For most of these I call my friends:
But if, Squire Bridgman, you were hurt,
To see me, as you thought, so pert,
You might have punished my transgression,
And damped the ardour of expression.
A brute there is, whose voice confounds,
And frights all others with strange sounds;
Had you, your matchless powers displaying,
Like him, Squire Bridgman, set a braying,
I should have lost my exultation,

Nor gloried in my situation."'

Garrick wrote, altered, or adapted thirty-eight different plays, farces, and entertainments. Of the former, the best by far is the Clandestine Marriage, the better part of which was written by Colman. Of his farces, the Lying Valet and High Life below Stairs remain upon the stock list; and the latter has hardly its equal for truth and humour in that department of the English drama.

His poetry consists of a great many prologues and epilogues and occasional addresses, with several odes and songs, and minor poems of all descriptions, among which the best is the beautiful Ode on the Death of Mr. Pelham, in the fourth volume of Dodsley's Collection, beginning

"Let others hail the rising sun,

I bow to that whose course is run."

He was rewarded for this disinterested tribute to a departed statesman by the following invitation from the greatest living one. Garrick, being then at Mount Edgecumbe, was thus asked by Lord Chatham to pay him a visit in his way to London:

"Leave, Garrick, the rich landscape, proudly gay,
Docks, forts, and navies, brightening all the bay,
To my plain roof repair, primeval seat;
Yet there no wonders your quick eyes can meet,
Save should you deem it wonderful to find
Ambition cured, and an unpassioned mind;
A statesman without power and without gall,

Hating no courtiers, happier than them all;
Bowed to no yoke, nor crouching for applause,
Votary alone to freedom and the laws.

Herds, flocks, and smiling Ceres deck our plain,
And, interspersed, a heart-enlivening train

Of sportive children frolic o'er the green,

Meantime pure love looks on and consecrates the scene:
Come, then, immortal spirit of the stage,
Great nature's proxy, glass of every age,

Come, taste the simple life of patriots old,

Who, rich in rural peace, ne'er thought of pomp and gold."

MR. GARRICK'S ANSWER.

"When Peleus' son, untaught to yield,
Wrathful forsook the hostile field;

His breast still warm with heavenly fire,
He tuned the lay, and swept the lyre.
So Chatham, whose exalted soul
Pervaded and inspired the whole;
Where far by martial glory led,
Britain her sails and banners spread,
Retires (though wisdom's God dissuades)
And seeks repose in rural shades.
Yet thither comes the God confess'd;
Celestial form! a well known guest.

Now slow he moves with solemn air,
Now on his brow hangs pensive care;
Now in his hand the historic page
Gives lessons to experienced age,
As when in vengeful ire he rose,
And plann'd the fate of Britain's foes;
While the wing'd hours obedient stand,
And instant speed the dread command.

Cheerful he came, all blithe and gay,
Fair and blooming like the sun of May;
Adown his radiant shoulder hung,
A harp, by all the Muses strung;
Smiling, he to his friend resign'd
This soother of the human mind."

On Garrick's death, January 20, 1779, he was buried on February 1, in Westminster Abbey, under Shakspeare's monument in Poet's Corner. The procession from his house on the Adelphi Terrace was very solemn and sumptuous; deputations from the two playhouses, and a long line of private friends attended. The Bishop of Rochester read the service in a most impressive manner, and the pall was borne by the Duke of Devonshire, Earl Spencer, Earl of Ossory, Viscount Palmerston, Lord Camden, Sir W. W. Wynne, Rt. Hon. R. Rigby, and the Hon. Mr. Stanley; while among the nearest attendant mourners were his two nephews and legatees, Carrington and Nathan Garrick, and then his numerous private friends, among whom were Dr. Johnson, George Colman, Mr. Dunning, Mr. Burke, Colonel Barré, Hon. Charles Fox, William Whitehead the Laureat, Lord Charles Spencer, Albany Wallis, Esq., &c.

Having brought Garrick to his loved Shakspeare's grave, we will quote Dr. Warton's short but expressive tribute to their joint memories, from his Essay on the Genius and Writings of Pope:

"We of Great Britain have much reason to congratulate ourselves on two very singular phenomena; I mean Shakspeare's being able to portray characters so very different as Falstaff and Macbeth, and Garrick's being able to personate so inimitably a Lear and an Able Drugger; nothing can more fully demonstrate the extent and versatility of these two original geniuses."

A monument in Westminster Abbey, executed at the cost of Mr. Albany Wallis, his solicitor, and one of his executors, was opened in June, 1797. Garrick is represented at full length in an animated position, throwing aside a curtain which discovers a medallion of Shakspeare, while Tragedy and Comedy, adorned with the respective emblems, and half seated on a pedestal, seem to approve the tribute.

NIGHT.

AN EPISTLE TO ROBERT LLOYD.

THIS poem was published in October, 1761, and if considered in the light of a familiar address to an intimate friend, is not subject to those strict rules of composition which more dignified poetry requires. Notwithstanding this due allowance, Night contains more faulty, bald and prosaic lines than any other, of our author's productions. An instance of his sinning against his own better judgment, occurs in his frequent adoption of the coarse epithet Fool; for the use of which he in the Ghost censures Dr. Johnson, in the concluding part of the character of Pomposo,

"For 'tis with him a certain rule

The folly's proved when he calls fool."

Fool is the most obvious word of contempt amongst the lowest set of speakers; it is attended with no grace, and conveys no strength of idea to the ear or understanding, it marks no character, but is applicable to all alike.

The title of the poem may probably have been suggested by Dr. Armstrong's "Day, an Epistle to J. Wilkes, of Aylesbury, Esq." then lately published, without the consent of the author, who was with the English army in Germany; from whence it was written in easy loose verse, with little regard to the matter, and less to the manner. In his epistle Dr. Armstrong ventured to censure Churchill, who expressed much resentment at the attack, and would never be reconciled with the author of it. The principal object of Night was to exculpate the poet and the friend to whom it is addressed, from the censure of the world on the score of those irregularities in conduct, which the celebrity of the foregoing poems rendered more conspicuous in the author of them, by inducing those who smarted under his lash, to make researches into his

private character; and by publishing exaggerated statements of his improprieties of behaviour, to deaden the force of the blow they could not parry. His propensity to late hours and his employment of them in genial converse with his friends, he here avows; and great examples in ancient and modern times, will certainly rescue his taste from the charge of sin gularity. Had he not been himself so severe a censor, his private irregularities would have been softened down to the eccentricities of genius, and his midnight parties would have been dignified with the amiable attributes of social enjoyment, "the feast of reason and the flow of soul;" instead of which, they were blazoned abroad as the orgies of brutal intemperance, and the scenes of vulgar and depraved gratification. His clerical character might indeed have induced a stricter attention to the opinion of the world, though some justification is afforded by a similar predilection for tavern meetings and late hours, in Dr. Johnson, whose purity of life, habitual temperance, and stern morality, would have dignified the most exalted station in the church. The Noctes Atticæ in Ivy Lane, were ushered in by the Doctor with his favourite toast, the dying ejaculation of Father Paul, "Esto perpetua!"