plained of the animal economy is obscured by no pedantic jargon, but made distinct, and, to a certain degree, picturesque to the conception. We need not indeed be reminded how small a portion of science can be communicated in poetry; but the practical maxims of science, which the Muse has stamped with imagery and attuned to harmony, have so far an advantage over those which are delivered in prose, that they become more agreeable and permanent acquisitions of the memory. If the didactic path of his poetry is, from its nature, rather level, he rises above it, on several occasions, with a considerable strength of poetical feeling. Thus, in recommending the vicinity of woods around a dwelling, that may shelter us from the winds, whilst it enables us to hear their music, he introduces the following pleasing lines:

"Oh! when the growling winds contend, and all
The sounding forest fluctuates in the storm;
To sink in warm repose, and hear the din
Howl o'er the steady battlements, delights
Above the luxury of vulgar sleep."

In treating of diet he seems to have felt the full difficulty of an humble subject, and to have sought to relieve his precepts and physiological descriptions, with all the wealth of allusion and imagery which his fancy could introduce. The appearance of a forced effort is not wholly avoided, even where he aims at superior strains, in order to garnish the meaner topics, as when he solemnly addresses the Naiads of all the rivers in the world, in rehearsing the praises of a cup of water. But he closes the book in a strain of genuine dignity. After contemplating the effects of Time on the human body, his view of its influence dilates, with easy and majestic extension, to the universal structure of nature; and he rises from great to greater objects with a climax of sublimity.

"What does not fade? the tower that long had stood
The crush of thunder and the warring winds,
Shook by the slow, but sure destroyer. Time,
Now hangs in doubtful ruins o'er its base.
And flinty pyramids, and walls of brass,

Descend: the Babylonian spires are sunk;
Achaia, Rome, and Egypt, moulder down.
Time shakes the stable tyranny of thrones,
And tottering empires crush by their own weight.
This huge rotundity we tread grows old;

And all those worlds that roll around the sun,
The sun himself shall die."

He may, in some points, be compared advan tageously with the best blank verse writers of the age; and he will be found free from their most striking defects. He has not the ambition of Akenside, nor the verbosity of Thomson. On the other hand, shall we say that he is equal in genius to either of those poets? Certainly, his originality is nothing like Thomson's; and the rapture of his heroic sentiments is unequal to that of the author of the "Pleasures of Imagination." For, in spite of the too frequently false pomp of Akenside, we still feel, that he has a devoted moral impulse, not to be mistaken for the cant of morality, a zeal in the worship of Virtue, which places her image in a high and hallowed light. Neither has his versification the nervous harmony of Akenside's, for his habit of pausing almost uniformly at the close of the line, gives an air of formality to his numbers. His vein has less mixture than Thomson's; but its ore is not so fine. Sometimes we find him trying his strength with that author, in the same walk of description, where, though correct and concise, he falls beneath the poet of "The Seasons" in rich and graphic observation. He also contributed to "The Castle of Indolence" some stanzas, describing the diseases arising from sloth, which form rather an useful back-ground to the luxuriant picture of the Castle, than a prominent part of its enchantment.*

On the whole, he is likely to be remembered as a poet of judicious thoughts and correct expression; and, as far as the rarely successful application of verse to subjects of science can be admired, an additional merit must be ascribed to the hand which has reared poetical flowers on the dry and difficult ground of philosophy.

FROM "THE ART OF PRESERVING HEALTH." BOOK I. ENTITLED "AIR."

Opening of the Poem in an Invocation to Hygeia. DAUGHTER of Pron, queen of every joy, Hygeia; whose indulgent smile sustains The various race luxuriant nature pours, And on th' immortal essences bestows Immortal youth; auspicious, O descend! Thou cheerful guardian of the rolling year, Whether thou wanton'st on the western gale, Or shakest the rigid pinions of the north, Diffusest life and vigour through the tracts Of air, through earth, and ocean's deep domain. When through the blue serenity of heaven Thy power approaches, all the wasteful host Of Pain and Sickness, squalid and deform'd, Confounded sink into the loathsome gloom,

Where in deep Erebus involved, the Fiends
Grow more profane. Whatever shapes of death,
Shook from the hideous chambers of the globe,
Swarm through the shuddering air: whatever
plagues

Or meagre famine breeds, or with slow wings
Rise from the putrid wat'ry element,

The damp waste forest, motionless and rank,
That smothers earth, and all the breathless winds,
Or the vile carnage of th' inhuman field;
Whatever baneful breathes the rotten south;
Whatever ills th' extremes or sudden change
Of cold and hot, or moist and dry produce;
They fly thy pure effulgence: they and all
The secret poisons of avenging Heaven,
And all the pale tribes halting in the train

*See ante, p. 450.

Of Vice and heedless Pleasure: or if aught
The comet's glare amid the burning sky,
Mournful eclipse, or planets ill-combined,
Portend disastrous to the vital world;
Thy salutary power averts their rage.
Averts the general bane: and but for thee
Nature would sicken, nature soon would die.

FROM THE SAME.

Choice of a rural situation, and allegorical picture of the Quartan Ague.

YE who amid this feverish world would wear
A body free of pain, of cares a mind;
Fly the rank city, shun its turbid air;
Breathe not the chaos of eternal smoke
And volatile corruption, from the dead,
The dying, sickning, and the living world
Exhaled, to sully heaven's transparent dome
With dim mortality. It is not air

That from a thousand lungs reeks back to thine,
Sated with exhalations rank and fell,
The spoil of dunghills, and the putrid thaw
Of nature; when from shape and texture she
Relapses into fighting elements:

It is not air, but floats a nauseous mass
Of all obscene, corrupt offensive things.
Much moisture hurts; but here a sordid bath,
With oily rancour fraught, relaxes more
The solid frame than simple moisture can.
Besides, immured in many a sullen bay
That never felt the freshness of the breeze,
This slumb'ring deep remains, and ranker grows
With sickly rest: and (though the lungs abhor
To drink the dun fuliginous abyss)
Did not the acid vigour of the mine,
Roll'd from so many thundering chimneys, tame
The putrid steams that overswarm the sky;
This caustic venom would perhaps corrode
Those tender cells that draw the vital air,
In vain with all the unctuous rills bedew'd;
Or by the drunken venous tubes, that yawn
In countless pores o'er all the pervious skin,
Imbibed, would poison the balsamic blood,
And rouse the heart to every fever's rage.

While yet you breathe, away; the rural wilds Invite ; the mountains call you, and the vales; The woods, the streams, and each ambrosial breeze That fans the ever-undulating sky;

A kindly sky! whose fost'ring power regales
Man, beast, and all the vegetable reign.

Find them some woodland scene where nature smiles

Benign, where all her honest children thrive.
To us there wants not many a happy seat!
Look round the smiling land, such numbers rise
We hardly fix, bewilder'd in our choice.
See where enthroned in adamantine state,
Proud of her bards, imperial Windsor sits;
Where choose thy seat in some aspiring grove
Fast by the slowly-winding Thames; or where
Broader she laves fair Richmond's green retreats,
(Richmond that sees an hundred villas rise
Rural or gay.) Oh! from the summer's rage
Oh! wrap me in the friendly gloom that hides

Umbrageous Ham!-But if the busy town
Attract thee still to toil for power or gold,
Sweetly thou may'st thy vacant hours possess
In Hampstead, courted by the western wind;
Or Greenwich, waving o'er the winding flood;
Or lose the world amid the sylvan wilds
Of Dulwich, yet by barbarous arts unspoil'd.
Green rise the Kentish hills in cheerful air;
But on the marshy plains that Lincoln spreads
Build not, nor rest too long thy wandering feet.
For on a rustic throne of dewy turf,
With baneful fogs her aching temples bound,
Quartana there presides; a meagre fiend
Begot by Eurus, when his brutal force
Compress'd the slothful Naiad of the Fens.
From such a mixture sprung, this fitful pest
With fev'rish blasts subdues the sick'ning land:
Cold tremors come, with mighty love of rest,
Convulsive yawnings, lassitude, and pains
That sting the burden'd brows, fatigue the loins,
And rack the joints, and every torpid limb;
Then parting heat succeeds, till copious sweats
O'erflow: a short relief from former ills.
Beneath repeated shocks the wretches pine;
The vigour sinks, the habit melts away:
The cheerful, pure, and animated bloom
Dies from the face, with squalid atrophy
Devour'd in sallow melancholy clad.
And oft the sorceress, in her sated wrath,
Resigns them to the furies of her train :
The bloated Hydrops, and the yellow fiend
Tinged with her own accumulated gall.

FROM THE SAME.

Recommendation of a High Situation on the Sea-coast.
MEANTIME, the moist malignity to shun
Of burthen'd skies; mark where the dry cham-
paign

Swells into cheerful hills: where marjoram
And thyme, the love of bees, perfume the air;
And where the cynorrhodon with the rose
For fragrance vies; for in the thirsty soil
Most fragrant breathe the aromatic tribes.
There bid thy roofs high on the basking steep
Ascend, there light thy hospitable fires.
And let them see the winter morn arise,
The summer evening blushing in the west:
While with umbrageous oaks the ridge behind
O'erhung, defends you from the blust'ring north,
And bleak affliction of the peevish east.

Oh! when the growling winds contend, and all
The sounding forest fluctuates in the storm;
To sink in warm repose, and hear the din
Howl o'er the steady battlements, delights
Above the luxury of vulgar sleep.

The murmuring rivulet, and the hoarser strain
Of waters rushing o'er the slippery rocks,
Will nightly lull you to ambrosial rest.
To please the fancy is no trifling good,
Where health is studied; for whatever moves
The mind with calm delight, promotes the just
And natural movements of th' harmonious frame.
Besides, the sportive brook for ever shakes

The trembling air; that floats from hill to hill,
From vale to mountain, with insessant change
Of purest element, refreshing still
Your airy seat, and uninfected gods.

Chiefly for this I praise the man who builds
High on the breezy ridge, whose lofty sides
Th' ethereal deep with endless billows chafes,
His purer mansion nor contagious years
Shall reach, nor deadly putrid airs annoy.

FROM BOOK II. ENTITLED "DIET.”
Address to the Naiads.

Now come, ye Naiads, to the fountains lead;
Now let me wander through your gelid reign.
I burn to view th' enthusiastic wilds
By mortal else untrod. I hear the din
Of waters thund'ring o'er the ruin'd cliffs.
With holy reverence I approach the rocks [song.
Whence glide the streams renown'd in ancient
Here from the desert down the rumbling steep
First springs the Nile; here bursts the sounding
In angry waves; Euphrates hence devolves [Po
A mighty flood to water half the east;
And there in gothic solitude reclined,
The cheerless Tanaïs pours his hoary urn.
What solemn twilight! what stupendous shades
Enwrap these infant floods! through every nerve
A sacred horror thrills, a pleasing fear
Glides o'er my frame. The forest deepens round;
And more gigantic still th' impending trees
Stretch their extravagant arms athwart the gloom.
Are these the confines of some fairy world?

A land of genii? Say, beyond these wilds
What unknown nations? If indeed beyond
Aught habitable lies. And whither leads,
To what strange regions, or of bliss or pain,
That subterraneous way? Propitious maids
Conduct me, while with fearful steps I tread
This trembling ground. The task remains to sing
Your gifts, (so Pæon, so the powers of health
Command,) to praise your crystal element:
The chief ingredient in heaven's various works
Whose flexile genius sparkles in the gem,
Grows firm in oak, and fugitive in wine;
The vehicle, the source, of nutriment
And life, to all that vegetate or live.

O comfortable streams! with eager lips
And trembling hand the languid thirsty quaff
New life in you; fresh vigour fills their veins.
No warmer cups the rural ages knew;
None warmer sought the sires of human kind.
Happy in temperate peace! their equal days
Felt not th' alternate fits of feverish mirth,
And sick dejection. Still serene and pleased,
They knew no pains but what the tender soul
With pleasure yields to, and would ne'er forget.
Blest with divine immunity from ails,
Long centuries they lived; their only fate
Was ripe old age, and rather sleep than death.
Oh! could those worthies from the world of gods
Return to visit their degenerate sons,
How would they scorn the joys of modern time,
With all our art and toil improved to pain!
Too happy they! but wealth brought luxury,
And luxury on sloth begot disease.

Nor shall the fiend, fell Famine, dare
Thy wiry tenement assail;
These, these shall be my constant care,
The limpid fount, and temperate meal;
And when the blooming Spring
In chequer'd livery robes the fields,
The fairest flow'rets Nature yields
To thee officious will I bring;

A garland rich thy dwelling shall entwine, And Flora's freshest gifts, thrice happy bird, be thine?

From dear Oblivion's gloomy cave

The powerful Muse shall wrest thy name, And bid thee live beyond the graveThis meed she knows thy merits claim; She knows thy liberal heart

Is ever ready to dispense

The tide of bland benevolence,

And melody's soft aid impart;

Is ready still to prompt the magic lay, Which hushes all our griefs, and charms our pains away.

Erewhile when, brooding o'er my soul,

Frown'd the black demons of despair,
Did not thy voice that power control,
And oft suppress the rising tear?
If Fortune should be kind,
If e'er with affluence I'm blest,
I'll often seek some friend distrest,

And when the weeping wretch I find,
Then, tuneful moralist, I'll copy thee,
And solace all his woes with social sympathy.

JOHN LANGHORNE was the son of a beneficed clergyman in Lincolnshire. He was born at Kirkby Steven, in Westmoreland. His father dying when he was only four years old, the charge of giving him his earliest instruction devolved upon his mother, and she fulfilled the task with so much tenderness and care, as to leave an indelible impression of gratitude upon his memory. He recorded the virtues of this parent on her tomb, as well as in an affectionate monody. Having finished his classical education at the school of Appleby, in his eighteenth year, he engaged himself as a private tutor in a family near Rippon. His next employment was that of assistant to the free-school of Wakefield. While in that situation he took deacon's orders; and, though he was still very young, gave indications of popular attraction as a preacher. He soon afterward went as a preceptor into the family of Mr. Cracroft, of Hackthorn, where he remained for a couple of years, and during that time entered his name at Clare-hall, Cambridge, though he never resided at his college, and consequently never obtained any degree. He had at Hackthorn a numerous charge of pupils, and as he has not been accused of neglecting them, his time must have been pretty well occupied in tuition; but he found leisure enough to write and publish a great many pieces of verse, and to devote so much of his attention to a fair daughter of the family, Miss Anne Cracroft, as to obtain the young lady's partiality, and ultimately her hand. He had given her some instructions in the Italian, and probably trusting that she was sufficiently a convert to the sentiment of that language, which pronounces that "all time is lost which is not spent in love," he proposed immediate marriage to her. She had the prudence, however, though secretly attached to him, to give him a firm refusal for the present; and our poet, struck with

despondency at the disappointment, felt it necessary to quit the scene and accepted of a curacy in the parish of Dagenham. The cares of love, it appeared, had no bad effect on his diligence as an author. He allayed his despair by an apposite ode to Hope; and continued to pour out numerous productions in verse and prose, with that florid facility which always distinguished his pen. Among these, his "Letters of Theodosius and Constantia" made him, perhaps, best known as a prose writer. His "Letters on Religious Retirement" were dedicated to Bishop Warburton, who returned him a most encouraging letter on his just sentiments in matters of religion; and, what was coming nearer to the author's purpose, took an interest in his worldly concerns. He was much less fortunate in addressing a poem, entitled "The Viceroy," to the Earl of Halifax, who was then lord-lieutenant of Ireland. This heartless piece of adulation was written with the view of obtaining his lordship's patronage; but the viceroy was either too busy, or too insensible to praise, to take any notice of Langhorne. In his poetry of this period, we find his "Visions of Fancy;" his first part of the "Enlargement of the Mind ;" and his pastoral "Valour and Genius," written in answer to Churchill's "Prophecy of Famine." In consequence of the gratitude of the Scotch for this last poem, he was presented with the diploma of doctor in divinity by the university of Edinburgh. His profession and religious writings gave an appearance of propriety to this compliment, which otherwise would not have been discoverable, from any striking connection of ideas between a doctorship of divinity and an eclogue on Valour and Genius.

He came to reside permanently in London in 1764, having obtained the curacy and lectureship of St. John's Clerkenwell. Being soon after

ward called to be assistant-preacher at Lincoln'sinn chapel, he had there to preach before an audience, which comprehended a much greater number of learned and intelligent persons than are collected in ordinary congregations; and his pulpit oratory was put to, what is commonly reckoned, a severe test. It proved to be also an honourable test. He continued in London for many years, with the reputation of a popular preacher and a ready writer. His productions in prose, besides those already named, were his "Sermons," "Effusions of Fancy and Friendship," "Frederick and Pharamond, or the Consolations of Human Life," "Letters between St. Evremond and Waller," "A Translation of Plutarch's Lives," written in conjunction with his brother, which might be reckoned a real service to the bulk of the reading community," Memoirs of Collins," and "A Translation of Denina's Dissertation on the Ancient Republics of Italy." He also wrote for several years in the Monthly Review. An attempt which he made in tragedy, entitled "The Fatal Prophecy," proved completely unsuccessful; and he so far acquiesced in the public decision, as never to print it more than once. In an humbler walk of poetry he composed "The Country Justice," and the "Fables of Flora." The Fables are very garish. The Country Justice was written from observations on the miseries of the poor, which came home to his own heart; and it has, at least, the merit of drawing our attention to the substantial interests of humanity.

In 1767, after a courtship of several years, he obtained Miss Cracroft in marriage, having corresponded with her from the time he had left her father's house; and her family procured for him the living of Blagden, in Somersetshire; but his domestic happiness with her was of short continuance, as she died of her first child-the son who lived to publish Dr. Langhorne's works.

In 1772 he married another lady of the name of Thomson, the daughter of a country gentleman, near Brough, in Westmoreland: and shortly after their marriage, he made a tour with his bride through some part of France and Flanders. At the end of a few years he had the misfortune to lose her, by the same fatal cause which had deprived him of his former partner. Otherwise his prosperity increased. In 1777 he was pro

FROM "THE COUNTRY JUSTICE."
PART I.

Duties of a Country Justice-The venerable mansions of
ancient Magistrates contrasted with the fopperies of
modern architecture-Appeal in behalf of Vagrants.
THE Social laws from insult to protect,
To cherish peace, to cultivate respect;
The rich from wanton cruelty restrain,

To smooth the bed of penury and pain;

*The translation of Plutarch has been since corrected and improved by Mr. Wrangham.

moted to a prebend in the cathedral of Wells; and in the same year was enabled to extend his practical usefulness and humanity by being put in the commission of the peace, in his own parish of Blagden. From his insight into the abuses of parochial office, he was led at this time to compose the poem of "The Country Justice," already mentioned. The tale of Owen of Carron" was the last of his works. It will not be much to the advantage of this story to compare it with the simple and affecting ballad of "Gill Morrice," from which it was drawn. Yet having read "Owen of Carron" with delight when I was a boy, I am still so far a slave to early associations as to retain some predilection for it.

The particular cause of Dr. Langhorne's death, at the age of forty-four, is not mentioned by his biographers, further than by a surmise that it was accelerated by intemperance. From the general decency of his character, it may be presumed that his indulgencies were neither gross nor notorious, though habits short of such excess might undermine his constitution.

It is but a cheerless task of criticism, to pass with a cold look and irreverent step, over the literary memories of men, who, though they may rank low in the roll of absolute genius, have yet possessed refinement, information, and powers of amusement, above the level of their species, and such as would interest and attach us in private life. Of this description was Langhorne; an elegant scholar, and an amiable man. He gave delight to thousands, from the press and the pulpit; and had sufficient attraction, in his day, to sustain his spirit and credit as a writer, in the face of even Churchill's envenomed satire. Yet, as a prose writer, it is impossible to deny that his rapidity was the effect of lightness more than vigour; and, as a poet, there is no ascribing to him either fervour or simplicity. His Muse is elegantly languid. She is a fine lady, whose complexion is rather indebted to art than to the healthful bloom of nature. It would be unfair not to except from this observation several plain and manly sentiments, which are expressed in his poem "On the Enlargement of the Mind," and some passages in his "Country Justice," which are written with genuine feeling.

The hapless vagrant to his rest restore,
The maze of fraud, the haunts of theft explore;
The thoughtless maiden, when subdued by art,
To aid, and bring her rover to her heart;
Wild riot's voice with dignity to quell,
Forbid unpeaceful passions to rebell,
Wrest from revenge the meditated harm,
For this fair Justice raised her sacred arm;
For this the rural magistrate, of yore,
Thy honours, Edward, to his mansion bore.

Oft, where old Air in conscious glory sails, On silver waves that flow through smiling vales;