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writer, who, with the truest relish for wit and humour, never loses sight of more importaut considerations.

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In Swift we see a turn of mind very different from that of the amiable Thomson, little relish for the subiime and beautiful, and a perpetual succession of violent emotions. All his pictures of life seem to show, that deformity and meanness the favourite objects of his attention, and that his soul was a constant prey to indignation, disgust, and other gloomy passions arising from such a view of things. And it is the tendency of almost all his writings (though it was not always the author's de sign), to communicate the same passions to his reader; insomuch, that, notwithstanding his erudition, and knowledge of the world, his abilities as a popular orator and man of business, the energy of his style, the elegance of some of his verses, and his extraordinary talents in wit and humour, there is reason to doubt, whether by studying his works any person was ever much improved in piety or benevolence*.'

The next contributor to the TATLER whom we shall notice, is Mr. JOHN HUGHES, who is said to have been the author of the letter signed Josiah Couplet in No. 64; that signed Wil Trusty in No. 73; a letter on the tendency of the work in No. 76; and the in

* Essays on Poetry and Music, p. 387, 4to. Edit. 1776.

ventory of a beau's effects in No. 113. For these assignments, we have the authority of Mr. Duncombe. The Annotators on the Tatler suspect that he wrote the short letter signed Philanthropos in No. 66, and the whole of No. 194, a transposition of the tenth canto of the fourth book of Spenser. STEELE is supposed to have alluded to HUGHES in the character of Aletheus in No. 56, 'He was,' say the Annotators on the Tatler, the intimate friend of STEELE, and seems to have interested himself very particularly in those papers of this work which were written with a view to detect and expose the sharpers of that time.' Some farther notice will be taken of Mr. HUGHES among the authors of the SPECTATOR.

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The Medicine, a Tale,' in No. 2, was written by Mr. WILLIAM HARRISON, a young gentleman high in esteem, and (as SWIFT characterises him a little pretty fellow, with a great deal of wit, good sense, and good nature'. For these and perhaps superior qualities, he has been praised, wept, and honoured,' by YOUNG in his Epistle to Lord LANSDowne.

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Mr. HARRISON received the early rudiments of his education at Winchester School, and was afterwards fellow of New College Oxon. His circumstances were very indiferent, as he had no other income than forty pounds a year when tutor to one of the Duke of QUEENSBERRY's sons. In this employment

he attracted the favour of SWIFT, who obtained for him the employment of Secretary to Lord RABY, afterwards Earl of STRAFFORD, and then ambassador at the Hague. A letter of his while at Utrecht, dated December 16, 1712, is printed in the Dean's works, from which it appears that his office was attended with much vexation and little advantage. SWIFT gives a remarkable instance of this, at the time HARRISON brought over the barrier treaty. Jan. 31, 1712-13. HARRISON was with me this morning; we talked three hours, and then I carried him to court. When we went down to the door of my lodging, I found a coach waited for him, I chid him for it: but he whispered me, it was impossible to be otherwise; and in the coach he told me, he had not one farthing in his pocket to pay for it; and therefore took the coach for the whole day, and intended to borrow money somewhere or other. So there was the QUEEN'S MINISTER intrusted, in affairs of the greatest importance, without a shilling in his pocket to pay a coach.' He died Feb. 14, 1712-13. was professedly Editor of the spurious Tatler hereafter mentioned. Dr. BIRCH, in a note on his letter to SWIFT, has confounded him with THOMAS HARRISON, M. A. of Queen's College*.

He

* NICHOLS's Select Collection of Poems, vol. iv. p. 181. In this Collection are all the Poems that can be traced to

Mr. HARRISON, exeept 'Woodstock Park,' which is in DODSLEY'S Collection.

The very humourous genealogy of the family of Bickerstaff in No. 11, is ascribed by STEELE in his Preface to the Octavo Edition, 1710,' to 'Mr. TWISDEN, who died at the battle of Mons, and has a monument in Westminster Abbey, suitable to the respect which is due to his wit and his valour.' HENEAGE TWISDEN was the seventh son of Sir WILLIAM TWISDEN, Bart. of Roydon Hall, East Peckham, Kent; and a youth of great expectations.

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At the time of his death (1709, aged 29,) he was a captain of foot in Sir RICHARD TEMPLE'S regiment, and Aid-de-Camp to JOHN DUKE of ARGYLE, who commanded the right wing of the Confederate Army. Near his monument in the north aisle of the Abbey, are two other small ones to the memory of his brothers JOSIAH and JOHN. SIAH was a captain of foot at the siege of Agremont, near Lisle in Flanders, and was killed by a cannon-ball, in 1708, in the 23d year of his age. John was a Lieutenant in the Admiral's ship, under Sir CLOUDESLEY SHOVEL, and perished with him in 1707, in the 24th year of his age.

The character of Aspasia, in No. 42, was written by CONGREVE. The person meant was Lady ELIZABETH HASTINGS, the daughter of Theophilus, the seventh Earl of Huntingdon, a lady celebrated as a pattern of munificence and piety. By her historical character drawn up by THOMAS BAR

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NARD, M. A. and published in 1742, it ap pears that she was indeed little lower than the Angels.' It does honour to CONGREVE that he could relish the beauties of such a character.

An excellent paper on gluttony, No. 205, is ascribed by STEELE, in the Theatre, No. 26,' to a Mr. FULLER, with this encomium :

The mind usually exerts itself in all its faculties, with an equal pace towards maturity and this gentleman, who at the age of sixteen, could form such pleasant pictures of the false and little ambitions of low spirits, as Mr. FULLER did, to whom, when a boy, we owe, with several other excellent pieces, The Vain-Glorious Glutton, when a secret correspondent of the Tatler; I say, such a one might, easily, as he proceeded in human life, arrive at this superior strength of mind at four and twenty. Of this young writer, and of his other pieces, I have not been able to obtain any account. I hazard a conjecture that he might be THOMAS FULLER, M. D. a physician, who died at Sevenoaks in Kent, Feb. 10, 1731, and who published Introductio ad Sapientiam, or the Right Art of Thinking, assisted and improved.'

The letter on language, education, &c. in No. 234. was written by Mr. JAMES GREENWOOD, author of an Essay towards a practical English Grammar,' and teacher of a boarding-school at Woodford in Essex.

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