tosh. Mackin- Boyne. His father, a younger son, obtained a situation in the revenue. He was himself educated at the school of Dundalk, where he read and relished the best writers of Greece and Rome; but he became so much infected with a passion for the army, or rather, for its show and dissipation, that he would not gratify his father by pursuing his studies at the university. In 1756 he purchased an ensigncy, and seems to have combined the conviviality of the time with desultory reading and careless composition. In 1765, when on the eve of purchasing a company, he was disappointed by an accident: he relinquished the army in a fit of ill humour, and applied the purchase-money to buy the place of a commissary of musters, thus unfortunately renouncing all regular advancement in a profession. He married, obtained leave to sell his place, and, after paying his debts, found himself possessed of six hundred pounds. About that time, Dr. Lucas, a man then popular at Dublin, had published a severe pamphlet against the sentence of a court-martial. Courtenay, prompted by old military feelings, employed his very idle hours in an answer, which obtained some commendation, and earned for him the patronage of Lord Townshend, then lord-lieutenant. He soon after became one of the writers of the " Bachelor," a government paper, conducted by Simcox, a clergyman, but chiefly written by Courtenay, Marlay 1, afterward a bishop, and Jephson2, a dramatic poet of note. It was a main part of the task of these advocates of the Castle to counteract the "Baratarian Letters," an Irish imitation of Junius, which, attacking the lord-lieutenant's government, received contributions from Flood, and first published Grattan's character of Chatham. Previous to the recall of the lord-lieutenant he gave Courtenay the place of barrack-master of Kinsale, and soon after his return to England appointed him secretary to the master-general of the ordnance. Though in that confidential relation to a minister, Courtenay agreed more in opinion, and was more connected with the Opposition, as may be pretty certainly inferred from his intimacy with Mr. Windham, then an oppositionist of more than common violence, who used to meet him often at the Thatched-house, as Courtenay said, to drink a glass to the health of General Washington. In 1780, Lord Townshend gave him a seat for Tamworth, which he long retained. He sometimes made ineffectual attempts to vindicate his consistency in voting for the minister, on the plea that he could no longer support the Americans after they had received French aid; as if those, whom he considered as exposing themselves to destruction in a righteous cause, might not lawfully seek for succour wherever they could find it. This, however, was the period of his chief success in parliament. He was then invited often to the evening convivial parties of Rigby, a man of wit and pleasure: he became an Mackinintimate friend of Mr. Gerard Hamilton, a man of considerable litera- tosh. ture and of fastidious taste in his companions, and of Boswell, a zealous but good-natured tory. At the coalition, in 1783, he was appointed surveyor-general of the ordnance. After the expulsion of that administration, he refused to retain the office, which was handsomely offered to him by the Duke of Richmond: the letters of both do them credit. Henceforwards he attached himself to Mr. Fox, during a long and rigid exclusion from office. On one occasion he took a step not believed to be agreeable to that great man. At a dinner at Lord Lauderdale's, in Leicestersquare, in spring 1792, he put his name, with others, of whom the present writer was one, to the Association of the "Friends of the People for the promotion of Parliamentary Reform," saying, as he pushed the writing materials on to his next neighbour, “There goes Tamworth." Mr. Fox, with difficulty, saved him from the necessity of leaving England in 1796 and in 1802, by procuring a seat for him. In 1806, Mr. Fox wished to have restored him to the ordnance, but a high influence obtained that place for another, and Courtenay, after twenty-five years of opposition, had a twelvemonth's seat at the treasury. In 1812, when aged, lonely, infirm, and nearly bed-ridden, he was rescued from cruel sufferings by the generosity of the late Lord Thanet. Even in that situation, when found at his dinner, consisting of the claw of a lobster, by one of his few visiters, he used to make his repast a subject of merriment. The happy marriages of two daughters were, for a short time, bright spots in his little sphere; but though his life was unprosperous, it was not, thanks to his temper, unhappy. The consolations of friendship he deserved and possessed among political opponents in times of much heat. Mr. Windham and Lord Stowell, Mr. Malone, and even Mr. Burke, continued to show kindness to him. He was frequently a guest of Sir Joshua Reynolds, of whose table he gave an amusing description [which is inserted ante, vol. iii. p. 444]. His parliamentary speeches, by which he was best known, did injustice to his powers. He was in truth a man of fine talents, and of various accomplishments, which rendered his conversation agreeable, as his good-nature and kind heart obtained for him the attachment of many excellent friends. But, from his speeches, strangers mistook him for a jester by profession. Every Irishman has wit, but Courtenay's drollery had not that polish and urbanity, of which pleasantry stands greater need than perhaps any other endowment. in He fell into two not easily forgotten mistakes; the one was a somewhat unrefined attack on Mr. Canning, whom he mistook for a declaiming schoolboy; the other was an attack on Mr. Wilberforce, Mackin- whose meekness and gentleness he unluckily regarded, before he knew him, as proofs of want of wit. The following extract from some criticism on parliamentary speakers written by him long after, is an agreeable proof that, in the case of Mr. Wilberforce, he discovered his error, and was willing to acknowledge the justice of the chastisement. “He (Mr. W.) is quick and acute in debate, and always prompt to answer and reply. When he is provoked to personality (which seldom happens) he retorts in a poignant and refined vein of satire, peculiarly his own." In the same criticism he makes reparation to Mr. Canning, by owning that "his wit is keen," but he tries to excuse himself by adding, "that it is sometimes flippant.” He died at his humble lodging, in Duke-street, Portland-place, on the 21st of March, 1815, in the seventy-eighth year of his age. To the early connexion of Mr. Courtenay with General Fraser, in the family of Lord Townshend, the writer of this note, (who is the general's grand-nephew) owed the beginning of a kindness which lasted till Courtenay's death. Fraser was Lord Townshend's aide-de-camp at Quebec in 1759, where by means of some French acquired when an officer in the Scotch regiments in the service of the states-general, he had the good fortune to render a more important service than is usually within the reach of an officer of the rank which he held at that time. When rowing down the river St. Lawrence, and on the point of landing, the night before the battle, they were observed by a French sentinel, who called to him for "the word," which the British officers did not know. Fraser answered in an audible whisper in French, “Hold your tongue; they will overhear us." The sentinel believed them to be a French reinforcement, and they effected their landing without disturbance. He went with Lord Townshend to Ireland, and he was killed in Burgoyne's army at Stillwater, near Saratoga, on the 7th October, 1777. His death has been affectingly represented by the pencil and the pen. The writer attended Mr. Courtenay's funeral, almost the only duty of a friend and an executor which circumstances left for him to perform; unless he may be allowed to consider as another of these duties the present attempt to preserve a short account of Mr. Courtenay, in which he has studiously endeavoured to avoid all exaggeration, and has laboured to shun that undue expansion which he cannot help considering as a sort of tacit exaggeration.—MACKINTOSH. A generous tear will Caledonia shed? 1 "A Scotchman must be a sturdy moralist, who does not prefer Scotland to truth." Johnson's Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland.-COURTENAY. Lost is the man, who scarce deigns Gray to praise, "The Poems of Dr. Watts were, by my recommendation, inserted in this collection; the readers of which are to impute to me whatever pleasure or weariness they may find in the perusal of Blackmore, Watts, Pomfret, and Yalden." Johnson's Life of Watts. The following specimen of their productions may be sufficient to enable the reader to judge of their respective merits : "Alas, Jerusalem! alas! where 's now Thy pristine glory, thy unmatch'd renown, Ah, hapless, miserable town!" Eleazar's Lamentation over Jerusalem, paraphrased by Pomfret. "Before the Almighty Artist framed the sky, Or gave the earth its harmony, His first command was for thy light; He view'd the lovely birth, and bless'd it: In purple swaddling bands it struggling lay, Old Chaos then a cheerful smile put on, And from thy beauteous form did first presage its own." "My cheerful soul now all the day Looks through the ruins of her clay, O, rather let this flesh decay, The ruins wider grow; Till, glad to see the enlarged way, I stretch my pinions through." Yalden's Hymn to Light. A Sight of Heaven in Sickness, by Isaac Watts.-COURTENAY. [The editor is not without some apprehensions, that he may incur a similar censure, for having recommended the introduction of Mr. Courtenay's poem into this collection. -ED.] He seemed to me to have an unaccountable prejudice against Swift. He said today, "I doubt if the Tale of a Tub' was his; it has so much more thinking, more owledge, more power, more colour, than any of the works that are indisputably his. If it was his, I shall only say, he was impar sibi.”—Boswell's Tour to the Hebrides, p. 38. Dr. Johnson's "unaccountable prejudice against Swift" may probably be derived from the same source as Blackinore's, if we may venture to form a judgment from the panegyrick he bestows on the following groundless invective, expressly aimed at Swift, as the author of "A Tale of a Tub," which he quotes in his life of Blackmore: "Seeral, in their books, have many sarcastical and spiteful strokes at religion in general; while others make themselves pleasant with the principles of the christian. Of the last kind, this age has seen a most audacious example in the book entitled 'A Tale of a Tub. Had this writing been published in a pagan or popish nation, who are justly impatient of all indignity offered to the established religion of their country, no doubt but the author would have received the punishment he deserved. But the fate of this impious buffoon is very different; for, in a protestant kingdom, zealous of their civil and religious immunities, he has not only escaped affronts, and the effects of publick resentment, but has been caressed and patronized by persons of great figure of all denominations." The malevolent dulness of bigotry alone could have inspired Blackmore with these sentiments. The fact is, that the Tale of a Tub" is a continued panegyrick on the Church of England, and a bitter satire on popery, Calvinism, and every sect of dissenters. At the same time I am persuaded, that every reader of taste and discernment will perceive, in many parts of Swift's other writings, strong internal proofs of that style which characterises the "Tale of a Tub;" especially in the VOL. V. GG With poignant taunt mild Shenstone's life arraigns, A sceptick once, he taught the letter'd throng Her gloom, and tinged his genius with her hue. "The "Publick Spirit of the Whigs." It is well known, that he affected simplicity, and studiously avoided any display of learning, except where the subject made it absolutely necessary. Temporary, local, and political topicks compose too great a part of his works; but in a treatise that admitted "more thinking, more knowledge," &c. he naturally exerted all his powers. Let us hear the author himself on this point. greatest part of that book was finished above thirteen years since (1696), which is eight years before it was published. The author was then young, his invention at the height, and his reading fresh in his head." And again: "Men should be more cautious in losing their time, if they did but consider, that to answer a book effectually requireth more pains and skill, more wit, learning, and judgment than were employed in writing it. And the author assureth those gentlemen, who have given themselves that trouble with him, that his discourse is the product of the study, the observation and the invention of several years; that he often blotted out more than he left; and if his papers had not been a long time out of his possession, they must still have undergone more severe corrections." "An Apology for the Tale of a Tub."-With respect to this work being the production of Swift, see his letter to the printer, Mr. Benjamin Tooke, dated Dublin, June 29, 1710, and Tooke's answer on the publication of the "Apology" and a new edition of the "Tale of a Tub."-Hawkesworth's edition of Swift's Works, 8vo. vol. xvi. p. 145. Dr. Hawkesworth mentions, in his preface, that the edition of "A Tale of a Tub," printed in 1710, was revised and corrected by the Dean a short time before his understanding was impaired, and that the corrected copy was, in the year 1760, in the hands of his kinsman, Mr. Dean Swift.-COURTENAY. JOHNSON. "I would tell truth of the two Georges, or of that scoundrel, King William." Boswell's Tour to the Hebrides, ante, v. ii. p. 480.-COURTENAY. 2 See his letter to Lord Thurlow, in which he seems to approve of the application (though he was not previously consulted), thanks his lordship for having made it, and even seems to express some degree of surprise and resentment on the proposed addition to his pension being refused. COURTENAY. [It seems very strange, that after Sir Joshua Reynolds had received Lord Thurlow's letter of the 18th Nov. 1784, he should still have permitted Dr. Johnson and all his friends to remain in the belief, that the king had been applied to and had refused. See ante, p. 265.—ED.] 3. If (added Dr. Johnson) God had never spoken figuratively, we might hold that he speaks literally, when he says, "This is my body." Boswell's Tour, p. 67. Here his only objection to transubstantiation seems to rest on the style of the scripture being figurative elsewhere as well as in this passage. Hence we may infer, that he would otherwise have believed in it. But Archbishop Tillotson and Mr. Locke reason more philosophically, by asserting, that "no doctrine, however clearly expressed in scripture, is to be admitted, if it contradict the evidence of our senses: s:-For our evidence for the truth of revealed religion is less than the evidence for the truth of our senses, because, |