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paragraph, except it be some of the prolixly concatenated sentences of Gauden; but his involutions are amply redeemed by a richuess of imagination which scatters the brightest flowers over the palpable confusion.

"The purport of his undertaking was, as he informs us," to tell his readers what he had observed of men and books in the most amusing manner he was able." This, indeed, was an unambitious claim, and to which, I think, he established a sufficient right in the progress of his labours.".

"If the Observer be considered as a body of Essays, upon life, upon manners, and upon literature, it will shrink in comparison with those produced by Steele, by Addison, and by Johnson. Cumberland was

capable of imagining characters; but he does not seem to have had much power of observing those qualities in individuals of which character is compounded. That which was obtrusively visible in a man, he could seize and portray; but the less obvious modes of thought, the secret bias, the prevailing but obscure motives to conduct, were seldom within his reach. He could invent, and give the invention an air of reality; upon a slender basis of truth he could engraft an agree able fiction, in which, however, the traces of fancy would still be so disceruible that the reader never mistook them.

"In this respect, therefore, he was greatly inferior to either Steele, Addison, or Johnson. They had a quick perception of the follies of mankind, and exhibited, without exaggeration, such a picture of them as none could mistake, and none could view without conviction of its truth. They looked abroad upon life, and observed all its various combinations: they studied man, and knew the artifices by which his conduct was obscured. They penetrated through that veil which necessity sometimes, and custom always, impels us to throw round our actions, and they disclosed those hidden qualities which escape the notice of ordinary observation, but which are recognized with instantaneous acquiescence when displayed.

"The want of this power in Cumberland is greatly felt by him who reads his essays consecutively; for, being restricted in the limits of his excursions, by inability to avail himself of what wider research would have offered, he is too diffuse upon single incidents and characters, as a man who has not many guincas applies one to its utmost variety of purposes.

"In his literary disquisitions, though always inferior to Johnsou as a critic, he is often very pleasing, and often equal to Addison. His learning, perhaps, sometimes degenerates into pedantry, but he who is rich is apt to display his wealth. His critical papers are among the most amusing, and he has instituted an ingenious comparison between Massinger's Fatal Dowry and Rowe's Fair Penitent, in which the brief opinions of Mr. M. Mason (Massinger's editor) are enforced by examples pertinently selected. I wish, however, that his admiration of Cowper had not excited him to an imitation of that nervous and original writer.

"In his characters he sometimes exhibited living individuals. I have already alluded to his introduction of Johnson; and in the same VOL. IV. New Series.

48

number, I imagine his actress to be Mrs. Siddons. Gorgon, the selfconceited painter of the deformed and terrible, (No 98.) was probably meant for Fuseli: but if so, there is more willingness to wound than power.

"There is nothing in these papers by which the most delicate reader can be displeased, which is a praise that cannot be wholly given either to the Spectator or Guardian, whose zeal to reform certain exposures of the female person often led them to illustrations not exactly within the limits of decency. This commendation I bestow the more willingly upon Cumberland, because the practice of such decorum was not habitual in him, for in some of his writings he only needed to employ a corresponding licentiousness of expression to rank with the corrupters of public morals."

We shall not quote this writer's strictures on the Society for the Suppression of Vice, at p. 450. et seq.: but we recommend them to the consideration of its zealous members.

A large portion of these pages is dedicated to the drama; and the author will not be said to have gone out of his way by animadverting on the extreme folly of the town in its idolatry of the talents of Master Betty. At the zenith of his popularity, we endeavoured to correct this mania, by suggesting the impossibility of those perfections which the public voice attributed to that youth, and has itself since refused to recognize.

Of the novels of his hero, Mr. M. speaks in terms of moral disapprobation; and of his scheme to establish a Review, with no applause. The following is his short account of Mr. C.'s death and character.

"Cumberland's death was not preceded by any tedious or painful illness. The uniform temperance of his life was such that he might justly hope a calm and gentle dismission to another state; that euthanasia for which Arbuthnot so tenderly sighed, for which every man must devoutly wish, and which, indeed, as I have heard, was vouchsafed to Cumberland. He was indisposed only a few days previously, and quietly resigned his soul to its Maker at the house of his friend, Mr. Henry Fry, in Bedford Place, Russel Square, a gentleman whom be mentions with great kindness in his Memoirs. This melancholy event took place on the 7th of May, 1811.

"When his death was known, it excited a very general sensation in the literary world. He had, indeed, lived through so long a period, had written so much, had acquired so general a reputation as an elegant scholar and author, and had been connected so intimately with the most eminent men of the last half century, that his loss seemed to dissever from us the only remaining link of that illustrious circle by which the individuals who composed it were still held to us.

"He was buried in Westminster Abbey on the 14th of May. His remains were interred in Poet's Corner, near the shrine of his friend Garrick. The funeral was attended by a numerous procession, which

reached the abbey about one o'clock, where they were met by Dr. Vincent, Dean of Westminster, the long-remembered friend and early schoolfellow of Cumberland. His office must, therefore, have been an affecting one. When the body was placed in the grave, he pronounced the following oration, for a correct copy of which I am indebted to the kindness of his daughter, Mrs. Jansen:

“Good People, we have committed to the dust the body of Rich ard Cumberland, a man weil entitled, by his virtues and his talents, to repose among the illustrious dead by which, in this place, he is surrounded. No author has written more; few have written better. His ta lents were chiefly devoted to the stage: his dramas were pure and classical, the characters drawn from high life as well as low life, but all invariably dealt with according to the strict rules of poetical justice; and we may say of him what we can say of few dramatists, that his plays were not contaminated by oaths or libidinous allusions, such as have disgraced the stage in all ages of the drama, and greatly, nay abominably, so at the present day. He was of opinion that the theatre was not merely a place of amusement, but a school of manners. In his prose works he was a moralist of the highest order. In his two great poems, drawn from holy writ, he well sustained the dignified character of our sacred religion, approved himself a worthy teacher of gospel morality, and a faithful servant of his blessed Redeemer. He was not exempt from the failings and infirmities of human nature; but let us remember, that his talents were never prostituted to the cause of vice or immorality; let us contemplate his long and useful labours in the service of God and his country; and may the God of all mercy pardon his sins, and in the resurrection of the just receive him into everlasting peace and glory!'"

To the correctness of this character, given of the deceased by Dr. Vincent, Mr. M. demurs, denying him the praise of a strictJy moral writer, and refusing to allow that his plays are free from oaths; but the passages which are adduced in Mr. M.'s first edition, and suppressed in the second, are not quite in point, if by oaths we mean impious appeals to the Divine Being. The prac tice, too common in the present day, of profane execration or cursing, is indeed exemplified in Cumberland's dramas.

Throughout this work, Mr. M. has aimed at producing a nervous composition, and on the whole he has succeeded: but, as he is a martinet in style, we were surprised to meet in p 469. with the following language: "he affords too many glimpses in the progress of the action, of how it is to terminate ;" and in p. 451. the sentence is not much better, in which he speaks of "negligen- ces which he had already animadverted on in examining the West Indian." He has written on Cumberland's works more than was necessary but he has in general written well, and in the spirit of sound criticism.

ORIGINAL.

BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIR

OF THE LATE

BRIGADIER GENERAL ZEBULON MONTGOMERY PIKE.

ZEBULON MONTGOMERY PIKE was born at Lamberton,* in the state of New-Jersey, January 5th, 1779. His father was a respectable officer in the army of the United States. His family had for several generations resided in New-Jersey, and were descended from a Captain John Pike, whose name is preserved by tradition as having been a gallant and distinguished soldier in the early Indian wars of the colony. He entered the army while yet a boy, and served for some time as a cadet in his father's company, which was then stationed on the western frontiers of the United States. At an early age he obtained the commission of ensign, and some time after, that of lieutenant in the 1st regiment of infantry. He was thus almost from his cradle trained to the habits of a military life; but he did not, like most of the peaceful veterans of the barracks and the parade, while away his days in inactivity, contented with the mechanical routine of military duty. By a life of constant activity and exposure, he invigorated his constitution, and prepared himself for deeds of hardihood and adventure. At the same time, he endeavoured to supply the deficiency of his early education by most ardent, though, probably, often desultory and ill-regulated application to every branch of useful knowledge. He had entered the army with no other education than such as is afforded by the most ordinary village school -reading, writing, and a little arithmetic. By his own solitary exertions he acquired, almost without the aid of a master, the

*This name is a curious instance of the mode in which many of our Indian names have been changed It is a corruption of Lamaton, which was formerly pronounced and spelt Alamatunk, that being the original Indian name,

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