this species of composition. He also wrote a pamphlet, vindicatin the memory of his grandfather Dr Bentley from what appeared to him an illiberal attack of Bishop Lowth.

At this period of his story he introduces several sketches and characters of his literary friends; which are executed, for the most part, with great force and vivacity. Of Garrick he says

• Nature had done fo much for him, that he could not help being an actor; she gave him a frame of fo manageable a proportion, and from its flexibility fo perfectly under command, that by its aptitude and elafticity, he could draw it out to fit any fizes of character that tragedy could offer to him, and contract it to any scale of ridiculous diminution, that his Abel Drugger, Scrub or Fribble, could require of him to fink it to. His eye, in the mean time, was so penetrating, so speaking; his brow fo moveable, and all his features fo plaftic, and fo accommodating, that wherever his mind impelled them, they would go; and before his tongue could give the text, his countenance would express the spirit and the paffion of the part he was encharged with. p. 245-6.

The following picture of Soame Jenyns is excellent.

• A disagreement about a name or a date will mar the best story that was ever put together. Sir Joshua Reynolds luckily could not hear an interrupter of this fort; Johnfon would not hear, or if he heard him, would not heed him; Soame Jenyns heard him, heeded him, fet him right, and took up his tale, where he had left it, without any diminution of its humour, adding only a few more twifts to his fnuff-box, a few more taps upon the lid of it, with a preparatory grunt or two, the invariable forerunners of the amenity that was at the heels of them. He was the man who bore his part in all focieties with the most even temper and undisturbed hilarity of all the good companions whom I ever knew. He came into your houfe at the very moment you had put upon your card; he dreffed himfelf to do your party honour in all the colours of the jay; his lace indeed had long fince loft its luftre, but his coat had faithfully retained its cut fince the days when gentlemen embroidered figured velvets with fhort fleeves, boot cuffs, and buckram ikirts: as nature had caft him in the exact mould of an ill made pair of stiff ftays, he followed her fo close in the fashion of his coat, that it was doubted if he did not wear them: because he had a protuberant wen just under his poll, he wore a wig that did not cover above half his head. His eyes were protruded like the eyes of the lobfter, who wears them at the end of his feelers, and yet there was room between one of these and his nose for another wen, that added nothing to his beauty; yet I heard this good man very innocently remark, when Gibbon published his hiftory, that he wondered any body fo ugly could write a book.

• Such was the exterior of a man, who was the charm of the circle, and gave a zeft to every company he came into; his pleasantry was of a fort peculiar to himself; it harmonized with every thing; it was like the bread to our dinner; you did not perhaps make it the whole, or

principal

principal part of your meal, but it was an admirable and wholesome auxiliary to your other viands. Soame Jenyns told you no long ftories, engroffed not much of your attention, and was not angry with thofe that did; his thoughts were original, and were apt to have a very whimfical affinity to the paradox in them: he wrote verfes upon danc ing, and profe upon the origin of evil, yet he was a very indifferent metaphyfician and a worfe dancer: ill nature and personality, with the fingle exception of his lines upon Johnson, I never heard fall from his lips; thofe lines I have forgotten, though I believe I was the firft perfon to whom he recited them; they were very bad, but he had been told that Johnfon ridiculed his metaphyfies, and fome of us had juft then been making extemporary epitaphs upon each other; though his wit was harmlefs, yet the general caft of it was ironical; there was a terfenefs in his repartees, that had a play of words as well as of thought; as, when fpeaking of the difference between laying out money upon land, or purchasing into the funds, he faid, "One was principal with"out intereft, and the other intereft without principal. Certain it is he had a brevity of expreffion, that never hung upon the ear, and you felt the point in the very moment that he made the pufh. P. 247-249.

Foote is frequently introduced. The following ftory we think very ludicrous.

I remember well, when Garrick and I made him a vifit, poor Foote had fomething worse than a dull man to ftruggle with, and matter of fact brought home to him in a way that, for a time, entirely overthrew his fpirits, and most completely frighted him from his propriety. We had taken him by furprise, and of course were with him fome hours before dinner, to make fure of our own if we had miffed of his. He feemed overjoyed to fee us, engaged us to ftay, walked with us in his garden, and read to us some scenes roughly sketched for his Maid of Bath. His dinner was quite good enough, and his wine fuperlative: Sir Robert Fletcher, who had ferved in the Eaft Indies, dropt in before dinner, and made the fourth of our party: When we had paffed about two hours in perfect harmony and hilarity, Garrick called for his tea, and Sir Robert rofe to depart: there was an unlucky fcreen in the room that hid the door, and behind which Sir Robert hid himself for fome purpose, whether natural or artificial I know not; but Foote, fuppofing him gone, inftantly began to play off his ridicule at the expence of his departed gueft. I must confefs it was (in the cant phrafe) a way that be had, and just now a very unlucky way, for Sir Robert bolting from behind the fcreen, cried out" I am not gone, Foote ; fpare me till I am out of hearing; and now, with your leave, 1 will ftay till thefe gentlemen depart, and then you fhall amuse me at their coft, as you have amufed them at mine. " P. 250-1.

Of Goldfmith he says,

• That he was fantastically and whimfically vain,, all the world knows ;. but there was no fettled and inherent malice in his heart. He was tena

cious to a ridiculous extreme of certain pretenfions that did not, and by nature could not, belong to him, and at the same time inexcufably carelefs of the fame which he had powers to command. His table-talk was, as Garrick aptly compared it, like that of a parrot, whilst he wrote like Apollo; he had gleams of eloquence, and at times a majefty of thought, but, in general, his tongue and his pen had two very different ftyles of talking. What foibles he had he took no pains to conceal; the good qualities of his heart were too frequently obscured by the careleffnefs of his conduct, and the frivolity of his manners. Sir Joshua Reynolds was very good to him, and would have drilled him into better trim and order for fociety, if he would have been amenable; for Reynolds was a perfect gentleman, had good fenfe, great propriety, with all the focial attributes, and all the graces of hofpitality, equal to any man.

Diftrefs drove Goldfmith upon undertakings neither congenial with his ftudies nor worthy of his talents. 1 remember him, when in his chamber in the Temple, he fhewed me the beginning of his Animated Nature; it was with a figh, such as genius draws, when hard neceffity diverts it from its bent to drudge for bread, and talk of birds and beasts and creeping things, which Pidcock's fhow-man would have done as well. Poor fellow, he hardly knew an afs from a mule, nor a turkey from a goofe, but when he faw it on the table. ' P. 257-9.

In purfuing the fame fpeculation, he introduces another still more celebrated character.

The

Who will fay that Johnson himself would have been fuch a champion in literature, fuch a front-rank foldier in the fields of fame, if he had not been preffed into the fervice, and driven on to glory with the bayonet of fharp neceffity pointed at his back? If fortune had turned him into a field of clover, he would have laid down and rolled in it. mere manual labour of writing would not have allowed his laffitude and love of eafe to have taken the pen out of the inkhorn, unless the cravings of hunger had reminded him that he must fill the fheet before he faw the table-cloth. He might, indeed, have knocked down Ofbourne for a blockhead, but he would not have knocked him down with a folio of his own writing. He would perhaps have been the dictator of a club, and wherever he fate down to converfation, there must have been that splash of ftrong bold thought about him, that we might ftill have had a collectanea after his death; but of profe I guefs not much, of works of labour none, of fancy perhaps fomething more, especially of poetry, which, under favour, 1 conceive was not his tower of ftrength. ' P. 259-60.

Anecdotes of times paft, fcenes of his own life, and characters of humourists, enthufiafts, crack-brained projectors, and a variety of ftrange beings, that he had chanced upon, when detailed by him at length, and garnished with thofe epifodical remarks, fometimes comic, fometimes grave, which he would throw in with infinite fertility of fancy, were a treat, which, though not always to be purchased by five and twenty cups of tea, I have often had the happiness to enjoy for less than half

the

the number. He was easily led into topics; it was not easy to turn him from them; but who would wifh it? If a man wanted to fhew himself off by getting up and riding upon him, he was fure to run reftive and kick him off; you might as fafely have backed Bucephalus, before Alexander had lunged him. Neither did he always like to be over-fondled; when a certain gentleman out-acted his part in this way, he is faid to have demanded of him- What provokes your rifibility, Sir? Have I faid any thing that you understand?-Then I afk pardon of the rest of the company-' But this is Henderfon's anecdote of him, and I won't fwear he did not make it himself.' p. 263-264.

I have heard Dr Johnson relate with infinite humour the circumftance of his refcuing Goldfmith from a ridiculous dilemma, by the purchase-money of his Vicar of Wakefield, which he fold on his behalf to Dodfley, and, as I think, for the fum of ten pounds only. He had run up a debt with his landlady, for board and lodging, of fome few pounds, and was at his wit's end how to wipe off the score, and keep a roof over his head, except by clofing with a very ftaggering propofal on her part, and taking his creditor to wife, whofe charms were very far from alluring, whilft her demands were extremely urgent. In this crifis of his fate he was found by Johnfon, in the act of meditating on the melancholy alternative before him. He fhewed Johnfon his manufcript of the Vicar of Wakefield, but feemed to be without any plan, or even hope, of raising money upon the difpofal of it; when Johnfon caft his eye upon it, he difcovered fomething that gave him hope, and immediately took it to Dodfley, who paid down the price above mentioned in ready money, and added an eventual condition upon its future fale. Johnfon defcribed the precautions he took in concealing the amount of the fum he had in hand, which he prudently administered to him by a guinea at a time. In the event he paid off the landlady's fcore, and redeemed the person of his friend from her embraces. P. 273.

These are almost all the literary characters of whom Mr Cumberland has made any particular mention; and though we are little more than half through the volume, we believe we are not very far from the conclusion of our extracts. The remainder of it is occupied, chiefly, with the personal transactions and family arrangements of the author, in which it is not reasonable to suppose that the public should take any great interest. His father was translated to the see of. Kilmore, and died soon after. Our author himself wrote a variety of plays, and some odes and other poems, which had respectively their merited success, and was appointed Secretary to the Colonial Department, through the friendly interest of Lord George Germain, then at the head of that Board. He was ever afterwards the zealous friend and defender of his patron; and spent much of his time in his society. The following anecdote struck us as curious and important.

• It

It happened to me to be prefent, and fitting next to Admiral Rodney at table, when the thought seemed first to occur to him of breaking the French line, by paffing through it in the heat of the action. It was at Lord George Germain's house at Stoneland, after dinner, when, having asked a number of questions about the manœuvring of columns, and the effect of charging with them on a line of infantry, he proceeded to arrange a parcel of cherry-ftones, which he had collected from the table, and forming them as two fleets drawn up in line, and opposed to each other, he at once arrested our attention, which had not been very generally engaged by his preparatory inquiries, by declaring he was determined fo to pierce the enemy's line of battle, (arranging his manœuvre at the fame time on the table) if ever it was his fortune to bring p. 298.

them into action. '

This statement, at first sight, appears to be inconsistent with the claim of our ingenious countryman Mr Clerk of Eldin to the brilliant and important discovery to which it alludes; and to say the truth, we cannot help entertaining some doubts of Mr Cumberland's accuracy in the detail of a conversation which took place five and twenty years before he committed it to writing; but upon attending to the circumstances of the case, it does not appear to us that the anecdote, even if recorded with perfect correctness, affords the slightest ground for calling in question the originality or importance of Mr Clerk's admitted discovery. Even if Admiral Rodney had really conceived this brilliant idea at the very moment commemorated by Mr Cumberland, it is apparent that Mr Clerk had been beforehand with him in the conception; and we should only have the extraordinary, though not unprecedented, case of the same discovery having been made successively by two separate individuals. The conversation recorded by Mr Cumberland appears to have taken place recently before the Admiral's departure for the West Indies in January 1780; but Mr Clerk had brought his plan to maturity, and communicated the particulars of it to several persons, immediately after Keppel's action off Ushant, nearly two years before, and while Admiral Rodney was resident abroad. But this is not all. Mr Clerk has himself stated in his preface, that having gone to London in the end of the year 1779, he had a meeting, by appointment, with Mr R. Atkinson, Admiral Rodney's particular friend, and another with Sir Charles Douglas his Captain, at which he detailed, and fully explained to these gentlemen, every part of his system, for the express purpose of having it communicated to the Admiral before his departure with the fleet which he had been appointed to command. Mr Clerk adds, that he understood that such a communication was accordingly made, and that he has it from the best authority, that the Admiral expressed his zealous approbation of the scheme before he left London, and, after his return, made no

scruple