THE EARLY FRENCH POETS
Many Authors





THE

EARLY FRENCH POETS,

A SERIES OF NOTICES AND TRANSLATIONS:

WITH AN

_Introductory Sketch of the History of French Poetry._

BY THE REV. HENRY CARY, M.A.

MDCCCXLVI.

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_Shortly will be published_,

THE ODES OF PINDAR,

IN ENGLISH VERSE.

SECOND EDITION, WITH NOTES,

EDITED BY THE REV. HENRY CARY, M.A.

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_Preparing for the Press_,

THE

LITERARY JOURNAL AND LETTERS

OF THE

REV. HENRY FRANCIS CARY.

_WITH A MEMOIR_.

BY HIS SON, THE REV. HENRY CARY, M.A.



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LIVES

OF

ENGLISH POETS,

FROM

JOHNSON TO KIRKE WHITE,

DESIGNED AS A CONTINUATION OF JOHNSON'S LIVES.

BY THE LATE

REV. HENRY FRANCIS CARY, M.A.

TRANSLATOR OF DANTE.

MDCCCXLVI.

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EDITOR'S PREFACE.

The papers of which this volume is composed originally appeared in the
London Magazine, between the years 1821 and 1824. It was the author's
intention to continue the series of Lives to a later period, but a
change in the proprietorship of the Magazine prevented the completion of
his plan. They are now for the first time published in a separate form,
and under their author's name.

In seeing the work through the press, the Editor has had occasion only
to alter one or two particulars in the Life of Goldsmith, which the
labours of that Poet's more recent biographer, Mr. Prior, have
subsequently elucidated.

HENRY CARY.

WORCESTER COLLEGE, OXFORD. _Dec_. 1, 1845.

CONTENTS.


SAMUEL JOHNSON

JOHN ARMSTRONG

RICHARD JAGO

RICHARD OWEN CAMBRIDGE

TOBIAS SMOLLETT

THOMAS WARTON

JOSEPH WARTON

CHRISTOPHER ANSTEY

WILLIAM MASON

OLIVER GOLDSMITH

ERASMUS DARWIN

WILLIAM JULIUS MICKLE

JAMES BEATTIE

WILLIAM HAYLEY

SIR WILLIAM JONES

THOMAS CHATTERTON

HENRY KIRKE WHITE





LIVES OF ENGLISH POETS.

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SAMUEL JOHNSON.

There is, perhaps, no one among our English writers, who for so great a
part of his life has been an object of curiosity to his contemporaries
as Johnson. Almost every thing he said or did was thought worthy of
being recorded by some one or other of his associates; and the public
were for a time willing to listen to all they had to say of him. A mass
of information has thus been accumulated, from which it will be my task
to select such a portion as shall seem sufficient to give a faithful
representation of his fortunes and character, without wearying the
attention of the reader. That any important addition should be made to
what has been already told of him, will scarcely be expected.

Samuel Johnson, the elder of two sons of Michael Johnson, who was of an
obscure family, and kept a bookseller's shop at Lichfield, was born in
that city on the 18th of September, 1709. His mother, Sarah Ford, was
sprung of a respectable race of yeomanry in Worcestershire; and, being a
woman of great piety, early instilled into the mind of her son those
principles of devotion for which he was afterwards so eminently
distinguished. At the end of ten months from his birth, he was taken
from his nurse, according to his own account of himself, a poor diseased
infant, almost blind; and, when two years and a half old, was carried to
London to be touched by Queen Anne for the evil. Being asked many years
after if he had any remembrance of the Queen, he said that he had a
confused but somehow a sort of solemn recollection of a lady in diamonds
and a long black hood. So predominant was this superstition relating to
the king's evil, that there was a form of service for the occasion
inserted in the Book of Common Prayer, and Bishop Bull,[1] in one of his
Sermons, calls it a relique and remainder of the primitive gift of
healing. The morbidness of constitution natural to him, and the defect
in his eye-sight, hindered him from partaking in the sports of other
children, and probably induced him to seek for distinction in
intellectual superiority. Dame Oliver, who kept a school for little
children, in Lichfield, first taught him to read; and, as he delighted
to tell, when he was going to the University, brought him a present of
gingerbread, in token of his being the best scholar her academy had ever
produced. His next instructor in his own language was a man whom he used
to call Tom Browne; and who, he said, published a  Spelling Book, and
dedicated it to the universe. He was then placed with Mr. Hunter the
head master of the grammar school in his native city, but, for two years
before he came under his immediate tuition, was taught Latin by Mr.
Hawkins, the usher. It is just that one, who, in writing the lives of
men less eminent than himself, was always careful to record the names of
their instructors, should obtain a tribute of similar respect for his
own. By Mr. Price, who was afterwards head master of the same school,
and whose name I cannot mention without reverence and affection, I have
been told that Johnson, when late in life he visited the place of his
education, shewed him a nook in the school-room, where it was usual for
the boys to secrete the translations of the books they were reading;
and, at the same time, speaking of his old master, Hunter, said to him,
"He was not severe, Sir. A master ought to be severe. Sir, he was
cruel." Johnson, however, was always ready to acknowledge how much he
was indebted to Hunter for his classical proficiency. At the age of
fifteen, by the advice of his mother's nephew, Cornelius Ford, a
clergyman of considerable abilities, but disgraced by the licentiousness
of his life, and who is spoken of in the Life of Fenton, he was removed
to the grammar-school of Stourbridge, of which Mr. Wentworth was master.
Here he did not remain much more than a twelvemonth, and, as he told Dr.
Percy, learned much in the school, but little from the master; whereas,
with Hunter, he had learned much from the master, and little in the
school. The progress he made was, perhaps, gained in teaching the other
boys, for Wentworth is said to have employed him as an assistant. His
compositions in English verse indicate that command of language which he
afterwards attained. The two following years he accuses himself of
wasting in idleness at home; but we must doubt whether he had much
occasion for self-reproach, when we learn that Hesiod, Anacreon, the
Latin works of Petrarch, and "a great many other books not commonly
known in the Universities," were among his studies.

His father, though a man of strong understanding, and much respected in
his line of life, was not successful in business. He must, therefore,
have had a firm reliance on the capacity of his son; for while he chided
him for his want of steady application, he resolved on making so great
an effort as to send him to the University; and, accompanying him
thither, placed him, on the 31st of October, 1728, a commoner at
Pembroke College, Oxford. Some assistance was, indeed, promised him from
other quarters, but this assistance was never given; nor was his
industry quickened by his necessities. He was sometimes to be seen
lingering about the gates of his college; and, at others, sought for
relief from the oppression of his mind in affected mirth and turbulent
gaiety. So extreme was his poverty, that he was prevented by the want of
shoes from resorting to the rooms of his schoolfellow, Taylor, at the
neighbouring college of Christ Church; and such was his pride, that he
flung away with indignation a new pair that he found left at his door.
His scholarship was attested by a translation into Latin verse of Pope's
Messiah; which is said to have gained the approbation of that poet. But
his independent spirit, and his irregular habits, were both likely to
obstruct his interest in the University; and, at the end of three years,
increasing debts, together with the failure of remittances, occasioned
by his father's insolvency, forced him to leave it without a degree. Of
Pembroke College, in his Life of Shenstone, and of Sir Thomas Browne, he
has spoken with filial gratitude. From his tutor, Mr. Jorden, whom he
described as a "worthy man, but a heavy one," he did not learn much.
What he read solidly, he said, was Greek; and that Greek, Homer and
Euripides; but his favourite study was metaphysics, which we must
suppose him to have investigated by the light of his own meditation, for
he did not read much in it. With Dr. Adams, then a junior fellow, and
afterwards master of the College, his friendship continued till his
death.

Soon after his return to Lichfield, his father died; and the following
memorandum, extracted from the little register which he kept in Latin,
of the more remarkable occurrences that befel him, proves at once the
small pittance that was left him, and the integrity of his mind: "1732,
Julii 15. Undecim aureos deposui: quo die quicquid ante matris funus
(quod serum sit precor) de paternis bonis sperare licet, viginti
scilicet libras accepi. Usque adeo mihi fortuna fingenda est. Interea ne
paupertate vires animi languescant nec in flagitium egestas abigat,
cavendum.--1732, July 15. I laid down eleven guineas. On which day, I
received the whole of what it is allowed me to expect from my father's
property, before the decease of my mother (which I pray may be yet far
distant) namely, twenty pounds. My fortune therefore must be of my own
making. Meanwhile, let me beware lest the powers of my mind grow languid
through poverty, or want drive me to evil." On the following day we find
him setting out on foot for Market Bosworth, in Leicestershire, where he
had engaged himself as an usher to the school of which Mr. Crompton was
master. Here he described to his old school-fellow, Hector, the dull
sameness of his life, in the words of the poet: Vitam continct una dies:
that it was as unvaried as the note of the cuckoo, and that he did not
know whether it were more disagreeable for him to teach, or for the boys
to learn the grammar rules. To add to his misery, he had to endure the
petty despotism of Sir Wolstan Dixie, one of the patrons of the school.
The trial of a few months disgusted him so much with his employment,
that he relinquished it, and, removing to Birmingham, became the guest
of his friend Mr. Hector, who was a chirurgeon in that town, and lodged
in the house of a bookseller; having remained with him about six months,
he hired lodgings for himself. By Mr. Hector he was stimulated, not
without some difficulty, to make a translation from the French, of
Lobo's Voyage to Abyssinia, for which he received no more than five
guineas from the bookseller, who, by an artifice not uncommon, printed
it at Birmingham, with the date of London in the title-page. To Mr.
Hector, therefore, is due the impulse which first made Johnson an
author. The motion being once given did not cease; for, having returned
to Lichfield in 1735, he sent forth in August proposals for printing by
subscription Politian's Latin Poems, with a Life of the Author, Notes,
and a History of Latin Poetry, from the age of Petrarch to that of
Politian. His reason for fixing on this era it is not easy to determine.
Mussato preceded Petrarch, the interval between Petrarch and Politian is
not particularly illustrated by excellence in Latin poetry; and Politian
was much surpassed in correctness and elegance, if not in genius, by
those who came after him--by Flaminio, Navagero, and Fracastorio. Yet in
the hands of Johnson, such a subject would not have been wanting in
instruction or entertainment. Such as were willing to subscribe, were
referred to his brother, Nathaniel Johnson, who had succeeded to his
father's business in Lichfield; but the design was dropped, for want of
a sufficient number of names to encourage it, a deficiency not much to
be wondered at, unless the inhabitants of provincial towns were more
learned in those days than at present.

In this year, he made another effort to obtain the means of subsistence
by an offer of his pen to Cave, the editor of