12 Delia alone can please, and never tire, 13 Beauty and worth in her alike contend, 14 On her I'll gaze, when others' loves are o'er, 15 Oh, when I die, my latest moments spare, 16 Oh, quit the room, oh, quit the deathful bed, 17 Let them, extended on the decent bier, Convey the corse in melancholy state, Through all the village spread the tender tear, WE may here mention Dr George Sewell, author of a Life of Sir Walter Raleigh, a few papers in the Spectator, and some rather affecting verses written on consumption, where he says, in reference to his garden 'Thy narrow pride, thy fancied green, All must be left when death appears, In spite of wishes, groans, and tears ; Sir John Vanbrugh, best known as an architect, but who also wrote poetry;-Edward Ward (more commonly called Ned Ward), a poetical publican, who wrote ten thick volumes, chiefly in Hudibrastic verse, displaying a good deal of coarse cleverness;-Barton Booth, the famous actor, author of a song which closes thus 'Love, and his sister fair, the Soul, Twin-born, from heaven together came; Love will the universe control, When dying seasons lose their name. Divine abodes shall own his power, When time and death shall be no more ;' Oldmixon, one of the heroes of the 'Dunciad,' famous in his day as a party historian ;-Richard West, a youth of high promise, the friend of Gray, and who died in his twenty-sixth year ;James Eyre Weekes, an Irishman, author of a clever copy of love verses, called 'The Five Traitors;'-Bramston, an Oxford man, who wrote a poem called 'The Man of Taste;'-and William Meston, an Aberdonian, author of a set of burlesque poems entitled 'Mother Grim's Tales.' RICHARD SAVAGE. THE extreme excellence, fulness, and popularity of Johnson's Life of Savage must excuse our doing more than mentioning the leading dates of his history. He was the son of the Earl of Rivers and the Countess of Macclesfield, and was born in London, 1698. His mother, who had begot him in adultery, after having openly avowed her criminality, in order to obtain a divorce from her husband, placed the boy under the care of a poor woman, who brought him up as her son. His maternal grandmother, Lady Mason, however, took an interest in him, and placed him at a grammar school at St Alban's. He was afterwards apprenticed to a shoemaker. On the death of his nurse, he found some letters which led to the discovery of his real parent. He applied to her, accordingly, to be acknowledged as her son; but she repulsed his every advance, and persecuted him with unrelenting barbarity. He found, however, some influential friends, such as Steele, Fielding, Aaron Hill, Pope, and Lord Tyrconnell. He was, however, his own worst enemy, and contracted habits of the most irregular description. In a tavern brawl he killed one James Sinclair, and was condemned to die; but, notwithstanding his mother's interference to prevent the exercise of the royal clemency, he was pardoned by the queen, who afterwards gave him a pension of £50 a-year. He supported himself in a precarious way by writing poetical pieces. Lord Tyrconnell took him for a while into his house, and allowed him £200 a-year, but he soon quarrelled with him, and left. When the queen died he lost his pension, but his friends made it up by an annuity to the same amount. He went away to reside at Swansea, but on occasion of a visit he made to Bristol he was arrested for a small debt, and in the prison he sickened, and died on the 1st of August 1743. He was only forty-five years of age. After all, Savage, in Johnson's Life, is just a dung-fly preserved in amber. His 'Bastard,' indeed, displays considerable powers, stung by a consciousness of wrong into convulsive action; but his other works are nearly worthless, and his life was that of a proud, passionate, selfish, and infatuated fool, unredeemed by scarcely one trait of genuine excellence in character. We love and admire, even while we deeply blame, such men as Burns; but for Savage our feeling is a curious compost of sympathy with his misfortunes, contempt for his folly, and abhorrence for the ingratitude, licentiousness, and other coarse and savage sins which characterised and prematurely destroyed him. THE BASTARD. INSCRIBED, WITH ALL DUE REVERENCE, TO MRS BRETT, ONCE COUNTESS OF MACCLESFIELD. In gayer hours, when high my fancy ran, 'Blest be the Bastard's birth! through wondrous ways, He shines eccentric like a comet's blaze! No sickly fruit of faint compliance he! 'Born to himself, by no possession led, Loosed to the world's wide range, enjoined no aim, Discharged my grasping soul; pushed me from shore, And unconcurring spirits lent no fire, And slumbering in a seat by chance my own. Climbs against wrongs, and brightens into day.' Is chance a guilt? that my disastrous heart, |