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Hen. Thy friends, thy father's house resign;
My friends, my house, my all is thine:
Awake, arise, my wedded wife,

To higher thoughts, and happier life!
For thee the marriage feast is spread,
For thee the virgins deck the bed;
The star of Venus shines above,
And all thy future life is love.

They rise, the dear domestic hours!
The May of love unfolds her flow'rs ;
Youth, beauty, pleasure spread the feast,
And friendship sits a constant guest;
In cheerful peace the morn ascends,
In wine and love the evening ends;
At distance grandeur sheds a ray,
To gild the evening of our day.

Connubial love has dearer names,
And finer ties, and sweeter claims,
Than e'er unwedded hearts can feel,
Than wedded hearts can e'er reveal;
Pure as the charities above,
Rise the sweet sympathies of love;
And closer cords than those of life
Unite the husband to the wife.

Like cherubs new come from the skies,
Henrys and Harriets round us rise;
And playing wanton in the hall,
With accent sweet their parents call;
To your fair images I run,

You clasp the husband in the son;
O how the mother's heart will bound!
O how the father's joy be crown'd!

ROBERT NUGENT, EARL NUGENT.

[Born, 1709. Died, 1788.]

ROBERT NUGENT was descended from the Nugents of Carlanstown, in the county of Westmeath, and was a younger son of Michael Nugent, by the daughter of Robert Lord Trimlestown. In the year 1741, he was elected Member of parliament for St. Mawes, in Cornwall; and, becoming attached to the party of the Prince of Wales, was appointed in (1747) comptroller of his Royal Highness's household. On the death of the Prince he made his peace with the court, and was named successively a lord of the Treasury, one of the vice-treasurers of Ireland, and a lord of trade. In 1767 he was created Baron Nugent and Viscount Clare, and subsequently Earl Nugent. He was thrice married. second wife, with whom he acquired a large fortune, was sister and heiress to Secretary Craggs, the friend of Addison.

His

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factures of his native island induced him, on one occasion, to present the Queen with a newyear's gift of Irish grogram, accompanied with a copy of verses; and it was wickedly alleged, that her Majesty had returned her thanks to the noble author for both his pieces of stuff.

A volume of his poems was published, anonymously, by Dodsley in 1739. Lord Orford remarks, that "he was one of those men of parts, whose dawn was the brightest moment of a long life." He was first known by a very spirited ode on his conversion from popery; yet he relapsed to the faith which he had abjured. On the circumstance of his re-conversion it is uncharitable to lay much stress against his memory. There have been instances of it in men, whom either church would have been proud to appropriate. But it cannot be denied, that his poem on Faith formed, at a late period of his life, an anti-climax to the first promise of his literary talents; and though he possessed abilities, and turned them to his private account, he rose to no public confidence as a statesman *.

ODE TO WILLIAM PULTENEY, ESQ. †

REMOTE from liberty and truth,
By fortune's crime, my early youth
Drank error's poison'd springs,
Taught by dark creeds and mystic law,
Wrapt up in reverential awe,

I bow'd to priests and kings.

[* Goldsmith, who admitted his Epistle to a Lady among his Beauties of British Poetry, addressed his Ilaunch of Venison to him.

"I am told," writes a Mr. John Gray to Smollett, "that Dr. Goldsmith now generally lives with his countryman,

Soon reason dawn'd, with troubled sight
I caught the glimpse of painful light,
Afflicted and afraid;

Too weak it shone to mark my way,
Enough to tempt my steps to stray
Along the dubious shade.

Lord Clare, who has lost his only son Colonel Nugent."
-London, July 9, 1771. Europ. Mag. vol. xlv.]

[ "Mr. Nugent," says Gray to Walpole, "sure did rat write his own Ode. Mallet, it was universally believed, had trimmed and doctored it up."]

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WILLIAM JULIUS MICKLE.

[Born, 1784. Died, 1788.]

WILLIAM JULIUS MICKLE was born at Langholm, in Dumfries-shire. His father, who was a clergyman of the Scottish church, had lived for some time in London, and had preached in the dissenting meeting-house of the celebrated Dr. Watts. He returned to Scotland, on being presented to the living of Langholm, the duties of which he fulfilled for many years; and, in consideration of his long services, was permitted to retain the stipend after he had removed to Edinburgh, for the better education of his children. His brother-in-law was a brewer in Edinburgh, on whose death the old clergyman unfortunately embarked his property, in order to continue his business, under the name of his eldest son. William, who was a younger son, was taken from the high-school of Edinburgh, and placed as a clerk in the concern; and, on coming of age, took the whole responsibility of it upon himself. When it is mentioned, that Mickle had, from his boyish years, been an enthusiastic reader of Spenser, and that, before he was twenty, he had composed two tragedies and half an epic poem, which were in due time consigned to the flames, it may be easily conceived that his habits of mind were not peculiarly fitted for close and minute attention to a trade which required incessant superintendence. He was, besides, unfortunate, in becoming security for an insolvent acquaintance. In the year 1763 he became a bankrupt; and, being apprehensive of the severity of one of his creditors, he repaired to London, feeling the misery of his own circumstances aggravated by those of the relations whom he had left behind him.

Before leaving Scotland, he had corresponded with Lord Lyttelton, to whom he had submitted some of his poems in MS., and one, entitled "Providence," which he had printed in 1762. Lord Lyttelton patronised his Muse rather than his fortune. He undertook (to use his lordship's own phrase) to be his "schoolmaster in poetry;" but his fastidious blottings could be of no service to any man who had a particle of genius and the only personal benefit which he attempted to render him was to write to his brother, the governor of Jamaica, in Mickle's behalf, when our poet had thoughts of going out to that island. Mickle, however, always spoke with becoming liberality of this connexion. He was pleased with the suavity of Lord Lyttelton's manners, and knew that his means of patronage were very slender. In the meantime, he lived nearly two years in London, upon remittances from his friends in Scotland, and by writing for the daily papers.

After having fluctuated between several schemes for subsistence, he at length accepted of the situation of corrector to the Clarendon press, at Oxford. Whilst he retained that office, he published a poem, which he at first named "The Concubine ;" but on finding that the title alarmed delicate ears, and suggested a false idea of its spirit and contents, he changed it to "Syr Martyn." At Oxford he also engaged in polemical divinity, and published some severe animadversions on Dr. Harwood's recent translation of the New Testament. He also showed his fidelity to the cause of religion in a tract, entitled "Voltaire in the Shades; or Dialogues on the Deistical Controversy."

His greatest poetical undertaking was the translation of "The Lusiad," which he began in 1770, and finished in five years. For the sake of leisure and retirement, he gave up his situation at the Clarendon press, and resided at the house of a Mr. Tomkins, a farmer, at Forest Hill, near Oxford. The English Lusiad was dedicated, by permission, to the Duke of Buccleugh; but his Grace returned not the slightest notice or kindness to his ingenious countryman. Whatever might be the duke's reasons, good or bad, for this neglect, he was a man fully capable of acting on his own judgment; and there was no necessity for making any other person responsible for his conduct. But Mickle, or his friends, suspected that Adam Smith and David Hume had maliciously stood between him and the Buccleuch patronage. This was a mere suspicion, which our author and his friends ought either to have proved or suppressed. Mickle was indeed the declared antagonist of Hume; he had written against him, and could not hear his name mentioned with temper: but there is not the slightest evidence that the hatred was mutual. That Adam Smith should have done him a mean injury, no one will believe probable, who is acquainted with the traditional private character of that philosopher. But Mickle was also the antagonist of Smith's doctrines on political economy, as may be seen in his "Dissertation on the Charter of the East India Company." The author of the "Wealth of Nations," forsooth, was jealous of his opinions on monopolies ! Even

[* Mickle's facility of versification was so great, that, being a printer by profession, he frequently put his lines into type without taking the trouble previously to put them into writing; thus uniting the composition of the author with the mechanical operation which typogra phers call by the same name.-SIR WALTER SCOTT, Poet. Works, vol. i. p. 70.]

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this paltry supposition is contradicted by dates, for Mickle's tract upon the subject of Monopolies was published several years after the preface to the Lusiad. Upon the whole, the suspicion of his philosophical enemies having poisoned the ear of the Duke of Buccleuch seems to have proceeded from the same irritable vanity, which made him threaten to celebrate Garrick as the hero of a second Dunciad when he refused to accept of his tragedy, "The Siege of Marseilles."

Though the Lusiad had a tolerable sale, his circumstances still made his friends solicitous that he should obtain some settled provision. Dr. Lowth offered to provide for him in the church. He refused the offer with honourable delicacy, lest his former writings in favour of religion should be attributed to the prospect of reward. At length the friendship of his kinsman, Commodore Johnstone, relieved him from unsettled prospects. Being appointed to the command of a squadron destined for the coast of Portugal, he took out the translator of Camoens as his private secretary. Mickle was received with distinguished honours at Lisbon. The Duke of Braganza, in admitting him a member of the Royal Academy of Lisbon, presented him with his own picture.

He returned to England in 1780, with a considerable acquisition of prize-money, and was appointed an agent for the distribution of the prize profits of the cruise. His fortune now enabled him to discharge the debts of his early and mercantile life. He married the daughter of Mr. Tomkins, with whom he had resided while translating the Lusiad; and, with every prospect of spending the remainder of his life in affluence and tranquillity, purchased a house, and settled at Wheatley, near Oxford. So far his circumstances have almost the agreeable air of a concluding novel; but the failure of a banker with whom he was connected as prize agent, and a chancery suit in which he was involved, greatly diminished his finances, and disturbed the peace of his latter years. He died at Forest Hill, after a short illness.

His reputation principally rests upon the translation of the Lusiad, which no Englishman had attempted before him, except Sir Richard Fanshawe. Sir Richard's version is quaint, flat, and harsh; and he has interwoven many ridiculously conceited expressions which are foreign both to [* In the year 1769 I might have gone to the East Indies on very advantageous terms. I have a relation an India Director, and there are two others with whom I have great interest; I mean Johnstone and Dempster. My conduct in neglecting such advantages appears to some of my friends as absurd and spiritless;-but they mistake me. I am so far from disliking to venture abroad, that should I fail of poetical success, to the East Indies I will certainly go; and it was only in the hopes that my tragedy would enable me to indulge the strong bent of my inclinations, that in 1769 prevented me.MICKLE to T. Warton, Oxford, April 18, 1771.3

the spirit and style of his original; but in general it is closer than the modern translation to the literal meaning of Camoens. Altogether, Fanshawe's representation of the Portuguese poem may be compared to the wrong side of the tapestry. Mickle, on the other hand, is free, flowery, and periphrastical; he is incomparably more spirited than Fanshawe; but still he departs from the majestic simplicity of Camoens' diction as widely as Pope has done from that of Homer. The sonorous and simple language of the Lusitanian epic is like the sound of a trumpet; and Mickle's imitation like the shakes and flourishes of the flute.

Although he was not responsible for the faults of the original, he has taken abundance of pains to defend them in his notes and preface. In this he has not been successful. The long lecture on geography and Portuguese history, which Gama delivers to the King of Melinda, is a wearisome interruption to the narrative; and the use of Pagan mythology is a radical and unanswerable defect. Mickle informs us as an apology for the latter circumstance, that all this Pagan machinery was allegorical, and that the gods and goddesses of Homer were allegorical also; an assertion which would require to be proved, before it can be admitted. Camoens himself has said something about his concealment of a moral meaning under his Pagan deities; but if he has any such morality, it is so well hidden that it is impossible to discover it. The Venus of the Lusiad, we are told, is Divine Love; and how is this Divine Love employed! For no other end than to give the poet an opportunity of displaying a scene of sensual gratification, an island is purposely raised up in the ocean; Venus conducts De Gama and his followers to this blessed spot, where a bevy of the nymphs of Venus are very good-naturedly prepared to treat them to their favours; not as

* A happy example of this occurs in the description of De Gama's fleet anchoring by moonlight in the harbour of Mozambique.

"The moon, full orb'd, forsakes her watery cave,
And lifts her lovely head above the wave;
The snowy splendours of her modest ray
Stream o'er the glistening waves, and glistening play:
Around her, glittering on the Heaven's arch'd brow,
Unnumber'd stars inclosed in azure glow,
Thick as the dewdrops in the April dawn,
Or May flowers crowding o'er the daisy lawn.
The canvas whitens in the silvery beam,
And with a mild pale-red the pendants gleam;
The mast's tall shadows tremble o'er the deep,
The peaceful lines a holy silence keep;
The watchman's carol, echoed from the prows,
Alone, at times, awakes the still repose."

In this beautiful sea-piece, the circumstance of "the mast's tall shadow trembling o'er the deep," and of the "carol of the watchman echoed from the prows,” gre touches of the translator's addition. Mickle has, herever, got more credit for improving the Lusiad than he deserves. [Camoens copied Homer in the above quotation, and Mickle had his eye intently fixed on Pope's translation of the passage.]

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