pastoral poet, who says, in answer to Lewis, through whom Davies made the request, how much he should like to divert himself with a translation, "I am fond, you know, of the French. I remember you liked 'The Rose and Butterfly' I imitated from La Motte." He then mentions the indolence of his character, and that he wrote but for amusement; so that when writing became a task or a duty, he was at once weary. "I am not enterprising," he adds, "and am tolerably happy in my present situation."

The next letter is from Henry White, a gold-beater in London, and merits to be printed entire :

"To John Cunningham.

"London, May 13, 1765. "Dear Cunningham, I have been busy in your affair ever since I wrote to you last. You must contrive somehow or other to send me a bundle of your proposals, for without 'em 't is impossible to do any thing. I here send you a small list of names, and I am pretty certain of sending you a larger one when you furnish me with proposals to distribute; but you must observe that we 've no time to lose, for the theatrical gents will soon depart from hence, and I flatter myself with getting you a group of them. Mr. Love you have wrote to, and he undertakes the two Garricks, &c. 1 hope he'll be punctual, for on his account I stop my pursuit at Drury Lane, and will push it with more vigour at Covent Garden; but these proposals I must have, so if you can't contrive to send immediately, why only say the word, and I'll get 'em printed here, but must have another copy, for Younge took the former one away, and I've been these two days hunting for him, but cannot light on him. I wish, lad, you had took courage, and ventured to town, depend on it your publication wou'd have answered much better here than it can possibly do in the country. Allow me to say, Cuny, that your modesty makes you underrate your merit (a very singular instance this for an Irishman); but however singular it may be, 'tis no less true. Why, man, you are allowed by a great number of men of real genius and merit to be the first pastoral poet of the age, and to hide yourself in an obscure corner of the world! Oh, fy! Rouse, lad, at once, and shine in the face of the world. Whatever number of subscribers I may get, you'll please to order the books to be delivered to me, and I'll distribute 'em and remit the money to you. Adieu,

dear lad, may great success attend you, is the sincere wish of your sincere friend and humble servant at command, "H. WHITE."

There are other letters from White. In one dated 13th July, 1765, he writes to his "dear friend Cuny:"

"I hope your work is in the press by this time, and that we shall see it soon. A friend of mine, who I have shewed some of your productions to, and who is much acquainted with the nature of publications, says that you should by all means print at least 1000 copies, be your subscribers ever so few."

White then alludes to the proposed dedication of the volume to Garrick :

"Seriously, I think you may as well venture to dedicate to the little man without any body's interest in the affair. He can't be offended; nay, he will, I'm sure, be pleased."

But before the volume appeared the poor poet had received an extraordinary letter with an extraordinary request. I shall give it in full; no part of so precious a document should be lost :

"To John Cunningham.

"Dr Sir,

"Dublin, Sycamore Alley, 21st Dec. 1765.

You should have heard from me before, but I have been in expectation every post for these three months to be called to London; however, I recd a Letter p. last post, by which I must be there the second week in March. I met your brother this week and he tells me that he has printed proposals for your poems; but on acct of your not being here could not meet with any success, indeed the savages here have a much better taste for claret than poetry. I request you will not forget my name in your list of subscribers; your brother seems to be very uneasy at his present situation, and proposes to be in London in spring. I hope it will be in my power to serve him there, an Introduction is all he wants.

"I must now, Dr Jack, inform you, under the rose, and to you alone I speak, that I am in expectation of Lord Temple's being my friend in an affair which I hope will be to my advantage; I've been advised to publish on my arrival in London a Poem, dedicated to him or his Lady; the subject I wou'd chuse wou'd be STOWE, A PASTORAL, a descrip" of wch I am sure you are no stranger too [sic], if

you are, shall send you a descrip" in print. I would have it in the manner of your former pastorals. I must, therefore, desire you will inform me if you will have time to execute it ag's the above time; I would have it to make a sixpenny pamphlet; be assured, Dr Sr, I shall with great pleasure satisfy you for your trouble when I am favoured wh your answer (which I request p. return of the post) I shall explain myself more largely. I depend on your secrecy in this affair, and be assured I am, "Dr St,

"Yours most sincerely,

"THOS. WILKES.

"Pray let me know if you have any Theat' pieces by you which has not app on the stage? Adieu. I request your speedy answer."

I have failed to discover "Stowe, a Pastoral;" no such poem appears among the vast poetical treasures preserved in the British Museum. Nor have I discovered more of Mr. Wilkes than that he was an actor of low-life characters. The request reminds one of the days of Elkanah Settle, who when his blaze of reputation past and he had sunk into the insignificance due to glorious mediocrity, kept congratulatory odes for lying-in ladies, epithalamiums for marriages in high life, and elegies on elegiacal occasions, all ready for distribution to young gentlemen of wealth made fathers, young peers made husbands, or old ladies disconsolate widows. Whether Elkanah added to their rejoicings or allayed their griefs has never been told, that they served his purpose is well known. I wonder whether "Stowe, a Pastoral," ever imposed upon my Lord Temple; it is not improbable that Cunningham wrote it and made Mr. Thomas Wilkes a more fortunate man.

Early in the year 1766 appeared from the well-known shop of Dodsley in Pall Mall the long-looked-for octavo volume, under the title of Poems chiefly Pastoral. The volume was well received by the public, and has since maintained its ground, running through many editions, and finding a place in the large body of British poetry. What he wants in

he makes up for by a astoral softness and prontiment and expressionan ease lyrical and harThe dedication was to the

"The blow was too severe for the poet. He was so confused at the time that he had not the use of his faculties, and indeed, never recollected that he ought to have spurned the offer with contempt, till his best friend, Mrs. Slack of Newcastle, reminded him of it by giving him a sound box on the ear, when he returned once more beneath her sheltering roof and related his sad story."

Had not the papers now before me been preserved, this story might have gone to posterity and been accepted as a settled truth. But the story is not even what Dryden calls a sophisticated truth with an alloy of lie in it; 'tis a pure invention, and the following letter from Cunningham's kind friend White will prove it fully. The letter has, unfortunately, no date :

"To John Cunningham.

"Dear Cunningham,-I received your books about ten o'clock this day, at eleven I got the frontispieces inserted, and at twelve I was at Mr. Garrick's; but he was not at home. I immediately repaired to the Theatre, but he was not to be found there. I then went to Dodd's, and got him to promise me he would find him out and deliver the books into his hands sometime this day and let me know time enough for the post the result. Well, now for it, lad, Dodd has found him, delivered the books, stayed with him while he read your card and some little matters of your book. He expressed great pleasure at what he read, says he'll take them with him to Hampton, where he is going for best part of next week, and on his return he'll write a line or two to your worship. Wondered much at your continuing in the country, and said he should be glad to do you any service in his power. Thus much for David

liquors was fast assisting to destroy. In his latter days he gave himself up almost wholly to drink; "he fell a sacrifice to it," says Ritson, "and he drank, as he often told me, to drown reflection." At this time he was often in want of clothes, of linen, and of the money wherewith to purchase them. His indolence increased, and his indifferent health and emaciated figure no longer fitted him for the stage, and he became dependent upon the bounty of his friends. Of the number of the kind, Mr. Slack, a printer in Newcastle, was kind beyond measure. His name deserves preservation. He not only received him into his house, but procured for him at his own expense the best medical advice, so that, at times, the poor poet had gleams of hope that he would be able to get round again, and, in the language of his friend Digges, "d- strolling altogether." But this was not to be. He lingered on under the friendly roof of Mr. Slack, and was to be seen loitering through the streets of Newcastle, his tall and once manly frame now spare and gaunt, his walk feeble, and his countenance betraying an inward discomposure, the effects of an unsettled life, and a constitution ruined by indulgence. At this time he became known to Bewick, the famous woodengraver, who has transferred to wood the poor poet and strolling player, just as he was every day to have been seen in Newcastle, carrying, in an old silk handkerchief, a herring, or some other common article of life. He remained in this all but helpless state till the 18th of September, 1773, when death came to his release, in his forty-fourth year. He was buried in the churchyard of St. John's, Newcastle, where a decent monument was placed over his grave, I believe by his friends Mr. and Mrs. Slack.

Cunningham seems to have been intended by Nature for a proud station in life, but disappointed hopes brought on despondency, and despondency drove him to drink. In his youth, unsuited with an aim, he became the companion of the dissolute and unsettled; of those

de in rant the heart-aches of the night;"

nter of tap-rooms, race-booths, and country fairs.

With this contamination around him daily, he did not, however, give up his faculty for song to any bad purpose; and has left behind him no line which, dying, he could have wished to have destroyed from the impurity of its thought. He did not prostitute his Muse, but, like a man of genius as he was, saw that poetry had other purposes; that to instruct and to please were its ends, not to vitiate and to divert. Well had it been if of many men of equal, of many of greater genius, we could say the same!

His brother Peter was a statuary in Dublin, and a modeller in wax, and, like himself, one on whom Fortune and Favour frowned. He resided all along in Ireland, and was employed upon a monument to Swift, as appears from the letters before me, and from his brother's works. Of others of his family, nothing is known.

The original of the following letter was long in the possession of Charles Mathews, the actor, and is here printed for the first time:

"To Mrs. A. Slack,

"At the Printing Office,
"Newcastle-upon-Tyne.

"Dear Madam,-I received yours, for which I thank you. I am in a bad state of health, and, I am afraid, rather peevish, -you will conclude so, perhaps, from my last. My health is, in short, so bad, that I am to remain at Scarborough till the company returns to Whitby (about six weeks). I could wish the books should be sent by the carriers overland to Whitby, and so forwarded to Scarborough, I have not heard about Mrs. Montague; had she a mind to let me hear from her, it must have been through your channel, as she cannot know my address. What do you think, Mrs. Slack, of sending her a book, in the manner of those I sent Mr. Garrick, and presenting it as my first-offering? The fly took up Mr. Garrick's, and Harry White, goldbeater, delivered them. I would have twenty or thirty sent to Mr. White, to whom I shall write about them directly. The York company will be three weeks at Hull, and if I had books I could distribute them I think to advan tage in that quarter. Let the land-carriage be high-no doubt it will be so, but I am so teased, from particular friendship, here and in the environs, that I can make no longer excuses with propriety. My friend Slack mistakes when he thinks

Few writers of the sixteenth century have exercised greater influence in various departments of intellectual activity than Michel de Montaigne. To say that he was the father of the modern essayists, is to say little. The ideas which he either originated or adopted, the doctrines he propounded, the errors he embraced, the truths he asserted, have all produced a numerous progeny. An at tempt to affiliate these would far transcend our patience. It is now scarcely possible to open a work of speculation, ethical or metaphysical, without lighting upon thoughts which, whether the material was drawn from his own mind or not, he had impressed with his image and superscription, and contributed to put in circulation. He has to answer for many of the absurd vagaries of the eighteenth century, and some of the soundest theories of succeeding philosophers have been drawn from his inexhaustible magazine. Not to mention the obligations of French literature to this original thinker, our own swarms with indications of his influence; he has presided over many a thoughtful moment of our greatest writers, and inspired some of their happiest imaginations. That Shakspeare had profited by his Essais is asserted, though it may be doubted; Bacon's Essays are, in por

tions, mere abridgements of passages of Montaigne. Pope drew his whole theory of human nature, as developed in the Essay on Man, from the Apologie pour Raymond de Sebonde; but it does not seem to be generally understood that, next to Rabelais, our inimitable Lawrence Sterne owes so much to no writer as to Michel de Montaigne.

We may, some day, without resorting to the vulgar imputation of plagiarism, criticise Tristram Shandy, with the express purpose of tracing the connexion of some of the ideas it contains with others met with in the Essais. Parallel passages we consider of no importance. They simply prove that intellectual architects have occasionally stolen a brick from a neighbour's house. Literary informers may discover that beautiful ideas have been transported wholesale from one book to another; they may marshal their witnesses in formidable array, and come before the tribunal of the country; but the author, whilst pleading guilty, maintains that he has done no wrong. He has merely discovered that another had expressed what he desired to say as well as he could have done, and in the same spirit, and has taken advantage of the circumstance. Who, for example, can blame Sterne if he traced a resemblance between the