cation: he, however, gave him the rudiments, and sent him to Alnwick School for three years, whence he veturned for his father's farther instruction. In the year 1750 he again visited his old master, who found him much improved, and a composer of Latin themes and epigrams, but a most rebellious scholar, in a furious barring-out, which lasted for a week. Another remove took place in 1751, to Berwick, where he was placed with his former preceptor's brother, in 1754. He finally returned to his father, who sent him, not long after, to the University of St. Andrew's, through the benevolent assistance of Capt. Bolton, a man equally brave and religious.

While Mr. S. was at St. Andrew's, he was elected member of a club, which may be characterized by the following narrative. This club had been deeply engaged in one of the purposes of the meeting; and, unfortunately for the family of Miss Nelly Sharp, a great-granddaughter of the Archbishop of that name, she was the favourite toast. The magical thyrsus of Bacchus," says Mr. S. "had decorated and suffused her image; and, in the rapture of knight-errantry, in the strum of the moment, we determined to scale the imaginary castle of the imaginary goddess. The party immediately proceeded to the execution of this brilliant fancy; and, having arrived at Mr. Sharp's house, they elevated my Lord Doune to a window of the first floor, which he entered, and finding his way to a room where the master of the premises presided at a card-table, he contrived to make himself so acceptable, as to enable his companions to add to the number of the jovial sons and daugh. ters of Scotland already assembled, with whom they passed an agreeable hour, over two bottles of claret.

We cannot think of following this gentleman through all the ramifications of bis life, but shall introduce him to our readers at different periods. During his intercourse with Dr. Johnson, the conversation once turned on Charles the Twelfth of wedeu. Mr. S. observed, he had often thought it surprising, that that monarch, with a mind of uncommon vigour, and a constitution equally rebust, should have had no connexion with women. "Sir, (answered the

I

Stagirite of England, in his usual decisive tone and manner,) a man who is busy has no occasion for women." When Mr. S. was afterwards at Algiers, the Swedish Consul there related to him an anecdote of Charles, which farther illustrates the above fact. According to the then custom of the Kings of Sweden, this Prince paid a visit to one of his subjects; and the door having been opened by a very beautiful servant-girl, he requested a kiss from her. She was more repugnant than he expected to find her he attempted to seize the favour; she repelled aim with anger and disdain. The gentleman of the house, after he had paid his homage to his young sovereign (then 15 years of age) observed with regret, that he seemed to be greatly agitated. own that I am,' replied he, and perhaps I deserve it; for 1 took the liberty to attempt to salute your pretty maid, of whom I envy you the possession; but she refused me with the airs and indignation of an Empress. This little adventure has discomposed me for a moment: but I am determined never to suffer a future moment's uneasiness from such a cause. My soul is absorbed in military glory; and that has always been injured, even while the greatest men were in pursuit of it, by a foolish admiration of women. I know the susceptibility of my nature; and I know the arts and the tyranny of the sex. They ruined Antony; they almost ruined Cæsar; and they made a fool of Alexander; but by they shall neither ruin nor make a fool of me.”

Our Author obtained the commis sion of a second lieutenaney in 1756, through the interference of a relation. The regiment to which he now belonged was the 23d or Royal Welsh Fusileers, commanded by General Huske, " a brave and blunt veteran," whose fatherly attention to all under his command had obtained for him the affectionate title from the soldiers of Daddy Huske. Mr. S. observes, on his first visit to London, that be had been an inhabitant of it one month before he felt in the least reconciled to its attractions. He also confesses that he has frequently made a good, and often a bad use of London; where he has sunk to the lowest propensities, and risen to the sublimost delights, of his nature. Lon

don

hension that Byng would not fight.".

It is impossible that any being, however vain and frivoious, or inattentive to the general appearance of nature, should peruse the following beautiful paragraph without feeling the words of the Author warmly inpressed on their imagination:

"I should unwillingly," says Mr. S. "apply to a Spanish night the epithet of Young "Night, sable goddess! At Gibraltar she is not a sable, but a shining goddess! a goddess of mild, yet of delightfully serious, of religious majesty. With what poetical pleasure, with what ascending of the soul, have I walked, ou an evening after sun-set, on the old parade at Gibraltar! Through the finest atmosphere, an ether of spotless and vivid azure saluted the eye, and charmed the mind. The galaxy streamed with a golden and white effulgence, totally unsullied with Northern vapours. All the heal venly host shed down the emanations of their splendid eloquence, displayed the magnificent characters of Deity, gave the demonstrative lye to Atheists, and proclaimed, with oracular emphasis, the the ology of the skies. The regions below bore a part, in this divine service, with those above. Bland and gentle was the air; and it conveyed from the geraniums aromatic odour. The fragrance filled the and flowering shrubs of the rock their atmosphere; and it seemed a pious evening sacrifice; an offering of gratitude from the earth to the benignity and grandeur of the heavens.”

A narrative still highly interesting succeeds this sketch of Gibraltar; a narrative which affords a striking contrast between the pusillanimous conduct of an Admiral and the bravery of his Captains. The gallant Ward was in the act of imitating Cornwall, in breaking the Enemy's line, when Byng hailed him as he was advancing, and ordered him to keep his station.

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Many of the truly-British sailors of this brave man had crowded round him, and requested him, with inex pressible ardour, to lead them to the Enemy. Ward burst into tears; and exclaimed What can I do, my worthy fellows? You see that my hands are tied.' This gentleman, too, gave a fatal wound of evidence at the court-martial of Admiral Byng. By this infamous pusillanimity of Byng the two largest ships in the flect, the Ramillies and the Culloden, were not in the action."

ness, while curate to Mr. Thorp, vicar of Berwick, where he began "his unfortunate profession of an author." At one time, when Mr. S. had nearly exhausted his stock of money, he offered by Advertisement to teach languages. The manner in which this address to the publick was worded attracted the attention of Mr. Ayrey, though he had no want of an instructor; and, to his infinite credit, Mr. S. found him "the most benevolent and generous man, and the warmest and most genuine. friend," he ever knew. We afterwards find the subject of our Review on-board of different men-of-war in the capacity of chaplain. In the desultory manner pursued by Mr. S. we again meet him in the company of Garrick, who related to him that he never received a greater compliment to his acting than from the Hon. Charles Townshend. This social Wit and Orator of the Senate met one of his brother members of the Privy Council in the street, "and, after the first compliments and the news of the day had passed, he informed him that there was to be a Privy Council in the evening. With all my heart, (replied Townshend,) I shall certainly not attend it for Garrick plays Kitely to-night."

that the encouragement of these Memoirs will be no inconsiderable gratification to the publick, independent of the claim they possess as strong recommendations of Religion and

Virtue.

17. The Romantick Mythology; in Two Parts. Part II. Faery. To which is subjoined, A Letter illustrating the Origin of our Marvellous Imagery; particularly as it appears to be derived from the Gothick Mythology. 4to, pp. 197; Cawthorne; 1809.

THE professed object of this Author is, to collect such parts of our popular superstitions as are suited to the ends of poetical embellishment, and to arrange and embody them in a systematic Mythology. In vindication of the utility of his plan, he remarks, that fiction of the romantic and marvellous kind has ever possessed a charm for readers of every description; and the most admired poets of every age and country appear, as it were, fascinated by its enchantment. Of the poets of our own country, he selects (but certainly with a bad arrangement) the names of Shakspeare, Milton, Spenser, Fletcher, Drayton, Pope, and Dryden, as illustrious instances; and farther remarks, that our most judicious critics seem pretty uniformly of opinion, that the most exquisite specimens of poetical talent are those which are professedly fanciful, or, at least, those which abound most in marvellous imagery.

On the other hand, however, he allows, that "among those who have expressed so decidedly their admiration of fanciful poetry, some are observed to discourage the attempts of the modern poet, who would undertake to revive or imitate it, now that it has lost hold of vulgar credulity, and is destitute of the support of popular superstition. Such are, indeed, the sentiments of some of the most profound and scientific of our critics; who are, however, distinguished rather by the severity of their judgment than the sensibility of their taste. They have proceeded so far as to proscribe all compositions built on such a foundation; and to exclude them from holding any rank among the legitimate productions of the drama and epopee; and to banish them from the closet to the nursery."

"How deeply this sentence," (continues our Author,) "if enforced, must affect the object of the present undertaking, is of itself sufficiently evident without explanation. And this consideration will, it is presumed, justify the temerity which ventures to question its conclusiveness, however recommended by high authority. Its apparent force seems to rest in a supposition that romantic fictions are indebted to the credulity of the times in which they are ad

mired for their influence over the imagination. But how little support this assumption, which offers such manifest violence to general feeling, receives from fact, may be easily shewn; as it may be clearly evinced that the existence of those beings whose agency is employed in poetical machines, was not merely considered problematical, but rejected as impossible, from the earliest period of the art; from the time when Poetry began to direct her motions under the guidance of pure unsophisticated Nature, to that in which she began to assume the formal air, and to study the affected. graces of foreign Criticism. No other creed was professed by the poet who had some interest in securing the probability of his fictions; no other belief was recommended to the reader, whose gratification would have been heightened by complying with so pleasing a delusion." This last position our Author endeavours to prove, by the instances of Chaucer and Shakspeare, neither of whom wished their readers to believe in the existence of the supernatural agents they employed.

We are far, however, from considering what he has here advanced as tending to discredit the sentiments of those criticks who would banish the wild fictions of superstitious times to the nursery. To their opinion, indeed, we are disposed to lean, although we may run the risk of being "distinguished rather by the severity of our judgment, than the sensibility of our taste." The question is not whether romantic fictions were indebted, in former times, to the credulity of those times, (although we do not think our Author very successful in proving the negative, since a belief in the agency of witchcraft may still be discovered among the vulgar in our own days,) but

whether

whether a species of machinery adapted to the infancy of literature, and valued only or principally where the human understanding has received very little cultivation, should be revived and cherished in an age of more widely-diffused learning and refinement, or, in other words, whether the grown man should again be de-. lighted with the productions of the nursery. Of late, it is true, that much encouragement has been given to the revival of romantic composition; but we cannot think this a very favourable symptom of our improvement in taste. Still, if they who are of our Author's opinion will be content with a secondary rank, and with the praise due to those who provide amusement for such as had rather warm their imagination than improve their reason, we shall not object to the history of Queen Mab and her court, and the frolics of our old friend Robin Goodfellow, being worked up into a system of Mythology; or, to allow the Author to characterize it in his own words, “ professed selection of such notions of the superstitious creed as seem adapted to the purposes of poetry; exhibiting such materials with more order and consistency than they can be supposed to possess while scattered in the various sources from which they have been collected; it may form no unuseful manual to the poet. Although in it none of the recesses of information are explored, which are not accessible to moderate industry, it may be productive of at least one advantage to him, as it may free him from the necessity of separating the same matter from the rubbish of provincial vulgarism, or relieve him from the heavy task of selecting it, amid the Jumber of antiquated learning. Such a repository will at least furnish the artist with the more rugged materials employed in his literary structures. It may supply him with the marble rough-hewn to his hand, and sepa rated from the quarry, though it af ford him no model to strike out the plan, or regulate the proportions of his architecture."

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We shall now enable our readers to determine how far these advantages will accrue from our Author's labours, by extracting one or two specimens. The first shall be, "The pare of the Elves in inspiring the Cot