Melite, together with an Account of Egypt in its most early State, and of the Shepherd Kings.' His grand work, called A New System, or an Analysis of Ancient Mythology,' was the next. This was published in quarto; vols. i. and ii. in 1774, and vol. iii. in 1776. In 1775 he published A Vindication of the Apamean Medal, and of the Inscription NOE; together with an Illustration of another Coin struck at the same Place in Honour of the Emperor Severus.' This appeared in the fourth volume of the Archæologia, and also as a quarto pamphlet. To these we must add An Address to Dr Priestley on the Doctrine of Philosophical Necessity.' 1780. A pamphlet 8vo. Vindicia Flavianæ ; or a Vindication of the Testimony given by Josephus concerning our Saviour Jesus Christ.' A pamphlet 8vo. 1780. 'Observations on the Poems of Thomas Rowley, in which the Authenticity of these Poems is ascertained.'. 'Collections on the Zingara, or Gipsy Language.' Archæologia, vol. vii. 'Gemmarum antiquarum delectos ex præstantioribus desumptus in Dactylotheca Ducis Marlburiensis; two volumes, folio. A Treatise on the Authenticity of the Scriptures, and the Truth of the Christian Religion;' octavo, 1792. 'Observations on the Plagues inflicted on the Egyptians; in which is shown the Peculiarity of those Judgments and their Correspondence with the Rites and Idolatry of that People; with a Prefatory Discourse concerning the Grecian Colonies from Egypt;' octavo, 1794. 'Observations upon a Treatise entitled, Description of the Plain of Troy, by Mons. le Chevalier;' quarto, 1795. 'A Dissertation concerning the War of Troy, and the Expedition of the Grecians, as described by Homer; showing that no such Expedition was ever Undertaken, and that no such City in Phrygia ever existed;' quarto, 1796. This last was a bold but less successful attempt to controvert and overthrow long established opinions, and to raise a literary Trojan war. It was remarked on by Mr Falkoner; answered most rudely by Mr Gilbert Wakefield; and extracted a Vindication of Homer from J. B. S. Morritt, Esq. of Rokeby Park, near Greta-bridge; whose more polished manners induced Mr Bryant to reply to him. In addition to these works Mr Bryant was the author of two other volumes entitled: The Sentiments of Philo-Judæus, concerning the Logos, or Word of God; together with large Extracts from his Writings, compared with the Scriptures on many other essential Doctrines of the Christian Religion;' octavo, 1797. And 'Dissertations on Balaam, Samson, and Jonah;' also Observations on famous controverted Passages in Josephus and Justin Martyr.'

The sup

Mr Bryant's mythological views may be gathered from the following. extract from his Analysis: "I cannot acquiesce in the stale legends of Deucalion of Thessaly, of Inachus of Argos, and Ægialcus of Sicyon, nor in the long line of princes that are derived from them. posed heroes of the first ages in every country are equally fabulous. No such conquests were ever achieved as are ascribed to Osiris, Dionusus, and Sesostris. The histories of Hercules and Persius are equally void of truth. I am convinced, and I hope I shall satisfactorily prove, that Cadmus never brought letters to Greece, and that no such person existed as the Grecians have described. What I have said about Sesostris and Osiris will be repeated about Ninus and Semiramis, two personages as ideal as the former. There never were such expeditions undertaken or conquests made, as are attributed to those princes: nor

were any such empires constituted as are supposed to have been established by them. I make as little account of the histories of Saturn, Janus, Pelops, Atlas, Dardanus, Minos of Crete, and Zoroaster of Bactria: yet something mysterious and of moment is concealed under these various characters, and the investigation of this latent truth will be the principal part of my inquiry. In respect to Greece, I can afford credence to very few events which were antecedent to the Olympiads. I cannot give the least assent to the story of Phryxus and the golden fleece. It seems to be plain, beyond doubt, that there were no such persons as the Grecian Argonauts, and that the expedition of Jason to Colchis was a fable."

George Morland.

BORN A. D. 1763.-DIED A. D. 1804.

GEORGE MORLAND was the son of an artist whose talents, though respectable, were not of the first order in his profession. "Whether," says a writer in the Monthly Magazine,' "George showed, in the earliest part of his life, that inclination for the art which frequently indicates genius, or whether the practice was forced upon him by his father, who might feel that it was the only art in which he could educate him, I know not; but I do know, that in the exhibitions of the original society of artists, to which the father belonged, were shown drawings by George Morland, at the age of four, five, and six years, which would have done credit to youths who were learning the art as their profession; and from this time his father forced him to study, unremittingly, the practice of every department of the art, till he entered the world upon his own account. In this manner passed the first seventeen years of the life of George Morland, and to this he is indebted for the immense power he had over the implements of his art; for it is notorious, that whether it was the pencils and palette, or the crayon he was called upon to use, no one had more command of his materials than this eminent artist.

Morland's first original compositions were dictated by his father. They were small pictures, of two or three figures, taken from the common ballads of the day, such as Young Roger came tapping at Dolly's window,' &c. These his father put into frames, and sold at different prices, from one guinea to three, according to the pockets of his customers. Though infinitely inferior to Morland's subsequent works, they were admired as the production of a youth, and got into the hands of engravers, and the prints that were made from them first brought Morland into notice.

A gentleman, who was going to spend the summer at Margate, advised the father to send his son thither to paint small portraits. The plan was a good one, and adopted. Company flocked round him; his portraits pleased, and a very great number were commissioned: but his unfortunate mauvaise honté rendered the undertaking unprofitable. The pig races, and such elegant amusements as are projected for the lower order of visitors to Margate, obtained all his attention; and the portraits which a careful man would have finished on the spot, and got paid for

before the parties had quitted the place, were left to be completed in town. So that instead of returning home with his pockets full of money, he brought only a large cargo of unfinished canvasses. On his return from Margate, he had taken lodgings at Kensal Green, near Harrow; but shortly afterwards, marrying Miss Ward, the sister of the painter, who, about the same time, became the husband of Morland's sister, they agreed to take a house together in High-street, Marylebone. Disagreements, however, between the parties soon led to a separation. For Mr I. R. Smith, who dealt largely in prints, he painted many pictures of subjects from the familiar scenes of life. The subjects were known to, and the sentiments they conveyed were felt by all, and the prints which Mr Smith made from them had a sale rapid beyond example, and spread the fame of Morland all over the continent as well as the kingdom. His peculiar talent, as it now burst forth in full splendour, was landscape, such as exists in sequestered situations, with appropriate animals and figures. He was fond of visiting the isle of Wight in the summerseason, and there is scarcely an object to be met with along the shore, at the back of the island, that his pencil has not delineated. His best pictures are replete with scenes drawn from this spot. A fine rocky shore, with fishermen mending their nets, careening their boats, or sending off their fish to the neighbouring market-towns, were scenes he most delighted in, when he attempted sea-shore pieces. He was once recognised at a place called Freshwater gate, in a low public-house, known by the name of 'The Cabin.' A number of fishermen, a few sailors, and three or four rustics, formed the homely group; Morland was in the midst of them, contributing his joke, and partaking of their noisy merriment, when his friend called him aside. Morland, with some reluctance, left his company in the Cabin; on his friend's remonstrating with him the next day for keeping such company, he drew from his pocket a sketch which his remembrance had supplied, after leaving the house, which he afterwards wrought up into one of his best pictures; a proof that his mind was still intent on its favourite pursuit-that of nature in her homeliest attire-though his manners at the moment betrayed nothing farther than an eagerness to partake in vulgar sensualities. He kept a collection of guinea-pigs, dogs, rabbits, and squirrels ; and, at one time, was owner of eight horses, at an inn called The White Lion, of which he painted the sign. In fine, says Hassell, "he heaped folly upon folly with such dire rapidity, that a fortune of £10,000 per annum would have proved insufficient for the support of his waste and prodigality."

The consequences however of his dissipated habits were frequent distress, the spunging-house, and the jail; except when he had the good fortune to escape into a retirement unknown to all but some trusty dealer, who for the time took all his works, and paid him a stipulated sum for his support. On one occasion he was found in a lodging in Somer's town, in the following most extraordinary circumstances: his infant child, that had been dead nearly three weeks, lay in its coffin in the one corner of the room; an ass and foal stood munching barleystraw out of the cradle; a sow and pigs were solacing themselves in the recess of an old cupboard; and himself whistling over a beautiful picture that he was finishing at his easel, with a bottle of gin hung up on one side, and a live mouse sitting for its portrait on the other!

It was common for him to have four guineas per day and his drink -an object of no small consequence, as he began to drink before he began to paint, and continued to do both alternately, till he had painted as much as he pleased, or till the liquor completely got the better of him, when he claimed his money, and business was at an end for the day. This laid his employer under the necessity of passing his whole time with him, to keep him in a state fit for work; and to carry off the day's work when it was done. By this conduct he ruined his constitution, diminished his powers, and sunk himself into general contempt. He had no society but the lowest of those beings whose only enjoyment is gin and ribaldry. It was from company of this description that he was carried off by a marshalsea writ, for a small sum of money. When taken to a place of confinement, he drank a large quantity of spirits, and was soon afterwards taken ill. The man in whose custody he was, alarmed at his situation, applied to several of his friends for relief; but that relief, if it was afforded, came too late the powers of life were exhausted, and he died before he had attained the age of forty years. His wife, whose life had been like his own, died a day or two after him.

"Thus perished George Morland; whose best works will command esteem so long as any taste for his art remains; whose ordinary productions will please, so long as any liking for a just representation of what is natural can be found; and whose talents would have insured him a life of happiness, in the most brilliant station he could desire, if his entrance into life had been guided by those who were able and willing to caution him against those snares that are continually preparing, by knaves and fools, for inexperienced youth. His command over every implement of his art was so great, that the use of them seemed to be nearly as natural to him as the use of their native language to other men. Pictures flowed from his pencil, as words from the lips of other men. His pictures from ballads, &c. are trifling, considered as works of art; but curious, as the productions of a youth designing from the ideas of others. In his picture of Garrick, he seized the true character of every object he copied, and produced a picture of considerable merit -all circumstances considered-though not an exact copy of the original. What few portraits he painted, had the merit of strong resemblance; and there is no doubt that, if he had followed that branch of the art, he would have attained to great eminence in it. His pictures of familiar subjects had considerable merit in point of composition; and he painted all his figures from nature; but, as these figures were taken from one or two women and children who were much about him, they have too much similarity. But he shines forth in all his glory in picturesque landscape. For about seven years that he painted such subjects, he was in his prime; and while the figures he introduced were of the lower order, they were still in keeping with the scenes, and had nothing to give disgust; but when his increasing irregularity led him from the wood-side to the ale-house, his subject assumed a meaner cast; for he still painted only what he saw. Stage-coachmen, postillions, and drovers, were honoured by his pencil; his sheep were changed for pigs; and, at last, with the true feeling of a disciple of Circe, he forsook the picturesque cottage and the wood-side, and never seemed happy but in a pig-stye. The horse too he has given with much effect, when old,

ragged, and miserable; but a beautiful horse he never could draw as it would be drawn by Gilpin, Stubbs, or any artist of that school."

"He sometimes," says another contemporary critic, "leaves the truth unfinished, but never violated. He affected none of those whimseys that are for ever setting amateurs by the ears, about warm colouring and cold colouring, and forcible lights, and forcible shadows, and subordinations, that, to illustrate one object or action, would sacrifice ninetenths of a picture in a waste of senseless obscurity. He saw none of these violent partialities in nature; and he scorned to please a depraved imagination by fantastic pretences of surpassing that which, as it is, no man can equal. His characters affect no graces nor anti-graces that do not belong to them. His lights and shadows are mild, moderate, and diffusive. The whole together rests easy upon the eye, and pleases a correct taste as much as it would had it surprised a vicious one more. His choice is always good; for he chooses that in which there is nothing essential to reject. He never gives us too much of a thing. His piece is but a cantlet of picturesque nature, neatly cut out, and transferred into a picture-frame. The character of Morland, therefore, as a painter, appears to be remarkably equal and consistent. Gainsborough, sometimes dull, was oftener capricious, and still oftener careless; and the character of Wilson's landscape, seldom purely English, was sometimes mixed, and sometimes absolutely indeterminate; but Morland we are always sure of,-his pictures never make a mistake,- -never insult by falsehood, disgust by affectation, disappoint by error, or tease by mystery. Such was the illustrious English artist, George Morland; whose moral character was, at the same time, so notoriously depraved, that, in the course of twenty years that I have been among arts and artists, and anxious as I ever felt to esteem the possessor of such splendid talents, I never heard him mentioned but with some concomitant sentiment of reluctant disgust. Eccentric as his conduct was, beyond all calculation and all powers of description, it did not afford even the melancholy palliation of insanity; for the vigour of his genius, and the soundness of his judgment, never forsook him in a picture, though they scarcely ever accompanied him in any other employment, action, or sentiment of his life. The only character likely to bear a parallel with Morland's seems to be that of Adrian Brauwer, a Flemish painter, of great and deserved celebrity, who lived, I think, in the sixteenth century. The principal differences seem to be, that the Fleming's subjects were as generally nauseous as the Englishman's were decent and pleasing; and that Brauwer was more elaborate, and coloured more richly, though, perhaps, not with greater truth. The latter, therefore, may possibly be surer of pleasing the eye, however he affects the taste or the understanding. The death of Brauwer, at the age of twenty-eight, appears to have been brought on by the same causes, of which accident, or a stronger constitution, protracted the effects in Morland twelve years longer."