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, or rather Cleiveland (for so he and his family spelt their name) (John), a noted loyalist and popular poet in the reign of Charles I. was the eldest son of the rev. Thomas Cleiveland, M. A. some time vicar of Hinckley, and rector of Stoke, in the county of Leicester. He was born in 1613, at Loughborough, where his father was then assistant to the rector; but educated at Hinckley, under the rev. Richard Vynes, a man of genius and learning, who was afterwards as much distinguished among the presbyterian party as his scholar was among the cavaliers. In his fifteenth year our poet was removed to Cambridge, and admitted of Christ’s college, Sept. 4, 1627, where he took the degree of B. A. in 163 1 He was thence transplanted to the sister foundation of St. John’s college in the same university, of which he was elected fellow March 27, 1634, and proceeded to the degree of M. A. in 1635. Of this society he continued many years a principal ornament, being one of the tutors, and highly respected by his pupils, some of -whom afterwards attained to eminence. By the statutes of that college, he should have taken orders within six years after his being elected fellow: but he uas admitted on the law line (as the phrase there is) November 2, 1640, and afterwards on that of physic, January 31, 1642, which excused him from complying with this obligation; though it does not appear that he made either law or physic his profession: for, remaining at college, he became the rhetoric reader there, and was usually employed by the society in composing their speeches and epistles to eminent persons (of which specimens may be seen in his works), being in high repute at that time for the purity and terseness of his Latin style. He also became celebrated for his occasional poems in English, and, at the breaking out of the civil wars, is said to have been the first champion that appeared in verse for the royal cause; which he also supported by all his personal influence: particularly by exerting his interest in the town of Cambridge, to prevent Oliver Cromwell (then an obscure candidate, but strongly supported by the puritan partv) from being elected one of its members. Cromwell’s stronger genius in this, as hi every other pursuit, prevailing, Cleveland is said to have shown great discernment, by predicting at so early a period, the fatal consequences that long after ensued to the cause of royalty. Cromwell got his election by a single vote, which Cleveland declared “had ruined both church and kingdom.” The parliament party carrying all before them in the eastern counties, Cleveland retired to the royal army, and with it to the king’s head quarters at Oxford, where he was much admired and caressed for his satirical poems on the opposite faction, especially for his satire on the Scottish covenanters, entitled “The Rebel Scot.” In his absence he was deprived of his fellowship, Feb. 13, 1644, by the earl of Manchester, who, under the authority of an ordinance of parliament, for regulating and reforming the university of Cambridge, ejected such fellows of colleges, &c. as refused to take the solemn league and covenant. From Oxford Cleveland was appointed to be judge-advocate in the garrison at Newark, under sir Richard Willis the governor, and has been commended for his skilful and upright conduct in this difficult office, where he also distinguished his pen occasionally, by returning smart answers to the summons, and other addresses to the garrison. Newark, after holding out the last of all the royal fortresses, was at length, in 1646, by the express command of the king (then a prisoner in the Scots army), surrendered upon terms, which left Cleveland in possession of his liberty, but destitute of all means of support, except what he derived from the hospitality and generosity of his brother loyalists, among whom he lived some years, obscure and unnoticed by the ruling party, till, in November 1655, he was seized at Norwich, as “a person of great abilities,” adverse and dangerous to the reigning government; and being sent to Yarmouth, he was there imprisoned for some time, till he sent a petition to the lord-protector, wherein the address of the writer has been much admired, who, while he honestly avows his principles, has recourse to such moving topics, as might sooth his oppressor, and procure his enlargement: in which he was not disappointed, for the protector generously set him at liberty, disdaining to remember on the throne the opposition he had received in his canvass for parliament as a private burgess. Cleveland thence retired to London, where he is said to have found a generous Maecenas; and, being much admired among all persons of his own party, became member of a club of wits and loyalists, which Butler, the author of Hiir dibras, also frequented. Cleveland then lived in chambers at Gray’s-inn (of which Butler is said to have been a member), and, being seized with an epidemic intermitting fever, died there on Thursday morning, April 29, 1659. His friends paid the last honours to his remains by a splendid funeral: for his body was removed to Hunsdon -house, and thence carried for interment, on Saturday May 1, to the parish church of St. Michael Royal, on College-hill, London, followed by a numerous attendance of persons eminent for their loyalty or learning: to whom his funeral sermon was preached by his intimate friend Dr. John Pearson, afterwards bishop of Chester, author of the Exposition of the Creed.

One of the poet’s brothers, William, was rector of Oldbury and Quat, near Bridgnorth in Shropshire, and dying 1666, left a son, who was grandfather of the rev. William Cleiveland, M. A. late rector of All-saints parish in Worcester, who died in 1794; and four daughters, whereof the youngest was grandmother of Dr. Percy, the late bishop of Dromore in Ireland, who wrote the poet’s life for the last edition of the Biographia Britannica. A sister of theirs, Elizabeth, married Mr. W r illiam II iff, of Hinckley, from whom are descended a respectable family, to which by marriage is allied the Historian of Leicestershire, in whose collection of Poems are many written by his ancestor, and many curious anecdotes of the author.

, an ingenious poet, and a man of taste, wit, and learning, was master of the grammar-school of Christ’s hospital, where he was himself educated. He took the degree of B. A. in 1698, and of M. A. in 1702, in Trinity- college, Cambridge. He died at London, in 1713, in the prime of life, and was buried in the cloisters of Christ’s hospital. Jacob says that his “Observations on Virgil” shew that he was well acquainted with that poet. He published in 1707, “A Collection of Poems on several occasions, &c. to which is prefixed a Discourse on Criticism, and the Liberty of Writing, by way of letter to a friend.” He translated the third, and part of the fourth book of Howe’s edition of the “Callipapdia,” and assisted Ozell in the translation of Boileau’s “Lutrin.” His other known productions are, 1. “The Miller’s Tale,” from Chaucer. 2. A translation of the “Muscipula.” 3. “The Oak and the Briar,” a tale. His excellent ode, “The Female Reign,” was printed in Dodsley’s Collection, and afterwards in the Gent. Mag. 1753, with alterations by Dr. Watts, who thought it “the truest and best Pindaric he had ever read,” an opinion in which we find Dr. Warton coinciding, in one of his notes on Pope’s works.

, an English poet, the son of Thomas Cokayne, esq. of Ashbourne-hall, in Derbyshire, and of Pooley, in Warwickshire, was born in 1608, at Elvaston, in Derbyshire, the seat of the family of his mother, Anne, daughter of sir John Stanhope, of Elvaston, knt, He was educated at Trinity- college, Cambridge, and in 1632 set out on his travels through France and Italy, of which he has given an account in a poem to his sou Mr. Thomas Cokayne. On his return he married Anne, daughter of sir Gilbert Kniveton, of Mercaston, in Derbyshire, knt. and retiring to his lordship of Fooley, gave himself up to his books and boon companions. Fie boasts, among his poetical friends, of Donne, Suckling/ Randolph, Drayton, Massinger, Habington, Sandys, and May; and appears also to have cultivated the acquaintance of sir William Dugdale, and other antiquaries. During the civil war, he suffered greatly for his religion, the Romari Catholic, and for what was then as obnoxious, his loyalty to Charles I. under whom he claimed the title ofa baronet. His losses also were increased by his want of ceconomy, and he was obliged to part with his estates during his life, which terminated in Feb. 1684, when he was privately buried in the chancel of Polesworth church. His poems and plays, with altered title-pages, were printed and reprinted in 1658, and are now purchased at high prices, chiefly as curiosities. His mind appears to have been much cultivated with learning, and it is clear that he possessed considerable talents, but he scarcely exhibits any marks of genius. He is never pathetic, sublime, or even elegant; but is generally characterized by a kind of familiarity which amounts to doggrel, and frequently to flatness and insipidity. Still, as our valuable authority adds, it is im possible to read notices of so many of his contemporaries, whose habits of life are recalled to our fancies, without feeling a subordinate kind of pleasure that gives these domestic rhymes a lively attraction.

, a French poet, was born at Janville in the Orleanois in 1735, and was a votary of the muses from his very infancy. He made his first appearance in the literary world in 1758, by a poetical translation of Pope’s Eloisa to Ahelard; in which he was said to have retained the warmth of the original, with the richness of its images. His tragedies of Astarbe and Calisto, the one performed in 1758, and the other in 1760, were not so successful. The complexion of them is indeed sorrowful, and even gloomy, but never tragical. The “Temple of Guides,” and two of the “Nights” of Young, in French verse, the epistle to M. Duhamel, and the poem of Prometheus, which appeared afterwards, are in general versified in a soft and harmonious manner. The epistle to M. Duhamel, which is replete with rural descriptions and sentiments of beneficence, has been ranked by many of its enthusiastic admirers with the best epistles of Boileau. These several performances excited the attention of the French academy towards the author, who elected him a meaaber at the beginning of 1776; but before he had pronounced his inaugural discourse, he was snatched away by death, in the flower of his age, the 7th of April in the same year, after he had risen from his bed in a state of extreme Weakness, and burnt what he had written of a translation of Tasso. This poet, who has so well described the charms of nature in his poems, and who even understood the art of drawing, yet in all the variety of colours saw only white and black, and only the different combinations of light and shade. This singular organization, however, did not weaken the charms of his imagination. His works were collected in two vols. 8vo, Paris, 1779, and have been since reprinted in 12mo. Among these is a comedy entitled “Les perfidies a la mode,” in which are some agreeable verses, two or three characters well enough drawn, but not a single spark of the vis comica.

, secretary and reader to the duke of Orleans, was born at Paris in 1709, and died in the same city Nov. 2, 1783, at the age of 75. In his character were united a singular disposition to gaiety, and an uncommon degree of sensibility; the death of a beloved wife accelerated his own. Without affecting the qualities of beneficence and humanity, he was humane and beneficent. Having a propensity to the drama from his infancy, he cultivated it with success. His “Partie-de-Chasse de Henri IV.” (from which our “Miller of Mansfield” is taken) exhibits a very faithful picture of that good king. His comedy of “Dupuis and Desronais,” in the manner of Terence, may perhaps be destitute of the vis cornica; but the sentiments are just, the characters well supported, and the situations pathetic. Another comedy, entitled “Truth in wine, or the Disasters of Gallantry,” has more of satire and broad humour. There are several more pieces of his, in which he paints, with no less liveliness than truth, the manners of his time; but his pencil is frequently as licentious as those manners. His talent at song-writing procured him the appellation of the Anacreon of the age, but here too he was deficient in delicacy. His song on the capture of Portmahon was the means of procuring him a pension from the court of 600 livres, perhaps the first favour of the kind ever bestowed. He was one of the last survivers of a society of wits who met under the name of the Caveau, and is in as much honourable remembrance as the Kit- K at club in London. This assembly, says a journalist, was of as much consequence to literature as an academy. Colle frequently used to regret those good old times, when this constellation of wits were wont to meet together, as men of letters, free and independent. The works of this writer are collected in 3 volumes, 12mo, under the title of " Theatre de SocieteY' Colle* was a cousin of the poet Regnard, whom he likewise resembled in his originality of genius.

, one of the members of the French academy, was born at Paris in 1598, and died in the same city February 10, 1659, aged sixty-one, leaving scarcely enough to bury him. Cardinal Richelieu appointed him one of the five authors whom he selected to write for the theatre. Colletet alone composed “Cyminde,” and had a part in the two comedies, the “Blindman of Smyrna,” and the “Tuilleries.” Reading the monologue in this latter piece to the cardinal, he was so struck with six bad lines in it, that he made him a present of 6uO livres; saying at the same time, that this was only for the six verses, which he found so beautiful, that the king was not rich enough to recompense him for the rest. However, to shew his right as a patron, and at the same time his judgment as a connoisseur, he insisted on the alteration of one word for another. Colletet refused to comply with his criticism; and, not content with defending his verse to the cardinal’s face, on returning home he wrote to him on the subject. The cardinal had just read his letter, when some courtiers came to compliment him on the success of the king’s arms, adding, that nothing could withstand his eminence!—“You are much mistaken,” answered he smiling; “for even at Paris I meet with persons who withstand me.” They asked who these insolent persons could be? “It is Colletet,” replied he; “for, after having contended with me yesterday about a word, he will not yet submit, as you may see here by this long letter he has been writing to me.” This obstinacy, however, did not so far irritate the minister as to deprive the poet of his patronage. Colletet had also other benefactors. Harlay, archbishop of Paris, gave him a handsome reward for his hymn on the immaculate conception; by sending him an Apollo of solid silver. Colletet took for his second wife, Claudine his maid servant; and, in order to justify his choice, published occasionally pieces of poetry in her name; but, this little artifice being presently discovered, both the supposititious Sappho, and the inspirer of her lays, became the objects of continual satire. This marriage, in addition to two subsequent ones, to the losses he suffered in the civil wars, and to his turn for dissipation, reduced him to the extreme of poverty. His works appeared in 1653, in 12mo.

, an unfortunate but excellent English poet, was born at Chichester, Dec. 25, about 1720, the son of a reputable hatter in that city. In 1733 he was admitted scholar of Winchester college under Dr. Burton, and at nineteen was elected upon the foundation to Newcollege in Oxford. He was first upon the list; and, in order to wait for a vacancy in that society, was admitted a commoner of Queen’s college in the same university; but no such vacancy occurring, his tutor, very sensible of his desert, recommended him to the society of Magdalen; and this recommendation, backed by an uncommon display of genius and learning in the exercises performed on the occasion, procured him to be elected a demy of that college in July 1741. During his residence in this place, which was till he had taken a bachelor’s degree, he applied himself to poetry, and published an epistle to sir Thomas Hanmer on his edition of Shakspeare, and the “Persian,” or, as they have been since entitled, “Oriental Eclogues,” which, notwithstanding their merit, were not attended with any great success; and it was objected to them, that though the scenery and subjects are oriental, the style and colouring are purely European. Of the force of this objection, Mr. Collins himself became sensible in the latter part of his life. Yet their poetical merit is very great and Dr. Langhorne has not scrupled to assert, “that in simplicity of description and expression, in delicacy and softness of numbers, and in natural and unaffected tenderness, they are not to be equalled by any thing of the pastoral kind in the English language.”

, an ancient Italian poet and philosopher, was born at Stignano in Pescia, in 1330, His father, who was in the army, being involved in the troubles of his country, was obliged to retire to Bologna, where Coluccio was educated, or rather where he taught himself for some time without % master. It appears indeed from a letter which he wrote to Bernardo cli Moglo, that he did not apply himself to the cultivation of polite literature till he was arrived at man’s estate, and that it was then he went to Bologna? and attended the public lectures of the father of the above Bernardo. By his own father’s request, he afterwards studied law, but on his death quitted that profession for eloquence and poetry. It is not stated when he left Bologna, nor when he was permitted to return to Florence; but in 1363, in his thirty-eighth year, we find him the colleague of Francis Bruin, as apostolical secretary to pope Urban V, and it is probable that he quitted this employment when Urban went to France. He quitted at the same time the ecclesiastical habit, and married a lady by whom he had ten children. His reputation for knowledge and eloquence procured him the greatest offers from popes, emperors, and kings; but his love for his native country made him prefer, to the most brilliant prospects, the office of chancellor of the republic of Florence, which was conferred on him in 1375, and which he filled very honourably for thirty years. The letters he wrote appeared so striking to John Galeas Visconti, then at war with the republic, that he declared one letter of Coluccio’s to be more mischievous to his cause than the efforts of a thousand Florentine knights.

, a Greek poet, was a native of Lycopolis, a city of Thebais, in Upper Egypt, of whose parentage or education nothing is recorded; but we learn from Suidas that he lived in the reign of Anastasius, who succeeded Zeno in the government of the Eastern empire, about the year 491. He wrote Caledonics, Persies, and Encomia; but none of his works now remain, except the “Rape of Helen,” and that in a mutilated state. It is not, however, destitute of imagery, and is adorned by a variety of striking and expressive epithets, although we may infer from it, that the true poetic spirit had then ceased to flourish. The first edition of this work is that by Aldus, 8vo, without a date, along with Quintus Calaber; and the last, if we mistake not, was by Harles, 1776, 8vo, but the best is said to be that of Lanness, Gr. & Lat. 1747, 8vo. The Italians and French have good translations in their respective languages, and there are three in English; the first by sir Edward Sherborne in 1701, valuable chiefly for his learned notes; the second partly by Fawkes, and partly by a nameless coadjutor, in 1780; and the third, inferior to that of Fawkes, by an anonymous writer, was published in 1786.

, a Scotch divine and poet, was born near St. Andrew’s in Fifeshire, 1620, and educated in the university of Edinburgh, where he took his degree of D. D. and was settled minister at Dysart. In 1662 he complied with the act of uniformity, and was appointed principal of the university of Edinburgh, in the room of Dr. Leighton, promoted to the see of Dumblane. He wrote several controversial tracts, most of which are now forgotten; but that which particularly recommends him to the notice of the public, is a humorous poem entitled “Scotch Hudibras,” written in the manner of Butler. This book gave great offence to the presbyterians but still, although little known in England, is well esteemed in Scotland. He died at Edinburgh 1676, aged 58.

He was a man of great parts, but not learned. He spoke several modern languages well, the German, French, and Spanish especially; but he knew nothing of the ancient, which he used to lament. His “Memoirs of his own times,” commence from 1464, and include a period of thirty-four years; in which are commemorated the most remarkable actions of the two last dukes of Burgundy, and of Louis XL and Charles VIII. kings of France; as likewise the most important contemporary transactions in EngJand, Flanders, Germany, Italy, and Spain. The great penetration and judgment which Comines has shewn in, these memoirs, the extensive knowlege of men and things, the wonderful skill in unfolding counsels and tracing actions to their first springs, and the variety of excellent precepts, political and philosophical, with which the whole is wrought up, have long preserved the credit of this work. Catherine de Medicis used to say, that Comines had made as many heretics in politics as Luther had in religion. He has one qualification not yet mentioned, which ought particularly to recommend him to our favour; and that is, the great impartiality he shews to the English. Whenever he has occasion to mention our nation, it is with much respect; and though, indeed, he thinks us deficient in political knowledge, when compared with his own countrymen, he gives us the character of being a generous, boldspirited people; highly commends our constitution, and never conceals the grandeur and magnificence of the English nation. Dryden, in his life of Plutarch, has made the historian some return for his civilities in the following elogium: “Next to Thucydides,” says that poet, “in this kind may be accounted Polybius among the Grecians; Livy, though not free from superstition, nor Tacitus from, ill-nature, amongst the Romans; amongst the modern Italians, Guicciardini and d'Avila, if not partial: but above all men, in my opinion, the plain, sincere, unaffected, and most instructive Philip deComines amongst the French, though he only gives his history the humble name of Commentaries. I am sorry I cannot find in our own nation, though it has produced some commendable historians, any proper to be ranked with these.” There are a very great number of editions of these “Memoirs” in French, enumerated by Le Long: the best, in the opinion of his countrymen, is that of the abbe Lenglet du Fresnoy, Paris, 1747, 4 vols. 4to, under the title of London. It was translated into English in 1596, as noticed by Ames and Herbert, who have, however, confounded him with Philip de Mornay. The last English translation was that of Uvedale, 1712, 2 vols. 8vo.

, of Gaza, a Christian poet of the third century, is the author of a Latin piece entitled “Institutiones.” It is composed in the form of verse, but without either measure or quantity: only care is taken that each line comprises a complete sense, and that it begins with something like an acrostic. It lay a long time in obscurity, until Rigaltius published it in his edition of Cyprian, and Davies at the end of Minutius Felix. It is more valuable for the strain of piety which prevails throughout the whole than for any poetical merit. Commodianus appears to have been originally a heathen, and as he informs us, was converted by reading the scriptures, and appears to have been also acquainted with secular authors. Lardner has bestowed a chapter on this work, and on the history of its author, in his “Credibility of the Gospel History.”

, a miscellaneous writer of some note in his day, was born in Ireland, and bred to the law, in which we do not find that he ever made any great figure. From thence he came over to London, in company with a Mr. Stirling, a dramatic poet of little note, to seek his fortune; and finding nothing so profitable, and so likely to recommend him to public notice, as political writing, he soon commenced an advocate for the government. There goes a story of him, however, but we will hope it is not a true one, that he and his fellow-traveller, who was embarked in the same adventure, for the sake of making their trade more profitable, resolved to divide their interests; the one to oppose, the other to defend the ministry. Upon which they determined the side each was to espouse by lots, or, according to Mr. Reed’s account, by tossing up a halfpenny, when it fell to Concanen’s part to defend the ministry. Stirling afterwards went into orders, and became a clergyman in Maryland. Concanen was for some time concerned in the “British” and “London Journals,” and in a paper called “The Specnlatist,” which last was published in 1730, 8vo. In these he took occasion to abuse not only lord Bolingbroke, who was naturally the object of it, but also Pope; by which he procured a place in the Dvwiciad. In a pamphlet called “A Supplement to the Profound,” he dealt very unfairly by Pope, as Pope’s commentator informs us, in not only frequently imputing to him Broome’s verses (for which, says he, he might seem in some degree accountable, having corrected what that gentleman did), but those of the duke of Buckingham and others. His wit and literary abilities, however, recommended him to the favour of the duke of Newcastle, through whose interest he obtained the post of attorney-general of the island of Jamaica in 1732, which office he filled with the utmost integrity and honour, and to the perfect satisfaction of the inhabitants, for near seventeen years; when, having acquired an ample fortune, he was desirous of passing the close of his life in his native country; with which intention he quitted Jamaica and came to London, proposing to pass some little time there before he went to settle entirely in Ireland. But the difference of climate between that metropolis and the place he had so long been accustomed to, had such an effect on his constitution, that he fell into a consumption, of which he died Jan. 22, 1749, a few weeks after his arrival in London. His original poems, though short, have considerable merit; but much cannot be said of his play, entitled “Wexford Wells.” He was also concerned with Mr. Roome and other gentlemen in altering Richard Broome’s “Jovial Crew” into a ballad opera, in which shape it is now frequently performed. Concanen has several songs in “The Musical Miscellany, 1729,” 6 vols. But a memofable letter addressed to him by Dr. Warburton will perhaps be remembered longer than any writing of his own pen. This letter^ which Mr. Malone first published (in his Supplement to Shakspeare, vol. I. p. 222), shews that, in 1726, Warbtirton, then an attorney at Newark, was intimate with Concanen, and an associate in the attacks made on Pope’s fame and talents. In 1724, Concanen published 3, volume of “Miscellaneous Poems, original and translated,” by himself and others.

, an English dramatic writer and poet, the son of William Congreve ofBardsey Grange, about eight miles from Leeds, was born in Feb. 1669-70. He was bred at the school of Kilkenny in Ireland, to which country he was carried over when a child by his father, who had a command in the army there. In 1685 he was admitted in the university of Dublin, and after having studied there some years, came to England, probably to his father’s house, who then resided in Staffordshire. On the 17th of March 1690-1, he became a member of the society of the Middle Temple; but the law proving too dry for him, he troubled himself little with it, and continued to pursue his former studies. His first production as an. author, was a novel, which, under the assumed name of Cleophil, he dedicated to Mrs. Catherine Leveson. The title of it was, “Incognita, or Love and Duty reconciled,” which has been said to have considerable merit as the production of a youth of seventeen, but it is certain he was now full twenty-one, and had sense enough to publish it without his name, and whatever reputation he gained by it, must have been confined within the circle of a few acquaintance.

Queen Mary dying at the close of this year, Congreve wrote a pastoral on that occasion, entitled “The Mourning Muse of Alexis;” which, for simplicity, elegance, and correctness, was long admired, and for which the king gave him a gratuity of 100l. In 1695 he produced his comedy called “Love for Love,” which gained him much applause; and the same year addressed to king William an ode “Upon the taking of Namiir;” which was very successful. After having established his reputation as a comic writer, he attempted a tragedy; and, in 1697, his “Mourning Bride” was acted at the new theatre in Lincoln' s-inn-fields, which completely answered the very high expectations of the public and of his friends. His attention, however, was now called off from the theatre to another species of composition, which was wholly new, and in which he was not so successful. His four plays were attacked with great sharpness by that zealous reformer of the stage, Jeremy Collier; who, having made his general attack on the immorality of the stage, included Congreve among the writers who had largely contributed to that effect. The consequence of the dispute which arose between Collier and the dramatic writers we have related in Collier’s article. It may be sufficient in this place to add, that although this controversy is believed to have created in Congreve some distaste to the stage, yet he afterwards brought on another comedy, entitled “The Way of the World;” of which it gave so just a picture, that the world seemed resolved not to bear it. This completed the disgust of our author to the theatre; upon which the celebrated critic Dennis, though not very famous for either, said with equal wit and taste, “That Mr. Congreve quitted the stage early, and that comedy left it with him.” This play, however, recovered its rank, and is still a favourite with the town. He amused himself afterwards with composing original poems and translations, which he collected in a volume, and published in 1710, when Swift describes him as “never free from the gout,” and “almost blind,” yet amusing himself with writing a “Taller.” He had a taste for music as well as poetry; as appears from his “Hymn to Harmony in honour of St. Cecilia’s day, 1701,” set by Mr. John Eccles, his great friend, to whom he was also obliged for composing several of his songs. His early acquaintance with the great had procured him an easy and independent station in life, and this freed him from all obligations of courting the public favour any longer. He was still under the tie of gratitude to his illustrious patrons; and as he never missed an opportunity of paying his compliments to them, so on the other hand he always shewed great regard to persons of a less exalted station, who had been serviceable to him on his entrance into public life. He wrote an epilogue for his old friend Southerne’s tragedy of Oroonoko; and we learn from Dryden himself, how much he was obliged to his assistance in the translation of Virgil. He contributed also the eleventh satire to the translation of “Juvenal,” published by that great poet, and wrote some excellent verses on the translation of Persius, written by Dryden alone.

"He who reads those lines enjoys for a moment the powers of a, poet he feels what he remembers to have felt before, but he feels it with great increase of sensibility he recognizes a familiar image, but meets it again amplified and expanded, embellished with beauty, and enlarged with majesty.

, an English poet of the 16th century, is said to have been born, or at least descended from a family of that name, in Yorkshire, and was for some time educated at Oxford, but took his bachelor’s degree at St. John’s college, Cambridge, in 1579. Edmund Bolton, in his “Hypercritica,” says, “Noble Henry Constable was a great master of the English tongue; nor had any gentleman of our nation a more pure, quick, or higher delivery of conceit: witness, among all other, that sonnet of his before his Majesty’s Lepanto.” He was the author of “Diana, or the excellent conceitful sonnets of H. C. augmented with divers quatorzains of honorable and learned personages, divided into eight decads,” 1594, 8vo. Of these sonnets Mr. Ellis has given three specimens, but which he thinks can hardly entitle him to be denominated “the first sonneteer of his time.” The most striking of his productions is that entitled “The Shepheard’s song of Venus and Adonis,” which is elegantly and harmoniously expressed. Mr. Malone, who reprinted it in the notes to the 10th volume of his Shakspeare, p. 74, thinks it preceded Shakspeare’s poem on the same subject, which it far excels, at least in taste and natural touches. Of his life, no memorials have been discovered. Dr. Birch, in his Memoirs of queen Elizabeth, thought him to be the same Henry Constable, who was a zealous Roman Catholic, and whose religion seems to have obliged him to live in a state of banishment from England. Sir E. Brydges is inclined to the same opinion. Constable afterwards came privately to London, but was soon discovered, and imprisoned in the Tower of London, whence he was released in the latter end of the year 1604. There was another of the name in the early part of the 16th century, a John Constable, the son of Roger Constable, who was born in London, and educated under the celebrated William Lilye. From thence he was sent to Byham Hall, opposite Merlon college, Oxford, where, in 1515, he took the degree of M.A. and was accounted at that time an excellent poet and rhetorician. He obtained some preferment, but of that, or of his subsequent history, we have no account. He published, in Latin, “Querela veritatis,”and “Epigrammata,” 1520, 4to. Like Henry Constable, he was of the Roman Catholic persuasion.

, an Italian poet, of an ancient family, was born about the end of the fourteenth, and died at Rimini about the middle of the fifteenth century. We have few particulars of his life. He appears to have been a lawyer by profession, and being at Bologna in 1409, he fell in love with the beauty whom he has celebrated in his verses. There is a collection of his poems, much esteemed, under the title of “La bella Mano,” Paris, 1595, 12mo, with some pieces of poetry by several of the old poets of Tuscany. This collection had been published for the first time at Venice, in 1492, 4to, and the abbe Salvini gave a new edition of it at Florence in 1715, accompanied with prefaces and annotations; but this is not so complete as either the edition of Paris, or that of Verona, 1753, in 4to. He was a professed imitator of Petrarch, but, although not destitute of merit, is greatly inferior to his model.

, an English officer and statesman, the second son of Francis, first lord Conway, was born in 1720, and appeared first in public life in 1741 as one of the knights for the county of Antrim, in the parliament of Ireland; and in the same year was elected for Higham Ferrers, to sit in the ninth parliament of Great Britain. He was afterwards chosen for various other places from 1754 to 1780, when he represented St. Edmund’s Bury. In 1741 he was constituted captain-lieutenant in the “first regiment of foot-guards, with the rank of lieutenant-colonel; and in April 1746, being then aid-de-camp to the duke of Cumberland, he got the command of the xorty-eighth regiment of foot, and the twenty-ninth in July 1749. He was constituted colonel of the thirteenth regiment of dragoons in December 1751, which he resigned upon being appointed colonel of the first, or royal regiment of dragoons, Septembers, 1759. In January 1756 he was advanced to the rank of major-general; in March 1759, to that of lieutenant-general; in May 1772, to that of general; and in October 12, 1793, to that of field marshal. He served with reputation in his several military capacities, and commanded the British forces in Germany, under prince Ferdinand of Brunswick, in 1761, during the absence of the marquis of Granby. He was one of the grooms of the bed-chamber to George II. and likewise to his present majesty till April 1764, when, at the end of the session of parliament, he resigned that office and his military commands, or, more properly speaking, was dismissed for voting against the ministry in the question of general warrants. His name, however, was continued in the list of the privy counsellors in Ireland; and William, the fourth duke of Devonshire, to whom he had been secretary when the duke was viceroy in Ireland, bequeathed him at his death, in 1764, a legacy of 5000l. on account of his conduct in parliament. On the accession of the Rockingham administration in 1765, he was sworn of the privy council, and appointed joint- secretary of state with the duke of Grafton, which office he resigned in January 1768. In February following, he was appointed colonel of the fourth regiment of dragoons; in October 1774, colonel of the royal regiment of horse-guards; and in October 1772, governor of the island of Jersey. On March 30, 1782, he was appointed commander in chief of his majesty’s forces, which he resigned in December 1783. He died at his seat at Park-place, near Henley upon Thames, July 9, 1795. General Conway was an ingenious man, of considerable abilities, but better calculated to be admired in the private and social circle, than to shine as a great public character. In politics, although we believe conscientious, he was timid and wavering. He had a turn for literature, and some talent for poetry, and, if we mistake not, published, but without his name, one or two political pamphlets. In his old age he aspired to the character of a dramatic writer, producing in 1789, a play, partly from the French, entitled” False Appearances," which was not, however, very successful. His most intimate friend appears to have been the late lord Orford, better known as Horace Walpole, who was his cousin, and addressed to him a considerable part of those letters which form the fifth volume of his lordship’s works. This correspondence commenced in 1 7-1-0, when Walpole was twenty-three years old, and Mr. Couway twenty. They had gone abroad together with the celebrated poet Gray in 1739, had spent three months together at Rheims, and afterwards separated at Geneva. Lord Orford’s letters, although evidently prepared for the press, evince at least a cordial and inviolable friendship for his correspondent, of which also he gave another proof in 3 letter published in defence of general Couway when dismissed from his offices; and a testimony of affection yet more decided, in bequeathing his fine villa of Strawberry Hill to Mrs. Darner, general Con way’s daughter, for her life.

, a learned divine and prelate of the church of England, was born at Pinhoe, near Exeter, on the 31st of January, 1691-2. His father was the rev. John Conybeare, vicar of Pinhoe; and his mother, Grace Wilcocks, was the daughter of a substantial gentleman farmer of that place. At a proper age, he was sent to the free-school of Exeter for grammatical education, where Hallet and Foster, afterwards two eminent dissenting divines, were his contemporaries. On the 23d of February, 1707-8, Mr. Conybeare was admitted a battler of Exeter college, Oxford, under the tuition of Mr. Thomas Kennel, afterwards Dr. Kennel, many years rector of Drew’s Teington, Pevon. Mr. Conybeare, on his coming to the university, was, according to the language of that place, chum with Mr. Richard Harding, who was elected fellow of Exeter college in 1709, and died rector of Marwood in Devonshire, in 1782, in the ninety-fifth year of his age. How early our young student obtained the esteem of the learned society with which he was connected, appears from his having been chosen on the 30th of June, 1710, and admitted on the 8th of July following, a probationary fellow of his college, upon sir William Petre’s foundation, in the room of Mr. Daniel Osborrie. When he was proposed as a candidate, it was only with the design of recommending him to future notice; but such was the sense entertained of his extraordinary merit, that he was made the object of immediate election. Mr. Harding used to say, that Mr. Conybeare had every way the advantage of him, excepting in seniority; and that he should have had no chance in a competition with him, if they had both been eligible at the same time. The patronage of Dr. Ilennel, Mr. Conybeare' s worthy tutor, concurred with his own desert, in bringing him forward thus early to academical advantages. On the 17th of July, 1713, he was admitted to the degree of bachelor of arts; and at the next election of college officers, upon the 30th of June, 1714, he was appointed praelector, or moderator, in philosophy. On the 19th of December following, he received deacon’s orders from the hanclaof Dr. William Talbot, bishop of Oxford; and on the 2rikof May, 1716, he was ordained priest by sir Jonathan Trelawny, bishop of Winchester. On the 16th of April, 1716, he proceeded to the degree of master of arts; soon after which he entered upon the curacy of Fetcham, in Surry, where he continued about a year. He was advised to this change of scene for the benefit of his health, which was always delicate, and had been greatly impaired by the intenseness of his application. Upon his return from Fetcham to Oxford, he became a tutor in his own college, and was much noticed in the university as a preacher. In the beginning of the year 1722, he published a sermon, which he had delivered before the university, on the 24th of December preceding, from Hebrews ii. 4, entitled “The nature, possibility, and certainty of Miracles, &c.” This discourse was so well received, that it went through four editions. Mr. Conybeare was hence encouraged to commit to the press a second sermon, from 1 Corinthians xiii. 12, which he had preached before the university, on the 21st of October, 1724, and the title of which was, “The Mysteries of the Christian Religion credible.” It is probable, that the reputation our author gained by these discourses, recommended him to the notice of the bishop of London (Dr. Gibson), who appointed him one of his majesty’s preachers at Whitehall, upon the first establishment of that institution. The esteem in which his abilities and character were held, procured him, also, the favour of the lord chancellor Macclesfield, who, in May 1724, presented him to the rectory of St. Clement’s in Oxford; a preferment of no great value, but which was convenient to iiim from his constant residence at that place, and from its being compatible with his fellowship. In 1725, he was chosen senior proctor of the university, which office he served in conjunction with Mr. Barnaby Smyth, fellow of Corpus-Christi college, and a scholar of eminence. In the same year, Mr. Conybeare was called upon to preach a visitation sermon before the bishop of Oxford, at whose request it was published, under the title of “The Case of Subscription to Articles of Religion considered,” and obtained no small degree of celebrity, being referred to in the controversy relating to subscription. The position of Mr. Conybeare is, that “every one who subscribes the articles of religion, does thereby engage, not only not to dispute or contradict them; but his subscription amounts to an approbation of, and an assent to, the truth of the doctrines therein contained, in the very sense in which the compilers are supposed to have understood them.” Mr. Conybeare’s next publication was an assize sermon, preached at St. Mary’s, Oxford, in 1727, from Ezra vii. 26, and entitled “The Penal sanctions of laws considered.” This discourse was dedicated by him to the honourable Charles Talbot, at that time solicitor-general, afterwards lord high chancellor of Great Britain, who had honoured our author with the care of his two eldest sons, Mr. Charles Talbot, celebrated by the poet Thomson, and the late earl Talbot, steward of his majesty’s household. On the llth of July, 1728, Mr. Conybeare was admitted to the degree of bachelor of divinity; and on the 24th of January following, he took his doctor’s degree. In the year 1729, he again appeared from the press, in a sermon that had been preached before the lord mayor and aldermen at St. Paul’s cathedral, and which was entitled ^The Expediency of a Divine Revelation represented.“It was accompanied with a dedication to bishop Talbot, father of the solicitor-general. From Dr. Conybeare’s introduction to this family, and the reputation he had acquired as a divine, it was expected that he would soon have been promoted to some dignity in the church. But the good bishop was taken off before he had a proper opportunity of carrying his benevolent intentions in our author’s favour into execution. In 1730, the headship of Exeter college becoming vacant, by the death of Dr. Hole, Dr. Conybeare was chosen to succeed him. His competitor, on this occasion, was the rev. Mr. Stephens, vicar of St. Andrew’s, Plymouth, a truly worthy clergyxpan, and the author of several ingenious discourses, Nevertheless, as he had retired early from the society, he could not be supposed to carry such weight with him as Dr. Conybeare, who had resided constantly in the college. In this year Dr. Tindal’s famous deistical book had appeared, entitled” Christianity as old as the Creation, or the Gospel a Republication of the Law of Nature.“This work excited the greatest attention, and drew forth the pens of some of the ablest divines of the kingdom, both in the church of PZngland, and among the protestant dissenters. Bishop Gibson, who had himself engaged in the controversy in his” Pastoral Letters,“encouraged Dr. Conybeare to undertake the task of giving a full and particular answer to Tindal’s production. Accordingly, he published in 1732, his” Defence of Revealed Religion,“Londoq, 8vo, by which he gained great credit to himself, and performed an eminent service to the cause of Christianity. In his dedication to the learned prelate now mentioned, he observes, that if he has not succeeded in his book according to his wishes, he may plead that it was drawn up amidst a variety of interruptions, and under a bad state of health.” This,“says he,” will in some sort excuse the author, though it may detract from the performance.“But Dr. Conybeare’s work did not stand in need of an apology. It is distinguished by the perspicuity of its method, and the strength of its reasoning; and is, indeed, one of the ablest vindications of revelation which England has produced. So well was the work received, that the third edition of it was published in 1733. Dr. Warburton justly styles it one of the best reasoned books in the world. It is likewise recommended by the temper and candour with which it is composed. Dr. Conybeare' s Defence will always maintain its rank, and perhaps be thought to sustain the first place among the four capital answers which Tindal received. The other three were, Foster’s” Usefulness, Truth, and Excellency of the Christian Revelation;“Leland’s” Answer to a late book, entitled Christianity as old as the Creation;“and Mr. Simon Browne’s” Defence of the Religion of Nature and the Christian Revelation."

, a poet and miscellaneous writer, was born at Braintree in Essex, in 1702 or 1703, where his father was an inn-keeper, and as Pope used to say, a Muggletonian. He was educated at Felsted school, where he made considerable proficiency, but how long he remained here, or what was his destination in life is not known. For some time he appears to have been domesticated in the family of lord Pembroke, who died in 1733, and who probably suggested to him a translation of Hesiod, to which his lordship contributed some notes. Before this nobleman’s death, he came to London in 1722, and became a writer by profession, and a strenuous supporter of revolution-principles, which formed a bond of union between him and Tickell, Philips, Welsted, Steele, Dennis, and others, whose political opinions agreed with his own. He wrote in some of the weekly journals of the time, and was considered as a man of learning and abilities. He is supposed to have attacked Pope from political principles, but it is fully as probable, that, as he was a good Greek scholar, he wished to derive some reputation from proving that Pope, in his translation of Homer, was deficient in that language. In 1725 he published a poem entitled “The Battle of the Poets,” in which Pope, Swift, and some others were treated with much freedom and translated and published in the Daily Journal, 1727, the episode of Thersites, from the second book of the Iliad, to show how much Pope had mistaken his author. For this attack Pope gave him a place in the “Dunciad,” and notices him with equal contempt in his Epistle to Dr. Arbutlmot. In a note likewise he informs us that Cooke “wrote letters at the same time to him, protesting his innocence;” but Cooke’s late biographer, sir Joseph Mawbey, is inclined to doubt this, and rather to believe that he was regardless of Pope’s enmity. In a subsequent edition of “The Battle of the Poets” Cooke notices the Dunciad with becoming spirit, and speaks with little respect of Pope’s “philosophy or dignity of mind, who could be provoked by what a boy writ concerning his translation of Homer, and in verses which gave no long promise of duration.” In 1725 or 172G, Cooke published “The Knights of the Bath,” and “Philander and Cydippe,” both poetical tales; and several other pieces of poetry the former evidently meant to attract the public attention, on the revival, about that time, of the order of the Bath. He wrote soon after “The Triumphs of Love and Honour,” a play; “The Eunuch,” a farce; and “The Mournful Nuptials,” a tragedy; all performed at Drury-lane theatre, but with little success. In 1726 he published an account of the “Life and Writings of Andrew Marvell, esq.” prefixed to an edition of the poetical works of that celebrated politician, 2 vols. 12mo, and in 1728 his translation of “Hesiod.” In 1734 he published an edition of Terence, with an English translation, 3 vols. 12mo, and in 1737 “A Translation of Cicero on the Nature of the Gods,” with philosophical, critical, and explanatory notes, to which is added an examination into the astronomy of the ancients, 8vo. In 1741 he encreased his classical reputation by an edition of Virgil, with an interpretation in Latin, and notes in English. In 1742 he published a volume of his original “Poems,” with imitations and translations, and in 1746 undertook a new edition and translation of Plautus, by subscription. Of this he produced in 1754 the first volume, containing a dissertation on the life of Plautus, and a. translation of the comedy of Amphitryon, but although his list of subscribers was very copious, and he went on receiving more, he never completed the work.

For the loss which was occasioned by Mr. Locke’s timidity or prudence, he was solicitous to make some degree of reparation. Accordingly, he formed an intention of writing, at large, the history of his noble friend; and if he had accomplished his intention, his work would undoubtedly have been a very valuable present to the public. But there was another biographer, who wrote a life of the earl, soon after his decease. This was Thomas Stringer, esq. of Ivy church, near Salisbury, a gentleman of great integrity and excellent character; who had held, we believe, under his lordship, when high-chancellor of England, the office of clerk of the presentations; and who was much esteemed by some of the principal persons of the age. With Mr. Locke in particular, he maintained an intimate friendship to the time of his death, which happened in 1702. Mr. Stringer’s account has been the ground-work on which the narrative intended for the public eye, by the noble family, has been built. It contained a valuable history of the earl’s life; but was probably much inferior in composition to what Mr. Locke’s would have been; and indeed, in its original form, it was too imperfect for publication. Sometime about the year 1732, this manuscript, together with the rest of the Shaftesbury papers, was put into the hands of Mr. Benjamin Marty n, a gentleman who was then known in the literary world, in consequence of having written a tragedy, entitled “Timoleoh,” which had been acted with success at the theatre royal in Drury-lane. Mr. Martyn made Mr. Stringer’s manuscript the basis of his own work, which he enriched with such speeches of the earl as are yet remaining, and with several particulars drawn from some loose papers left by his lordship. He availed himself, likewise, of other means of information, which more recent publications had afforded; and prefixed to the whole an introduction of considerable length, wherein he passed very high encomiums on our great statesman, and strengthened them by the testimonies of Mr. Locke and Mons. Le Clerc. He added, also, strictures on L' Estrange, sir William Temple, bishop Burnet, and others, who had written to his lordship’s disadvantage. One anecdote, which we well remember, it cannot but be agreeable to the public and to the noble family to see related. It is well known with what severity the earl of Shaftesbury’s character is treated by Dryden, in his Absalom and Achitophel. Nevertheless, soon after that fine satire appeared, his lordship having the nomination of a scholar, as governor of the Charter-house, gave it to one of the poet’s sons, without any solicitation on the part of the father, or of any other person. This act of generosity had such an effect upon IXryden, that, to testify his gratitude, he added, in the second edition of the poem, the four following lines, in celebration of the earl’s conduct as lord chancellor.

, an English poet and miscellaneous writer, was born in 1723. He descended, according to the account of his life in the Biographia Britannica, from an ancient family in Nottinghamshire, impoverished on account of its loyalty during the rebellion in Charles the First’s time. Thurgaton Priory in that county was granted to one of his ancestors by Henry VIII. and after some interruption, became the residence of our poet’s father, and still continues in the family. In Thoroton’s Nottinghamshire, it is stated that the family name was Gilbert, and that, in 1736, John Gilbert, esq. obtained leave to use the surname and arms of Cooper, pursuant to the will of John Cooper, of Thurgaton, esq. He was educated at Westminster-school under Dr. John Nichols, and in 1743 became a fellow-commoner of Trinity college, Cambridge, where he resided two or three years, without taking a degree, but not without a due attention to his studies. With some tincture of foppery, he was a young man of very lively parts, and attached ^to classical learning, which it is only to be regretted he did not pursue with judgment* He quitted the university on his marriage with Susanna, the grand-daughter of sir Nathan Wright, lord keeper. la. 1745, he published “The Power of Harmony,” in two books, in which he endeavoured to recommend a constant attention to what is perfect and beautiful in nature, as the means of harmonizing the soul to a responsive regularity and sympathetic order. This imitation of the language of the Shaftesbury school was not affectation. He had studied the works of that nobleman with enthusiasm, and seems entirely to have regulated his conduct by the maxims of the ancient and modern academics. The poem brought him into notice with the public, but he appears not at this time to have courted the fame of authorship. When Dodsley began to publish his “Museum,” he invited the aid of Mr. Cooper among others who were friendly to him, and received a greater portion of assistance from our author’s pen than from that of any other individual. His papers, however, were signed, not Pkilalethes, as mentioned in the Biographia Britannica, but Philaretes.

In 1755 he published the “Tomb of Shakspeare,” a vision, and when the “World” was set up by Dodsley and Moore, he contributed two papers. In 1756, he appears to have caught the alarm very general at that time among the enemies of administration, lest the Hessian troops, brought into the country to defend the kingdom from invasion, should be instrumental in subverting its liberties. Mr. Cooper was no politician, but he was a poet, and he determined to contribute his share of warning, in a poem entitled “The Genius of Britain,” addressed to Mr. Pitt. In 1758 he published “Epistles to the Great, from Aristippus in retirement,” and soon after “The Call of Aristippus,” addressed to Dr. Akenside, in a style of adulation pardonable only to the warmest feelings of friendship. Some other of his lesser pieces were republished about this time; and in 1759 his translation of Gresset’s “VerVert,” a mock heroic poem in four cantos. In 1764, all these, with the exception of the “Ver Vert,” and “The Estimate of Life,” were published in one volume by Dodsley, whom he allowed to take that liberty, and who informs us that they were originally written for the author’s amusement, and afterwards published for the bookseller’s profit. At this time, he had probably taken leave of the muses, and was applying himself to the active and useful duties of a magistrate. He resided, however, occasionally in London, and was a constant attendant and frequent speaker at the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce. Of this he had unsuccessfully endeavoured to become a vice-president, and felt his disappointment so keenly as to retire in disgust. He died at his house in May Fair, after a long and excruciating illness, occasioned by the stone, April 14, 1769, in the fortysixth year of his age.

, an English prelate, but better known and perhaps more respected as a poet, was the son of Vincent Corbet, and was born at Ewell in Surrey, in 1582. His father, who attained the age of eighty, appears to have been a man of excellent character, and is celebrated in one of his son’s poems with filial ardour. For some reason he assumed the name of Pointer, or, perhaps, relinquished that for Corbet, which seems more probable: his usual residence was at Whitton in the county of Middlesex, where he was noted for his skill in horticulture, and amassed considerable property in houses and land, which he bequeathed to his son at his death in 1619. Our poet was educated at Westminster school, and in Lenu term, 1597-8, entered in Broadgate hall (afterwards Pembroke college), and the year following was admitted a student of Christ Church, Oxford, where he soon became noted among men of wit and vivacity. In 1605 he took his master’s degree, and entered into holy orders. In 3612 he pronounced a funeral oration in St. Mary’s church, Oxford, on the death of Henry, prince of Wales; and the following year, another on the interment of that eminent benefactor to learning, sir Thomas Bodley. In 1618 he took a journey to France, from which he wrote the epistle to sir Thomas Aylesbury. His “Journey to Fiance,” one of his most humorous poems, is remarkable for giving some traits of the French character that are visible in the present day. King James, who showed no weakness in the choice of his literary favourites, made him one of his chaplains in ordinary, and in 1627 advanced him to the dignity of dean, of Christ Church. At this time he was doctor in divinity, vicar of Cassington near Woodstock, in Oxfordshire, and prebendary of Bedminster Secunda in the church of Sarum.

His poems, after passing through three editions, were lately very carefully revised and published by Mr. Gilchrist, with the addition of an excellent life, notes, and illustrations. As a poet, it will npt be found that Corbet stands eminently distinguished. His thoughts, however, are often striking and original, although delivered in the uncouth language of his times, and seldom indebted to correctness of versification. His faults are in general those of the age in which he wrote, and if he fills no conspicuous place in poetical history, it ought not to be forgot that he wrote for the amusement of the moment, and made no pretensions to the veneration of posterity. His principal objects were gaiety and merriment at the expence of the more glaring follies of his day; of his serious efforts it may be justly said that his feeling was without affectation, and his panegyric without servility.

, called by Melchior Adam, Henry Urban, a physician and poet, was a native of Simmershuys in Hesse. To assist himself in the prosecution of his studies, he undertook the business of private tutor, and while thus employed, had the good fortune to attract the notice of Erasmus, but his openness of character is said to have procured him enemies among men of less liberal minds. In 1521 he went to Italy, where he attached himself in a particular manner to the study of botany collecting and examining a number of rare plants, and diligently comparing them with the descriptions of them left by Dioscorides. At Ferrara he took the degree of doctor in medicine, which he afterwards taught at Erfurt and Marpurg. In 1535 he went to Bremen, where he remained until his death, in 1533. He was author of several, and some very valuable, works. His “Treatise on the English Sweating Sickness” was published at Fribourg, in 1529, 4to; and in 1532, he gave a Latin version of the Tberiaca, and Alexipharmica of Nicander. His “Botanologicon, sive Colloquium de Herbis,” was printed at Colonna, in 1534, and is commended by Haller, and was several times reprinted; and his “De Abusu Uroscopirc,” in 1546, at Francfort. His Latin poems were published in the “Deliciae Poet. Germ.”

The performance and compositions of this admirable musician, says Dr. Burney, form an sera in instrumental music, particularly for the violin, and its kindred instruments, the tenor and violoncello, which he made respectable, and fixed their use and reputation, in all probability, as long as the present system of music shall continue to delight the ears of mankind. Indeed, this most excellent master had the happiness of enjoying part of his fame during mortality; for scarce a contemporary musical writer, historian, or poet, neglected to celebrate his genius and talents; and his productions have contributed longer to charm the lovers of music by the mere powers of the bow, without the assistance of the human voice, than tho.se of any composer that has yet existed. Haydn, indeed, with more varied abilities, and a much more creative genius, when instruments of all kinds are better understood, has captivated the musical world in perhaps a still higher degree; but whether the duration of his favour will be equal to that of Corelli, who reigned supreme in all concerts, and excited undiminished rapture full half a century, must be left to the determination of time, and the encreased rage of depraved appetites for novelty.

, a late celebrated improvisatrice, was born at Pistoia in 1740, and gave, in her infancy, the most unequivocal marks of uncommon genius; and her acquirements in natural and moral philosophy, and ancient and modern history, were at the age of seventeen very remarkable. At the age of twenty she began to display that talent for extempore composition which is so common in Italy, and so uncommon elsewhere as to be questioned. Of this lady’s abilities, however, we are not permitted to doubt, if we give any credit to the popularity she gained among all classes, and especially among persons of the highest rank. The empress Maria Theresa offered her the place of female poet laureat at court, which she accepted, And went to Vienna in 1765. Previously to this she had married signer Morelli, a gentleman of Leghorn; but her conduct after marriage became grossly licentious, a circumstance which does not appear to have diminished the respect paid to her by all ranks. At Vienna, she wrote an epic poem and a volume of lyric poetry, both which she dedicated to the empress. She attracted the enthusiastic admiration of Metastasio himself, and rendered the taste for Italian poetry more predominant than it had ever been in Vienna. Soon after 1771, she settled in Rome, was admitted a member of the academy of the Arcadi, under the name of Gorilla Olympica, and for some years continued to charm the inhabitants of Rome by her talents in improvisation. At length when Pius VI. became pope, he determined that she should be solemnly crowned, an honour which had been granted to Petrarch only. An account of this singular transaction, beautifully printed at Parma, by Bodoni, in 1779, contains her diploma and all the discourses, poems, sonnets, &c. written on the occasion, with the examination which she underwent, concerning her knowledge of the most important subjects upon which she was required to Improvisare, or treat extemporaneously, in verse publicly at the Campidoglio in Rome. The Italian title of this narrative is, “Atti della solenne coronazione fatta in Campidoglio della insigne poetesia D-na. Maria Maddalena Morelli Fernandez Pistoiese, Tragli Arcadi Gorilla Olimpica.” Twelve members of the Arcadian academy were selected out of thirty, publicly to examine this new edition of a Tenth Muse which has been so often dedicated to ladies of poetical and literary talents. Three several days were allotted for this public exhibition of poetical powers on the following subjects: sacred history, revealed religion, moral philosophy, natural history, metaphysics, epic poetry, legislation, eloquence, mythology, fine arts, and pastoral poetry.

, a Grecian lady, celebrated for her beauty and poetic talents, was born at Thessu a city in Boeotia, and was the disciple of Myrtis, another Grecian lady. Her verses were so esteemed by the Greeks that they gave her the name of the Lyric Muse. She lived in the time of Pindar, about 495 years before Christ, and is said to have gained the prize of lyric poetry five times from that poet: but Pausanias observes that her beauty made the judges partial. Corinna wrote a great deal of poetry, but no more have come down to us than some fragments whicli may be seen in Fabricius’s “Bibliotheca Graeca.”

Some sensualists, as it appears, had objected to his manner of living; and in order to evince the reasonableness of their own, had urged, that it was not worth while to mortify one’s appetites at such a rate, for the sake of being old since all that was life, after the age of sixty-five, could not properly be called vita viva, sed vita mortua not a living life, but a dead life. “Now,” says he, “to shew these gentlemen how much they are mistaken, I will briefly run over the satisfactions and pleasures which I myself now enjoy in this eighty-third year of my age. In the first place I am always well; and so active withal, that I can with ease mount a horse upon a flat, and walk to the tops of very high mountains. In the next place I am always cheerful, pleasant, perfectly contented, and free from all perturbation, and every uneasy thought. I have none of that fastidium vita?, that satiety of life, so often to be met with in persons of my age. I frequently converse with men of parts and learning, and spend much of my time in reading and writing. These things I do, just as opportunity serves, or my humour invites me; and all in my own house here at Padua, which, I may say, is as commodious and elegant a seat, as any perhaps that this age can shew; built by me according to the exact proportions of architecture, and so contrived as to be an equal shelter against heat and cold. I enjoy at proper intervals my gardens, of which I have many, whose borders are refreshed with streams of running water. I spend some months in the year at those Eugancan hills, where I have another commodious house with gardens and fountains: and I visit also a seat I have in the valley, which abounds in beauties, from the many structures, woods, and rivulets that encompass it. I frequently make excursions to some of the neighbouring cities, for the sake of seeing my friends, and conversing with the adepts in all arts and sciences: architects, painters, statuaries, musicians, and even husbandmen. I contemplate their works, compare them with the ancients, and am always learning something, which it is agreeable to know. I take a view of palaces, gardens, antiquities, public buildings, temples, fortifications: and nothing escapes me, which can afford the least amusement to a rational mind. Nor are these pleasures at all blunted by the usual imperfections of great age: for I enjoy all my senses in perfect vigour; my taste so very much, that I have a better relish for the plainest food now, than I had for the choicest delicacies, when formerly immersed in a life oi luxury. Nay, to let you see what a portion of fire and spirit I have still left within me, know, that I have this very year written a comedy, full of innocent mirth and pleasantry; and, if a Greek poet was thought so very healthy and happy, for writing a tragedy at the age of 73, why should not I be thought as healthy and as happy, who have written a comedy, when I am ten years older? In short, that no pleasure whatever may be wanting to my old age, I please myself daily with contemplating that immortality, which I think I see in the succession of my posterity. For every time I return home, I meet eleven grandchildren, all the offspring of one father and mother; all in fine health; all, as far as I can discern, apt to learn, and of good behaviour. I am often amused by their singing; nay, I often sing with them, because my voice is louder and clearer now, than ever it was in my life before. These are the delights and comforts of my old age; from which, I presume, it appears, that the life I spend is not a dead, morose, and melancholy life, but a living, active, pleasant life, which I would not change with the robustest of those youths who indulge and riot in all the luxury of the senses, because I know them to be exposed to a thousand diseases, and a thousand kinds of deaths. I, on the contrary, am free from all such apprehensions: from the apprehension of disease, because I have nothing for disease to feed upon; from the apprehension of death, because I have spent a life of reason. Besides, death, I am persuaded, is not yet near me. I know that (barring accidents) no violent disease can touch me. I must be dissolved by a gentle and gradual decay, when the radical humour is consumed like oil in a lamp, which affords no longer life to the dying taper. But such a death as this cannot happen of a sudden. To become unable to walk and reason, to become blind, deaf, and bent to the earth, from all which evils I am far enough at present, must take a considerable portion of time: andI verily believe, that this immortal soul, which still inhabits my body with so much harmony and complacency, will not easily depart from it yet. I verily believe that I have many years to live, many years to enjoy the world and all the good that is in it; by virtue of that strict sobriety and temperan-ce, which I have so loug and so religiously observed; friend as I am to reason, but a foe to sense.” His wife, who survived him, lived also to nearly the same age. Sir John Sinclair, in his “Code of Health and Longevity,” mentions the edition of 1779 as the best English translation of Cornaro’s works. There are four discourses on one subject, penned at different times; the first, already mentioned, which he wrote at the age of eighty-three, in which he declares war against every kind of intemperance. The second was composed three years after, and contains directions for repairing a bad constitution. The third he wrote when he was ninety-one, entitled “An earnest exhortation to a sober life;” and the last is a letter to Barbaro, patriarch of Aquileia, written when he was ninety-five, which contains a lively description of the htalth, vigour, and perfect use of all his faculties, which he had the happiness of enjoying at that advanced period of life.

, an Italian poet, was born at Placentia, and flourished in the fifteenth century, but we have no dates of his birth or death. He passed some part of his life at Milan, and afterwards travelled into France; and on his return he went to Ferrara, where he remained until his death, patronized by the duke Hercules I. who had a high regard for him. Some of his biographers inform us that he served under the celebrated Venetian general, Bartholomew Coglioni, of whom he has left a life, in Latin, published by Burman. He left also a great many other works, the most considerable of which is an Italian poem, in nine books, on the military art, with the Latin title of “De Re Militari,” Venice, 1493, fol.; Pesaro, 1507, 8vo, &c. He has likewise given Latin titles to his three small poems, on the art of governing, the vicissitudes of fortune, and on the ablest generals: these were published at Venice, 1517, 8vo, but are rather dull and uninviting. His “Lyric poems,” sonnets, canzoni, &c. were published at Venice, 1502, 8vo, and Milan, 1519. In these we find a little more spirit and vivacity, but they partake of the poetical character of his time. Quadrio, however, ranks them among the best in the Italian language.

, one of the most celebrated French poets, and called by his countrymen the Shakspeare of France, was born at Roan, June 6, 1606, of considerable parents, his father having been ennobled for his services by Louis XIII. He was brought up to the bar, which he attended some little time; but having no turn for business, he soon deserted it. At this time he had given the public no specimen of his talents for poetry, nor appears to have been conscious of possessing any such: and they tell us, that it was purely a trifling affair of gallantry, which gave occasion to his first comedy, called “Melite.” The drama was then extremely low among the French; their tragedy fiat and languid, their comedy more barbarous than the lowest of the vulgar would now tolerate. Corneille was astonished to find himself the author of a piece entirely new, and at the prodigious success with which his “Melite” was acted. The French theatre seemed to be raised, and to flourish at once; and though deserted in a manner before, was now filled on a sudden with a new company of actors. After so happy an essay, he continued to produce several other pieces of the same kind; all of them, indeed, inferior to what he afterwards wrote, but much superior to any thing which the French had hitherto seen. His “Medea” came forth next, a tragedy, borrowed in part from Seneca, which succeeded, as indeed it deserved, bul indifferently; but in 1637 he presented the “Cid,” another tragedy, in which he shewed the world how high his genius was capable of rising, and seems to confirm Du Bos’s assertion, that the age of thirty, or a few years more or less, is that at which poets and painters arrive at as high a pitch of perfection as their geniuses will permit. All Europe has seen the Cid: it has been translated into almost all languages: but the reputation which he acquired by this play, drew all the wits of his time into a confederacy against it. Some treated it contemptuously, others wrote against it. Cardinal de Richelieu himself is said to have been one of this cabal; for, not content with passing for a great minister of state, he affected to pass for a wit and a critic; and, therefore, though he had settled a pension upon the poet, could not abstain from secret attempts against his play . It was supposed to be under his influence that the French Academy drew up that critique upon it, entitled, “Sentiments of the French academy upon the tragi-comedy of Cid:” in which, however, while they censured some parts, they did not scruple to praise it very highly in others. Corneille now endeavoured to support the vast reputation he had gained, by many admirable performances in succession, which, as Bayle observes, “carried the French theatre to its highest pitch of glory, and assuredly much higher than the ancient one at Athens;” yet still, at this time, he had to contend with the bad taste of the most fashionable wits. When he read his “Polyeucte,” one of his best tragedies, before a company of these, where Voiture presided, it was very coldly received; and Voiture afterwards told him, it was the opinion of his friends that the piece would not succeed. In 1647 he was chosen a member of the French academy; and was what they call dean of that society at the time of his death, which happened in 1684, in his 79th year.

He was, it is said, a man of a devout and melancholy cast; and upon a disgust he had conceived to the theatre, from the cold reception of his “Pertharite,” betook himself to the translation of “The Imitation of Jesus Christ,” by Kempis; which he performed very elegantly. He returned, however, to the drama, although not with his wonted vigour. He spoke little in company, even upon subjects which he perfectly understood. He was a very worthy and honest man; not very dexterous in making his court to the great, which was perhaps the chief reason why he never drew any considerable advantage from his productions, besides the reputation which always attended them. Racine, in a speech made to the French academy in the beginning- of 1685, does great justice to our author’s talents. After representing the miserable state in which the French theatre then was, that it was without order, decency, sense, taste, he passes to the sudden reformation effected by Corneille: “a man who possessed at once all those extraordinary talents which form a great poet; art, force, judgment, and wit. Nor can any one sufficiently admire the greatness of his sentiments, the skill he shews in the economy of his subjects, his masterly way of moving the passions, the dignity, and at the same time the vast variety of his characters.” This encomium must have the more weight, as it comes from the only man in the world who has been considered as his great rival. Yet we are told, that when Racine read his tragedy of “Alexander” to Corneille, the latter gave him many commendations, but advised him to apply his genius, as not being adapted to the drama, to some other speuies of poetry. Corneille, says Dr. Warton, one would hope, was incapable of a mean jealousy; and if he gave this advice, thought it really proper to be given. The French have ever been fond of opposing Corneille to Shakspeare ' 9 but the want of comic powers in Corneille, for his comedies are truly contemptible, must ever obstruct the comparison. His genius was unquestionably very rich, but seems more turned towards the epic than the tragic muse; and in. general he is magnificent and splendid, rather than tender and touching. He is, says Blair, an opinion in which all English critics agree, the most declamatory of all the French tragedians. He united the copiousness of Dryden with the fire of Lucan; and he resembles them also in their faults: in their extravagance and impetuosity. As to the opinions of the best modern French critics, on the merits of Corneille, we may refer to an admirable “Eloge,” published by Da Ponte, in London, 1808, and to Suard’s “Melange de Litterature,” 1808. But Fontenelle’s comparison between Corneille and Racine, as less accessible to many readers, may be added here with advantage. Corneille, says Fontenelle, had no excellent author before his eyes, whom he could follow; Racine had Corneille. Corneille found the French stage in a barbarous state, and advanced it to great perfection: Racine has not supported it in the perfection in which he found it. The characters of Corneille are true, though they are not common: the characters of Racine are not true, but only in proportion as they are common. Sometimes the characters of Corneille are, in some respects, false and unnatural, because they are noble and singular; those of Racine are often, in some respects, low, on account of their being natural and ordinary. He that has a noble heart, would chuse to resemble the heroes of Corneille; he that has a little heart, is pleased to find his own resemblance in the heroes of Racine. We carry, from hearing the pieces of the one, a desire to be virtuous; and we carry the pleasure of finding men like ourselves, in foibles and weaknesses, from the pieces of the other. The tender and graceful of Racine is sometimes to be found in Corneille: the grand and sublime of Corneille is never to be found in Racine. Racine has painted only the French and the present age, even when he designed to paint another age and other nations: we see in Corneille all those ages, and all those nations, that he intended to paint. The number of the pieces of Corneille is much greater than that of Racine: CorneiHe, notwithstanding, has made fewer tautologies and repetitions than Racine has made. ID the passages where the versification of CorneiHe is good, it is more bold, more noble, and, at the same time, as pure and as finished as that of Racine: but it is not preserved in this degree of beauty: and that of Racine is always equally supported. Authors, inferior to Racine, have written successfully after him, in his own way: no author, not even Racine himself, dared to attempt, after CorneiHe, that kind of writing which was peculiar to him. Voltaire, the best editor of Corneille’s works, seems in some measure to coincide with Fontenelle. “CorneiHe,” says he, “alone formed himself; but Louis XIV. Colbert, Sophocles, and Euripides, all of them contributed to form Racine.” When we arrive, however, at Racine, it will be necessary to estimate his merit, without the bias which comparative criticism generally produces.

, brother to the preceding, a French poet also, but inferior to Peter CorneiHe, was born in 1625. He was a member of the French academy, and of the academy of inscriptions. He discovered, when he was young, a strong inclination and genius for poetry; and afterwards was the author of many dramatic pieces, some of which were well received by the public, and acted with great success. He died at Andeli, 1709, aged 84. His dramatic works, with those of his brother, were published at Paris, 1.738, in 11 vols. 12mo. Besides dramatic, Thomas Corneille was the author of some other works: as, 1. A translation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses and some of his Epistles. 2. Remarks upon Vaugelas. 3. fe A dictionary of arts,“in 2 vols. folio. 4.” An universal geographical and historical dictionary," in 3 vols. folio. In the last work, that part of the geography which concerns Normandy is said to be excellent. As to his dramatic talents, they were far from being contemptible, and a few of his pieces still keep their place on the stage; but it was his misfortune to be a Corneille, and brother of one emphatically called the Great Corneille.

, a Latin poet of some note in his day, was born in the parish of St. Thomas, in Salisbury. He received his education at Winchester-school, and in the year 1562 was admitted perpetual fellow of New college, Oxford. In the year 1566, on queen Elizabeth’s visiting the university, he, together with W. Reynolds, bachelor of arts, received her majesty and her train at New college; on which occasion he pronounced an oration, for which he received great praises and a handsome purse of gold. He afterwards took his degree in arts, and, in June 1570, became rector of Odcombe on the death of Thomas Reade, and some time after, bachelor of divinity. In the year 1594, he was appointed prebendary of Warthill, in the cathedral church of York, and also held some other dignity, but what we are not informed. He died at the parsonage-house at Odcombe, on the 4th of March, 1606. It is asserted that his son, the celebrated traveller, agreeably to his whimsical character, entertained a design of preserving his body from stench and putrefaction, and with that view caused it to be kept above ground until the 14th of April following, when it was buried in the chancel of the church of Odcombe. George Cory ate was much commended in his time for his fine fancy in Latin poetry; and for certain pieces which he had written was honourably quoted by several eminent writers. The only pieces Mr. Wood had seen of his composition were, 1. “Poemata varia Latina,” London, 1611, 4to, published by his son after his death, and by him entitled “Posthuxna fragmenta Poematum Georgii Coryate.” 2. “Descriptio Anglise, Scotiæ, et Hiberniæ,” written in Latin verse, and dedicated to queen Elizabeth, but it does not appear that this piece was ever printed. In 1763, James Liunley Kingston, esq. of Dorchester, published, from a ms. found amongst the papers belonging to a considerable family in one of the western counties, a Latin poem, which appears to have been written in the reign of queen Elizabeth, entitled “Descriptio Angli.se et Descriptio Londini,” being two poems in Latin verse, supposed to be written in the fifteenth century. This pamphlet Mr. Gough thinks may be part of the poem noticed by Mr. Wood. The mention of only fifteen colleges at Oxford, fixes the date of the verses before the year 1571. Mr. Coryate’s wife, Gertrude, outlived her husband and son many years, and resided at Odcombe or near it until her death. Dr. Humphry Hody, a native of that place, informed Mr. Wood, that she was buried near the remains of her husband on the 3d of April, 1645. It appears that after her husband’s death she married a second time.

What became of the notes and observations he made in his long peregrinations, is unknown. The following only, which he sent to his friends in England, were printed in his absence: 1. “Letters from Asmere, the court of the great mogul, to several persons of quality in England, concerning the emperor and his country of East-India,” 1616, 4to, in the title of which is our author’s picture, riding on an elephant. 2. “A Letter to his mother Gertrude, dated from Agra in East India, containing the speech that he spoke to the great mogul in the Persian lauguage.” 3. “Certain Observations from the mogul’s court and East India.” 4. “Travels to, and observations in, Constantinople and other places in the way thither, and in his journey thence to Aleppo, Damascus, and Jerusalem.” 5. “His oration, Purus, Putus Coryatus; quintessence of Coryate; spoken extempore, when Mr. llugg dubbed him a knight on the ruins of Troy, by the name of Thomas Coryate the first English knight of Troy.” 6. “Observations of Constantinople abridged.” All these are to be found in the “Pilgrimages” of Sam Purchas. 7. “Diverse Latin and Greek epistles to learned men beyond the seas;” some of which are in his “Crudities.” Among his persecutors was Taylor the Water-poet, who frequently endeavours to raise a laugh at his expence. To Coryate’s works may be added a copy of verses, in the Somersetshire dialect, printed in Guidott’s “Collection of Treatises on the Bath Waters,” 1725, 8vo.

, an elegant modern Latin poet, was born in a village near Verona in 1483, and gained considerable reputation by his talents. -He followed to the army Bartholomew d'Alviano, a Venetian general who had a regard for him; but he was taken by the French at the battle of Ghiara d'Adda, in the year 1509, lost some of his manuscripts, and did not regain his liberty for some time. His patron sent him to pope Julius II. at Viterbo, where he died in 1511, of a pestilential fever. Several of his epigrams and orations are printed in the collection entitled “Carmina quinque poetarum,” Venice, 1548, 8vo.

, an English poet, was the son of Charles Cotton, esq. of Beresford in Staffordshire, a man of considerable fortune and high accomplishments. His son, who inherited many of these characteristics, was born on the 28th of April, 1630, and educated at the university of Cambridge, where he had for his tutor Mr. Ralph Rawson, whom he celebrates in the translation of an ode of Joannes Secundus. At the university, he is said to have studied the Greek and Roman classics with distinguished success, and to have become a perfect master of the French and Italian languages. It does not appear, however, that he took any degree, or studied with a view to any learned profession; but after his residence at Cambridge, travelled into France and other parts of the continent. On his return, he resided during the greater part of his life at the family seat at Beresford. In 1656, when he was in his twenty-sixth year, he married Isabella, daughter of sir Thomas Hutchinson, knt. of Owthorp in the county of Nottingham, a distant relation, and took her home to his father’s house, as he had no other establishment. In 1658 he succeeded to the family estate encumbered by some imprudencies of his deceased father, from which it does not appear that he was ever able to relieve it.

At what time his first wife died, is not recorded. His second was Mary, countess dowager of Ardglass, widow of Wingfield lord Cromwell, second earl of Ardglass, who died in 1649. She must therefore have been considerably older than our poet, but she had a jointure of 1500l. a year, which, although it probably afforded him many comforts, was secured from his imprudent management. He died in the parish of St. James’s, Westminster, in 1687, and, it would appear, in a state of insolvency, as Elizabeth Bludworth, his principal creditor, administered to his effects, his widow and children having previously renounced the administration. These children were by the first wife, One of them, Mr. Beresford Cotton, published in 1694- the “Memoirs of the Sieur de Pontis,” translated by his father; and perhaps assisted in the collection of his poems which appeared in 1689. This gentleman had a company given him in a regiment of foot raised by the earl of Derby, for the service of king William; and one of his sisters was married to the celebrated Dr. George Stanhope, dean of Canterbury,

His fate as a poet has been very singular. The “Virgil Travestie,” and his other burlesque performances, have been perpetuated by at least fifteen editions, while his “Poems,” published in 1689, in which he displays true taste and elegance, have never been reprinted until they were admitted into the late edition of the Poets; or, at least, a selection, for many of his smaller pieces abound in those indelicacies which were the reproach of the reign of Charles II. In what remain, we find a strange mixture of broad humour and drollery, mixed with delicacy and tenderness of sentiment, and even with devotional poetry of a superior cast. His Pindarics will probably not be thought unworthy of a comparison with those of Cowley. His verses are often equally harmonious, while his thoughts are less encumbered with amplification. In his burlesque poems, Butler appears to have been his model, but we have the Hudibrastic measure only; nothing can be more vulgar, disgusting, or licentious than his parodies on Virgil and Lucian. That they should- have been so often reprinted, marks the slow progress of the refinement of public taste during the greater part of the eighteenth century; but within the last thirty years it has advanced with rapidity, and Cotton is no longer tolerated. The Travestie, indeed, even when executed with a more chaste humour than in Cotton’s Virgil, or Bridges’s Homer, is an extravagance pernicious to true taste, and ought never to be encouraged unless where the original is a legitimate object of ridicule.

, an English physician, poet, and amiable man, was born in 1707, but in what county, or of what family, is not known. He studied physic under the celebrated Boerhaave, at Leyden, and is supposed to have taken his degree at that university, which was then the first medical school in Europe, and the resort of all who wished to derive honour from the place of their education. On his return he endeavoured to establish himself as a general practitioner, but circumstances leading him more particularly to the study of the various species of lunacy, he was induced to become the successor of a Dr. Crawley, who kept a house for the reception of lunatics at Dunstable, in Bedfordshire: and having engaged the housekeeper, and prevailed on the patients’ friends to consent to their removal, he opened a house for their reception at St. Alban’s. Here he continued for some years, adding to his knowledge of the nature of mental disorders, and acquiring considerable fame by the success and humanity of his mode of treatment. When his patients began to increase, he found it necessary to hire a larger house, where he formed a more regular establishment, and dignified it by the name of The College. His private residence was in St. Peter’s street in the town of St. Alban’s, and was long known as the only house in that town defended from the effects of lightning by a conductor.

If we have few particulars of the life of Dr. Cotton, we have many testimonies to the excellence of his character. We find from Mr. Hayley’s Life of Cowper, that he had at one time among his patients, that amiable and interesting poet, who speaks of Dr. Cotton’s services in a manner that forms a noble tribute to his memory: and Mr. Hayley says, that Dr. Cotton was “a scholar and a poet, who added to many accomplishments, a peculiar sweetness of manners, in very advanced life,” when Mr. Hayley had the pleasure of a personal acquaintance with him. In a subsequent part of his Life of Cowper, the latter, alluding to an inquiry respecting Dr. Cotton’s works, pays the following compliment to his abilities: “I did not know that he had written any thing newer than his Visions: 1 have no doubt that it is so far worthy of him as to be pious and sensible, and I believe no man living is better qualified to write on such subjects as his title seems to announce. Some years have passed since I heard from him, and considering his great age, it is probable that I shall hear from him no more: but I shall always respect him. He is truly a philosopher, according to my judgment of the character, every tittle of his knowledge in natural subjects being connected in his mind with the firm belief of an omnipotent agent.” His writings, indeed, are uniformly in favour of piety and benevolence, and his correspondence, from which many extracts are given in the lute edition of his Works, justifies the high respect in which he was held by his numerous friends. His prose pieces consist of reflections on some parts of scripture, which he has entitled “Sermons;” and various essays on health, husbandry, zeal, marriage, and other miscellaneous topics. One of these, entitled “Mirza to Selim” (an imitation of Lyttelton’s Persian Letters) is said to relate to the death of the Rev. Robert Romney, D, D. vicar of St. Alban’s, which happened in 1743. When dying, this gentleman prophesied that his brother and heir would not long enjoy his inheritance, which proved true, as he died in June 1746. Some of these essays were probably written for the periodical journals, and others for the amusement of private friends. As a poet, he wrote with ease, and had a happy turn for decorating his reflections in familiar verse: but we find very little that is original, fanciful, or vigorous. He scarcely ever attempts imagery, or description, and nowhere rises beyond a certain level diction adapted to the class of readers whom he was most anxious to please. Yet his “Visions” have been popular, and deserve to continue so. Every sensible and virtuous mind acquiesces in the truth and propriety of his moral reflections, and will love the poems for the sake of the writer.

, an eminent English poet, was born in London, 1618. His father, who was a grocer, dying before his birth, he was left to the care of his mother, who, by the interest of friends, procured him to be admitted a king’s scholar in Westminster school. The occasion of his first inclination to poetry, was his casual meeting with Spenser’s Fairy Queen. “I believe,” says he, in his essay on himself, “I can tell the particular little chance that filled my head first with such chimes of verses as have never since left ringing there. For I remember, when I began to read, and to take some pleasure in it, there was wont to lie in my mother’s parlour—I know not by what accident, for she herself never in her life read any book but of devotion; but there was wont to lie—Spenser’s Works. This I happened to fall upon, and was infinitely delighted with the stones of the knights and giants, and monsters, and brave houses, which I found every-where, though my understanding had little to do with all this, and by degrees with the tinkling of the rhyme, and dance of the numbers; so that I think I had read him all over before I was twelve years old.”

, an ingenious and popular dramatic writer, the daughter of Mr. Philip Parkhouse, of Tiverton, in Devonshire, was born at that place in 1743. Her father was educated for holy orders, but a family loss depriving him of a certainty of provision in the church, he desisted from his first intention, and became a bookseller, as the nearest approach he could then prudently make to a life of some degree of literary enjoyment. He afterwards rose to be a member of the corporation of Tiverton, and was very highly respected as a man of talents and probity, and a good scholar. He was not very distantly related to the poet Gay, who recordshis visit to his relations in Devonshire in his “Journey to Exeter,” inscribed to the earl of Burlington. It was Mr. Parkhouse’s favourite aim to cultivate the promising talents of his daughter, and he lived to witness the reputation she acquired almost to the last period of her literary career. In her twenty -fifth year she was married to Mr. Cowley, a man of very considerable talents, who died in 1797, a captain in the East India company’s service. It was when he was with his regiment in India that she dedicated her comedy of “More Ways than One” to him, in the affectionate lines prefixed to it; and it was to this gentleman’s brother, an eminent merchant of London, now living, that “The Fate of Sparta” is dedicated with so much feeling.

, bishop of Galloway, was born at Edinburgh in 1566, and at eight years old was sent by his father to the school of Dunbar, where he made great proficiency in grammar-learning, and evinced a pious disposition, which adhered to him throughout life. Five years after he studied at the university of St. Andrew’s, but made less progress in philosophy than in divinity, to which he was particularly attached. On his return home in 1582, his parents recommended various pursuits, hut his inclination still being to that of divinity, he resolved to go to England, in which, as he informs us, lie arrived but scantily provided; yet just as he had spent the little money he brought with him, he was engaged as an assistant teacher with a Mr. Guthrie, who kept a school at Hoddesden, in Hertfordshire. There he remained three quarters of a year, and having occasion to go to London, was hospitably received by the famous Hugh Broughton, who assisted him for the space of a year and a half in his theological studies. At the age of nineteen he returned to Edinburgh, was admitted into the church, and appointed to preach at the parish of Bothkenner in Stirlingshire. When he arrived at this his first charge, he found a church almost in ruins, without roof, doors, pulpit, pews, of windows, yet such was the effect of his labours, that in less than half a year, the parishioners bestowed a complete repair on the church, with suitable ornaments. From this place, in about eight years, he was removed to Perth, where he continued to preach for nineteen years, not only on the Sundays, but every Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday evening. About the close of this period he was appointed by king James, on the recommendation of some prelates whom his majesty consulted, to be bishop of Galloway, in which see he continned until his death, Feb. 15, 1619, at which time he was also dean of the Chapel Royal. His works were afterwards collected and published at London in one volume folio, 1629, consisting of treatises on various parts of scripture, many of which were originally delivered as sermons, and left by him in a fit state for the press They breathe, says a recent writer, a spirit of cordial piety, and if we consider the time and country of the writer, the simplicity and strength of his style maybe thought peculiarly worthy of commendation. He introduces several of his religious treatises with a variety of dedicatory epistles, which shew that his ardent devotion was united to great elegance of manners. He appears to have been familiar with many illustrious persons of his time, and there is a sonnet prefixed to his commentary on the Revelation, by that adjrurable Scotch poet, Drummond of Hawthornden.

1619, 4to. Fuller’s Abel Redivivus. Clarke’s Ecclesiastical History, p. 445. Hayley’s life of Cowper, To!. I. p. '2. 8vo edit. Mr. Hayley thinks it not improbable that he may have been an ancestor of the poet. waited upon the queen at St. James’s with the articles agreed upon between the commissioners, as the terms upon which the union was to take place, and made a speech to her majesty on the occasion. The articles of union, agreed upon by the commissioners, with some few alterations, were afterwards ratified by the parliaments both of England and Scotland. The lord-keeper had a very considera^le hand in this measure, and in consideration of that, and his general merit and services, he was advanced, Nov^ 9, 1706, to the dignity of a peer, by the style and title of lord Cowper, baron Cowper of Wingham in Kent; and on May 4, 1707, her majesty in council declared him lord high chancellor of Great Britain. In 1709, in consequence of the intrigues of Harley and Mrs. Masham, the earl of Sunderland, son-in-law to the duke of Marlborough, was removed from the office of secretary of state; and it being apprehended that this event would give disgust to that great general, and perhaps induce him to quit the command of the army, a joint letter was sent to his grace by lord Cowper, the dukes of Newcastle and Devonshire, and other noblemen, in which they conjured him in the strongest terms, not to quit his command. But soon after, on the 8th of August, 1710, the earl of Godolphin being removed from the post of lord-treasurer, the other whig ministers resigned with spirit and dignity. Lord Cowper, in particular, behaved with unexampled firmness and honour, rejecting with scorn the overtures which Harley, the new favourite, made to induce him to continue. When he waited on the queen to resign, she strongly opposed his resolution, and returned the seals three times after he had laid them down. At last, when she could not prevail, she commanded him to take them ' adding, “I beg it as a favour of you, if I may use that expression.” Cowper could not refuse to obey her commands: but, after a short pause, and taking up the seals, he said that he would not carry them out of the palace except on the promise, that the surrender of them would be accepted on the morrow: and on the following day his resignation was accepted. This singular contest between her majesty and him lasted three quarters of an hour.

On the demise of queen Anne, lord Cowper was nominated one of the lords justices of the kingdom, till the arrival of king George I. from Hanover. On the 29th of August, 1714, he was appointed lord chancellor of Great Britain; and shortly after lord lieutenant and custos rotulorum of the county of Hertford. When a new parliament was assembled, on the 27th of March, 1715, George I. declared from the throne, “That he had ordered the lord chancellor to declare the causes of calling this parliament in his majesty’s name and words.” He then delivered his speech into lord Cowper’s hands, who read it to both houses. On the 6th of February, 1716, his lordship was appointed lord high-steward for the trial of the rebel lords; as he was also, the following year, at the trial of the earl of Oxford, to whom he behaved on that occasion with great politeness. A change taking place in the ministry in the beginning of March 1718, lord Cowper resolved to resign the great seal; but, before his resignation, the king, on account of his great merit and services, on the 18th of that month, raised him to the dignity of a viscount and earl, by the title of viscount Fordwich, in the county of Kent, and earl Cowper. The preamble to his patent was drawn up by Mr. Hughes the poet, whom he had patronized. He resigned the great seal in the month of April, and was succeeded by lord Parker.

, a very distinguished modern English poet, and one whose singular history will apologize for the length of the present article, was the descendant of an ancient and honourable family. His father was the second son of Spencer Cowper (a younger brother of the lord chancellor Cowper) who was appointed chief justice of Chester in 1717, and afterwards a judge in the court of common pleas. He died in 1728, leaving a daughter, Judith, a young lady who had a striking taste for poetry, and who married colonel Madan, and transmitted her poetical taste and devotional spirit to a daughter. This daughter was married to her cousin major Cowper, and was afterwards the friend and correspondent of our poet. His father, John Cowper, entered into the church, and became rector of Great Berkhamstead in Hertfordshire. He married Anne, the daughter of Roger ponne, esq. of Ludlam-hall in Norfolk, by whom he had several children who died in their infancy, and two sons,William and John, who survived their mother. William was born at Berkhamstead Nov. 26, 1731, and from his infancy appears to have been of a very delicate habit both of mind and body. To such a child the loss of a mother is an incalculable misfortune, and must have been particularly so to young Cowper. In his biographer’s opinion, it contributed in the highest degree to the dark colouring of his subsequent life. Undoubtedly when a child requires a more than ordinary share of attention, the task can seldom be expected to be performed with so much success as by a mother, who to her natural affection joins that patience and undisturbed care which are rarely to be found in a father: but at the same time it may be remarked, that Cowper’s very peculiar frame of mind appears to have been independent of any advantages or misfortunes in education. In 1737, the year of his mother’s death, he was sent to a school at Market-street in Hertfordshire, under the conduct of Dr. Pitman, but was removed from it, at what time is uncertain, on account of a complaint in his eyes for which he was consigned to the care of a female oculist for the space of two years. It does not, however, appear that he profited so much from her aid as from the small-pox, which seized him at the age of fourteen, and removed the complaint for the present, but left a disposition to inflammation, to which he was subject nearly the whole of his life.

About this time he added to the number of his friends the late venerable and pious John Newton, rector of St. Mary Woolnoth, London, but then curate of Olney in Buckinghamshire, who being consulted by Mr. Cowper as to an eligible residence for Mrs. Unwin, recommended a house at Olney, to which that lady, her daughter, and our poet, removed on the 14th of October 1767. At this residence, endeared to them by the company and public services of a man of congenial sentiments, Cowper for some years continued to enjoy those blessings of a retired and devotional life, which had constituted his only happiness since his recovery. His correspondence at this aera evinces a placid train of sentiment, mixed with an air of innocent gaiety, that must have afforded the highest satisfaction to his friends. Among other pleasures, of the purest kind, he delighted in acts of benevolence; and as he was not rich, he had the additional felicity of being employed as an almoner in the secret benevolences of that most charitable of all human heings, the late John Thornton, esq. an opulent merchant of London, whose name he has immortalized in his poem on charity, and in some verses on his death, which Mr. Hayley first published. Mr. Thornton statedly allowed Mr. Newton the sum of 200l. per annum, for the use of the poor of Olney, and it was the joint concern of Mr. Newton and Mr. Cowper to distribute this sum in the most judicious and useful manner. Such a bond of union could not fail to increase their intimacy. “Cowper,” says Mr. Newton, “loved the poor; he often visited them in their cottages, conversed with them in the most condescending manner, sympathized with them, counselled and comforted them in their distresses; and those, who were seriously disposed, were often cheered and animated by his prayers.” Of their intimacy, the same writer speaks in these emphatic terms: “For nearly twelve years we were seldom separated for seven hours at a time, when we were awake and at home. The first six I passed in daily admiring, and aiming to imitate him: during the second six, I walked pensively with him in the valley of the shadow of death.” Among other friendly services about this time, he wrote for Mr. Newton some beautiful hymns, which the latter introduced in public worship, and published in a collection long before Cowper was known as a poet.

In 1770, his brother John died at Cambridge, an event which made a lasting, but not unfavourable impression on the tender and affectionate mind of our poet. While the circumstances of this event were recent, he committed them to paper, and they were published by Mr. Newton in 1802. Cowper afterwards introduced some lines to his memory in the Task:

Some time before the publication of this volume, Mr. Cowper made a most important acquisition in the friendship and conversation of lady Austen (widow of sir Robert Austen), whom he found a woman of elegant taste, and such critical powers as enabled her to direct his studies by her judgment, and encourage them by her praise. An accidental visit which this lady made to Olney served to introduce her to the poet, whose shyness generally gave way to a display of mental excellence and polished manners. In a short time, lady Austen shared his esteem with his older friend Mrs. Unwin, although not without exciting some little degree of jealousy, which Mr. Hayley has noticed with his usual delicacy. Cowper, without at first suspecting that the feelings of Mrs. Unwin could be hurt, “considered the cheerful and animating society of his new accomplished friend, as a blessing conferred on him by the signal favour of providence.” Some months after their first interview, lady Austen quitted her house in London, and having taken up her residence in the parsonage house of Olney, Cowper, Mrs. Unwin, and she, became almost one family, dining always together alternately in the houses of the two ladies.

In this year, when he was beginning his translation of Homer, the quiet and even tenour of his life was disturbed by the necessity he felt of parting with lady Austen. A short extract from Mr. Hayley will give this matter as clear explanation as delicacy can permit: “Delightful and advantageous as his friendship with lady Austen had proved, he now began to feel that it grew -impossible to preserve that triple cord, which his own pure heart had led him to suppose not speedily to be broken. Mrs. Unwin, though by no means destitute of mental accomplishments, was eclipsed by the brilliancy of the poet’s new friend, and naturally became uneasy, under the apprehension of being so, for to a woman of sensibility, what evil can be more afflicting, than the fear of losing all mental influence over a man of genius and virtue, whom she has long been accustomed to inspirit and to guide? Cowper perceived the painful necessity of sacrificing a great portion of his present gratifications. He felt, that he must relinquish that ancient friend, whom he regarded as a venerable parent; or the new associate, whom he idolized as a sister of a heart and mind peculiarly C9ngenial to his own. His gratitude for past services of unexampled magnitude and weight, would not allow him to hesitate: with a resolution and delicacy, that do the highest honour to his feelings, he wrote a farewell letter to lady Austen, explaining and lamenting the circumstances that forced him to renounce the society of a friend, whose enchanting talents and kindness had proved so agreeably instrumental to the revival of his spirits and to the exercise of his fancy. In those very interesting conferences with which I was honoured by lady Austen, I was irresistibly led to express an anxious desire for the sight of a letter written by Cowper, in a situation that must have called forth all the finest powers of his eloquence as a monitor and a friend. The lady confirmed me in my opinion that a more admirable letter could not be written; and had it existed at that time, I am persuaded from her noble frankness and zeal for the honour of the departed poet, she would have given me a oopy; but she ingenuously confessed, that in a moment of natural mortification, she burnt this very tender yet resolute letter. Had it been confided to my care, I am persuaded I should have thought it very proper for publication, as it displayed both the tenderness and the magnanimity of Cowper, nor could I have deemed it a want of delicacy towards the memory of lady Austen, to exhibit a proof, that animated by the warmest admiration of the great poet, whose fancy slie could so successfully call forth, she was willing to devote her life and fortune to his service and protection. The sentiment is to be regarded as honourable to the lady; it is still more honourable to the poet, that with such feelings as rendered him perfectly sensible of all lady Austen’s fascinating powers, he could return her tenderness with innocent gallantry, and yet resolutely preclude himself from her society when he could no longer enjoy it without appearing deficient in gratitude towards the compassionate and generous guardian of his sequestered life. No person can justly blame Mrs. Unwin for feeling apprehensive that Cowper’s intimacy with a lady of such extraordinary talents, might lead him into perplexities, of which he was by no means aware. This remark was suggested by a few elegant and tender verses, addressed by the poet to lady Austen, and shown to me by that lady. Those who were acquainted with the unsuspecting innocence, and sportive gaiety of Cowper, would readily allow, if they had seen the verses to which I allude, that they are such as he might have addressed to a real sister; but a lady only called by that endearing name, may be easily pardoned if she was induced by them to hope, that they might possibly be a prelude to a still dearer alliance. To me they appeared expressive of that peculiarity in his character, a gay and tender gallantry, perfectly distinct from arr-orous attachment. If the lady, who was the subject of the verses, had given them to me with a permission to print them, I should have thought the poet himself might have approved of their appearance, accompanied with such a commentary.”

Vol. X, Ee Hayley, with every inclination for an office so agreeable, and a partnership so honourable, still imagined that at this time he might render more essential service to the poet by an application to his more powerful friends. This delicate office was undertaken in consequence of what he had observed in Cowper on a late visit to Weston. “He possessed completely at this period,” says his biographer, “all the admirable faculties of his mind, and all the native tenderness of his heart but there was something indescribable in his appearance, which led me to apprehend, that without some signal event in his favour, to re-animate his spirits, they would gradually sink into hopeless dejection. The state of his aged and infirm companion (Mrs. Unwin) afforded additional ground for increasing solicitude. Her cheerful and beneficent spirit could hardly resist her own accumulated maladies, so far as to preserve ability sufficient to watch over the tender health of him, whom she had watched and guarded so long. Imbecility of body and mind must gradually render this tender and heroic woman unfit for the charge which she had so laudably sustained. The signs of such imbecility were beginning to be painfully visible; nor can nature present a spectacle more truly pitiable than imbecility in such a shape, eagerly grasping for dominion, which it knows neither how to retain, nor how to relinquish.”

For some time, however, the fears of Mr. Cowper’s affectionate friend appeared to be groundless. His correspondence after the departure of Mr. Hayley, in November, 1793, bespoke a mind considerably at ease, and even cheerful and active. From various circumstances, the scheme of publishing an edition of Milton appears to have been totally relinquished, and as his enthusiasm for this undertaking had abated, he expresses considerable satisfaction that he could devote the whole of his time to the improvement of his translation of Homer. A new scheme, more suitable to his original talents, had been suggested in 1791, by the rev. Mr. Buchanan, curate of Ravenstone, a man of worth and genius. This was a poem to be entitled “The Four Ages, or the four distinct periods, of Infancy, Youth, Manhood, and Old Age.” For some time our poet meditated with great satisfaction on this design, and probably revolved many of the subordinate subjects in his mind. It seems to have been particularly calculated for his powers of reflection, his knowledge of the human heart, and his exquisite talent for depicting life and manners; and it was intended likewise to unite the fascinations of the graphic art. Mr. Hayley has published a fragment of this work, imperfect as the author left it, but more than enough to make us regret that his situation and the situation of his aged companion soon forbade all hopes of its being executed .

His removal from Weston now appeared to his friends a necessary experiment, to try what change of air and of objects might produce; and his young kinsman, the rev. Mr. Johnson, undertook to convey him and Mrs. Unwin from that place to North Tuddenham, in Norfolk, where they arrived in the beginning of August 1795, and resided till the 19th. Of Cowper’s state during this time, all that we are told is, that he exhibited some regret on leaving Weston, and some composure of mind during a conversation of which the poet Thomson was the subject. He was able also to bear considerable exercise, and on one occasion walked with Mr. Johnson to the neighbouring village of Mattishall, on a visit to his cousin Mrs. fiodhain. On surveying his own portrait, by Abbot, in the house of that lady, he clasped his hands in a paroxysm of pain, and uttered a vehement wish, that his present sensations might be such as they were when that picture was painted.

To add much to this sketch respecting the merit of Cowper as a poet, would be superfluous. After passing through the many trials which criticism has instituted, he remains, by universal acknowledgment, one of the first poets of the eighteenth century. Even without awaiting the issue of such trials, he attained a degree of popularity which is almost without a precedent, while the species of popularity which he has acquired is yet more honourable than the extent of it. No man’s works ever appeared with less of artificial preparation; no venal heralds proclaimed the approach of a new poet, nor told the world what it was to admire. He emerged from obscurity, the object of no patronage, and the adherent of no party. His fame, great and extensive as it is, arose from gradual conviction, and gratitude for pleasure received. The genius, the scholar, the critic, the man of the world, and the man of piety, each found in Cowper' s works something to excite their surprize and their admiration, something congenial with their habits and feelings, something which taste readily selected, and judgment decidedly confirmed. Cowper was found to possess that combination of energies which marks the comprehensive mind of a great and inventive genius, and to furnish examples of the sublime, the pathetic, the descriptive, the moral, and the satirical, so numerous, that nothing seemed beyond his grasp, and so original, that nothing reminds us of any former poet.

If this p'raise be admitted, it will be needless to inquire in what peculiar charms Cowper’s poems consist, or why he, above all poets of recent times, has become the universal favourite of his nation. Yet, as he appears to have been formed not only to be an ornament, but a model to his brethren, it may not be useless to remind them, that in him the virtues of the man, and the genius of the poet, were inseparable; that in every thing he respected the highest interests of human kind, the promotion of religion, morality, and benevolence, and that while he enchants the imagination by the decorations of genuine poetry, and even condescends to trifle with innocent gaiety, his serious purposes are all of the nobler kind. He secures the judgment by depth of reflection on morals and manners; and by a vigour of sentiment, and a knowledge of human nature, such as every man’s taste and every man’s experience must confirm. In description, whether of objects of nature, or of artificial society, he has few equals, and whether he passes from description to reasoning, or illustrates the one by the other, he has found the happy art of administering to the pleasures of the senses and those of the intellect with equal success. But what adds a peculiar charm to Cowper, is, that his language is every where the language of the heart. The pathetic, in which he excels, is exclusively consecrated to subjects worthy of it. He obtrudes none of those assumed feelings by which some have obtained the character of moral, tender, and sympathetic, who in private life are known to be gross, selfish, and unfeeling. In Cowper we have every where the happiness to contemplate not only the most favourite of poets, but the best of men.

In 1541, Henry VIII. granted him, by patent, the office of master of the grammar-school of Reading, with a certain tenement called “a scole-house,” with a stipend of ten pounds, issuing out of the manor of Cholsey, belonging to the late dissolved monastery of Reading. A few years after he had obtained this patent, which he appears, to have had the power of assigning during his life, he quitted Reading, and travelled over great part of the continent, teaching the learned languages. Leland, in some Latin verses, among his “Encomia,” addressed to Cox, speaks of his visiting the universities of Prague, Paris, and Cracow, and that he was known to Melancthon, who was Greek professor at Wittemberg. In the latter part of his life he kept a school at Caer-leon, and is said to have survived until the reign of Edward VI. Bale says that he was instructed in all the liberal arts, that he was a grammarian, a rhetorician, and a poet; a sound divine, and a diligent preacher of God’s word. It is needless after this to add that he was of the reformed religion. In Edward Vlth’s time, he was one of the licensed preachers.

, who was born at Baumeles-Nones in Franche-Comtt;, and died at Paris July 18, 1782, in an advanced age, was for some time a Jesuit. Having quitted that society, he repaired to the capital about 1751, and sought a livelihood by his pen. He began his career by certain fugitive pieces, of which some, as the “Discovery of the Philosopher’s stone,” in imitation of Swift, and the “Miraculous year,” had the most success. These trifles were collected under the very suitable title of “Bagatelles morales.” Some of the pieces in this collection are written, with ease, delicacy, and sprightliness; but irony being the favourite figure with the author, the style of it is too monotonous, and the witticisms sometimes too far fetched. There was visible in the writings of the abbe Coyer, as well as in his conversation, a perpetual effort at being agreeable, which he was unable to sustain to any length. Besides some temporary pieces, the abbé Coyer also wrote, 1. “The History of John Sobieski,” 1761, 3 vols. 12mo; a very interesting work. 2. “Travels in Italy and Holland,” 1775, 2 vols. 12mo. The abbe Coyer ran over these countries, oiot so much in the character of a deep observer, as of a light Frenchman, who takes a superficial glance, and then hastily sets down some remarks analogous to the fluctuation of his mind, of his inclinations and his character. The book is far inferior both to the observations of M. Grosley and the travels of M. de la Lande. 3. “New observations on England,” 1779, 12mo, which is little else that an abridgment of Grosley’s London. 4. “Noblesse Commenjante,” 2 vols. 8vo, and a little romance entitled “Chinki, histoire Cochin-Chinoise,” which made more noise in France than his “Bagatelles,” and are said to have contributed to two important changes in France, the granting of letters of noblesse to eminent merchants, and the abolition of wardenships. 5. “Plan d'education publique,” 1770, 12 mo. The abbe Coyer also translated Biackstone’s Commentaries on the Criminal Law of England. He had long fruitlessly endeavoured to obtain admittance into the French academy, and had adopted many of the sentiments of the modern philosophers, who do not appear, however, to have had a profound respect for him. He was always telling Voltaire that he intended to come and spend three months with him, until the poet, frightened at his threat, wrote to him, “Mons. Abbe, do you know the difference which I find between you and Don Quixote It is, that he took inns for castles, and you take castles for inns.”

, said to be brother to the preceding, was born in 1633, and was educated at Queen’s college, Cambridge, where he gained such esteem by his learning and piety, that Dr. Cudworth, in 1656, wrote in the strongest terms to secretary Thurloe, to recommend him to Oliver Cromwell, as a proper person for the chaplainship of the English factory at Lisbon. Some years after the restoration, he was made canon-residentiary of Chichester, and was elected fellow of Eton college in 1672. In 1680 he was chosen by the fellows provost of Eton in opposition to Waller the poet, who was twice disappointed of the same preferment, once in 1665, when the lord chancellor Clarendon refused to put the seal to the grant, because it could be held only by a clergyman, and now when the privy-council came to the same determination. Dr. Cradock, who was admired in his own time for his uncommon talents, great copiousness and vivacity in preaching, is scarce known to the present day, except by the high character given of him by his contemporaries, and two excellent sermons: one on Providence, preached before Charles II. by whose command it was printed: it has since passed through several editions: the other “On the great end and design of Christianity,” was printed some years after his death, which happened Oct. 16, 1695, when he was interred in the college chapel.

, of another family, a German divine and poet, doctor and professor of divinity at the university of Kiel, was born in 1723, at Jostadt, near Aunaberg. He was educated at Leipsic, where he made great proficiency in learning, but was soon under the necessity of employing his talents to defray the expences of the university, which he did partly in teaching, and partly in translating for the booksellers. He soon, however, acquired great reputation, and in 1750 was invited to Copenhagen, where he became court-chaplain. In 1765 he was appointed professor of divinity in the university of Copenhagen, and in 1773 was appointed to the same office in the university of Kiel, where he died June 12, 1738. He ranks as an orator, historian, poet, and translator, but his countrymen distinguish him principally as an historian, and a poet. His translation of, and additions to Bossuet’s “Introduction to Universal History,” bespeak the highest talents, and his translation of the “Psalms” is said to breathe the true spirit of Oriental poetry. His two lyric odes of “David” and “Luther” are excellent; and, though inferior to Klopstock and Ramler in spirit, he far surpasses them in versification and ease. His principal works are: 1. “A Translation of the Sermons of St. Chrysostom, with an Introduction and Remarks,” ten parts, Leipsic, 1748 51. 2. Bossuet’s Introduction, with additions, ibid. 1748 72. 3. Poetical Translation of the “Psalms,” in four parts, ibid. 1762 64. 4. “Gospel Imitation of the Psalms of David, and other holy songs,” Copenhagen, 1769. 5. “Luther,” an ode, 1771. 6. “Melancthon,” an ode. He was also concerned with Klopstock in publishing the “Northern Inspector,” one of the best periodical publications in Germany.

, an English poet, was the son of the rev. William Crashaw, a divine of some note in his day, and preacher at the Temple church, London. He published several volumes on points controverted between the Roman catholics and protestants, either original or translated; and in 1608, a translation of the Life of Galeacius Caracciolo, marquis of Vico, an Italian nobleman, who was converted by the celebrated reformer Peter Martyr, and forsook all that rank, family, and wealth could yield, for the quiet enjoyment of the reformed religion. Mr. Crashaw also translated a supposed poem of St. Bernard’s, entitled “The Complaint or Dialogue between the Soule and the Bodie of a damned man,” 1616, and in the same year published a “Manual for true Catholics, or a handfull or rather a heartfull of holy Meditations and Prayers.” All these show him to have been a zealous protestant; but, like his son, somewhat tinctured with a love of mystic poetry and personification.

Our poet was born in London, but in what year is uncertain. In his infancy, sir Henry Yelverton and sir Randolph Crew undertook the charge of his education, and afterwards procured him to be placed in the Charter- house on the foundation, where he improved in an extraordinary degree under Brooks, a very celebrated master. He was thence admitted of Pembroke-hall, March 1632, and took his bachelor’s degree in the same college, in 1634. He then removed to Peterhouse, of which he was a fellow in 1637, and was admitted to his master’s degree in 1633. In 1634, he published a volume of Latin poem?, mostly of the devotional kind, dedicated to Benjamin Lang, master of Pembroke- hall. This contained the well-known line, which has sometimes been ascribed to Dryden and others, on the miracle of turning water into wine:

In 1646, the poet Cowley found Crashaw in France in great distress, and introduced him to the patronage of Charles the First’s queen, who gave him letters of recommendation to Italy. There he became secretary to one of the cardinals at Rome, and was made canon in the church of Loretto, where he died of a fever, soon after this last promotion, about the year 1650. Cowley’s very elegant and affectionate lines may be seen in the works of that poet. Mr. Hayley remarks, that “fine as they are, Cowley has sometimes fallen into the principal defect of the poet whom he is praising. He now and then speaks of sacred things with a vulgar and ludicrous familiarity of language, by which (to use a happy expression of Dr. Johnson’s), ` readers far short of sanctity, may be offended in the present age, when devotion, perhaps not more fervent, is more delicate. 1 Let us add, that if the poetical character of Crashaw seem not to answer this glowing panegyric; yet in his higher character of saint, he appears to have had the purest title to this affectionate eulogy.” It appears by a passage in Selden’s Table Talk, that Crashaw had at one time an intention of writing against the stage, and that Selden succeeded in diverting him from his purpose. He had not, however, to regret that the stage outlived the church.

, an ancient comic poet, frequently mentioned by Quhuilian, Horace, and Persius, along with Eupolis and Aristophanes, as the great masters of what we call the ancient comedy, flourished in the 81st olympiad, about twenty or thirty years before Aristophanes. He was un Athenian, and appears to have spent his long life in his native city; where, if he did not invent comedy, he was at least the first who brought it into some form and method, and made it fit for the entertainment of a civilized audience, although it still retained many marks of its rude original. Persons and vices were exposed in barefaced satire, and the chief magistrates of the commonwealth ridiculed by name upon the stage. We find in Plutarch’s life of Pericles several passages out of Cratinus’s plays, where he reflected boldly on that great general. Cratinus appears to have been an excessive drinker, for which he offered the excuse that it was absolutely necessary to warm his fancy, and Horace quotes his authority to shew what short-lived things the offspring of water poets commonly prove. For the same reason, Aristophanes, in his “Irene,” attributes the death of Cratinus to the shock he received at the sight of a noble cask of wine split in pieces and washing the streets. The time of it is preserved in the same jest of Aristophanes, and referred to the year in which the Lacedaemonians first invested Athens; namely, in the 37th olympiad, or B. C. 431. Suidas tells us, that be wrote twenty-one plays, none of which are extant, and he gives only this short description of his excellencies, that he was “splendid and animated in his characters.”

* The creditors of Crebillon would ceived him uncommonly well, being have stopped the profits of this tragedy; struck with his venerable and interestbut the spirited old bard appealed to ing figure; but she was in bed, and the king in council, and procured an ai the instant the old poet was kissing honourable decree in his favour, netting hc-r hand, the king entered the room, forth, that works of genius should not “Alas! ruadame!” exclaimed Crebi4be deemed effects that weie capable of Ion, “the king has surprised us: 1 am being seized. Warton’s Essay on undone.” This exclamation, fro:n the Pope. inouth of an old man of eighty, dif In order to remove Voltaire from verted Louis XV. exceedingly. The

court, Crebillon was recommended as monarch zealously patronized Crea superior poet to madame de Pompa- billon ever after, got his works printed

, an English poet, chiefly noted for his translatious of ancient authors, was son of Thomas Creech, and born near Sherbourne in Dorsetshire, 1659. He was educated in grammar learning under Mr. Gurganven of Sherbourne, to whom he afterwards dedicated a translation of one of Theocritus’s Idylliums; and entered a commoner of Wadham college in Oxford, 1675. Wood tells us, that his father was a gentleman; but Jacob says, in his “Lives and Characters of English Poets,” that his parents were not in circumstances sufficient to support him through a liberal education, but that his disposition and capacity for learning raised him up a patron in colonel Strangeways, whose generosity supplied that defect. Creech certainly distinguished himself much; and was accounted a good philosopher and poet, and a severe student. June 13, 1683, he took the degree of M. A. and not long after was elected probationer fellow of All-souls college; to which, Jacob observes, the great reputation acquired by his translation of Lucretius recommended him. Wood tells us, that upon this occasion he gave singular proofs of his classical learning and philosophy before his examiners. In 1696 he took his degree of bachelor of divinity, and began to be well known by the works he published; but they were of no great advantage to his fortune, since his circumstances were always indifferent. In 1699, having taken orders, he was presented by his college to the living of Welwyn in Hertfordshire; but while at Oxford, on another occasion, in June 1700, he put an end to his life. The motives of this fatal catastrophe have been variously represented. M. Bernard informs us, in the “ Republic of Letters,” that in 1700, Creech fell in love with a, woman, who treated him contemptuously, though she was complaisant enough to others; that not being able to digest this usage, he was resolved not to survive it; and that he hanged himself in his study, in which situation he was found three days after. Jacob says nothing of the particular manner of his death, but only that he unfortunately made away with himself: which he ascribes to a naturally morose and splenetic temper, too apt to despise the understandings and performances of others. “This,” says Jacob, “made him less esteemed than his great merit deserved; and his resentments on this account frequently engaged him in those heats and disputes which in the end proved fatal to him.” But from an original letter of Arthur Charlett, preserved in the Bodleian library, it has lately been discovered, that this unhappy event was owing to a very different cause. There was a fellow collegian of whom Creech frequently borrowed money; but repeating his applications too often, he met one day with such a cold reception, that he retired in a fit of gloomy disgust, and in three days was found hanging in his room: and Mr. Malone has more recently published a letter from Dr. Tanner, by which it appears that Creech had before exhibited marks of insanity.

The following is a list of his translations; for we do not find him to have been the author of any original works. 1. A translation of “Lucretius,” printed in 8vo, at Oxford, 1682. Dryden, in the preface to the “Miscellany Poems,” which were published by him, speaks of this translation in the highest terms of approbation, calling Creech “the ingenious and learned translator of Lucretius” and every body else entertained the same opinion of it.' In the edition of 1714, in 2 vols. 8vo, all the verses of the text, which Creech had left untranslated, particularly those in the fourth book about the nature of love, are supplied; and many new notes added and intermixed by another hand, by way of forming a complete system of the Epicurean philosophy. Creech had published in 1695 an edition of Lucretius in Latin, with notes, which were afterwards printed at the end of the English translation. Another edition of this, much enlarged, but very incorrect, was published in 1717 in 8vo. The best is that of Glasow, 1759, 12 mo. He will perhaps be far longer rememred as the editor than the translator of Lucretius. 2. In 1684 he published a translation of “Horace” in which, however, he has omitted some few odes. As to the satires, he was advised, as he tells us in the preface, “to turn them to our own time; since Rome was now rivalled in her vices; and parallels for hypocrisy, profaneness, avarice, and the like, were easy to be found.” But those crimes,“he declares,” were out of his acquaintance; and since the character is the same whoever the person is, he was not so fond of being hated, as to make any disobliging application. Such pains,“says he,” would look like an impertinent labour to find a dunghill.“3. The” Idylliums“of Theocritus, with Rapin’s discourse of pastorals, 1684,- 8vo. 4. The second elegy of Ovid’s first book of elegies the sixth, seventh, eighth, and twelfth of the second book; the story of Lucretia, out of the Fasti; and the second and third of Virgil’s eclogues; printed in a collection of miscellany poems, 1684. 5. The thirteenth satire of Juvenal, with notes. Printed in the English translation of the satires, 1693, in folio. 6. A translation into English of the verses prefixed to Quintinie’s Complete Gardener. 7. The Lives of Solon, Pelopidas, and Cleomenes, from Plutarch. 8. The Life of Pelopidas, from Cornelius Nepos. 9. Laconic apophthegms, or remarkable sayings of the Spartans, from Plutarch. 10. A discourse concerning Socrates’s da3mon, and the two first books of the Symposiacs, from Plutarch. These translations from Plutarch were published in the English translations of his” Lives“and” Morals.“11. A translation of Manilius’s Astronomicon, dated from All-Souls, Oct. 10, 1696. On his father’s monument he is called” the learned, much admired, and much envied Mr. Creech.“By whom he could have been envied, we know not, yet there is a ridiculous story that Dryden became so jealous of him, as to incite him to translate Horace that he might lose as much reputation by that poet, as he had gained by Lucretius. His poetry will scarcely at present be deemed an object which calls for much criticism, as he is rather a good scholar than a good poet; and in the instance of Lucretius, a most judicious editor. Dr. Warton, however, who will be allowed Jto be an admirable judge, has spoken of him in terms of applause.” Creech,“says the doctor,” in truth, is a much better translator than he is usually supposed and allowed to be. He is a nervous and vigorous writer: and many parts, not only of his Lucretius, but of his Theocritus and Horace (though now decried) have not been excelled by other translators. One of his pieces may be pronounced excellent; his translation of the thirteenth satire of Juvenal; equal to any that Dryden has given us of that author.“Pope certainly paid him no small compliment by beginning his epistle to Mr. Murray (afterwards lord Mansfield) with two lines from Creech’s Horace. Pope used to say that” he hurt his translation of Lucretius very much by imitating Cowley, and bringing in turns even into some of the most grand parts. He has done more justice to Manilius."

, a very amiable and ingenious lady, nearly related to the poet Dryden, was the only daughter of sir Gilbert Pickering, bart. by Elizabeth, the only daughter of sir Sidney Montagu, knt. and sister of Edward Montagu, first earl of Sandwich. She was born in 1642, and was married to John Creed of Oundle, esq. a wise, learned, and pious man (as his inscription, written by her, intimates), “who served his majesty Charles II. in diverse honourable employments at home and abroad; lived with honour, and died lamented, 1701.” By this gentleman she had a numerous family, one of whom, the brave major Richard Creed, is commemorated by a monument in Westminster-abbey, as well as by one erected by his mother in the church of Tichmarsh. During her widowhood, Mrs. Creed resided many years in a mansionhouse at Barnwell, near Oundle in Northamptonshire, belonging to the Montagu family, where she amused and employed herself in painting, and gratuitously instructed many young women in drawing, fine needle-work, and other elegant arts. Many of the churches in the neighbourhood of Oundle are decorated with altar-pieces, monuments, and ornaments of different kinds, the works of her hand; and her descendants are possessed of many portraits, and some good pictures painted by her. Two days in every week she constantly allotted to the public; on one, she was visited by all the nobility and gentry who resided near her; on the other, she received and relieved all the afflicted and diseased of every rank, giving them food, raiment, or medicine, according to their wants. Her reputation in the administration of medicine was considerable; and as she afforded it gratis, her practice was of course extensive. Her piety was great and unaffected. That it was truly sincere, was evinced by the magnanimity with which she endured many trials more heavily afflictive than what usually fall to the lot even of those whose life is prolonged to so great an extent. In 1722, when in her eightieth year, she erected a monument in the church of Ticbmarsh to the memory of Dryden and his ancestors, with a:; inscription by herself. She died at Ountlle in May 1728, and her remains were removed to Tichmarsh, where she was buried with her ancestors. Her funeral sermon, which Mr. Malone doesnot appear to have seen, was preached hy Henry Lee, D. D. rector of Tichmarsh in May 1728, and therefore probably the date of her death, in Malone’s Life of Dryden, viz. “the beginning of 1724-5,” must be incorrect. This sermon, printed at London the same year, 8vo, is dedicated to Mrs. Stuart, executrix and sole surviving daughter of Mrs. Creed. An extract from it, confirming the excellence of her character, may be seen in a compilation less respected than it deserves, Wilford’s “Memorials.”

, an Italian poet, and poetical historian, the son of John Philip Crescimbeni, a lawyer, and Anna Virginia Barbo, was born Oct. 9, 1663, at Macerata in the marche ofAncona. Jerome Casanati, afterwards cardinal, was his godfather, and gave him the names of John-Maria-Ignatius-Xavier-Joseph-Antony, of which he retained only John Maria, and afterwards changed the latter into Mario. After receiving grammatical education at home, his uncle Antony-Francis, an advocate, invited him to Rome in 1674; hut the following year his father and mother recalled him to Macerata, where he engaged in a course of study among the Jesuits. His teacher of rhetoric was Charles d' Aquino, under whom he made great progress in eloquence and poetry. Among his early attempts, he wrote a tragedy in the style of Seneca, “The Defeat of Darius, king of Persia,” and translated the first two hooks of Lucan’s Pharsalia into Italian verse from which performances he derived so much reputation, as to be admitted a member of the academy of the Disposti, in the town of Jesi, although only in his fifteenth year. About that time he continued his classical studies for eight months under Nicolas Antony Raffaelli, and entered upon a course of philosophy. His father now recommending the law as a profession, Crescimbeni took his doctor’s degree Oct. 3, 167 y, and was appointed to lecture on the institutes, which he did for a year. His uncle before mentioned, aoain inviting him to Rome, he divided his time there between law and polite literature, and in 1685, the academy of the Infecondi admitted him a member. Hitherto his studies in Italian poetry had not been conducted so as to inspire him with a very pure taste; but about 1687, he entered on a course of reading of the best Italian poets, which not only enabled him to correct his own taste and style, but gave him hopes that tie might improve those of his countrymen. With this intention he endeavoured to form a new society, or, as they are called in Italy, academy, rindcr the name of Arcadia, the members to be called the shepherds of Arcadia, and each to take the name of a shepherd, and that of some place in ancient Arcadia, and his own name accordingly was Alfesibeo Cario. Such was the origin of this celebrated academy, and surely no origin was ever mure childishly romantic, or unpromising as to any beneficial e licet on solid or elegant literature, to which purposes, however, we are told it has eminently contributed. It was established Oct. 5, 1690. A short account of it, written in 1757, informs us that the first members were those itained persons chiefly who were about queen Christina of Sweden. (See Christina, vol. IX.) It admits all sciences, all arts, all nations, all ranks, and both sexes. The number of its members is not determined; they are said at present to be upwards of two thousand, but we have heard a much larger number assigned, for they sometimes aggregate whole academies. At Home, the academicians assemble in pastoral habits, in a most agreeable garden, called Bosco Parrhasia. The constitution of the society being democratic, they never chusje a prince for their protector. At the end of each olympiad, for that is the method of computing adopted by the Arcadians, they cbuse a custode, who is the speaker, and has the sole right of assembling the society, who are also represented by him alone, when they are not assembled. In order to be admitted a member, it is requisite that the person should be twenty-four years of age complete, of a reputable family, and to have given some specimen of abilities in one or more branches of education. As to the ladies, a poem, or a picture, is a testimony of genius that is held sufficient. The stated assemblies of this academy are fixed to seven different days, between the first of May and the seventh of October. In the first six they read the works of the Roman shepherds, the productions of strangers being reserved for the seventh and last. Each author reads his own compositions, except ladies and cardinals, who are allowed to employ others.

, an Italian divine and poet, of the sixteenth century, was born at Gallipoli, in the kingdom of Naples. Having entered into the church, his merit procured him the friendship of many of the most learned men of his time, and particularly of the cardinal Jerome Seripando, to whom he was for some time secretary; and he was also in great request as a teacher of jurisprudence, philosophy, and theology. He died about 1595, at the time when pope Clement VIII. intended to have promoted him to a bishopric. His principal work is a piece of criticism, much admired in his time, “De ethnicis philosophis caute legendis,” Rome, 1594, folio. Crispus’s other works are two orations concerning the war against the Turks, printed at Rome in 1594, 4to. “De JMedici Laudibus, Oratio ad cives suos Gallipolitanos,” Home, 1591, 4to. The “Life of Sannazarius,” Rome, 1583, reprinted at Naples in 1633, 8vo. A draught or map of the city of Gallipoli, dedicated to Flaminio Caraccioli January the 1st, 1591. Some of his Italian poems are in a collection published by Scipio de Monti, under the title “Le Rime,” &c. 1585, 4to.

, was born in the province of Maine in 1552. He was sieur or lord of the manor of Croix du Maine, and of Vieille Cour, four leagues from Mans. From his youth he. had a passionate inclination for learning and books, and collected so large a library at the university in Greek and Latin authors, and most European languages, that, as he says himself, the catalogue of them would make a volume. He began to make this collection in his seventeenth year; and in his thirty-second, viz. in 1584, he published his “French Library,” being a general account of all authdfs that wrote in that language, fol. Of this we shall take particular notice under the article Verdier. In 1519 he addressed a discourse to viscount de Pauliny, and speaks of a great many works which he had written, none of which, however, are known, except a small 4to, *' Dessems ou projets, &c. pour dresser une bibliotheque parfaite," Paris, 1583, and a long Latin epitaph on the poet Monin, who was assassinated at Paris in 1586, a fate which befell himself at Tours in 1592.

, a divine and poet, was born either in Gloucestershire, or, according to Bale, in Northamptonshire, and entered a student of Magdalen college, Oxford, about the year 1534; and after taking the degree of B. A. was elected probationer fellow in 1542. In the beginning of the reign of Edward VI. he settled in London, took a house in Ely-rents, Holborn, and there exercised the trade of printer and bookseller, and being, we suppose, in orders, occasionally preached but being at the same time a zealous friend to the reformation, on the accession of queen Mary he went with the other exiles to Francfort, where he remained until the queen’s death. After his return to England he had several benefices bestowed on him, among which were the archdeaconry, and a prebend in Hereford, both which he resigned in 1567; a prebend of St. Paul’s, the rectory of St. Peter le Poor, and the vicarage of St. Giles’s Cripplegate; but he was deprived of the latter, the only promotion which he appears to have held at that time (1566), for a riot in the church, because the choristers wore surplices. In 1576, however, it appears that he was collated to the living of St. Lawrence Jewry, and probably was now more reconciled to the ceremonies and habits of the church. In 1578 he was presented with the freedom of the Stationers’ company, and soon after is found with the wardens, licensing copies. He died June 18, 1588, and was buried in his former church of St. Giles’s. He was, according to Tanner, a person of a happy genius, an eminent preacher, and a zealous advocate for reformation. His works, both in prose and verse, enumerated by Wood and Tanner, are now merely objects of curiosity. In 1550 he printed the first edition of “Pierce Plowman’s Vision,” with the view of helping forward the reformation by the revival of a book which exposed the absurdities of popery. He translated into popular rhyme, not only the Psalter, but the Litany, with hymns, all which he printed together in 1549. In the same year, and in the same measure, he published “The Voice of the Last Trumpet blown by the seventh angel,” a piece containing twelve several lessons for the instruction of all classes. He also attacked the abuses of his age in thirty-one “Epigrams,” 1550, and twice reprinted. In the same year he published a kind of metrical sermon on “Pleasure and Pain, Heaven and Hell Remember these four, and all shall be well.” In his “Dialogue between Lent and Liberty,” written to prove that Lent is a superstitious institution, Mr. Warton thinks that the personification of Lent is a bold and a perfectly new prosopopeia. Crowley likewise wrote and printed in 1588, a rhyming manual, “The School of Virtue and Book of Good Nature,” a translation, into metre, of many of the less exceptionable Latin hymns anciently used by the catholics. Among his prose works are “An Apology of those English preachers and writers which Cerberus, the three-headed dog of hell, chargeth with false doctrine under the name of Predestination,” 1566, 4to, and “Brief Discourse concerning those four usual notes whereby Christ’s Catholic Church is known,” 1581, 4 to, &c. In controversy he was usually warm, and not nice in his language; and in his poetry he consulted usefulness rather than taste.

, a very extraordinary person, was a native of Amsterdam, where he was born in 1.522. It appears that early in life he travelled into Spain and Portugal, but the motives of his journey are not ascertained. He was a man of science; and, according to report, a good poet. The sister arts he at first considered as an amusement only; but at length was obliged to have recourse to engraving for his support, and though the different studies in which he employed his time prevented his application to this art from being so close as it ought to have been, yet marks of genius are discoverable in his works. They are slight, and hastily executed with the graver alone, in an open careless style, so as greatly to resemble drawings made with a pen. He was settled at Haerlem; and there pursuing his favourite studies in literature, he learned Latin, and was made secretary to that town, from whence he was several times employed as ambassador to the prince of Orange, to whom he addressed a famous manifesto, which that prince published in 1566. Had he stopped here, it had been well; but, directing his thoughts to matters which he did not understand, he brought forward an argument as dangerous as it was absurd. He maintained, that all religious communications were corrupted; and that without a supernatural mission, accompanied with miracles, no person hat! any right to administer in any religious office: he therefore pronounced that man to be unworthy the name of a Christian who would enter any place of public worship. This he not only advanced in words, but strove to shew the sincerity of his belief in it by practice; and for that reason would not communicate with either protestant or papist. His works were published in three volumes folio, 1630; and though he was several times imprisoned, and at last sentenced to banishment, yet he does not appear to Lave altered his sentiments. He died at Tergout in 1590, aged 68. It is to his honour as an artist, that he was the instructor of the justly-celebrated Henry Goltzius. Cuerenhert worked conjointly with the Galles and other artists, from the designs of Martin Hemskerk. The subjects are from the Old and New Testament, and consist chiefly of middling-sized plates lengthwise. He also engraved several subjects from Frank Floris.

As a writer, the number of his works is perhaps the most striking circumstance; but many of them, it may be remembered, were hastily written, and produced to better his income at a time when a succession of statesmen had agreed to forget that such a man ever held a public station. Whatever else he wrote, the drama was his favourite pursuit, from which he could seldom endure a long interruption; and this seems to have created in his mind a ready play of imagination which unfitted him for the serious concerns of real life and business. As a poet, he cannot rank very high; elegant versification and sentiment, however, throw a charm over some of his poetical works which has ensured them a considerable share of popularity. His “Observer,” now that he has acknowledged how much he took from Bentley’s Mss. no longer supports his character as a Greek critic. First or last, the drama was his peculiar province: it was in that he endeavoured to excel, and in that, we think, he has attained the excellence that will he most permanent.

, a poet of considerable reputation, was born in 1729 in Dublin, where his father and mother, both descendants of Scotch parents, then resided. His father was a wine cooper, and becoming enriched by a prize in the lottery, commenced wine-merchant, and failed. The little education our author received was from a Mr. Clark, who was master of the grammar-school of the city of Drogheda; and when his father’s affairs became embarrassed, he was recalled to Dublin, where he produced many of his lesser poems at a very early age. At seventeen he wrote a farce, entitled “Love in a Mist,” which was acted for several nights at Dublin in 1747. Garrick is said to have been indebted to this farce for the fable or plot of his “Lying Valet.” The success of his little drama procured him the freedom of the theatre, to which he became immoderately attached, and mistaking inclination for ability, commenced actor without one essential qualification either natural or acquired, if we except a knack at personating the mock French character, in which he is said to have been tolerable. His passion for the stage, however, predominated so strongly, that without any intimation of his intentions, he left his family and embarked for England, where he obtained a precarious and unprofitable employment in various companies of strolling comedians. Frequent want made him at length sensible of his imprudence, but pride prevented his return to his friends; and the death of his father in circumstances of distress, probably reconciled him to a way of life which he could not now exchange for a better. About the year 1761 we find him a performer at Edinburgh, where he published his “Elegy on a Pile of Ruins,” which, although obviously an imitation of Gray’s Elegy, contains many passages conceived in the true spirit of poetry, and obtained considerable reputation. During his theatrical engagement at Edinburgh, although insignificant as an actor, he was of some value to the manager, by furnishing prologues and other occasional addresses, which were much applauded.

Dr. Currie might now, without danger to his professional character, indulge his inclination for the ornamental parts of literature; and an occasion offered in which he had the happiness of rendering his taste and his benevolence equally conspicuous. On a visit to his native county, in 1792, he had become personally acquainted with that rustic son of genius, Robert Burns. This extraordinary, but unfortunate man, having at his death left his family in great indigence, a subscription was made in Scotland for their immediate relief, and at the same time a design was formed, of publishing an edition of his printed works and remains for their emolument. Mr. Syme, of Ryetlale, an old and intimate friend of Dr. Currie, strongly urged him to undertake the office of editor; and to this request, in which other friends of the poet’s memory concurred, he could not withhold his acquiescence, notwithstanding his multiplied engagements. In 1800 he published in 4 vols. 8vo, “The Works of Robert Burns, with an account of his Life, and a criticism on his Writings: to which are prefixed, some Observations on the Character and Condition of the Scottish Peasantry.” These volumes were a rich treat to the lovers of poetry and elegant literature; and Dr. Currie’s part in them, as a biographer and critic, was greatly admired, as well for beauty of style, as for liberality of sentiment and sagacity of remark. If any objection was made to him as an editor, on account of unnecessary extension of the materials, the kind purpose for which the publication was undertaken, pleaded his excuse with all who were capable of feeling its force. Its success fully equalled the most sanguine expectations.

, whose German name was Speishammer, an eminent historian, was born in 1473, at Sweinfurt, in Franconia, and became distinguished as a philosopher, historian, orator, poet, and physician, although his historical works only have survived. He was educated at Vienna, where his studies were confined to medicine and poetry, and soon became in high favour with the emperor Maximilian I. who made him his librarian, and afterwards employed him in various important negociations in Hungary, Bohemia, and Poland, and for many years admitted him to his presence as a confidential adviser, and placed him at the head of the senate of Vienna. When Cuspinian meditated his historical writings, the emperor ordered the libraries and archives to be thrown open to him. He died in 1529. His biographer, Gerbelius, describes him as a man of elegant person, address, and manners; and his works attest his learning and diligence in historical research. In this branch he wrote: 1. “De Cicsaribus et Imperatoribus Romanorum,” 1519, fol.; reprinted at Strasburgh, 1540; Basil, by Oporinus, 1561, and Francfort, 1601. 2. “Austria, sive Commentarius de rebus Austrice Marchionum, Ducum, &c.” Basil, 1553, fol. Franc fort, 1601. 3. “Commonefactio ad Leonem X. papam, ad Carolum V. imperatorem, &c. de Constantinopoli capta a Turcis, &c.” Leipsic, 1596, 4to. 4. “Commentarius in Sexti Rufi libellum de regia, consulari, imperialique dignitate, &c.” Basil, 1553, fol. with his life by Gerbelius, reprinted at Francfort, 1601, fol. 5. “De origine Turcorum,” Antwerp, 1541, 8vo. 6. “Panegyric! variorum Auctorum,” Vienna, 1513.

In 1695, and the three following parliaments, lord Cutts was regularly elected one of the representatives both for the county of Cambridge, and for the borough of Newport in the Isle of Wight; but made his election for the former. In two parliaments which followed (1702 and 1705) he represented Newport. In 1698 he was complimented by Mr. John Hopkins, as one to whom “a double crown was due,” as a hero and as a poet. In 1699, he is thus introduced in a compliment to king William on his conquests:

, a French critic and philologer, was born of protestant parents at Castres in Upper Languedoc April 6, 1651, and began to be educated in the college there; but, when by a decree of the council the direction of it was given, in 1664, to the Jesuits alone, his father sent him to the university of Puylaurens, and afterwards to that of Saumur, that he might finish his classical studies under Tannegui le Fevre, or Tanaquil Faber. This eminent scholar was so pleased with Dacier’s inclination for learning, that he kept him alone in his house, after he had dismissed the rest of the pupils; and here he conceived that affection for le Fevre’s celebrated daughter, which ended at length in marriage. On le Fevre’s death in 1672, Dacier returned to his father; and after some time went to Paris, in order to gain a settlement, and cultivate the acquaintance and friendship of the learned: in the former of these objects he did not at first succeed; but on a second visit to Paris, he procured an introduction to the duke of Montausier, governor to the dauphin, who put him on the list of the commentators for the use of the dauphin, and engaged him in the edition of Pompeius Festus, and Marcus Verrius Flaccus. This he published at Paris, 1681, in 4to; and it was again published at Amsterdam, 1699, in 4to, which edition is preferable to that of Paris, because there are added to it the entire notes of Joseph Scaliger, Fulvius Ursinus, and Anthony Augustinus, and the new fragments of Festus. His Horace, with a French translation, and notes critical and historical, came out at Paris, 1681, in 10 vols. 12mo, and has often been printed since. The best edition of this work is that of Amsterdam, 1726, consisting of the same number of volumes in the same size. Another edition was printed at Amsterdam in 8 vols. 12mo, to which were added the translation and notes of father Sanadon, published at Paris, 1728, in 2 vols. 4to, Mr. John Masson, a refugee minister in England, made several animadversions upon Dacier’s notes on Horace, in his life of that poet, printed at Leyden in 1708; which occasioned Dacier to publish new explications upon the works of Horace, with an answer to the criticisms of Mr. Masson, in which he treats Masson’s book with great contempt; and, speaking of verbal criticism, styles it “the last effort of reflection and judgment.” These were afterwards added to Sanadon’s edition of Dacier’s Horace.

, the learned wife of the preceding, was born at Saumur, about the end of 1651. She was only eleven years old when her father resolved to give her a learned education; which is said to have been owing to the following circumstance, that while he was teaching one of his sons the rudiments of grammar, in the same room where mademoiselle le Fevre was employed with her needle, she, with every appearance of unconcern, now and then supplied her brother with answers to questions that puzzled him. This induced her father to give her a regular course of lessons, and educate her as a scholar, in which character she soon excelled the youths under his care, and became her father’s associate in some of his publications. We are told that when she had learned Latin enough to read Phaedrus and Terence, he began to instruct her in the Greek, which she was so much pleased with, that in a short time she was capable of reading Anacreon, Callimachus, Homer, and the Greek Tragic Poets. As she read them, she shewed so much taste of the beauties of those admirable writers, that all the fatigue of her father in his professorship was softened by the pleasure which he found in teaching her. To divert her in her more serious studies, he taught "her the Italian language, and read over with her several poets of that nation, and particularly Tasso, in the perusal of whom she very acutely remarked the difference between that poet and Virgil and Homer. She sometimes took the liberty of disputing with her father, particularly, on one occasion, respecting Vaugelas’s translation of Quintus Curtius. Her father was charmed with it, but mademoiselle le Fevre ventured to point out some negligences of style, errors in language, and passages ill translated; and he was frequently obliged to own himself of the same opinion with her. These little contests, however, gave him great satisfaction, and he was extremely surprized to find so delicate a taste, and so uncommon a penetration, in so young a person.

The erudition of lord Hailes, says his friend the late lord Woodhousiee, was not of a dry and scholastic nature; he felt the beauties of the composition of the ancients; he entered with taste and discernment into the merits of the Latin poets, and that peculiar vein of delicate and ingenious thought which characterises the Greek epigrammatists; and a few specimens which he has left of his own composition in that style, evince the hand of a master. It would not, adds his lordship, be easy to produce from the works of any modern Latin poet, a more delicate, tender, and pathetic effusion, or an idylliou of greater classical purity, than the iambics he wrote “On the death of his first wife, in child-bed of twins.” Lord Hailes was a man of wit, and possessed a strong feeling of the absurd and ridiculous in human conduct and character, which gave a keen edge of irony both to his conversation and writings. To his praise, however, it must be added, that that irony, if not always untinctured with prejudice, was never prompted by malignity, and was generally exerted in the cause of virtue and good morals. How much he excelled in painting the lighter weaknesses and absurdities of mankind, may be seen from the papers of his composition in the “World” and the “Mirror.” His private character was every thing that is praise-worthy and respectable. In a word, he was an honour to the station which he filled, and to the age in which he lived. That such a man should not yet have found a biographer worthy of his merits, cannot be ascribed either to the obscurity of his character and station, or to the incapacity of his contemporaries. But lord Hailes was a man of piety of the old stamp, and a strenuous advocate for revealed religion, and therefore did not share, as he uould not have been ambitious to share, the celebrity that has been conferred on some of his countrymen of a very opposite character.

, a French poet, was born at Jliom in Auvergne in 1671; and went to Paris, where he distinguished himself very early in the republic of letters. At the age of nineteen he was invited to Chartres, to be professor of rhetoric; which office he discharged with high repute for four years. Upon his return to Paris, he devoted his labours entirely to the service of the theatre, for which he continued to write songs, operas, and tragedies, to the end of his life. He was admitted a member of the academy of inscriptions in 1706, and of the French academy in 1712. He had a place in the king’s library, and died at Paris Feb. 21, 1748. His works were collected and printed at Paris, 1751, in 4 vols. 12mo. As a man Danchet was highly esteemed for the qualities of his mind, and the mildness of his temper; he was sincere, upright, and disinterested, and was an enemy to every species of satire and calumny, weapons too frequently used by poets and men of genius. Of this a singular instance is on record. One of his rivals having insulted him in a published satire, Danchet sent him privately an epigrammatic answer of the severest cast, which he assured him no other person had seen, and begged him to observe, that it was as easy as shameful for men of letters to embark in such kind of warfare.

, an English poet and historian, the son of a music-master, was born near Taunton, in Somersetshire, in 1562. In 1579 he was admitted a commoner of Magdalen-hall, Oxford, where he continued about three years, and by the help of an excellent tutor, made considerable improvement in academical studies. He left the university, however, without taking a degree, and pursued the study of history and poetry under the patronage of the earl of Pembroke’s family. This he thankfully acknowledges in his “Defence of Rhime,” which is printed in the late edition of his works, as a necessary document to illustrate the ideas of poetry entertained in his time. To the same family he was probably indebted for an university education, as no notice occurs of his father, who, if a music-master, could not well have escaped the researches of Dr. Burney. The first of his product ions, at the age of twenty-three, was a translation of Paulns Jovius’s ' Discourse of Rare Inventions, both military and amorous, called Imprese,“London, 1585, 8vo, to which he prefixed an ingenious preface. He afterwards became tutor to the lady Anne Clifford, sole daughter and heiress to George, earl of Cumberland, a lady of very high accomplishments, spirit, and intrepidity. To her, when at the age of thirteen, he addressed a delicate admonitory epistle. She was married, first to Richard, earl of Dorset, and afterwards to the earl of Pembroke,” that memorable simpleton,“says lord Orford,” with whom Butler has so much diverted himself." The pillar which she erected in the county of Westmoreland, on the road-side between Penrith and Appleby, the spot where she took her last leave of her mother,

Among her other munificent acts, was a monument to the memory of our poet, on which she caused it to be engraven that she had been his pupil; a circumstance which she seems to have remembered with delight, at the distance of more than half a century after his decease.

At the death of Spenser, Daniel, according to Anthony Wood, was appointed poet-lanreat to tiuceu Elizabeth; but Mr. Malone, whose researches lead to more decisive accuracy, considers him only as a volunteer laureat, like Jonson, Dekker, and others who furnished the court with masks and pageants. In king James’s reign he was made gentleman extraordinary, and afterwards one of the grooms of the privy-chamber to the queen consort, who took great delight in his conversation and writings. Some of la’s biographers attribute this promotion to the interest of his brother-in-law, Florio, the Italian lexicographer, but it is perhaps more probable that he owed it to the Pembroke family. Mrs. Cooper, in her Muses’ Library, observes, that in the introduction to his poem on the civil wars, he acknowledges the friendship of one of the noble family of Mountjoy; and this, adds our female critic, is the more grateful and sincere, as it was published after the death of his benefactor. He now rented a small house and garden in Old-street, in the parish of St. Luke’s, London, where he composed most of his dramatic pieces, and enjoyed the friendship of Shakspeare, Marlowe, and Chapman, as well as of many persons of rank; but he appears to have been dissatisfied with the opinions entertained of his poetical talents; and towards the end of his life retired to a farm, which he had at Beckington, near Philips-Norton, in Somersetshire, and where, after some time devoted to study and contemplation, he died, and was buried Oct. 14, 1619. He had been married to his wife Justina, several years, but left no issue.

“He was born not far from Taunton, in this county (Somersetshire), whose father was a master of musick and his harmonious mind made an impression on his son’s genius, who proved an exquisite poet. He carried in his Christian and surname, two holy prophets, his monitors so to qualify his raptures, that he abhorred all prophaneness. He was also a judicious historian, witness his Lives of our English kings since the conquest, until king Edward III. wherein he hath the happiness to reconcile brevity with clearness, qualities of great distance in other authors. He was a servant in ordinary to queen Anne, who allowed him, a fair salary. As the tortoise burieth himself all the winter under the ground, so Mr. Daniel would lye hid at his garden-house in Old -street, nigh London, for some months together (the more retiredly to enjoy the company of the muses) and then would appear in publick, to converse with his friends, whereof Dr. Cowel and Mr. Camden were principal. Some tax him to smack of the old cask, as resenting of the Romish religion, but they have a quicker palate than I, who can make any such discovery. In his old age he turned husbandman, and rented a farm in Wiltshire, nigh the Devizes. I can give no account how he thrived thereupon. For though he was well versed in Virgil, his fellow-husbandman-poet, yet there is more required to make a rich farmer, than only to say his Georgics by heart; and I question whether his Italian will fit our English husbandry. Besides, I suspect that Mr. Daniel his fancy was too fine and sublimated to be wrought down to his private profit.”

Mr. Headly, who appears to have studied his works with much attention, thus appreciates his merit: “Though very rarely sublime, he has skill in the pathetic; and his pages are disgraced with neither pedantry nor conceit. We find, both in his poetry and prose, such a legitimate and rational flow of language as approaches nearer the style of the 18th than the 16th century, and of which we may safely assert, that it never will become obsolete. He certainly was the Atticus of his day. It seems to have been his error to have entertained too great a diffidence of his own abilities. Constantly contented with the sedate propriety of good sense, which he no sooner attains than he seems to rest satisfied, though his resources, had he but made the effort, would have carried him much farther. In thus escaping censure, he is not always entitled to praise. From not endeavouring to be great, he sometimes misses of being respectable. The constitution of his mind seems often to have failed him in the sultry and exhausting regions of the muses; for though generally neat, easy, and perspicuous, he too frequently grows slack, languid, and enervated. In perusing his long historical poem, we grow sleepy at the dead ebb of his narrative, notwithstanding being occasionally relieved with some touches of the pathetic. Unfortunate in the choice of his subject, he seems fearful of supplying its defects by digressional embellishment; instead of fixing upon one of a more fanciful cast, which the natural coolness of his judgment would necessarily have corrected, he has cooped himself up within the limited and narrow pale of dry events; instead of casting his eye on the general history of human nature, and giving his genius a range over her immeasurable fields, he has confined himself to an abstract diary of fortune; instead of presenting us with pictures of truth from the effects of the passions, he has versified the truth of action only; he has sufficiently, therefore, shown the historian, but by no means the poet. For, to use a sentiment of sir William Davenant’s, ‘ Truth narrative and past is the idol of historians, (who worship a dead thing); and truth operative, and by its effects continually alive, is the mistress of poets, who hath not her existence in mutter, but in reason.’ Daniel Las often the softness of Rowe without his effeminacy. In his Complaint of Cleopatra, he has caught Ovid’s manner very happily, as he has no obscurities either of style or language, neither pedantry nor affectation, all of which have concurred in banishing from use the works of his contemporaries. The oblivion he has met with is peculiarly undeserved; he has shared their fate, though innocent of their faults.”

, an illustrious Italian poet, descended from one of the first families of Florence, of the name of Caccia Guida. Alighieri was the surname of the maternal line, natives of Ferrara, so called from a golden wing which the family bore on their arms. He was born in 1265, a little after the return of the Guelfs or pope’s faction, who had been exiled from their native country in consequence of the defeat at Monte Aperte. The superiority of his genius appeared early, and if we may credit his biographer Boccaccio, his amorous disposition appeared almost as soon. His passion for the lady whom he has celebrated in his poem by the name of Beatrice, is said to have commenced at nine years of age. She was the daughter of Eoleo Portinari, a noble citizen of Florence. His passion seems to have been of the platonic kind, according to the account he gives of it in his “Vita Nuova,” one of his earliest productions. The lady died at the age of twenty-six and Dante, affected by the afflicting event, fell into a profound melancholy, to cure which his friends recommended matrimony. Dante took their advice, but was unfortunate in choosing a lady of a termagant temper, from whom he found it necessary to separate, but not until they had lived miserably for a considerable time, during which she bore him several children. Either at this period, or after the death of his first mistress, he seems by his own account to have fallen into a profligate course of life, from which he was rescued by the prayers of his mistress, now a saint, who prevailed on the spirit of Virgil to attend him through the infernal regions. It is not easy to reduce this account to matter of fact, nor is it very clear indeed whether his reigning vice was profligacy, or ambition of worldly honours. It is certain, however, that he possessed this ambition, and had reason to repent of it.

Dante first found a patron in the great Cane de la Scala, prince of Verona, whom he has celebrated in the first canto of the Inferno; but his high spirit was ill-suited to courtly dependance; and it is very probable he lost the favour of the prince by the frankness of his behaviour. Of this an instance is given in several authors. The disposition of the poet, in the latter part of his life, had acquired a strong tincture of melancholy, which made him less acceptable in the gay court of Verona, where probably a poet was only thought a character fit to find frivolous amusements for his patron. A common jester, or buffoon (a noted personage in those days), eclipsed the character of the hard, and neither the variety of his learning, nor the sublimity of his genius, stood him in any stead. Cane, the prince, perceived that he was hurt by it; and, instead of altering his mode of treatment, very ungenerously exasperated his resentment, by observing one day in public company, that it was very extraordinary, that the jester, whom every one knew to be a worthless fellow, should be so much admired by him, and all his court; while Dante, a man unparalleled in learning, genius, and integrity, was universally neglected. “You will cease to wonder (says Dante), when you consider that similarity of manners is the strongest bond of attachment.” It does not appear whether the prince resented this answer, which he surely must have felt; but it is certain that the prince endeavoured to make the poet an occasional object of merriment in some very low instances, and Dante condescended to meet him even in that humble species of wit. Dante, however, soon found it necessary to seek his fortune elsewhere, and from Verona he retired to France, according to Manetti; and Boccaccio affirms that he disputed in the theological schools of Paris with great reputation, which Boccaccio had a much better opportunity of knowing than Bavle, who takes upon him to question the fact.

Dante’s first prospect of better fortune opened in 1308, when Henry, count of Luxemburgh was raised to the empire. In hopes of being restored to his native country, he attached himself to the interests of the new emperor, in whose service he is supposed to have written his Latin work “De Monarchia,” in which he asserts the rights of the empire against the encroachments of the papacy. In 131 J, he instigated the emperor to lay siege to Florence, in which enterprize, says one of his biographers, he did not chuse to appear in person, from motives of respect to his native country. But the emperor was repulsed by the Florentines; and his death, which happened next year, deprived Dante of all hopes of re-establishment in his native country. After this disappointment he is supposed to have spent several years in roving about Italy, in a state of poverty and dependance; till he found an honourable establishment at Ravenna, by the friendship of Guido NoVelio de Polenta, lord of that place, who received tbl? illustrious exile with the most endearing liberality, continued to protect him during the few remaining years of his life, and extended his munificence even to the ashes of the poet.

Eloquence was one of the many talents which Dante possessed in an eminent degree; on this account he is said to have been employed in fourteen different embassies during the course of his life, and to have succeeded in most of them. His patron Guido had occasion to try his abilities in a service of this nature, and dispatched him as his ambassador, to negociate a peace with the Venetians, who were preparing for hostilities against Ravenna. Manetti asserts that he was unable to procure a public audience at Venice, and returned to Ravenna by land, from his apprehension of the Venetian fleet. But the fatigue of his journey, and the mortification of having failed in his attempt to preserve his generous patron from the impending danger, threw him into a fever, which terminated in death. He died Sept. 14, 1321, in the palace of Guido, who paid the most tender regard to his memory. This magnificent patron, says Boccaccio, commanded the body to be adorned with poetical ornaments; and alter being carried on a bier through the principal streets of Ravenna, by the most illustrious citizens, to be deposited in a marble coffin. He pronounced himself the funeral oration, and expressed his design of erecting a most splendid monument, in honour of the deceased; a design, which his subsequent misfortunes rendered him unable to accomplish. At his request, however, many epitaphs were written on the poet. The best of them, says Boccaccio, was by Giovanni di Virgilio, of Bologna, a famous author of the time, and the intimate friend of Dante. Bernardo Bembc, the father of the celebrated cardinal, raised a handsome monument over the neglected ashes of the poet, with a Latin inscription; but before this, the Florentines had vainly endeavoured to gain the bones of their great poet from the city of Ravenna. In the age of Leo X. they made a second attempt, by a solemn application to the pope for that purpose; and Michael AngeJo, an enthusiastic admirer of Dante, very liberally offered to execute a magnificent monument to the poet, but the hopes of the Florentines were again unsuccessful.

His fame rests on his “Divina Commedia,” unquestionably a great and singular, but very unequal work. At what time, or in what place, he wrote it, his numerous commentators seem unable to determine. The life of Dante, in which we have principally followed Mr. Boyd, in the preliminary matter to his excellent translation, is after all not the life of a poet, nqr does it furnish the information we naturally look for in order to enable us to trace the progress of genius. Boccaccio asserts, that he began the “Commedia” in his thirty-eighth year, and had finished seven cantos of his “Inferno” before his exile, and that in the plunder of his house, on that event, the beginning of his poem was fortunately preserved, but remained for some time neglected, till, its merit being accidentally discovered by an intelligent poet, Dino, it was sent to the marquis Marcello Marespina, an Italian nobleman, by whom Dante was then protected. The marquis restored these lost papers to the poet, and intreated him to proceed in the work, which opened in so promising a manner. To this accident we are probably indebted for the poem of Dante, which he must have continued under all the disadvantages of an unfortunate and agitated life. It does not appear at what time he completed it: perhaps before he quitted Verona, as he dedicated the “Paradeso” to his Veronese patron. The critics are not agreed why he called this poem “Commedia.”

The very high estimation in which this work was held in, Florence appears from a very singular institution. The republic of Florence, in 1373, assigned a public stipend to a person appointed to read lectures on the poem of Dante. Boccaccio was the first person engaged in this office; but his death happening two years after his appointment, his comment extended only to the first seventeen cantos of the “Inferno.” Another very terrible instance of their veneration for their native bard is told by the author of the “Memoires de Petrarque.” Ceno de Ascoli, a celebrated physician and astrologer, had the boldness to write parodies on the poem of Dante. This drew on him the animadversion of the inquisition. Charles, duke of Calabria, thought to protect him, but in vain. The bishop of Aversa, his chancellor, declared it was highly impious to entertain a sorcerer as a physician, and Ascoli was accordingly burnt at Florence, about three years after the death of the poet whom he had maligned.

, according to some, a descendant of the famous poet, was born at Perugia in 1537, and took the habit of a Dominican. He became skilful in philosophy and divinity, but more so in the mathematics. He was invited to Florence by the great duke Cosmo I. and explained to him the sphere and the books of Ptolemy, and left here a marble quadrant, and an equinoctial and meridian line on the front of the church of St. Maria Novella. He read public lectures on the same subject, and had many auditors in the university of Bologna, where he was appointed mathematical professor. Before he returned to Perugia, he made a fine map of that city, and of its whole territory, and in 1576 traced the grand meridian in the church of St. Petrona, which Cassini completed. The reputation of his learning caused him to be invited to Rome by Gregory XIII. who employed him in making geographical maps and plans. He acquitted himself so well in this, that the pope thought himself obliged to prefer him; and accordingly gave him the bishopric of Alatri, near Rome. He went and resided in his diocese; but Sixtus V. who succeeded Gregory XIII. would have him near his person, and ordered him to return to Rome. Dante was preparing for the journey, but was prevented by death, in 1586. His principal works are, “A Treatise of the Construction and Use of the Astrolabe,” “Mathematical Tables,” and a “Commentary on the Laws of Perspective.”

, a native of Perugia, of the family of Rainaldi, imitated so well the verses of the poet Dante, that he was generally called by his name. He was not less distinguished by the delicacy of his poetry, than by his skill in the mathematics and in architecture. He died in 1512, in an advanced age, after having invented several machines, and composed a commentary on the sphere of Sacrobosco. His grandson Vincent Dante, an able mathematician, like him, was at the same time painter and sculptor. His statue of Julius III. has been generally looked upon as a master-piece of the art. Philip II. king of Spain, offered him a large salary to induce him to come and finish the paintings of the Escurial; but the delicacy of Dante’s constitution would not permit him to quit his natal air. He died at Perugia in 1576, at the age of forty-six. There is extant by him, “The lives of those who have excelled in drawings for statues.”

, a physician and poet, was a native of Elton, near Newark, Nottinghamshire, where he was born December 12, 1731. After going through the usual school education, under the Rev. Mr. Burrows, at the grammar-school at Chesterfield, with credit, he was sent to St. John’s college, at Cambridge. There he only continued until he took his bachelor’s degree in medicine, when he went to Edinburgh to complete his studies; which being finished, and having taken the degree of doctor in medicine, a profession to which he was aUvays attached, he went to Lichfield, and there commenced his career of practice. Being sent for, soon after his arrival, to Mr. Inglis, a gentleman of considerable fortune in the neighbourhood, who was ill with fever, and in so dangerous a state that the attending physician had given up the case as hopeless, the doctor had the good fortune to restore him to health. This gave him so high a degree of reputation at Litchfield, and in the neighbouring towns and villages, that his competitor, who was before in considerable practice, finding himself neglected, and nearly deserted, left the place. Dr. Darwin soon after married miss Howard, the daughter of a respectable inhabitant of Lichfield, by which he strengthened his interest in the place. By this lady he had three sons, who lived to the age of manhood; two of them he survived; the third, Dr. Robert Waring Darwin, is no.v in considerable practice as a physician at Shrewsbury. In 1781, our author, having married a second wife, removed to Derby, where he continued to reside to the time of his death, which happened on Sunday the 18th of April, 1802, in the seventieth year of his age. Six children by his second lady, with their mother, remain to lament the loss of him.

, a poet and dramatic writer of considerable note, was the son of John Davenant, who kept the Crown tavern or inn at Oxford, but owing to an obscure ins nuation in Wood’s accountof his birth, ithas been supposed that he was the natural son of Shakspeare; and to render this story probable, Mrs. Davenant is represented as a woman of beauty and gaiety, and a particular favourite of Shakspeare, who was accustomed to lodge at the Crown, on his journies between Warwickshire and London. Modern inquirers, particularly Mr. Steevens, are inclined to discredit this story, which indeed seems to rest upon no very sound foundation. Young Davenant, who was born Feb. 1605, very early betrayed a poetical bias, and one of Iris first attempts, when he was only ten years old, was an ode in remembrance of master William Shakspeare: this is a remarkable production for one so young, and one who lived, not only to see Shakspeare forgotten, but to contribute, with some degree of activity, to that instance of depraved taste. Davenant was educated at the grammarschool of All Saints, in his native city, under Mr. Edward Sylvester, a teacher of high reputation. In 1621, the year in which his father served the office of mayor, he entered of Lincoln-college, but being encouraged to try his success at court, he appeared there as page to Frances duchess of Richmond, a lady of great influence and fashion. He afterwards resided in the family of the celebrated sir Ftilke Greville, lord Brooke, who was himself a poet and a patron of poets. The murder of this nobleman in! 628 depriving him of what assistance he might expect from his friendship, Davenant had recourse to the stage, on which he produced his first dramatic piece, the tragedy of Albovine, king of the Lombards.

This play had success enough to procure him the recommendation, if nothing more substantial, of many persons of distinction, and of the wits of the times; and with such encouragement he renewed his attendance at court, adding to its pleasures by his dramatic efforts, and not sparingly to the mirth of his brethren the satirists, by the unfortunate issue of some of his licentious gallantries. For several years his plays and masks were acted with the greatest applause, and his character as a poet was raised very high by all who pretended to be judges. On the death of Ben Jonson, in 1638, the queen procured for him. the vacant laurel, which is said to have given such offence to Thomas May, his rival, as to induce him to join the disaffected party, and to become the advocate and historian of the republican parliament. In 1639, Davenaut was appointed “Governor of the king and queen’s company acting at the Cockpit in Drurv-lane, during the lease which Mrs. Elizabeth Beeston, alias Hutcheson, hath or doth hold in the said house.” When the civil commotions had for some time subsisted, the peculiar nature of them required that public; amusements should be the decided objects of popular resentment, and Davenant, who had administered so copiously to the pleasures of the court, was very soon brought under suspicions of a more serious kind. In May 16M, he was accused before the parliament, of being a partner with many of the king’s friends, in the design of bringing the army to London for his majesty’s protection. His accomplices effected their escape, but Davenant was apprehended at Feversham, and sent up to London. In July following he was bailed, but on a second attempt to withdraw to France, was taken in Kent. At last, however, he contrived to make his escape without farther impediment, and remained abroad for some time. The motive of his flight appears not to have been cowardice, but an unwillingness to sacrifice his life to popular fury, while there was any prospect of his being able to devote it to the service of his royal master. Accordingly, when the queen sent over a considerable quantity of military stores for the use of the earl of Newcastle’s army, Davenant resolutely ventured to return to England, and volunteered his services under that nobleman, who had been one of his patrons. The earl ma.le him lieutenant-general of his ordnance, a post for which, if he was not previously prepared, he qualified himself with so much skill and success, that in September 1643, he was rewarded with the honour of knighthood for the service he rendered to the royal cause at the siege of Gloucester. Of his military prowess, however, we have no farther account, nor at what time he found it necessary, on the decline of the king’s affairs, to retire again into France. Here he was received into the confidence of the queen, who in 1646 employed him in one of her importunate and ill-advised negociations with the king, who was then at Newcastle. About the same time Davenant had embraced the popish religion, a step which probably recommended him to the queen, but which, when known, could only tend to increase the animosity of the republicans against the court, which was already too closely suspected of an attachment to that persuasion. The object of his negociation was to persuade the king to save his crown by sacrificing the church; a proposition which his majesty rejected with becoming dignity; and this, as lord Clarendon observes, “evinced an honest and conscientious principle in his majesty’s mind, which elevated him above all his advisers.” The queen’s advisers in the measure were, his majesty knew, men of no religious principle, and he seems to have resented their sending an ambassador of no more consequence than the manager of a play-house.

During our poet’s residence at Paris, where he took up his habitation in the Louvre, with his old friend lord Jermyn, he wrote the first two books of his “Gondibert,” which were published in England, but without exciting much interest. Soon after he commenced projector, and hearing that vast improvements might be made in the loyal colony of Virginia, by transporting good artificers, whom France could at that time spare, he embarked with a number of them, at one of the ports in Normandy. This humane and apparently wise scheme ended almost immediately in the capture of his vessel on the trench coast, by one of the parliamentary ships of war, which carried him to the Isle of Wight, where he was imprisoned at Cowescastle. After endeavouring to reconcile himself to this unfortunate and perilous situation, he resumed his pen, and proceeded with his “Gondibert,” but being in continual dread of his life, he made but slow progress. His fears, indeed, were not without foundation. In 1650, when the parliament had triumphed over all opposition, he was ordered to be tried by a high commission court, and for this purpose was removed to the Tower of London. His biographers are not agreed as to the means by which he was saved. Some impute it to the solicitations of two aldermen, of York, to whom he had been hospitable when they were his prisoners, and whom he suffered to escape. Others inform us that Milton interposed. Both accounts, it is hoped, are true, and it is certain that after the restoration, he repaid Milton’s interference in kind, by preserving him from the resentment of the court. He remained, however, in prison for two years, and was treated with some indulgence, by the favour of the lord-keeper, Whitlocke, whom he thanked in a letter written with peculiar elegance of style and compliment.

As a poet, his fame rests chiefly on his “Gondibert,” but the critics have never been agreed in the share he derives from it. The reader who declines to judge for himself, may have ample satisfaction in the opinions of the late bishop Hurd, and of Dr. Aikin, as detailed in the conclusion of his life in the Biographia Britannica. It will, probably be found on an unprejudiced perusal of this original and very singular poem, that the opinions of Dr. Aikin and Mr. Headley are founded on those principles of taste and feeling which cannot be easily opposed; yet in considering the objections of Dr. Hurd, allowance is to be made for one who is so powerful and elegant an advocate for the authorized qualities of the Epic species, and for arguments which if they do not attach closely to this poem, may yet be worthy of the consideration of those whose inventive fancy leads them principally to novelty of manner, and who are apt to confound the arbitrary caprices with the genuine powers of a poet. His miscellaneous pieces are of very unequal merit. Most of them were probably written in youth, and but few can be reprinted with the hope of satisfying a polished taste. Complimentary poetry, so much the fashion in his times, is now perused with indifference, if not disgust; and although the gratitude which inspired it may have been sincere, it is not highly relished by the honest independence which belongs to the sons of the muses.

, a poet and statesman, was the third son of John Davies, of Tisbury, in Wiltshire, not a tanner, as Anthony Wood asserts, but a gentleman, formerly of New Inn, and afterwards a practitioner of law in his native place. His mother was Mary, the daughter of Mr. Bennett, of Pitt-house in the same county. When not fifteen years of age he was sent to Oxford, in Michaelmas term 1585, where he was admitted a commoner of Queen’s college, and prosecuted his studies with perseverance and success. About the beginning of 1588 he removed to the Middle Temple, but returned to Oxford in 1590, and took the degree of B. A. At the Temple, while he did not neglect the study of the law, he rendered himself obnoxious to the discipline of the place by various youthful irregularities, and after being fined, was at last removed from commons. Notwithstanding this, he was called to the bar in 1595, but was again so indiscreet as to forfeit his privileges by a quarrel with Mr. Richard Martin, whom he beat in the Temple hall. For this offence he was in Feb. 1597-8 expelled by the unanimous sentence of the society. Martin was, like himself, a wit and a poet, and had once been expelled for improper behaviour. Both, however, outlived their follies, and rose to considerable eminence in their profession. Martin became reader of the society, recorder of London, and member of parliament, and enjoyed the esteem of Selden, Ben Jonson, and other men of learning and genius, who lamented his premature death in 1618.

It is probable that these complimentary trifles made him known to the courtiers, for when the queen was to be entertained by Mr. Secretary Cecil, our poet, by desire, contributed his share in “A Conference between a gentleman usher and a post,” a dramatic entertainment, which does not add much to his reputation. A copy exists in the British Museum, Harl. ms. No. 286. His progress from being the terrae filius of a court to a seat in parliament is not known, but we find that he was chosen a member in the last parliament of Elizabeth, which met on the 27th of October 1601. He appears to have commenced his political career with spirit and intelligence, by opposing monopolies, which were at that time too frequently granted, and strenuously supporting the privileges of the house, for which the queen had not the greatest respect.

As a poet, he was one of the first of his day, but has been unaccountably neglected, although his style approaches the refinement of modern times. The best arbiters of poetical merit, however, seem to be agreed that his “Nosce Teipsum” is a noble monument of learning, acuteness, command of language, and facility of versification. It has none, indeed, of the sublimer flights which seem adapted to philosophical poetry, hut he is particularly happy in his images, which strike by their novelty and elegance. As to his versification, he has anticipated the harmony which the modern ear requires, more successfully than any of his contemporaries.

According to Wood, he wrote a version of some of the Psalms, which is probably lost. It is more certain that he wrote epigrams, which were added to Mario w’s translation of Ovid’s Epistles, printed at Micldleburgh in 1596. Mr. Ellis has given two of them among his “Specimens,” which do not excite much curiosity for the rest. Mar-low’s volume is exceedingly scarce, which may be accounted for by the following information: in 1599, the hall of the stationers underwent as great a purgation as was carried on in don Quixote’s library. Marston’s Pygmalion, Marlow’s Ovid, the satires of Hall and Marston, the epigrams of Davies, &c. were ordered for immediate conflagration by the prelates Whitgift and Bancroft. There are other pieces frequently ascribed to sir John Davies, which, Mr. Ritson thinks, belong to John Davies of Hereford, but a& our author superintended the edition of his poems printed about four years before his death, he included all that he thought proper to acknowledge, and probably, if we except the epigrams, nearly all that he had written. The lord Dorset recommended an edition of his works to Tate, who published the “Nosce Teipsum,” with the preface. In 1773 another edition was published by Mr. Thomas Davies from a copy corrected by Mr. William Thomson, the poet, including the “Acrostics” and “Orchestra.” The whole have been added to the late edition of the Poets.

, of Hereford, as he usually styled himself, a poet and schoolmaster, was born in that city, and sent when young from a grammar-school there, to the university of Oxford; but Wood has not discovered in what college he studied, nor does it appear that he took any degree. After leaving the university, he returned to his native place, where he obtained the character of a poet, and published several productions of the rhyming kind; but not finding, as it would indeed have been wonderful if he had found, much profit accrue, he set up a writing-school, first at Hereford, and afterwards in London, where he at length acquired the character of one of the first penmen in England. In 1611 we find him living in Fleet-street, and a Roman catholic. From Peck’s Desiderata it appears that Arthur Wilson was one of his pupils, and that the conversation of Davis and his family inspired him with some doubts of the religious kind. From his poems we learn that Davis left a brother, James, at Oxford, who was also a writing-master; and that he himself married a wife whose name was Croft, by whom, he says, he had a “crop of care,” meaning, probably, a large family. As a writing-master, he published some engraved books of instruction, or specimens, but Massey has seen only “The Writing School-master, or Anatomy of Fair Writing,” engraved, after his death, by Ingheenram, which he thinks does not support the high character given of his penmanship by his contemporaries. It is said he was some time tutor to prince Henry, who, according to Birch, wrote a very fine hand. He died about 1618, and, Fuller informs us, was buried in the church or church-yard of St. Giles’s in the Fields.

, an. eminent French poet, was born near the head of the Vienne, in the Limousin, about 1507. Removing to the capital of the kingdom to finish his studies, he distinguished himself in such a manner by his skill in Greek, and his talent at poetry, that he became one of the professors of the university of Paris. In 1560 he succeeded John Stracellus in the post of king’s reader and professor of Greek; but before this he had been principal of the college of Coqueret, and tutor to John Antony de Baif, in the house of his father Lazarus de Baif, who was master of the requests. He continued to instruct this young pupil in the college of Coqueret; and he had also the famous Ronsard for his scholar there, during the space of seven years. His highest praise is, that his school produced a great number of able men; but imprudent generosity and want of management reduced him to poverty, and procured him a place in the list of those learned men, whose talents have been of little benefit to themselves. In the reign of Henry II. he had been preceptor to the king’s pages and Charles IX. honoured him with the title of his poet, took great delight in conversing with him, and endeavoured to support him in his old age. It will not now be thought much in his favour that Daurat had an uncommon partiality for anagrams, of which he was the first restorer. It is pretended, that he found the model of them in Lycophron, and brought them so much into vogue, that several illustrious persons gave him their names to anagrammatise. He undertook also to explain the centuries of Nostradamus, and with such imposing plausibility as to be considered in the light of his interpreter or subprophet. When he was near 80, having lost his first wife, he married a young girl; and by her had a son, for whom he shewed his fondness by a thousand ridiculous actions. In excuse for this marriage, he said that he would rather die by a bright sword than a rusty one. He had by his first wife, among other children, a son, who was the author of some French verses, printed in a collection of his own poems; and a daughter, whom he married to a learned man, named Nicolas Goulu, in whose favour he resigned his place of regius professor of Greek. He wrote a great many verses in Latin, Greek, and French, in some of which he attacked the protestants; and no book was printed, nor did any person of consequence die, without his producing some verses on the subject; as if he had been poet in ordinary to the kingdom, or his muse had been a general mourner. The odes, epigrams, hymns, and other poems in Greek and Latin, composed by Daurat, have been estimated at the gross sum of 50,000 verses; Scaliger had such an opinion of him as a critic, that he said he knew none but him and Cujacius, who had abilities sufficient to restore ancient authors; but he has presented the public with no specimen of that talent, except some remarks on the Sybilline verses in Opsopseus’s edition. Scaliger tells us, with some ridicule, however, that he spent the latter part of his life in endeavouring to find all the Bible in Homer. He died at Paris, Nov. 1, 1588, aged Si. His principal collection of verses is entitled “Joannis Aurati, Lemovicis, Poetse et interprets regii, Poematia, hoc est, Poematum libri quinque; Epigrammatum libri tres; Anagrammatum liber unus; Funerum liber unus; Odarum libri duo; Epithalamiorum liber unus; Eclogarum libri duo; Variarum rerum liber unus,” Paris, 1586, 8vo, a very singular collection, although of no great merit as to taste or versification. He deserves more praise as one of the revivers of Greek literature in France, and in that character his memory was honoured, in 1775, hy an eloge, written by the abbe Vitrac, professor of humanity at Limoges.

, a dramatic writer of very little value, flourished in the reign of James I. The exact periods of his birth and decease are not ascertained; but he could not have died young, as his earliest play bears date 1600, and his latest 1637. Mr. Oldys thinks that he was living in 1638, and that he was in the King’s-bench prison from 1613 to 1616, or longer. It is supposed he had acquired reputation even in the time of queen Elizabeth, whose decease and funeral he commemorates in his “Wonderful Year,” 1603. He was contemporary with Ben Jonson, with whom he quarrelled. Of this we have usually bad the following account: that “Jonson, who certainly could never ‘bear a rival near the throne,’ has, in his ‘ Poetaster,’ the Dnnciad of that author, among many Other poets whom he has satirised, been peculiarly severe on Decker, whom he has characterised under the name of Crispinus. This compliment Decker has amply repaid in his ‘ Satyromastix, or the untrussing a humourous Poet,’ in which, under the title of young Horace, he has made Ben the hero of his piece.” The provocation, however, on the part of Jonson is completely overthrown by Mr. Gilchrist, whose accurate research has established the fact that the Crispinus of Jonson was not Decker, but Marston. In the Biog. Dramatics, is a long list of forgotten plays by Decker; and his “Gull’s Hornbook,” a scarce little tract by him, was elegantly and curiously reprinted in 1813.

, the second wife of the preceding, and a lady of distinguished ingenuity and merit, was born at a small country house of her father’s at Coulton in Wiltshire, May, 14, 1700. She was the daughter of Bernard Granville, esq. afterward lord Lansdowne, a nobleraan whose abilities and virtues, whose character as a poet, whose friendship with Pope, Swift, and other eminent writers of the time, and whose general patronage of men eyf genius and literature, have often been recorded in biographical productions. As the child of such a family, sh^ could not fail of receiving the best education. It was at Long-Leat, the seat of the Weymouth family, which was occupied by lord Lansdowne during the minority of the heir of that family, that Miss Granville first saw Alexander Pendarves, esq. a gentleman of large property at Roscrow in Cornwall, and who immediately paid his addresses to her; which were so strenuously supported by her uncle, whom she had not the courage to deny, that she gave a reluctant consent to the match; and accordingly it took place in the compass of two or three weeks, she being then in the seventeenth year of her age. From a great disparity of years, and other causes, she was very unhappy during the time which this connexion lasted, but endeavoured to make the best of her situation. The retirement to which she was confined was wisely employed in the farther cultivation of a naturally vigorous understanding: and the good use she made of her leisure hours, was eminently evinced in the charms of her conversation, and in her letters to her friends. That quick feeling of the elegant and beautiful which constitutes taste, she possessed in an eminent degree, and was therefore peculiarly fitted for succeeding in the fine arts. At the period we are speaking of, she made a great proficiency in music, but painting, which afterwards she most loved, and in which she principally excelled, had not yet engaged her practical attention. in 1724 Mrs. Pendarves became a widow; upon which occasion she quitted Cornwall, and fixed her principal residence in London. For several years, between 1730 and 1736, she maintained a correspondence with Dr. Swift. In 1743, as we have seen in the former article, Mrs. Pendarves was married to Dr. Delany, with whom it appears that she had long been acquainted; and for whom he had many years entertained a very high esteem. She had been a widow nineteen years when this connexion, which was a very happy one, took place, and her husband is said to fcave regarded her almost to adoration. Upon his decease in ftiay 1768, she intended to fix herself at Bath, and was in quest of a house for that purpose. But the duchess dowager of Portland, hearing of her design, went down to the place; and, having in her earl v years formed an intimacy with Mrs. Delany, wished to have near her a lady from whom she had necessarily, for several years, been much separated, and whose heart and talents she knew would in the highest degree add to thejiappiness of her own life. Her <*race succeeded in her solicitalions, and Mrs. Delany now passed her time between London and Bulstrode. On the death of the duchess-dowager of Portland, his present majesty, who had frequently seen and honoured Mrs Delany with his notice at Bulstrode, assigned her for her summer residence the use of a house completely furnished, in St. Alhan’s-street, Windsor, adjoining to the entrance of the castle: and, that the having two houses on her hands might not produce any inconvenience with regard to the expence of her living, his majesty, as a farther mark of his royal favour, conferred on her a pension of three hundred pounds a year. On the 15th of April, 1788, after a short indisposition, she departed this life, at her house in St. James’s-place, having nearly completed the 88th year of her age. The circumstance that has principally entitled Mrs. Delany to a place in this work is her skill in painting, and in other ingenious arts, one of which was entirely her own. With respect to painting, she was late in her application to it. She did not learn to draw till she was more than thirty years of age, when she put herself under the instruction of Goupy, a fashionable master of that time, and much employed by Frederic prince of Wales. To oil-painting she did not take till she was past forty. So strong was her passion for this art, that she has frequently been known to employ herself in it, day after day, from six o'clock in the morning till dinner time, allowing only a short interval for breakfast. She was principally a copyist; but a very fine one. The only considerable original work of hers in oil was the Kaising of Lazarus, in the possession of her friend lady JBute. The number of pictures painted by her, considering how late it was in life before she applied to the art, was very great. Her own house was full of them; and others are among the chief ornaments of Calswich, Welsborn, and Ham, the respective residences of her nephews, Mr. Granville and Mr. Dewes, and of her niece Mrs. Port. Mrs. Delany, among her other accomplishments, excelled in embroidery and shell-work; and, in the course of her life, produced many elegant specimens of her skill in these respects. But, what is more remarkable, at the age of 74 she invented a new and beautiful mode of exercising her ingenuity. This was by the construction of a Flora, of a most singular kind, formed by applying coloured papers together, and which might, not improperly, be called a species of mosaic work. Being perfectly mistress of her scissars, the plant or flower which she purposed to imitate she cut out; that is, she cut out its various leaves and parts in such coloured Chinese paper as suited her subject; and, when she could not meet with a colour to correspond with the one she wanted, she dyed her own paper to answer her wishes. She used a black ground, as best calculated to throw out her flower; and not the least astonishing part of her art was, that though she never employed her pencil to trace out the form or shape of her plant, yet when she had applied all the p eces which composed it, it hung so loosely and gracefully, that every one was persuaded that it must previously have been drawn out, and repeatedly corrected by a most judicious hand, before it could have attained the ease and air of truth which, without any impeachment of the honour of this accomplished lady, might justly be called a forgery of nature’s works. The effect was superior to what painting could have produced; and so imposing was her art, that she would sometimes put a real leaf of a plant by the side of one of her own creation, which the eye could not detect, even when she herself pointed it out. Mrs. Delany continued in the prosecution of her design till the 83d year of her age, when the dimness of her sight obliged her to lay it aside. However, by her unwearied perseverance, she became authoress of far the completest Flora that ever was executed by the same hand. The number of plants finished bv her amounted to nine hundred and eighty. This invaluable Flora was bequeathed by her to her nephew Court Dewes, esq. and is now in the possession of Barnard Dewes, esq. of Welsborn in Warwickshire. The liberality of Mrs. Delany’s mind rendered her at all times ready to communicate her art. She frequently pursued her work in company; was desirous of shewing to her friends how easy it was to execute; and was often heard to lament that so few would attempt it. It required, however, great patience and great knowledge in botanical drawing. She began to write poetry at 80 years of age, and her verses shew at least a pious disposition. Her private character is thus given by her friend, Mr. Keate. “She had every virtue that could adorn the human heart, with a mind so pure, and so uncontaminated by the world, that it was matter of astonishment how she could have lived in its more splendid scenes without being tainted with one single atom of its folly or indiscretion. The strength of her understanding received, in the fullest degree, its polish, but its weakness never reached her. Her life was conducted by the sentiments of true piety; her way of thinking, on every occasion, was upright and just; her conversation was lively, pleasant, and instructive. She was warm, delicate, and sincere in her friendships; full of philanthropy and benevolence, and loved and respected by every person who had the happiness to know her. That sun-shine and serenity of mind which the good can only enjoy, and which had thrown so much attraction on her life, remained without a shadow to the last; not less bright in its setting, than in its meridian lustre. That form which in youth had claimed admiration, in age challenged respect. It presented a noble ruin, become venerable by the decay of time. Her faculties remained unimpaired to the last; and she quitted this mortal state to receive in a better world the crown of a well-spent life.”

, an eminent English poet, the only son of sir John Denham, knt. of Little Horseley in Essex, by Eleanor, daughter of sir Garret More, knt. baron of Mellefont in Ireland, was born at Dublin in 1615, his father having been some time before chief baron of the exchequer in Ireland, and one of the lords commissioners of that kingdom; but, upon his being made, in 1617, one of the barons of the exchequer in England, he was brought by him to London, and educated there in school-learning. In 1631 he was entered a gentleman-commoner of Trinitycollege in Oxford “but being looked upon,” says Wood, “as a slow and dreaming young man by his seniors and contemporaries, and given more to cards and dice than his study, they could never then in the least imagine that he could ever enrich the world with his fancy, or issue of his brain, as he afterwards did.” When he had continued there three years, and undergone a public examination for his degree of B. A. he went to Lincoln’s Inn with a view of studying the law; but his love of gaming continuing, he squandered away all the money he could get. His father being informed of this, and threatening to disinherit him if he did not reform, he wrote a little “Essay upon Gaming,” which he presented to his father, in order to shew him what an abhorrence he had conceived towards it: this gentleman’s death, however, no sooner happened, in 1638, than he returned to his former habits, and presently lost several thousand pounds.

In 1647 he was entrusted by the queen with a message to the king, who was then in the hands of the army, and to whom he got admittance by the help of his acquaintance Hugh Peters; “which trust,” says he, in the dedication of his poems to Charles II. “I performed with great safety to the persons with whom we corresponded: but about nine months after, being discovered by their knowledge of Mr. Cowley’s hand, 1 happily escaped both for myself and them.” In April 1648 he conveyed away James duke of York into France, as Wood says; but Clarendon assures us, that the duke went off with colonel Bamfield only, who contrived the means of escape. Not long after, he was sent sent ambassador from Charles II. to the king of Poland; and William (afterwards lord) Crofts was joined in the embassy with him. Among his poems is one entitled, “On my lord Crofts’s and my journey into Poland, from whence we brought 10,000l. for his majesty, by the decimation (or tithing) of his Scottish subjects there.” About 1652 he returned to England; and, his paternal estate being greatly reduced by gaming and the civil wars, he was kindly entertained by lord Pembroke at Wilton; where, and sometimes at London, he continued with that nobleman above a year. At the restoration he entered upon the office of surveyor-general of all his majesty’s buildings; and at the coronation of the king, was created K. B. Wood pretends, that Charles I. had granted our poet the reversion of that place, after the decease of the famous Inigo Jones, who held it; but sir John himself, in the dedication of his poems, assures us, that Charles II. at his departure from St. Germain’s to Jersey, was pleased, freely, without his asking, to confer it upon him. After his promotion to tbis office, he gave over his poetical lines, and “made it his business,” he says, “to draw such others as might be more serviceable to his majesty, and, he hoped, more lasting.” Uponsome discontent arising from a second marriage, he had the misfortune to be deprived of his reason. Dr. Johnson notices a slight circumstance omitted by other writers, which is, that when our poet was thus afflicted, Butler lampooned him for his lunacy. “I know not,” adds the doctor, “whether the malignant lines were then made public; nor what provocation incited Butler to do what no provocation can excuse.” On his recovery, which was soon, he wrote his fine verses upon the death of Cowley; whom yet he survived but a few months; for he died at his office near Whitehall, which he had before built, March 1668, and was interred in Westminster-abbey, near Chaucer, Spenser, and Cowley. Sir John was an early member of the royal society.

On the above, so often repeated, lines on the Thames, and so often parodied, the reader may find some curious disquisitions in lord Mouboddo’s “Origin and Progress of Language,” and in Mason’s “Essay on the power of Numbers and the principles of Harmony,” 1749. The only opponent of Denham as a poet, generally, is Mr. Scott in his “Critical Essays,” but with Dryden, Johnson, Warton, &c. &c. in his favour, his reputation cannot suffer much by a solitary foe.

, a poet, a political writer, and a critic, was born in the city of London in 1657. His father was a sadler, and a citizen of reputation who determining to give him a liberal education, sent him to Harrow-on-theHill, where he received his grammatical instruction under Dr. William Horn, a school-master in high esteem for piety and literature. In the eighteenth year of his age he was removed to the university of Cambridge, where he was entered of Caius college, January 13, 1675, and continued there till he took his bachelor’s degree in 1679; after which he became a member of Trinity-hall, and in 1683, was admitted to the degree of master of arts. It is related, by the author of the Biographia Dramatica, that he was expelled from college, for literally attempting to stab a person in the dark, which, has been since confirmed by Dr. Farmer, by an extract from the Gesta book of Caius college: by this it appears that he was expelled March 4, 1680, for assaulting and wounding one Glenham with a sword. This accounts for his removing to Trinity hall.

Mr. Dennis’s next dramatic attempt was in a comedy, entitled “Gibraltar, or the Spanish Adventure;” and which was performed in 1705, at the theatre royal in Drury-lane; but without success. “Orpheus and Eurydice,” a masque, which was produced by our author in 1707, does not appear to have been acted. It is printed in the “Muse’s Mercury,” for the month of February in that year. In 1709, Mr. Dennis brought upon the stage, at Drury-lane, “Appius and Virginia,” a tragedy, which was not very successful; but is remarkable for a circumstance little connected with its literary merit. Dennis, expressly for the use of this play, had invented a new species of thunder, which was approved of by the actors, and is the sort at present used in the theatre. Some nights after his tragedy had been laid aside, Dennis being in the pit at the representation of Macbeth, heard his own thunder made use of; upon which he rose in a violent passion, and exclaimed, with an oath, that it was, his thunder. “See,” said he, “how these rascals use me They will not let my play run and yet they steal my thunder” Our author’s last dramatic production was “Coriolanus, the Invader of his country; or, The Fatal Resentment;” a tragedy, altered from Shakspeare’s Coriolanus. After it had been represented three nights, the managers Wilks, Cibber, and Booth, who were not satisfied with the profits derived from it, to the astonishment and indignation of Mr. Dennis, gave out another play for the next evening. Upon this he published his tragedy, with a dedication to the duke of Newcastle, at that time lord chamberlain of his majesty’s household, in which he has given full scope to his resentment against the patentees, and especially against Mr. Cibber. The last gentleman, instead of the author’s epilogue, had substituted one of his own, which was spoken by Mrs. Oldfield, an additional cause of offence to our poet, who, in an advertisement, has represented it as a wretched medley of impudence and nonsense; and, indeed, it does not appear to be entitled to commendation. Dennis, as already noticed, derived some fortune from an uncle; but that was probably spent in a little time. As he wrote for government when the whigs were in power, and was patronised by lord Halifax, there can be no doubt but that he occasionally received pecuniary gratifications, either from the bounty or through the interest of that nobleman. For his poem on the battle of Blenheim the duke of Marlborough rewarded him with a present of a hundred guineas. But, previously to the writing of that poem, he had experienced his grace’s patronage in a much more important instance; for the duke had procured for him the place of a waiter at the Custom-house, worth a hundred and twenty pounds a year. This office he held for six years; during which he managed his affairs with so little discretion, that, in order to discharge some pressing demands, he was obliged to dispose of his waitership. The earl of Halifax, having heard of his design, sent for him, and, in the most friendly manner, expostulated with him wpon the folly and rashness of disposing of his place, by which his lordship told him that he would soon become i beggar. In reply, our author represented the exigencies? to which he was reduced, and the importunate nature of the demands that were made upon him. The ear), however, insisted, that, if he must sell his place, he should reserve to himst-If an annuity out of it for a considerable term of years; such a term as his lordship thought Mr. Dennis was not likely to survive; yet this he did survive, and was exposed in his old age to great poverty. With such a disposition as Mr. Dennis possessed, it is not surprizing that he was often liable to arrests from his creditors. An instance of sir Richard Steele’s friendship to him in this respect he is said to have ill-repaid. Sir Richard, if the story be true, once became bail for him, and afterwards was arrested on his account; but, when he heard of it, he only exclaimed, “'Sdeath! why did he not keep out of the way, as I did?” In the latter part of our poet’s life, he resided within the verge of the court, for the security of his person, but one Saturday night, he happened to saunter to a public-house, which, in a short time, he discovered to be out of the verge. As he was sitting in an open drinking-room, a man of a suspicious appearance entered, about whom Mr. Dennis imagined there was something that denoted him to be a bailiff. Being seized with a panic, he was afraid that his liberty was now at an end, and sat in the utmost solicitude, but durst not offer to stir, lest he should be seized upon. After an hour or two had passed in this painful anxiety, at last the clock struck twelve; when Mr. Dennis, addressing himself to the suspected person, cried out in an extacy, “Now, sir, bailiff or no bailiff, I don't care a farthing for you you have no power now.” The man was astonished at his behaviour; and, when it was explained to him, was so much affronted with the suspicion, that, had not our author been protected by his age, he would probably have taken personal revenge.

In 1713, Mr. Addison’s Cato was produced upon the stage with a degree of applause, which, we believe, was never before given to any dramatic composition. But though the play was acted in the cause of whiggism, and Dennis himself was so zealous a whig, he could not bear the success with which it was attended. That in this hewas actuated by personal animosity, cannot be denied; since it is acknowledged by himself, in a letter to the duke of Buckingham, that the motive which induced him to write his remarks upon Cato was, his having been attacked in several numbers of the Spectator. His principle of action we condemn; but the abilities with which he has executed his purpose are unquestionable, “He found,” says Dr. Johnson, “and shewed many faults: he shewed them, indeed, with anger; but he found them with acutejncss, such as ought to rescue his criticism from oblivion;” and Dr. Johnson has thought a large extract from this pamphlet worthy of transcription into his Life of Add son, who himself maintained a profound silence. Pope, however, took upon him to avenge his cause, in a pamphlet entitled “The Narrative of Dr. Robert Norris, concerning the strange and deplorable frenzy of Mr. John Dennis, an officer in the custom house,” a piece of humour which does little credit to Pope’s heart, and must excite the disapprobation of every benevolent mind. Pope, however, left Dennis’s objections to Cato in their full force, “and therefore discovered more desire of vexing the critic, than of defending the poet. Addison, who was no stranger to the world,” says Dr. Johnson, “probably saw the selfishness of Pope’s friendship; and resolving that he should have the consequences of his officiousness to himself, informed Dennis by Steele, that he was sorry for the insult; and that whenever he should think fit to answer his remarks, he would do it in a manner to which nothing could be objected.” Mr. Dennis, having been successful in displaying the faults of Cato, with regard to the probability of the action, and the reasonableness of the plan, proceeded, in the pride of conquest, to attack the sentiments of the play in seven letters. But here his strictures are, in general, trifling and insignificant; containing such petty cavils, and minute objections, as the malignity of criticism, united with some degree of sagacity, might be capable of exercising against the most perfect productions of the human mind.

In 1718, Mr. Dennis published, in two volumes, 8vo, his “Select Works;” and printed, likewise, in the same year, by subscription, in two volumes, large 8vo, “Original Letters, familiar, moral, and critical,” a collection which does credit to our author’s abilities. Among the pieces not yet mentioned, he has made some ingenious remarks upon the vis comica, with the want of which Terence was charged by Julius Caesar; and there are several other disquisitions that are not unworthy of a perusal. In a letter to Mr. Jacob Tonson, senior, on the conspiracy against the reputation of Mr. Dryden, our author has manifested a high regard for the honour of that great poet. The character, however, which Mr. Dennis gives of himself, in the same letter, is very different from what the public, both at that time and ever since, has entertained. “Whatever,” says he, “the mistaken world may think, I am always willing to be pleased; nay, am always as greedy of pleasure as any Epicurean living; and whenever I am naturally touched, I give myself up to the first impression, and never look for faults.”

, a young man who acquired a short-lived reputation as a poet, was born in the south of Ireland, January 1775. His father, who was a schoolmaster at Ennis for some years, is said to have employed his son, when only in his ninth year, in the situation of Greek and Latin assistant at his own school, and to increase the wonder, we are told time he had written as much genuine poetry at ten, as either Cowley, Milton, or Pope had produced at nearly double that age. At ten, too, he. ran away to Dublin, where he acquired the patronage of a Dr. Houlton, in whose house he resided about ten weeks, giving astonishing proofs of his acquaintance with the Greek and Roman classics, and producing poetical translations ad aperturam libri. This gentleman, when obliged himself to leave Dublin, gave him some money, which he soon spent, and wandered through the streets without a settled home, until he found an asylum with a scene-­painter belonging to the theatre. The scene-painter introduced him to the players, and some attempts were laudably made by them to place him in a situation where he might prosecute his studies; but the depravity of his disposition appears to have been as early wonderful as his poetical talents. The latter, however, procured him one patron after another, all of whom he disgusted by his ingratitude and licentious conduct. At length, abandoned by every person of character, he entered as a private in the 108th regiment, commanded by the earl of Granard, and behaving with some decency under the check of military discipline, he was progressively advanced to the ranks of corporal and serjeant; and in September 1794, in the nineteenth year of his age, embarked with the regiment for England. He accompanied it afterwards abroad in the expedition under the earl of Moira, and appears to have behaved so well, that his lordship promoted him to a second-lieutenancy in the waggon corps, but on the reduction of this army, Dermody was put on the half-pay list.

Such are the outlines of a life which his biographer has extended to two volumes, of considerable size, without affording a period or an incident on which the mind can dwell with any pleasure. The whole, indeed, forms a most disgusting picture of early and uniform depravity, a character wholly formed of shade, and comparable to nothing we remember. As a poet, Dermody cannot be allowed to rank very high. With a happy ear for versification, he gives us only common ideas and common images variously applied; whether he might have produced any work of a superior kind, had he been regular and studious, cannot now be ascertained. The early age at which he produced many of his pieces affords no ground of probability. If, according to his biographer, he wrote as well at the age of ten, as Cowley, Milton, or Pope, it is certain that he sunk as much below them afterwards.

, an elegant Latin poet, was a native of France, and born at Chateauneuf, in Berri, Jan. 25, 1711, and entered the order of the Jesuits, in whose schools he taught rhetoric for some years. When invited to Paris, to the college of Louis-le-Grand, he acquired great fame by his Latin poetry, which was thought so pure, that he was usually styled ultimus Romanorum. On the abolition of the order of the Jesuits in France, Desbillons found an honourable asylum with the elector palatine, who gave him a pension of a thousand crowns, and a place in the college of Manheim, where he died March 19, 1789. He wrote Latin Iambics with great ease, and even wrote his will in that measure, in which he bequeathed his valuable library to the Lazarists. His works are: 1. “Fabulae libri XV.” Paris, 1775, and 1778, elegantly printed by Barbou; but it is rather singular that the first five books of these fables were originally printed at Glasgow in 1754, and a second edition at Paris, in 1756; at which time the author acknowledged the work, and added five more books, the whole then containing about three hundred and fifty fables. The greater part are translated or paraphrased from the writings of the most eminent fabulists, ancient and modern, particularly among the moderns, La Fontaine; but there is a considerable number of originals. He afterwards increased the number of books to fifteen, as in the edition first mentioned. They have been also reprinted in Germany, and the author himself translated them into French, with the Latin text added, which edition, usually reckoned the best, was published at Manheim, 1769, 2 vols. 8vo. His Latin style is peculiarly chaste and unaffected. 2. “Nouveaux eclaircissemens sur la vie et les ouvrages de Guillaume Postel,” 1763, 8vo. 3. “Histoire de la vie et des exploits militaires de madame de St. Balmont,” 1773, 8vo. 4. “Ars bene valendi,” 1788, 8vo; a Latin poem in Iambics, on the preservation of health, in which the author inveighs against hot liquids, especially chocolate, tea, and coffee. Besides these, Desbillons published a very correct edition of “Phaxlrus,” with three dissertations on the life, fables, and editions of Phacdrus, and notes, Manheim, 1786, 8vo, and an edition of Thomas a Kempis. He wrote also some dramatic pieces in Latin, and a history of the Latin language, which is still in manuscript. In 1792 his “Miscellanea Posthuma” were published at Manheim, 8vo, containing a fifteenth and sixteenth book of Fables; “Monita Philosophica,” against the modern French philosophers; and a Latin comedy, “Schola Patrum, sive Patrum et Liberorum indoles emendata.”

, a poet to whom much of the improvement of the French language is attributed, was born at Chartres in 1546, whence he went to Paris. Attaching himself there to a bishop who was going to Rome, he gained an opportunity of visiting that city, and acquiring a perfect knowledge of the Italian language. When he returned to France, he applied himself entirely to French poetry, and was one of the few poets who have enjoyed great affluence, which he owed in part to the great liberality of the princes by whom he was protected. Henry III. of France gave him 10,000 crowns, to enable him to publish his first works. Charles IX. presented him with 800 crowns of gold for his poem of Rodomont. The admiral de Joyeuse gave him an abbey for a sonnet. Besides which, he enjoyed benefices to the amount altogether of 10,000 crowns a year. Henry III. even honoured him with a place in his council, and consulted him on the most important affairs. It is said that he refused several bishoprics; but he loved solitude and retirement, which he sought as often as he could. He was very liberal to other men of letters, and formed a large library, to which he gave them the utmost freedom of access. Some, who were envious of his reputation, reproached him with having borrowed freely from the Italian poets, which he was far from denying; and when a book appeared upon the subject, entitled “Rencontre des Muses de France et d'ltalie,” he said, “If I had known the author’s design, I could have furnished him with many more instances than he has collected.” After the death of Henry III. he joined himself for a time to the party of the League, but afterwards repented, and laboured zealously to serve the interests of Henry IV. in Normandy, and succeeded in obtaining the friendship and esteem of that liberal monarch. He died in 1606. Desportes is acknowledged to have been one of the chief improvers of the French language. His works consist of sonnets, stanzas, elegies, songs, epigrams, imitations, and other poems; some of which were first published in 4to, by Robert Stephens, in 1573. A translation of the Psalms was one of his latest works, and one of the most feeble. A delightful simplicity is the characteristic of his poetry, which is therefore more perfect when applied to amorous and gallant, than to noble subjects. He often imitated and almost translated Tibullus, Ovid, and other classics. A few sacred poems are published in some editions of his Psalms, which have little more merit than the Psalms to which they are subjoined.

It was as a prose-writer that the earl of Essex excelled, and not as a poet. He is said to have translated one of Ovid’s Epistles; and a few of his sonnets are preserved in the Ashmolean museum. They display, however, no marks of poetic genius. “But if Essex,” says Mr. Warton, “was no poet, few noblemen of his age were more courted by poets. From Spenser to the lowest rhymer he was the subject of numerous sonnets, or popular ballads. I will not except Sydney. I could produce evidence to prove, that he scarcely ever went out of England, or even left London, on the most frivolous enterprize, without a pastoral in his praise, or a panegyric in metre, which were sold and sung in the streets. Having interested himself in the fashionable poetry of the times, he was placed high in the ideal Arcadia now just established; and, among other instances which might be brought, on his return from Portugal in 1589 he was complimented with a poem called” An Egloge gratulatorie entituled to the right honorable and renowned shepherd of Albion’s Arcadia, Robert earl of Essex, and for his returne lately into England.“This is a light in which lord Essex is seldom viewed. I know not if the queen’s fatal partiality, or his own inherent attractions, his love of literature, his heroism, integrity, and generosity, qualities which abundantly overbalance his presumption, his vanity, and impetuosity, had the greater share in dictating these praises. If adulation were any where justifiable, it must be when paid to the man who endeavoured to save Spenser from starving in the streets of Dublin, and who buried him in Westminster-abbey with becoming solemnity. Spenser was persecuted by Burleigh because he was patronised by Essex.”

composed a poem, which a certain poet not only escaped unpunished for his

It is remarkable that there were moments in which Diderot, notwithstanding his avowed impiety, seems to have been compelled by the force of truth, to pay homage to the New Testament. An acquaintance found him one day explaining it to his daughter, with all the apparent seriousness and energy of a believer. On expressing his surprize, Diderot replied, “I understand your meaning; but after all, where is it possible to find better lessons for her instruction?” This from him who had given so many lessons of a different kind, and had been a more zealous teacher of impiety and profligacy than perhaps any man in France, appears somewhat improbable; yet it may coincide with a report, which is more certain, that in his latter days he shewed some signs of contrition. In 1784 his health began visibly to decline; and one of his domestics, perceiving that his death was at no great distance, acquainted him with his apprehensions, and addressed him on the importance of preparing for another world. He heard the man with attention, thanked him kindly, acknowledged that his situation required seriousness, and promised to weigh well what he had said. Some time after this conversation he desired a priest might be brought, and the same domestic introduced one, whom Diderot saw several times, and was preparing to make a public recantation of his errors. Condorcet, and his other philosophic friends, now crowded about him, persuaded him that he was cheated, that his case was not so dangerous as it was said to be, and that he only wanted the country air to restore him to health. For some time he resisted their attempts to bring him back to atheism, but was at last prevailed upon to leave Paris; and his departure being kept secret, he was concealed in the country till July 2, when he died. His dead body was then secretly brought back to Paris, and his friends eagerly spread the report that he died suddenly on rising from the table, without the least sign of repentance. His character, from what has been said, is not very difficult to be understood. Some of his countrymen extol his frankness, his candour, his disinterestedness, his integrity while others represent him as artful, interested, and concealing iiis cunning- under a cheerful air, and sometimes >ven a rough behaviour which we confess appears more probable, as the genuine result of his principles. Towards the laiter part of uis life he hurt himself in th.: public opinion, by taking up too warmly the pretended ahVo-Ls he imagined to exist against him in the “Confessions” of his old friend J. J. Rousseau; and by this conduct left unfavourable impressions both of his heart and his understanding. This Rousseau, whom he so much decries, praises him in the second manuscript part of his Confessions; but says in one of his letters, that “though naturally kind, i of a generous disposition, Diderot had the unhappy ;>ensity to misinterpret the speeches and actions of his :ids; and that the most ingenuous explanations only furnished the subtilty of his invention with new interpretations against them.” The enthusiasm Diderot displays in some of his productions, appeared in the circle of his, friends, on every topic of discourse. He spoke with rapidity, with vehemence, and the turns of his phrases were often poignant and original. It has been said, that nature by mistake made him a metaphysician, and not a poet; but though he was often a poet in prose, he has left some verses which prove him to have had but little talent for poetry. The intrepid philosophy of which he boasted, affected always to brave the shafts of criticism; and his numerous censors were unable to cure him either of his taste for a system of metaphysics scarcely intelligible, or of his fondness for exclamations and apostrophes which prevailed in his conversation and in his writings. He married, and we are told by his friends, was in domestic life sensible and obliging; easily provoked, but as easily calmed; yielding to transient ebullitions of temper, but generally having it under command. The goodness or badness of his temper, however, as affecting his relatives, is a matter of little consequence, compared to the more extensive mischief which arose from his writings as an infidel, and his example as a profligate. Of the latter we need no more decided proof than the extract from one of his letters to Wilkes, published by lord Teignmouth in his “Life of Sir William Jones.” La Harpe, to whose “Lyceum” we may refer for an impartial account of Diderot, thinks very justly that the principal cause of the success of the French infidels, in gaining readers and followers, arose from their enlisting the passions on their side. Such, says he, is the basis of their system, the general spirit of their sect, and the principle of their success. The method is not very honourable, but with a little address it is almost sure to succeed, at least for a time, for nothing is more easy than to pass off as a theory, a corruption which already exists as a fashion.

, of Alexandria, surnamed “Bowels of Brass,” from his indefatigable application to study, lived in the reign of Augustus, and is said by Seneca to have written 4000 treatises, not one of which has descended to our times but some scholia on Homer are attributed to him, which Schrevelius has joined to an edition of that poet, Amsterdam, 1656, 2 vols. 4to, and they occur in some other editions, but they appear to be the work of a later author.

, earl of Bristol, and father of lord George Digby, was by no means an inconsiderable man, though checked by the circumstances of his times from making so great a figure as his son. He was descended from an ancient family at Coleshill, in Warwickshire, and born in 1580. He was entered a commoner of Magdalen-­college, Oxford, in 1595; and the year following distinguished himself as a poet by a copy of verses made upon the death of sir Henry Union of Wadley, in Berks. Afterwards he travelled into France and Italy, and returned from thence perfectly accomplished; so that soon falling under the notice of king James, he was admitted gentleman of the privy-chamber, and one of his majesty’s carvers, in 1605. February following he received the honour of knighthood; and in April 1611, was sent ambassador into Spain, as he was afterwards again in 1614. April 1616 he was admitted one of the king’s privy-council, and vicechamberlain of his majesty’s household; and in 1618 was advanced to the dignity of a baron, by the title of the lord Digby of Sherbourne, in Dorsetshire. In 1620 he was sent ambassador to the archduke Albert, and the year following to Ferdinand the emperor; as also to the duke of Bavaria. In 1622 he was sent ambassador extraordinary to Spain, concerning the marriage between prince Charles and Maria daughter of Philip III. and the same year was created earl of Bristol. Being censured by the duke of Buckingham, on his return from the Spanish court in 1624, he was for a short time sent to the Tower but after an examination by a committee of lords, we do not find that any thing important resulted from this inquiry. After the accession of Charles I. the tide of resentment ran strong against the earl, who observing that the king was entirely governed by Buckingham, resolved no longer to keep any measures with the court. In consequence of this, the king, by a stretch of prerogative, gave orders that the customary writ for his parliamentary attendance should not; be sent to him, and on May 1, 1626, he was charged with high treason and other offences. Lord Bristol recriminated, by preparing articles of impeachment against the duke; but the king, resolving to protect Buckingham, dissolved the parliament. The earl now sided with the leaders of opposition in the long parliament. But the violences of that assembly soon disgusting him, he left them, and became a zealous adherent to the king and his cause; for which at length he suffered exile, and the loss of his estate. He died at Paris, Jan. 21, 1653.

Learning was long hereditary in this family. Sir Dudley had a brother, Leonard, and a son Dudley, who were both learned men and authors. His brother Leonard, born in 1588, was educated in University-college, Oxford, took the degree of B. A. in 1606, removed to London and then travelling beyond sea, studied in foreign universities: i'rcm whence returning a good scholar, and an accomplished person, he was created M. A. in 1626. His commendatory verses to Shakspeare are prefixed to that poet’s works. He also translated from Spanish into English “Gerardo the unfortunate Spaniard, 1622,” 4to, written by Goncalo de Cespades and from Latin into English verse, “Clauclian’s Rape of Proserpine, 1617,” 4to. He died April 7, 1635, being accounted a good poet and orator; and a great master of the English, French, and Spanish languages.

His son Dudley, who was his third son, was born about 1612, and educated at Oxford, where he took the degree of B. A. in 1632; and the year after was elected a fellow of All-souls’ college. He took a master’s degree in 1635; and became a good poet and linguist, and a general scholar. He died October 1, 1643; having distinguished himself only by the two following productions: 1. “An answer to a printed book entitled * Observations upon some of his majesty’s late answers and expresses, 1” Oxon. 1642. 2. “The unlawfulness of subjects taking up arms against their sovereign in what case soever; with answers to all objections,” Lond. 1643, 4to.

, an English poet, was born in Ireland about 1633, while the government of that kingdom was under the first earl of Strafford, to whom he was nephew; his father, sir James Dillon, third earl of Roscommon, having married Elizabeth the youngest daughter of sir William Wentworth, of Wentworth-Woodhouse, in the county of York, sister to the earl of Stratford. Hence lord Roscommon was christened Wentworth. He was educated in the protestant religion, his father (who died at Limerick in 1619) having been converted by archbishop Usher from the communion of the church of Rome; and passed the years of his infancy in Ireland. He was brought over to England by his uncle, on his return from the government of Ireland*, and placed at that nobleman’s seat in Yorkshire, under the tuition of Dr. Hall, erroneously* said to have been afterwards bishop of Norwich. The celebrated Hall was at this time a bishop, and far advanced in years. By this Dr. Hall, whoever he was, he was instructed in Latin; and, without learning the common rules of grammar, which he could never remember, attained to write that language with classical elegance and propriety. When the cloud began to gather over England, and the earl of Strafford was singled out for an impeachment, he was, by the advice of Usher, sent to finish his education at Caen in Normandy, where the protestants had then an university, and studied under the direction of the learned Bochart; but at this time he could not have been more than nine years old. After some years he travelled to Rome, where he grew familiar with the most valuable remains of antiquity, applying himself particularly to the knowledge of medals, which he gained to perfection; and he spoke Italian with so much grace and fluency, that he was frequently mistaken there for a native.

His poems, which are not numerous, are in the body of English poetry collected by Dr. Johnson. His “Essay on Translated Verse,” and his translation of “Horace’s Art of Poetry,” have great merit. Waller addressed a poem to his lordship upon the latter, when he was 75 years of age. *' In the writings of this nobleman we view,“says Fenton,” the image of a mind naturally serious and solid; richly furnished and adorned with all the ornaments of art and science; and those ornaments unaffectedly disposed in the most regular and elegant order. His imagination might probably have been more fruitful and sprightly, if his judgment had been less severe but that severity (delivered in a masculine, clear, succinct style) contributed to make him so eminent in the didactical manner, that no man, with justice, can affirm he was ever equalled by any of our nation, without confessing at the same time that he is inferior to none. In some other kinds of writing his genius seems to have wanted fire to attain the point of perfection; but who can attain it? He was a man of an amiable composition, as well as a good poet; as Pope, in his ‘Essay on Criticism,’ had testified in the following lines:

, canon of the chapter of St. Bennet at Paris, and member of the academy of the Arcades at Rome, was born of a reputable family at Amiens, Nov. 1, 1715, and died at Paris April 23, 1786. After exercising the ministerial functions in the place of his nativity, he repaired to the capital to engage in literary pursuits. M. Joly le Fleuri, at that time avocat-génral, gave him his esteem, his confidence, and his patronage. He was first employed on the “Journal Chretien,” under the abbe Joannetj and the zeal with which he attacked certain authors, and especially M. de SaintFoix, involved him in some unpleasant controversy. He had represented this latter as an infidel seeking every occasion for mixing pestilential notions in whatever he wrote. SaintFoix took up the affair with warmth, and brought an action against both him and abbe Joannet, which terminated in a sort of reparation made him by the two journalists, in their periodical publication. After this the abbe Dinouart began to write on his own account, and in October 1760, set up his “Journal Ecclesiastique,” or, Library of ecclesiastical knowledge, which he continued till his death. He established a very extensive correspondence with the provincial clergy, who consulted him on the difficulties of their ministration. This correspondence contributed greatly to the recommendation of his journal, which contained instructions in all matters of church discipline, morality, and ecclesiastical history. The editor indeed made no scruple of drawing almost all his materials from well-known books, without altering a word; he inserted, for example, in his journal, all the ecclesiastical part of Hardion’s Universal History; but it was useful to the inferior provincial clergy, who were deficient in libraries, and not sorry to have their loss in some shape made up by the periodical compilation of abbe Dinouart. Other critics censured him for giving an incoherent assortment of articles; for advertising, for instance, in the same leaf, “Balm of Genevieve,” and “Sermons to be sold” for the use of young orators who would not take the trouble to compose them; imitating in this a quack of our own nation, who used to advertise sermons, marmalade, and rules for carving. Dinouart, however, bears a reputable personal character. He was naturally of a kind disposition and a sensible heart. The great vivacity of his temper, which hurried him sometimes into transient extravagancies, which he was the first to condemn in himself, prompted also his activity to oblige, for which he never let any opportunities escape him. He generally wrote in a loose, negligent, and incorrect manner, both in verse and prose, and even aspired to be thought a French and Latin poet; but still the usefulness of the greater part of his works recommended them. Among them, we find, 1. “Embriologie sacre'e, traduite du Latin de Cangiamila,” 12mo. 2. “Hymnes Latines.” 3. “Manuel des pasteurs,” 3 vols. 12mo. 4. “La llhetorique du predicateur, ou Traite de l'eloquence du corps,” 12mo. 5. A new edition of the “Abrege” chronologique de Phistoire ecclesiastique de Pabbe Macquer,“Paris, 1768, 3 vols. 3vo. 6.” Anecdotes ecclesjastiques," ibid. 1772, 2 vols. 8vo, in which he was assisted by the abbd Jaubert.

, was an ancient poet and geographer, concerning whom we have no certain information but what we derive from the elder Pliny. Pliny, speaking of the Persian Alexandria, afterwards called Antioch, and at last Charrax, could not miss the opportunity of paying his respects to a person who had so much obliged him, and whom he professes to follow above all men in the geographical part of his work. He tells us, that *' Dionysius was a native of this Alexandria, and that he had the honour to be sent by Augustus to survey the eastern part of the world, and to make reports and observations about its state and condition, for the use of the emperor’s eldest son, who was at that time preparing an expedition into Armenia, Parthia, and Arabia.“This passage, though seemingly explicit enough, has not been thought sufficient by the critics to determine the time when Dionysius lived, whether under the first Augustus Caesar, or under some of the later emperors, who assumed his name: Vossius and others are of opinion, that the former is the emperor meant by Pliny; but Scaliger and Salmasius think he lived under Severus, or Marcus Aurelias, about A. D. 130 or 150. Dionysius wrote a great number of pieces, enumerated by Suidas and his commentator Eustathius: but his” Periegesis," or survey of the world, is the only one we have remaining; and it would be superfluous to say, that this is one of the most exact systems of ancient geography, when it has been already observed, that Pliny himself proposed it for his pattern. It is written in Greek hexameters; but some think that Dionysius is no more to be reckoned a poet, than any of those authors who have included precepts in numbers, for the sake of assisting the memory. Yet, although his book is more valuable for matter than manner, it has been thought that he had a genius capable of more sublime undertakings, and that he constantly made the Muses the companions, though not the guides, of his travels. As proofs of this, we are referred to his descriptions of the island of Lucca, inhabited by departed heroes; of the monstrous and terrible whales in Taprobana; of the poor Scythians that dwelt by the Meotic lake; to the account of himself, when he comes to describe the Caspian sea, and of the swans and bacchanals on the banks of Cayster, which shew him to have possessed no small share of poetic spirit.

, a Greek poet and musician, was the author of the words and music of three hymns, of which the first is addressed to Calliope, the second to Apollo, and the third to Nemesis. Of these the music has been preserved and published by Dr. Fell, bishop of Oxford, in 1672. This precious manuscript, which was found in Ireland, among the papers of the famous archbishop Usher, was bought, after his decease, by Mr. Bernard, fellow of St. John’s college, who communicated it to the editor, together with remarks and illustrations by the rev. Mr. Edmund Chilmead, of Christ church, who likewise redueed the ancient musical characters to those in common, use. It appears by the notes, that the music of these hymns was composed in the Lydian mode, and diatonic genus. Vincenzo Galilei, father of the great Galileo, first published these hymns with their Greek notes, in his “Dialogues upon Ancient and Modern Music,” printed at Florence, 1581, folio. He assures us, that he had them from a Florentine gentleman, who copied them very accurately from an ancient Greek manuscript, preserved in th library of cardinal St. Angelo, at Rome, which ms. likewise contained the treatises of music by Aristides Quintilianus, and Bryennius, since published by Meibomius and Dr. Wallis. The Florentine edition of these hymns entirely agrees with that printed at Oxford. In 1602, Hercules Bottrigari mentioned the same hymns in his harmonical discourse, called “Melone,” printed at Ferrara, in 4to. But he derived his knowlege of these pieces only from the Dialogues of Galilei; however, he inserted, in the beginning of his book, some fragments of them in common notes; but they were disfigured by a number of typographical errors. At length, in 1720, M. Burette published these three hymns in the “Memoirs of the Academy of Inscriptions,” ton), v. from a copy found at the end of a Greek manuscript in the king of France’s library at Paris, No. 3221, which likewise contained the musical treatises of Aristides Quintilianus, and of Bacchius senior'. But though the words were confused, and confounded one with another, they appeared much more complete in this manuscript than elsewhere, particularly the hymn to Apollo, which had six verses more at the beginning; and that to Nemesis, which, though deficient at the end in all the other editions, was here entire, having fourteen verses, exclusive of the six first.

, an English poet and miscellaneous writer, was born at Mansfield, in Nottinghamshire, in 1703. His father is said to have kept the tree-school at Mansfield, a situation in which it is natural to suppose he could have bestowed some education on his children, yet it is not easy to reconcile this with the servile track of life into which they were obliged to enter. He is described as a little deformed man, who, after having a large family by his first wife, married at the age of seventy-five a young girl of only seventeen years, by whom he had a child. Of his sons, A Ivory lived many years, and died in the service of the late sir George Saville; Isaac was for some time gardener to Mr. Allen, of Prior-park, and afterwards to lord Weymouth, at Long-leat. In these two families he spent fifty-two years of his life; and has the credit of being the projector of some of the beautiful plantations at both those seats. He retired from Long-leat at the age of seventy-eight, and died about three years after. There was a third, John, whose name with that of Alvory, and of the father, is among the subscribers to our poet’s first publication. James, who was twenty-two years younger than Robert, will come to be mentioned hereafter; when he was taken into partnership. How he passed the preceding part of his time is not known. Of Robert, nothing is now remembered in his native town, but a traditional story, that he was put apprentice to a stocking-weaver of that place, and that, being almost starved, he ran away, and was hired by a lady as her footman: this lady, it is added, observing that he employed his leisure hours in reading, gave him every encouragement; and soon after he wrote an entertainment, which was shewn to Pope and others. Part of this story is probable, but too much of his history is crowded into it. His first service was not that of a lady, nor was the entertainment (The Toy-shop) his first production.

His next attempt was more successful than the publication or' his poems, and, considering the disadvantages of a life of servitude, more extraordinary; he wrote a dramatic piece, entitled “The Toy-shop,” the style of which discovers an improvement which to those who had just read “The Muse in Livery,” must have appeared wonderful. This the author determined to submit to Pope in manuscript. He tells us he had a great regard for that poet, before he had the honour of being known to him, and “it was a great mortification to him that he used to think himself too inconsiderable ever to merit his notice or esteem,. However, some time after I had wrote the Toy-shop, hoping there was something in it which might recommend me to him in a moral capacity, at least, though not in a poetical one, I sent it to him, and desired his opinion of it; expressing some doubt, that though I designed it for the stage, yet, unless its novelty would recommend it, I was afraid it would not bear a public representation, and therefore had not offered it to the actors.”

It would be unnecessary to say much on the merit of a piece which is so well known. During its early popularity, it occasioned many imitations, the principal of which were, “The Second part of the Œconomy of Human Life;” “The Œconomy of Female Life” “The Œconomy of the Sexes” and “The Œconomy of a Winter’s Day,” an humourous burlesque. Dodsley’s “Œconomy,” however, outlived these temporary efforts, and continued to be praised and read as the production of lord Chesterfield. The real author, although he might secretly appropriate this praise to himself, was perhaps not very well pleased to find that he seldom was suspected to have deserved it. His next production appears to have occupied his thoughts and leisure hours for a considerable time. This was a poem, intended to be comprized in three books, treating of agriculture, commerce, and arts. Of these, by way of experiment, he published the first, under the general titld of “Public Virtue,” in 1754; but it did not meet with such encouragement as to induce him to complete his design. It is written in blank verse, to which his ear was not very well attuned; but with many imperfections, this poem has likewise many beauties. He appears to have contemplated rural scenery with the eye of a poet. In the didactic part, he fails as others have failed before him, who wished to convey mechanical instruction with solemn pomp, and would invoke the heroic muse to tell what an unlettered farmer knows better. To console himself for the cool reception of this work, he told Dr. Johnson that “Public Virtue was not a subject to interest the age.”

On the death of Shenstone, in the beginning of the year 1763, Dodsley endeavoured to repay the debt of gratitude, by publishing a very beautiful edition of the works of that poet, to which he prefixed a short account of his life and writings, a character written with much affection, a description of the Leasowes, &c. He had now retired from the active part of his business, having realized a considerable fortune, and was succeeded by his brother James, whom he had previously admitted into partnership, and who continued the business until hi’s death in 1797, but without his brother’s spirit or intelligence.

After the incidental notices taken of his different writings in this sketch of his life, little remains to be added as to their general character. As a poet, if poets are classed by rigorous examination, he will not be able to maintain a very elevated rank. His “Agriculture” was probably intended as the concentration of his powers, but the subject had not been for many years of town-life very familiar to him, and had he been more conversant in rural œconomy, he could not give dignity to terms and precepts which are neither intelligible nor just when translated from the homely language of the farm and the cottage. Commerce and the Arts, had he pursued his plan, were more capable of poetical illustration, but it may be doubted whether they were not as much above his powers, as the other is beneath the flights of the heroic muse. The “Art of Preaching” shows that he had not studied Pope’s versification in vain. It is not, however, so strictly an imitation of Horace’s Art of Poetry, which probably he could not read, as of Pope’s manner of modernizing satire. It teaches no art, but that which is despicable, the art of casting unmerited obloquy on the clergy.

The wife of archbishop Dolben (by whom he had three children, Gilbert and John, and a daughter Catharine, who died an infant), survived him till 1706, when she died at Finedon, in Northamptonshire, in her eightieth year. His eldest son, Gilbert, who furnished Dryden with the various editions of Virgil, when about to translate that poet, was afterwards created a baronet by queen Anne, and for many years represented the city of Peterborough in parliament. He was appointed a justice of the common pleas in Ireland by William III. and held that office for twenty years. He died in 1722. The probity and worth of the present representatives of this family are well known.

, a most laborious Italian writer, was born at Venice in 1508. His family was one of the most ancient in the republic, but reduced in circumstances. Lewis remained the whole of his life in his native city, occupied in his numerous literary undertakings, which procured him some personal esteem, but little reputation or wealth. Perhaps his best employment was that of cor-, rector of the press to the celebrated printer Gabriel Giolito, whose editions are so much admired for the beauties of type and paper, and yet with the advantage of Dolce’s attention, are not so correct as could be wished. As an original author, Dolce embraced the whole circle of polite literature and science, being a grammarian, rhetorician, orator, historian, philosopher, editor, translator, and commentator; and as a poet, he wrote tragedies, comedies, epics, lyrics, and satires. All that can be called events in his life, were some literary squabbles, particularly with Ruscelli, who was likewise a corrector of Giolito’s press. He died of a dropsical complaint in 1569, according to Apostolo Zeno, and, according to Tiraboschi, in 1566. Baillet, unlike most critics, says he was one of the best writers of his age. His style is flowing, pure, and elegant; but he was forced by hunger to spin out his works, and to neglect that frequent revisal which is so necessary to the finishing of a piece. Of his numerous works, a list of which may be seen in Niceron, or Moreri, the following are in some reputation: 1. “Dialogo della pittura, intitolato I'Aretino,” Venice, 1557, 8vo. This work was reprinted, with the French on the opposite page, at Florence, 1735. 2. “Cinque priini canti del Sacripante,” Vinegia^ 1535, 8vo. 3. “Primaleone,” 1562, 4to. 4. “Achilles; 1 * and” Jineas,“1570, 4to. 5.” La prima imprese del conte Orlando," 1572, 4to. 6. Poems in different collections, among others in that of Berni. And the Lives of Charles V. and Ferdinand the First.

, an eminent English divine and poet, was born in the city of London in 1573. His father was descended from a very ancient family in Wales, and his mother was distantly related to sir Thomas More the celebrated and unfortunate lord chancellor, and to judge Rastall, whose father, one of the earliest English printers, married Elizabeth, the chancellor’s sister. Ben Jonsoa seems to think that he inherited a poetical turn from Haywood, the epigrammatist, who was also a distant relation, by the mother’s side. Of his father’s station in life we have no account, but he must have been a man of considerable opulence, as he bequeathed to him three thousand pounds, a large sum in those days. Young Donne received the rudiments of education at home under a private tutor, and his proficiency was such, that he was sent to the university at the early, and perhaps unprecedented age of eleven years, or according to Walton, at ten. At this time, we are told, he understood the French and Latin languages, and had in other respects so far exceeded the usual attainments of boyhood, as to be compared to Picus Mirandula, one that was “rather born, than made wise by study.” He was entered of Hart-hall, now Hertford college, where at the usual time he might have taken his first degree with honour, but having been educated in the Roman catholic persuasion, he submitted to the advice of his friends who were averse to the oath usually administered on that occasion. About his fourteenth year, he was removed to Trinity college, Cambridge, where he prosecuted his studies for three years with uncommon perseverance and applause: but here likewise his religious scruples prevented his taking any degree.

This transaction, which, according to the date of Dr. Morton’s promotion to the deanery of Gloucester, happened in 1607, when our poet was in his thirty- fourth year, is not unimportant, as it displays that character for nice honour and integrity which distinguished Donne in all his future life, and was accompanied with an heroic generosity of feeling and action, which is perhaps rarely to be met with, unless in men whose principles have the foundation which he appears to have now laid.

Dr. Donne’s reputation as a poet, was higher in his own time than it has been since. Dryden fixed his character with his usual judgment; as “the greatest wit, though not the best poet of our nation.” He says afterwards , that “he affects the metaphysics, not only in his satires, but in his amorous verses, where Nature only should reign, and perplexes the minds of the fair sex with nice speculations of philosophy, when he should engage their hearts, and entertain them with the softnesses of love.” Dryden has also pronounced that if his satires were to be translated into numbers, they would yet be wanting in dignity of expression. From comparing the originals and translations in Pope’s works, the reader will probably think that Pope has made them so much his own, as to throw very little lighten Donne’s powers. He every where elevates the expression, and in very few instances retains a whole line. Pope, in his classification of poets, places Donne at the head of a school, that school from which Dr. Johnson has given so many remarkable specimens of absurdity, in his life of Covyley, and which, following Dryden, he terms the metaphysical school. Gray, in the sketch which he sent to Mr. Warton, considers it as a third Italian school, full of conceit, begun in queen Elizabeth’s reign, continued under James and Charles I. by Donne, Crashaw, Cleiveland, carried to its height by CowJey, and ending perhaps in Sprat. Donne’s numbers, if they may be so called, are certainly the most rugged and uncouth of any of our poets. He appears either to have had no ear, or to have been utterly regardless of harmony. Yet Spenser preceded him, and Drummond, the first polished versifier, was his contemporary; but it must be allowed that before Drummond appeared, Donne had relinquished his pursuit of the Muses, nor would it be just to include the whole of his poetry under the general censure which has been usually passed. Dr. Warton seems to think that if he had taken pains, he might not have proved so inferior to his contemporaries; but what inducement could he have to take pains, as he published nothing, and seems not desirous of public fame? He was certainly not ignorant or unskilled in the higher attributes of style, for he wrote elegantly in Latin, and displays considerable taste in some of his smaller pieces and epigrams. At what time he wrote his poems has not been ascertained; but of a few the dates may be recovered by the corresponding events of his life. Ben Jonson affirmed that he wrote all his best pieces before he was twenty-five years of age. His satires, in which there are some strokes levelled at the reformation, must have been written very early, as he was but a young man when he renounced the errors of popery. His poems were first published in 4to, 1633, and 12mo, 1635, 1651, 1669, and 1719. His son was the editor of the early editions.

, a physician, orator, and poet, born at Zigenrick in Voiglitland, died in 1631, in an advanced age, counsellor and physician to the princes of Brieg and Lignitz. He is the author of several works, which have been called learned fooleries. The most known of them are, 1. “Amplritheatrum sapientiae Socraticie,” Hanover, 1619, 2 vols. fol. 2. “Homo diabolus hocest: Auctorum veterum et recentiorum de calumnias natura et remediis, sua lingua editorum, sylloge” Frankfort, 1618, 4to 3. “De increment dominationis Turcicae,” &c.

, an artist, was a native of Dosso in the Ferrarese territory, and from the school of Costa went to Rome, where he studied six years, and five at Venice; and formed a style which is sometimes compared to that of Raphael, sometimes to that of Titian, and sometimes is said to resemble Coreggio. His name, with that of Gio. Batista his brother, has been ranked with the first names of Italy by Ariosto, their countryman; and the pictures of Dosso prove that he did not owe the high rank in which he is placed by the poet, to partiality. The head of his St. John at Patmos, in the church a' Lateran at Ferrara, is a prodigy of expression. Of his most celebrated picture in the church of the Dominicans at Faenza, there remains now only a copy: time destroyed the original. It represents Christ among the Doctors, and even in the copy the simplicity of the composition, the variety of the characters, and the breadth and propriety of the drapery, deserve admiration. Seven of his pictures, and perhaps of his best time, are at Dresden, and the best of these is that much praised one of the Four Doctors of the Church. Dosso, in partnership with his brother, was much employed in works for the court of Alphonso and Ercole II. dukes of Ferrara; and to that connection with him, a character so much inferior to himself, we may probably ascribe the aspersions and illiberal criticism of Vasari. The style of Dosso retains something more obsolete than the style of the great masters with whom he is compared; but he has a novelty of invention and drapery all his own; and withal a colour which with variety and boldness unites a general harmony. This excellent artist died about 1560, but his age has not been ascertained.

When a detachment of the army was ordered home to suppress the rebellion in Scotland, he returned to England in Sept. 1745, and having no longer any connexion with the guards, went back to Baliol college, where he was elected one of the exhibitioners on the more lucrative foundation of Mr. Snell. In 1747 he was ordained priest, and became curate of Tilehurst, near Reading; and afterwards of Dunstevv, in Oxfordshire, where he was residing, when, at the recommendation of Dr. Charles Stuart, and lady Allen, a particular friend of his mother, he was selected by lord Bath as a tutor to accompany his son, lord Pulteney, on his travels. Of the tour which he then made, there exists a manuscript in Mr. Douglas’s hand-writing. It relates principally, if not exclusively, to the governments and political relations of the several countries through which he passed. In October 1749, he returned to England, and took possession of the free chapel of Eaton Constantine, and the donative of Uppington, in Shropshire, on the presentation of lord Bath. Here he commenced his literary career, by his able defence of Milton. Early in 1747, William Lander, a Scotch schoolmaster, made a most flagitious attempt to subvert the reputation of Milton, by shewing that he was a mere copier or translator of the works of others, and that he was indebted to some modern Latin poets for the plan, arrangement, &c. of his Paradise Lost. Many persons of considerable literary talents gave credit to the tale of Lander, among whom was the celebrated Dr. Johnson. Mr. Douglas, however, examined the merits of the case, considered most accurately the evidence adduced by Lander, and soon found that the whole was a most gross fabrication. He published in 1750 a defence of Milton against Lander, entitled, “Milton vindicated from the Charge of Plagiarism,” &c. which appeared in the form of a letter addressed to the earl of Bath. Having justified the poet, he proceeded to charge the accuser with the most gross and manifest forgery, which he substantiated to the entire satisfaction of the public. The detection was indeed so clear and manifest, that the criminal acknowledged his guilt, in a letter dictated by Dr. Johnson, who abhorred the imposition he had practised.

He left four sons behind him; the eldest of whom, Janus Dousa, would, if he had lived, have been a more extraordinary man than his father. Joseph Scaliger calls him the ornament of the world; and says, that in the flower of his age he had reached the same maturity of wisdom and erudition, as others might expect to attain after a life spent in study. Grotius also assures us, that his poems exceeded those of his father; whom he assisted in composing the Annals of Holland. He was born in 1572; and, before he was well out of infancy, became, through the great care of his father, not only a good linguist and poet, but also a good philosopher and mathematician. To all this he afterwards added an exquisite knowledge of the civil law and of history. Besides a great many poems, which he composed in a very tender age, we have his notes and observations upon several Latin poets. Those upon Plautus were the product of his sixteenth year; and he was not above nineteen when he published his book “De Rebus Ccelestibus,” and his “Echo, sive Lusus imaginis jocose.” His commentaries upon Catullus, Tibullus, and Propertius, were published the same year. His extraordinary fame and merit caused him to be made preceptor to the prince of Orange, and afterwards first librarian of the university of Leyden. He died at the Hague, in his return from Germany in 1597, when he had not quite completed his 26th year.

, an ingenious physician and poet, the son of a country gentleman of both his names, was born at Newton House, in the village of Newton St. Cyrus, near Exeter, in 1740, and educated at the grammar-school of Exeter. About 1758 he was entered of Baliol college, Oxford, where he remained until he took his bachelor’s degree, and in 1762 was ordained by bishop Lavington in the cathedral of Exeter, but he had little attachment to the church, nor were his prospects very alluring. In 1765 he repaired to Edinburgh, with a view to study medicine, and took up his abode in the house of Dr. Blacklock, who, having read his first poetical production, “The Land of the Muses,” bestowed encouraging praise. This poem was published at Edinburgh in 1768, but has never since been reprinted. To it were added “Poems on several occasions,” of various merit, but all indicating a considerable share of poetical taste. In 1769, Mr. Downman came to London, where he attended the hospitals and lectures for one winter. He then received his master’s degree at Cambridge, and soon after settled as a practitioner at Exeter, and married the daughter of Dr. Andrew, an eminent physician in that city. Here his practice was rapidly increasing, when, in 1778, the severity of a chronic complaint, contracted in his earlier years, obliged him to consult his health by change of air, and retirement, during- which he amused himself by literary efforts. The first was his tragedy of “Lucius’unius Brutus,” published in 1779, in which there are some poetical beauties, but not enough of the dramatic form to suit the stage. “Belisarius,” his second dramatic attempt, was performed at the Exeter theatre, but with little success; but his third, “Editha,” brought out at that theatre in 1781, was performed for seventeen nights. This, however, must be imputed to its being founded on a local event peculiarly interesting to an Exeter audience; in other respects all his tragedies must be allowed to be better adapted to the closet than the stage.

, an English divine and poet, of the sixteenth century, was educated at St. John’s college, Cambridge, where he took his degree of bachelor in divinity in 1569. The same year he was admitted to the prebend of Firles in the cathedral of Chichester, June 27, and on July 2 to that of Chamberlaynward in St. Paul’s, and March 9 following, he was installed archdeacon of Lewes. He seems to have been chaplain to Grindall, when archbishop of York. He was a tolerable Latin poet, and translated the Ecclesiastes into Latin hexameters, 1572, 4to, and published two miscellanies of Latin poetry, the one entitled “Sylva,” and the other “Poemata varia et externa,” the last printed at Paris. In the “Sylva,” he mentions his new version of David’s psalms, which Wartou supposes to have been in English, and says, he had begun to translate the Iliad, but had gone no further than the fourth book. In 1566 he published what he called “A medicinable Morall, that is, the two bookes of Horace his satyres Englished, according to the prescription of St. Hierome,” &c. Lond. and in the following year appeared “Horace, his arte of Poetrie, Pistles, and Satyrs Englished.” This version, which Drant undertook in the character of a grave divine, and as a teacher of morality, is very paraphrastic, and sometimes parodical. His other publications are, 1. “Gregory Nazianzen his Epigrams and spiritual sentences,” 1568, 8vo. 2. “Shaklocki, epigrammatis in mortem Cuthberti Scoti, apomaxis,” Lond. 1565, 4to which occurs in Herbert’s Antiquities under the title “An Epygrame of the death of Cuthberte Skotte some tyme beshoppe of Chester, by Roger Shacklocke, and replyed against by Thomas Drant.” 3. “Thomae Drantae Angli, Advordingamiae Praesul,” 1575, 4to. These two last are in the British Museum. 4. “Three godly and learned Sermons, very necessary to be read and regarded of all men,” 1584, 8vo. Extracts from these are given in the Bibliographer. The time of his death is no where mentioned, but as the archdeaconry of Lewes was vacant in 1578, it might have been in consequence of that event.

, an English poet, was born at HarshuU, in the parish of Atherston, in the county of Warwick, in 1563. His family was ancient, and originally descended from the town of Drayton in Leicestershire, which gave name to his progenitors, as a learned antiquary of his acquaintance has recorded; but his parents removing into Warwickshire, our poet was born there. When he was but ten years of age, he seems to have been page to some person of honour, as we collect from his own words: and, for his learning at that time, it appears evidently in the same place, that he could then construe his Cato, and some other little collection of sentences. It appears too, that he was then anxious to know, “what kind of strange creatures poets were r” and desired his tutor of all things, that if possible “he would make him a poet.” He was some time a student in the university of Oxford: though we do not find that he took any degree there. In 1588, he seems, from his own description of the Spanish invasion, to have been a spectator at Dover of its defeat; and might possibly be engaged in some military post or employment there, as we find mention of his being well spoken of by the gentlemen of the army. He took delight very early, as we have seen, in the study of poetry; and was eminent for his poetical efforts, nine or ten years before the death of queen Elizabeth, if not sooaer. In 1593 he published a collection of pastorals, under the title of “Idea: the Shepherd’s Garland, fashioned in nine eclogues; with Rowland’s sacrifice to the nine Muses,” 4to, dedicated to Mr. Robert Dudley. This “Shepherd’s Garland” is the same with what was afterwards reprinted with emendations by our author in 1619, folio, under the title of “Pastorals,” containing eclogues; with the “Man in the Moon;” but the folio edition of Drayton’s works, printed in 1748, though the title-page professes to give them all, does not contain this part of them. Soon after he published his “Barons’ Wars,” and “England’s heroical Epistles;” his “Downfalls of Robert of Normandy, Matilda and Gaveston;” which were all written before 1598; and caused him to be highly celebrated at that time, when he was distinguished not only as a great genius, but as a good man. He was exceedingly esteemed by his contemporaries; and Burton, the antiquary of Leicestershire, after calling him his “near countryman and old acquaintance,” adds further of him, that, “though those transalpines account us tramontani, rude, and barbarous, holding our brains so frozen, dull, and barren, that they can afford no inventions or conceits, yet may he compare either with their old Dante, Petrarch, or Boccace, or their neoteric Marinella, Pignatello, or Stigliano. But why,” says Burton, “sould I go about to commend him, whom his own works and worthiness have sufficiently extolled to the world?”

Drayton was one of the foremost of Apollo’s train, who welcomed James I. to his British dominions, with a congratulatory poem, &c. 1603, 4to and how this very poem, through strange ill luck, might have proved his ruin, but for his patient and prudent conduct under the indignity, he has, with as much freedom as was then convenient, informed us in the preface to his “Poly-Olbion,” and in his epistle to Mr. George Sandys among his elegies. It is probable, that the unwelcome reception it met with might deter him from attempting to raise himself at court. In 1613 he published the first part of his “Poly-Olbion;” by which Greek tide, signifying very happy, he denotes England; as the ancient name of Albion is by some derived from Olbion, happy. It is a chorographical description of the rivers, mountains, forests, castles, &c. in this island, intermixed with the remarkable antiquities, rarities, and commodities thereof. The first part is dedicated to prince Henry, by whose encouragement it was written: and there is an engraving at full length of that prince, in a military posture, exercising his pike. He had shewed Drayton some singular marks of his favour, and seems to have admitted him as one of his poetical pensioners; but dying before the book was published, our poet lost the benefit of his patronage. There are 1 S songs in this volume, illustrated with the learned notes of Selden; and there are maps before every song, in which the cities, mountains, forests, rivers, &c. are represented by the figures of men and women. His metre of 12 syllables being now antiquated, it is quoted more for the history than the poetry in it; and in that respect is so very exact, that, as Nicolson observes, and since, Mr. Gough, Drayton’s Poly-Olbion affords a much truer account of this kingdom, and the dominion of Wales, than could well be expected from the pen of a poet. It is interwoven with many fine episodes: of the conquest of this island by the Romans; of the coming of the Saxons, the Danes, and the Normans, with an account of their kings; of English warriors, navigators, saints, and of the civil wars of England, &c. This volume was reprinted in 1622, with the second part, or continuation of 12 songs more, making 30 in the whole, and dedicated to prince Charles, to whom he gives hopes of bestowing the like pains upon Scotland.

In 1626 we find him styled poet laureat, in a copy of his own verses written in commendation of Abraham Holland, and prefixed to the posthumous poems of that author. It is probable, that the appellation of poet laureat was not formerly confined so strictly, as it is now, to the person on whom this title is conferred by the crown, who is presumed to have been at that time Ben Jonson; because we find it given to others only as a distinction of their excellency in the art of poetry; to Mr. George Sandys particularly, who was our author’s friend. The print of Drayton, before the first volume of his works in folio, has a wreath of bays above his head, and so has his bust in Westminster-abbey; yet when we find that the portraits of Joshua Sylvester, John Owen, and others, who never had any grant of the laureat’s place, are as formally crowned with laurel as those who really possessed it, we have reason to believe, that nothing more was meant by it, than merely a compliment. Besides, as to Drayton, he tells us himself, in his dedication to sir William Aston of “The Owl,” that he leaves the iaurel to those who may look after it. In 1627 was published the second volume of his poems, containing his “Battle of Agincourt, Miseries of queen Margaret, Court of Fairies, Quest of Cynthia, Shepherd’s Syrena, elegies, also, the Moon-Calf,” which is a strong satire upon the masculine affectations of women, and the effeminate disguises of the men, in those times. The elegies are 12 in number, though there are but eight reprinted in the edition of 1748. In 1630 he published another volume of poems in 4to, entitled, the “Muses’ Elyzium:” with three divine poems, on Noah’s flood, Moses’s birth and miracles, and David and Goliath. Draytori died in 1631, and was buried in Westminster-abbey amongst the poets.

, an elegant and ingenious poet, a descendant of the ancient family of the Drummonds of Carnock, and the son of sir John Drummond of llawthornden, was born, probably at Hawthornden, his father’s seat in Scotland, on the 13th of December, 1585. He received his school education at Edinburgh, and afterwards studied at the university of that city, where he took the degree of master of arts. At the age of twenty-one he went to France, in compliance with his father’s views, and attended lectures on the civil law, a subject on which he left sufficient documents to prove that his judgment and proficiency were uncommon. The president Lockhart, to whom these manuscripts were communicated, declared, that if Mr. Drummond had followed the practice of the law, “he might have made the best figure of any lawyer in his time.” After a residence abroad of nearly four years, he returned to Scotland in 1610, in which year his father died. Instead, however, of prosecuting the study of the law as was expected, he thought himself sufficiently rich in the possession of his paternal estate, and devoted his time to the perusal of the ancient classics, and the cultivation of his poetical genius. Whether he had composed or communicated any pieces to his friends before this period, is uncertain. It was after a recovery from a dangerous illness that he wrote a prose rhapsody, entitled “Cypress Grove,” and about the same time his “Flowers of Zion, or Spiritual Poems,” which, with the “Cypress Grove,” were printed at Edinburgh in 1623, 4to. A part of his Sonnets, it is said, were published as early as 1616. During his residence at Hawthornden, he courted a young lady of the name of Cunningham, with whom he was about to have been united, when she was snatched from him by a violent fever. To dissipate his grief, which every object and every thought in this retirement contributed to revive, he travelled on the continent for about eight years, visiting Germany, France, and Italy, which at that time comprized all that was interesting in polished society and study to a man of curiosity and taste. During this tour he enriched his memory and imagination, by studying the various models of original poetry, and collected a valuable set of Greek and Latin authors, with some of which he enriched the college library of Edinburgh, and others were reposited at Hawthornden. The books and manuscripts which he gave to Edinburgh were arranged in a catalogue printed in 1627, and introduced by a Latin preface from his pen, on the advantage and honour of libraries, which at that time were considered rather as accidental collections than necessary institutions.

As a poet he ranks among the first reformers of versification, and in elegance, harmony, and delicacy of feeling, is so superior to his contemporaries, that the neglect with which he has been treated would appear unaccountable if we did not consider that it is but of late the public attention has been drawn to the more ancient English poets. Mr. Headly, however, Mr. Neve the ingenious author of “Cursory Remarks on some of the ancient English Poets,” Dr. Warton, Mr. Pinkerton, Mr. Park, and other critics of unquestionable taste, have lately expatiated on his merit with so much zeal and ability, that he is no longer in danger of being overlooked, unless by those superficial readers who are content with what is new and fashionable, and profess to be amateurs of an art of which they know neither the history nor the principles.

“He inherited,” says his last encomiast, “a native poetic genius, but vitiated by the false taste which prevailed in his age, a fondness for the conceits of the Italian poets, Petrarch and Marino, and their imitators among the French, Ronsard, Bellai, and Du Bartas. Yet many of his sonnets contain simple and natural thoughts clothed in great beauty of expression. His poem entitled” Forth Feasting,“which attracted the envy as well as the praise of Ben Jonson, is superior, in harmony of numbers, to any of the compositions of the contemporary poets of England; and is, in its subject, one of the most elegant panegyrics that ever were addressed by a poet to a prince. In prose writing, the merits of Drummond are as unequal as they are in poetry. When an imitator, he is harsh, turgid, affected, and unnatural; as in his” History of the Five James’s,“which, though judicious in the arrangement of the matter, and abounding in excellent political and moral sentiments, is barbarous and uncouth in its style, from an affectation of imitating partly the manner of Livy, and partly that of Tacitus. Thus, there is a perpetual departure from ordinary construction, and- frequently a violation of the English idiom. In others of his prose compositions, where he followed his own taste, as in the” Irene,“and” Cypress-Grove,“and particularly in the former, there is a remarkable purity and ease of expression, and often a very high tone of eloquence. The” Irene,“written in 1638, is a persuasive to civil union, and the accommodation of those fatal differences between the king and the people, then verging to a crisis. It is a model of a popular address; and allowing for its pushing too far the doctrine of passive obedience, bears equal evidence of the political sagacity, copious historical information, and great moral worth and benevolence of its author.” As the neglect of one age is sometimes repaid by the extravagant commendations of another, perhaps this temperate, judicious, and elegant character of Drummond, copied from lord Woodhouselee’s Life of Kames, will be found more consistent with the spirit of true criticism than some of those impassioned sketches in which judgment has less share.

, an illustrious English poet, was son of Erasmus Dryden, of Tichmersh, in Northamptonshire, third son of Erasmus Dryden, of Cannons-Ashbv, in the same county, baronet; and born at Aldwincle, near Oundle, in that county, according to the general opinion, August 9, 1631, although Mr. Malone seems inclined to remove his birth to a prior year. He was educated in grammarlearning at Westminster-school, being king’s scholar there, under Dr. Busby; and was thence elected, May II, 1650, a scholar of Trinity-college, Cambridge. During his stay at school, he translated the third satire of Persius for a Thursday night’s exercise, as he tells us himself, in an advertisement at the head of that satire and the year before he left it, wrote a poem on the death of the lord Hastings which however was but an indifferent performance, and particularly defective in point of harmony. He had before this, in 1649, wrote some verses, which have been preserved. In 1652 he was slightly punished for disobedience and contumacy. In January 1654, he took his degree of B. A. but not that of M. A. until June 17, 1668, and then by a dispensation from the archbishop of Canterbury, in consequence of a letter from Charles II. By the death of his father in 1654, he inherited a small estate in Northamptonshire, and after residing seven years at Cambridge, removed to London in 1657. In consequence of his kinsman, sir Gilbert Pickering, being a favourite of Oliver and Richard Cromwell, Dryden in 1658 published “Heroic Stanzas on the late lord Protector,” written after his funeral: and in 1660, “Astraea Redux,” a poem on the happy restoration and return of his sacred majesty Charles the Second. A remarkable distich in this piece exposed our poet to the ridicule of the wits:

In 1661 he produced his first play, “The Duke of Guise,” which was followed the next year by the “Wild Gallant.” In the same year, 1662, he addressed a poem to the lord chancellor Hyde, presented on new-year’s-day; and, the same year also, published a satire on the Dutch*. His next production was “Annus Mirabilis,” the year of wonders, 1666; an historical poem: printed in 1667. His reputation as a poet was now so well established, that this, together with his attachment to the court, procured him the place of poet-laureat, and historiographer to Charles II. of which accordingly he took possession, upon the death of sir William Davenant, in 1668, but his patent was not signed till 1670. The pension of the two offices was 200l. a year. In 1667 he published “An Essay on Dramatic Poesy,” dedicated to Charles earl of Dorset and Middlesex. In the preface we are told that the purpose of this discourse was to vindicate the honour of our English writers from the censure of those who unjustly prefer the French. The essay is drawn up in the form of a dialogue. It was animadverted upon by sir Robert Howard, in the preface to his “Great Favourite, or Duke of Lerma,” to which Dryden replied in a piece prefixed to the second edition of his “Indian Emperor.” Although his first plays had not been very successful, he went on, and in the space of twenty-five years produced twenty-seven plays, besides his other numerous poetical writings. Of the stage, says Dr. Johnson, when he had once invaded it, he kept possession; not indeed, without the competition of rivals, who sometimes prevailed, or the censure of critics, which was often poignant, and often just; but with such a degree of reputation, as made him at least secure of being heard, whatever might be the final determination of the public. These plays were collected, and published in 6 vols. 12mo, in 1725; to which is prefixed the essay on dramatic poetry, and a dedication to the duke of Newcastle by Congreve, in which the author is placed in a very equivocal light.

In 1671 he was publicly ridiculed on the stage under the character of Bays, in the duke of Buckingham’s famous comedy called the “Rehearsal.” The character of Bays, as we are told ia the key printed with that satirical performance in 17 '55, was originally intended for sir Robert Howard, under the name of Bilboa: but a stop being put to the representation by the breaking out of the plague in 1665, it was laid by for several years, and not exhibited on the stage till Dec. 7, 1671. During this interval, Dryden being advanced to the laurel, the noble author changed the name of his poet from Bilboa to Bays; and made great alterations in his play, in order to ridicule several dramatic performances, which had appeared since the first writing of it, and particularly some of Dry den’s. he affected to despise the satire, as appears from his dedication of the translation of Juvenal and Persius; where, speaking of the many lampoons and libels that had been written against him, he says: “I answered not the Rehearsal, because I knew the author sat to himself, when he drew the picture, and was the very Bayes of his own farce; because also I knew, that my betters were more concerned, than I was, in that satire; and lastly, because Mr. Smith and Mr. Johnson, the main pillars of it, were two such languishing gentlemen in their conversation, that I could liken them to nothing but their own relations, those noble characters of men of wit and pleasure about town.” Insensible, however, as he affected to be, he did not fail to take a full revenge on its author, under the character of Zimri, in his “Absalom and Achitophel.”

In 1673, his tragi-comedies, entitled the “Conquest of Granada” by the Spaniards, in two parts, were attacked by Richard Leigh, a player belonging to the duke of York’s theatre, in a pamphlet called “A Censure of the Rota,” &c. which occasioned several other pamphlets to be written. Elkanah Settle likewise criticised these plays; and it is remarkable that Settle, though in reality a mean and inconsiderable poet, was the mighty rival of Dryden, and for many years bore his reputation above him. To the first part of the “Conquest of Granada,” Dryden prefixed an essay on Heroic Plays, and subjoined to the second a Defence of the Epilogue; or, an essay on the dramatic poetry of the last age. In 1679 was published an “Essay on Satire,” written jointly by the earl of Mulgrave and Dryden. This piece, which was handed about in ms. contained severe reflections on the duchess of Portsmouth and the earl of Rochester; and they, suspecting Dryden to be the author of it, hired three men to cudgel him; who, as Wood relates, effected their business as he was returning from Will’s coffee-house through Rose-street, Covent-gardeu, to his own house in Gerrard-street, Soho, at eight o'clock at night, on the 16th of December, 1679. In 1680 came out an English translation in verse of Ovid’s epistles by several hands two of which, viz. Canace to Macareus, and Dido to Æneas, were translated by Dryden, who also wrote the general preface and the epistle of Helen to Paris by Dryden and the earl of Mulgrave.

The same year, 1681, he published his Medal, a satire against sedition. This poem was occasioned by the striking of a medal, on account of the indictment against the earl of Shaftesbury for high-treason being found ignoramus by the grand jury at the Old Bailey, November 1611, for which the whig-party made great rejoicings by ringing of bells, bonfires, &c. in all parts of London. The whole poem is a severe invective against the earl of Shaftesbury and the whigs to whom the author addresses himself, ina satirical epistle prefixed to it, thus “I have one favour to desire of you at parting, that, when you think of answering this poem, you would employ the same pens against it, who have combated with so much success against Absalom and Achitophel; for then you may assure yourselves of a clear victory without the least reply. Rail at me abundantly; and, not to break a custom, do it without wit. If God has not blessed you with the talent of rhyming, make use of my poor stock and welcome: let your verses run upon my feet; and for the utmost refuge of notorious blockheads, reduced to the last extremity of sense, turn my own lines upon me, and, in utter despair of your own satire, make me satirize myself.” Settle wrote an answer to this poem, entitled “The Medal reversed;” and is erroneously said to have written a poem called “Azariah and Hushal,” against “Absalom and Achitophel.” This last was the production of one Pordage, a dramatic writer. In 1682, Dryden published a poem, called “Religio Laici; or, the Layman’s Faith.” This piece is intended as a defence of revealed religion, and of the excellency and authority of the scriptures, as the only rule of faith and manners, against deists, papists, and presbyterians. The author tells us in the preface, that it was written for an ingenious young gentleman, his friend, upon his translation of father Simon’s “Critical History of the Old Testament.” In October of this year, he also published his Mac Flecnoe, an exquisite satire against the poet Shad well.

His tragedy of the “Duke of Guise,” much altered, with the assistance of Lee, appeared again in 168S, dedicated to Lawrence earl of Rochester, and gave great offence to the whigs. It was attacked in a pamphlet, entitled “A Defence of the charter and municipal rights of the city of London, and the rights of other municipal cities and towns of England. Directed to the citizens of London. By Thomas Hunt.” In this piece, Dryden is charged with condemning the charter of the city of London, and executing its magistrates in effigy, in his “Duke of Guise;” frequently acted and applauded, says Hunt, and intended most certainly to provoke the rahhle into tumults and disorders. Hunt then makes several remarks upon the design of the play, and asserts, that our poet’s purpose was to corrupt the manners of the nation, and lay waste their morals; to extinguish the little remains of virtue among us by bold impieties, to confound virtue and vice, good and evil, and to leave us without consciences. About the same time were printed also “Some Reflections upon the pretended Parallel in the play called The Duke of Guise” the author of which pamphlet tells us, that he was wearied with the dulness of this play, and extremely incensed at the wicked and barbarous design it was intended for; that the fiercest tories were ashamed of it; and, in short, that he never saw any thing that could be called a play, more deficient in wit, good character, and entertainment, than this. In answer to this and Hunt’s pamphlet, Dryden published “The Vindication: or, The Parallel of the French holy league and the English league and covenant, turned into a seditious libel against the king and his royal highness, by Thomas Hunt and the author of the Reflections, &c.” In this Vindication, which is printed at the end of the play, he tells us that in the year of the restoration, the first play he undertook was the “Duke of Guise,” as the fairest way which the act of indemnity had then left of setting forth the rise of the late rebellion; that at first it was thrown aside by the advice of some friends, who thought it not perfect enough to be published; but that, at the earnest request of Mr. Lee, it was afterwards produced between them; and that only the first scene, the whole fourth act, and somewhat more than half the fifth, belonged to him, all the rest being Mr. Lee’s. He acquaints us also occasionally, that Mr. Thomas Shadwell, the poet, made the rough draught of this pamphlet against him, and that Mr. Hunt finished it.

In 1699 he entered into a contract with Tonson, the bookseller, to supply him with 10,000 verses, which produced in 1700 his “Fables, ancient and modern;” translated into verse from Homer, Ovid, Boccace, and Chaucer. He tells us in the preface to this his last work, that “he thinks himself as vigorous as ever in the faculties of his soul, excepting only his memory, which,” he says, “is not impaired to any great degree;” and he was then sixtyeight years of age. For this labour he was to get only 30GJ. out of which 250 guineas were paid down, and he was to receive the remainder on the appearance of a second edition, which did not happen till thirteen years after his death. Besides the original pieces and translations hitherto mentioned, he wrote many other things, which have been several times published in the “Six volumes of Miscellanies” under his name, and in other collections. They consist of translations from the Greek and Latin poets epistles to several persons; prologues and epilogues to various plays elegies, epitaphs, and songs. In 1743 came out in two volumes 12mo, a new collection of our author’s poetical works, under the title of “Original Poems and Translations, by John Dry den, esq. now first collected and published together;” that is, collected from the “Six volumes of Miscellanies” just mentioned. The editor observes, in his preface, that “it was but justice to the productions of so excellent a poet, to set them free at last from so disadvantageous, if not unnatural, an union; an union, which, like the cruelty of Mezentius in Virgil, was no less than a junction of living and dead bodies together.” “It is now high time,” says he, “that the partnership should be dissolved, and Mr. Dryden left to stand upon his own bottom. His credit as a poet is out of all danger, though the withdrawing his stock may probably expose many of of his copartners to the hazard of a poetical bankruptcy.” There is a collection of our author’s original poems and translations, published in a thin folio, 1701; but, as it does not contain much above half the pieces, so it does not at all answer the design of this collection; which, with his plays, fables, and translations of Virgil, JuvenaJ, and Persius, was intended to complete his works in twelves. As to his performances in prose, besides essays and prefaces, some of which have been mentioned, he wrote the lives of Plutarch anci Lucian, prefixed to the translations of those authors by several hands; “The Life of Polybius,” before the translation of that historian by sir Henry Sheer; and the preface to the “Dialogue concerning Women,” by William Walsh, esq.

His leg having become mortified, his surgeon recommended an amputation of the limb, with a view to stop the further progress of the disorder; but he would not undergo the operation, saying, that as by the course of nature he had not many years to live, he would not attempt to prolong an uncomfortable existence by a painful and uncertain experiment, but patiently submit to death. This account, which was given by a contemporary writer, not long afterwards, is strongly corroborated by the unquestionable testimony of Mrs. Elizabeth Creed, his kinswoman; who informs us, that he received the notice of his approaching dissolution with perfect resignation and submission to the Divine Will; and that in his last illness he took the most tender and affectionate farewell of his afflicted friends, “of which sorrowful number she herself was one.” Twentytwo years afterwards this very respectable lady, who was then in her eightieth year, erected a monument at Tichmarsh, in honour of our poet and his parents, on which these circumstances so much to his honour are recorded. (See Creed, vol. X.)

Dr. Johnson conceived, that no description of Dryden’s person had been transmitted to us but, on the contrary, there are few English poets, of whose external appearance more particulars have been recorded. We have not indeed any original whole-length portrait of him, such as that very curious delineation of Pope, with which we have been lately gratified, whence a more perfect notion of that poet’s external appearance may be obtained than from all the friendly drawings of Richardson; yet from various descriptions of Dryden’s person that have come down to us, a very adequate idea of it may be formed. He was certainly a short, fat, florid man, “corpore quadrato,” as lord Hailes some years ago observed to Mr. Malone, “a description which ^neas Sylvius applied to James the First of Scotland” The same gentleman remarked, that that at one time he wore his hair in large quantity, and that it inclined to gray, even before his misfortunes; a circumstance which, he said, he had learned from a portrait of Dry den, painted by Kneller, formerly in the possession of the late Mr. James West. But perhaps his lordship here is not quite accurate. By “before his misfortunes” was meant before the Revolution; but the portrait in question was probably painted at a later period. From other documents, however, it appears that he became gray before he was deprived of the laurel. In Riley’s portrait, painted in 1683, he wears a very large wig: so also in that by Closterman, done at a late period. By Tom Brown he is always called “little Bayes,” and by Rochester, when he quarrelled with, and wished to depreciate him, he was nick-named “poet Squab.” The earliest portrait of Dryden hitherto discovered is that in the picture gallery, Oxford, but the painter is not known. It is engraved in Mr. Malone’s Life.

He married the lady Elizabeth Howard, daughter of the earl of Berkshire, who died in June or July 1714, after having been for some years insane. By her he had three sons, Charles, John, and Erasmus—Henry, of all whom we shall take some notice hereafter. There are some circumstances, relating to Dryden’s funeral, recorded in Wilson’s memoirs of the life of Mr. Congreve, which have been generally credited. It is said that the day after his death. Sprat, bishop of Rochester and dean of Westminster, sent word to lady Elizabeth Howard, his widow, that he would make a present of the ground, and all the other abbey fees. Lord Halifax likewise sent to lady Elizabeth, and to Mr. Charles Dryden her son, offering to defray the expences of our poet’s funeral, and afterwards to bestow 500l. on a monument in the abbey; which generous offer from both was accepted. Accordingly, on the Sunday following, the company being assembled, the corpse was put into a velvet hearse, attended by 18 mourning coaches, When they were just ready to move, lord Jefferu-s, son of the chancellor Jefferies, with some of his rakish companions, coining by, asked whose funeral it was; and, being told it was Mr. Dry den’s, he protested, that ho should not be buried in that private manner; that he would himself, with lady Elizabeth’s leave, have the honour of his interment, and would bestow 1000l. on a monument in the abbey for him. This put a stop to the procession; and Jefferies, with several of the gentlemen who had alighted from the coaches, went up stairs to the lady Elizabeth, who was sick in bed. Jefferies repeated the purport of what he had said below; but lady Elizabeth absolutely refusing her consent, he fell on his knees, vowii.g never to rise till his request was granted. The lady, under a sudden surprise, fainted away and lord Jefferies, pretending to have gained her consent, ordered the body to be carried to Mr. RussePs, an undertaker in Cheapside, and to be left there till further orders. In the mean time, the abbey was lighted up, the ground opened, the choir attending, and the bishop waiting some hours to no purpose for the corpse. The next day, Mr. Charles Dryden waited upon lord Halifax and the bishop, and endeavoured to excuse his mother, by relating the truth; but they would not hear of any excuse. Three days after, the undertaker, receiving no orders, waited on lord Jetieries, who turned it off in a jest, pretending, that those who paid any regard to a drunken frolic deserved no better; that he remembered nothing at all of the matter; and that they might do what they pleased with the corpse. Upon this, the undertaker waited on the lady Elizabeth, who desired a day to consider what must be done. Mr. Charles Dryden immediately wrote to lord Jefferies, who returned for answer, that he knew nothing of the matter, and would be troubled no more about it. Mr. Dryden applied again to lord Halifax and the bishop of Rochester, who absolutely refused to do any thing in the affair. In this distress, Dr. Garth sent for the corpse to the college of physicians, and proposed a funeral by subscription which succeeding, about three weeks after Dryden’s decease, Garth pronounced a Latin oration over his body, which was conveyed from the college, attended by a numerous train of coaches, to Westminster-abbey. After the funeral, Mr. Charles Dryden sent lord Jefteries a challenge, which was not accepted; and, Mr. Dryden publicly declaring he would watch every opportunity to fight him, his lordship thought fit to leave the town upon it, and Mr. Dryden never could meet him after. Mr. Malone, however, has very clearly proved that the greater part of all this was a fiction by Mrs. Thomas. The fact is, that, on May 1, a magnificent funeral was projected by several persons of quality, and the body was in consequence conveyed to the College of Physicians, whence, after Dr. Garth had pronounced a Latin oration in his praise, it was, on the 13th of May, conveyed to Westminster-abbey, attended by above one hundred coaches.

As to Dryden’s character, it has been treated in extremes, some setting it too high, others too low; for he was too deeply engaged in party, to have strict justice done him either way. As to his dramatic works, to say nothing more of the Rehearsal, we find, that the critics, his contemporaries, made very free with them and, it must be confessed, they are not the least exceptionable of his compositions. In tragedy, it has been observed, that he seldom touches the passions, but deals rather in pompous language, poetical flights, and descriptions; and that this was his real taste, appears not only from the tragedies themselves, but from two instances mentioned by Mr. Gildon. The first is, that when a translation of Euripides was recommended to him instead of Homer, he replied, that he had no relish for that poet, who was a master of tragic simplicity: the other is, that he generally expressed a very mean, if not a contemptible, opinion of Otway, who is universally allowed to have succeeded in affecting the passions; though, in the preface to his translation of M. Fresnoy, he speaks more favourably of that poet. Gildon ascribes this taste in Dryden to his intimacy with French romances. As to comedy, he acknowledges his want of gem us for it, in his defence of the “Essay on Dramatic Poetry,” prefixed to his Indian Emperor: “I know,” says he, “I am not fitted by nature to write comedy; I want that gaiety of humour which is required in it. My conversation is slow and dull; my humour saturnine and reserved. In short, 1 am none of those who endeavour to break jests in company, or to make repartees. So that those who decry my comedies, do me no injury, except it be in point of profit: reputation in them is the last thing to which I shall pretend.” But perhaps he would have wrote better in both kinds of the drama, had not the necessity of his circumstances obliged him to conform to the popular taste; and, indeed, he insinuates as much in the epistle dedicatory to the Spanish Friar: “I remember some verses of my own Maximin and Almanzor, which cry vengeance on me for their extravagance. All I can say for those passages, which are, I hope, not many, is, that I knew they were bad enough to please, even when I writ them. But I repent of them among my sins; and if any of their fellows intrude by chance in my present writings, I draw a stroke over all those Dalilahs of the theatre, and am resolved I will settle myself no reputation by the applause of fools. It is not that I am mortified to all ambition; but I scorn as much to take it from half-witted judges, as I should to raise an estate by cheatingfof bubbles. Neither do I discommend the lofty style in tragedy, which is naturally pompous and magnificent; but nothing is truly sublime, that is not just and proper.” He tells us, in his preface to Fresnoy, that his “Spanish Friar was given to the people; and that he never wrote any thing in the dramatic way to please himself, but his Anthony and Cleopatra.”

His translations of Virgil, Juvenal, and Persius, and his Fables, were more successful, as we have observed already. But his poetical reputation is built chiefly upon his original poems, among which his Ode on Saint Caecilia’s Day is justly esteemed one of the most perfect pieces in any language. It has been set to music more than once, particularly in the winter of 1735, by Handel; and was publicly performed with the utmost applause, on the theatre in Covent-garden. Congreve, in the dedication of our author’s dramatic works to the duke of Newcastle, has drawn his character to great advantage. He represented him, in regard to his moral character, in every respect not only blameless, but amiable; and, “as to his writings,” says he, “no man hath written in our language so much and so various matter, and in so various manners, so well. Another thing I may say was very peculiar to him; which is, that his parts did not decline with his years, but that he was an improving writer to the last, even to near se* venty years of age; improving even in fire and imagination, as well as in judgment; witness his Ode on St. Caecilia’s Day, and his Fables, his latest performances. He was equally excellent in verse and in prose. His prose had all the clearness imaginable, together with all the nobleness of expression; all the graces and ornaments proper and peculiar to it, without deviating into the language or diction of poetry. I have heard him frequently own with pleasure, that if he had any talent for English prose, it was owing to his having often read the writings of the great archbishop Tillotson. His versification and his numbers he could learn of nobody; for he first possessed those talents in perfection in our tongue. In his poems, his diction is, wherever his subject requires it, so sublimely and so truly poetical, that its essence, like that of pure gold, cannot be destroyed. What he has done in any one species or distinct kind of writing, would have been sufficient to have acquired him a great name. If he had written nothing but his prefaces, or nothing but his songs or his prologues, each of them would have entitled him to the preference and distinction of excelling in his kind.” It may be proper to observe, that Congreve, in drawing this character of Dryden, discharged an obligation laid on him by our poet, in these lines:

Pope had a high opinion of Dryden. His verses upon his Ode on St. Caecilia’s Day are too well known to need transcribing. In a letter to Wycherley, he says, “It was certainly a great satisfaction to me, to see and converse with a man, whom in his writings I had so long known with pleasure; but it was a very high addition to it, to hear you at our very first meeting doing justice to your dead friend Mr. Dryden. I was not so happy as to know him: Frrgtlium tantum vidi. Had I been born early enough, I must have known and loved him; for I have been assured, not only by yourself, but by Mr. Congreve and sir William Trumball, that his personal qualities were as amiable as his poetical, notwithstanding the many libellous misrepresentations of them; against which, the former of these gentlemen has told me he will one day vindicate him.” But what Congreve and Pope have said of Dryden, is rather in the way of panegyric, than an exact character of him. Others have spoken of him more moderately, and yet have probably done him no injustice. Thus Felton observes, th^.t “he at once gave the best rules, and broke them in spite of his own knowledge, and the Rehearsal. His prefaces are many of them admirable upon dramatic writings: he had some peculiar notions, which he maintains with great address; but his judgment in disputed points is of less weight and value, because the inconstancy of his temper did run into his thoughts, and mixed with the conduct of his writings, as well as his life.” Voltaire styles him “a writer whose genius was too exuberant, and not accompanied with judgment enough; and tells us, that if he had writ only a tenth part of the works he left behind him, his character would have been conspicuous in every part; but his groat fault is, his having endeavoured to be universal.” Dryden has made no scruple to disparage himself, where he thought he had not excelled. Thus, in his dedication of his Aurengzebe to the earl of Mulgrave, speaking of his writing for the stage, “I never thought myself,” says he, “very fit for an employment where many of my predecessors have excelled me in all kinds; and some of my contemporaries, even in my own partial judgment, have outdone me in comedy. Some little hopes I have yet remaining (and those too, considering my abilities, may be vain), that I may make the world some part of amends for many ill plays, by an heroic poem,” of which, however, he did not execute any part. Upon the whole, Mr. Malone appears to have examined and delineated his character as a man, with most truth and precision; and as a poet it is impossible to refer to any thing equal to that masterly criticism given by Dr. Johnson in his life of our poet.

It is said, that he had once a design of taking orders, but was refused*; and that he solicited for the provost­* The malignity which Dryden often not have admitted, and such as may expressed against the clergy is ira- vitiate light and unprincipled minds, puted by Langhaiue to a repulse which But there is no reason for supposing he suffered when he solicited ordina- that he disbelieved the religion which tion but he “denied that he ever de- he disobeyed. He forgot his duty rasigned to enter into the church and ther than disowned it. His tendency such a denial,” observes Dr. Johnson, to profaneness is the effect of levity, “he would not have hazarded, if he negligence, and loose conversation, could have been convicted of falsehood, with a desire of accommodating himMalevolence to the Clergy,” adds the self to the corruption of the times, bydoctor, “is seldom at a great distance venturing to be wicked as far as he from irreverence of religion, and Dry- durst. When he professed himself a den affords no exception to this ob- convert to Popery, he did not pretend f^rvatiou. His writings exhibit many to have received any new conviction passages, which, with all the allow- of the fundamental doctrines of Curisance that can be made for characters tianity.” and occasions, are such as piety would ship of Eton-college, but failed also in this. This we have upon the authority of Thomas Brown, who, in “The late Converts exposed, or the reason of Mr. Bayes’s changing his religion,” of which he was supposed to be the author, has the following passage in the preface: “But, prythee, why so severe always upon the priesthood, Mr. Bayes? You, I find, still continue your old humour, which we are to date from the year of Hegira, the loss of Eton, or since orders were refused you.” Langbaine likewise, speaking of our author’s Spanish Friar, tells us, that “ever since a certain worthy bishop refused orders to a certain poet, Mr. Dryden has declared open defiance against the whole clergy; and since the church began the war, he has thought it but justice to make reprisals on the church.”

, born at Paris, Oct. 29, 1668, was the son of a gentleman of the bedchamber to the French king. His father took great pains in his education; but left him scarcely any property, and he soon had recourse to his pen as the means of gaining a subsistence. The marchioness de Maintenon, having seen some of his essays, made choice of him to furnish her pupils at St. Cyr with sacred sonnets, and recommended him so strongly to Pontchartrain, the secretary of state, that the minister, taking the poet for some considerable personage, went and made him a visit. Duche, seeing a secretary of state enter his doors, thought he was going to be sent to the Bastille^; but he was soon relieved from his fright by the civilities of the minister. Duche had as much gentleness in his disposition as charms in his wit, and never indulged in any strokes of satire. Rousseau and he were the delight of the companies they frequented; but the impression made by Duche, though less striking at first, was most lasting. He was also admired for the talent of declamation, which he possessed in no common degree. The academy of inscriptions and belles lettres were pleased to admit him of their body; but he died in the prime of life, Dec. 14, 1704. Duche presented the French theatre with three tragedies, Jonathan, Absalom, and Deborah, of which the second, containing several pathetic scenes, still keeps its ground on the stage; and also wrote some ballets, tragedies, &c. for the opera. Of these last, his “Iphigenia” is his best performance and in the opinion of his countrymen, has many of the excellencies of the Grecian tragedies. There is likewise by this author a collection of edifying stories, which used to be read at St. Cyr with no less edification than pleasure, but which has sometimes been confounded with the pious and moral stories of the abbé de Choisi. The two works are indeed written in the same design, that of disengaging youth from frivolous reading but the collection of the poet is less known than that of the abbé yet is not inferior to it, either in elevation of sentiment, in truth of character, or even in elegance of style. His hymns and his sacred canticles were also sung at St. Cyr.

, an English civilian, was born at Heavy-Tree, near Exeter in Devonshire, 1580, of a considerable family, and was the younger brother of Nicholas Duck, recorder of Exeter. At the age of fifteen he was entered of Exeter college, Oxford, took his degree of B. A. and became a fellow-commoner in 1599. From thence he removed to Hart-hall, took his master’s degree, and afterwards was elected fellow of All-souls but his genius leading him to the study of the civil law, he took his degree of doctor in that faculty.* He travelled into France, Italy, and Germany; and, after his return, was made chancellor of the diocese of Bath and Wells. He was afterwards made chancellor of London, and at length master of the requests: but the confusions, which were then beginning, probably hindered him from rising higher. In 1640 he was elected burgess for Minehead in Somersetshire, and soon after siding with king Charles in the time of the rebellion, became a great sufferer in the fortunes of his family, being stripped by the usurpers of 2000l. In 1648 he was sent for by his majesty to Newport in the Isle of Wight, to assist in his treaty with the commissioners from the parliament; but, that treaty not succeeding, he retired to his habitation at Chiswick near London, where he died in May 1649, but in Smith’s obituary he is said to have died in December preceding. He was an excellent civilian, a man of piety, a tolerable poet, especially in his younger days, and very well versed in history, ecclesiastical as well as civil. His only defect was a harshness of voice in pleading. He left behind him, “Vita Henrici Chichele,” &c. Oxon. 1617, 4to, added to Bates’s Lives, and translated into English, 1699, and “De usu & authoritate Juris Civilis Romanorum in dominiisprincipmn Christianorum:” a very useful and entertaining work, which has been printed several times at home and abroad, and is added to De Ferriere’s “History of Civil Law,” 1724, 8vo. He was greatly assisted in this work by the learned Dr. Gerard Langbaine.

, a very extraordinary person, who from a thresher became a poet, and was afterwards advanced to the cure of a parish, was born about the beginning of the last century, and had originally no other teaching than what enabled him to read and write English: and, as arithmetic is generally joined with this degree of learning, he had a little share of that too. About his fourteenth year he was taken from school, and was afterwards successively engaged in the several lowest employments of a country life, which lasted so long, that he had almost forgot all the arithmetic he had learned at school. However, he read sometimes, and thought oftener: he had a certain longing after knowledge; and, when he reflected within himself on his want of education, he began to be particularly uneasy, that he should have forgot any thing of what he had learned, even at his little school. He thought of this so often, that, at last, he resolved to try his own strength; and, if possible, to recover his arithmetic again.

With these helps Stephen grew something of a poet, and something of a philosopher. He had from his infancy a cast in his mind towards poetry, as appeared from several little circumstances; but what gave him a higher taste of it than he had been used to, was Milton’s Paradise Lost. This he read over twice or thrice with a dictionary before he could understand the language of it thoroughly; and this, with a sort of English grammar he had, is said to have been of the greatest use to him. It was his friend that helped him to the Spectators; which, as he himself owned, improved his understanding more than any thing. The pieces of poetry scattered in those papers helped on his natural bent that way; and made him willing to try whether he could not do something like them. He sometimes turned his own thoughts into verse, while he was at wo;k and at la>-t bo;,an to venture those thoughts a little upon paper. The thing took air; and Stephen, who had before the name of a scholar among the country people, was said now to be able to write verses too. This was mentioned accidentally, about 1729, before a gentleman of Oxford, who sent for Stephen and, after some talk with him, desired him to write him a letter in verse. He did so; and that letter is the epistle which stands the last in his poems, though the first whole copy of verses that ever he wrote.

By these attempts, one after another, he became known to the clergymen in the neighbourhood; who, upon examining him, found that he had a great deal of merit, made him some presents, and encouraged him to go on. At length some of his essays falling into the hands of a lady of quality who attended on queen Caroline, he became known to her majesty, who took him under her protection, and settled on him a yearly pension, supposed to be of 30l.; it was such a one at least as was sufficient to maintain him independently of labour. This Duck very gratefully acknowledges in the dedication of his poems to the queen “Your majesty,” says he, “has indeed the same right to them, as you have to the fruits of a tree, which you have transplanted out of a barren soil into a fertile and beautiful garden. It was your generosity which brought me out of obscurity, and still condescends to protect me; like the Supreme Being, who continual‘.;,’ supports the meanest creature which his goodness has produced.” Swift, who might, one would think, easily have overlooked such an object as Duck, but whose spleen prompted him to be satirical on any occasion or none, was so piqued at this generosity in the queen, while we suppose he thought himself and his own friends neglected, that he wrote the following quibbling epigram, as he calls it, “on Stephen Duck, the thresher and favourite poet:”

In 1733 the queen made him one of the yeomen of the guards, from which situation, by a singular, and, we think, absurd transition, he was admitted into orders, and preferred to the living of Byfleet in Surrey. The only qualification for this office which his biographers mention, is a small knowledge of Latin, not enough surely to justify such an abuse of church patronage. Before this he was appointed keeper of the queen’s select library at Richmond, called Merlin’s Cave, where he had apartments, which were continued to his daughter after his decease. Here and at Byfleet he continued for many years to make poems and sermons, and was much followed by the people as a preacher; till, falling at length into a low-spirited melancholy way, he flung himself into the Thames from a bridge near Reading, or, as some say, into a trout stream, which is near Reading, and was drowned. This unhappy accident, for he was perfectly lunatic, befell him some time in March or April, 1756. In the preface to his poems he makes his acknowledgments to some gentleman who “first took notice of him in the midst of poverty and labour.” What those gentlemen did was highly generous and praise-worthy, and it was but gratitude in Stephen to acknowledge it yet it is more than probable, that if he had been suffered to pass the remainder of his lite, after he had spent so much of it, in poverty and labour, he had lived and died more happily. It was thought that his melancholy proceeded from a notion that he had not been sufficiently provided for, and if so, his injudicious patrons must have flattered him into a very false estimate of his merit. Warton says that Spence, who wrote Duck’s life and published his poems, was the means of his obtaining the living of Byfleet; and such was the taste of the courtiers of queen Caroline, that they actually wished to set up this poor versifier as a rival to Pope. But although, to use Warburton’s sarcastic language, “queen Caroline, who moderated, as a sovereign, between the two great philosophers, Clarke and Leibnitz, in the most sublime points in metaphysics and natural philosophy, chose this man for her favourite poet,” it was beneath such a man as Spence to persuade poor Duck that he merited the higher rewards of genius. Few men, if we may judge from his works, had ever less pretensions.

, was a divine and a poet, the effusions of whose muse have been honoured with a place in Dr. Johnson’s collection, but of whose early history little is known, nor do we know who his parents were, or where he was born. His grammatical education he received under the famous Dr. Busby, at Westminster-school, into wnich he was admitted in 1670, and from which he was elected in 1675, to Trinity- college, Cambridge. In 1673 he took the degree of B. A. and that of M. A. in 1682. He became likewise a fellow of the college, and it is related that he was for some time tutor to the duke of Richmond. Having entered into holy orders, he was presented to the rectory of Blaby, in Leicestershire, in 1687-8, made a prebendary of Gloucester, and in 1688 chosen a procior in convocation for that church, and was chaplain to queen Anne. In 1710 he was presented by sir Jonathan Trelawny, bishop of Winchester, to the wealthy living of Witney, in Oxfordshire, which, however, he enjoyed but a few months; for, on the 10th of February, 1710-11, having returned from an entertainment, he was found dead the next morning. When Mr. Duke left the university, being conscious of his powers, he enlisted himself among the wits of the age. He was in particular the familiar friend of Otway, and was engaged, among other popular names, in the translations of Ovid and Juvenal. From his writings he appears not to have been ill-qualified for poetical composition. “In his Review,” says Dr. Johnson, “though unfinished, are some vigorous lines. His poems are not below mediocrity; nor have I found in them much to be praised.” With the wit, Mr. Duke seems to have shared the dissoluteness of the times for some of his compositions are such as he must have reviewed with detestation in his later days. This was especially the case with regard to two of his poems; the translation of one of the elegies of Ovid, and the first of the three songs. “Perhaps,” observes Dr. Johnson, “like >ome other foolish young men, he rather talked than lived viciously, in an age when he that would be thought a wit was afraid to say his prayers; and whatever might have been bad in the first part of his life was surely condemned and reformed by his better judgment;” and this, it is hoped, was the case.

Mr. Duke, in his character as a divine, published three sermons in his life-time. The first was on the imitation of Christ, preached before the queen in 1703, from 1 John, ii. 6. The second was from Psalm xxv. 14, and was likewise preached before the queen in 1704. The third was an assize sermon, on Christ’s kingdom, from John xviii. 36, and published in the same year. In 1714, fifteen of his sermons on several occasions, were printed in one vol. 8vo, which were held in good reputation, and are spoken of in strong terms of commendation by Dr. Henry Felton, who, in his Dissertation on reading the Classics, says, “Mr. Duke may be mentioned under the double capacity of a poet and a divine. He is a bright example in the several parts of writing, whether we consider the originals, his translations, paraphrases, or imitations. But here I can only mention him as a divine, with this peculiar commendation, that in his sermons, besides liveliness of wit, purity and correctness of style, and justness of argument, we see many fine allusions to the ancients, several beautiful passages handsomely incorporated in the train of his own thoughts; and, to say all in a word, classic learning and a Christian spirit.”

, an eminent Scotch poet, was born about the year 1465, and, as it is generally supposed, although without much foundation, at Salton, a village on the delightful coast of the Forth in East Lothian. This is collected from what Kennedy, a contemporary poet, says in one of his satires; who mentions likewise his own wealth, and Dunbar’s poverty. If we are to credit the same author, Dunbar was related to the earls of March; but of this there is no satisfactory evidence. In his youth he seems to have been a travelling noviciate of the Franciscan order; but this mode of life not being agreeable to his inclination, he resigned it, and returned to Scotland, as is supposed, about 1490, when he might be 25 years of age. In his “Thistle and Rose,” which was certainly written in 1503, he speaks of himself as a poet that had already made many songs: and that poem is the composition rather of an experienced writer, than of a novice in the art. It is indeed probable that his tales, “The twa marrit wemen and the wedo;” and, “The freirs of Bervvik,” (if the last be his) were written before his “Thistle and Rose.” However tin’s may have been, Dunbar, after being the author of “The gold in Terge,” a poem rich in description, and of many small pieces of the highest merit, died in old age about 1530. In his younger years, our poet seems to have had great expectations that his abilities would have recommended him to an ecclesiastical benetice; and in his smaller poems he frequently addresses the king lor that purpose: but there is no reason to believe that he was successful, although it may be thought that the “Thistle and Rose,” which was occasioned by the marriage of James IV. king of Scotland, with Margaret Tudor, eldest daughter of Henry VII. king of England, deserved better treatment at the hands of the young royal pair. Mr. Pinkerton, in his list of Scottish poets, tells us, he has looked in vain over many calendars of the characters, &c. of this period, to find Dunbar’s name; but suspects that it was never written by a lawyer. Mr. Warton, in characterising the Scottish poets of this time, observes that the writers of that nation have adorned the period with a degree of sentiment and spirit, a command of phraseology, and a fertility of imagination, not to be found in any English poet since Chaucer and Lydgate. “He might safely have added,” says Mr. Pinkerton, “not even in Chaucer or Lydgate.” Concerning Dunbar, Mr. Warton says, that the natural complexion of his genius is of the moral and didactic cast. This remark, however, Mr. Pinkerton thinks, must not be taken too strictly. “The goldin Terge,” he adds, “is moral; and so are many of his small pieces: but humour, description, allegory, great poetical genius, and a vast wealth of words, all unite to form the complexion of Dunbar’s poetry. He unites, in himself, and generally surpasses the qualities of the chief old English poets; the morals and satire of Langland; Chaucer’s humour, poetry, and knowledge of life; the allegory of Gower; the description of Lydgate.” This is a very high character, but surely the morality of his poems may be questioned. Several of his compositions contain expressions which appear to us grossly profane and indecent; and one of his addresses to the queen would not now be addressed to a modern courtezan. Even the most sacred observances of the church are converted into topics of ridicule; and its litanies are burlesqued in a parody, the profaneness of which is almost unparalleled. The notes added to the collection published by sir David Daly rm pie in 1770 are peculiarly valuable; for they not only explain and illustrate the particular expressions and phrases of the pieces in question, but contain several curious anecdotes, and throw considerable light on the manners of the times.

He had a son, Mark Duncan, who is mentioned by biographers under the name of Cerisantes. Bayle gives a long desultory account of him. His life appears to have been strangely checquered, through a spirit impatient of rest, with a variety of literary, civil, and military pursuits. Moreri has inserted in his dictionary, from the fictitious memoirs said to be written by the duke of Guise, some calumnies against Cerisantes, which are refuted in a satisfactory manner by Bayle. Several detached pieces of Cerisantes’s poetry are to be seen in printed miscellaneous collections. Among these is a remarkable one, inscribed, “Carmen gratulatorinm in nuptias Caroli It. Aug. cum Henrietta Maria rilia Henrici IV. R. Fr.” The visionary blessings that were to arise from this union to all the world, particularly to his native country, and that of his progenitor, (by their becoming the joint arbiters of that perpetual peace in Europe, which it was the project of Henry to establish, and which he has beautifully painted in the most lively colouring), only shew that a good poet may be a bad prophet. He is said to have died in 1648.

, was born 1730, and when a child, was of an amiable disposition, had an uncommon capacity for learning, and discovered, very early, a genius for poetry. After some years passed at a school at Romford, in Essex, under the care of his relation, the rev. Philip Fletcher, afterwards dean of Kildare, and younger brother to the bishop of that see, he was removed to a more eminent one at Felsted, in the same county. At this school he was stimulated by emulation to an exertion of his talents; and, by a close application, he became the first scholar, as well as captain of the school, and gained the highest reputation; and by the sweetness of his temper and manners, and by a disposition to friendship, he acquired and preserved the love of all his companions, and the esteem of his master and family. He has, on some particular occasions, been heard modestly to declare, that he was never punished, during hib whole residence at either school, for negligence in his lessons or exercise, or for any other misdemeanor. He was very early qualified for the university, and constantly improved himself, when at home, by his private studies, and the assistance or his father, happy in the companionship of such a son, who was always dutiful and affectionate to him; and the first literary characters of that time associated with a father and son, whose polished taste and amiable manners rendered them universally acceptable. He was entered, at the age of sixteen, at Bene‘t-college, Cambridge, where Mr. Castle, afterwards dean of Hereford, was then master: and he was recommended to that college by archbishop Herring, whom we have mentioned as his father’s particular friend. The archbishop baptised his son, and promised to patronize him, if educated for the church, and therefore sent him to the college where he had completed his own education. At the university he continued to rise in reputation as a scholar and a poet, and was always irreproachable in his moral character: he had the happiness of forming some connections there with men of genius an ’< virtue, which lasted through life; but the first and strongest attachment, in which he most delighted, end which reflected honour on his own merit, was the uninterrupted friendship, and constant correspondence, which com.uued to the last, with Mr. Greene, a very respectable clergyman of the diocese of Norwich, a man whose character for learning and abilities, goodness and virtue, justly gained him the esteem and love of all who had the happiness of his acquaintance, whose testimony is real praise, who acknowledged the worth of his valuable friend, “and loved his amiable and benevolent spirit.”

, bookseller and miscellaneous writer, was born at Graff bam, in Huntingdonshire, the 14th of May, 1659; the son of John Dunton, fellow of Trinity-college, Cambridge, and rector of Graft ham, whose works he published in 8vo, embellished with very curious engravings. Dunton was in business upwards of twenty years, during which time he traded considerably in the Stationers’ company; but, about the beginning of the last century, he failed, and commenced author; and in 1701, was amanuensis to the editor of a periodical paper called the “Post Angel.” He soon after set up as a writer for the entertainment of the public; and projected and carried on, with the assistance of others, the “Athenian Mercury,” or a scheme to answer a series of questions monthly, the querist remaining concealed. This work was continued to about 20 volumes; and afterwards reprinted by Bell, under the title of the “Athenian Oracle,” 4 vols. 8vo. It forms a strange jumble of knowledge and ignorance, sense and nonsense, curiosity and impertinence. In 1710 he published his “Athenianism,” or the projects of Mr. John Dunton, author of the “Essay on the hazard of a deathbed repentance.” This contains, amidst a prodigious variety of matter, six hundred treatises in prose and verse, by which he appears to have been, with equal facility, a philosopher, physician, poet, civilian, divine, humourist, &c. To this work he has prefixed his portrait, engraved by M. Vander Gucht; and in a preface, which breathes all the pride of self-consequence, informs his readers he does not write to flatter, or for hire. As a specimen of this miscellaneous farrago, the reader may take the following heads of subjects: 1. The Funeral of Mankind, a paradox, proving we are all dead and buried. 2. The spiritual hedge-hog; or, a new and surprising thought. 3. The double life, or a new way to redeem time, by living over to-morrow before it comes. 4. Dunton preaching to himself; or every man his own parson. 5. His creed, or the religion of a bookseller, in imitation of Brown’s Religio Medici, which h.is some humour and merit. This he dedicated to the Stationers’ company. As a satirist, he appears to most advantage in his poems entitled the “Beggar mounted” the “Dissenting Doctors;” “Parnassus hoa!” or frolics in verse “Dunton’s shadow,” or the character of a summer friend but in all his writings he is exceedingly prolix and tedious, and sometimes obscure. His “Case is altered, or Dunton’s remarriage to his own wife,” has some singular notions, but very little merit in the composition. For further particulars of this heterogeneous genius, see “Dunton’s Life and Errors,” a work now grown somewhat scarce, or, what will perhaps be more satisfactory, the account of him in our authority. Dunton died in 1733.

Dr. Duport left behind him several learned works, among which his “Gnomologia Homeri,” 1660, shews his extensive reading, and great knowledge of the Greek tongue, and was then deemed very useful for the understanding of that poet. His other works are, 1. “Tres Libri Solomonis, scilicet Proverbia, Ecclesiastes, Cantica, Graco Carmine donati, 1646,” 12mo. 2. “Metaphrasis libri Psalmorum versibus Graecis contexta cum versione Lat. Cantabr. 1666,” 4to, a work very honourably mentioned by Jo. Alb. Fabricius, in his “Bibliotheca Grteca,” and in Tillotson’s Life by Birch. 3. “Musae Subsecivae, sen Poetica Stromata,” 1676, 8vo. This volume consists of three books of miscellany poems, under the title of “Sylvae,” “Carmina Gratulatoria ad Regemet Reginam,” ' Epicedia, seu Carmina Funebria,“*' Carmina Comitialia, seu Epigrammata in Comitiis Academicis composita,” “Epigrammata Sacra,” and “Epithalamia Sacra.”

, a poet of the Elizabethan age, was of the same family with those of his name in Somersetshire, and was born probably about 1540. He was educated at Oxford, either in Baliol college or Broadgate’s hall, when he discovered a propensity to poetry, and polite literature, but left it without a degree, and travelled abroad. On his return, having the character of a well-bred man, ho was taken into the service of the court. He now obtained considerable celebrity as a poet, and was a contributor to the “English Helicon,” and not to the “Collection of Choice Flowers and Descriptions,” as Wood says, in which last his name does not appear. Queen Elizabeth had a great respect for his abilities, and employed him in several embassies, particularly to Denmark in 1589; and on his return from thence, conferred on him the chancellorship of the garter, on the death of sir John WoHey, 1596, and at the same time she knighted him; but like other courtiers, he occasionally suffered by her caprices. He was at one time reconciled to her, by her majesty’s being taught to believe that he was sinking to the grave under the weight of her displeasure. Sir Edward partook of the credulity of the times, studied chemistry, and was thought to be a Rosicrusian. He was at least a dupe to the famous astrologers Dr. Dee and Edward Kelly, of whom he has recorded, that in Bohemia he saw them put base metal in a crucible, and after it was set on the fire, and stirred with a stick of wood, it came forth in great proportion pure gold.

, an eminent English lawyer, was descended from an ancient and honourable family in Somersetshire, of the same family with sir Edward Dyer, the poet, who was fourth in descent from sir James Dyer’s great-grandfather. Sir James was the second son of Richard Dyer, esq. of Wincalton and Roundhill in Somersetshire, at the latter of which places he was born about the year 1512. Wood says he was a commoner of Broadgate-hall (now Pembroke college), Oxford, and that he left it, without taking a degree, probably about 1530, when he went to the Middle Temple. Here he appears to have rendered himself conspicuous for learning anil talents, as in 1552 he performed the office of autumnal reader to that society; a distinction which was at that time conferred only upon such as were eminent in their profession. He had, on May 10 preceding, been called to the degree of serjeant at law, and in the following November his abilities were rewarded with the post of king’s Serjeant. On the meeting of the last parliament of Edward VI. 1552-3, Dyer was chosen speaker of the house of commons (that office being considered in those days as peculiarly appropriated to lawyers of eminence), and in this capacity, on Saturday afternoon, March 4, made “an ornate oration before the king.” This is the only particular concerning the speaker which occurs in the Journals of that short parliament, which sat only for one month; and the dissolution of which was quickly followed by the death of that excellent young prince; whose successor, though in most respects she pursued measures totally opposite to those of his reign, continued the royal favour to Dyer, whom, Oct. 19, 1553, she appointed one of her serjeants, In this office his name appears as one of the commissioners. on the singular trial of sir Nicholas Throckmorton; when his jury, with a freedom rarely exercised in that unhappy period, ventured to acquit the prisoner. Our author’s behaviour on that occasion is not disgraced by any servile compliances with the views of the court; yet his regard for his own character was tempered with so much discretion, as not to occasion any diminution of her majesty’s protection; for on May 20, 1557, being at that time recorder of Cambridge, and a knight, he was appointed a judge of the common pleas, whence on April 23 of the next year, he was promoted to the queen’s bench, where he sat (though of the reformed religion) during the remainder of this reign as a puisne judge.

, an English poet, was born in 1700, the second son of Robert Dyer, of Aberglasney, in Caermarthenshire, a solicitor of great capacity and note. He passed through Westminster-school under the care of Dr. Freind, and was then called home to be instructed in his father’s profession. His genius, however, led him a different way; for, besides his early taste for poetry, having a passion no less strong for the arts of design, he determined to make painting his profession. With this view, having studied awhile under his master, he became, as he tells his friend, an itinerant painter, and wandered about South Wales and the parts adjacent; and about 1727 printed “Grongar Hill,” a poem which Dr. Johnson says, “is not very accurately written but the scenes which it displays are so pleasing, the images which they raise so welcome to the mind, and the reflections of the writer so consonant to the general sense or experience of mankind, that when it is once read, it will be read again.” Being probably unsatisfied with his own proficiency, he made the tour of Italy; where, besides the usual study of the remains of antiquity, and the works of the great masters, he frequently spent whole days in the country about Rome and Florence, sketching those picturesque prospects with facility and spirit. Images from hence naturally transferred themselves into his poetical compositions; the principal beauties of the “Ruins of Rome,” are perhaps of this kind, and the various landscapes in the “Fleece” have been particularly admired. On his return to England, he published the “Ruins of Rome,” 1740; but soon found that he could not relish a town life, nor submit to the assiduity required in his profession; his talent indeed, was rather for sketching than finishing; so he contentedly sat down in the country with his little fortune, painting now and then a portrait or a landscape, as his fancy led him. As his turn of mind was rather serious, and his conduct and behaviour always irreproachable, he was advised by his friends to enter into orders; and it is presumed, though his education had not been regular, that he found no difficulty in obtaining them. He was ordained by the bishop of Lincoln, and had a law degree conferred on him.

Mr. Dyer appears to have been intended by his early friends for the ministry among the dissenters, but discovered an averseness to the pastoral office, which sir John Hawkins insinuates to have proceeded from an unfavourable change in his religious sentiments. Various literary schemes appear to have been suggested to him, none of which he undertook, except in 1758, the revisal of the English edition of Plutarch’s Lives. In this he translated anew only the lives of Demetrius and Pericles. In 1759 he became a commissary in the army in Germany, and continued in that station to the end of the seven years war, after which he returned to England, and on the formation of the Literary Club, (composed of Dr. Johnson and his friends) in 1764, he was the first member electee! into that society, with whom he continued to associate, and by whom he was highly esteemed to the time of his death, in Sept. 1772. From an excellent portrait of this gentleman by sir Joshua Reynolds, a mezzotinto print was scraped by his pupil Marchi, of which a copy was imposed on the public as the portrait of Dyer the poet.

, one of our ancient English poets, was born in Somersetshire in 1523, and admitted scholar of Corpus Christi college, Oxford, under the tuition of George Etheridge, May 11, 1540, and probationer fellow Aug. 11, 1514. In 1547, when Christ church was founded by Henry VIII. he was admitted student of the upper table, and the same year took his master’s degree. Warton cites a passage from his poems to prove that in his early years, he was employed in some department about the court. In the British Museum there is a small set of manuscript sonnets, signed with his initials, addressed to some of the beauties of the courts of queen Mary and queen Elizabeth. He therefore probably did not remain long at the university. In the beginning of Elizabeth’s reign, he was made one of the gentlemen of her chapel, and master of the children there, having the character of not only being an excellent musician, but an exact poet, as many of his compositions in music and poetry testify. For these he was highly valued, by those who knew him, especially his associates in Lincoln’s- Inn (of which he was a member), and much lamented by them when he died. This event, according to sir John Hawkins, happened Oct. 31, 1556, but others say in 1566. He wrote “Damon and Pythias,” a comedy, acted at court and in the university, first printed in 1570, or perhaps’ in 1565, and “Palamon and Arcyte,” another comedy in two parts, probably never printed, but acted in Christ-church hall, 1566, before queen Elizabeth, of which performance Wood gives a curious account. Warton thinks it probable that he wrote many other dramatic pieces now lost. He is mentioned by Puttenham, as gaining the prize for comedy and interlude. Besides being a writer of regular dramas, he appears to have been a contriver of masques, and a composer of poetry for pageants. In a word, he united all those arts and accomplishments which ministered to popular pleasantry, in an age when the taste of the courtiers was not of a much higher order than that of the vulgar in our time. His English poems, for he wrote also Latin poetry, are for the most part extant in “The Paradise of Dainty Devises,” Lond. 1578, 4to, lately reprinted in the “Bibliographer,” where, as well as in our other authorities, are some farther notices of Edwards. It is justly observed by Warton, that his popularity seems to have altogether arisen from those pleasing talents, of which no specimens could be transmitted to posterity, and which prejudiced his partial contemporaries in favour of his poetry.

To the seventh edition of the “Canons of Criticism,” which was published in 1765, is annexed a small piece, entitled “An Account of the Trial of the Letter T, alias Y,” the design of which was to put gentlemen of learning and leisure in mind of settling the orthography of our language. It is a sensible performance, and displays, in a pleasing manner, Mr. Edwards’s skill in English criticism; a study, of which he was particularly fond, and in which few have shewn a more exact taste. The two chief things hinted at in the piece are uniformity in spelling, where the reasons from derivation are the same; and, preserving, as much as may be, the marks of etymology. In the same publication are given fifty of our author’s sonnets, in the style and manner of Spenser, twenty-seven of which had never before been printed. The rest, two excepted, had previously appeared in Dodsley’s and Pearch’s collections of poems. Two more original sonnets, together with an ode, occasioned by a lady’s being burnt with curling-irons, may be seen in the sixth volume of Nichols’s Select Collection; but as a poet, he has not been so highly esteemed as in his critical capacity, although it has been said that his sonnets are formed upon the model of the Italians of the good age, and of their imitators among us, Spenser and Milton. They discover, however, the traces of an elegant mind.

, an eminent philosopher, poet, orator, historian, and physician, was of Agrigentum, in Sicily, and flourished about the eighty-fourth olympiad, or B. C. 44-4. He appears from his doctrine to have been of the Italic school; but under what master he studied philosophy is uncertain. After the death of his father Meto, who was a wealthy citizen of Agrigentum, he acquired great weight among his fellow-citizens, by espousing the popular party, and favouring democratic measures. He employed a large share of his paternal estate in giving dowries to young women, and marrying them to men of superior rank. His consequence in the state became at length so great, that he ventured to assume several of the distinctions of royalty, particularly a purple robe, a golden girdle, a Delphic crown, and a train of attendants; always retaining a grave and commanding aspect. He was a determined enemy to tyranny, and is said to have employed his influence in establishing and defending the rights of his countrymen.

The skill which Empedocles possessed in medicine and natural philosophy enabled him to perform many wonders, which he passed upon the superstitious and credulous multitude for miracles. He pretended to drive away noxious winds from his country, and hereby put a stop to epidemical diseases. He is said to have checked, by the power of music, the madness of a young man, who was threatening his enemy with instant death; to have cured Pantha, a woman of Agrigentum, whom all the physicians had declared incurable; to have restored a woman to life, who had lain breathless for thirty days; and to have done many other things equally astonishing, after the manner of Pythagoras: on account of which he was an object of universal admiration, so that when he came to the Olympic games, the eyes of all the people were fixed upon him. Besides medical skill, Empedocles possessed poetical talents. The fragments of his verses, which are dispersed through various ancient writers, have been in part collected by Henry Stephens, in the “Poesis philosophica,” 1574, 8vo. This circumstance affords some ground for the opinion of Fabricius, that Empedocles was the real author of that ancient fragment which bears the name of “The Golden Verses of Pythagoras.” He is said also to have been a dramatic poet; but Empedocles the tragedian was another person; Suidas, upon some unknown authority, calls him the grandson of the philosopher. Georgias Leontinus, a celebrated orator, was his pupil; whence it may seem reasonable to infer, that he was an eminent master of the art of eloquence. The particulars of his death are variously related. Some report, that during the night, after a sacred festival, he was conveyed away towards the heavens, amidst the splendour of celestial light; others that he threw himself into the burning crater of Mount Etna. Much reliance cannot be placed on either of these stories. There is more probability that towards the close of his life he went into Greece, and died there, at what time is uncertain. Aristotle says he died at sixty years of age. The substance of his philosophy, according to Brucker, is this: It is impossible to judge of truth by the senses without the assistance of reason; which is. led, by the intervention of the senses, to the contemplation of the real nature, and immutable essences, of things. The first principles of nature are of two kinds, active and passive the active is unity, or God the passive, matter. The active principle is a subtle, ethereal fire, intelligent and divine, which gives being to all things, and animates all things, and into which all things will be at last resolved. Many daemons, portions of the divine nature, wander through the region of the air, and administer human affairs. Man, and also all brute animals, are allied to the divinity; and it is therefore unlawful to kill or eat animals. The world is one whole, circumscribed by the revolution of the sun, and surrounded, not by a vacuum, but by a. mass of inactive matter. The first material principles of the four elements are similar atoms, indefinitely small, and of a round form. Matter, thus divided into corpuscles, possessed the primary qualities of friendship and discord, by means of which, upon the first agitation of the original chaotic mass, homogeneous parts were united, and heterogeneous separated, and the four elements composed, of which all bodies are generated. The motion of the corpuscles, which excites the qualities of friendship and discord, is produced by the energy of intellectual fire, or divine mind; all motion, and consequently all life and being, must therefore be ascribed to God. The first principles of the elements are eternal nothing can begin to exist, or be annihilated but all the varieties of nature are produced by combination or separation. In the formation of the world, ether was first secreted from chaos, then fire, then earth; by the agitation of which were produced water and air. The heavens are a solid body of air, crystallized by fire. The stars are bodies composed of fire, they are fixed in the crystal of heaven; but the planets wander freely beneath it. The sun is a fiery mass, larger than the moon, which is in the form of a hollow plate, and twice as far from the sun as from the earth. The soul of man consists of two parts, the sensitive, produced from the same principles with the elements; and the rational, which is a daemon sprung from the divine soul of the world, and sent down into the body as a punishment for its crimes in a former state, where it transmigrates till it is sufficiently purified to return to God.

, an ancient Latin poet, was born at Radian, a town in Calabria, anno U. C. 514, or B.C. 237. That this was the place of his nativity, we learn from himself, as well as from others; and the Florentines at this day claim him for their fellow-citizen. He came at first to Rome, when M. P. Cato was quaestor, whom he had instructed in the Greek language in Sardinia. C. Nepos informs us, that “Cato, when he was praetor, obtained the province of Sardinia, from whence, when he was quaestor there before, he had brought Ennius to Rome:” which we esteem,“says the historian,” no less than the noblest triumph over Sardinia.“He had a house on the Aventine mount; and, by his genius, conversation, and integrity, gained the friendship of the most eminent perspns in the city. Among these were Galba and M. Fulvius Nobilior, by whose son (who, after his father’s example, was greatly addicted to learning) he was made free of the city. He attended Fulvius in the war against the Ætolians and Ambraciotae, and celebrated his victories over those nations. He fought likewise under Torquatus in Sardinia, and under the elder Scipio; and in all these services distinguished himself by his uncommon valour. He was very intimate with Scipio Nasica, as appears from Cicero: Nasica, going one day to visit Ennius, and the maid-servant saying that he was not at home, Scipio found that she had told him so by her master’s orders, and that Ennius was at home. A few days after, Ennius coming to Nasica, and inquiring for him at the door, the latter called out to him,” that he was not at home.“Upon which Ennius answering,” What do I not know your voice“Scipio replied,” You have a great deal of assurance for I believed your maid, when she told me, that you were not at home and will not you believe me myself?" Ennius was a man of uncommon virtue, and lived in great simplicity and frugality. He died at the age of seventy years; and his death is said to have been occasioned by the gout, contracted by an immoderate use of wine, of which he always drank very freely before he applied himself to writing. This Horace affirms:

He was interred in the Appian way, within a mile of the city, in Scipto’s sepulchre; who had so great an esteem and friendship for him, that he ordered him to be buried in his sepulchre, and a statue to be erected to him upon his monument. Valer. Maximus observes, that “Scipio paid these honours to Ennius, because he thought that his own, actions received a lustre from that poet’s writings; and was persuaded, that the memory of his exploits would last as long as the Roman empire should flourish.”

, a celebrated Latin poet of Hesse, tras born January 6, 1488, under a tree in the fields, and therefore probably of very obscure parents. He became, however, so famous by his poems, as to be called the German Homer. He taught the belles lettres at Herfort and Nuremberg, then at Marpurg, where the landgrave of Hesse loaded him with favours. Eobanus was given to his country vice of excessive drinking, in which he prided himself. He died October 5, 1540, at Marpurg. He translated Theocritus into Latin verse, Basil, 1531, 8vo, and Homer’s Iliad, Basil, 1540, 8vo, &c. His “Eclogues,” Haloe, 1539, 8vo, and “De tuenda bona Valetudine,” Erancforr, 1564, 8vo, are particularly admired. His style is natural, easy, clear, and correct; nor had' Germany, at that time, produced much that was superior. His life was written by Joachim Camerarius, Nuremb. 1553, 8vo.

, an ancient poet and philosopher, who flourished about 440 B. C. was born in the island of Coos, and was carried, as we are told by Laertius, into Sicily when he was but three months old, first to Megara, and afterwards to Syracuse; which may well enough justify Horace and others in calling him. a Sicilian. He had the honour of being taught by Pythagoras himself; and he and Phormus are said to have invented comedy in Syracuse, though others have pretended to that discovery. He wrote fifty -five, or, according to others, thirty-five plays; but his vrorks have been so long lost, that even their character is scarcely on record. Horace only has preserved the memory of one of his excellences, by commending Plautus for imitaiing it; and that is, the keeping his subject always in view, and following the intrigue very closely: Plautus ad cxemplum Siculi properare Epicharmi, &c.

, a Cretan philosopher and poet, of the city of Gnossus in Crete, flourished in that island, when Solon was in great reputation at Athens, in the sixth century B. C. Many fabulous stories are told of him, and it is not easy to separate the true from the false part of his history. He was supposed to have been the son of the nymph Balte. He was a man venerable for religious observances, and it was the general persuasion, all over Greece, that he was inspired by some heavenly genius; and that he was frequently favoured with divine revelations. He devoted himself wholly to poetry, and every thing connected with divine worship. He was the first who introduced the consecration of temples, and the purification of countries, cities, and likewise private houses. He had little esteem for the people of his own country. St. Paul, in his epistle to Titus, when speaking of the Cretans, cites one of his verses, where he says (according to our translation), “The Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, slow bellies;” which, however, Fenelon translates less obscurely in these words, “They were great liars, indolent, yet malignant brutes.”

He left Italy soon after his pupil, without understanding the language of that country, which made his journey less advantageous as well as pleasant to him. It is said that when he was at Venice, he met Bernard Ocricularius of Florence, who had written Latin history in the manner of Sallust Erasmus desired a conversation with him, and addressed him in Latin: but the Florentine obstinately refused to speak any thingexcept Italian; which Erasmus not understanding, they separated without edification on either part. Why Erasmus should not understand Italian, it is. not difficult to conceive; but it is somewhat singular that he should be ignorant of French, which was in a great measure the case, though he had spent so much time in that country. In his way from Italy to England, he passed first to Curia, then to Constance, and so through the Martian forest by Brisgau to Strasburgh, and from thence by the Rhine to Holland; whence, after making some little stay at Antwerp and Louvain, he took shipping for England. Some of his friends and patrons, whom he visited as he came along, made him great offers, and wished him to settle among them; but his heart was at this time entirely fixed upon spending the remainder of his days in England, not only upon account of his former connections and friendships, which were very dear to him, bxit the great hopes that had lately been held out to him, of ample preferment, provided he would settle there. Henry VII. died in April 1509; and Henry VIII. his son and successor, was Erasmus’s professed friend and patron, and had for some time held a correspondence with him by letters. That prince was no sooner upon the throne, than Montjoy wrote to Erasmus to hasten him into England, promising him great things on the part of the king, and of Warham archbishop of Canterbury, though indeed he had no particular commission to that end from either the one or the other. More, and some other friends, wrote him also letters to the same purpose. But he had no sooner arrived in the beginning of 1510, than he perceived that liis expectations had been raised too high, and began secretly to wish that he had not quitted Rome. However, he took no notice of the disappointment, but pursued his studies with his usual assiduity. At his arrival in England he lodged with More; and while he was there, to divert himself and his friend, he wrote, within the compass of a week, “Encomium Moriæ,” or “The praise of Folly,” a copy of which was sent to France, and printed there, but with abundance of faults; yet it became so popular, that in a few months it went through seven editions. The general design of this ludicrous piece is to shew, that there are fools in all stations, and more particularly to expose the errors and follies of the court of Rome, not sparing the pope himself; so that he was never after regarded as a true son of that church. It was highly acceptable to persons of quality, but as highly offensive to dissolute monks, who disapproved especially of the Commentary which Lystrius wrote upon it, and which is printed with it, because it unveiled several things from whose obscurity they drew much profit. Soon after he came to England he published a translation of the Hecuba of Euripides into Latin verse; and, adding some poems to it, dedicated it to archbishop Warham. The prelate received the dedication courteously, yet made the poet only a small present. As he was returning from Lambeth, his friend Grocyn, who had accompanied him, asked, “what present he had received” Erasmus replied, laughing, “A very considerable sum” which Grocyn would not believe. Having told him what it was, Grocyn observed, that the prelate was rich and generous enough to have made him a much handsomer present; but certainly suspected that he had presented to him a book already dedicated elsewhere. Erasmus asked, “how such a suspicion could enter his head” “Because,” said Grocyn, “such hungry scholars as you, who stroll about the world, and dedicate books to noblemen, are apt to be guilty of such tricks.”

, a Spanish poet, was the son of a celebrated lawyer, and was born at Madrid in 1533. He was brought up in the palace of Philip II. and fought under him at the famous battle of Saint Quentin in 1557, after which being desirous to acquire the knowledge of different countries and their inhabitants, he travelled over France, Italy, Germany, and England. Having heard, while at London, that some provinces of Peru and Chili had revolted against the Spaniards, their conquerors and their tyrants, he was seized with an ardent longing to signalize his courage on this new scene of action. Accordingly he set out on the voyage; and soon after his arrival, he passed the frontiers of Chili into a little mountainous region, where he maintained a long and painful war against the rebels, whom at length he defeated. It is this war which makes the subject of his poem of the “Araucana,” so called from the name of the country, and which has very considerable merit, and several passages glow with all the charms of animated verse. The descriptions are rich, though defective in variety; but we can trace no plan, no unity of design, no probability in the episodes, nor harmony in the characters. This poem consists of more than 36 cantos, the length of which is produced by many repetitions and tedious details. Mr. Hayley, however, has bestowed considerable attention on it in his “Essay on Epic poetry,” with a view to recommend it to the English reader. It was printed, for the first time, in 1597, 12mo; but the best edition is that of Ma1632, 2 vols. 12mo. The time of his death is hot known, nor can he be traced beyond 1596.

, a celebrated wit and comic writer in the reigns of king Charles II. and king James II. is said to have been descended of an ancient family in Oxfordshire, or allied to it He was born about 1636, not very distant from London, it is believed, as some of his nearest relations appear to have been settled not far from this metropolis. It is thought he was partly educated at the university of Cambridge, but travelled into France, and perhaps Flanders also, in his younger years. At his retu,rn, he studied for a while the municipal laws at one of the inns of court in London; but the polite company he kept, and his own natural talents, inclining him rather to court the favour of the muses and cultivate the belles lettres, he produced his first dramatic performance in 1664, entitled “The Comical Revenge; or, Love in a tub,” which brought him acquainted, as he himself informs us, with Charles afterwards earl of Dorset, to whom it is dedicated. Its fame also, with his lively humour, engaging conversation, and refined taste in the fashionable gallantries of the town, soon established him in the societies, and rendered him the delight of those leading wits among the quality and gentry of chief rank and distinction, who made pleasure the chief business of their lives, and rendered that reign the most dissolute of any in our history; such as George Villiers duke of Bucks, John Wilmot earl of Rochester, sir Car Scroop, sir Charles Sedley, Henry Savile, &c. Encouraged by his first success, he brought another comedy upon the stage, in 1668, entitled “She would if she could,” which gained him no less applause, and it was supposed he would now make the stage his principal pursuit, but whether from indolence, or his pleasurable engagements, there was an interval of above seven years before the appearance of his next and last dramatic production, entitled “The Man of Mode; or, Sir Fopling Flutter.” It is dedicated by him to the duchess of York, who then was Mary, the daughter of the duke of Modena; in the service of which duchess our author, as he says in his said dedication, then was. This play still exalted his reputation, even above what both the former had done; he having therein, as perhaps he had also partly set himself some example in the others before, shadowed forth (but somewhat disguisedly) some of his noted acquaintance and contemporaries, who were known, or thought to be so, by his said draughts of them, to many of the audience; and this rendered the play very popular. In the famous poem written by the lord Rochester, after the example of sir John, Suckling’s upon the like subject, Apollo finds some plausible pretence of exception to the claim of every poetical candidate for the laurel crown; therefore our poet, by the scheme or drift of it, could escape no less disappointment than the rest: yet his lordship, to do him ample justice, has sufficiently shewed his merits to it, in every thing but his perseverance to exert them; which, after having first of all discarded Mr. Dryden, he next expresses thus: