in every word where that "something greater yet that letter"* is ever to be found. Had he lived to execute this purpose, he would doubtless have displayed great learning, and no small absurdity. The hypothesis seems to be utterly untenable. The pronunciation of language is in continual flux, and at all times there are many words which are uttered, or accented, according to the choice or judgment of individuals, after an older or a newer fashion. Poets, (especially when and where there are no critics,) will use either at discretion, as suits their metre, and often avail themselves of both for the sake of variety. Yet Bentley considered the revived Digamma, as the child of his old age; and in the brief interval between the conclusion of his long struggle, and his death, was fond of discussing the point with those young scholars who came to visit him, as the patriarch of Helenic learning. But the publication of the digammated Homer was prevented by a paralytic affection, which seized the venerable scholar in the course of 1739, just after the appearance of his Manilius, a work of his earlier years; of this, and the Lucan, which was first printed fourteen years after his death, at the Strawberry-hill press, nothing need be said.

Thus have we brought the active life of Bentley to a conclusion. We must be more brief than we could wish in pourtraying his familiar history, though the picture is extremely pleasing.

In his domestic relations, Bentley was not only blameless, but exemplary; and domestic virtue always brings its own reward. Whatever brawls disturbed him without, " he still had peace at home," nor did he carry his despotic rule and contumelious language to his own fire side; if he called his children names,-they were names of fondness. If he erred, it was in too partial a regard to his kindred or dependents. For forty years he was the affectionate husband of a virtuous wife, who never had reason to complain that his controversies or his law-suits had soured his temper. Mrs. Bentley was the mother of four children, of whom one died in his infancy. Richard, the surviving son, discovered such uncommon talents, that he was entered at Trinity College at ten and made Fellow at fifteen. He was bred to no profession, and suffered severely in after life from neglect of economy. Elizabeth, the eldest daughter, married Mr. Humphrey Ridge, of Hampshire, and in less

Of the Digamma nothing is settled, after all the learning that has been employed about it, except that its form is that of a Roman F, though sometimes it rather resembled G, and that it was either a W or a V, or something between both. It is only found on some old marbles, and on coins of the Greek town of Velia, in Italy. However pronounced it must have been an offence to the ear. The Greeks were right in dropping it, and we are wrong in puzzling about it.

than a year, was a widow. Joanna, who married Mr. Dennison Cumberland, and became mother to Cumberland, the dramatist, was a beauty celebrated from her very infancy.* After Mrs. Bentley's death, both her daughters spent much time in the lodge, and supported by filial attentions, such as only a daughter can render, the declining years of their father, who spent the evening of his long and stormy day as peacefully as if all his life had been gentleness.

The author of the West Indian gives a most charming account of his grandfather in old age, though Bentley died when Cumberland was but ten years old. Between old age and childhood there is a strong and holy sympathy; nor is there the least reason to suspect Cumberland's picture of false colouring, because he is not always accurate in facts and dates.

The favourite companion of the great Critic, in his latter years, was the faithful Walker, with whom he used to smoke his pipe, (a habit he only indulged in after his seventieth year,) and discussed his port, a liquor for which he entertained an orthodox respect, while he expressed an anti-gallican contempt for claret, saying that it would be port if it could. He continued to the last to amuse himself with reading, occasionally shewing picture books to his grandchildren, never harshly correcting them when their noisy gambols interrupted his studies. Such at least are the reminiscences of his grandson, and it is good for the heart to believe them.

But we must hasten to a close. Bentley is said to have had a presentiment that he should reach his eightieth year, and not exceed it. "It was an age long enough," he would remark, "to read every thing worth reading."

Et tunc magna mei sub terris ibit Imago.

In January, 1742, he completed his eightieth year. In June he was well enough to preside at the examination for University scholarships; shortly after he was seized with a brain fever, and on the 14th of July, 1742, he expired. He was the first of Critics, and might have been among the first of men, if he could have endured contradiction.

* The pretty pastoral, published in the 8th volume of the Spectator,

My time, Oh ye shepherds, was happily spent,

When Phoebe went with me wherever I went,

is said to have been composed by Byrom, then a young B.A. of Trinity, in honour of Jug Bentley, (as Aristarchus used to call his darling child,) when she was but eleven years old. Some prudent mothers, and still more Aunts, will look grave at the publication of such a compliment to so very young a lady, but we never could learn that Miss Joanna was the worse for it.

THOMAS LORD FAIRFAX.

IN narrating the lives of Lord Fairfax, and the famous Earl of Derby, we shall have occasion to redeem our pledges of strict political impartiality. Both fell on the same evil days-the same mighty interests agitated both, but they viewed them from different positions, or through the medium of different prejudices. They took opposite sides, and fought, it may be, with equal merit, but not with like success. Fame has reversed the judgment of Fortune, since Derby stands unchallenged in the first rank of the martyrs of loyalty, while Fairfax follows in the rear-guard of the confessors of republicanism. But which was in the right, or which least in the wrong, is a question for neither Fortune nor Fame to decide, nor shall we pronounce the verdict. It belongs to history, not to biography. We will endeavour to do justice to the acts of both, without approving or condemning the cause in which either acted.

Thomas Lord Fairfax was of an ancient and renowned family, long settled at Denton, in the parish of Otley, in Yorkshire. A military and a poetical spirit had characterised the house of Fairfax for many generations. Thomas Fairfax, great-grandfather to our present subject, engaged, after the manner of aspiring youth in that age, in the wars of Charles V. and Francis I., as a voluntary, and was with Bourbon at the sack of Rome, in 1527. In 1577, or 1579, he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth. His son Thomas received the same martial honour from the more appropriate hand of Henri IV., for his valour displayed before Rouen, in the English force sent to the assistance of the French Protestant cause; and afterwards signalized himself in the German wars against the house of Austria. He was the first Lord Fairfax of Cameron, and elder brother to Edward Fairfax, the translator of Tasso. A third brother, Charles, was a Captain under Sir Francis

*

Edward, second son of Sir Thomas Fairfax and Dorothy his wife, was born at Denton, but the year of his birth has not been ascertained; neither are we informed of the place of his education. That his youth was studious, appears by his early proficiency; and he continued all his days a man of books and of peace, living a country life, familiar with the beauties of nature, and devoting much time to the

Vere, at the battle of Newport, fought in 1600; and in the three years' siege of Ostend, commanded all the English in that town for some

culture of his children and nephews (the sons of the Lord Fairfax), who grew up under his tuition in all liberal and godly learning. Though possessed with that shy fantastic melancholy which some have deemed the proper complexion of poets, he kept old English hospitality, yet impaired not, but rather improved, his estate. And so, having attained a good old age in credit and good-will, he died in 1632, at his house called New-hall, in the parish of Fuyistone, between Denton and Knaresborough, happy in being spared the necessity of choosing a side in the sad contest that ensued.-Chalmers' Bio. Dic. Vol. XIV.

The translation of Tasso's Jerusalem, by which alone he is remembered, was the work of his youth, and was dedicated to Queen Elizabeth. So long as the Italian models continued in vogue, and the rich, various, long-drawn, linked sweetness of our early versification was understood and enjoyed, Fairfax's Tasso was read and admired, as a fair exotic transplanted by a skilful hand into a congenial soil. King James delighted in it (and the King's prerogative then extended over the realms of the Muses), and it solaced the prison hours of Charles 1st, to whom it must have been strangely fascinating, since the name of Fairfax could not hinder him from loving it. Waller acknowledged himself indebted to the English Tasso for the melody of his own numbers; and Dryden mentions Fairfax as coæqal with Spenser. Even under the detestable tyranny of French criticism, when it became fashionable to talk of the Elizabethan writers as rude stammerers in an unpolished language and unmanageable metres, the wits of the new school allowed him such modicums of praise as they were wont to accord to the poets of better times; always, however, objecting to his stanza, the ottava rima, as unfitted to the English tongue. In fact, their ears, accustomed to the narrow compass, quick recurring rhimes, and balanced structure of the couplet, were incapable of perceiving a prolonged and suspended harmony. The present race of critics have a much juster sense of poetic music; and though it is unlikely that Fairfax will ever again be generally read, he is no longer liable to be insulted by invidious comparisons of his stanzas with the couplets of a Mr. Hoole, of the India House, who traduced (to borrow an expressive French phrase) Tasso and Ariosto in the English heroic verse. Fairfax was, it must be confessed, an unfaithful translator, who, if he sometimes expanded the germ of his author to a bright, con summate flower, just as often spoiled what he was trying to improve. Besides his version of the "Jerusalem Delivered," he wrote the "History of Edward the Black Prince," and Eclogues, composed in the first year of James 1st, said by his son to be so learned, that no man's reading but his own was sufficient to explain the allusions in them. This filial praise does not promise much poetry. Probably the Eclogues are "allegorical pastorals." Now, as pastoral, per se, is the silliest of all compositions, so, with due deference to Mantuan and Spenser, the allegorical is the absurdest of all pastorals. Still, they must be curious; and it is to be regretted that, excepting the fourth, which appeared in Mrs. Cooper's "Muses Library," 1737, they have never been printed.

Collins says of Edward Fairfax, that "himself believed the wonders that he sung." There is more truth in this than might be wished. He was so much affected with the superstitions of his age, as to fancy his children bewitched, and that on so very weak grounds, that the poor wretches whom he prosecuted for this impossible crime were actually acquitted. Yet even the verdict of a jury, little disposed as juries then

time before it surrendered. In this service he received a severe wound in the face from a splinter of a French Marshal's skull. He was slain in 1604.

Sir Thomas Fairfax, brother of the poet, created, A.D. 1627, Baron Fairfax, of Cameron, in the Kingdom of Scotland, married Helen, daughter of Robert Ask, Esq., and by her left two daughters and five sons, of whom the eldest, Ferdinando, succeeded to the title, and, by Mary, daughter of Edmund Sheffield, Earl of Mulgrave, was father to Thomas, afterwards third Lord Fairfax, the Parliamentary general.

Heralds, who amid the darkness of unrecorded antiquity, seldom miss of finding what they seek, have stretched the Fairfax pedigree beyond the Ultima Thule of the Norman Conquest. Francis Nichols, in his "British Compendium," asserts that the original seat of the family was at Towcester, in Northumberland, whence they removed into Yorkshire. Certainly the name signifying, fair-locks, (Sax. Feax Hair,) indicates a Saxon derivation, though quaintly Latinized in their motto Fare, Fac, Say Do, after the fashion of canting heraldry. But the more credible account of Whitelock ascribes the first elevation of the house to the law; though its martial and poetical propensities plead strongly for the Heralds.

Thomas, afterwards Lord Fairfax, was born at the family seat of Denton, January, 1611. We have no information concerning his childhood, nor the place of his school education; but, as his father was a zealous Puritan and disciplinarian, and his own character was stern and unbending, we may conclude that the rod was not spared. He studied

were, (or dared be,) to favour witches, does not seem to have disabused his senses, for he left behind, in manuscript, "Dæmonologia: a discourse of Witchcraft, as it was acted in the family of Mr. Edward Fairfax, of Fuyistone, in the County of York, in the year 1621." This has never been printed. A copy was in possession of the late Isaac Reed, Esq. As an important document in the history of human nature, it ought assuredly to be given to the world. It must be remembered that Fairfax in this instance only coincided with the spirit of his age, and bowed to the wisdom of his ancestors. To have doubted of the existence of witches, would then have exposed him to the imputation of atheism; and as certain disorders were uniformly attributed to diabolical agency, an anxious parent might be excused for mistaking the symptoms in his own offspring. We need not doubt that he spoke sincerely, when he said, in this very treatise, "For myself, I am in religion neither a fantastic Puritan, nor a superstitious Papist; but so settled in conscience, that I have the sure ground of God's Word to warrant all I believe, and the commendable ordinances of our English church to approve all I practice; in which course I live a faithful Christian and an obedient subject, and so teach my family."

We trust that none will object to these notices of a poet, who, though too little known to be the subject of a separate article, is nevertheless, one of the Yorkshire Worthies.