dered by Swift as the satirical effusion of Pope, and by Pope as the humorous ridicule of Swift. His ballad of "Sally in our Alley" was more than once commended for its nature by Addison, and is sung to this day. Of the national song, "God save the King," it is supposed he was the author both of the words and the music. He was very successful on the stage, and wrote admirable burlesques of the Italian opera, in "The Dragon of Wantley," and "The Dragoness;" and the mock tragedy of "Chrononhotonthologos" is not forgotten. Among his Poems lie still concealed several original pieces; those which have a political turn are particularly good, for the politics of Carey were those of a poet and a patriot. I refer the politician who has any taste for poetry and humour, to "The Grumbletonians, or the Dogs without doors, a Fable," very instructive to those grown-up folks, "The Ins and the Outs." "Carey's Wish" is in this class; and, as the purity of election remains still among the desiderata of every true Briton, a poem on that subject by the patriotic author of our national hymn of "God save the King" may be acceptable. CAREY'S WISH. Cursed be the wretch that's bought and sold, For when election is not free, When liberty is put to sale For wine, for money, or for ale, This maxim in the statesman's school Learn, learn, ye Britons, to unite; Unite, and drive the world before you." To the ballad of "Sally in our Alley" Carey has prefixed an argument so full of nature, that the song may hereafter derive an additional interest from its simple origin. The author assures the reader that the popular notion that the subject of his ballad had been the noted Sally Salisbury, is perfectly erroneous, he being a stranger to her name at the time the song was composed. "As innocence and virtue were ever the boundaries of his Muse, so in this little poem he had no other view than to set forth the beauty of a chaste and disinterested passion, even in the lowest class of human life. The real occasion was this: A shoemaker's prentice, making holiday with his sweetheart, treated her with a sight of Bedlam, the puppet-shows, the flying chairs, and all the elegancies of Moorfield's; from whence, proceeding to the Farthing Pye-house, he gave her a collation of buns, cheesecakes, gammon of bacon, stuffed beef, and bottled ale; through all which scenes the Author dodged them (charmed with the simplicity of their courtship), from whence he drew this little sketch of Nature; but, being then young and obscure, he was very much ridiculed for this performance; which, nevertheless, made its way into the polite world, and amply recompensed him by the applause of the divine Addison, who was pleased (more than once) to mention it with approbation." In "The Poet's Resentment" poor Carey had once forsworn "the harlot Muse: ". "Far, far away then chase the harlot Muse, Mayst thou be crown'd with birch instead of bays!” Poets make such oaths in sincerity, and break them in rapture. At the time that this poet could neither walk the streets nor be seated at the convivial board, without listening to his own songs and his own music-for, in truth, the whole nation was echoing his verse, and crowded theatres were applauding his wit and humour-while this very man himself, urged by his strong humanity, founded a "Fund for decayed Musicians"he was so broken-hearted, and his own common comforts so utterly neglected, that, in despair, not waiting for nature to relieve him from the burden of existence, he laid violent hands on himself; and when found dead, had only a halfpenny in his pocket! Such was the fate of the author of some of the most popular pieces. in our language! He left a son, who inherited his misery, and a gleam of his genius. THE MISERIES OF THE FIRST ENGLISH COMMENTATOR. DR. ZACHARY GREY, the editor of Hudibras, is the father of our modern commentators. His case is rather peculiar ; I know not whether the father, by an odd anticipation, was doomed to suffer for the sins of his children, or whether his own have been visited on the third generation; it is certain that never was an author more overpowered by the attacks he received from the light and indiscriminating shafts of ignorant wits. He was ridiculed and abused for having assisted us to comprehend the wit of an author, which, without that aid, at this day would have been nearly lost to us; and whose singular subject involved persons and events which required the very thing he gave,historical and explanatory notes. A first thought, and all the danger of an original invention, which is always imperfectly understood by the superficial, was poor Dr. Grey's merit. He was modest and laborious, and he had the sagacity to discover what Butler wanted, and what the public required. His project was a happy thought, to commentate on a singular work which has scarcely a parallel in modern literature, if we except the "Satyre Ménippée" of the French, which is, in prose, the exact counterpart of Hudibras in rhyme; for our rivals have had the same state revolution, in which the same dramatic personages passed over their national stage, with the same incidents, in the civil wars of the ambitious Guises, and the citizen-reformers. They, too, found a Butler, though in prose, a Grey in Duchat, and, as well as they could, a Hogarth. An edition, which appeared in 1711, might have served as the model of Grey's Hudibras. It was, however, a happy thought in our commentator, to turn over the contemporary writers to collect the events and discover the personages alluded to by Butler; to read what the poet read, to observe what the poet observed. This was at once throwing himself and the reader back into an age, of which even the likeness had disappeared, and familiarising us with distant objects, which had been lost to us in the haze and mists of time. For this, not only a new mode of travelling, but a new road, was to be opened; the secret history, the fugitive pamphlet, the obsolete satire, the ancient comedy-such were the many curious volumes whose dust was to be cleared away, to cast a new radiance on the fading colours of a moveable picture of manners; the wittiest ever exhibited to mankind. This new mode of research, even at this moment, is imperfectly comprehended, still THE MISERIES of the first englISH COMMENTATOR. 91 ridiculed even by those who could never have understood a writer who will only be immortal in the degree he is comprehended-and whose wit could not have been felt but for the laborious curiosity of him whose "reading" has been too often aspersed for "such reading" "As was never read." Grey was outrageously attacked by all the wits, first by Warburton, in his preface to Shakespeare, who declares, that, "he hardly thinks there ever appeared so execrable a heap of nonsense under the name of commentaries, as hath been lately given us on a certain satyric poet of the last age." It is odd enough, Warburton had himself contributed towards these very notes, but, for some cause which has not been discovered, had quarrelled with Dr. Grey. I will venture a conjecture on this great conjectural critic. Warburton was always meditating to give an edition of his own of our old writers, and the sins he committed against Shakespeare he longed to practise on Butler, whose times were, indeed, a favourite period of his researches. Grey had anticipated him-and though Warburton had half reluctantly yielded the few notes he had prepared, his proud heart sickened when he beheld the amazing subscription Grey obtained for his first edition of Hudibras; he received for that work 15007.-a proof that this publication was felt as a want by the public. Such, however, is one of those blunt, dogmatic censures in which Warburton abounds, to impress his readers with the weight of his opinions; this great man wrote more for effect than any other of our authors, as appears by his own or some friend's confession, that if his edition of Shakespeare did no honour to that bard, this was not the design of the commentator -which was only to do honour to himself by a display of his own exuberant erudition. The poignant Fielding, in his preface to his " Journey to Lisbon," has a fling at the gravity of our doctor. "The laborious, much-read Dr. Z. Grey, of whose redundant notes on Hudibras I shall only say, that it is, I am confident, the single book extant in which above 500 authors are quoted, not one of which could be found in the collection of the late Dr. Mead." Mrs. Montague, in her letters, severely characterises the miserable father of English commentators; she wrote in youth and spirits, with no knowledge of books, and before even the unlucky commentator had published his work, but wit is the bolder by anticipation. She observes, that "his dulness may be a proper ballast 'Cole's MSS. for doggrel; and it is better that his stupidity should make jest dull than serious and sacred things ridiculous;" alluding to his numerous theological tracts. Such then are the hard returns which some authors are doomed to receive as the rewards of useful labours from those who do not even comprehend their nature; a wit should not be admitted as a critic till he had first proved, by his gravity, or his dulness if he chooses, that he has some knowledge; for it is the privilege and nature of wit to write fastest and best on what it least understands. Knowledge only encumbers and confines its flights. THE LIFE OF AN AUTHÒRESS. Of all the sorrows in which the female character may participate, there are few more affecting than those of an Authoress; -often insulated and unprotected in society-with all the sensibility of the sex, encountering miseries which break the spirits of men; with the repugnance arising from that delicacy which trembles when it quits its retirement. " My acquaintance with an unfortunate lady of the name of ELIZA RYVES, was casual and interrupted; yet I witnessed the bitterness of hope deferred, which maketh the heart sick." She sank, by the slow wastings of grief, into a grave which probably does not record the name of its martyr of literature. She was descended from a family of distinction in Ireland; but as she expressed it," she had been deprived of her birthright by the chicanery of law." In her former hours of tranquillity she had published some elegant odes, had written a tragedy and comedies; all which remained in MS. In her distress, she looked up to her pen as a source of existence; and an elegant genius, and a woman of polished manners, commenced the life of a female trader in literature. Conceive the repulses of a modest and delicate woman in her attempts to appreciate the value of a manuscript with its purchaser. She has frequently returned from the booksellers to her dreadful solitude to hasten to her bed-in all the bodily pains of misery, she has sought in uneasy slumbers a temporary forgetfulness of griefs which were to recur on the morrow. Elegant literature is always of doubtful acceptance with the public, and Eliza Ryves came at length to try the most masculine exertions of the pen. She wrote for one newspaper much political matter; but the proprietor was too great a politician for the writer of politics, for he only praised the labour he never paid; much poetry |