menced a tragedy, entitled "Pausanias," sketches of which he submitted to the criticism both of Gray and Walpole, in like manner as Gray, at a somewhat later period, submitted his unfinished sketches of "Agrippina" to West. Toward the close of the last century, it may be mentioned, a portion of "Pausanias was still extant in MS.

In 1738 West, having removed from Christ Church to London, settled himself in the Inner Temple, and commenced the study of the law. It was in vain, however, that he endeavoured to take an interest in his new profession. Three years afterward, for instance, we find him writing to Walpole that he has contracted a "natural aversion" for his adopted calling; that the course he has taken to qualify himself for it, instead of increasing has diminished his narrow income; that he cannot hope to maintain himself by "poetry and Pausanias;" that, on the other hand, the war with which Europe is threatened holds out to him the prospect of an opportunity "either of distinguishing himself or being knocked on the head;" that, according to the convictions at which he has arrived, "there is little in life to make one fond of it;" that, were he to purchase a commission, it would be tantamount to stripping him of the little fortune he has left; and accordingly, under these circumstances, he expresses a mournful hope that his friends will exert themselves to procure a pair of colours for him, on

conditions less disproportioned to his diminished

resources.

Whether West's constitution had, at any period of his short life, been strong enough to enable him to bear up against the fatigues and excitement of the military profession may reasonably be doubted. At all events, before eleven months had elapsed from the date of the foregoing appeal to Walpole, and before the desired opportunity of testing his physical powers in the army had presented itself, he was sinking into the grave. For some time past, indeed, though apparently cheered by occasional rays of hope, his health had been irremediably on the decline. "Your letter," writes Walpole to him, only twenty-eight days before his death, "made me quite melancholy, till I came to the postscript of fine weather. Your so suddenly finding the benefit of it makes me trust you will entirely recover your health and spirits with the warm season. Nobody wishes it more than I: nobody has more reason, as few have known you so long." In the meantime, when Gray, in the month of September, 1741, had returned to London from his travels in France and Italy, he found his amiable friend not only prostrated by illness, but overwhelmed by family misfortunes. Since then, however, the spring, as we have seen by Walpole's letter, had faintly revived him, and accordingly, leaving Gray behind him in London, where they had lately been fellow residents, he

set out on a visit to Hertfordshire. Thither it was that Gray at this time forwarded to him in MS. his beautiful ode on the spring, but, before it reached Hertfordshire, the invalid was no more. His death took place at Pope's, in the parish of Hatfield, on the 1st of June, 1742, at the age of twenty-six. West's remains rest in the chancel of Hatfield Church, beneath a stone which once bore the following inscription:

"Here lieth the body of Richard West, Esq., only son of the Right Hon. Richard West, Esq., Lord Chancellor of Ireland, who died the 1st of June, 1742, in the twenty-sixth year of his age."

I

The loss of West was deplored in verse both by Gray and Ashton; by the former in a well-known elegiac sonnet commencing

"In vain to me the smiling mornings shine;"

and by Ashton in the following stanzas, which have not the less merit that they are little known:

"While surfeited with life, each hoary knave
Grows, here, immortal, and eludes the grave,

Thy virtues immaturely met their fate,
Cramp'd in the limit of too short a date!

"Thy mind, not exercised so oft in vain,

In health was gentle, and composed in pain:

'Unfortunately, at the recent restoration of Hatfield Church, no trace of this interesting memorial could be discovered; neither has it since been replaced by any more modern tribute to the poet's genius.

Successive trials still refined thy soul,
And plastic patience perfected the whole.

"A friendly aspect, not suborned by art,

An eye, which looked the meaning of thy heart; A tongue, with simple truth and freedom fraught, The faithful index of thy honest thought.

"Thy pen disdained to seek the servile ways
Of partial censure, and more partial praise:
Through every tongue it flowed in nervous ease,
With sense to polish, and with wit to please.

"No lurking venom from thy pencil fell;

Thine was the kindest satire, living well:

The vain, the loose, the base, might blush to see

In what thou wert, what they themselves should be.

"Let me not charge on Providence a crime,

That snatched thee, blooming, to a better clime,
To raise those virtues to a higher sphere:

Virtues! which only could have starved thee here."

CHAPTER XXXI.

GEORGE MONTAGU, EARL OF HALIFAX, K. G.

GEORGE MONTAGU, Viscount Sunbury, - for such was the title borne by the third Earl of Halifax during his nonage, — was born on the 5th of October, 1716. Amiable, popular, strikingly elegant in his figure and manners, and endowed with abilities much beyond the common average, there was probably, of the young men who about the same time as himself quitted Eton for the university, not one who carried away with him a happier combination of mental and personal accomplishments than the heir of the Halifax branch of the house of Montagu. In the words of Richard Cumberland, the dramatic writer, who afterward served under him as his private secretary: "There was something extremely brilliant and more than commonly engaging in the person, manners, and address of the Earl of Halifax. He had been educated at Eton, and came with the reputation of a good scholar to Trinity College [Cambridge], where he established himself in the good opinion of the whole society; not only by his regular and orderly