Aul. Did. Read in thy fate our answer. Thy pride had yielded Yet if To bow a wretch, alas! how bow'd already! When trick'd and varnish'd by your glossing pen men, Will shine in honour's annals, and adorn Himself; it boots not me. Look there, look there! Come hither, youth: be thou to me a son, EPITAPH ON MRS. MASON, IN THE CATHEDRAL OF BRISTOL. TAKE, holy earth! all that my soul holds dear: Take that best gift which Heaven so lately gave: To Bristol's fount I bore with trembling care Her faded form; she bow'd to taste the wave, And died. Does youth, does beauty, read the line? Does sympathetic fear their breasts alarm? Speak, dead Maria! breathe a strain divine: Even from the grave thou shalt have power to charm. Bid them be chaste, be innocent, like thee; As firm in friendship, and as fond in love. And bids "the pure in heart behold their God." AN HEROIC EPISTLE*. TO SIR WILLIAM CHAMBERS, KNIGHT, COMPTROLLER-GENERAL OF HIS MAJESTY'S WORKS, AND AUTHOR OF A LATE "DISSERTATION ON ORIENTAL GARDENING,"-ENRICHED WITH EXPLANATORY NOTES, CHIEFLY EXTRACTED FROM THAT ELABORATE PERFORMANCE. 1773. KNIGHT of the Polar Star! by fortune placed Like thee to scorn dame Nature's simple fence; [* of this Epistle, which came so opportunely to the succour of native taste against the Chinese invasion, personal spleen was undoubtedly the main inspiration. Chambers had offended Mason by publishing the Dissertation so soon after his English Garden; ' and his crime, in the eyes of Walpole, was no less than using his elaborate work as a weapon to deter the king from introducing classic improvements into the gardens of Richmond.ALLAN CUNNINGHAM, Lives of British Art, vol. iv. p. 347.] † Cynosure, an affected phrase. "Cynosura is the constellation of Ursa Minor, or the Lesser Bear, the next star to the pole."-Dr. Newton, on the word in Milton. "Many trees, shrubs and flowers," sayeth Li-Tsong, a Chinese author of great antiquity, "thrive best in low, moist situations; many on hills and mountains; some require a rich soil; but others will grow on clay, in sand, or even upon rocks, and in the water: to some a sunny exposition is necessary; but for others the shade is preferable. There are plants which thrive best in exposed situations, but, in general, shelter is requisite. The skilful gardener, to whom study and experience have taught these qualities, carefully attends to them in his operations; knowing that thereon depend the health and growth of his plants, and consequently the beauty of his plantations." Vide Diss. p. 77. The reader, I presume, will readily allow, that he never met with so much recondite truth as this ancient Chinese here exhibits. And, like old Orpheus, make some strong effort Thy satire sure had given them both a stab, *Vide (if it be extant) a poem under this title, for which (or for the publication of Lord Bolingbroke's philosophical writings) the person here mentioned received a considerable pension in the time of lord Bute's administration. This is the great and fundamental axiom, on which oriental taste is founded. It is therefore expressed here with the greatest precision, and in the identical phrase of the great original. The figurative terms, and even the explanatory simile, are entirely borrowed from Sir William's Dissertation. "Nature" (says the Chinese, or Sir William for them) "affords us but few materials to work with. Plants, grounds and water, are her only productions; and though both the forms and arrangements of these may be varied to an incredible degree, yet they have but few striking varieties, the rest being of the nature of changes rung upon bells, which, though in reality different, still produce the same uniform kind of gingling; the variation being too minute to be easily perceived." "Art must therefore supply the scantiness of Nature," &c. &c. page 14. And again, "Our larger works are only a repetition of the small ones, like the honest bachelor's feast, which consisted in nothing but a multiplication of his own dinner; three legs of mutton and turnips, three roasted geese, and three buttered applepies." Preface, page 7. + So Milton. Where the gorgeous East with richest hand Showers on her kings barbaric pearl and gold. Nor rest we here, but, at our magic call, Or, wanting these, from Charlotte Hayes we bring "In their lofty woods, serpents and lizards, of many beautiful sorts, crawl upon the ground. Innumerable monkeys, cats, and parrots clamber upon the trees." Pag 40. "In their lakes are many islands, some small, sine large, amongst which are often seen stalking along, the elephant, the rhinoceros, the dromedary, ostrich, and the giant baboon." Page 66. They keep in their enchanted scenes a surprising variety of monstrous birds, reptiles and animals, which are tamed by art, and guarded by enormous dogs of Tibet, and African giants, in the ha of magicians." Page 42. "Sometimes, in this rom) excursion, the passenger finds himself in extensi recesses, surrounded with arbours of jessamine, vist and roses; where beauteous Tartarean damsels, in las transparent robes that flutter in the air, present him wit rich wines, &c., and invite him to taste the swee retirement, on Persian carpets, and beds of Camastic down." Page 40. "Their scenes of terror are composed of get! woods, &c.; gibbets, crosses, wheels, and the whole app ratus of torture are seen from the roads. Here too conceal in cavities, on the summits of the highest tains, foundries, lime-kilns, and glass-works, which se forth large volumes of flame, and continued columns thick smoke, that give to these mountains the appeara of volcanoes." Page 37. "Here the passenger from t to time is surprised with repeated shocks of electras impulse; the earth trembles under him by the power confined air," &c. Page 39. Now to produce both thes effects, viz. the appearance of volcanoes and earthquakes we have here substituted the occasional explosion di powder-mill, which (if there be not too much sumpcy in the contrivance) it is apprehended will at once ans all the purposes of lime-kilns and electrical machins and imitate thunder and the explosion of cannon into the bargain. Vide page 40. "In the most dismal recesses of the woods, are t ples dedicated to the king of vengeance, near which ♬ placed pillars of stone, with pathetic descriptions of treg events; and many acts of cruelty perpetrated ther outlaws and robbers." Page 37. **This was written while Mr. Wilkes was sherif London, and when it was to be feared he would ratth chain a year longer as lord mayor. But say, ye powers, who come when fancy calls, Who of three realms shall condescend to know And o'er the Thames fling one stupendous line * "There is likewise in the same garden, viz. YvenMing-Yven, near Pekin, a fortified town, with its ports, streets, public squares, temples, markets, shops, and tribunals of justice; in short, with everything that is at Pekin, only on a smaller scale." "In this town the emperors of China, who are too much the slaves of their greatness to appear in public, and their women, who are excluded from it by custom, are frequently diverted with the hurry and bustle of the capital, which is there represented, several times in the year, by the eunuchs of the palace." Page 32. + Sir William's enormous account of Chinese bridges, too long to be here inserted. Vide page 53. + "Some of these eunuchs personate porters." Page 32. § "Fruits and all sorts of refreshments are cried about the streets in this mock city."-The name of a woman who kept a fruit-shop in St. James's street. Drew iron tears down Pluto's cheek" Milton. While skulking round the pews, that babe of grace, Who ne'er before at sermon show'd his face, The Jews prevail, and, thund'ring from the stocks, Fair Schwellenbergen smiles the sport to see, "Neither are thieves, pickpockets, and sharpers forgot in these festivals; that noble profession is usually allotted to a good number of the most dexterous eunuchs." Vide ibid. **The watch seizes on the culprit." Vide ibid. tt "He is conveyed before the judge, and sometimes severely bastinadoed." Ibid. ‡‡ "Quarrels happen-battles ensue." Ibid. §§ "Every liberty is permitted, there is no distinction of persons." Ibid. "This is done to divert his imperial majesty, and the ladies of his train." Vide ibid. [The laugh raised by these satiric rhymes in due season died quietly away; and Chambers, abandoning Chinese pagodas and Eastern bowers, confined himself to Roman architecture.-ALLAN CUNNINGHAM, Lives of Brit. Art. vol. iv. p. 250.] JOSEPH WARTON. [Born, 1722. Died, 1800.] He was DOCTOR JOSEPH WARTON, Son to the vicar of Basingstoke, and elder brother to the historian of English poetry, was born in the house of his maternal grandfather, the Rev. Joseph Richardson, rector of Dunsfold, in Surrey. chiefly educated at home by his father, Dr. War- | ton, till his fourteenth year, when he was admitted on the foundation of Winchester college. He was there the schoolfellow and intimate of Collins, the poet; and, in conjunction with him and another youth, whose name was Tomkyns, he sent to the Gentleman's Magazine three pieces of poetry, which were highly commended in that miscel lany*. In 1740, being superannuated, he left Winchester school, and having missed a presentation to *The piece which Collins contributed was entitled A Sonnet: "When Phoebe form'd a wanton smile, From 'midst the drops, my love is born, (Signed) DELICATULUS. [Collins's other signature was Amasius. But only one of the poems with that name in the Gentleman's Maga New College, Oxford, was entered a commoner at 'that of Oriel. At the university he composed his two poems, "The Enthusiast," and "The Dying Indian," and a satirical prose sketch, in imitation of Le Sage, entitled "Ranelagh," which his editor, Mr. Wooll, has inserted in the volume that contains his life, letters, and poems. Having taken the degree of bachelor of arts at Oxford, in 1744, he was ordained on his father's curacy at Basingstoke. At the end of two years, he removed from thence to do duty at Chelsea, where he caught the small-pox. Having left that place, for change of air, he did not return to it, on account of some disagreement with the parishioners, but officiated for a few months at Chawton and Droxford, and then resumed his residence at Basingstoke. In the same year, 1746, he published a volume of his odes, in the preface to which he expressed a hope that they would be regarded as a fair attempt to bring poetry back from the moralizing and didactic taste of the age, to the truer channels of fancy and description. Collins, our author's immortal contemporary, also published his odes in the same month of the same year. He realised, with the hand of genius, that idea of highly personified and pic. turesque composition, which Warton contemplated with the eye of taste. But Collins's works were ushered in with no manifesto of a design to regenerate the taste of the age, with no pretensions of erecting a new or recovered standard of excellence. In 1748 our author was presented by the Duke of Bolton to the rectory of Winslade, when he immediately married a lady of that neighbourhood, Miss Daman, to whom he had been for some time attached. He had not been long settled in his living, when he was invited by his patron to accompany him to the south of France. The Duchess of Bolton was then in a confirmed dropsy, and his Grace, anticipating her death, wished to have a protestant clergyman with him on the Continent, who might marry him, on the first intelligence of his consort's death, to the lady with whom he lived, and who was universally known by the name of Polly Peachum. Dr. Warton complied with this proposal, to which (as his circumstances were narrow) it must be hoped that his poverty consented rather than his will. those" (says Mr. Wooll)" who have enjoyed the rich and varied treasures of Dr. Warton's conversation, who have been dazzled by the brilliancy of his wit, and instructed by the acuteness "To zine of that time was by Collins. Of the other verses, Mr. Dyce says, "their incdiocrity convinces me that they did not proceed from the pen of Collins" (p. 207). There was no necessity to decide this by their mediocrity; for Cave, in a note at the end of the poetry for that month, says, "The poems signed Amasius in this Magazine are from different correspondents;" and Dr. Johnson says, in one of his little notes to Nichols omitted by Boswell, that the other Amasius was Dr. Swan, the translator of Sydenham.] of his understanding, I need not suggest how truly enviable was the journey which his fellow-travellers accomplished through the French provinces to Montauban." It may be doubted, however, if the French provinces were exactly the scene, where his fellow-travellers were most likely to be instructed by the acuteness of Dr. Warton's observations; as he was unable to speak the language of the country, and could have no information from foreigners, except what he could now and then extort from the barbarous Latin of some Irish friar. He was himself so far from being¦ delighted or edified by his pilgrimage, that for private reasons, (as his biographer states), and from impatience of being restored to his family, he returned home, without having accomplished the object for which the Duke had taken him abroad. He set out for Bordeaux in a courier's cart; but being dreadfully jolted in that vehicle, he quitted it, and, having joined some carriers in Brittany, came home by way of St. Maloes. A month after his return to England, the Duchess of Bolton died; and our author, imagining that his patron would, possibly, have the decency to remain a widower for a few weeks, wrote to his Grace, offering to join him immediately. But the Duke had no mind to delay his nuptials; he was joined to Polly by a protestant clergyman, who was found upon the spot; and our author thus missed the reward of the only action of his life which can be said to throw a blemish on his respectable memory. In the year 1748-9 he had begun, and in 1753 he finished and published, an edition of Virgil in English and Latin. To this work Warburton contributed a dissertation on the sixth book of the Eneid; Atterbury furnished a commentary on the character of Iapis; and the laureate Whitehead, another on the shield of Eneas. Many of the notes were taken from the best commentators on Virgil, particularly Catrou and Segrais: some were supplied by Mr. Spence; and others, relating to the soil, climate, and customs of Italy, by Mr. Holdsworth, who had resided for many years in that country. For the English of the Æneid, he adopted the translation by Pitt. The life of Virgil, with three essays on pastoral*, didactic, and epic poetry, and a poetical version of the Eclogues and Georgics, constituted his own part of the work. This translation may, in many instances, be found more faithful and concise than Dryden's; but it wants that elastic and idiomatic freedom, by which Dryden reconciles us to his faults; and exhibits rather the diligence of a scholar than the spirit of a poet. Dr. Harewood, in his view of the classics, accuses the Latin text of incorrectnesst. Shortly *His reflections on pastoral poetry are limited to a few sentences; but he subjoins an essay on the subject, by Dr. Johnson, from the Rambler. With what justice I will not pretend to say; but after comparing a few pages of his edition with Maittaire, he seems to me to be less attentive to punctuation than the after the appearance of his Virgil, he took a share in the periodical paper, The Adventurer, and contributed twenty-four numbers, which have been generally esteemed the most valuable in the work. 66 In 1754 he was instituted to the living of Tunworth, on the presentation of the Jervoise family; and in 1755 was elected second master of Winchester School, with the management and advantage of a boarding-house. In the following year Lord Lyttelton, who had submitted a part of his History of Henry II." to his revisal, bestowed a scarf upon him. He found leisure, at this period, to commence his "Essay on the Writings and Genius of Pope," which he dedicated to Young, without subscribing his name. But he was soon, and it would appear with his own tacit permission, generally pronounced to be its author. Twenty-six years, however, elapsed before he ventured to complete it. Dr. Johnson said, that this was owing to his not having been able to bring the public to be of his opinion as to Pope. Another reason has been assigned for his inactivity*. Warburton, the guardian of Pope's fame, was still alive; and he was the zealous and useful friend of our author's brother. The prelate died in 1779, and in 1782 Dr. Warton published his extended and finished Essay. If the supposition that he abstained from embroiling himself by the question about Pope with Warburton be true, it will at least impress us with an idea of his patience; for it was no secret that Ruffhead was supplied by Warburton with materials for a life of Pope, in which he attacked Dr. Warton with abundant severity; but in which he entangled himself more than his adversary, in the coarse-spun ropes of his special pleading. The Essay, for a time, raised up to him another enemy, to whom his conduct has even an air of submissiveness. In commenting on a line of Pope, he hazarded a remark on Hogarth's propensity to intermix the ludicrous with attempts at the sublime. Hogarth revengefully introduced Dr. Warton's works into one of his satirical pieces, and vowed to bear him eternal enmity. Their mutual friends, however, interfered, and the artist was pacified. Dr. Warton, in the next edition, altered his just animadversion on Hogarth into an ill-merited compliment. By delaying to re-publish his Essay on Pope, he ultimately obtained a more dispassionate hearing from the public for the work in its finished state. In the mean time, he enriched it with ad editor of the Corpus Poetarum, and sometimes to omit the marks by which it is customary to distinguish adverbs from pronouns. I dislike his interpretation of one line in the first Eclogue of Virgil, which seems to me peculiarly tasteless; namely, where he translates " Post aliquot aristas" "after a few years." The picture of Melibaus's cottage "behind a few cars of corn," so simply and exquisitely touched, is thus exchanged for a forced phrase with regard to time. * Chalmers's Life of J. Warton, British Poets. ditions, digested from the reading of half a lifetime. The author of "The Pursuits of Literature" has pronounced it a common-place book; and Richardson, the novelist, used to call it a literary gossip: but a testimony in its favour, of more authority than any individual opinion, will be found in the popularity with which it continues to be read. It is very entertaining, and abounds with criticism of more research than Addison's, of more amenity than Hurd's or Warburton's, and of more insinuating tact than Johnson's. At the same time, while much ingenuity and many truths are scattered over the Essay, it is impossible to admire it as an entire theory, solid and consistent in all its parts. It is certainly setting out from unfortunate premises to begin his Remarks on Pope with grouping Dryden and Addison in the same class of poets; and to form a scale for estimating poetical genius, which would set Elijah Fenton in a higher sphere than Butler. He places Pope, in the scale of our poets, next to Milton, and above Dryden; yet he applies to him the exact character which Voltaire gives to the heartless Boileau-that of a writer, "perhaps, incapable of the sublime which elevates, or of the feeling which affects the soul." With all this, he tells us, that our poetry and our language are everlastingly indebted to Pope: he attributes genuine tenderness to the "Elegy on an Unfortunate Lady;" a strong degree of passion to the "Epistle of Eloise ;" invention and fancy to "The Rape of the Lock ;" and a picturesque conception to some parts of "Windsor Forest," which he pronounces worthy of the pencil of Rubens or Julio Romano. There is something like April weather in these transitions. In May 1766, he was advanced to the headmastership of Winchester School. In consequence of this promotion, he once more visited Oxford, and proceeded to the degree of bachelor and doctor in divinity. After a union of twenty years, he lost his first wife, by whom he had six children; but his family and his professional situation requiring a domestic partner, he had been only a year a widower, when he married a Miss Nicholas, of Winchester. He now visited London more frequently than before. The circle of his friends, in the metropolis, comprehended all the members of Burke's and Johnson's Literary Club. With Johnson himself he was for a long time on intimate terms; but their friendship suffered a breach which was never closed, in consequence of an argument, which took place between them, during an evening spent at the house of Sir Joshua Reynolds. The concluding words of their conversation are reported, by one who was present, to have been these: Johnson said, "Sir, I am not accustomed to be contradicted." Warton replied, "Better, sir, for yourself and your friends if you were: our respect could not be increased, but our love might." |