I hold my tongue to tell the troth, And keep my breath to cool my broth.

For chance or change of peace or pain, For Fortune's favour or her frown, For lack or glut, for loss or gain,

I never dodge nor up nor down :

But swing what way the ship shall swim, Or tack about with equal trim.

I suit not where I shall not speed, Nor trace the turn of every tide; If simple sense will not succeed,

I make no bustling, but abide : For shining wealth, or scaring woe, I force no friend, I fear no foe.

Of ups and downs, of ins and outs,

Of they're i' the wrong, and we're i' the right,

I shun the rancours and the routs ;
And wishing well to every wight,
Whatever turn the matter takes,
I deem it all but ducks and drakes.

With whom I feast I do not fawn,

Nor if the folks should flout me, faint;

If wonted welcome be withdrawn,

I cook no kind of a complaint:
With none disposed to disagree,
But like them best who best like me.

Not that I rate myself the rule

How all my betters should behave; But fame shall find me no man's fool, Nor to a set of men a slave:

I love a friendship free and frank,
And hate to hang upon a hank.

Fond of a true and trusty tie,

I never loose where'er I link; Though if a business budges by,

I talk thereon just as I think;

My word, my work, my heart, my hand, Still on a side together stand.

If names or notions make a noise,
Whatever hap the question hath,

The point impartially I poise,

And read or write, but without wrath; For should I burn or break my brains, Pray who will pay me for my pains?

I love my neighbour as myself,

Myself like him too, by his leave; Nor to his pleasure, power, or pelf,

Came I to crouch, as I conceive: Dame Nature doubtless has designed A man the monarch of his mind.

Now taste and try this temper, sirs, Mood it and brood it in your breast; Or if ye ween, for worldly stirs,

That man does right to mar his rest, Let me be deft, and debonair,

I am content I do not care.

The following is a fair specimen of Byrom's theological argumentation (against Sherlock):

When tempted Adam, yielding to deceit,
Presumed of the fordidden tree to eat,
The Bishop tells us that he did not die:
Pray will you ask him, sir, the reason why?
Why he would contradict the sacred text,
Where death to sin so surely is annexed.
'The day thou eatest' are the words, you know,

And yet by his account, it was not so.

The often-sung hymn, 'Christians awake, salute the happy morn,' is a selection from Byrom's Christmas Carol. The following is his happiest jeu d'esprit:

Jacobite Toast.

God bless the king, God bless the Faith's Defender,
God bless-no harm in blessing-the Pretender.
But who Pretender is, and who is king,

God bless us all! that's quite another thing.

Byrom's poems were republished, with Life and notes, in 1814; were included in Chalmers's Poets; and were re-edited in 1894-95 by Prof. Ward for the Chetham Society (4 vols.). The Journal and Literary Remains appeared in 1854-57 (2 vols. ; Chetham Society).

Thomas Amory (1691?-1788) was a miscellaneous writer and humourist of an eccentric type. He was of Irish descent-his father acquired property as secretary for the confiscated estatesand he went to school in Dublin; but he is found established in Westminster in 1757. In 1755 he published, anonymously, Memoirs containing the Lives of several Ladies of Great Britain; A History of Antiquities; Observations on the Christian Religion; with a variety of Disquisitions (in two volumes)—an extraordinary miscellany of religion, scenery, autobiography, and fictitious adventures. His next work is practically a continuation: The Life of John Buncle, Esq. (2 vols. 1756-66). The author's aim in both works was to promote good morals and Unitarian doctrines, or rather a kind of Christian Deism; the ladies whose charms and virtues are commemorated belong very obviously to the fictitious side of the enterprise. In the first he travels among the wild hills of Northumberland, and meets there, in a secluded spot (which he invests with all the beauty and softness of a scene in Kent or Devon), the daughter of a deceased college friend, who had been disinherited for refusing to sign the Thirty-nine Articles. The young lady entertains her father's friend, and introduces him to other ladies. They undertake a visit to the Western Islands, and encounter various adventures and vicissitudes, besides indulging in philosophical and polemical discussions. The Life of John Buncle is of like complexion, but in the form of an autobiography. Buncle has in succession no less than seven wives, all wooed and won upon his peculiar Christian principles.' To such reviewers as should attempt to raise the laugh against him he replies: I think it unreasonable and impious to grieve immoderately for the dead. A decent and proper tribute of tears and sorrow, humanity requires; but when that duty has been paid, we must

remember that to lament a dead woman is not to lament a wife. A wife must be a living woman.' And, fortified by this philosophy, John Buncle proceeds on his way undisturbed after each bereavement, usually in high spirits, relishing fine old ale and good cheer, and making fresh converts to his views and opinions. The personal attractions, literary and other acquirements, of each wife, her many virtues, and her family history, are related at length. 'As I mention nothing of any children by so many wives,' he explains, 'some readers may perhaps wonder at this; and therefore, to give a general answer once for all, I think it sufficient to observe, that I had a great many to carry on the succession ; but as they never were concerned in any extraordinary affairs, nor ever did any remarkable things, that I ever heard of-only rise and breakfast, read and saunter, drink and eat, it would not be fair, in my opinion, to make any one pay for their history.' In lieu of this, the reader is treated to dissertations on the origin of language, the causes of earthquakes and of muscular motion, on phlogiston, fluxions, the Athanasian Creed, and fifty other topics brought together in heroic contempt of the unities of time and place. At a moment's notice the most unlikely persons— farmers' wives and country gentlemen's daughters -burst into long debates or disquisitions on the evidences for (improved) Christianity, the origin of language, phallic worship, the physical cause of the Deluge. Between Cumberland and Yorkshire, Buncle discovers a 'fine romantic country,' a trackless and all but impassable wilderness, with mountains higher than 'Snowden or Kedar-Idris,' appalling precipices, deafening cataracts as high as Niagara, bottomless abysses, but here and there little companies of charming recluses, sometimes wholly women. He is great on 'natural curiosities' -caverns, fossils, odd shells, rare mushrooms. There is a portentous account of a fight to the death (seen under a rather highly magnifying microscope!) between a 'gallant louse' and an active flea, who at one stage of the struggle 'fixes his flashing eyes on his foe.' The classical quotations and even the names of the authors cited leave much to be desired, and suggest second-hand (though miscellaneous and extensive) erudition. There is a vast amount of irrelevant padding in the notes. One long note gives sketches of the lives and works of St Jerome, St Ambrose, and the Gregories. Another note, running on tenth page, discusses Madame de Guyon, Madame Bourignon, and several other mystics, male and female. Another describes various monuments of native Irish literature, with translations. Such a fantastic and desultory work is only tolerable in virtue of its portentous eccentricity and unlikeness to any other book, with its occasionally happy, original, and unexpected thoughts and locutions. How Hazlitt could have said that the soul of Rabelais had passed into Amory is incompre

to a

In the year 1739, I travelled many hundred miles to visit ancient monuments, and discover curious things; and as I wandered, to this purpose, among the vast hills of Northumberland, fortune conducted me one evening, in the month of June, when I knew not where to rest, to the sweetest retirement my eyes have ever beheld. . This is Hali-farm. It is a beautiful vale surrounded with rocks, forest, and water. I found at the upper end of it the prettiest thatched house in the world, and a garden of the most artful confusion I had ever seen. The little mansion was covered on every side with the finest flowery greens. The streams all round were murmuring and falling a thousand ways. All the kind of singing-birds were here collected, and in high harmony on the sprays. The ruins of an abbey enhance the beauties of this place; they appear at the distance of four hundred yards from the house; and as some great trees are now grown up among the remains, and a river winds between the broken walls, the view is solemn, the picture fine.

When I came up to the house, the first figure I saw was the lady whose story I am going to relate. She had the charms of an angel, but her dress was quite plain and clean as a country-maid. Her person appeared faultless, and of the middle size, between the disagreeable extremes; her face, a sweet oval, and her complexion the brunette of the bright rich kind; her mouth, like a rose-bud that is just beginning to blow; and a fugitive dimple, by fits, would lighten and disappear. The finest passions were always passing in her face; and in her long, even chestnut eyes, there was a fluid fire, sufficient for half-a-dozen pair.

She had a volume of Shakspear in her hand as I came softly towards her, having left my horse at a distance with my servant; and her attention was so much engaged with the extremely poetical and fine lines which Titania speaks in the third act of the Midsummer Night's Dream,' that she did not see me till I was quite near her. She seemed then in great amazement. She could not be much more surprised if I had dropped from the clouds. But this was soon over, upon my asking her if she was not the daughter of Mr John Bruce, as I supposed, from a similitude of faces, and informing her that her father, if I was right, was my near friend, and would be glad to see his chum in that part of the world. Marinda replied: You are not wrong,' and immediately asked me in. She conducted me to a parlour that was quite beautiful in the rural way, and welcomed me to Hali-farm, as her father would have done, she said, had I arrived before his removal to a better world. She then left me for a while, and I had time to look over the room I was in. The floor was covered with rushes wrought into the prettiest mat, and the walls decorated all round with the finest flowers and shells. Robins and nightingales, the finch and the

linnet, were in the neatest reed cages of her own making; and at the upper end of the chamber, in a charming little open grotto, was the finest strix capite aurito, corpore rufo, that I have seen, that is, the great eagle owl. This beautiful bird, in a niche like a ruin, looked vastly fine. As to the flowers which adorned this room, I thought they were all natural at my first coming in; but on inspection, it appeared that several baskets of the finest kinds were inimitably painted on the walls by Marinda's hand.

These things afforded me a pleasing entertainment for about half an hour, and then Miss Bruce returned. One of the maids brought in a supper-such fare, she said, as her little cottage afforded; and the table was covered with green peas and pigeons, cream-cheese, new bread and butter. Everything was excellent in its kind. The cider and ale were admirable. Discretion and dignity appeared in Miranda's behaviour; she talked with judg ment; and under the decencies of ignorance was concealed a valuable knowledge. After supper she gave me the history of her father from the time he and I parted, and concluded with saying that by his death, a year before my arrival, she became the solitary thing I saw her, in the midst of untravelled mountains, and had not in the world one friend, excepting the poor rustics of her house and neighbourhood.

Richard Savage was an undignified assistant of Pope's, who supplied the 'private intelligence and secret incidents' which add poignancy to the satire of the Dunciad. Savage is better known for his misfortunes, as related by Dr Johnson, than for the charms of his poetry, which rarely rises above the level of mediocrity, whereas his melancholy story bears to be a romance in real life. It is almost certain, however, that Johnson's memoir, derived directly or indirectly from Savage himself, is little else than a romance, and its hero an impostor. Together, often penniless, they had roamed the streets by night; and now, moved by pity to partiality, he wrote what is perhaps the most perfect short Life in the language. That the story contains 'inherent improbabilities and proved falsehoods' was demonstrated by Moy Thomas in 1858 in Notes and Queries.

Savage (1697-1743) was born in London, and according to his own account was the issue of a liaison between the wife of Charles Lord Brandon, afterwards Earl of Macclesfield, and Richard Savage, Earl Rivers. Lady Brandon had been separated from her husband about ten years when she formed a liaison with Lord Rivers, by whom she had two children, a girl (who died in infancy, having been christened after the father and mother, 'Ann Savage') and a male child, baptised as 'Richard Smith.' Richard Smith, like the preceding child, was removed and placed at nurse, being taken away by a baker's wife named Portlock, who said the child was her own, and from this time all trace of the infant is lost. If we are to believe Savage's story, the Countess (from 1700 the wife of Colonel Brett) from the hour of his birth discovered a resolution of disowning

him, and would never see him again. She suffered a large legacy left to him by his godmother to be embezzled for want of some one to prosecute his claim; told Earl Rivers, his father, on his deathbed (1712) that his child was dead, with the express object of depriving him of another legacy of £6000; endeavoured to have Richard kidnapped to the West Indies; and finally interfered to the utmost of her power, and by means of an 'atrocious calumny,' to prevent his being saved from the hangman. Most of these assertions have been disproved. Indeed, the story of the legacy is palpably untrue, for, as Croker remarked, if Savage had a title to the legacy, he could not have found any difficulty in recovering it. Had the executors resisted his claims, the whole costs, as well as the legacy, must have been paid by them, if he had been the child to whom it was given.

The writer we know as Savage is first heard of in 1717, when was published The Convocation, or a Battle of Pamphlets, a Poem written by Mr Richard Savage. Next year (1718) he produced a comedy, Love in a Veil, which was published by Curll, and stated on the title-page to be 'written by Richard Savage, Gent., son of the late Earl Rivers.' Steele thought well of the play, and became his friend for a time. In Jacob's Lives of the Poets (1719) the same story is repeated with additions; and Aaron Hill in his periodical, The Plain Dealer (1724), inserted letters and statements to the same effect, which were furnished by Savage. His remarkable history thus became known, but the vices of his character displayed themselves. He had some good impulses, but his habits were low and sensual. His temper was irritable and capricious, and whatever money he received was instantly spent in obscure haunts of dissipation. In a tavern brawl in 1727 he had the misfortune to kill a young man called Sinclair, for which he was tried and condemned to death, but was pardoned by Queen Caroline and set at liberty. He published poetical pieces for his living; addressed a birthday ode to the queen in 1732, calling himself the Volunteer Laureate' -to the annoyance, it is said, of Colley Cibber, the legitimate inheritor of the laurel; and received from Her Majesty a pension of £50. His threats, as well as the sympathetic interest of the public in the story of his wrongs, induced Lord Tyrconnel, a friend of his reputed mother, to take him into his family, where he lived on equal terms and was allowed £200 a year. This, as Johnson said, was the 'golden period' of Savage's life. But, as might have been foreseen, the habits of the poet differed widely from those of the peer; they soon quarrelled, and Savage was again set adrift on the world. The death of the queen also stopped his pension; but his friends made up an annuity for him of equal amount, to which Pope contributed £20. Savage agreed to withdraw to the country, to avoid the temptations

of London. He selected Swansea, but stopping at Bristol, was treated with great kindness by the opulent merchants and other inhabitants, whom he afterwards libelled in a sarcastic poem. In Swansea he resided about a year; but on revisiting Bristol he was arrested for a small debt, and being unable to find bail, was thrown into prison. His folly, extravagance, and pride, though it was 'pride that licks the dust,' had left him almost without a friend. He made no vigorous effort to extricate or maintain himself. Pope continued his allowance; but being provoked by something in his conduct, he wrote to him, stating that he was 'determined to keep out of his suspicion by not being officious any longer, or obtruding into any of his concerns.' Savage felt the force of this rebuke from the steadiest and most illustrious of his friends. He was soon afterwards taken ill, and, unable to procure medical assistance, was found dead in bed. The kindly keeper of the prison buried the poor man at his own expense.

Savage was the author of two plays and a volume of miscellaneous poems. Of the latter, the principal piece is The Wanderer (1729), written with greater care than most of his things; it was the offspring of that happy period of his life when he lived with Lord Tyrconnel. Pope repeatedly read it and commended it. Amidst much puerile and tawdry description and many banalities, The Wanderer contains some impressive passages. There are obvious evidences that Savage studied The Seasons, of which part was published three years before. The Bastard (1728) is also a striking poem, and bears the impress of true feeling and vigorous thinking. One couplet is worthy of Pope. Of the bastard he says:

He lives to build, not boast, a generous race:
No tenth transmitter of a foolish face.

The concluding passage, in which he bewails the lot of his victim and of himself, has real pathos in it, though it ends in a bit of preposterous bombast, bathos, and bad taste.

From The Bastard.'

Is chance a guilt, that my disastrous heart,
For mischief never meant, must ever smart?
Can self-defence be sin? Ah, plead no more!
What though no purposed malice stained thee o'er,
Had heaven befriended thy unhappy side,
Thou hadst not been provoked-or thou hadst died.
Far be the guilt of home-shed blood from all
On whom, unsought, embroiling dangers fall!
Still the pale dead revives, and lives to me,
To me! through Pity's eye condemned to see.
Remembrance veils his rage, but swells his fate;
Grieved I forgive, and am grown cool too late.
Young and unthoughtful then; who knows, one day,
What ripening virtues might have made their way!
He might have lived till folly died in shame,
Till kindling wisdom felt a thirst for fame.
He might perhaps his country's friend have proved;
Both happy, generous, candid, and beloved;

He might have saved some worth, now doomed to fall, And I, perchance, in him have murdered all.

O fate of late repentance! always vain :
Thy remedies but lull undying pain.

Where shall my hope find rest? No mother's care
Shielded my infant innocence with prayer:

No father's guardian hand my youth maintained,
Called forth my virtues, or from vice restrained;
Is it not thine to snatch some powerful arm,
First to advance, then screen from future harm?
Am I returned from death to live in pain?
Or would imperial pity save in vain?
Distrust it not. What blame can mercy find,
Which gives at once a life, and rears a mind?

Mother, miscalled, farewell-of soul severe,
This sad reflection yet may force one tear :
All I was wretched by to you I owed;
Alone from strangers every comfort flowed!

Lost to the life you gave, your son no more,
And now adopted, who was doomed before,
New born, I may a nobler mother claim,
But dare not whisper her immortal name;
Supremely lovely and serenely great,
Majestic mother of a kneeling state;
Queen of a people's heart, who ne'er before
Agreed, yet now with one consent adore.
One contest yet remains in this desire,
Who most shall give applause where all admire.

There is a certain parallelism in the passage quoted below to the survey of the city, its sins, sorrows, and close-packed contrasts, in Dr Teufelsdröckh's garret-window in Weissnichtwo. 'Bold bad spectre' sounds like a modern joke, although the collocation of 'bold' and 'bad' is as old at least as Spenser ; and few even of Savage's poetical contemporaries would regard the epithet 'sapient bard' a compliment.

From 'The Wanderer.'

Yon mansion, made by beaming tapers gay,
Drowns the dim night, and counterfeits the day;
From 'lumined windows glancing on the eye,
Around, athwart, the frisking shadows fly.
There midnight riot spreads illusive joys,
And fortune, health, and dearer time destroys.

Soon death's dark agent to luxuriant ease

Shall wake sharp warnings in some fierce disease.

O man thy fabric's like a well-formed state;
Thy thoughts, first ranked, were sure designed the great;
Passions plebeians are, which factions raise ;
Wine, like poured oil, excites the raging blaze;
Then giddy anarchy's rude triumphs rise:
Then sovereign Reason from her empire flies:
That ruler once deposed, wisdom and wit
To noise and folly, place and power, submit ;
Like a frail bark thy weakened mind is tost,
Unsteered, unbalanced, till its wealth is lost.
The miser-spirit eyes the spendthrift heir,
And mourns, too late, effects of sordid care.
His treasures fly to cloy each fawning slave,
Yet grudge a stone to dignify his grave.
For this, low-thoughted craft his life employed;
For this, though wealthy, he no wealth enjoyed;
For this he griped the poor, and alms denied,
Unfriended lived, and unlamented died.

Yet smile, grieved shade! when that unprosperous store
Fast lessens, when gay hours return no more;
Smile at thy heir, beholding, in his fall,
Men once obliged, like him, ungrateful all!
Then thought-inspiring woe his heart shall mend,
And prove his only wise, unflattering friend.
Folly exhibits thus unmanly sport,

While plotting Mischief keeps reserved her court.
Lo! from that mount, in blasting sulphur broke,
Stream flames voluminous, enwrapped with smoke!
In chariot-shape they whirl up yonder tower,
Lean on its brow, and like destruction lower!
From the black depth a fiery legion springs;
Each bold bad spectre claps her sounding wings,
And straight beneath a summoned, traitorous band,
On horror bent, in dark convention stand:
From each fiend's mouth a ruddy vapour flows,
Glides through the roof, and o'er the council glows:
The villains, close beneath the infection pent,
Feel, all possessed, their rising galls ferment;
And burn with faction, hate, and vengeful ire,
For rapine, blood, and devastation dire!
But Justice marks their ways: she waves in air
The sword, high-threatening, like a comet's glare.
While here dark Villainy herself deceives,
There studious Honesty our view relieves;
A feeble taper from yon lonesome room,
Scattering thin rays, just glimmers through the gloom;
There sits the sapient bard in museful mood,
And glows impassioned for his country's good!
All the bright spirits of the just combined,
Inform, refine, and prompt his towering mind!
He takes the gifted quill from hands divine,
Around his temples rays refulgent shine.

Now rapt, now more than man, I see him climb
To view this speck of earth from worlds sublime.
I see him now o'er nature's works preside;
How clear the vision! and the view how wide!

John Dyer was born at Aberglasslyn, Carmarthenshire, about 1700; and on the death of his father, a solicitor, abandoned the profession of law. He then took to art, and rambled over South Wales and the adjoining parts of England, filling his mind with a love of nature and his portfolio with sketches. During his excursions he wrote Grongar Hill (1726), a poem remarkable in its period for simplicity, warm feeling, and fine description of natural scenery; it provokes comparison with Jonson's Penshurst and Denham's Cooper's Hill. Grongar Hill, on the river Towy in Cardigan, commands a view noble enough to inspire any poet. Dyer next made a tour to Italy, to study painting. On his return in 1740 he published anonymously another poem, The Ruins of Rome, in blank verse of this pattern:

Behold the pride of pomp,

The throne of nations fallen; obscured in dust;
Even yet majestical: the solemn scene
Elates the soul, while now the rising sun
Flames on the ruins in the purer air
Towering aloft, upon the glittering plain,
Like broken rocks, a vast circumference;
Rent palaces, crushed columns, rifted moles,
Fanes rolled on fanes, and tombs on buried tombs.

One short passage Johnson specially noted as
'conceived with the mind of a poet'-it is certainly
neither smooth (even if we agree to mispronounce
orison) nor in Johnson's own manner :
The pilgrim oft

At dead of night, 'mid his orison, hears,
Aghast, the voice of time, disparting towers,
Tumbling all precipitate down dashed,

Rattling around, loud thundering to the moon. Seeing that he had little chance of succeeding as an artist, Dyer entered the Church, and obtained successively the vicarage of Catthorpe in Leicestershire and the Lincolnshire livings of Belchford, Coningsby, and Kirkby-on-Bain. He published in 1757 his longest poetical work, The Fleece, devoted to the care of sheep, the labours of the loom.' How The subject was hardly a promising one. can a man write poetically, said Johnson, of serges and druggets? Yet Dyer did write a not unpleasing didactic poem on this theme; Akenside assisted him with some finishing touches, and Wordsworth praised the result in a sonnet. One critic, learning from Dodsley that the author of The Fleece was no longer young, threatened 'He will be buried in woollen!' He did die the year after the publication. (Samuel Dyer, translator and Johnson's friend, was a younger contemporary.) Dyer's poetical pictures are happy miniatures of nature, carefully drawn, prettily coloured, and grouped with the taste of an artist. His versification is musical, and his moralisings relevant enough. Byron thought the six lines towards the close of Grongar Hill beginning 'As yon summits soft and fair' had suggested Campbell's famous opening of the 'Pleasures of Hope.'

Grongar Hill.

Silent nymph, with curious eye,
Who, the purple evening, lie
On the mountain's lonely van,
Beyond the noise of busy man;
Painting fair the form of things,
While the yellow linnet sings;
Or the tuneful nightingale
Charms the forest with her tale;
Come, with all thy various hues,
Come, and aid thy sister muse;
Now, while Phoebus, riding high,
Gives lustre to the land and sky!
Grongar Hill invites my song,
Draw the landskip bright and strong;
Grongar, in whose mossy cells
Sweetly musing quiet dwells;
Grongar, in whose silent shade,
For the modest Muses made;
So oft I have, the evening still,
At the fountain of a rill,

Sat upon a flowery bed,

With my hand beneath my head;

While strayed my eyes o'er Towy's flood,

Over mead, and over wood,

From house to house, from hill to hill,

Till contemplation had her fill.