language. Perhaps this sentence was delivered by that great man with some qualification, which was either forgotten or omitted by the reporter of it; otherwise such praise was surely disproportioned to its object.

In this poem, he professes to compare the good and evil which fall to the share of those different nations whose lot he contemplates. His design at setting out is to shew that, whether we consider the blessings to be derived from art or from nature, we shall discover "an equal portion dealt to all mankind." And the conclusion which he draws at the end of the poem would be perfectly just, if these premises were allowed him.

In every government though terrors reign, Though tyrant kings or tyrant laws restrain, How small, of all that human hearts endure, That part which laws or kings can cause or cure! Still to ourselves in every place consign'd, Our own felicity we make or find: With secret course, which no loud streams annoy. Glides the smooth current of domestic joy. The lifted axe, the agonizing wheel, Luke's iron crown, and Damien's bed of steel, To men remote from power but rarely known, Leave reason, faith, and conscience, all our own.

That it matters little or nothing to the happiness of men whether they are governed well or ill, whether they live under fixed and known laws, or at the will of an arbitrary tyrant, is a paradox, the fallacy of which is happily too apparent to need any refutation. Nor is his inference warranted by those particular observations which he makes for the purpose of establishing it. When of Italy he tells us, "that sensual bliss is all this nation knows," how is Italy to be compared either with itself when it was prompted by those "noble aims," of which he speaks, or with that country where he sees

The lords of human kind pass by, Intent on high designs, a thoughtful band, By forms unfashion'd, fresh from nature's hand, Fierce in their native hardiness of soul, True to imagined right, above controul; While e'en the peasant learns these rights to scan, And learns to venerate himself as man?

That good is every where balanced by some evil, none will deny. But that no effort of human courage or prudence can make one scale preponderate over the other, and that a decree of fate has fixed them in eternal equipoise, is an opinion which, if it were seriously entertained, must bind men to a tame and spiritless acquiescence in whatever disadvantages or inconveniences they may chance to find themselves involved, and leave to them the exercise of no other public virtue than that of a blind submission.

His poetry is happily better than his argument. He discriminates with much skill the manners of the several countries that pass in review before him; the illustrations, with which he relieves and varies his main subject, are judiciously interspersed; and as he never raises his tone too far beyond his pitch at the first starting, so he seldom sinks much below it. The thought at the beginning appears to have pleased him; for he has repeated it in "the Citizen of the World:"

Where'er I roam, whatever realms to see, My heart untravel'd fondly turns to thee; Still to my brother turns with ceaseless pain, And drags at each remove a lengthening chain.

"The further I travel, I feel the pain of separation with stronger force; those ties that bind me to my native country and you are still unbroken. By every remove I only drag a greater length of chain."

To the poetical compositions of Goldsmith, in general, may be applied with justice that temperate commendation which he has given to the works of Parnell in his life of that Poet. "At the end of his course the reader regrets that his way has been so short; he wonders that it gave him so little trouble; and so resolves to go the journey over again." There is much to solace fatigue and even to excite pleasure, but nothing to call forth rapture. We stay to contemplate and enjoy the objects on our road; but we feel that it is on this earth we have been travelling, and that the author is either not willing or not able to raise us above it. No writer in the English language has combined such various excellences as a novelist, a writer of comedies, and a poet.

FOOTNOTES [1] He took the degree of Bachelor of Arts, Feb. 27, 1749. Prior's Life of Goldsmith, vol. i. p.98. ED. [2] He also helped himself by writing street-ballads. Prior, vol. i. p. 75. ED.

* * * * *

ERASMUS DARWIN.

Erasmus, the seventh child and fourth son of Robert Darwin, Esq. by his wife Elizabeth Hill, was born at Elston, near Newark, in Nottinghamshire, on the 12th of December 1731. He was educated at the Grammar school of Chesterfield, in Derbyshire, under the Rev. Mr. Burrows, and from thence sent to St. John's College, Cambridge, where he had for his tutor Dr. Powell, afterwards Master of the College, to whose learning and goodness, Mason, another of his pupils, has left a testimony in one of his earliest poems.

After proceeding Bachelor in Medicine at Cambridge, Darwin went to Edinburgh, in order to pursue his studies in that science to more advantage. When he had been there long enough to entitle him to the degree of Doctor in Medicine, he quitted Edinburgh, and began his practice at Nottingham, but soon after (in 1756) removed to Lichfield. In the following year he married Mary, daughter of Charles Howard, Esq. a proctor in the Ecclesiastical Court of Lichfield. He was very soon distinguished for his professional skill. The first case which he treated with so much success as to attract the public notice, was that of a young man of fortune, who, being in a fever, was given over by his ordinary physician, but whom Darwin restored, probably by one of those bold measures from which others would have shrunk, but to which he wisely had recourse whenever a desperate malady called for a desperate cure. His patient, whose name was Inge, was, I believe, the same whom Johnson, in his life of Ambrose Phillips, has termed a gentleman of great eminence in Staffordshire. Part of the wealth that now flowed in upon him, from an extensive and opulent circle, was employed with that liberality which in this country is perhaps oftener exercised by men of his profession than by those of any other.

At Lichfield, he formed an intimacy with several persons, who afterwards rose to much distinction. Of these, the most remarkable were Mr. Edgeworth, whose skill in mechanics made him acceptable to Darwin; Mr. Day, a man remembered to more advantage by his writings, than by the singularities of his conduct; and Anna Seward, the female most eminent in her time for poetical genius. The manner in which the first of these introduced himself shall be told in his own words, as they convey a lively description of Darwin's person and habits of life at this time. "I wrote an account to the Doctor of the reception which his scheme" (for preventing accidents to a carriage in turning) "had met with from the Society of Arts. The Doctor wrote me a very civil answer; and though, as I afterwards found out, he took me for a coach-maker, he invited me to his house: an invitation which I accepted in the ensuing summer. When I arrived at Lichfield, I went to inquire whether the Doctor was at home. I was shewn into a room where I found Mrs. Darwin. I told her my name. She said the Doctor expected me, and that he intended to be at home before night. There were books and prints in the room, of which I took occasion to speak. Mrs. Darwin asked me to drink tea, and I perceived that I owed to my literature the pleasure of passing the evening with this most agreeable woman. We talked and conversed upon various literary subjects till it was dark; when Mrs. Darwin seeming to be surprised that the Doctor had not come home, I offered to take my leave; but she told me that I had been expected for some days, and that a bed had been prepared for me: I heard some orders given to the housemaid, who had destined a different room for my reception from that which her mistress had upon second thoughts appointed. I perceived that the maid examined me attentively, but I could not guess the reason. When supper was nearly finished, a loud rapping at the door announced the Doctor. There was a bustle in the hall, which made Mrs. Darwin get up and go to the door. Upon her exclaiming that they were bringing in a dead man, I went to the hall. I saw some persons, directed by one whom I guessed to be Doctor Darwin, carrying a man who appeared to be motionless. 'He is not dead,' said Doctor Darwin. 'He is only dead drunk. I found him,' continued the Doctor, 'nearly suffocated in a ditch: I had him lifted into my carriage, and brought hither, that we might take care of him to-night.' Candles came; and what was the surprise of the Doctor and of Mrs. Darwin, to find that the person whom he had saved was Mrs. Darwin's brother! who, for the first time in his life, as I was assured, had been intoxicated in this manner, and who would undoubtedly have perished had it not been for Doctor Darwin's humanity. During this scene I had time to survey my new friend, Doctor Darwin. He was a large man, fat, and rather clumsy; but intelligence and benevolence were painted in his countenance: he had a considerable impediment in his speech, a defect which is in general painful to others; but the Doctor repaid his auditors so well for making them wait for his wit or his knowledge, that he seldom found them impatient. When his brother was disposed of, he came to supper, and I thought that he looked at Mrs. Darwin as if he was somewhat surprised when he heard that I had passed the whole evening in her company. After she withdrew, he entered into conversation with me upon the carriage that I had made, and upon the remarks that fell from some members of the Society to whom I had shewn it. I satisfied his curiosity; and having told him that my carriage was in the town, and that he could see it whenever he pleased, we talked upon mechanical subjects, and afterwards on various branches of knowledge, which necessarily produced allusions to classical literature; by these, he discovered that I had received the education of a gentleman. 'Why! I thought,' said the Doctor, 'that you were a coach-maker!' 'That was the reason,' said I, 'that you looked surprised at finding me at supper with Mrs. Darwin. But you see, Doctor, how superior in discernment ladies are even to the most learned gentlemen: I assure you that I had not been in the room five minutes before Mrs. Darwin asked me to tea!'"

These endeavours to improve the construction of carriages were near costing him dear; nor did he desist till he had been several times thrown down, and at last broke the pan of the right knee, which occasioned a slight but incurable lameness. The amiable woman, of whom Mr. Edgeworth has here spoken, died in 1770. Of the five children whom she brought him, two were lost in their infancy. Charles, the eldest of the remaining three, died at Edinburgh, in 1778, of a disease supposed to be communicated by a corpse which he was dissecting, when one of his fingers was slightly wounded. He had obtained a gold medal for pointing out a test by which pus might be distinguished from mucus; and the Essay in which he had stated his discovery was published by his father after his death, together with another treatise, which he left incomplete, on the Retrograde Motions of the Absorbent Vessels of Animal Bodies in some Diseases. Another of his sons, Erasmus, who was a lawyer, in a temporary fit of mental derangement put an end to his existence, in 1799. Robert Waring, a physician, now in high reputation at Shrewsbury, is the only one of these children who survived him.

A few years before he quitted Lichfield, in consequence of a second marriage, he attempted to establish a Botanical Society in that city; but his only associates were the present Sir Brooke Boothby, and a proctor whose name was Jackson. Of this triumvirate, Miss Seward, who knew them well, tells us that Jackson admired Sir Brooke Boothby, and worshipped and aped Dr. Darwin. He became a useful drudge to each in their joint work, the translation of the Linnaean system of vegetation into English from the Latin. His illustrious coadjutors exacted of him fidelity to the sense of their author, and they corrected Jackson's inelegant English, weeding it of its pompous coarseness. Darwin had already conceived the design of turning the Linnaean system into a poem, which, after he had composed it, was long handed about in manuscript; and, I believe, frequently revised and altered with the most sedulous care. The stage on which he has introduced his fancied Queen of Botany, and her attendants from the Rosicrusian world, has the recommendation of being a real spot of ground within a mile of the place he inhabited. A few years ago it retained many traces of the diligence he had bestowed on it, and has probably not yet entirely lost them. Of this work, called the Botanic Garden, which he retained till he thought there was no danger of his medical character suffering from his being known as a poet, he published, in 1789, the second part, containing the Loves of the Plants, first; believing it to be more level to the apprehension of ordinary readers. It soon made its way to an almost universal popularity. With the lovers of poetry, the novelty of the subject, and the high polish, as it was then considered, of the verse, secured it many favourers, and the curiosity of the naturalist was not less gratified by the various information and the fanciful conjectures which abounded in the notes. The first part was given to the public in three years after.

In 1795 and 1796, appeared the two volumes of Zoonomia, or Laws of Organic Life, the produce of long labour and much consideration. What profit a physician may derive from this book I am unable to determine; but I fear that the general reader will too often discover in it a hazardous ingenuity, to which good sense and reason have been sacrificed. When the writer of these pages, who was then his patient, ventured to intimate the sensuality of one part of it to its author, he himself immediately referred to the passage which was likely to have raised the objection; and, on another occasion, as if to counteract this prejudice in the mind of one whose confidence he might be desirous of obtaining, he recommended to him the study of Paley's Moral Philosophy.

In 1781, he married his second wife, the widow of Colonel Pole, of Radburne, near Derby, with whom he appears to have lived as happily as he had done with his first. By her persuasion, he was induced to pass the latter part of his days at Derby. Here his medical practice was not at all lessened; and he had a second family to provide for out of the emolument which it brought him. His other publications were a Tract on Female Education, a slight performance, written for the purpose of recommending a school kept by some ladies, in whose welfare his relation to them gave him a warm interest; and a long book in 1800, on the Philosophy of Agriculture and Gardening, which he entitled Phytologia.

On Lady Day, 1802, he took possession of an old house, called the Priory, which had belonged to his son Erasmus, and was situated at a short distance from Derby; and on the 17th of the next month, while he was writing to his friend, Mr. Edgeworth, the following letter, he was arrested by the sudden approach of death.

* * * * *

Priory, near Derby, April 17, 1802.

Dear Edgeworth,—I am glad to find that you still amuse yourself with mechanism, in spite of the troubles of Ireland.

The use of turning aside, or downwards, the claw of a table, I don't see, as it must be reared against a wall, for it will not stand alone. If the use be for carriage, the feet may shut up, like the usual brass feet of a reflecting telescope.

We have all been now removed from Derby about a fortnight, to the Priory, and all of us like our change of situation. We have a pleasant home, a good garden, ponds full of fish, and a pleasing valley somewhat like Shenstone's—deep, umbrageous, and with a talkative stream running down it. Our home is near the top of the valley, well screened by hills from the east and north, and open to the south, where at four miles' distance we see Derby Tower.

Four or more strong springs rise near the house, and have formed the valley, which, like that of Petrarch, may be called Valchiusa, as it begins, or is shut at the situation of the house. I hope you like the description, and hope farther, that yourself or any part of your family will sometime do me the pleasure of a visit.

Pray tell the authoress that the water-nymphs of our valley will be happy to assist her next novel.

My bookseller, Mr. Johnson, will not begin to print the Temple of Nature till the price of paper is fixed by Parliament. I suppose the present duty is paid

* * * * *

To this imperfect sentence was added on the opposite side by another hand;

Sir,—This family is in the greatest affliction. I am truly grieved to inform you of the death of the invaluable Dr. Darwin. Dr. Darwin got up apparently in good health; about eight o'clock, he rang the library bell. The servant who went, said he appeared fainting. He revived again. Mrs. Darwin was immediately called. The Doctor spoke often, but soon appeared fainting; and died about one o'clock.

Our dear Mrs. Darwin and family are inconsolable: their affliction is great indeed, there being few such husbands or fathers. He will be most deservedly lamented by all who had the honour of being known to him.

I remain, Sir,

Your obedient humble servant,

S.M.

P.S. This letter was begun this morning by Dr. Darwin himself.

The complaint which thus suddenly terminated his life, in his seventy-first year, was the Angina Pectoris.

The Temple of Nature was printed in the year after his death; but the public had either read enough of his writings or were occupied with other things, for little attention was paid to this poetical bequest. That ingenious burlesque of his manner, the Loves of the Triangles, probably contributed to loosen the spell by which he had for a while taken the general ear.

His person is well described by his biographer, Miss Seward, as being above the middle size, his form athletic, and his limbs too heavy for exact proportion; his countenance marked by the traces of a severe small-pox, and, when not animated by social pleasure, rather saturnine than sprightly. In youth his exterior was rendered agreeable by florid health, and a smile that indicated good-humour. His portrait, by Wright of Derby, gives a very exact, but inanimate, representation of his form and features. In justice to the painter, it must be told, that I believe the likeness to have been taken after death.

In his medical practice he was by some accused of empiricism. From this charge, both Miss Seward and Mr. Edgeworth have, I think, justly vindicated him. The former has recorded a project which he suggested, on the supposed authority of some old practitioners, but which he did not execute, for curing one of his consumptive patients by the transfusing of blood from the veins of a person in health. I have been told, that when a mother, who seemed to be in the paroxysm of a delirium, expressed an earnest wish to take her infant into her arms, and her attendants were fearful of indulging her lest she should do some violence to the object of her affection, he desired them to commit it to her without apprehension, and that the result was an immediate abatement of her disorder. This was an instance rather of strong sagacity than of extraordinary boldness; for nothing less than a well-founded confidence in the safety of the experiment could have induced him to hazard it.

I know not whether it be worth relating, that when sent for to a nobleman, at Buxton, who conceived his health to have suffered by the use of tea, to which he was immoderately addicted, Darwin rang the bell, and ordered a pot of strong green tea to be brought up, and, filling both his patient's cup and his own, encouraged him to frequent and lavish draughts. I have heard that he was impatient of inquiries which related to diet; thinking, I suppose, that after the age of childhood, in ordinary cases, each person might regulate it best for himself. But from an almost entire abstinence from fermented liquors, he was, both by precept and example, a strenuous adviser. "He believed," says Miss Edgeworth, in her Memoirs of her Father, "that almost all the distempers of the higher classes of people arise from drinking, in some form or other, too much vinous spirit. To this he attributed the aristocratic disease of gout, the jaundice, and all bilious or liver complaints; in short all the family of pain. This opinion he supported in his writings with the force of his eloquence and reason; and still more in conversation, by all those powers of wit, satire, and peculiar humour, which never appeared fully to the public in his works, but which gained him strong ascendancy in private society. During his lifetime, he almost banished wine from the tables of the rich of his acquaintance; and persuaded most of the gentry in his own and the neighbouring counties to become water-drinkers." Here, I doubt, Miss Edgeworth has a little over-rated the extent of his influence. "Partly in jest, and partly in earnest, he expressed his suspicions, and carried his inferences on this subject, to a preposterous excess. When he heard that my father was bilious, he suspected that this must be the consequence of his having, since his residence in Ireland, and in compliance with the fashion of the country, indulged too freely in drinking. His letter, I remember, concluded with—Farewell, my dear friend. God keep you from whiskey—if he can."

His opinion respecting the safety of inoculating for the small-pox at a proper age, as it was expressed in the following letter to the writer of these pages, will be satisfactory to such parents as are yet unconvinced of the efficacy of vaccination; and his opinion is the more valuable, because it was given at a time when there was neither prejudice nor prepossession on the subject.

Derby, Oct. 9, 1797.

Dear Sir,—On the best inquiry I have been able to make to-day, I cannot hear that the small-pox is in Derby. I can only add, that all those who have died by inoculation, whom I have heard of these last twenty years, have been children at the breast; on which account it may be safer to defer inoculation till four or five years old, if there be otherwise no hazard of taking the disease naturally.

I am, &c.

E. DARWIN.

On the accounts which his patients gave him of their own maladies, he placed so little dependence, that he thought it necessary to wring the truth from them as a lawyer would do from an unwilling witness. His general distrust of others, in all that related to themselves, is well exemplified by a casual remark that has been lately repeated to me by a respectable dignitary of the church, to whom when he was apologizing for his want of skill in the game of chess, at which they were going to play, Darwin answered, that he made it a rule, not to believe either the good or the harm that men spoke of themselves.

This want of reliance in the sincerity of those with whom he conversed has been attributed, with some colour of reason, to his habitual scepticism on matters of higher moment. Mr. Fellowes has observed of him, that he dwelt so much and so exclusively on second causes, that he seems to have forgotten that there is a first. There is no solution of natural effects to which he was not ready to listen, provided it would assist him in getting rid of what he considered an unnecessary intervention of the Supreme Being. A fibre capable of irritability was with him enough to account, not only for the origin of animal life, but for its progress through all its stages. He had thus involved himself in the grossest materialism; but, being endued with an active fancy, he engendered on it theories so wild and chimerical, that they might be regarded with the same kind of wonder as the fictions of romance, if our pleasure were not continually checked by remembering the error in which they originate. What more prodigious transformation shall we read of in Ovid, than that which he supposes the organs of his strange ens to have undergone during the change of our globe from moist to dry?

As in dry air the sea-born stranger roves, Each muscle quickens, and each sense improves; Cold gills aquatic form respiring lungs, And sounds aerial flow from slimy tongues.

Temple of Nature, c. 1.

The peculiarities of the shapes of animals, which distinguished them from each other, he supposes to have been gradually formed by these same irritable fibres, and to have been varied by reproduction. As to the faculties of sensation, volition, and association, they come in afterwards as matters of course, and in a manner so easy and natural, that the only wonder is, what had kept them waiting so long. He mentions, with something like approbation, the hypothesis of Buffon and Helvetius, who, as he tells us, seem to imagine, that mankind arose from one family of monkeys, on the banks of the Mediterranean, who accidentally had learned to use the adductor pollicis, or that strong muscle which constitutes the ball of the thumb and draws the point of it to meet the points of the fingers, which common monkeys do not; and that this muscle gradually increased in size, strength and activity, in successive generations; and that, by this improved use of the sense of the touch, monkeys acquired clear ideas, and gradually became men.

To this he gravely adds, that perhaps all the productions of nature are in their progress to greater perfection! an idea countenanced by modern discoveries and deductions concerning the progressive formation of the solid parts of this terraqueous globe, and consonant of the dignity of the Creator.

His description of the way in which clear ideas were acquired is not much improved when he puts it into verse.

Nerved with fine touch above the bestial throngs, The hand, first gift of Heaven! to man belongs: Untipt with claws, the circling fingers close, With rival points the bending thumbs oppose, Trace the nice lines of form with sense refined, And clear ideas charm the thinking mind.

Temple of Nature, c. 3.

He tells us of a naturalist who had found out a shorter cut to the production of animal life, who thought it not impossible that the first insects were the anthers and stigmas of flowers, which had by some means loosened themselves, from their parent plant, and that other insects in process of time had been formed from these; some acquiring wings, others fins, and others claws, from their ceaseless efforts to procure food, or to secure themselves from injury. What hindered but these insects might have acquired hands, and by those means clear ideas also, is not explained to us.

As great improvements, however, have certainly been made in some way or other, he sees reason to hope that not less important ameliorations may in time succeed. If our improved chemistry (says he,) should ever discover the art of making sugar from fossile or aerial matter, without the assistance of vegetation, food for animals would then become as plentiful as water, and they might live upon the earth without preying on each other, as thick as blades of grass, without restraint to their numbers but the want of local room: no very comfortable prospect, it must be owned, especially to those who are aware of the alarming ratio in which, according to later discoveries, population is found to multiply itself; a consummation that would scarcely produce that at which he thought it the chief duty of a philosopher to aim: namely, the greatest possible quantity of human happiness. On being made acquainted with reveries such as these, through the means of the press, we are inclined to doubt the justice of his encomium on the art of printing, since which discovery, he tells us, superstition has been much lessened by the reformation of religion; and necromancy, astrology, chiromancy, witchcraft, and vampyrism, have vanished from all classes of society; though some are still so weak in the present enlightened times as to believe in the prodigies of animal magnetism, and of metallic tractors. What then is to be said of the prodigies of spontaneous vitality? To a system which removes the Author of all so far from our contemplation, we might well prefer the faith of

—the poor Indian, whose untutor'd mind Sees God in clouds, and hears him in the wind.

The father of English poetry, who well knew what qualities and habits might with most probability be assigned to men of different professions, has made it a trait in the character of his Doctour of Phisike, that

His study was but little in the Bible.

Though there are illustrious examples of the contrary, yet it may sometimes be with the physician as Shakspeare said of himself, when complaining of the influence which the business of a player had on his mind, that

—his nature is subdued To that it works in.

A propensity to materialism had not, however, so subdued the mind of Darwin, as to prevent him from acknowledging the existence of what he terms the Great Cause of Causes, Parent of Parents, Ens Entium. Nay, he went the length of maintaining, that his doctrine of spontaneous vitality was not inconsistent with Scripture.

But whatever may be thought of his creed, it must be recorded of him that he discharged some of the best duties of religion in a manner that would have become its most zealous professors. He was bountiful to the poor, and hospitable to his equals. To the inferior clergy, when he resided at Lichfield, he gave his advice unfeed, and he attended diligently to the health of those who were unable to requite him. Johnson is said, when he visited his native city, to have shunned the society of Darwin: Cowper, who certainly was as firm a believer as Johnson, thought it no disparagement to his orthodoxy, to address some complimentary verses to him on the publication of his Botanic Garden.

This poem ought not to be considered more than as a capriccio, or sport of the fancy, on which he has expended much labour to little purpose. It does not pretend to anything like correctness of design, or continuity of action. It is like a picture of Breughel's, where every thing is highly coloured, and every thing out of order. In the first part, called the Economy of Vegetation, the Goddess of Botany appears with her attendants, the Powers of the Four Elements, for no other purpose than to describe to them their several functions in carrying on the operations of nature. In the second, which has no necessary connection with the first, the Botanic Muse describes the Loves of the Plants. Here the fiction is puerile, and built on a system which is itself in danger of vanishing into air. At the end of the second canto, the Muse takes a dish of tea, which I think is the only thing of any consequence that is done throughout. The second part has been charged with an immoral tendency; but Miss Seward has observed, with much truth, that it is a burlesque upon morality to make the amours of the plants responsible at its tribunal; and that the impurity is in the imagination of the reader, not in the pages of the poet. For these amours, he might have found a better motto than that which he has prefixed from Claudian, in the following stanza of Marini.

Ne' fior ne' fiori istessi Amor ha loco, Ama il giglio il ligustro e l'amaranto, E Narciso e Giacinto, Ajace e Croco, E con la bella Clitia il vago Acanto; Arde la Rosa di vermiglio foco, L'odor sospiro e la rugiada e pianto: Ride la Calta, e pallida e essangue Vinta d'amor la violetta langue.

Adone, Canto 6.

He was apt to confound the odd with the grotesque, and to mistake the absurd for the fanciful. By an excellent landscape-painter now living, I was told that Darwin proposed as a subject for his pencil, a shower, in which there should be represented a red-breast holding up an expanded umbrella in its claws.

An Italian critic, following a division made by Plotinus, has distributed the poets into three classes, which he calls the musical, the amatorial, and the philosophic. In the first, he places those who are studious of softness and harmony in their numbers; in the second, such as content themselves with describing accurately the outward appearances of real or fanciful objects; and in the third, those who penetrate to the qualities of things, draw out their hidden beauties, and separate what is really and truly fair from that which has only its exterior semblance. Among the second of these, Darwin might claim for himself no mean station. It was, indeed, a notion he had taken up, that as the ideas derived from visible objects (to use his own words) are more distinct than those derived from any other source, the words expressive of those ideas belonging to vision make up the principal part of poetic language. So entirely was he engrossed by this persuasion, as, too frequently, to forget that the admirers of poetry have not only eyes but ears and hearts also; and that therefore harmony and pathos are required of the poet, no less than a faithful delineation of visible objects.

Yet there is something in his versification also that may be considered as his own. His numbers have less resemblance to Pope's, than Pope's to those of Dryden. Whether the novelty be such as to reflect much credit on the inventor, is another question. His secret, was, I think, to take those lines in Pope which seemed to him the most diligently elaborated, and to model his own upon them. But with those forms of verse which he borrowed more particularly from Pope, in which one part is equally balanced by the other, and of which each is complete in itself without reference to those which precede or follow it, he has mingled one or two others that had been used by our elder poets, but almost entirely rejected by the refiners of the couplet measure till the time of Langhorne; as where the substantive and its epithet are so placed, that the latter makes the end of an iambic in the second, and the former the beginning of a trochee in the third foot.

And showers thĕ stīll snōw frŏm his hoary urns. Darwin, Botanic Garden, p. I, c. 2, 28.

Or dart thĕ rēd flāsh thrŏugh the circling band. Ibid. 361.

Or rests hĕr faīr chēek ŏn his curled brows. Ibid. c. 2, 252.

Deserve ă swēet lōok frŏm Demetrius' eye. Shakspeare, Mid. N. D.

Infect thĕ soūnd pīne ănd divert his grain. Shakespeare, Tempest.

Which on thy sōft chēek fŏr complexion dwells. Shakspeare, Sonnet 99.

To lay thĕir jūst hānds ŏn the golden key. Milton, Comus.

Or where they make the end of an iambic in the first, and the beginning of a spondee in the second foot, as

Thĕ wān stārs glīm mering through its silver train. Botanic Garden, p. I, c. I, 135.

Thĕ brīght drōps rōl ling from her lifted arms. Ibid. c. 2, 59.

Thĕ pāle lāmp glīm mering through the sculptur'd ice. Ibid. 134.

Hĕr faīr chēek prēss'd upon her lily hand. Temple of Nature, c. I, 436.

Thĕ foūl bōar's cōn quest on her fair delight. Shakspeare, Venus and Adonis, 1030.

Thĕ rēd blōod rōck'd to show the painter's strife. Ibid. Rape of Lucrece, 1377.

There is so little complexity in the construction of his sentences, that they may generally be reduced to a few of the first and simplest rules of syntax. On these he rings what changes he may, by putting the verb before its nominative or vocative case. Thus in the following verses from the Temple of Nature:

On rapid feet o'er hills, and plains, and rocks, Speed the sacred leveret and rapacious fox; On rapid pinions cleave the fields above, The hawk descending, and escaping dove; With nicer nostril track the tainted ground, The hungry vulture, and the prowling hound; Converge reflected light with nicer eye, The midnight owl, and microscopic fly;

With finer ear pursue their nightly course, The listening lion, and the alarmed horse.

C. 3, 93.

Sometimes he alternates the forms; as

In Eden's groves, the cradle of the world, Bloom'd a fair tree with mystic flowers unfurl'd; On bending branches, as aloft it sprung, Forbid to taste, the fruit of knowledge hung; Flow'd with sweet innocence the tranquil hours, And love and beauty warm'd the blissful bowers.

Ibid. 449.

The last line or the middle of the last line in almost every sentence throughout his poems, begins with a conjunction affirmative or negative, and, or nor; and this last line is often so weak, that it breaks down under the rest. Thus in this very pretty impression, as it may almost be called, of an ancient gem;

So playful Love on Ida's flowery sides With ribbon-rein the indignant lion guides; Pleased on his brindled back the lyre he rings, And shakes delirious rapture from the strings; Slow as the pausing monarch stalks along, Sheathes his retractile claws, and drinks the song. Soft nymphs on timid step the triumph view, And listening fauns with beating hoofs pursue; With pointed ears the alarmed forest starts, And love and music soften savage hearts.

Botanic Garden, c. 4. 252.

And in an exceedingly happy description of what is termed the picturesque:

The rush-thatch'd cottage on the purple moor, Where ruddy children frolic round the door, The moss-grown antlers of the aged oak, The shaggy locks that fringe the colt unbroke, The bearded goat with nimble eyes, that glare Through the long tissue of his hoary hair, As with quick foot he climbs some ruin'd wall, And crops the ivy which prevents its fall, With rural charms the tranquil mind delight, And form a picture to the admiring sight.

Temple of Nature, c. 3, 248.

And in his lines on the Eagle, from another gem:

So when with bristling plumes the bird of Jove, Vindictive leaves the argent fields above, Borne on broad wings the guilty world he awes, And grasps the lightning in his shining claws.

Botanic Garden, p. I, c. I, 205.

where I cannot but observe the peculiar beauty of the epithet applied to the plumes of the eagle. It is the right translation of the word by which Pindar has described the ruffling of the wings on the back of Zetes and Calais.

[Greek:—pteroisin naeta pephrikontas ampho porphyreois.]

Pyth. 4, 326.

which an Italian translator has entirely mistaken;

Uomin' ambi, ch'orrore a' risguardanti Facean coi rosseggianti Vanni del tergo.

But Darwin could have known nothing of Pindar; and the word may perhaps he found with a similar application in one of our own poets.

As the singularity of his poems caused them to be too much admired at first, so are they now more neglected than they deserve. There is about as much variety in them as in a bed of tulips, of which the shape is the same in all, except that some are a little more rounded at the points than others; yet they are diversely streaked and freckled, with a profusion of gay tints, in which the bizarre (as it is called by the fanciers of that flower) prevails. They are a sight for one half hour in the spring, and no more; and are utterly devoid of odour.

* * * * *

WILLIAM JULIUS MICKLE.

William Julius Mickle was born on the 29th of September, 1734, at Longholm, in the county of Dumfries, of which place his father, Alexander Meikle, or Mickle, a minister of the church of Scotland, was pastor. His mother was Julia, daughter of Thomas Henderson, of Ploughlands, near Edinburgh. In his thirteenth year, his love of poetry was kindled by reading Spenser's Faery Queen. Two years after, his father, who was grown old and infirm, and had a large family to educate, by an unusual indulgence obtained permission to reside in Edinburgh, where Mickle was admitted a pupil at the High School. Here he remained long enough to acquire a relish for the Greek and Latin classics. When he was seventeen years old, his father unluckily embarking his capital in a brewery, which the death of his wife's brother had left without a manager, William was taken from school, and employed as clerk under the eldest son, in whose name the business was carried on. At first he must have been attentive enough to his employment; for on his coming of age, the property was made over to him, on the condition of paying his family a certain share of the profits arising from it. Afterwards, he suffered himself to be seduced from business by the attractions of literature. His father died in 1758; and, in about three years he published, without his name, Knowledge, an Ode, and a Night Piece, the former of which had been written in his eighteenth year. In both there is more of seriousness and reflection than of that fancy which marks his subsequent productions. Beside these, he had finished a drama, called the Death of Socrates, of which, if we may judge from his other tragedy, the loss is not to be lamented, and he had begun a poem on Providence. The difficulties consequent on his trusting to servants the work of his brewery, which he was too indolent to superintend himself, and on his joining in security for a large sum with a printer who failed, were now gathering fast upon him. His creditors became clamorous; and at Candlemas (one of the quarter days in Scotland) 1762, being equally unwilling to compound with them, as his brother advised him to do, and unable to satisfy their demands, he prevailed on them to accept his notes of hand, payable in four months. When the time was expired, he found himself, as might have been expected, involved in embarrassments from which he could devise no means of escaping. His mind was harassed by bitter reflections on the distress which threatened those whom his parent had left to his protection; and he was scared by the terrors of a jail. But they, with whom he had to reckon, were again lenient. He consoled himself with recollecting that his delinquency had proceeded from inadvertence, not from design, and resolved to be more sedulous in future: but had still the weakness to trust for relief to his poem on Providence. This was soon after published by Dodsley, and, that it might win for itself such advantages as patronage could give, was sent to Lord Lyttelton, under the assumed name of William Moore, with a representation that the author was a youth, friendless and unknown, and with the offer of a dedication if the poem should be again edited. This proceeding did not evince much knowledge of mankind. A poet has as seldom gained a patron as a mistress, by solicitation to which no previous encouragement has been given. It was more than half a year before he received an answer from Lyttelton, with just kindness enough to keep alive his expectations. In the meantime, the friendly offices of a carpenter in Edinburgh, whose name was Good, had been exerted to save his property from being seized for rent; but the fear of arrest impelled him to quit that city in haste; and embarking on board a coal vessel at Newcastle, he reached London, pennyless, in May, 1763. His immediate necessities were supplied by remittances from his brothers, and by such profits as he could derive from writing for periodical publications. There is no reason to suppose that he was indebted to Lyttelton for more than the commendation of his genius, and for some criticism on his poems; and even this favour was denied to the most beautiful among them, his Elegy on Mary, Queen of Scots. The cause assigned for the exclusion was, that poetry should not consecrate what history must condemn, a sacred principle if it he applied to the characters of those yet living, but of more doubtful obligation as it regards past times. When Euripides, in one of his dramas, chose to avail himself of a wild and unauthorized tradition, and to represent Helen as spotless, he surely violated no sanction of moral truth; and in the instance of Mary, Mickle might have pleaded some uncertainty which a poet was at liberty to interpret to the better part.

During his courtship of Lyttelton he was fed at one time by hopes of being recommended in the West Indies; and, at another, of being served in the East; till by degrees the great man waxed so cold, that he wisely relinquished his suit. His next project was to go out as a merchant's clerk to Carolina; but some unexpected occurrences defeating this plan also, he engaged himself as corrector of the Clarendon press, at Oxford. Here he published (in 1767) the Concubine, a poem, in the manner of Spenser, to which, when it was printed, ten years after, having in the meantime passed through several editions, he gave the title of Syr Martyn.

Early in life, his zeal for religion had shewn itself in some remarks on an impious book termed the History of the Man after God's own Heart; and in 1767, the same feelings induced him to publish A Vindication of the Divinity of Jesus Christ, in a Letter to Dr. Harwood; and, in the year following, Voltaire in the Shades, or Dialogues on the Deistical Controversy.

He was now willing to try his fortune with a tragedy, and sent his Siege of Marseilles to Garrick, who observed to him, that though abounding in beautiful passages, it was deficient in dramatic art, and advised him to model it anew; in which task, having been assisted by the author of Douglas, and having submitted the rifacciamento of his play to the two Wartons, by whom he was much regarded, he promised himself better success; but had the mortification to meet with a second rebuff. An appeal from the manager to the public was his unquestioned privilege; but not contented with seeking redress by these means, he threatened Garrick with a new Dunciad. The rejection which his drama afterwards underwent at each of the playhouses, from the respective managers, Harris and Sheridan, perhaps taught him at least to suspect his own judgment.