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 sin '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 ransom which the poet can bring as the price of his relief from surrounding 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

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, aud 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."

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 Hymns 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, Bones, Hurdy-Gurdy, and other national English instruments. Thornton also published The Battle of the Wigs, and contrib uted 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.