tions and antitheses of popular poets and dramatists. Some very ingenious lines being quoted, in which there was more of what the Italianз call concetti, than sense, he thus parodied them :

and to the line

he answered

If the boy, who turnips cries,
Cries not when his father dies,

'Tis a proof that he would rather
Have a turnip than his father.

Who rules o'er freemen should himself be free,

Who drives fat oxen should himself be fat.

He used at times to talk immoderately loud, and one evening was doing so behind the scenes, while Garrick was playing King Lear: the actor, on coming off, told him to speak in a lower tone, as he disturbed his feelings. "Poh!" said Johnson, “Punch has no feelings:" a reply which was in accordance with the great contempt he had for actors.-Sir Joshua Reynolds having painted his portrait, representing him as reading, and near-sighted, he expressed himself much dissatisfied, saying, "It is not friendly to hand down to posterity the imperfections of any man." Of this circumstance, Mrs. Thrale says, "I observed that he would not be known by posterity, for his defects only, let Sir Joshua do his worst ;" and when she adverted to his own picture painted with the ear-trumpet, and done in this year for Mr. Thrale, she records Johnson to have answered, "He may paint himself as deaf as he chooses; but I will not be blinking Sam."-Sir Joshua used to relate a characteristic anecdote of Johnson: About the time of their first acquaintance, when they were one evening together at the Miss Cotterells, the then Duchess of Argyle and another lady of high rank came in: Johnson, thinking that the Miss Cotterells were too much engrossed by them, and that he and his friend were neglected as low company, of whom they were somewhat ashamed, grew angry; and, resolving to shock their supposed pride, by making their great visitors imagine they were low indeed, he addressed himself in a loud tone to Mr. Reynolds, saying, "How much do you think you and I could get in a week, if we were to work as hard as we could?"—O'Leary was very anxious to be introduced to Dr. Johnson, and Mr. Murphy took him one morning to the doctor's lodgings. On his entering the room, the doctor viewed him from top to toe, without saying a word to him: at length, darting one of his severest looks at him, he spoke to him in the Hebrew language, to which O'Leary made no reply. Upon which, the doctor said to him, "Why do you not answer me, sir?" "Faith, sir," said O'Leary, "I cannot reply to you, because I do not understand the language in which you are addressing me." Upon this the doctor, with a contemptuous sneer, said to Murphy, "Why, sir, this is a pretty fellow you have brought

hither; sir, he does not comprehend the primitive language." O'Leary immediately bowed very low, and complimented the doctor with a long speech in Irish, of which the doctor not understanding a word, made no reply, but looked at Murphy. O'Leary, seeing that the doctor was puzzled at hearing a language of which he was ignorant, said to Murphy, pointing to the doctor, "This is a pretty fellow to whom you have brought me: sir, he does not understand the language of the sister kingdom." Johnson, it seems, was not insensible to praise: soon after the publication of his Life of Savage, which was anonymous, Mr. Harte, while dining with Cave, spoke very handsomely of the work. The next time Cave met Harte, he told him that he had made a man very happy the other day at his house, by the encomiums he bestowed on the author of Savage's Life. "How could that be?" says Harte; "none were present but you and I." Cave replied, "You might observe I sent a plate of victuals behind the screen. There skulked the biographer, one Johnson, whose dress was so shabby that he durst not make his appearance. He overheard our conversation; and your applauding his performance delighted him exceedingly."-The following anecdote of Johnson's meeting at Glasgow, with Adam Smith, has been furnished by Sir Walter Scott, which, he says, Mr. Boswell has omitted for obvious reasons:-Smith, it is related, after leaving the party in which he had met Johnson, happened to come to another company, where, knowing that he had been in Johnson's society, they were anxious to know what had passed, and the more so, as Dr. Smith's temper seemed much ruffled. At first, Smith would only answer, "He's a brute-he's a brute !" but on closer examination, it appeared that Johnson no sooner saw Smith, than he attacked him for some point of his famous letter on the death of Hume. Smith vindicated the truth of his statement. "What did Johnson say?" was the universal inquiry. "Why, he said," replied Smith, with the deepest impression of resentment, "he said, 'You lie!"-"And what did you reply?"-"I said, "You are a son of a!'" "On such terms," says Sir Walter, "did these two great moralists meet and part, and such was the classical dialogue between two great teachers of philosophy."

ERASMUS DARWIN.

RASMUS DARWIN was the son of a barrister, and was born at Elveston, or Elston, in Nottinghamshire, on the 12th of December, 1731. He received the rudiments of education at the grammar-school of Chesterfield, whence, in 1753-4, he removed to St. John's College, Cambridge; and, being intended for the medical profession, graduated M. B. in 1755. Before leaving the university, he had composed a poem on the death of Frederick, Prince of Wales, which was printed among the Cambridge collection of verses on that occasion; but the merits of this production did not rise above mediocrity. Having taken his degree of M. D. at Edinburgh, he commenced the practice of his profession at Nottingham, but shortly afterwards removed to Lichfield, where his fortunate cure of a patient, who had been given over by a celebrated physician, established his reputation, and was the foundation of his prosperity. In 1757, he married a Miss Howard, whom he lost, thirteen years afterwards, after having had by her five children; and, in 1781, he united himself to the widow of Colonel Pole, to whom he had been long previously attached. He shortly afterwards removed to Derby, where he completed his celebrated poem of The Botanic Garden, which was published in 1791, consisting of two parts, The Economy of Vegetation, and The Loves of the Plants, with philosophical notes. A poem of such singular construction, and so ably executed, created a great sensation in the literary world, and placed the name of Darwin, says Dr. Aikin, high among the poets of the time. In 1794, he published the first, and in 1796, the second volume of his Zoonomia, or The Laws

of Organic Life; the purpose of which was to reduce the facts relating to animal life into classes, orders, genera, and species; and, by comparing them with each other, to unravel the theory of diseases. His fundamental notion in this comprehensive work, was, that man, animals, and vegetables, all took their origin from living filaments, susceptible of irritation, which is the agent that sets them in motion. In 1800, appeared his Phytologia, or The Philosophy of Agriculture and Gardening, in which, says his biographer, in the Edinburgh Encyclopædia, "his conviction that vegetables are remote links in the chain of sentient existence, often hinted at in the notes to The Botanic Garden, is here avowed in a regular system." In 1801, he removed to an old mansion, near Derby, and died there on the 10th of April, 1802; after having prepared for the press a poem, called The Temple of Nature, or the Origin of Society, published in 1803; and which, with two papers in the Philosophical Transactions, and his share of the English translation of the Systema Vegetabilium of Linnæus, constitute, in addition to those previously mentioned, the whole of Darwin's acknowledged works.

In person, the subject of our memoir was above the middle size; of an athletic but somewhat corpulent body; with a countenance bearing traces of the small-pox; a stoop in the shoulders, and a lameness, which rendered him unwieldy in his appearance. He stammered to such a degree that he was almost unintelligible, yet nothing so much annoyed him as to be anticipated in his words. He possessed an ardent mind, a cheerful but hasty temper, and great humanity and benevolence of disposition; which was particularly conspicuous in his care of brute animals, and even insects. He was supposed, says Dr. Aikin, "to sit loose to religious sentiments, and was vulgarly charged with atheism; though a poem of his is extant, in which, with great force and beauty, he refutes the atheistic system." As a poet, the reputation of Darwin has greatly declined, in consequence, probably, of his addressing the reason and the imagination, without touching, or but rarely, the heart. Few poets have better succeeded in delighting the eye, the taste, and the fancy; and in perspicuity of style he has few equals.

DAVID HUME.

HIS celebrated historian was born at Edinbu gh, on the the 26th of April, 1711. He was of a good family, both by father and mother, and the former dying while he was an infant, he was brought up under the care of his mother, whom he describes as a woman of singular merit. A passion for literature took possession of him at a very early period of his education, and, in consequence of his sobriety and studious disposition, he was destined by his family for the law; but "while they fancied," he says in his autobiography, "I was poring upon Voet and Vinnius, Cicero and Virgil were the authors which I was secretly devouring." His health, however, becoming impaired by sedentary application, he, in 1734, went to Bristol with a view of engaging in mercantile pursuits, but found them so unsuitable to his disposition, that in a few months afterwards, he took up his residence in France, and laid down a plan of life which he steadily and successfully pursued. "I resolved," he says, " to make a very rigid frugality supply my deficiency of fortune; to maintain, unimpaired, my independency; and to regard every object as contemptible, except the improvement of my talents in literature."

After a stay of three years abroad, he returned to England; and, in 1738, published his Treatise of Human Nature, the fate of which he describes by saying, "it fell dead-born from the press." Of too sanguine a temperament to be discouraged, he continued his literary labours, and, in 1742, printed, at Edinburgh, the first part of his Essays, which were received in a manner that fully compensated for his former disappoint