I fhall therefore endeavour to do juftice to his mémory, fince nobody elfe undertakes it. And indeed I can affign no caufe why fo many of his acquaintance (that are as willing and more able than myfelf to give an account of him) fhould forbear to celebrate. the memory of one so dear to them, but only that they look upon it as a work entirely belonging to me. I shall content myself with giving only a character of the perfon and his writings, without meddling with the tranfactions of his life, which was altogether private: I fhall only make this known obfervation of his family, that there was scarcely fo many extraordinary men in any one. I have been acquainted with five of his brothers (of which three are ftill living), all men of fine parts, yet all of a very unlike temper and genius. So that their fruitful mother, like the mother of the gods, feems to have produced a numerous offspring, all of different though uncommon faculties. Of the living, neither their modefty, nor the humour of the prefent age, permits me to speak of the dead, I may fay fomething. One of them had made the greateft progrefs in the ftudy of the law of nature and nations of any one I know. He had perfectly mastered, and even improved, the notions of Grotius, and the more refined ones of Puffendorf. He could refute Hobbes with as much folidity as fome of greater name, and expofe him with as much wit as Echard. That noble ftudy, which requires the greatest reach of reason and nicety of diftinction, was not at all difficult to him. Twas a national lofs to be deprived of one who understood a fcience fo neceffary, and yet fo unknown more; unknown in England. I fhall add only, he had the fame honefty and fincerity as the perfon I write of, but more heat: the former was more inclined to argue, the latter to divert: one employed his reafon the other his imagination: the former had been well qualified for thofe pofts, which the modefty of the latter made him refufe. His other dead brother would have been an ornament to the college of which he was a member. He had a genius either for poetry or oratory; and, though very young, compofed feveral very agreeable pieces. In all probability he would have written as finely as his brother did nobly. He might have been the Waller, as the other was the Milton of his time. one might celebrate Marlborough, the other his beautiful offspring. This had not been fo fit to describe the actions of heroes as the virtues of private men. In a word, he had been fitter for my place; and, while his brother was writing upon the greatest men that any age ever produced, in a ftyle equal to them, he might have ferved as a panegyrift on him. The This is all I think neceffary to fay of his family. I fhall proceed to himself and his writings; which I shall first treat of, because I know they are cenfured by fome out of envy, and more out of ignorance. The Splendid Shilling, which is far the leaft confiderable, has the more general reputation, and per haps hinders the character of the reft. The ftyle agreed fo well with the burlesque, that the ignorant thought it could become nothing else. Every body is pleased with that work. But to judge rightly of the other requires a perfect maftery of poetry and criticism, a juft contempt of the little turns and VOL. IX. Χ witticifms witticisms now in vogue, and, above all, a perfect understanding of poetical diction and description. All that have any tafte for poetry will agree, that the great burlefque is much to be preferred to the low. It is much eafier to make a great thing appear little, than a little one great: Cotton and others of a very low genius have done the former; but Philips, Garth, and Boileau, only the latter. A picture in miniature is every painter's talent; but a piece for a cupola, where all the figures are enlarged, yet proportioned to the eye, requires a mafter's hand. It muft ftill be more acceptable than the low burlesque, because the images of the latter are mean and filthy, and the language itself entirely unknown to all men of good breeding. The style of Billingsgate would not make a very agreeable figure at St. James's. A gentleman would take but little pleafure in language which he would think it hard to be accofted in, or in reading words which he could not pronounce without blufhing. The lofty burlesque is the more to be admired, because, to write it, the author must be mafter of two of the moft different talents in nature. A talent to find out and expose what is ridiculous, is very different from that which is to raise and elevate. We must read Virgil and Milton for the one, and Horace and Hudibras for the other. We know that the authors of excellent comedies have often failed in the grave ftyle, and the tragedian as often in comedy. Admiration and Laughter are of fuch oppofite natures, that they are feldom created by the fame perfon. The man of mirth is always obferving the follies and weakneffes, the the ferious writer the virtues or crimes, of mankind; one is pleased with contemplating a beau, the other a hero: even from the fame object they would draw different ideas: Achilles would appear in very different lights to Therfites and Alexander; the one would admire the courage and greatnefs of his foul; the other would ridicule the vanity and rashness of his temper. As the fatyrift says to Hanibal: -1, curre per Alpes, Ut pueris placeas, & declamatio fias. The contrariety of ftyle to the subject pleases the more ftrongly, because it is more furprising; the expectation of the reader is pleasantly deceived, who expects an humble style from the subject, or a great fubject from the ftyle. It pleases the more univerfally, because it is agreeable to the tafte both of the grave and the merry; but more particularly fo to those who have a relish of the best writers, and the nobleft fort of poetry. I fhall produce only one paffage out of this poet, which is the misfortune of his Galligaskins: My Galligafkins, which have long withstood This is admirably pathetical, and fhews very well the viciffitudes of fublunary things. The reft goes on to a prodigious height; and a man in Greenland could hardly have made a more pathetick and terrible complaint. Is it not furprising that the subject should be fo mean, and the verse so pompous, that the least things in his poetry, as in a microscope, fhould grow great X 2 great and formidable to the eye; efpecially confidering that, not understanding French, he had no model for his ftyle? that he fhould have no writer to imitate, and himself be inimitable? that he fhould do all this before he was twenty? at an age which is ufually pleased with a glare of falfe thoughts, little turns, and unnatural fuftian? at an age, at which Cowley, Dryden, and I had almost said Virgil, were inconfiderable? fo foon was his imagination at its full ftrength, his judgement ripe, and his humour complete. This poem was written for his own diverfion, without any defign of publication. It was communicated but to me; but foon spread, and fell into the hands of pirates. It was put out, vilely mangled, by Ben Bragge; and impudently faid to be corrected by the author. This grievance is now grown more epidemical; and no man now has a right to his own thoughts, or a title to his own writings. Xenophon answered the Perfian, who demanded his arms, "We have nothing now " left but our arms and our valour: if we surrender "the one, how fhall we make use of the other?" Poets have nothing but their wits and their writings; and if they are plundered of the latter, I don't fee what good the former can do them. To pirate, and publicly own it, to prefix their names to the works they fteal, to own and avow the theft, I believe, was never yet heard of but in England. It will found oddly to pofterity, that, in a polite nation, in an enlightened age, under the direction of the most wife, most learned, and moft generous encouragers of knowledge in the world, the property of a mechanick fhould be better fecured than that of a scholar! that the poorest manual operations should be more |