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Yet say, O say, bright daughter of the sky,
Wilt thou still shun the student's midnight oil?
And, O too partial! every grace deny

To all but yonder sturdy sons of toil?

Would numbers win thee, thou no lay shouldst need,
Whether the Muses' sacred band resides
Among the Dryads on the daisied mead,

Where Cam's fair stream, or silver Isis glides.

But thy chill breast repels the poet's fires:
Even rapt Musaus* felt, amid the strains
That drew down angels from their golden lyres,
Head-clouding vapours, and heart-rending pains.

DR WILKIE.

In 1757 was published in Edinburgh The Epigoniad, a Poem in nine Books, founded on part of the fourth Iliad of Homer relative to the sacking of Thebes. It was very popular in Scotland, but had few readers in England. The Critical Review had an article upon the poem, which drew forth a long reply from David Hume, in which he speaks of its six thousand lines as 'abounding in sublime beauties,' and written so thoroughly in the spirit of Homer as 'would almost lead us to imagine that the Scottish bard had found a lost manuscript of that father of poetry, and had read a faithful translation of it into English.' When Hume wrote this, the warmhearted friend predominated over the philosophical critic; as it also must have done when he pronounced the following description of the person and mission of Jealousy to be painted in the most splendid colours that poetry affords.' It is, however, vigorous and ingenious, and as good a specimen as could be offered of Wilkie's powers:

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Description of Jealousy.

First to her feet the winged shoes she binds,
Which tread the air and mount the rapid winds:
Aloft they bear her through the ethereal plain,
Above the solid earth and liquid main:
Her arrows next she takes of pointed steel,
For sight too small, but terrible to feel:
Roused by their smart the savage lion roars,
And mad to combat rush the tusky boars.

Of wounds secure; for where their venom lights,
What feels their power all other torment slights.
A figured zone, mysteriously designed,
Around her waist her yellow hair confined
There dark Suspicion lurked, of sable hue;
There hasty Rage his deadly dagger drew;
Pale Envy inly pined; and by her side
Stood Frenzy, raging with his chains untied;
Affronted Pride with thirst of vengeance burned,
And Love's excess to deepest hatred turned.
All these the artist's curious hand expressed,
The work divine his matchless skill confessed.
The virgin last around her shoulders flung
The bow; and by her side the quiver hung;
Then, springing up, her airy course she bends,
For Thebes, and lightly o'er the tents descends.
The son of Tydeus, 'midst his bands, she found
In arms complete, reposing on the ground:
And, as he slept, the hero thus addressed,
Her form to fancy's waking eye confessed.
The author of the Epigoniad, WILLIAM WILKIE,
D.D. (1721-1772), was a native of Echlin, parish
of Dalmeny, Linlithgowshire, and sometime

* Pope.

minister of Ratho. In 1759 he was elected Professor of Natural Philosophy in the university of St Andrews. He is described as a very absent, eccentric person, who wore as many clothes as tradition assigns to the gravedigger in Hamlet on the stage, and who used to lie in bed with two dozen pair of blankets above him! David Hume gives a humorous description of the circumstances under which Wilkie carried on his Homeric studies. The Scottish farmers near Edinburgh are very much infested, he says, with wood-pigeons. 'And Wilkie's father planted him often as a scarecrow (an office for which he is well qualified) in the midst of his fields of wheat. He carried out his Homer with him, together with a table, and pen and ink, and a great rusty gun. He composed and wrote two or three lines, till a flock of pigeons settled in the field, then rose up, ran towards them, and fired at them; returned again to his former station, and added a rhyme or two more, till he met with a fresh interruption.'

JOHN ARMSTRONG.

JOHN ARMSTRONG, the friend of Thomson, of Mallet, Wilkes, and other public and literary characters of that period, is now only known as the author of a didactic poem, the Art of Preserv ing Health, which is but little read. Armstrong was son of the minister of Castleton, a pastoral parish in Roxburghshire. He studied medicine in Edinburgh, and took his degree of M.D. in 1732. He repaired to London, and became known by the publication of several fugitive pieces and medical essays. A very objectionable poem, the Economy of Love, gave promise of poetical powers, but marred his practice as a physician. În 1744 appeared his Art of Preserving Health, which was followed by two other poems, Benevolence and Taste, and a volume of prose essays, the latter indifferent enough. In 1760, he was appointed physician to the forces in Germany; and on the peace in 1763, he returned to London, where he practised, but with little success, till his death, September, 7, 1779, in the seventieth year of his age. Armstrong seems to have been an indolent and splenetic, but kind-hearted man-shrewd, caustic, and careful-he left £3000, saved out of a small income. His portrait in the Castle of Indolence is in Thomson's happiest manner :

With him was sometimes joined in silent walk-
Profoundly silent, for they never spoke-
One shyer still, who quite detested talk;
Oft stung by spleen, at once away he broke
To groves of pine and broad o'ershadowing oak;
There, inly thrilled, he wandered all alone,
And on himself his pensive fury wroke,
Nor ever uttered word, save when first shone
The glittering star of eve-Thank Heaven, the day
is done!"

Warton has praised the Art of Preserving Health for its classical correctness and closeness of style, and its numberless poetical images. In general, however, it is stiff and laboured, with occasional passages of tumid extravagance; and the images are not unfrequently echoes of those of Thomson and other poets. The subject required the aid of ornament, for scientific rules are in general bad themes for poetry, and few men are ignorant of the true philosophy of life, however they may deviate

from it in practice. Armstrong was no ascetic philosopher. His motto is, 'Take the good the gods provide you,' but take it in moderation.

When you smooth

The brows of care, indulge your festive vein
In cups by well-informed experience found
The least your bane, and only with your friends.

The effects of over-indulgence in wine he has finely described:

But most too passive, when the blood runs low
Too weakly indolent to strive with pain,
And bravely by resisting conquer fate,
Try Circe's arts; and in the tempting bowl
Of poisoned nectar sweet oblivion swill.
Struck by the powerful charm, the gloom dissolves
In empty air; Elysium opens round,

A pleasing frenzy buoys the lightened soul,
And sanguine hopes dispel your fleeting care;
And what was difficult, and what was dire,
Yields to your prowess and superior stars:
The happiest you of all that e'er were mad,
Or are, or shall be, could this folly last.
But soon your heaven is gone: a heavier gloom
Shuts o'er your head; and, as the thundering stream,
Swollen o'er its banks with sudden mountain rain,
Sinks from its tumult to a silent brook,

So, when the frantic raptures in your breast
Subside, you languish into mortal man;
You sleep, and waking find yourself undone,
For, prodigal of life, in one rash night

You lavished more than might support three days.
A heavy morning comes; your cares return
With tenfold rage. An anxious stomach well
May be endured; so may the throbbing head;
But such a dim delirium, such a dream,
Involves you; such a dastardly despair
Unmans your soul, as maddening Pentheus felt,
When, baited round Citharon's cruel sides,
He saw two suns, and double Thebes ascend.

In prescribing as a healthy situation for residence a house on an elevated part of the sea-coast, he indulges in a vein of poetical luxury worthy the enchanted grounds of the Castle of Indolence:

Oh! when the growling winds contend, and all
The sounding forest fluctuates in the storm;
To sink in warm repose, and hear the din
Howl o'er the steady battlements, delights
Above the luxury of vulgar sleep.

The murmuring rivulet, and the hoarser strain
Of waters rushing o'er the slippery rocks,
Will nightly lull you to ambrosial rest.
To please the fancy is no trifling good,
Where health is studied; for whatever moves
The mind with calm delight, promotes the just
And natural movements of the harmonious frame.

In his first book, Armstrong has penned a ludicrously pompous invective on the climate of Great Britain, steeped in continual rains, or with raw fogs bedewed.' ` He exclaims :

Our fathers talked

Of summers, balmy airs, and skies serene:
Good Heaven! for what unexpiated crimes
This dismal change! The brooding elements,
Do they, your powerful ministers of wrath,
Prepare some fierce exterminating plague?
Or is it fixed in the decrees above,
That lofty Albion melt into the main?
Indulgent nature! Oh, dissolve this gloom;
Bind in eternal adamant the winds

That drown or wither; give the genial west
To breathe, and in its turn the sprightly north,

And may once more the circling seasons rule The year, not mix in every monstrous day! Now, the fact, we believe, is, that in this country there are more good enjoyable days in the year than in any other country in Europe. (See the opinion of Charles II. anté, p. 454.) Two extracts from the Art of Preserving Health are subjoined. The second, which is certainly the most energetic passage in the whole poem, describes the sweating sickness' which appeared in England in August 1485, among the troops of Henry VII. who fought at Bosworth field. It desolated parts of England, but did not penetrate into Scotland or Ireland.

Wrecks and Mutations of Time.

What does not fade? The tower that long had stood
The crush of thunder and the warring winds,
Shook by the slow but sure destroyer Time,
Now hangs in doubtful ruins o'er its base,
And flinty pyramids and walls of brass
Descend. The Babylonian spires are sunk ;
Achaia, Rome, and Egypt moulder down.
Time shakes the stable tyranny of thrones,
And tottering empires rush by their own weight.
This huge rotundity we tread grows old,
And all those worlds that roll around the sun;
The sun himself shall die, and ancient night
Again involve the desolate abyss,

Till the great Father, through the lifeless gloom,
Extend his arm to light another world,
And bid new planets roll by other laws.

Pestilence of the Fifteenth Century.

Ere yet the fell Plantagenets had spent
Their ancient rage at Bosworth's purple field;
While, for which tyrant England should receive,
Her legions in incestuous murders mixed
And daily horrors; till the fates were drunk
With kindred blood by kindred hands profused:
Another plague of more gigantic arm
Arose, a monster never known before,
Reared from Cocytus its portentous head;
This rapid fury not, like other pests,
Pursued a gradual course, but in a day
Rushed as a storm o'er half the astonished isle,
And strewed with sudden carcasses the land.

First through the shoulders, or whatever part
Was seized the first, a fervid vapour sprung;
With rash combustion thence, the quivering spark
Shot to the heart, and kindled all within ;
And soon the surface caught the spreading fires.
Through all the yielding pores the melted blood
Gushed out in smoky sweats; but nought assuaged
The torrid heat within, nor aught relieved
The stomach's anguish. With incessant toil,
Desperate of ease, impatient of their pain,
They tossed from side to side. In vain the stream
Ran full and clear; they burnt, and thirsted still.
The restless arteries with rapid blood

Beat strong and frequent. Thick and pantingly The breath was fetched, and with huge labourings heaved.

At last a heavy pain oppressed the head,

A wild delirium came: their weeping friends
Were strangers now, and this no home of theirs.
Harassed with toil on toil, the sinking powers
Lay prostrate and o'erthrown; a ponderous sleep
Wrapt all the senses up: they slept and died.
In some a gentle horror crept at first
O'er all the limbs; the sluices of the skin
Withheld their moisture, till by art provoked

POETS.

The sweats o'erflowed, but in a clammy tide;
Now free and copious, now restrained and slow;
Of tinctures various, as the temperature

Had mixed the blood, and rank with fetid streams :
As if the pent-up humours by delay

Were grown more fell, more putrid, and malign.
Here lay their hopes (though little hope remained),
With full effusion of perpetual sweats

To drive the venom out. And here the fates
Were kind, that long they lingered not in pain.
For, who survived the sun's diurnal race,
Rose from the dreary gates of hell redeemed;
Some the sixth hour oppressed, and some the third.
Of many thousands, few untainted 'scaped;
Of those infected, fewer 'scaped alive;
Of those who lived, some felt a second blow;
And whom the second spared, a third destroyed.
Frantic with fear, they sought by flight to shun
The fierce contagion. O'er the mournful land
The infected city poured her hurrying swarms :
Roused by the flames that fired her seats around,
The infected country rushed into the town.
Some sad at home, and in the desert some
Abjured the fatal commerce of mankind.

In vain ; where'er they fled, the fates pursued.
Others, with hopes more specious, crossed the main,
To seek protection in far-distant skies:

But none they found. It seemed the general air,
From pole to pole, from Atlas to the east,
Was then at enmity with English blood;
For but the race of England all were safe
In foreign climes; nor did this fury taste
The foreign blood which England then contained.
Where should they fly? The circumambient heaven
Involved them still, and every breeze was bane:
Where find relief? The salutary art

Was mute, and, startled at the new disease,
In fearful whispers hopeless omens gave.

To Heaven, with suppliant rites they sent their prayers;

Heaven heard them not. Of every hope deprived,
Fatigued with vain resources, and subdued
With woes resistless, and enfeebling fear,
Passive they sunk beneath the weighty blow.
Nothing but lamentable sounds were heard,
Nor aught was seen but ghastly views of death.
Infectious horror ran from face to face,
And pale despair. 'Twas all the business then
To tend the sick, and in their turns to die.
In heaps they fell; and oft the bed, they say,
The sickening, dying, and the dead contained.

SIR WILLIAM BLACKSTONE.

Few votaries of the muses have had the resolution to abandon their early worship, or to cast off 'the Delilahs of the imagination,' when embarked on more gainful callings. An example of this, however, is afforded by the case of SIR WILLIAM BLACKSTONE-born in London in 1723, died 1780 -who, having made choice of the law for his profession, and entered himself a student of the Middle Temple, took formal leave of poetry in a copy of natural and pleasing verses, published in Dodsley's Miscellany. Blackstone rose to rank and fame as a lawyer, wrote a series of masterly commentaries on the laws of England, was knighted, and died a judge in the court of Common Pleas. From some critical notes on Shakspeare by Sir William, published by Stevens, it would appear that, though he had forsaken his muse, he still-like Charles Lamb, when he had given up the use of the 'great plant' tobaccoloved to live in the suburbs of her graces.'

The Lawyer's Farewell to his Muse.
As, by some tyrant's stern command,
A wretch forsakes his native land,
In foreign climes condemned to roam
An endless exile from his home;
Pensive he treads the destined way,
And dreads to go; nor dares to stay;
Till on some neighbouring mountain's brow
He stops, and turns his eyes below;
There, melting at the well-known view,
Drops a last tear, and bids adieu :
So I, thus doomed from thee to part,
Gay queen of fancy and of art,
Reluctant move, with doubtful mind,
Oft stop, and often look behind.
Companion of my tender age,
Serenely gay, and sweetly sage,
How blithesome we were wont to rove,
By verdant hill or shady grove,

Where fervent bees, with humming voice,
Around the honied oak rejoice,
And aged elms with awful bend,
In long cathedral walks extend !
Lulled by the lapse of gliding floods,
Cheered by the warbling of the woods,
How blest my days, my thoughts how free,
In sweet society with thee!

Then all was joyous, all was young,
And years unheeded rolled along:
But now the pleasing dream is o'er,
These scenes must charm me now no more;
Lost to the fields, and torn from you-
Farewell!-a long, a last adieu.
Me wrangling courts, and stubborn law,
To smoke, and crowds, and cities draw:
There selfish faction rules the day,
And pride and avarice throng the way;
Diseases taint the murky air,
And midnight conflagrations glare;
Loose Revelry, and Riot bold,
In frighted streets their orgies hold;
Or, where in silence all is drowned,
Fell Murder walks his lonely round;
No room for peace, no room for you;
Adieu, celestial nymph, adieu!
Shakspeare, no more thy sylvan son,
Nor all the art of Addison,

Pope's heaven-strung lyre, nor Waller's case,
Nor Milton's mighty self must please:
Instead of these, a formal band

In furs and coifs around me stand;
With sounds uncouth and accents dry,
That grate the soul of harmony,
Each pedant sage unlocks his store
Of mystic, dark, discordant lore,

And points with tottering hand the ways
That lead me to the thorny maze.
There, in a winding close retreat,
Is justice doomed to fix her seat ;
There, fenced by bulwarks of the law,
She keeps the wondering world in awe ;
And there, from vulgar sight retired,
Like Eastern queen, is more admired.
Oh, let me pierce the secret shade
Where dwells the venerable maid!
There humbly mark, with reverent awe,
The guardian of Britannia's law;
Unfold with joy her sacred page,
The united boast of many an age;
Where mixed, yet uniform, appears
The wisdom of a thousand years.
In that pure spring the bottom view,
Clear, deep, and regularly true;
And other doctrines thence imbibe
Than lurk within the sordid scribe;

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FROM 1720

Observe how parts with parts unite
In one harmonious rule of right;
See countless wheels distinctly tend
By various laws to one great end;
While mighty Alfred's piercing soul
Pervades and regulates the whole.
Then welcome business, welcome strife,
Welcome the cares, the thorns of life,
The visage wan, the pore-blind sight,
The toil by day, the lamp at night,
The tedious forms, the solemn prate,
The pert dispute, the dull debate,
The drowsy bench, the babbling hall,
For thee, fair Justice, welcome all!
Thus though my noon of life be past,
Yet let my setting sun, at last,
Find out the still, the rural cell,
Where sage retirement loves to dwell!
There let me taste the home-felt bliss
Of innocence and inward peace;
Untainted by the guilty bribe,
Uncursed amid the harpy tribe;
No orphan's cry to wound my ear;
My honour and my conscience clear.
Thus may I calmly meet my end,
Thus to the grave in peace descend.

DR JAMES GRAINGER.

JAMES GRAINGER (circa 1721-1766) was, according to his own statement, seen by Mr Prior, the biographer of Goldsmith, 'of a gentleman's family in Cumberland.' He studied medicine in Edinburgh, was in the army, and, on the peace, established himself as a medical practitioner in London. His poem of Solitude appeared in 1755, and was praised by Johnson, who considered the opening very noble.' Grainger wrote several other pieces, translated Tibullus, and was a critic in the Monthly Review. In 1759, he went to St Christopher's in the West Indies, commenced practising as a physician, and married a lady of fortune. During his residence there, he wrote his poem of the Sugarcane (published in 1764), which Shenstone thought capable of being rendered a good poem; and the arguments in which, Southey says, are 'ludicrously flat and formal.' One point is certainly ridiculous enough; 'he very poetically,' says Campbell, dignifies the poor negroes with the name of "swains."' Grainger died in the West

Indies.

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Ode to Solitude.

O Solitude, romantic maid!
Whether by nodding towers you tread,
Or haunt the desert's trackless gloom,
Or hover o'er the yawning tomb,
Or climb the Andes' clifted side,
Or by the Nile's coy source abide,
Or starting from your half-year's sleep,
From Hecla view the thawing deep,
Or, at the purple dawn of day
Tadmor's marble wastes survey,
You, recluse, again I woo,
And again your steps pursue.
Plumed Conceit himself surveying,
Folly with her shadow playing,
Purse-proud, elbowing Insolence,
Bloated empiric, puffed Pretence,
Noise that through a trumpet speaks,
Laughter in loud peals that breaks,
Intrusion with a fopling's face-
Ignorant of time and place-

Sparks of fire Dissension blowing, Ductile, court-bred Flattery, bowing, Restraint's stiff neck, Grimace's leer, Squint-eyed Censure's artful sneer, Ambition's buskins, steeped in blood, Fly thy presence, Solitude."

Sage Reflection, bent with years,
Conscious Virtue, void of fears,
Muffled Silence, wood-nymph shy,
Meditation's piercing eye,

Halcyon Peace on moss reclined,
Retrospect that scans the mind,
Wrapt earth-gazing Reverie,
Blushing, artless Modesty,
Health that snuffs the morning air,
Full-eyed Truth with bosom bare,
Inspiration, Nature's child,
Seek the solitary wild.

You, with the tragic muse retired,
The wise Euripides inspired;
You taught the sadly-pleasing air
That Athens saved from ruins bare.
You gave the Cean's tears to flow,
And unlocked the springs of woe;
You penned what exiled Naso thought,
And poured the melancholy note.
With Petrarch o'er Vaucluse you strayed,
When death snatched his long-loved maid;
You taught the rocks her loss to mourn,
You strewed with flowers her virgin urn.
And late in Hagley you were seen,
With bloodshot eyes, and sombre mien;
Hymen his yellow vestment tore,
And Dirge a wreath of cypress wore.
But chief your own the solemn lay
That wept Narcissa young and gay;
Darkness clapped her sable wing,
While you touched the mournful string;
Anguish left the pathless wild,
Grim-faced Melancholy smiled,
Drowsy Midnight ceased to yawn,
The starry host put back the dawn;
Aside their harps even seraphs flung
To hear thy sweet Complaint, O Young!
When all nature's hushed asleep,
Nor Love nor Guilt their vigils keep,
Soft you leave your caverned den,
And wander o'er the works of men;
But when Phosphor brings the dawn
By her dappled coursers drawn,
Again you to the wild retreat
And the early huntsman meet,
Where, as you pensive pace along,
You catch the distant shepherd's song,
Or brush from herbs the pearly dew,
Or the rising primrose view.
Devotion lends her heaven-plumed wings,
You mount, and nature with you sings.
But when mid-day fervours glow,
To upland airy shades you go,

Where never sunburnt woodman came,
Nor sportsman chased the timid game;
And there beneath an oak reclined,
With drowsy waterfalls behind,
You sink to rest.

Till the tuneful bird of night
From the neighbouring poplar's height,
Wake you with her solemn strain,
And teach pleased Echo to complain.

With you roses brighter bloom, Sweeter every sweet perfume; Purer every fountain flows, Stronger every wildling grows.

Let those toil for gold who please,
Or for fame renounce their ease.
What is fame? an empty bubble.
Gold? a transient shining trouble.
Let them for their country bleed,
What was Sidney's, Raleigh's meed?
Man's not worth a moment's pain,
Base, ungrateful, fickle, vain.
Then let me, sequestered fair,
To your sibyl grot repair;
On yon hanging cliff it stands,
Scooped by nature's salvage hands,
Bosomed in the gloomy shade
Of cypress not with age decayed.
Where the owl still-hooting sits,
Where the bat incessant flits,
There in loftier strains I'll sing
Whence the changing seasons spring;
Tell how storms deform the skies,
Whence the waves subside and rise,
Trace the comet's blazing tail,
Weigh the planets in a scale;
Bend, great God, before thy shrine,
The bournless macrocosm's thine.

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Two travellers of such a cast, As o'er Arabia's wilds they passed, And on their way in friendly chat, Now talked of this, and then of that; Discoursed awhile, 'mongst other matter, Of the Chameleon's form and nature. 'A stranger animal,' cries one, 'Sure never lived beneath the sun : A lizard's body lean and long, A fish's head, a serpent's tongue, Its foot with triple claw disjoined; And what a length of tail behind! How slow its pace! and then its hueWho ever saw so fine a blue?'

'Hold there,' the other quick replies; 'Tis green-I saw it with these eyes, As late with open mouth it lay, And warmed it in the sunny ray; Stretched at its ease, the beast I viewed, And saw it eat the air for food.'

'I've seen it, sir, as well as you, And must again affirm it blue;

At leisure I the beast surveyed
Extended in the cooling shade.'

"Tis green, 'tis green, sir, I assure ye.'
'Green!' cries the other in a fury:
"Why, sir, d'ye think I've lost my eyes?'
''Twere no great loss,' the friend replies;
For if they always serve you thus,
You'll find them but of little use.'

So high at last the contest rose,
From words they almost came to blows:
When luckily came by a third;
To him the question they referred:
And begged he'd tell them, if he knew,
Whether the thing was green or blue.

'Sirs,' cries the umpire, 'cease your pother;
The creature 's neither one nor t' other.
I caught the animal last night,
And viewed it o'er by candlelight:
I marked it well; 'twas black as jet-
You stare-but, sirs, I've got it yet,
And can produce it.'-' Pray, sir, do;
I'll lay my life the thing is blue,'
'And I'll be sworn, that when you've seen
The reptile, you'll pronounce him green.'
'Well, then, at once to ease the doubt,'
Replies the man, 'I'll turn him out:
And when before your eyes I've set him,
If you don't find him black, I'll eat him.'
He said; and full before their sight
Produced the beast, and lo!-'twas white.
Both stared; the man looked wondrous wise-
'My children,' the Chameleon cries-
Then first the creature found a tongue-
"You all are right, and all are wrong:
When next you talk of what you view,
Think others see as well as you:
Nor wonder if you find that none
Prefers your eyesight to his own.'

JAMES MACPHERSON.

The translator of Ossian stands in a dubious light with posterity, and seems to have been willing that his contemporaries should be no better informed. With the Celtic Homer, however, the name of Macpherson is inseparably connected. They stand, as liberty does with reason,

Twinned, and from her hath no dividual being. Time and a better taste have abated the pleasure with which the poems of Ossian' were once read; but productions which engrossed so much attention, which were translated into many different languages, which were hailed with delight by Gray, by David Hume, John Home, and other eminent persons, and which, in a bad Italian translation, formed the favourite reading of Napoleon, cannot be considered as unworthy of notice.

JAMES MACPHERSON was born at Kingussie, a village in Inverness-shire, on the road northwards from Perth, in 1738. He was intended for the church, and received the necessary education at Aberdeen. At the age of twenty, he published a heroic poem, in six cantos, entitled The Highlander, which at once proved his ambition and his incapacity. It is a miserable production. For a short time Macpherson taught the school of Ruthven, near his native place, whence he was glad to remove as tutor in the family of Mr Graham of Balgowan. While attending his pupil (afterwards Lord Lynedoch) at the spa of Moffat, he became acquainted, in the autumn of 1759, with Mr John

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