inquiry. Mr Wakefield himself next underwent prosecution; and his sentence, upon conviction, was two years' imprisonment in Dorchester gaol. There exists no other measure of punishment in such a case than comparison, and perhaps, upon the application of this rule, it will not be found inordinately severe. Two years' abode in a prison is, however, a most serious infliction; it is cutting off so much from desirable existence. Mr Wakefield, notwithstanding his natural fortitude, felt it as such. Though, from the habits of sobriety and seclusion, he had little to resign in respect of the ordinary pleasures of the world, his habits of pedestrian exercise, and his enjoyment of family comfort, were essentially infringed by confinement. He likewise found all his plans of study so deranged, by the want of his library, and the many incommodities of his situation, that he was less able to employ that resource against tedium and melancholy than might have been expected. One powerful consolation, however, in addition to that of a good conscience, attended him. A set of warm and generous friends employed themselves in raising a contribution which should not only indemnify him for any pecuniary loss consequent upon his prosecution, but should alleviate his cares for the future support of his family. The purpose was effected; and it is to be hoped that Englishmen will ever retain spirit enough to take under their protection men who have faithfully, though perhaps not with due prudence and consideration, maintained the noble cause of mankind against the frowns of authority. At length the tedious period elapsed, and the last day of May in this year, 1801, restored him to liberty. He was received by his friends, many of whom had visited him in prison, with the most cordial welcome. was endeared to them by his sufferings, and his character was generally thought to have received a meliorating tinge of mildness and moderation from the reflections which had passed through his mind. He formed extensive plans for future literary labours, and seemed fully capable of enjoying and benefiting that world to which he was returned. When— oh what is man!—a fever, probably occasioned by his anxious exertions to fix himself in a new habitation, cut short all his prospects. From the first attack he persuaded himself that the termination would be fatal, and this conviction materially opposed every attempt of medicine in his favour. He surveyed death without terror, and prepared for it by tender offices to the survivors."

James Hurdis.

BORN A. D. 1763.-died a. D. 1801.

He

THE REV. JAMES HURDIS was born at Bishopstone in the county of Sussex, in the year 1763. He was the only son of James Hurdis, Gent. by his second wife. His father died while his son was yet a child, leaving his mother in no affluent circumstances, with seven children. He was sent to school in the city of Chichester, at the age of eight years, first under the tuition of the Rev. Richard Tireman, and afterwards under the Rev. John Atkinson. Being of a delicate frame and constitution, young Hurdis seldom partook in the juvenile sports of his school-companions; but generally employed his hours of leisure in read

ing such books as are attractive to a youth who has an early passion for literature. His inclination to poetry soon manifested itself in many poetical compositions; among which was a tragedy in five acts, entitled 'Panthea,' founded on the story in Xenophon's Cyropædia. This was afterwards transformed into a poem. Music was the only amusement which could induce him to relax from study; the love of that enchanting science seems to have been naturally united with his disposition, even from an infant. As he advanced in life, he became a proficient upon almost every musical instrument, but the organ appears to have been his favourite; and during the time of his being at school, he nearly completed the building of a small one,-a work interrupted by his quitting school for Oxford.

In 1780 he was entered a commoner of St Mary-hall, Oxford; and at the election in 1782, he was chosen a demy of Magdalen college. Finding himself freed from the restrictions of a school-boy, and a more ample field opening to the encouragement of his poetical taste, his application to books and poesy became almost unlimited. At the commencement of every vacation, he returned to his mother at Bishopstone, and devoted this interval of relaxation from his own studies, to the assiduous instruction of his four younger sisters in those branches of literature which he thought might be most beneficial to them.

About the year 1784 he went to Stanmer in Sussex, where he resided for some considerable time, as tutor to the earl of Chichester's youngest son, Mr George Pelham. In May, 1785, having obtained the degree of B. A., he retired to the curacy of Burwash, in Sussex; his rector being the Rev. John Courtail, archdeacon of Lewes. situation he resided six years.

In this

In 1786 he was elected probationer-fellow of Magdalen college, and the following year took his degree of M. A. Finding himself sufficiently enabled to assist his mother in the support of her family, he now hired a small house, and took three of his sisters to reside with him. It was about this period that our author first appeared before the public as a poet. In 1788 he published his Village Curate,' the reception of which far exceeded his expectations; a second edition being called for the following year, and afterwards a third, and a fourth; which last he considerably improved.

·

His production was a poem entitled 'Adriano; or, the First of June,' which was followed in a short time by three other poems, 'Panthea,' 'Elmer and Ophelia,' and the 'Orphan Twins.' In 1791, through the interest of the earl of Chichester, he was appointed to the living of Bishopstone; in this year he wrote the 'Tragedy of Sir Thomas More;' and his 'Select Critical Remarks upon the English Version of the first Ten Chapters of Genesis.'

In 1792 he was deprived by death of his favourite sister Catherine, who is so frequently portrayed in his works, under the different appellations of Margaret and Isabel. On this affliction he quitted his curacy, and with his two sisters returned to Bishopstone. About this period he had the pleasing satisfaction of meeting and becoming personally known to Cowper, author of 'The Task,' with whom he had maintained a confidential correspondence for some years. In 1792 he published his Cursory Remarks upon the Arrangement of the Plays of Shakspeare, occasioned by reading Mr Malone's Essay on the Chrono

logical Order of those celebrated Pieces.' Mr Cowper, in a letter to the author, speaks of the above publication as follows: "I have read your Cursory Remarks, and am much pleased both with the style and the argument. Whether the latter be new or not, I am not competent to judge; if it be, you are entitled to much praise for the invention of it. Where other data are wanting to ascertain the time when an author of many pieces wrote each in particular, there can be no better criterion by which to determine the point, than the more or less proficiency manifested in the composition. Of this proficiency where it appears, and of those plays in which it appears not, you seem to me to have judged well and truly; and consequently I approve of your arrangement."

In April, 1793, he went to Oxford, and, with two of his sisters, resided in a small house at Temple Cowley. In November of the same year he was elected professor of poetry in that university; and in the year following took the degree of bachelor in divinity. On being elected professor, he published a Specimen of some intended lectures on English Poetry.' And it was in this year that he wrote his Tears of Affection,' a poem occasioned by the lingering regret he still experienced from the death of his favourite sister. In 1797 he took the degree of D.D., and in 1797 he married Harriet, daughter of Hughes Minet, Esq. of Fulham, Middlesex.

In 1800 he printed at his own private press, his 'Favourite Village,' and the same year he published his Twelve Dissertations on the Nature and Occasion of Psalm and Prophecy.'

He was

This amiable and accomplished man died in his 38th year. tall, but well-proportioned; his countenance serene and lively, of a fair complexion, with flaxen hair. His disposition was meek, affectionate, benevolent, and cheerful, yet occasionally irritable and impatient. With his intimate friends he was affable, polite, and familiar; but in mixed company generally reserved. A small marble table is erected to his memory in Bishopstone church, with the following epitaph by his friend William Hayley:

"Hurdis! ingenuous poet and divine!

A tender sanctity of thought was thine;

To thee no sculptured tomb could prove so dear,

As the fond tribute of a sister's tear;

For Earth, who shelters in her vast embrace

The sleeping myriads of the mortal race,

No heart in all that multitude has known,

Whose love fraternal could surpass thine own."

George Romney.

BORN A. D. 1734.-DIED A. D. 1802.

GEORGE, the second son of John Romney, was born at Beckside, near Dalton in Furness, in the county of Lancaster, on the 15th of December, 1734, O. S. His father was a man of great worth and exemplary piety. He followed the occupation of a cabinet-maker; but having a genius far above the generality of artisans of that description, and being full of projects in mechanics, engineering, architecture, and, amongst

the rest, in agriculture, he worked not only in wood, but in iron, erected steam-engines, designed plans for houses, built and furnished them, and was the first that introduced the method of manuring land with sea-shells, &c. He resided on a small patrimonial freehold, called Cockan, near Furness abbey, in the aforesaid parish of Dalton, and farmed his lands. He had ten sons and one daughter by his wife; and as school-education in those parts and at that time was cheap, he sent George, of whom we are speaking, to Dendron, a village distant about four miles from his house, to a school kept by Mr Fell, who educated scholars at the moderate charge of five shillings a quarter.

It appears that the worthy father of our painter had more irons in the fire than always turned to profit; his excursive genius drew him into various undertakings; and, though he continued to live in credit and esteem with his neighbours, he was an easy creditor, a careless accomptant, and did not take measures to accumulate property. In the year 1745, when George was in his eleventh year, his father, upon the discouraging aspect of business in that melancholy period when the Rebellion was raging, took him from school, and bound him to his own trade. There is reason to believe he had made very little progress in school learning when he laid aside his copy-book, and took up the cabinet-maker's tools in the humble prosecution of his father's craft. Yet even then the hand that was destined to illuminate the painter's canvass was not idle, for his fancy was at work, and his genius struggled for emancipation. In this occupation he persisted for the space of ten years; for in 1755 we find him still in the workshop. He now began to employ his invention upon designs for carvings and embellishments from models that existed only in his own imagination, the construction of all which did not add one corner-cupboard to his father's stock, and brought in only visionary custom and employ for palaces and castles in the air. Smitten also with an embryo passion for the concord of sweet sounds-which he had probably never heard but in his dreams— he conceived the idea of transplanting the arts of Cremona to his native town of Dalton, and began a manufactory of violins, which he disposed of to the rural amateurs, who were perhaps as little instructed in the use of those instruments as he had been in the formation of them. The worst amongst them, however, made a noise that we may suppose amused the children, and sounded forth the fame of the operator through the neighbouring cottages; they served, likewise, the further and better purpose of putting a little money into the pocket of the needy and ingenious projector. He did not, however, whilst thus providing instruments of melody for others, forget himself; for whilst he was practising the art of making fiddles, he was studying that of performing on them; and having finished one of superior workmanship, he kept it by him as a chef-d'œuvre to the day of his death. Upon this violin the writer of these memoirs has heard the maker of it perform in a room hung round with pictures of his own painting; which is rather a coincidence of arts in the person of one man. The tones of this instrument seemed to be extremely good, and there was some light carved work that spread from the setting in of the neck over part of the back, very curiously executed. When Mr Romney has been asked how he first conceived the ambition of becoming a painter, when he had never had the opportunity of contemplating the picture of any thing in creation beyond that of the

Red Lion at Dalton-a specimen not very much to the honour either of the artist or the animal-he explained himself by ascribing his impulses to the opportunities that were thrown in his way by the favour of one Samuel Knight, a working-man, who boarded with his father. This unconscious patron of the arts, and founder, as he may be called, of the fortunes of our painter, being luckily a man of more than common curiosity, put himself to the expense of taking in a monthly magazine, which, besides all the treasures of information and amusement which its miscellanies contained, was enriched with prints explanatory of the topics which were handled in the work; and when Samuel Knight had satisfied his hunger and thirst after knowledge, he was in the custom of lending his magazine to his eager inmate George, who, neglecting all baser matters of births, marriages, and burials, fell to the more attractive work of copying the engravings. Upon these humble models he wrought with such success, as soon encouraged him to alter and improve upon them, and in process of time to strike out subjects of his own, executed so as not only to extort applause from his communicative friend, the owner of the magazine, but in the end to recommend him to the notice of a neighbouring gentleman, Mr Lewthwaite, of Broad-gate, Millum, in Cumberland, who advised the father of the young emerging artist to accommodate him in his passion, and put him out to some professor or practitioner, at least, who might instruct and train him in his favourite art. This gentleman is entitled to be considered as one of the patrons of our painter's genius at a period when it was most in need of assistance and encouragement. The advice of Mr Lewthwaite prevailed with the father, who probably was not less disposed to listen to it, forasmuch as he was, by this time, very thoroughly convinced, that his trade of cabinet-making would not be much advanced by his son George's violins and carvings, and less by his paintings and drawings, which now began to display themselves on the walls of the workshop and the doors of the barn,-not in the shapes of chairs and chests of drawers, but in the likenesses of men and women, sketched in chalk, and so ingeniously done, as drew a crowd, not of customers, but of idlers, to admire them.

This happened in the year 1755, an era not favourable to the painter's art, when the capital of the kingdom furnished nothing but the school, if such it may be called, of Hudson, and the vicinage of Dalton, no master for our hero George, but an itinerant artist of the name of Steele, vulgarly called Count Steele.' This distinguished personage passed his time in travelling from town to town with the tools of his art, confining his excursions within the northern borders, and never approaching nearer to the sun than the city of York. As the town of Kendal was one of his stations, he took Dalton in his route; and, being just then in need of a supply, was tempted to accept a small premium from the father of our painter, and bound him his apprentice at the age of nineteen.

Under the auspices of Steele, our newly initiated disciple entered on his career of fame and fortune, and sat down, after a time, in the city of York, a noviciate in the art and mystery of a painter. A genius like Romney's could not be long in discovering the want of it in his master. Laurence Sterne was then living in York, and having seen some paintings of the apprentice very different from those of the master, imme