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wild pranks, and sallies of extravagance. The glare of his general character diffused itself upon his writings; the compositions of a man whose name was heard so often were certain of attention, and from many readers certain of applause. This blaze of reputation is not yet quite extinguished, and his poetry still retains some splendour beyond that which genius has bestowed.

"As he cannot be supposed to have found leisure for any course of continued study, his pieces are commonly short, such as one fit of resolution would produce.

"His songs have no particular character: they tell, like other songs, in smooth and easy language, of scorn and kindness, dismission and desertion, absence and inconstancy, with the common places of artificial courtship. They are commonly smooth and easy, but have little nature, and little senti

ment.

"His imitation of Horace on Lucilius is not inelegant or unhappy. In the reign of Charles the Second began that adaptation, which has since been very frequent, of ancient poetry to present times, and perhaps few will be found where the parallelism is better preserved than in this. The versification is indeed sometimes careless, but is sometimes vigorous and weighty. The strongest effort of his muse is his poem upon "Nothing.

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"In all his works there is sprightliness and vigour, and every where may be found tokens of a mind which study might have carried to excellence; and what more can be expected from

a life spent in ostentatious contempt of regularity, and ended before the abilities of many other men begin to be displayed! 1”

OTWAY.

LITTLE is known of this great but unfortunate

writer.

He was born at Trottin in Sussex, March 3, 1651, the son of Mr. Humphry Otway, rector of Woolbeding. From Winchester school he was entered in 1669 a Commoner of Christ Church, but left the University without a degree; whether for want of money, or from impatience of academical restraint, or mere eagerness to mingle with the world, is not known.

On his arrival in London he commenced player; but, finding himself unable to gain any reputation on the stage, he thought he possessed such powers as might qualify him for a dramatic author. In 1675, his twenty-fifth year, he produced "Alcibiades, a Tragedy." In 1677 he published "Titus and Berenice," translated from Racine with the "Cheats of Scapin" from Moliere; and in 1678 Friendship in Fashion," a comedy which, whatever

'Some Letters of Lord Rochester to his wife (which place his character in a new point of view, and which were never before published) appeared in the European Magazine for October 1796, p. 233 et seq.

might be its first reception, was, upon its revival at Drury Lane in 1749, hissed off the stage for immorality and obscenity.

Otway, it is said, was about this time a favourite of the dissolute wits who in general did no more for him than pay his reckoning. Men of wit, says one of Otway's biographers, received at that period no favour from the great but to share their riots, from which they were dismissed again to their own narrow circumstances. Thus they languished in poverty without the support of eminence.

Some exception, however, must be made. The Earl of Plymouth, one of King Charles's natural sons, procured for Otway a cornet's commission in some troops then sent into Flanders. But he did not prosper in his military character; for, whatever was the reason, he came back to London in extreme indigence.

In 1675" Don Carlos" was played, and it is said with great success. "The Orphan" was exhibited in 1680, and in the same year he produced the "History of Caius Marius," much of which is borrowed from the "Romeo and Juliet" of Shakespeare.

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In 1683 was published the first, and, the next year, the second part of "The Soldier's Fortune, two comedies now forgotten; and in 1685 his last and greatest dramatic work, "Venice Preserved, a tragedy which still continues to be one of the favourites of the public. Together with these plays he wrote several poems, and translated from the French the "History of the Triumvirate."

All this was performed before he was thirtyfour years old, for he died April 14, 1685, in a manner which I am unwilling to mention. Having been compelled by his necessities to contract debts, and hunted, as is supposed, by the terriers of the law, he retired to a public house on Tower Hill, where he died of want, or, as it is related by one of his biographers, by swallowing, after a long fast, a piece of bread which charity had supplied. He went out, as it is reported, almost naked, in the rage of hunger, and, finding a gentleman in a neighbouring coffee-house, asked him for a shilling. The gentleman gave him a guinea, and Otway going away bought a roli, and was choaked with the first mouthful. All this I hope is not true; but that indigence and its concomitants, sorrow and despondency, brought him to the grave, has never been denied.

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Otway had not much cultivated versification, nor much replenished his mind with general knowledge. His principal power was in moving the passions, to which Dryden in his latter years left an illustrious testimony. He appears, by some of his verses, to have been a zealous royalist, and had what was in those times the common reward of loyalty he lived and died neglected.

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GARTH.

SAMUEL GARTH was of a good family in Yorkshire, and from some school in his own country became a student at Peterhouse in Cambridge, where he resided till he commenced Doctor of Physic on July 7, 1691. He was admitted fellow of the College at London July 26, 1692, and was soon so much distinguished by his conversation and accomplishments as to obtain very extensive practice.

He is always mentioned as a man of benevolence, which was fully proved by his great zeal in forwarding the undertaking of the Dispensary, which occasioned him to write his poem of that name. In 1697 he spoke that which is now called the Harveian Oration, and in October 1702 became one of the censors of the college.

Garth, being an active and zealous Whig, was a member of the Kit-cat Club, and consequently known to all the great men of that denomination. In 1710, when the government fell into other hands, he wrote to Lord Godolphin a short poem on his dismission.

At the accession of the present family his merits were acknowledged and rewarded. He was knighted with the sword of his hero, Marlborough, and was made physician in ordinary to the King, and physician general to the army.

He then undertook an edition of " Ovid's Metamorphoses, translated by several hands which

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