To thoughtless youth it pleasure yields, To fill the catalogue of human woes. SAMUEL BISHOP was born in London, in 1731, and educated at the university of Oxford. After he had taken his degrees, and obtained a fellowship in his college, he entered into orders, and was appointed head master of Merchant Tailor's School, London, with the livings of St. Martin Outwich, and Ditton. In these varied duties he passed a peaceful and happy life, with little variety or change, until his death, which occurred in 1795. The poems of Bishop are numerous, comprising two large octavo volumes. They are chiefly on light subjects, and written in an easy and elegant style. The best of them was devoted to the praise of his wife; and it is impossible to read such lines as the following without feeling that their author was an amiable and happy man. They were addressed to Mrs. Bishop, and accompanied with a ring, on the anniversary of her wedding-day, which was also her birth-day. TO MARY. 'Thee, Mary, with this ring I wed'- If she, by merit since disclosed, Here, then, to-day (with faith as sure, Those virtues which, before untried, ROBERT LLOYD was the son of Dr. Pierson Lloyd, under-master of Westminster school, and was born in London, in 1733. He was thoroughly prepared for the university under his father's guidance, and at Trinity College, Cambridge, greatly distinguished himself by his talents and scholarship; but he was very irregular in his habits. After taking his master's degree, he became an usher under his father; but the wearisome routine of this line of life soon disgusted him, and he attempted to earn a subsistence by his literary talents. His poem called The Actor attracted some notice, and was the precursor of Churchill's 'Rosciad.' The style is light and easy, and the observations are generally correct and spirited. By contributing to periodical works as an essayist, a poet, and a dramatic critic, Lloyd might have obtained a respectable subsistence; but his means, as fast as he obtained any, were thoughtlessly squandered away in company with Churchill and other wits upon town.' He brought out two indifferent theatrical pieces, published his poems by subscription, and edited the 'St. James Magazine,' to which his literary friends generally contributed. The magazine failed, and Lloyd was cast into prison for the debts he had contracted to sustain it. His friend Churchill allowed him, under these trying circumstances, a guinea a-week and a servant; and endeavored to raise a subscription for the purpose of extricating him from his embarrassments. But Churchill's death, which occurred in 1764, proved fatal to our poet. 'Lloyd,' says Southey, 'had been apprised of his danger; but when the news of his death was somewhat abruptly announced to him, as he was sitting at dinner, he was seized with a sudden sickness, and saying 'I shall follow poor Charles,' took to his bed, from which he never rose again; dying, if ever man thus died, of a broken heart. The tragedy did not end here; for Churchill's favorite sister, who is said to have possessed much of her brother's sense, and spirit, and genius, and to have been betrothed to Lloyd, attended him during his illness; and sinking under the double loss, soon followed her brother and her lover to the grave.' Lloyd successfully parodied the Odes of Gray and Mason, without tincturing the humor of his burlesques with the least degree of malignity. Indeed this unfortunate young poet seems to have been one of the gentlest of witty observers and lively satirists: he was ruined by the friendship of Churchill and the Nonsense Club, and not by the force of an evil nature. The vivacity of his style, which Churchill closely copied, may be seen from the following short extract: WRETCHEDNESS OF A SCHOOL USHER. Were I at once empowered to show For one, it hurts me to the soul, His own lies fallow all the while. 'Yet still he's on the road,' you say, 'Of learning.' Why, perhaps he may, Nor getting on, nor standing still; For little way his learning reaches, Who reads no more than what he teaches. CHARLES CHURCHILL, the intimate friend and companion of Lloyd, was the son of a clergyman in Westminster, and was born there, in 1731. After studying at Westminster school, he entered Trinity College, Cambridge; but he left the university abruptly, without a degree, returned to his father's house, and soon after entered into a clandestine marriage with a young lady in Westminster. His conduct had hitherto been comparatively unimpeachable, and he therefore entered into orders, and settled in the curacy of Rainham, in Essex. His father died in 1758, and the poet was appointed his successor in the curacy and lectureship of St. John's, at Westminster. This transition, which promised an accession of comfort and respectability, proved the bane of poor Churchill. He renewed his intimacy with Lloyd and other school companions, and launched, with them, into a career of dissipation and extravagance. His poetry drew him into notice; and he not only disregarded his lectureship, but he laid aside the clerical costume, and appeared in the extreme of fashion, with a blue coat, gold-laced hat, and ruffles. The dean of Westminster remonstrated with him for this breach of clerical propriety, and his animadversions were seconded by the poet's parishioners. Churchill affected to ridicule this prudery; but the dean and his congregation were too powerful for him, and he was compelled to resign his lectureship. Released now from all external restraints, Churchill's debauchery knew no limit; and he unfortunately formed, about this time, an acquaintance with Wilkes, the notorious and profligate conductor of the 'North Briton.' His ready pen, however, still threw off, at will, his popular satires, and the profits arising from their publication enabled him to plunge into every excess. This conduct he attempted to justify in a poetical epistle to Lloyd, entitled Night, in which he revenges himself on prudence and the world, by railing at them in the most severe terms. "This vindication proceeded,' says one of his biographers, 'on the exploded doctrine, that the barefaced avowal of vice is less culpable than the practice of it under a hypocritical assumption of virtue. The measure of guilt in the individual is, we conceive, tolerably equal; but the sanction and dangerous example afforded in the former case, renders it, in a public point of view, an evil of tenfold magnitude.' Churchill's irregularities sensibly affected his powers of composition, and his poem, The Ghost, published at this time, was an incoherent and tiresome production. The outlawry of Wilkes, roused the intensest satirical power of the poet, and he produced his Prophecy of Famine, which, like the North Briton, was especially directed against the Scottish nation. This is a Scots pastoral, and is the most ludicrous, and, perhaps, the best of Churchill's satires. Soon after the publication of this poem, the poet embarked for France, on a visit to his friend Wilkes, who then resided in that country, and with whom he had kept up a constant correspondence from the time of his departure from England. He had been in France, however, but a few weeks, before he was seized with a fever while at Bologne, which terminated his misguided life on the fourth of November, 1764, before he had reached the thirty-third year of his age. His remains were brought back to England, and buried at Dover; and some of his gay associates placed over his grave a stone on which was engraved the following line from one of his own poems : Life to the last enjoyed, here Churchill lies. The enjoyment, however, may be doubted, hardly less than the taste of the inscription. It is certain that Churchill expressed his compunctions for part of his conduct, in verses like the following, in his Conference, and which evidently came from his heart : Look back! a thought which borders on despair, Churchill's genius was evidently above mediocrity; and hence when The Rosciad appeared, he was hailed as a second Dryden. The 'fatal facility' of his verse, and his unscrupulous satire of living individuals and passing events, had the effect of making all London 'ring from side to side' with his applause, at a time when the real poetry of the age could hardly obtain either publishers or readers. The moral lesson which his life and career teach is unmistakable. With his clerical profession he had renounced his belief in Christianity itself; and though he made his will only the day before his death, there is in it not the slightest expression of religious faith or hope. We close this gloomy sketch with the following sprightly passage from the Prophecy of Famine : Two boys whose birth, beyond all question, springs Jockey, whose manly high cheek bones to crown, |