English Church Music; and A Memoir of Thomas Gray. His Works have been priuted in 4 vols., 8vo. His dramas show much fancy and a fine classical taste, but are entirely unsuited for representation. His greatest success was in his lyrical pieces.

MATTHEW GREEN, 1697-1737, is a poet of some celebrity, whose poems are usually printed with those of Parnell, Collins, Gray, and others. He was an officer in the London Custom-House, and was noted for his wit. He wrote The Grotto, The Spleen, and some other pieces.

REV. JOHN DYER, 1700-1758, began the study of law, abandoned the profession for the life of an itinerant artist, and afterwards took orders and entered the church. He had a literary turn, and wrote several poems which are worthy of note: Grongar Hill; The Ruins of Rome; The Fleece, a poem in four books, etc. Grongar Hill is considered the best. "It is not indeed very accurately written; but the scenes which it displays are so pleasing, the images which they raise are so welcome to the mind, and the reflections of the writer so consonant to the general sense or experience of mankind, that when it is once read it will be read again."- Dr. Johnson.

Collins.

William Collins, 1720-1756, is one of the greatest of English lyric poets. What he has written is not much in amount, but that little is of the highest order of excellence. Some of his odes are thought to come as near absolute perfection as anything ever written.

Collins's life was a sad one. His Odes, when first published, were received with cold neglect, and the publisher lost heavily by the operation. Receiving afterwards a legacy from an uncle, Collins repaid the publisher for the money lost in the transaction, and then threw the remaining copies of his book into the fire. Finding his mind unsteady, he travelled in France, for the purpose of diversion. On coming back to England, he retired to an asylum for the insane, and thence to the house of his sister, where he died at the early age of thirty-six. He published some Persian Eclogues, but the only works by which he is now known are his Odes. These are among the best English classics. The Ode on the Passions will doubtless live as long as the language itself in which the poem is written.

"Though utterly neglected on their first appearance, the Odes of Collins, in the course of one generation, without any adventitious aid to bring them into notice, were acknowledged to be the best of their kind in the language. Silently and imperceptibly they had risen by their own buoyancy; and their power was felt by every reader who had any poetic feeling."- Southey.

Shenstone.

WILLIAM SHENSTONE, 1714-1763, is favorably known by his poem, The Schoolmistress, written in the Spenserian measure.

Shenstone studied for a number of years at Oxford without taking a degree. The last twenty years of his life were devoted to laying out and improving his estate, The Leasowes, in Shropshire. Shenstone belongs to the minor poets of England. Had he been forced to exertion, he might have produced something more worthy of his pow ers, but he seems to have frittered away his days as a literary idler. The only one of his poems generally read and admired is The Schoolmistress, pronounced by Hazlitt "a perfect piece of writing." The Pastoral Ballad and Jemmy Dawson are also good.

Akenside.

MARK AKENSIDE, M. D., 1721-1770, had considerable eminence in his day as a medical practitioner and a writer on medical science. But his chief distinction was won by a poem on The Pleasures of the Imagination, first published in 1744.

This one production has given to Akenside a permanent and honorable place in the gallery of British poets. The work shows learning and genius, though not of the highest order, and is obviously wanting in naturalness. "The sweetness which we miss in Akenside is that which should arise from the direct representation of life and its warm realities and affections. We seem to pass, in his poems, through a gallery of pictured abstractions, rather than of pictured things."- Campbell. His Odes and other writings have passed into merited oblivion.

Churchill.

CHARLES CHURCHILL, 1731–1764, was in his day a poet of great celebrity.

Career. Through the mistaken advice of his father, Churchill entered the clerical profession; but finding its duties distasteful, he abandoned it, and became openly immoral and profligate. He had great talents, and his writings show marks of genius, but not enough to account for the extraordinary favor with which they were received. Much of this temporary success was no doubt due to the fact that his poems for the most part were bitterly personal. He was the intimate friend of the notorious demagogue, John Wilkes, and mixed up politics and scandal among the ingredients of the cup which he offered to the public.

Works.-The Rosciad, his earliest publication, was a satire upon the performers at Drury Lane and Covent Garden, and met with instant success. Being severely taken to task for it by the critics, he turned upon his reviewers, as Byron did at a later day, and wrote his Apology. The Prophecy of Famine, a Scots Pastoral, was written at the suggestion of Wilkes, and was a bitter invective against the Scottish nation. Hogarth, who disliked Churchill, caricatured him in his usual style, by painting him as a bear dressed up canonically, with ruffles at his paws, and holding a pot of porter. Churchill took his revenge in a fierce and sweeping Epistle to Hogarth. He published a volume of his Sermons, to which he prefixed a satirical dedication to Warburton, addressing that dignitary as "Doctor, Dean, Bishop, Gloster, My Lord."

Some of his other pieces are The Ghost; The Conference, a Poem; The Conclave; The Bard, etc.

"Churchill, as a satirist, may be ranked immediately after Pope and Dryden, with perhaps a greater share of humor than either. He has the bitterness of Pope, with less wit to atone for it, but no mean share of the fine manner and energetic plainness of Dryden."-Thomas Campbell.

"No English poet ever enjoyed so excessive and so short-lived a popularity."Southey.

Churchill boasted that he wrote in hot haste, taking no time to plan or prune:

"Had I the power, I could not have the time,"

While spirits flow, and life is in her prime,
Without a siu 'gainst pleasure, to design
A plan, to methodize each thought, each line
Highly to finish, and make every grace

In itself charming, take new charms from place.
Nothing of books, and little known of men,

When the mad fit comes on I seize the pen ;

Rough as they run, the rapid thoughts set down,

Rough as they run, discharge them on the town."

Allan Ramsay.

ALLAN RAMSAY, 1685-1758, was a Scotch poet of some note. His poem, The Gentle Shepherd, has been a general favorite.

Ramsay was originally a wig-maker; subsequently he became a bookseller, having removed from Lanarkshire to Edinburgh. Besides publishing the works of others, he gave to the world several of his own, almost exclusively poetical. They are written in the Scotch dialect. Ramsay is, in a sense, the predecessor of Burns and the coadjutor of Percy. His poems, being favorably received in England, familiarized the English public to the dialect north of the Tweed, while his collection of ancient ballads kept alive a love for popular poetry, afterwards so powerfully stimulated by the appearance of the Reliques. The best known of Ramsay's works are his Tea-Table Miscellany, a collection of English and Scotch songs, and the Gentle Shepherd, a Pastoral Comedy.

"Ramsay had not the force of Burns; but neither, in just proportion to his merits, is he likely to be felt by an English reader. The fire of Burns's wit and passion glows through an obscure dialect by confinement to short and concentrated bursts. The interest which Ramsay excites is spread over a long poem, delineating manners more than passions; and the mind must be at home both in the language and manners to appreciate the skill and comic archness with which he has heightened the display of rustic character without giving it vulgarity, and refined the views of peasant life by situations of sweetness and tenderness without in the least departing from its simplicity. Like the poetry of Tasso and Ariosto, that of the Gentle Shepherd is engraven on the memory of its native country. Its verses have passed into proverbs, and it continues to be the delight and solace of the peasantry whom it describes.”— Campbell.

ALLAN RAMSAY, JR., 1713–1784; a son of Allan Ramsay, was celebrated in his day as a painter. He published several pamphlets on political subjects, which are no

longer of importance. Ramsay enjoyed the reputation of being a very entertaining. conversationist.

Young.

Edward Young, 1684-1765, author of "The Night Thoughts," holds no inconsiderable place in English litera

ture.

Career. Young was the son of an English clergyman. He was educated at Winchester and at Oxford. He held a Law Fellowship at Oxford, and took the degree of D. C. L. there in 1719. Having a promise of preferment in the church, he took holy orders in 1727, but never rose higher than a country rectory in Hertfordshire. In 1731, he was married to Lady Elizabeth Lee, widow of Col. Lee, and daughter of the Earl of Lichfield. The poet's step-daughter, Miss Lee, was married to Mr. Temple, son of Lord Palmerston. Mr. and Mrs. Temple are supposed to be the Philander and Narcissa of The Night Thoughts.

Works.-Dr. Young is almost exclusively known by the one work already named. He wrote, however, many others. The following are the titles of a few: The Universal Passion, love of fame, a series of seven satires; The Force of Religion, founded on the death of Lady Jane Grey; two Tragedies, Busiris King of Egypt, and Revenge; A Poem on the Last Day; A Vindication of Providence, etc.

"Young's Night Thoughts" was once almost as common a book as Pilgrim's Progress, and as generally read. It is still one of the most popular works in the language, although open to obvious and just criticism.

"The 'Night Thoughts' certainly contains many splendid and happy conceptions, but their beauty is thickly marred by false wit and over-labored antithesis; indeed, his whole ideas seem to have been in a state of antithesis while he composed the poem. One portion of his fancy appears devoted to aggravate the picture of his desolate feelings, and the other half to contradict that picture by eccentric images and epigrammatic ingenuities. As a poet, he was fond of exaggeration, but it was that of the fancy more than that of the heart. There is nothing of entertaining succession of parts in the 'Night Thoughts.' The poem excites no anticipation as it proceeds. One book bespeaks no impatience for another, nor is found to have laid the smallest foundation for new pleasure when the succeeding night sets in. The poet's fancy discharges itself on the mind in short ictuses of surprise, which rather lose than increase their force by reiteration; but he is remarkably defective in progressive interest and collective effect. The power of the poem, instead of being in the whole, lies in short, vivid, and broken gleams of genius: so that, if we disregard particular lines, we shall but too often miss the only gems of rangom which the poet can bring as the price of his relief from sur. rounding tedium."- Campbell: Essay on English Poetry.

"Young is too often fantastical and frivolous; he pins butterflies to the pulpitcushion; he suspends against the grating of the charnel-house colored lamps and

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comic transparencies,― Cupid, and the cat and the fiddle; he opens a storehouse filled with minute particles of heterogeneous wisdom and unpalatable gobbets of ill-concocted learning, contributions from the classics, from the schoolmen, from homilies, and from farces. What you expected to be an elegy turns out an epigram; and when you think he is bursting into tears he laughs in your face. Do you go with him into his closet, prepared for an admonition or a rebuke, he shakes his head, and you sneeze at the powder and perfumery of his peruke. Wonder not if I prefer to his pungent essences the incense which Cowper burns before the altar."-W. S. Landor: Imaginary Conversations.

John Byrom, 1691-1763, was a remarkable character and a very interesting author.

Career.

A Student and Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, he made his mark in 1714 by the pastoral" Colin and Phoebe," which appeared in The Spectator. He studied medicine abroad, but never took a degree, (“Doctor" by courtesy only,) and in 1724 was made F. R. S. He invented a system of shorthand, and for a while supported himself by teaching it, having married for love, thereby offending the lady's relatives and his own. Afterwards, inheriting the family estates at Kensall, Lancashire, he led the easy life of a country gentleman, and amused himself with study and rhyming.

Character and Works.- Byrom was a man of blameless character, and a Christian philosopher of a high and uncommon type. He admired and largely followed the Mystics, especially Jacob Behmen: yet luminous and solid common sense appears in all his writings Possessed of great wit and rich humor, he is the author of some of our best epigrams; and his poems run through all styles and subjects, "from grave to gay, from lively to severe." He wrote verse carelessly and with great fluency, published next to nothing, and was utterly indifferent to reputation; had he chosen, he might have won high poetic rank. As it is, one or two hymns and several lighter pieces from his pen are still well known: and the fortunate possessor of his somewhat scarce "Poems" will find in them much to amuse, to edify, and to instruct. They were collected after his death, and appeared in two volumes, 1773, and again, revised and enlarged, in 1814. Also his "Literary Remains" were published for the Cheetham Society, in 1857; so permanent has been the impression made on the comparatively few who had any adequate knowledge of the man through his writings. They display a lively, powerful, penetrating, and well-instructed mind, and a spirit thoroughly attuned to the love of God and man. One-half his poems are distinctively religious: the thought in these belongs rather to our time than to that in which he lived. Often free, it is always reverent, and generally sound; his pages, besides the wholesome flavor of a genial personality, are informed by an ardent and yet a reasoning faith. Among the English authors who have fallen short of absolute greatness, there is perhaps none who better deserves, or is likely longer to retain, honorable mention and kindly remembrance. He is supposed to have coined the word “bibliolatry,” in the following couplet:

"If to adore an image be idolatry,

To deify a book is bibliolatry."