liam, who, the day after his accession, made him lord chamberlain of the household, and gave him afterwards the garter (1691). He happened to be among those that were tossed with the king in an open boat sixteen hours, in very rough and cold weather, on the coast of Holland. His health afterwards declined; and on Jan. 19, 1705-6, he died at Bath.

He was a man whose elegance and judgment were universally confessed, and whose bounty to the learned and witty was generally known. To the indulgent affection of the public, Lord Rochester bore ample testimony in this remark: "I know not how it is; but Lord Buckhurst may do what he will, yet is never in the wrong."

If such a man attempted poetry, we cannot wonder that his works were praised. Dryden, whom, if Prior tells truth, he distinguished by his beneficence, and who lavished his blandishments on those who are not known to have so well deserved them, undertaking to produce authors of our own country superior to those of antiquity, says, "I would instance your lordship in satire, and Shakespeare in tragedy." Would it be imagined that, of this rival to antiquity, all the satires were little personal invectives, and that his longest composition was a song of eleven stanzas ?*

The blame, however, of this exaggerated praise falls on the encomiast, not upon the author, whose performances are, what they pretend to be, the effusions of a man of wit-gay, vigorous, and airy. His verses to Howard show great fertility of mind; and his Dorinda has been imitated by Pope.

SAMUEL COLVIL.
(Born circa 1640.)

Samuel Colvil is the author of a poem which has been designated the Scottish Hudibras, but with very little claim to the title. The Mock Poem, or Whiggs' Supplication (London, 1681), is certainly an imitation of Butler; but it displays no portion of the English poet's wit or learning. Its popularity exceeded its merits; for it has been frequently reprinted. Colvil, who is celebrated by Cunningham, in his History of Great Britain, as a strenuous defender of the Protestant religion, is also the author of a theological work, entitled The Grand Impostor Detected; or, an Historical Dispute of the Papacy and Popish Religion. Part I. Edinburgh, 1673.

* Most of Lord Dorset's works have been collected in the late editions of our minor poets; and with the Duke of Buckingham's works are printed two of Lord Dorset's poems, and in Prior's posthumous works is one called "The Antiquated Coquet." His lordship and Waller are said to have assisted Mrs. Catherine Philips in her translation of Corneille's Pompey.

Sir Charles was the son of Sir John Sedley, of Aylesford in Kent, by a daughter of Sir Henry Savile, and was born about the year 1639. At seventeen years of age he became a fellow-commoner of Wadham College in Oxford; but taking no degree, retired to his own county, without either travelling or going to the inns of court. As soon as the Restoration was effected, he came to London in order to join the general jubilee; and then commenced wit, courtier, poet, and gallant. He was so much admired and applauded, that he began to be a kind of oracle among the poets; and no performance was approved or condemned till Sir Charles Sedley had given judgment. This made King Charles jestingly say to him, that nature had given him a patent to be Apollo's viceroy; and Lord Rochester bears testimony to the same, when he puts him foremost among the judges of poetry:

"I loath the rabble; 'tis enough for me,
If Sedley, Shadwell, Shepherd, Wycherley,
Godolphin, Butler, Buckhurst, Buckingham,
And some few more, whom I omit to name,
Approve my sense, I count their censure fame."

It happened by Sir Charles, in respect of the king, as is said of the famous Cardinal Richelieu, viz. that they who recommended him to the royal favour thereby supplanted themselves, and afterwards envied him; but with this difference between the cardinal and Sir Charles, that the latter was never ungrateful. When he had a taste of the court, as the king never would part with him, so he never would part from the king; and yet two things proved particularly

detrimental to him in it: first, his estate, so far from being improved, was diminished; and secondly, his morals were debauched. The king delighted in his conversation; and he was the dearer to his majesty on this account, that he never asked a favour: whereas some other courtiers, by their bold importunity, exhausted that prince's treasures, who could not deny a man who craved, though he hated his forwardness; nor could remember the silent indigence of his friend, though he applauded the modesty of it. He was deeply immersed in the public distractions of the times, and is said to have committed many debaucheries.

Sir Charles was chosen to serve for Romney in Kent, in that long parliament which began the 8th of May, 1661; and continued to sit for several parliaments after. He was extremely active for the Revolution; which was thought the more extraordinary, as he had received favours from King James II. That prince had an amour with a daughter of Sir Charles,-who was not very handsome, James being remarkable for not fixing upon beauties, and had created her Countess of Dorchester. This honour, far from pleasing, shocked Sir Charles; for great a libertine as he had been himself, he could not bear his daughter's dishonour, which he considered as made more conspicuous by this exaltation. He therefore conceived a hatred to James; and being asked one day why he appeared so warm for the Revolution, he answered, "From a principle of gratitude: for since his majesty has made my daughter a countess, it is fit I should do all I can to make his daughter a queen." He died towards 1728.

His works were printed in two volumes 8vo, 1719; and consist of plays, translations, songs, prologues, epilogues, and little occasional pieces. However amorously tender and delicate his poems, yet they have not much strength, nor do they afford great marks of genius. The softness of his verses is characterised by the Duke of Buckingham, who calls them Sedley's Witchcraft; and the art of insinuating loose principles in decent language is thus ascribed to him by the Earl of Rochester:

"Sedley has that prevailing, gentle art,
That can with a resistless charm impart
The loosest wishes to the chastest heart;
Raise such a conflict, kindle such a fire,
Betwixt declining virtue and desire,

'Till the poor vanquish'd maid dissolves away,
In dreams all night, in sighs and tears all day."

Sedley's plays are:

1. The Mulberry Garden. Comedy. 1668.

2. Antony and Cleopatra. Tragedy. 1667.

3. Bellamira; or, the Mistress. Comedy. 1687. While this play was acting, the roof of the play-house fell down, but very few were hurt, except the author; whose merry friend, Sir Fleetwood Shepherd, told him, that there was so much fire in the play, that it blew up the poet, house and all. Sir Charles answered, "No, the play was so heavy it brought down the house, and buried the poet in his own rubbish."

4. Beauty the Conqueror; or, the Death of Mark Antony. Tragedy. 5. The Grumbler. Comedy.

6. The Tyrant King of Crete. Tragedy.

THOMAS SHADWELL.

(1640-1692.)

Thomas Shadwell was descended of a good family in the county of Stafford, but born at Stanton Hall in Norfolk, a seat of his father's, about the year 1640. He was educated at Caius College, Cambridge; and afterwards placed in the Middle Temple, where he studied the law some time, and then went abroad. Upon his return from his travels, he applied himself to dramatic writing; and was so successful therein, that he became known to several persons of great wit and great quality, and was highly esteemed and valued by them. At the Revolution, he was, by his interest with the Earl of Dorset, made his majesty's historiographer and poet laureate: and when some persons urged that there were authors who had better pretensions to the laurel, his lordship is said to have replied, that "he did not pretend to determine how great a poet Shadwell might be, but was sure that he was an honest man.' This reply reflects great honour on Shadwell, but was not at all to the purpose. He succeeded Dryden as poet laureate, who had so warmly espoused the opposite interest, that at the Revolution he was dispossessed of his place. This, however, was a great mortification to Dryden, who resented the indignity very warmly, and immediately conceived an antipathy to Shadwell; of which he has given proof in his Mac-Flecknoe, where he says,

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"Others to some faint meaning make pretence,
But Shadwell never deviates into sense."

But all we learn hence is, that a satirist does not pay regard to truth when it interferes with the gratification of his spleen; for nothing can be more unjust than the idea these lines are intended to convey. Shadwell was not, indeed, so great a poet as Dryden; but Shadwell did not write nonsense. Many of his comedies have fine strokes of humour in them, and abound in original characters strongly marked and well sustained. Langbaine says, "There is nobody will deny this play (The Virtuoso) its due applause: at least, I know that the University of Oxford, who may be allowed competent judges of comedy, especially of such characters as Sir Nicholas Gimcrack and Sir Formal Trifle, applauded it. And as no man ever undertook to discover the frailties of such pretenders to this kind of knowledge before Mr. Shadwell, so none since Mr. Jonson's time ever drew so many different characters of humours, and with such success. Shadwell had great facility in writing, for in the preface to his Psyche he tells us that tragedy was written by him in five weeks. Thus the Earl of Rochester says,

"None seem to touch upon true comedy,

But hasty Shadwell and slow Wycherley;"

where, by the way, he not only allows him to be excellent in comedy, but seems even to give him the preference to Wycherley. And yet there is a saying of Lord Rochester which shows, that whatever opinion he had of his writings, he had a still better of his conversation; for he said, that "if he had burnt all he wrote, and printed all

he spoke, he would have had more wit and humour than any other poet." Shadwell, as appears from Rochester's Session of the Poets, was a great favourite with Otway, and lived in intimacy with him; which might, perhaps, be the occasion of Dryden's expressing so much contempt for Otway, which was still more ungrounded than his contempt for Shadwell. Shadwell died the 9th of December, 1692; and his death was occasioned, as some say, by too large a dose of opium, given him by mistake. A white marble monument, with his bust, was erected in Westminster Abbey by his son Sir John Shadwell; and his funeral sermon was preached by Dr. Nicholas Brady, the translator of the Psalms, who tells us, among other things, that "he was a man of great honesty and integrity, and had a real love of truth and sincerity, an inviolable fidelity and strictness to his word, an unalterable friendship wheresoever he professed it, and (however the world may be mistaken in him) a much deeper sense of religion than many others have who pretend to it more openly."

Besides his dramatic works, he wrote several other pieces of poetry; the chief of which are his congratulatory poem on the Prince of Orange's coming to England; another on Queen Mary; a translation of the tenth satire of Juvenal, &c. Shadwell, in his comedies, imitated Ben Jonson, and proposed him as his model of excellence. His plays are:

1. The Sullen Lovers; or, the Impertinent. Comedy.

2. The Humorist. Comedy.

3. The Royal Shepherdess. Tragi-Comedy. 1669.

4. The Virtuoso. Comedy. 1676.

5. Pysche. Tragedy. 1675.

6. The Libertine. Tragedy. 1676.

7. Epsom Wells. Comedy. 1676.

8. The History of Timon of Athens the Man-hater. 1678. In the dedication to George Duke of Buckingham, Shadwell modestly says, "This play was originally Shakespeare's, who never made more masterly strokes than in this; yet I can truly say I have made it into a play."

9. The Miser. Comedy (from Molière's Avare).

10. A true Widow. Comedy. 1679.

11. The Lancashire Witches, and Teague O'Divelly, the Irish Priest. Comedy. 1682.

12. The Woman Captain. Comedy.

13. The Squire of Alsatia. Comedy. 1688.

14. Bury Fair. Comedy. 1689. In the dedication he observes, "that this play was written during eight months' painful sickness, wherein all the several days in which he was able to write any part of a scene amounted not to one month, except some few, which were employed in indispensable business." 15. Amorous Bigot; with the second part of Teague O'Divelly. Comedy. 1690.

16. The Scowerers. Comedy. 1690.

17. The Volunteers; or, the Stock-Jobbers. Comedy.

In the epilogue, the character of Mr. Shadwell, who was then dead, was given.

ELKANAH SETTLE.

(1648-1724.)

Elkanah Settle was born at Dunstable, in Bedfordshire, in 1648, and in the 18th year of his age was entered commoner of Trinity