are pale with fear, and that others have been made use of as crutches, for the support of bad causés and desperate fortunes;" and he remarks of the book of statutes which he delivers, that "the ignorant may perhaps admire the splendour of the cover, but the learned know that the real treasure is within." Of these two sentences it is easily discovered, that the first is forced and unnatural, and the second trivial and low. Soon afterwards Mr. Cheynel was admitted to the degree of Bachelor of Divinity, for which his grace had been denied him in 1641, and, as he then suffered for an ill-timed assertion of the Presbyterian doctrines, he obtained that his degree should be dated from the time at which he was refused it; an honour which, however, did not secure him from being soon after publicly reproached as a madman. considering as heretical and impious, thought it necessary to confute; and therefore Cheynel, who had now obtained his doctor's degree, was desired, in 1649, to write a vindication of the doctrine of the Trinity, which he performed, and published the next year. He drew up likewise a confutation of some Socinian tenets advanced by John Fry; a man who spent great part of his life in ranging from one religion to another, and who sat as one of the judges on the King, but was expelled afterwards from the House of Commons, and disabled from sitting in Parliament. Dr. Cheynel is said to have shown himself evidently superior to him in the controversy, and was answered by him only with an opprobrious book against the Presbyterian clergy. He Of the remaining part of his life there is found only an obscure and confused account. quitted the presidentship of St. John's, and the professorship, in 1650, as Calamy relates, because he would not take the engagement; and gave a proof that he could suffer as well as act in a cause which he believed just. We have, indeed, no reason to question his resolution, whatever occasion might be given to exert it; nor is it probable that he feared affliction more than danger, or that he would not have borne persecution himself for those opinions which inclined him to persecute others. But the vigour of Cheynel was thought by his companions to deserve profit as well as honour; and Dr. Bailey, the president of St. John's College, being not more obedient to the authority of the Parliament than the rest, was deprived of his revenues and authority, with which Mr. Cheynel was immediately invested; who, with his usual coolness and modesty, took possession of the lodgings soon after, by breaking open the doors. This preferment being not thought adequate to the deserts or abilities of Mr. Cheynel, it was therefore desired, by the committee of Parliament, that the visitors would recommand him to the lec- He did not suffer much upon this occasion; tureship of divinity founded by the Lady Mar- for he retained the living of Petworth, to which garet. To recommend him, and to choose, was he thenceforward confined his labours, and at that time the same; and he had now the plea- where he was very assiduous, and, as Calamy sure of propagating his darling doctrine of pre-affirms, very successful in the exercise of his destination, without interruption, and without danger. Being thus flushed with power and success, there is little reason for doubting that he gave way to his natural vehemence, and indulged himself in the utmost excesses of raging zeal, by which he was indeed so much distinguished, that, in a satire mentioned by Wood, he is dignified by the title of Arch-visitor; an appellation which he seems to have been industrious to deserve by severity and inflexibility: for, not contented with the commission which he and his colleagues had already received, he procured six or seven of the members of Parliament to meet privately in Mr. Rouse's lodgings, and assume the style and authority of a committee, and from them obtained a more extensive and tyrannical power, by which the visitors were enabled to force the solemn League and Covenant and the negative Oath upon all the members of the University, and to prosecute those for a contempt who did not appear to a citation, at whatever distance they might be, and whatever reason they might assign for their ab sence. ministry, it being his peculiar character to be warm and zealous in all his undertakings. This heat of his disposition, increased by the uncommon turbulence of the times in which he lived, and by the opposition to which the unpopular nature of some of his employments exposed him, was at last heightened to distraction, so that he was for some years disordered in his understanding, as both Wood and Calamy relate, but with such difference as might be expected from their opposite principles. Wood appears to think, that a tendency to madness was discoverable in a great part of his life; Calamy, that it was only transient and accidental, though, in his additions to his first narrative, he pleads it as an extenuation of that fury with which his kindest friends confess him to have acted on some occasions. Wood declares that he died little better than distracted; Calamy, that he was perfectly recovered to a sound mind before the Restoration, at which time he retired to Preston, a small village in Sussex, being turned out of his living at Petworth. It does not appear that he kept his living till the general ejection of the nonconformists; and By this method he easily drove great numbers it is not unlikely that the asperity of his carfrom the University, whose places he supplied riage, and the known virulence of his temper, with men of his own opinion, whom he was very might have raised him enemies, who were will Industrious to draw from other parts, with pro-ing to make him feel the effects of persecution mises of making a liberal provision for them out of the spoils of heretics and malignants. Having, in time, almost extirpated those opinions which he found so prevalent at his arrival, or at least obliged those who would not recant, to an appearance of conformity, he was at leisure for employments which deserve to be recorded with greater commendation. About this time, many Socinian writers began to publish their notions with great boldness, which the Presbyterians, which he had so furiously incited against others; but of this incident of his life there is no particular account. After his deprivation, he lived (till his death which happened in 1665) at a small village near Chichester, upon a paternal estate, not augmented by the large preferments wasted upon him in the triumphs of his party; having been remarkable, throughout his life, for hospitality and contempt of money. CAVE.* THE curiosity of the public seems to demand | the history of every man who has, by whatever means, risen to eminence; and few lives would have more readers than that of the compiler of the "Gentleman's Magazine," if all those who received improvement or entertainment from him should retain so much kindness for their bene factor as to inquire after his conduct and cha racter. EDWARD CAVE was born at Newton, in Warwickshire, Feb. 29, 1691. His father (Joseph) was the younger son of Mr. Edward Cave, of Cave's-in-the-Hole, a lone house on the street road in the same county, which took its name from the occupier; but having concurred with his elder brother in cutting off the intail of a small hereditary estate, by which act it was lost from the family, he was reduced to follow in Rugby the trade of a shoemaker. He was a man of good reputation in his narrow circle, and remarkable for strength and rustic intrepidity. He lived to a great age, and was in his latter years supported by his son. It was fortunate for Edward Cave, that, having a disposition to literary attainments, he was not cut off by the poverty of his parents from opportunities of cultivating his faculties. The school of Rugby in which he had, by the rules of its foundation, a right to be instructed, was then in high reputation, under the Rev. Mr. Holyock, to whose care most of the neighbouring families, even of the highest rank, intrusted their sons. He had judgment to discover, and, for some time, generosity to encourage the genius of young Cave; and was so well pleased with his quick progress in the school, that he declared his resolution to breed him for the university, and recommended him as a servitor to some of his scholars of high rank. But prosperity which depends upon the caprice of others is of short duration. Cave's superiority in literature exalted him to an invidious familiarity with boys who were far above him in rank and expectations; and, as in unequal associations it always happens, whatever unlucky prank was played was imputed to Cave. When any mischief, great or small, was done, though perhaps others boasted of the stratagem when it was successful, yet upon detection or miscarriage the fault was sure to fall upon poor Cave. influence of birth and fortune is resisted; and how frequently men, not wholly without sense of virtue are betrayed to acts more atrocious than the robbery of a hen roost, by a desire of pleasing their superiors. Those reflections his master never made, or made without effect; for under pretence that Cave obstructed the discipline of the school, by selling clandestine assistance, and supplying exercises to idlers, he was oppressed with unreasonable tasks, that there might be an opportunity of quarrelling with his failure; and when his dili gence had surmounted them, no regard was paid to the performance. Cave bore this persecution a while, and then left the school, and the hope of a literary education, to seek some other means of gaining a livelihood. He was first placed with a collector of the excise. He used to recount with some pleasure a journey or two which he rode with him as his clerk, and relate the victories that he gained over the excisemen in grammatical disputations. But the insolence of his mistress, who employed him in servile drudgery, quickly disgusted him, and he went up to London in quest of more suitable employment. He was recommended to a timber merchant at the Bankside, and, while he was there on liking, is said to have given hopes of great mercantile abilities; but this place he soon left, I know not for what reason, and was bound apprentice to Mr. Collins, a printer of some reputation, and deputy alderman. This was a trade for which men were formerly qualified by a literary education, and which was pleasing to Cave, because it furnished some employment for his scholastic attainments. Here, therefore, he resolved to settle, though his master and mistress lived in perpetual discord, and their house was therefore no comfortable habitation. From the inconveniences of these domestic tu mults he was soon released, having in only two years, attained so much skill in his art, and gained so much the confidence of his master, that he was sent without any superintendant to conduct a printing-office at Norwich, and publish a weekly paper. In this undertaking he met with some opposition, which produced a public controversy, and procured young Cave the reputation of a writer. His master died before his apprenticeship was At last his mistress by some invisible means expired, and he was not able to bear the perverselost a favourite cock. Cave was, with little ex-ness of his mistress. He therefore quitted her amination, stigmatised as the thief and murderer; house upon a stipulated allowance, and married not because he was more apparently criminal a young widow, with whom he lived at Bow. than others, but because he was more easily When his apprenticeship was over, he worked as reached by vindictive justice. From that time a journeyman at the printing-house of Mr. BarMr. Holyock withdrew his kindness visibly from ber, a man much distinguished, and employed by him, and treated him with harshness, which the the Tories, whose principles had at that time so crime in its utmost aggravation, could scarcely much prevalence with Cave, that he was for some deserve; and which surely he would have for-years a writer in "Mist's Journal;" which, though borne, had he considered how hardly the habitual *This life first appeared in the Gentleman's Magazine for 1754, and is now printed from a copy revised by the author, at my request, in 1791.-N. he afterwards obtained, by his wife's interest, a small place in the Post-office, he for some time versation, however mean, in time persuasive, he continued. But as interest is powerful, and conby degrees inclined to another party; in which, however, he was always moderate, though steady Cave now began to aspire to popularity; and and determined. being a greater lover of poetry than any other When he was admitted into the Post-office, heart, he sometimes offered subjects for poems, and still continued, at his intervals of attendance, to exercise his trade, or to employ himself with some typographical business. He corrected the "Gradus ad Parnassum;" and was liberally rewarded by the Company of Stationers. He wrote an "Account of the Criminals," which had for some time a considerable sale; and published many little pamphlets that accident brought into his hands, of which it would be very difficult to recover the memory. By the correspondence which his place in the Post-office facilitated, he procured country newspapers and sold their intelligence to a Journalist in London, for a guinea a week. He was afterwards raised to the office of clerk of the franks, in which he acted with great spirit and firmness; and often stopped franks which were given by members of parliament to their friends, because he thought such extension of a peculiar right illegal. This raised many complaints, and having stopped, among others, a frank given to the old dutchess of Marlborough by Mr. Walter Plummer, he was cited before the House as for a breach of privilege, and accused, I suppose very unjustly, of opening letters to detect them. He was treated with great harshness and severity, but, declining their questions by pleading his oath of secrecy, was at last dismissed, And it must be recorded to his honour, that, when he was ejected from his office, he did not think himself discharged from his trust, but continued to refuse to his nearest friends any information about the management of the office. By this constancy of diligence and diversification of employment, he in time collected a sum sufficient for the purchase of a small printingoffice, and began the "Gentleman's Magazine," a periodical pamphlet, of which the scheme is known wherever the English language is spoken. To this undertaking he owed the affluence in which he passed the last twenty years of his life, and the fortune which he left behind him, which, though large, had been yet larger, had he not rashly and wantonly impaired it by innumerable projects, of which I know not that ever one succeeded. "The Gentleman's Magazine," which has now subsisted fifty years, and still contines to enjoy the favour of the world,* is one of the most successful and lucrative pamphlets which literary history has upon record, and therefore deserves, in this narrative, particular notice. Mr. Cave, when he formed the project, was far from expecting the success which he found; and others had so little prospect of its consequence, that though he had for several years talked of his plan among printers and booksellers, none of them thought it worth the trial. That they were not restrained by virtue from the execution of another man's design, was sufficiently apparent as soon as that design began to be gainful; for in a few years a multitude of magazines arose and perished; only the London Magazine, supported by a powerful association of booksellers, and circulated with all the art and all the cunning of trade, exempted himself from the general fate of Cave's invaders, and obtained, though not an equal, yet a considerable sale.† This was said in the beginning of the year 1781; and may with truth be now repeated. t The London Magazine ceased to exist in 1785.-N. proposed prizes for the best performers. The first prize was 501., for which, being but newly acquainted with wealth, and thinking the influence of 50%. extremely great, he expected the first authors of the kingdom to appear as competitors; and offered the allotment of the prize to the universities. But when the time came, no name was seen among the writers that had ever been seen before; the universities and several private men rejected the province of assigning the prize.* At all this Mr. Cave wondered for a while; but his natural judgment, and a wider acquaintance with the world, soon cured him of his astonishment, as of many other prejudices and errors. Nor have many men been seen raised by accident or industry to sudden riches, that retained less of the meanness of their former state. He continued to improve his Magazine, and had the satisfaction of seeing its success propor tionate to his diligence, till, in 1751, his wife ted of an asthma. He seemed not at first much affected by her death, but in a few days lost his sleep and his appetite, which he never recovered; but after having lingered about two years, with many vicissitudes of amendment and relapse, fell, by drinking acid liquors, into a diarrhoea, and afterwards into a kind of lethargic insensibility, in which one of the last acts of reason which he exerted was fondly to press the hand that is now writing this little narrative. He died on the 10th of January, 1754, having just concluded the twenty-third annual collection.t *The determination was left to Dr. Cromwell Mortl mer and Dr. Birch, and by the latter the award was made, which may be seen in the Gent. Mag. vol. vi. p. 59.-N. Mr. Cave was buried in the church of St. James, Clerkenwell, without an epitaph; but the following inscription at Rugby, from the pen of Dr. Hawkesworth, is here transcribed from the "Anecdotes of Mr. Bowyer," p. 88. Near this place lies Who departed this Life, Nov. 18th, 1747, He was placed by Providence in an humble station, Temperance blessed him with Content and Wealth. As he was an affectionate Father, Planned, executed, and established GENTLEMAN'S MAGAZINE, The body of WILLIAM CAVE, Inherited from him a competent estate; heard. He was a man of a large stature, not only tall the scheme which he supposed never to have been but bulky, and was, when young, of remarkable strength and activity. He was generally healthful, and capable of much labour and long application; but in the latter years of his life was afflicted with the gout, which he endeavoured to cure or alleviate by a total abstinence both from strong liquors and animal food. From animal food he abstained about four years, and from strong liquors much longer; but the gout continued unconquered, perhaps unabated. uncommon; His resolution and perseverance were very in whatever he undertook, neither expense nor fatigue were able to repress him; but his constancy was calm, and to those who did not know him appeared faint and languid; but he always went forward, though he moved slowly. The same chillness of mind was observable in his conversation: he was watching the minutest accent of those whom he disgusted by seeming inattention; and his visitant was surprised when he came a second time, by preparations to execute He lived a patriarch in his numerous race, He was, consistently with his general tranqui↓ lity of mind, a tenacious maintainer, though not a clamorous demander of his right. In his youth having summoned his fellow journeymen to concert measures against the oppression of their mas ters, he mounted a kind of rostrum, and harangued them so efficaciously, that they determined to resist all future invasions; and when the stamp offices demanded to stamp the last half sheet of the Magazines, Mr. Cave alone defeated their claim, to which the proprietors of the rival Magazines would meanly have submitted. He was a friend rather easy and constant, than zealous and active; yet many instances might be given, where both his money and his diligence were employed liberally for others. His enmity was in like manner cool and deliberate; but though cool, it was not insidious, and though deliberate, not pertinacious. His mental faculties were slow. He saw little at a time, but that little he saw with great exactness. He was long in finding the right, but seldom failed to find it at last. His affections were not easily gained, and his opinions not quickly discovered. His reserve, as it might hide his faults, concealed his virtues: but such he was as they who best knew him have most lamented. KING OF PRUSSIA.* CHARLES FREDERICK the present king of Prus-ces in the conduct of affairs which he could not sia, whose actions and designs now keep Europe approve, and some which he could scarcely forin attention, is the eldest son of Frederick Wil- bear to oppose. liam by Sophia Dorothea, daughter of George the First, King of England. He was born, January 24, 1711-12. Of his early years nothing remarkable has been transmitted to us. As he advanced towards manhood, he became remarkable by his disagreement with his father. The late king of Prussia was of a disposition violent and arbitrary, of narrow views, and vehement passions, earnestly engaged in little pursuits, or in schemes terminating in some speedy consequence, without any plan of lasting advantage to himself or his subjects, or any prospect of distant events. He was therefore always busy, though no effects of his activity ever appeared; and always eager, though he had nothing to gain. His behaviour was to the last degree rough and savage. The least provocation, whether designed or accidental, was returned by blows, which he did not always forbear to the Queen and Prin cesses. From such a king and such a father it was not any enormous violation of duty in the immediate heir of a kingdom sometimes to differ in opinion, and to maintain that difference with decent pertinacity. A prince of a quick sagacity and comprehensive knowledge must find many practi * First printed in the Literary Magazine for 1756.-H. The chief pride of the old king was to be master of the tallest regiment in Europe. He there fore brought together from all parts men above the common military standard. To exceed the height of six feet was a certain recommendation to notice, and to approach that of seven a claim to distinction. Men will readily go where they are sure to be caressed; and he had therefore such a collection of giants as perhaps was never seen in the world before. To review this towering regiment was his daily pleasure, and to perpetuate was so much his care, that when he met a tall woman be immediately commanded one of his Titanian retinue to marry her, that they might propagate procerity, and produce heirs to the father's habiliments. In all this there was apparent folly, but there was no crime. The tall regiment made a fine show at an expense not much greater, when once it was collected, than would have been bestowed upon common men. But the king's military pastimes were sometimes more pernicious. He maintained a numerous army, of which he made no other use than to review and to talk of it; and when he, or perhaps his emissaries, saw a boy, whose form and sprightliness promised a future soldier, he ordered a kind of badge to be put about his neck, by which he was marked out for the service, like the sons of christian captives in Turkey; and his parents were forbidden to destine him to any other mode of life. | fluence not easily to be resisted, was not the only act by which the old king irritated his son. A lady with whom the prince was suspected of intimacy, perhaps more than virtue allowed, was seized, I know not upon what accusation, and, by the king's order, notwithstanding all the reasons of decency and tenderness that operate in other countries, and other judicatures, was publicly whipped in the streets of Berlin. At last, that the prince might feel the power of a king and a father, in its utmost rigour, he was, in 1733, married, against his will, to the Princess Elizabetha Christina of Brunswick Lunenburg Beveren. He married her indeed at his father's command, but without possessing for her either esteem or affection, and considering the claim of parental authority fully satisfied by the external ceremony, obstinately and perpetually during the life of his father refrained from her bed. The poor princess lived about seven years in the court of Berlin, in a state which the world has not often seen, a wife without a husband, married so far as to engage her person to a man who did not desire her affection, and of whom it was doubtful whether he thought himself restrained from the power of repudiation by an act performed under evident compulsion. This was sufficiently oppressive, but this was not the utmost of his tyranny. He had learned, though otherwise perhaps no very great politician, that to be rich was to be powerful; but that the riches of a king ought to be seen in the opulence of his subjects, he wanted either ability or benevolence to understand. He therefore raised exorbitant taxes from every kind of commodity and possession, and piled up the money in his treasury, from which it issued no more. How the land which had paid taxes once was to pay them a second time, how imposts could be levied without commerce, or commerce continued without money, it was not his custom to inquire. Eager to snatch at money, and delighted to count it, he felt new joy at every receipt, and thought himself enriched by the impoverishment of his dominions. By which of these freaks of royalty the prince was offended, or whether, as perhaps more frequently happens, the offences of which he complains were of a domestic and personal kind, it is not easy to discover. But his resentment, whatever was its cause, rose so high, that he resolved not only to leave his father's court, but his territories, and to seek a refuge among the neighbour-in ing or kindred princes. It is generally believed that his intention was to come to England, and live under the protection of his uncle, till his father's death, or change of conduct, should give him liberty to return. His design, whatever it was, he concerted with an officer in the army, whose name was Kat, a man in whom he placed great confidence, and whom, having chosen him for the companion of his flight, he necessarily trusted with the preparatory measures. A prince cannot leave his country with the speed of a meaner fugitive. Some thing was to be provided, and something to be adjusted. And, whether Kat found the agency of others necessary, and therefore was constrained to admit some partners of the secret; whether levity or vanity incited him to disburden himself of a trust that swelled in his bosom, or to show to a friend or mistress his own importance; or whether it be in itself difficult for princes to transact any thing in secret; so it was, that the king was informed of the intended flight, and the prince, and his favourite, a little before the time settled for their departure, were arrested, and confined in different places. The life of princes is seldom in danger, the hazard of their irregularities falls only on those whom ambition or affection combines with them. The king, after an imprisonment of some time, set his son at liberty; but poor Kat was ordered to be tried for a capital crime. The court examined the cause and acquitted him; the king remanded him to a second trial, and obliged his judges to condemn him. In consequence of the sentence thus tyrannically extorted, he was publicly beheaded, leaving behind him some papers of reflections made in the prison, which were afterwards printed, and among others an admonition to the prince, for whose sake he suffered, not to foster in himself the opinion of destiny, for that a providence is discoverable in every thing round us. This cruel prosecution of a man who had committed no crime, but by compliance with in Thus he lived secluded from public business, contention with his father, in alienation from his wife. This state of uneasiness he found the only means of softening: he diverted his mind from the scenes about him by studies and liberal amusements. The studies of princes seldom produce great effects, for princes draw with meaner mortals the lot of understanding; and since of many students not more than one can be hoped to advance far towards perfection, it is scarcely to be expected that we should find that one a prince; that the desire of science_should overpower in any mind the love of pleasure, when it is always present, or always within call that laborious meditation should be preferred in the days of youth to amusements and festivity; or that perseverance should press forward in con tempt of flattery: and that he in whom moderate acquisitions would be extolled as prodigies, should exact from himself that excellence of which the whole world conspires to spare him the necessity. In every great performance, perhaps in every great character, part is the gift of nature, part the contribution of accident, and part, very often not the greatest part, the effect of voluntary election and regular design. The King of Prussia was undoubtedly born with more than common abilities; but that he has cultivated them with more than common diligence, was probably the effect of his peculiar condition, of that which he then considered as cruelty and misfortune. In this long interval of unhappiness and obscurity, he acquired skill in the mathematical sciences, such as is said to put him on the level with those who have made them the business of their lives. This is probably to say too much: the acquisitions of kings are always magnified. His skill in poetry and in the French language has been loudly praised by Voltaire, a judge without exception, if his honesty were equal to his knowledge. Music he not only understands, but practises on the German flute in the highest perfection; so that, according to the regal censure of Philip of Macedon, he may be ashamed to play so well. |