vised her to affect to favour his assiduities. She did so, and they were immediately withdrawn. Shenstone was an inamorato of the same species; he might have had his Phyllis whenever he chose to ask for her. Of Moore, the author of the Fables, Mr. Campbell relates a singular circumstance. In the last number of The World, to which he contributed sixty-one papers, the conclusion of the work is made to depend on a fictitious incident which had occasioned the death of the author. When the papers were collected into volumes, Moore, who superintended the publication, realized this jocular fiction by his own death, while the last number was in the press.

Much as we have protested against poetical extracts, on the present occasion we cannot forbear from citing the following humorous translation of the Integer Vita' of Horace, by the son of the celebrated Allan Ramsay. It was wholly new to us, and if it is equally so to our readers, we feel that they will forgive us for violating our resolution.

'HORACE'S" INTEGER VITE," &c. BY ALLAN RAMSAY, JUN.

'A man of no base (John) life or conversation,
Needs not to trust in, coat of mail nor buffskin,
Nor need he vapour, with the sword and rapier,
Pistol, or great gun.

'Whether he ranges, eastward to the Ganges,
Or if he bends his course to the West Indies,
Or sail the Sea Red, which so many strange odd
Stories are told of.

For but last Monday, walking at noon day,
Conning a ditty, to divert my Betty,

By me that sour Turk (I not frighted) our Kirk-
Treasurer's man pass'd.

' And sure more horrid monster in the torrid

Zone ne'er was found, Sir, tho' for snakes renown'd, Sir,
Nor can great Peter's empire boast such creatures,

Th' of bears the wet nurse.

Should I by hap land on the coast of Lapland,
Where there no fir is, much less pears and cherries,
Where stormy weather's sold by hags, whose leather-
faces would fright one.

'Place me where tea grows, or where sooty negroes,
Sheep's guts round tie them, lest the sun should fry them,
Still while my Betty smiles and talks so pretty,
I will adore her.' Vol. V.

p. 333.

The particulars which Mr. Campbell has recorded of Goldsmith, are among the most entertaining things in this work. He was belaboured by a savage tutor, Theaker Wilder, and driven from the university of Dublin, for giving a very innocent hop in his College Rooms. He afterwards undertook the station of domestic tutor in a gentleman's family, and staid there long enough to save 301., with which he bought a tolerable horse, and set out, somewhat better equipped than the knight of La Mancha, whom he seems to have chosen as his prototype, expressly in search of adventure.

'At the end of six weeks, his friends, having heard nothing of him, concluded that he had left the kingdom, when he returned to his mother's house, without a penny, upon a poor little horse, which he called Fiddleback, and which was not worth more than twenty shillings. The account which he gave of himself was, that he had been at Cork, where he had sold his former horse, and paid his passage to America; but the ship happening to sail whilst he was viewing the curiosities of the city, he had just money enough left to purchase Fiddleback, and to reach the house of an old acquaintance on the road. This nominal friend, however, had received him very coldly: and, in order to evade his application for pecuniary relief, had advised him to sell his diminutive steed, and promised him another in its place, which should cost him nothing either for price or provender. To confirm this promise, he pulled out an oaken staff from beneath a bed. Just as this generous offer had been made, a neighbouring gentleman came in, and invited both the miser and Goldsmith to dine with him. Upon a short acquaintance, Oliver communicated his situation to the stranger, and was enabled, by his liberality, to proceed upon his journey. This was his story. His mother, it may be supposed, was looking rather gravely upon her prudent child, who had such adventures to relate, when he concluded them by saying, "and now, my dear mother, having struggled so hard to come home to you, I wonder that you are not more rejoiced to see me." Mr. Contarine next resolved to send him to the Temple; but on his way to London he was fleeced of all his money in gaming, and returned once more to his mother's house in disgrace and affliction. Again was his good uncle reconciled to him, and equipped him for Edinburgh, that he might pursue the study of medicine.

On his arrival at Edinburgh he took lodgings, and sallied forth to take a view of the city; but at a late hour, he recollected that he had omitted to inform himself of the name and address of his landlady; and would not have found his way back, if he had not fortunately met with the porter who had carried his luggage. After attending some courses of medical lectures at Edinburgh, he was permitted by his uncle, to repair to Leyden, for the sake of finishing his studies, when his departure was accelerated by a debt, which he had contracted by becoming security for an acquaintance, and from the arrest attending which, he was only saved by the interference of a friend. If Leyden, however, was his object, he, with the usual eccentricity of his motions, set cut to reach it by way of Bordeaux, and embarked in a ship which was bound thither from Leith; but which was driven, by stress of weather, into Newcastle upon Tyne. His fellow passengers were some Scotchmen, who had been employed in raising men in their own country for the service of the king of France. They were arrested, by orders from government, at Newcastle; and Goldsmith, who had been committed to prison with them, was not liberated till after a fortnight's confinement. By this accident, however, he was eventually

saved from an early death. The vessel sailed during his imprisonment, and was wrecked at the mouth of the Garonne, where every soul on board perished.' Vol. VI. p. 254.

We regret that we have not room for the sound and elegant critical estimate of his poetical powers which succeeds these anecdotes. Walter Harte's father was a nonjuring clergyman, who, with a rare political and moral honesty refused to take the oaths to king William, though in the time of the dethroned monarch he had personally remonstrated with Jefferies for his cruelty. Harte himself seems to have been the last man whom we should have expected lord Chesterfield to select as tutor for his son. His life of Gustavus Adolphus is written in so barbarous a jargon, that his noble patron, speaking of its being translated into German, heartily wished that its author had translated it into English;' yet the historian himself fancied that his style was particularly easy, and when George Hawkins, the bookseller, ventured very respectfully to solicit the alteration of some of his most violent and uncouth phrases, 'Ah, George,' he used to answer, that is what we call writing.'

A little Ode on hearing the drum,' beginning I hate that drum's discordant sound,' is attributed by Mr. Campbell to a quaker bard, John Scott. We should be sorry to rob the society of Friends of the few laurels with which their solitary poet is graced, but we are very much mistaken if we have not seen these verses in the pages of a living poet; be it as it may, lis est de tribus capellis and neither party can lose much by the surrender. Wẹ have heard that when Mr. Gibbon presented his concluding Series of the Decline and Fall,' to the duke of Cumberland, his illustrious patron's remark was, What another thick book, Mr. Gibbon, always scribble, scribble, scribble!' Lord Nugent, it is said, met with a similar reception from the throne itself. His zeal for the manufactures of his native country induced him to present the queen with a new-year's gift of Irish grogram, accompanied with a copy of verses: and it was wickedly alleged that her majesty had returned her thanks to the noble author for both his pieces of stuff.

In p. 327, vol. vii, we observe Mr. Matthias mentioned by name as the author of the Pursuits of Literature; there is strong presumptive proof that he is so, but as we believe that Mr. Matthias has never avowed himself so to be, we look upon an unqualified and unauthorised assertion of this kind (particularly when accompanied by a protestation of individual partiality, which implies personal friendship), to be no slight breach of literary morals. Whatever may be the purpose (and we can imagine many which are highly salutary), for which a writer resigns the gratification of living fame, by adopting concealment, to unmask him against his will, is at least, uncourteous. We may suspect, and we may state

the grounds of our suspicions, but to go beyond this, especially if we are in his confidence, is rude, if not dishonest.

We have not much respect for Darwin either as a man or as a poet; the two following anecdotes are whimsical and characteristic. 'He was, in theory and practice, a rigid enemy to the use of wine, and of all intoxicating liquors; and in the course of his practice, was regarded as a great promoter of temperate habits among the citizens: but he gave a singular instance of his departure from his own theory, within a few years after his arrival in the very place, where he proved the apostle of sobriety. Having one day joined a few friends, who were going on a water party, he got so tipsy after a cold collation, that on the boat approaching Nottingham, he jumped into the river, and swam ashore. The party called to the philosopher to return; but he walked on deliberately, in his wet clothes, till he reached the market-place of Nottingham, and was there found, by his friend, an apothecary of the place, haranguing the town's people on the benefit of fresh air, till he was persuaded by his friend to come to his house and shift his clothes. Dr. Darwin stammered habitually; but on this occasion, wine untied his tongue. In the prime of life, he had the misfortune to break the patella of his knee, in consequence of attempting to drive a carriage of his own Utopian contrivance, which upset at the first experiment.' Vol. VII. p. 397.

One thing has struck us very forcibly in this collection.-We know not where among the same number of men, occupied in the same pursuit, so many instances of unhappiness could be discovered. Some indeed have been the merited victims of their own intemperate follies; but to the lovers of good old times, who shrink back when they hear of a sleek and well-fed modern bard receiving 3,000 guineas for the copy-right of a modish and mawkish poem, it may afford some consolation to review those who have been tenants of the cell, or the garret, and whose stomachs have kept an inverted sabbath of six days out of the seven. Greene, it is true, died of a surfeit of pickled herrings and old Rhenish; Marlowe and Motteaux were killed in drunken quarrels at a brothel; Fenton drank two bottles of Port every afternoon, in his easy chair, and died by attempting a reduction; Randolph, Somerville, Parnell, fell sacrifices to Bacchus; George Etheridge broke his neck down stairs, while bowing his friends out after dinner; and May was so delighted with the success of his 'Breviary,' that he went to bed one night after having drank freely, in apparent health, and was found dead in the morning. Some indeed assert, that his night cap was tied too tightly under his chin, but Andrew Marvel attributes his death to an equally probable cause of suffocation. Look now on the shadowy side of the picture: Denham, Nat Lee, Collins, Cowper, Smart, Brook, G. A. Stevens, Bampfylde, and Ferguson, all died in idiotcy or madness; of the last, a most touching incident is related;- When committed to the receptacle of

the insane, a consciousness of his dreadful fate seemed to come over him. At the moment of his entrance, he uttered a wild cry of despair, which was re-echoed from all the inmates of the dreadful mansion, and left an impression of inexpressible horror on the friends who attended.' In a few days his poverty-stricken mother, who had reluctantly committed her son to a public hospital, from her inability to support him, received remittances sufficient to defray the expense of his attendance at home; but they arrived too late; the poor maniac was already dead. Otway, John Brown (the author of Barbarossa), and Chatterton, were suicides. George Wither, Dekker, Cotton, Savage, and Lloyd, breathed their last in jails. Lovelace, once the pride of courts, after losing his mistress like Biron in Isabella, escaped a prison only by concealment, and died in a miserable lodging near Shoe-lane. Butler, and Ben Jonson, each experienced the worst extremes of poverty. Andrew Marvel is supposed to have been poisoned. Quarles died heart-broken at the destruction of his whole possessions, (among which he most regretted his books and MSS.) by the Puritans. Drummond is said, and we believe it to be true, notwithstanding Mr. Campbell's bitter sarcasm, never to have recovered his shock on hearing of the murder of Charles I. Shirley and his wife died, of fright at the fire of London; and poor George Sewell, after writing in the Spectator, and living in a polished circle, had not a single friend to close his eyes. He was buried meanly under a hollow tree in the boundary of Hamstead church-yard, and however courted in his life time, has not now even a turf hillock to point out the spot of his repose.

Happy for many of these would it have been if their histories had been as much a blank as that of Timothy Dwight; a gentleman whose pretensions to a niche in this collection are not very clear. 'Timothy Dwight: of this American poet, I am sorry to be able to give the British reader no account. I believe his personal history is as little known as his poetry on this side of the Atlantic.' Is not this somewhat like the famous chapter on Serpents in a work on Natural History? On Serpents. There are no Serpents to be found in these countries.' But there are many other Poets in these volumes concerning whom we only wonder how the d-1 they got there.' Amhurst Selden to wit: from whose dull verses it is inconceivable how Mr. Campbell could have the patience to quote nearly forty pages. Some few (but in justice we must say very few) of the extracts also ought not to have found their way into a work intended for general circulation. With these trifling exceptions, we venture to recommend the work before us as forming the best Corpus' of our own Poets now in existence. We are far however from meaning by this commendation, that we think it would be a difficult task to form one which should be much better.