too good for a prostitute stage.'

What is this but common civility in the first place, and common cant in the second? That the poem would be very fine might be anticipated; as much is always said on similar occasions. That the stage was a prostitute one, is no more than what every age says of itself. Nothing is good but what is gone, and that which is gone was bad while it was present. This is the accustomed jargon of each generation. And where then can we look for a period of acknowledged and evident virtue, by a comparison with which we may estimate the degree of subsequent degeneracy? Not in the testimonies of those who lived in that period, but in that of those who lived after it. This is like a child who be wails the bauble that is destroyed, and neglects the one it possesses, only because the one cannot be had, and the other can. To such puerility it might be expected Warburton would have been superior; but the prejudice was a vehicle for praise, and he could play the courtly panegyrist with admirable dexterity, as every reader will acknowledge who remembers the adulatory correspondence between himself and Bishop Hurd, lately published. Prelatical courtesy is there carried to its height; and to a height which no one can contemplate with much pleasure.

Though the drama of Cumberland was printed, it has never happened to fall under my notice; nor could I obtain it any where upon recent inquiry. What are its claims, therefore, to the applause

which the author demands for it, I know not; but if I am to form my judgment of the whole from the specimens presented by Cumberland, I should hesitate to believe that it was either a fine dramatic poem, or too good for any stage, prostitute or chaste. The dialogue, in these extracts, is too Whetame, and the language too feebly correct. ther I am wrong in forming this opinion let the reader judge from the same evidence as I have had.

"Gab.-Cato is still severe, is still himself:

Rough and unshaken in his squalid garb,
He told us he had long in anguish mourn'd,
Not in a private but the public cause,

Not for the wrong of one, but wrong of all,
Of Liberty, of Virtue, and of Rome.

"Clod.-No more: I sleep o'er Cato's drowsy theme.
He is the senate's drone, and dreams of liberty,
When Rome's vast empire is set up to sale,

And portion'd out to each ambitious bidder
In marketable lots"

"In the further progress of the same scene Pompey is mentioned, and Calphurnius Piso introduced in the following terms:

"Gab.

-Oh! who shall attempt to read

In Pompey's face the movements of his heart?

The same calm artificial look of state,

His half-clos'd eyes in self-attention wrapt,
Serve him alike to mask unseemly joy,
Or hide the pangs of envy and revenge.
"Clod.-See, yonder your old colleague Piso comes!
But name hypocrisy and he appears.

How like his grandsire's monument he looks!
He wears the dress of holy Numa's days,
The brow and beard of Zeno; trace him home,
You'll find his house the school of vice and lust,
The foulest sink of Epicurus' sty,

And him the rankest swine of all the herd."

"I find the two first acts are wound up with some couplets, in rhyme, after the manner of the middle age. It will, I hope, be pardonable, if I here insert the lines with which Clodius concludes the first act

"When flaming comets vex our frighted sphere,
Though now the nations melt with awful fear,
From the dread omen fatal ills presage,

Dire plague and famine and war's wasting rage;
In time some brighter genius may arise,
And banish signs and omens from the skies,
Expound the comet's nature and its cause,

Assign its periods and prescribe its laws,

Whilst man grown wise, with his discoveries fraught,
Shall wonder how he needed to be taught."

This play Lord Halifax, who requested a perusal of it, undertook to present to Garrick, using all his influence with him to obtain its representation. Cumberland accompanied his lordship to the manager, and heard the strong recommendation of his patron ; but he read, in the countenance of Garrick, the fate of his drama. It was left with him for his opinion; that opinion was given a day or two afterwards, and confirmed the predictions of the author. He bore his disappointment unrepining; but his lordship, who probably thought

his avowed protection of the writer a sufficient testimony of his merits, felt so indignant at the rejection, that he suspended for some time his usual intercourse with Garrick. Cumberland candidly adds, “when I published this play I was conscious that I published Mr. Garrick's justification for refusing it;" with so much more prudence did the author contemplate the transaction than the peer.

In the 201st page of his Memoirs, Cumberland expatiates upon the difficulty of his undertaking, and reviews his qualifications for the task of delineating himself. Among those which he considers necessary to his purpose, he reckons some which, had he possessed them, no one would be pleased with their exertion. He deprecates the idea of merely recording the respective dates of his several productions, and aspires to the office of a censor over himself, vainly supposing that he could "act as honestly and conscientiously in his own case as he would in the instance of another person," and "resolving not to speak partially of his own works, because they are his own." Here is an assumption of power which no one would believe him to possess, had he really possessed it, or were it possible for any one to possess it. His praise would be ascribed to partiality, his censure to affectation; and so little are mankind accustomed to confide in the accuracy of opinions which a man entertains of himself, that their

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notions of things would receive no modification from such an authority, nor would they be prevented from forming their own decisions respecting him and his actions. The candour and truth, therefore, which Cumberland wished to employ, would have answered no ultimate purpose satisfactory to himself; and he would have done better by aiming only at that neutrality of opinion which leans to neither side, but simply states the evidence with regard to a particular circumstance, without urging its application to any specific inference.

In the year 1759, Cumberland resigned his fellowship for a wife, an exchange of very dubious benefit, and which some men have made without finding the equivalent of what they resigned. The lady whom he married, was Elizabeth, the only daughter of George Ridge, Esq. an intimate friend of his father's and a gentleman at whose house he had passed many happy and social hours before he probably ever thought of connecting himself so tenderly with the destiny of one of its inmates. He pays an affectionate, and I doubt not a sincere, testimony to her virtues, and of course celebrates her personal attractions. They lived happily together for many years, though I have been told, by a friend who was likely to be well informed, that his wife's love for him was sometimes displayed with too little attention to his liberty, and that her desire of having him always in her presence,