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WILLIAM JULIUS MICKLE.

WILLIAM Julius Mickle was born on the 29th of September, 1734, at Longholm, in the county of Dumfries, of which place his father, Alexander Meikle, or Mickle, a minister of the church of Scotland, was pastor. His mother was Julia, daughter of Thomas Henderson, of Ploughlands, near Edinburgh. In his thirteenth year, his love of poetry was kindled by reading Spenser's Faëry Queen. Two years after, his father, who was grown old and infirm, and had a large family to educate, by an unusual indulgence obtained permission to reside in Edinburgh, where Mickle was admitted a pupil at the High School. Here he remained long enough to acquire a relish for the Greek and Latin classics. When he was seventeen years old, his father unluckily embarking his capital in a brewery, which the death of his wife's brother had left without a manager, William was taken from school, and employed as clerk under the eldest son, in whose name the business was carried on. At first he must have been attentive enough to his employment; for on his coming of age, the property was made over to him, on the condition of paying his family a certain share of the profits arising from it. Afterwards, he suffered

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himself to be seduced from business by the attractions of literature. His father died in 1758; and, in about three years he published, without his name, Knowledge, an Ode, and a Night Piece, the former of which had been written in his eighteenth year. In both there is more of seriousness and reflection than of that fancy which marks his subsequent productions. Beside these, he had finished a drama, called the Death of Socrates, of which, if we may judge from his other tragedy, the loss is not to be lamented, and he had begun a poem on Providence. The difficulties consequent on his trusting to servants the work of his brewery, which he was too indolent to superintend himself, and on his joining in security for a large sum with a printer who failed, were now gathering fast upon him. His creditors became clamorous; and at Candlemas (one of the quarter days in Scotland) 1762, being equally unwilling to compound with them, as his brother advised him to do, and unable to satisfy their demands, he prevailed on them to accept his notes of hand, payable in four months. When the time was expired, he found himself, as might have been expected, involved in embarrassments from which he could devise no means of escaping. His mind was harassed by bitter reflections on the distress which threatened those whom his parent had left to his protection; and he was scared by the terrors of

jail. But they, with whom he had to reckon, were again lenient. He consoled himself with recollecting that his delinquency had proceeded from inadvertence, not from design, and resolved to be more sedulous in future: but had still the weakness to trust for relief to his poem on Providence. This was soon after published by Dodsley, and, that it might win for itself such advantages as patronage could give, was sent to Lord Lyttelton, under the assumed name of William Moore, with a representation that the author was a youth, friendless and unknown, and with the offer of a dedication if the poem should be again edited. This proceeding did not evince much knowledge of mankind. A poet has as seldom gained a patron as a mistress, by solicitation to which no previous encouragement has been given. It was more than half a year before he received an answer from Lyttelton, with just kindness enough to keep alive his expectations. In the meantime, the friendly offices of a carpenter in Edinburgh, whose name was Good, had been exerted to save his property from being seized for rent; but the fear of arrest impelled him to quit that city in haste; and embarking on board a coal vessel at Newcastle, he reached London, pennyless, in May, 1763. His immediate necessities were supplied by remittances from his brothers, and by such profits as he could derive from writing for periodical publications.

There is no reason to suppose that he was indebted to Lyttelton for more than the commendation of his genius, and for some criticism on his poems; and even this favour was denied to the most beautiful among them, his Elegy on Mary, Queen of Scots. The cause assigned for the exclusion was, that poetry should not consecrate what history must condemn, a sacred principle if it be applied to the characters of those yet living, but of more doubtful obligation as it regards past times. When Euripides, in one of his dramas, chose to avail himself of a wild and unauthorized tradition, and to represent Helen as spotless, he surely violated no sanction of moral truth; and in the instance of Mary, Mickle might have pleaded some uncertainty which a poet was at liberty to interpret to the better part.

During his courtship of Lyttelton he was fed at one time by hopes of being recommended in the West Indies; and, at another, of being served in the East; till by degrees the great man waxed so cold, that he wisely relinquished his suit. His next project was to go out as a merchant's clerk to Carolina; but some unexpected occurrences defeating this plan also, he engaged himself as corrector of the Clarendon press, at Oxford. Here he published (in 1767) the Concubine, a poem, in the manner of Spenser, to which, when it was printed, ten years after, having

in the meantime passed through several editions, he gave the title of Syr Martyn.

Early in life, his zeal for religion had shewn itself in some remarks on an impious book termed the History of the Man after God's own Heart; and in 1767, the same feelings induced him to publish A Vindication of the Divinity of Jesus Christ, in a Letter to Dr. Harwood; and, in the year following, Voltaire in the Shades, or Dialogues on the Deistical Controversy.

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He was now willing to try his fortune with a tragedy, and sent his Siege of Marseilles to Garrick, who observed to him, that though abounding in beautiful passages, it was deficient in dramatic art, and advised him to model it anew in which task, having been assisted by the author of Douglas, and having submitted the rifacciamento of his play to the two Wartons, by whom he was much regarded, he promised himself better success; but had the mortification to meet with a second rebuff. An appeal from the manager to the public was his unquestioned privilege; but not contented with seeking redress by these means, he threatened Garrick with a new Dunciad. The rejection which his drama afterwards underwent at each of the playhouses, from the respective managers, Harris and Sheridan, perhaps taught him at least to suspect his own judgment.