THE BANKRUPT. Oft have you pray’d me, when in youth,Never to err from paths of truth;But youth to vice is much too prone,And mine by far too much, I own.Induced to riot, swear, and game,I thought in vice t’acquire fame;But found the pois’ning scenes of riotSoon robb’d my mind of joy and quiet.The usual course of rakes I ran,The dupe of woman and of man.Careless of fortune’s smile or frown,My... more...

CHURCHILL—HIS LIFE AND WRITINGS. In Churchill we find a signal specimen of a considerable class of writers, concerning whom Goldsmith's words are true—   "Who, born for the universe, narrow'd their mind,  And to party gave up what was meant for mankind." Possessed of powers and natural endowments which might have made him, under favourable circumstances, a poet, a hero, a man,... more...

INTRODUCTION It may well be doubted whether works of controversy serve any useful purpose.  ‘On an opponent,’ as Mr. Matthew Arnold said, ‘one never does make any impression,’ though one may hope that controversy sometimes illuminates a topic in the eyes of impartial readers.  The pages which follow cannot but seem wandering and desultory, for they are a reply to a book, Mr. Max Müller’s... more...

THE LIFE OF AKENSIDE. Mark Akenside was born at Newcastle-upon-Tyne on the 9th of November 1721. His family were Presbyterian Dissenters, and on the 30th of that month he was baptized in the meeting, then held in Hanover Square, by a Mr. Benjamin Bennet. His father, Mark, was a butcher in respectable circumstances—his mother's name was Mary Lumsden. There may seem something grotesque in finding... more...

LIFE OF JOSEPH ADDISON. Joseph Addison, the Spectator, the true founder of our periodical literature, the finest, if not the greatest writer in the English language, was born at Milston, Wiltshire, on the 1st of May 1672. A fanciful mind might trace a correspondence between the particular months when celebrated men have been born and the peculiar complexion of their genius. Milton, the austere and... more...

LIFE OF ALEXANDER POPE Alexander Pope was born in Lombard Street, London, on the 21st of May 1688—the year of the Revolution. His father was a linen-merchant, in thriving circumstances, and said to have noble blood in his veins. His mother was Edith or Editha Turner, daughter of William Turner, Esq., of York. Mr Carruthers, in his excellent Life of the Poet, mentions that there was an Alexander Pope,... more...

PREFACE. I was in hopes that this volume might have gone its way without preface; but as I look over the sheets, I find in them various fallings short of old purposes which require a word of explanation. Of which shortcomings, the chief is the want of reference to the landscape of the Poussins and Salvator; my original intention having been to give various examples of their mountain-drawing, that it... more...

The Life and Poetry of James Beattie James Beattie, the author of the Minstrel was born at Laurencekirk, in the county of Kincardineshire—a village situated in that beautiful trough of land called the Howe of the Mearns, and surmounted by the ridge of the Garvock Hills, which divide it from the German Ocean—on the 25th day of October 1735. His father, who was a small farmer and shopkeeper, and who... more...

WHISTLER. I have studied Mr. Whistler and thought about him this many a year. His character was for a long time incomprehensible to me; it contained elements apparently so antagonistic, so mutually destructive, that I had to confess my inability to bring him within any imaginable psychological laws, and classed him as one of the enigmas of life. But Nature is never illogical; she only seems so, because... more...

THE GENIUS AND POETRY OF POPE. Few poets during their lifetime have been at once so much admired and so much abused as Pope. Some writers, destined to oblivion in after-ages, have been loaded with laurels in their own time; while others, on whom Fame was one day to "wait like a menial," have gone to the grave neglected, if not decried and depreciated. But it was the fate of Pope to combine in... more...