expressed in the above letter, he put on airs of concern on this occasion which inclines us to think that intemperance had in some degree injured his reason. Being unable to purchase mourning, he tied a piece of black ribbon round the neck of a lap-dog, which he carried about in his arms: and when in liquor, he always indulged a dream of his wife being still alive, and would talk very spitefully of those by whom he suspected she was entertained. This he never mentioned, however, but in his cups, which was as often as he had money to spend. The manner, it is added, by his biographer, of his becoming intoxicated was very particular. As he had no spirit to keep good company, he retired to some obscure alehouse, and regaled himself with hot two-penny, which though he drank in very great quantities, yet he had never more than a pennyworth at a time. Such a practice rendered him so completely sottish, that even his abilities, as an author, were sensibly impaired.

After his return from Reading, his behaviour, it is said, became so decent, that hopes were entertained of his reformation. He now obtained some employment from the booksellers in translating, of which, from the French language, at least, he was very capable; but his former irregularities had gradually undermined his constitution, and enfeebled his powers both of body and mind. He died, after a lingering illness, in obscure lodgings near Shoe Lane, in the month of May 1749. The manner of his death is variously related. Mr. Giles, a collector of poems, says he was informed by Mr. Sandby the bookseller, that Boyse was found dead in his bed, with a pen in his hand, and in the act of writing and Dr. Johnson informed Mr. Nichols that he was run over by a coach, when in a fit of intoxication; or that he was brought home in such a condition as to make this probable, but too far gone to be able to give any account of the accident.

:

Another of Mr. Nichols' correspondents produces a letter from Mr. Stewart, the son of a bookseller at Edinburgh, who had long been intimately acquainted with Mr. Boyse, in which the particulars of his death are related in a different manner.

"Poor Mr. Boyse was one evening last winter attacked in Westminster by two or three soldiers, who not only robbed him, but used him so barbarously, that he never recovered the bruises he received, which might very probably induce the consumption of which he died. About nine months before his death he married a cutler's widow, a native of Dublin, with whom he had no money; but she proved a very careful nurse to him during his lingering indisposition. She told me, that Mr. Boyse never imagined he was dying, as he always was talking of his recovery; but perhaps his design in this might be to comfort her, for one incident makes me think otherwise. About four or five weeks before he breathed his last, his wife went out in the morning, and was surprised to find a great deal of burnt papers upon the hearth, which he told her were old bills and accounts; but I suppose were his manuscripts, which he had resolved to destroy, for nothing of that kind could be found after his death. Though from this circumstance it may be inferred that he was apprehensive of death; yet I must own, that he never intimated it to me, nor did he seem in the least desirous of any spiritual advice. For some months before his end, he had left off drinking all fermented liquors, except now and then a glass of wine to support his spirits, and that he took very moderately. After his death, I endeavoured all I could to get him decently buried, by soliciting those dissenters who were the friends of him and his father, but to no purpose; for only Dr. Grosvenor, in Hoxton Square, a dissenting teacher, offered to join towards it. He had quite tired out those friends in his lifetime; and the general answer that I received was, That such a contribution was of no service to him, for it was a matter of no importance

how or where he was buried.' As I found nothing could be done, our last resource was an application to the parish; nor was it without some difficulty, occasioned by the malice of his landlady, that we at last got him interred on the Saturday after he died. Three more of Mr. Johnson's amanuensis, and myself, attended the corse to the grave. Such was the miserable end of poor Sam, who was obliged to be buried in the same charitable manner with his first wife; a burial, of which he had often mentioned his abhorrence."

Although there is too much reason to believe that no part of Boyse's character has been misrepresented in the preceding narrative, he must not be deprived of the evidence which Mr. Nichols' correspondent has advanced in his favour. He assures us that he knew him from the year 1732 to the time of his death: and that he never saw any thing in his wife's conduct that deserved censure; that he was a man of learning; and when in company with those by whom he was not awed, an entertaining companion; but so irregular and inconsistent in his conduct, that it appeared as if he had been actuated by two different souls on different occasions. These last accounts are in some degree confirmed by the writer of his life in Cibber's collection, who says that while Boyse was in his last illness he had no notion of his approaching end, nor "did he expect it until it was almost past the thinking of." His mind, indeed, was often religiously disposed: he frequently thought upon that subject; and probably suffered a great deal from the remorse of his conscience. The early impressions of his good education were never entirely obliterated; and his whole life was a continual struggle between his will and reason, as he was always violating his duty to the one, while he fell under the subjection of the other. It was, adds the same author, in consequence of this war in his mind, that he wrote a beautiful poem called Recantation'.

Such was the life of a man whose writings, as far as we have been able to discover them, are uniformly in favour of virtue, remarkable for justness of sentiment on every subject in which the moral character is concerned, and not unfrequently for the loftiness and dignity which mark the effusions of a pure and independent mind. To reconcile such a train of thought with his life, with actions utterly devoid of shame or delicacy, or to apologize for the latter with a view to remove the inconsistency between the man and his writings, if not impossible, must at least be left to those who have no scruple to tell us that genius is an apology for all moral defects, and that none but the plodding prudent sons of Dullness would reveal or censure the vices of a favourite poet. Such is already the influence of this perversion of the powers of reasoning, that if it is much longer indulged, no man will be thought worthy of compassion or apology, but he who errs against knowledge and principle, who acts wrong and knows better.

The life of Boyse, however, as it has been handed down to us, without any affected palliation, will not be wholly useless if it in any degree contribute to convince the dissipated and thoughtless, of what dissipation and thoughtlessness must inevitably produce. It is much to be regretted that they who mourn over the misfortunes of genius, have been too frequently induced by the artifice of partial biographers, to suppose that misery is the inseparable lot of men of distinguished talents, and that the world has no rewards for those by whom it has been instructed or delighted, except poverty and neglect. Such is the propensity of some to murmur without reason, and of others to sympathize without discrimination, that this unfair opinion of mankind might be

7 This poem, like many other productions of this writer, is not now to be found, unless by accident. C.

received as unanswerable, if we had no means of looking more closely into the lives of those who are said to have been denied that extraordinary indulgence to which they laid claim. Where the truth has been honestly divulged, however, we shall find that of the complaints which lenity or affectation have encouraged and exaggerated in narrative, some will appear to have very little foundation, and others to be trifling and capricious. Men of genius have no right to expect more favourable consequences from imprudence and vice than what are common to the meanest of mankind. Whatever estimate they may have formed of their superiority, if they pass the limits allotted to character, happiness, or health, they must not hope that the accustomed rules of society are to be broken, or the common process of nature is to be suspended, in order that they may be idle without poverty, or intemperate without sickness. Yet the lives of men celebrated for literary and especially for poetical talents, afford many melancholy examples of those delusions, which if perpetuated by mistaken kindness, cannot add any thing to genius but a fictitious privilege, which it is impossible to vindicate with seriousness, or exert with impunity.

If the life of Boyse be considered with a reference to these remarks, it will be found that he was scarcely ever in a situation of distress, of which he could justly complain. He exhausted the patience of one set of friends, after another, with such unfeeling contempt and ingratitude, that we are not to wonder at his living the precarious life of an outcast, of a man who belongs to no society, and whom no society is bound to maintain. Among his patrons were many persons of high rank and opulence, whom he rendered ashamed of their patronage, and perhaps prevented from the exercise of general kindness, lest it might be disgraced by the encouragement of those who dissipate every favour in low and wanton excesses.

What can be urged in his favour from internal evidence ought not to be concealed. We do not find in his works much of the cant of complaint; and although he submitted to every mean art of supplication, he does not seem to have resented a denial as an insult, nor to have taken much pains to make the worse appear the better cause. In his private letters, indeed, he sometimes endeavoured by false professions and imaginary misfortunes, to impose upon others, but he did not impose upon himself. He had not perverted his own mind by any of the impious sophistries which by frequent repetition become mistaken for right reason. He was not, therefore, without his hours of remorse, and towards the latter part of his life, when his heart was softened by a sense of inward decay, he resolved in earnest to retrieve his character.

As a poet, his reputation has been chiefly fixed on the production entitled DEITY, which although irregular and monotonous, contains many striking proofs of poetical genius. The effort indicates no small elevation of mind, even while we must allow that success is beyond all human power. Of his other pieces perhaps a larger collection is here given than was necessary. They may, however, be regarded as curiosities, as the productions of a man who never enjoyed the undisturbed exercise of his powers, who wrote in circumstances of peculiar distress, heightened by the consciousness that he could obtain only temporary relief, that he had forfeited the respect due to genius, and could expect to be rewarded only by those to whom he was least known. We are told that he wrote all his poems with ease and even rapidity. That many of his lines are incorrect will not therefore excite surprise, especially when we consider that he wrote for immediate relief, and not for fame, and that when one piece had produced him a benefaction, he generally dismissed it from his mind, and began another, about which he had no other care than that it might answer the same purpose.

POEMS

SAMUEL BOYSE.

Charm'd with the hope new patriots still shall rise,

HIS GRACE, JOHN DUKE OF BEDFORD, And with successive lustre gild Britannia's skies.