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EDWARD CAVE was born at Newton in Warwickshire, Feb. 29, 1691. His father (Joseph) was the younger son of Mr. Edward Cave, of Cave's in the Hole, a lone house, on the Street-road in the same county, which took its name from the occupier; but having concurred with his elder brother in cutting off the intail of a small hereditary estate, by which act it was lost from the family, he was reduced to follow in Rugby the trade of a shoemaker. He was a man of good reputation in his narrow circle, and remarkable for strength and rustic intrepidity. He lived to a great age, and was in his latter years supported by his

son.

It was fortunate for Edward Cave, that, having a disposition to literary attainments, he was not cut off by the poverty of his parents from opportunities of cultivating his faculties. The school of Rugby, in which he had, by the rules of its foundation, a right to be instructed, was then in high reputation, under the Rev. Mr. Holyock, to whose care most of the neighbouring families, even of the highest rank, entrusted their sons. He had judgment to discover, and, for some time, generosity to encourage, the genius of young Cave; and was so well pleased with his quick progress in the school, that he declared his resolution to breed

him for the university, and recommended him as a servitor to some of his scholars of high rank. But prosperity which depends upon the caprice of others is of short duration. Cave's superiority in literature exalted him to an invidious familiarity with boys who were far above him in rank and expectations; and, as in unequal associations it always happens, whatever unlucky prank was played, was imputed to Cave. When any mischief, great or small, was done, though perhaps others boasted of the stratagem when it was successful, yet upon detection or miscarriage the fault was sure to fall upon poor Cave.

At last, his mistress by some invisible means lost a favourite cock. Cave was, with little examination, stigmatized as the thief or murderer; not because he was more apparently criminal than others, but because he was more easily reached by vindictive justice. From that time Mr. Holyock withdrew his kindness visibly from him, and treated him with harshness, which the crime, in its utmost aggravation, could scarcely deserve; and which surely he would have forborne, had he considered how hardly the habitual influence of birth and fortune is resisted; and how frequently men, not wholly without sense of virtue, are betrayed to acts more atrocious than the robbery of

a henroost, by a desire of pleasing their superiors.

Those reflections his master never made, or made without effect; for under pretence that Cave obstructed the discipline of the school, by selling clandestine assistance, and supplying exercises to idlers, he was oppressed with unreasonable tasks, that there might be an opportunity of quarrelling with his failure; and when his diligence had surmounted them, no regard was paid to the performance. Cave bore this persecution a while, and then left the school, and the hope of a literary education, to seek some other means of gaining a livelihood.

for some years a writer in Mist's Jour nal; which, though he afterwards obtained by his wife's interest a small place in the Post Office, he for some time continued. But as interest is powerful, and conversation, however mean, in time persuasive, he by degrees inclined to another party; in which, however, he was always moderate, though steady and determined.

When he was admitted into the Post Office, he still continued, at his intervals of attendance, to exercise his trade, or to employ himself with some typographical business. He corrected the Gradus ad Parnassum;' and was liberally rewarded by the Company of Stationers. He wrote He was first placed with a collector of an Account of the Criminals,' which the excise. He used to recount with some had for some time a considerable sale; pleasure a journey or two which he rode and published many little pamphlets that with him as his clerk, and relate the vic-accident brought into his hands, of which tories that he gained over the excisemen it would be very difficult to recover the in grammatical disputations. But the in-memory. By the correspondence which solence of his mistress, who employed him in servile drudgery, quickly disgusted him, and he went up to London in quest of more suitable employment.

He was recommended to a timber merchant at the Bankside, and while he was there on liking, is said to have given hopes of great mercantile abilities; but this place he soon left, I know not for what reason, and was bound apprentice to Mr. Collins, a printer of some reputation, and deputy alderman.

his place in the Post Office facilitated, he procured country newspapers, and sold their intelligence to a journalist in London, for a guinea a week.

He was afterwards raised to the office of clerk of the franks, in which he acted with great spirit and firmness; and often stopped franks, which were given by members of parliament to their friends, because he thought such extension of a peculiar right illegal. This raised many complaints, and having stopped, among others, a frank given to the old duchess of Marlborough by Mr. Walter Plummer, he was cited before the House as for breach of privilege, and accused, I suppose very unjustly, of opening letters to detect them. He was treated with great harshness and severity, but declining their questions by pleading his oath of secrecy, was at last dismissed. And it must be recorded to his honour, that, when he was ejected from his office, he did not think himself discharged from his trust, but continued to refuse to his nearest friends any information about the management of the office.

This was a trade for which men were formerly qualified by a literary education, and which was pleasing to Cave, because it furnished some employment for his scholastic attainments. Here, therefore, he resolved to settle, though his master and mistress lived in perpetual discord, and their house was therefore no comfortable habitation. From the inconveniencies of these domestic tumults he was soon released, having in only two years attained so much skill in his art, and gained so much the confidence of his master, that he was sent without any superintendent to conduct a printinghouse at Norwich, and publish a weekly By this constancy of diligence and dipaper. In this undertaking he met with versification of employment, he in time some opposition, which produced a pub-collected a sum sufficient for the purchase lic controversy, and procured young Cave the reputation of a writer.

His master died before his apprenticeship was expired, and he was not able to bear the perverseness of his mistress. He therefore quitted her house upon a stipulated allowance, and married a young widow with whom he lived at Bow. When his apprenticeship was over, he worked as a journeyman at the printing house of Mr. Barber, a man much distinguished and employed by the Tories, whose principles had at that time so much prevalence with Cave, that he was

of a small printing-office, and began the

Gentleman's Magazine,' a periodical pamphlet, of which the scheme is known wherever the English language is spoken. To this undertaking he owed the affluence in which he passed the last twenty years of his life, and the fortune which he left behind him, which, though large, had been yet larger, had he not rashly and wantonly impaired it by innumerable projects, of which I know not that ever one succeeded.

The Gentleman's Magazine,' which has now subsisted fifty years, and still

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continues to enjoy the favour of the world, is one of the most successful and lucrative pamphlets which literary history has upon record, and therefore deserves, in this narrative, particular notice.

Mr. Cave, when he formed the project, was far from expecting the success which he found; and others had so little prospect of its consequence, that though he had for several years talked of his plan among printers and booksellers, none of them thought it worth the trial. That they were not restrained by virtue from the execution of another man's design, was sufficiently apparent, as soon as that design began to be gainful; for in a few years a multitude of magazines arose and perished; only the London Magazine,' supported by a powerful association of booksellers, and circulated with all the art and all the cunning of trade, exempted itself from the general fate of Cave's invaders, and obtained, though not an equal, yet a considerable sale +.

Cave now began to aspire to popularity; and being a greater lover of poetry than any other art, he sometimes offered subjects for poems, and proposed prizes for the best performers. The first prize was fifty pounds, for which, being but newly acquainted with wealth, and thinking the influence of fifty pounds extremely great, he expected the first authors of the kingdom to appear as competitors; and offered the allotment of the prize to the universities. But when the time came, no name was seen among the writers that had ever been seen before; the universities and several private men rejected the province of assigning the prize. At all this Mr. Cave wondered for a while; but his natural judgment, and a wider acquaintance with the world, soon cured him of his astonishment, as of many other prejudices and errors. Nor have many men been seen raised by accident or industry to sudden riches that retained less of the meanness of their former state.

He continued to improve his Magazine, and had the satisfaction of seeing its success proportionate to his diligence, till, in 1751, his wife died of an asthma. He seemed not at first much affected by her death, but in a few days lost his sleep and his appetite, which he never recovered; but after having lingered about two years, with many vicissitudes of

This was said in the beginning of the year 1781 and may be now repeated.

The London Magazine ceased to exist in 1785.

The determination was left to Dr. Cromwell Mortimer and Dr. Birch, and by the latter the award was made, which may be seen in the Gent. Mag. vol. vi. p. 59.

amendment and relapse, fell, by drinking acid liquors, into a diarrhoea, and afterwards into a kind of lethargic insensibility, in which one of the last acts of reason which he exerted was fondly to press the hand that is now writing this little narrative. He died on the 10th of January, 1754, having just concluded the twenty-third annual collection §.

He was a man of a large stature, not only tall but bulky, and was, when young, of remarkable strength and activity. He was generally healthful, and capable of much labour and long application; but in the latter years of his life was afflicted with the gout, which he endeavoured to cure or alleviate by a total abstinence both from strong liquors and animal food. From animal food he abstained about

§ Mr. Cave was buried in the church of St. James, Clerkenwell, without an epitaph; the pen of Dr. Hawkesworth, is here tranbut the following inscription at Rugby, from scribed from the Anecdotes of Mr. Bowyer,

p. 88.

Near this place lies
The body of
JOSEPH CAVE,
Late of this parish;
Who departed this Life Nov. 18, 1747,
Aged 79 years.

He was placed by Providence in a humble
station;
But

Industry abundantly supplied the wants of

Nature,
And

Temperance blest him with
Content and Wealth.

As he was an affectionate Father,
He was made happy in the decline of life
By the deserved eminence of his eldest Son,
EDWARD CAVE;

Who without interest, fortune, or connexion,
By the native force of his own genius,
Assisted only by a classical education,
Which he received at the Grammar School
Of this Town,

Planned, executed, and established
A literary work, called
THE

GENTLEMAN'S MAGAZINE,

Whereby he acquired an ample fortune, The whole of which devolved to his family.

Here also lies

The body of WILLIAM CAVE,
Second Son of the said JOSEPH CAVE,
Who died May 2, 1757, aged 62 years;
And who having survived his elder brother,
EDWARD CAVE,

Inherited from him a competent estate;
And, in gratitude to his benefactor,
Ordered this monument to perpetuate his
memory.

He lived a patriarch in his numerous race,
And show'd in charity a Christian's grace:
Whate'er a friend or parent feels, he knew;
His hand was open, and his heart was true;
In what he gain'd and gave, he taught man-
kind,
A grateful always is a generous mind.
Here rest his clay! his soul must ever rest,
Who bless'd when living, dying must be
blest.
H H

four years, and from strong liquors much longer; but the gout continued unconquered, perhaps unabated.

His resolution and perseverance were very uncommon; in whatever he undertook, neither expense nor fatigue were able to repress him: but his constancy was calm, and to those who did not know him, appeared faint and languid; but he always went forward, though he moved slowly.

and harangued them so efficaciously, that they determined to resist all future invasions; and when the stamp officers demanded to stamp the last half sheet of the Magazines, Mr. Cave alone defeated their claim, to which the proprietors of the rival Magazines would meanly have submitted.

He was a friend rather easy and constant, than zealous and active; yet many instances might be given, where both his money and his diligence were employed

like manner cool and deliberate; but though cool, it was not insidious, and thongh deliberate, not pertinacions.

The same chilness of mind was observable in his conversation he was watch-liberally for others. His enmity was in ing the minutest accent of those whom he disgusted by seeming inattention; and his visitant was surprised when he came a second time, by preparations to execute the scheme which he supposed never to have been heard.

His mental faculties were slow. He saw little at a time, but that little he saw with great exactness. He was long in He was, consistently with this general finding the right, but seldom failed to tranquillity of mind, a tenacious main- find it at last. His affections were not tainer, though not a clamorous demander, easily gained, and his opinions not quickof his right. In his youth, having sum-ly discovered. His reserve, as it might moned his fellow journeymen to concert measures against the oppression of their masters, he mounted a kind of rostrum,

hide his faults, concealed his virtues : but such he was, as they who best knew him have most lamented.

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CHARLES FREDERICK, the present king of Prussia, whose actions and designs now keep Europe in attention, is the eldest son of Frederick William by Sophia Dorothea, daughter of George the First, king of England. He was born January 24, 1711-12. Of his early years no. thing remarkable has been transmitted to us. As he advanced towards manhood, he became remarkable by his disagreement with his father.

The late king of Prussia was of a disposition violent and arbitrary, of narrow views, and vehement passions, earnestly engaged in little pursuits, or in schemes terminating in some speedy consequence, without any plan of lasting advantage to himself or his subjects, or any prospect of distant events. He was therefore al ways busy, though no effects of his activity ever appeared; and always eager, though he had nothing to gain. His behaviour was to the last degree rough and savage. The least provocation, whether designed or accidental, was returned by blows, which he did not always forbear to the queen and princesses.

From such a king and such a father it was not any enormous violation of duty in the immediate heir of a kingdom sometimes to differ in opinion, and to maintain that difference with decent pertinacity. A prince of a quick sagacity

and comprehensive knowledge must find many practices in the conduct of affairs which he could not approve, and some which he could scarcely forbear to oppose.

The chief pride of the old king was to be master of the tallest regiment in Europe. He therefore brought together from all parts men above the common military standard. To exceed the height of six feet was a certain recommendation to notice, and to approach that of seven a claim to distinction. Men will readily go where they are sure to be caressed; and he had therefore such a collection of giants as perhaps was never seen in the world before.

To review this towering regiment was his daily pleasure, and to perpetuate it was so much his care, that when he met a tall woman, he immediately commanded one of his Titanian retinue to marry her, that they might propagate procerity, and produce heirs to the father's habiliments.

In all this there was apparent folly, but there was no crime. The tall regiment made a fine show at an expense not much greater, when once it was collected, than would have been bestowed upon common men. But the king's military pastimes were sometimes more pernicious. He maintained a numerous army, of which he made no other use than to review and

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