gant habits however, and especially his relish for theatrical amusements, soon involved him in fresh difficulties. But when want had roused him to exertion, this cause of his dissipation was by his genius converted into the source of emolument and fame. In March 1761 he published his Rosciad, a most discriminating but severe critique upon the principal dramatic performers of the day. Few poems since the Dunciad have made upon the public mind an impression equal to that produced by the Rosciad. It rapidly went through a succession of editions, and at once raised its author to the pinacle of celebrity. Success, however, had an unhappy effect upon the mind of Churchill. His fame was a passport into the company of wits and men of fashion; and if his principles were not corrupted, his habits became loose and debauched. He gave the finishing stroke to his moral reputation by contracting an intimacy with the celebrated profligate, John Wilkes, in whose political squabbles he engaged with all the warmth of friendship, as well as with the zeal of patriotism, and in whose defence he produced poem after poem, which though eagerly read at the time of their publication, are now, together with the circumstances which gave them birth, only known to the reader of minute and curious research. The career of Churchill was rapid and short. He did not appear as an author till the year 1761, and in the year 1764 he died of a miliary fever at Boulogne, to which place he had repaired to visit his friend Wilkes, who was at that time a refugee in France. Churchill's first publication was also his best. The Rosciad is not only nervous and strong, but sufficiently polished. His great fault was carelessness in plan, detail, and style. But his faults are redeemed by numerous beauties; and so long as servility and selfishness shall be despised and detested by true-born Englishmen, his "Prophecy of Famine" will be read with the interest which is always excited by skilful and pungent satire. Dr. Akenside also in some degree devoted his muse to po litical litical topics. Had he made these topics the exclusive subjects of poetic illustration, he would long since have descended to oblivion. But he was not only a politician, he was also a philosopher; and his work entitled "Pleasures of the Imagination" ranks among the best didactic poems in the English language. At the age of eighteen Akenside was sent to the university of Edinburgh for the purpose of entering on a course of study proper to qualify him for the office of a dissenting minister. Soon, however, quitting theology, he turned his attention to medicine; and after continuing during the usual course of three years at Edinburgh he went to Leyden, where he took his doctor's degree in 1744. In the same year he firmly established his reputation as a poet, by the publication of his "Pleasures of the Imagination". It has been justly remarked by a discerning critic, that "his after performances never equalled this work, which was finished at the early age of three and twenty;" and had he lived to perfect his design of new modelling it, if he had rendered it more correct in principle, he would most undoubtedly have greatly impaired its energy, and diminished its spirit. In its original state it affords one of the finest specimens extant of the capabilities of English blank verse. Its march is stately and dignified, and its diction classically pure and elevated. Akenside indeed seems to have been endowed with an excellent ear. He possessed the happy art of lengthening out his periods without sacrificing either perspicuity or harmony; and his pauses are artfully and elegantly varied. His illustrations are well chosen; and throughout the whole of this composition he evinces a relish for the beauties of nature, and an intimate acquaintance with the works of ancient and of modern writers of the greatest celebrity. His lyric compositions are cold, stiff, and ungraceful; and it is remarkable that when he converted his Epistle to Curio, a warm and pungent invective against the apostate earl of Bath, into an ode its spirit entirely evaporated. In many of his poems Akenside expressed himself with so much enthusiasm in praise of liberty, and on this topic so closely closely copied the style of the classic poets of antiquity, that he was suspected of a leaning towards republican principles; and on that account underwent no small degree of obloquy. This circumstance, however, did not finally obstruct his promotion; for on the first settlement of her majesty's household he had the honour of being appointed one of her physicians. This situation he held till June 1770, when he died of a putrid fever in the forty-ninth year of his age. In the reign of his present majesty there flourished two other physicians who united an attachment to the muses with skill in the healing art. We allude to Dr. Armstrong and Dr. Smollet. The former of these writers was the son of a Scotch divine, and was born about the year 1709 at Castleton, in Roxburghshire. In 1732 he took his degree in medicine in the university of Edinburgh. His first poetical publication appeared in 1737, under the title of the "Economy of Love;" a poem of considerable power, but bordering too closely on the licentious to confer on its author honourable fame. From time to time he produced several other pieces which scarcely rise above mediocrity. The work upon which his reputation is principally founded is "The Art of Preserving Health," a didactic poem in four books. This subject obviously opened to the poet a vast range of topics, from which Dr. Armstrong has made a judicious selection. His diction is rather copious than elevated, perspicuous rather than animated. He is not ambitious of ornament; but he is natural and pleasing. He does not reach the lofty pitch of his brother physician Akenside; but he does not like him occasionally degenerate into stiffness and affectation of phraseology. He died in Sep Dr. Armstrong lived to an advanced age. tember 1779; and it is a matter perhaps not unworthy of of remark, that though his high spirit and his disdain of the arts too frequently adopted to rise in the medical profession had greatly limited his practice, yet by the exercise of prudent economy he had before his death attained to opulence in his circumstances. Tobias Smollet was, like his friend Armstrong, a native of Scotland, having been born in 1720, near the village of Renton in Dumbartonshire. He was educated in the grammar school of Dumbarton, whence he was removed to the university of Glasgow. In this city he was apprenticed to a surgeon, with whom he did not continue long; and when he quitted this situation he went to prosecute his studies at Edinburgh. When he had attained the age of nineteen he repaired to London. In this great mart of talent he could only raise sufficient interest to procure the office of surgeon's mate in the navy, in which capacity he witnessed the siege of Carthagena in 1741. Being soon disgusted with the drudgery to which his professional duty exposed him, he quitted the service, and he made some efforts to establish himself as a physician at Bath; but these were unsuccessful. He therefore relinquished the practice of medicine, and fixing his residence at Chelsea determined to rely upon his pen for support. Nor was he disappointed in his expectations. Few authors have been more industrious or more versatile in the display of their talents than he was. By his writings in almost every department of literature he contrived to live in honourable independence till the year 1771, when he died at Leghorn in the 51st year of his age. Smollet is most generally known as a novellist: but his merit as a poet is not inferior to that which he evinced as a writer of romance. The poems which he has left behind hin are so exquisite in their kind, that the reader of taste regrets that he did not devote more time to this species of composition. But, alas! Smollet wrote for bread, and the time was not yet come when poetry was vended at so much a line. We may, however, venture to prophesy, that when the effusions of the prolific poetasters of more modern days are consigned to merited oblivion, his noble "Ode to Independence," and his plaintive "Tears of Scotland," will to distant ages be freshly remembered. It was also the destiny of another of the most attractive of our later poets to gain his subsistence by labouring for the booksellers. booksellers. We allude to Oliver Goldsmith, a native of Elphin in Ireland, who after being obliged to quit the univerity of Edinburgh by stress of want travelled through the continent on foot, indebted to casual hospitality for shelter, and to charity for support. On his return to England he was obliged for some time to drudge in the ill-requited office of usher to a private school; but breaking out of the house of bondage, he commenced author, and soon astonished the town by the publication of "The Traveller." The celebrity which he deservedly obtained by this poem gave him currency in the first literary circles. He was admitted into Johnson's celebrated club of wits; and he soon increased his fame and his fortune by bringing on the stage a successful comedy. His facility in composition procured him ready and profitable employment from the booksellers; but his habits of carelessness and extravagance involved him in perpetual difficulties, which were also aggravated by the generosity of his disposition. The embarrassed state of his affairs at length brought on a despondency of mind which caused him to fall an easy victim to a disorder which in happier circumstances he might have overcome. He died in March 1774, adding another name to the numerous list of those whose history evinces that genius without prudence is a passing meteor, which shines for a moment and then sinks in darkness. "It would not be easy," says a judicious critic, "to point out in the whole compass of English poetry pieces that are read with more delight than the Traveller' and the Deserted Village.' The elegance of the versification; the force and splendour, yet simplicity of the diction; the happy mixture of animated sentiment with glowing description, are calculated to please equally the refined and the uncultivated taste." Among the poets who have adorned the reign of his present majesty, a place of distinguished pre-eminence is due to William Couper, esq. The intercst which his poetry excites in the general mind is greatly enhanced by the extraordinary circumstances of his life. Born of a noble family, and destined to the study of the law, the road to emolument and honour |