to bid farewell to the Rectory of Sturminster Marshall, on being presented to the more accessible one of Denham, in Buckinghamshire, about eight miles from the "Distant spires and antique towers" so familiar to him from boyhood. Here, in the discharge of the double but mild duties required of him at Eton and Denham, he continued to reside till 1768, when the demands of his numerous family compelled him to accept the lucrative rectory of Stoke Newington, in Middlesex, in the gift of the Rev. Charles Weston. In the mean time, he had taken his degree as D.D. in 1765, and, the same year, had been appointed by a fellow Etonian and contemporary, George Earl of Halifax, to be his chaplain. In 1772, in consequence of the death of Dr. Sumner, the Provostship of King's College became vacant; an event thus incidentally referred to, on the 18th of March in that year, by Gough, the antiquary, to his friend, Mr. Tyson :-" Dr. Cooke, Fellow of Eton, is to be Provost, it is said, without opposition; but the younger part do not like him, as he is supposed to be a strict disciplinarian. He is old, and has a large family, and is a good scholar."1 Notwithstanding, however, the hostility of the younger part" of the community of King's, some 1 Nichols's 'Lit. Anecdotes,' vol. viii. p. 587. of whom had probably smarted under his discipline when Head Master, he was, on the 25th of March, universally elected to the Provostship; this promotion being followed, on the 9th of August, 1780, by his being appointed Dean of Ely. Dr. Cooke lived to the great age of eighty-six, when he passed away, sincerely regretted and respected by the College in which he had alike spent the heyday of his youth and the greater portion of his declining years. "We lament," writes an Etonian of somewhat later date, "the loss of a Provost venerable in advanced age, dignified in his deportment, and of classical erudition, deep, useful, and extensive. In the extremest boundary of human life, without the throbs of agony, or the cold gradations of dissolution and decay, and supported and sustained by female filial piety—that blessed bounden duty! he came as a shock of corn to the ground in his season. Such was William Cooke, D.D., Provost of King's College !" 1 Dr. Cooke died at Bath on the 21st of November, 1797. In the south vestry of King's College Chapel a marble tablet, bearing a Latin inscription, was raised to his memory." 1 'Pursuits of Literature,' p. 308, seventh edition. THOMAS AUGUSTINE ARNE. IN the month of March, 1728, shortly before the philanthropic General Oglethorpe brought under the notice of the House of Commons the frightful atrocities perpetrated by the authorities of the Fleet Prison on the unfortunate prisoners committed to their charge, there happened to be seated in the parlour or tap-room of the prison-tavern an unoffending London tradesman, whom ill success in his business had rendered a bankrupt and deprived of his liberty. Suddenly, without any apparent provocation, this person was seized upon by the myrmidons of the warder and deputy-warder of the prison, by whom he was flung into a damp and nauseous dungeon, in which such were the sufferings he endured during a six weeks' confinement without fire or covering, that his reason forsook him and he died. Such, as far as can be ascertained, was the fate of Edward Arne, the father, not only of the subject of the present memoir, but of his sister, the celebrated tragic actress, Mrs. Cibber. At all events, his names, and those of the unhappy prisoner who perished in the Fleet were the same, and presumably, at least, they were one and the same person. The father of Dr. Arne and of Mrs. Cibber was an upholsterer, carrying on business at the sign of the "Two Crowns and Cushions," in King Street, Covent Garden, in which thoroughfare his two distinguished offspring were born. His own name was not an unfamiliar one to the public in the days of Queen Anne and George I. It was, for instance, at his house in King Street that the four Indian Kings, commemorated in the 'Spectator' (No. 50), were lodged in 1710; in addition to which he was the original of the garrulous political upholsterer immortalized by Addison in the 'Tatler' (Nos. 155 and 160). His son, Thomas Augustine Arne, composer of the once popular opera of Artaxerxes,' and of the exquisite music set by him to Milton's masque of 'Comus,' was born on the 28th of May, 1710. Destined by his father to follow the profession of the law, it was probably with the view of advancing him in that calling that he was placed at Eton. He had, however, almost in infancy, imbibed a passion for music, a predilection which, it would appear, was not only a source of much vexation to his father, but at Eton was the occasion of constant interruption to the studies of his companions, as well as to his own. "I have been assured by many of his schoolfellows," writes Dr. Burney, "that his love for music operated upon him too powerfully, even while he was at Eton, for his own peace or that of his companions; for, with a miserable cracked common flute, he used to torment them night and day, when not obliged to attend the school." 1 From Eton young Arne was removed to a desk in a lawyer's office, to the duties of which, however, he showed so much repugnance, that every hour he could borrow from them was devoted to the cultivation of his darling pursuit. "At home," writes Dr. Burney, "he had contrived to secrete a spinet in his room, upon which, after muffling the strings with a handkerchief, he used to practise in the night while the rest of the family were asleep." Had his father overheard him, the probability was, as we are told, that he would have thrown the instrument, if not the lad himself, out of the window. When in want of money, it was his custom, as he himself told Dr. Burney, to borrow a servant's livery, by which means he gained a free admission to the upper gallery of the opera, which in those days was appropriated to the domestics of the noble and the wealthy, who happened to be in attendance on their masters or mistresses. With the exception of some lessons on the violin which he contrived to obtain 1 Burney's 'History of Music,' vol. iv. p. 655. 2 Ibid., pp. 655, 656. "A clerk, foredoomed his father's soul to cross, |