writing to a poet, he has interspersed many well of his own productions? and determines critical observations, of which some are com- very justly, that, of the plan and disposition, and mon, and some perhaps ventured without much all that can be reduced to principles of science, consideration. He began, even now, to exer- the author may depend upon his own opinion; cise the domination of conscious genius, by re- but that, in those parts where fancy predomi commending his own performance: "I am satis-nates, self-love may easily deceive. He might fied that as the Prince and General" [Rupert have observed, that what is good only because and Monk]" are incomparably the best subjects it pleases, cannot be pronounced good till it has I ever had, so what I have written on them is been found to please." much better than what I have performed on any "Sir Martin Mar-all" (1668) is a comedy, other. As I have endeavoured to adorn my published without preface or dedication, and at poem with noble thoughts, so much more to ex-first without the name of the author. Langpress those thoughts with elocution." baine charges it, like most of the rest, with plagiarism; and observes, that the song is translated from Voiture, allowing however that both the sense and measure are exactly observed. It is written in quatrains, or heroic stanzas of four lines; a measure which he had learned from the "Gondibert" of Davenant, and which he then thought the most majestic that the English language affords. Of this stanza he mentions the incumbrances, increased as they were by the exactness which the age required. It was, throughout his life, very much his custom to recommend his works by representation of the difficulties that he had encountered, without appearing to have sufficiently considered that where there is no difficulty, there is no praise. There seems to be, in the conduct of Sir Robert Howard and Dryden towards each other, something that is not now easily to be explained. Dryden, in his dedication to the Earl of Orrery, had defended dramatic rhyme; and Howard, in a preface to a collection of plays, had censured his opinion. Dryden vindicated himself in his "Dialogue on Dramatic Poetry:" Howard, in his preface to "the Duke of Lerma," animadverted on the vindication; and Dryden, in a preface to "The Indian Emperor," replied to the animadversions with great asperity, and almost with contumely. The dedication to this play is dated the year in which the "Annus Mirabilis" was published. Here appears a strange inconsistency; but Langbaine affords some help, by relating that the answer to Howard was not published in the first edition of the play, but was added when it was afterwards reprinted: and as "The Duke of Lerma" did not appear till 1668, the same year in which the dialogue was published, there was time enough for enmity to grow up between authors, who, writing both for the theatre, were naturally rivals. He was now so much distinguished, that in 1668† he succeeded Sir William Davenant as poet-laureat. The salary of the laureat had been raised in favour of Jonson, by Charles the First, from a hundred marks to one hundred pounds a year, and a tierce of wine: a revenue in those days not inadequate to the conveniences of life. The same year, he published his Essay on Dramatic Poetry, an elegant and instructive dialogue, in which we are told, by Prior, that the principal character is meant to represent the Duke of Dorset. This work seems to have given Addison a model for his dialogues upon Medals. "Secret Love, or the Maiden Queen" (1668), is a tragi-comedy. In the preface he discusses a curious question, whether a poet can judge "The Tempest" (1670) is an alteration of Shakspeare's play, made by Dryden in conjunction with Davenant; "whom," says he, "I found of so quick a fancy, that nothing was proposed to him in which he could not suddenly produce a thought extremely pleasant and surprising; and those first thoughts of his, contrary to the Latin proverb, were not always the least happy; and as his fancy was quick, so likewise were the products of it remote and new. He borrowed not of any other; and his imaginations were such as could not easily enter into any other man." The effect produced by the conjunction of these two powerful minds was, that to Shakspeare's monster, Caliban, is added a sister monster, Sycorax; and a woman, who, in the origi nal play, had never seen a man, is in this brought acquainted with a man that had never seen a woman. About this time, in 1673, Dryden seems to have had his quiet much disturbed by the success of "The Empress of Morocco," a tragedy written in rhyme by Elkanah Settle; which was so much applauded, as to make him think his supremacy of reputation in some danger. Settle had not only been prosperous on the stage, but, in the confidence of success, had published his play with sculptures and a preface of defiance. Here was one offence added to another; and, for the last blast of inflammation, it was acted at Whitehall by the court ladies. Dryden could not now repress those emotions, which he called indignation, and others jealousy; but wrote upon the play and the dedication such criticism as malignant impatience could pour out in haste. Of Settle he gives this character: "He's an animal of a most deplored understanding, without reading and conversation. His being is in a twilight of sense, and some glimmering of thought which he never can fashion into wit or English. His style is boisterous and rough hewn, his rhyme incorrigibly lewd, and his numbers perpetually harsh and ill-sounding. The little talent which he has, is fancy. He sometimes labours with a thought; but, with the pudder he makes to bring it into the world, 'tis commonly still-born; so that, for want of learning and elocution, he will never be able to express any thing either naturally or justly.” This is not very decent; yet this is one of the pages in which criticism prevails over brutal fury. He proceeds: "He has a heavy hand at fools, and a great felicity in writing nonsense for them. Fools they will be in spite of him. His king, his two empresses, his villain, and his sub- | villain, nay, his hero, have all a certain natural cast of the father-their folly was born and bred in them, and something of the Elkanah will be visible." This is Dryden's general declamation; I will not withhold from the reader a particular remark. to Having gone through the first act, he says, conclude this act with the most rumbling piece of nonsense spoken yet: To flattering lightning our feign'd smiles conform, And in their orbs view the dark characters Till, soften'd by our charms, their furies cease, Conform a smile to lightning, make a smile imi-ridge, made of the giblets of a couple of young geese, stodged full of meteors, orbs, spheres, track, tate lightning, and flattering lightning; lightning hideous draughts, dark characters, white forms, and sure is a threatening thing. And this lightning radiant lights, designed not only to please appemust gild a storm. Now, if I must conform my tite, and indulge luxury; but it is also physical, smiles to lightning, then my smiles must gild a being an approved medicine to purge choler; for storm too: to gild with smiles is a new invention it is propounded, by Morena, as a recipe to cure of gilding. And gild a storm by being backed their fathers of their choleric humours; and, with thunder. Thunder is part of the storm; were it written in characters as barbarous as the so one part of the storm must help to gild an- words, might very well pass for a doctor's bill. other part, and help by backing; as if a man To conclude; it is porridge, 'tis a recipe, 'tis a would gild a thing the better for being backed, pig with a pudding in the belly, 'tis I know not or having a load upon his back. So that here is what: for, certainly, never any one that pregilding by conforming, smiling, lightning, back-tended to write sense had the impudence before ing, and thundering. The whole is as if I should to put such stuff as this into the mouths of those say thus: I will make my counterfeit smiles that were to speak it before an audience, whom look like a flattering stone-horse, which, being he did not take to be all fools; and after that to backed with a trooper, does but gild the battle. print it too, and expose it to the examination of I am mistaken if nonsense is not here pretty the world. But let us see what we can make of thick sown. Sure the poet writ these two lines this stuff: aboard some smack in a storm, and, being seasick, spewed up a good lump of clotted nonsense at once." Here is perhaps a sufficient specimen; but as the pamphlet, though Dryden's, has never been thought worthy of republication, and is not easily to be found, it may gratify curiosity to quote it more largely : Whene'er she bleeds, For when we're dead, and our freed souls enlarged"Here he tells what it is to be dead; it is to have our freed souls set free. Now, if to have a soul set free, is to be dead; then, to have a freed soul set free, is to have a dead man die. Then, gentle as a happy lover's sigh"They two like one sigh, and that one sigh like two wandering meteors, -Shall fly through the air"That is, they shall mount above like falling stars, or else they shall skip like two Jacks with lanthorns, or Will with a wisp, and Madge with a candle." "That attends that breath.-The poet is at breath again; breath can never 'scape him; and here he brings in a breath that must be infectious with "And in their airy walk steal into their cruel pronouncing a sentence; and this sentence is not to be pronounced till the condemned party fathers' breasts, like subtle guests. So that their bleeds; that is, she must be executed first, and fathers' breasts must be in an airy walk, an airy walk sentenced after; and the pronouncing of this of a flier. And there they will read their souls, and sentence will be infectious; that is, others will track the spheres of their passions. That is, these catch the disease of that sentence, and this in- walking fliers, Jack with a lanthorn, &c. will put fecting of others will torment a man's self. The on his spectacles, and fall a reading souls; and whole is thus: when she bleeds, thou needest no put on his pumps, and fall a tracking of spheres: greater hell or torment to thyself, than infecting of so that he will read and run, walk and fly, at the others by pronouncing a sentence upon her. What same time! Oh! nimble Jack! Then he will see, hodge-podge does he make here! Never was how revenge here, how ambition there- The Dutch grout such clogging, thick, indigestible birds will hop about. And then view the dark stuff. But this is but a taste to stay the sto- characters of sieges, ruins, murders, blood, and mach; we shall have a more plentiful mess pre-wars, in their orbs: track the characters to their sently. “Now to dish up the poet's broth, that I pro mised: For when we're dead, and our freed souls enlarged, Like wand ring meteors through the air we'll fly; We'll steal into our cruel fathers' breasts, There read their souls, and track each passion's sphere, forms! Oh! rare sport for Jack! Never was place so full of game as these breasts! You cannot stir, but flush a sphere, start a character, or unkennel an orb !" Settle's is said to have been the first play embellished with sculptures; those ornaments seem to have given poor Dryden great disturbance. He tries, however, to ease his pain by venting his malice in a parody. "The poet has not only been so imprudent to 72 able evening. But even this, whatever it may | accession, made him lord-chamberlain of the subtract from his facility, leaves him his courage. He was soon after made a gentleman of the bed-chamber, and sent on short embassies to France. In 1674, the estate of his uncle, James Cranfield, Earl of Middlesex, came to him by its owner's death, and the title was conferred on him the year after. In 1677, he became, by the death of his father, Earl of Dorset, and inherited the estate of his family. In 1684, having buried his first wife of the family of Bagot, who left him no child, he married a daughter of the Earl of Northampton, celebrated both for beauty and understanding. He received some favourable notice from King James; but soon found it necessary to oppose the violence of his innovations, and, with some other lords, appeared in Westminster Hall to countenance the bishops at their trial. As enormities grew every day less supportable, he found it necessary to concur in the Revolution. He was one of those lords who sat every day in council to preserve the public peace, after the King's departure; and, what is not the most illustrious action of his life, was employed to conduct the Princess Anne to Nottingham with a guard, such as might alarm the populace as they passed, with false apprehensions of her danger. Whatever end may be designed, there is always something despicable in a trick. He became, as may be easily supposed, a favourite of King William, who, the day after his household, and gave him afterwards the garter. He happened to be among those that were tossed with the King in an open boat sixteen hours, in very rough and cold weather, on the coast of Holland. His health afterwards declined; and, on January 19, 1705-6, he died at Bath. He was a man whose elegance and judgment were universally confessed, and whose bounty to the learned and witty was generally known. To the indulgent affection of the public, Lord Rochester bore ample testimony in this remark"I know not how it is, but Lord Buckhurst may do what he will, yet is never in the wrong." If such a man attempted poetry, we cannot wonder that his works were praised. Dryden, whom, if Prior tells truth, he distinguished by his beneficence, and who lavished his blandishments on those who are not known to have so well deserved them, undertaking to produce authors of our own country superior to those of antiquity, says, "I would instance your Lordship in satire, and Shakspeare in tragedy." Would it be imagined that, of this rival to antiquity, all the satires were little personal invectives, and that his longest composition was a song of eleven stanzas? The blame, however, of this exaggerated praise falls on the encomiast, not upon the author; whose performances are, what they pretend to be, the effusions of a man of wit; gay, vigorous, and airy. His verses to Howard show great fertility of mind; and his Dorinda has been imitated by Pope. STEPNEY. again to the Emperor; and in 1706, to the States-general. In 1697, he was made one of the commissioners of trade. His life was busy, and not long. He died in 1707; and is buried in Westminster Abbey, with this epitaph, which Jacob transcribed : GEORGE STEPNEY, descended from the Step-burgh; in 1699, to the King of Poland; in 1701 neys of Pendigrast, in Pembrokeshire, was born at Westminster, in 1663. Of his father's condition or fortune I have no account.* Having received the first part of his education at Westminster, where he passed six years in the College, he went at nineteen to Cambridge,† where he continued a friendship begun at school with Mr. Montague, afterwards Earl of Halifax. They came to London together, and are said to have been invited into public life by the Earl of Dorset. His qualifications recommended him to many foreign employments, so that his time seems to have been spent in negotiations. In 1692, he was sent envoy to the elector of Brandenburgh; in 1693, to the Imperial Court; in 1694, to the Elector of Saxony; in 1696, to the Electors of Mentz and Cologne, and the Congress at Francfort; in 1698, a second time to Branden * It has been conjectured that our Poet was either son or grandson of Charles, third son of Sir John Stepney, the first baronet of that family. See Granger's History, vol. ii. p. 396, edit. 8vo. 1775. Mr. Cole says, the Poet's Cole's MSS. in Brit. Mus.-C. father was a grocer. He was entered of Trinity College, and took his master's degree in 1689.-H. H. S. E. Ob Ingenii acumen, Rerum Usum, Virorum Amplissimorum Consuetudinem, Suâ ætate multum celebratus, Post longum honorum Curfum Brevi Temporis Spatio confectum, Cum Naturæ parum, Fama satis vixerat, Animam ad altiora aspirantem placidè efflavit. On the left hand. G. S. Ex Equestri Familiâ Stepneiorum, De Pendegrast. in Comitatu Pembrochiensi oriundus, Westmonasterii natus est, A. D. 1663. Electus in Collegium Sancti Petri Westmonast. A. 1676. Sancti Trinitatis Cantab. 1682. Consiliariorum quibus Commerci Cura commissa est 1697. Chelseie mortuus, et, comitante Magnâ Procerum Frequentia, huc elatus, 1707. It is reported that the juvenile compositions of Stepney made gray authors blush. I know not whether his poems will appear such wonders to the present age. One cannot always easily find the reason for which the world has sometimes conspired to squander praise. It is not very unlikely that he wrote very early as well as he ever wrote; and the performances of youth have many favourers, because the authors yet lay no claim to public honours, and are therefore not considered as rivals by the distributors of fame. He apparently professed himself a poet, and added his name to those of the other wits in the version of Juvenal; but he is a very licentious translator, and does not recompense his neglect of the author by beauties of his own. In his original poems, now and then, a happy line may perhaps be found, and now and then a short composition may give pleasure. But there is, in the whole, little either of the grace of wit, or the vigour of nature. PHILIP S. JOHN PHILIPS was born on the 30th of December, 1676, at Bampton, in Oxfordshire; of which place his father, Dr. Stephen Philips, archdeacon of Salop, was minister. The first part of his education was domestic; after which he was sent to Winchester, where, as we are told by Dr. Sewel, his biographer, he was soon distinguished by the superiority of his exercises; and what is less easily to be credited, so much endeared himself to his schoolfellows, by his civility and good-nature, that they, without murmur or ill-will, saw him indulged by the master with particular immunities. It is related, that when he was at school, he seldom mingled in play with the other boys, but retired to his chamber; where his sovereign pleasure was to sit hour after hour, while his hair was combed by somebody whose services he found means to procure.* At school he became acquainted with the poets, ancient and modern, and fixed his attention particularly on Milton. In 1694, he entered himself at Christ-church, a college at that time in the highest reputation, by the transmission of Busby's scholars to the care first of Fell, and afterwards of Aldrich. Here he was distinguished as a genius eminent among the eminent, and for friendship particularly intimate with Mr. Smith, the author of "Phædra and Hippolytus." The profession which he intended to follow was that of physic; and he took much delight in natural history, of which botany was his favourite part. Isaac Vossius relates, that he also delighted in having his hair combed when he could have it done by barbers, or other persons skilled in the rules of prosody. Of the passage that contains this ridiculous fancy, the following is a translation :-"Many people take delight in the rubbing of their limbs, and the combing of their hair; but these exercises would delight much more, if the servants at the baths, and of the barbers, were so skilful in this art, that they could express any measures with their fingers. I remember that more than once I have fallen into the hands of men of this sort, who could imitate any measure of songs in combing the hair, so as sometimes to express very intelligibly iambics, trochees, dactyls, &c. from whence there arose to me no small delight." See his "Treatise de Poematum cantu et Viribus Ryth mi." Oxon. 1673. D. 62.-H. His reputation was confined to his friends and to the University; till about 1703, he extended it to a wider circle by the "Splendid Shilling," which struck the public attention with a mode of writing new and unexpected. This performance raised him so high, that, when Europe resounded with the victory of Blenheim, he was, probably with an occult opposition to Addison, employed to deliver the acclamation of the Tories. It is said that he would willingly have declined the task, but that his friends urged it upon him. It appears that he wrote this poem at the house of Mr. St. John. "Blenheim" was published in 1705. next year produced his great work, the poem upon "Cider," in two books; which was received with loud praises, and continued long to be read, as an imitation of Virgil's "Georgic," which needed not shun the presence of the original. The He then grew probably more confident of his own abilities, and began to meditate a poem on the "Last Day;" a subject on which no mind can hope to equal expectation. This work he did not live to finish; his diseases, a slow consumption and an asthma, put a stop to his studies, and on Feb. 15, 1798, at the beginning of his thirty-third year, put an end to his life. He was buried in the cathedral of Hereford; and Sir Simon Harcourt, afterwards lord-chancellor, gave him a monument in Westminster Abbey. The inscription at Westminster was written, as I have heard, by Dr. Atterbury, though commonly given to Dr. Freind. Herefordiæ conduntur Ossa, Litterarum Amoniorum sitim, Præclaris Emulorum studiis excitatus, Antiquo illo, libero, multiformi Ad res ipsas apto prorsus, et attemperato, Uni in hoc laudis genere Miltono secundus, Res seu Tenues, seu Grandes, seu Mediocres Nusquam, non quod decuit, Egregius, quocunque Stylum verteret, Auso licèt à tuâ Metrorum Lege discedere, Vatum certe Cineres, tuos undique stipantium Viri benè de se, de Litteris meriti J. Philips, Stephani, S. T. P. Archidiaconi Salop Filius, natus est Bamptoniæ In agro Oxon, Dec. 30, 1676. cient Centos. To degrade the sounding words and stately construction of Milton, by an application to the lowest and most trivial things, gratifies the mind with a momentary triumph over that grandeur which hitherto held its captives in admiration; the words and things are presented with a new appearance, and novelty is always grateful where it gives no pain. But the merit of such performances begins and ends with the first author. He that should again adapt Milton's phrase to the gross incidents of common life, and even adapt it with more art, which would not be difficult, must yet expect but a small part of the praise which Philips has obtained; he can only hope to be considered as the repeater of a jest. "The parody on Milton," says Gildon, "is the only tolerable production of its Author." This is a censure too dogmatical and violent. The poem of "Blenheim" was never denied to be tolerable, even by those who do not allow it supreme excellence. It is indeed the poem of a scholar, "all inexpert of war;" of a man who writes books from books, and studies the world in a college. He seems to have formed his ideas of the field of Blenheim from the battles of the heroic ages, or the tales of chivalry, with very little comprehension of the qualities necessary to the composition of a modern hero, which Addison has displayed with so much propriety. He makes Marlborough behold at a distance the slaughter made by Tallard, then haste to encounter and restrain him, and mow his way through ranks made headless by his sword. He imitates Milton's numbers indeed, but imitates them very injudiciously. Deformity is easily copied; and whatever there is in Milton which the reader wishes away, all that is obsolete, peculiar, or licentious, is accumulated with great care by Philips. Milton's verse was harmonious, in proportion to the general state of our metre in Milton's age; and, if he had written after the improvements made by Dryden, it is reasonable to believe that he would have admitted a more pleasing modulation of numbers into his work; but Philips sits down with a reI solution to make no more music than he found; to want all that his master wanted, though he is very far from having what his master had. Those asperities, therefore, that are venerable in the "Paradise Lost," are contemptible in the "Blenheim." There is a Latin ode written to his patron, St. John, in return for a present of wine and tobacco, which cannot be passed without notice. It is gay and elegant, and exhibits several artful accommodations of classic expressions to new purposes. It seems better turned than the ode of Hannes.* Philips has been always praised, without contradiction, as a man modest, blameless, and pious; who bore narrowness of fortune without discontent, and tedious and painful maladies without impatience; beloved by those that knew him, but not ambitious to be known. He was probably not formed for a wide circle. His conversation is commended for its innocent gayety, which seems to have flowed only among his intimates; for I have been told that he was in company silent and barren, and employed only upon the pleasure of his pipe. His addiction to tobacco is mentioned by one of his biographers, who remarks, that in all his writings, except "Blenheim," he has found an opportunity of celebrating the fragrant fume. In common life he was probably one of those who please by not offending, and whose person was loved because his writings were admired. He died honoured and lamented, before any part of his reputation had withered, and before his patron St. John The author probably wrote, had disgraced him. His works are few. The "Splendid Shilling" has the uncommon merit of an original design, unless it may be thought precluded by the an To the poem on "Cider," written in imitation of the "Georgics," may be given this peculiar praise, that it is grounded in truth; that the pre *This ode I am willing to mention, because there seems to be an error in all the printed copies, which is, I think, retained in the last. They all read: Quam Gratiarum cura decentium, Quam Gratiarum cura decentium |