not only Smart, but Fielding, who was his particular friend. This declaration was corroborated by an advertisement from honest Newbery, who adds that he introduced Smart to Hill, six months after the former had engaged with himself (Newbery) in business, when they met as perfect strangers. With respect to Hill's assertion that he had been the means of introducing Smart to Mr. Newbery, the latter declares it to be an absolute falsehood.

The truth was, that Hill pretended to take the part of our poet in the Inspector, which he was known to write, while he abused him in the Impertinent, the author of which, he flattered himself, was not known. But it was among the misfortunes of this archquack, although advantageous to the public, that whatever disguise he put on was always too thin to elude the penetration of his contemporaries. This trick in particular had been discovered by the reviewer of books in the Gentleman's Magazine, five months before the Inspector appeared, in which he accused Smart of ingratitude. We are not therefore to wonder that the discovery of such malignant hypocrisy stimulated Smart to write the Hilliad, which it appears he first read or circulated in manuscript among his friends. But whatever praise they bestowed on the genius displayed in this satire, they were not pleased that he had involved himself in a war of obloquy with one whom to conquer was to exceed in the worst part of his character; and Smart probably listened to their opinions, for he published no more of the Hilliad. Hill had the credit of writing a Smartiad, which served no other purpose than to set off the merit of the other.

In 1754, Smart published the Seatonian prize poem on the Power, and in 1756, that on the Goodness of the Supreme Being7; and in the same year his Hymn to the Supreme Being, on recovery from a dangerous fit of illness; which illness, if I mis take not, filled up the space between the years 1754 and part of 1756. "Though the fortune," says his biographer, "as well as the constitution of Mr. Smart requir ed the utmost care, he was equally negligent in the management of both, and his various and repeated embarrassments acting upon an imagination uncommonly fervid, produced temporary alienations of mind; which at last were attended with paroxysms so violent and continued as to render confinement necessary. In this melancholy state, his family, for he had now two children, must have been much embarrassed in their circumstances, but for the kind friendship and assistance of Mr. Newbery. Many other of Mr. Smart's acquaintance were likewise forward in their services; and particularly Dr. Samuel Johnson, who on the first approaches of Mr. Smart's malady, wrote several papers for a periodical publication in which that gentleman was concerned, to secure his claim to a share in the profits of it."

The publication alluded to was the Universal Visitor and Memorialist, published by Gardner, a bookseller in the Strand. Smart and Rolt, a much inferior writer, are said to have entered into an engagement to write for this magazine, and

"In his letter prefixed to the Hilliad, he intimates that he had no intention of carrying it further; and adds that he would rather be commended to posterity by the elegant and amiable muses, than by the satiric sister.-C.

7 His biographer informs us that he delayed so long to undertake this poem, that there was barely opportunity to write it upon paper, and send it to Cambridge by the most expeditious conveyance, within the time limited for receiving the composit ons.-C.

for no other work whatever; for this they were to have a third of the profits, and the contract was to be binding for ninety-nine years. In Boswell's Life of Johnson, we find this contract discussed with more gravity than it seems to deserve. It was probably a contrivance of Gardner's to secure the services of two irregular men for a certain period. Johnson, however, wrote a few papers for our poet; "not then," he added," knowing the terms on which Smart was engaged to write, and thinking I was doing him good. I hoped his wits would soon return to him. Mine returned to me, and I wrote in the Universal Visitor no longer." The pub. lication ceased in about two years from its commencement.

Smart's madness, according to Dr. Johnson's account, discovered itself chiefly in unnecessary deviations from the usual modes of the world, in things that are not improper in themselves. He would fall upon his knees and say his prayers in the street, or in any unusual place, and insisted on people praying with him. His habits were also remarkably slovenly: but he had not often symptoms of dangerous Junacy, and the principal reason of his confinement was to give his constitution a chance of recovering from the effects of intemperance.

After his release, when his mind appeared to be in some measure restored, he took a pleasant lodging in the neighbourhood of St. James's Park, and conducted his affairs for some time with prudence. He was maintained partly by his lite rary occupations, and partly by the generosity of his friends, receiving among other benefactions, fifty pounds a year from the Treasury, but by whose interest his biographer was not able to discover. In 1757, he published a prose translation of the works of Horace. From this performance he could derive little fame. He professes, indeed, that he had been encouraged to think that such a translation would be useful to those who are desirous of acquiring or recovering a competent knowledge of the Latin tongue, but the injury done to learners by literal translations was at this time too generally acknowledged to allow him the full force of this apology. His sentiments on the undertaking, when he came to reflect more seriously, will appear hereafter in a letter from Dr. Hawkesworth.

In what manner he lived for some time after this, we are not told. It was in 1759 that Garrick gave him the profits of a benefit before mentioned, when it appears that he was again involved in pecuniary distresses. In 1763, he published a song to David, in which there are some passages of more majestic animation than in any of his former pieces, and others in which the expression is mean, and the sentiments unworthy of the poet or the subject. These inequalities will not, however, surprize the reader when he is told that this piece was composed by him during his confinement, when he was debarred the use of pen, ink and paper, and was obliged to indent his lines with the end of a key, upon the wainscot. This poem was not admitted into the edition of his works published in 1791, but the grandeur and originality of the following thoughts will apologize for my introducing in this place the only part of it, I have been able to recover, and for which I am in. debted to the Monthly Review.

"Sublime-invention ever young,
Of vast conception, tow'ring tongue,

To God th' eternal theme;
Notes from your exaltations caught,
Unrival'd royalty of thought,

O'er meaner strains supreme.

His muse, bright angel of his verse,
Gives balm for all the thorns that pierce,
For all the pangs that rage:

Blest light still gaining on the gloom,
The more than Michael of his bloom,
Th' Abishag of his age.

He sung of God, the mighty source

Of all things, the stupendous force
On which all strength depends;

From whose right arm, beneath whose eyes,
All period, pow'r, and enterprize
Commences, reigns, and ends.

The world, the clustering spheres he made,
The glorious light, the soothing shade
Dale, champaign, grove and hill :

The multitudinous abyss,

Where secresy remains in bliss,
And wisdom hides her skill.

Tell them, I AM, Jehovah said

To Moses while Earth heard in dread,

:

And, smitten to the heart,

At once, above, beneath, around,

All Nature, without voice, or sound,

Replied, "O Lord, THOU ART."

In the same year he published a smaller miscellany of poems on several occasions, at the conclusion of which he complains again of the Reviewers, and betrays that irritability of self conceit which is frequently observed to precede, and sometimes to accompany derangement of mind. In other respects these poems added little to his fame, and except one or two have not been reprinted.

In 1764, he published Hannah, an oratorio, the music of which was composed by Worgan, and soon after in the same year an Ode to the Earl of Northumberland, on his being appointed lord lieutenant of Ireland, with some other pieces. In all these his imagination, although occasionally fine, went often into wild excesses, and evinced that his mind had never recovered its sober tone. The following letter from Dr. Hawkesworth, already mentioned, to Mrs. Hunter, one of Smart's sisters, affords an interesting display of his general conduct and sentiments at this time.

"Dear Madam,

"I am afraid that you have before now secretly accused me, and I confess that appearances are against me: I did not, however, delay to call upon Mr. Smart, but I was unfortunate enough twice to miss him. I was the third day of my being in town seized with a fever that was then epidemic, from which I am but just recovered. I have since my being in town this second time called on my

old friend, and seen him. He received me with an ardour of kindness natural to the sensibility of his temper, and we were soon seated together by his fireside: I perceived upon his table a quarto book, in which he had been writing, a prayerbook and a Horace: after the first compliments, I said I had been at Margate, had seen his mother and his sister, who expressed great kindness for him, and made me promise to come and see him: to this he made no reply: nor did he make any enquiry after those I mentioned: he did not even mention the place, nor ask me any questions about it, or what carried me thither. After some pause, and some indifferent chat, I returned to the subject, and said that Mr. Hunter and you would be very glad to see him in Kent: to this he replied very quick,' " I cannot afford to be idle;" I said he might employ his mind as well in the country as in town, at which he only shook his head and I entirely changed the subject. Upon my asking him when we should see the Psalms, he said they were going to press immediately: as to his other undertakings, I found he had completed a translation of Phædrus in verse for Dodsley at a certain price, and that he is now busy in translating all Horace into verse, which he sometimes thinks of publishing on his own account, and sometimes of contracting for it with a bookseller: I advised him to the latter, and he then told me he was in treaty about it, and believed it would be a bargain: he told me his principal motive for translating Horace into verse, was to supersede the prose translation which he did for Newbery, which he said would hurt his memory. He intends however to review that translation, and print it at the foot of the page in his poetical version, which he proposes to print in quarto with the Latin, both in verse and prose, on the opposite page; he told me he once had thoughts of printing it by subscription, but as he had troubled his friends already, he was unwilling to do it again, and had been persuaded to publish it in numbers, which, though I rather dissuaded him, seemed at last to be the prevailing bent of his mind: he read me some of it: it is very close, and his own poetical fire sparkles in it very frequently; yet, upon the whole, it will scarcely take place of Francis's, and therefore, if it is not adopted as a school book, which perhaps may be the case, it will turn to little account. Upon mentioning his prose translation, I saw his countenance kindle, and snatching up the book, "What," says he," do you think I had for this ?" I said I could not tell." Why," says he, with great indignation, "thirteen pounds." I expressed very great asto nishment, which he seemed to think he should encrease by adding, "but, Sir, I gave a receipt for a hundred;" my astonishment however was now over, and I found that he received only thirteen pounds because the rest had been advanced for his family; this was a tender point, and I found means immediately to divert him from it.

"He is with very decent people, in a house most delightfully situated with a terrace that overlooks St. James's Park, and a door into it. He was going to dine with an old friend of my own, Mr. Richard Dalton, who has an appointment in the king's library, and if I had not been particularly engaged, I would have dined with him. He had lately received a very genteel letter from Dr. Lowth, and is by no means considered in any light that makes his company as a gentleman, a scholar, and a genius less desirable."

In his intervals of health and regularity, he still continued to write, and although

he perhaps formed too high an opinion of his effusions, he spared no labour when employed by the booksellers, and formed in conjunction with them many schemes of literary industry which he did not live to accomplish. In 1765, he published a poetical translation of the Fables of Phædrus, with the appendix of Gudius, and an accurate original text on the opposite page. This translation appears to be executed with neatness and fidelity, but has never become popular. His translation of the Psalms which followed in the same year affords a melancholy proof of want of judgment and decay of powers. Many of his psalms scarcely rise above the level of Sternhold and Hopkins, and they had the additional disadvantage of appearing at the same time with Merrick's more correct and chaste translation. In 1767, our poet executed the design hinted at in Dr. Hawkesworth's letter, by republishing his Horace, with a metrical translation, in which although we find abundance of inaccuracies, irregular rhymes and redundancies, there are some passages conceived in the true spirit of the original.

His last publication, in 1768, exhibited a more striking proof of want of judgment than any of his late performances. It was intitled the Parables of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, done into familiar verse, with occasional applications for the use of younger minds. This was dedicated to Master Bonnel George Thornton, a child of three years old, and is written in that species of verse which would be tolerated only in the nursery.

In what manner he lived during these years his biographer has not informed us: but at length he was confined for debt in the King's Bench prison, the rules of which were obtained for him by his brother-in-law Mr. Thomas Carnan. Here he died after a short illness occasioned by a disorder in his liver, May 18th, 1770 leaving two daughters who, with his widow, have long been settled at Reading, and by their prudent management of the bookselling trade, transferred to them by the late Mr. John Newbery, have been enabled to maintain a very respectable rank in life.

In 1791, a collection of his poetical pieces was formed, to which were prefixed some memoirs of his life collected from his relations. Of these much use has been made in the present sketch, but it has been found necessary to employ considerable research in supplying the want of proper dates, and other circum. stances illustrative of the literary character of a man who, with all his failings, had many amiable qualities, and certainly the genius of a real poet. Of his personal character, the following particulars yet remain to be added from the Memoirs.

"His piety was exemplary and fervent; it may not be uninteresting to the reader to be told, that Mr. Smart, in composing the religious poems, was frequently so impressed with the sentiment of devotion, as to write particular passages on his knees.

“He was friendly, affectionate, and liberal to excess; so as often to give that to others, of which he was in the utmost want himself: he was also particularly engaging in conversation, when his first shyness was worn away; which he had in common with literary men, but in a very remarkable degree. Having undertaken to introduce his wife to my Lord Darlington, with whom he was well acquainted;