into the best societies of London. He was writing his Enquiry in a miserable dirty-looking room, in which 'there was but one chair; and when, from civility, he ' resigned it to me, he was himself obliged to sit on the 'window. While we were conversing together, some one gently tapped at the door, and being desired to come in, ' a poor ragged little girl, of a very becoming demeanour,

' entered the room, and dropping a curtsey, said, "My ""mama sends her compliments, and begs the favour of ""you to lend her a chamberpot full of coals.""

If the February number of the Critical Review lay by the reverend, startled, and long-descended visitor, perhaps good-natured Goldsmith, as he scraped together his

answer to that humble petition, pointed with a smile to a description of the fate of poets which he had just published there. There is a strong similitude,' he had said, reviewing a new edition of the Fairy Queen, 'between 'the lives of almost all our English poets. The Ordinary ' of Newgate, we are told, has but one story, which serves 'for the life of every hero that happens to come within the 'circle of his pastoral care; and however unworthy the re'semblance appears, it may be asserted that the history of ' one poet might serve with as little variation for that of any ' other. Born of creditable parents, who gave him a pious ' education; in spite of all their endeavours, in spite of all 'the exhortations of the minister of the parish on Sundays, ' he turned his mind from following good things, and fell 'to... writing verses! Spenser lived poor, was reviled by 'the critics of the time, and died in the utmost distress.'

He was again working for Hamilton. Smollett himself had not seen his new reviewer, but the success of the Ovid papers proclaimed the value of his assistance, and sent the publisher to Green Arbour Court. He had resumed with this notice of Spenser; a discriminating proof of his appreciation of all great mastery in the divine art. Popular and practical himself, he wonders not the less at the 'Great Magician:' suddenly taken from the ways of the present world,' and far from Drury Lane alehouses or Auburn villages, in the sequestered remoteness of a gorgeous and luxurious fancy he thinks of Virgil, and even Homer, as moderns in comparison with

Elizabeth's Englishman: and when he wakes from this Elysium, and comes back to the ways of the world, his conclusions are, that 'no poet enlarges the imagination 'more than Spenser'; that Cowley was formed into 'poetry by reading him'; that Gray and Akenside have

pro

fited by their study of him; and that 'his verses may one day come to be considered the standard of English poetry.' Following this review, was a notice of young Langhorne's translation of Bion's Elegy on Adonis; wherein he happily contrasted the false and florid tastes of the day with the pure simplicity of the Greek. If a hero or poet happens to die with us, the whole board of elegiac poets raise 'the dismal chorus, adorn his hearse with all the paltry 'escutcheons of flattery, rise into bombast, and paint him at the head of thundering legions, or reining Pegasus in 'his rapid career. They are sure to strew cypress enough ' upon the bier, dress up all the muses in mourning, and 'look as dismal and sorrowful themselves as an under'taker's shop. But neither pomp nor flattery agrees with 'real affliction: it is not thus that Marcellus, even that Marcellus who was adopted by the emperor of the 'world, is bewailed by Propertius. His beauty, his 'strength, his milder virtues, had caught the poet's affections, and inspired his affliction. Were a person to die ' in these days, though he was never at a battle in his life,

our elegiac writers would be sure to make one for the 'occasion.' Subsequently, and with as happy and clear a spirit, he discussed a book on Oratory by a Gresham

professor of rhetoric: instancing the lawyer who, on 'hearing his adversary talk of the war of Troy, the beauteous Helen, and the river Scamander, entreated the ' court to observe that his client was christened, not 'Scamander, but Simon.'

And here I will sum up briefly as I may, what remain to be noticed of these humble and unacknowledged labours in the Critical Review. The tone is more confident than in The Dunciad days; the just appreciation is the same. Obscure and depressed as the writer was, his free running hand very frankly betrays its work, amid the cramped laborious penmanship with which Smollett's big-wigged friends surrounded it. No man wishing to hide under cover of a mean fortune, was ever so easily detected. Favourite expressions, which to the end of his life continued so, are here: thoughts he had turned to happy use in his Irish letters, reappear again and again: and disguise himself for Scroggen or James Willington as he may, he cannot write from other inspiration, or with a less natural instinctive grace, than his own. The work I now refer to connects itself, for this reason, with the most brilliant to follow. The foibles and social vanities which his Chinese friend is soon with indulgent humour to correct, are here already clear to him: the false poetic taste which he will shortly supplant with his natural manly verse, he does his best thus early to weaken and expose: and the do-me-good family romances, with which the moralmongers of the day would make stand against the Roderick

Randoms and Tom Joneses, are thrust back from before the Vicar's way.

Among his reviews, then, were Murphy's Orphan of China; containing good-natured evidence of curiosity as to the Chinese people, and of interest in the plans of his recent reverend visitor, at that time preparing a Chinese translation for the press.. Butler's Remains; in which, bewailing the 'indigence in which the poet lived and died,' he protested with generous 'horror' at 'the want of discernment, the more than barbarous ingratitude, of his contemporaries'.. Marriott's Answer to the Critical Review; containing whimsical and humourous apology for his own satirical comparisons of three months before.. and Dunkins's Epistle to Lord Chesterfield; which he closed with a story of a traveller passing through the city of Burgos in Spain, who, desirous of knowing their most learned men, applied to one of the inhabitants for information. 'What,' replied the Spaniard, who happened to be a scholar, have you 'never heard of the admirable Brandellius, or the inge'nious Mogusius? One the eye, and the other the heart ' of our university, known all over the world?' 'Never,' cried the traveller; but pray inform me what Brandellius is particularly remarkable for.' 'You must be very 'little acquainted in the republic of letters,' said the other, 'to ask such a question. Brandellius has written a 'most sublime panegyric on Mogusius.' 'And prithee, 'what has Mogusius done to deserve so great a favour?' 'He has written an excellent poem in praise of Brandel