such causes as were likely to strike a churchman in that age. The substance of Asser is contained in the fourth and fifth books of Mr. Turner's History of the Anglo-Saxons, where the reader will find a more copious and interesting account of Alfred, though written in a singular style, than in any other English performance.

It is still however a disgrace to English biogra phy, that there is no life of our unrivalled countryman, important enough from the size and the composition to do him justice. The notices of Milton, Hume, and Burke, who like all other wise men, of all opinions and countries, have united to speak of him with one voice, are mere notices, however. excellent of their kind. Little perhaps could be added to the facts of his story; but they are of a nature to be rendered doubly interesting by proper management; no subject, it is evident, could be more justly provocative of elegant reflection and illustration; and a compact, lively volume, written by one who was learned enough to enter into the language of his hero, of taste enough to relish his

accomplishments, and of knowledge and spirit enough to apprehend the real greatness of his character, would be a treasure to be laid up in the heart of every Englishman, and tend to perpetuate those solid parts of our character, which are the only real preservatives of our glory.

5 'Twas lucky for Colman he wasn't there too,
For his pranks would have certainly met with their due,-
And Sheridan's also, that finished old tricker
But one was in prison, and both were in liquor.

It cannot be supposed, especially in my present situation, that I should object to a man on the mere ground of his being circumscribed in his movements ;` but it is pretty well known, I believe, that it is not plain-dealing which sent Mr. Colman to prison, nor any very great care for his honour which keeps him there. These are matters, however, upon which I am loth to touch, and therefore dismiss them.-The pertinacious ribaldry of Mr. Colman, and his affectation of regarding it's reprovers as hypocrites,things which look more like the robust ignorance of

a vulgar young rake, than the proceedings of even an old man of the world who is approaching his grave, have met with their just reprobation from every reader of common sense. The truth is, that Mr. Colman the Younger, as he calls himself, has been prodigiously overrated in his time, partly perhaps from his real superiority to the Dibdins and Reynoldses as a writer of huge farces, and partly from the applauses of a set of interested actors and gratuitous playwrights, whom he has helped to spoil in return; so that it really seems to be half vanity as well as sottishness, that persuades him he has a right to talk as he pleases, and to make us acquainted with this obscene dotage of his over his cups.

On Mr. Sheridan I spare myself additional com、 ment, especially after the climax with which he finished his moral, when explanations were going to and fro respecting the Regent's cabinet. Apollo's rebuke of him, had he made his appearance, would have been on the old score of his neglect of the drama. As a comic writer, he has certainly, for a long time past, been our only connexion with a better race,-for

there was an ideal sickliness about Mr. Cumberland, -a hankering after petty effects and smooth-speaking sympathies,-an inaptitude, in short, to fall in with the real forms and spirits of life, which made him look rather like a sickly foreigner who had got among us, than one of the native stock. The best part about him was his elegant scholarship. But may I say, that Mr. Sheridan, upon the whole, appears to me to have been overrated as an observer, and that the best part of him is his elegance also? an informed elegance no doubt, and one that is full of a social and sprightly humour,—but still a business of words rather than thoughts,-an elegance informing us little in it's turn, and quite on the tasteful side instead of the inventive.

6 Apollo just gave them a glance with his eye,
Spencer--Rogers--Montgomery,'-and putting them by,
Begg'd the landlord to give his respects to all three,
And say he'd be happy to see them to tea.

These writers, though classed together, and equally denied admittance to Apollo's dinner-table, either

from illegibility to his greater honours or inability to sustain the strength of his wine, are, it must be confessed, of very unequal merits. Mr. Montgomery is perhaps the most poetical of the three, Mr. Rogers the best informed, and Mr. Spencer the soonest pleased with himself. The first seems to write with his feelings about him, the second with his books, the third with his recollections of yesterday and his cards of invitation. The most visible defect of Mr. Montgomery, who appears to be an amiable man, is a sickliness of fancy, which throws an air of feebleness and lassitude on all that he says;-the fault of Mr. Rogers is direct imitation of not the best models, written in a style at once vague and elaborate. His Pleasures of Memory,-a poem, at best, in imitation of Goldsmith,-is written in the worst and most monotonous taste of modern versification, -to say nothing of the never-failing souls and controuls, thoughts and fraughts, tablets, tracings, impartings, and all the endless common-] -places of magazine rhyming. Mr. Rogers, of late years, seems to have become aware of the defects of his versifi