With a very good opinion of himself, he was quick in discerning, and frank in applauding, the excellencies of others. Though proud of his own name and lineage, and ambitious of the countenance of the great, he was yet so cordial an admirer of merit, wherever found, that much public ridicule, and something like contempt, were excited by the modest assurance with which he pressed his acquaintance on all the notorieties of his time, and by the ostentatious (but, in the main, laudable) assiduity with which he attended the exile Paoli and the low-born Johnson! These were amiable, and, for us, fortunate inconsistencies. His contemporaries, indeed, not without some colour of reason, occasionally complained of him as vain, inquisitive, troublesome, and giddy; but his vanity was inoffensive, his curiosity was commonly directed towards laudable objects,-when he meddled, he did so, generally, from goodnatured motives, and his giddiness was only an exuberant gaiety, which never failed in the respect and reverence due to literature, morals, and religion; and posterity gratefully acknowledges the taste, temper, and talents with which he selected, enjoyed, and described that polished and intellectual society which still lives in his work, and without his work had perished! Vixere fortes ante Agamemnona Nocte, carent quia vate sacro.'-HOR. Such imperfect though interesting sketches as Ben Jonson's Visit to Drummond,'Selden's Table Talk,' Swift's Journal,' and 'Spence's Anecdotes,' only tantalize our curiosity and excite our regret that there was no Boswell to preserve the conversation and illustrate the life and times of Addison, of Swift himself, of Milton, and, above all, of Shakspeare! We can hardly refrain from indulging ourselves with the imagination of works so instructive and delightful; but that were idle, except as it may tend to increase our obligation to the faithful and fortunate biographer of Dr Johnson. Mr Boswell's birth and education familiarized him with the highest of his acquaintance, and his goodnature and conviviality with the lowest. He describes society of all classes with the happiest discrimination. Even his foibles assisted his curiosity; he was sometimes laughed at, but always well-received; he excited no envy, he imposed no restraint. It was well-known that he mnade notes of every conversation, yet no timidity was alarmed, no delicacy demurred; and we are perhaps indebted to the lighter parts of his character for the patient indulgence with which every body submitted to sit for their pictures. Nor were his talents inconsiderable. He had looked a good deal into books, and more into the world. The narrative portion of his work is written with good sense, in an easy and perspicuous style, and without (which seems odd enough) any palpable imitation of Johnson. But in recording conversations he is unrivalled; "Before great Agamemnon reign'd, Reign'd kings as great as he, and brave, In the small compass of a grave; In endless night they sleep, unwept, unknown; No bard had they to make all time their own."—FRANCIS. that he was eminently accurate in substance, we have the evidence of all his contemporaries; but he is also in a high degree characteristic— dramatic. The incidental observations with which he explains or enlivens the dialogue are terse, appropriate, and picturesque-we not merely hear his company, we see them!" Richard Glover. BORN A. D. 1712.-DIED A. d. 1785. MR GLOVER, the author of the epic poem of 'Leonidas,' was born in 1712. He was the son of a Hamburgh merchant settled in London. His first poetical efforts were made in his sixteenth year, when he wrote some verses in honour of Sir Isaac Newton, which attracted the attention of Dr Pemberton, who thought them of sufficient merit to deserve a place in his view of Sir Isaac's philosophy, then on the eve of publication. Young Glover was destined by his father to succeed him in business, and accordingly became engaged in the Hamburgh trade after finishing a brief education. But the toils and pursuits of the countinghouse failed to estrange him from the society of his loved muses; and, in 1737, he presented his 'Leonidas' at the tribunal of public criticism. The award was favourable, and in the course of little more than one year it passed through twelve editions. Lord Cobham, to whom it was dedicated, warmly patronised it; Lord Lyttleton, in the periodical paper called Common Sense,' praised it in the warmest terms, not only for its poetical beauties but its excellent political tendencies; Fielding lauded it in The Champion;' and, in a word, the whole old whig interest were moved in its behalf, and hastened to identify the youthful Cato with their own cabal. The bait took, and Glover, whether from vanity or principle, became a keen politician and staunch adherent of the party. He made a conspicuous figure in city politics as early as the year 1739, when, by his influence and activity, he was the means of setting aside the election to the mayoralty of a person who had voted in parliament with the court-party. In the same year he was intrusted with the management of the appeal to parliament which the city-merchants deemed it proper to make against the line of policy then pursuing by Sir Robert Walpole. To the whig principles thus early adopted by him, he remained a steadfast adherent during the whole of his career. He was indeed too ardent an admirer of political consistency not to have his feelings repeatedly shocked by the conduct of many of his opposition friends; and such were the high Catonic principles which marked his character, that he unhesitatingly broke up his intercourse with any of the party when the disintegrity of their motives appeared sufficiently clear to him. In this feature of his character the reader will discern a striking resemblance to that of the mysterious and formidable shade' known amongst us by the name of Junius. The resemblance has been followed out with considerable ingenuity by the author of An Inquiry concerning the Author of the Letters of Junius, with reference to the Memoirs of a celebrated Literary and Political character." The particulars on London, 1814. 8vo. 1 which this inquirer founds his presumption in favour of Glover are the following: "He was an accomplished scholar, and had all the advantages that affluent circumstances and the best company could give. He was ever strongly attached to the principles of the constitution; his politics were those of Junius, and he was of the private councils of men in the highest station of the state throughout the greater part of a long and active life. At the time the letters of Junius were written, he had attained an age which could allow him without vanity to boast of an ample knowledge and experience of the world; and during the period of their publication he resided in London, and was engaged in no pursuits incompatible with his devoting his time to their composition: so that, in his letter to Mr Wilkes, he might justly say, 'I offer you the sincere opinion of a man who perhaps has more leisure to make reflections than you have, and who, though he stands clear of business and intrigue, mixes sufficiently for the purpose of intelligence in the conversation of the world.'" To these circumstances some others, which the inquirer indicates, might be added in support of the claims put forward for Mr Glover to the authorship of Junius. For example, Junius was evidently well-acquainted with city concerns and the language of traders and stock-jobbers; he valued himself on his knowledge of financial affairs; he was evidently familiar with the labour of correcting the press and the technical language of printers; he could write poetry apparently with facility; and he seems to have entertained a personal regard for Woodfall his printer. All these points of resemblance may undoubtedly be traced betwixt Glover and Junius, but they will not probably be found to counterbalance the general impression that the letters of Junius were the offspring of a much more brilliant and powerful mind than the author of 'Leonidas,' and the Memoirs of a celebrated Character' has evinced in these his principal avowed pieces. About the year 1744, Glover, disgusted at the scenes of intrigue and faction which his political career had betrayed to him, withdrew altogether from public affairs, and devoted his attention to the prosecution of his mercantile projects. Nor was it until ten years afterwards, when the prospect of the formation of an efficient and liberal ministry under Pitt was first held out to the country, that he was again prevailed upon to resume acquaintance with his friends at the west end of the town. Pitt honoured him with his confidence for a time; but the high-souled poet did not hesitate to withdraw himself from the friendship and favour of even such a man as Pitt when the minister's political conduct had become the subject of his disapprobation. At the accession of George III. Glover was chosen member of parliament for Weymouth, and sat in parliament from 1761 to 1768. In 1775 he retired from public life His last political act was supporting the claim of the West India planters and merchants at the bar of the house of commons, for which service his clients voted him a piece of plate of the value of £300. He died in 1785. Glover's Leonidas' amply entitles him to a distinguished place among the poets of his country. It is a piece of stately classic diction; free from turgidity, and considerably varied by incident and description; but its poetry is not of a sufficiently imaginative character for the taste of the present day. His Athenaid' is a correct, but compared with the Leonidas,' an inferior performance. He was the author of the celebrated ballad entitled Hosier's Ghost,' which was written with a view to rouse the nation, or rather the ministry, who seemed to b the only parties opposed to the general feeling, to a war with Spain. Of his dramatic pieces, entitled 'Boadicea' and 'Medea,' little can be said either in the form of praise or censure. 6 His Memoirs,' to which we have already adverted, are written with great impartiality, and contain some curious notices of the motives and intrigues of the principal actors on the political stage in England, from the resignation of Sir Robert Walpole to the establishment of Lord Chatham's second administration. Thomas Leland. BORN A. D. 1722.-died a. D. 1785. DR THOMAS LELAND, the well-known translator of Demosthenes, was born in Dublin, and educated at the university in that city. He entered Trinity college in 1737, and was elected a fellow in 1746. In 1748 he took orders. His first literary production was an edition of the orations of Demosthenes, with a Latin version and notes, which was published in 1754. The first volume of his English translation of the great Greek orator appeared in 1756; the second, in 1761; and the third in 1770. This work raised him to a high rank amongst the scholars of his day. The style is elegant, and the translation, on the whole, correct; although it would require a man of considerably greater powers than Dr Leland, and a more extensive command of all the resources of language, to furnish any thing like an adequate version of those matchless harangues that once "fulmin'd over Greece" with such a potent and resistless energy, and held the most refined and fastidious audience the world ever saw spell-bound and mute with astonishment at the superhuman eloquence of the orator. The translation of Demosthenes probably suggested Dr Leland's next great work, The History of the Life and Reign of Philip, King of Macedon.' This, too, is an able and erudite performance. In 1763 Dr Leland was appointed professor of oratory in Trinity college. Soon after this he got into controversy with the redoubtable Warburton, who had chosen, in his celebrated Doctrine of Grace,' to assert that eloquence was not any real quality, but only a fantastical and arbitrary abuse of language; and that the writers of the New Tes tament used a barbarous style in writing Greek, being masters of the words only, and not of the idioms, of that language. Against these two propositions Dr Leland read several lectures in his chair of oratory, the substance of which he published in 1764. Hurd answered on the part of Warburton and Leland replied. In 1773 Dr Leland published a History of Ireland, from the invasion of Henry II.,' in three volumes 4to. This is by no means a work of original research, and is of little value, therefore, to the student of Irish history; but it is written in a pleasing style, and forms a good popular work on the subject. In addition to the works we have mentioned, Dr Leland published some sermons which were much admired, and after his death, three volumes of pulpit-discourses from his pen were given to the public He died in 1785. William Strahan. BORN A. D. 1715.—DIED A. d. 1785. THIS eminent printer was a Scotsman by birth, and educated in Scotland. He went as a journeyman-printer to London, while yet a very young man, and by his industry and attention to business gradually rose in the world, until he obtained a share of the patent of king's printer, and became one of the leading publishers in the metropolis. In 1775 he was elected one of the members for Malmesbury, with Charles James Fox for his colleague. He steadily adhered to the liberal party, but lost his seat on the dissolution in 1784, and did not again enter parliament. He died in July 1785. William Whitehead. BORN A. D. 1715.-DIED A. d. 1785. WILLIAM WHITEHEAD, one of our minor poets, was born at Cambridge, and received the rudiments of education at a private school in that city. At the age of fourteen he procured admission to Winchester school, through the interest of Lord Montfort. At this latter seminary, Whitehead bore the character of a quiet pensive boy, fond of reading, and a great scribbler of English verses. In 1735 he was entered of Clare-hall, Cambridge, where he gained the acquaintance and esteem of such men as Powell, Balguy, Ogden, and Hurd. 6 His first successful poetical production was an imitation of Pope's preceptive style, in a poem On the danger of Writing in Verse.' His next publication, the tale of Atys and Adrastus,' was still more successful; but the best of his didactic pieces is his Essay on Ridicule,' first published in 1743. In 1750 he published a tragedy, entitled, "The Roman Father,' which still retains its place on the stage, and must therefore be pronounced a successful effort, although we suspect few of our readers ever heard of it. A second effort in this line, entitled 'Creusa,' was less successful, although Mason, the biographer of Whitehead, gives it the preference over 'The Roman Father.' In 1754, Whitehead accompanied the son of his patron, Lord Jersey, and another young nobleman, to the continent. During this tour he wrote several elegies and odes, which Mason thinks have been unduly neglected by the public. On the death of Cibber, and the refusal of Gray to accept the laureateship, that office was bestowed on Whitehead, whose genius was by no means outraged by its mechanical demands on his powers. He made a good and patient laureate, annually producing his quantum of verse, and occasionally stumbling upon a poetical sentiment or expression; but the dangerous wreath drew down |