kind in our language. His Irene is remarkable for splendour of language, richness of sentiment, and harmony of numbers, but as a tragedy it is radically defective: it excites neither interest nor passion. Of his lesser pieces, the Prologue on opening the Theatre, in 1747, and that for the benefit of Milton's grand-daughter, are perfect models of elegant and manly address. His odes are effective in imagination and description; he always undervalued this species of poetry, and certainly has not improved it. A few of his translations are more happily executed, particularly the Dove of Anacreon. The poem on the death of his humble friend Levet is one of those pathetic appeals to the heart which are irresistible.

ROBERT MACKAY.

(1714-1778.)

The

Robert Mackay, commonly called Rob Donn, was born at Alt-naCaillich, in Strathmore, Sutherlandshire, in the year 1714. From childhood he gave proofs of poetic ability, and is said to have composed his first verse when only three years old. When six or seven years of age, the precocity of the boy induced a gentleman to take him into his service, or rather family. Although his talents thus early excited much attention, he did not receive even the rudiments of education (indeed, he never knew the alphabet); but, ere he had marked himself man, he had laid in an extensive stock of such lore, as had, from time immemorial, constituted the intellectual wealth of his country. This consisted of Highland traditions, legends, and ballads; his knowledge of which was quite extraordinary. gentleman into whose family Rob had been taken was an extensive grazier and cattle-dealer, and Rob was sent to tend calves on the hillside, till sufficiently advanced in strength and years to assist in driving droves of cattle to the markets of the South. His witty sayings, satires, elegies, and above all, his love songs, had already, however, begun to make him famous, not only in his native glen, but wherever the drovers, in their annual peregrinations, could carry an anecdote or stanza. His fame thus spreading, Donald Lord Reay, now took him under his charge, and appointed him to the office of bowman, or head cow-herd; a responsible situation in those days, and one which he faithfully discharged for several years. He was subsequently a drover; then for a short time he joined the first regiment of Sutherland Highlanders, but more in the capacity of bard to the regiment than as a private soldier. He afterwards settled as a small farmer, which occupation he followed till his death. He died on the 5th August, 1778, aged 64 years.

From Rob Donn being an uneducated man, his compositions must be looked upon as the efforts of unaided, uncultivated genius. His satirical pieces are generally considered his best efforts; but his elegies are also much admired, being simple and pathetic, and in many instances rising even to the sublime.~ Being all in the Gaelic language,

they are little known except in the Highlands, but there his lyrics, satires, and songs are much admired and sung by the natives, and have rendered our mountains and glens classic ground. His two most successful efforts are considered to be Marbhrann Eoghainn (Ewen's Flegy), in which he treats of the uncertainty of time, and the calls to preparation for death sounded to mankind, in the simultaneous fall of high and low, rich and poor; and Piobaireachd Iseabail Nic Aoidh, a song composed in honour of the daughter of his first patron.

Rob Donn married in early life, and had several children; but none of them, so far as is known, had any of the poetic talent of their father. His poems were collected by the Rev. Dr. Mackay, late of Dunoon, and published at Inverness in 1829, under the title of Orain le Rob Donn, bard ainmeil Dhuthaich Mhic Aoidh.

A granite monument of neat design has been erected to his memory in Durness Churchyard, with inscriptions in Gaelic, English, Greek, and Latin. The English inscription is as follows:

:

This tomb was erected at the expense of a few of his countrymen,
Ardent admirers of native talent

Elizabeth Carter, the eldest daughter of the Rev. Nicholas Carter, D.D., was born at Deal, December 17, 1717. She early applied herself with assiduity to the acquisition of learning, and to such purpose, that her acquaintance with both dead and living languages well nigh equalled that of the most eminent linguist that ever adorned her own, or any other period. She peculiarly delighted in Greek, and was more completely mistress of that language than she was of any other. Hebrew and Latin she understood well, and Arabic sufficiently to read it tolerably. Of modern languages, she was versed in French, Italian, Spanish, German, and Portuguese. Her knowledge of ancient and modern history was equally exact and extensive; of the sciences, astronomy was her favourite study, and in that she had made very considerable progress. Miss Carter was not only a great scholar, she was also one of the most pious and humble of Christians, one of the kindest of relations, one of the most affectionate of friends, one, in its most extensive sense, of the most charitable of women. Her publications were not numerous; she read more than she wrote, and thought more than she said. Her principal work was the translation of Epictetus, with an admirable introduction to it, which has passed through several editions. She also published, when

very young, a translation of Algarotti's Dialogues, and of Newton's Philosophy. The production which has procured the admission of her name into this work, was a small volume of poems, which have always been much read and admired, and of which four editions have been printed. These poems were principally contributions commenced in November 1734, when she was only seventeen, and continued for many years, to the Gentleman's Magazine. It was one of these contributions, a Riddle, printed in the number for February 1738, which procured for the authoress the esteem and friendship of Samuel Johnson, then himself struggling into fame. "I have composed a Greek epigram to Eliza," said Johnson to Cave; "and think she ought to be celebrated in as many different languages as Louis le Grand." The epigram, in Latin as well as Greek, appeared in the number for the following April (1738). Miss Carter, besides the works already mentioned, translated Crousaz's Examen of Pope's Essay on Man. Dr. Johnson advised her to "undertake a translation of Boethius De Consolatione, because there is prose and verse; and to put her name to it, when published;" but she does not appear to have adopted the suggestion. Miss Carter died universally respected, in Clarges Street, London, February 19, 1806.

FRANCIS FAWKES.*

'(1721-1777.)

Mr. Fawkes was born in Yorkshire, about the year 1721. He was educated at Leeds, under the care of the Rev. Mr. Cookson, vicar of that parish; from whence he went to Jesus College, Cambridge, and took his bachelor's degree in 1741, and his master's in 1745.

After being admitted into holy orders, he settled at Bramham, in Yorkshire, near the elegant seat of that name, belonging to Robert Lane, Esq., the beauties of which afforded him the first subject for his Muse. He published his Bramham Park in 1745, but without his name. His next publications were the Descriptions of May and Winter, from Gawen Douglas; the former in 1752, the latter in 1754: these brought him into considerable notice as a poetical antiquary; and it was hoped that he would have been encouraged to modernise the whole of that author's works.

About the year last mentioned he removed to the curacy of Croydon in Surrey, where he had an opportunity of courting the notice of Archbishop Herring, who resided there at that time, and to whom, among other complimentary verses, he addressed an ode on his grace's recovery, which was printed in Dodsley's collection. These attentions, and his general merit as a scholar, induced the archbishop to collate him, in 1755, to the vicarage of Orpington with St. Mary Cray, in Kent. In 1757 he had occasion to lament his patron's death in a pathetic elegy styled Aurelius, printed with his grace's Sermons in 1763, but previously in our author's volume

* Chalmers.

of poems in 1761; about the same time he married Miss Purrier of Leeds.

In April 1774, by the late Dr. Plumptre's favour, he exchanged his vicarage for the rectory of Hayes; this, except the office of chaplain to the Princess Dowager of Wales, was the only ecclesiastical promotion he obtained.

In 1761 he published by subscription a volume of original poems and translations, by which he got more profit than fame. His subscribers amounted to nearly 800; but no second edition was called for. A few pieces are now added from Mr. Nichols' collection and from the Poetical Calendar, a periodical selection of fugitive poetry, which he published in conjunction with Mr. Woty, an indifferent poet of that time. In 1767 he published an eclogue entitled Partridge Shooting, so inferior to his other productions, that the omission of it cannot be regretted. He was the editor also of a Family Bible, with notes, in 4to, which is a work of very inconsiderable merit; but to which he probably contributed only his name, a common trick among the retailers of "complete family Bibles."

His translations of Anacreon, Sappho, Bion, Moschus, and Musæus, appeared in 1760; and his Theocritus, encouraged by another liberal subscription, in 1767. His Appollonius Rhodius, a posthumous publication, completed by the Rev. Mr. Meen, of Emanuel College, Cambridge, made its appearance in 1780, when Mr. Fawkes's widow was enabled, by the kindness of the editor, to avail herself of the subscriptions, contributed, as usual, very liberally. Mr. Fawkes died August 26, 1777.

MARK AKENSIDE.*

(1721-1770.)

Mark Akenside was born on the 9th of November, 1721, at Newcastle-upon-Tyne. His father Mark was a butcher, of the Presbyterian sect; his mother's name was Mary Lumsden. He received the first part of his education at the Grammar-school of Newcastle; and was afterwards instructed by Mr. Wilson, who kept a private academy.

At the age of eighteen he was sent to Edinburgh, that he might qualify himself for the office of a Dissenting minister, and received some assistance from the fund which the Dissenters employ in educating young men of scanty fortune. But a wider view of the world opened other scenes, and prompted other hopes; he determined to study physic, and repaid that contribution, which, being received for a different purpose, he justly thought it dishonourable to retain.

Whether, when he resolved to be a Dissenting minister, he ceased to be a Dissenter, I know not. He certainly retained an unnecessary and outrageous zeal for what he called and thought liberty; a zeal which sometimes disguises from the world, and not rarely from the mind which it possesses, an envious desire of plundering wealth, or

* Johnson.

degrading greatness; and of which the immediate tendency is innovation and anarchy, an impetuous eagerness to subvert and confound, with very little care what shall be established.

Akenside was one of those poets who have felt very early the motions of genius, and one of those students who have very early stored their memories with sentiments and images. Many of his performances were produced in his youth; and his greatest work, The Pleasures of Imagination, appeared in 1744. I have heard Dodsley, by whom it was published, relate, that when the copy was offered him, the price demanded for it, which was 1207., being such as he was not inclined to give precipitately, he carried the work to Pope, who, having looked into it, advised him not to make a niggardly offer, for "this was no every-day writer."

In 1741 he went to Leyden in pursuit of medical knowledge; and three years afterwards (May 16, 1744,) became doctor of physic; having, according to the custom of the Dutch Universities, published a thesis or dissertation. The subject which he chose was The Origin and Growth of the Human Foetus; in which he is said to have departed, with great judgment, from the opinion then established; and to have delivered that which has been since confirmed and received.

Akenside was a young man, warm with every notion that by nature or accident had been connected with the sound of liberty; and, by an eccentricity which such dispositions do not easily avoid, a lover