first volume is dedicated, in a humorous and satirical style, to the Man in the Moon, and the second to the Right Honourable James Lord Tyrawley and Killmain. They consist of seventyseven essays, thirty-three in the first volume, and forty-four in the second, on a great variety of subjects. They are written with much vivacity, and a few might be selected which display considerable wit and humour; of this kind are “Travels made and performed from Exeter to London," vol. 2, page 47; and the Essay on "Modern Inventions," a satire on Quack Adver-, tisements, vol. 2, p. 82. The style, however, of the Humourist is not only inelegant, but coarse, and loaded with vulgar and idiomatic expressions, and there is much ribaldry interspersed through its pages. In an essay on Coffee-Houses the author remarks, that "after the Restoration, the king, who brought back with him many of the manners of the French nation, insinuated the same conversible humour into his favourites and followers. There were several Coffee-Houses then erected, where assemblies of the Literati professed to meet; and the Town had due notice given them, at which hour the respective boards sat, to speak sentences, and say things worth the hearing. John Dryden took his place very solemnly every evening at Will's, which is

remembered and duly honoured for his sake, to this day." To whom we are indebted for this mot ley work I am, at present, totally ignorant.

28. THE PLAIN DEALER. The writers of this periodical paper were Aaron Hill and W. Bond. Aaron Hill was born in London on February 10th, 1685; and after his school education at Westminster, not being able, from the destitute state in which he was left by his father, to complete his studies at an university, he embraced the resolution of applying to his relation Lord Paget, then Ambassador at the Court of Constantinople. For this city, therefore, he embarked in 1700, and was fortunately well received by his Lordship, who procured him an able tutor, under whose directions he travelled through a great part of the East, visiting Egypt, Palestine, &c. He returned to England in 1703, in the Ambassador's suite; and, upon the death of Lord Paget, accompanied Sir William Wentworth, of Yorkshire, on a tour through Europe, which occupied nearly three years. Mr. Hill appeared before the public as an author in 1709, by publishing "A History of the Ottoman Empire," and "Camillus," a poem, a panegyric on the Earl of Peterborough, which obtained him the patron. age of that nobleman. The succeeding year was

* Vol. 2, p. 185.

a most propitious period in our author's annals; he married a lady of great beauty, wealth, and accomplishments; was appointed manager of Drury Lane Theatre; wrote. his first tragedy, entitled "Elfrid, or the Fair Inconstant," which he had written at the request of Booth, and produced an Opera at the Haymarket, called "Rinaldo," which was received with great applause. His prospects, however, soon clouded; a disagreement with the Duke of Kent, Lord Chamberlain, induced him, in a few months, to give up the management of the Theatre; and the failure of a scheme, for which he had obtained a patent in 1713, to make sweet oil from beech-nuts, in'volved him in heavy pecuniary losses. The spirit of projecting, indeed, seems, from this period, never to have deserted Hill; he undertook a plan, shortly after the ruin of his first attempt, for the establishment of a plantation in Georgia; and, in 1728, entered into a contract with the York Buildings Company in the Highlands of Scotland, for cutting timber upon their estates, and floating it down the river Spey; but these schemes, like the former, proved abortive. In the mean time he was equally industrious with his pen; in 1718, a poem, called " The Northern Star," in honour of Peter the Great, procured him a gold medal from the Empress Catherine; and

his politics, though but sparingly mingled with the "Plain Dealer," introduced him, most undeservedly, among the heroes of the Dunciad. It was in the province of a dramatic poet, however, that he was best known to his contemporaries; and in this, more as a translator than an original writer; his "Fall of Siam," performed in 1716, and his "Athelstan" in 1731, are now forgotten; but his adaptations from Voltaire, his “Zara," "Alzira," and " Merope," have great merit, and the first and third still keep possession of the stage.

He

The loss of his amiable and beloved wife, in 1731, was an irreparable shock; she had borne him nine children, and in her he had possessed a consolation in adversity however severe. endeavoured to amuse his mind by literature, and to bury his sorrows in retirement: at Plaistow, in Essex, he composed most of his latter pieces; and in the dedication of his Merope to Lord Bolingbroke, thus pathetically paints his solitude and resignation, and his hopes of immortality: Cover'd in Fortune's shade, I rest reclin'd, My griefs all silent, and my joys resign'd; With patient eye life's ev'ning gleam survey, Nor shake th' out-hast'ning sands, nor bid them stay: Yet, while from life my setting prospects fly, Fain would my mind's weak offspring shun to die; Fain would their hope some light through time explore, The name's kind passport, when the man's no more.

Our author did not long survive the production of his Merope; he expired on February 8th, 1750, in the sixty-eighth year of his age, and was buried in the cloisters of Westminster Abbey in the same grave with his wife.

Aaron Hill was a man of amiable manners and of great moral worth; but his wishes for the longevity of his mental offspring are not likely to be gratified. Many of his best pieces were collected, shortly after his death, in four volumes octavo ; but they are little read, nor do they, with a few exceptions, rise much beyond mediocrity.*

It was unfortunate, that in writing the Plain Dealer he should have fixed upon a coadjutor so inferior to himself as Mr. Bond.t Notwithstanding this unhappy choice, it is, as a miscellaneous paper, the best that has come under our review since the Free-Thinker; and, though not worthy of re-publication as a whole, contains several essays from which both amusement and

* His Dramatic Works were collected in two volumes octavo, 1760.

"The Plain Dealer," observes Dr. Johnson, "was a periodical paper written by Mr. Hill and Mr. Bond, whom Savage called the two contending powers of light and darkness. They wrote by turns each six essays; and the character of the work was observed regularly to rise in Mr. Hill's weeks, and fall in Mr. Boud's." Life of Sas Vage. Note.