of Bath are copies from the Tabitha Bramble and Lydia of that celebrated romance. The Bath Guide was received with deserved and general applause. Its satire, which is poignant without grossness or personality, pleased all. Some years afterwards Mr Anstey published 'An Election Ball, in Poetical Letters from Mr Inkle at Bath, to his wife at Gloucester; with a poetical Address to John Miller, Esq. at BathEaston Villa;' which, though inferior to the former poem, presents a considerable degree of wit and humour. He was also author of The Priest Dissected, a Poem addressed to the Reverend Author of Regulus, Toby, Cæsar, and other pieces in the Papers, Canto I. 1774;' and a satire, entitled, Ad C. W. Bamfylde, Epistola poetica familiaris in quâ continentur Tabulæ V. ab eo excogitatæ quæ Personas representant Poematis cujusdem Anglicani cui Titulus, an Election Ball, 1776,' Besides these pieces, Anstey was the author of Speculation; or a Defence of Mankind, 1780,' 4to. In this work he complains that the poet had been treated by the world in a manner which his inoffensive reprehension of its vices did not entitle him to. He also wrote

4to.

Liberality; or Memoirs of a decayed Macaroni, 1788,' 4to; 'The Farmer's Daughter, a poetical Tale founded on Fact,' published in 1795. His latest publication was an elegant Latin ode to Dr Jenner, written a very short time previous to his decease.

Arthur Murphy.

BORN A. D. 1733.-DIED A. D. 1805.

THIS well-known dramatic writer, and translator of Tacitus, was born in Ireland, and descended from a very respectable family in that country. He was sent very early in life to the college of St Omer's, where he remained till his eighteenth year, and was at the head of the Latin class when he quitted the school. He was an excellent Latin scholar, and very well acquainted with the Greek language, when he returned to his native country. Soon after his return to Ireland he was sent to England and placed under the protection of a near relation, a person high in the mercantile world. It was intended by this relation that Mr Murphy should engage in commercial pursuits, but literature and the stage soon drew his attention, and wholly absorbed his mind.

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Mr Murphy was tempted to venture upon the theatrical boards, and made several attempts to acquire reputation as an actor; but though he always displayed judgment, he wanted those powers which are essential to the acquisition of fame and fortune in that arduous walk of life. was, however, wholly undeserving of the brutal attack on his talents as an actor, which Churchill directed against him, chiefly from motives of party-prejudice. Murphy answered the scurrilities of that energetic but coarse and furious bard, in a very humorous ode addressed to the 'Naiads of Fleet Ditch,' and in a very spirited poem, entitled 'Expostulation,' in which he modestly but firmly vindicated his literary character against all the assaults of his various opponents. He, however, withdrew from the stage, and made two attempts to become a member of the Temple, and of Gray's-inn, but was rejected on the illiberal plea that he had been upon the stage. He found more liberal sentiments in

the members of Lincoln's-inn, and from them obtained admission to the bar. The dramatic muse, however, still so much engaged his attention, that the law was always a secondary consideration. In the course of his life he sent twenty pieces to the stage, most of which were successful, and several of which will certainly retain an established rank among what are called stock-pieces of the theatre. It should have been observed that he first started into the literary world with a series of essays in the manner of the Spectator, entitled The Gray's-inn Journal,' which displayed great observation and knowledge of life for so young an author. According to his own account, he was but twenty-one when, as he used to say, "he had the impudence to write a periodical paper during the time that Johnson was publishing his Rambler." At one period of his life Mr Murphy came forward as a political writer, though without putting his name to his productions. The works of this kind which were well-known to have been the issue of his pen, were The Test' and 'The Auditor,' by which he powerfully supported the operations of government at that time; and consequently exposed him to all the virulence of party defamation. He has shown his taste and elegance as a scholar, by a Latin version of 'The Temple of Fame,' and of Gray's celebrated 'Elegy,' as well as other admired English poems, and a masterly translation of the works of Tacitus. He was the author of the following pieces: The Apprentice,' a Farce, acted at Drury-lane, 1756; "The Englishman returned from Paris,' ditto, 1757; The Upholsterer,' ditto, 1768; 'The Orphan of China, a Tragedy,' ditto, 1759; 'The Way to keep Him,' three acts, ditto, 1760-enlarged to five acts, 1761; All in the Wrong,' 1761; 'The Old Maid, a Farce,' ditto, 1761; 'The Citizen, a Farce,' acted at Covent Garden, 1763; 'No One's Enemy but his Own, a Comedy,' acted at Covent Garden, 1764; What We Must All Come To,' altered to 'Three Weeks after Marriage,' 1776; 'The Choice, a Farce,' acted at Drury-lane, 1765; 'The School for Guardians, a Comedy,' acted at Covent Garden, 1767; Zenobia, a Tragedy,' acted at Drury-lane, 1768; 'The Grecian Daughter,' ditto, 1772; Alzuma,' ditto, 1773; News from Parnassus, a Prelude,' ditto, 1776; Know Your Own Mind, a Comedy,' 1777; and 'The Rival Sisters, a Tragedy,' acted at the Opera House by the Drury-lane Company, 1793. His works have been collected in seven volumes octavo. His celebrity as a dramatist probably produced him business as an advocate. He was nominated a Commissioner of Bankrupts, in which office he continued to his death which happened the 18th day of June, 1805.

Mungo Park.

BORN A. D. 1771.-DIED A. D. 1805?

THIS celebrated but ill-fated traveller was the son of a Scotch farmer near Selkirk. He was originally destined for the church, but ultimately studied medicine, and was introduced by Sir Joseph Banks to practice in the navy.

After having made a voyage in an East Indiaman, he offered his services to the African association, and having been engaged by this society, he sailed from Portsmouth on the 22d of May, 1795. Land

ing at Illifree, he proceeded to Pisania on the Gambia river, whence he pursued his journey amid incredible hardships to the Niger, and to Sego the capital of Bambarra.

"The latter part of Park's first journey, and his return home, afford a narrative of peculiar interest, from two incidents, of a nature sufficiently dramatic, one of them indeed almost emulating the combinations of romance. Having encountered all the horrors of the rainy season, and being worn down by fatigue, his health had, at different times, been seriously affected. But, soon after his arrival at Kamalia, he fell into a severe and dangerous fit of sickness, by which he was closely confined for upwards of a month. His life was preserved by the hospitality and benevolence of Karfa Taura, a negro, who received him into his house, and whose family attended him with the kindest solicitude. The same excellent person, at the time of Park's last mission into Africa, hearing that a white man was travelling through the country, whom he imagined to be Park, took a journey of six days to meet him; and joining the caravan at Bambakoo, was highly gratified by the sight of his friend. There being still a space of five hundred miles to be traversed, (the greater part of it through a desert) before Park could reach any friendly country on the Gambia, he had no other resource but to wait with patience for the first caravan of slaves that might travel the same track. No such opportunity occurred till the latter end of April, 1797; when a coffie, or caravan, set out from Kamalia under the direction of Karfa Taura, in whose house he had continued during his long residence of more than seven months at that place. The coffle began its progress westwards on the 17th of April, and on the 4th of June reached the banks of the Gambia, after a journey of great labour and difficulty, which afforded Park the most painful opportunities of witnessing the miseries endured by a caravan of slaves in their transportation from the interior to the coast. On the 10th of the same month, Park arrived at Pisania, from whence he had set out eighteen months before; and was received by Dr Laidley (to use his own expression) as one risen from the grave. On the 15th of June he embarked in a slave ship bound to America, which was driven by stress of weather to the West Indies; and got with great difficulty, and under circumstances of considerable danger, into the island of Antigua. He sailed from thence on the 24th of November, and after a short, but tempestuous passage, arrived at Falmouth, on the 22d of the following month, having been absent nearly two years and seven months. mediately on his landing he hastened to London, anxious in the greatest degree about his family and friends, of whom he had heard nothing for two years. He arrived in London before day-light on the morning of Christmas day, 1797, and it being too early an hour to go to his brother-in-law Mr Dickson, he wandered for some time about the streets in that quarter of the town where his house was. Finding one of the entrances into the gardens of the British Museum accidentally open, he went in and walked about there for some time. It happened that Mr Dickson, who had the care of those gardens, went there early that morning upon some trifling business. What must have been his emotions on beholding, at that extraordinary time and place, the vision, as it must at first have appeared, of his long-lost friend, the object of so many anxious reflections, and whom he had long numbered with the dead!"

Im

In 1803 he was invited by government to undertake a second journey into the interior, and acceded to the invitation. He was at this time practising surgery in the neighbourhood of Peebles. But, says the writer of his life, "his journeys to visit distant patients-his long and solitary rides over 'cold and lonely heaths,' and 'gloomy hills assailed by the wintry tempest,' seem to have produced in him feelings of disgust and impatience, which he had perhaps rarely experienced in the deserts of Africa. His strong sense of the irksomeness of this way of life broke out from him upon many occasions; especially when, previously to his undertaking his second African mission, one of his nearest relations expostulated with him on the imprudence of again exposing himself to dangers which he had so very narrowly escaped, and perhaps even to new and still greater ones; he calmly replied, that a few inglorious winters of country practice at Peebles, was a risk as great, and would tend as effectually to shorten life, as the journey which he was about to undertake."

He sailed from England on the 30th of January, 1805, and reached Goree on the 28th of March. Thirty-five soldiers and a lieutenant volunteered to accompany him in his journey into the interior; and on the 26th of April, the day before he left the Gambia, we find him writing in high spirits to his friend Dickson: "Every thing at present," he says, "looks as favourable as I could wish; and if all things go well, this day six weeks I expect to drink all your healths in the water of the Niger. The soldiers are in good health and spirits. They are the most dashing men I ever saw; and if they preserve their health, we may keep ourselves perfectly secure from any hostile attempt on the part of the natives. I have little doubt but that I shall be able, with presents and fair words, to pass through the country to the Niger; and if once we are fairly afloat, the day is won.-Give my kind regards to Sir Joseph and Mr Greville; and if they should think that I have paid too little attention to natural objects, you may mention that I had forty men and forty-two asses to look after, besides the constant trouble of packing and weighing bundles, palavering with the negroes, and laying plans for our future success. I never was so busy in my life." Unfortunately his hopes were soon dashed by the death of all his companions except Lieutenant Martyn, and three of the soldiers. however, determined to persevere in his enterprise, and embarked on the Niger in a crazy vessel which, principally by his own labour, he had constructed out of two old canoes, on the 17th of November, 1805 On that day he completed his journal up to that date, and wrote to the colonial secretary a letter, in which he says: "With the assistance of one of the soldiers, I have changed a large canoe into a tolerably good schooner, on board of which I this day hoisted the British flag, and shall set sail to the east, with the fixed resolution to discover the termination of the Niger, or perish in the attempt. I have heard nothing that I can depend on respecting the remote course of this mighty stream; but I am more and more inclined to think, that it can end no where but in the sea. My dear friend Mr Anderson, and likewise Mr Scott, are both dead; but though all the Europeans who are with me should die, and though I were myself half dead, I would still persevere; and if I could not succeed in the object of my journey, I would at last die on the Niger. If I succeed in the object of my journey, I expect

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to be in England in the month of May or June, by way of the West Indies. I request that your lordship will have the goodness to permit my friend Sir Joseph Banks to peruse the abridged account of my proceedings, and that it may be preserved, in case I should lose my papers." On the 19th he wrote to his wife: "We have already embarked all our things, and shall sail the moment I have finished this letter. I do not intend to stop or land any where, till we reach the coast; which I suppose will be some time in the end of January. We shall then embark in the first vessel for England. If we have to go round by the West Indies, the voyage will occupy three months longer; so that we expect to be in England on the first of May. The reason of our delay since we left the coast was the rainy season, which came on us during the journey; and almost all the soldiers became affected with the fever. I think it not unlikely but I shall be in England before you receive this. You may be sure that I feel happy at turning my face towards home. We this morning have done with all intercourse with the natives; and the sails are now hoisting for our departure for the coast."

It is probable that he set sail immediately after writing these letters; but they are the last authentic tidings that have ever been received of this enterprising traveller. When rumours reached Senegal of his death, Governor Maxwell employed Isaaco, a native African of considerable intelligence, who had been despatched by Park with his papers and letters before he embarked on the Niger, to go in search of him. He was absent about twenty months, and returned in September, 1811, with a confirmation of the fatal intelligence, which he had received from Amadi Fatouma, the guide who accompanied Park from Sansanding, on his voyage on the Niger. Amadi says, in his journal, which has been published along with Isaaco's, "Next day (Saturday) Mr. Park departed, and I (Amadi) slept in the village (Yaour). Next morning, I went to the king to pay my respects to him. On entering the house I found two men who came on horseback; they were sent by the chief of Yaour. They said to the king, we are sent by the chief of Yaour to let you know that the white men went away, without giving you or him (the chief) any thing; they have a great many things with them, and we have received nothing from them; and this Amadou Fatouma now before you is a bad man, and has likewise made a fool of you both.' The king immediately ordered me to be put in irons; which was accordingly done, and every thing I had taken from me; some were for killing me, and some for preserving my life. The next morning early, the king sent an army to a village called Boussa near the river side.-There is before this village a rock across the whole breadth of the river. One part of the rock is very high; there is a large opening in that rock in the form of a door, which is the only passage for the water to pass through; the tide current is here very strong. This army went and took possession of the top of this opening. Mr Park came there after the army had posted itself; he nevertheless attempted to pass. The people began to attack him, throwing lances, pikes, arrows, and stones. Mr Park defended himself for a long time ; two of his slaves at the stern of the canoe were killed; they threw every thing they had in the canoe into the river, and kept firing, but heing overpowered by numbers and fatigue, and unable to keep up the