There he stopt short, nor since has writ a tittle, Now he begs Verse, and what he gets commends, So some coarse Country Wench, almost decay'd, In a translated Suit, then tries the Town, But just endur'd the Winter she began, And in four Months, a batter'd Harridan. Now nothing's left, but, wither'd, pale, and shrunk, To bawd for others, and go Shares with Punk." WEST.. Educated at Eton and Oxford 1700 ?-1756. Marries, and retires to Wickham in Kent Translates Pindar, and publishes Observations on the Resurrection' His Friendship with Lyttelton and Pitt Death and Burial at Wickham Works and Character. - GILBERT WEST is one of the writers of whom I regret my inability to give a sufficient account; the intelligence which my inquiries have obtained is general and scanty. He was the son of the Reverend Dr. West; perhaps him who published 'Pindar' at Oxford about the beginning of this century. His mother was sister to Sir Richard Temple, afterwards Lord Cobham. His father purposing to educate him for the Church, sent him first to Eton, and afterwards to Oxford; but he was seduced to a more airy mode of life, by a commission in a troop of horse procured him by his uncle. He continued some time in the army; though it is reasonable to suppose that he never sunk into a mere soldier, nor ever lost the love or much neglected the pursuit of learning; and afterwards, finding himself more inclined to civil employment, he laid down his commission, and engaged in business under the Lord Townshend, then Secretary of State, with whom he attended the King to Hanover. His adherence to Lord Townshend ended in nothing but a nomination (May, 1729) to be Clerk-Extraordinary of the Privy Council, which produced no immediate profit; for it His father, Richard West (d. 1716), was with Robert Welsted the joint editor of an edition of Pindar, published at Oxford in 1697, folio. The same Richard West, I suspect, described by Wood as the son of Richard West, of Creiton, in Northamptonshire, Clerk. His mother was living in 1749 with his sister Hetty, at Meres-Ashby, in Northamptonshire. His brother, Admiral Temple West, has a monument in Westminster Abbey. VOL. III. T only placed him in a state of expectation and right of succession, and it was very long before a vacancy admitted him to profit. Soon afterwards he married,2 and settled himself in a very pleasant house at Wickham, in Kent, where he devoted himself to learning and to piety. Of his learning the late Collection 3 exhibits evidence, which would have been yet fuller, if the dissertations which accompany his version of 'Pindar' had not been improperly omitted. Of his piety the influence has, I hope, been extended far by his 'Observations on the Resurrection,' published in 1747, for which the University of Oxford created him a Doctor of Laws by Diploma (March 30, 1748), and would doubtless have reached yet further had he lived to complete what he had for some time meditated, the Evidences of the Truth of the New Testament. Perhaps it may not be without effect to tell that he read the prayers of the public liturgy every morning to his family, and that on Sunday evening he called his servants into the parlour, and read to them first a sermon, and then prayers. Crashaw is now not the only maker of verses to whom may be given the two venerable names of Poet and Saint.4 5 He was very often visited by Lyttelton and Pitt, who, when they were weary of faction and debates, used at Wickham to find books and quiet, a decent table, and literary conversation. There is at Wickham a walk made by Pitt; and, what is of far more importance, at Wickham Lyttelton received that conviction which produced [1748] his Observations on St. Paul.' 6 These two illustrious friends had for a while listened to the 2 His wife's Christian name was Catherine. Who she was I know not. 3 Of English Poets, for which Johnson's 'Prefaces' or 'Lives' were written. 4 Poet and Saint! to thee alone are given The two most sacred names of Earth and Heaven. Who was his first cousin. COWLEY: On the Death of Mr. Crashaw. • Observations on the Conversion and Apostleship of St. Paul. In a Letter to Gilbert West, Esq. Dodsley, 1748, 8vo. It was written to convince the poet of The Seasons.' |