ment; and gave a proof that he could suffer, as well as act, in a cause which he believed just. We have, indeed, no reason to question his resolution, whatever occasion might be given to exert it; nor is it probable that he feared affliction more than danger, or that he would not have borne persecution himself for those opinions which inclined him to persecute others.

He did not suffer much upon this occasion; for he retained the living of Petworth, to which he, thenceforward, confined his labours, and where he was very assiduous, and, as Calamy affirms, very successful in the exercise of his ministry, it being his peculiar character to be warm and zealous in all his undertakings.

This heat of his disposition, increased by the uncommon turbulence of the times in which he lived, and by the opposition to which the unpopular nature of some of his employments exposed him, was, at last, heightened to distraction, so that he was, for some years, disordered in his understanding, as both Wood and Calamy relate, but with such difference as might be expected from their opposite principles. Wood appears to think, that a tendency to madness was discoverable in a great part of his life; Calamy, that it was only transient and accidental, though, in his additions to his first narrative, he pleads it, as an extenuation of that fury with which his kindest friends confess him to have acted on some occasions. Wood declares, that he died little better than distracted; Calamy, that he was perfectly recovered to a sound mind, before the restoration, at which time he retired to Preston, a small village in Sussex, being turned out of his living at Petworth.

It does not appear that he kept his living till the general ejection of the nonconformists; and it is not unlikely that the asperity of his carriage, and the known virulence of his temper, might have raised him enemies, who were willing to make him feel the effects of persecution, which he had so furiously incited against others; but of this incident of his life there is no particular account.

After his deprivation, he lived, till his death, which happened in 1665, at a small village near Chichester, upon a paternal estate, not augmented by the large preferments wasted upon him in the triumphs of his party; having been remarkable, throughout his life, for hospitality and contempt of money.

CAVE.

THE curiosity of the publick seems to demand the history of every man who has, by whatever means, risen to eminence; and few lives would have more readers than that of the compiler of the Gentleman's Magazine, if all those who received improvement or entertainment from him should retain so much kindness for their benefactor, as to inquire after his conduct and character.

Edward Cave was born at Newton, in Warwickshire, Feb. 29, 1691. His father (Joseph) was the younger son of Mr. Edward Cave, of Cave's-in-the-Hole, a lone house, on the Street road, in the same county, which took its name from the occupier; but having concurred with his elder brother in cutting off the entail of a small hereditary estate, by which act it was lost from the family, he was reduced to follow, in Rugby, the trade of a shoemaker. He was a man of good reputation in his narrow circle, and remarkable for strength and rustick intrepidity. He lived to a great age, and was, in his latter years, supported by his son.

It was fortunate for Edward Cave, that, having a disposition to literary attainments, he was not cut off by the poverty of his parents from opportunities of cultivating his faculties. The school of Rugby, in which he had, by the rules of its foundation, a right to be instructed, was

This life first appeared in the Gentleman's magazine for 1754, and is now printed from a copy revised by the author, at my request, in 1781. N.—It was, in the magazine, introduced by a general remark, which we have again prefixed.

then in high reputation under the reverend Mr. Holyock, to whose care most of the neighbouring families, even of the highest rank, intrusted their sons. He had judgment to discover, and, for some time, generosity to encourage, the genius of young Cave; and was so well pleased with his quick progress in the school, that he declared his resolution to breed him for the university, and recommended him, as a servitor, to some of his scholars of high rank. But prosperity which depends upon the caprice of others, is of short duration. Cave's superiority in literature exalted him to an invidious familiarity with boys who were far above him in rank and expectations; and, as in unequal associations it always happens, whatever unlucky prank was played was imputed to Cave. When any mischief, great or small, was done, though, perhaps, others boasted of the stratagem, when it was successful, yet, upon detection, or miscarriage the fault was sure to fall upon poor Cave.

At last, his mistress, by some invisible means, lost a favourite cock. Cave was, with little examination, stigmatised as the thief and murderer; not because he was more apparently criminal than others, but because he was more easily reached by vindictive justice. From that time, Mr. Holyock withdrew his kindness visibly from him, and treated him with harshness, which the crime, in its utmost aggravation, could scarcely deserve; and which, surely, he would have forborne, had he considered how hardly the habitual influence of birth and fortune is resisted; and how frequently men, not wholly without sense of virtue, are betrayed to acts more atrocious than the robbery of a hen-roost, by a desire of pleasing their superiours.

Those reflections his master never made, or made without effect; for, under pretence that Cave obstructed the discipline of the school, by selling clandestine assistance, and supplying exercises to idlers, he was oppressed with unreasonable tasks, that there might be an opportunity of quarrelling with his failure; and when his diligence had surmounted them, no regard was paid to the performance. Cave bore this persecution awhile, and then left the

school, and the hope of a literary education, to seek some other means of gaining a livelihood.

He was first placed with a collector of the excise. He used to recount, with some pleasure, a journey or two which he rode with him as his clerk, and relate the victories that he gained over the excisemen in grammatical disputations. But the insolence of his mistress, who employed him in servile drudgery, quickly disgusted him, and he went up to London in quest of more suitable employment.

He was recommended to a timber-merchant at the Bankside, and, while he was there on liking, is said to have given hopes of great mercantile abilities; but this place he soon left, I know not for what reason, and was bound apprentice to Mr. Collins, a printer of some reputation, and deputy alderman.

This was a trade for which men were formerly qualified by a literary education, and which was pleasing to Cave, because it furnished some employment for his scholastick attainments. Here, therefore, he resolved to settle, though his master and mistress lived in perpetual discord, and their house was, therefore, no comfortable habitation. From the inconveniencies of these domestick tumults he was soon released, having, in only two years, attained so much skill in his art, and gained so much the confidence of his master, that he was sent, without any superintendant, to conduct a printing-office at Norwich, and publish a weekly paper. In this undertaking he met with some opposition, which produced a publick controversy, and procured young Cave the reputation of a writer.

His master died before his apprenticeship was expired, and he was not able to bear the perverseness of his mistress. He, therefore, quitted her house upon a stipulated allowance, and married a young widow, with whom he lived at Bow. When his apprenticeship was over, he worked, as a journeyman, at the printing-house of Mr. Barber, a man much distinguished, and employed by the tories, whose principles had, at that time, so much prevalence with Cave, that he was, for some years, a writer in

Mist's Journal; which, though he afterwards obtained, by his wife's interest, a small place in the post-office, he for some time continued. But, as interest is powerful, and conversation, however mean, in time persuasive, he, by degrees, inclined to another party; in which, however, he was always moderate, though steady and determined.

When he was admitted into the post-office, he still continued, at his intervals of attendance, to exercise his trade, or to employ himself with some typographical business. He corrected the Gradus ad Parnassum; and was liberally rewarded by the company of stationers. He wrote an account of the criminals, which had, for some time, a considerable sale; and published many little pamphlets, that accident brought into his hands, of which it would be very difficult to recover the memory. By the correspondence which his place in the post-office facilitated, he procured country newspapers, and sold their intelligence to a journalist in London, for a guinea a week.

He was afterwards raised to the office of clerk of the franks, in which he acted with great spirit and firmness; and often stopped franks, which were given by members of parliament to their friends, because he thought such extension of a peculiar right illegal. This raised many complaints, and having stopped, among others, a frank given to the old dutchess of Marlborough by Mr. Walter Plummer, he was cited before the house, as for a breach of privilege, and accused, I suppose very unjustly, of opening letters to detect them. He was treated with great harshness and severity, but, declining their questions, by pleading his oath of secrecy, was at last dismissed. And it must be recorded to his honour, that, when he was ejected from his office, he did not think himself discharged from his trust, but continued to refuse, to his nearest friends, any information about the management of the office.

By this constancy of diligence and diversification of employment, he in time collected a sum sufficient for the purchase of a small printing-office, and began the Gentleman's Magazine, a periodical pamphlet, of which the