of history are so closely followed as to give the whole the air of a poetical chronicle. To this opinion we may oppose the fact of having ourselves repeatedly perused it in early youth, for the interest which the story continually excited. Glover endeavoured to imitate the ancients, but wanted strength to support the severe style which he had chosen. He has, however, many and great merits, this especially among others, that instead of treading in the sheep-track wherein the writers of modern epics, till his time, servum pecus, had gone one after the other, he framed the stories of both his poems according to their subject, without reference to any model, or any rule but that of propriety and good sense. 'He was supposed by Dr. Warton,' says Mr. Chalmers, to have left some curious memoirs of his life, but as so many years have elapsed without their appearance, this was either a mistake, or they have been deemed unfit for publication.' A portion of this history has lately been made public, and it is as interesting as any thing can be which relates to the politics of such unimportant times. It has led to a supposition that the author of Junius and of these memoirs, were one and the same person; and an Inquiry has been published, which must be allowed to have shown satisfactorily that the various requisites which must have existed in Junius, are to be found in Glover. It is thus proved that Glover might have been the author, but no proof has as yet been adduced that he was. We should rejoice if this inquiry should bring forth more of his remains, and lead to a collected edition of the works of an author who, though too highly extolled in his own day, must ever hold a respectable rank among the English poets. This is the more to be wished, because Glover's history has been hitherto very imperfectly given. The editor of his Memoirs would do more honour to the memory of this distinguished man by executing this task, than if he should succeed in identifying him with the most eminent libeller of his day; for the literary character of Junius will not maintain its rank. It is as little difficult in these times to write a malicious style, as it is to produce smooth verses; and he who, like Junius, is deterred by no sense of veracity or of shame from bringing forward bold accusations which he knows to be unfounded; misrepresenting and distorting facts, and seasoning calumny and detraction with insult, may easily obtain the reputation of writing with vivacity and strength. But the trick has grown common: some of the most eminent professors of the art have been 'stripped and whipped' as they deserved; and they have discovered, somewhat too late, while writhing under the wholesome discipline, that the precepts of the moral law are not to be violated with impunity. Whitehead, the laureate, is said to have contracted his school friendships either with noblemen or gentlemen of large fortunes; and it is asked if this choice, which some imputed to vanity and

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others to prudence, might not be owing to his delicacy, as that would make him easily disgusted with the coarser manners of ordinary boys.' We know not whether this execrable folly comes from Dr. Balguy or Mason, but it is lamentable to think that either should have been capable of uttering it. Mr. Chalmers talks of his being enabled to remain at school by his own frugality, and such assistance as his mother could give him: in what manner could his own frugality contribute to this?-In the life of that good man Scott of Amwell, a sort of last dying speech and confession, which the quakers published after his death, is inserted without any suspicion that it will injure the memory of Mr. Scott. Those,' the editor adds, who have admired him as the excellent and benevolent citizen and the favoured poet, will not, it is hoped, whatever their religious opinion may be, view him with less complacency on his death-bed as a christian.' This precious paper requires some comment; Scott's life had not merely been innocent and decorous, but eminently useful. He was esteemed regular and moral in his conduct,' says this very document, 'and extensive in his knowledge; very remarkably diligent and attentive in promoting works of public utility, in assisting individuals in cases of difficulty, and in the conciliation of differences. Nevertheless,' it is added, there is reason to believe he frequently experienced the conviction of the spirit of truth for not faithfully following the Lord. Whether any heavier offence can be proved against him by the society than that of having styled himself Esquire in one of his title-pages, and used such heathen words as December and May in his poems, instead of twelfth month and fifth month, we know not; but when he was dying at a vigorous age of a typhus fever, he was brought down,' says this quaker-process, as from the clifts of the rocks and the heights of the hills into the valley of deep humiliation. Being convinced of his own low and unprepared state, he said he himself was unworthy of the lowest place in the heavenly mansions, but hoped he should not be a companion of accursed and wrathful spirits.' In this state of religious concern' he continued till he died, and the quakers published the account as a word of reproof to the careless, and of comfort to the mourners on Zion. They will probably not be well pleased at seeing it republished in a work which will preserve it for many centuries. Thirty years have done much towards softening down the asperities of the sect; and if they had among their members at this time one who wrote such poems as Scott of Amwell, they would regard his works as things which did honour to the society as well as to the author. The Romanists draw a veil over their confessions, with due reverence for the feelings, as well as due tenderness for the infirmities of human nature. How much wiser and better is their practice than that which drags into day-light these death-bed scenes; and

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founding a judicial process upon whatever comes from the lips of a man upon the rack of disease, publishes sentence against him, and wounds the living while it stigmatizes the dead!

A correspondent in the Gentleman's Magazine asserted that Mickle was employed by Evans to fabricate some of the old ballads published by him, and Mr. Chalmers says this calumny was fully refuted in a subsequent letter. An opinion has been expressed in a former number of this journal that many of the modern ballads in Evan's collection were written by Mickle: there was no attempt at deceit in the case, and nothing but a spirit of malignant stupidity could extract from it an accusation against the author. Perhaps it would not yet be too late to discover other pieces of this very able writer which exist in the periodical publications of the day. The old Bachelor, a poem of striking merit, which was reprinted in the Annual Anthology from the Town and Country Magazine, seems to bear the marks of his hand.

In the life of Logan Mr. Chalmers speaks of the discovery of Ossian's poems as if he believed in their authenticity. Because some pieces which are printed among the remains of poor Michael Bruce have been ascribed to Logan, he has not thought it proper to admit Bruce's poems into his collection; and, speaking of Lord Woodhouslee's appointment to the professorship of history at Edinburgh for which Logan was soliciting, he tells us that the talents of the successful person, had talents been the criterion, must have excluded all competition. A tithe of Logan's talents would make ten Lord Woodhouslees.-He defends the parishioners of Logan for quarrelling with him on the score of his literary pursuits, saying 'there can be surely no great injustice in complaining of studies which diverted him from his profession, a profession which he had voluntarily chosen, and in which he was liberally settled :' as if the active pursuit of literature were in any way incompatible with the duties of the ministry! A valuable addition is made to T. Warton's works, by the discovery of five pastoral eclogues, the scenes of which are laid among the shepherds oppressed by the war in Germany. They were published in 1745, and ascribed to him on the competent authority of Isaac Reid. The plan is stated in the preface to be entirely new,' and the design essentially distinguished from any productions of their kind either ancient or modern' the author adds, 'I hope it will not be thought odd, or ill chosen. The opposing interests of a peaceful and rural life, and the tumultuous scenes of war, together with the various struggles and passions arising from thence, seem by no means an improper field for the most elegant writer to exercise his genius in.' They are certainly remarkable productions for a youth of eighteen; but Warton, though undoubtedly to be believed in asserting his own originality, was mistaken when he supposed that no former producKK 2

tion of the same kind was to be found. The Jesuit Jean de Bussières has an eclogue precisely upon the same plan.

The Life of Mason is written with praiseworthy care in collecting scattered notes. It does not mention that he was a frequent guest at Rokeby, now a celebrated name, and that the faded decorations of a favourite summer-house which overlooks the wild Greta, are carefully preserved as the work of his hand. Mr. Chalmers's character of this poet is expressed as usual with laboured and inaccurate pomposity; its import however is just, he censures the finical profuseness of his ornaments, the epithets which encumber what they do not illustrate, and the stiff and strained alliteration which he so perpetually affected: and he does justice to the bold and original conceptions of a writer who aimed at nobler and better things than any of his contemporaries. The Heroic Epis tle, and the other piece which appeared under the same fictitious name, are added here to Mason's works, upon sufficient evidence, but not without a wish, says Mr. Chalmers, that they could have been attributed to some writer of less private or public worth. The editor has not shown the same judgment in his estimate of the literary merits of Sir William Jones, to whom he assigns a very high rank among modern poets:-it is not Sir William Jones's poetry that can perpetuate his name. The life of Cowper is Mr. Chalmers's best production, and we quote from it that part which relates to the intellectual malady of the poet, in justness to the writer, though we still must wish that Cowper's lot had fallen among friends whose religious opinions had been of a happier character.

It appears to the present writer, from a careful perusal of that instructive piece of biography published by Mr. Haley, that Cowper, from bis infancy, had a tendency to errations of the mind; and without admitting this fact in some degree, it must seem extremely improbable that the mere dread of appearing as a reader in the house of lords should have brought on his first settled fit of lunacy. Much, indeed, has been said of his uncommon shyness and diffidence, and more perhaps, than the history of his early life will justify. Shyness and diffidence are common to all young persons who have not been early introduced into company, and Cowper, who had not, perhaps, that advantage at home, might have continued to be shy when other boys are forward. But had his mind been, even in this early period, in a healthful state, he must have gradually assumed the free manners of an ingenuous youth, conscious of no unusual imperfection that should keep him back. At school, we are told he was trampled upon by the ruder boys who took advantage of his weakness, yet we find that he mixed in their amusements, which must in some degree have advanced him on a level with them: and what is yet more extraordinary, we find him associating with men of more gayety than pure morality admits, and sporting with the utmost vivacity and wildness with Thurlow and others, when it was natural to expect that he would have been glad to court solitude for the purposes of study, as well as for the indulgence of his habitual shyness, if, indeed, at this period it was so habitual as we are taught to believe.

* Although, therefore, it be inconsistent with the common theories of mania, to ascribe his first attack to his aversion to the situation which was provided for him, or to the operation of delicacy or sensibility on a healthy mind, it is certain that at that time, and when, by his own account, he was an entire stranger to the religious system which he afterwards adopted, he was visited by the first attack of his disorder, which was so violent and of such a length as to put an end to all prospect of advancement in his profession. It is particularly incumbent on all who venerate the sound and amiable mind of Cowper, the clearness of his understanding, and his powers of reasoning, to notice the date and circumstances of this first attack, because it has been the practice with superficial observers, and professed infidels, who are now running down all the important doctrines of revealed religion under the name of me thodism, to ascribe Cowper's malady to his religious principles, and his religious principles to the company he kept. But important as it may be to repel insinuations of this kind, it is become less necessary since the publication of Mr. Hayley's Life, which affords the most complete vindication of Mr. Cowper's friends, and decidedly proves that his reli gious system was no more connected with his malady than with his literary pursuits; that his malady continued to return without any impulse from either, and that no means of the most judicious kind were omitted by himself or his friends to have prevented the attack, if human means could have availed. With respect to his friends, there can be nothing conceived more consolatory to him who wishes to cherish a good opinion of mankind, than to contemplate Cowper in the midst of those friends, men and women exquisitely tender, kind, and disinterested, animated by the most pure benevolence towards the helpless and interesting sufferer, enduring cheerfully every species of fatigue and privation, to administer the least comfort to him, and sensible of no gratification but what arose from their success in prolonging and gladdening the life on which they set so high a value.'-p. 600, 601.

Three volumes of translations bring up the rear of this collection. They contain Pope's Homer, Dryden's Virgil and Juvenal, Pitt's Eniad, and Vida's Art of Poetry; Francis's Horace, Rowe's Lucan, Grainger's Tibullus, Fawke's Theocritus, Apollonius Rhodius, Coluthus, Anacreon, Sappho, Bion, Moschus and Musæus; Garth's Ovid, Lewis's Statius, Cooke's Hesiod, Hoole's Ariosto, and Tasso, and Mickle's Lusiad. There was at least as much cause for including Cowper's Homer as Pitt's Virgil; and miserably ignorant indeed must that editor be, not merely of the merit of books, but of the estimation in which they are held, who could prefer Hoole's Tasso to Fairfax's.

Upon comparing Mr. Chalmers's collection with Dr. Anderson's, the advantage appears at first sight to be greatly on the side of the former. The type and paper are materially better, they are as good as could be desired, and the text is far less incorrect. But the quantity of additional matter is by no means so great as the additional number of volumes might seem to promise, and the