by his master. In this emergency he resolved to seek an asylum in the metropolis, whither he instantly repaired, and where he soon got engaged with various publications. Besides contributing a variety of essays to the daily papers, he projected a history of London, and a history of England, and plunged deeply into the party-politics of the day. But the result disappointed his expectations, and in a few months he was reduced to a state of utter indigence. After an ineffectual attempt to obtain the situation of surgeon in a slave-ship, the unfortunate youth terminated his own existence, on the 25th of August, 1770, by swallowing a dose of arsenic or opium, having previously destroyed all his manuscripts, and left nothing behind him but a few small parchments. His remains were interred in the burying-ground of St Andrew's workhouse. Thus died Chatterton,

"The wonder and reproach of an enlightened age.'

That he "passed his life in the fabrication of a lie" is, in spite of the efforts of a Whiter and a Symmons to establish the authenticity of the Rowleian poems, too true. But posterity, while it deprecates the fraud, will ever award the due meed of praise to

"The wondrous youth of Bristowe's plain,

That pour'd in Rowley's garb his solemn strain."

The poems to which Chatterton appended the name of Rowley were first collected into an 8vo volume by Mr Tyrwhitt, and subsequently in a splendid 4to by Dean Milles. The best edition is that of Southey and Gregory, in 3 volumes 8vo.

The St James' Chronicle, during the rage of the Chattertonian controversy, published the following list of the partizans on each side:

William Falconer.

BORN A. D. 1730.-DIED A. D. 1770.

THIS ingenious but hapless poet was a native of Edinburgh. His father was in very humble circumstances, and apprenticed him, while yet very young, on board a Leith merchant-vessel. Campbell, the author of Lexiphanes,' was among the first to discover symptoms of genius about the youth; he warmly befriended him, and procured him the appointment of mate on board a vessel engaged in the Levant trade. This vessel was afterwards shipwrecked during her passage from Alexandria to Venice, and only Falconer and two of the crew escaped. When about twenty years of age he appears to have contributed several little effusions to the 'Gentleman's Magazine.' They are chiefly of a whimsical cast, and touch on naval life and adventures. In 1762, he published The Shipwreck,' the poem which introduced him to public notice, and on which alone his fame rests. Soon after its appearance he was rated a midshipman on board Sir Edward Hawke's ship, the Royal George; and in 1763 was appointed purser of the Glory frigate. He was afterwards transferred to the Aurora frigate, which sailed from England for the East Indies on the 30th of September, 1769, but was never heard of after leaving the Cape, and is supposed to have foundered in the Mozambique channel. The Shipwreck is a poem of great promise. Its versification is exquisite, and its whole construction as nearly perfect as any descriptive piece in the language. It is, perhaps, to a landsman's ear, overloaded with technical terms; but this was probably inseparable from his subject, and invests his verse with the highest claims to those for whose gratification he chiefly wooed the muse.

James Brindley.

BORN A. D. 1716.-DIED A. D. 1772.

THIS celebrated and self-instructed engineer was born at Tunsted in Derbyshire. He received little or no education in his childhood. At seventeen years of age he apprenticed himself to a millwright, near Macclesfield, in Cheshire. In this situation his mechanical genius soon displayed itself in a manner which astonished his master and fellow-workmen, who could not believe that such a ready command of all the resources of their art, as he always evinced when left to himself, could have been acquired by any thing short of a previous and long apprenticeship. It is related of him that his master having undertaken to construct a paper-mill, soon found himself at fault with regard to some part of the machinery; whereupon his apprentice set off one evening a distance of fifty miles to obtain a personal inspection of a paper-mill in operation, and returned the succeeding day with such a thorough comprehension of the parts and working of the machinery, that he not only enabled his master to finish a good paper-mill, but even to introduce various improvements into it.

In 1752, Brindley erected a very powerful water-wheel at Clifton in Lancashire, for the purpose of draining some coal-mines; the complete success of this undertaking introduced him to extensive employment both as a machinist and an engineer. In 1758, the duke of Bridgewater obtained an act of parliament for cutting a canal from Worsley to Salford near Manchester. This undertaking required the execution of several tunnels and aqueducts on the line of the canal, for it was resolved to avoid the construction of locks, so as to render the transit of vessels perfectly free and uninterrupted; and his grace, having full confidence in Brindley's skill and fertile genius, intrusted the whole work to his superintendence. In the execution of it, Brindley evinced consummate skill and the most complete command of all the resources of mechanical art, triumphing over obstacles which thoroughly trained engineers had pronounced insurmountable, and at the same time effecting extensive savings on the original estimates for different parts of the undertaking. In 1766 he began a canal from the Trent to the Mersey, commonly known by the name of the Grand Trunk navigation; he did not live to finish this undertaking, but it owes its success to the skill and ingenuity of his plans. He was also the engineer of the canals from Haywood, in Staffordshire, to Bewdley, and from Birmingham to Wolverhampton, of the Oxfordshire canal, the Calder navigation, and various other works of a similar kind throughout the kingdom.

Brindley died at Turnhurst, in Staffordshire, on the 30th of September, 1772. His life appears to have been shortened by the intense and ceaseless demands made upon his faculties by the number and magnitude of the undertakings intrusted to his management. In these he had little or no assistance from books, or the labours of other men; his resources lay almost entirely within himself. His methods of calculation and designing were in a great measure peculiar to himself, and incommunicable to others; while the results he obtained were always found to be exactly verified in practice.

George Edwards.

BORN A. D. 1693.-DIED A. D. 1773.

He

THIS very eminent naturalist was born at Westham, in Essex. received his education at two private seminaries. He was early apprenticed to a London merchant; but it is said that the arrival of a quantity of books on natural history at his master's house, the bequest of a deceased relative, and to which young Edwards had access, determined his taste, and ultimately led him to abandon commercial pursuits for the sake of gratifying his absorbing passion-the pursuit of natural history. A combination of fortunate circumstances enabled him to perform several tours on the continent in early life; amongst other countries he visited and spent a considerable time in Holland, Norway, and France. Being an acute and diligent observer of nature, these excursions greatly enlarged his acquaintance with objects of natural science. His election in 1733, to the office of librarian to the college of physicians, on the recommendation of Sir Hans Sloane, threw open to him the stores of scientific literature in the possession of that body,

and afforded him eminent facilities for the cultivation of his favourite branches.

In 1743, the first volume of his 'History of Birds' was published in 4to; a second volume appeared in 1747; a third in 1750; and a fourth in 1751. These volumes were well-received by the public. The figures are natural, and the drawing and colouring very correct. In 1758 he published a volume entitled 'Gleanings of Natural History,' to which he successively added other two volumes. These seven quarto volumes contain upwards of six hundred subjects in natural history, described and delineated for the first time. Some idea of the extreme accuracy and care of our author and artist may be formed from the account which he himself has given in the third volume of his 'Gleanings' of his exactness in delineating any object. "It often happens," he says, "that my figures on the copper plates greatly differ from my original drawings; for sometimes the originals have not altogether pleased me as to their attitudes or actions. In such cases I have made three or four, sometimes six, sketches or outlines, and have deliberately considered them all, and then fixed upon that which I judged most free and natural to be engraven on my plate." "It is not reasonable," adds he, "to expect that a work of this nature should be highly laboured and finished in the colouring part, because it would greatly raise the price of it, as colouring work in London, when highly finished, comes very dear. The most material part is, keeping as strictly as can be to the variety of colours found in the natural subjects, which has been my principal care; and now, on revising all that have been coloured, I think them much nearer nature than most works of the kind that have been published."

Edwards communicated various papers to the Royal society. He enjoyed the friendship and correspondence of many eminent men, especially of the great Swedish naturalist Linnæus, who highly esteemed his ornithological publications. He died in 1773.

John Hawkesworth.

BORN A. D. 1719.-DIED A. D. 1773.

THIS elegant essayist was born in London. He appears to have early devoted himself to literature, and from the first to have followed letters as his profession. In 1744 he succeeded Dr Johnson in compiling the parliamentary debates for the 'Gentleman's Magazine;' he also contributed various poetical pieces to that miscellany. His papers in the ‘Adventurer' attracted the attention of Archbishop Herring, who conferred on him the degree of doctor of civil law. In 1761 he published several dramatic pieces, and his admired tale of 'Almoran and Hamet.' Short

ly after the secession of Ruff head, in 1760, from the review department of the Gentleman's Magazine,' Dr Hawkesworth was intrusted with this department. In 1768 he published a good translation of Tele

machus.'

In 1772 the lords of the admiralty employed Dr Hawkesworth to draw up an account of the late voyage and discoveries of Captain Cook in the South seas. He received £6000 for this work; but was severely

and justly censured for many objectionable sentiments which he had advanced in his share of the publication. He died in 1773.

Abraham Tucker.

BORN A. D. 1705.-DIED A. D. 1774.

ALTHOUGH the name of Abraham Tucker is not even mentioned in some general biographical dictionaries, and is passed over in silence in Mr Stewart's Dissertation on the progress of metaphysical, ethical, and political philosophy,' yet the recommendation of no less illustrious a man than Dr Paley, who says of him in the preface to his Moral and Politica! Philosophy,' "I have found in this writer more original thinking and observation upon the several subjects that he has taken in hand, than in any other, not to say in all others put together;" and the high eulogium pronounced upon him by a still more distinguished name in metaphysical literature, Sir James Mackintosh, sufficiently warrant us to assign him an ample niche in our temple.

Tucker was born in London, of a Somersetshire family, on the 2d of September, 1705. His father, a wealthy merchant, dying soon afterwards, the care of his early education devolved on his maternal uncle, Sir Isaac Tillard, a man of great private worth. Young Tucker received the rudiments of his education at Bishop's Stortford, and in 1721 was entered as a gentleman commoner in Merton college, Oxford. Having passed through the usual course of a liberal education, and particularly applied himself to metaphysics and mathematics, he went into chambers in the Inner Temple about the year 1724, where for some time he devoted himself very assiduously to the study of law. In 1727 he purchased Batchworth castle, near Dorking, where he turned his attention to rural affairs, and spent a good deal of his time in the pursuits and amusements proper to a rich country gentleman. He had no turn for politics, and declined for this reason to offer himself as a representative for his county, though often solicited to do so. On the only occasion on which he ever took a part in public business, his political adversaries thought his appearance sufficiently ridiculous to render it the burden of a burlesque ballad; but Tucker did not feel at all sore upon the matter, and was so much amused with the figure which he made in verse that he set the ballad to music.

Mr Tucker was peculiarly fortunate in his domestic relations; and some of the finest and most touching passages in his great work have a reference to his felicity in this respect. His wife died in 1754, an event which overwhelmed him in the deepest affliction; and it was soon after this, and partly with a view to occupy and divert his mind, that he first turned his attention to the composition of that work which has won for him the approbation of two such competent judges, and is likely to hand his name down to posterity as one of the most distinguished of English metaphysicians. His first appearance as an author was in 1763, when in order to ascertain what reception he was likely to meet with from the public in the character of a writer on ethics, he put forth a sort of feeler in a small octavo volume under the title of Freewill, Foreknowledge, and Fate, a fragment by Edward Search.' This book consists, for the