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stance of vanity than that to which man is liable, to be deluded from the cradle to the grave with fleeting shadows of happiness. His pleasures, and those not considerable neither, die in the possession, and fresh enjoyments do not rise fast enough to fill up half his life with satisfaction. When I see persons sick of themselves any longer than they are called away by something that is of force to chain down the present thought: when I see them hurry from country to town, and then from the town back again into the country, continually shifting postures, and placing life in all the different lights they can think of: "Surely," say I to myself, "life is vain, and the man beyond expression stupid or prejudiced, who from the vanity of life cannot gather that he is designed for immortality."

Spectator, No. 626.

THOMAS TICKELL.

1686-1740.

THOMAS TICKELL, the bosom friend of Addison, was born in Bridekirk, near Carlisle, in Cumberland, in 1686. At the usual age he entered Oxford University, where he devoted himself to his studies with great industry. He was early introduced to Addison, and gained his friendship, which was never for a moment violated. Addison, it is said, had the affection of a father for Tickell, who, in return, loved and venerated that great man with a warmth of zeal which no filial affection could exceed. In consequence of this connection he made several contributions to the Spectator and Guardian, though his papers cannot all now be identified. While negotiations were on foot that preceded the peace of Utrecht,' he published his poem entitled "The Prospect of Peace." Though it has not much merit as a poem, it presents some noble thoughts on the general subject of peace and the duty of nations to cultivate it among each other, which, if practised, would make the world much better and happier. In 1717, when Addison was made secretary of state, he advanced his friend Tickell to the post of under-secretary, a situation which he filled with equal advantage to himself and his patron.

The decease of Addison, 1719, was severely felt and most sincerely la mented by Tickell. To the collected works of his great patron, who had on his death-bed left him the charge of publishing them, he prefixed an "Elegy," in memory of their author, "to whose beauty and pathos," says Dr. Drake, "no language can do justice." It is this, indeed, on which his fame as a writer chiefly rests; though his verses on the "Cato" of Addison, and his ballad of "Colin and Lucy," have much merit. His promotion and prosperity ceased not with the death of Addison. In 1725 he was created secretary to the lords justices of Ireland, a situation of dignity and profit, and he held it till his death, which took place on the 23d of April, 1740.

ON THE DEATH OF ADDISON."

If, dumb too long, the drooping Muse hath stay'd,
And left her debt to Addison unpaid,

1 The treaty of Utrecht was signed in 1713.

2 This was addressed to the Earl of Warwick, Addison's step-sor.

Blame not her silence, Warwick, but bemoan,
And judge, oh! judge my bosom by your own.
What mourner ever felt poetic fires!

Slow comes the verse that real woe inspires:
Grief unaffected suits but ill with art,
Or flowing numbers with a bleeding heart.
Can I forget the dismal night that gave
My soul's best part for ever to the grave!
How silent did his old companions tread,
By midnight lamps, the mansions of the dead,
Through breathing statues, then unheeded things,
Through rows of warriors, and through walks of kings!
What awe did the slow, solemn knell inspire;
The pealing organ, and the pausing choir;
The duties by the lawn-robed prelate paid;
And the last words, that dust to dust convey'd!
While speechless o'er thy closing grave we bend,
Accept these tears, thou dear, departed friend.
Oh, gone for ever! take this long adieu;
And sleep in peace, next thy loved Montague.
To strew fresh laurels, let the task be mine,
A frequent pilgrim, at thy sacred shrine;
Mine with true sighs thy absence to bemoan
And grave with faithful epitaphs thy stone.
If e'er from me thy loved memorial part,
May shame afflict this alienated heart;
Of thee forgetful, if I form a song,
My lyre be broken, and untuned my tongue;
My grief be doubled from thy image free,
And mirth a torment, unchastised by thee.
Oft let me range the gloomy aisles alone,
Sad luxury! to vulgar minds unknown;
Along the walls where speaking marbles show
What worthies form the hallow'd mould below;
Proud names, who once the reins of empire held;
In arms who triumph'd, or in arts excell'd;
Chiefs, graced with scars, and prodigal of blood;
Stern patriots, who for sacred freedom stood;
Just men, by whom impartial laws were given;
And saints who taught, and led, the way to heaven;
Ne'er to these chambers, where the mighty rest,
Since their foundation, came a nobler guest;
Nor e'er was to the bowers of bliss convey'd
A fairer spirit or more welcome shade.

In what new region to the just assign'd,

What new employments please th unbodied mind:
A winged Virtue, through th' ethereal sky,
From world to world unwearied does he fly?
Or curious trace the long, laborious maze

Of heaven's decrees, where wondering angels gaze?
Does he delight to hear bold seraphs tell
How Michael battled, and the dragon fell;
Or, mix'd with milder cherubim, to glow
In hymns of love, not ill essay'd below?
Or dost thou warn poor mortals left behind,
A task well-suited to thy gentle mind?

Oh! if sometimes thy spotless form descend;
To me, thy aid, thou guardian genius, lend!
When rage misguides me, or when fear alarms,
When pain distresses, or when pleasure charms,
In silent whisperings purer thoughts impart,
And turn from ill a frail and feeble heart;
Lead through the paths thy virtue trod before,
Till bliss shall join, nor death can part us more.
That awful form, which, so the heavens decree,
Must still be loved and still deplored by me,

In nightly visions seldom fails to rise,

Or, roused by fancy, meets my waking eyes,

If business calls, or crowded courts invite,

Th' unblemish'd statesman seems to strike my sight;
If in the stage I seek to sooth my care,

I meet his soul which breathes in Cato' there;

If pensive to the rural shades I rove,

His shape o'ertakes me in the lonely grove;

'Twas there of just and good he reason'd strong,
Clear'd some great truth, or raised some serious song
There patient show'd us the wise course to steer,

A candid censor, and a friend severe;

There taught us how to live; and (oh! too high
The price for knowledge,) taught us how to die.

RICHARD BENTLEY. 1662-1742

RICHARD BENTLEY, one of the most learned men, and perhaps me greatest classical scholar England has produced, was the son of a farmer near Wakefield, in Yorkshire, and was born in 1662. He was educated at Cambridge, and became chaplain to Stillingfleet, Bishop of Worcester. In 1692 he was appointed to the lectureship instituted by Boyle, for the defence of the Christian religion, and he delivered a series of very able discourses against atheism, which were highly popular. His next public appearance was in the famous controversy with the Hon. Charles Boyle, Earl of Orrery, relative to the genuineness of the Greek Epistles of Phalarus. Most of the wits and scholars of that period joined with Boyle against Bentley; but he triumphantly established the position that the epistles are spurious. Though professedly a controversial work, it embodies a mass of accurate information relative to historical facts, antiquities, chronology, and philology, such as, we may safely say, has rarely, if ever, been collected in the same space; and shows how thoroughly digested and familiar was the vast stock of reading which Bentley possessed. At the end of the "Dissertation on Phalarus," Bentley denies the genuineness of the "Fables" which bear Æsop's name.

It would be impossible, in this mere sketch of his life,3 to enumerate all his subsequent works. They were mostly of a classical character, and from the great learning and research which they displayed, established his reputation, not in England only, but on the continent, as the first scholar of his age. In

1 Addison's tragedy of "Cato."

? See this controversy spoken of on page 342.

3 Read-Dr. Monk's Life of Bentley, a most interesting as well as learned piece of biography: also a life by Hartley Coleridge, in his "Lives of Distinguished Northerns.

one labor, however, he signally failed: it was in his edition of the "Paradise Lost." Assuming that, from the blindness of Milton, and, consequently, from the necessity of his dictating his thoughts to others, many verbal errors must have been made in transcribing, he undertook to make " emendations" without number, in that immortal work. It proved a most signal failure, and showed that, however learned he was in classic lore, he was destitute of true poetic taste and feeling, and could not enter into the lofty conceptions and sublime flights of the great English bard. One of his "emendations" will suffice here. The sublime line,

Bentley renders,

"No light, but rather darkness visible,"

"No light, but rather a transpicuous gloom;"

thus verifying his favorite maxim, that no man was ever written out of his reputation except by himself.

After a life of great literary labor, and enjoying some of the highest honors in the church, this distinguished scholar died on the 14th of July, 1742.

AUTHORITY OF REASON IN RELIGION.

We profess ourselves as much concerned, and as truly as [the deists] themselves are, for the use and authority of reason in controversies of faith. We look upon right reason as the native lamp of the soul, placed and kindled there by our Creator, to conduct us in the whole course of our judgments and actions. True reason, like its divine Author, never is itself deceived, nor ever de

ceives any man. Even revelation itself is not shy nor unwilling to ascribe its own first credit and fundamental authority to the test and testimony of reason. Sound reason is the touchstone to distinguish that pure and genuine gold from baser metals; revelation truly divine, from imposture and enthusiasm: so that the Christian religion is so far from declining or fearing the strictest trials of reason, that it everywhere appeals to it; is defended and supported by it; and, indeed, cannot continue, in the apostle's description, "pure and undefiled" without it. It is the benefit of reason alone, under the Providence and Spirit of God, that we ourselves are at this day a reformed orthodox church: that we departed from the errors of popery, and that we knew, too, where to stop; neither running into the extravagances of fanaticism, nor sliding into the indifferency of libertinism. Whatsoever, therefore, is inconsistent with natural reason, can never be justly imposed as an article of faith. That the same body is in many places at once; that plain bread is not bread; such things, though they be said with never so much pomp and claim to infallibility, we have still greater authority to reject them, as being contrary to common sense and our natural faculties; as subverting the foundations of all faith, even the grounds of their own credit, and all the principles of civil life.

So far are we from contending with our adversaries about the dignity and authority of reason; but then we differ with them

about the exercise of it, and the extent of its province. For the deists there stop, and set bounds to their faith, where reason, their only guide, does not lead the way further, and walk along before them. We, on the contrary, as Moses was shown by divine power a true sight of the promised land, though himself could not pass over to it, so we think reason may receive from revelation some further discoveries and new prospects of things, and be fully convinced of the reality of them; though itself cannot pass on, nor travel those regions; cannot penetrate the fund of those truths, nor advance to the utmost bounds of them. For there is certainly a wide difference between what is contrary to reason, and what is superior to it and out of its reach.

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THIS ardent lover and eulogist of field-sports, was born in 1692, and was educated at Oxford. After leaving the university, he settled upon his patrimonial estate in Warwickshire, and occupied his time partly with the duties of a justice of the peace, partly with the active pleasures of the sportsman, and partly with the cultivation of his poetical talents. Hospitable, convivial, and careless of economy, he became involved in debt, and in the latter part of his life, according to the account of his friend Shenstone, the poet, "drank himself into pains of the body, in order to get rid of the pains of the mind." Thus, most lamentably, was his misery completed, and his end accelerated; and he died in 1742, in the fiftieth year of his age.

Somerville is best known by his poem, entitled the "Chase," which still has considerable popularity. It is written in blank verse, tolerably harmonious, and his descriptions, always accurate, from his own practical knowledge of his subject, are frequently vivid and beautiful. He has also written another rural poem, called " Field-Sports," which describes the amusement of hawking; "Hobinol, or Rural Games," a mock heroic; and many pieces of a miscellaneous character. Of the latter, the lines to Addison show much good feeling, and just appreciation of the character of that great and good man.

BEGINNING OF A FOX-HUNT.

Ere yet the morning peep,

Or stars retire from the first blush of day,

With thy far-echoing voice alarm thy pack,

And rouse thy bold compeers. Then to the copse
Thick with entangling grass, or prickly furze,

With silence lead thy many-color'd hounds,

In all their beauty's pride. See! how they range
Dispersed, how busily this way, and that,
They cross, examining with curious nose
Each likely haunt. Hark! on the drag I hear
Their doubtful notes, preluding to a cry
More nobly full, and swell'd with every mouth.
As straggling armies, at the trumpet's voice,

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