nefactor; for they reverenced him as a guardian and obeyed him as a dictator.

ther renovated by discourse nor increased by reading, wore gradually away, and left his mind vacant to the vexations of the hour, till at last In his works he has given very different specihis anger was heightened into madness. mens both of sentiments and expression. His He however permitted one book to be pub-"Tale of a Tub" has little resemblance to his lished, which had been the production of for- other pieces. It exhibits a vehemence and rapidmer years; "Polite Conversation," which ap-ity of mind, a copiousness of images and vivapeared in 1738. The "Directions for Servants" was printed soon after his death. These two performances show a mind incessantly attentive, and, when it was not employed upon great things, busy with minute occurrences. It is apparent that he must have had the habit of In his other works is found an equable tenor noting whatever he observed; for such a num-of easy language, which rather trickles than ber of particulars could never have been assem-flows. His delight was in simplicity. That he bled by the power of recollection. has in his works no metaphor, as has been said,

city of diction, such as he afterwards never possessed or never exerted. It is of a mode so distinct and peculiar that it must be considered by itself; what is true of that, is not true of any thing else which he has written.

He grew more violent, and his mental powers is not true; but his few metaphors seem to be declined, till (1741) it was found necessary that received rather by necessity than choice. He legal guardians should be appointed of his per-studied purity; and though perhaps all his stric son and fortune. He now lost distinction. His madness was compounded of rage and fatuity. The last face that he knew was that of Mrs. Whiteway; and her he ceased to know in a little time. His meat was brought him cut into mouthfuls; but he would never touch it while the servant stayed, and at last, after it had stood perhaps an hour, would eat it walking; for he continued his old habit, and was on his feet ten hours a day.

Next year (1742) he had an inflammation in his left eye, which swelled it to the size of an egg, with biles in other parts: he was kept long waking with the pain, and was not easily restrained by five attendants from tearing out his eye.

The tumour at last subsided, and a short interval of reason ensuing, in which he knew his physician and his family, gave hopes of his recovery; but in a few days he sunk into a lethargic stupidity, motionless, heedless, and speechless. But it is said, that, after a year of total silence, when his housekeeper, on the 30th of November, told him that the usual bonfires and illuminations were preparing to celebrate his birth day, he answered "It is all folly; they had better let it alone."

It is remembered, that he afterwards spoke now and then, or gave some intimation of a meaning; but at last sunk into perfect silence, which continued till about the end of October, 1744, when, in his seventy-eighth year, he expired without a struggle.

tures are not exact, yet it is not often that solecisms can be found; and whoever depends on his authority may generally conclude himself safe. His sentences are never too much dilated or contracted; and it will not be easy to find any embarrassment in the complication of his clauses, any inconsequence in his connexions, or abruptness in his transitions.

His style was well suited to his thoughts, which are never subtilized by nice disquisitions, decorated by sparkling conceits, elevated by am, bitious sentences, or variegated by far-sought learning. He pays no court to the passions; he excites neither surprise nor admiration; he al ways understands himself, and his reader always understands him; the peruser of Swift wants little previous knowledge; it will be sufficient that he is acquainted with common words and common things; he is neither required to mount elevations, nor to explore profundities; his pas sage is always on a level, along solid ground, without asperities, without obstruction.

This easy and safe conveyance of meaning it was Swift's desire to attain, and for having attained he deserves praise. For purposes merely didactic, when something is to be told that was not known before, it is the best mode; hut against that inattention by which known truths are suffered to lie neglected it makes no provi sion; it instructs, but does not persuade.

He was a churchman rationally zealous; he desired the prosperity, and maintained the honour, of the clergy; of the dissenters he did not wish to infringe the toleration, but he opposed their encroachments.

By his political education he was associated with the whigs; but he deserted them when they deserted their principles, yet without running When Swift is considered as an author, it is into the contrary extreme; he continued through just to estimate his powers by their effects. In out his life to retain the disposition which he the reign of Queen Anne he turned the stream of assigns to the "Church-of-England Man," of popularity against the whigs, and must be con-thinking commonly with the whigs of the state fessed to have dictated for a time the political and with the tories of the church. opinions of the English nation. In the succeeding reign he delivered Ireland from plunder and oppression; and showed that wit, confederated with truth, had such force as authority was unable to resist. He said truly of himself, that Ireland "was his debtor." It was from the time To his duty as dean he was very attentive. when he first began to patronize the Irish that He managed the revenues of his church with they may date their riches and prosperity. He exact economy; and it is said by Delany, that taught them first to know their own interest, more money was, under his direction, laid out their weight, and their strength, and gave them in repairs, than had ever been in the same time spirit to assert that equality with their fellow-since its first erection. Of his choir he was emisubjects, to which they have ever since been making vigorous advances, and to claim those rights which they have at last established. Nor can they be charged with ingratitude to their be

nently careful; and, though he neither loved nor understood music, took care that all the singers were well qualified, admitting none without the testimony of skilful judges.

In his church he restored the practice of weekly communion, and distributed the sacramental elements in the most solemn and devout manner with his own hand. He came to church every morning, preached commonly in his turn, and attended the evening anthem, that it might not be negligently performed.

He read the service "rather with a strong, nervous voice, than in a graceful manner; his voice was sharp and high-toned, rather than harmonious."

nerosity, it should be remembered that he was never rich. The revenue of his deanery was not much more than seven hundred a year.

His beneficence was not graced with tenderness or civility; he relieved without pity, and assisted without kindness; so that those who were fed by him could hardly love him.

He made a rule to himself to give but one piece at a time, and therefore always stored his pocket with coins of different value.

Whatever he did, he seemed willing to do in He entered upon the clerical state with hope a manner peculiar to himself, without sufficiently to excel in preaching; but complained, that from considering that singularity, as it implies a conthe time of his political controversies, "he could tempt of the general practice, is a kind of defionly preach pamphlets." This censure of him-ance which justly provokes the hostility of self, if judgment be made from those sermons ridicule; he, therefore, who indulges peculiar which have been printed, was unreasonably habits is worse than others, if he be not better.

severe.

Of his humour, a story told by Pope* may afford a specimen.

The suspicions of his irreligion proceeded in a great measure froin his dread of hypocrisy ; "Dr. Swift has an odd blunt way, that is misinstead of wishing to seem better, he delighted taken by strangers for ill-nature.-'Tis so odd, in seeming worse than he was. He went in that there is no describing it but by facts. I'll London to early prayers, lest he should be seen tell you one that first comes into my head. One at church: he read prayers to his servants every evening, Gay and I went to see him: you know morning with such dexterous secrecy, that Dr. how intimately we were all acquainted. On our Delany was six months in his house before he coming in, Heydey, gentlemen, (says the Docknew it. He was not only careful to hide the tor,' what's the meaning of this visit? How good which he did, but willingly incurred the came you to leave the great lords that you are so suspicion of evil which he did not. He forgot fond of, to come hither to see a poor Dean ?'— what himself had formerly asserted, that hypo-Because we would rather see you than any of crisy is less mischievous than open impiety. Dr. them.'-'Ay, any one that did not know so well Delany, with all his zeal for his honour, has as I do might believe you. But since you are justly condemned this part of his character. come, I must get some supper for you, I supThe person of Swift had not many recommen-pose.No, Doctor, we have supped already. dations. He had a kind of muddy complexion, which, though he washed himself with oriental scrupulosity, did not look clear. He had a countenance sour and severe, which he seldom softened by any appearance of gayety. He stubbornly resisted any tendency to laughter.

To his domestics he was naturally rough; and a man of rigorous temper, with that vigilance of minute attention which his works discover, must have been a master that few could bear. That he was disposed to do his servants good on important occasions, is no great mitigation; benefaction can be but rare, and tyrannic peevishness is perpetual. He did not spare the servants of others. Once when he dined alone with the Earl of Orrery, he said of one that waited in the room, "That man has, since we sat at table, committed fifteen faults." What the faults were, Lord Orrery, from whom I heard the story, had not been attentive enough to discover. My number may perhaps not be exact.

Supped already! that's impossible! why 'tis not eight o'clock yet. That's very strange; but if you had not supped, I must have got something for you.-Let me see, what should I have had? A couple of lobsters; ay, that would have done very well; two shillings-tarts, a shilling; but you will drink a glass of wine with me, though you supped so much before your usual time only to spare my pocket? No, we had rather talk with you than drink with you.'-'But if you had supped with me, as in all reason you ought to have done, you must then have drank with me.-A bottle of wine, two shillings-two and two is four, and one is five; just two and sixpence a-piece. There, Pope, there's half-acrown for you, and there's another for you, Sir; for I won't save any thing by you I am determined.'-This was all said and done with his usual seriousness on such occasions; and in spite of every thing we could say to the contrary, he actually obliged us to take the money."

In the intercourse of familiar life, he indulged his disposition to petulance and sarcasm, and thought himself injured if the licentiousness of his raillery, the freedom of his censures, or the petulance of his frolics, was resented or repressed. He predominated over his companions with very high ascendency, and probably would bear none over whom he could not predominate. To give him advice, was, in the style of his friend Delany, "to venture to speak to him." This customary superiority soon grew too delicate for truth; and Swift, with all his penetration, allowed himself to be delighted with low

In his economy he practised a peculiar and offensive parsimony, without disguise or apology. The practice of saving being once necessary, became habitual, and grew first ridiculous, and at last detestable. But his avarice, though it might exclude pleasure, was never suffered to encroach upon his virtue. He was frugal by inclination, but liberal by principle; and if the purpose to which he destined his little accumulations be remembered, with his distribution of occasional charity, it will perhaps appear, that he only liked one mode of expense better than another, and saved merely that he might have something to give. He did not grow rich by in-flattery. juring his successors, but left both Laracor and the deanery more valuable than he found them. ---With all this talk of his covetousness and ge

On all common occasions, he habitually affects

* Spence.

"My Lord, when you consider Swift's singnIt may be justly supposed that there was in lar, peculiar, and most variegated vein of wit, alhis conversation what appears so frequently in ways intended rightly, although not always so his letters, an affectation of familiarity with the rightly directed; delightful in many instances, great, and ambition of momentary equality and salutary even where it is most offensive; sought and enjoyed by the neglect of those cere- when you consider his strict truth, his fortitude monies which custom has established as the bar-in resisting oppression and arbitrary power; his riers between one order of society and another. fidelity in friendship; his sincere love and zeal This transgression of regularity was by himself for religion; his uprightness in making right reand his admirers termed greatness of soul. But solutions, and his steadiness in adhering to a great mind disdains to hold any thing by cour-them: his care of his church, its choir, its ecotesy, and therefore never usurps what a lawful claimant may take away. He that encroaches on another's dignity puts himself in his power; he is either repelled with helpless indignity or endured by clemency and condescension.

much upon which the critic can exercise his would be to tell the reader what he knows alpowers. They are often humorous, almost al-ready, and to find faults of which the author ways light, and have the qualities which recom- could not be ignorant, who certainly wrote often mend such compositions, easiness and gayety. not to his judgment, but his humour. They are, for the most part, what their author intended. The diction is correct, the numbers are smooth, and the rhymes exact. There seldom occurs a hard-laboured expression or a redundant epithet; all his verses exemplify his own definition of a good style; they consist of "proper words in proper places."

To divide this collection into classes, and show how some pieces are gross and some are trifling,

It was said, in a preface to one of the Irish editions, that Swift had never been known to take a single thought from any writer, ancient or modern. This is not literally true; but perhaps no writer can easily be found that has borrowed so little, or that in all his excellences and all his defects has so well maintained his claim to be considered as original.

BROOM E.

WILLIAM BROOME was born in Cheshire, as | is said, of very mean parents. Of the place of his birth or the first part of his life, I have not been able to gain any intelligence. He was educated upon the foundation at Eton, and was captain of the school a whole year, without any vacancy by which he might have obtained a scholarship at King's College: being by this delay, such as is said to have happened very rarely, superannuated, he was sent to St. John's College by the contributions of his friends, where he obtained a small exhibition.

At this college he lived for some time in the same chamber with the well-known Ford, by whom I have formerly heard him described as a contracted scholar and a mere versifier, unacquainted with life and unskilful in conversation. His addiction to metre was then such, that his companions familiarly called him Poet. When he had opportunities of mingling with mankind, he cleared himself, as Ford likewise owned, from the great part of his scholastic rust.

Broome fell the second, sixth, eighth, eleventh, twelfth, sixteenth, eighteenth, and twenty-third, together with the burden of writing all the notes. As this translation is a very important event in poetical history, the reader has a right to know upon what grounds I establish my narration. That the version was not wholly Pope's was always known; he had mentioned the assistance of two friends in his proposals, and at the end of the work some account is given by Broome of their different parts, which however mentions only five books as written by the coadjutors; the fourth and twentieth by Fenton; the sixth, the eleventh, and the eighteenth, by himself; though Pope, in an advertisement prefixed afterwards to a new volume of his works, claimed only twelve. A natural curiosity after the real conduct of so great an undertaking incited me once to inquire of Dr. Warburton, who told me, in his warm language, that he thought the relation given in the note "a lie;" but that he was not able to ascertain the several shares. The intelligence which Dr. Warburton could not afford me I obtained from Mr. Langton, to whom Mr. Spence had imparted it.

He appeared early in the world as a translator of the "Iliads" into prose, in conjunction with Ozell and Oldisworth. How the several parts were distributed is not known. This is The price at which Pope purchased this as the translation of which Ozell boasted as supe-sistance was three hundred pounds paid to Fenrior, in Toland's opinion, to that of Pope: it has long since vanished, and is now in no danger

from the critics.

ton, and five hundred to Broome, with as many copies as he wanted for his friends, which amounted to one hundred more. The payment made to Fenton I know not but by hearsay; Broome's is very distinctly told by Pope, in the notes to the "Dunciad.”

He was introduced to Mr. Pope, who was then visiting Sir John Cotton at Madingley near Cambridge, and gained so much of his esteem, that he was employed, I believe, to make ex- It is evident, that, according to Pope's own tracts from Eustathius for the notes to the trans-estimate, Broome was unkindly treated. If lation of the "Iliad;" and in the volumes of poetry published by Lintot, commonly called Pope's Miscellanies," many of his early pieces were inserted.

Pore and Broome were to be yet more closely connected. When the success of the "Iliad" gave encouragement to a version of the "Odyssey," "Pope, weary of the toil, called Fenton and Broome to his assistance; and, taking only half the work upon himself, divided the other half between his partners, giving four books to Fenton and sight to Broome. Fenton's books I have enumerated in his life: to the lot of

four books could merit three hundred pounds, eight and all the notes, equivalent at least to four, had certainly a right to more than six.

Broome probably considered himself as injured, and there was for some time more than coldness between him and his employer. He always spoke of Pope as too much a lover of money; and Pope pursued him with avowed hostility; for he not only named him disrespect. fully in the "Dunciad," but quoted him more than once in the "Bathos," as a proficient in the "Art of Sinking ;" and in his enumeration of the different kinds of poets distinguished for

the profound, he reckons Broome among "the and elegant. His rhymes are sometimes unparrots who repeat another's words in such a suitable; in his "Melancholy," he makes breath hoarse odd tone as makes them seem their own." rhyme to birth in one place, and to earth in I have been told that they were afterwards re-another. Those faults occur but seldom; and conciled; but I am afraid their peace was without friendship.

He afterwards published a Miscellany of Poems, which is inserted, with corrections, in the late compilation.

he had such power of words and numbers as fitted him for translation; but in his original works, recollection seems to have been his business more than invention. His imitations are so apparent, that it is a part of his reader's emHe never rose to a very high dignity in theployment to recall the verses of some former church. He was some time rector of Sturston poet. Sometimes he copies the most popular in Suffolk, where he married a wealthy widow; writers, for he seems scarcely to endeavour at and afterwards, when the king visited Cam-concealment; and sometimes he picks up fragbridge (1728) became doctor of laws. He was ments in obscure corners. His lines to Fenton, (in August 1728) presented by the crown to the Serene, the sting of pain thy thoughts beguile, rectory of Pulham in Norfolk, which he held And make afflictions objects of a smile, with Oakley Magna in Suffolk, given him by brought to my mind some lines on the death the Lord Cornwallis, to whom he was chaplain, of Queen Mary, written by Barnes, of whom who added the vicarage of Eye in Suffolk; he I should not have expected to find an imitator: then resigned Pulham, and retained the other two. But thou, O Muse! whose sweet nepenthean tongue Towards the close of his life he grew again Can charm the pangs of death with deathless song, Canst stinging plagues with easy thoughts beguile, poetical, and amused himself with translating Make pains and tortures objects of a smile. Odes of Anacreon, which he published in the "Gentleman's Magazine" under the name of Chester.

He died at Bath, November 16,1745, and was buried in the Abbey Church.

Of Broome, though it cannot be said that he was a great poet, it would be unjust to deny that he was an excellent versifier; his lines are smooth and sonorous, and his diction is select

To detect his imitations were tedious and use

less. What he takes he seldom makes worse;
and he cannot be justly thought a mean man
whom Pope chose for an associate, and whose
co-operation was considered by Pope's enemies
as so important, that he was attacked by Henley
with this ludicrous distich:

Pope came off clean with Homer; but they say
Broome went before, and kindly swept the way.

POPE.

ALEXANDER POPE was born in London, May | 22, 1688, of parents whose rank or station was never ascertained; we are informed that they were of "gentle blood;" that his father was of a family of which the Earl of Downe was the head; and that his mother was the daughter of William Turner, Esquire, of York, who had likewise three sons, one of whom had the honour of being killed, and the other of dying in the service of Charles the First; the third was made a general officer in Spain, from whom the sister inherited what sequestrations and forfeitures had left in the family.

perhaps ended with his childhood. His voice, when he was young, was so pleasing, that he was called in fondness "the little Nightingale."

Being not sent early to school, he was taught to read by an aunt; and when he was seven or eight years old became a lover of books. He first learned to write by imitating printed books; a species of penmanship in which he retained great excellence through his whole life, though his ordinary hand was not elegant.

When he was about eight, he was placed in Hampshire, under Taverner, a Romish priest, who, by a method very rarely practised, taught This, and this only, is told by Pope, who is him the Greek and Latin rudiments together. more willing, as I have heard observed, to show He was now first regularly initiated in poetry what his father was not, than what he was. by the perusal of "Ogilby's Homer" and It is allowed that he grew rich by trade; but "Sandys' Ovid." Ogilby's assistance he never whether in a shop or on the exchange, was ne- repaid with any praise; but of Sandys, he dever discovered till Mr. Tyres told, on the au-clared, in his notes to the "Iliad," that English thority of Mrs. Racket, that he was a linendraper in the Strand. Both parents were papists.

Pope was from his birth of a constitution tender and delicate; but is said to have shown remarkable gentleness and sweetness of disposition. The weakness of his body continued through his life; but the mildness of his mind

In Lombard-street, according to Dr. Warton.-C.
This weakness was so great, that he constantly wore

poetry owed much of its beauty to his transla tion. Sandys very rarely attempted original composition.

From the care of Taverner, under whom his proficiency was considerable, he was removed to a school at Twyford, near Winchester, and

stays, as I have been assured by a waterman at Twickenham, who, in lifting him into his boat, had often felt them. His method of taking the air on the water was to have a sedan chair in the boat, in which he sat with the glasses down.--H.