happened whilst thus solemnly employed; and a stone in the chancel is thus inscribed: "Sacred to the memory of the Rev. Thomas Allen, was called from his Master's work to his Master's joy, on Saturday evening, May 31, 1755, æt. suæ 74." He left behind him a quarto volume in MS, which I now possess *, with the following title: "Heaven upon Earth, or the Certainty of our Christian Faith and Hope under Jesus and the Resurrection; to help the regenerate Christian, who has begun to live to God, to act and converse here below upon the views of eternal glory: A practical work, fit for all Families, as well as Schools: put into blank or Miltonic verse, for the more easy committing it to memory: And is the second part of The New Birth, or Christian Regeneration, &c. [p. 797.] "To his most Sacred Majesty George II. King of Great Britain, France, and Ireland: "May it please your Sacred Majesty, "To accept of this Second Part of that Poetic Work, the former of which I dedicated to your Royal Grandchildren, Prince George and Prince Edward, last December, 1753, for the regenerating all the British Youth. This carries on the same good design for helping forwards into Glory all the rest of your Majesty's subjects, the Nobility, Gentry, and Commons; if they will but listen to their own true interest, and God's gracious counsels and prescribed * He was succeeded in the Rectory of Kettering by the Rev. Gilbert Bennett, M. A. who was instituted July 12, 1755. + I have also in MS. his "Common-place Book," and a Diary of the various events of the last six years of his life, ending May 28, 1755; with a minute of his going "to Mr. Hill, of Rowell, with two Bills in Chancery,-one about his Rectory; the other on Madam Colesworth's gift to her Relations at Weekley." course course to all; if they will be content to exchange some of their temporal satisfactions for those of a more refined gust and relish. And as they have here no continuing City, but seek one to come, living as it were here in the suburbs of the New Jerusalem; so it must needs be their duty and interest, to live as so many subjects and citizens of it, and enjoy somewhat of Heaven upon Earth, especially when so thin a partition as this weak body, not above four inches thick, parts the suburbs from the city (I mean our entrance into it)—a less distance by far than what a sea-unicorn lately perforated *." "It was King David's commendable ambition, not only to rule his people prudently with all his power, but to carry them along with him unto glory; in the use of holy means, such as his Alphabetical Psalms, designed apparently to be got memoriter, and to be repeated by Servants and Children, to Parents and Masters, as the following lines may well be, whereby he did as much service to God's true honour and glory, as all the Levites put together. As it is the glory of Physicians, that no patients have miscarried under their care;-so it is of Kings, that no subject of theirs, through any neglect or misconduct in them, missed of the two great ends of government, temporal peace and eternal salvation." Mr. Allen's son, Edmund, was a worthy and respectable Printer in Bolt-court, Fleet-street t. *The following account was given by the crew of a ship from St. Eustatia, on their arrival at Edinburgh; viz. "In our pas→ sage from the Main hither, June 16, 1754, in lat. 15. long. 61. we were struck by a sword-fish, or sea-unicorn, on our starboard bow, which ran his horn through our outside plank (a timber of ten inches thick) and ceiling into the hold, broke his horn off, and left it in the hold ten inches. We reckon that the horn went through 14 inches and a half of solid oak." Northampton Mercury. He was the next-door neighbour and intimate friend of Dr. Johnson; who, in a Letter to Mr. Nichols, Oct. 20, 1784, says, "I hope we shall be much together. You must now be to me what you were before, and what dear Mr. Allen was besides. He was taken unexpectedly away, but I think he was a very good man."-See "Literary Anecdotes," II. 552; VIII. 417; IX. 753. ** For * *** For the following valuable communications I am indebted to Mr. Justice HARDINGE's very excellent Friend Lady KNOWLES: "SIR, Kingsland, April 18, 1817. "As a girl of twelve years old, I remember Mr. Hardinge at my Father's house, much delighted with a little musical party, in which my Brother and myself were assigned the principal parts. After this, whimsically enough, we saw little of him, and exchanged few letters, until the discovery I made to him of my taste for Dr. Davies's Poetry and Prose writing, which I had copied in a manuscript book, both to amuse and improve my leisure hours. Fortunately he was the only person who could justly appreciate and draw from the shade a character so sweet and excellent as Sneyd Davies; and in Mr. Hardinge's admiration of him I found a congenial mind, with a superiority of intellect highly improving to me from what it naturally exacted in return, and from this period our correspondence became animated, interesting, and confidential, until We lost this Patron of the efforts of Genius. "The confused state in which Mr. Hardinge left his papers, and the haste with which he was compelled to put the whole together as he from time to time received the documents, has, I doubt not, occasioned the following errors in the Lines of Dr. John Davies (the Father of Sneyd) "On the South Sea *." Stanza 1 1.2 3 2 4 5 3 7 3 13 1 17 1 3 19 4 pile, not place. among our Lords the rabble The Jews and Gentiles. Oft pawn their jewels for a sUM. "Had our worthy Friend but lived a few months longer, I doubt not that he would have classed the whole over again; and, through the means of farther inquiry and scrutiny, he would have obtained more exact knowledge on some points than he could have in the short time he was writing. But, as it is, even an hasty production from Mr. Hardinge's pen, it causes him to live in a spiritual sense to our imagination; and I highly appreciate every original expression, as if still in the enjoyment of his society, and the benefits of his clever and highly-cultivated mind. "I am happy, Sir, to convey to you something from the pen of Mr. Hardinge. The Poem on Ludlow, I think, you will consider classically good, and elegant in its character and style of moral reflection. The other is ludicrous, and in a playful strain of satire, and which, as it refers to Mr. Hardinge's judicial capacity, may be well introduced as a characteristic feature in Mr. Hardinge's life. "I am, Sir, your sincerely obliged, C. KNOWLES." See vol. I. p. 494. 3 F VOL. III. 64 ON Of courteous Knights—and Beauty's charms. Point at the chilling Winter there; Though churlish Time his curtain drew, The lay of Milton I can hear, The martyr'd Patriot's genial mind Oblivion spares the hallow'd theme, Nor lovely Sacharissa's bloom Shall fade in shadows of the tomb; The Zutphen Hero's parting breath, When pageants all are at an end, Hail, charm of Song, and blessing too; And calls on Time to disengage + Algernon Sidney. § Ld. Brooke's epitaph. And And loud against the dust is heard If Genius can its age disown, The Muses- never tell their own." "Mr. Hardinge having one day seen his own full-bottomed Wig stripped of its curl, and swept into a corner of a passagein a disconsolate mood, thus addressed the humiliated state of this judicial ornament as if it could hear him and speak to him: "Emblem of all state and power, Wing and feather of an hour! Could assume the weight of lead. Then protection he could pledge Now the comb, as in despair, Shuns the abdicated hair; And the Maid's oblivious broom Seems to ridicule the doom. From the lethargy of rest Who shall raise thy dormant crest? April soon will pass away; Oh, beware the first of May † ! Rather warn the felon crows, Where the ripening herbage grows; Where, though mute, thy sapient form Still its terror can reform; Than degrade thee out of Court, For the gazer's common sport; Prostituting all thy power To the mob's insulting hour. “Thus when hair again was grown, Sampson made his prowess known, To Derision's cruel mirth, By its immolated worth.” * He had censured a Jury for acquitting a Murderer; and had sentenced a man to be whipped for stealing a table cloth from a hedge. + Nothing is more shamefully familiar upon these Saturnalia to the common eye than a Judge's Wig upon a Chimney-sweeper's face. |