For the EUROPEAN MAGAZINE. An ACCOUNT of JOSEPH NOLLIKINS, HIS artist is the fon of Jofeph Francis gives the following account: That he was of Antwerp, fon of a painter who had long refided in England, but who had died at Roan. The fon came over young, and studied under Tillemans, and afterwards copied Watteau and Paulo Panini. He painted landscape, figures, and converfations, and particularly the amufements of children. He was much employed by Lord Cobham, at Stowe, and by the late Earl of Tylney. He died in St. Anne's parish, Jan. 21, 1748, aged 42, and left a wife and a numerous young family. This numerous young family, however, confifted but of two children, Jofeph the artist, now under confideration, and a daughter. Jofeph was born about the year 1738, and, when young, was more remarkable for his fondness for ringing St. James's church bell, than for any more laudable exertion. He was an apprentice to Mr. Scheemaker, a very worthy man, and one of the beft fculptors then in London. With him he continued feven years, and during that time abandoned his habits of diffipation, and became very induftrious and attentive to his profeffion. In 1759, he gained a premium from the Society of Arts, for a drawing from plaifter; and the next year, the first premium for a model in clay, his own com To the EDITOR of the EUROPEAN MAGAZINE. SIR, HAVING always efteemed the European Magazine as the repofitory of real and useful intelligence, I take the liberty of fending you a few obfervations on the publication of the Microcofm, the Olla Podrida, and the Cofmopolitan, ob, ferving, that if they are thought worthy to be prefented to your readers, my object is entirely fulfilled. Thefe three books are all of them the productions of young writers, and poffefs a confiderable quantity, though different degrees of merit. The Microcofm, on which, in your Magazine for March, you bestowed fuch juft encomiums, defervedly is entitled to the firf place: it is indeed a work which would reflect no difgrace on the best writer of the prefent time; and, excepting a little prefumption in ridiculing Addifon's criticifm on the Chevy chace, is unexceptionable in point of matter, language, aud ftyle. I wish the fame could be faid of the Olla Podrida, which owes its exiftence to fome Oxonians, of whom Mr. Bulkley is the chief, and is Jately completed. Throwing afide all partiality to my brethren here, I must own that it is inferior to the Microcofm in every article of good writing. The affertion may appear rather dogmatical, but it is founded on truth; for I do not mean to infinuate by it that the work, taken by itself, is unworthy of praise, or deftitute of felf-recommendation, but that generally, compared with the other, the product of fchool-boys, it falls greatly inferior. There is one paper in it, and one only, which is fuperior to any the Microcofm contains; it is written by Dr. Horne, Prefident of Magdalen College, and conveys fome impartial and juft reflections on the conduct of Dr. John fon's biographical friends. of thought, abfurd and ridiculous. I have heard of many mechanical methods of making poets; but the corking up the effluvia of Grub-ftreet into bottles, and difpenfing it to all thofe who wish to become poets, with a direction to smell to the bottle before they begin writing, becaufe fuch fmelling has the fame effect as direct infpiration, is a method which evinces the author of it to be almoft as mad as the country quack, Yet fuch is the method which the ingenious Mr. Fofbrook * recommends to thofe defirous of becoming poets; tho' the poetry with which he concludes his firft number, demonftrates that he ufed fome more efficacious method himself, and that it partook of a nobler origin than the effluvia of Grub-street. The publication of a periodical paper at a public school is a circumftance both new and furprizing: and is a furong proof that, however true in other refpects the allegations of those may be who are preaching the degeneracy of the prefent age in comparifon with paft ones, in refpect to a daring fpirit and a defire of knowledge, they are altogether groundless. At Oxford the defign is not novel, The Connoiffeur, by Colman, &c. was carried on there; a performance which as much outweighs the Olla Podrida in fterling value, as the poems of Homer do the effufions of the American bard. I am informed, from no contemptible authority, that the Westminster ladst have it in agitation to follow the example of the Etonians. I hope they may fucceed, and excite the other public fchools to the fame attempt; for then, Sir, the eighteenth century may boaft, that boys of fourteen or fixteen years of age retailed the fayings of Socrates, criticised the works of antiquity, corrected the vices of the times, increafed the volumes of learn. ing, pointed out the paths of virtue and knowledge, and improved the age they lived in by their own bold and honeft exertions. Of the Cofmopolitan much cannot be faid, as it is not far advanced, having only made its appearance fince the com pletion of the Olla Podrida; which if it is intended to excel, it will, I am afraid, fail in the accomplishment of its intention : nothing in it novel or original announces any thing above the Olla Podrida: the Oxford, May 5, 1788. profe part of the firit number is, in point I am, Sir, yours,&c. OXONIENSIS, *Mr. Fofbrook is the gentleman who fuperintends and writes for the Cofmopolitan. † A paper entitled "The Trifler," which has appeared during this month, is attributed to fome of the fenior (cholars on this foundation. To To the EDITOR of the EUROPEAN MAGAZINE. SIR, HE inclofed epitaphs form part of a THE poetical collection, addressed to the Right Honourable the Earl of Oxenford, &c. by one John Southern, 4to. black letter, the title-page wanting. This book is fo rare, that no other fragment of it appears to have been met with by the molt vigilant among our ancient and modern collectors. Who Southern, our author and editor, was, I am unable to difcover. What he thought of himfelf indeed, may be understood from the frequent boats with which his odes and fonnets are interlarded. • A very few fpecimens of his arrogant pretences to the enjoyment and diftribution of fame, will be thought fufficient by your readers. "BUT thou for whom I writ fo well, "And that I will make eternell; "And thou for whome my holie paines Dooth chafe ignoraunce held fo long, "Conjoining, in a vulgar fong, The fecretes, both Greekes and Lataines, Think'st thou it is nothing to have "The penne of Soothern for thy trompet? "Yes, yes, to whome Soothern is Poete, 4 The honour goes not to the grave. "And Juno it's another thing To heare a well-learned voice fing, "Or to fee workes of a wife hand; "Than it's to heare our doting rimors "Whofe labours doo bring both dishonors "To themfelves, and to our England." Sig. C. iii. Again: "Whofe well compoted ryme But, alas! how prefumptuous is human hope!-Diana, a fictitious appellation, ferves only to tell us what was not the true name of our author's miftrefs. Southern furvives but as the real defignation of a being wholly unpoetical, except in his own conceit; and of all the poems for which he had vainly promifed immortality to himself and his friends, perhaps no more than a fingle and mutilated copy has efcaped oblivion. His patron, Edward Vere, the feventeenth Earl of Oxford, flourished early in the reign of Elizabeth, and died at an advanced age, in 'the fecond year of her fucceffor. Some of his veries are highly commended by Webbe and Buttenham, in their difcourfes on English Poetry, 4to. 1586, and 1589. More of his compofitions are to be met with in the Paradife of Dainty Devifes, 4to. 1596, under the fignature E. O. as well as in England's Helicon, 1600 t. For a particular account of him, fee the Biographia Britannica, Collins's Collections, and Mr. Walpole's Noble Authors. The name of his Countefs, however, (who was Anne, the eldest daughter of the famous Cecil Lord Burleigh) not being inferted in any catalogue of rhyming Peereffes, I fend you four of her productions, undoubtedly printed in her lifetime by Mafter Southern aforefaid; and truft that I have thereby afcertained her * I cannot help fufpecting that, in this inftance, our author's printer has been guilty of a whimsical mistake. The Goddefs Juno has nothing to do with the fubject in question, nor is the mentioned in any other part of the ode from whence the foregoing paffage is tranfcribed. Perhaps the compofitor, mifled by fimilarity of found, has given us Juno instead of you know, a familiar appeal to the knowledge of Mafter Southern's mistress, Diana, whom he addreffes on the present occasion. + There are allo lines of his prefixed to Cardanus's Comforts, &c. 1573. right |