but shared in the misery he had brought on himself, and exerted the powers of her mind with such indefatigable zcal, that, after the space of a few months, she succeeded in disentangling him from his immediate embarrassments, and the property was vested in the hands of trustees, two of them gentlemen connected with Mr. Smith's family, high in situation and affluent in circumstances.

Soon after these events, Mrs. Smith collected such poems as she had originally written for her amusement; they were first offered to Dodsley and refused; they were afterwards shewn to Dilly in the Poultry, who also declined them: it has been seen with what degree of judgment these decisions were made: through the interest of Mr. Hayley, they were at length printed by Dødsley on Mrs. Smith's account, and the rapid sale, and almost immediate demand for a second edition, sufficiently justified the author's confidence in her own powers, and encouraged her to proceed in a line, which, as it might render her in a great degree independent of the persons who had now the management of the affairs, contributed to divert her thoughts, and to lead her mind into the visionary regions of fancy, rendering the sad realities she was suffering under, in some measure, less poignant. The still encreasing derangement of Mr. Smith's affairs soon after obliged him to leave England, and in the autumn of 1784, he established his family in a gloomy and inconvenient chateau in Normandy, nine miles from any town. In the spring of 1785, the family returned to England, and soon after resided in the ancient mansion then belonging to Sir Charles Mill, at Woollading, now the residence of Lord Robert Spencer, and of which parish the father of Otway the poet had been rector; a circumstance which rendered it classic ground to Mrs. Smith, and inspired those beautiful sonnets in which his name is so happily introduced; here also she translated those very interesting extracts from Les Causes Celebres which have been so deservedly admired, and which was a most difficult undertaking from the singularity of the work, and the obscurity of the law. terms. Again it became necessary for Mrs. Smith to exert her fortitude, when she parted from her eldest son, who had been appointed to a writership in Bengal; and when the second was snatched from her by a rapid and malignant fever, which more or less affected the whole family, and which carried him off after an illness of three days. Other domestic calamities, insupportable to a spirit like hers, overtook her very soon afterwards; and circumstances which delicacy forbids us to detail, determined her to quit her husband's house, and withdraw with most of her children to a small village near Chichester. The charming novel of Emmeline was

written at this place, in the course of a few months; the novelty of the descriptive scenery which Mrs. Smith first introduced, and the elegance of the style, obtained for it the most unbounded suc. cess, and encreased the ardour and persevering application of the author, which brought forward several other works of the same kind, almost all equally pleasing, and which followed with a rapi dity and variety truly astonishing.

Mrs. Smith after some time removed te Brighton, where she continued till 1793, and where her talents introduced her to many distinguished and literary characters: circumstances and the love of change next carried her to another part of Sussex. Her third son had entered the army, and served on the continent in the campaign of that year, as ensign in the 14th regiment; he had been distinguished by his good conduct, but unfortunately received a dangerous wound before Dunkirk, which made the amputation of his leg necessary. He returned to England in this melancholy situation; and such a distressing event, combining with other causes, preyed ou the constitution of his mother, who, having contracted a very alarming rheumatic complaint, was advised to try the Bath waters, and thither she removed in 1794, where in the spring of 1795, that which she considered as the heaviest of her domestic calamities befel her, in the death of her second daughter, a lovely and amiable young woman, of a rapid decline. She had been two years the wife of the Chevalier de Foville, an emigrant. Mrs. Smith is said never to have recovered this afflic tion; but at times the original chearfulness of her temper returned, and latterly she never mentioned her lost daughter. Her love of change, which might always be numbered among her foibles, was now become an habitual restlessness; and she continued to wander from place to place, in hopes of attaining that happiness which ever seemed to elude her pursnit. Her various residences may be traced in her poems. In 1801, she had to lament the death of that on who lost his limb in the service of his country, which took place at Barbadoes, where the affairs of his family had called him, and by his ardent spirit and exertions, the property situated there was disposed of; but he was not destined to reap the benefit of his successful negociation, he fell a victim to the yellow fever, from the benevolence of his disposition in attending his servant, who was first seized with the malady. His loss was deeply regretted by his mother and family. In 1803, Mrs Smith removed from the neighbourhood of Tunbridge Wells, to a village in Surry, regarding it as her native soil, having passed her infancy at her father's place at Stoke, and there she had long expressed a desire that all her

sorrows might repose. Her wishes have been complied with; she rests near her mother and many of her ancestors in the parish church of that village. Death closed her sufferings in her 57th year, on the 28th of October, 1806, after a most tedious and painful illness, which had totally exhausted her frame; but the powers of her extraordinary mind lost neither their strength nor their brilli ancy. She was a widow at the time of her dissolution, and from that circumstance became possessed of her own fortune. Of a family of twelve children, six only are living, three sons and three daughters. In her then surviving sons she was particularly happy, having lived to see the two elder ones advanced to honourable and lucrative appointments in the civil service of India, and both as high in character as in situation; their conduct towards their mo. ther, to whom so much was due, and whom they loved so sincerely, was uniformly every thing that gratitude could dictate, and affection inspire. Her two other sons were in the army; the eldest of them a lieutenant colonel, now on service with his regiment whose conduct as a son, a gentleman, and a soldier, has ever been most truly gratifying to the feelings of a mother; The youngest son, who with such a brother to excite his emulation, was advanc ing with credit and success in his military career, fell a second victim to the fatal fever at Surinam, the 16th of September, 1806, in his 22d year. His mother, who was particularly attached to him, was fortunate in being spared the misery of knowing he had pre ceded her to the grave; the tidings not having reached England till after her decease.

Mrs. Smith's poetical works are too well known, and have been too long the admiration of the public, to require any farther illustration; the number of editions through which they have passed, sufficiently establishes their merit. Those which have been pubJished since her decease, offer an astonishing proof of the energy of her genius, for they were all written within the last two years, while she was undergoing such bodily suffering, and her mind was still harassed with many cares. Yet none of her earliest poems are superior either in taste or imagination to those which comprise this volume, and in the opinion of some very excellent judges they even exceed any she had ever written.

It would swell this article to too great a length, were we to enter into an acute examination of the various novels of this lady; that they brought on her much undeserved abuse, is not very surprising, her intellectual superiority was too obvious to escape the shafts of envy and malignity; the idle remarks of the stupid, the unfeeling, or the envious, either are, or will be forgotten, while the brilliancy

of Mrs. Smith's genius will shine with undiminished lustre. Of her prose works, her school-books are amongst the most admirable which have been written for the use of young persons, and are eminently calculated to form the taste, instruct the mind, and correct the heart.

Mr. JAMES MONTGOMERY.

JAMES Montgomery was born at Irvine in Ayrshire, on the 4th of November, 1771. His parents were of the Moravian persuasion," and his father a pastor of that sect. From his birth he was intended to follow the same profession as his father, but the causes which militated against this plan will be better related hereafter. When five years old, his parents left with him his native land, and removed to Grace-hill, in Antrim. One year after this he was placed at an academy of the united Moravian Brethren, at Fuk neck, near Leeds, and soon after this his parents quitted their son and country for ever; his father, accompanied by his wife, having quitted Europe, to go and preach the gospel to the poor negroes in cur settlements in the West Indies, where they both shortly fell a prey to death. At school Mr. Montgomery imbibed a most romantic turn for poetry, which made him extremely indolent and listless in the pursuit of every other study, and made his friends determine to change the plan which had been chalked out for his future destination in society. Instead, therefore, of bringing him up in the profession of his father, they placed him in a retail shop at Mirfield, near Wakefield. Though here he was treated with much kindness, and could not complain of being too much employed in the drudgery of business, yet the independent spirit born with a man of genius, rendered his occupation irksome to his mind. No longer able to put up with the restraints it subjected him to, with nothing but five shillings, and the hopes incident to a lively imagination, he decamped from his master's house, and set out on his travels, his youthful mind buoyed with the dreams of patronage and literary renown. His strict Moravian education, and consequent ignorance of the ways of the world, subjected him to the scoffs of the illiberal, and to the still more galling pity of the well meaning, but injudicious portion of mankind: disappointed in his dreams of grandeur and fame, he was shortly

opliged to take up his residence with a Mr. Hunt, at Wath, near Rotherham, who followed the same line of business as his late master at Mirfield. With him, except a few weeks he spent in London, the spot of his boyish ambition, he, at several periods, resided two years; and from thence he wrote to the guardians of his youth, to beseech them to forgive the imprudent step he had taken in quitting Mirfield, and to write in his favour to the new master he had chosen. They, in answer, assured him of their entire forgiveness, and wished to procure him a situation more concordant to his inclinations; but finding him averse to this proposal, they complied with his desires of recommending him to Mr. Hunt. During the interim of his stay in London, he was received by Mr. Harrison, a bookseller in Paternoster-row, as an inmate in his house; he had paved the way to his reception there by having previously sent him a volume of his manuscript poems, which Mr. Harrison advised him, however, not to publish, but at the same time endeavoured to encourage him to cultivate his talents. Our young author, disappointed in his expectations, took the opportunity of a misunderstanding with Mr. Harrison to return to Wath, where he was received by the benevolent Mr. Hunt with truly paternal affection. From thence he went to Sheffield, in 1792, and engaged with Mr. Gales, editor of a newspaper rather free in its political strictures; and though he sometimes contributed his mite in this line of composition, yet essays and the mases were chiefly his department. Two years after this, when Gales quitted England, by the assistance of an almost stranger, Mr. Montgorry was enabled to undertake the newspaper himself. Soon after this, he was cast into prison for three months, and fined twenty pounds, for publishing in his paper a song, which was written by a person unknown to him, a clergyman of Belfast, nine months before the war began, and yet by a court of justice was deemed a libel on a war which took place such a length of time affer it had been composed. Mr. R. Taylor presided on this trial, and the first verdict was, guilty of publishing. This not satisfying the court, the jury were desired to re-consider the case, and to deduce the malicious intention, not from the circumstances attending the publication, but from the words of the song. They retired for another hour, and brought him in guilty. Our author had scarcely been re-established peace. fully in his former occupation, when another storm burst upon his head. Two men, in a riot at Sheffield, having unfortunately been