reception of these novel wonders from the genius of America. One of the electrical spires, or lightning conductors, recommended by Franklin, was erected on the top of St. John's Gate, and its effect is described in the volume for 1751, at p. 383. It figures in the background of our emblematical frontispiece for 1752".

I can also well remember, as another evidence of Mr. Cave's scientific efforts and ingenuity, that the battlements of St. John's Gate were again mounted with cannon. The merit of this invention was portability. These cannon would discharge about a pound ball, and yet were so light that a man could easily carry one of them on his shoulder P. They remained on our premises for some years after their honoured inventor was

no more.

EDWARD CAVE breathed his last, within the venerable walls of St. John's Gate, on the 10th of January, 1754, in the 63rd year of his age. His health had been perceptibly failing for the last three years, from the time of his losing his wife, who died of asthma in the year 1751. He had been long a martyr to gout, and his life was sacrificed to the injudicious means he adopted to escape from its torments. His name must be ever memorable as the first projector of Magazines, and as the early patron of SAMUEL JOHNSON. And to the honour of both it is to be remembered, that, although their more intimate connection as employer and servant terminated in 1743, though Johnson served other masters, and even wrote in other Magazines, yet their mutual esteem and good offices were unim

It need scarcely be added that Franklin's subsequent discoveries in electricity made repeated calls upon our a tention. In our volume for 1752 (at p. 560) is the account of a new experiment by him, signed B. F., and dated from Philadelphia on the 19th of October in that year. The Magazine for Nov. 1755 contains a paper by him entitled "Observations on the Increase of Mankind, Peopling of Countries," &c. Another correspondent of Mr. Collinson was Cadwallader Colden, Esq., of New York, author of The Principles of Action in Matter, the Gravitation of Bodies, and the Motion of the Planets explained from those Principles: of whose work an account was given in vol. xxii. pp. 498, 570, 589.

May 5, 1746. Experiments were made on Wimbledon-common before Gen. Ligonier, and other persons of distinction, with 4 small cannon of a new contrivance, upon one light carriage, which was drawn by one man from place to place. Each piece discharged either a pound ball, or from 14 to 24 musket balls. And they were judged very useful."-GENT. MAG., vol. xvi. p. 270.

P Vol. xxviii. p. 587.

4 Even when John-on, in 1756, consented to take an active part in the conduct of a new Magazine, he did not do so without a testimony to the merits of its prototype, and a disclaimer of any intention or desire to withdraw from us the share of public favour which we then enjoyed.

We are about (he then wrote) to exhibit to our countrymen a new Monthly Collection, to which the well-deserved popularity of the first undertaking of this kind has now made it almost necessary to prefix the name of MAGAZINE. There are already many such periodical compilations, of which we do not envy the reception, nor shall dispute the excellence. If the nature of things would allow us to indulge our wishes, we should desire to advance our own interest without lessening that of any others, and to excite the curiosity of the vacant, rather than withdraw that which other writers have already engaged."

The Literary Magazine, or Universal Review, to which this passage was prefixed, was commenced in Jan. 1756 by W. Faden, in Wine-office-court, Fleet-street. On the title-page of vol. I. appears the name of "J. Richardson in Paternoster-row;" on those of vols. II. and III. that of "J. Wilkie, behind the Chapter-house in St. Paul's Churchyard." It continued to August 1758, and was published on the 15th of every month. The number for January 1758 (only) is entitled The Literary and Antigallican Magazine."

paired to the last. One of the last acts of reason exerted by Cave was fondly to press the hand of Johnson, and Johnson eagerly undertook to commemorate the merits of his departed friends.

I have already, in my previous chapters, given various indications of Cave's character and habits. His want of warmth in personal intercourse, and his apparent slowness of apprehension, but which were combined with a more than ordinary resolution and perseverance, are particularly noticed by Dr. Johnson, and I have related the description given by Sir John Hawkins, how Cave would receive his visitors sitting, and still pursue the task that was before him. In many respects he resembled a well-known person of modern times, that indefatigable collector of autographs, the late Mr. WILLIAM UPCOTT, of the London Institution. There was the same imperfect education and scholarship, combined with natural talent and shrewdness, and considerable self-acquired knowledge. There was the same inattention and discourtesy, particularly to strangers on their first address, combined with a rough bonhommie, and real goodness of heart. There was the same plodding industry and determined perseverance. Upcott was a good-looking man; Cave was less so, but tall and well made, and "when young (as Johnson says), of remarkable strength and activity." The close attention and application which he devoted to the Magazine induced more sedentary habits; he now kept his wife half-an-hour waiting for meals, sat writing during breakfast and supper, and was even buried in thought at dinner-time. But once a week, "to stir his blood," he would play at shuttlecock, in his library, with his poetical friend Mr. Duick; though Mrs. Cave thought it might have shewn better manners, and done himself more good, if he had taken her an airing in the chaise". This was before his rising fortunes had enabled him to give madam her carriage, with St. John's Gate on its panels, and a pair of handsome bays to ride to Islington or into Cheapside.

In his ineffectual efforts to shake off the gout, Cave abstained during four years from animal food, and from strong liquors much longer. Nearly twenty years before his death his ordinary beverage was milk-and-watery. This made him an unsocial companion in those convivial times, and deprived him of one chance of conciliating his brother publishers :

“Mr. Urban, (said one,) as you don't take a merry bottle, and keep Booksellers company,

They may be apt to tell Gentlemen-all you undertake is mere trumpery.”

The verses from which these lines are extracted contain some pleasant allusions to Cave's "mighty projects," and particularly to his translation of

"Poor dear Cave! I owed him much. For to him I owe that I have known you. He died, I am afraid, unexpectedly to himself; yet surely unburthened with any great crime, and for the positive duties of religion I have yet (got ?) no right to condemn him for neglect."-Johnson to Miss Elizabeth Carter, Jan. 14, 1756.

Johnson's memoir of Cave was first published in the Magazine for February 1754. It was inserted by Dr. Kippis in the Biographia Britannica, and has been repeated in other biographical collections. In 1781 it was revised by its author, on the request of Mr. Nichols, who inserted it in his Life of Bowyer, and subsequently, with additions, in the fifth volume of the Literary Anecdotes of the Eighteenth Century. It was originally accompanied, in the Magazine, by a portrait, etched by the celebrated Worlidge, "after the manner of Rembrandt" (vol. xxiv. p. 47); but that plate not printing a sufficient number, it was re-engraved in line, (as before noticed, in last August Magazine, p. 131).

"GENT. MAG., vol. v. p. iv.

August, p. 131. 7 GENT. MAG., vol. v. p. iv.

Dr. Johnson's memoir. Mrs. Urban's Lecture, Dec. 31, 1735.

Du Halde's Description of China, which was published in shilling numbers, and finally formed two volumes folio. To advance this project", Cave announced that he should be contented with the proceeds that might arise from the sale of 1,000 copies, and that all subsequent profits should be divided among the first thousand subscribers, "only deducting £50 to be given to such of his Majesty's British subjects as shall, in the opinion of the Royal Society, make (from the hints given in this Description of China) the best and most useful improvement in any beneficial branch of art."

Of the efficacy of premiums he had always a great, and perhaps undue, estimation. He vastly admired the plan, in this respect, of the Dublin Society, founded in 1731, for promoting husbandry and other useful arts and sciences in Ireland; and so much so, that in 1740, he proposed to offer additional prizes in aid of its objectsb.

A taste for scientific inventions, combined with a turn for speculation, naturally led Mr. Cave, when he possessed the means, into some hazardous and unrequited expenditure. His fancy was successively occupied by "innumerable projects," none of which, excepting the Magazine, were known. to Dr. Johnson to have succeeded; and by some of them, according to the same authority, his fortune was "rashly and wantonly impaired." I think it very probable that the Doctor had particularly in mind Mr. Cave's speculation in spindles, in which he embarked on the suggestion of Mr. Lewis Paul, of Birmingham, and with which Johnson, as a mutual friend, had a good deal to do. Paul was an ingenious gentleman who, in the year 1738, took out a patent for a "machine to spin wool or cotton into thread, yarn, or worsted;" and who, therefore, if he had been successful, might have anticipated the triumphs of Sir Richard Arkwright and the first Sir Robert Peel. In January 1740, Cave was induced to purchase of Paul one hundred spindles, which were delivered at Clerkenwell, and a mill was erected for their reception, on the course of Turnmill-brook, the stream which has sometimes, but improperly, been called the river Fleet. Paul undertook to work this mill; and it was in fact a partnership concern, but it was never brought into profitable order; and in October 1756, nearly three years after Mr. Cave's death, his nephew, Mr. Richard Cave, at

The proposals for the Description of China will be found in GENT. MAG., vol. v. p. 563, and at length in Nichols' Literary Anecdotes, vol. v. p. 44.

b GENT. MAG., vol. x. p. 472.

It is to this affair, and other money transactions in which Cave was involved with Paul, that the letters of Johnson to that gentleman refer, which have been inserted in Croker's edition of Boswell, and which Mr. Croker truly says are very dark and obscure. Many of Paul's papers are extant, but divided in at least three portions. In the British Museum, Additional Charters, are, No. 5971, the specification of Paul's patent, 20th July, 1738; 5972 and 5973, two indentures of the 5th Jan. 1740, signed by Paul and Cave; and 5974, the probate of the will of Lewis Paul, of Kensington Gravel-pits, esq., dated 1st May, 1758, and proved 27th April, 1759, (two days after Paul's death,) by Thomas Yeo, of Gray's-inn, gentleman, who was enjoined by the testator to take the name of Paul. Mr. Paul was, in 1738, styled "of Birmingham, gentleman," and in 1755 he resided at Brook-green, Hammersmith. The letters of Johnson, inserted in Croker's Boswell, are (or were) in the possession of Mr. Lewis Pocock, with the exception of two-those of Dec. 23, 1755, and Sept. 25, 1756, which are part of the collection of Mr. Robert Cole, F.S.A., of Upper Norton-street, and never were Mr. Pocock's. Mr. Cole possesses a considerable number of other papers relative to Mr. Paul, including some letters of Mr. Cave, and he has the intention to form from them a memoir which will commemorate the merits of a scientific inventor whose merits have been hitherto disregarded, and at the same time confer that elucidation upon the aforesaid letters of Johnson which they so much require.

GENT. MAG. VOL. CCII.

3 E

Johnson's request, made a friendly seizure of the property (then valued at £1,000), in order to prevent worse consequences.

In literary composition, Cave left nothing of much importance. Though his pen was constantly in his hand, his labours were principally devoted to abridgment and condensation, and the ordinary work of editorship. His original efforts were usually in rhyme. Of these I before gave some short specimens, with references to others. Such was his itching for rhyming, that in June 1732 he wrote "a week's occurrences in verse," and in December 1735 he versified the whole chronicle of the months. In the volume for the latter year (p. 265,) is a longer poetical piece by him than any I elsewhere know. It consists of 193 lines, entitled "an Epistle to a Fellow-traveller," and describes a journey to London from Eyford in Gloucestershire. This was a place which furnished some features of local description to Milton in the third book of Paradise Lost. It belonged, in 1735, to "the worthy William Wanley, Esq." Cave remarked in a

note :

"I have nowhere seen (except at Cave's inn on the Watling-street road between Warwickshire and Leicestershire) so strong a spring as in these gardens: it is almost at the bottom of a hill adorn'd with a fine grove of pine trees; there is a stone table over it, which Milton is said to have made use of. King William on his progress being invited to this seat, was pleased to dine there, and to say it seemed to be a place out of the world."

From Eyford the travellers proceeded to Stow-on-the-Wold, whence Cave's companion, whom I believe to have been Mr. Raikes of Gloucester, was about to take a third wife,-Mary, the daughter of Mrs. Mary Curtes; and here some bantering occurred whether the buxom mother, who had been fourteen years a widow, would not prove an equally suitable match for Cave himself. There was one material obstacle in the way :

"Urbana's in no hurry to expire!

By birth a Milton, she that shining name
Exchang'd for Newton, dear alike to fame;
And, made by second choice Urbana now,
May reckon still to pledge another vow."

Upon this consideration, Cave shook his head, and came to the conclusion that he was more likely to give place to a third husband, than to be one himself. Poor man! he missed his wife greatly when she was taken from him, some sixteen years after, but he did not marry again.

In 1736 he went to Bath in search of relief for the gout; a journey celebrated in some other versesi.

Ten years later, in 1746, he has left a pleasant record of a day's journey from Aylesbury to London, which he made after parting company from the celebrated Dr. Philip Doddridge, who, it will be recollected, lived at Northampton, and with whose "very delectable and no less improving discourse" he acknowledges himself to have been highly gratified.

There is yet one more of Cave's country excursions upon which a few words must be said, if it were only to correct a very extraordinary misap

d See Johnson's letter of the 8th Oct. 1756. August, p. 132.

f Vol. ii. p. 822.

Vol. v. p. 734.

Then belonging to the Duke of Shrewsbury: see Sir Robert Atkyns's History of Gloucestershire, p. 657.

This is the only notice we have of the family name or connections of Mrs. Cave. See lines from Sylvius to Sylvanus at Bath, in vol. vi. p. 543.

This interesting letter of Cave to Doddridge is printed in Nichols' Literary Illustrations, vol. ii. p. 840.

prehension of Mr. Wilson Croker. In 1750, during one of his visits to Mr. Raikes, at Gloucester, Cave rode from thence to Whitminster, on a visit to Richard Cambridge, Esq., who had recently entertained the Prince of Wales at the same place, and who gave him some amusing anecdotes of the behaviour of the Prince and the people. These are recounted by Cave to his correspondent Samuel Richardson1.

This is not the place for a history of Cave's press at St. John's Gate; but I may here briefly state, in addition to Dr. Johnson's slight reference to "an account of the Criminals, and many little pamphlets brought by accident into Cave's hands," that, besides the translation of Du Halde's China, (of which, by-the-bye, I find no copy in our National Library,) and the poetical works of Elizabeth Carter, Moses Browne, and R. Luck, and other books which I have incidentally noticed, that press also produced the Hon. Anchitel Grey's Parliamentary Debates, a History of the Reign of Elizabeth, in two volumes, octavo, Mackerell's History of King's Lynn, in folio, Dawson's History of the Order of the Garter, in octavo, and the Parliamentary Register, or Lists of all Parliaments from 1660, a very useful book for reference. I have already mentioned that The Rambler issued from it, in its original numbers, as did Johnson's London, his Vanity of Human Wishes, his tragedy of Irene, his Lives of Savage and of Barretier, and his Miscellaneous Observations on Macbeth, and on Hanmer's edition of Shakspeare. Thence also issued the Works of Dr. Thomas Sydenham, for which Johnson wrote the preliminary life of that distinguished physician; the Memoirs of the Royal Academy of Surgery, at Paris, in two vols. 8vo.; Daniel on the Present State of the British Customs, in quarto, and several works of the mathematical class.

SONNET AFTER PETRARCH.

AYE me! it ever seems, as years roll on,
That Time is speeding with a swifter foot;
And that his step is still more soft and mute

When men do feel how much of life is gone!
In youth, methought life might too slowly run;
That strength might fail me ere I won the goal;
That ere the prize to which my panting soul

Pressed ever onward should be surely won,
Desire might fail me: I have long since past
That glittering goal; and now my lonely way
Lies 'mid dim shadows from the rearward cast,
And low faint voices whisper me to stay;
But still more swiftly Time is hurrying me
To the dark waters of yon shoreless sea.

C.

1 This letter is printed in Richardson's Correspondence, and in Nichols' Literary Anecdotes, vol. v. p. 38. Mr. Wilson Croker, censuring Johnson's inattention to minute details in his biographies, remarks that "no one, from his Life of Cave, would have imagined that Cave (as appears from the same letter) had been invited to meet the Prince and Princess of Wales, at a country house." (Boswell, edit. 1848, p. 84.) The facts were these. Cave's visit to Whitminster was made about the middle of August; the visit of the Prince and Princess of Wales had taken place on Monday, the 16th of July. It is described in GENT. MAG., vol. xx. p. 331.