CAVE.* how frequently men, not wholly without sense of virtue are betrayed to acts more atrocious than the robbery of a hen roost, by a desire of pleasing their superiors. THE Curiosity of the public seems to demand | influence of birth and fortune is resisted; and the history of every man who has, by whatever means, risen to eminence; and few lives would have more readers than that of the compiler of the "Gentleman's Magazine," if all those who received improvement or entertainment from him should retain so much kindness for their benefactor as to inquire after his conduct and cha racter. EDWARD CAVE was born at Newton, in Warwickshire, Feb. 29, 1691. His father (Joseph) was the younger son of Mr. Edward Cave, of Cave's-in-the-Hole, a lone house on the street road in the same county, which took its name from the occupier; but having concurred with his elder brother in cutting off the intail of a small hereditary estate, by which act it was lost from the family, he was reduced to follow in Rugby the trade of a shoemaker. He was a man of good reputation in his narrow circle, and remarkable for strength and rustic intrepidity. He lived to a great age, and was in his latter years supported by his son. It was fortunate for Edward Cave, that, having a disposition to literary attainments, he was not cut off by the poverty of his parents from opportunities of cultivating his faculties. The school of Rugby in which he had, by the rules of its foundation, a right to be instructed, was then in high reputation, under the Rev. Mr. Holyock, to whose care most of the neighbouring families, even of the highest rank, intrusted their sons. He had judgment to discover, and, for some time, generosity to encourage the genius of young Cave; and was so well pleased with his quick progress in the school, that he declared his resolution to breed him for the university, and recommended him as a servitor to some of his scholars of high rank. But prosperity which depends upon the caprice of others is of short duration. Cave's superiority in literature exalted him to an invidious familiarity with boys who were far above him in rank and expectations; and, as in unequal associations it always happens, whatever unlucky prank was played was imputed to Cave. When any mischief, great or small, was done, though perhaps others boasted of the stratagem when it was successful, yet upon detection or miscarriage the fault was sure to fall upon poor Cave. Those reflections his master never made, or made without effect; for under pretence that Cave obstructed the discipline of the school, by selling clandestine assistance, and supplying exercises to idlers, he was oppressed with unreasonable tasks, that there might be an opportunity of quarrelling with his failure; and when his diligence had surmounted them, no regard was paid to the performance. Cave bore this persecution a while, and then left the school, and the hope of a literary education, to seek some other means of gaining a livelihood. He was first placed with a collector of the excise. He used to recount with some pleasure a journey or two which he rode with him as his clerk, and relate the victories that he gained over the excisemen in grammatical disputations. But the insolence of his mistress, who employed him in servile drudgery, quickly disgusted him, and he went up to London in quest of more suitable employment. He was recommended to a timber merchant at the Bankside, and, while he was there on liking, is said to have given hopes of great mercantile abilities; but this place he soon left, I know not for what reason, and was bound apprentice to Mr. Collins, a printer of some reputation, and deputy alderman. This was a trade for which men were formerly qualified by a literary education, and which was pleasing to Cave, because it furnished some employment for his scholastic attainments. Here, therefore, he resolved to settle, though his master and mistress lived in perpetual discord, and their house was therefore no comfortable habitation. From the inconveniences of these domestic tumults he was soon released, having in only two years, attained so much skill in his art, and gained so much the confidence of his master, that he was sent without any superintendant to conduct a printing-office at Norwich, and publish a weekly paper. In this undertaking he met with some opposition, which produced a public controversy, and procured young Cave the reputation of a writer. His master died before his apprenticeship was At last his mistress by some invisible means expired, and he was not able to bear the perverselost a favourite cock. Cave was, with little ex-ness of his mistress. He therefore quitted her amination, stigmatised as the thief and murderer; house upon a stipulated allowance, and married not because he was more apparently criminal a young widow, with whom he lived at Bow. than others, but because he was more easily reached by vindictive justice. From that time Mr. Holyock withdrew his kindness visibly from him, and treated him with harshness, which the crime in its utmost aggravation, could scarcely deserve; and which surely he would have forborne, had he considered how hardly the habitual This life first appeared in the Gentleman's Magazine for 1754, and is now printed from a copy revised by the author, at my request, in 1791.--N. When his apprenticeship was over, he worked as a journeyman at the printing-house of Mr. Barber, a man much distinguished, and employed by the Tories, whose principles had at that ume so much prevalence with Cave, that he was for some years a writer in "Mist's Journal;" which, though he afterwards obtained, by his wife's interest, a small place in the Post-office, he for some time continued. But as interest is powerful, and conversation, however mean, in time persuasive, he by degrees inclined to another party; in which, however, he was always moderate, though steady Cave now began to aspire to popularity; and and determined. being a greater lover of poetry than any other When he was admitted into the Post-office, heart, he sometimes offered subjects for poems, and still continued, at his intervals of attendance, to exercise his trade, or to employ himself with some typographical business. He corrected the "Gradus ad Parnassum ;" and was liberally rewarded by the Company of Stationers. He wrote an "Account of the Criminals," which had for some time a considerable sale; and published many little pamphlets that accident brought into his hands, of which it would be very difficult to recover the memory. By the correspondence which his place in the Post-office facilitated, he procured country newspapers and sold their intelligence to a Journalist in London, for a guinea a week. He was afterwards raised to the office of clerk of the franks, in which he acted with great spirit and firmness; and often stopped franks which were given by members of parliament to their friends, because he thought such extension of a peculiar right illegal. This raised many complaints, and having stopped, among others, a frank given to the old dutchess of Marlborough by Mr. Walter Plummer, he was cited before the House as for a breach of privilege, and accused, I suppose very unjustly, of opening letters to detect them. He was treated with great harshness and severity, but, declining their questions by pleading his oath of secrecy, was at last dismissed. And it must be recorded to his honour, that, when he was ejected from his office, he did not think himself discharged from his trust, but continued to refuse to his nearest friends any information about the management of the office. By this constancy of diligence and diversification of employment, he in time collected a sum sufficient for the purchase of a small printingoffice, and began the "Gentleman's Magazine," a periodical pamphlet, of which the scheme is known wherever the English language is spoken. To this undertaking he owed the affluence in which he passed the last twenty years of his life, and the fortune which he left behind him, which, though large, had been yet larger, had he not rashly and wantonly impaired it by innumerable projects, of which I know not that ever one succeeded. "The Gentleman's Magazine," which has now subsisted fifty years, and still contines to enjoy the favour of the world, is one of the most suc cessful and lucrative pamphlets which literary history has upon record, and therefore deserves, in this narrative, particular notice. Mr. Cave, when he formed the project, was far from expecting the success which he found; and others had so little prospect of its consequence, that though he had for several years talked of his plan among printers and booksellers, none of them thought it worth the trial. That they were not restrained by virtue from the execution of another man's design, was sufficiently apparent as soon as that design began to be gainful; for in a few years a multitude of magazines arose and perished; only the London Magazine, supported by a powerful association of booksellers, and circulated with all the art and all the cunning of trade, exempted himself from the general fate of Cave's invaders, and obtained, though not an equal, yet a considerable sale.† *This was said in the beginning of the year 1781; and may with truth be now repeated. The London Magazine ceased to exist in 1785.-N. proposed prizes for the best performers. The first prize was 50l., for which, being but newly acquainted with wealth, and thinking the influence of 501. extremely great, he expected the first authors of the kingdom to appear as competitors; and offered the allotment of the prize to the universities. But when the time came, no name was seen among the writers that had ever been seen before; the universities and several private men rejected the province of assigning the prize.* At all this Mr. Cave wondered for a while; but his natural judgment, and a wider acquaintance with the world, soon cured him of his astonishment, as of many other prejudices and errors. Nor have many men been seen raised by accident or industry to sudden riches, that retained less of the meanness of their former state. He continued to improve his Magazine, and had the satisfaction of seeing its success proportionate to his diligence, till, in 1751, his wife ed of an asthma. He seemed not at first much affected by her death, but in a few days lost his sleep and his appetite, which he never recovered; but after having lingered about two years, with many vicissitudes of amendment and relapse, fell, by drinking acid liquors, into a diarrhoea, and afterwards into a kind of lethargic insensibility, in which one of the last acts of reason which he exerted was fondly to press the hand that is now writing this little narrative. He died on the 10th of January, 1754, having just concluded the twenty-third annual collection.† heard. He was a man of a large stature, not only tall the scheme which he supposed never to have been but bulky, and was, when young, of remarkable strength and activity. He was generally healthful, and capable of much labour and long application; but in the latter years of his life was afflicted with the gout, which he endeavoured to cure or alleviate by a total abstinence both from strong liquors and animal food. From animal food he abstained about four years, and from strong liquors much longer; but the gout continued unconquered, perhaps unabated.` His resolution and perseverance were very uncommon; in whatever he undertook, neither expense nor fatigue were able to repress him; but his constancy was calm, and to those who did not know him appeared faint and languid; but he always went forward, though he moved slowly. The same chillness of mind was observable in his conversation: he was watching the minutest accent of those whom he disgusted by seeming inattention; and his visitant was surprised when he came a second time, by preparations to execute He lived a patriarch in his numerous race, He was, consistently with his general tranquil lity of mind, a tenacious maintainer, though not a clamorous demander of his right. In his youth having summoned his fellow journeymen to concert measures against the oppression of their masters, he mounted a kind of rostrum, and harangued them so efficaciously, that they determined to resist all future invasions; and when the stamp offices demanded to stamp the last half sheet of the Magazines, Mr. Cave alone defeated their claim, to which the proprietors of the rival Magazines would meanly have submitted. He was a friend rather easy and constant, than zealous and active; yet many instances might be given, where both his money and his diligence were employed liberally for others. His enmity was in like manner cool and deliberate; but though cool, it was not insidious, and though deliberate, not pertinacious. His mental faculties were slow. He saw little at a time, but that little he saw with great exactness. He was long in finding the right, but seldom failed to find it at last. His affections were not easily gained, and his opinions not quickly discovered. His reserve, as it might hide his faults, concealed his virtues: but such he was, as they who best knew him have most lamented. KING OF PRUSSIA.* CHARLES FREDERICK the present king of Prus-ces in the conduct of affairs which he could not sia, whose actions and designs now keep Europe approve, and some which he could scarcely forin attention, is the eldest son of Frederick Wil- bear to oppose. liam by Sophia Dorothea, daughter of George the First, King of England. He was born, January 24, 1711-12. Of his early years nothing remarkable has been transmitted to us. As he advanced towards manhood, he became remarkable by his disagreement with his father. The late king of Prussia was of a disposition violent and arbitrary, of narrow views, and vehement passions, earnestly engaged in little pursuits, or in schemes terminating in some speedy consequence, without any plan of lasting advantage to himself or his subjects, or any prospect of distant events. He was therefore always busy, though no effects of his activity ever appeared; and always eager, though he had nothing to gain. His behaviour was to the last degree rough and savage. The least provocation, whether designed or accidental, was returned by blows, which he did not always forbear to the Queen and Prin cesses. From such a king and such a father it was not any enormous violation of duty in the immediate heir of a kingdom sometimes to differ in opinion, and to maintain that difference with decent pertinacity. A prince of a quick sagacity and comprehensive knowledge must find many practi * First printed in the Literary Magazine for 1756.-H. The chief pride of the old king was to be master of the tallest regiment in Europe. He therefore brought together from all parts men above the common military standard. To exceed the height of six feet was a certain recommendation to notice, and to approach that of seven a claim to distinction. Men will readily go where they are sure to be caressed; and he had therefore such a collection of giants as perhaps was never seen in the world before. To review this towering regiment was his daily pleasure, and to perpetuate it was so much his care, that when he met a tall woman he immediately commanded one of his Titanian retinue to marry her, that they might propagate procerity, and produce heirs to the father's habiliments. In all this there was apparent folly, but there was no crime. The tall regiment made a fine show at an expense not much greater, when once it was collected, than would have been bestowed upon common men. But the king's military pastimes were sometimes more pernicious. He maintained a numerous army, of which he made no other use than to review and to talk of it; and when he, or perhaps his emissaries, saw a boy, whose form and sprightliness promised a future soldier, he ordered a kind of badge to be put about his neck, by which he was marked out fluence not easily to be resisted, was not the only for the service, like the sons of christian cap-act by which the old king irritated his son. A lady tives in Turkey; and his parents were forbidden to destine him to any other mode of life. with whom the prince was suspected of intimacy, perhaps more than virtue allowed, was seized, I know not upon what accusation, and, by the king's order, notwithstanding all the reasons of decency and tenderness that operate in other countries, and other judicatures, was publicly whipped in the streets of Berlin. This was sufficiently oppressive, but this was not the utmost of his tyranny. He had learned, though otherwise perhaps no very great politician, that to be rich was to be powerful; but that the riches of a king ought to be seen in the opulence of his subjects, he wanted either ability or benevo- At last, that the prince might feel the power of lence to understand. He therefore raised exor- a king and a father, in its utmost rigour, he was, in bitant taxes from every kind of commodity and 1733, married, against his will, to the Princess possession, and piled up the money in his trea- Elizabetha Christina of Brunswick Lunenburg sury, from which it issued no more. How the Beveren. He married her indeed at his father's land which had paid taxes once was to pay them command, but without possessing for her either a second time, how imposts could be levied with- esteem or affection, and considering the claim of out commerce, or commerce continued without parental authority fully satisfied by the external money, it was not his custom to inquire. Eager ceremony, obstinately and perpetually during the to snatch at money, and delighted to count it, he life of his father refrained from her bed. The felt new joy at every receipt, and thought himself poor princess lived about seven years in the court enriched by the impoverishment of his dominions. of Beriin, in a state which the world has not often By which of these freaks of royalty the prince seen, a wife without a husband, married so far was offended, or whether, as perhaps more fre- as to engage her person to a man who did not dequently happens, the offences of which he com- sire her affection, and of whom it was doubtful plains were of a domestic and personal kind, it is whether he thought himself restrained from the not easy to discover. But his resentment, what-power of repudiation by an act performed under ever was its cause, rose so high, that he resolved evident compulsion. not only to leave his father's court, but his terri- Thus he lived secluded from public business, tories, and to seek a refuge among the neighbour-in contention with his father, in alienation from ing or kindred princes. It is generally believed that his wife. This state of uneasiness he found the his intention was to come to England, and live only means of softening: he diverted his mind under the protection of his uncle, till his father's from the scenes about him by studies and liberal death, or change of conduct, should give him amusements. The studies of princes seldom liberty to return. produce great effects, for princes draw with meaner mortals the lot of understanding; and since of many students not more than one can be hoped to advance far towards perfection, it is scarcely to be expected that we should find that one a prince; that the desire of science should overpower in any mind the love of pleasure, when it is always present, or always within call; that laborious meditation should be preferred in the days of youth to amusements and festivity; or that perseverance should press forward in con tempt of flattery: and that he in whom moderate acquisitions would be extolled as prodigies, should exact from himself that excellence of which the whole world conspires to spare him the necessity. His design, whatever it was, he concerted with an officer in the army, whose name was Kat, a man in whom he placed great confidence, and whom, having chosen him for the companion of his flight, he necessarily trusted with the preparatory measures. A prince cannot leave his country with the speed of a meaner fugitive. Something was to be provided, and something to be adjusted. And, whether Kat found the agency of others necessary, and therefore was constrained to admit some partners of the secret; whether levity or vanity incited him to disburden himself of a trust that swelled in his bosom, or to show to a friend or mistress his own importance; or whether it be in itself difficult for princes to transact any thing in secret; so it was, that the king was informed of the intended flight, and the prince, and his favourite, a little before the time settled for their departure, were arrested, and confined in different places. The life of princes is seldom in danger, the hazard of their irregularities falls only on those whom ambition or affection combines with them. The king, after an imprisonment of some time, set his son at liberty; but poor Kat was ordered to be tried for a capital crime. The court examined the cause and acquitted him; the king remanded him to a second trial, and obliged his judges to condemn him. In consequence of the sentence thus tyrannically extorted, he was publicly beheaded, leaving behind him some papers of reflections made in the prison, which were afterwards printed, and among others an admonition to the prince, for whose sake he suffered, not to foster in himself the opinion of destiny, for that a providence is discoverable in every thing round us. This cruel prosecution of a man who had committed no crime, but by compliance with in In every great performance, perhaps in every great character, part is the gift of nature, part the contribution of accident, and part, very often not the greatest part, the effect of voluntary election and regular design. The King of Prussia was undoubtedly born with more than common abilities; but that he has cultivated them with more than common diligence, was probably the effect of his peculiar condition, of that which he then considered as cruelty and misfortune. In this long interval of unhappiness and obscurity, he acquired skill in the mathematical sciences, such as is said to put him on the level with those who have made them the business of their lives. This is probably to say too much: the acquisitions of kings are always magnified. His skill in poetry and in the French language has been loudly praised by Voltaire, a judge without exception, if his honesty were equal to his knowledge. Music he not only understands, but practises on the German flute in the highest perfection; so that, according to the regal censure of Philip of Macedon, he may be ashamed to play so well. He may be said to owe to the difficulties of his youth an advantage less frequently obtained by princes than literature and mathematics. The necessity of passing his time without pomp, and of partaking of the pleasures and labours of a lower station, made him acquainted with the various forms of life, and with the genuine passions, interests, desires, and distresses, of mankind. Kings, without this help, from temporary infelicity, see the world in a mist, which magnifies every thing near them, and bounds their view to a nar-tures are few, and commerce little. row compass, which few are able to extend by the mere force of curiosity. I have always thought that what Cromwell had more than our lawful kings he owed to the private condition in which he first entered the world, and in which he long continued: in that state he learned his art of secret transaction, and the knowledge by which he was able to oppose zeal to zeal, and make one enthusiast destroy another. reproach of raising it. It was publicly said in our House of Commons, that he had eight millions sterling of our money; but I believe he that said it, had not considered how difficultly eight millions would be found in all the Prussion dominions. Men judge of what they do not see by that which they see. We are used to talk in England of millions with great familiarity, and imagine that there is the same affluence of money in other countries, in countries whose manufac The King of Prussia gained the same arts, and, being born to fairer opportunities of using them, brought to the throne the knowledge of a private man without the guilt of usurpation. Of this general acquaintance with the world there may be found some traces in his whole life. His conversation is like that of other men upon common topics, his letters have an air of familiar elegance, and his whole conduct is that of a man who has to do with men, and who is not ignorant what motives will prevail over friends or enemies. In 1740, the old king fell sick, and spoke and acted in his illness with his usual turbulence and roughness, reproaching his physicians in the grossest terms with their unskilfulness and impotence, and imputing to their ignorance or wickedness, the pain which their prescriptions failed to relieve. These insults they bore with the submission which is commonly paid to despotic monarchs; till at last the celebrated Hoffinan was consulted, who failing, like the rest, to give ease to his majesty, was, like the rest, treated with injurious language. Hoffman, conscious of his own merit, replied, that he could not bear reproaches which he did not deserve; that he had tried all the remedies that art could supply, or nature could admit; that he was, indeed, a professor by his majesty's bounty; but that, if his abilities or integrity were doubted, he was willing to leave, not only the university, but the kingdom, and that he could not be driven into any place where the name of Hoffman would want respect. The king, however unaccustomed to such returns, was struck with conviction of his own indecency, told Hoffman that he had spoken well, and requested him to continue his attendance. The king, finding his distemper gaining upon his strength, grew at last sensible that his end was approaching, and ordering the prince to be called to his bed, laid several injunctions upon him, of which one was to perpetuate the tall regiment by continual recruits, and another to receive his espoused wife. The prince gave him a respectful answer, but wisely avoided to diminish his own right or power by an absolute promise; and the king died uncertain of the fate of the tall regiment. The young king began his reign with great expectations, which he has yet surpassed. His father's faults produced many advantages to the first years of his reign. He had an army of seventy thousand men well disciplined, without any imputation of severity to himself; and was master of a vast treasure, without the crime or Every man's first cares are necessarily domestic. The king, being now no longer under influence, or its appearance, determined how to act towards the unhappy lady who had possessed for seven years the empty title of the Princess of Prussia. The papers of those times exhibited the conversation of their first interview; as if the king, who plans campaigns in silence, would not accommodate a difference with his wife, but with writers of news admitted as witnesses. It is certain that he received her as queen, but whether he treats her as a wife is yet in dispute. In a few days his resolution was known with regard to the tall regiment; for some recruits being offered him, he rejected them; and this body of giants, by continued disregard, moul dered away. He treated his mother with great respect, ordered that she should bear the title of Queenmother, and, that instead of addressing him as His Majesty, she should only call him Son As he was passing soon after between Berlin and Potsdam, a thousand boys, who had been marked out for military service, surrounded his coach and cried out, "Merciful king! deliver us from our slavery." He promised them their liberty, and ordered, the next day, that the badge should be taken off. He still continued that correspondence with learned men which he began when he was prince; and the eyes of all scholars, a race of mortals formed for dependence, were upon him, as a man likely to renew the times of patronage, and to emulate the bounties of Louis the Fourteenth. It soon appeared that he was resolved to go vern with very little ministerial assistance: he took cognizance of every thing with his own eyes; declared that in all contrarieties of interest between him and his subjects, the public good should have the preference; and in one of the first exertions of regal power banished the prime minister and favourite of his father, as one that had betrayed his master and abused his trust. He then declared his resolution to grant a general toleration of religion, and among other liberalities of concession allowed the profession of Freemasonry. It is the great taint of his character that he has given reason to doubt. whether this toleration is the effect of charity or indifference; whether he means to support good men of every religion, or considers all religions as equally good. There had subsisted for some time in Prussia an order called the Order for Favour, which, according to its denomination, had been conferred with very little distinction. The king instituted the Order for Merit, with which he honoured those whom he considered as deserving. There were some who thought their merit not sufficiently recompensed by this new title; but he was not very ready to grant pecuniary rewards. Those who were most in his favour he sometimes pre |