edition of his essays on agriculture, observations on national industry, and several others of his early writings were composed during a residence of more than twenty years at Monkshill, the name of the abovementioned farm. In the year 1780 the honorary degrees of A. M. and LL. D. were conferred upon him by the university of Aberdeen.

In 1783, having previously arranged matters for the conducting of his farm, he removed to the neighbourhood of Edinburgh, principally with a view to the education of his increasing family, and influenced, no doubt, by a desire to live where he could enjoy more of literary society than was to be had in so remote a part of the country. Previous to his departure from Aberdeenshire, he was actively employed in promoting measures for alleviating the distresses of the poorer classes in that county, owing to the failure of the crops in 1782. About the same year he printed and circulated among his friends, a proposal for establishing the Northern British fisheries. This tract was never published, but the attention of the government being excited to the subject by it, he was applied to by the treasury to undertake a survey of the western coast of Scotland, for the purpose of obtaining information on this important subject. This public-spirited inquiry he undertook, and accomplished in 1784, having a revenue cutter to convey him round the coast. We next find him engaged in preparing for the publication of the Bee.' This was a project he had long contemplated, namely, a weekly periodical work, designed for the dissemination of useful knowledge, which by its cheapness should be calculated for all ranks of people, while sufficient attention was paid to its various literary departments to render it respectable in the highest circles. His name was now so highly established, that the encouragement given by the public to this performance was wonderful, and nothing but great mismanagement in conducting the commercial part of the work-for which, like most persous of similar habits, he was ill-adapted—could have caused it to fail in being a very profitable concern to him. His own writings form a conspicuous part of this book, under the names of Senex, Timothy Hairbrain, Alcibiades, and the greater part of the matter without signature.

Having removed to the vicinity of London about the year 1797, he once more engaged in the service of the public, and produced in Apri!, 1799, the first number of his Recreations,' a miscellaneous monthly publication, having for its principal objects agriculture and natural history. Although the work contains a number of communications from others, yet the greater part of it is written by himself. It met with the greatest encouragement from the public; but complaining of the irregu larity of his printers and booksellers as being intolerable, he dropt it at the end of the sixth volume. The thirty-seventh number of his 'Recreations' is his last publication, in March, 1802, after which he consigned himself to quiet retirement, at a time when he foresaw the decline of his own powers approaching; these were hastened to decay by being overworked. He died on the 15th October, 1808.

As a practical farmer, it is acknowledged by all who knew him, that he not only understood how to turn the modes of culture usually followed by others to the greatest advantage, by judiciously selecting then and applying them according to the circumstances of the case, but also that he had powerful resources within his own mind in the invention of new practices, many of which, and of those followed in distant countries,

he introduced with the greatest success. Failings of a nature which too often accompany genius, however, deprived him of most of the benefits of his labours. He was deficient in that plodding perseverance which was necessary to mature the works he had begun; and he often neglected one object to adopt another. But above all, his utter negligence of pecuniary matters brought him into difficulties which embittered the best of his days. In his younger days he was handsome in his person, of middle stature, and robust constitution. Extremely moderate in his living, the country exercise animated his countenance with the glow of health; but the overstrained exertion of his mental powers afterwards impaired his health, ultimately wasted his faculties, and brought on premature old age. Dr Anderson was the author of several articles for the Encyclopedia Britannica.' He contributed numerous essays, under a variety of signatures, in the early part of the Edinburgh Weekly Magazine,' the principal of which were, Agricola, Timoleon, Germanicus, Cimon, Scoto-Britannus, E. Aberdeen, Henry Plain, Impartial, a Scot. He also reviewed the subject of agriculture for the Monthly Review' for several years.

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Thomas Holcroft.

BORN A. D. 1744.-DIED A. D. 1809.

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THE father of this highly popular dramatist was a shoemaker in Letcester-fields, London. Owing to imprudence or misfortune he was obliged to abandon his humble vocation, and for some time appears to have led the life of a wandering huckster. Of this period of his life, the subject of the present notice has left us two or three interesting anecdotes in his diary and memoirs which strongly mark the vigorous faculties he possessed from nature. At the time referred to, he had scarcely completed his seventh year :-" It was in this retired spot, near to Ascot heath, that my father himself began to teach me to read; the task at first I found difficult, till the idea one day seized me, of catching all the sounds I had been taught from the arrangement of the letters; and my joy at this amazing discovery was so great, that the recollection of it has never been effaced. After that my progress was so rapid, that it astonished my father: he boasted of me to every body; and that I might lose no time, the task he set me was eleven chapters a day in the Old Testament. I might indeed have deceived iny father by skipping some of the chapters; but a dawning regard for truth, aided by the love I had of reading, and the wonderful histories I sometimes found in the sacred writings, generally induced me to go through the whole of the task,' In these rudiments of learning was comprised the whole of his literary instruction. Many years elapsed before he acquired the art of writing. and during that long interval he was destined to experience hardships, by which, in a character of less energy, the latent spark of genius might have been for ever extinguished. At one period, when his parents had no better resource than to wander about the country as hawkers and pedlars, their son had occasion to exercise the ingenuity of a mendicant. "Young as I was, I had considerable readiness in making out a story; and on this day my little inventive faculties shone forth with much bril

liancy. I told one story at one house, another at another, and continued to vary my tale just as the suggestions arose; the consequence of which was, that I moved the good country people exceedingly: one called me a poor fatherless child; another exclaimed what a pity I had so much sense; a third patted my head, and prayed God to preserve me, that I might make a good man; and most of them contributed, either by scraps of meat, farthings, bread and cheese, or other homely offers, to enrich me, and send me away with my pockets loaded. I joyfully brought as much of my stores as I could carry to the place of rendezvous my parents had appointed, where I astonished them by again reciting the false tales I had so readily invented. My father, whose passions were easily moved, felt no little conflict of mind, as I proceeded. I can now, in imagination, see the working of his features: God bless the boy, I never heard the like!' then turning to my mother, he exclaimed, with great earnestness, This must not be! The poor child will become a common-place liar, a hedgeside rogue-he will learn to pilfer, turn a confirmed vagrant, go on the highway when he is older, and get hanged.'

It is, perhaps, not easy to identify with this little ragged boy the author of Hugh Trevor' and the Road to Ruin;' but it was probably in this situation that he acquired those habits of patience, hardihood, and perseverance, which render energy efficient and talents productive. In his thirteenth year we find him engaged as a stable boy at Newmarket a situation of comparative elegance and luxury. "Happy had been the meal where I had enough-rich to me was the rag that kept me warm-and heavenly the pillow, no matter what, or how hard, on which I could lay my head to sleep. Now I was warmly clothed, nay gorgeously, for I was proud of my new livery, and never suspected that there was any disgrace in it-I fared voluptuously, not a prince on earth, perhaps, with half the appetite and never-failing relish-and instead of being obliged to drag through the dirt after the most sluggish, obstinate, and despised among our animals, I was mounted on the noblest that the earth contains, had him under my care, and was borne by him over hill and dale, far outstripping the wings of the wind: was not this a change such as might excite reflexion even in the mind of a boy? Whether I had or had not begun to scrawl and imitate writing, or whether I was able to convey written intelligence concerning myself to my father, for some months after I left him, I cannot say; but we were very careful not to lose sight of each other; and following his affection as well as his love of change, in about half-a-year he came to Newmarket himself, where he at first procured work of the most ordinary kind at his trade. There was one among his shopmates whom I well remember, for he was struck with me, and I with him; he not only made shoes, but was a cockfeeder of some estimation; and, what was to me much more interesting, he had read so much, as to have made himself acquainted with the most popular English authors of that day: he even lent me books to read, among which were 'Gulliver's Travels' and theSpectator; both of which could not but be to me of the highest importance. I remember, after I had read them, he asked me to consider, and tell him which I liked best. I immediately replied, "There was no need of consideration, I liked Gulliver's Travels' ten times the best.'-' Aye,' said he, 'I would have laid my life on it, boys and

young people always prefer the marvellous to the true.'-I acquiesced in this judgment; which, however, only proved, that neither he nor I understood Gulliver, though it afforded me infinite delight."

Holcroft resided two years and a half at Newmarket; when conceiving disgust for his associates, and an ardent desire to gratify his love of knowledge, he removed to London, though with no fairer prospect than working with his father at a cobbler's stall. In his twentieth year he married, and necessity soon forced him to try his fortune on the stage. From an actor he became a dramatic writer; and some of the most suc cessful translations were executed by a man who, for the first time in his life, took lessons in the French language at two-and-thirty!

His first essay as a dramatic writer was a musical farce called 'The Crisis,' which was acted with tolerable success in 1778. In 1781 he produced a comedy under the title of Duplicity;' which was followed by "The Noble Peasant,' an opera, and The Follies of a Day, or the Marriage of Figaro.' His most popular dramatic piece, The Road to Ruin,' was produced in 1792. He was the author of several novels, which had their share of popularity in their day, such as Anna St Ives,' Hugh Trevor,' and Brian Perdue.' His last publication was entitled

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'A Tour in Germany and France.' He died in 1809.

Richard Gough.

BORN A. D. 1735.-died a. D. 1809.

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RICHARD GOUGH, whose researches and writings as an antiquary obtained for him the appellation of the Camden of the 18th century, was descended from the Goughs of Wales. Sir Matthew Gough, with whose father the pedigree of his family begins, passed the prime of his life in the French wars of Henry V. and VI. and finished it in Cade's rebellion, fighting on the part of the citizens, in July, 1450, at the battle of London-bridge. Mr Gough's father was the fifth son of Sir Harry Gough of Perry-hall. He was born October 21st, 1735, in Winchester street, London, on a site peculiarly appropriate for the birth of an antiquary, that of the monastery of Augustine friars founded by Humphrey de Bohun, Earl of Hereford and Essex, in 1253. Mr Gough's parents were dissenters, and their son received the first rudiments of Latin at home, under the tuition of one Barnewitz, a Courlander. He was afterwards committed to the instruction of the Rev. Roger Pickering, a learned dissenting minister, on whose death in 1755 Mr Gough finished his Greek studies under Mr Samuel Dyer, the friend and literary contemporary of Johnson. After his father's death in July, 1752, he was admitted fellow-commoner of Bennet college Cambridge, where his brother John had before studied under Dr Mawson, afterwards bishop of Chichester and Ely. Bennet college had peculiar attractions for a mind like Mr Gough's; it had not only trained the great Parker to revive the study of antiquity, and received from him a rich donation of curious and ancient manuscripts, but had educated Stukeley, who traced our antiquities to their remotest origin. Here was planned the 'British Topography.' From Cambridge Gough made his first antiquarian excursions, and continued these pursuits every year to various

parts of the kingdom, taking notes, which on his return were digested into form. Many years, however, before Gough joined the university, he had given evidence of his possessing those powers of unwearied application and research which are so essential to the pursuits of an antiquary. At the early age of eleven he began the translation of a History of the Bible' from the French, which he accomplished in the course of a year and a half. The mother, delighted with this proof of her son's diligence and attainments, was at the expense of printing twentyfive copies of this performance. "The style," says Chalmers, "is throughout juvenile and simple. Mr Gough in his mature years, appears to have looked at it with complacency." Three years after this he executed a translation of Fleury's 'Customs of the Israelites,' which was also printed for public distribution.

In 1768 Mr Gough publishedAnecdotes of British Topography' in a single quarto volume. The first compiler of a work of this description was John Bagford, who furnished Bishop Gibson with the list prefixed to his edition of the 'Britannia.' Bishop Nicholson's Historical Libraries,' and Dr Rawlinson's English Topographer,' had of course become greatly imperfect; Gough's works not only informed the curious what lights had from time to time been thrown on our topographical antiquities, but enumerated most of the materials which had been collected, whether in print or manuscript. An improved edition of this work was published in two volumes, in 1780, and afterwards augmented by the addition of a third volume.

In February 1767 he was elected a member of the Society of antiquaries, and drew up their history prefixed to the first volume of the "Archæologia,' in 1770. The publication of the Archæologia' he superintended for many years; and in the different volumes, till 1796, are various articles drawn up or communicated by him. In 1767 he opened a correspondence, mostly under the signature of D. H., with the Gentleman's Magazine;' and on the death of his fellow-collegian, Duncombe, in 1786, he occasionally communicated reviews of literary publications to that miscellany. In 1774 he entered into matrimony, and retired to Enfield, a property which his father purchased in 1723. He added to the family mansion an extensive library, the richest in topography in the kingdom.

In 1773 he formed the design of a new edition of Camden's Britannia.' For twenty summers he had amused himself with taking notes in various parts of England and Scotland, at first with no higher view than private information, or perhaps of communicating them to the public in some such form as Dr Stukeley's 'Itinerary,' or that of the local antiquities of particular towns or districts; but the mistakes and conciseness of preceding editors at last encouraged him to undertake a new edition of the Britannia,' the translation and enlargement of which occupied him seven years, and he was nine more attending it through the press. It appeared in three volumes folio, in 1789, and subse

quently in four volumes. In 1785 Mr Gough published A comparative View of the ancient Monuments of India, particularly those on the Island of Salset, near Bombay in which, with considerable industry, he threw together the narratives of travellers of different nations. The next year appeared the first volume of his grand work, entitled 'Sepulchral Monuments of