works of nature: it proves its author to have been a true poet in desire and object; and if, instead of a tragedy, he has given a serious poem in dialogue, let us not quarrel with a golden vase, if it should not exactly correspond with its description in the catalogue." The following choral ode, which occurs in this drama, was considered a chef d'œuvre by Mason's contemporaries : "Mona on Snowdon calls: Hear, thou King of mountains, hear! King of mountains, bend thine ear! And greet in whispers sage and slow. And burst thy base with thunder's shock; Shall Mona use than those that dwell In music's secret cells, and lie Steep'd in the stream of harmony. "Snowdon has heard the strain : Busy murmurs hum around, Rustling vestments brush the ground; Round, and round, and round they go, Through the twilight, through the shade, Mount the oak's majestic head, And gild the tufted mistleto.”† The author of Caractacus,' in strict keeping with the spirit of northern mythology, has put the following battle-hymn into the mouth of 'the warrior' Death: "Gray seems to have been much pleased with these lines. Speaking of the advantages and licenses of subjects like Caractacus, drawn from a period of whose manners and opinions scarcely any thing is known, he says, They leave an unbounded liberty to pure imagination and fiction, (our favourite provinces,) where no critic can molest, or antiquary gainsay us: and yet (to please me) these fictions must have some affinity, some seeming connexion, with that little we really know of the character and customs of the people. For example, I never heard in my life that midnight and the moon were sisters; that they carried rods of ebony and gold, or met to whisper on the top of a mountain; but now I could lay my life that it is all true, and do not doubt it will be found so in some pantheon of the Druids, that is to be discovered in the library at Herculaneum.' I cannot think sober sisters' by any means a happy epithet in the present state of the English language. Sober originally meant soundminded, self-possessed; but at present it only implies the absence of ebriety."-H Coleridge. "This last image, pretty as it is, is far too pretty for the occasion. It would be well in a sportive fairy-tale; but the Druids, while invoking mysterious powers, in whose existence they had a real, not a poetical belief, could not be in a mood to observe such minute effects."- Ibid. "No, my Britons! battle slain, Rapture gilds your parting hour; I that all despotic reign, Claim but there a moment's power; Swiftly the soul of British flame, Animates some kindred frame, Swiftly to life and light exultant flies, Exults again in martial extacies, Again for freedom fights, again for freedom dies !" These extracts will impress the reader with a favourable idea of Mason's lyrical powers. In 1765 he was united to an amiable and accomplished woman, Miss Maria Sherman of Hull, whose death he was called upon to lament within less than twelve months from their nuptials. In 1771 he lost his friend Gray, who bequeathed to him his books and manuscripts. Mason in return performed the duties of editor and biographer to the accomplished bard, in a manner which detracted nothing from the reputation of either. In 1772 he published the first book of his 'English Garden,' of which the fourth and last appeared in 1782. It is a very long and very dull poem. Politics chiefly occupied the latter part of Mason's life. He opposed the American war, and advocated parliamentary reform; but a new light latterly broke in upon his mind on these matters, and he followed the course of Burke in abjuring his former tenets, and publishing a new political faith in his 'Palinodia,' which was written in 1794. For some years previous to his death, he was in the habit of composing an anniversary sonnet on his birth-day. The following, commemorating the completion of his 72d year, is perhaps the last piece of poetry he ever wrote: "Again the year on easy wheels has roll'd, To bear me to the term of seventy-two; How Nature, to her Maker's mandate true, The snow-drop pale, the crocus spik'd with gold: Strains not discordant to each moral theme He died in May, 1797, of the consequences of a contusion he had received on his leg. William Julius Mickle. BORN A. D. 1734.-DIED A. D. 1788. THE ingenious translator of 'The Lusiad,' was the son of a Scottish clergyman of some reputation in the commonwealth of letters, and received his early education at the school of Langholm, of which parish his father was minister. He evinced a decided taste for literature while yet a very young man, but having engaged in some business speculations which proved unfortunate, his attention was for several years turned aside from letters. In 1762 he published a poem, entitled, Providence, or Arandus and Emilée,' which obtained for him the favourable notice of Lord Lyttleton. Mr Chalmers represents his lordship as having, upon the whole, baulked the young poet's expectations, after exciting them considerably with the promise of his patronage. We do not think, however, that the biographer has made good this charge against his lordship, although it is certain that Mickle encountered not a few of the hardships and uncertainties attendant upon a literary life, after his removal to the English metropolis, and was at last happy to accept the office of a corrector to the Clarendon press at Oxford. In 1767 he published a poem, which he at first entitled, "The Concubine,' but in subsequent editions, Sir Martyn.' This poem is written in the Spenserian stanza, and evinces considerable genius and a good ear for rhythm. It made some noise at the time it appeared, and was attributed to different writers of established reputation. In 1772 he edited a collection of Fugitive pieces, which was published in continuation of Dodsley's collection, in four volumes, 8vo., by George Pearch. He was now, however, meditating his great work, the translation of The Lusiad;' on which he nearly exclusively employed himself for four years. It was published in 1775, in one volume, quarto; a second edition was called for in 1778. 'The Lusiad,' in its English dress, was very favourably received both by the English and Portuguese critics, and procured for the translator many civilities from the countrymen of his favourite Camoens, on his visiting Lisbon, in 1779, in the quality of secretary to Commodore Johnstone. few He died in 1788. An edition of his poems, with a biographical sketch, was published in 1794, by Mr Ireland. Of his principal piece, The Lusiad,' it may be safely affirmed, that we possess very translations of superior merit.; it is at once free and literal; a poem fitted "to live in the English language," and at the same time a faith ful mirror to the original epic. His preliminary dissertations are also very favourable specimens of general scholarship. Thomas Day. BORN A. D. 1748.-DIED A. D. 1789. THIS eccentric, but amiable man, was a native of London. He was born on the 22d of June, 1748. His early education was superintended by his mother, a lady of considerable accomplishments: his father having died when he was little more than a year old. Young Day's fortune was handsome,—and he received a first-rate education at the Charter house and Oxford. On finishing his studies at the university, he spent several successive years on the continent, where he seems to have employed himself in studying the habits of the lower classes, with a view to discover the origin of that universal taint which he found to infect human nature in all existing modifications of society, but for which, unwilling to accept the solution offered by revelation, he long felt himself unable to account. At last he became satisfied, that a defective and injudicious education was the sole root of the mischief; and, with an ardour peculiar to himself, immediately set about instituting a set of experiments, the grand aim and object of which was the production of a woman of faultless mind and manners, whose company, he wisely resolved, should reward him for his labours, and form the solace of his future life. of this hopeful scheme, he paid a visit to the foundling hospital at Shrewsbury, where he was permitted to select two female children to be the subjects of his educational experiments. His choice fell upon two girls of twelve years of age; both of interesting appearance, but of different casts of complexion and features; the one, on whom he was pleased to bestow the classical name of Lucretia, was a fair-haired, rosy-cheeked child; the other, who was made to exchange her name for that of Sabrina, was a clear brunette, with dark eyes and raven locks. We subjoin the particulars of this strange bargain, and the result of the experiment, nearly in Mr Chalmers's words: Full The girls were obtained on written conditions, for the due perfovmance of which, an intimate friend of Mr Day's, a barrister, became guarantee. The conditions were: that Mr Day should, within twelve months from the period of taking the girls under his charge, bind one of them apprentice to some respectable tradeswoman, and pay one hundred pounds of premium for her, besides maintaining her until she married, or began business for herself, on either of which events he pledged himself to pay her four hundred pounds more. With respect to the one whom he might make choice of for his future partner, at the end of the twelve months' comparative trial, he bound himself to treat her with respect and all necessary kindness, until she should be fitted to fill the station for which he destined her; and, in the event of his changing his mind, to maintain her at board in some respectable family, till she should get married to another, when he would pay her a wedding-portion of five hundred pounds. These preliminaries arranged, Mr Day immediately set out for France, carrying his young charges with him, but unaccom panied by a single English servant, an arrangement by which he thought to subject their infantile minds entirely to his new plan of education, by precluding the possibility of their holding conversation with any others but themselves and their instructor. He soon found he had undertaken no easy task; his pupils teased and perplexed him in a thousand ways he had never before dreamt of; they quarrelled; they cried whenever they were left alone with any person who could not speak English to them; at last they both sickened of smallpox, and poor Day was obliged to nurse them himself. Eight months of this sort of life completely satisfied our experimenter; at the expiry of this period he returned to England, and got rid of Lucretia by placing her with a chamber-milliner. With Sabrina he actually proceeded during some years in the execution of his favourite project; but was at last reluctantly compelled to abandon all hopes of making her his wife. She indeed grew up an accomplished and amiable woman, but fell far short of her protector's beau ideal of a wife.1 At last Mr Day ventured into the bonds of matrimony with a Yorkshire lady, who seems to have made him in all respects an excellent wife. With her he retired to his estates in Essex and Surrey, where he devoted himself to a rural life, and the active discharge of the duties of a country-gentleman. He wrote several political pamphlets, and exerted himself strenuously in behalf of American independence and parliamentary reform. In one of his political tracts, the following remark occurs; it has lost none of its point in the present day: "If there be an object truly ridiculous in nature, it is an American patriot signing resolutions of independence with the one hand, and, with the other, brandishing a whip over his affrighted slaves." His first poetical publication, entitled 'The Dying Negro,' which appeared in 1773, contributed not a little to excite that general abhorrence of the slave-trade, which at last brought about the abolition of the accursed traffic. His other poetical pieces are entitled, 'The Devoted Legions,' and 'The Desolation of America;' they are both of a political cast. But the publication by which Mr Day is most generally, and will be longest known, is the History of Sandford and Merton,' one which he wrote for the use of children, and which never fails to prove eminently entertaining at least, if not so deeply and directly instructive as its author hoped it might prove, to juvenile minds. We are told, by an anonymous writer, that Mr Day was, in addition to his qualities as a good citizen and patriot, 66 an ingenious mechanic, a well-informed chemist, a learned theoretical physician, and an expert constitutional lawyer." Mr Day was killed, in 1789, by a kick from a young horse, which, with the view of trying his theory of education on the irrational creation, he was attempting to train and exercise himself. Wellesley, Earl of Mornington. BORN A. D. 1735.-DIED A.D. 1781. THIS nobleman, father of the Duke of Wellington, takes a place in 'See Miss Seward's Life of Darwin. 2 See article Day in Biographia Britannica. |