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THE

LIFE OF JAGO,

BY MR, CHALMERS.

RICHARD JAGO, descended of a Cornish family, was the third son of the rev. Richard Jago, rector of Beaudesert', in Warwickshire, by Margaret, the daughter of William Parker, gent. of Henly in Arden; and was born October 1, 1715. He received his classical education under the rev. Mr. Crumpton, an excellent schoolmaster, at Solihull, in the same county, but one whose severity our poet has thought proper to record in his Edge-Hill.

Hail, Solihull! respectful I salute

Thy walls: more awful once, when, from the sweets

Of festive freedom, and domestic ease,

With throbbing heart, to the stern discipline

Of pedagogue morose I sad return'd,

At this school he formed an intimacy, which death only dissolved, with the poet Shenstone, whose letters to him have since been published. In their early days they probably exchanged their juvenile verses, and afterwards communicated to each other their more serious studies and pursuits. Somervile also appears to have encouraged our author's first attempts, which were made at a yet earlier period, when under his father's humble roof.

O Beaudesert!.........

Haunt of my youthful steps! where I was wont
To range, chanting my rude notes to the wind,
While Somervile disdain'd not to regard

With candid ear, and regulate the strain.

From school he was entered as a servitor of University College, Oxford, where Shenstone, then a commoner of Pembroke, the late rev. Richard Greaves, Mr. Whistler, and others who appear among Shenstone's correspondents, showed him every respect, notwithstanding the inferiority of his rank. A young man of whatever merit, who was servitor, was usually visited, if visited at all, with secresy; but this prejudice is now so

'Or Beldesert, a living conferred upon him by Lloyd, bishop of Worcester, in 1709. C.

much abolished, that the same circumspection is not thought necessary. He took his master's degree July 9, 1738, having entered into the church the year before, and served the curacy of Snitterfield, near Stratford upon Avon. His father died in 1740. In 1744, or, according to Shenstone's Letters, in 1743, he married Dorothea Susanna Fancourt, daughter of the rev. Fancourt of Kilmcote in Leicestershire, a young lady

whom he had known from her childhood'.

For several years after his marriage, he resided at Harbury, to which living he was presented in 1746. Lord Willoughby de Broke gave him also the living of Chesterton, at a small distance from Harbury. These two benefices together did not produce more than one hundred pounds a year. In 1751 he had the misfortune to lose his wife, who appears to have been an amiable and accomplished woman, and was left with the care of seven very young children.

In 1754 lord Clare, the late earl Nugent, procured for him from Dr. Madox, bishop of Worcester, the vicarage of Snitterfield, worth about 1407. In 1759, he married a second wife, Margaret, daughter of James Underwood, esq. of Rudgely, in Staffordshire, who survived him, but by whom he had no children.

Some of his smaller pieces of poetry had before this time been inserted in Dodsley's Collection, but he put in for higher claims, by publishing the poem of Edge-Hill, in the year 1767; and in 1768 his more popular fable of Labour and Genius. In 1771, he was presented by his kind patron, lord Willoughby de Broke, to the living of Kilmcote, formerly held by his first wife's father, which being worth near 3007. a year, enabled him to maintain his family with ease and comfort, especially as he retained Snitterfield, and resigned only the trifling living of Harbury. During the latter part of his life, when the infirmities of age made their approach, he resided almost entirely at Snitterfield, where he amused himself with improving the vicarage house, and ornamenting his grounds, a taste he probably caught from Shenstone, but which he contrived to indulge at a much less expense.

He died after a short illness, May 8, 1781, aged sixty-five years, and was buried, according to his desire, in a vault which he had made for his family in the church at Snitterfield. Three of his daughters, by the first wife, survived him.

His personal character is thus given by his biographer-" Mr. Jago, in his person, was about the middle stature. In his manner, like most people of sensibility, he appeared reserved among strangers: amongst his friends he was free and easy: and his conversation sprightly and entertaining. In domestic life, he was the affectionate husband, the tender parent, the kind master, the hospitable neighbour, and sincere friend; and both by his doctrine and example, a faithful and worthy minister of the parish over which he presided."

In 1784, his poems, as corrected, improved, and enlarged by the author a short time before his death, with some additional pieces, were published by his friend, the late Jobn Scott Hylton, esq. of Lapall-House near Hales Owen, who was likewise the correspondent of Shenstone. To this publication Mr. Hylton prefixed some account of Jago's life, which, however meagre and unsatisfactory, is all that can now be procured. A very few particulars, indeed, but perhaps of no great importance, have been gleaned from Shenstone's Letters, &c. His life, it may be presumed, was that of a man not dependent on fame, and whose productions formed the amusement of his leisure hours. It would

Shenstone's Letters. Letter xlix. C.

appear by one of Shenstone's letters that he occasionally used his pencil as well as his pen.

His rank as a poet cannot be thought very high. Yet we have few more beautiful specimens of tenderness and sensibility than in his Elegies on the Blackbirds and Goldfinches. The fable of Labour and Genius has a pleasing mixture of elegance and humour.

The Elegy, on the Blackbirds appeared first in The Adventurer, to the editor of which it was sent by Gilbert West, and published as his. The author claimed it, however, when added to Dodsley's collection, a circumstance which Dr. Johnson has noted, but not with sufficient precision, in his life of West. Even when Mr. Jago put his name to it, a manager of the Bath theatre endeavoured to make it pass for his own, and with great effrontery asserted that Jago was a fictitious name adopted from the play of Othello.

His longest poem, Edge-Hill, has some passages not destitute of animation, but it is so topographically exact, that to enjoy it the reader must have a map constantly before him; and perhaps with that aid, if he is not conversant with the various scenery, the effect will be languor and indifference. Even his friend Shenstone seems to speak coldly of it. "You must by no means lay aside the thoughts of perfecting Edge-hill, at your leisure. It is possible, that in order to keep clear of flattery, I have said less in its favour than I really ought-but I never considered it otherwise than as a poem which it was very adviseable for you to complete and finish." Shenstone did not live to see it published in its finished state, and whatever his objections, probably bestowed the warmest praise on the tender and simple episode of Lydia and the Blind Lover, taken from a story in The Tatler.

His other pieces requires no distinct notice.-Shenstone, in a letter dated 1759, mentions an Essay on Electricity written by Jago, but whether published, I have not been able to discover. In 1755, he printed a very sensible and seasonable discourse, entitled The Causes of Impenitence considered, preached at Harbury, May 4, 1755, on occasion of a conversation said to have passed between one of the inhabitants and an apparition, in the churchyard belonging to that place. From this incident, which he does not consider it as his business either to confirm or disprove, he takes an opportunity to enforce the necessity of repentance. Another sermon, 1763, is attributed to him in Cooke's Historical Register, of which I can find no mention any where else.

HINTS

FOR A

PREFA CЕ,

FOR ANY AUTHOR, AND FOR ANY BOOK.

THE following sheets were fairly transcribed, the title-page was adjusted, and every thing, as the writer thought, in readiness for the press, when, upon casting his eyes over them for the last time, with more than usual attention, something seemed wanting, which, after a short pause, he perceived to be the Preface. Now it is fit the reader should know, as an apology for this seeming inattention, that he had formerly rejected this article under a notion of its being superfluous, and uninteresting to the reader; but now, when matters were come to a crisis, and it was almost too late, he changed his mind, and thought a preface as essential to the figure of a book, as a portico is to that of a building. Not that the author would insinuate by this comparison, that his paper edifice was entitled to any thing superb and pompous of this sort; but only that it wanted something plain and decent, between the beggarly style of Quarles, or Ogilby, and the magnificence of the profuse Dryden. Far be from him, by calling this small appendage to his work by the name of a portico, or an antechamber, or a vestibule, or the like, to raise the reader's expectations, or to encourage any ideas but those of the most simple kind, as introductory to his subsequent entertainment: neither would he, like some undertakers in literary architecture, bestow as much expense on the entrance, as, prudently managed, might furnish the lofty town apartments, or pastoral villa of a modern poet. On the contrary, he reserves all his finery of carving and gilding, as well as his pictures and cabinets, for their proper places within.

But for the further illustration of his meaning, he chooses to have recourse to allusions more nearly related to his subject, such as the prelude to a song, or the prologue to a play, there being evidently a great affinity between rhyming and fiddling, writing verses and playing the fool.

Another consideration, which greatly influenced the author in this point, was the respect which he bears to the public. For conceiving himself now in the very act of making his appearance before every circle of the polite and learned world, he was struck with awe, and felt as if he had been guilty of some indecorum, like a person abruptly breaking into good company with his hat on, or without making a bow. For though by his situation in life he is happily relieved from any personal embarrassment of this kind, yet he considered his book as his proxy, and he would by no means have his proxy guilty of such an impropriety as to keep his hat on before all the learned men of Europe,, or to omit making his bow upon being admitted to an audience, or presented in the drawing-room. Great is the force of this little article of gesticulation, from the lowest class of orators in the street, to those in the highest departments in life; insomuch that it has been thought a prudent, attentive, and skilful manager, either on the stage, or at the bar, as well as the bowing dean in his walk, may acquire as much success amongst polite and well-bred people, and particularly the ladies, who are the best judges, by the magic of his bow, as by any other part of his action or oratory.

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