she received £500. In 1794, she travelled on the continent; but did not, as generally supposed, from the vividness of her description of that country, visit Italy, being, according to a writer in the Biographie Universelle, prevented from proceeding beyond Friburg, on suspicion of not being an Englishwoman, notwithstanding her passport. In 1795, she published, in quarto, An Account of a Journey in Holland, with Observations made during a Tour on the Lakes of Westmoreland and Cumberland; and the same work subsequently appeared in two octavo volumes. She next gave to the world her romance of The Italian, for which, though by no means so popular as The Mysteries of Udolpho, she received from the publisher £800. The author of the article, Radcliffe, in a French publication, called Dictionnaire Historique, Critique, et Bibliographique, also attributes to her two works, entitled respectively, Woman's Advocate, and Visions of the Castle of the Pyrennees; and a romance by her, called Gaston de Blondeville, appeared shortly after her death, which took place on the 7th of February, 1823. In person, the subject of our memoir was low in stature, but exquisitely proportioned, with a fine expressive countenance, indicative of vivacity and intelligence. As a writer of romance, Mrs. Radcliffe stands at the head of her class: a rank assigned her by the critics of all countries where her works, which have been translated into almost all the European languages, have been made known. Sheridan spoke with great praise of The Mysteries of Udolpho; and Dr. Joseph Warton said, that happening to take it up at night, he was so fascinated that he could not go to bed until he had finished it. It is in the delineation of guilt, under the influence of terror and superstition, that Mrs. Radcliffe is so pre-eminently successful and original; and, in this respect, Chénier, in his Observations upon the English Romance Writers, ranks her next to Shakspeare.

BAILLIE, (JOANNA,) sister of the celebrated Dr. Matthew Baillie, was born at Bothwell, in Scotland, about the year 1763. We have been unable to collect any particulars of her life,

but she is well known to the public as one of the most successful female writers of the present age. Her most celebrated production is her Plays of the Passions; a series in which each passion is made the subject of a tragedy and a comedy. These procured her great reputation, particularly her tragedies, which evince strong conceptions of character, vivid imagery, and a masterly delineation of the various passions. One of her most recent publications is A View of the general Tenor of the New Testament, regarding the 'Nature and Dignity of Jesus Christ. She is also the author of The Family Legend, a tragedy; Metrical Legends, or Exalted Characters; and two dramas, entitled, respectively, The Martyr, and The Bride.

MORGAN, (Lady,) whose name is so well known in the literary world, was a Miss Owenson. Her father belonged to the Theatre Royal, Dublin, where she was born, about the year 1770. She is principally known as the author of two works, called, respectively, France, and Italy, both in two volumes. These had an extensive circulation at home and abroad; and, for a time, were very influential over the opinions of the reading English, respecting those countries. Both of them were prohibited in Sardinia, Rome, and Austria, and the authoress was forbidden to enter the Austrian territories. Her other works consist chiefly of novels, of which The O'Briens and the O'Flahertys is one of the most recent. She married, not very early in life, Dr. Morgan, a physician, who was subsequently knighted. Her Book of the Boudoir, published in 1829, contains some amusing particulars and anecdotes concerning herself, but a disgusting air of egotism and conceit pervades the whole. Her last publication is France in 1829-30, which contains a lively picture of the moral and political state of the country at that time. Her feeblest production is considered to be her Life and Times of Salvator Rosa. Besides the works before-mentioned, she is the author of the novels of St. Clair, The Novice of St. Dominic, The Wild Irish Girl, Patriotic Sketches of Ireland, Woman, or Ida of Athens, and Absenteeism; which, with the exception

TOBIN, (JOHN,) the son of a West India merchant, was born at Salisbury, in 1770, and educated at Bristol and Southampton. He afterwards came to London, and practised as an attorney, but employed the greater part of his time in writing for the stage, where, however, none of his pieces were produced, with the exception of an indifferent farce, till after his death, which occurred in 1804. In the same year, his play of The Honeymoon, which had been previously rejected, was acted at Cork; and, in consequence of the applause which it met with, was followed by The Curfew, another of Tobin's plays. The Honeymoon, however, was the more popular of the two, and is, indeed, the sole production on which the fame of its author depends. It is still frequently acted; and, from the very felicitous manner in which it is modelled after the older dramatists, stands almost unrivalled among our imitative plays.

MORTON, (THOMAS,) was born at Durham, about 1770, and losing his father whilst young, was taken care of by his uncle, an eminent stock-broker, who placed him at the Soho Academy, in London. Here the part he took in the annual exhibitions of the schoolplays, gave him such a taste for dramatic composition, that, though subsequently entered a law student of Lincoln's Inn, he devoted the principal part of his time to play-writing, and produced, in 1792, a historical play, called Columbus. This met with little success; but his next piece, The Children of the Wood, had a run of more than seventy nights, and is stili a stock play. Thus encouraged, he became one of our most regular dramatic authors, and produced, in succession, his comedies of The Way to Get Married, A Cure for the Heart Ache, Secrets Worth Knowing, The School of Reform, Town and Country, Education, and Speed the Plough. His other pieces are, the popular opera of The Slave; the play of Zorinski; a musical piece, called The Knight of Snowdoun; besides several dramatic trifles, which he has adapted and altered

best performance of Mr. Morton, of whose talents as a dramatist it may be said, that, if not of a transcendent character, they are such as place him above all comparison with the herd of scribblers whose productions have, of late years, supplanted the less obstrusive, but more genuine, effusions of genius.

HOOK, (JAMES,) the son of the well-known musical composer of the same name, was born on the 16th of June, 1771. He received the rudiments of education at a school at Ealing, and was afterwards sent to Westminster, where he distinguished himself among the boys by sketching portraits and caricatures. One of these, representing a pair of scales, containing three Etonians and three Westminster boys, of whom the latter were made to preponderate, gave rise to the following epigram from Canning, then a scholar at Eton:

What mean ye, by this print so rare,
Ye wits, of Eton jealous;
But that we soar aloft in air,

And ye are heavy fellows? This appeared in a periodical of the Etonians, called The Trifler, and was Microcosm, the production of the Westthus answered by Mr. Hook, in The minster boys:

Cease, ye Etonians, and no more
With rival wits contend;
Feathers, we know, will float in air,
And bubbles will ascend.

About 1791, he entered a student of St. Mary Hall, Oxford, where, in 1794-5, he graduated B. A., previously to which he declined an advantageous appointment in India, determining to enter the church. Having imbibed a strong prejudice in favour of Tory principles, he, in 1796, published a pamphlet, that went through two editions, under the title of Publicola, or a Sketch of the Times and Prevailing Opinions, in which he satirised Paine, Horne Tooke, Godwin, Thelwall, and others of that party, in an imaginary revolution. In 1797, he married the daughter of Sir Walter Farquhar, Bart., who, as soon as he was ordained deacon and priest, ob'ained for him the small living of Laddington, in Leicestershire, and introduced him to the notice of the

most eminent Tory politicians of the day. In 1799, he graduated M. A.; and, in 1801, he produced The Opinion of an Old Englishman, in which he traced, with great eloquence and discrimination, the character of Pitt, from the beginning of his ministerial career to that period. In 1802, he was made chaplain to George the Fourth; and, in 1803, alarmed at the progress of Buonaparte, published, under the signature of Publicola, his celebrated addresses to the people, the soldiers, and the sailors, of which no less than a million were circulated in England and Wales. In 1804, he was appointed to the rectory of Hertingfordbury, and St. Andrew's, in Hertfordshire; afterwards graduated, successively, B.C.L., and D.C.L.; and, in 1807, he obtained a stall in Winchester Cathedral. In 1811, he published a tract, entitled Notes Explanatory of certain parts of the Protestant Dissenters' Catechism; the profits of which he applied to the benefit of the Church charity and Sunday schools. In 1814, he succeeded Dr. Middleton as Archdeacon of Huntingdon; and, in the course of the two following years, published a succession of political pamphlets, the chief of which were entitled, Plain Facts for Plain Folks, &c., and Al Kalomeric, an Arabian tale, depicting the progress of the spirit of the French revolution. In 1817, in order to concentrate his duties, he exchanged his livings, in Hertfordshire, with

Dr.

Ridley, for that of Whippingham, in the Isle of Wight; and, in the same year, he brought out, in weekly numbers, from the 1st of March till the end of September, The Good Old Times, or the Poor Man's History of England, from the earliest period down to the present times, a work which was extremely popular. Having previously it is said, declined an Irish bishopric, he, in 1825, accepted the deanery of Worcester; but ill health, which had disabled him from preaching since 1820, terminated in a liver complaint in 1827, and carried him off in the February of the following year. Dean Hook obtained considerable temporary reputation as a political and polemical pamphleteer, in which character few writers have surpassed him.

VOL. III.

OPIE, (AMELIA,) the daughter of Dr. Alderson, an eminent physician of Norwich, was born in that city, in 1771. At a very early period, she evinced talents of a superior order, composing, whilst still a child, poems, descriptive pieces, and novels, though none of them, with the exception of some poetical pieces in The Monthly Magazine, were published before her marriage, which took place in May, 1798, with Mr. Opie, the celebrated painter. Her first publication, The Father and Daughter, a tale, with other pieces, appeared in 1801; which at once drew upon its author the public attention, and it has always remained a favourite of its class. It was succeeded, in 1802, by An Elegy to the Memory of the late Duke of Bedford, and a volume of other poems; and, in 1804, she gave to the world her tale of Adeline Mowbray, or the Mother and Daughter. This was followed, in 1806, by Simple Tales, in four volumes, duodecimo; and, in 1808, appeared, anonymously, in two volumes, duodecimo, her Dangers of Coquetry; and an octavo volume, under the title of The Warrior's Return, and other poems. Having become a widow in 1807, she published, in 1810, Memoirs of Mr. Opie, prefixed to the Lectures he had read at the Royal Academy. Her subsequent productions are, a novel, entitled Temper, or Domestic Scenes; Tales of Real Life; Simple Tales; Valentine's Eve; New Fables, in four volumes; Tales of the Heart; and The Black Man's Lament, in advocacy of the abolition of slavery, which appeared in 1826. The most remarkable feature in her life since this period, is her entrance into the Society of Friends, and her retirement from society, after having been one of its most cheerful votaries. Of all female writers of the present age, Mrs. Opie is the most forcible and affecting; in her power of displaying the workings of the passions, she is very little inferior to Godwin. She falls short of Miss Edgeworth, in her descriptions of real life, and delineation of domestic character; but in originality and vigour of conception, and creation of appalling interest, she is infinitely superior. Her Father and Daughter is a harmonious piece of dom stic tragedy; though, says a writer in The Edinburgh Review, "for a

short and convincing proof of her power, we would refer to a little tale, entitled Confessions of an Odd-tempered Man; contained in a collection called Tales of Real Life, and which bears some resemblance to the Adolphe, of Benjamin Constant." Mrs. Opie holds no mean rank as a poetess, though her prose writings have procured her the greatest share of approbation.

CARR, (Sir JOHN,) facetiously called the Jaunting Car, in consequence of his numerous tours, and the accuracy with which he has given an account of them to the public, was born in Devonshire, about the year 1772. He was bred to the law, but had scarcely commenced practice, when ill health induced him to travel. A poem, called The Song of Discord, printed in 1813, was his first publication. It met with little notice; but his Stranger in France, a tour from Devonshire to France, which appeared in the same year, was, in consequence of its agreeable style, very well received. The avidity with which it was read, caused him to publish a variety of similar works, for which his successive tours furnished him with ready materials, and the result was much profit to himself, and amusement to his readers. People at length began to smile at the repeated issue of our traveller's journals; and a writer in The Monthly Review having criticised his Stranger in Ireland, with a jocular severity, his tours were at last scarcely less ridiculed than Blackmore's epics. A burlesque upon the one above-named completed the destruction of their fame; and Sir John had the additional mortification of losing an action which he brought against the author of the Hints for a Right Merrie and Conceited Tour. He published, however, two other works of a similar description; and, in 1809, a volume of poems, with his portrait prefixed. Sir John was knighted by the Duke of Bedford, when his grace was Lord-lieutenant of Ireland.

ELMSLEY, (PETER,) was born in 1773, and educated at Westminster School and the University of Oxford, where he studied for the church. The only preferment he ever obtained, was to the living of Little Horkesley, in Essex, in 1798; after which he devoted

his time to literature. Removing to the Scotch metropolis, in 1802, he became a contributor to The Edinburgh Review, and subsequently wrote for The Quarterly. In the former, his most celebrated articles are on Heyne's Homer, Bloomfield's Prometheus, and Porson's Hecuba. In 1818 and 1819, he visited Italy; and, in the latter year, was employed, in conjunction with Sir Humphrey Davy, to collect the Herculanean papyri. On his return to England, he settled at Oxford, where he took the degree of D. D., and was made principal of St. Alban's Hall. In 1823, he was appointed Camden professor of ancient history; and died on the 8th of March, 1825. Dr. Elmsley, who was one of the first classical scholars of his age, published, in addition to the papers above mentioned, an edition of the following tragedies of Sophocles and Euripides: Edipus Tyrannus; Acharnanes; Heraclidiæ; Medæa; Baccha; and Edipus Coloneus.

LEWIS, (MATTHEW GREGORY,) the son of a gentleman possessing large property in the West Indies, and who was, for some time, under secretary at war, was born in 1773. He was educated at Westminster School; and, afterwards, travelling for improvement, received a deep impression, whilst in Germany, from the literature of that country. This he manifested, on his return to England, by the publication of several novels of peculiar interest, and particularly The Monk, which first appeared in 1795, and subsequently procured him the appellation of Monk Lewis. This novel is founded on the story of the Santon Barsisa, in The Guardian; and, at the time of its appearance, excited a great deal of notice, not unmixed with disgust, in consequence of its licentious details. A prosecution was even threatened by government, which the author is said to have avoided by a promise to recal all the early copies that had got into circulation, and to remodel those parts which were considered most offensive. He would seem also to have offended his family by this publication; for, in a letter, which was published after his death, he excuses himself to his father, by saying that, at the time of his publishing the work in question, he was too young

to judge properly of the impression which its contents might make, though his design was to benefit the cause of religion. He sat in parliament for Hendon, for one session, and died in 1818, during a voyage to the West Indies, occasioned, as has been reported, by poison given him by a slave, to whom he had imparted his intention of emancipating all his slaves at his decease. Besides The Monk, he was the author of several other romantic novels, and some dramatic pieces, of which his tragedy of Adelgitha, and melo-drames of Rugantino and Timour the Tartar, are the most celebrated. His writings were sufficiently popular, in their time, to produce a host of imitators, who surpassed Lewis, perhaps, in licentiousness and extravagance, but were decidedly beneath him in genius. The Monk has passed through several editions and translations, and, in that class of writing to which it belongs, the author will probably long remain without a rival.

ARNOLD, (SAMUEL JAMES,) son of the celebrated musical composer, was born on the 5th of December, 1774, and educated for the profession of an artist, which he abandoned for that of author. His first production was the musical entertainment of Auld Robin Gray, which was acted, with success, at the Haymarket Theatre. It was followed by the Shipwreck, at Drury Lane, which also became a temporary favourite with the public. His most successful production was the comedy of Man and Wife, or More Secrets than One, which was produced at Drury Lane, in 1809, and had a run of thirtynine nights. In the same year, having obtained a license for the establishment of an English opera, and purchased the Lyceum Theatre, in the Strand, he produced there his first great opera of Up All Night, or the Smuggler's Cave. His new theatre was highly prosperous, and each succeeding year produced fresh efforts from Mr. Arnold's pen, among which were, the operas of Plots, or the North Tower; The Maniac; The King's Proxy; The Devil's Bridge; The Americans; Frederick the Great; Baron de Trenck; and Broken Promises; besides a multitude of dramas, including those very successful ones

Two Words, and Free and Easy. In 1812, Mr. Arnold was solicited to undertake the management of the new Drury Lane Theatre, by the late Mr. Whitbread, after whose death he resigned his post;-pulled down his old theatre, and rebuilt a new one, which he opened in 1816. In the meantime, Mr. Arnold gave birth to a new era in the dramatic music of the country, by the adaptation, and first performance in England, of Weber's celebrated opera of Der Freischütz, which had been previously refused by both the great patent theatres. This was followed up by others, not less successful, and including some of the finest continental operas. It has been said, that Mr. Arnold has distinguished himself more by the production of foreign, than of English, music; but the charge is sufficiently contradicted by the foregoing list of operas, among the composers of which we need but name H. Bishop, Kelly, Braham, T. Cooke, and W. Hawes. In 1802-3, Mr. Arnold married a daughter of Henry James Pye, Esq., the poet laureate, by whom he has two sons and a daughter. Mr. Arnold is a magistrate, and a fellow of the Royal Society; his private character is said to be estimable, and he has the reputation of being a most delightful and entertaining companion.

MURRAY, (ALEXANDER,) the son of a Scotch shepherd, was born in the shire of Kirkcudbright, Scotland, on the 22nd of October, 1775. After having learned to read, he was, at the age of eight years, sent to tend sheep; but being, as he says, in his autobiography, "indolent, and given to books, and writing on boards with coals," his father found him of little use. At length, in May, 1784, his uncle undertook to put him to school; but ill health prevented him from remaining there more than three months, after which he returned to his old employment. He continued to act as a shepherd's boy until his thirteenth year, when he was engaged as teacher in the families of two of the neighbouring farmers. In the meantime, he had taught himself arithmetic and geography; and though he subsequently attended a day-school for about three months, in 1790, he may be said to have acquired, by his