my own creature, and in a very honourable post, and very worthy of it. I am much concerned His mother and sister attend for this poor "14th. I took Parnell this morning, and we walked to see poor Harrison. I had the hundred pounds in my pocket. I told Parnell I was afraid to knock at the door; my mind misgave me. I knocked, and his man in tears told me his master was dead an hour before. Think what grief this is to me! I went to his mother, and have been ordering things for his funeral with as little cost as possible, to-morrow at ten at night. Lord Treasurer was much concerned when I told him. I could not dine with Lord Treasurer, nor any where else; but got a bit of meat toward evening. No loss ever grieved me so much: poor creature! "15th. At ten this night I was at poor Harrison's funeral, which I ordered to be as private as possible. We had but one coach with four of us; and when it was carrying us home after the funeral, the braces broke, and we were forced to sit in it, and have it held up, till my man went for chairs, at eleven at night, in terrible rain. I am come home very melancholy, and will go to bed *." *Swift's Works, vol, xv. p. 382, 383. Some parts of this description appeal strongly to the heart, and the lines in Italics shew that Swift was not only active in relieving distress, where his affections were engaged, but that he was charitable from principle: a feature in his conduct which will induce us, if any thing can, to overlook the frequent shades which darken and deform his character. Mr. Harrison was the author of The Medicine, a Tale, in N° 2 of Steele's Tatler; the foundation of which, says Sir Richard," is from a real accident which happened among my acquaintance." A story, however, very similar to this in the leading circumstances, is thus related by Burton in his entertaining folio, called "The Anatomy of Melancholy:"-" An honest woman, I cannot now tell where she dwelt, but by report an honest woman she was, hearing one of her gossips by chance complaine of her husband's impatience, told her an excellent remedy for it, and gave her withall a glasse of water, which when he brawled shee should hold still in her mouth, and that toties quoties, as often as hee chid; shee did so two or three times with good successe, and at length seeing her neighbour, gave her great thanks for it, and would needs knowe the ingredients, she told her in briefe, what it was, Faire water, and no more; for it was not the water, but her silence, which performed the cure. Let every froward woman imitate this example, and be quiet within dores *." Harrison has certainly the merit of expanding and improving the tale, but with regard to his versification little commendatory can be said. Beside these verses, he was the author of some poems, which may be found in Dodsley's and Nichols's Collections. 42. Gilbert BUDGELL, the second brother of Eustace Budgell, whose life we have sketched at the commencement of the fourth part of these Essays, was the author of some elegant verses at the close of N° 591 of the Spectator. The paper to which they are appended, and which the annotators conjecture to have been the composition either of our author or his brother, is employed in detailing maxims and cases relative to the passion of love; and the poetry of Gilbert describes, with no common skill and beauty, his ardent, but almost hopeless, attachment for the fair Corinna. Some of the lines remind me of the second and third stanzas of Mrs. Barbauld's exquisite song, "Come here, fond youth, whoe'er thou be," F * Anatomy of Melancholy, Part iii. sect. iii, memb, iv. subsect 2. though the couplets of Budgell are undoubtedly much inferior in point of simplicity and taste. 43. HENRY BLAND, D. D. first headmaster of Eton school, then provost of the College, and afterwards dean of Durham, was the author of a most faithful and elegant Latin translation of Cato's soliloquy, inserted in N° 628 of the Spectator. It had usually been attributed to Bishop Atterbury, until Mr. Walpole assured Mr. Nichols "that it was the work of Bland, and that he had more than once heard his father, Sir Robert Walpole, say, that it was he himself who gave that translation to Mr. Addison, who was extremely surprised at the fidelity and beauty of it *." 44. CHARLES DARTIQUENAVE, or, as his name is commonly spelled, Dartineuf, the convivial friend of Swift, Steele, and Addison, was celebrated as an epicure and a punster. "He was," say the annotators, undoubtedly a writer in *Spectator, vol. viii. p. 351, note by Mr. Nichols, 8vo. edit. of 1797. I find that I have not been correct in ascribing a translation of this soliloquy, in vol. i. p. 362, to Atterbury as well as to Bland; a mistake into which I was probably led by a too hasty comparison of the Biographia Britannica with the Variorum edition of the Spectator. the Tatler, though his papers cannot at present be ascertained." Dartiquenave was paymaster of the works; and his connoisseurship in the culinary art, and his labours at the table, have been recorded by Lord Lyttleton, one of whose "Dialogues of the Dead" is between Apicius, an ancient epicure, and Dartineuf, a modern epicure. Of this luxurious mortal the following notice has escaped Swift in his Journal to Stella: "Darteneuf invited me to dinner to-day. Do not you know Darteneuf? That is the man that knows every thing, and that every body knows; and that knows where a knot of rabble are going on a holiday, and when they were there last *.” It is not probable that many of my readers will be anxious to ascertain the compositions of a man who appears to have been so completely a slave to the grossest of appetites. 45. RICHARD INCE was educated at Westminster; on leaving which school he became a student of Christ's church, Oxford. That he was a contributor to the Spectator we have the testimony of Steele himself, who, at the conclusion of N° 555, has added the following postscript: "It had not come to my knowledge, when I left off the Spectator, that I owe several excellent sentiments *Swift's Works, vol. xiv. p. 384. |