Frank Sayers.

BORN A. D. 1763.-DIED A. D. 1817.

"To many of our younger readers, in an age when every season brings with it its shoal of poets," says a writer in the Quarterly Review, whose interesting and elegant notice of our poet we here abridge, "the name of Sayers may, perhaps, be unknown, as being out of date; but it is known to their elders,—it is known on the continent,—and will be known by posterity. In the course of fame, the race is not to the swift, but to the strong."

Frank, the son of Francis Sayers, and Ann, his wife, was born in London, on the 3d of March, 1763. His father was a native of Great Yarmouth, who had settled in London as an insurance-broker, and superintended shipping concerns for his Yarmouth connexions. His mother's name was Morris; she was of Welsh extraction; and the son, who had the feelings of an antiquary, as well as of a poet, pleased himself with thinking that his pedigree might be traced to Rhys-ap-Tewdwr Mawr, prince of South Wales, and so up, through the heroes of Welsh history, into the age of fable and romance. His first schoolmaster was a dissenting minister at Yarmouth, by name Whitesides, "a man of adequate learning and sense, but sadly given to hypochondriasis."

At the age of ten he was removed to a boarding-school at North Walsham, where Nelson was his school-fellow, but a disparity of five years between them prevented all intimacy. In the ensuing year he was removed to Palgrave, where the Rev. Rochemont Barbauld, having settled as the minister of one of those dissenting congregations which were at that time lapsing into Socinianism, had just opened a boardingschool. Mrs Barbauld, who was then a bride, and who had already, as Lætitia Aikin, acquired her high reputation, took her part in the instruction of the pupils. Sayers used to say, in after-life, that he considered the lessons which he received from her in English composition as the most useful part of the instructions bestowed at Palgrave.

After Sayers had remained three years under the tuition of Mr and Mrs Barbauld, he was taken from school, and placed in a merchant's counting-house at Yarmouth. A few months afterwards his grandfather died, leaving him an estate at Pakefield, of about one hundred and thirty acres,-too little for independence, and yet enough to unsettle him. He now relinquished all thoughts of commerce, and placed himself with a skilful agriculturist at Oulton, in Suffolk, to learn farming, with the intention of occupying his own estate.

This plan, however, was soon abandoned. Leaving Oulton, Sayers went to reside awhile with his mother, who had fixed herself in the pleasant village of Thorpe near Norwich, in which city her two sisters were settled. "It was now," says his biographer Mr Taylor, "that our friendship became truly intense. In his society was always found both instruction and delight; at this time I first fancied my society was become of value to him. I could describe Paris, and, what he more delighted to hear about, Rome and Naples. The literature of Germany, then almost unknown in England, I had pervasively studied, and

was eager to display; and frequently I translated for his amusement such passages as appeared to me remarkable for singularity or beauty. We read the same English books, in order to comment upon them when we met. My morning-walk was commonly directed to Thorpe: we prolonged the stroll together on the uninclosed heath, and he frequently returned with me to Norwich, dined at my father's table, and took me back to tea with his mother."

In his twentieth year Sayers went to Edinburgh as a general student, and while there, determined upon following the profession of physic. He returned to Thorpe, and finding the income of his estate barely adequate to the expense of carrying on his studies, he sold it, and vested its proceeds, at a prudent season, in the funds. "This," says his friend, 66 was a season of civic ferment. In our walks, indeed, Sayers and I seldom talked politics; but often at my father's table, who was active in elections, hospitable to partisans, and an adherent of the Coalition. We too, on the contrary, were agreed to contend for Pitt and parliamentary reform: yet in this our sympathy there was not entire concord; we had entered a common path from different quarters: a zealot of the rights of the people, I was content with any administration which would undertake to carry them into effect; Sayers was more attached to the crown, and though willing, under its shelter, to welcome every improvement which seemed a natural evolvement of the constitution, he was not friendly to any attempt at inserting the graft from without. Mr Windham at this time came frequently to Norwich, and, when his visits had electioneering purposes, slept occasionally at our house, where he saw and argued with Sayers, inquired his destination, and observed to my father that, with so fine a person, and so fine an intellect, that young man would, in any professional line, become speedily an ornament to his country." He now entered regularly upon his professional studies, and pursued them, first in London, under Cruikshank, Baillie, and John Hunter, afterwards at Edinburgh under Monro, Black, and Cullen. Sayers could pursue the theory of medicine with the interest of an active and inquisitive mind; but he seems to have been physically incapable of the practice; the sight of an operation on the living subject was more than he could bear; and when he attempted to go through a course of clinical lectures at the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary, more than once he fainted by the bedside of the patient to whom he should have administered relief. He ultimately, however, obtained a diploma from Harderwyk, a town in Guelderland, situated on the Zuyder-Zee, where a provincial academy had been established in the middle of the seventeenth century.

"Having set his heart at rest as to the pursuit of fortune, there remained the pursuit of fame; and this, his biographer tells us, was now his darling care: he used to repeat Cowley's aspiration after an earthly immortality, and ask, with him, what he should do to make himself for ever known? His deliberations ended in a resolution to compose some lyrical dramas; a perusal of the Greek tragedians-which he went through with agitated feeling-determined the form of his out. line; Percy's Northern Antiquities supplied the costume and the colouring. It may be added, that he had been impressed by the Runic mythology as exhibited in Gray's spirited versions of some of the Scandinavian remains; and that the perusal of Klopstock's choral

dramas, which he read with his friend Taylor, strengthened the predilection for that form of drama which the ancients had taught him to admire." Mr Taylor has described his mode of composition: “I was admitted," he says, "behind the curtain, saw his works, as it were, on the easel, first in the outline, then garishly shaded, and, lastly, with the blended and finished colouring. His first care was to round the fable, and everywhere to foresee his drift; the dialogue was then rapidly composed, and always the shortest cut taken to the purpose in view; the critical situations were afterwards raised into effect, and brightened into brilliance, by consulting analogous effects of celebrated writers, with the intention of transplanting beauties of detail; and finally, the lyrical ornaments, in which he mainly excelled, were inserted at every opportunity."

The dramatic sketches were favourably received. If the readers were not numerous, they were of that description whom a poet should be most desirous to please; and the sale of three editions shows that they were more numerous than might have been expected. They were still more admired in Germany; where two translations speedily appeared, and the German critics said, that the curse which for many years seemed to have rested on English poets, had been dissolved by Sayers. "He was too easily satisfied with his success: the ambition, with which his biographer tells us he had commenced his career, seemed to have attained its object; and he never afterwards attempted any thing of equal magnitude. This may, in some degree, be explained by the habit of procrastination in which he indulged, for he was almost a systematic postponer, and would often smile in cordial sympathy with his biographer, at the maxim, 'that he who leaves a thing undone, has always something to do.' But he had also fallen into another habit which is not less unfortunate, and which may very probably be traced to the sort of critical education bestowed upon him in early youth; numerous minute corrections of his poems were found among his papers; 'some put affirmatively, some hypothetically; and time, which might better have been devoted to the execution of new works, was consumed in the fruitless and endless labour of touching and re-touching the productions of his youth."

A volume of disquisitions metaphysical and literary was his second publication. It was followed by one of Miscellanies, Antiquarian and Historical, and these by a little collection of his minor poems, under the title of Nugæ Poëticæ.' He died August 16th, 1817, bequeathing several sums to charitable uses, his books to the library belonging to the dean and chapter of Norwich, and his papers to his true and constant friend, Mr Taylor, from whom in life he had never been divided.

John Playfair.

BORN A. D. 1748.-died a. D. 1819.

THIS eminent philosopher was eldest son of the Rev. James Playfair, minister of Benvie in Forfarshire. At the age of fourteen he obtained a bursary or exhibition in the university of St Andrews; where

he applied himself with great industry and success to the study of the mathematical sciences. The late Principal Hill, who was his fellowstudent, says of him in one of his letters from college: "Playfair has very great merit, and more knowledge and a better judgment than any of his class-fellows. I make no exceptions; my parts might be more showy, and the kind of reading to which my inclination led me, was calculated to enable me to make a better figure at St Andrews; but, in judgment and understanding, I am greatly inferior to him."

In 1766 he became a candidate for the professorship of mathematics, in the Marischal college of Aberdeen, vacant by the death of Dr Stewart. He had six competitors to contend with; who, according to the terms of the foundation, were subject to an examination, to which, it was considered, none but the most able mathematicians would be equal. The examination lasted a fortnight, and terminated in favour of Dr Trail; who, however, afterwards confessed that he attributed his own success solely to the fact of his being two years older than Mr Playfair. He quitted the university in 1769; and, for the next year or two, spent most of his time in Edinburgh, where he became intimate with Dr Robertson, Adam Smith, Dr Black, and Dr Hutton.

In 1772, on the decease of his father, he was presented to the parish of Benvie. He continued, however, to cultivate the exact sciences, and in 1779 we find him communicating to the Royal society of London, an essay on the Arithmetic of Impossible quantities, "pointing out the insufficiency of the doctrine of negative quantities given by John Bernouilli and Maclaurin, viz. that the imaginary characters which are involved in the expression, compensate or destroy each other. He attempted, also, to show, in this ingenious paper, that the arithmetic of impossible quantities is nothing more than a particular method of tracing the affinity of the measures of ratios and of angles; and that they can never be of any use as instruments of discovery, unless when the subject of investigation is a property common to the measure of ratios and of angles."

In 1782 he accepted the tutorship of the two eldest sons of Mr Ferguson of Raith; in consequence of which he resigned his clerical office, but was soon after appointed to the mathematical chair in the university of Edinburgh. In the meantime he became a member of the Royal society, lately instituted in the Scottish metropolis, and communicated to their Transactions a paper 'On the causes which affect the Accuracy of Barometrical Measurements,' and a Biographical Account of the Rev. Dr Matthew Stewart.' In 1789 he succeeded Dr Gregory as secretary to the physical class of the Royal society. In the same year, a paper of his was read to this society, entitled Remarks on the Astronomy of the Brahmins,' written in furtherance and explanation of the views of M. Bailly, in his Traité de l'Astronomie Indienne et Orientale. His next communication was in 1792, On the Origin and Investigation of Porisms.'

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In 1796 he published his Elements of Geometry; and in 1802, his Illustrations of the Huttonian theory,' of which an able writer says: "Though brought out under the modest appellation of a commentary, it is unquestionably entitled to be regarded as an original work; and though the theory which it expounds must always retain the name of the philosopher who first suggested it. yet Mr Playfair has, in a great

measure, made it his own, by the philosophical generalization which he has thrown around it; by the numerous phenomena which he has enabled it to embrace; by the able defences with which its weakest parts have been sustained; and by the relation which he has shown it to bear to some of the best established doctrines, both in chemistry and astronomy."

In 1805 he was appointed secretary to the Royal society, on the death of Dr Robison, whom he also succeeded in the chair of Natural Philosophy in the university of Edinburgh. In 1807 he was elected a fellow of the Royal society of London, to which he communicated an • Account of the Lithological Survey of Schehallien.' In 1809 his paper On the Progress of Heat when communicated to Spherical bodies,' was read before the society of Edinburgh. In 1814 he published, for the use of his students, Outlines of Natural Philosophy,' in two volumes, the first relating to dynamics, mechanics, hydrostatics, hydraulics, aërostatics, and pneumatics,-the second to astronomy. A third was to have been added, treating of optics, electricity, and magnetism; but he never finished the volume.

Mr Playfair's next work was his splendid Discourse on the Progress of the Physical and Mathematical sciences,' which appeared in the supplement to the Encyclopædia Britannica.' Of this essay, Sir James Mackintosh says: 66 There is no composition on the history of the Physical and Exact sciences, in our language, which can be compared to that of Mr Playfair in philosophical eloquence, except the noble work of his great predecessor Mr Maclaurin on the Newtonian discoveries, which in some places rises to a true sublimity, without ever losing the serenity and clearness of philosophy. The manner of these two great mathematicians, however, is very different; and indicates a difference in their habitual mode of contemplating science. Mr Maclaurin seems to have admired most the grandeur of nature as disclosed by philosophy; Mr Playfair to have fixed his admiration on the energy with which human reason lays open nature to our view. The manner of thinking of the former was most naturally favourable to eloquence. The second, in a more advanced state of progress, when outward nature began to be viewed with abated wonder, found a new object of admiration in those intellectual victories and conquests which had long before inspired the genius of his master, Bacon."

In 1816 Mr Playfair visited the continent. Soon after his return to Edinburgh, his health began to decline. He died on the 20th of July, 1819, and was honoured with a public funeral. Soon after his death an Account of the Character and Merits of the late Professor Playfair,' evidently from the pen of an intimate and highly accomplished friend, appeared in a periodical publication. The following is an extract from this able elogé :

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"If he did not signalise himself by any brilliant or original invention, he must, at least, be allowed to have been a most generous and intelligent judge of the achievements of others, as well as the most eloquent expounder of that great and magnificent system of knowledge which has been gradually evolved by the successive labours of so many gifted individuals. He possessed, indeed, in the highest degree, all the characteristics both of a fine and powerful understanding, at once penetrating and vigilant, but more distinguished, perhaps, for the caution and