Edinburgh Ball, in which the young Pretender is held up to ridicule. This, however, was never performed, or printed. He then began a regular tragedy, The Roman Father, which was produced on the stage in 1750. He appears to have viewed the difficulties of a first attempt with a wary eye, and had the precaution to make himself known to the public by the Lines addressed to Dr. Hoadley. Those to Mr. Garrick, on his becoming joint patentee of Drury Lane theatre, would probably improve his interest with one whose excessive tenderness of reputation was among the few blemishes in his character.

It is not necessary to expatiate on the merits of The Roman Father, as dramatic pieces are excluded from this collection. It still retains its place on the stage, and has been the choice of many new performers who wished to impress the audience with a favourable opinion of their powers, and of some old ones who are less afraid of modern than of ancient tragedy, of declamation than of passion. Mr. Mason has bestowed a critical discussion upon it, but evidently with a view to throw out reflections on Irene, which Johnson never highly valued; and on Garrick, whom he accused of a tyrannical use of the pruning knife. To this, however, he confesses that Whitehead submitted with the humblest deference, nor was it a deference which dishonoured either his pride or his taste. He avowedly wrote for stage-effect, and who could so properly judge of that as Garrick ?

The next production of our author was The Hymn to the Nymph of the Bristol Spring, in 1751, "written in the manner of those classical addresses to heathen divinities of which the hymns of Homer and Callimachus are the architypes." This must be allowed to be a very favourable specimen of his powers in blank verse, and has much of poetical fancy and ornament. The Sweepers, a ludicrous attempt in blank verse, would, in Mr. Mason's opinion, have received more applause than it has hitherto done, had the taste of the generality of readers been founded more on their own feelings than on mere prescription and authority. It appears to me, however, to be defective in plan: there is an effort at humour in the commencement, of which the effect is painfully interrupted by the miseries of a female sweeper taken into keeping, and passing to ruin through the various stages of prostitution.

About this time, if I mistake not, for Mr. Mason has not given the precise date, he wrote the beautiful stanzas on Friendship, which that gentleman thinks one of his best and most finished compositions. What gives it a peculiar charm is, that it comes from the heart, and appeals with success to the experience of every man who has imagined what friendship should be, or known what it is. The celebrated Gray, according to Mr. Mason's account, "disapproved the general sentiment which it conveyed, for he said it would furnish the unfeeling and capricious with apologies for their defects, and that it ought to be entitled A Satire on Friendship." Mr. Mason repeated this opinion to the author who, in consequence, made a considerable addition to the concluding part of the piece. "Still, however, as the exceptionable stanzaś remained, which contained an apology for what Mr. Gray thought no apology ought to be made, he continued unsatisfied, and persisted in saying, that it had a bad tendency, and the more so, because the sentiments which he thought objectionable were so poetically and finely expressed."

This is a singular anecdote; how far Gray was right in his opinion may be left to the consideration of the reader, who is to remember that the subject of these verses is school-boy friendship. Some instances of its instability Whitehead may have experi

VOL. XVII.

enced, and the name of Charles Townsend is mentioned as one who forgot him when he became a statesman. But it is certain that he had less to complain of, in this respect, than most young men of higher pretensions, for he retained the greater part of his youthful friendships to the last, and was, indeed, a debtor to friendship for almost all he had. What Gray seems to be afraid of, is Whitehead's admission that the decay of friendship may be mutual, and from causes for which neither party is seriously to blame.

The subject of this poem is not indirectly connected with the verses which he wrote about this time (1751) to the Rev. Mr. Wright, who had blamed him for leading what his friends thought a dependent life, and for not taking orders, or entering upon some regular profession. For this there was certainly some plea. He had resigned his fellowship in 1746, about a year after he became one of lord Jersey's family, and with that, every prospect of advantage from his college. He had now remained five years in this family, and had attained the age of thirty-six, without any support, but what depended on the liberality of his employer, or the sale of his poems. It was not therefore very unreasonable in his friend to suggest, that he had attained the age at which men in general have determined their course of life, and that his present situation must be one of two things, either dependent or precarious.

In the verses just mentioned, Whitehead endeavours to yindicate his conduct, and will, I apprehend, be found to vindicate it like one too much enamoured of present ease to look forward to probable disappointment. He is content with dependence, because he has made it easy to himself; his present condition is quiet and contentment, and what can his future be more? thus ingeniously shifting the subject from a question of dependence or independence, to that of ambition and bustle. But although this will not apply generally, such was his temper or his treatment that it proved a sufficient apology in his own case. Throughout a long life, he never had cause to repent of the confidence he placed in his noble friends, who continued to heap favours upon him in the most delicate manner, and without receiving, as far as we know, any of those humiliating or disgraceful returns which degrade genius and endanger virtue.

The poems now enumerated, and a few others of the lighter kind, he published in 1754 in one volume, and about the same time produced his second tragedy, Creusa, which had not the success of The Roman Father, although Mr. Mason seems inclined to give it the preference. But it ought not to be forgot that, with the profits arising from these theatrical productions, our author honourably discharged his father's debts.

About this time, lord Jersey determined that his son should complete his education abroad, and the late lord Harcourt having the same intentions concerning his eldest son lord viscount Nuneham, a young nobleman of nearly the same age, Mr. Whitehead was appointed governor to both, and gladly embraced so favourable an opportunity of enlarging his views by foreign travel. Leipsic was the place where they were destined to pass the winter of 1754, in order to attend the lectures of professor Mascow on the Droit publique. They set off in June, and resided the rest of the summer at Rheims, that they might habituate themselves to the French language, and then passed seven months at Leipsic, with little satisfaction or advantage, for they found the once celebrated Mascow in a state of dotage, without being quite incapacitated from reading his former lectures.

In the following spring, they visited the German courts, proceeded to Vienna, and thence to Italy. On their return homeward, they crossed the Alps, and passed through Switzerland, Germany, and Holland, being prevented from visiting France by the decla