to him from all quarters. In 1745 he printed a sermon on the breaking out of the Scottish Rebellion, and 1746, another sermon on its suppression. In 1756 he preached before the governors of Middlesex Hospital, at St. Anne's, Westminster; in 1759 he delivered a commencement sermon at Cambridge; the following year he preached a sermon at the annual assemblage of the London charity children; another special sermon which he delivered was before the House of Commons on the 30th of January, 1762; and, lastly, he preached the Spital Sermon at St. Bride's the same year. These sermons, together with others preached by him at Eton, Lincoln's Inn, and St. Botolph's, he published in an octavo volume in 1770. He was also the author of some controversial letters on the practice of electing aliens to vacant places in Eton College. Dr. Ashton, after having survived for some years a severe attack of the palsy, expired on the 1st of March, 1775, at the age of fifty-nine. Prefixed to his volume of sermons is a fine mezzotinto portrait of him by Spilsbury, from a painting by Sir Joshua Reynolds. There is also another good mezzotinto portrait of him by McArdell, after Gainsborough. RICHARD WEST. RICHARD WEST, whose gentle disposition, who e uncommon natural abilities and early death have invested with a passing and touching interest an otherwise uneventful career, was born in 1716. His parentage, on the maternal as well as on the paternal side, was an honourable one. His father was Richard West, appointed Lord Chancellor of Ireland in 1725; his mother was Elizabeth, daughter of the celebrated Bishop Burnet, the historian of the Reformation and of his Own Time.' To whatever extent, however, young West may have inherited his intellectual endowments from his mother, it was to his father apparently that he was indebted for that poetic faculty of which his schoolfellows, Gray and Walpole, thought so highly. The Chancellor, it is said, was the author of 'Hecuba,' a tragedy, a performance borrowed from the Greek of Euripides, which, in or about the year 1726, was performed for three nights only at Drury Lane Theatre, and then, whatever may have been its literary merits, with very VOL. I. indifferent scenic success. When, before the end of that year, the eminent lawyer breathed his last, his gifted and only son was but ten years old. At Eton, as Mason, however reluctantly, seems to admit, West would appear to have been esteemed a more brilliant scholar than Gray. At all events, neither of them apparently had at school a more formidable rival to apprehend. Both Gray and West," writes their schoolfellow, Walpole, "had abilities marvellously premature." As their friendship, which had commenced at Eton, was interrupted only by death, so also did they severally retain a warm and genial affection for the scene of their boyhood. "Gray is at Burnham," writes Walpole to West, "and, what is surprising, has not been at Eton !" 66 Gray at Burnham, and not see Eton!" writes back West in similar language of surprise; at the same time enclosing in his reply some pleasing verses commemorative of the happy days and the happy friendships he had enjoyed on "Etonian ground." 2 "Lost and inwrapt in thought profound, Absent, I tread Etonian ground; Then starting from the dear mistake, "Oh! how I long again with those, 1 'Letters,' vol. vi. p. 15. 2 Ibid., vol. i. pp. 8, 10, 11. "Their presence would the scene endear, Like Paradise would all appear; More sweet around the flowers would blow, It was probably nearly at the same time (1734) that Gray removed to Peter House College, Cambridge, that West commenced his studies at Christ Church, Oxford. Here apparently it was that he composed that which seems to have been the most ambitious of his poems, his Monody on the Death of Queen Caroline,' a poem which, though now nearly forgotten, contains a proportion of powerful, and many highly poetical, lines, of which the following quatrain "Ah me! what boots us all our boasted power? They cannot ward th' inevitable hour, Nor stay the fearful violence of Fate." -obviously, though perhaps unconsciously, suggested to his friend, Gray, one of the most striking stanzas in his Elegy written in a Country Churchyard:' "The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power, And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave, The paths of glory lead but to the grave." It was apparently about four years after the composition of his Monody' that West commenced 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. Towards the close of the last century, it may be mentioned, a portion of Pausanias' was still extant in MS.1 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 afterwards, 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.2 1 Lord Orford's 'Works,' vol. iv. p. 458; Walpole's 'Letters,' vol. i. p. 67; Mitford's Life of Gray, 'Works,' vol. i. pp. xiv. xvi., note. 2 Walpole's Letters,' vol. i. pp. 69, 70. |