pointed application; and some are remembered and quoted, where few call to mind. the author. It has been remarked, that Garth enlarged and altered the "Dispensary" in almost every edition; and, what is more uncommon, that every alteration was for the better. This poem may be called an imitation of the Lutrin, inasmuch as, but for the Lutrin, it might probably not have been written; and there are even particular resemblances. The subject, which is a quarrel between the physicians and apothecaries of London, may vie with that of Boileau in want of general interest; yet it seems to afford more diversity to the satirical poet. Garth, as has been observed, is a link of transition between the style and turn of poetry under Charles and William, and that we find in Addison, Prior, Tickell, and Pope, during the reign. of Anne.-HALLAM, HENRY, 1837-39, Introduction to the Literature of Europe, pt. iv, ch. v, par. 48.

The wit of this slight performance may have somewhat evaporated with age, but it cannot have been at any time very pungent. CRAIK, GEORGE L., 1861, A Compendious History of English Literature and of the English Language, vol. II, p. 269.

Garth is mainly interesting at the present day because he was the first writer who took the couplet, as Dryden had fashioned it, from Dryden's hands, and displayed it in the form it maintained. throughout the eighteenth century. In some respects it may be said that no advance in this peculiar model was ever made on "The Dispensary." Its best lines are equal to any of Pope's in mere fashion, and in it appear clearly enough the inherent defects of the form when once Dryden's "energy divine" and his cunning admixture of what looked like roughness had been lost or rejected. . . . Except for its versification, which not only long preceded Pope, but also anticipated Addison's happiest effort by some years, "The Dispensary" is not now an interesting poem. The dispute on which it is based is long forgotten, its mock heroic plan looks threadbare to our eyes, and the machinery and imagery have lost all the charm that they may at one time have had. But as a versifier Garth must always deserve a place in the story of English Literature.-SAINTSBURY,

GEORGE, 1880, English Poets, ed. Ward, vol. III, p. 13.

In 1699 Garth published "The Dispensary, a Poem," which is a record of the first attempt to establish those out-patient rooms now universal in the large towns of England. "The Dispensary" ridicules the apothecaries and their allies among the fellows. It was circulated in manuscript, and in a few weeks was printed and sold by John Nutt, near Stationers' Hall. A second and a third edition appeared in the same year, to which were added a dedication to Anthony Henley, an introduction explaining the controversy in the College of Physicians, and copies of commendatory verses. A fourth edition appeared in 1700, a sixth in 1706, a seventh in 1714, and a tenth in 1741. The poem continued to be generally read for fifty years, and some of its phrases are still quoted. -MOORE, NORMAN, M. D., 1890, Dictionary of National Biography, vol. XXI, p. 31.

GENERAL

Whenever Garth shall raise his sprightly

song,

Sense flows in easie numbers from his tongue; Great Phoebus in his learned son we see Alike in physick as in poetry.

-GAY, JOHN, 1714, To Bernard Lintot, Poems.

His works will scarce make a moderate volume, and though they contain many things excellent, judicious, and humorous, yet they will not justify the writer, who dwells upon them in the same rapturous strain of admiration, with which we speak of a Horace, a Milton, or a Pope. He had the happiness of an early acquaintance with some of the most powerful, wisest, and wittiest men of the age in which he lived; he attached himself to a party, which at last obtained the ascendant, and he was equally successful in his fortune as his friends: Persons in these circumstances are seldom praised, or censured with moderation.-CIBBER, THEOPHILUS, 1753, Lives of the Poets, vol. III, p. 270.

The fun has all faded out of "The Dispensary," and Garth is no longer in the least degree attractive. But his didactic verse is the best between Dryden and Pope, though we see beginning in it the degradation of the overmannered style of the eighteenth century.-GOSSE, EDMUND, 1888, A History of Eighteenth Century Literature, p. 34.

GENERAL

His head, hand, or heart was always employ'd in something worthy imitation; his pencil, his bow-string, or his pen, each of which he us'd in a masterly manner, were always directed to raise and entertain his own mind, or that of others, to a more cheerful prosecution of what was noble and virtuous.-STEELE, SIR RICHARD, 1720, The Theatre, No. 15.

He is too grave a poet for me, and I think among the mediocribus in prose as well as verse.-SWIFT, JONATHAN, 1735, Letter to Alexander Pope, Sept. 3.

To answer your question as to Mr. Hughes, what he wanted as to genius he made up as an honest man; but he was of the class you think him.-POPE, ALEXANDER, 1735, Letter to Jonathan Swift, Nov.

His last work was his tragedy, "The Siege of Damascus," after which a Siege became a popular title. This play, which still continues on the stage, and of which it is unnecessary to add a private voice to such continuance of approbation, is not acted or printed according to the author's original draught, or his settled intention. He had made Phocyas apostatize from his religion; after which the abhorrence of Eudocia would have been reasonable, his misery would have been just, and the horrors of his repentance exemplary. The players, however, required that the guilt of Phocyas should terminate in desertion. to the enemy; and Hughes, unwilling that

his relations should lose the benefit of his work, complied with the alteration.JOHNSON, SAMUEL, 1779-81, Hughes, Lives of the English Poets.

Hughes was a man of good sense, and well versed in some branches of learning. He had applied himself to the study of the classics, especially the Greek and Roman poets, with diligence and success. He perceived and felt the beauties with which

they abound. . . Hughes was ambitious to distinguish himself in heroic odes and tragedy. As he neither excelled in sublimity or in pathos, he did not succeed in either. As an essayist, his observations are just and judicious, and expressed in suitable language.. On the whole, Hughes was a man better qualified to excel in the lower than in the higher kinds of composition. In operas, songs, and translations, he succeeded very well; in attempting heroic odes and tragedy, he seems not to have remembered, or not to have applied his favourite Horace's advice to poets, to consider quid ferre recusant; quid valeant bumori; "what weight their talents can bear, or what exceeds their strength."-Though not entitled to the character of a very great poet, he deserved a still high praise, he was an upright, benevolent, religious man.-BISSET, ROBERT, 1793, ed., The Spectator, vol. 1, pp. 237, 238, 239.

The only piece, however, which can with any propriety claim for Hughes the appellation of a poet, is "The Siege of Damascus." Of this Drama, which is still occasionally acted, the sentiments and morality are pure and correct, the imagery frequently beautiful, and the diction and versification for the most part clear and melodious. It is defective, notwithstanding, in the most essential quality of dramatic composition, the power of affecting the passions; and is, therefore, more likely to afford pleasure in the closet than on the stage. On the prose. of Hughes I am inclined to bestow more praise than on his poetry. . . . Hughes has more merit as a translator of poetry, than as an original poet.

All

the periodical essays of Hughes are written in a style which is, in general, easy, correct, and elegant: they occasionally exhibit wit and humour; and they uniformly tend to inculcate the best precepts,

moral, prudential, and religious.-DRAKE, NATHAN, 1804, Essays Illustrative of the Tatler, Spectator and Guardian, vol. III, pp. 29, 30, 31, 50.

Hughes was a ready and smooth versifier; but nothing that he wrote rose above mediocrity, if it ever reached it.-ARNOLD, THOMAS, 1868-75, Chaucer to Wordsworth, p. 282.

GENERAL

There is one poetess to whose writings I am especially partial, the Countess of Winchelsea. I have perused her poems frequently, and should be happy to name such passages as I think most characteristic of her genius, and most fit to be selected. Her style in rhyme is often admirable, chaste, tender, and vigorous, and entirely free from sparkle, antithesis, and that overculture, which reminds one, by its broad glare, its stiffness, and heaviness, of the double daisies of the garden, compared with their modest and sensitive kindred of the fields. haps I am mistaken, but I think there is a good deal of resemblance in her style and versification to that of Tickell, to whom Dr. Johnson justly assigns a high place among the minor poets, and of whom Goldsmith rightly observes, that there is a strain of ballad thinking through all his poetry, and it is very attractive.-WORDSWORTH, WILLIAM, 1829-30, Letter to Mr. Dyce, Memoirs by C. Wordsworth, ed. Reed, Oct. 16, May 10, vol. 11, pp. 220, 222.

Per

She was a poetess of singular originality and excellence; her lines "To the Nightingale" have lyrical qualities which were scarcely approached in her own age, and would do credit to the best, while her odes and more weighty pieces have a strength and accomplishment of style which make the least interesting of them worth reading. Lady Winchilsea was one of the last pindaric writers of the school of Cowley. Her odes display that species of writing in the final dissolution out of which it was redeemed by Gray and Collins. Such a poem as her "All is Vanity," full as it is of ingenious thought, and studded

with noble and harmonious lines, fails to impress the attention as a vertebrate composition. Her "Ode to the Spleen," from which Pope borrowed his famous "aromatic pain," is still more loose and fragmentary in structure. On the other hand, her less ambitious studies have a singular perfection of form and picturesqueness of manner. She lights upon the right epithet and employs it with precision, and gives a brilliant turn, even to a triviality, by some bright and natural touch. "Nocturnal Reverie" is worthy of Wordsworth's commendation; it is simply phenomenal as the creation of a friend of Prior and of Pope, and some of the couplets, especially those which describe the straying horse, and the cries of the birds, are worthy of the closest observers of hature in a naturalistic age.-GoSSE, EDMUND, 1880, English Poets, ed. Ward, vol. III, p. 27.

Her

In general feeling an Augustan, with an under-currant of real love for nature. It is in her fondness fcr country life, her love of out-door beauty, and her accurate descriptions of nature, that she differs from her contemporaries. In these important points, she may certainly be classed as reactionary in tendency. Her octosyllabic ode, "To the Nightingale," has true lyric quality, and her short poems, "The Tree" and "A Nocturnal Reverie," are notable expressions of nature-worship.-PHELPS, WILLIAM LYON, 1893, The Beginnings of the English Romantic Movement, p. 28.

It is a pity that her poems have not been reprinted and are difficult of access, for it is desirable to read the whole in order to appreciate the unconscious clash of style and taste in them.

Fortunately for Lady Winchelsea, natural taste and the opportunities of life seem to have inclined her to take natural objects as the source of her imagery. What place suggested the "Nocturnal Reverie" we cannot say, but it is clearly a corrected impression and not merely conventional. It is all seen the waving moon on the river, the sleepy cowslip, the foxglove, paler than by day, but chequering still with red the dusky brakes, and the wonderful image of the horse, take us almost a century away from the drawing-rooms and the sham shepherdesses of her contemporaries.

And she could manage the shortened octosyllable even better than Parnell, could adjust the special epithet (Pope borrowed or stole "aromatic pain" from her, though probably she took it from Dryden's "aromatic splinters"). Altogether she is a most remarkable phenomenon, too isolated to point much of a moral, but adoring the lull of early eighteenth-century poetry with images even more correct than Thomson's and put in language far less artificial.-SAINTSBURY, GEORGE, 1898, A Short History of English Literature, pp. 562, 563.

PERSONAL

At a time when oriental studies were in their infancy in this country, Simon Ockley, animated by the illustrious example of Pococke and the laborious diligence of Prideaux, devoted his life and his fortune to these novel researches, which necessarily involved both. With that enthusiasm which the ancient votary experienced, and with that patient suffering the modern martyr has endured, he pursued, till he accomplished, the useful object of his labours. He, perhaps, was the first who exhibited to us other heroes than those

of Rome and Greece; sages as contemplative, and a people more magnificent even than the iron masters of the world. Among other oriental productions, his most considerable is "The History of the Saracens." The first volume appeared in 1708, and the second ten years afterwards. In the preface to the last volume, the oriental student pathetically counts over his sorrows, and triumphs over his disappointments; the most remarkable part is the date of the place from whence this preface was written he triumphly closes his labours in the confinement of Cambridge Castle for debt!-DISRAELI, ISAAC, 1812

13, The Rewards of Oriental Students, Calamities of Authors.

GENERAL

Ockley had the culture of oriental learning very much at heart, and the several publications which he made were intended solely to promote it.-HEATHCOTE, RALPH, 1761-1815, Chalmer's General Biographical Dictionary, vol. XXIII, p. 294.j

The very curious history of the Saracens, given by Ockley, should be consulted, and is somewhat necessary to enable the studen more exactly to comprehend the character of the Arabians, which is there displayed, by their own writers, in all its singularities. SMYTH, WILLIAM, 1840, Lectures on Modern History, Lecture iii.

Although many of its details require correction, the importance of Ockley's work in relation to the progress of oriental studies cannot be overestimated. Following in the steps of Pocock's famous "Specimen Historiæ Arabum," but adopting a popular method, and recommending it by an admirable English style, Ockley for the the first time made the history of the early Saracen conquests attractive to the general reader, and stimulated the

student to further research. With ali its inaccuracies, Ockley's "History of the Saracens" became a secondary ciassic, and formed for generations the main

source of the average notions of early Mohammedan history.-POOLE, STANLEY LANE-1895, Dictionary of National Biography, vol. XLI, p. 364.

PERSONAL

He had a piercing wit, a quick apprehension, an unerring judgment; that he understood critically the delicacies of poetry, and was as great a judge as a patron of learning.-DUNTON, JOHN, 1705, Life and Errors, p. 422.

"The nobleman-look."-Yes, I know what you mean very well: that look which a noble man should have; rather than what they have generally now. The Duke of Buckingham (Sheffield) was a genteel man; and had a great deal the look you speak of.-POPE, ALEXANDER, 1742-43, Spence's Anecdotes, ed. Singer, p. 215.

The life of this peer takes up fourteen pages and a half in folio in the General Dictionary, where it has little pretensions to occupy a couple. But his pious relict. was always purchasing places for him, herself and their son, in every suburb of the temple of fame,a tenure, against which, of all others, quo-warrantos are sure to take place. -WALPOLE, HORACE, 1758, A Catalogue of the Royal and Noble Authors of England, Scotland and Ireland, vol. IV, p. 99.

His character is not to be proposed as worthy of imitation. His religion he may be supposed to have learned from Hobbes; and his morality was such as naturally proceeds from loose opinions. His sentiments with respect to women he picked up in the court of Charles; and his principles concerning property were such as a gaming-table supplies. He was censured

as covetous, and has been defended by an instance of inattention to his affairs, as if a man might not at once be corrupted by avarice and idleness. He is said, however, to have had much tenderness, and to have been very ready to apologise for his violences of passion.-JOHNSON, SAMUEL, 1779-81, Sheffield, Lives of the English Poets.

As far as posterity has the means of judging, we can only come to the conclusion, that he was characterized by many vices, and, apparently, by scarcely a single virtue. The best that can be said of him is, that he was a brave man, and an agreeable companion. His laugh is described as having been the pleasantest in the world; and though his temper was passionate, his disposition is said to have been a forgiving one.-JESSE, JOHN HENEAGE, 1843, Memoirs of the Court of England from the Revolution in 1688 to the Death of George the Second, vol. II, p. 14.

He was, by the acknowledgment of those who neither loved nor esteemed him, a man distinguished by fine parts, and in parliamentary eloquence inferior to scarcely any orator of his time. His moral character was entitled to no respect. He was a libertine without that openness of heart and hand which sometimes makes libertinism amiable, and a haughty aristocrat without that elevation of sentiment which sometimes makes aristocratical haughtiness respectable. The satirists of the age nicknamed him Lord Allpride, and pronounced it strange that a man who had