"Upon a ministerial newspaper affixing his adopted signature to some verses of a very different nature and tendency, he wrote the following IMPROMPTU. The slavish print, that's dead to shame, In fury for departed fame, Has even robb'd me of my name : Alas! my nose is out of joint; Yet what's a Thorne without a point?" Our epigrammatist next directed his brilliant talents to dramatic composition; but we are gravely told that "he was not superficial enough to succeed in this walk. He disdained to sacrifice judgment to perverted taste, and therefore was not calculated to please a vitiated palate. His tragedy of Lorenzo,' represented at Covent Garden house, and his 'Magician no Conjuror,'-while they prove his various turn of mind, equally manifest to those who knew the writer, that he was biassed to the undertaking without due consideration. His native fire," we are next assured, "flames out in his odes. Some of these give room to think that had he employed himself chiefly in the lyric species of poetry, he might have filled a most honourable place between Pindar and Horace.(!) In confirmation of which assertion reference may be had to the odaic song he wrote for the 14th of July, the anniversary of the fall of the Bastile, and which was repeated in full chorus, with so much applause, in the year 1791, at the Crown and Anchor tavern. The Laurel of Liberty' he wrote also, and presented it to the National convention, who did honour to the author by the manner in which it was received." The French revolution drew Merry to Paris, where, we are informed, he favoured the young legislature with a short treatise, in English, on the nature of free government, which also was graciously received by the convention; "honourable mention being made of it in their journals." Our poet and legislator, however, did not feel himself quite at ease in Paris: "Revolution upon revolution greatly affected his sensibility; for, although he was robust of frame, his nerves did not correspond with his muscular strength." For these excellent reasons, "he quitted the scene of sanguinary contention," and once more betook himself to England. His next adventure we must relate in the words of his Della Cruscan pupil. "Upon his marriage with the celebrated actress Miss Brunton, a prospect opened to him of living at his ease by the joint production of that lady's talents and his own pen; but unfortunately the pride of those relations upon whom he had most dependence, was wounded by the alliance, and he was constrained, much against Mrs Merry's inclination, to take her from the stage. This he did as soon as her engagement at the theatre expired, which was in the spring of 1792. They both returned from the continent in the summer of 1793 (for Mrs Merry had accompanied him to France,) and from that date they cannot be said to have formed any settled plan, unless their retiring to America in 1796 may be so considered. Occasionally, in the above interval, Mr Merry wrote for a periodical paper; and some of the best poetry in the 'Telegraph' was the production of his pen. His Signior Pittachio,' written at this period, must ever be deemed a most happy production of keen satire, unsurpassed by any thing in ancient or modern times. (!) No minister in any age had been so ridiculed before. But our author had seen that the thunder of reason and truth had been as ineffectually tried to change the state of affairs as his squibs of satire and ridicule; he therefore began to think of seeking in a distant country what he despaired of ever finding in this. He was not long in resolving. He snatched up a pen, and wrote, partly in tears, partly in ink, an adieu to his native land. These affecting lines are in print, and the occasion and subject of them are fresh in the minds of his dearest friends, to whom upon his taking leave he said, in the words of Oroonoko : This last farewell : Be sure of one thing that will comfort us,- Cannot be worse than this.' Considering this a mere sketch of a life in what is called the grande monde, we have not touched upon any of the incidents of our hero's early age. Trifling as they may be thought by some persons, they will no doubt one day engage the pen of some abler hand, who shall undertake fully to satisfy public curiosity, by prefixing his whole life to a collection of his classical works." Mr Merry died suddenly at Baltimore in Maryland. The hopes of his biographer remain yet unfulfilled. No collection of his classical works' has yet been called for by an undiscerning public; and of his tremendous satires, unrivalled odes, and matchless epigrams, not one is now remembered; the memory of the founder of the Della Cruscan school of English poetry has, however, been embalmed for the admiration of future generations in Mr Gifford's Bæviad and Mæviad' Burnett, Lord Monboddo. BORN A. D. 1714.-DIED A. D. 1799. JAMES BURNETT, one of the Scottish lords of Session, was descended from the ancient family of the Burnetts of Leys in Kincardineshire, and was born at the family seat of Monboddo, in the latter part of the year 1714. He was first educated at the parish school of Laurencekirk, whence he went to King's college, Aberdeen; after the usual course there he went to the continent, and studied civil law at the university of Groningen. Having passed successfully through his juridical studies, he was received a member of the Faculty of advocates in Edinburgh in 1738, and speedily rose into considerable repute and practice at the bar. During the rebellion in 1745, while the administration of justice in the northern capital was interrupted, he went to London, where he gained the acquaintance of several of the literati of the day, and particularly of Mallet, Thomson, and Armstrong. These visits, like his contemporary Boswell, he became fond of repeating during the vacations of court; so that he kept up his acquaintance with the leading literary men of the day, long after most of his contemporaries were laid in the dust. In 1767 he was promoted to the bench, by the title of Lord Monboddo, on the death of Lord Milton. In 1773 he surprised the literary world by the publication of his work 'On the Origin and Progress of Language,'-a work full of profound and varied erudition and whimsical ideas, but intended chiefly to vindicate the honours of Grecian literature and metaphysics of the Greeks. With the same capital view his lordship afterwards published his huge treatise, in six 4to volumes, on ‘Ancient Metaphysics.' His notions of the origin of language, arts, and sciences were much akin to those of the ancient Epicureans as detailed by Lucretius in his 5th book. He carried his admiration of the ancients to an excessive and foolish pitch, contending not only for their mental but in all respects physical superiority over the modern race of mortals, whom he was fond of representing as an exceedingly degenerate race, and degenerating still in each successive generation. Yet there was nothing about his lordship's manner which indicated any thing like heartlessness towards his race, or even any want of the amenities of life in his general manners. Boswell carried Johnson to see Monboddo, when on their tour to the North. Lord Monboddo, says Boswell, "received us at his gate most courteously; pointed to the Douglas arms upon his house, and told us that his great-grandmother was of that family. 'In such houses,' said he, 'our ancestors lived, who were better men than we.' 'No, no, my lord!' said Dr Johnson, we are as strong as they and a great deal wiser.' This was an assault upon one of Lord Monboddo's capital dogmas," continues Boswell, "and I was afraid there would have been a violent altercation in the very close, before we got into the house. But his lordship is distinguished not only for Ancient Metaphysics,' but for ancient politesse,— la vieille cour,'—and he made no reply." Lord Monboddo died in 1799. As a judge he was ever considered able, upright, and assiduous in the discharge of his duties. William Withering. BORN A. D. 1741.—died a. D. 1799. THIS excellent botanist was the son of a respectable apothecary at Wellington, Shropshire. He studied at the university of Edinburgh, and graduated in 1766. In 1774, after having practised for a short time at Stafford, he removed to Birmingham, where he soon got into a very extensive and lucrative practice. In 1776 he published a 'Botanical Arrangement' of British plants, in two vols. 8vo. The first edition of this work was little more than a translation of Hudson's Flora Anglica,' published in 1762, which last was an adaptation of Ray's synopsis to the system of Linnæus. The third edition of the Arrangement,' however, published in four vols. 8vo. in 1796, was so much improved and enlarged as to be justly considered an original work. In 1783 Dr Withering published a translation of Bergmann's 'Outlines of Mineralogy; and in 1785 a very valuable professional treatise on the use of fox-glove as a diuretic. Besides these publications he communicated a variety of papers to the Royal society. He died in 1799. “ William Melmoth. BORN A. D. 1710.-DIED A. d. 1799. THIS accomplished scholar and elegant writer was son of William Melmoth, Esq., of Lincoln's inn, the author of a very popular treatise entitled The Great Importance of a Religious Life,' which was ascribed by Walpole to the first earl of Egmont. He was educated for his father's profession, and appointed a commissioner of bankrupts, by Sir John Eardley Wilmot, in 1756. He seems, however, to have spent the greater part of his life in retirement and the cultivation of polite literature. He first appeared as an author in 1742, in a volume of letters under the name of Fitzosborne, in which he has discussed various topics, moral and literary, with much acuteness of reasoning and elegance of diction. In 1747 he published a translation of Pliny's Letters, in two volumes; and in 1753 a translation of Cicero's Letters, in three volumes. He subsequently published translations of Cicero's treatises De Amicitiâ ' and De Senectute.' All these are remarkably elegant works, though the translator has perhaps enfeebled the energy of the originals by the extreme care and polish which he has bestowed upon the style of his English version. He died at Bath in 1799. John Bacon. BORN A. D. 1740.-DIED A. D. 1799. THIS celebrated sculptor was the son of a cloth-worker in Southwark, Surrey. His parents were poor, and his education very limited. He discovered an early taste for the arts of design, and having apprenticed himself, at the age of fourteen, to a porcelain-maker, he was employed in modelling those little figures which appear in bas relief on some articles of pottery, and occasionally too in painting figures on plates and dishes. He might never have risen from this humblest walk in the profession of art, had his genius not been excited to higher attempts than the modelling of sheep and shepherdesses by the small clay models used by sculptors in those days which were sent to the pottery furnace to be hardened. These at once stimulated his ambition and directed his taste; and so rapidly did he improve his taste and execution by the contemplation of the models thus supplied him, that at the age of nineteen he obtained a premium of ten guineas from the Society of arts for a model in clay; by the same society he was subsequently awarde‹i other premiums to the amount of above £200, in the course of fifteen years. On the establishment of the Royal academy he became a student, along with Banks and Nollekins, and in 1769 he received, from the hands of Reynolds, the first gold medal for sculpture given by the academy. "The subject," says Mr Allan Cunningham, "was Eneas bearing Anchises from the burning of Troy,-the figures some twenty inches high and the relief small,-and I suspect one of his unsuccessful antagonists was Banks; for among the models of the latter I have observed two reliefs of the same subject, both of considerable merit. His repu tation was farther established by the exhibition of his statue of Mars: West, when he saw it, said to one of his brethren, 'If this is his first essay, what will this man be when he arrives at maturity ?'—an observation creditable to both, yet proving that Bacon's earlier works had failed in making an impression on the painter. The statue obtained for our sculptor the personal notice of the archbishop of York, a gold medal from the Society of arts, and his election as an associate of the Royal academy itself in the year 1770. Looking at it with eyes accustomed to the marbles of ancient Greece and modern Italy, we are apt to feel some surprise that it should have awakened so much emotion. But if we consider the state of sculpture at that period in England, we will soften the severity of our comparisons, and rank it with the best of those statues made upon academic principles,-correct in outline, accurate in proportions,-nicely balanced in action and skilfully modelled, and deficient only in that heroic sentiment and true touch of soul, which can animate and kindle the rudest shape, and without which forms worthy of Olympus are but clods of the valley. The statue is naked, of the size of life, with more of the soft graceful look of Adonis than of the fiery energy of Mars." Bacon's advancing reputation now encouraged him to open a studio in the city, and "commence his contest for bread and fame." By the kindness of Dr Markham he was employed to model a bust of the king for the hall of Christ church, Oxford. This he executed in a manner which entirely pleased both his majesty and the Oxonians; and, what was of still greater consequence to his further success, his address and whole bearing proved agreeable to royalty. Soon after this he removed from Wardour-street to Newman-street, where, it is said, a friendly builder provided him with a handsome suite of rooms entirely at his own risk in the first instance: saying that he should never look for any return for the money he had laid out until the artist was quite capable of giving it. He now executed various works in marble for both private and public commissions. One of the earliest public monuments that came from his chisel was that in honour of the illustrious Chatham, ordered by the city corporation for their guild-hall. This monument is in the allegorical taste of the day, but certainly much superior to the great mass of its contemporaries. Cunningham, perhaps with justice, censures it for a certain violence of action,-it is wanting in that character of calmness and repose which seems so essential to perfect effect in sculpture. Shortly after this he fabricated an antique head of a Jupiter Tonans, and exhibited it as such to his brother-artists, who took the bait, and supposing it to be really an antique, were loud and unanimous in its praise. "He often remarked," says his biographer, the Rev. Mr Cecil, "on the affectation of many with respect to the antique, who are without taste for selecting what is really excellent in it. Call it,' said he, but an antique, and people begin immediately to find some beauty. Look at that figure in the corner of my study,can you see any thing in it? Yet many who come here and at first take no notice of it, as soon as they hear it is a cast from the antique, begin to admire! Had I made it a few years ago it would not have 6 |