PAUL WHITEHEAD.: [Born, 1710. Died, 1774.] PAUL WHITEHEAD was the son of a tailor, in London; and, after a slender education, was placed as an apprentice to a woollen-draper. He afterwards went to the Temple, in order to study law. Several years of his life (it is not quite clear at what period) were spent in the Fleet-prison, owing to a debt which he foolishly contracted, by putting his name to a joint security for 30007. at the request of his friend Fleetwood, the theatrical manager, who persuaded him that his signature was a mere matter of form. How he obtained his liberation we are not informed. In the year 1735 he married a Miss Anne Dyer, with whom he obtained ten thousand pounds. She was homely in her person, and very weak in intellect; but Whitehead, it appears, always treated her with respect and tenderness. He became, in the same year, a satirical rhymer against the ministry of Walpole; and having published his "State Dunces," a weak echo of the manner of the "Dunciad," he was patronised by the opposition, and particularly by Bubb Doddington. In 1739 he published the "Manners," a satire, in which Mr. Chalmers says, that he attacks every thing venerable in the constitution. The poem is not worth disputing about; but it is certainly a mere personal lampoon, and no attack on the constitution. For this invective he was summoned to appear at the bar of the House of Lords, but concealed himself for a time, and the affair was dropped. The threat of prosecuting him, it was suspected, was meant as a hint to Pope, that those who satirised the great might bring themselves into danger; and Pope (it is pretended) became more cautious. There would seem, however, to be nothing very terrific in the example of a prosecution, that must have been dropped either from clemency or conscious weakness. The ministerial journals took another sort of revenge, by accusing him of irreligion; and the evidence, which they candidly and consistently brought to substantiate the charge, was the letter of a student from Cambridge, who had been himself expelled from the university for atheism. In 1744 he published another satire, entitled the "Gymnasiad," on the most renowned boxers of the day. It had at least the merit of being harmless. By the interest of Lord Despenser, he obtained a place under government, that of deputy treasurer of the chamber; and, retiring to a handsome cottage, which he purchased at Twickenham, he lived in comfort and hospitality, and suffered his small satire and politics to be equally forgotten. Churchill attacked him in a couplet,— "May I (can worse disgrace on manhood fall?) Be born a Whitehead, and baptised a Paul." But though a libertine like Churchill, he seems not to have been the worse man of the two. Sir John Hawkins gives him the character of being good-hearted, even to simplicity; and says, that he was esteemed at Twickenham for his kind offices, and for composing quarrels among his neighbours. HUNTING SONG. Mankind are all hunters in various degree; The cit hunts a plumb-while the soldier hunts Let the bold and the busy hunt glory and wealth; All the blessing we ask is the blessing of health, With hound and with horn through the woodlands to roam, And, when tired abroad, find contentment at home. With the sports, &c. WALTER HARTE. [Born about 1707. Died, 1774.] THE father of this writer was a fellow of Pembroke college, Oxford, prebendary of Wells, and vicar of St. Mary's at Taunton, in Somersetshire. When Judge Jefferies came to the assizes at Taunton, to execute vengeance on the sharers of Monmouth's rebellion, Mr. Harte waited upon him in private, and remonstrated against his severities. The judge listened to him attentively, though he had never seen him before. It was not in Jefferies' nature to practise humanity; but, in this solitary instance, he showed a respect for its advocate; and in a few months advanced the vicar to a prebendal stall in the cathedral of Bristol. At the Revolution the aged clergyman resigned his preferments, rather than take the oath of allegiance to King William; an action which raises our esteem of his intercession with Jefferies, while it adds to the unsalutary examples of men supporting tyrants, who have had the virtue to hate their tyranny. The accounts that are preserved of his son, the poet, are not very minute or interesting. The date of his birth has not even been settled. A writer in the Gentleman's Magazine fixes it about 1707; but by the date of his degrees at the university, this supposition is utterly inadmissible; and all circumstances considered, it is impossible to suppose that he was born later than 1700. He was educated at Marlborough college, and took his degree of master of arts at Oxford, in 1720. He was introduced to Pope at an early period of his life; and, in return for the abundant adulation which he offered to that poet, was rewarded with his encouragement, and even his occasional assistance in versification. Yet, admirer as he was of Pope, his manner leans more to the imitation of Dryden. In 1727 he published, by subscription, a volume of poems, which he dedicated to the Earl of Peterborough, who, as the author acknowledges, was the first patron of his muse. In the preface it is boasted, that the poems had been chiefly written under the age of nineteen. As he must have been several years turned of twenty, when he made this boast, it exposes either his sense or veracity to some suspicion. He either concealed what improvements he had made in the poems, or showed a bad judgment in not having improved them. [* This, according to Mr. Croker's showing, (Boswell, vol. i. p. 378) is not the case. The Walter Harte who took his degree of A. M. at Pembroke College, Oxford, in 1720, was not the poet; for he was of St. Mary's Hall, and made A.M. on the 21st January 1730. This one fact removes Mr. Campbell's after difficulties.] His next publications, in 1730 and 1735, were an "Essay on Satire," and another on "Reason," to both of which Pope is supposed to have contributed many lines. Two sermons, which he printed, were so popular as to run through five editions. He therefore rose, with some degree of clerical reputation, to be principal of St. Mary Hall, Oxford; and was so much esteemed, that Lord Lyttelton recommended him to the Earl of Chesterfield, as the most proper tutor and travelling companion to his son. Harte had, indeed, every requisite for the preceptorship of Mr. Stanhope, that a Grævius or Gronovius could have possessed; but none of those for which we should have supposed his father to have been most anxious. He was profoundly learned, but ignorant of the world, and awkward in his person and address. His pupil and he, however, after having travelled together for four years, parted with mutual regret; and Lord Chesterfield showed his regard for Harte by procuring for him a canonry of Windsor. During his connexion with Lord Peterborough, that nobleman had frequently recommended to him to write the life of Gustavus Adolphus. For this historical work he collected, during his travels, much authentic and original information. It employed him for many years, and was published in 1759; but either from a vicious taste, or from his having studied the idioms of foreign languages, till he had forgotten those of his own, he wrote his history in a style so obscure and uncouth, that its merits, as a work of research, were overlooked, and its reception from the public was cold and mortifying. Lord Chesterfield, in speaking of its being translated into German, piously wishes "that its author had translated it into English; as it was full of Germanisms, Latinisms, and all isms but Anglicisms." All the time, poor Harte thought he was writing a style less laboured and ornate than that of his contemporaries; and when George Hawkins, the bookseller, objected to some of his most violent phrases, he used to say, "George, that is what we call writing." This infatuation is the more surprising, that his Sermons, already mentioned, are marked by no such affectation of manner; and he published in 1764 "Essays on Husbandry," which are said to be remarkable for their elegance and perspicuity. Dr. Johnson, according to Boswell, said, "that Harte was excessively vain: that he left London on the day his Life of Gustavus' was published, to avoid the great praise he was to receive; but Robertson's History of Scotland' having come out the same day, he was ashamed to return to the scene of his mortification." This sarcastic anecdote comes in the suspicious company of a blunder as to dates, for Robertson's "History of Scotland" was published a month after [before?] Harte's "Life of Gustavus ;" and it is besides rather an odd proof of a man's vanity, that he should have run away from expected compliments+. The failure of his historical work is alleged to have mortified him so deeply, as to have affected his health. All the evidence of this, however, is deduced from some expressions in his letters, in which he complains of frequent indisposition. His biographers, first of all take it for granted, that a man of threescore could not possibly be indisposed from any other cause than from reading harsh reviews of his "Life of Gustavus ;" and then, very consistently, show the folly of his being grieved at the fate of his history, by proving that his work was reviewed, on the whole, rather in a friendly and laudatory manner. Harte, however, was so far from being a martyr, either to the justice or injustice of criticism, that he prepared a second edition of the "Life of Gustavus " for the press; and announced, in a note, that he had finished the "History of the thirty years War in Germany." His servant Dore, afterwards an innkeeper at Bath, got possession of his MSS. and this work is supposed to be irrecoverably lost. In the mean time, he was struck with a palsy in 1766, which attacked him again in 1769, and put a period to his life five years after. At the time of his death he was vicar of St. Austel and Blazy in Cornwall. His poetry is little read; and I am aware of hazarding the appearance of no great elegance of taste, in professing myself amused and interested by several parts of it, particularly by his "Amaranth." In spite of pedantry and grotesqueness, he appears, in numerous passages, to have condensed the reflection and information of no ordinary mind. If the reader dislikes his story of "Eulogius," I have only to inform him, that I have taken some pains to prevent its being more prolix than is absolutely necessary, by the mechanical reduction of its superfluities. EULOGIUS: OR, THE CHARITABLE MASON. FROM THE GREEK OF PAULUS SYLLOGUS. IN ancient times scarce talk'd of, and less known, He learnt with patience, and with meekness taught, On the south aspect of a sloping hill, Whose skirts meandering Penus washes still, [Boswell by Croker, vol. iv. p. 449.] [t "Harte's Life of Gustavus Adolphus, Mr. Chalmers tells us, was a very unfortunate publication. Hume's House of Tudor came out the same week, and Robertson's History of Scotland only a month before; and after perusing these, poor Harte's style could not certainly be endured. Mr. Chalmers perhaps may require to be told that industry in collecting, examining, and arranging the materials of history, and fidelity in using them, are the first qualities of an historian: that in those qualities Harte has not been surpassed; that in the opinion of military men Harte's is the best military history in our language, and that it is rising and will continue to rise in repute."-SOUTHEY, Quar. Rev. vol. xi. p. 497.] Our pious labourer pass'd his youthful days No stately larch-tree there expands a shade No lofty poplars catch the murmuring breeze, A nameless dwelling, and an unknown name! This spot, for dwelling fit, Eulogius chose, And then, without the aid of neighbours' art, They thank'd their Maker for a pittance sent, Four rooms, above, below, this mansion graced, No flesh from market-towns our peasant sought: The happiest, most contented man alive. Alternate were his labours and his rest, Eusebius, hermit of a neighb'ring cell, His brother Christian mark'd, and knew him well: With zeal unenvying, and with transport fired, Beheld him, praised him, loved him, and admired. "Then hear me, gracious Heaven, and grant my prayer; Make yonder man the fav'rite of thy care: One day, in turning some uncultured ground, (In hopes a freestone quarry might be found), His mattock met resistance, and behold A casket burst, with di'monds fill'd, and gold. A neighb'ring matron, not unknown to fame, (Historians give her Teraminta's name), The parent of the needy and distress'd, Who but Eulogius now exults for joy? New thoughts, new hopes, new views his mind employ. [eyes. Pride push'd forth buds at every branching shoot, Libanius-like, he play'd the sophist's part, And now, the treasure found, and matron's store, A part to gaming confessors was lent, At night a dream confirm'd the hermit more; He 'spied his friend on beds of roses laid: * A famous Greek rhetorician in the fourth century, whose orations are still extant. Round him a crowd of threat'ning furies stands, His master's presence, nay, his name, denied. There walk'd Eusebius at the dawn of light, Old man, good morrow, the gay courtier cried; The hermit then assumed a bolder tone; I call thee (adds he) miscreant to thy face. And in an evil hour my wishes sped. Back to Thebaïs full of discontent; So pray'd the hermit, and with reason pray'd.— Some plants the sunshine ask, and some the shade. At night the nure-trees spread, but check their bloom At morn, and lose their verdure and perfume. Meanwhile Eulogius, unabash'd and gay, By other arts he learns the knack to thrive ; On less important days, he pass'd his time In gaming, jobbing, fiddling, painting, drinking, T' increase this load, some sycophant report The Demon having tempted Eulogius to engage in rebel- Now see Eulogius (who had all betray'd Repent, and haste thee to Larissa's plain, Or wander through the world, another Cain. |