Ah me! what hand can touch the string so fine? Who up the lofty diapason roll Such sweet, such sad, such solemn airs divine, Then let them down again into the soul! Such the gay splendour, the luxurious state, Held their bright court, where was of ladies store; And hither Morpheus sent his kindest dreams, No, fair illusions! artful phantoms, no! Than these same guileful angel-seeming sprites, Who thus in dreams, voluptuous, soft, and bland, Poured all the Arabian heaven upon our nights, And blest them oft besides with more refined delights. They were in sooth a most enchanting train, They, till due time should serve, were bid far hence to keep. Ye guardian spirits, to whom man is dear, The nations not so blest as thee, Still more majestic shalt thou rise, More dreadful from each foreign stroke; Thee haughty tyrants ne'er shall tame; To thee belongs the rural reign; Thy cities shall with commerce shine; The Muses, still with freedom found, In 1897 the Rev. D. C. Tovey published a good edition of The Poetical Works of James Thomson, with critical appendices and a memoir; and there is a convenient Selection by J. Logie Robertson (Clarendon Press, 1891). Murdoch and Dr Johnson were early biographers; there are also Lives by Gilfillan, by W. M. Rossetti, and by W. Bayne ('Famous Scots,' 1898). A German monograph by Schmeding appeared in 1889: and Professor Léon Morel is the author of a singularly full monograph on James Thomson, sa l'ie et ses Euvres (1895). David Mallet (1705?-65), author of some popular ballad stanzas, and some florid unimpassioned poems in blank verse, was a successful but unprincipled literary adventurer. His original name was Malloch, the name adopted by many of the Macgregors when their clan was broken up (1603). His father was said to have kept an inn at Crieff, but seems rather to have been the well-to-do tenant of the farm of Dunruchan, near Muthill in Perthshire. Educated at Crieff parish school and Edinburgh University, where he made the acquaintance of James Thomson, Mallet went to London as tutor in the Duke of Montrose's family in 1723. Next year his ballad of William and Margaret appeared; and he soon numbered among his friends Young, Pope, and other authors, to whom his assiduous attentions, his agreeable manners, and literary tastes rendered his society acceptable. In 1726 he began to write his name Mallet, for there is not one Englishman,' he said, 'that can pronounce Malloch;' and Dennis had made a jest on Moloch that rankled. A great dandy, he succeeded not merely in keeping clear of Scotticisms in his published works, but 'in clearing his tongue of his native pronunciation.' In 1728 he published his poem the Excursion, written in servile imitation of the blank verse of Thomson. By command of Frederick, Prince of Wales, then head of the Opposition, he wrote, in conjunction with Thomson, the masque of Alfred, which was performed in 1740, at Cliefden, the prince's summer residence. In this slight dramatic performance—afterwards altered by Mallet, and brought upon the stage at Drury Lane in 1751– 'Rule, Britannia,' first appeared. In the reissue Mallet indirectly claimed the song-and all that was best in the masque-as his own. But it seems to be fatal to his claim that the song was published in 1752 as by Thomson. In the same year (1740) he wrote a Life of Bacon, prefixed to an edition of the works. In 1742 he was appointed under-secretary to the Prince of Wales; and a fortunate second marriage with a daughter of Lord Carlisle's steward added to his income. Both Mallet and his wife were professed deists. When Gibbon the historian left Oxford and entered the Roman Catholic Church, he went to live in Mallet's house, but was rather scandalised than reclaimed by the philosophy of his host. In 1749 Mallet figured as the ostensible editor of Bolingbroke's Patriot King -insulting the memory of his benefactor Pope; and the peer rewarded him by bequeathing to him the whole of his works, manuscripts, and library. Mallet's love of money and freethinking views were equally gratified by this bequest; he published the collected works of Bolingbroke in 1754, and drew down on Bolingbroke's head and his own Johnson's famous sarcasm (see above at page 203), in which Mallet figured as the hungry Scotchman whom Bolingbroke hired for half-a-crown to fire off after his death the gun he was himself too great a coward to discharge. The accession of George III. opened a way for all literary Scotsmen subservient to the Crown, and Mallet was soon a worshipper of the favourite Lord Bute. He dedicated his tragedy of Elvira (1763) to Bute, and was rewarded with the sinecure office of Keeper of the Book of Entries for the port of London, worth £300 a year. Gibbon anticipated that if ever his friend Mallet should attain poetic fame, it would be by his Amyntor and Theodora (1747), a blank-verse tale of a hermit in St Kilda; but, contrariwise, the poetic repute of Mallet has rested on his ballads, and chiefly on his William and Margaret, written about the age of twenty-two. Critics from Dr Percy down gave high praise to the ballad; attempts were at the same time made-in vain— to prove it a wholesale plagiarism. But it is sufficiently obvious that Mallet used freely both the ideas and the words of actual old ballads. Thus the injured maid had often returned from her grave to reproach her undoer; and the hungry worm and the cock crowing are precise parallels to the channerin' worm and the cock in 'The Wife o' Usher's Well' (see Vol. I. p. 537). Mallet confessed to having followed a verse in Fletcher's Knight of the Burning Pestle : When it was grown to dark midnight, And all were fast asleep, In came Margaret's grimly ghost, And stood at William's feet. In the first printed copies of Mallet's ballad the first two lines were all but identical: When all was wrapt in dark midnight, William and Margaret. Clad in a wintry cloud; When youth and years are flown : Her bloom was like the springing flower, That sips the silver dew; The rose was budded in her cheek, Just opening to the view. But love had, like the canker-worm, The rose grew pale, and left her cheek, 'Awake!' she cried, 'thy true love calls, Thy love refused to save. 'This is the dark and dreary hour When injured ghosts complain; 'Bethink thee, William, of thy fault, 'Why did you promise love to me, And not that promise keep? Why did you swear my eyes were bright, Yet leave those eyes to weep? 'How could you say my face was fair, And yet that face forsake? 'Why did you say my lip was sweet, And made the scarlet pale? 'That face, alas! no more is fair, Those lips no longer red: Dark are my eyes, now closed in death, And every charm is fled. 'The hungry worm my sister is ; This winding-sheet I wear : And cold and weary lasts our night, Till that last morn appear. 'But hark! the cock has warned me hence; A long and last adieu! Come see, false man, how low she lies, The lark sung loud; the morning smiled Pale William quaked in every limb, He hied him to the fatal place Where Margaret's body lay; And stretched him on the green-grass turf And thrice he called on Margaret's name, The Birks of Invermay. The smiling morn, the breathing spring, Like them, improve the hour that flies; For soon the winter of the year, the Ballantyne brothers. The Dragon of Wantley (1744) was popular on the stage. In all he produced some two hundred works. It was of him it was said that 'he led a life free of reproach, and hanged himself October 4th, 1743.' From Henry Carey, as Lord Macaulay noted, 'descended that Edmund Kean who in our time transformed himself so marvellously into Shylock, Iago, and Othello.' Carey's poem of Namby Pamby has added a word to the English language. It is a burlesque of the child-poems of Ambrose Philips, and is a reductio ad absurdum in child-language, 'Namby Pamby Pilli-pis,' the name of the poet, corresponding with 'rhimypimed on missy-mis.' The reference is to the 'Dimply damsel, sweetly smiling,' and 'Timely blossom, infant fair' style of odes by Ambrose Philips. Namby Pamby: or, a Panegyric on the new Versification addressed to A— P, Esq. 'Nauty Pauty Jack-a-dandy And away did hoppy-hop.' All ye poets of the age, Now methinks I hear him say, In Chrononhotonthologos the Great, a burlesque of the bombast of the stage, and much ado about nothing, Bombardinion, general of Queerummania, reports an invasion of the Antipodeans, but defeats them. Meanwhile the King falls in love with the captive Queen, and quarrels with the general, who first kills the King and then himself. The plot is -intentionally, it may be presumed-utterly silly and senseless, but there are amusing passages, the most being made of the fantastic names. SCENE.-An Anti-Chamber in the Palace. Enter RIG- Aldi. Fatigu'd with the tremendous toils of war, For now he nods and snores; anon he starts; Rig.-Fun. Say! I say he sleeps dog-sleep: What a plague would you have me say? Aldi. O impious thought! O curst insinuation! To animals detestable and vile SCENE. BOMBARDINION'S Tent. KING and BOMBARDINION, at a table, with two Ladies. Bomb. This honour, royal sir! so royalizes The royalty of your most royal actions, The dumb can only utter forth your praise; For we, who speak, want words to tell our meaning. King. Hold, Bombardinion, I esteem it fit, Bomb. See that the table instantly be spread, The king shall eat; tho' all mankind be starv'd. Cook. I am afraid his majesty will be starv'd, before I can run round the world for a dinner; besides, where's the money? King. Ha! dost thou prattle, contumacious slave? Guards, seize the villain! broil him, fry him, stew him; Ourselves shall eat him out of mere revenge. Cook. O pray, your majesty, spare my life; there's some nice cold pork in the pantry: I'll hash it for your majesty in a minute. King. Be thou first hash'd in hell, audacious slave. Hash'd pork! shall Chrononhotonthologos Bomb. A blow! shall Bombardinion take a blow? Blush! blush, thou sun! start back thou rapid ocean! Hills! vales! seas! mountains! all commixing crumble, And into chaos pulverize the world; For Bombardinion has receiv'd a blow, And Chrononhotonthologos shall die. King. What means the traitor? Bomb. Thus I defy thee! [Draws. Traitor in thy teeth, [They fight; he kills the King. Ha! what have I done? Go, call a coach, and let a coach be call'd; Doct. Or, by this light, thy soul shall quit thy body. Doct. My lord, he 's far beyond the power of physic, And, if I find thou triflest with me there, I come! your faithful Bombardinion comes! [Kills himself. Carey thus tells the occasion of his classical lyric, Sally in our Alley, the music of which is also his 'A shoemaker's apprentice making holiday with his sweetheart, treated her with a sight of Bedlam, the puppet-shows, the flying chairs, and all the elegancies of Moorfields: from whence proceeding to the Farthing Piehouse, he gave her a collation of buns, cheese-cakes, gammon of bacon, stuffed beef, and bottled ale; through all which scenes the author dodged them (charmed with the simplicity of their courtship), from whence he drew this little sketch of nature.' The song, he adds, was more than once mentioned with approbation by 'the divine Addison.' There is no good ground for crediting him with the authorship of God save the King, though after his death his son claimed it for him. Sally in our Alley. Of all the girls that are so smart, There's none like pretty Sally: She is the darling of my heart, And she lives in our alley. There is no lady in the land Her father he makes cabbage-nets, And through the streets does cry 'em : Her mother she sells laces long, To such as please to buy 'em : But sure such folks could ne'er beget When she is by, I leave my work Of all the days that's in the week, And that's the day that comes betwixt For then I'm dressed all in my best, To walk abroad with Sally; She is the darling of my heart, And she lives in our alley. My master carries me to church, As soon as text is named: I leave the church in sermon time, When Christmas comes about again, I'll give it to my honey: I would it were ten thousand pounds, She is the darling of my heart, My master and the neighbours all A slave, and row a galley : But when my seven long years are out, O then we'll wed, and then we'll bed, Philip Doddridge, Nonconformist divine, was born in London, 26th June 1702. His grandfather had been ejected from the living of Shepperton in Middlesex by the Act of Uniformity in 1602; and his father, a well-to-do oilman in London, married the only daughter of a German Lutheran pastor who had fled from Prague to escape the persecution which raged in Bohemia after the expulsion of Frederick, the Elector Palatine. In 1712 Doddridge was sent to school at Kingstonupon-Thames; but both his parents dying, he was removed to St Albans in 1715, and whilst there was admitted a member of the Nonconforming congregation. When, in 1718, the Duchess of Bedford offered to educate him at either university for the Church of England, Doddridge declined from conscientious scruples. Dr Clarke, Presbyterian minister of St Albans, befriended him, and in 1719 he was placed at a Dissenting academy at Kibworth in Leicestershire. Here for three years he pursued his studies for the ministry, cultivating a taste for elegant literature, and, as appears from his correspondence, usually in love with somebody, and in brisk correspondence with her. The playfulness and even gaiety of some of these epistles are remarkable in one so staid and devout, and suggest Cowper's. From his first sermon, delivered at the age of twenty, Doddridge became a marked preacher among the Dissenters, and had calls to various congregations. He declined several calls because the congregations inviting were 'a very rigid kind of people,' or were too orthodox; but in 1729 he settled at Northampton, becoming also the head of a theological academy. He believed that he was 'in all the most important points a Calvinist ;' but the orthodox suspected him, and Stoughton holds that his view of the Trinity was Sabellian. But even those who suspected his orthodoxy, and thought his truly Catholic liberality too allembracing, revered his personal piety. He had a happy family life and many devoted friends. He first appeared as an author in 1730, when he published a pamphlet on the Means of Reviv ing the Dissenting Interest. His Sermons on the Education of Children (1732), Sermons to Young People (1735), Ten Sermons on the Power and Grace of Christ (1736), and Practical Discourses on Regeneration (1741) were all well received; and The Rise and Progress of Religion in the Soul (1745) is one of the few works of practical religion which has been accepted by all denomi nations of evangelical Christians as next to the Bible the best aid to the devout life, and has been translated into French, Dutch, German, Danish, Gaelic, Welsh, Tamil, and other tongues. In 1747 appeared Some Remarkable Passages in the Life of Colonel James Gardiner, who was slain by the Rebels at the Battle of Prestonpans, Sept. 21, 1745-the life of a Scottish officer who served with distinction under Marlborough, and from a gay libertine life was suddenly converted to the strictest piety by a visible representation of Christ upon the cross amidst a blaze of light, and the audible words: 'O sinner! did I suffer this for thee, and are these the returns?' The Family Expositor, containing a Version and Paraphrase of the New Testament, with Critical Notes and a Practical Improvement (6 vols. 1739-56), also received a wide welcome. Doddridge's health failing, he was, in 1751, advised to remove to a |