the sun and the fields were turning round him; whipped and spurred his horse until the animal reared and wheeled in every direction: at length he lost his whip, his feet seemed incapable of resting in the stirrups, the bridle dropped from his hand, and he appeared to have lost the use of all his faculties. Finally, he fell from his horse in such a death-like manner, that Preville gave an involuntary cry of horror; and his terror greatly increased when he found that his friend made no answers to his questions. After wiping the dust from his face, he asked again, with the emotion and anxiety of friendship, whether he was hurt. Garrick, whose eyes were closed, half opened one of them, hiccuped, and, with the most natural tone of intoxication, called for another glass. Preville was astonished; and when Garrick started up, and resumed his usual demeanour, the French actor exclaimed- My friend, allow the scholar to embrace his master, and thank him for the valuable lesson he has received."" As an author, Garrick was only respectable: besides the dramatic works already noticed, he composed an infinitude of prologues, epilogues, songs, and epigrams, remarkable for liveliness and uncommon variety. Dr. Johnson has observed that Dryden wrote better prologues than Garrick, but that Garrick wrote more good ones than Dryden. He commemorated the death of Mr. Secretary Pelham in an ode, which, as we are told, ran through four editions in six weeks, and ridiculed a Mr. Fitzgerald, who had attacked him through the Craftsman, in a poem called 'Fribleriad,' which has been pointedly commended by Churchill. This effusion, however, affected his interests in an unexpected way, for soon after its appearance, Fitzgerald roused up a party who compelled the managers of Drury-lane to abandon a privilege which they had retained up to this period—of refusing any admissions at halfprice upon the night of a new representation.- Sheridan honoured Garrick's death with a Monody, spoken at Drury-lane Theatre, but there does not remain room for its insertion. JOHN GAY. GAY'S monument, executed by Adams, and erected by his patrons the Duke and Duchess of Queensbury, stands in the southern extremity of the Poet's Corner in Westminster Abbey. The design, simple in the extreme, presents his bust supported by a cherub on an elevated pedestal of fine marble, which is decorated with emblematical devices of music, comedy, and poetry. Altogether, it is rather a heavy performance. His own brief epitaph, which has been so often condemned for its levity, and can never be relished for its point, is engraved upon the ledge: Life is a jest, and all things show it; I thought so once, but now I know it. Underneath are the affectionate lines in which Pope essayed to commemorate his merits as an author, and his character as a man. Of manners gentle, and affections mild, In wit a man, simplicity a child; With native humour tempting virtuous rage, He died December the 4th, 1732, aged 45. John Gay was born at Exeter during the year 1688, and edu cated at the Free School of Barnstable, under a master named Luck, who subsequently published a volume of Latin and English poetry. His family, though antiently estated, was so reduced at the period of his youth, that no higher prospects of settling him in the world occurred to their ambition than an apprenticeship to a London sik-mercer, in the Strand. Of the time he spent in this servile employment, or the manner in which he occupied his leisure, no account has been given. His own entreaties are said to have prevailed upon his master to cancel the contract subsisting between them. In 1712, he obtained by some influence unknown, the post of Secretary in the household of the Duchess of Monmouth; and during the following year started in the career of an author, by publishing Rural Sports,' an eclogue, in two cantos, which he inscribed to Pope. The friendship of the latter was the only advantage which this effort produced, or deserved to produce. It is an outline neither judiciously planned, nor neatly sketched; the verses are separately smooth, and the thoughts plain, but the diction is not always correctly expressed, and there is no richness of imagination revealed in the style. His next performance was Trivia; or, The art of walking the Streets of London,' perhaps the best of his miscellaneous poems the subject is peculiarly fitted to the nature of his talents, and he has executed it with much pleasantry. The Shepherd's Week,' a poem in six pastorals, dedicated to Lord Bolingbroke, followed in 1714. It has been suggested, that he was incited to this composition by Pope, who, disrelishing the praises awarded to Ambrose Phillips for his essays in the same style of poetry, sought to establish the inadequacy of making pastorals so many strict copies of nature. For this undertaking he fixed upon Gay, an author by this time associated with the prominent wits of the day, and rapidly advancing into public estimation. The effect of this literary scheme was curious: Gay fulfilled the project to an extreme, bordering upon grossness and degradation; the literati were satisfied that to be tasteful a pastoral must not be natural; but the public seized upon the poems with delight, and read them with avidity, as painting with sincerity the real manners and oc cupations of rural life. We are now to consider him as a dramatist: after printing tl e 'Mohocks, a tragi comical farce, without his name, he brought forward the Wife of Bath,' a comedy borrowed from Chaucer's Tales. It was acted at the theatre in Drury Lane during the year 1713, but obtained neither honour or profit. Yet he seems to have regarded it with tenderness; for, seventeen years after wards, when the town was flushed with the success of the 'Beggar's Opera,' he reproduced it, with alterations, and had the mortification of seeing it again rejected. This misfortune, however, was compensated by better things, for the amiability of his manners had now so strongly attached to his interest several of those great men whom literary merit had first drawn to an acquaintance with his person, that in the last year of Queen Anne's reign he was appointed secretary to the Earl of Clarendon in an embassy to the Court of France. Great hopes were excited in his breast by this preferment; and, as his temperament was sanguine, he looked forward to a speedy possession of all those emolumentary offices to which talent such as his had occasionally been advanced in the course of our history. But the anticipation was soon blasted: Queen Anne died, the House of Hanover succeeded to the throne; and, as Gay had chosen his friends from among the dependants of the Stuarts, there appeared at first no prospect of success for his ambition under the new order of things. Poets, however, have immemorially been accustomed to apply the license of their noble art to meaner things: Gay resumed courage and adopted the prudent resolution of making those flowers which had proved acceptable to one family, equally pleasing to another. With this view he produced, and dedicated to the Princess of Wales, the 'What d'ye call it?" a tragi.comi-pastoral farce, acted at Drury Lane in 1715. This vagary was meant to ridicule the dominant passion for tragedies, but the imagery being ludicrous and the action grave, the audience did not at first enter into the project, and some laughed while others cried. From the beginning it was highly extolled by the wits, and as soon as the gist was taken, became sufficiently popular. Two years after he sought to pursue the credit of this career by entertaining the town with a comedy, in three acts, entitled Three Hours after Marriage.' The title page gave only his own name as the au thor, but it was generally understood to have been written con jointly by him, Pope, and Arbuthnot. The association of intellect thus employed was certainly powerful, yet the effect was by no means successful. The play stood for seven nights with great difficulty, and was then driven off the stage with the most positive declarations of censure. One object it proposed, was the ridicule of Dr. Woodward, who had then begun to direct his attention to fossile antiquities, -a pursuit as little open to contempt as the character of the man was liable to satire. It cannot be regretted that the comedy which wantonly tampered with domestic life should be exploded with the disgust such an outrage must always deserve. Gay was truly, as Pope observed, a simple mortal: up to this period he had lived on in the ardour of hope, expecting every day to rise to fame and independence, but finding himself at the close of each succeeding year as poor and unprovided as he had been at the beginning of it. The mind that is easily roused to the enthusiasm of hope is at intervals sure to fall into the opposite extremes of depression. Such was now the case with Gay : his spirits sunk in disappointment, and although no claim of merit availed to procure a substantial remedy for his distress, yet the regard which his manners had excited from his acquaintances, induced many attentions which soothed and diverted his melancholy. During the year 1716 the Earl of Burlington sent him into Devonshire; during the next year Mr. Pulteny took him on an excursion to Aix la Chapelle; and in 1718 Lord Harcourt invited him down to his country seat, where the two lovers were killed by lightning, as related by Pope in his letters. These proofs of kindness were in time extended to acts of substantial benefit, for with the advice of his friends, he published his poems by subscription in 1720, and realised 10007. by the undertaking. How he disposed of this sum does not exactly appear of those whom he called in to confer with him on the subject, Lewis, who was steward to the Earl of Oxford, advised him to intrust it to the funds, and live upon the interest; Arbuthnot exhorted him to entrust it to Providence, and live upon the principal, and Pope desired him to purchase an annuity. It seems probable that he followed no one of these courses, but invested the major part upon South Sea Stock, in which Mr. Secre |