which place he removed to the curacy of Croydon, in Surrey, whence Archbishop Herring collated him to the vicarage of Orpington with St Mary Cray, in Kent. In 1774 he exchanged his vicarage for the rectory of Hayes. His first poetical publication was a descriptive poem, entitled Bramham Park,' which appeared in 1747. In 1761 he published a volume of 'Original Poems and Translations; and in 1767 a translation of Theocritus very respectably executed. It is said that Pearce, Jortin, Johnson, Warton, and several other eminent scholars and critics, contributed to the Theocritus. He died in August, 1777.

John Armstrong.

BORN A. D. 1709.-DIED A. D. 1779.

THIS minor English poet was born in the parish of Castleton in Roxburghshire. He studied medicine in the university of Edinburgh, and practised, with considerable repute, in London for several years previous to his death. His literary reputation is chiefly founded on a didactic poem, entitled The Art of Preserving Health,' which was published in 1744. He wrote several other pieces both on professional and non-professional subjects; and enjoyed a fair average reputation among the scholars of his day, though his writings are seldom referred

to now.

Thomas Amory.

BORN A. D. 1692.-DIED A. D. 1789.

THOMAS AMORY, the son of Counsellor Amory, who attended King William in Ireland, was born in the county of Clare in the year 1692. He is believed to have studied medicine for the purpose of practising as a physician; his design, however, if intended, was never put in execution. In 1755 he published a very remarkable work, entitled 'Memoirs, containing the Lives of several Ladies of Great Britain; a History of Antiquities, Productions of Nature, and Monuments of Art; Observations on the Christian Religion, as professed by the Established Church and Dissenters of every Denomination; Remarks on the writings of the greatest English Divines, and a Review of the Works of the Writers called Infidels, from Lord Herbert of Cherbury to the late Lord Viscount Bolingbroke; with a variety of disquisitions and opinions relative to criticism and manners; and many extraordinary actions: in several Letters,' Lond. 8vo. A second volume was promised, but it never appeared. In 1756 he published the first volume of the life of John Buncle, and the second in 1766, in which it is thought the author intended to sketch his own picture. It is in some sort a continuation of the Memoirs.' Mr Amory was likewise author of a letter to the Monthly Reviewers, as also of various religious tracts, poems, and songs. He died in 1789, at the advanced age of ninety-seven.

James Harris.

BORN A. D. 1709.-DIED A. D. 1780.

THIS celebrated philological and grammatical writer was the eldest son of James Harris, Esq. of Salisbury, and the lady Elizabeth Ashley, sister to the celebrated author of the ، Characteristics. He received his early education at Salisbury, whence he was sent to Oxford at the age of sixteen. Having spent the usual term of study at Wadham college, he became a member of Lincoln's inn, though with no view towards the bar.

In his twenty-fourth year he succeeded, by the death of his father, to a handsome property, and immediately gave himself up to the pursuit of literature, especially the Greek philosophy. In 1744 he published three treatises on Art, the Fine Arts, and Happiness, distinguished by their elegance of style, profound and varied learning, and general correctness of thought and sentiment. In 1751 he published a work, entitled‘Hermes, or a Philosophical Inquiry concerning Universal Grammar.' This is a work of much research and fine taste, although it does not perhaps deserve so high a commendation as has been passed upon it by Lowth and some others. Horne Tooke attacked it with great virulence.

In 1761, Mr Harris was returned one of the representatives for Christchurch. In 1763 he became a lord of the treasury, but resigned office with the rest of the ministry in 1765. In 1775 he published a work entitled 'Philosophical Arrangements,' being a portion of a meditated larger work on the Peripatetic logic. His last work was entitled 'Philological Inquiries.' It contains a summary of the critical philosophy of the ancients.

Mr Harris died in 1780. His son, Lord Malmesbury, published a splendid edition of his works in 1801, in two quarto volumes, with a Memoir prefixed. His lordship seems to have formed a pretty just estimate of his respected parent's literary character. He says: “The distinction by which he was most generally known, and by which he is likely to survive to posterity, is that of a man of learning." Mr Harris's treatises will always be admired for their taste and erudition; though little regarded, perhaps, as profoundly philosophical tracts.

Richard Wilson.

BORN A. D. 1713. DIED A. D. 1782.

THIS artist was of Welsh extraction. He was born in the year 1713. At thirty-five years of age we find him a portrait-painter of some repute in London, for he was employed in 1748 to execute likenesses of the prince of Wales and the duke of York, for their tutor the bishop of Norwich. Edwards says, that in drawing a head Wilson was not excelled by any of his contemporaries, which is, after all, not saying much for his genius in this line of the art; for, with the excep

tion of Reynolds-and he was now only rising into notice-all the portrait-limners of the day were wretched daubers.

A visit to Italy, which Wilson was enabled to make in his thirty-sixth year, proved the means of leading him into that department wherein his better genius lay. At first, says Allan Cunningham," he continued the study and practice of portrait-painting, and, it is said, with fair hopes of success, when an accident opened another avenue to fame, and shut up the way to fortune. Having waited one morning, till he grew weary, for the coming of Zucarelli the artist, he painted, to beguile the time, a scene upon which the window of his friend looked, with so much grace and effect that Zucarelli was astonished, and inquired if he had studied landscape. Wilson replied that he had not. • Then I advise you,' said the other, to try, for you are sure of great success.' The counsel of one friend was confirmed by the opinion of another. This was Vernet, a French painter, a man whose generosity was equal to his reputation, and that was very high. One day, while sitting in Wilson's painting-room, he was so struck with the peculiar beauty of a newly-finished landscape that he desired to become its proprietor, and offered in exchange one of his best pictures. This was much to the gratification of the other; the exchange was made, and with a liberality equally rare and commendable, Vernet placed his friend's picture in his exhibition-room, and when his own productions happened to be praised or purchased by English travellers, the generous Frenchman used to say, 'Don't talk of my landscapes alone, when your own countryman, Wilson, paints so beautifully.' These praises, and an internal feeling of the merits of his new performances, induced Wilson to relinquish portrait-painting, and proceed with landscape. He found himself better prepared for this new pursuit than he had imagined; he had been long insensibly storing his mind with the beauties of natural scenery, and the picturesque mountains and glens of his native Wales had been to him an academy when he was unconscious of their influence. He did not proceed upon that plan of study, much recommended, but little practised, of copying the pictures of the old masters, with the hope of catching a corresponding inspiration; but he studied their works, and mastered their methods of attaining excellence, and compared them carefully with nature. By this means he caught the hue and the character of Italian scenery, and steeped his spirit in its splendour. His landscapes are fanned with the pure air, warmed with the glowing suns, filled with the ruined temples, and sparkling with the wooded streams and tranquil lakes of that classic region. His reputation rose so fast that he obtained pupils. Mengs, out of regard for his genius, painted his portrait; and Wilson repaid this flattery with a fine landscape."

Wilson returned to England after a six years' residence abroad. The sure road to fame now lay before him: landscape-painting, in its true principles, was yet unknown in England, and none were better qualified to become the founder of a new school in that delightful branch of the art than Wilson. But he had to inspire his countrymen with a new taste, before he could hope to cultivate a branch of the art in which he was so eminently qualified to excel with advantage to himself; and this he found no small difficulty in accomplishing. His easy, artless, truthful style, failed to win the attention of such purchasers as gloated on the productions of Barret's easel, and the equally worthless daubs of

Smith of Chichester; and poor Wilson found it difficult to procure a scanty subsistence by selling the noble creations of his fine genius to pawnbrokers and such sort of customers. He had, however, a confident persuasion that the public taste would yet come round, and that the merits and value of his paintings would, ere long, be felt and acknowledged: "Beechey," he one day said to that artist, "you will live to see great prices given for my pictures, when those of Barret will not fetch one farthing.”

In his declining years Wilson was rendered comfortable in his worldly circumstances by the bequest of a relative; but the gift came too late to rescue his genius from the oppressing ills of poverty. His sight was now failing, and his skill of touch forsaking him; his spirits too had been soured and fretted by the neglect with which he had been treated by a public not yet qualified to appreciate his genius. He died in May, 1782.

6

"As a landscape-painter," says Allan Cunningham, "the merits of Wilson are great; his conceptions are generally noble, and his execution vigorous and glowing; the dewy freshness, the natural lustre and harmonious arrangement of his scenes, have seldom been exceeded. He rose at once from the tame insipidity of common scenery into natural grandeur and magnificence; his streams seem all abodes for nymphs, his hills are fit haunts for the muses, and his temples worthy of gods. His whole heart was in his art, and he talked and dreamed landscape. He looked on cattle as made only to form groups for his pictures, and on men as they composed harmoniously. One day looking on the fine scene from Richmond Terrace, and wishing to point out a spot of particular beauty to the friend who accompanied him, 'There,' said he, holding out his finger, see near those houses, there where the figures are.' He stood for some time by the waterfall of Terni in speechless admiration, and at length exclaimed, Well done: water, by God!' In aërial effect he considered himself above any rival. When Wright of Derby offered to exchange works with him, he answered, With all my heart. I'll give you air, and you will give me fire.' 'Wilson,' says Fuseli, discoursing on art in 1801, observed nature in all her appearances, and had a characteristic touch for all her forms. But, though in effects of dewy freshness and silent evening lights few have equalled and fewer excelled him, his grandeur is oftener allied to terror, bustle, and convulsion, than to calmness and tranquillity. He is now numbered with the classics of the art, though little more than the fifth part of a century has elapsed since death relieved him from the apathy of cognoscenti, the envy of rivals, and the neglect of a tasteless public; for Wilson, whose works will soon command prices as proud as those of Claude, Poussin, or Elzheimer, resembled the last most in his fate, and lived and died nearer to indigence than ease.' Wilson's landscapes are numerous, and are scattered as they should be through public galleries and private rooms. They are in general productions of fancy rather than of existing reality; scenes pictured forth by the imagination rather than transcribed from nature, yet there is enough of nature in them to please the commonest clown, and enough of what is poetic to charm the most fastidious fancy. He sometimes indeed painted fac-similes of scenes; but his heart disliked such unpoetic drudgery; for his thoughts were ever dwelling among hills and streams

renowned in story and song, and he loved to expatiate on ruined temples and walk over fields where great deeds had been achieved, and where gods had appeared among men. He was fortunate in little during his life: his view from Kew gardens, though exquisite in colour and in simplicity of arrangement, was returned by the king for whom it was painted; nor was the poetic loveliness of his compositions felt till such acknowledgment was useless to the artist. The names of a few of his principal compositions will show the historical and poetical influence under which he wrought,-the Death of Niobe, Phæton, Morning, View of Rome, Villa of Mecænas at Tivoli, Celadon and Amelia, View on the river Po, Apollo and the Seasons, Meleager and Atalanta, Cicero at his Villa, Lake of Narni, View on the coast of Baix, the Tiber near Rome, Temple of Bacchus, Adrian's Villa, Bridge of Rimini, Rosamond's Pond, Langallon-Bridge, Castle of Dinas Bran, Temple of Venus at Baiæ, Tomb of the Horatii and Curiatii, Broken Bridge of Narni, and Nymphs Bathing."

John Fothergill.

BORN A. D. 1712.-died A. D. 1780.

THIS distinguished physician was born near Richmond in Yorkshire. He studied medicine and took the degree of M.D. at Edinburgh. In 1746 he was admitted a licentiate of the London college of physicians. He attained a very extensive practice in the metropolis and realized a handsome fortune, notwithstanding his benevolent disposition, and the large sums which he is known to have given away in charity. There appears to have been a good deal of the religious mystic about Dr Fothergill; but his character was unimpeachable, and his superior skill as a physician very generally admitted by his brethren. He was a munificent patron of scientific and learned men, and expended large sums in the formation of botanical collections. He died in 1780.

William Cole.

BORN A. D. 1714.-DIED A. D. 1782.

THIS industrious antiquary was the son of a gentleman of property in Cambridgeshire, and was born at Little Abington, near Baberham, in that county. After having been placed five years at Eton, he was entered of Clare hall, Cambridge. He afterwards removed to King's college. In 1736 he took the degree of B. A. In 1740 he proceeded M.A. In 1745 he was admitted to priest's orders, and in 1749 collated to the rectory of Hornsey in Middlesex.

In 1765 he accompanied Horace Walpole to France, and at one time thought of settling in that country. He was, however, diverted from

1 Chalmers is of opinion that Cole was secretly inclined to Romanism, and that to this leaning may be traced his desire to settle in France. See article COLE in Biographical Dictionary.'