to the dying statesman, it revived in him a melancholy spark of the pleasantry of former days. "If Mr. Selwyn calls again," he said, "show him up; if I am alive I shall be delighted to see him; and if I am dead he would like to see me." Lord Holland died at Holland House, Kensington, on the 1st of July, 1774, in the sixty-ninth year of his age. Only twenty-three days afterwards, Lady Holland followed her husband to the grave. Their children consisted of Stephen Fox, who succeeded his father as second Baron Holland, and who survived him only six months; of Henry, who died young; of Charles James, the celebrated statesman; and of Henry Edward, a general in the army, colonel of the 10th regiment of foot, and Governor of Portsmouth, who died in 1811.

GILBERT WEST.

THE subject of the present memoir affords an interesting and instructive example of a man of eminent talents, of many virtues, and the son of pious parents, becoming entangled in the maze of infidelity in his youth, yet, in his maturer years, recalling the beautiful precepts which, kneeling at a mother's knee, he had imbibed in happy childhood, and thus, by dint of earnest investigation and the Divine blessing, re-converted to be a devout and steadfast believer. "To the early care of a most excellent woman, his mother," as he wrote to Dr. Doddridge on the 14th of March, 1748, "he owed that bent and bias to religion which, with the cooperating grace of God, had at length brought him back to those paths of peace from which he might otherwise have been in danger of deviating for ever."

Gilbert West-of the story of whose life Dr. Johnson lamented his inability to discover but little, and to which little we regret being unable to add much

more was born in the year 1706. His father was the Rev. Dr. Richard West, Prebendary of Durham, well known among the scholars of his day as the editor of Pindar, the same poet of whose odes his son Gilbert afterwards rendered himself so eminent as the translator. He was, it may be mentioned, of the same family as West the painter. The poet's excellent mother was a lady of high family connections, having been sister to Richard Viscount Cobham, the friend of Pope, and aunt of Richard first Earl Temple, and of his brother George Grenville, the future Prime Minister. The first Marquis of Buckingham was her great-nephew.

With a view to his taking holy orders, Gilbert West was in the first instance sent by his friends to Eton, and afterwards entered at Christ Church, Oxford; but having, in the mean time, conceived a preference for the military over the clerical profession, he obtained, through the influence of his uncle, Lord Cobham, a follower of the great Marlborough, a commission in a regiment of horse. To a person, however, of West's refined tastes and literary pursuits, the army, considering the class of persons by which it was then officered, could scarcely have afforded a very congenial occupation, and accordingly, laying down his commission, about the time of his coming of age he succeeded in obtaining employment in the office of Lord Townshend, then Secretary of State, on which noblemen, as in the case

of his schoolfellows Weston and Townshend, he was in attendance when he accompanied George II. to his German dominions.

It was about this time that, in the month of May, 1729, the poet was nominated to the situation of Clerk Extraordinary of the Privy Council; a post, however, from which he not only received no present salary, but for which a paid vacancy was so long in occurring, that it was not till after the lapse of nearly a quarter of a century that he derived any solid advantage from the boon. Nevertheless he had, in the mean while, deemed himself justified in incurring the expense and responsibilities of marriage; settling himself at the same time, to quote the words of Dr. Johnson, "in a very pleasant house at Wickham, in Kent, where he devoted himself to learning and to piety." Wickham, in consequence of his fixing his residence there, became classic ground. Here, for instance, we find his former illustrious schoolfellow Lord Chatham, then Mr. Pitt, delighting to enjoy, in exchange for the noise and smoke of London and the tumult of the House of Commons, the simple meal and choice conversation of his friend. When Johnson wrote his 'Lives of the Poets,' a walk which had been laid out by Pitt at Wickham was still known as Mr. Pitt's walk. Another distinguished Eton contemporary and friend, who occasionally joined West and Pitt at Wickham, was George Lord Lyttelton, once a disbeliever in revealed religion

like West himself, but who at Wickham became inspired by those Christian truths of which he afterwards proved himself so able a champion. In his Kentish retreat, West, when not invaded by friends, appears to have devoted his time to the exercise of learning and piety. "Perhaps," writes Dr. Johnson, "it may not be without effect to tell, that he read the prayers of the public liturgy every morning to his family, and that on Sunday evening he called his servants into the parlour, and read to them first a sermon, and then prayers."

As late as, and indeed long after, this time, the poet's income, notwithstanding the efforts of his friends to obtain for him an adequately remunerative appointment, had been comparatively small. The post, indeed, of preceptor to the heir-presumptive, afterwards George III., is said to have been offered to him, but, owing to the restricted powers of control over the Prince's education with which it was proposed to fetter him, was believed to have been refused. At length, however, in 1752, not only did the long-expected and lucrative vacancy in the Privy Council Office take place, but he was also, through the interest of Mr. Pitt, appointed to the Treasurership of Chelsea Hospital. But Fortune had withheld her smiles till it was too late for him long to enjoy her favours. The affliction which he suffered by the death of his only son, in 1755, not only

1 Johnson's 'Lives of the Poets;' Life of West.