fined him to the house. He died, after a short illness, on the 8th of May, 1781, and was buried in the church of Snitterfield. In his person he was above the middle stature. His manner was reserved before strangers, but easy even to sprightliness in the society of his friends. He is said to have discharged blamelessly all the duties of his profession and of domestic life. As a poet, he is not entitled to very high commendation. The distinguishing feature of his poetry is the ease of its diction. Johnson has observed, that if blank verse be not tumid and gorgeous, it is crippled prose. To disprove this, it would be sufficient to quote the greater part of that story from the Tatler* of the Young Man restored to Sight, which Jago has introduced into his Edge-hill. Nothing can be described more naturally, than his feelings and behaviour on his first recovery.

The friendly wound was given; th' obstructing film
Drawn artfully aside; and on his sight.
Burst the full tide of day. Surprised he stood,
Not knowing where he was, nor what he saw.
The skilful artist first, as first in place,

He view'd, then seized his hand, then felt his own,
Then mark'd their near resemblance, much perplex'd,
And still the more perplex'd the more he saw.

*No. LV.

Now silence first th' impatient mother broke, And, as her eager looks on him she bent,

"My son (she cried), my son!" On her he gazed
With fresh surprise. "And what!" he cried, "art thou
My mother? for thy voice bespeaks thee such,
Though to my sight unknown."—"Thy mother I
(She quick replied); thy sister, brother, these."-
"O! 'tis too much (he said); too soon to part,
Ere well we meet! But this new flood of day
O'erpowers me, and I feel a death-like damp
Chill all my frame, and stop my faltering tongue."
Now Lydia, so they call'd his gentle friend,
Who, with averted eye, but in her soul
Had felt the lancing steel, her aid applied,
"And stay, dear youth (she said), or with thee take
Thy Lydia, thine alike in life or death!"

At Lydia's name, at Lydia's well known voice,
He strove again to raise his drooping head
And ope his closing eye, but strove in vain,
And on her trembling bosom sunk away.

Now other fears distract his weeping friends:
But short their grief! for soon his life return'd,
And, with return of life, return'd their peace.—(B. iii.)

The country which he has undertaken to describe in this poem is fertile and tame. There was little left to him, except to enlarge on its antiquities, to speak of the habitations that were scattered over it, and to compliment the most distinguished among their possessors. Every day must detract something from the

interest, such as it is, that arises from these sources. A poet should take care not to make the fund of his reputation liable to be affected by dilapidations, or to be passed away by the hands of a conveyancer.

It would seem as if he had never visited a tract of land much wilder than that in which he was bred and born. In speaking of "embattled walls, raised on the mountain precipice," he particularises "Beaudesert; Old Montfort's seat ;"*-a place, which, though it is pleasantly diversified with hill and dale, has no pretensions of so lofty a kind. This, he tells us, was "the haunt of his youthful steps;" and here he met with Somerville, the poet of the Chase, to whom both the subject and the title of his poem might have been suggested by that extensive common, known by the name of Cannock Chase,† on the border of which Beaudesert is situated.

* Edge-Hill, Book I.

The author has here fallen into an error in confounding Beaudesert, near Henley in Arden, with a place of the same name, near Cannock Chase. The mistake was pointed out to him a few days after its publication, by his valued friend and relative, the Rev. Thomas Price, Rector of Enville, Staffordshire. Mr. Price's letter will furnish the best explanation. He writes:

"MY DEAR CARY,

"In your life of Jago, I am afraid you have fallen into a mistake, by confounding the two Beaudeserts.

The digressions, with which he has endeavoured to enliven the monotony of his subject, are sometimes very far-fetched. He has scarcely finished his exordium, when he goes back to the third day of the creation, and then passes on to the deluge. This reminds one of the Mock Advocate in the Plaideurs of Racine, who, having to defend the cause of a dog that had robbed the pantry, begins,

Avant la naissance du monde-

on which the judge yawns and interrupts him,

That one of which Jago's father was Rector, and near which Somerville resided, is, as you have stated in the beginning of the life, near Henley, and to that the words, "Old Montfort's seat" must refer, because Dugdale, treating of Beldesert, near Henley, says, 66 on the east side of the last mentioned brook runneth a hilly tract, bordered with deep vallies on each part; the point whereof maketh a kind of promontory, whose ascent being somewhat steep, gave occasion of the fortifying there at first, considering its situation in these woodland parts, where, through the opportunity of so much shelter, advantage was most like to be taken by the disherited English and their offspring, to make head for their redemption from the Norman yoke. Tis not unlike, but this mountainous ground, &c. Thurslem de Montfort, near kinsman of the first Norman Earl of Warwick, erected that strong castle, whereunto, by reason of its pleasant situation, the French name Beldesert, was given, and which continued the chief seat of his descendants for divers ages.""-ED.

Avocat, ah! passons au déluge.

Of his shorter pieces, the three Elegies on Birds are well deserving of notice. That entitled the Blackbirds is so prettily imagined, and so neatly expressed, that it is worth a long poem. Thrice has Shenstone mentioned it in his Letters, in such a manner as to show how much it had pleased him. The Goldfinches is only less excellent. He has Swallows by the seriousness of the moral.

Nunc non erat his locus.

spoiled the

The first half of Peytoe's Ghost has enough in it to raise a curiosity, which is disappointed by the remainder.

RICHARD OWEN CAMBRIDGE.

RICHARD CAMBRIDGE, the son of a Turkey merchant, descended from a family long settled in Gloucestershire, was born in London, on the fourteenth of February, 1717. His father dying soon after his birth, the care of his education devolved on his mother and his maternal uncle, Thomas Owen, Esq. a lawyer who had retired from practice to his seat in Bucking