appointed resident tutor and lecturer in the belles lettres, in the Warrington Academy; and, whilst holding that situation, was created LL.D., by the University of Edinburgh, and published The Speaker, and other popular works. On the dissolution of the academy, in 1783, he took private pupils; and, in 1785, became minister to a congregation at Norwich, where he devoted the remainder of his life to literary occupations, and his pastoral duties. He died on the 3rd of November, 1797, highly beloved and respected. "To be amiable," says Dr. Aikin, of whose Biographical Dictionary he wrote half of the first volume) "was the essence of his character; and in every relation of life, the benevolence of a kind heart displayed itself in the most engaging features." Besides The Speaker, equally valuable for the selections made by the author, and his own Essay on Elocution, he wrote a sequel to the work, entitled Exercises in Elocution; The Preacher's Directory; The English Preacher; Biographical Sermons on the Principal Characters in the Old and New Testament; Institutes of Natural Philosophy, and an abridgment of Brucker's History of Philosophy. This last was written with peculiar elegance and perspicuity, presenting, in an attractive form, a work of great value, but one seldom consulted in the original, on account of its harsh and involved Latin style.

REED, (ISAAC,) the son of a baker, was born in London, on the 1st of January, 1742. He practised first as an attorney, and subsequently as a conveyancer, but devoted much of his time to literature, as well as to his profession. As an author, he is principally known by his splendid edition of Shakspeare, in twenty one voluines, octavo, combining all the information of Johnson, Steevens, and Farmer, and justly considered the most perfect ever published, of the works of the immortal bard. Mr. Reed also wrote a History of the English Stage, prefixed to his edition of The Biographia Dramatica; was, for many years, owner and editor of The European Magazine; and, in 1783, published four volumes of a miscellaneous collection of humorous pieces, entitled The Repository. He was well known as a book collector, and his library oc

cupied thirty-nine days in the sale of it by auction, after his death, which occurred on the 5th of January, 1807. Mr. Reed edited the poetical works of Lady Montagu, and several other publications; and he was one of the most valuable contributors to the Westminster and Gentleman's Magazines.

CHALMERS, (GEORGE,) was born at Fochabers, in Scotland, towards the end of the year 1742. He received the rudiments of education at the grammarschool of his native town, and was afterwards sent to King's College, Aberdeen, whence he removed to Edinburgh, and studied law for several years. In 1763, he accompanied his uncle to America, for the purpose of giving him legal assistance in the recovery of a large tract of land at Maryland; and was induced to practise his profession at Baltimore, where he, in a few years, acquired an extensive and profitable business. His prospects, however, were completely destroyed by the breaking out of the American revolution; and, in 1775, he came to England, not one of the least suffering loyalists. Without receiving any compensation for his losses, he applied himself to the first of his literary undertakings, which appeared in 1780, entitled Political Annals of the Present United Colonies, from their Settlement to the Peace of 1763, compiled chiefly from Records, and authorized often by the insertion of State Papers. This was succeeded by An Introduction to the History of the Revolt of the Colonies; Estimate of the Comparative Strength of Great Britain during the Present and Four Preceding Reigns, which went through several editions, and was translated into French and German; Opinions on Interesting Subjects of Public Law and Commercial Policy, arising from American Independence; and Three Tracts on Irish Arrangements. In August, 1786, he was appointed chief clerk to the board of trade; and, for the next forty years, continued to publish a variety of works, of which the principal are, Church-yard Chips concerning Scotland; Life of Mary, Queen of Scots; Political Works of Sir David Lyndsay; Life of Ruddiman; and his Caledonia, in three volumes, quarto. This last, as well as several others, he, unfortunately,

did not live to complete; dying whilst the fourth volume was in progress, in May, 1825. As an author, Mr. Chalmers will never be known to posterity by any other work than his Caledonia; which, with all its defects, says his biographer in The Edinburgh Encyclopædia, is one "which a person of greater genius or scholarship would not have undertaken, and one which a mere plodding antiquary would not have performed." Its chief faults are a want of skill in the condensation of his materials, and an affectation of style totally inconsistent with the subject. The matter is truly valuable and original, and no source seems to have been overlooked in his investigations after truth. His other publications, and particularly his controversial writings, have not gained more than temporary celebrity; an arrogant and dogmatic tone pervades them, neither warranted by their own intrinsic merit, nor the station of his antagonists, among whom were Malone and Steevens, Dr. Pinkerton, Dr. Currie, and others of equal eminence.

COWLEY, (HANNAH,) was the daughter of Mr. Parkhouse, a bookseller, at Tiverton, in Devonshire, and born there in 1743. She received an excellent education, and, at the age of twenty-five, married a captain in the East India service, of the name of Cowley. It was while sitting with her husband at one of the theatres, some time in 1776, that she first entertained the idea of dramatic writing. Struck with the mediocrity of the play which happened to be acting, she said that she could write as well herself; and, next morning, is said to have sketched the first act of The Runaway. On its completion, it was received with such applause as induced her to continue her labours; and the result was the production of a number of excellent plays; of which The Belle Stratagem, and Who is the Dupe? which still retain their place on the stage, may be mentioned as the principal. As a poetess, she is favourably known, by her pieces of The Maid of Arragon, The Scottish Village, and The Siege of Acre. She died, highly respected, and after a most exemplary life, on the 11th of March, 1809. Her dramatic and poetical works

VOL. III.

were published, in three volumes, octavo, in 1813. In her poetry, as in her plays, she displays great ease and liveliness; and she is said to have been the Anna Matilda who so long maintained a celebrated poetical newspaper correspondence with Della Crusca (Mr. Merry).

EDGEWORTH, (RICHARD LoVELL,) was born at Bath, in 1744. He was of an Irish family, and received his education at Trinity College, Dublin, and Corpus Christi College, Oxford. He seems to have had some idea of following the law as a profession, as he entered a student of the Middle Temple, but, if he was called, he never practised at the bar. Literature and the science of mechanics formed his chief pursuits, and the practical result of his studies in the latter showed considerable genius. Among them may be mentioned his construction of a telegraph, in 1767, though the idea was not altogether original, and he failed in bringing it into general use. He passed several months in France, engaged in the superintendence of some works on the Rhone, at Lyons; and, on his return, was elected a fellow of the Royal Society, and a member of the Royal Irish Academy, on its foundation, in 1785. He spent the latter part of his life upon his own estate, at Edgeworth Town, in the south of Ireland, engaged in agricultural, scientific, and literary pursuits. His principal work is a treatise on practical education, and another on professional education; the former of which he wrote in conjunction with his more talented daughter, Miss Maria Edgeworth. He also published An Essay on the Construction of Roads and Carriages; A Letter to Lord Charlemont on the Telegraph; and various papers in the Transactions of the Irish Academy. He died in June, 1817, having married four wives, of whom two were sisters. Mr. Edgeworth is rather distinguished for the versatility of his talents than the excellence of his writings, which are, however, useful and well-intentioned, if not splendid or profound.

NICHOLS, (JOHN,) was born at Islington, on the 2nd of February, 1744; and, after having received a good

education, became_apprentice to the celebrated printer, Bowyer, with whom he was subsequently admitted into partnership. In 1778, he became joint proprietor with Mr. David Henry, and, after that gentleman's death, editor, of The Gentleman's Magazine; to which he himself contributed a variety of articles relative to British topography and antiquities. Having previously been admitted a common-councilman of the city of London, he was, in 1804, chosen master of the Stationer's Company. About four years afterwards, his printing-office was burnt down, when a number of very valuable works were irremediably lost. He died on the 26th of November, 1826, leaving behind him numerous publications, of which the chief are, his Anecdotes of William Bowyer, and Literary Anecdotes of the Eighteenth Century, the whole forming ten octavo volumes; and the History and Antiquities of Leicestershire, in folio. His Literary Anecdotes is the only work of the kind existing, and may be consulted as an interesting and faithful supplement to the memoirs of all the eminent literati of the period to which it is confined.

PYE, (HENRY JAMES,) a lineal descendant of the sister of the illustrious Hampden, was born in London, on the 10th of February, 1745, at which time his father represented the county of Berkshire. He was educated at home, under private tutors, until the year 1762, when he was entered a gentleman commoner of Magdalen College, Oxford, when he ultimately obtained the degree of LL.D. In 1784, he was returned for Berkshire; in 1790, appointed poet laureate; and, in 1791, a police magistrate for Queen Square; which he resigned in 1811, and retired to Pinner, where he died, on the 11th of August, 1813. Mr. Pye having made himself responsible for his father's debts, amounting to nearly £20,000, ultimately became much involved. As a scholar, Mr. Pye ranked highly; and, as a poet, was respectable. In private life he was universally beloved. Among his chief works are, Alfred, an epic poem; the tragedies of Adelaide, Siege of Meaux, and The Inquisitor; Prior Claims, a comedy, in conjunction with S. J. Arnold, Esq.; Comments on the

Commentators of Shakspeare; Birthday Odes; four volumes of Miscellaneous Poems; The Democrat, a novel, in two volumes; The Aristocrat, a novel, in two volumes; besides several Translations of Xenophon, Pindar, Horace, &c.

MACKENZIE, (HENRY,) the son of a physician at Edinburgh, was born there in August, 1745. He was educated for the profession of the law; and, after having studied, both in London and Edinburgh, became an attorney in the court of Exchequer, in the latter city, in 1766; three years before which, his tragedy of The Prince of Tunis had been successfully represented on the stage. In 1771, appeared, anonymously, the work for which he is chiefly celebrated, entitled The Man of Feeling; the merited popularity of which induced a Mr. Eccles, of Bath, to lay claim to the authorship, which he endeavoured to maintain, by producing a copy transcribed with his own hand, with blottings, erasures, and interlineations. This gave rise to a public contradiction of the fraud on the part of the real author, whose reputation was, in consequence, so fully established, that he was induced, some years afterwards, to publish The Man of the World; an inferior continuation of his former novel, but still an impressive and powerful performance. His next production was entitled Julia de Roubigné, an epistolary novel, which, Sir Walter Scott has observed, gives the reader too much actual pain to be so generally popular as The Man of Feeling. He, however, adds, that the very acute feeling which the work usually excites among the readers, he is disposed to ascribe to the extreme accuracy and truth of the sentiments, as well as to the beautiful manner in which they are expressed. In 1778, having become member of a new literary society, he suggested the institution of a periodical paper, called The Mirror, of which he was editor, as also, subsequently, of The Lounger; where appeared his review of the poems of Burns, who was thus brought into immediate public notice, and prevented from quitting his country for the West Indies. In 1783, Mr. Mackenzie produced The Shipwreck, or

Fatal Curiosity, an adaptation of Lillo's tragedy, at Covent Garden, and at the same theatre, his two unsuccessful comedies of The Force of Fashion, and The White Hypocrite, were subsequently acted. He is also the author of another tragedy, called The Spanish Father; and, besides editing the poems of Blacklock, contributed several papers to the Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and of the Highland Society. He also published, in 1791, a small volume of translations from the German Drama; and has distinguished himself in political literature, by a series of letters under the signature of Brutus. During the greater part of his life, Mr. Mackenzie, who is much esteemed in private life, has enjoyed the office of comptroller of the taxes for Scotland, a situation worth about £800 a-year. He married, in 1767, a daughter of Sir James Grant, and has a family by her, of eleven children. His celebrity is derived principally from his Essays and his Man of Feeling, which are distinguished by sweetness and beauty of style, deep pathos, and tenderness and delicacy of imagination, that will always render them popular. Sir Walter Scott held in great estimation the talents of Mr. Mackenzie and, in dedicating to him the novel of Waverley, styled him the Scotch Addison. In summing up his merit as a novelist and essayist, the same high authority observes, historian of the Homespun Family may place his narrative, without fear of shame, by the side of The Vicar of Wakefield. Colonel Caustic and Umphraville, are masterly conceptions of the laudator temporis acti;' and many passages in those papers, which Mr. Mackenzie contributed to The Mirror and Lounger, attest with what truth, spirit, and ease, he could describe, assume, and sustain, a variety of characters."

"the

HAYLEY, (WILLIAM,) descended from a respectable family at Chichester, was born in that town on the 29th of October, 1745. He lost his father at three years of age, and, after having received the rudiments of education in his native town, was sent to a school at Kingston-upon-Thames, whence, in consequence of a severe illness, occasioned

by mismanagement, he was removed to the care of a private tutor at Teddington. Here he took great delight in poetry and dramatic composition; and, one day, reciting, with great vehemence, the lines which immediately precede the death of Othello, he, in his ardour, actually thrust the knife into his breast, and was near ending his days in reality. In August, 1757, he was sent to Eton, and quitted it in 1763; in which year he was entered of Trinity Hall, Cambridge, where poetry and painting seem to have occupied the chief part of his time. In June, 1766, he was admitted a student of the Middle Temple, but took no further step towards going to the bar, and appears to have left the university in 1767, without taking any degree. In 1769, after a somewhat romantic attachment, he married a Miss Ball; the derangement of whose mother induced Mrs. Hayley to ask her son how he would feel if his wife should fall a victim to the same calamity. "In that case," he replied, "I should bless my God for having given me courage sufficient to make myself the legal guardian of the most amiable and most pitiable woman on earth." After having had two tragedies rejected, The Afflicted Father and The Syrian Queen, he retired to Eartham, and, devoting himself to poetical composition, published, in 1778, An Epistle to an Eminent Painter; and, afterwards, successively, An Epistle to Adam Keppel, Elegy on the Ancient Greek Medal, and Epistle to a Friend on the Death of John Thornton, Esq. In 1780, appeared his Essay on History; and, in 1781, his celebrated Triumphs of Temper. He afterwards published separate Essays on Epic Poetry, Painting, and Sculpture; The Triumph of Music; a prose Essay on Old Maids, in three volumes; and his Life and Correspondence of Cowper. The death of a natural son having induced him to remove to Felpham, in Sussex, he died there on the 12th of November, 1820. Hayley's best productions are, his Essay on Old Maids, and Triumphs of Temper; the latter performance has much poetical merit, and will probably suffer little in the general estimation, by Lord Byron's couplet against it in the English Bards, &c. Sheridan