pages. In succeeding years, Mr. Day published two noble poems, The Dying Negro, and The Devoted Legions; also Sandford and Merton, which by wise parents is put into every youthful hand. Mr. Day dedicated the third edition of the Dying Negro to Rousseau. That dedication has every force and every grace of eloquence. The sentiments are strongly characteristic of their writer except in the philippic against American resistance just commenced when the address to Rousseau was composed. Generous indignation of the slave trade, practised without remorse in the southern colonies of North America, induced Mr. Day to refuse them all credit for the patriotic virtue of that resistance to new and unconstitutional claims which threatened their liberties. In the course of the year 1770, Mr. Day stood for a full-length picture to Mr. Wright of Derby. A strong likeness and a dignified portrait were the result. Drawn as in the open air, the surrounding sky is tempestuous, lurid, and dark. He stands leaning his left arm against a column inscribed to Hambden. Mr. Day looks upwards, as enthusiastically meditating on the contents of a book, held in his dropped right hand. The open leaf is the oration of that virtuous patriot in the senate, against the grant of ship-money, demanded by king Charles the first. A flash of lightning plays in Mr. Day's hair, and illuminates the contents of the volume. The poetic fancy, and what were then the politics of the original, appear in the choice of subject and attitude. Dr. Darwin sat to Mr. Wright about the same period. That was a simply contemplative portrait, of the most perfect resemblance. During the summer and autumn of that year, was found, in Dr. Darwin's circle, as Mr. Day's visiter, the late Mr. William Seward of London; yet, though a young man whose talents were considerably above the common level, he was rather a satellite than a planet in that little sphere. He afterwards became known to the literary world as one of Dr. Johnson's habitual companions, and, in the year 1795, he published Anecdotes of Distinguished Persons; a compilation of more industry in the collection, than grace in the dress. Mr. W. Seward has not displayed in those volumes, the happy art of animating narration. Common occurrences, even in the lives of eminent people, weary attention, unless they are told with elegance and spirit. From the ardently-sought society of men of genius, this gentleman acquired a striking degree of wit and ingenious allusion in conversation, though it was too uniformly, and too caustically, of the sarcastic species; but every sort of fire seems to have evaporated from the language of Mr. W. Seward in passing through his pen. Mr. Day and Mr. Edgeworth took the house now inhabited by Mr. Moresby, in the little green valley of Stow, that slopes from the east end of the cathedral, and forms, with its old grey tower on the banks of its lake, so lovely a landscape. That house was Mr. Day's bachelor mansion through the year 1770; that of Mr. Edgeworth, and his wife and family, in the ensuing year. All of this city and its vicinity, who comprehended and tasted those powers of mind which take the higher range of intellect, were delighted to mingle in such associations. In February 1775, died Dr, Small, nor were so much talent and merit suffered to pass away, "Without the meed of some melodious tears." They were given in a short elegy, by his most valued friend, Dr. Darwin; which elegy is engraven on a vase in Mr. Boulton's garden, sacred to the memory of the ingenious deceased: Ye gay, and young, who, thoughtless of your doom, Where Melancholy broods o'er many a tomb, If chance ye enter these sequester'd groves, O leave to Folly's cheek, the laughs and loves, Here, while no titled dust, no sainted bone, No warrior, frowning in historic stone, Cold Contemplation leans her aching head, Waves her meek hand, and sighs for science, dead, Epitaph on Dr. Small of Birmingham, by Mr. Day: Beyond the rage of Time, or Fortune's power, O taught on reason's boldest wing to rise, O gentle bosom! O unspotted mind! O friend to truth, to virtue, and mankind, Thy lov'd remains we trust to this pale shrine, In Mr. Day's epitaph there is some pathos, and more poetry; but it is far from being faultless. Perhaps it may be its least error, that the name of the bewailed is omitted, which Dr. Johnson has well observed, ought always to be involved in the verses. It must, however, be confessed, that, in this case, the noun personal was not calculated to appear with grace in verse; but that consideration, though it doubtless caused, will not justify the omission. In Dr. Darwin's Elegy, it is placed out of all possibility of ludicrous equivoque, and so accents the last line, as to produce no mean or inharmonious sound. The commendation, also, is, in the elegy, of much more dignified modesty. Praise may be allowed to glow even upon a tombstone, but should never be hyperbolic. The epitaph is too exclamatory; and to assert that no second loss, so deplorable, can be sustained, is infinitely too much for one, who, however endowed and adorned, left the world at large no written testimony of that imputed superiority. It is finely observed by the charming Prior, "That the distinguish'd part of men, |