pon, and charged him, as Pope thought, with Addison's approbation, as disaffected to the government. Even with this he was not satisfied; for, indeed, there is no appearance that any regard was paid to his clamours. He proceeded to grosser insults, and hung up a rod at Button's, with which he threatened to chastise Pope, who appears to have been extremely exasperated; for in the first edition of his Letters he calls Philips "rascal," and in the last charges him with detaining in his hands the subscriptions for Homer delivered to him by the Hanover Club. I suppose it was never suspected that he meant to appropriate the money; he only delayed, and with sufficient meanness, the gratification of him by whose prosperity he was pained. Men sometimes suffer by injudicious kindness; Philips became ridiculous, without his own fault, by the absurd admiration of his friends, who decorated him with honorary garlands, which the first breath of contradiction blasted. When upon the succession of the house of Hanover every whig expected to be happy, Philips seems to have obtained too little notice; he caught few drops of the golden shower, though he did not omit what flattery could perform. He was only made a commissioner of the lottery, (1717,) and, what did not much elevate his character, a justice of the peace. secretary,* added such preferments as enabled him to represent the county of Armagh in the Irish parliament. In December, 1726, he was made secretary to the Lord Chancellor; and in August, 1733, became judge of the Prerogative Court. After the death of his patron he continued some years in Ireland; but at last longing, as it seems, for his native country, he returned (1748) to London, having doubtless survived most of his friends and enemies, and among them his dreaded antagonist Pope. He found however the Duke of Newcastle still living, and to him he dedicated his poems, collected into a volume. Having purchased an annuity of four hundred pounds, he now certainly hoped to pass some years of life in plenty and tranquillity; but his hope deceived him: he was struck with a palsy, and died June 18,1749, in his seventy-eighth year. Of his personal character all that I have heard is, that he was eminent for bravery and skill in the sword, and that in conversation he was solemn and pompous. He had great sensibility of censure, if judgment may be made by a single story which I heard long ago from Mr. Ing, a gentleman of great eminence in Staffordshire. Philips," said he, "was once at table, when I asked him, How came thy king of Epirus to drive oxen, and to say, 'I'm goaded on by love?' After which question he never spoke again." Of "The Distrest Mother" not much is pre tended to be his own, and therefore it is no sub The success of his first play must naturally dispose him to turn his hopes towards the stage; he did not however soon commit himself to theject of criticism; his other two tragedies, I be mercy of an audience, but contented himself with the fame already acquired, till after nine years he produced (1722) "The Briton," a tragedy, which, whatever was its reception, is now neglected; though one of the scenes, between Vanoc, the British prince, and Valens, the Roman general, is confessed to be written with great dramatic skill, animated by spirit truly poetical. lieve, are not below mediocrity, nor above it. Among the Poems comprised in the late Collec tion, the Letter from Denmark may be justly praised; the Pastorals, which by the writer of the "Guardian" were ranked as one of the four genuine productions of the rustic muse, cannot surely be despicable. That they exhibit a mode of life which did not exist, nor ever existed, is not to be objected: the supposition of such a He had not been idle, though he had been si-state is allowed to pastoral. In his other poems lent; for he exhibited another tragedy the same year, on the story of "Humphrey Duke of Gloucester." This tragedy is only remembered by its title. he cannot be denied the praise of lines sometimes elegant; but he has seldom much force or much comprehension. The pieces that please best are those which, from Pope and Pope's adherents, His happiest undertaking was of a paper call-procured him the name of Namby Pamby; the ed "The Freethinker," in conjunction with as- poems of short lines, by which he paid his court sociates, of whom one was Dr. Boulter, who, to all ages and characters, from Walpole, the then only minister of a parish in Southwark, "steerer of the realm," to Miss Pulteney in the was of so much consequence to the government, nursery. The numbers are smooth and sprightthat he was made first, bishop of Bristol, and ly, and the diction is seldom faulty. They are afterwards primate of Ireland, where his piety not loaded with much thought, yet, if they had and his charity will be long honoured. been written by Addison, they would have had admirers: little things are not valued but when they are done by those who can do greater. It may easily be imagined that what was printed under the direction of Boulter would have nothing in it indecent or licentious; its In his translations from Pindar he found the title is to be understood as implying only free-art of reaching all the obscurity of the Theban dom from unreasonable prejudice. It has been bard, however he may fall below his sublimity; reprinted in volumes, but is little read; nor he will be allowed, if he has less fire, to have can impartial criticism recommend it as worthy more smoke. of revival. He has added nothing to English poetry, yet Boulter was not well qualified to write diur- at least half his book deserves to be read: pernal essays; but he knew how to practise the li-haps he valued most himself that part which the berality of greatness and the fidelity of friend- critic would reject. ship. When he was advanced to the height of ecclesiastical dignity, he did not forget the companion of his labours. Knowing Philips to be slenderly supported, he took him to Ireland, as partaker of his fortune; and, making him his * The Archbishop's "Letters," published in 1769, (tho originals of which are now in Christ Church library, Oxford,) were collected by Mr. Philips.-C. At his house in Hanover-street, and was buried in Audley Chapel.-C. WEST. GILBERT WEST is one of the writers of whom 1 by some who did not know his change of opinion, I regret my inability to give a sufficient account; the intelligence which my inquiries have obtained is general and scanty. in expectation of new objections against Christianity; and as infidels do not want malignity they revenged the disappointment by calling He was the son of the Rev. Dr. West; per-him a methodist. haps him who published "Pindar” at Oxford Mr. West's income was not large; and his about the beginning of this century. His mother friends endeavoured, but without success, to obwas sister to Sir Richard Temple, afterwards tain an augmentation. It is reported, that the Lord Cobham. His father, purposing to edu-education of the young prince was offered to cate him for the church, sent him first to Eton, him, but that he required a more extensive and afterwards to Oxford; but he was seduced power of superintendence than it was thought to a more airy mode of life, by a commission in proper to allow him. a troop of horse, procured him by his uncle. He continued some time in the army; though it is reasonable to suppose that he never sunk into a mere soldier, nor ever lost the love, or much neglected the pursuit, of learning; and afterwards, finding himself more inclined to civil employment, he laid down his commission, and engaged in business under the Lord Townshend, then secretary of state, with whom he attended the king to Hanover. His adherence to Lord Townshend ended in nothing but a nomination (May 1729) to be clerk-extraordinary of the privy council, which produced no immediate profit; for it only placed him in a state of expectation and right of succession, and it was very long before a vacancy admitted him to profit. | In time, however, his revenue was improved; he lived to have one of the lucrative clerkships of the privy council, (1752;) and Mr. Pitt at last had it in his power to make him treasurer of Chelsea Hospital. He was now sufficiently rich; but wealth came too late to be long enjoyed; nor could it secure him from the calamities of life; he lost (1755) his only son; and the year after (March 26) a stroke of the palsy brought to the grave one of the few poets to whom the grave might be without its terrors. eminently happy; in the second he has a little strayed from Pindar's meaning, who says, “if thou, my soul, wishest to speak of games, look not in the desert sky for a planet hotter than the sun; nor shall we tell of nobler games than those of Olympia." He is sometimes too paraphrastical. Pindar bestows upon Hiero an epithet, which, in one word, signifies delighting in horses; a word which, in the translation, generates these lines: Of his translations I have only compared the first Olympic ode with the original, and found my expectation surpassed, both by its elegance and its exactness. He does not confine himself to his author's train of stanzas, for he saw that Soon afterwards he married, and settled him- the difference of the languages required a differself in a very pleasant house at Wickham, inent mode of versification. The first strophe is Kent, where he devoted himself to learning and to piety. Of his learning the late Collection exhibits evidence, which would have been yet fuller, if the dissertations which accompany his version of Pindar had not been improperly omitted. Of his piety the influence has, I hope, been extended far by his "Observations on the Resurrection," published in 1747, for which the university of Oxford created him a doctor of laws by diploma, (March 30, 1748,) and would doubtless have reached yet further, had he lived to complete what he had for some time meditated, the evidences of the truth of the "New Testament." Perhaps it may not be without effect to tell, that he read the prayers of the public liturgy every morning to his family, and that on Sunday evening he called his servants into the parlour, and read to them first a sermon and then prayers. Crashaw is now not the only maker of verses to whom may be given the two venerable names of poet and saint. Hiero's royal brows, whose care Tends the courser's noble breed, Pleas'd to train the youthful steed. Pindar says of Pelops, that "he came alone in Near the billow-beaten side which however is less exuberant than the former He was very often visited by Lyttelton and Pitt, who, when they were weary of faction and A work of this kind must, in a minute examidebates, used at Wickham to find books and quiet, a decent table, and literary conversation. nation, discover many imperfections; but West's There is at Wickham a walk made by Pitt; version, so far as I have discovered it, appears to and, what is of far more importance, at Wick-be the product of great labour and great abilities. ham Lyttelton received that conviction which produced his "Dissertation on St. Paul." These two illustrious friends had for a while listened to the blandishments of infidelity; and when West's book was published, it was bought Certainly him. It was published in 1697.-C. His Institution of the Garter (1742) is written with sufficient knowledge of the manners that prevailed in the age to which it is referred, and with great elegance of diction; but, for want of a process of events, neither knowledge nor elegance preserves the reader from weariness. His Imitations of Spenser are very successfully GOLLINS. performed, both with respect to the metre, the language, and the fiction; and being engaged at once by the excellence of the sentiments, and the artifice of the copy, the mind has two amusements together. But such compositions are not to be reckoned among the great achievements of intellect, because their effect is local and temporary; they appeal not to reason or passion, but to memory, and presuppose an accidental or artificial state of mind. An imitation of Spenser is nothing to a reader, however acute, by whom Spenser has never been perused. Works of this kind may deserve praise, as proofs of great industry, and great nicety of observation: but the highest praise, the praise of genius, they cannot claim. The noblest beauties of art are those of which the effect is coextended with ra- of THERE is in the "Adventurer" a paper COLLIN S. WILLIAM COLLINS was born at Chichester, on the twenty-fifth day of December, about 1720. His father was a hatter of good reputation. He was in 1733, as Dr. Warburton has kindly informed me, admitted scholar of Winchester College, where he was educated by Dr. Burton. His English exercises were better than his Latin. He first courted the notice of the public by some verses to "A Lady Weeping," published in "The Gentleman's Magazine." In 1740, he stood first in the list of the scholars to be received in succession at New College, but unhappily there was no vacancy. This was the original misfortune of his life. He became a commoner of Queen's College, probably with a scanty maintenance; but was, in about half a year, elected a demy of Magdalen College, where he continued till he had taken a bachelor's degree, and then suddenly left the university; for what reason I know not that he told. He now (about 1744) came to London a literary adventurer, with many projects in his head, and very little money in his pockets. He designed many works; but his great fault was irresolution; or the frequent calls of immediate necessity broke his scheme, and suffered him to A man doubtful of pursue no settled purpose. his dinner, or trembling at a creditor, is not much disposed to abstracted meditation, or remote inquiries. He published proposals for a history of the Revival of Learning; and I have heard him speak with great kindness of Leo the Tenth, and with keen resentment of his tasteless successor. But probably not a page of his history was ever written. He planned several tragedies, but he only planned them. He wrote now and then odes and other poems, and did something, however little. About this time I fell into his company. His appearance was decent and manly; his knowledge considerable, his views extensive, his conversation elegant, and his disposition cheerful. By degrees I gained his confidence; and one day was admitted to him when he was immured by a bailiff, that was prowling in the street. On this occasion recourse was had to the book- But man is not born for happiness. Collins, who, while he studied to live, felt no evil but poverty, no sooner lived to study than his life was assailed by more dreadful calamities, disease and insanity. Having formerly written his character,* while upon my memory, I shall insert it here. perhaps it was yet more distinctly impressed "Mr. Collins was a man of extensive literature, and of vigorous faculties. He was acquainted not only with the learned tongues, but with the Italian, French, and Spanish languages. He had employed his mind chiefly upon works of fiction, and subjects of fancy; and, by indulg ing some peculiar habits of thought, was emition which pass the bounds of nature, and to nently delighted with those flights of imaginawhich the mind is reconciled only by a passive acquiescence in popular traditions. He loved to rove through the meanders of enchantment, fairies, genii, giants, and monsters; he delighted to gaze on the magnificence of golden palaces, "This was however the character rather of to repose by the water-falls of Elysian gardens. wildness, and the novelty of extravagance, were his inclination than his genius; the grandeur of always desired by him, but not always attained. Yet, as diligence is never wholly lost, if his efforts sometimes caused harshness and obscurity, they likewise produced in happier moments *In the "Poetical Calendar," a collection of poems by Fawkes and Woty, in several volumes, 1763, &c.-C. sublimity and splendour. This idea which he once delighted to converse, and whom I yet rehad formed of excellence led him to oriental fic-member with tenderness. tions and allegorical imagery, and perhaps, while He was visited at Chichester, in his last illhe was intent upon description, he did not suffi-ness, by his learned friends Dr. Warton and his ciently cultivate sentiment. His poems are the brother, to whom he spoke with disapprobation production of a mind not deficient in fire, nor of his Oriental Eclogues, as not sufficiently exunfurnished with knowledge either of books or pressive of Asiatic manners, and called them his life, but somewhat obstructed in its progress by Irish Eclogues. He showed them, at the same deviation in quest of mistaken beauties. time, an ode inscribed to Mr. John Hume, on the superstitions of the Highlands; which they thought superior to his other works, but which no search has yet found.* His disorder was not alienation of mind, but general laxity and feebleness, a deficiency rather of his vital than his intellectual powers. What he spoke wanted neither judgment nor spirit; but a few minutes exhausted him, so that he was forced to rest upon the couch, till a short cessation restored his powers, and he was again "His morals were pure, and his opinions pious: in a long continuance of poverty, and long habits of dissipation, it cannot be expected that any character should be exactly uniform. There is a degree of want by which the freedom of agency is almost destroyed; and long association with fortuitous companions will at last relax the strictness of truth, and abate the fervour of sincerity. That this man, wise and virtuous as he was, passed almost unentangled through the snares of life, it would be prejudiceable to talk with his former vigour. and temerity to affirm; but it may be said that The approaches of this dreadful malady he at least he preserved the source of action unpol-began to feel soon after his uncle's death; and, luted, that his principles were never shaken, with the usual weakness of men so diseased, that his distinctions of right and wrong were he eagerly snatched that temporary relief with never confounded, and that his faults had no-which the table and the bottle flatter and seduce. thing of malignity or design, but proceeded from But his health continually declined, and he grew some unexpected pressure, or casual temptation. more and more burdensome to himself. "The latter part of his life cannot be remem- To what I have formerly said of his writings bered but with pity and sadness. He languish- may be added, that his diction was often harsh, ed some years under that depression of mind unskilfully laboured, and injudiciously selected. which enchains the faculties without destroying He affected the obsolete when it was not worthy them, and leaves reason the knowledge of right of revival; and he puts his words out of the comwithout the power of pursuing it. These clouds mon order, seeming to think, with some later which he perceived gathering on his intellects, candidates for fame, that not to write prose is he endeavoured to disperse by travel, and passed certainly to write poetry. His lines commonly into France; but found himself constrained to are of slow motion, clogged and impeded with yield to his malady, and returned. He was for clusters of consonants. As men are often essome time confined in a house of lunatics, and teemed who cannot be loved, so the poetry of afterwards retired to the care of his sister in Chi-Collins may sometimes extort praise when it chester, where death, in 1756, came to his relief. gives little pleasure. "After his return from France, the writer of this character paid him a visit at Islington, where he was waiting for his sister, whom he had directed to meet him: there was then nothing of disorder discernible in his mind by any but himself; but he had withdrawn from study, and travelled with no other book than an English Testament, such as children carry to the school: when his friend took it into his hand, out of curiosity to see what companion a man of letters had chosen, 'I have but one book,' said Collins, but that is the best."" Such was the fate of Collins, with whom I Mr. Collins's first production is added here from the "Poetical Calendar." TO MISS AURELIA C———R, ON HER WEEPING AT HER SISTER'S WEDDING. * It is printed in the late Collection.-R. DYER. JOHN DYER, of whom I have no other account to give than his own letters, published with Hughes's correspondence, and the notes added by the editor, have afforded me, was born in 1700, the second son of Robert Dyer, of Aberglasney in Caermarthenshire, a solicitor of great capacity and note. He passed through Westminster-school under the care of Dr. Freind, and was then called home to be instructed in his father's profession. But his father died soon, and he took no delight in the study of the law; but, having always amused himself with drawing, resolved to turn painter, and became pupil to Mr. Richardson, an artist then of high reputation, but now better known by his books than by his pictures. Having studied awhile under his master, he became, as he tells his friend, an itinerant painter, and wandered about South Wales, and the parts adjacent; but he mingled poetry with painting, and, about 1727, printed "Grongar Hill" in Lewis's Miscellany. Being, probably, unsatisfied with his own proficiency, he, like other painters, travelled to Italy; and coming back in 1740, published "The Ruins of Rome." If his poem was written soon after his return, he did not make much use of his acquisitions in painting, whatever they might be: for decline of health and love of study determined him to the church. He therefore entered into orders; and, it seems, married about the same time, a lady of the name of Ensor; "whose grandmother," says he, "was a Shakspeare descended from a brother of every body's Shakspeare;" by her, in 1756, he had a son and three daughters living. to require an elaborate criticism. "Grongar Hill" is the happiest of his productions: it is not indeed very accurately written; but the scenes which it displays are so pleasing, the images which they raise are so welcome to the mind, and the reflections of the writer so consonant to the general sense or experience of mankind, that when it is once read, it will be read again. The idea of "The Ruins of Rome" strikes more, but pleases less, and the title raises greater expectation than the performance gratifies. Some passages however, are conceived with the mind of a poet; as when, in the neighbourhood of dilapidating edifices, he says, Of "The Fleece," which never became po His ecclesiastical provision was for a long pular, and is now universally neglected, I can time but slender. His first patron, Mr. Harper, say little that is likely to recall it to attention. gave him, in 1741, Calthorp, in Leicestershire, The woolcomber and the poet appear to me of eighty pounds a year, on which he lived ten such discordant natures, that an attempt to years, and then exchanged it for Belchford, in bring them together is to couple the serpent with Lincolnshire, of seventy-five. His condition the fowl. When Dyer, whose mind was not now began to mend. In 1751, Sir John Heath- unpoetical, has done his utmost, by interesting cote gave him Coningsby, of one hundred and his reader in our native commodity, by interforty pounds a year; and in 1755, the Chancel-spersing rural imagery and incidental digreslor added Kirkby, of one hundred and ten. He sions, by clothing small images in great words, complains that the repair of the house at Co- and by all the writer's arts of delusion, the ningsby, and other expenses, took away the profit. meanness naturally adhering, and the irreveIn 1757, he published "The Fleece," his great-rence habitually annexed to trade and manufacest poetical work, of which I will not suppress a ture, sink him under insuperable oppression; ludicrous story. Dodsley, the bookseller, was and the disgust which blank verse, encumbering one day mentioning it to a critical visiter, with and encumbered, superadds to an unpleasing more expectation of success than the other could subject, soon repels the reader, however willing easily admit. In the conversation the Author's to be pleased. age was asked, and being represented as advanced in life, "He will," said the critic, "be buried in woollen." I Let me however honestly report whatever may counterbalance this weight of censure. have been told that Akenside, who, upon a He did not indeed long survive that publica- poetical question, has a right to be heard, said, tion, nor long enjoy the increase of his prefer-That he would regulate his opinion of the ments; for in 1758* he died. Dyer is not a poet of bulk or dignity sufficient *July 24th.-C. reigning taste by the fate of Dyer's 'Fleece;' for, if that were ill-received, he should not think it any longer reasonable to expect fame from excellence." SHENSTONE. WILLIAM SHENSTONE, the son of Thomas | poem of "The School-Mistress" has delivered Shenstone and Anne Pen, was born in Novem-to posterity; and soon received such delight ber, 1714, at the Leasowes in Hales-Owen, one from books, that he was always calling for fresh of those insulated districts which, in the division entertainment, and expected that, when any of of the kingdom, was appended, for some reason not now discoverable, to a distant county; and which, though surrounded by Warwickshire and Worcestershire, belongs to Shropshire, though perhaps thirty miles distant from any other part of it. He learned to read of an old dame whom his the family went to market, a new book should be brought him, which, when it came, was in fondness carried to bed and laid by him. It is said, that when his request had been neglected, his mother wrapt up a piece of wood of the same form, and pacified him for the night. As he grew older he went for a while to the |