beauty the same subject was capable. In the Ode to Evening, he has again tried his strength with Collins. There are some images of rural life in it that have the appearance of being drawn from nature, and which therefore please. Hail, meek-eyed maiden, clad in sober grey, * To the deep wood the clamorous rooks repair, Light skims the swallow o'er the watery scene, And from the sheep-cotes, and fresh-furrow'd field, Stout ploughmen meet to wrestle on the green. The swain that artless sings on yonder rock, But these pretty stanzas are interrupted by the mention of Phoebus, the Dryads, old Sylvan, and Pan. The Ode to Content is in the same metre as his school-fellow's Ode to Evening; but in the numbers, it is very inferior both to that and to Mrs. Barbauld's Ode to Spring. In his Dying Indian, he has produced a few lines of extraordinary force and pathos. The rest of his poems, in blank verse, are for the most part of an indifferent structure. In his Translations from Virgil, he will probably be found to excel Dryden as much in correctness, as he falls short of him in animation and harmony. When his Odes were first published, Gray perceived the author to be devoid of invention, but praised him for a very poetical choice of expression, and for a good ear, and even thus perhaps a little over-rated his powers. But our lyric poetry was not then what it has since been made by Gray himself, the younger Warton, Mason, Russell, and one or two writers now living. If he had enjoyed more leisure, it is probable that he might have written better; for he was solicitous not to lose any distinction to be acquired by. his poetry; and took care to reclaim a copy of humorous verses, entitled, an Epistle from Thomas Hearne, which had been attributed by mistake to his brother, among whose poems it is still printed. CHRISTOPHER ANSTEY. AN account of Christopher Anstey, written by his second son, is prefixed to the handsome edition of his works, printed at London, in 1808. He was born on the thirty-first of October, 1724, and was the son of Doctor Anstey, rector of Brinkley, in Cambridgeshire, a living in the gift of St. John's College, Cambridge; of which the Doctor had formerly been fellow and tutor. His mother was Mary, daughter of Anthony Thompson, Esq. of Trumpington, in the same county. They had no offspring but our poet, and a daughter born some years before him. His father was afflicted with a total deafness for so considerable a portion of his life, as never to have heard the sound of his son's voice; and was thus rendered incapable of communicating to him that instruction which he might otherwise have derived from a parent endowed with remarkable acuteness of understanding. He was, therefore, sent very early to school at Bury St. Edmunds. Here he continued, under the tuition of the Rev. Arthur Kinsman, till he was removed to Eton; on the foundation of which school he was afterwards placed. His studies having been completed with great credit to himself, under Doctor George, the head-master of Eton, in the year 1742 he succeeded to a scholarship of King's College, Cambridge, where his classical attainments were not neglected. He was admitted in 1745 to a fellowship of his college; and, in the next year, he took his degree of Bachelor of Arts. He now resided chiefly in the University, where his resistance to an innovation, attempted to be introduced into King's College, involved him in a dispute which occasioned the degree of Master to be refused him. That College had immemorially asserted for its members an exemption from the performance of those public exercises demanded of the rest of the University as a qualification for their degrees. This right was now questioned; and it was required of the Bachelor Fellows of King's, that they should compose and pronounce a Latin oration in the public schools. Such an infringement of privilege was not to be tamely endured. After some opposition made by Anstey, in common with the other junior Fellows, the exercise in dispute was at lenth exacted. But Anstey, who was the senior Bachelor of the year, and to whose lot it therefore fell first to deliver this obnoxious declamation, contrived to frame it in such a manner, as to cast a ridicule on the whole proceeding. He was accordingly interrupted in the recitation of it, and ordered to compose another; in which, at the same time that he pretended to ex culpate himself from his former offence, he continued in the same vein of raillery. Though his degree was withheld in consequence of this pertinacity, yet it produced the desired effect of maintaining for the College its former freedom. While an under-graduate, he had distinguished himself by his Latin verses, called the Tripos Verses; and, in 1748, by a poem, in the same language, on the Peace; printed in the Cambridge Collection. His quarrel with the senior part of the University did not deprive him of his fellowship. He was still occasionally an inmate of the College, and did not cease to be a Fellow, till he came into the possession of the family estate at his mother's death, in 1754. In two years after he married Anne, third daughter of Felix Calvert, Esq. of Albury-Hall, in Hertfordshire, and the sister of John Calvert, Esq. one of his most intimate friends, who was returned to that and many successive Parliaments, for the borough of Hertford. 66 By this most excellent lady," says his biographer, with the amiable warmth of filial tenderness, "who was allowed to possess every endowment of person, and qualification of mind and disposition which could render her interesting and attractive in domestic life, and whom he justly regarded as the pattern of every virtue, and the source of all his happiness, he lived in uninterrupted and undiminished esteem and affection for nearly half a |