go to some place where he is not known: Don't let him go to the devil, where he is known."-JOHNSON, SAMUEL, 1773, Life by Boswell. From the fate of this misguided man a useful lesson may be drawn; though possessed of considerable abilities, of a competent fortune, of great and powerful connections, and admired and respected in the early period of his life, the pride of self-opinion, and the fury of ungoverned resentment, blasted all his hopes and views, and gradually led him into the commission of errors and extravagances, which at length terminated in gaming, forgery, infidelity, and suicide. -DRAKE, NATHAN, 1804-14, Essays, Illustrative of the Tatler, Spectator, and Guardian, vol. III, p. 17. A man of extreme vanity and vindictive feeling. CHAMBERS, ROBERT, 1876, Cyclopædia of English Literature, ed. Carruthers. GENERAL As an author where he does not speak of himself, and does not give a loose to his vanity, he is a very agreeable and deserving writer; not argumentative or deep; but very ingenious and entertaining; and his stile is peculiarly elegant, so as to deserve being ranked in that respect with Addison's, and is superior to most of the other English writers.-CIBBER, THEOPHILUS, 1753, Lives of the Poets, vol. v, p. 14. He told us that "Addison wrote Budgell's papers in 'The Spectator;' at least mended them so much, that he made them almost his own; and that Draper, Tonson's partner, assured Mrs. Johnson, that the much admired Epilogue to "The Distressed Mother,' which came out in Budgell's name, was in reality written by Addison." -JOHNSON, SAMUEL, 1776, Life by Boswell, ed. Hill, vol. III, p. 53. Budgell was a man of lively talents, a good taste, and a well informed mind. In vigour of intellect he was inferior to Steele, but superior to him in elegant learning. BISSET, ROBERT, 1793, A Biographical Sketch of the Authors of the Spectator, p. 215. However erroneous or vicious we may esteem the conduct of Budgell, it is with pleasure that we can mention his contributions to the Spectator and Guardian, as displaying both the cheerfulness and gaiety of an innocent mind, and the best and soundest precepts of morality and religion. At the time of their composition, indeed, he was more directly under the influence and direction of his accomplished relation than at any subsequent period of his life, and he then possessed the laudable ambition of doing all that might render him worthy of his affection and support.-DRAKE, NATHAN, 1804-14. Essays, Illustrative of the Tatler, Spectator and Guardian, vol. III, p. 24. Budgell was a rough, vigorous, dissipated barrister, who preferred making a figure in the coffee-houses and in literature to the practice of his profession. His humour is comparatively obstreperous, of the Defoe and Macaulay type, which the French seem to consider peculiarly English. It is genial rather from the author's hearty enjoyment of the fun he is making than from any sympathy with the objects of his derision. -MINTO, WILLIAM, 1872-80, Manual of English Prose Literature, p. 404. Thirty-seven numbers of the "Spectator" are ascribed to Budgell; and though Dr. Johnson says that these were either written by Addison, or so much improved by him that they were made in a manner his own, there seems to be no sufficient authority for the assertion. It is true that the style and humour resemble those of Addison; but as the two writers were much together, a successful attempt on Budgell's part to imitate the productions of his friend, was probable enough.CHAMBERS, ROBERT, 1876, Cyclopædia of English Literature, ed. Carruthers. He shared Addison's lodgings during the last years of Queen Anne, and took a considerable part in the "Spectator." Thirty-seven papers are ascribed to him. They are palpable imitations of Addison's manner. One of them (No. 116) is an account of Sir Roger de Coverley in the hunting-field. Johnson mentions a report that Addison had "mended them so much that they were almost his own." It was also said that Addison was also the real author of an epilogue to Ambrose Philip's "Distressed Mother," the "most successful ever spoken in an English theatre;" and had Budgell's name substituted for his own at the last moment, to strengthen his young cousin's claims to a place.STEPHEN, LESLIE, 1886, Dictionary of National Biography, vol. VII, p. 224. John Strype John Strype was the son of a German refugee who fled to England on account of his religion, and there followed the business of a silk merchant. The son was born in London, in 1643, and educated at Catherine Hall, Cambridge. At that university, and also at Oxford, he took his master's degree, in 1671. Entering into orders, he became successively curate of Theydon-Boys, in Essex, preacher in Low Leyton, rector of Terring, in Sussex, and lecturer at Hackney. He resigned his clerical charges in 1724, and from that time till his death, which occurred in 1737, he resided at Hackney, with an apothecary, who had married his grand-daughter. Strype was an industrious and even laborious collector of literary antiquities. His works afford ample illustrations of ecclesiastical history and biography, at periods of deep national interest and importance, and they are now ranked among the most valuable of English standard memorials. His writings consist of a "Life of Archbishop Cranmer;" a "Life of Sir Thomas Smith;" a "Life of Bishop Aylmer;" a "Life of Sir John Cheke;" "Annals of the Reformation," in four volumes; a "Life of Archbishop Grindal;" "Life and Letters of Archbishop Parker;" "Life of Archbishop Whitgift;" and "Ecclesiastical Memorials," in three volumes. He also edited Stow's "Survey of London," and part of Dr. Lightfoot's works.-MILLS, ABRAHAM, 1851, The Literature and the Literary Men of Great Britain and Ireland, vol. II, p. 234. GENERAL Of Strype, it would be impossible to speak too highly. His labours have supplied us with some of the most necessary, as well as instructive, portions of Church history. . . A writer, who, all fidelity, and honest and honourable in the letter and spirit of every thing which he wrote, seems, nevertheless, too frequently to have been under the influence of a somnolency which it was impossible to shake off. Strype is a fine, solid, instructive fellow, for a large arm chair, in a gothic study, before a winter's fire; but you must not deposit him on the shelves of your Tusculum-to be carried to rustic seats in arbours and bowers; by the side of gurgling streams or rushing cascades. There is neither fancy, nor brilliancy, nor buoyancy, about him; he is a sage to consult, rather than a companion to enliven.-DIBDIN, THOMAS FROGNALL, 1824, The Library Companion, pp. 117, note, 516. Honest John Strype.-HALLAM, HENRY, 1837-39, Introduction to the Literature of Europe, pt. i, ch. v, par. 25, note. I have no wish to cavil at what Strype says, and I think no one feels more strongly than I do the value of his work; but really it is one great inconvenience of the careless way in which he wrote, that one cannot bring one passage to correct another, without a high probability of its containing something in itself which needs correction. We are certainly much indebted to Strype for publishing many manuscripts which he found in old collections, but we must receive what he says of them, and from them, with a constant recollection that, in his estimation, one old manuscript appears to have been about as good as another.-MAITLAND, SAMUEL ROFFEY, 1849-99, Essays on Subjects Connected with the Reformation in England, ed. Hutton, pp. 31, note, 47. His works have been printed in 27 vols., 8vo. and though valuable as store houses of information, are of the Dryasdust order.-HART, JOHN S., 1872, A Manual of English Literature, p. 255. The most famous antiquary of the period.-MINTO, WILLIAM, 1872-80, Manual af English Prose Literature, p. 403. Strype's lack of literary style, unskilful selection of materials, and unmethodical arrangement render his books tiresome to the last degree. Even in his own day his cumbrous appendixes caused him to be nicknamed the "appendix-monger. His want of critical faculty led him into serious errors, such as the attribution of Edward VI of the foundation of many schools which had existed long before that king's reign. . To students of the ecclesiastical and political history of England in the sixteenth century the vast accumulations of facts and documents of which his books consist render them of the utmost value.-GOODWIN, GORDON, 1898, Dictionary of National Biography, vol. LV, p. 68. . Matthew Green 1696-1737 Matthew Green was born in 1696, and died in 1737; held a position in the Custom House; and was distinguished as a poet and wit. He wrote "The Grotto," and other poems; but his most noted production is "The Spleen," whose cheerful, thoughtful octosyllabics dealt with remedy for the depression of spirits which was said to have its source in the spleen. -MORLEY, HENRY, 1879, A Manual of English Literature, ed. Tyler, p. 546. PERSONAL We find that he had obtained a place in the Custom house, the duties of which he is said to have discharged with great diligence and fidelity. It is further attested, that he was a man of great probity and sweetness of disposition, and that his conversation abounded with wit, but of the most inoffensive kind. He seems to have been subject to low spirits, as a relief from which he composed his principal poem, "The Spleen."-AIKIN, JOHN, 1820, Select Works of the British Poets. THE SPLEEN 1737 His poem, "The Spleen," was never published during his lifetime. Glover, his warm friend, presented it to the world after his death; and it is much to be regretted, did not prefix any account of its interesting author. It was originally a very short copy of verses, and was gradually and piecemeal increased. Pope speedily noticed its merit, Melmoth praised its strong originality in Fitzosborne's Letters, and Gray duly commended it in his correspondence with Walpole, when it appeared in Dodsley's collection. In that walk of poetry, where Fancy aspires no further than to go hand in hand with common sense, its merit is certainly unrivalled. - CAMPBELL, THOMAS, 1819, Specimens of the British Poets. Such is this singular poem on the "Spleen," which few persons, it is imagined, will once read, without frequent re-perusals, every one of which will be repaid by new discoveries of uncommon and ingenious turns of thought. It possesses that undoubted mark of excellence, the faculty of impressing the memory with many of its strong sentiments and original images: and perhaps not more lines of "Hudibras" itself have been retained by its admirers, than of this poem.-AIKIN, JOHN, 1820, An Essay on the Poems of Green. Something of the quaker may be observable in the stiffness of his versification, and its excessive endeavors to be succinct. His style has also the fault of beng occasionally obscure; and his wit is sometimes more labored than finished. But all that he says is worth attending to. His thoughts are the result of his own feeling and experience; his opinions rational and cheerful, if not very lofty; his warnings against meddling with superhuman mysteries admirable; and he is remarkable for the brevity and originality of his similes. He is of the school of Butler; and it may be affirmed of him as a rare honor, that no man since Butler has put so much wit and reflection into the same compass of lines.-HUNT, LEIGH, 1846, Wit and Humor, p. 242. "The Spleen," a reflective effusion in octosyllabic verse, is somewhat striking from an air of originality in the vein of thought, and from the labored concentration and epigrammatic point of the language; but, although it was much cried up when it first appeared, and the laudation has continued to be duly echoed by succeeding formal criticism, it may be doubted if many readers could now make their way through it without considerable fatigue, or if it be much read in fact at all. With all its ingenious or energetic rhetorical posture-making, it has nearly as little real play of fancy as charm of numbers, and may be most properly characterized as a piece of bastard or perverted Hudibrastic, -an imitation of the manner of Butler to the very dance of his verse, only without the comedy,-the same antics, only solemnized or made to carry a moral and serious meaning.-CRAIK, GEORGE L., 1861, A Compendious History of English Literature and of the English Language, vol. II, p. 275. Green suffered really or poetically from the fashionable eighteenth-century disorder which Pope has so well described in "The Rape of the Lock," and in this "motley piece," as he calls it, he sets forth the various expedients which he employed to evade his enemy. Taken altogether, his precepts constitute a code. of philosophy not unlike that advocated in more than one of the Odes of Horace. To observe the religion of the body; to cultivate cheerfulness and calm; to keep a middle course, and possess his soul in quiet; content, as regards the future, to ignore what Heaven withholds,—such are the chief features of his plan. But, in developing his principles he takes occasion to deal many a side-long stroke at imperfect humanity, and not always at those things only which are opposed to his theory of conduct. Female education, faction, law, religious sects, reform, speculation, place-hunting, poetry, ambition,all these are briefly touched and seldom left unmarked by some quivering shaft of ridicule. Towards the end of the poem comes an ideal picture of rural retirement, which may be compared with the joint version by Pope and Swift of Horace's sixth satire in the second book; and the whole closes with the writer's views upon immorality and a summary of his practice. Regarded as a whole, we can recall few discursive poems which contain so much compact expression and witty illustration. The author was evidently shrewd and observant, and unusually gifted in the detection of grotesque aspects and remote affinities.-DOBSON, AUSTIN, 1880, English Poets, ed. Ward, vol. II, p. 195. He is remembered by his poem of "The Spleen;" less known than it deserves to be to modern readers. It contains less than nine hundred lines; is full of happy expressions, and evidently the production of a profound, original, and independent thinker.-SARGENT, EPES, 1880-81, Harper's Cyclopædia of British and American Poetry, p. 154. It was one of the most original works of the day; and I am not sure that anything so good, of the same kind, is to be found in our later literature. There is something of the humour of Butler in its fluent and yet vigorous octosyllabic couplets; but the character of the thought and its mode of expression are Green's own. He was almost Pope's equal in the art of packing a thought into terse and pithy phrases. ADAMS, W. H. DAVENPORT, 1886, Good Queen Anne, vol. II, p. 351. In style and temper he was astonishingly like his French contemporary, J. B. L. Gresset (1709-1777), whose poems, first printed in 1734, it is needless to say Green had never heard of. He is a master of refined philosophic wit and gentle persiflage; his delicate raillery is without the least element of rancour; he addresses a little circle of private friends, and is charming because so easy, natural, and sincere. It calls forth the reader's surprise to note how wide a range of reflection Green's little poem moves across, yet whatever his witty muse touches she adorns. The originality of Matthew Green, the fact that he never wastes a line by repeating a commonplace, together with his fine cheerfulness as of a Jabez, desiring neither poverty nor riches, makes us regret that he left so little behind him, and so narrowly escaped the poppy of oblivion.-GOSSE, EDMUND, 1888, A History of Eighteenth Century Literature, pp. 216, 217. The "Spleen, " written in Swift's favourite octosyllabic metre, is one of the best poems of its class.-STEPHEN, raphy, vol. XXIII, p. 51. LESLIE, 1890, Dictionary of National Biog GENERAL All there is of M. Green here, has been printed before; there is a profusion of wit everywhere; reading would have formed his judgment, and harmonised his verse, for even his wood-notes often break out into strains of real poetry and music. GRAY, THOMAS, 1751, Letter to Horace Walpole. We incline to think that if it be not, as a whole, a poem, it sparkles, at least, with some genuine poetry. We are far from wishing to exalt Green to the topmost summits of Parnassus, but surely the critic who praised Blackmore, and Pitt, and "Rag Smith" might have spared a word and a smile for the many poetical and brilliant thoughts to be found in the "Spleen." Green's chief power, however, lay not in imagination, nor perhaps even in art, so much as in keen, strong sense, which he has the power, too, of shaping into the most condensed couplets and sharp-edged lines. when he read the "Spleen," said "there was a great deal of originality in it." There are, here and there, indeed, traces Pope, of resemblance to "Hudibras" and to "Alma," but on the whole, Green has a brain, an eye, and a tongue of his owna brain piercing if not profound-an eye clear if not comprehensive-and an utterance terse and vigorous, if not grand and lyrical. GILFILLAN, GEORGE, 1858, ed., The Poetical Works of Armstrong, Dyer and Green, pp, 236, 237, 238. A poet of whimsical and dainty vein, who wrote with great sprightliness of humor and lightness of touch.-MINTO, WILLIAM, 1894, The Literature of the Georgian Era, ed. Knight, p. 129. Elizabeth Rowe 1674-1737 Miscellaneous writer, was the daughter of a dissenting minister at Ilchester, where she was born in 1674. She was married to Thomas Rowe, a young littérateur, who lived a few years after; upon which she retired to Frome, where she resided for the remainder of her life. Her principal works are, "Friendship in Death," "Letters, Morals and Entertaining," and "Devout Exercises of the Heart." Died, 1737.— CATES, WILLIAM L. R., 1867, ed., A Dictionary of General Biography, p. 975. PERSONAL She had the happiest command over her passions, and maintained a constant calmness of temper, and sweetness of disposition, that could not be ruffled by adverse accidents. She was in the utmost degree an enemy to ill-natured satire and detraction; she was as much unacquainted with envy, as if it had been impossible for so base a passion to enter into the human mind. She had few equals in conversation; her wit was lively, and she expressed her thoughts in the most beautiful and flowing eloquence.-CIBBER, THEOPHILUS, 1753, Lives of the Poets, vol. IV, p. 340. This highly accomplished woman had a great share of all the personal charms that awaken love, as she had all the virtues to rivet it. Her stature was of the true standard; her hair of the most pleasing colour; and her eyes were inclined to blue, and full of fire: her complexion was fair, and often suffused by a modest blush; her voice was soft, as her manners were gentle in short, she was all that man can form an idea of excellence and beauty. NOBLE, MARK, 1806, A Biographical History of England, vol. III, p. 310. -- She made it her duty to soften the anxieties, and heighten all the satisfactions, of his life. Her capacity for superior things did not tempt her to neglect the less honourable cares which the laws of custom and decency impose on the female sex, in the connubial state; and much less was she led by a sense of her own merit, to assume anything to herself inconsistent with that duty and submission which the precepts of Christian piety so expressly enjoin. -HALE, SARAH JOSEPHA, 1852, Woman's Record, p. 493. GENERAL Let all my pow'rs, with awe profound, Attend the rapture of the sound, I have just finished Mrs Rowe's "Letters from the Dead to the Living❞—and moral and entertaining,-I had heard a great deal of them before I saw them, and am sorry to tell you I was much disappointed with them: they are so very enthusiastick, that the religion she preaches rather disgusts and cloys than charms and elevates-and so romantick, that every word betrays improbability, instead of disguising fiction, and displays the Author, instead of human nature. BURNEY, FRANCES, 1768, Early Diary, ed. Ellis, vol. 1, p. 8. So Her strongest bent was to poetry. prevalent was her genius this way, that her very prose hath all the charms of verse without the fetters; the same fire and elevation, the same bright images, bold figures, and rich and flowing diction. She could hardly write a single letter but it bore the stamp of the poet.-BURDER, SAMUEL, 1815-34, Memoirs of Eminently Pious Women, p. 222. In the year 1736, Mrs. Rowe published her poem, called "The History of Joseph, to which, at the urgent request of her friend Lady Hertford, she afterwards wrote a sequel, in two books, which was published early in 1737. In this poem |