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EDWARD MOORE was the son of a dissenting clergyman at Abingdon, in Berkshire, and was bred to the business of a linen-draper, which he pursued, however, both in London and Ireland, with so little success, that he embraced the literary life (according to his own account) more from necessity than inclination. His Fables (in 1744) first brought him into notice. The Right Honourable Mr. Pelham was one of his earliest friends; and his Trial of Selim gained him the friendship of Lord Lyttelton. Of three works which he produced for the stage, his two comedies, the "Foundling" and "Gil Blas," were unsuccessful; but he was fully indemnified by the profits and reputation of the "Gamester." Moore himself acknowledges that he owed to Garrick many popular passages of his drama; and Davies, the biographer of Garrick, ascribes

to the great actor the whole scene between Lewson and Stukely, in the fourth act; but Davies's authority is not oracular. About the year 1751, Lord Lyttelton, in concert with Dodsley, projected the paper of the "World," of which it was agreed that Moore should enjoy the profits, whether the numbers were written by himself or by volunteer contributors. Lyttelton's interest soon enlisted many accomplished coadjutors, such as Cambridge, Jenyns, Lord Chesterfield, and H. Walpole. Moore himself wrote sixty-one of the papers. In the last number of the " World" the conclusion is made to depend on a fictitious incident which had occasioned the death of the author. When the papers were collected into volumes, Moore, who superintended the publication, realized this jocular fiction by his own death, whilst the last number was in the press.*

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Is it with you she rests? No. Int'rest, slander are your views, And Virtue now, with every Muse, Flies your un hallow'd breasts.

There was a time, I heard her say,
Ere females were seduced by play,
When beauty was her throne;
But now, where dwelt the soft Desires,
The furies light forbidden fires,

To Love and her unknown.

From these th' indignant goddess flies,'
And where the spires of Science rise,
A while suspends her wing;
But pedant Pride and Rage are there,
And Faction tainting all the air,

And pois'ning every spring.

Long through the sky's wide pathless way
The Muse observed the wand'rer stray,

And mark'd her last retreat;
O'er Surrey's barren heaths she flew,
Descending like the silent dew
On Esher's peaceful seat.

There she beholds the gentle Mole
His pensive waters calmly roll,

Amidst Elysian ground:

There through the winding of the grove
She leads her family of Love,

And strews her sweets around.

I hear her bid the daughters fair
Oft to yon gloomy grot repair,

Her secret steps to meet:

"Nor thou," she cries, "these shades forsake, But come, loved consort, come and make The husband's bliss complete."

Yet not too much the soothing ease
Of rural indolence shall please

My Pelham's ardent breast;
The man whom Virtue calls her own
Must stand the pillar of a throne,
And make a nation bless'd.
Pelham! 'tis thine with temp'rate zeal
To guard Britannia's public weal,
Attack'd on every part:
Her fatal discords to compose,
Unite her friends, disarm her foes,
Demands thy head and heart.

When bold Rebellion shook the land,
Ere yet from William's dauntless hand
Her barbarous army fled;

When Valour droop'd, and Wisdom fear'd,

Thy voice expiring Credit heard, And raised her languid head.

Now by thy strong assisting hand, Fix'd on a rock I see her stand,

Against whose solid feet,

In vain, through every future age, The loudest most tempestuous rage Of angry war shall beat.

And grieve not if the sons of Strife
Attempt to cloud thy spotless life,

And shade its brightest scenes;
Wretches by kindness unsubdued,
Who see, who share the common good,
Yet cavil at the means.

Like these, the metaphysic crew,
Proud to be singular and new,

Think all they see deceit;
Are warm'd and cherish'd by the day,
Feel and enjoy the heavenly ray,

Yet doubt of light and heat.

THE HAPPY MARRIAGE.

How blest has my time been! what joys have I known,

Since wedlock's soft bondage made Jessy my own!
So joyful my heart is, so easy my chain,
That freedom is tasteless and roving a pain.

Through walks grown with woodbines, as often we stray,

Around us our boys and girls frolic and play:
How pleasing their sport is! the wanton ones see,
And borrow their looks from my Jessy and me.

To try her sweet temper, ofttimes am I seen,
In revels all day with the nymphs on the green:
Though painful my absence, my doubts she be-
guiles,

And meets me at night with complacence and smiles.

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JOHN DYER.

[Born, 1700. Died, 1758.]

DYER was the son of a solicitor at Aberglasney, in Caermarthenshire. He was educated at Westminster school, and returned from thence to be instructed in his father's profession, but left it for poetry and painting; and, having studied the arts of design under a master, was for some time, as he says, an itinerant painter in Wales. Dividing his affections, however, between the sister Muses he indited (1726) his Grongar Hill amidst those excursions. It was published about his twenty-seventh year. He afterward made the tour of Italy in the spirit both of an artist and

poet, and, besides studying pictures and prospects, composed a poem on the Ruins of Rome. On his return to England he married a lady of the name of Ensor, a descendant of Shakspeare, retired into the country, and entered into orders. His last preferment was to the living of Kirkely on Bane. The witticism on his " Fleece," related by Dr. Johnson, that its author, if he was an old man, would be buried in woollen, has, perhaps, been oftener repeated than any passage in the poem itself.

GRONGAR HILL.

SILENT nymph, with curious eye! Who, the purple evening, lie On the mountain's lonely van, Beyond the noise of busy man; Painting fair the form of things, While the yellow linnet sings; Or the tuneful nightingale Charms the forest with her tale; Come, with all thy various hues, Come, and aid thy sister Muse; Now, while Phoebus riding high Gives lustre to the land and sky! Grongar Hill invites my song, Draw the landscape bright and strong; Grongar, in whose mossy cells, Sweetly musing, Quiet dwells; Grongar, in whose silent shade, For the modest Muses made, So oft I have, the evening still, At the fountain of a rill,

Sat upon a flow'ry bed,

With my hand beneath my head;

While stray'd my eyes o'er Towy's flood,
Over mead, and over wood,

From house to house, from hill to hill,
Till contemplation had her fill.

About his chequer'd sides I wind,
And leave his brooks and meads behind,
And groves, and grottos where I lay,
And vistas shooting beams of day:
Wide and wider spreads the vale;
As circles on a smooth canal:
The mountains round, unhappy fate,
Sooner or later, of all height,

Withdraw their summits from the skies, And lessen as the others rise:

Still the prospect wider spreads,

Adds a thousand woods and meads;

Still it widens, widens still,

And sinks the newly-risen hill.

[* In Lewis' Miscellanies, 1726.]

61

Now I gain the mountain's brow.
What a landscape lies below!
No clouds, no vapours intervene ;
But the gay, the open scene,
Does the face of nature show,
In all the hues of heaven's bow;
And, swelling to embrace the light,
Spreads around, beneath the sight.

Old castles on the cliffs arise,
Proudly towering in the skies!
Rushing from the woods, the spires
Seem from hence ascending fires!
Half his beams Apollo sheds
On the yellow mountain-heads!
Gilds the fleeces of the flocks,
And glitters on the broken rocks!

Below me trees unnumber'd rise,
Beautiful in various dyes:
The gloomy pine, the poplar blue,
The yellow beech, the sable yew,
The slender fir, that taper grows,

The sturdy oak with broad-spread boughs.
And beyond the purple grove,
Haunt of Phyllis, queen of love!
Gaudy as the opening dawn,
Lies a long and level lawn,

On which a dark hill, steep and high,
Holds and charms the wandering eye!
Deep are his feet in Towy's flood,
His sides are clothed with waving wood,
And ancient towers crown his brow,
That cast an awful look below;
Whose ragged walls the ivy creeps,
And with her arms from falling keeps:
So both a safety from the wind
On mutal dependence find.

"Tis now the raven's bleak abode;
'Tis now th' apartment of the toad;
And there the fox securely feeds;
And there the poisonous adder breeds,
Conceal'd in ruins, moss, and weeds;
While, ever and anon, there falls
Huge heaps of hoary moulder'd walls.
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Yet time has seen, that lifts the low,
And level lays the lofty brow,
Has seen this broken pile complete,
Big with the vanity of state;

But transient is the smile of fate!
A little rule, a little sway,
A sunbeam in a winter's day,
Is all the proud and mighty have
Between the cradle and the grave.

And see the rivers how they run,
Through woods and meads, in shade and sun,
Sometimes swift, sometimes slow,
Wave succeeding wave, they go
A various journey to the deep,
Like human life, to endless sleep!
Thus is nature's vesture wrought,
To instruct our wandering thought;
Thus she dresses green and gay,
To disperse our cares away.*

Ever charming, ever new,
When will the landscape tire the view!
The fountain's fall, the river's flow,
The woody valleys, warm and low;
The windy summit, wild and high,
Roughly rushing on the sky!
The pleasant seat, the ruin'd tower,
The naked rock, the shady bower;
The town and village, dome and farm,
Each give each a double charm,
As pearls upon an Ethiop's arm.

See on the mountain's southern side,
Where the prospect opens wide,
Where the evening gilds the tide;
How close and small the hedges lie!
What streaks of meadows cross the eye!
A step methinks may pass the stream,
So little distant dangers seem;

So we mistake the future's face,
Eyed through hope's deluding glass;
As yon summits soft and fair,
Clad in colours of the air,
Which, to those who journey near,
Barren, brown, and rough appear;
Still we tread the same coarse way,
The present's still a cloudy day.†

O may I with myself agree,
And never covet what I see:
Content me with an humble shade,
My passions tamed, my wishes laid;
For, while our wishes wildly roll,
We banish quiet from the soul:
'Tis thus the busy beat the air,
And misers gather wealth and care.
Now, ev'n now, my joys run high,
As on the mountain-turf I lie;
While the wanton zephyr sings,
And in the vale perfumes his wings:
While the waters murmur deep;
While the shepherd charms his sheep;
While the birds unbounded fly,
And with music fill the sky,
Now, even now, my joys run high.

Be full, ye courts; be great who will; Search for peace with all your skill; Open wide the lofty door,

Seek her on the marble floor;
In vain you search, she is not there;
In vain ye search the domes of care!
Grass and flowers Quiet treads,
On the meads and mountain-heads,
Along with Pleasure, close allied,
Ever by each other's side:

And often, by the murmuring rill,
Hears the thrush, while all is still,
Within the groves of Grongar Hill.

ALLAN RAMSAY.

[Born, 1686. Died, 1757.]

THE personal history of Allan Ramsay is marked by few circumstances of striking interest; yet, independently of his poetry, he cannot be reckoned an insignificant individual who gave Scotland her first circulating library, and who established her first regular theatre. He was born in the parish of Crawford Moor, in Lanarkshire, where his father had the charge of Lord Hopeton's lead-mines. His mother, Alice Bower, was the daughter of an Englishman who had emigrated to that place from Derbyshire. By his paternal descent the poet boasts of having

[* See Byron's remark on this passage. Life and Works, vol. vi. p. 365.]

[t Lord Byron asks, (vol. vi. p. 366,) "Is not this the original of Mr. Campbell's far-famed,

'Tis distance lends enchantment to the view,
And robes the mountain in its azure hue?"

We answer for Mr. Campbell, decidedly not!]

Apropos to this delicate distinction of the Scottish biographer may be mentioned the advertisement of a

sprung from "a Douglas loin;" but, owing to the early death of his father, his education was con fined to a parish-school, and at the age of fifteen he was bound apprentice to the humble business of a wig-maker. On this subject one of his Scottish biographers refutes, with some indignation, a report which had gone abroad, that our poet was bred a barber, and carefully instructs the reader, that in those good times, when a fashionable wig cost twenty guineas, the employ ment of manufacturing them was both lucrative and creditable. Ramsay, however, seems to have

French perruquier in the Palais Royal, who ranks his business among the "imitative arts." A London artist in the same profession had a similar jealousy with the historian of Ramsay's life, at the idea of mere trimmer of the human face" being confounded with "genuine" perruquiers." In advertising his crop-wigs he alluded to some wig-weaving competitors, whom he denominated "mere hair-dressers and barbers;" and "shall a barber (he exclaims) affect to rival these crops?" "Barbarus has segetes."-VIRGIL.

felt no ambition either for the honours or profits of the vocation, as he left it on finishing his apprenticeship. In his twenty-fourth y year he married the daughter of a writer, or attorney, in Edinburgh. His eldest son* rose to well-known eminence as a painter. Our poet's first means of subsistence after his marriage, were to publish small poetical productions in a cheap form, which became so popular, that even in this humble sale he was obliged to call upon the magistrates to protect his literary property from the piracy of the hawkers. He afterward set up as a bookseller, and published, at his own shop, a new edition of "Christ's Kirk on the Green," with two cantos of his own subjoined to the ancient original, which is ascribed to James I. of Scotland. A passage in one of those modern cantos of Ramsay's describing a husband fascinated homewards from a scene of drunkenness by the gentle persuasions of his wife, has been tastefully selected by Wilkie, and been made the subject of his admirable pencil.

In 1724 he published a collection of popular Scottish songs, called the Tea-Table Miscellany, which speedily ran through twelve impressions. Ruddiman assisted him in the glossary, and Hamilton of Bangoor, Crawfurd, and Mallet were among the contributors to his modern songs. In the same year appeared his Evergreen, a collection of pieces from the Bannatyne MSS. written before the year 1600. Here the vanity of adorning what it was his duty to have faithfully transcribed led him to take many liberties with the originals; and it is pretty clear that one poem, viz. the Vision, which he pretended to have found in ancient manuscript, was the fruit of his own brain.

But the Vision, considered as his own, adds a plume to his poetical character which may overshade his defects as an editor.

In 1726 he published his Gentle Shepherd. The first rudiments of that pleasing drama had been given to the public in two pastoral dialogues, which were so much liked that his friends exhorted him to extend them into a regular play. The reception of this piece soon extended his reputation beyond Scotland. His works were reprinted at Dublin, and became popular in the colonies. Pope was known to admire The Gentle Shepherd; and Gay, when he was in Scotland,

* This son of the poet was a man of literature as well as genius. The following whimsical specimen of his poetry is subjoined as a curiosity. The humorous substitution of the kirk-treasury man for Horace's wolf, in the third stanza. will only be recognised by those who understand the importance of that ecclesiastical officer in Scotland, and the powers with which he is invested for summoning delinquents before the clergy and elders, in cases of illegitimate love.

HORACE'S "INTEGER VITÆ,” &c.

BY ALLAN RAMSAY, JUN.

A man of no base (John) life or conversation,
Needs not to trust in, coat of mail nor buffskin,
Nor need he vapour, with the sword and rapier,
Pistol, or great gun.
Whether he ranges, eastward to the Ganges,
Or if he bends his course to the West Indies,
Or sail the Sea Red, which so many strange odd
Stories are told of.

at

| sought for explanations of its phrases, that he might communicate them to his friend Twickenham. Ramsay's shop was a great resort of the congenial fabulist while he remained in Edinburgh; and from its windows, which overlooked the Exchange, the Scottish poet used to point out to Gay the most remarkable characters of the place.

A second volume of his poems appeared in 1728; and in 1730 he published a collection of fables. His epistles in the former volume are generally indifferent; but there is one addressed to the poet Somervile, which contains some easy lines. Professing to write from nature more than art, he compares, with some beauty, the rude style which he loved and practised, to a neglected orchard.

I love the garden wild and wide,

Where oaks have pium-trees by their side,
Where woodbines and the twisting vine
Clip round the pear-tree and the pine:
Where mixt jonquils and gowanst grow,
And roses midst rank clover blow,
Upon a bank of a clear strand,

Its wimplings led by nature's hand;
Though docks and brambles here and there,
May sometimes cheat the gard'ner's care,
Yet this to me's a Paradise,
Compared to prime cut plots and nice,
Where nature has to art resign'd,

And all looks stiff, mean, and confined.

Of original poets he says, in one expressive couplet:

The native bards first plunged the deep,
Before the artful dared to leap.

About the age of forty-five he ceased to write for the public. The most remarkable circumstance of his life was an attempt which he made to establish a theatre in Edinburgh. Our poet had been always fond of the drama, and had occasionally supplied prologues to the players who visited the northern capital. But though the age of fanaticism was wearing away, it had not yet suffered the drama to have a settled place of exhibition in Scotland; and when Ramsay had, with great expense, in the year 1736, fitted up a theatre in Carubber's Close, the act for licensing the stage, which was passed in the following year, gave the magistrates of Edinburgh a power of shutting it up, which they exerted with gloomy severity. Such was the popular hatred of playhouses in Scotland at this period, that, some time

For but last Monday, walking at noon-day,
Conning a ditty, to divert my Betty,
By me that son's Turk (I not frighted) our Kirk-
Treasurer's man pass'd,

And sure more horrid monster in the torrid-
Zone ne'er was found, Sir, though for snakes renown'd, Sir,
Nor can great Peter's empire boast such creatures,
Th'of bears the wet nurse

Should I buy hap land on the coast of Lapland,
Where there no fir is, much less pears and cherries,
Where stormy weather's sold by hags, whose leather-
faces would fright one.

Place me where tea grows, or where sooty negroes,
Sheep's guts round tie them, lest the sun should fry them,
Still while my Betty smiles and talks so pretty,
I will adore her.
† Daisies.

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