holding a separate court, surrounded by the opposition; and the author received from the prince an invitation to attend his circle, where he was, while the immediate political object subsisted, received with great favour.

In the following year he published London; or, the Progress of Commerce, and the celebrated ballad of Hosier's Ghost, both written with a view to rouse the nation to resent the conduct of the Spaniards, and to promote what had seldom been known, a war called for by the people, and opposed by the ministry. He was on a visit at Stowe when he wrote this ballad, the most spirited of all his productions. The thought occurred to him during the night; he rose early, and

went into the garden to compose; in the heat of composition he got into the tulip-bed, and, unfortunately, having a stick in his hand, hewed and slashed all around him without mercy. Some of the company, who had seen him from the windows, and suspected how his mind was occupied, asked him at breakfast how he could think of destroying Lady Temple's favourite flowers. The poet, perfectly unconscious of what he had done, pleaded not guilty. There were, however, witnesses enough to convict him : he acknowledged that he had been composing in the garden; and was easily forgiven when he recited his ballad.

In 1739 and 1740 he took a prominent part in the opposition

aroused in the city to the proceedings of the ministry, an occupation that may have contributed to the deterioration of his business-affairs, which we find to have occurred at about this time, but which was afterwards, to a large extent, remedied. In 1754 he produced Boadicea, a tragedy, which had a run of nine nights at Drury-lane; and in 1761 he published Medea, a tragedy on the Greek model.

On the accession of George III., Mr. Glover, his affairs having been retrieved, became M.P. for Weymouth; and distinguished himself in the house by sound sense and considerable eloquence, applied to the discussion of commercial questions; and so much to the satisfaction of the mercantile classes, that in 1775 the West India merchants presented him with a service of plate, to the value of 3007. He died at his house in Albemarle-street, November 25, 1785, having completed for publication his epic entitled the Athenaid.

The life and soul of poetry were not in Glover (writes Southey); but he loved liberty with fervour, worthy of a Greek or of an Englishman; and Leonidas will continue to be read in spite of its bad language and disjointed versification, because the whole history of mankind furnishes no other subject so animated and so ennobling. His Athenaid wants this moral dignity. Themistocles is the chief personage; and it is impossible to conceal that Themistocles was rather a statesman than a hero. Still, the poem is a very pleasing one: it deserves to be better known, and should always accompany the Leonidas. Glover thought it the best of the two; it was the work of his old age, and, in the vanity of an honest heart, he would sometimes boast that it was longer than the Iliad.

EDWARD MOORE.

(1712-1757.)

Edward Moore, the son of a dissenting clergyman at Abingdon, in Berkshire, after unsuccessfully prosecuting the business of a linendraper in London and elsewhere, applied himself to literature as a livelihood. His first production, Fables for the Female Sex, by its popularity, justified this course. Not only in the freedom and ease of their versification, but in their pungency, they perhaps approached nearer to Gay than any of the numerous imitations of this author that were sent forth. This publication procured for its author, among other influential friendships, that of the Right Hon. Mr. Pelham; as his next work, The Trial of Selim the Persian, gained for him that of Lord Lyttelton, in compliment to whom the poem was composed. Of Mr. Moore's three dramatic compositions, The Foundling and Gil Blas were unsuccessful; but The Gamester has, from its first production, enjoyed great popularity. Many of the more effective passages were contributed by the eminent actor whose impersonation of the hero had doubtless much to do with the triumph of the tragedy.

In 1751 commenced the periodical paper called The World, founded by Lord Lyttelton, in conjunction with Dodsley, as a mode of providing an income for Moore, who was to receive all the profits

of the sale, which became considerable. Moore himself wrote sixtyone of the papers. In the last number of the periodical, the conclusion is made to depend on a fictitious incident, which had occasioned the death of the author; and by a singular coincidence, the death of Edward Moore took place (Feb. 28, 1757) while this last number was passing through the press in a collective form. Moore, writes Gay, was a poet who never had justice done him while living. There are few of the moderns who have a more correct taste, or a more pleasing manner of expressing their thoughts. It was upon his Fables he chiefly founded his reputation; yet they are by no means his best production.

REV. JOSIAH RELPH.
(1712-1743.)

Josiah Relph was the son of a Cumberland statesman, who, on a paternal inheritance which could not exceed, if it even amounted to, 301. a year, brought up a family of three sons and a daughter, one of whom he educated for a learned profession. Josiah was sent first to Appleby school, one of the many excellent schools of that county; then to Glasgow: he afterwards engaged in a grammar-school in his native place, Sebergham, in Cumberland, and ultimately succeeded to the perpetual curacy there; but there is no reason to believe that his income was ever more than 50l. a year.

It appears from his diary that his step-mother was harsh and unkind to him and his sister, whom he dearly loved, his father siding with his wife; an injury which he felt the more poignantly from his having, either entirely, or very near, made up to him all the expenses he had been at in his education. "In a lovely dell," says Mr. Boucher, who wrote, with much feeling, the life of this interesting man, "by a murmuring stream, under the canopy of heaven, he had provided himself a table and a stool, and a little raised seat or altar of sods; hither, in all his difficulties and distresses, in imitation of his Saviour, he retired and prayed; rising from his knees, he generally committed to paper the meditation on which he had been employed, or the resolves he had then formed. On businesses and emergencies which he deemed still more momentous, he withdrew into the church, and there walking in the aisles, in that awful solitude poured out his soul in prayer and praise to his Maker. His sermons were usually meditated in the churchyard after the evening had closed. The awe which his footsteps excited at that unusual hour is not yet forgotten by the villagers."

He continued in charge of the school, when his constitution was visibly giving way to that disorder which at length proved mortal, being accelerated by his ascetic mode of living. A few days before his death, he sent for all his pupils, one by one, into his chamber ;a more affecting interview it is impossible to conceive; one of them," writes Mr. Boucher, "who is still living, acknowledges that he never thinks of it without awe; it reminds him, he says, of the last judgment. He was perfectly composed, collected, and serene; his vale

dictory admonitions were not very long, but they were earnest and pathetic. He addressed each of them in terms somewhat different, adapted to their different tempers and circumstances; but in one charge he was uniform: lead a good life, that your death may be easy, and everlastingly happy." He died of consumption, before he had completed his 32d year. After many years a monument was erected to his memory by Mr. Boucher. His writings, Miscellany of Poems, with Pastorals in the Cumberland dialect, which evince no indication of his ascetic disposition, have been since published, the first edition being under the care of his pupil, the Rev. Mr. Denton. The characters, as well as the imagery, of these Cumbrian pastorals, were taken from real life; there was hardly a person in the village who could not point out those who had sat for two of the portraits, Cursty and Peggy.

WILLIAM THOMPSON.

(Died circa 1767.)

It is not certain where William Thompson was born; but in 1734 and 1736 he wrote Stella, sive Amores, Tres Libri, and six pastorals, none of which he thought proper to include in his published works.

It was on the banks of the Eden, which runs near Brough, that his "prattling Muse was first provoked to numbers," and where he wrote most of the smaller pieces that he thought worthy of preservation. At the usual age he went to Queen's College, Oxford.

In 1757 he published two volumes, or, as he quaintly terms them, tomes of poems, by subscription, with prefaces and notes, which give us a high idea of the author's modesty, piety, and learning.

When an undergraduate he wrote Gondibert and Bertha, a tragedy, taken from Davenant's poem of Gondibert. An earnest admirer of Spenser, he was, at a long distance of course, an imitator of that poet. His Nativity has much sweetness and gracefully solemn imagery.

His Hymn to May has received more praise than any of his other pieces; but his poem Sickness is the longest, and altogether, perhaps, the most successful effort of his Muse. The reflections are natural, and solemnly impressive. In borrowing the language of Scripture, he has employed it with less change of its original beauty than might have been expected. The poetical beauties of the Palace of Disease, the Delirious Dreams, and the greater part of the fourth book on Recovery, have much of the fire and enthusiasm of true genius.

In 1738 Thompson proceeded M.A. He afterwards became a fellow of his college, and succeeded to the living of South Weston and Hampton Poyle, in Oxfordshire. His poem Sickness was published in 1746. He became dean of Raphoe in Ireland, where, it is presumed, he died some time before the year 1767.

In 1751 he was an unsuccessful candidate for the poetry professorship, against Hawkins. In 1756 he published Gratitude, a poem, in honour of the donation by the Countess-Dowager of Pomfret.

William Shenstone, the son of Thomas Shenstone and Anne Pen, was born in November 1714, at the Leasowes in Hales-Owen, one of those insulated districts which, in the division 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 poem of The Schoolmistress has delivered to posterity; and soon received such delight from books, that he was always calling for fresh entertainment, and expected that, when any of 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 wrapped 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 grammar-school in Hales-Owen; and was placed afterwards with Mr. Crumpton, an eminent schoolmaster at Solihul, where he distinguished himself by the quickness of his progress.

When he was young (June 1724), he was deprived of his father,

* Johnson.