PAUL WHITEHEAD was the son of a tailor, in London; and, after a slender education, was placed as an apprentice to a woollen-draper. He afterwards went to the Temple, in order to study law. Several years of his life (it is not quite clear at what period) were spent in the Fleet-prison, owing to a debt which he foolishly contracted, by putting his name to a joint security for 30007. at the request of his friend Fleetwood, the theatrical manager, who persuaded him that his signature was a mere matter of form. How he obtained his liberation we are not informed.

In the year 1735 he married a Miss Anne Dyer, with whom he obtained ten thousand pounds. She was homely in her person, and very weak in intellect; but Whitehead, it appears, always treated her with respect and tenderness.

He became, in the same year, a satirical rhymer against the ministry of Walpole; and having published his "State Dunces," a weak echo of the manner of the "Dunciad," he was patronised by the opposition, and particularly by Bubb Doddington. In 1739 he published the "Manners," a satire, in which Mr. Chalmers says, that he attacks every thing venerable in the constitution. The poem is not worth disputing about; but it is certainly a mere personal lampoon, and no attack on the constitution. For this invective he was summoned to appear at the bar of the House of Lords, but concealed himself for a time, and the affair was dropped. The threat of prosecuting him, it was suspected, was meant as a hint to Pope, that those who

satirised the great might bring themselves into danger; and Pope (it is pretended) became more cautious. There would seem, however, to be nothing very terrific in the example of a prosecution, that must have been dropped either from clemency or conscious weakness. The ministerial journals took another sort of revenge, by accusing him of irreligion; and the evidence, which they candidly and consistently brought to substantiate the charge, was the letter of a student from Cambridge, who had been himself expelled from the university for atheism.

In 1744 he published another satire, entitled the "Gymnasiad," on the most renowned boxers of the day. It had at least the merit of being harmless.

By the interest of Lord Despenser, he obtained a place under government, that of deputy treasurer of the chamber; and, retiring to a handsome cottage, which he purchased at Twickenham, he lived in comfort and hospitality, and suffered his small satire and politics to be equally forgotten. Churchill attacked him in a couplet,—

"May I (can worse disgrace on manhood fall?)

Be born a Whitehead, and baptised a Paul."

But though a libertine like Churchill, he seems not to have been the worse man of the two. Sir John Hawkins gives him the character of being good-hearted, even to simplicity; and says, that he was esteemed at Twickenham for his kind offices, and for composing quarrels among his neighbours.

Mankind are all hunters in various degree;
The priest hunts a living-the lawyer a fee,
The doctor a patient-the courtier a place,
Though often, like us, he's flung out in the chase.
With the sports, &c.

The cit hunts a plumb-while the soldier hunts
The poet a dinner-the patriot a name; [fame,
And the practised coquette, though she seems to
In spite of her airs, still her lover pursues. [refuse,
With the sports, &c.

Let the bold and the busy hunt glory and wealth; All the blessing we ask is the blessing of health, With hound and with horn through the woodlands

to roam,

And, when tired abroad, find contentment at home. With the sports, &c.

THE father of this writer was a fellow of Pembroke college, Oxford, prebendary of Wells, and vicar of St. Mary's at Taunton, in Somersetshire. When Judge Jefferies came to the assizes at Taunton, to execute vengeance on the sharers of Monmouth's rebellion, Mr. Harte waited upon him in private, and remonstrated against his severities. The judge listened to him attentively, though he had never seen him before. It was not in Jefferies' nature to practise humanity; but, in this solitary instance, he showed a respect for its advocate; and in a few months advanced the vicar to a prebendal stall in the cathedral of Bristol. At the Revolution the aged clergyman resigned his preferments, rather than take the oath of allegiance to King William; an action which raises our esteem of his intercession with Jefferies, while it adds to the unsalutary examples of men supporting tyrants, who have had the virtue to hate their tyranny.

The accounts that are preserved of his son, the poet, are not very minute or interesting. The date of his birth has not even been settled. A writer in the Gentleman's Magazine fixes it about 1707; but by the date of his degrees at the university, this supposition is utterly inadmissible; and all circumstances considered, it is impossible to suppose that he was born later than 1700. He was educated at Marlborough college, and took his degree of master of arts at Oxford, in 1720. He was introduced to Pope at an early period of his life; and, in return for the abundant adulation which he offered to that poet, was rewarded with his encouragement, and even his occasional assistance in versification. Yet, admirer as he was of Pope, his manner leans more to the imitation of Dryden. In 1727 he published, by subscription, a volume of poems, which he dedicated to the Earl of Peterborough, who, as the author acknowledges, was the first patron of his muse. In the preface it is boasted, that the poems had been chiefly written under the age of nineteen. As he must have been several years turned of twenty, when he made this boast, it exposes either his sense or veracity to some suspicion. He either concealed what improvements he had made in the poems, or showed a bad judgment in not having improved them.

[* This, according to Mr. Croker's showing, (Boswell, vol. i. p. 378) is not the case. The Walter Harte who took his degree of A. M. at Pembroke College, Oxford, in 1720, was not the poet; for he was of St. Mary's Hall, and made A.M. on the 21st January 1730. This one fact removes Mr. Campbell's after difficulties.]

His next publications, in 1730 and 1735, were an "Essay on Satire," and another on "Reason," to both of which Pope is supposed to have contributed many lines. Two sermons, which he printed, were so popular as to run through five editions. He therefore rose, with some degree of clerical reputation, to be principal of St. Mary Hall, Oxford; and was so much esteemed, that Lord Lyttelton recommended him to the Earl of Chesterfield, as the most proper tutor and travelling companion to his son. Harte had, indeed, every requisite for the preceptorship of Mr. Stanhope, that a Grævius or Gronovius could have possessed; but none of those for which we should have supposed his father to have been most anxious. He was profoundly learned, but ignorant of the world, and awkward in his person and address. His pupil and he, however, after having travelled together for four years, parted with mutual regret; and Lord Chesterfield showed his regard for Harte by procuring for him a canonry of Windsor.

During his connexion with Lord Peterborough, that nobleman had frequently recommended to him to write the life of Gustavus Adolphus. For this historical work he collected, during his travels, much authentic and original information. It employed him for many years, and was published in 1759; but either from a vicious taste, or from his having studied the idioms of foreign languages, till he had forgotten those of his own, he wrote his history in a style so obscure and uncouth, that its merits, as a work of research, were overlooked, and its reception from the public was cold and mortifying. Lord Chesterfield, in speaking of its being translated into German, piously wishes "that its author had translated it into English; as it was full of Germanisms, Latinisms, and all isms but Anglicisms." All the time, poor Harte thought he was writing a style less laboured and ornate than that of his contemporaries; and when George Hawkins, the bookseller, objected to some of his most violent phrases, he used to say, "George, that is what we call writing." This infatuation is the more surprising, that his Sermons, already mentioned, are marked by no such affectation of manner; and he published in 1764 "Essays on Husbandry," which are said to be remarkable for their elegance and perspicuity.

Dr. Johnson, according to Boswell, said, "that Harte was excessively vain: that he left London on the day his Life of Gustavus' was published, to avoid the great praise he was to receive; but

Robertson's History of Scotland' having come out the same day, he was ashamed to return to the scene of his mortification." This sarcastic anecdote comes in the suspicious company of a blunder as to dates, for Robertson's "History of Scotland" was published a month after [before?] Harte's "Life of Gustavus ;" and it is besides rather an odd proof of a man's vanity, that he should have run away from expected compliments+.

The failure of his historical work is alleged to have mortified him so deeply, as to have affected his health. All the evidence of this, however, is deduced from some expressions in his letters, in which he complains of frequent indisposition. His biographers, first of all take it for granted, that a man of threescore could not possibly be indisposed from any other cause than from reading harsh reviews of his "Life of Gustavus ;" and then, very consistently, show the folly of his being grieved at the fate of his history, by proving that his work was reviewed, on the whole, rather in a friendly and laudatory manner. Harte, however, was so far from being a martyr, either

to the justice or injustice of criticism, that he prepared a second edition of the "Life of Gustavus " for the press; and announced, in a note, that he had finished the "History of the thirty years War in Germany." His servant Dore, afterwards an innkeeper at Bath, got possession of his MSS. and this work is supposed to be irrecoverably lost. In the mean time, he was struck with a palsy in 1766, which attacked him again in 1769, and put a period to his life five years after. At the time of his death he was vicar of St. Austel and Blazy in Cornwall.

His poetry is little read; and I am aware of hazarding the appearance of no great elegance of taste, in professing myself amused and interested by several parts of it, particularly by his "Amaranth." In spite of pedantry and grotesqueness, he appears, in numerous passages, to have condensed the reflection and information of no ordinary mind. If the reader dislikes his story of "Eulogius," I have only to inform him, that I have taken some pains to prevent its being more prolix than is absolutely necessary, by the mechanical reduction of its superfluities.

IN ancient times scarce talk'd of, and less known,
When pious Justin fill'd the eastern throne,
In a small dorp, till then for nothing famed,
And by the neighbouring swains Thebaïs named,
Eulogius lived an humble mason he;
In nothing rich, but virtuous poverty.
From noise and riot he devoutly kept,
Sigh'd with the sick, and with the mourner wept;
Half his earn'd pittance to poor neighbours went ;
They had his alms and he had his content.
Still from his little he could something spare
To feed the hungry, and to clothe the bare,
He gave, whilst aught he had, and knew no bounds;
The poor man's drachma stood for rich men's
pounds;

He learnt with patience, and with meekness taught,
His life was but the comment of his thought.

On the south aspect of a sloping hill, Whose skirts meandering Penus washes still,

[Boswell by Croker, vol. iv. p. 449.]

[t "Harte's Life of Gustavus Adolphus, Mr. Chalmers tells us, was a very unfortunate publication. Hume's House of Tudor came out the same week, and Robertson's History of Scotland only a month before; and after perusing these, poor Harte's style could not certainly be endured. Mr. Chalmers perhaps may require to be told that industry in collecting, examining, and arranging the materials of history, and fidelity in using them, are the first qualities of an historian: that in those qualities Harte has not been surpassed; that in the opinion of military men Harte's is the best military history in our language, and that it is rising and will continue to rise in repute."-SOUTHEY, Quar. Rev. vol. xi. p. 497.]

Our pious labourer pass'd his youthful days
In peace and charity, in prayer and praise.
No theatres of oaks around him rise,
Whose roots earth's centre touch, whose head the
skies;

No stately larch-tree there expands a shade
O'er half a rood of Larisséan glade:

No lofty poplars catch the murmuring breeze,
Which loiteringwhispers on the cloud-capp'd trees;
Such imagery of greatness ill became

A nameless dwelling, and an unknown name!
Instead of forest-monarchs, and their train,
The unambitious rose bedeck'd the plain;
On skirting heights thick stood the clustering vine,
And here and there the sweet-leaved eglantine;
One lilac only, with a statelier grace,
Presumed to claim the oak's and cedar's place,
And, looking round him with a monarch's care,
Spread his exalted boughs to wave in air.

This spot, for dwelling fit, Eulogius chose,
And in a month a decent home-stall rose,
Something, between a cottage and a cell—
Yet virtue here could sleep, and peace could dwell.
From living stone (but not of Parian rocks),
He chipp'd his pavement, and he squared his
blocks :

And then, without the aid of neighbours' art,
Perform'd the carpenter's and glazier's part.
The site was neither granted him, nor giv'n;
'Twas nature's ; and the ground-rent due to heav'n.
Wife he had none: nor had he love to spare ;
An aged mother wanted all his care.

They thank'd their Maker for a pittance sent,
Supp'd on a turnip, slept upon content.

Four rooms, above, below, this mansion graced,
With white-wash deck'd, and river-sand o'ercast :
The first, (forgive my verse if too diffuse,)
Perform'd the kitchen's and the parlour's use:
The second, better bolted and immured,
From wolves his out-door family secured:
(For he had twice three kids, besides their dams;
A cow, a spaniel, and two fav'rite lambs :)
A third, with herbs perfumed, and rushes spread,
Held, for his mother's use, a feather'd bed:
Two moss-matrasses in the fourth were shown;
One for himself, for friends and pilgrims one.

No flesh from market-towns our peasant sought:
He rear'd his frugal meat, but never bought :
A kid sometimes for festivals he slew;
The choicer part was his sick neighbours' due:
Two bacon-flitches made his Sunday's cheer;
Some the poor had, and some out-lived the year:
For roots and herbage, (raised at hours to spare),
With humble milk, composed his usual fare.
(The poor man then was rich, and lived with glee;
Each barley-head untax'd, and daylight free :)
All had a part in all the rest could spare,
The common water, and the common air.
Meanwhile God's blessings made Eulogius
thrive,

The happiest, most contented man alive.
His conscience cheer'd him with a life well spent,
His prudence a superfluous something lent,
Which made the poor who took, and poor who
gave, content.

Alternate were his labours and his rest,
For ever blessing, and for ever blest.

Eusebius, hermit of a neighb'ring cell,

His brother Christian mark'd, and knew him well: With zeal unenvying, and with transport fired, Beheld him, praised him, loved him, and admired. "Then hear me, gracious Heaven, and grant my prayer;

Make yonder man the fav'rite of thy care:
Nourish the plant with thy celestial dew,
Like manna, let it fall, and still be new:
Expand the blossoms of his gen'rous mind,
Till the rich odour reaches half mankind.
Then may his soul its free-born range enjoy,
Give deed to will, and every power employ."
The hermit's prayer permitted, not approved;
Soon in an higher sphere Eulogius moved.

One day, in turning some uncultured ground, (In hopes a freestone quarry might be found), His mattock met resistance, and behold

A casket burst, with di'monds fill'd, and gold.
He cramm'd his pockets with the precious store,
And every night review'd it o'er and o'er ;
Till a gay conscious pride, unknown as yet,
Touch'd a vain heart, and taught it to forget:
And, what still more his stagg'ring virtue tried,
His mother, tut'ress of that virtue, died.

A neighb'ring matron, not unknown to fame, (Historians give her Teraminta's name),

The parent of the needy and distress'd,
With large demesnes and well saved treasure blest:
(For, like th' Egyptian prince, she hoarded store
To feed at periodic dearths the poor);
This matron, whiten'd with good works and age,
Approach'd the sabbath of her pilgrimage;
Her spirit to himself th' Almighty drew ;—
Breath'd on th' alembic, and exhaled the dew.
In souls prepared, the passage is a breath
From time t'eternity, from life to death.
But first, to make the poor her future care,
She left the good Eulogius for her heir.

Who but Eulogius now exults for joy? New thoughts, new hopes, new views his mind employ.

[eyes.

Pride push'd forth buds at every branching shoot,
And virtue shrunk almost beneath the root.
High raised on Fortune's hill, new Alps he spies,
O'ershoots the valley which beneath him lies,
Forgets the depths between, and travels with his
The tempter saw the danger in a trice,
(For the man slidder'd upon Fortune's ice):
And, having found a corpse, half dead, half warm,
Revived it, and assumed a courtier's form :
Swift to Thebaïs urged his airy flight;
And measured half the globe in half a night.

Libanius-like, he play'd the sophist's part,
And by soft marches stole upon the heart :
Maintain'd that station gave new birth to sense,
And call'd forth manners, courage, eloquence:
Then touch'd with sprightly dashes here and there,
(Correctly strong, yet seeming void of care),
The master-topic, which may most men move,
The charms of beauty and the joys of love!
Eulogius falter'd at the first alarms,
And soon the 'waken'd passions buzz'd to arms;
Nature the clam'rous bell of discord rung,
And vices from dark caverns swift upsprung.
So, when hell's monarch did his summons make,
The slumb'ring demons started from the lake.

And now, the treasure found, and matron's store,
Sought other objects than the tatter'd poor;
Part to humiliated Apicius went,

A part to gaming confessors was lent,
And part, O virtuous Thais, paid thy rent.
Poor folks have leisure hours to fast and pray;
Our rich man's bus'ness lay another way:
No farther intercourse with heaven had he,
But left good works to men of low degree:
Warm as himself pronounced each ragged man,
And bade distress to prosper as it can :
Till, grown obdurate by mere dint of time,
He deem'd all poor men rogues, and want a crime.
Fame, not contented with her broad highway,
Delights, for change, through private paths to stray;
And, wand'ring to the hermit's distant cell,
Vouchsafed Eulogius' history to tell.

At night a dream confirm'd the hermit more; He 'spied his friend on beds of roses laid:

* A famous Greek rhetorician in the fourth century, whose orations are still extant.

Round him a crowd of threat'ning furies stands,
With instruments of vengeance in their hands.
He waked aghast : he tore his hair,
And rent his sackcloth garments in despair;
Walk'd to Constantinople, and inquired
Of all he met ; at length the house desired
By chance he found, but no admission gain'd;
A Thracian slave the porter's place maintain'd,
(Sworn foe to thread-bare suppliants), and with
pride

His master's presence, nay, his name, denied.

There walk'd Eusebius at the dawn of light,
There walk'd at noon, and there he walk'd at night.
In vain. At length, by Providence's care,
He found the door unclosed, nor servants near.
He enter'd, and through sev'ral rooms of state
Pass'd gently; in the last Eulogius sat.

Old man, good morrow, the gay courtier cried;
God give you grace, my son, the sire replied:
And then, in terms as moving and as strong,
As clear, as ever fell from angel's tongue,
Besought, reproved, exhorted, and condemn'd:
Eulogius knew him, and, though known, con-
temn'd.

The hermit then assumed a bolder tone;
His rage was kindled, and his patience gone.
Without respect to titles or to place,

I call thee (adds he) miscreant to thy face.
My prayers drew down heaven's bounty on thy
head,

And in an evil hour my wishes sped.
Ingratitude's black curse thy steps attend,
Monster to God, and faithless to thy friend!
The hermit went

Back to Thebaïs full of discontent;
Saw his once-impious rashness more and more,
And, victim to convinced contrition, bore
With Christian thankfulness the marks he wore.
And then on bended knees with tears and sighs,
He thus invoked the Ruler of the skies:
"My late request, all-gracious Power, forgive!
And that yon miscreant may repent, and live,
Give him that poverty which suits him best,
And leave disgrace and grief to work the rest."

So pray'd the hermit, and with reason pray'd.— Some plants the sunshine ask, and some the shade. At night the nure-trees spread, but check their bloom

At morn, and lose their verdure and perfume.
The virtues of most men will only blow,
Like coy auriculas, in Alpine snow :
Transplant them to the equinoctial line,
Their vigour sickens and their tints decline.

Meanwhile Eulogius, unabash'd and gay,
Pursued his courtly track without dismay :
Remorse was hoodwink'd, conscience charm'd away.
Reason the felon of herself was made,
And nature's substance hid by nature's shade!
Our fine man, now completed, quickly found
Congenial friends in Asiatic ground.
The advent'rous pilot in a single year
Learn'd his state cock-boat dext'rously to steer.

By other arts he learns the knack to thrive ;
The most obsequious parasite alive :
Chameleon of the court, and country too;
Pays Cæsar's tax, but gives the mob their due;
And makes it, in his conscience, the same thing
To crown a tribune, or behead a king.

On less important days, he pass'd his time
In virtuoso-ship, and crambo-rhyme :

In gaming, jobbing, fiddling, painting, drinking,
And ev'ry art of using time, but thinking.
He gives the dinners of each upstart man,
As costly, and luxurious, as he can ;
Then weds an heiress of suburbian mold,
Ugly as apes, but well endow'd with gold;
There fortune gave him his full dose of strife,
A scolding woman, and a jealous wife!

T' increase this load, some sycophant report
Destroy'd his int'rest and good grace at court.
At this one stroke the man look'd dead in law :
His flatt'rers scamper, and his friends withdraw.
And now (to shorten my disastrous tale)
Storms of affronts pour'd in as thick as hail.
Each scheme for safety mischievously sped,
And the drawn sword hung o'er him by a thread.
Child he had none. His wife with sorrow died;
Few women can survive the loss of pride.

The Demon having tempted Eulogius to engage in rebel-
lion against his Prince, he is cast into prison.
Here, were it not too long, I might declare
The motives and successes of the war;
The prowess of the knights, their martial deeds,
Their swords, their shields, their surcoats, and
Till Belisarius at a single blow [their steeds;
Suppress'd the faction and repell'd the foe.
By a quick death the traitors he relieved ;
Condemn'd, if taken; famish'd, if reprieved.

Now see Eulogius (who had all betray'd
Whate'er he knew) in loathsome dungeon laid :
A pris'ner, first of war, and then of state:
Rebel and traitor ask a double fate!
But good Justinian, whose exalted mind
(In spite of what Pirasmus urged,) inclined
To mercy, soon the forfeit-life forgave,
And freed it from the shackles of a slave.
Then spoke with mild, but in majestic strain,

Repent, and haste thee to Larissa's plain,

Or wander through the world, another Cain.
Thy lands and goods shall be the poor man's lot,
Or feed the orphans, you've so long forgot.
Forsaken, helpless, recognised by none,
Proscribed Eulogius left the unprosp'rous town:
For succour at a thousand doors he knock'd ;
Each heart was harden'd, and each door was lock'd.
A pilgrim's staff he bore, of humble thorn;
Pervious to winds his coat, and sadly torn:
Shoes he had none: a beggar gave a pair,
Who saw feet poorer than his own, and bare.
He drank the stream, on dew-berries he fed,
And wildings harsh supplied the place of bread;
Thus homeward urged his solitary way;
(Four years had he been absent to a day.)