presents from admirers personally unknown to him in acknowledgement of his public services. Pope's sneer in a letter to Swift, that the tory party "never gave him sixpence to keep him from starving" dose not seem wholly justifiable. But he had to depend for his livelihood mainly on his pen, and the hackwork that he did for the booksellers as a translator only brought him a precarious income. LEE, SIDNEY, 1893, Dictionary of National Dictionary of National Biography, vol. XXXIII, p. 126.

GENERAL

He with watchful eye

Observes and shoots their treasons as they fly, Their weekly frauds his keen replies detect, He undeceives more fast than they infect. -TATE, NAHUM, 1682, Absalom and Achitophel, pt. ii.

Those who shall consider the number and greatness of his books, will admire he should ever write so many; and those who have read them, considering the skill and method they are written in, will admire he should write so well. Nor is he less happy in verse than in prose, which for elegance of language, and quickness of invention, deservedly entitles him to the honour of a poet.--WINSTANLEY, WILLIAM, 1687, Lives of the Most Famous English Poets.

He was certainly a very great master of the English tongue.-BOYER, ABEL, 1703-13, Annals of the Reign of Queen Anne, vol. III, p. 243.

The chief manager of all those angry writings was one Sir Roger L'Estrange, a man who had lived in all the late times, and was furnished with many passages and an unexhausted copiousness in writing: so that for four years he published three or four sheets a week under the title of the "Observator," all tending to defame the contrary party, and to make the clergy apprehend that their ruin was designed. BURNET, GILBERT, 1715-34, History of My Own Time.

Sir Roger's works indeed are often calculated for the meanest capacities, and the phrase is consequently low; but a man must be greatly under the influence of prejudice, who can discover no genius in his writings; nor an intimate acquaintance with the state of parties, human life, and manners. CIBBER, THEOPHILUS, 1753, Lives of the Poets, vol. IV, p. 302.

L'Estrange, who was by no means so bad a writer as some have represented him, was sunk in party faction, and having generally the worst side of the argument, often had recourse to scolding, pertness, and consequently a vulgarity that discovers itself even in his more liberal compositions. He was the first writer who regularly enlisted himself under the banners of a party for pay, and fought for it through right and wrong for upwards of forty literary campaigns. This intrepidity gained him the esteem of Cromwell himself, and the papers he wrote even just before the revolution, almost with the rope about his neck, have his usual characters of impudence and perseverance. That he was a standard-writer cannot be disowned, because a great many very eminent authors formed their style by his. But his standard was far from being a just one; though, when party considerations are set aside, he certainly was possessed of elegance, ease, and perspicuity.-GOLDSMITH, OLIVER, 1759, The Bee, No. 8, Nov. 24.

His Esop's "Fables" was more a new work than a translation. The most valuable of his books is his translation of Josephus, which, though in a better style than most of his writings, has been very justly censured. He was one of the great corrupters of our language, by excluding vowels and other letters not commonly pronounced, and introducing pert and affected phrases.-GRANGER, JAMES, 17691824, Biographical History of England, vol. V, p. 270.

Sir Roger L'Estrange among his rivals was esteemed as the most perfect model of political writing. He was a strong party-writer on the government side, for Charles the Second, and the compositions of the author seem to us coarse, yet they contain much idiomatic expression. His Esop's Fables are a curious specimen of familiar style. Queen Mary showed a due contempt of him after the Revolution, by this anagram:

Roger L'Estrange, Lye strange Roger ! -DISRAELI, ISAAC, 1791-1824, Origin of Newspapers, Curiosities of Literature, p. 230.

The pattern of bad writing in this respect was Sir Roger L'Estrange: his Esop's Fables will present every thing

that is hostile to good taste; yet, by a certain wit and readiness in raillery, L'Estrange was a popular writer, and may even now be read, perhaps, with some amusement.-HALLAM, HENRY, 1837-39, Introduction to the Literature of Europe, pt. iv, ch. vii, par. 32.

"Eminent writer in the 17th century," who eminently displays the worse characteristics of that period of our literature. --COLERIDGE, SARA, 1847, ed., Biographia Literaria, by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, ch. xvii, note.

scrupulous regarder of truth.-CHAMBERS, ROBERT, 1876, Cyclopædia of English Literature, ed. Carruthers.

L'Estrange has been accused of corrupting the language, and certainly he was not in the habit of inquiring too closely into the parentage or the associations of any term that seemed to him either striking or appropriate. But in literature we are to judge by results, and here the result is plainly a style so idiomatic, so pungent, and so telling as completely to justify his audacity. The flatnosed, hunch-backed, blubber-lipped, big

vol. I.

All the translations [Quevedo] I have seen are bad. The best is that of L'Estrange, or at least the most spirited; but still L'Estrange is not always faithful when he knew the meaning, and he is sometimes unfaithful from ignorance. Indeed, the great popularity of his translations was probably owing, in some degree, to the additions he boldly made to his text, and the frequent accommodations he hazarded of its jests to the scandal and tastes of his times by allusions entirely English and local.-TICKNOR, GEORGE, 1849-55, History of Spanish Literature, vol. II, p. 271, note.

He excelled in the coarse derision and invective-the rough give-and-take of the time; so much so, that he has been, absurdly enough, accused of corrupting the English language. He earned the hatred of lovers of freedom by his opposition to the emancipation of the press (which was accomplished in 1694), and by his rude. exercise of authority while he was himself censor; but these offences may fairly enough be considered the accidents of his time and his position. -MINTO, WILLIAM 1872-80, Manual of English Prose Literature, p. 339.

As a controversialist, L'Estrange was bold, lively, and vigorous, but coarse, impudent, abusive, and by no means a

Xanthus, horribly bold, meddling and expensive, easily put off the hooks and hard to be pleased again; the kite who comes powdering down on the frogs and mice; the lark who goes out progging for food for little ones; the snake lazing at his length in the gleam of the sun; the weasel who tried what she could do with her wits when she could live no longer upon the square;-these and a thousand other vivid and surprising turns of phrase must delight all but the purist as surely as they demonstrate the possibility of a literary employment of "slang" which, if attempted by any but an artist, would result in nothing save imbecility, vulgarity, and nonsense.-MILLAR, J. H., 1893, English Prose, ed. Craik, vol. II, p. 589.

He has a permanent place in history as the first "able editor, "who not only made his journal the vehicle for political discussions, and availed himself of regular news-letters, but employed a regular staff of assistants to collect news.

L'Estrange's prose style is bad, but he was the author of several useful translations. ... He was a courtly and well-bred man, of considerable culture, and would be mentioned with more respect if he had not exercised a function detestable to the entire republic of letters. Dr. Johnson regarded him as the first writer upon record who regularly enlisted himself under the banners of a party for pay, and fought for it through right and wrong. This is probably correct as a mere statement of fact, but unjust if it was intended to imply any doubt of the purity of L'Estrange's motives in serving the high monarchial party, or of the sincerity of his advocacy of its principles.-GARNETT, RICHARD, 1895, The Age of Dryden, pp. 174, 175.

jests and gross buffoonery, so that his performances have little intrinsic value, and were read only while they were recommended by the novelty of the event that occasioned them.-JOHNSON, SAMUEL, 1779-81, Dryden, Lives of the English Poets.

The wits laughed, but did not give him reason to laugh also. His conversation of Mr. Bays, related in dialogue, raised his character with the public, as a man of sense, wit, and humour. This was followed by other dialogues, odes, satires, letters, epigrams, and translations without number; for Tom's tavern bills were long, and he lived solely by his pen, which, as well as his tongue, ever made more enemies than friends: a buffoon in company, his raillery was neither delicate nor decent. He loved low abuse, and scattered it everywhere with a liberal hand the clergy came in for more than their share of it.-NOBLE, MARK, 1806, Biographical History of England, vol. 1.

I would fain believe, to speak from a mere glance into these volumes, that the Meridian of London is improved since Mr. Brown's days: and sorry to learn that this "vulgar writer's" works are not likely just yet to visit

"The waters of Oblivion's lake." The author appears to have possessed, besides an acquaintance with French, Italian, and Spanish, some classical lore, and to have employed it in working up the alloy and baser portions of ancient wit into modern shapes. "And if he was not so nice in the choice of his authors," says Dr. Drake, "as might be expected from a man of his taste, he must be excused; because, doing those things for his sub

sistence, he did not consult his own liking so much as his booksellers', taking such as they have offered the best price for." Poor man! he had better have tried to dig, and ought to have been less ashamed to beg, than to follow in the track of those who, though they do not call evil good, yet stimulate under pretence of satirizing it. COLERIDGE, SARA, 1847, ed. Biographia Literaria, by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, ch. xvii, note.

What, Tom Brown "of facetious memory!" Tom Brown, the witty, the learned, the convivial! Tom Brown, the topmost of topshelfers, the wittiest of witsnappers, the most humoursome of humourists!he who stood literary sponsor for Tom Moore's "Twopenny Post-Bag," even as older Democritus did for Robert Burton's "Anatomy"-who, I thought, was as well known to the youngest book-luney as to the veteran Dibdinite and Heberian,to the humblest bookster who displays. his ragged wares on a hand-barrow as to the bibliopolic successors of Rodd and Lilly-Tom Brown "an unknown worthy!"

Whose writings are not only characterized by a large amount of wit and learning, but are now especially valuable for the vivid picture which they afford of the habits and the customs, the amusements and the pleasures, the morals and the manners of the period at which they were written.-BATES, WILLIAM, 1880, Notes and Queries, 6th Series, vol. 1, p. 316.

Tom Brown hardly deserves a place in my anthology; but I have found room for one copy of verses-a clever imitation of one of Martial's epigrams.-BULLEN, A. H., 1895, ed. Musa Proterva, p. xii.