Others, indeed, have shewn their distrust of Phalaris's title to them, but are content to declare their sentiment without assigning their reasons. Phalaris, or 'somebody else,' says Cælius Rhodus. The Epistles that go under the name of Phalaris,' says Menagius. Some name the very person at whose door they lay the forgery. 'Lucian, whom they commonly mistake for Phalaris,' says Ang. Politianus. The Epistles of Phalaris, if they are truly his, and not rather Lucian's,' says Lilius Greg. Gyraldus, who in another place informs us, that Politian's opinion had generally obtained among the learned of that age, 'The Epistles,' says he of Phalaris, which 'most people attribute to Lucian.' How judiciously they ascribe them to Lucian we shall see better anon, after I have examined the case of Phalaris, who has the plea and right of possession; and I shall not go to dispossess him, as those have done before me, by an arbitrary sentence in his own tyrannical way, but proceed with him upon lawful evidence, and a fair and impartial trial; and I am very much mistaken in the nature and force of my proofs, if ever any man hereafter that reads them persist in his old opinion of making Phalaris an author.

The censures that are made from style and language alone are commonly nice and uncertain, and depend upon slender notices. Some very sagacious and learned men have been deceived in those conjectures, even to ridicule. The great Scaliger published a few iambics, as a choice fraginent of an old tragedian, given him by Muretus; who soon after confessed the jest, that they were made by himself. Boxhornius wrote a commentary upon a small poem De Lite, supposed by him to be some ancient author's; but it was soon discovered to be Michael Hospitalius's, a late Chancellor of France; so that if I had no other argument but the style to detect the spuriousness of Phalaris's Epistles, I myself, indeed, should be satisfied with that alone; but I durst not hope to convince every body else. I shall begin therefore with another sort of proofs, that will affect the most slow judgments, and assure the most timid or incredulous.

Then follows the argument proper, in too great detail for quotation. Bentley's unheard-of liberties with the most perfect passages of Paradise Lost may be well illustrated by his transformation of 'No light, but rather darkness visible' into 'No light but rather a transpicuous gloom;' and by his proposed emendations of the very last lines of the last book (see the last paragraph quoted in Vol. I. p. 703). Addison had suggested that the omission of the last two unforgetable lines

They hand in hand, with wandering steps and slow,
Through Eden took their solitary way-

Bentley

would make a better close for the poem. disapproved this suggestion, but asserted that the lines had been utterly corrupted by the editor, and for the reasons given proposed to restore or emend them into woefully different verses:

Milton tells us before, that Adam, upon hearing Michael's predictions, was even surcharg'd with joy (xii. 372); was replete with joy and wonder (468); was in doubt whether he should repent of, or rejoice in, his fall (475); was in great peace of thought (558); and Eve herself was not sad, but full of consolation (620). Why then does this distich dismiss our first parents in anguish,

and the reader in melancholy? And how can the expression be justified, "with wand'ring steps and slow"? Why wand ring? Erratic steps? Very improper: when in the line before, they were guided by Providence. And why slow? when even Eve profess'd her readiness and alacrity for the journey (614):-" But now lead on; In me is no delay." And why "their solitary way"? All words to represent a sorrowful parting; when even their former walks in Paradise were as solitary as their way now there being nobody besides them two, both here and there. Shall I therefore, after so many prior presumptions, presume at last to offer a distich, as close as may be to the author's words, and entirely agreeable to his scheme?

"Then hand in hand with social steps their way

Through Eden took, with heav'nly comfort cheer'd." Dyce's edition of Bentley's works (3 vols. 1836-38) is unfinished. See the Life of him by Monk (2 vols. 1833), and the monograph in the English Writers' series by Sir Richard Jebb (1882).

The Duke of Buckingham (JOHN SHEFFIELD, often called DUKE OF BUCKINGHAMSHIRE-1648-1721) was associated in his latter days with the wits and poets of the reign of Queen Anne, though in spirit he belongs to the previous age. Having succeeded his father as Earl of Mulgrave in 1658, he served with Prince Rupert against the Dutch, and in 1673 became colonel of a regiment of foot. In order to learn the art of war under Marshal Turenne, he made a campaign in the French service. But even amidst the din of arms he did not wholly neglect literary pursuits, and he made himself an accomplished scholar. He was a member of the Privy Council of James II., but acquiesced in the Revolution, and was for three years a member of the Privy Council of William and Mary, with a pension of £3000 and the title of Marquis of Normanby. Sheffield is said to have made love' to Queen Anne when they were both young, and Her Majesty heaped honours on the favourite immediately on her accession to the throne, including the dukedom of the county of Buckingham. He lived in great state in a magnificent house he had built in St James's Park, of which he has given a long description-dwelling with delight on its gardens, terrace, park, and canal, and the rows of goodly elms and limes through which he approached his mansion. This stately residence was purchased by George III., and taken down by George IV. to make way for the present royal palace, which still bears the name of Buckingham. Sheffield wrote several poems and prose works, among the latter being an Account of the Revolu tion. Among the former is an Essay on Satire, which Dryden is reported, but erroneously, to have revised. His principal work, however, is his Essay on Poetry, which was published anonymously in 1682; the second edition, enlarged in 1691, received the praises of Roscommon, Dryden, and Pope. This poem was retouched by Pope, and in return some of the last lines of Buckingham were devoted to the praise of the young poet of Windsor Forest. The Essay on Poetry, written

in the heroic couplet, seems to have suggested Pope's Essay on Criticism. It is in the style of Roscommon, plain, perspicuous, and sensible, but it contains little or no true poetry-less than many of Dryden's prose essays-and is much of it incredibly commonplace in thought and in word. Out of Shakespeare's Julius Cæsar he manufactured, with the help of some new love scenes and other tags, two model dramas according to his own-and his contemporaries'-notions of good taste.

From the Essay on Poetry.'
Of all those arts in which the wise excel,
Nature's chief master-piece is writing well;
No writing lifts exalted man so high
As sacred and soul-moving Poesy:

No kind of work requires so nice a touch,

And, if well finished, nothing shines so much.
But Heaven forbid we should be so profane
To grace the vulgar with that noble name.
'Tis not a flash of fancy, which, sometimes
Dazzling our minds, sets off the slightest rhymes;
Bright as a blaze, but in a moment done :
True wit is everlasting like the sun,
Which, though sometimes behind a cloud retired,
Breaks out again, and is by all admired.
Number and rhyme, and that harmonious sound
Which not the nicest ear with harshness wound,
Are necessary, yet but vulgar arts;
And all in vain these superficial parts
Contribute to the structure of the whole;
Without a genius, too, for that's the soul:
A spirit which inspires the work throughout,
As that of nature moves the world about;
A flame that glows amidst conceptions fit,
Even something of divine, and more than wit;
Itself unseen, yet all things by it shewn,

Describing all men, but described by none. . . .
First, then, of songs, which now so much abound,
Without his song no fop is to be found;
A most offensive weapon which he draws
On all he meets, against Apollo's laws.
Though nothing seems more easy, yet no part
Of poetry requires a nicer art;

For as in rows of richest pearl there lies
Many a blemish that escapes our eyes,
The least of which defects is plainly shewn
In one small ring, and brings the value down :
So songs should be to just perfection wrought;
Yet when can one be seen without a fault?
Exact propriety of words and thought;
Expression easy, and the fancy high;

Yet that not seem to creep, nor this to fly;
No words transposed, but in such order all,

As wrought with care, yet seem by chance to fall. . . .
Of all the ways that wisest men could find
To mend the age and mortify mankind,
Satire well writ has most successful proved,
And cures, because the remedy is loved.
'Tis hard to write on such a subject more,
Without repeating things oft said before.
Some vulgar errors only we 'll remove,
That stain a beauty which we so much love.
Of chosen words some take not care enough,
And think they should be, as the subject, rough;

This poem must be more exactly made,

And sharpest thoughts in smoothest words conveyed.
Some think, if sharp enough, they cannot fail,
As if their only business was to rail;
But human frailty, nicely to unfold,
Distinguishes a satire from a scold.

Rage you must hide, and prejudice lay down;
A satyr's smile is sharper than his frown ;
So, while you seem to slight some rival youth,
Malice itself may pass sometimes for truth.

By painful steps at last we labour up
Parnassus' hill, on whose bright airy top
The epic poets so divinely shew,

And with just pride behold the rest below.
Heroic poems have a just pretence

To be the utmost stretch of human sense;

A work of such inestimable worth,

There are but two the world has yet brought forth-
Homer and Virgil; with what sacred awe

Do those mere sounds the world's attention draw!
Just as a changeling seems below the rest
Of men, or rather as a two-legged beast,
So these gigantic souls, amazed, we find
As much above the rest of human-kind!
Nature's whole strength united! endless fame
And universal shouts attend their name !
Read Homer once, and you can read no more,
For all books else appear so mean, so poor,
Verse will seem prose; but still persist to read,
And Homer will be all the books you need.

Sir Richard Blackmore (birth year unknown; died 1729) was one of the most fortunate physicians and most severely handled poets of the age. Born of a good family at Corsham in Wiltshire, and educated at Westminster and St Edmund Hall, Oxford, he took his B.A. in 1674. He was in extensive medical practice, was knighted in 1697 by William III., and afterwards made censor of the College of Physicians. In 1695 he published Prince Arthur, an epic poem, which he says he wrote amidst the duties of his profession, 'for the greatest part in coffee-houses, or in passing up and down the streets.' Dryden, whom he had attacked for licentiousness, satirised him for writing to the rumbling of his chariot-wheels.' In Prince Arthur Blackmore flattered himself that he had imitated Virgil's manner, angels taking the place of heathen gods in the management of sublunary affairs. In King Arthur (1697) he seems to think he had followed rather the Homeric model. The twelve dreary books of this preposterous epic are devoted wholly to one of the most fabulous of Arthur's exploits as reported by Geoffrey of Monmouth an expedition to support the Christian people of Gaul against certain heathen Franks, in which history, ethnology, and commonsense are alike defied. The principal enemy is the Frankish king Clotar, assumed to be a heathen-though the Franks were converted to Christianity before the end of the fifth century, and Arthur or his prototype seems to have belonged to the sixth. The prince of darkness and his

pseudo-Miltonic council of war-Belus, Milcom, Ammon, Rimmon, &c.-discuss in long speeches how to check the Christian champion's progress, but in vain. There are endless lists of the princes in either camp, and the numbers of their forces. The battle in which Arthur triumphs is not more amusing than the rest. Before the campaign is ended Satan effects a diversion by stirring up strife in Britain; Arthur has to hasten thither, but soon returns, and in a final battle wounds Clotar mortally, takes the opportunity as he lies 'weltering in his gore' to address a sermon to him about Divine justice, and then hacks off his head and 'spurns' or apparently kicks the corpse. The last stage of the personal conflict between the kings proceeded thus:

The Frank observing that his arm did wield
His sword in vain against King Arthur's shield,
Retreating, to the ground did downward stoop,
And heav'd a mighty rocky fragment up.
Then did the furious warriour forward step,

And hurl'd with both his hands the pondrous heap.
The Britons trembled when they saw the stone
With such a force against their monarch thrown.
O'er Arthur's shoulder flew the flinting rock,
But as it past a craggy corner struck

The shoulder's point, and his bright armour bruis'd,
Which in his flesh a painful wound produc'd.
His friends grew pale to see that shoulder hurt,
Which did their empire and their hopes support.
The pious monarch did the wound neglect,
And for one mortal stroke did all his might collect,
Like some celestial sword of temper'd flame,
Down on the Frank keen caliburno came.
It fell upon his neck with vengeful sway,
And thro' the shrinking muscles made its way,
The head, reclin'd, on the right shoulder lay.
Down fell the Frank, disabled by the wound,
Weltering in gore and raging, bit the ground.
The pious prince did o'er the warriour stand,
Bright caliburno flaming in his hand.

Blackmore continued writing, and published a series of epics on King Alfred, Queen Elizabeth, the Redeemer, the Creation, &c. All are intolerably tedious, and have sunk into oblivion; but Pope has preserved his memory in various satirical allusions. Addison extended his friendship to the Whig poet, whose private character was irreproachable, and strongly approved his hostility to the prevalent grossness and impiety of dramatic poetry. Dr Johnson included Blackmore in his edition of the poets, but of his works reproduced only the poem of Creation, which, he said, 'wants neither harmony of numbers, accuracy of thought, nor elegance of diction.' Even Dennis, formerly hostile, thought Blackmore surpassed Lucretius. The design of Creation was to demonstrate the existence of a Divine Eternal Mind. The worthy doctor recites the proofs of a Deity from natural and physical phenomena, and afterwards reviews the systems of the Epicureans and the Fatalists, con

cluding with a hymn to the Creator of the world. The old-fashioned orthodox piety of Blackmore is everywhere apparent in his writings; but the genius of poetry evaporates amidst tedious argumentations, commonplace illustrations, prosing declamation, and general dullness. From the opening of Creation it would appear that he deliberately designed to outsoar Milton 'to heights unknown'— to anybody but himself, presumably :

No more of courts, of triumphs, or of arms,
No more of valour's force, or beauty's charms;
The themes of vulgar lays, with just disdain,
I leave unsung, the flocks, the amorous swain,
The pleasures of the land, and terrors of the main.
How abject, how inglorious 'tis to lie
Grovelling in dust and darkness, when on high
Empires immense, and rolling worlds of light,
To range their heavenly scenes, the muse invite !
I meditate to soar above the skies,

To heights unknown, through ways untry'd to rise:
I would th' Eternal from his works assert,
And sing the wonders of creating art.

While I this unexampled task essay,
Pass awful gulfs, and beat my painful way;
Celestial Dove! divine assistance bring,
Sustain me on thy strong-extended wing,
That I may reach th' Almighty's sacred throne,
And make his causeless power, the cause of all things
Thou dost the full extent of nature see, [known.

And the wide realms of vast immensity:
Eternal Wisdom thou dost comprehend,
Rise to her heights, and to her depths descend:
The Father's sacred counsels thou canst tell,
Who in his bosom didst for ever dwell.
Thou on the deep's dark face, immortal dove!
Thou with Almighty energy didst move
On the wild waves, incumbent didst display
Thy genial wings, and hatch primæval day.
Order from thee, from thee distinction came,
And all the beauties of the wond'rous frame.
Hence stampt on nature we perfection find,
Fair as th' idea in the Eternal Mind.

Garth in The Dispensary unkindly makes Blackmore cite four scraps of his own verse (quite accurately reproduced) from Prince Arthur and King Arthur as sufficiently sonorous to summon the Sibyl from the shades.

These lines the pale Divinity shall raise,
Such is the power of sound and force of lays,
Blackmore is made to say, and then cites his own:
Arms meet with arms, fauchions with fauchions clash,
And sparks of fire struck out from armour flash.
Thick clouds of dust contending warriors raise,
And hideous war o'er all the region brays.
Some raging ran with huge Herculean clubs,
Some massy balls of brass, some mighty tubs
Of cinders bore.

Naked and half-burnt hills with hideous wrack
Affright the skies and fry the ocean's back.
High rocks of snow and sailing hills of ice,
Against each other with a mighty crash
Driven by the winds in rude rencounter dash.

Blood, brains, and limbs the highest walls disdain,
And all around lay squalid heaps of slain.

In the following singular and original theodicy from Book iii. of Creation, it is noticeable that Blackmore quite admits the Creator might (but for sufficient reasons) have made a much finer world; and he justifies the ways of God to men in the matter of having wasted so much space on mountains not from the majesty or beauty of the everlasting hills, but from their utilitarian 'convenience' for practical purposes:

You ask us why the soil the thistle breeds;
Why its spontaneous birth are thorns and weeds;
Why for the harvest it the harrow needs?

The Author might a nobler world have made,
In brighter dress the hills and vales arrayed,
And all its face in flowery scenes displayed :

The glebe untilled might plenteous crops have borne,
And brought forth spicy groves instead of thorn :
Rich fruit and flowers, without the gardener's pains,
Might every hill have crowned, have honoured all the plains:
This Nature might have boasted, had the Mind
Who formed the spacious universe designed
That man, from labour free, as well as grief,
Should pass in lazy luxury his life.

But He his creature gave a fertile soil,
Fertile, but not without the owner's toil,
That some reward his industry should crown,
And that his food in part might be his own.
But while insulting you arraign the land,
Ask why it wants the plough or labourer's hand;
Kind to the marble rocks, you ne'er complain,
That they, without the sculptor's skill and pain,
No perfect statue yield, no basse relieve,
Or finished column for the palace give.
Yet if from hills unlaboured figures came,

Man might have ease enjoyed, though never fame.
You may the world of more defect upbraid,
That other works by Nature are unmade:
That she did never, at her own expense,
A palace rear, and in magnificence
Out-rival art, to grace the stately rooms;
That she no castle builds, no lofty domes.
Had Nature's hand these various works prepared,
What thoughtful care, what labour had been spared!
But then no realm would one great master shew,
No Phidias Greece, and Rome no Angelo.
With equal reason too you might demand
Why boats and ships require the artist's hand;
Why generous Nature did not these provide,
To pass the standing lake or flowing tide.

You say the hills, which high in air arise,
Harbour in clouds, and mingle with the skies,
That earth's dishonour and encumbering load,
Of many spacious regions man defraud;
For beasts and birds of prey a desolate abode.
But can the objector no convenience find

In mountains, hills, and rocks, which gird and bind
The mighty frame, that else would be disjoined?
Do not those heaps the raging tide restrain,
And for the dome afford the marble vein?
Do not the rivers from the mountains flow,
And bring down riches to the vale below?
See how the torrent rolls the golden sand
From the high ridges to the flatter land!

The lofty lines abound with endless store
Of mineral treasure and metallic ore,
With precious veins of silver, copper, tin;
Without how barren, yet how rich within!
They bear the pine, the oak and cedar yield,
To form the palace and the navy build.

Basse relieve was one of many ways (bas relieve, bass relief, base relief) in which bas-relief used to be spelt in English.

Sir Samuel Garth, an eminent London physician, was born in 1661 at Bowland Forest in the West Riding of Yorkshire, and educated at Ingleton, Peterhouse (Cambridge), and Leyden, taking his M.D. in 1691, and being elected a Fellow of the College of Physicians in 1693. In 1699 he published his poem of The Dispensary, to aid the College in a war they were then waging with the apothecaries. The latter, supported by some of the physicians, had ventured to prescribe as well as compound medicines; and the physicians advertised that they would give advice gratis to the poor, and establish a dispensary of their own for the sale of cheap medicines. 'The original of this difference,' Garth said in the preface, 'has been of some standing, though it did not break out into fury and excess until the time of the erecting of the dispensary, a room in the college set up for the relief of the sick poor.' The College triumphed ; but in 1703 the House of Lords decided that apothecaries were entitled to exercise the privilege Garth and his brother-physicians resisted. Garth was a popular and kindly man, a firm Whig, yet the early encourager of Pope; and when Dryden died he pronounced a Latin oration over his remains. With Addison he was, politically and personally, on terms of the closest intimacy. On the accession of George I. he was knighted with Marlborough's sword, and received the double appointment of Physician-in-Ordinary to the King and Physician-General to the Army. He edited Ovid's Metamorphoses, 'translated by the most eminent hands,' in 1717, and wrote a good many prologues and occasional poems and verses, such as those inscribed on the toastglasses of the Kit-Cat Club, of which he was a member. He died 18th January 1719, and was buried in the chancel of the church at Harrowon-the-Hill. Pope praised him as 'the best good Christian he, although he knows it not;' and Bolingbroke, in oddly similar terms, called him 'the best-natured ingenious wild man I ever knew.' The Dispensary is a mock-heroic poem in six cantos, designed, Garth said, 'to rally some of our disaffected members into a sense of their duty; it culminates in a grand combat between physicians and apothecaries. Envy and Disease play a large part, and a delegate is finally sent to the shades to consult Harvey on the matter in dispute. In the management of the plot Garth took hints both from Boileau's Some Lutrin and from Dryden's MacFlecknoe. of the leading apothecaries of the day are

happily ridiculed; but the interest of the satire has largely passed away. It opens thus:

Speak, goddess! since 'tis thou that best canst tell
How ancient leagues to modern discord fell;
And why physicians were so cautious grown
Of others' lives, and lavish of their own;
How by a journey to the Elysian plain,
Peace triumphed, and old time returned again.

Not far from that most celebrated place The Old Bailey
Where angry Justice shews her awful face;
Where little villains must submit to fate,
That great ones may enjoy the world in state;
There stands a dome, majestic to the sight, The College
of Physicians
And sumptuous arches bear its oval height;
A golden globe, placed high with artful skill,
Seems to the distant sight a gilded pill;
This pile was, by the pious patron's aim,
Raised for a use as noble as its frame;
Nor did the learn'd society decline
The propagation of that great design;
In all her mazes, Nature's face they viewed,
And, as she disappeared, their search pursued.
Wrapt in the shade of night the goddess lies,
Yet to the learn'd unveils her dark disguise,
But shuns the gross access of vulgar eyes.

Now she unfolds the faint and dawning strife
Of infant atoms kindling into life;
How ductile matter new meanders takes,
And slender trains of twisting fibres makes;
And how the viscous seeks a closer tone,
By just degrees to harden into bone;

While the more loose flow from the vital urn,
And in full tides of purple streams return;
How lambent flames from life's bright lamps arise,
And dart in emanations through the eyes;
How from each sluice a gentle torrent pours,
To slake a feverish heat with ambient showers;
Whence their mechanic powers the spirits claim ;
How great their force, how delicate their frame;
How the same nerves are fashioned to sustain
The greatest pleasure and the greatest pain;
Why bilious juice a golden light puts on,
And floods of chyle in silver currents run;
How the dim speck of entity began

To extend its recent form, and stretch to man ;
Why Envy oft transforms with wan disguise,
And why gay Mirth sits smiling in the eyes; . . .
Whence Milo's vigour at the Olympic 's shewn,
Whence tropes to Finch, or impudence to Sloane;
How matter, by the varied shape of pores
Or idiots frames or solemn senators.

Hence 'tis we wait the wondrous cause to find
How body acts upon impassive mind;
How fumes of wine the thinking part can fire,
Past hopes revive, and present joys inspire;
Why our complexions oft our soul declare,
And how the passions in the feature are;
How touch and harmony arise between
Corporeal figure and a form unseen;
How quick their faculties the limbs fulfil,
And act at every summons of the will;
With mighty truths, mysterious to descry,
Which in the womb of distant causes lie.

But now no grand inquiries are descried;
Mean faction reigns where knowledge should preside;

Feuds are increased, and learning laid aside;
Thus synods oft concern for faith conceal,
And for important nothings shew a zeal :
The drooping sciences neglected pine,
And Pæan's beams with fading lustre shine. Apol
No readers here with hectic looks are found,
Nor eyes in rheum, through midnight watching, drown
The lonely edifice in sweats complains
That nothing there but sullen silence reigns.
This place, so fit for undisturbed repose,
The god of Sloth for his asylum chose;
Upon a couch of down in these abodes,
Supine with folded arms, he thoughtless nods;
Indulging dreams his godhead lull to ease,
With murmurs of soft rills, and whispering trees:
The poppy and each numbing plant dispense
Their drowsy virtue and dull indolence;
No passions interrupt his easy reign,
No problems puzzle his lethargic brain :
But dark oblivion guards his peaceful bed,
And lazy fogs hang lingering o'er his head.

The poem proceeds to show how the slumbers of the god a effectively and finally disturbed. The Sloane named so disrespe fully is the famous Sir Hans, who was one of the first subscribe to the Dispensary.

On Death.

'Tis to the vulgar death too harsh appears;
The ill we feel is only in our fears.

To die is landing on some silent shore,
Where billows never break, nor tempests roar:
Ere well we feel the friendly stroke, 'tis o'er.
The wise through thought the insults of death defy,
The fools through blest insensibility.

'Tis what the guilty fear, the pious crave;
Sought by the wretch, and vanquished by the brave.
It eases lovers, sets the captive free,
And, though a tyrant, offers liberty.

(From Canto ii)

Often-quoted fragments of the Dispensary are:
Dissensions like small streams are first begun;
Scarce seen they rise, but gather as they run.
Harsh words, though pertinent, uncouth appear;
None please the fancy who offend the ear.

Though possession be the undoubted view,
To seize is far less pleasure than pursue.

Garth wrote the epilogue to Addison's traged
of Cato, which ends with the following aspiration:
Oh, may once more the happy age appear,
When words were artless, and the thoughts sincere;
When gold and grandeur were unenvied things,
And courts less coveted than groves and springs!
Love then shall only mourn when Truth complains,
And Constancy feel transport in its chains;
Sighs with success their own soft language tell,
And eyes shall utter what the lips conceal:
Virtue again to its bright station climb,
And Beauty fear no enemy but Time;
The fair shall listen to desert alone;
And every Lucia find a Cato's son.

In the same poem occurs the couplet : The woes of wedlock with the joys we mix; "Tis best repenting in a coach and six.