Anne Steele, 1716-1778, is one of the sweet singers of the church.

Mrs. Steele was the daughter of a Baptist clergyman, the Rev. William Steele, of Broughton, Hampshire. She was never married, but in her later years became Mrs. Steele, by one of the beautiful courtesies of the olden time.

Character. — Mrs. Steele was a woman of a most earnest religious spirit, and was very active in deeds of Christian charity. She was a great sufferer, and the trial of her patience has left its mark upon her writings. Owing to an accident in childhood she was a confirmed invalid, and was often confined to her chamber; a few hours before her contemplated wedding, the object of her affections was drowned; her father's death gave her a shock from which she never recovered. Yet a spirit of peaceful content pervades all she wrote.

Works. Mrs. Steele was the author of Poems on Subjects chiefly Devotional, in 3 vols. The collection includes 144 Hymns, 34 Psalms, and about 50 poems on moral subjects. Some of her Hynins are faultless as lyrics, and are familiar in almost every household of the Christian faith.

Falconer.

WILLIAM FALCONER, 1730-1769, has a permanent place in English literature by his one remarkable poem, The Shipwreck.

Falconer was the son of a barber in Edinburgh, and went to sea while young. He suffered shipwreck on two occasions, and both times very narrowly escaped with his life. His familiarity with sea life and its dangers, joined to the possession of the true poetic faculty, enabled him to give such a picture of shipwreck as no other poet has succeeded in giving. He published some other poems, but this was the only one that attracted attention. He also compiled A Universal Dictionary of the Marine, 4to, which was regarded of great value. In 1769, he sailed for India as purser to the ship Aurora, which touched at the Cape of Good Hope, but was never heard of afterward. It is supposed to have gone down in the Mozambique Channel.

JOHN ARMSTRONG, M. D., 1709-1779, was a didactic poet of considerable repute.

Armstrong was a graduate of the University of Edinburgh, and attained some celebrity in his profession as a physician. His chief literary work was a poem on The Art of Preserving Health, which was highly praised by Warton, Beattie, and others Warton says: "To describe so difficult a thing, gracefully and poetically, as the effects of distemper on a human body, was reserved for Dr. Armstrong, who accordingly hath executed it at the end of his third book, where he hath given us that pathetic account of the sweating sickness. There is a classical correctness and closeness of style in this poem that are truly admirable, and the subject is raised and adorned by numberless poetical images." Armstrong's other publications are: A Dialogue between Hygeia, Mercury, and Pluto; Winter; Benevolence, a Poetical Epistle to Eumenes; Taste, an Epistle to a Young Critic; and A Short Ramble through France and Italy. He published also a volume of Medical Essays.

CHRISTOPHER ANSTEY, 1724-1805, is chiefly known as the author of The New Bath Guide, 1766, one of the most popular poems of that day. It was a diverting satire upon the follies of the time, and is directed chiefly against physicians and Methodists. Smollett is said to have borrowed largely from it in the composition of Humphrey Clinker. Dodsley, the publisher, said that the profits on the sale of The New Bath Guide were greater than he had ever gained by the publication of any other book in the same length of time. It has now fallen almost entirely into oblivion.

BONNELL THORNTON, 1724–1768, a humorous writer of the last century, was educated at Westminster School and Oxford. His earliest production was An Ode on St. Cecilia's Day, a burlesque of the Jews - Harp, Boues, Hurdy-Gurdy, and other national English instruments. Thornton also published The Battle of the Wigs, and contributed to The Student, and to The Connoisseur. Assisted somewhat by Coleman and Warner, he published, in 1767, a translation of the Comedies of Plautus, which is still valued by the classical student.

HENRY CAREY, 1743, GEORGE SAVILLE CAREY, 1743-1807, father and son. They were musical composers and poets of the same order, writing songs, setting them to music, and singing them for public amusement. Their productions were not of a high order, or of a kind likely to survive; but they were very numerous, and they contributed largely to the popular amusement; and it is recorded especially, of both these men, that though they dealt much in the comic, they never once transgressed the laws of decency.

WILLIAM WHITEHEAD, 1715-1785, Poet-Laureate, was born at Cambridge, son of a baker, and was educated at Winchester and Cambridge.

Whitehead resided for many years with Lord and Lady Jersey, first as tutor to their son, and then as a social companion; and succeeded Colley Cibber in the Laureateship in 1727. Macaulay calls him "the most accomplished tuft-hunter of his time." He wrote Atys and Adrastus; Epistle of Anne Boleyn to Henry VIII.; The Danger of Writing in Verse: Essay on Ridicule; Epistle on Nobility; Hymn to the Nymph at Bristol Spring; Pathetic Apology for All Laureats; Verses to the People of England; Variety, a Tale for Married People; Goat's Beard; and the following Plays: The Roman Father, Creusa King of Athens, School for Lovers, A Trip to Scotland, Edipus.

PAUL WHITEHEAD, 1710-1774, was born in Holborn, the son of a tailor, and was apprenticed to a mercer. He married an heiress, through whom he received £10,000; refused to pay £3000, for which he had gone security, and suffered imprisonment therefor; became a political satirist, and was appointed to an office in the Treasury worth £800 per annum, which post he kept till his death. He wrote State Dunces, a satire, in imitation of Pope; Manners, a satire, for which the publishers were fined and imprisoned by the House of Lords; Honor, and The Gymnasiad, Satires, etc.

DAVID MALLET, 1700-1765, was a native of Scotland. He was educated at Edinburgh and Aberdeen, and removed to London, on which occasion he changed his name from Malloch to Mallet. He is the author of several poems, ballads, and plays, and of a life of Bacon, which is prefixed to the works of that author. "As a writer he cannot be placed in any high class. There is no species of composition in which he was eminent. His dramas had their day,—a short day,--and are forgotten; his blank verse seems to my ear the echo of Thomson." - Dr. Johnson.

WILLIAM WILKIE, D. D., 1721-1772, was a native of Echlin, Scotland, and a graduate of the University of Edinburgh. He tried his hand for a time at farming; afterwards became a minister; finally, Professor of Natural Philosophy in the University of Glasgow. He had in his day considerable reputation as a poet, and was known among his friends as "The Scottish Homer." His chief poem was The Epigoniad, a poem in

nine Books, in the manner of Spenser. It is now little known.

ANDREW MCDONALD, 1757-1790, son of a gardener of Leith, was educated at the University of Edinburgh, and entered the ministry of the Scotch Church. After preaching for some time at Glasgow, he went to London, and undertook a literary career, but died early, "a victim to sickness, disappointment, and misfortune." His principal works are: Velina, & Poetical Fragment; Vimanda, a Tragedy; The Independent, a Novel; The Fair Apostate, a Tragedy; Law and Loyalty, an Opera; The Princess of Tarento, a Comedy, etc.

WILLIAM JULIUS MICKLE, 1735–1788, acquired considerable distinction as the translator of The Lusiad, by Camoens.

Mickle was a native of Scotland. He was educated in Edinburgh, and resided for one year at Lisbon. He is the author of a number of poems, but is chiefly known as the translator of the celebrated epic which has been named. It is through the medium of this translation, almost exclusively, that the English public is acquainted with the Portuguese poet. The original is a work of high poetic power, and holds an acknowledged place in literature. The value of Mickle's translation, however, may be questioned. For the translator, in accordance with the spirit of his age, deemed himself at liberty to deviate from the original wherever he thought that he could do so to advantage. He himself says ingenuously: "It was not to gratify the dull few, whose greatest pleasure in reading a translation is to see what the author exactly says, — it was to give a poem that might live in the English language, which was the ambition of the translator."

Mr. Mickle has long since departed, and his theory, we trust, with him. The "dull few," who now comprise the greatest critics that the world has ever seen, insist more than ever upon "seeing in a translation what the author exactly says," and can tolerate no tampering with the original. There is nothing against a poet's rewriting a theme borrowed from another language; but a translation, as a translation, cannot be anything more or less than an exact reproduction of the original. Mickle, nevertheless, is still entitled to our regard as being among the earliest promoters in England of modern cosmopolitan literature.

JOHN SCOTT, 1730-1783, was a member of the Society of Friends, who led a quiet life in the village of Amwell. He was a popular versifier, and he made also some essays in literary criticism, besides writing on social economics. His works are: Amwell, a Descriptive Poem, intended to immortalize his native village; Four Elegies, Descriptive and Moral, on the four seasons; Critical Essays; Observations on the Present State of the Parochial and Vagrant Poor; A Digest of the Highway and General Turnpike Laws, etc.

HENRY BROOKE, 1706-1783, an Irish poet and novelist, was mentioned with commendation by Pope, Swift, Johnson, and others. Some of his writings were of a political and partisan character. Works: Universal Beauty, a Philosophical Poem; Translation of the first three books of Tasso; The Earl of Westmoreland, a Tragedy; The Earl of Essex, a Tragedy; Gustavus Vasa, a Play; Redemption, a Poem; The Fool of

Quality, a novel; Juliet Grenville, a novel; A New Collection of Fairy Tales; Famous Letters, on the plan of Swift's Drapier's Letters.-CHARLOTTE BROOKE, daughter of the novelist Henry Brooke, was the author of the following works: Reliques of Irish Poetry, translated into English verse; A Journey through England and Wales; Natural History; Emma, the Foundling of the Wood.

MRS. FRANCES BROOKE, 1745-1789, the wife of an English clergyman, was the author of numerous works, prose and verse: Virginia, a Tragedy; Siege of Sinope, a Tragedy: Rosina, a Play; Marian, a Play; The History of Lady Julia Mandeville, a novel; The History of Clara Mandeville, a sequel to the preceding; The History of Emily Montague; Memoirs of the Marquis of St. Forlaix; Elements of the History of England, Garrick refused to represent her tragedies, whereupon she endeavored to take revenge in a novel, The Excursion, which did not redound greatly to her credit.

ROBERT FERGUSSON, 1750-1774, was a Scotch poet of considerable merit, but intemperate habits, who by dissipation brought himself to poverty and finally to the insane asylum, and died at the early age of twenty-four. He was a native of Edinburgh, and was educated at St. Andrew's. His poems have been published in 2 vols. Burns was a great admirer of Fergusson's poetry, and erected a monument to his memory.

Chatterton.

Thomas Chatterton, 1752-1770, was a youthful poet, whose extraordinary talents and impostures are among the standing wonders of literary history.

Early History. Chatterton was born in Bristol, and was the son of a sexton. The family for some generations had been in charge of the Radcliff church, and it was in the muniment-room of this church that the young poet found the means for his impostures. In early childhood he was esteemed dull, and his first teacher, unable to make him learn the alphabet, sent him home to his mother. He had, however, a morbid fancy for anything curious or antique. The illuminated capitals in some of the old manuscripts to which he had access excited him; and at the age of eight he learned to read, his mother teaching him out of an old black letter Testament. At the age of fourteen he was apprenticed to a scrivener, and not having much else to do, he eagerly devoured everything on the subject of heraldry and antiquities that came in his way.

History of His Impastures. On the opening of the New Bridge, the Bristol papers contained A Description of the Fryer's First Passage over the Old Bridge, purporting to be taken from an ancient manuscript. The paper, which was a really curious affair, being traced to the boy Chatterton, he declared that it had been found by his father, with many other old MSS., in an iron chest in the muniment-room of the church. From this time, he continued to furnish to the public and to individuals specimens of these old MSS. "A citizen addicted to heraldry was presented with a pedigree which carried his name up to the Conquest; a religious gentleman was favored with a fragment of a sermon; and a Mr. Bergum received a poem, entitled The

Romaunt of the Cnyghts, written by John de Bergham, an ancestor, four hundred and fifty years before!"- Allibone.

The poetical compositions which he furnished purported to be chiefly by W. Canynge, a Bristol merchant, and Thomas Rowley, a monk or secular priest, both of the fifteenth century. The peculiarities of the ancient manuscripts, the spelling, grammar, and modes of thought were so thoroughly imitated that the documents seemed certainly genuine; yet the poetry was of so superior a character to anything likely to be found in such circumstances, that the critics were sorely puzzled. A violent controversy arose on the question of the authenticity of these remarkable productions. Why should a lad, who could produce from his own brain poetry of so high an order, tax his ingenuity to palm off the credit of it upon others? Nearly all the leading writers and critics of the day, Horace Walpole, Dr. Johnson, Gibbon, Bishop Percy, and a host of others, engaged in the discussion. Young Chatterton went to London, and readily made engagements with the booksellers, and was on the full tide of literary success, when suddenly he was found dead in his bed, from the effects of a dose of arsenic. There was a streak of insanity in the family, and the disease which, in the judgment of charity, led him to this sad end, was probably only another form of that which had prompted his strange impostures. He died at the age of seventeen years, nine months. It is worthy of remark that the poems which he ascribes to the old monk Rowley are greatly superior to those which he puts forth as his own.

"Nothing can be more extraordinary than the delight which Chatterton appears to have felt in executing those numberless and multifarious impositions. His ruling passion was not the vanity of a poet who depends upon the opinion of other people's gratification, but the stoical pride of talent, which felt nourishment in the solitary contemplation of superiority over the dupes who fell into his toils."— Walter Scott.

Works. His principal poems are: The Tragedy of Ella; Ode to Ella; Execution of Sir Charles Bawdin; Battle of Hastings; The Tournament; A Description of Canynge's Feast, etc.

IV. THEOLOGICAL WRITERS.

Bishop Warburton.

William Warburton, 1698-1779, is one of the most conspicuous figures of the times in which he lived, especially as a writer on polemic theology. His chief work, The Divine Legation of Moses, displayed prodigious learning and abilities. He is noted for his belligerent propensities, and for the great variety, as well as the extent, of his attainments.

Early History. Warburton never received a University education, but was trained for the bar and admitted to practice. His fondness for letters, however, led him to relinquish that profession for the church. After holding various preferments, he was, in somewhat tardy recognition of his great merits and reputation, appointed by Pitt to the bishopric of Gloucester.

Character.-Warburton belonged in a special sense to the church militant. His learning was the prodigious accumulation of incessant