6

step of the poet, who had now removed to London, was to assign an entire work to the loyal and laudable project of rendering his sovereign ridiculous. 'The Lousiad,' a clever mock heroic, in four cantos, was the result. It was agitated in the privy-council, he observes in one of his letters, "to attack me for my writings, particularly the Lousiad ; but Are you sure of a verdict?' said a lord high in the law, Chancellor Thurlow; 'if not so, we shall look like a parcel of fools.'" 'Bozzy and Piozzi,' a burlesque on the biographers of Dr Johnson, was his next publication. 'Ode upon Ode, or a Peep at St James's; or New Year's Day,' followed, and helped to carry on the scurrilous system for bringing the king and royal family into contempt. These various publications being got up at a very small expense, and sold in immense numbers, at from eighteen-pence to half-a-crown, must have brought large sums to the coffers of their author.

Of the same genius was 'Peter's Prophecy, an Epistle to Sir Joseph Banks,' in which the president of the Royal society is very roughly handled; and 'Peter's Pension, a solemn Epistle to a Sublime Personage,' in which, between jest and earnest, the poet expresses his willingness to be pensioned. This partly jocular and facetious, partly abusive, and partly serious proposition, was likely enough to be received like those sayings in which more is meant than meets the ear. Dr Wolcott asserted, that "he was solicited by the administration to fall into their ranks. That his answer was, he had no praise to bestow, but if silence would content them, he would muzzle his muse. That the offer was accepted, but it was sometime after hinted to him, having been paid two quarters' pension, that active co-operation was expected. That he, in consequence, waited upon Mr Charles Long, the secretary of the treasury, who, after some general conversation, informed the doctor that there was money floating in that mine for such as deserved well of the government. This, of course, startled the virtuous and independent satirist, who, snatching his hat, hastily withdrew, and refused to take the pension, of which one half year, amounting to £100, was then due." The Poetical Epistle to a Falling Minister,' was succeeded by Subjects for Painters,' in which a multitude of stories are versified, most of them humorous, and some vulgar and profane; and this work was in turn succeeded by Expostulatory Odes to a Great Duke and a Little Lord,'' Benevolent Epistle to John Nichols,' Advice to the Laureat,'Epistle to Bruce the Abyssinian Traveller,' The Rights of Kings,' &c. &c.

Although he had thus realized property by means tending very much to revolutionize, Peter Pindar was no friend to revolutionizing in other hands and in another way. About 1792 he attacked Tom Paine in a series of odes commencing thus:

"O Paine! thy vast endeavour I admire !
How brave the hope to set a realm on fire!
Ambition, smiling, praised thy giant wish:
Compared to thee, the man, to gain a name,
Who to Diana's temple put the flame,

A simple minnow to the king of fish.
Say, didst thou fear that Britain was too blest
Of peace, thou most delicious pest?

How shameful that this pin's head of an isle,

While half the globe's in grief, should wear a smile!"

Some of the lashing is very forcible. After ironically praising the design, the poet exclaims,

"What pity thy combustibles were bad!

How death had grinn'd delight and hell been glad

To see our liberties o'erturning."

Veering from the abuse of reformers to the abuse of ministers, Peter Pindar pursued his profitable course, publishing annually a number of odes, epistles, satires, in which politics, personalities, the arts, literature, science, tales, humour and love, were oddly blended, and often finely treated. An edition of Pilkington's Dictionary of Painters, in which he wrote the life of Richard Wilson, was the only work of magnitude, independent of his poems, which we have heard of his having executed.

The pursuits of Wolcott were not those which are calculated to secure an easy and quiet life. Earning his bread by the continual publication of satire, as it is called, but in truth of much professional invective and personal slander, the world rewarded him neither with public honours nor private friendships. His wit indeed was relished by the multitude, and the better parts of his genius applauded even by the wise and good, who, while they praised the talent, detested the principles of the writer; but his existence was one of warfare," his hand was against every man, and the hand of every man was against him." His furious assault upon the author of the Baviad,' in the shop of Mr Wright, then a bookseller in Piccadilly, was a memorable affair. The man who had with his pen so bitterly attacked all ranks of society, could not endure a similar infliction upon himself; but resorted to ruffianly violence in revenge. The editor of the Monthly Magazine' says: "The doctor's assault on W. Gifford the poet, is well-remembered; but, in truth, as he has often confessed since, he mistook his man, and intended that chastisement for J. Gifford, editor of the Antijacobin. He used, however, pleasantly to say, that they both deserved it; and therefore it was all one.' In reply to a civil note from the editor on the subject, be sent the following: 'Dear Sir,-I am much obliged by your friendly intentions. It was but a fair piece of justice due to my character as a man to attack at any disadvantages such a calumniating ruffian as Gifford, the instant he came within the reach_of my vengeance. Had not Wright and his customers, and his Frenchman and his shopmen, hustled me and wrestled the cane from my hand, and then confined my arms, I should have done complete justice to my cause. As it was, he had a smart taste of what he will experience in future, wherever I find him. Such a pest of society ought to be driven from its bosom-such is Gifford, lately a poor despicable cobbler of Ashburton! such is one of the literary pillars of Pitt's administration ! Perhaps you do not know that this fellow is a magistrate, and possesses an annual income of nearly one thousand pounds a year under government, to support its dignity by defamation.'"

The outraged "cobbler took severe revenge on his assailant in an Epistle to Peter Pindar,' in which the following lines occur:

"Thou may'st toil and strain,

Ransack, for filth, thy heart; for lies, thy brain;
Rave, storm;-'tis fruitless all. Of this be sure,
Abuse of me will ne'er one sprat' procure;

Bribe one night cellar to invite thee in,
Purchase one draught of gunpowder and gin;
Seduce one brothel to display its charms,
Nor lure one hobbling strumpet to thy arms.

False fugitive! back to thy vomit flee-
Troll the lascivious song, the fulsome glee;
Truck praise for lust, hunt infant genius down,
Strip modest merit of its last half-crown;
Blow from thy mildewed lips, on virtue blow,
And blight the goodness thou canst never know.

.

But what is he, that, with a Mohawk's air,
"Cries havock, and lets slip the dogs of war?"
A blotted mass, a gross, blood-boltered clod,
A foe to man, a renegade from God,
From noxious childhood to pernicious age,
Separate to infamy, in every stage.

Lo! here the reptile! who from some dark cell,
Where all his veins with native poison swell,
Crawls forth, a slimy toad, and spits and spues
The crude abortions of his loathsome muse
On all that genius, all that worth holds dear,
Unsullied rank, and piety sincere ;
While idiot mirth the base defilement lauds,
And malice, with averted face, applauds.

Lo, here the brutal sot! who drenched with gin,
Lashes his withered nerves to tasteless sin;
Squeals out, with oaths and blasphemies between,
The impious song, the tale, the jest obscene;
And careless views amidst the barbarous roar,
His few grey hairs strew, one by one, the floor!
Lo! here the wrinkled profligate! who stands
On nature's verge, and from his leprous hands
Shakes tainted verse; who bids us, with the price
Of rancorous falsehoods, pander to his vice;
Give him to live the future as the past,
And in pollution wallow to the last!"

Wolcott was a man of vigorous constitution, and tasked that blessing to the uttermost in the gratification of sensual appetites. In 1807 an action was brought against him for crim. con., but he was acquitted. In 1812 the whole of his works appeared in five volumes, octavo; after this time he wrote but little, having completely lost his eyesight, which the operation of couching in 1814 failed to restore. His last work was 'An Epistle to the Emperor of China,' occasioned by the unfavourable result of Lord Amherst's embassy, which appeared in 1817. He lived for some years in Gooch-street, where he once narrowly escaped being burnt to death, together with the old woman who attended him in his blindness the bed-curtains of his domestic having caught fire, the blaze was luckily seen by a hackney-coachman on the stand opposite the house, who rushed in, in time to save Pindar and his housekeeper. From Gooch-street he removed for country air to Somer's-town, where he died on the 13th of January, 1819, after a lingering, but not painful illness, in his 81st year. It is said that he dictated verses within a few days of his death: he had contributed slight productions to the periodical press within a year or two preceding.

Frank Sayers.

BORN A. D. 1763.-DIED A. D. 1817.

"To many of our younger readers, in an age when every season brings with it its shoal of poets," says a writer in the Quarterly Review, whose interesting and elegant notice of our poet we here abridge, “the name of Sayers may, perhaps, be unknown, as being out of date; but it is known to their elders, it is known on the continent,—and will be known by posterity. In the course of fame, the race is not to the swift, but to the strong."

Frank, the son of Francis Sayers, and Ann, his wife, was born in London, on the 3d of March, 1763. His father was a native of Great Yarmouth, who had settled in London as an insurance-broker, and superintended shipping concerns for his Yarmouth connexions. His mother's name was Morris; she was of Welsh extraction; and the son, who had the feelings of an antiquary, as well as of a poet, pleased himself with thinking that his pedigree might be traced to Rhys-ap-Tewdwr Mawr, prince of South Wales, and so up, through the heroes of Welsh history, into the age of fable and romance. His first schoolmaster was a dissenting minister at Yarmouth, by name Whitesides, "a man of adequate learning and sense, but sadly given to hypochondriasis."

At the age of ten he was removed to a boarding-school at North Walsham, where Nelson was his school-fellow, but a disparity of five years between them prevented all intimacy. In the ensuing year he was removed to Palgrave, where the Rev. Rochemont Barbauld, having settled as the minister of one of those dissenting congregations which were at that time lapsing into Socinianism, had just opened a boardingschool. Mrs Barbauld, who was then a bride, and who had already, as Lætitia Aikin, acquired her high reputation, took her part in the instruction of the pupils. Sayers used to say, in after-life, that he considered the lessons which he received from her in English composition as the most useful part of the instructions bestowed at Palgrave.

After Sayers had remained three years under the tuition of Mr and Mrs Barbauld, he was taken from school, and placed in a merchant's counting-house at Yarmouth. A few months afterwards his grandfather died, leaving him an estate at Pakefield, of about one hundred and thirty acres,-too little for independence, and yet enough to unsettle him. He now relinquished all thoughts of commerce, and placed himself with a skilful agriculturist at Oulton, in Suffolk, to learn farming, with the intention of occupying his own estate.

This plan, however, was soon abandoned. Leaving Oulton, Sayers went to reside awhile with his mother, who had fixed herself in the pleasant village of Thorpe near Norwich, in which city her two sisters were settled. "It was now," says his biographer Mr Taylor, "that our friendship became truly intense. In his society was always found both instruction and delight; at this time I first fancied my society was become of value to him. I could describe Paris, and, what he more delighted to hear about, Rome and Naples. The literature of Germany, then almost unknown in England, I had pervasively studied, and

was eager to display; and frequently I translated for his amusement such passages as appeared to me remarkable for singularity or beauty. We read the same English books, in order to comment upon them when we met. My morning-walk was commonly directed to Thorpe: we prolonged the stroll together on the uninclosed heath, and he frequently returned with me to Norwich, dined at my father's table, and took me back to tea with his mother."

In his twentieth year Sayers went to Edinburgh as a general student, and while there, determined upon following the profession of physic. He returned to Thorpe, and finding the income of his estate barely adequate to the expense of carrying on his studies, he sold it, and vested its proceeds, at a prudent season, in the funds. "This," says his friend, "was a season of civic ferment. In our walks, indeed, Sayers and I seldom talked politics; but often at my father's table, who was active in elections, hospitable to partisans, and an adherent of the Coalition. We too, on the contrary, were agreed to contend for Pitt and parliamentary reform: yet in this our sympathy there was not entire concord; we had entered a common path from different quarters : a zealot of the rights of the people, I was content with any administration which would undertake to carry them into effect; Sayers was more attached to the crown, and though willing, under its shelter, to welcome every improvement which seemed a natural evolvement of the constitution, he was not friendly to any attempt at inserting the graft from without. Mr Windham at this time came frequently to Norwich, and, when his visits had electioneering purposes, slept occasionally at our house, where he saw and argued with Sayers, inquired his destination, and observed to my father that, with so fine a person, and so fine an intellect, that young man would, in any professional line, become speedily an ornament to his country." He now entered regularly upon his professional studies, and pursued them, first in London, under Cruikshank, Baillie, and John Hunter, afterwards at Edinburgh under Monro, Black, and Cullen. Sayers could pursue the theory of medicine with the interest of an active and inquisitive mind; but he seems to have been physically incapable of the practice; the sight of an operation on the living subject was more than he could bear; and when he attempted to go through a course of clinical lectures at the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary, more than once he fainted by the bedside of the patient to whom he should have administered relief. He ultimately, however, obtained a diploma from Harderwyk, a town in Guelderland, situated on the Zuyder-Zee, where a provincial academy had been established in the middle of the seventeenth century.

"Having set his heart at rest as to the pursuit of fortune, there remained the pursuit of fame; and this, his biographer tells us, was now his darling care: he used to repeat Cowley's aspiration after an earthly immortality, and ask, with him, what he should do to make himself for ever known? His deliberations ended in a resolution to compose some lyrical dramas; 'a perusal of the Greek tragedians-which he went through with agitated feeling-determined the form of his out. line; Percy's Northern Antiquities supplied the costume and the colouring.' It may be added, that he had been impressed by the Runic mythology as exhibited in Gray's spirited versions of some of the Scandinavian remains; and that the perusal of Klopstock's choral