CONYERS MIDDLETON (1683-1750) is now chiefly known for an extravagantly eulogistic life of Cicero (1741), in which, as Macaulay observes, he resorted to the most disingenuous shifts, to unpardonable distortions and suppres sions of facts.' The book is written in a forcible and lively style. A man of considerable learning, Middleton was a violent controversialist, who liked better to attack and to defend than to dwell in the serene atmosphere of literature or of practical divinity. He assailed the famous Richard Bentley with such rancour that he had to apologize and was fined £50 by the Court of King's Bench. Middleton was a doctor of divinity, but his controversial works, while never directly attacking the chief tenets of the religion he professed, lean far more to the side of the Deists than to the orthodox creed, and, indeed, it would not be uncharitable to class him among them. He appears, like Swift, to have chiefly regarded the Christian religion as an institution of service to the stability of the State. Of the Miscellaneous Works which were published after his death in five volumes, the most elaborate and the most provocative of disputation is A Free Inquiry into the Miraculous Powers which are supposed to have subsisted in the Christian Church through several successive centuries (1749). Middleton was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, and in 1734 was elected librarian of the University.

RICHARD SAVAge (1698-1743), whose fate is one of the most melancholy in the annals of versemen, lives in the admirable though neither impartial nor wholly accurate biography of Dr. Johnson. In 1719 he produced Love in a Veil, a comedy from the Spanish; and in 1723 his tragedy Sir Thomas Overbury was acted, but with little success. In the same year he published The Bastard, a poem which is said to have driven his mother out of society. The Wanderer, in five cantos, appeared in 1729, and was regarded

by the author as his masterpiece. It has some vigorous
lines and several descriptive passages that are not conven-
tional. Savage died in prison at Bristol, a city which
recalls the equally painful story of Chatterton.

LEWIS THEOBALD (1688-1744), the original hero of the
Dunciad, was a dramatist and translator, but is chiefly
known as the author of Shakespeare Restored; or specimens
of blunders committed or unamended in Pope's edition of the
poet (1726). This was followed two years later by Pro-
posals for Publishing Emendations and Remarks on Shake-
speare, and in 1733 by his edition of the dramatist in seven
volumes, 'Theobald as an editor,' say the editors of the
Cambridge Shakespeare, is incomparably superior to his
predecessors and to his immediate successor Warburton,
although the latter had the advantage of working on his
materials. He was the first to recall a multitude of read-
ings of the first Folio unquestionably right, but unnoticed
by previous editors. Many most brilliant emendations
are due to him.'

....

WILLIAM WALSH (1663-1708) has chronologically little
claim to be noticed here, for his poems were published before
the beginning of the century, but he is to be remembered
as the early friend and wise counsellor of Pope, and also
as the author, I believe, of the only English sonnet be-
tween Milton's in 1658, and Gray's, on Richard West, in
1742.

ANNE FINCH, Countess of Winchelsea (1660-1720), pub-
lished a volume of verse in 1713 under the title of Mis-
cellany Poems on Several Occasions, Written by a Lady.
The book contains a Nocturnal Reverie, which has some
lines showing a close and faithful observation of rural
sounds and sights, as for example:

"When the loosed horse, now as his pasture leads,
Comes slowly grazing through the adjoining meads,

Whose stealing pace and lengthened shade we fear,
Till torn-up forage in his teeth we hear;
When nibbling sheep at large pursue their food,
And unmolested kine rechew the cud;

When curlews cry beneath the village walls,
And to her straggling brood the partridge calls.’

The Nocturnal Reverie, however, is an exception to the general character of Lady Winchelsea's poems, which consist chiefly of odes (including the inevitable Pindaric), fables, songs, affectionate addresses to her husband, poetical epistles, and a tragedy, Aristomenes; or the Royal Shepherd. The Petition for an Absolute Retreat is one of the best pieces in the volume. It displays great facility in versification, and a love of country delights.

THOMAS YALDEN (1670-1736), born in Exeter, and educated at Magdalen College, Oxford, entered into holy orders (1711), and was appointed lecturer of moral philosophy. Of his poems,' writes Dr. Johnson, 'many are of that irregular kind which, when he formed his poetical character, was supposed to be Pindaric.' Pindarics were indeed the bane of the age. Every minor poet, no matter however feeble his poetical wings might be, endeavoured to fly with Pindar. Like Gay, Yalden tried his skill as a writer of fables.

NOTE.

Mrs. Veal's Ghost (see pp. 186-187). A curious discovery, made by Mr. G. A. Aitken (see Nineteenth Century, January, 1895), makes it certain, he thinks, that 'the whole narrative is literally true.' He even hopes that the receipt for scouring Mrs. Veal's gown may some day be found. Mr. Aitken seems to infer that Defoe's other tales will also turn out to be true histories, but Defoe avers, with all the seriousness he expends on Mrs. Veal, that he witnessed the great Plague of London, which it is needless to say he did not.

1704.

1707.

1709.

1709.

1709-1711.

The Tatler.

1710.

1711.

1711-1712,

Locke died.

Addison's Campaign.

Swift's Tale of a Tub and Battle of the Books.
Fielding born.

Johnson born.

Pope's Pastorals.

Berkeley's Principles of Human Knowledge.
Pope's Essay on Criticism.

and 1714.} The Spectator.

Addison's Cato.

Sterne born.

Mandeville's Fable of the Bees.

Gay's Trivia.

Pope's Translation of Homer's Iliad.
Wycherley died.

Prior's Poems on Several Occasions (folio).
Defoe's Robinson Crusoe (first part).

Addison died.

Smollett born.

Pope's Translation of Homer's Odyssey.
Swift's Drapier's Letters.

1713.

1713.

1714.

1715.

1715-1720.

1715.

1718.

1719-1720.

1719.

1721.

Prior died.

1721.

1723-1725.

1724.

1724.

Kant born.