were not likely to abound either in books or conversation relating to literature; but he happened to form an acquaintance and friendship with a neighbour of the name of Frogley, a master bricklayer, who, though an uneducated man, was an admirer of poetry, and by his intercourse with this friend he strengthened his literary propensity. His first poetical essays were transmitted to the Gentleman's Magazine. In his thirtieth year he published four elegies, which were favourably received. His poems, entitled "The Garden," and "Amwell," and his volume of collected poetical pieces, appeared after considerable intervals; and his "Critical Essays on the English Poets" were published in the last year of his life. These, with his "Remarks on the Poems of Rowley," are all that can be called his literary productions. He published also two political tracts, in answer to Dr. Johnson's " Patriot," and "False Alarm." His critical essays contain some judicious remarks on Denham and Dyer; but his verbal strictures on Collins and Goldsmith discover a miserable insensibility to the soul of those poets. His own verses are chiefly interesting, where they breathe the pacific principles of the quaker; while his personal character engages respect, from exhibiting a public spirit and liberal taste, beyond the habits of his brethren. He was well informed in the laws of his country; and, though prevented by his tenets from becoming a magistrate, he made himself useful to the inhabitants of Amwell, by his offices of arbitration,

and by promoting schemes of local improvement. He was constant in his attendance at turnpike meetings, navigation trusts, and commissions of land-tax. Ware and Hertford were indebted to him for the plan of opening a spacious road between those two His treatises on the highway and parochial laws were the result of long and laudable attention to those subjects.

towns.

His verses, and his amiable character, gained him by degrees a large circle of literary acquaintance, which included Dr. Johnson, Sir William Jones, Mrs. Montague, and many other distinguished individuals; and having submitted to inoculation, in his thirty-sixth year, he was from that period more frequently in London. In his retirement he was fond of gardening; and, in amusing himself with the improvement of his grounds, had excavated a grotto in the side of a hill, which his biographer, Mr. Hoole, writing in 1785, says, was still shewn as a curiosity in that part of the country. He was twice married. His first wife was the daughter of his friend Frogley. He died at a house in Radcliff, of a putrid fever.

ODE ON HEARING THE DRUM.

I HATE that drum's discordant sound,
Parading round, and round, and round:
To thoughtless youth it pleasure yields,
And lures from cities and from fields,

To sell their liberty for charms

Of tawdry lace, and glittering arms; And when ambition's voice commands, To march, and fight, and fall, in foreign lands.

I hate that drum's discordant sound,
Parading round, and round, and round:
To me it talks of ravag'd plains,

And burning towns, and ruin'd swains,
And mangled limbs, and dying groans,
And widows' tears, and orphans' moans;
And all that misery's hand bestows,
To fill the catalogue of human woes.

ODE ON PRIVATEERING.

How custom steels the human breast
To deeds that nature's thoughts detest!
How custom consecrates to fame
What reason else would give to shame!
Fair Spring supplies the favouring gale,
The naval plunderer spreads his sail,
And ploughing wide the wat❜ry way,
Explores with anxious eyes his prey.

The man he never saw before,
The man who him no quarrel bore,
He meets, and avarice prompts the fight;
And rage enjoys the dreadful sight

VOL. V.

F F

Of decks with streaming crimson dy'd,
And wretches struggling in the tide,
Or, 'midst th' explosion's horrid glare,
Dispers'd with quivering limbs in air.

The merchant now on foreign shores
His captur'd wealth in vain deplores;
Quits his fair home, O mournful change!
For the dark prison's scanty range;
By plenty's hand so lately fed,
Depends on casual alms for bread;
And with a father's anguish torn,
Sees his poor offspring left forlorn.

And yet, such man's misjudging mind,
For all this injury to his kind,
The prosperous robber's native plain
Shall bid him welcome home again;
His name the song of every street,
His acts the theme of all we meet,
And oft the artist's skill shall place
To public view his pictur'd face!

If glory thus be earn'd, for me
My object glory ne'er shall be;
No, first in Cambria's loneliest dale
Be mine to hear the shepherd's tale!
No, first on Scotia's bleakest hill
Be mine the stubborn soil to till!
Remote from wealth, to dwell alone,
And die, to guilty praise unknown!

THE TEMPESTUOUS EVENING.

AN ODE.

THERE'S grandeur in this sounding storm,
That drives the hurrying clouds along
That on each other seem to throng,
And mix in many a varied form;
While, bursting now and then between,
The moon's dim misty orb is seen,
And casts faint glimpses on the green.

Beneath the blast the forests bend,
And thick the branchy ruin lies,
And wide the shower of foliage flies;
The lake's black waves in tumult blend,
Revolving o'er and o'er and o'er,
And foaming on the rocky shore,
Whose caverns echo to their roar.

The sight sublime enrapts my thought,
And swift along the past it strays,
And much of strange event surveys,
What history's faithful tongue has taught,
Or fancy form'd, whose plastic skill
The page with fabled change can fill
Of ill to good, or good to ill.

But can my soul the scene enjoy,

That rends another's breast with pain?