most curious and entertaining one, on the character of Gainsborough the painter.

His time was devoted to music, painting, and literature; and it is difficult to say which of the three had the greatest share of his attention. But that his music derived much aid from his literary judgment will be universally allowed. Indeed, the taste he constantly maifested in the selection of his words forms an elegant and distinguishing trait in his professional character. The native ease of Shenstone, and the tender sentiment of Hammond furnished many of his subjects; and the address with which he has reduced the heroic lines of the latter to lyric measure is a merit that ought not to be omitted, when we are collecting the evidences of his ingenuity. The subjects on which he chiefly delighted to employ his pencil were those of landscapes; in the colouring of which he was particularly strong and bold. Morning and evening were his favourite seasons; because in the scenery of these he could indulge his love of partial lights and striking effects; his cattle were well drawn, and the disposition of his figures was judicious and happy: but his pictures on the whole had more of effect than finish, and rather displayed a clear masterly mind, than the refined touches of an elaborate hand. His music, taken in the aggregate, speaks great justness of conception, much beauty and novelty of idea, considerable powers of expression, a resource in combination and adjustment ranking far above mediocrity, and a matured judgment in general effect. But his melodies are not always free from that mechanical quaintness and rustic inelegance, which, perhaps, only an almost constant residence in the metropolis can wholly surmount; nor are his accompaniments of that artificial and delicate texture, which gives new grace to the air; perpetually embellishing that beauty it ought never to conceal, and occasionally varying from, without deserting, the subject. His basses are not unfrequently chosen with but little art or design, and his elegies and choral scores sometimes betray a want of facility in the interior disposition of the harmony, as well as embarrassment in answering the points. When playing on the organ or harpsichord, he seemed lost to every thing around him. His performance was full, correct, and impassioned; and he had too just a taste, and was too much a devotee to the good old school, ever to destroy a single resident beauty in a composition, for the sake of unnecessary and surreptitious embellishment.

"His peculiar forte," says a writer in Ree's Cyclopædia, "consisted in giving an elegant and plaintive melody to elegiac poetry. In constituting harmony, without rendering the middle parts destitute of melody, Jackson stands unrivalled. This is no trivial praise, when it is known that, before his time, composers were, and are at present, very defective in this part of their art. It was, however, a defect in Jackson's music, that his melody would suit any species of plaintive lines : few of his compositions displayed the art of mingling expression with melody, and preserving the latter in its purity."

Jacob Bryant.

BORN A. D. 1718.-DIEN A. D. 1804.

THIS learned but visionary scholar was educated at Eton and Cambridge. He proceeded master of arts in 1744; after which he attended the young duke of Marlborough, and his brother Lord Charles Spenser, as their private tutor while at Eton. He afterwards became private secretary to his grace. In this capacity he accompanied the duke of Marlborough to the continent, and attended him during the campaign in which he had the command of the British forces; and upon the duke's being appointed master-general of the ordnance, he promoted Bryant to the office of secretary, a post which was said to be worth about £1400 per annum.

The general habits of the latter period of the life of Mr Bryant were sedentary; and, during the last ten years of it, he frequently complained of pains in his chest, the concomitants of close application and a recumbent posture. In his younger days spent at Eton he excelled in various athletic exercises, and by his skill in swimming, was the happy instrument in saving the life of Dr Barnard, afterwards provost of Eton college. The doctor gratefully acknowledged this essential service by embracing the first opportunity that occurred to present the nephew of his preserver with the living of Wootton-Courtney, near Minehead, Somersetshire, a presentation belonging to the provost of Eton in right of his office.

With respect to the domestic habits of Mr Bryant, little is known. He was never married. Blessed with every comfort that could be derived from celebrity and fortune, the days of Mr Bryant seem to have glided smoothly on to the period of a long-extended existence; he might be truly said to have enjoyed health, peace, and competence; the first of these he derived from temperance, the second from an evenness of disposition, and the latter from two sources, his own family, and his munificent patron, the duke of Marlborough, who, after the decease of his father, settled on him an annuity of £600, which he continued to receive till his death. Beside the pecuniary expression of esteem already mentioned, the duke of Marlborough assigned two rooms to his use at Blenheim, over the doors of which his name was inscribed; and he was the only person to whom the keys of the choice and magnificent library were presented.

In his retreat at Cypenham, near Windsor, he expired on the 13th of November, 1804, of a mortification in his leg, originating in the seemingly slight circumstance of a rasure against a chair, in the act of reaching a book from a shelf.

He had presented many of his most valuable books to the king; his editions of Virgil, &c. by Caxton, he had also given to the marquess of Blandford; the remainder of his curious collection he bequeathed to the library of King's college, Cambridge, where he had been educated. The first work Mr Bryant published was in 1767, entitled 'Observations and Inquiries relating to various Parts of Ancient History, containing Dissertations on the Wind Euroclydon; and on the Island

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Melite, together with an Account of Egypt in its most early State, and of the Shepherd Kings.' His grand work, called A New System, or an Analysis of Ancient Mythology,' was the next. This was published in quarto; vols. i. and ii. in 1774, and vol. iii. in 1776. In 1775 he published 'A Vindication of the Apamean Medal, and of the Inscription NOE; together with an Illustration of another Coin struck at the same Place in Honour of the Emperor Severus.' This appeared in the fourth volume of the Archæologia, and also as a quarto pamphlet. To these we must add An Address to Dr Priestley on the Doctrine of Philosophical Necessity.' 1780. A pamphlet 8vo. Vindicia Flavianæ ; or a Vindication of the Testimony given by Josephus concerning our Saviour Jesus Christ.' A pamphlet 8vo. 1780. Observations on the Poems of Thomas Rowley, in which the Authenticity of these Poems is ascertained.' 'Collections on the Zingara, or Gipsy Language.' Archæologia, vol. vii. 'Gemmarum antiquarum delectos ex præstantioribus desumptus in Dactylotheca Ducis Marlburiensis;' two volumes, folio. A Treatise on the Authenticity of the Scriptures, and the Truth of the Christian Religion;' octavo, 1792. 'Observations on the Plagues inflicted on the Egyptians; in which is shown the Peculiarity of those Judgments and their Correspondence with the Rites and Idolatry of that People; with a Prefatory Discourse concerning the Grecian Colonies from Egypt;' octavo, 1794. 'Observations upon a Treatise entitled, Description of the Plain of Troy, by Mons. le Chevalier;' quarto, 1795. A Dissertation concerning the War of Troy, and the Expedition of the Grecians, as described by Homer; showing that no such Expedition was ever Undertaken, and that no such City in Phrygia ever existed;' quarto, 1796. This last was a bold but less successful attempt to controvert and overthrow long established opinions, and to raise a literary Trojan war. It was remarked on by Mr Falkoner; answered most rudely by Mr Gilbert Wakefield; and extracted a Vindication of Homer from J. B. S. Morritt, Esq. of Rokeby Park, near Greta-bridge; whose more polished manners induced Mr Bryant to reply to him. In addition to these works Mr Bryant was the author of two other volumes entitled: The Sentiments of Philo-Judæus, concerning the Logos, or Word of God; together with large Extracts from his Writings, compared with the Scriptures on many other essential Doctrines of the Christian Religion;' octavo, 1797. And Dissertations on Balaam, Samson, and Jonah;' also Observations on famous controverted Passages in Josephus and Justin Martyr.'

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Mr Bryant's mythological views may be gathered from the following extract from his Analysis: "I cannot acquiesce in the stale legends of Deucalion of Thessaly, of Inachus of Argos, and Ægialcus of Sicyon, nor in the long line of princes that are derived from them. The supposed heroes of the first ages in every country are equally fabulous. No such conquests were ever achieved as are ascribed to Osiris, Dionusus, and Sesostris. The histories of Hercules and Persius are equally void of truth. I am convinced, and I hope I shall satisfactorily prove, that Cadmus never brought letters to Greece, and that no such person existed as the Grecians have described. What I have said about Sesostris and Osiris will be repeated about Ninus and Semiramis, two personages as ideal as the former. There never were such expeditions undertaken or conquests made, as are attributed to those princes: nor

were any such empires constituted as are supposed to have been established by them. I make as little account of the histories of Saturn, Janus, Pelops, Atlas, Dardanus, Minos of Crete, and Zoroaster of Bactria: yet something mysterious and of moment is concealed under these various characters, and the investigation of this latent truth will be the principal part of my inquiry. In respect to Greece, I can afford credence to very few events which were antecedent to the Olympiads. I cannot give the least assent to the story of Phryxus and the golden fleece. It seems to be plain, beyond doubt, that there were no such persons as the Grecian Argonauts, and that the expedition of Jason to Colchis was a fable."

George Morland.

BORN A. D. 1763.-DIED A. D. 1804.

GEORGE MORLAND was the son of an artist whose talents, though respectable, were not of the first order in his profession. "Whether," says a writer in the Monthly Magazine,' "George showed, in the earliest part of his life, that inclination for the art which frequently indicates genius, or whether the practice was forced upon him by his father, who might feel that it was the only art in which he could educate him, I know not; but I do know, that in the exhibitions of the original society of artists, to which the father belonged, were shown drawings by George Morland, at the age of four, five, and six years, which would have done credit to youths who were learning the art as their profession; and from this time his father forced him to study, unremittingly, the practice of every department of the art, till he entered the world upon his own account. In this manner passed the first seventeen years of the life of George Morland, and to this he is indebted for the immense power he had over the implements of his art; for it is notorious, that whether it was the pencils and palette, or the crayon he was called upon to use, no one had more command of his materials than this eminent artist.

Morland's first original compositions were dictated by his father. They were small pictures, of two or three figures, taken from the common ballads of the day, such as Young Roger came tapping at Dolly's window,' &c. These his father put into frames, and sold at different prices, from one guinea to three, according to the pockets of his customers. Though infinitely inferior to Morland's subsequent works, they were admired as the production of a youth, and got into the hands of engravers, and the prints that were made from them first brought Morland into notice.

A gentleman, who was going to spend the summer at Margate, advised the father to send his son thither to paint small portraits. The plan was a good one, and adopted. Company flocked round him; his portraits pleased, and a very great number were commissioned: but his unfortunate mauvaise honté rendered the undertaking unprofitable. The pig races, and such elegant amusements as are projected for the lower order of visitors to Margate, obtained all his attention; and the portraits which a careful man would have finished on the spot, and got paid for

before the parties had quitted the place, were left to be completed in town. So that instead of returning home with his pockets full of money, he brought only a large cargo of unfinished canvasses. On his return from Margate, he had taken lodgings at Kensal Green, near Harrow; but shortly afterwards, marrying Miss Ward, the sister of the painter, who, about the same time, became the husband of Morland's sister, they agreed to take a house together in High-street, Marylebone. Disagreements, however, between the parties soon led to a separation. For Mr I. R. Smith, who dealt largely in prints, he painted many pictures of subjects from the familiar scenes of life. The subjects were known to, and the sentiments they conveyed were felt by all, and the prints which Mr Smith made from them had a sale rapid beyond example, and spread the fame of Morland all over the continent as well as the kingdom. His peculiar talent, as it now burst forth in full splendour, was landscape, such as exists in sequestered situations, with appropriate animals and figures. He was fond of visiting the isle of Wight in the summerseason, and there is scarcely an object to be met with along the shore, at the back of the island, that his pencil has not delineated. His best pictures are replete with scenes drawn from this spot. A fine rocky shore, with fishermen mending their nets, careening their boats, or sending off their fish to the neighbouring market-towns, were scenes he most delighted in, when he attempted sea-shore pieces. He was once recognised at a place called Freshwater gate, in a low public-house, known by the name of 'The Cabin.' A number of fishermen, a few sailors, and three or four rustics, formed the homely group; Morland was in the midst of them, contributing his joke, and partaking of their noisy merriment, when his friend called him aside. Morland, with some reluctance, left his company in the Cabin; on his friend's remonstrating with him the next day for keeping such company, he drew from his pocket a sketch which his remembrance had supplied, after leaving the house, which he afterwards wrought up into one of his best pictures ; a proof that his mind was still intent on its favourite pursuit-that of nature in her homeliest attire-though his manners at the moment betrayed nothing farther than an eagerness to partake in vulgar sensualities. He kept a collection of guinea-pigs, dogs, rabbits, and squirrels ; and, at one time, was owner of eight horses, at an inn called The White Lion, of which he painted the sign. In fine, says Hassell," he heaped folly upon folly with such dire rapidity, that a fortune of £10,000 per annum would have proved insufficient for the support of his waste and prodigality."

The consequences however of his dissipated habits were frequent distress, the spunging-house, and the jail; except when he had the good fortune to escape into a retirement unknown to all but some trusty dealer, who for the time took all his works, and paid him a stipulated sum for his support. On one occasion he was found in a lodging in Somer's town, in the following most extraordinary circumstances: his infant child, that had been dead nearly three weeks, lay in its coffin in the one corner of the room; an ass and foal stood munching barleystraw out of the cradle; a sow and pigs were solacing themselves in the recess of an old cupboard; and himself whistling over a beautiful picture that he was finishing at his easel, with a bottle of gin hung up on one side, and a live mouse sitting for its portrait on the other!