Hating no courtiers, happier than them all; Herds, flocks, and smiling Ceres deck our plain, Of sportive children frolic o'er the green, Meantime pure love looks on and consecrates the scene: Come, taste the simple life of patriots old, Who, rich in rural peace, ne'er thought of pomp and gold." MR. GARRICK'S ANSWER. "When Peleus' son, untaught to yield, His breast still warm with heavenly fire, Now slow he moves with solemn air, And plann'd the fate of Britain's foes; Cheerful he came, all blithe and gay, On Garrick's death, January 20, 1779, he was buried on February 1, in Westminster Abbey, under Shakspeare's monument in Poet's Corner. The procession from his house on the Adelphi Terrace was very solemn and sumptuous; deputations from the two playhouses, and a long line of private friends attended. The Bishop of Rochester read the service in a most impressive manner, and the pall was borne by the Duke of Devonshire, Earl Spencer, Earl of Ossory, Viscount Palmerston, Lord Camden, Sir W. W. Wynne, Rt. Hon. R. Rigby, and the Hon. Mr. Stanley; while among the nearest attendant mourners were his two nephews and legatees, Carrington and Nathan Garrick, and then his numerous private friends, among whom were Dr. Johnson, George Colman, Mr. Dunning, Mr. Burke, Colonel Barré, Hon. Charles Fox, William Whitehead the Laureat, Lord Charles Spencer, Albany Wallis, Esq., &c. Having brought Garrick to his loved Shakspeare's grave, we will quote Dr. Warton's short but expressive tribute to their joint memories, from his Essay on the Genius and Writings of Pope: "We of Great Britain have much reason to congratulate ourselves on two very singular phenomena; I mean Shakspeare's being able to portray characters so very different as Falstaff and Macbeth, and Garrick's being able to personate so inimitably a Lear and an Able Drugger; nothing can more fully demonstrate the extent and versatility of these two original geniuses." A monument in Westminster Abbey, executed at the cost of Mr. Albany Wallis, his solicitor, and one of his executors, was opened in June, 1797. Garrick is represented at full length in an animated position, throwing aside a curtain which discovers a medallion of Shakspeare, while Tragedy and Comedy, adorned with their respective emblems, and half seated on a pedestal, seem to approve the tribute. NIGHT. AN EPISTLE TO ROBERT LLOYD. THIS poem was published in October, 1761, and if considered in the light of a familiar address to an intimate friend, is not subject to those strict rules of composition which more dignified poetry requires. Notwithstanding this due allowance, Night contains more faulty, bald and prosaic lines than any other, of our author's productions. An instance of his sinning against his own better judgment, occurs in his frequent adoption of the coarse epithet Fool; for the use of which he in the Ghost censures Dr. Johnson, in the concluding part of the character of Pomposo, "For 'tis with him a certain rule The folly's proved when he calls fool." Fool is the most obvious word of contempt amongst the lowest set of speakers; it is attended with no grace, and conveys no strength of idea to the ear or understanding, it marks no character, but is applicable to all alike. The title of the poem may probably have been suggested by Dr. Armstrong's "Day, an Epistle to J. Wilkes, of Aylesbury, Esq." then lately published, without the consent of the author, who was with the English army in Germany; from whence it was written in easy loose verse, with little regard to the matter, and less to the manner. In his epistle Dr. Armstrong ventured to censure Churchill, who expressed much resentment at the attack, and would never be reconciled with the author of it. The principal object of Night was to exculpate the poet and the friend to whom it is addressed, from the censure of the world on the score of those irregularities in conduct, which the celebrity of the foregoing poems rendered more conspicuous in the author of them, by inducing those who smarted under his lash, to make researches into hig private character; and by publishing exaggerated statements of his improprieties of behaviour, to deaden the force of the blow they could not parry. His propensity to late hours and his employment of them in genial converse with his friends, he here avows; and great examples in ancient and modern times, will certainly rescue his taste from the charge of sin gularity. Had he not been himself so severe a censor, his private irregularities would have been softened down to the eccentricities of genius, and his midnight parties would have been dignified with the amiable attributes of social enjoyment, "the feast of reason and the flow of soul;" instead of which, they were blazoned abroad as the orgies of brutal intemperance, and the scenes of vulgar and depraved gratification. His clerical character might indeed have induced a stricter attention to the opinion of the world, though some justification is afforded by a similar predilection for tavern meetings and late hours, in Dr. Johnson, whose purity of life, habitual temperance, and stern morality, would have dignified the most exalted station in the church. The Noctes Attica in Ivy Lane, were ushered in by the Doctor with his favourite toast, the dying ejaculation of Father Paul "Esto perpetua!" NIGHT.* Contrarius evehor orbi.-OVID. Met. lib. ii. WHEN foes insult, and prudent friends dispense, Misfortunes, like the owl, avoid the light; *"This Night, like many others at this time of the year, is very cold, long, dark, and dirty, which will not induce many to walk out in it."-CRITICAL REVIEW, Dec. 1761. |