made, Johnny, who entertained some serious fears that it might be extended to him, edged behind his master, in order to be as much as possible out of harm's way. From these fears, however, he was soon relieved by the provost being called on to come forward and receive the honor alluded to at His Majesty's hands, while he himself was not named. In five minutes after, the provost of Starvieston was transformed into Sir David Clapperton, was graciously dismissed from the royal presence, and eventually returned in safety to Starvieston-to the great joy of his wife and his own no small gratification-a regular and indisputable knight.

JOHN MACKAY WILSON.

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES.

MATTHEW PRIOR.

came the intimate friend of Bolingbroke and Oxford, the chiefs of the Tory party. In 1712, at the conclusion of the Spanish Succession war, he acted under the English ambassador at the French court for the speedier arrangement of the peace between England and France, which the tardy conferences at Utrecht were slow in effecting. In 1713, on the return of the duke of Shrewsbury from France, Prior enjoyed till the following year the dignity of ambassador at Paris. The death of the queen leading to the fall of the Tory party, he was recalled, and shared in the hardships of impeachment and imprisonment with which their opponents. visited the friends of Bolingbroke and Oxford. On his release, in 1717, he was in distressed circumstances, but he realized a considerable sum by the publication of his collected works, and the gratitude of Lord Oxford's son purchased an estate for his

1664, at Winburn, in Dorsetshire, or, as some allege, in London. He furnishes no intelligence respecting his obscure origin. Shortly after leaving Westminster school, while residing with a relation in London, he attracted the notice of the earl of Dorset, who sent him to Cambridge. The publication, with Montague, of the "City Mouse and the Country Mouse," in ridicule of Dryden's "Hind and Panther," seems to have opened to the young poet the road of preferment. He obtained the secretaryship of the English embassy in the congress at The Hague in 1691. From this period till the end of the reign of Queen Anne he was employed by the government in high official situations. On the accession of the queen he had changed his politics; he be

tranquillity of old age after his busy life. He died in 1721, at Wimpole, a seat of the earl of Oxford. He left five hundred pounds to build him a monument in Westminster.

Prior is a lively and graceful writer, sometimes far from pure in sentiment, never rising to passion or sublimity, but moving in a round of elegant and sparkling, though common, thought. "His diction," says Johnson, "is more his own than that of any among the successors of Dryden." "His diligence has justly placed him amongst the most correct of the English poets. His poems consist of epistles, humorous tales, fables, epigrams, odes in honor of his patrons William and Anne, songs, etc. His longer works are

66

Henry and Emma," a frigid paraphrase of the beautiful old ballad "The Nut Brown

Maid;" "Solomon on the Vanity of the World," in heroic rhyme; and "Alma; or, The Progress of the Mind," a humorous philosophical piece of the style of Hudibras.

G

DANIEL SCRYMGEOUR.

REV. GEORGE CRABBE. EORGE CRABBE was born in the year 1754. He is a writer whose most important works belong to our own age, and whose later style is materially affected by the impulse he contributed to give to the poetical literature of his period. He was the son of a collector of salt duties in Aldborough, in Suffolk. The poet was educated as carefully as the extremely narrow circumstance of his father would permit. He attempted the profession of a surgeon in his native place, but his failure urged him to direct his energies to London and to literature. He reached the metropolis in all the proverbial poverty of a poet, and vainly offered his verses to the booksellers. Reduced to the utmost distress, he was fortunate enough to obtain the protection and countenance of Edmund Burke, and ultimately the gruff though substantial notice of Chancellor Thurlow. Entering into holy orders, Burke's interest obtained for him the office of chaplain to the duke of Rutland, at Belvoir Castle. From this period the poet's prospects brightened. The universal success of The Village probably induced Thurlow -who, like Johnson's patron, Chesterfield, helped his literary protegés when they were becoming independent of his aid-to confer on the poet two small livings in the vicinity of Belvoir. These were afterward exchanged for two more lucrative, and the poet spent the remainder of his life in affluence and

comfort; and few, from genuine Christianity, active benevolence and conscientious discharge of duty, ever deserved good fortune

more.

Crabbe was of a childlike simplicity in character, gentle, affectionate, retiring and reserved, but shrewd, active and minute in observation. The descriptive parts of his poetry exhibit the latter quality in a very remarkable degree, while he manages so to combine minuteness with general effect that his pictures have no confusion and impress the mind distinctly as wholes. He is the poet of the poor; their sufferings, crimes, merits, households, are the regions where Crabbe is most at home. He walks among the shadows of human nature and conducts us amid its deepest darkness, but the great lessons of his poetry are benign and cheerful, and its aim is to teach mankind to be the friend of man. In his style Crabbe produces the poetical effect by means of language of the most naked simplicity, almost utterly divested of the conventional ornaments of poetry. His chief works, which range in date from 1783 to 1818, are The Village, The Parish Register, The Borough, Tales in Verse, Tales of the Hall. He died in 1832.

DANIEL SCRYMGEOUR.

ROBERT HERRICK.

to gratify his personal taste, and to portraitpainting as a means of sustenance.

Fisher, after an uneventful life, died at Dedham on the 14th of February, 1863. In his later years he did not keep up with the splendid progress of art in the United States, but many of his earlier pieces were of his earlier pieces were greatly admired and have been widely known from their engravings. Among the most celebrated of these are two pictures. The first is "The Storm," a work full of life and motion. It is one of those terrible cyclones which recur so frequently in this counfrequently in this country. A traveller on horseback is caught in the forest while the wind is roaring and rending huge trees into fragments, and the lightning is filling the air with its zigzag darts. Both horse and rider show their great fright in the picture, and look as if beseeching the earth to give them shelter. The other picture, "The Freshet," is also a scene of devastation and destruction. The great floods are abroad upon the earth: it is a new diluvium, which aspires to rival that of Noah. Some who are saved crouch upon the bank and watch the struggles of those less fortunate. A horseman is dragging some from the fierce, rushing grasp of the flood, but one arm can do little, and so fear and humanity and hope are all swallowed up in the world of waters.

In 1832, Mr. Fisher painted a portrait of

1591, was descended from an ancient Leicestershire family which called itself "Eyrick." He was the son of a goldsmith in Cheapside, obtained the degree of M.A. at Cambridge in 1620, and became in 1629 vicar of Deanbourn, in Devonshire. He was ejected by the Puritan government in 1648, and, taking up his residence in London, assumed the lay habit and applied himself to literary pursuits. During the twenty years of his vicarship he had produced a large number of love-verses, songs and epigrams, specimens of which had been printed from time to time in London. In 1648 these were collected and published in a thick octavo, with a dedication to the prince of Wales. The contents were arranged under the two heads of Hesperides and Noble Numbers.

Herrick ranks as one of our chief lyricwriters. He had a marvellously musical ear, and some of his metres are among the most exquisite in our language. His joyous outbursts of song and love and his verses to flowers, tearful and tender, are masterpieces of expression. At the same time, it must be owned that a large portion of his poetry is mere doggerel. The volume appears to have been made up of every scrap he could gather of his writings, good and bad. He said of his own book,

"I write of hell; I sing-and ever shall-
Of heaven, and hope to have it after all."