Once shew'd him, 'midst the seals and rings A copper piece, in shape and size, Which made him think this other dame Who in his manners, mien, and shape was "It came," says he, "or I will be whipt, From Memphis in the Lower Egypt; Soon as the Nile's prolific flood Has fill'd the plains with slime and mud, year For here this line, so faint and weak, Which bill or beak, upon my word, The very That these two curves which wave and float thus, Are but the tendrils of the Lotus, Which, as Herodotus has said, Th' Egyptians always eat for bread.” He spoke, and heard, without a pause, The rising murmur of applause; The voice of admiration rung On ev'ry ear from ev'ry tongue : But ah! what arts by fate are tried Soon as the Synod he came near, Loud dissonance assail'd his ear; And soon in Romans' hand he spies And peeps, and snuffs, and peeps again ; And, big with laughter, and surprise, To them a curiosity? If this is your best proof of science, The tempest ey'd, Tom speeds his flight,, CHRISTOPHER SMART. BORN 1722.-DIED 1771. Next Shipbourne, though her precincts are confin'd Opes her delightful prospect; dear Fairlawn! Kiss the green drooping herbage; there, where trees, (HOP GARDEN.) The village of Shipbourne in Kent, was then the birth place of Christopher Smart, who was born April 11th, 1722. His father possessed an estate of some value in the neighbourhood, and was steward to the Kentish property of Lord Barnard, afterwards Earl of Darlington. He had been originally destined for the church, and had acquired in consequence a taste for literature, which induced him to give his son a learned education. Christopher Smart, suffered from his birth, which was premature, under a feeble constitution of body, which was not improved by his subsequent habits, but he displayed we are informed, at a very early period of his life, a taste and a talent for poetry. He lisped in verse; and composed a poem when only four years: old; another in his thirteenth year, he deemed worthy a place in the collection he afterwards offered to the public; and he was capable of latin metrical compoposition when only sixteen years old. He was educated first at Maidstone, and afterwardsat Durham, from whence he was removed in his seventeenth year, and placed at Pembroke Hall, Cambridge,. where he acquired a fellowship, and remained many years. He appears to have led a life of dissipation and extravagance during his residence at Cambridge, neither creditable to himself nor to the university of which he was a member. He was the wit and poet laureate of the place; his company was courted by strangers and residents, and like a poet of superior order in later times, he became a frequenter of taverns,. and was weak enough to afford to every idle inviter 66 a slice of his constitution." By these practices he contracted debts, involved himself in difficulties and disgrace, and acquired habits which in the end deprived him of reason, and every enjoyment of life. While at Cambridge he wrote and published several poems on various subjects; among others a latin version of Pope's Ode on St. Cecilia's Day, and by that poet's. particular recommendation, another of the “Essay on Criticism." In the year 1750 he became a candidate for the Seatonian prize for the best poem on the subject of the Supreme Being, and was successful in that and four succeeding years. In 1752 he married the daughter of Mrs. Newbery, wife of the bookseller of that name, by a former husband, and lost his fellowship in consequence ;; |