he could adorn by splendor of images, him to come and take his feat upon and power of versification. Dean Swift would never own he wrote the Tale of the Tub. When Faulkner the printer asked him, one day, "If he was really the author of it?" "Young man," said he, " I am surprised that you dare to ask me that question." The idea of the Tale of the Tub was, perhaps, taken from an allegorical tale of Fontenelle's, on the Catholic and Protestant Religion, published in Bayle's "Nouvelles de la Republique des Lettres," about the year 1606. Ferranti Pallavichini's Divortio Cœlefte (a fatire against the abuses of the Popish power) he might, perhaps, have seen. Cyrano de Bergerac's Voyage to the World of Descartes certainly suggested Gulliver's Travels. Swift has, however, wonderfully improved upon his supposed model. Johnson imagines that "Les Imaginations Extravagantes de M. Ouffle," a fatire upon Magic and Aftrology, gave the hint for Martinus Scriblerus. There is a second part of Martinus Scriblerus; containing, amongst other things, an Account of the Hero's Amours with a Giantess, which is very little known. Stradling verfus Styles, in Martinus Scriblerus, is supposed to have been written by Mr Fortescue, the Master of the Rolls, a man of great worth, and some humour. He is said to have written one fong in the Beggar's Opera, Many years ago at the house of a clergyman of fortune who lived at Bath, and whose father had been private Secretary to Lord Bolinbroke when he was Secretary at War, there was a whole-length portrait of Dean Swift, by Jervis. It represented him as a handfome, dark man, of about thirty. The refpect paid to Swift, at Dublin, was so great, that an old gentleman (now living) has seen the crowd divide, that were attending a Court of Justice, to make room for the Bench with the Judges. 1 Dr Young ftood once as candidate for the Borough of Cirencester. He made, however so bad a figure as a canvasser, that he was obliged to take refuge in the house of the perfon ke oppofed, Lord Bathurst. Lord Bolingbroke married Madame de la Villette, niece to Madame de Maintenon. I have feen two pictures of them, painted by Rigaud. They reminded me of Milton's description of our first parents: For contemplation he, and valour form'd; For foftness she, and sweet attractive grace. decla Aaron Hill used to say of Lord Bolingbroke, "that he was the higheft bred gentleman he had ever seen." He did not always, however, preserve that character. Mrs red, she had one night (though he was to wait upon the Queen in Council) seen him come into an Affembly so drunk that he could hardly stand, In his exile from this country, after ⚫ having quarrelled with the Pretender, he lived near Orleans, at la Source, the spring that forms the Loiret, or smaller Loire. When some of his French friends were one day ridiculing the parfimony and avarice of his old enemy, the Duke of Marlborough, he replied, " En verité, Mefsieurs, c'etoit un si grand homme que j'ai oublié ses defauts." An eulogium from such an enemy does more honour to the memory of the Duke than all that his warmest panegyrifts have been ever able to say. When Lord Bolingbroke was permitted to return to his own country he resided at Battersea, in the old family house, of which he did the honours with great politeness; in which fome of his guests used to think was too much of the Vieille Cour. He died of a cancer in his cheek, at a very advanced age, and is buried with his second wife in Batterseta Church. In one of the galleries of the church there is an elegant table monument to his memory, with a long infcription, faying, amongst other things, that, "after having been Secretary of State, in the reign of Queen Anne, and those of George the First and Second, he was fomething greater and better." The latter part of the fentence, I fuspect, in his life-lime, he would not have agreed to himself, as he was continually abusing Sir Robert Walpole, the Minifter, who, though he had permitted him to return to England, by preventing him from fitting in the House of Peers rendered him of no consequence in politics or party, ex cept as a writer. His great and ar dent mind could not remain unemployed. In a French pbrafe, "the fword would have eaten its scabbard." had he not applied the power of his mind to fome pursuit. He wrote, therefore, on politics and on religion. The first he treated too much in the abstract, with great force of illustration, however, and with wonderful energy of language, but with great personal malevolence against the Minister; and though to the latter subject he brought fome ingenuity, and his ufual magic of style, yet he wrote on it with fophistry, misrepresentation, and without the neceffary preliminary knowledge to understand his fubject. This Bishop Warburton has very fully shewn in his Observations on Lord Bolinbroke's Letters on History. Lord Bolingbroke had a law-fuit with Madame de Maintenon, about his wife, her niece's fortune. When he was on his return to England, the faid to our Minister at Paris, who told it to the Dean of -, " I with your master joy of his new fubject; I hope he will profit much by him; c'est l'homme le plus ingrat, le plus coquin, et le plus scelerat, que je connois." Lord Bolingbroke could never speak of Sir R. Walpole but in terms of great acrimony and violence. The King, he said, he could forgive for putting him in the infignificant situa tion he was; the Minifter he never could. At Battersea he used to receive his visitors in a large wig and morning gown, and very often with a pipe in his mouth. Bishop Warburton had displeased him in endeavouring to get his pupil Pope from him. He used to call him a very gross flatterer of that Poet, whom too, after his death, and (after discovering that he had printed his Patriot King) he ufed to abufe. THOMSON, the Author of the Seafons, was a man so indolent, that Dr saw him one day, at Lord Melcombe's, go to a peach-tree in the garden, with his hands in his pockets, and devour the fruit (as it was upon the tree). When Dr found him one day in bed, at two o'clock afternoon, and asked him, Why he was in bed at that hour? " Mon," replied he, in his "Scotch accent, I had no motive to " rife." Richardfon, the author of Sir Charles Grandison, was intimately acquainted with the Duke of Wharton, whose printer he used to be, for his political pamphlets, &c. He is fupposed to have drawn the character of Lovelace from this nobleman. The character of Sir Charles Grandifon he has been faid to take from the elegant, the learned, the pious Mr Nelson, Author of a very excellent book on the Fasts and Feasts of our Church, and Dr Clarke's antagonist on the subject of the Trinity. There is said to have been, in the library of a most excellent lady of high rank, lately dead, four Dialogues of the Dead, in MSS. written by Prior, the poet. One of them is a Dialogue between Sir Thomas More and Oliver Cromwell's porter. When Richardfon, the painter, shewed Prior one of his books, upou the subject of his art, and asked him, What title he should give it? he faid, "The Memoirs of yourself, and Xx2 and your son Jonathan, with a Word or two about Painting." Prior lived, in the latter part of his life, at Down Hall, in Essex, where he occafionally amused himself with writing trifling verses. Prior's Cloe, I have been told, many years ago, used to frequent the Theatre every night, very well dreffed, and in her coach; and afterwards used to fup by herself, at one of the taverns in that neighbourhood: Dr Johnson supposes her origin to have been extremely low.. Mr Mallet used to say, that as he was fitting by Mr Pope, in his last illness, Mr Pope, in a delirium, told him, that he felt his head open, and Apollo to come out of it, and enter into that of Mr Mallet. When General Stanhope was Secretary of State, one of the Scotch Noblemen who was under sentence of death for being concerned in the Rebellion, happened to have been an old schoolfellow of his. Lord S. made a point, at the Council, that his life should be spared. This, how ever, not being granted him, he said hè would resign his place immediately if he were not permitted to fucceed in his request. The Ministry were forry, to be deprived of the abilities of this very excellent man, and granted him the life of a man,, about whom he had interested himself so much, merely on account of his having known him in his early years, though he had not afterwards kept up any particular acquaintance with him. When the famous Will Whifton asked this noble person, Whether he had ever committed any wrong action since he had been a Minister of State? he walked away without giving him any answer. Queen Anne's Ministry were afraid of permitting the French enthusiasts to play their tricks in public. Lord Bolingbroke said, "You should rather wish they would play them before as many persons as possible, some of whom may be able to detect them; or they will cabal together in private, and their followers will be able to tell their story in their own way." Much information respecting the characters and history of the great perfons of Queen Anne's time might be collected from Spence's Anecdotes, so often quoted by Dr Johnson, and which their noble possessor permitted him to make use of, with a liberality of sentiment, and a regard to literature, that graces even title itself. Dr Warton, while he was writing his Remarks on the Writings of Mr Pope, was permitted to make use of this very curious collection of Anecdotes, which had been withheld from the public eye only by delicacy to the memories of many of the illuftrious persons who are mentioned in them. was the old comedy of the Greeks, which gave place to the general and less offenfive ridicule of the new. This latter fort is the produce of a more elegant and refined state of so ciety, where imagination and sentiment have softened the passions, and the feeling of the public is disgusted by the broad and glaring portrait of particular persons. But, in the retrograde progress of society, in the wane of genius and of tafte, people are apt to return to the former state of less cultivated periods, and the fickly appetite, as well as the gross, is only to be satisfied with the coarse seasoning of personal fatire and pointed scurrility. Under such denominations it will hardly be disputed that the poems of Peter Pindar may be classed. He attacks without referve or compassion all characters in which any opening can be discovered for detraction or ridicule. Unfortunately, it must often happen, that such characters are not among the unworthy or the cenfurable, but such only where some trifling foibles, or imperfections, give room for the thoughtless to laugh, or the envious to rejoice at their expofure. Serious vice admits not of this mortifying ridicule; were Sir Joseph Banks a Murderer of men, instead of, an Impaler of butterflies, a few indignant juvenalian lines were all that party or wit could bring against, him. From this circumstance, it has been sometimes alledged, Pindar himself derives an advantage which fets him beyond the reach of poetical recrimination. When once a man is fet down for a blackguard, what fature can effect, or what ridicule expose, him? There is an establishment in ill as well as good character, which defies the attacks of its opponents; to the wretch who has once been pilloried, the pillory ceases to be a punish ment. Yet Peter, in the publication be fore us, seems to be not insensible to the attacks of the press, even when directed by persons whose infignificance he affects to despise. From some strictures in the Gentleman's Magazine, which Mr John Nicholls is supposed to conduct, has arisen the enmity which has found vent in this "Benevolent epiftle." Nor is Pindar's independence on the great less problematical than his indifference to criticism, though he despises "the curs that bark," in the sunshine of St James's, he is willing to crouch for the favours of Carleton House. The prefent performance, both in point of fancy and expreffion, seems to us inferior to the former productions. of the fame author. These derived their principal merit from certain odd and whimsical associations conveyed in language, which, if it loft some what of the poetic, feemed to gain much of the humorous from its ease and its naivete. We do not difcover fo much of this fort of excellence in the lines before us; and the rea der is likewise disposed to abate his applaufe in proportion as they arro gate so much importance to their au thor. The greater part of the poem is occupied by a derail of Peter's former works, in which, though new ri-.. dicule is meant to be thrown on the subjects of his muse, it is not fo pointed as the praise which he claims for the ability with which he has exposed them. There are some, perhaps, of which the coarseness and vulgarity is beyond the ordinary licence of this fort of writing; and, as gonerally happens in such passages, the coarseness and vulgarity are the only things for which they are confpicuous. The History of the public Revenue of the British Empire. Part Third. By Sir John Sinclair, Bart. 4to. p.. 412. Cadell. 1790. Price 15S in boards.. THE THE following are the contents of this interesting work. Chap. 1. Of the progress of the national income fince the revolution, 33 pages.-2. Progress of the public expences fince the revolution, 72 pages. -3. Of the present state of the public revenue, and of the different branches of which it confifts, 60 pages. 4. Of the national resources, 69 pages. -5. Analysis of the present national debt, with some observations on the nature and real amount of the burden, and the means of discharging it, together with a state of the public income and expenditure, compared to that of France, 72 pages.-6. Of the revenue of Scotland, 54 pages. Additional observations with regard to the erection of a stamp-office in ScotIand, 4 pages. Foreign property in the English funds, 4 pages. To this is added an appendix-No. 1. An account of the disbursements of the civil lift for the year ending the 1st Jan. 1786, 12 p.-No. 2. An account shewing how the money given for the service of the year 1788 has been disposed of, distinguished under the feveral heads until the 8th day of May 1789, and the parts remaining unsatisfied, with the deficiency thereupon, 8 p.-No. 3. Tables of the progress of the most important branches of the public revenue, 8 p. -No. 4. An account of the excifes and other taxes levied in the provinces of Holland and Utrecht, 16 pages. A Sea Manual, recommended to the young Officers of the British Navy, as a Companion to the Signal Book. By Sir Alex. Schomberg. 8vo. 130 p. Pr. 3s. Robinfons. 1789. THIS performance is well calculated to afford useful information to fuch young officers as are defirous of obtaining both a practical and theoretical knowledge of their profession. It is written in an easy familiar manner, and the mode in which the subject is illustrated is perfpicuous and concife. We have only to wish that the author had executed his design upon a larger scale, as we apprehend that a fuller detail of particulars would, in feveral instances, have proved more generally fatisfactory. Obfervations made in a Tour from Bengal to Persia, in the years 1786 and 1787; with a short Account of the Remains of the celebrated Palace of Persepolis. By William Franklin, Enfign of the Honourable Bengal Establishment, lately returned from Perfia. WITH pleasure we notice the attention paid by our countrymen to the description of the new scenes they have been introduced to in Afia; and it adds not a little to our fatisfaction that the son of so respectable a scholar as the late Dr Franklin, has commenced a literary career with these judicious and informing obfervations in his travels, infcribed to Earl Cornwallis. "The author being a fupernumerary officer on the Bengal ef"tablishment, and desirous of employing his leisure time by improving himself in the knowledge of "the Perfian language, as well as to "gain information of the history and manners of the nations, obtained a furlough for three years for that purpose; from which circumstance "these observations arofe. -The ad 66 66 |