Part 7

Quippe sub immensis terrae penetralibus altae Hiscunt in vastum tenebrae: magnarum ibi princeps labitur undarum Oceanus, quo patre liquoris Omnigeni latices et mollis lentor aquai Profluxere, nova nantes aestate superne Aerii rores nebularum, et liquidus imber. Fama est perpetuos illinc se erumpere fontes, Florigerum Ladona, et lubrica vitra Selemni, Crathidaque, imbriferamque Lycaeis vallibus Hagno, Et gelidam Panopin et Peirenen lacrymosam, Illinc et rapido amnes fluere et mare magnum.

In the third book, he once more breathes freely, and in recounting the various kinds of exercise by which the human frame may be invigorated, his poetic faculty again finds room to play. Joseph Warton, in his Essay on Pope, has justly commended the Episode on the Sweating Sickness, with which it concludes. In the fourth and last, on the Passions, he seems to have grown weary of his task; for he has here less compression and less dignity.

His verse is much more compact than Thomson's, whom he resembles most in the turn of the expression; although he has aimed now and then, but with an ill-assured and timid hand, at a Miltonic boldness in the numbers or the phrase. When he takes occasion to speak of the river with which his remembrances in early life were associated, he has, contrary to his usual custom, indulged himself with enlarging on his prototype.

Thomson had mentioned incidentally the Tweed and the Jed:

--The Tweed, pure parent stream, Whose pastoral banks first heard my Doric reed, With sylvan Jed! thy tributary brook.--_Autumn_, 889.

He has thus expanded it:--

--Such the stream, On whose Arcadian banks I first drew air, Liddal; till now, except in Doric lays Tun'd to her murmurs by her love-sick swains, Unknown in song: though not a purer stream, Through meads more flowery, or more romantic groves, Rolls towards the western main. Hail, sacred flood! May still thy hospitable swains be blest In rural innocence; thy mountains still Teem with the fleecy race; thy tuneful woods For ever flourish; and thy vales look gay With painted meadows, and the golden grain! Oft with thy blooming sons, when life was new, Sportive and petulant, and charm'd with toys, In thy transparent eddies have I lav'd; Oft trac'd with patient steps thy fairy banks, With the well-imitated fly to hook The eager trout, and with the slender line And yielding rod, solicit to the shore The struggling panting prey; while vernal clouds And tepid gales obscur'd the ruffled pool, And from the deeps call'd forth the wanton swarms.

B. iii. v. 96.

What he has here added of his love of fishing is from another passage in the Seasons [3].

But his imitations of other writers, however frequent, have no semblance of study or labour. They seem to have been self-suggested, and to have glided tacitly and insensibly into the current of his thoughts. This is evinced by the little pains he took to work upon and heighten such resemblances. As he did not labour the details injudiciously, so he had a clear conception of his matter as a whole. The consequence is, that the poem has that unity and just subordination of parts which renders it easy to be comprehended at one view, and, on that account, more agreeable than the didactic poems of his contemporaries, which having detached passages of much more splendour, are yet wanting in those recommendations. One objection to his subject is, that it is least pleasing at that period of life when poetry is most so; for it is not till the glow of youth is gone by, and we begin to feel the infirmities and the coldness of age, that we are disposed to bestow much attention on the Art of Preserving Health.

His tragedy is worth but little. It appears from his Essays, that he had formed a contracted notion of nature, as an object of imitation for the tragic poet; and he has failed to give a faithful representation of nature, even according to his own imperfect theory.

The two short epistles on Benevolence and Taste, have ease and vigour enough to shew that he could, with a little practice, have written as well in the couplet measure as he did in blank verse. If Armstrong cannot be styled a man of genius, he is at least one of the most ingenious of our minor poets.

FOOTNOTES [1] Nichols's Literary Anecdotes, Vol. ii. p. 307, &c. [2] Chalmers's Biographical Dictionary, vol. ii. p. 486. [3] Footnote: Spring, v. 376, &c.

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RICHARD JAGO

Richard, the third son of Richard Jago, Rector of Beaudesert, in Warwickshire, was born on the 1st of October, 1715. His mother was Margaret, daughter of Wm. Parker, a gentleman of Henley in Arden, a neighbouring town in the same county. He received the earlier part of his education at Solihull, under Mr. Crumpton, whom Johnson, in his life of Shenstone, calls an eminent schoolmaster. Here Shenstone, who was scarcely one year older, and who, according to Johnson, distinguished himself by the quickness of his progress, imparted to Jago his love of letters. As the one, in his Schoolmistress, has delivered to posterity the old dame who taught him to read; the other has done the same for their common preceptor, but with less ability and less kindness, in his Edgehill, where he terms him "Pedagogue morose."

At the usual time he was admitted a servitor of University College, Oxford. His humble station in the University, though it did not break off his intimacy with Shenstone, must have hindered them from associating openly together.

In 1738, he took the degree of Master of Arts, having been first ordained to the curacy of Snitterfield, a village near the benefice of his father, who died two years after. Soon after that event, he married Dorothea Susannah, daughter of John Fancourt, Rector of Kimcote, in Leicestershire. In 1746, he was instituted to Harbury, where he resided; and about the same time was presented, by Lord Willoughby de Broke, to Chesterton, which lay at a short distance; both livings together amounting to about 100_l._ a year. In 1754, Lord Clare, afterwards Earl Nugent, obtained for him, from Dr. Madox, Bishop of Worcester, the vicarage of Snitterfield, worth about 140_l._ After having inserted some small poems in Dodsley's Collection, he published (in 1767) Edgehill, for which he obtained a large subscription; and in the following year, the fable of Labour and Genius. In 1771, his kind patron, Lord Willoughby de Broke, added to his other preferment the rectory of Kimcote, worth nearly 300_l._ in consequence of which he resigned Harbury.

His first wife died in 1751, leaving him seven children. He had known her from childhood. The attention paid her by Shenstone shews her to have been an amiable woman. In eight years after, he married Margaret, daughter of James Underwood, Esq. of Rugeley, in Staffordshire, who survived him. During the latter part of his life, his infirmities confined him to the house. He died, after a short illness, on the 8th of May, 1781, and was buried in the church of Snitterfield. In his person he was above the middle stature. His manner was reserved before strangers, but easy even to sprightliness in the society of his friends. He is said to have discharged blamelessly all the duties of his profession and of domestic life. As a poet, he is not entitled to very high commendation. The distinguishing feature of his poetry is the ease of its diction. Johnson has observed, that if blank verse be not tumid and gorgeous, it is crippled prose. To disprove this, it would be sufficient to quote the greater part of that story from the Tatler [1] of the Young Man restored to Sight, which Jago has introduced into his Edge-hill. Nothing can be described more naturally, than his feelings and behaviour on his first recovery.

The friendly wound was given; th'obstructing film Drawn artfully aside; and on his sight Burst the full tide of day. Surprised he stood, Not knowing where he was, nor what he saw. The skilful artist first, as first in place, He view'd, then seized his hand, then felt his own, Then mark'd their near resemblance, much perplex'd, And still the more perplex'd the more he saw. Now silence first th' impatient mother broke, And, as her eager looks on him she bent, "My son (she cried), my son!" On her he gazed With fresh surprise. "And what!" he cried, "art thou My mother? for thy voice bespeaks thee such, Though to my sight unknown."--"Thy mother I (She quick replied); thy sister, brother, these."-- "O! 'tis too much (he said); too soon to part, Ere well we meet! But this new flood of day O'erpowers me, and I feel a death-like damp Chill all my frame, and stop my faltering tongue." Now Lydia, so they call'd his gentle friend, Who, with averted eye, but in her soul Had felt the lancing steel, her aid applied, "And stay, dear youth (she said), or with thee take Thy Lydia, thine alike in life or death!" At Lydia's name, at Lydia's well known voice, He strove again to raise his drooping head And ope his closing eye, but strove in vain, And on her trembling bosom sunk away. Now other fears distract his weeping friends: But short their grief! for soon his life return'd, And, with return of life, return'd their peace.--(B. iii.)

The country which he has undertaken to describe in this poem is fertile and tame. There was little left to him, except to enlarge on its antiquities, to speak of the habitations that were scattered over it, and to compliment the most distinguished among their possessors. Every day must detract something from the interest, such as it is, that arises from these sources. A poet should take care not to make the fund of his reputation liable to be affected by dilapidations, or to be passed away by the hands of a conveyancer.

It would seem as if he had never visited a tract of land much wilder than that in which he was bred and born. In speaking of "embattled walls, raised on the mountain precipice," he particularises "Beaudesert; Old Montfort's seat;"[2]--a place, which, though it is pleasantly diversified with hill and dale, has no pretensions of so lofty a kind. This, he tells us, was "the haunt of his youthful steps;" and here he met with Somerville, the poet of the Chase, to whom both the subject and the title of his poem might have been suggested by that extensive common, known by the name of Cannock Chase,[3] on the border of which Beaudesert is situated.

The digressions, with which he has endeavoured to enliven the monotony of his subject, are sometimes very far-fetched. He has scarcely finished his exordium, when he goes back to the third day of the creation, and then passes on to the deluge. This reminds one of the Mock Advocate in the Plaideurs of Racine, who, having to defend the cause of a dog that had robbed the pantry, begins,

Avant la naissance du monde----

on which the judge yawns and interrupts him,

Avocat, ah! passons an deluge.

Of his shorter pieces, the three Elegies on Birds are well deserving of notice. That entitled the Blackbirds is so prettily imagined, and so neatly expressed, that it is worth a long poem. Thrice has Shenstone mentioned it in his Letters, in such a manner as to show how much it had pleased him. The Goldfinches is only less excellent. He has spoiled the Swallows by the seriousness of the moral.

Nunc non erat his locus.

The first half of Peytoe's Ghost has enough in it to raise a curiosity, which is disappointed by the remainder.

FOOTNOTES [1] No. LV. [2] Edge-Hill, Book I. [3] The author has here fallen into an error in confounding Beaudesert, near Henley in Arden, with a place of the same name, near Cannock Chase. The mistake was pointed out to him a few days after its publication, by his valued friend and relative, the Rev. Thomas Price, Rector of Enville, Staffordshire. Mr. Price's letter will furnish the best explanation. He writes:--

"MY DEAR CARY,

"In your life of Jago, I am afraid you have fallen into a mistake, by confounding the two Beaudeserts. That one of which Jago's father was Rector, and near which Somerville resided, is, as you have stated in the beginning of the life, near Henley, and to that the words, "Old Montfort's seat" must refer, because Dugdale, treating of Beldesert, near Henley, says, 'on the east side of the last mentioned brook runneth a hilly tract, bordered with deep vallies on each part; the point whereof maketh a kind of promontory, whose ascent being somewhat steep, gave occasion of the fortifying thereat first, considering its situation in these woodland parts, where, through the opportunity of so much shelter, advantage was most like to be taken by the disherited English and their offspring, to make head for their redemption from the Norman yoke. Tis not unlike, but this _mountainous_ ground, &c. Thurslem de Montfort, near kinsman of the first Norman Earl of Warwick, erected that strong castle, whereunto, by reason of its pleasant situation, the French name Beldesert, was given, and which continued the chief seat of his descendants for divers ages.'"--ED.

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RICHARD OWEN CAMBRIDGE.

Richard Cambridge, the son of a Turkey merchant, descended from a family long settled in Gloucestershire, was born in London, on the fourteenth of February, 1717. His father dying soon after his birth, the care of his education devolved on his mother and his maternal uncle, Thomas Owen, Esq. a lawyer who had retired from practice to his seat in Buckinghamshire, and who, having no children of his own, adopted his nephew. At an early age he was sent to Eton, where, among his schoolfellows and associates, were Gray, West, Jacob Bryant, the Earl of Orford, and others eminent for wit or learning. Here he contracted not only a literary taste and habits of study, but that preference for the quiet amusements of a country life, which afterwards formed a part of his character. In 1734 he was removed from Eton to Oxford, and admitted a gentleman commoner of St. John's College. On the marriage of the Prince of Wales, two years after, he contributed some verses to the Congratulatory Poems from that University. A ludicrous picture, which he draws of academical festivity, betrays the future author of the Scribleriad:--

In flowing robes and squared caps advance, Pallas their guide, her ever-favour'd band; As they approach they join in mystic dance, Large scrolls of paper waving in their hand; Nearer they come, I heard them sweetly sing.

He left the University without taking a degree, and in 1737 became a member of Lincoln's Inn. In four years after he married the second daughter of George Trenchard, Esq. of Woolverton, in Dorsetshire, who was Member of Parliament for Poole, and son of Sir John Trenchard, Secretary of State to King William. Retiring to his family mansion of Whitminster, in Gloucestershire, on the banks of the Stroud, he employed himself in making that stream navigable to its junction with the Severn, in improving his buildings, and in ornamenting his grounds, which lay pleasantly in the rich vale of Berkeley. Here his happiness was interrupted by the death of one among his former playmates at Eton, whom he had most distinguished by his affection. This was Captain Berkeley, an officer, who in those happy times, when military men were not yet educated apart from scholars, had added to his other accomplishments a love of letters, and who fell in the battle of Fontenoy. This affliction discouraged him from proceeding in a poem on Society, which he had intended as a memorial of their friendship. The opening does not promise well enough to make us regret its discontinuance.

At Whitminster he had the honour of entertaining the Prince of Wales, with his consort, and their daughter the late Duchess Dowager of Brunswick, then on a visit to Lord Bathurst at Cirencester. The royal guests were feasted in a vessel of his own constructing, that was moored on a reach of the Severn; and the Prince gratified him by declaring, that he had often made similar attempts on the Thames, but never with equal success. To the exercise of mechanical ingenuity in improving the art of boat-building, he added uncommon skill in the use of the bow and arrow, and had assembled all the varieties of those instruments that could be procured from different countries.

He appears to have possessed in an unusual degree, the power of suddenly ingratiating himself with those who conversed with him. A gentleman who had never before seen him, and who had reluctantly accompanied the Prince in his aquatic expedition, was so much pleased with Cambridge, as to be among the foremost to acknowledge his satisfaction; and having been introduced by William Whitehead, then tutor to the Earl of Jersey's eldest son, into the house of that nobleman, he soon became a welcome guest, and formed a lasting friendship with one of the family, who was afterwards Earl of Clarendon. In the number of his intimates he reckoned Bathurst, afterwards Chancellor, with whom an acquaintance, begun at Eton, had been continued at Lincoln's Inn; Carteret, Lyttelton, Grenville, Chesterfield, Yorke, Pitt, and Pulteney. In order to facilitate his intercourse with such associates, and perhaps in conformity with the advice of his departed friend Berkeley, who had recommended London as the proper stage for the display of his poetical talent, he was induced to pass two of his winters in the capital; but finding that the air of the town was injurious to his health, in 1751 he purchased a residence at Twickenham. He had now another opportunity of showing his taste for rural embellishment, in counteracting the effects of his predecessor's formality, in opening his lawns and grouping his trees with an art that wore the appearance of negligence. An addition to his fortune by the decease of his uncle Mr. Owen, who left him his name together with his estate, enabled him to gratify these propensities. By some of his powerful friends he had been urged to obtain a seat in Parliament, and addict himself to a public life; but he valued his tranquillity too highly to comply with their solicitations. A sonnet addressed to him by his friend Edwards, author of the Canons of Criticism, and which is not without elegance, tended to confirm him in his resolve.

In the year[1] of his removal to Twickenham, the Scribleriad was published, a poem calculated to please the learned, rather than the vulgar, and with respect to which he had observed the rule of the _nonum prematur in annum_. To The World, the periodical paper undertaken soon after by Moore, and continued for four years, he contributed twenty-one numbers. Though determined against taking an active part in public affairs, yet he shewed himself to be far from indifferent to the interests of his country. Her maritime glory more peculiarly engaged his attention.

Anson, Boscawen, and indeed nearly all the distinguished seamen of his day, were among his intimates or acquaintance; and he assisted some of the principal navigators in drawing up the relations which they gave to the world of their discoveries. In 1761, he was prompted by his apprehensions, that the nation was not sufficiently on her guard against the endeavours making by the French to deprive her of her possessions in the East, to publish a History of the War upon the Coast of Coromandel. The great work undertaken by Mr. Orme prevented him from pursuing the subject.

Continuing thus to pass his days in the enjoyment of domestic happiness and learned ease, surrounded by a train of menials grown grey in his service, exercising the rites of hospitality with uniform cheerfulness, and performing the duties of religion with exemplary punctuality, respected by the good and admired by the ingenious, he reached his eighty-third year with little inconvenience from the usual infirmities of age. His faculties then declining, he was dismissed by a gradual exhaustion of his natural powers, and resigning his breath without a sigh on the seventeenth of September, 1802--

--Like ripe fruit he dropp'd Into his mother's lap ... ...for death mature.

Having always lived in an union of the utmost tenderness with his family, he exhibited a pleasing instance of the "ruling passion strong in death." "Having passed," says his son, "a considerable time in a sort of doze, from which it was thought he had hardly strength to revive, he awoke, and upon seeing me, feebly articulated, 'How do the dear people do?' When I answered that they were well; with a smile upon his countenance, and an increased energy of voice, he replied, 'I thank God;' and then reposed his head upon his pillow, and spoke no more."

He was buried at Twickenham, where, on inquiring a few years ago, I found that no monument had been raised to his memory.

He left behind a widow, a daughter, and two sons. From the narrative of his life written by one of these, the Reverend Archdeacon Cambridge, and prefixed to a handsome edition of his poems and his papers in The World, the above account has been chiefly extracted.

Chesterfield, another of the contributors to The World, inserted in it a short character of him under the name of Cantabrigiensis, introduced by an encomium on his temperance; for he was a water-drinker.

That he was what is commonly termed a news-monger, appears from the following laughable story, told by the late Mr. George Hardinge, the Welch Judge:--

I wished upon some occasion to borrow a Martial. He told me he had no such book, _except by heart_. I therefore inferred, that he could not immediately detect me. Accordingly I sent him an epigram which I had made, and an English version of it, as from the original. He commended the latter, but said, that it wanted the neatness of the Roman. When I undeceived him, he laughed, and forgave me.

It originated in a whimsical fact. Mr. Cambridge had a rage for news; and living in effect at Richmond, though on the other side of the Thames, he had the command of many political reporters. As I was then in professional business at my chambers, I knew less of public news than he did; and every Saturday, in my way from Lincoln's Inn to a villa of my own near him, called upon him for the news from London. This I told him was not unlike what Martial said, L. iii. 7.

Deciano salutem.

Vix Roma egressus, villa novus advena, ruris Vicini dominum te "quid in urbe?" rogo. Tu novitatis amans Roma si Tibura malles Per nos "de villa quae nova" disce "tua."

_Nichols's Illust. of the Literary Hist, of the xviii. Cent_. v. i. p. 131.

Of his poems, which are neither numerous, nor exhibit much variety of manner, little remains to be said. Archimage, though a sprightly sally, cannot be ranked among the successful imitations of Spenser's style. _Als ne_ and _mote_, how often soever repeated, do not go far towards a resemblance of the Faery Queene.