on his benefit night; by which means, being a man of good management, he was enabled to live very respectably. He at length married a young widow with a tolerable fortune, on which he set up a tavern in Bow-street, Covent Garden; but quitted business at his wife's death, and lived privately on the competence he had realised. He died in 1744. As a dramatic writer, he is far from deserving to be placed in the lowest rank; for though his plots are seldom original, yet he has given them so many additions of his own, and has clothed the designs of others in so pleasing a dress, that a great share of the merit they possess ought to be attributed to him. The language of his comedies-which are greatly superior to his tragedies-is easy, and the dialogue natural and sprightly. One of them, The Country Lasses, continued for a long time on the list of acting plays. Notwithstanding his inoffensive and conciliatory character, he could not escape the malignity of Pope, who has, on some trivial pique, placed him in the Dunciad, appending to his poetical scurrility this note from The Characters of the Times: "Charles Johnson, famous for writing a play every year, and for being at Button's every day. He had probably thriven better in his vocation, had he been a small matter leaner he may be justly called a martyr to obesity, and be said to have fallen a victim to the rotundity of his parts." It is honourable to Johnson, as Reed observes, that his enemies could fix no greater imputation upon him than his being physically fat. Charles Johnson's works are these;

1. The Gentleman Cully. Comedy. 1702.

2. Fortune in her Wits. Comedy. 1705. A very indifferent translation of Mr. Cowley's Naufragium Joculare.

3. The force of Friendship. Tragedy. 1710.

4. Love in a Chest. Farce. 1710.

5. The Wife's Relief; or, the Husband's Cure. Comedy. Chiefly borrowed from Shirley's Gamester. 1711.

6. The Successful Pirate. Tragi-comedy. 1712.

7. The Generous Husband; or, the Coffee-house Politician. Comedy. 1713.

8. The Country Lasses; or, the Custom of the Manor. Comedy. 1714.

9. Love and Liberty. Tragedy. 1715.

10. The Victim. Tragedy. 1715.

11. The Sultaness. Tragedy. 1717.

12. The Cobler of Preston. Farce. 1717.

13. Love in a Forest. Comedy. 1721. From Shakespeare's "As you like it."

14. The Masquerade. Comedy. 1723.

15. The Village Opera. 1728.

16. The Ephesian Matron. Farce. 1730.

17. Celia; or, the Perjured Lovers. Tragedy. 1732.

CHARLES MONTAGUE, EARL OF HALIFAX.*
(1661-1715.)

The life of the Earl of Halifax was properly that of an artful and active statesman, employed in balancing parties, contriving expedients, and combating opposition, and exposed to the vicissitudes of advancement and degradation: but, in this collection, poetical merit is the claim to attention; and the account which is here to be expected may properly be proportioned not to his influence in the state, but to his rank among the writers of verse.

Charles Montague was born April 16, 1661, at Hoxton, in Northamptonshire; the son of Mr. George Montague, a younger son of the Earl of Manchester. He was educated first in the country, and then removed to Westminster, where, in 1677, he was chosen a king's scholar, and recommended himself to Busby by his felicity in extemporary epigrams. He contracted a very intimate friendship with Mr. Stepney; and in 1682, when Stepney was elected at Cambridge, the election of Montague being not to proceed till the year following, he was afraid lest by being placed at Oxford he might be separated from his companion, and therefore solicited to be removed to Cambridge, without waiting for the advantages of another year.

It seems indeed time to wish for a removal; for he was already a school-boy of one-and-twenty.

* Johnson.

His relation, Dr. Montague, was then master of the college in which he was placed a fellow-commoner, and took him under his particular care. Here he commenced an acquaintance with the great Newton, which continued through his life, and was at last attested by a legacy.

In 1685 his verses on the death of King Charles made such an impression on the Earl of Dorset, that he was invited to town, and introduced by that universal patron to the other wits. In 1687 he joined with Prior in The City Mouse and the Country Mouse, a burlesque of Dryden's Hind and Panther. He signed the invitation to the Prince of Orange, and sat in the convention. He about the same time married the Countess Dowager of Manchester, and intended to have taken orders; but afterwards altering his purpose, he purchased for 15007. the place of one of the clerks of the council.

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After he had written his epistle on the victory of the Boyne, his patron Dorset introduced him to King William, with this expression: Sir, I have brought a mouse to wait on your majesty." To which the king is said to have replied, “You do well to put me in the way of making a man of him ;" and ordered him a pension of five hundred pounds. This story, however current, seems to have been made after the event. The king's answer implies a greater acquaintance with our proverbial and familiar diction than King William could possibly have attained.

In 1691, being member of the House of Commons, he argued warmly in favour of a law to grant the assistance of counsel in trials for high treason; and, in the midst of his speech falling into some confusion, was for a while silent; but, recovering himself, observed, "how reasonable it was to allow counsel to men called as criminals before a court of justice, when it appeared how much the presence of that assembly could disconcert one of their own body."*

After this he rose fast into honours and employments, being made one of the commissioners of the treasury, and called to the privy council. In 1694 he became chancellor of the exchequer; and the next year engaged in the great attempt of the recoinage, which was in two years happily completed. In 1696 he projected the general fund, and raised the credit of the exchequer; and, after inquiry concerning a grant of Irish crown lands, it was determined by a vote of the Commons, that Charles Montague, Esq. "had deserved his majesty's favour." In 1698, being advanced to the first commission of the treasury, he was appointed one of the regency in the king's absence: the next year he was made auditor of the exchequer, and the year after created Baron Halifax. He was, however, impeached by the Commons; but the articles were dismissed by the Lords.

* Mr. Reed observes that this anecdote is related by Walpole, in his Catalogue of Royal and Noble Authors, of the Earl of Shaftesbury, author of the Characteristics; but this appears to be a mistake, if we are to understand that the words were spoken by Shaftesbury at this time, when he had no seat in the House of Commons; nor did the bill pass at this time, being thrown out by the House of Lords. It became a law in the 7th William, when Halifax and Shaftesbury both had seats. The editors of the Biographia Britannica adopt Walpole's story, but they are not speaking of this period. The story first appeared in the Life of Lord Halifax, published in 1715.

For advising his Majesty to sign the partition-treaty.

At the accession of Queen Anne he was dismissed from the council; and in the first parliament of her reign was again attacked by the Commons, and again escaped by the protection of the Lords. In 1704 he wrote an answer to Bromley's speech against occasional conformity. He headed the inquiry into the danger of the church. In 1706 he proposed and negotiated the union with Scotland; and when the elector of Hanover had received the garter, after the act had passed for securing the Protestant succession, he was appointed to carry the ensigns of the order to the electoral court. He sat as one of the judges of Sacheverell, but voted for a mild sentence. Being now no longer in favour, he contrived to obtain a writ for summoning the electoral prince to parliament as Duke of Cambridge.

At the queen's death he was appointed one of the regents; and at the accession of George I. was made Earl of Halifax, knight of the garter, and first commissioner of the treasury, with a grant to his nephew of the reversion of the auditorship of the exchequer. More was not to be had, and this he kept but a little while; for, on the 19th of May, 1715, he died of an inflammation of his lungs.

Of him who from a poet became a patron of poets, it will be readily believed that the works would not miss of celebration. Addison began to praise him early,* and was followed or accompanied by other poets; perhaps by almost all, except Swift and Pope, who forebore to flatter him in his life, and after his death spoke of him, Swift with slight censure, and Pope, in the character of Bufo, with acrimonious contempt.

He was, as Pope says, "fed with dedications;" for Tickell affirms that no dedication was unrewarded. To charge all unmerited praise with the guilt of flattery, and to suppose that the encomiast always knows and feels the falsehood of his assertions, is surely to discover great ignorance of human nature and human life. In determinations depending not on rules, but on experience and comparison, judgment is always in some degree subject to affection. Very near to admira

tion is the wish to admire.

Every man willingly gives value to the praise which he receives, and considers the sentence passed in his favour as the sentence of discernment. We admire in a friend that understanding which selected us for confidence; we admire more in a patron that judgment which, instead of scattering bounty indiscriminately, directed it to us; and if the patron be an author, those performances which gratitude forbids us to blame, affection will easily dispose us to exalt.

To these prejudices, hardly culpable, interest adds a power always operating, though not always, because not willingly, perceived. The modesty of praise wears gradually away; and perhaps the pride of patronage may be in time so increased, that modest praise will no longer please.

** "The noble Montague,

For wit, for honour, and for judgment fam'd;
While Nassau's godlike acts adorn his lines,
And all the hero in full glory shines.

We see his army set in full array,

And Boyne's dy'd waves run purple to the sea."

Many a blandishment was practised upon Halifax, which he would never have known, had he no other attractions than those of his poetry, of which a short time has withered the beauties. It would now be esteemed no honour, by a contributor to the monthly bundles of verse, to be told that, in strains either familiar or solemn, he sings like Montague.

THOMAS SOUTHERN.

(1660-1746.)

Thomas Southern was born in Dublin, 1660, and received his early education at the University there. In the eighteenth year of his age he quitted Ireland, and entered himself of the Middle Temple, which, however, he soon quitted for the more agreeable service of the Muses.

His first dramatic performance, The Persian Prince or Loyal Brother, was acted in 1682. This play was introduced at a time when the Tory interest was triumphant in England, and the character of

*Besides the admirable travesty written in conjunction with Prior, Halifax is the author of

An Answer to Mr. Bromley's Speech in relation to the Occasional Conformity Bill. 1704.

Seasonable Inquiries on Questions concerning a New Parliament. 1711. A Poem on the Death of Charles II. 1684.

The Man of Honour: a Poem.

Ode on the Marriage of H.R.H. the Princess Anne and Prince George of Denmark. In Latin verse.

Epistle to Charles Earl of Dorset and Middlesex, occasioned by King William's Victory in Ireland.

(All these, except the Inquiries, with several of his speeches, were published together in an 8vo volume, with memoirs of his lordship's life, 1716.)

Verses written at Althorp, on a blank leaf of a Waller, on seeing Vandyke's picture of Lord Sunderland.

Verses written for the Toasting-glasses of the Kit-Kat Club.

Dunton says of Lord Halifax, that he was "affable, easy, and obliging, candid and ingenuous; and all these qualities were well tempered." Steele, in a dedicatory epistle, flatters him with saying: "Your lordship's patience has produced those arts which before shunned the commerce of the world, into the service of life; and it is to you we owe that the man of wit has turned himself to be the man of business. Your own studies have been diverted from being the highest ornament to the highest use to mankind; and the capacities that would have rendered you the greatest poet of your age, have, to the advantage of Great Britain, been employed in pursuits which have made you the most able patriot."

The biographer of Lord Halifax in Cibber's Lives writes: "Considered as a poet, his lordship makes a less considerable figure than the Earl of Dorset : there is a languor in his verses which seems to indicate that he was not born with a poetical genius. That he was a lover of the Muses there is not the least doubt, as we find him patronising the poets so warmly'; but there is some difference between a propensity to poetry and the power of excelling in it."