The snow-drop pale, the crocus spik'd with gold. Strains not discordant to each moral theme In thee, my God, my Saviour, and my Lord !" He died in May, 1797, of the consequences of a contusion he had received on his leg. ་ William Julius Mickle. BORN A. D. 1734.-DIED A. D. 1788. THE ingenious translator of 'The Lusiad,' was the son of a Scottish clergyman of some reputation in the commonwealth of letters, and received his early education at the school of Langholm, of which parish his father was minister. He evinced a decided taste for literature while yet a very young man, but having engaged in some business speculations which proved unfortunate, his attention was for several years turned aside from letters. In 1762 he published a poem, entitled, Providence, or Arandus and Emilée,' which obtained for him the favourable notice of Lord Lyttleton. Mr Chalmers represents his lordship as having, upon the whole, baulked the young poet's expectations, after exciting them considerably with the promise of his patronage. We do not think, however, that the biographer has made good this charge against his lordship, although it is certain that Mickle encountered not a few of the hardships and uncertainties attendant upon a literary life, after his removal to the English metropolis, and was at last happy to accept the office of a corrector to the Clarendon press at Oxford. In 1767 he published a poem, which he at first entitled, The Concubine,' but in subsequent editions, Sir Martyn.' This poem is written in the Spenserian stanza, and evinces considerable genius and a good ear for rhythm. It made some noise at the time it appeared, and was attributed to different writers of established reputation. In 1772 he edited a collection of Fugitive pieces, which was published in continuation of Dodsley's collection, in four volumes, 8vo., by George Pearch. He was now, however, meditating his great work, the translation of The Lusiad;' on which he nearly exclusively employed himself for four years. It was published in 1775, in one volume, quarto; a second edition was called for in 1778. The Lusiad,' in its English dress, was very favourably received both by the English and Portuguese critics, and procured for the translator many civilities from the countrymen of his favourite Camoens, on his visiting Lisbon, in 1779, in the quality of secretary to Commodore Johnstone. He died in 1788. An edition of his poems, with a biographical sketch, was published in 1794, by Mr Ireland. Of his principal piece, The Lusiad,' it may be safely affirmed, that we possess very few translations of superior merit; it is at once free and literal; a poem fitted to live in the English language," and at the same time a faith ful mirror to the original epic. His preliminary dissertations are also very favourable specimens of general scholarship. Thomas Day. BORN A. D. 1748.-DIED A. D. 1789. He was THIS eccentric, but amiable man, was a native of London. born on the 22d of June, 1748. His early education was superintended by his mother, a lady of considerable accomplishments: his father having died when he was little more than a year old. Young Day's fortune was handsome,-and he received a first-rate education at the Charter house and Oxford. On finishing his studies at the university, he spent several successive years on the continent, where he seems to have employed himself in studying the habits of the lower classes, with a view to discover the origin of that universal taint which he found to infect human nature in all existing modifications of society, but for which, unwilling to accept the solution offered by revelation, he long felt himself unable to account. At last he became satisfied, that a defective and injudicious education was the sole root of the mischief; and, with an ardour peculiar to himself, immediately set about instituting a set of experiments, the grand aim and object of which was the production of a woman of faultless mind and manners, whose company, he wisely resolved, should reward him for his labours, and form the solace of his future life. of this hopeful scheme, he paid a visit to the foundling hospital at Shrewsbury, where he was permitted to select two female children to be the subjects of his educational experiments. His choice fell upon two girls of twelve years of age; both of interesting appearance, but of different casts of complexion and features; the one, on whom he was pleased to bestow the classical name of Lucretia, was a fair-haired, rosy-cheeked child; the other, who was made to exchange her name for that of Sabrina, was a clear brunette, with dark eyes and raven locks. We subjoin the particulars of this strange bargain, and the result of the experiment, nearly in Mr Chalmers's words: Full The girls were obtained on written conditions, for the due performance of which, an intimate friend of Mr Day's, a barrister, became guarantee. The conditions were: that Mr Day should, within twelve months from the period of taking the girls under his charge, bind one of them apprentice to some respectable tradeswoman, and pay one hundred pounds of premium for her, besides maintaining her until she married, or began business for herself, on either of which events he pledged himself to pay her four hundred pounds more. With respect to the one whom he might make choice of for his future partner, at the end of the twelve months' comparative trial, he bound himself to treat her with respect and all necessary kindness, until she should be fitted to fill the station for which he destined her; and, in the event of his changing his mind, to maintain her at board in some respectable family, till she should get married to another, when he would pay her a wedding-portion of five hundred pounds. These preliminaries arranged, Mr Day immediately set out for France, carrying his young charges with him, but unaccom panied by a single English servant,—an arrangement by which he thought to subject their infantile minds entirely to his new plan of education, by precluding the possibility of their holding conversation with any others but themselves and their instructor. He soon found he had undertaken no easy task; his pupils teased and perplexed him in a thousand ways he had never before dreamt of; they quarrelled; they cried whenever they were left alone with any person who could not speak English to them; at last they both sickened of smallpox, and poor Day was obliged to nurse them himself. Eight months of this sort of life completely satisfied our experimenter; at the expiry of this period he returned to England, and got rid of Lucretia by placing her with a chamber-milliner. With Sabrina he actually proceeded during some years in the execution of his favourite project; but was at last reluctantly compelled to abandon all hopes of making her his wife. She indeed grew up an accomplished and amiable woman, but fell far short of her protector's beau ideal of a wife.' At last Mr Day ventured into the bonds of matrimony with a Yorkshire lady, who seems to have made him in all respects an excellent wife. With her he retired to his estates in Essex and Surrey, where he devoted himself to a rural life, and the active discharge of the duties of a country-gentleman. He wrote several political pamphlets, and exerted himself strenuously in behalf of American independence and parliamentary reform. In one of his political tracts, the following remark occurs; it has lost none of its point in the present day: "If there be an object truly ridiculous in nature, it is an American patriot signing resolutions of independence with the one hand, and, with the other, brandishing a whip over his affrighted slaves." His first poetical publication, entitled The Dying Negro,' which appeared in 1773, contributed not a little to excite that general abhorrence of the slave-trade, which at last brought about the abolition of the accursed traffic. His other poetical pieces are entitled, The Devoted Legions,' and The Desolation of America; they are both of a political cast. But the publication by which Mr Day is most generally, and will be longest known, is the History of Sandford and Merton,' one which he wrote for the use of children, and which never fails to prove eminently entertaining at least, if not so deeply and directly instructive as its author hoped it might prove, to juvenile minds. We are told, by an anonymous writer, that Mr Day was, in addition to his qualities as a good citizen and patriot, an ingenious mechanic, a well-informed chemist, a learned theoretical physician, and an expert constitutional lawyer." . · Mr Day was killed, in 1789, by a kick from a young horse, which, with the view of trying his theory of education on the irrational creation, he was attempting to train and exercise himself. Wellesley, Earl of Mornington. BORN A. D. 1735.-DIED A.D. 1781. THIS nobleman, father of the Duke of Wellington, takes a place in See Miss Seward's Life of Darwin. * See article Day in Biographia Britannica. the annals of British science, as one of the most accomplished theoretical and practical musicians. Daines Barrington, in his Miscellanies,' informs us, that he evinced a most precocious musical talent. "His father," says Mr Barrington, "played well, for a gentleman, on the violin ; which always delighted the child while in his nurse's arms, and long before he could speak. Nor did this proceed from a love common to other children, of a sprightly noise: as may appear by the following anecdote. Dubourg-who was, thirty years ago, a distinguished player on that instrument-happened to be at the family-seat; but the child would not permit him to take the instrument from his father. till his little hands were held. After having heard Dubourg, however, the case was altered; and there was much more difficulty to persuade him to let Dubourg give back the instrument to his father; nor would the infant ever afterwards permit the father to play whilst Dubourg was in the house." It was not till his ninth year, that he attempted to play on any instrument. An old portrait-painter, who came at this time to the family-seat, gave him some instruction on the violin; and so rapid was his improvement, that in a short time he was able to take part in a conSoon afterwards he commenced composer, "from emulation," says Mr Barrington, "of the applause given to a country-dance made by a neighbouring clergyman. He accordingly set to work; and, by playing a treble on the violin, whilst he sung a bass to it, he formed a minuet, the bass of which he wrote in the treble clef, and was very profuse of his fifths and octaves, being totally ignorant of the established rules of composition. This minuet was followed by a duet for two French horns, whilst the piece concluded by an andante movement: thus consisting of three parts, all of which being tacked together, he called a serenata. At this time he had never heard any music but from his father, sisters, and the old painter." cert. "It is From the violin our young musician proceeded to the organ. well known," continues Mr Barrington, "that this instrument is more likely to form a composer than any other; and his lordship, in process of time, committed his ideas to writing. As he had, however, never received the least instruction in the abstruse but pleasing science, he wished to consult both Rosengrave and Gemminiani, who, on examining his compositions, told him that they could not be of the least service to him, as he had himself investigated all the established rules, with their proper exceptions." He succeeded to the title of Baron Mornington, on the death of his father, on the 31st of January, 1758. In 1759, he married the eldest daughter of the first Viscount Dungannon; and, on the 2d of October, 1760, he was advanced to the dignities of Viscount Wellesley and Earl of Mornington. He died at Kensington, on the 22d of May, 1781, and was succeeded in his title and estates by his eldest son, Richard, the present marquess of Wellesley. The earl's finest compositions are his glees, especially Here in cool grot,' 'By Greenwood tree,' and 'O, Bird of eve.' John Hamilton Mortimer. BORN A. D. 1741.-died a. D. 1779. THIS artist was the son of a miller in Sussex, who used to consider himself the lineal descendant of Mortimer, Earl of March. The family possessed a kind of hereditary attachment to the pictorial art, and young Mortimer early became emulous of distinction in the same line, and prevailed upon his father to pay a premium of one hundred guineas for liberty to place him in the studio of the then celebrated Hudson. He soon, however, lost his esteem for Hudson, and transferred himself to the painting-room of Pine, who was then considered an excellent colourist. But an introduction to Cipriani, at that time employed in painting the ceilings and galleries of the duke of Richmond's house, proved of more service to him than all that he had previously gleaned under both of his masters. The duke allowed him to study his collection of paintings and statues; and he soon after obtained several premiums from the Society for the encouragement of arts, for drawings made from the figures in the Richmond gallery. "The reputation," says Allan Cunningham, "which all allow that Mortimer about this time suddenly acquired, has been ascribed by the biographers to the picture of Edward the Confessor seizing the treasures of his mother, which, in the opinion of Reynolds, excelled the rival painting by Romney so decidedly as to entitle him to the premium of fifty guineas. The tradition of the studios, however, ascribes his first great start in fame to a source more romantic, or at least accidental. It was the fashion in those days for painters to be largely employed in embellishing ceilings, and walls, and furniture; and it may be remembered that the coach of Sir Joshua Reynolds had the seasons painted on the panels: now the state coach which was to convey the king to the house of lords required repair, and Mortimer was called in by the coach-maker to ornament the panels; which he did so successfully, that the people, who crowded to see their young sovereign, bestowed equal attention on the Battle of Agincourt painted on the carriage. The king, it is added, was so much pleased, that he caused the panel to be taken out and preserved, and extended his notice to Mortimer. To this incident is imputed the king's anxiety for the painter's admission into the Royal academy. His success in the contest with Romney, however, whether this story of the panel be true or not, made him more widely known, and inspired him with new confidence in his own powers. He soon after produced a large picture of St Paul preaching to the Britons; and so well was it thought of that the Society of arts presented him with a hundred guineas, and when exhibited in Spring Gardens it so far excelled the works opposed to it, that some were justified in exclaiming, "We have now got an historical painter of our own!" It was indeed a picture of considerable merit,-displaying no little originality of character in some of the heads, and above all, it was the work of a very young man fresh from the country, who had never been abroad and had studied but little at home." |