been shown to Dr. Stevenson, an eminent physician of the Scottish capital, the doctor benevolently took him to Edinburgh, where Blacklock improved his knowledge of Latin, and completed his studies at the university. The publication of his poems excited a general interest in his favour, and Professor Spence, of Oxford, having prefixed to them an account of his life and character, a second edition of them was liberally encouraged in London. In 1759 he was licensed as a preacher of the Scottish church. He soon afterwards married a Miss Johnston, a very worthy but homely woman; whose beauty, however, he was accustomed to extol with an ecstacy that made his friends regard his blindness as, in one instance, no misfortune. By the patronage of the Earl of Selkirk he was presented to the living of Kirkcudbright; but in consequence of the violent objections that were made by the parishioners to having a blind man for their clergyman, he resigned the living, and accepted of a small annuity in its stead. With this slender provision he returned to Edinburgh, and subsisted for the rest of his life by taking young gentlemen as boarders in his house, whom he occasionally assisted in their studies.

He published an interesting article on Blindness in the Encyclopædia Britannica,' and a work entitled 'Paraclesis, or Consolations of Religion,' in two dissertations, the one original, the other translated from a work which has been sometimes ascribed to Cicero, but which is more generally believed to have been written by Vigonius of Padua. He died of a nervous fever, at the age of seventy.

Blacklock was a gentle and social being, but prone to melancholy; probably more from constitution than from the circumstance of his blindness, which he so often and so deeply deplores. From this despondent disposition he sought refuge in conversation and music. He was a tolerable performer on the flute, and used to carry a flageolet in his pocket, on which he was not displeased to be solicited for a tune.

His verses are extraordinary for a man blind from his infancy; but Mr. Henry Mackenzie, in his elegant biographical account of him, has certainly overrated his genius : and when Mr. Spence, of Oxford, submitted Blacklock's descriptive powers as a problem for metaphysicians to resolve, he attributed to his writings a degree of descriptive strength which they do not possess. De

nina * carried exaggeration to the utmost when he declared that Blacklock would seem a fable to posterity as he had been a prodigy to his contemporaries. It is no doubt curious that his memory should have retained so many forms of expression for things which he had never seen; but those who have conversed with intelligent persons who have been blind from their infancy must have often remarked in them a familiarity of language respecting the objects of vision which, though not easy to be accounted for, will be found sufficiently common to make the rhymes of Blacklock appear far short of marvellous. Blacklock, on more than one occasion, betrays something like marks of blindness.†

WILLIAM HAYWARD ROBERTS.

[Born, 1745. Died, 1791.]

He was educated at Eton, and from thence was elected to King's College, Cambridge, where he took the degree of master of arts, and of doctor in divinity. From being an under master at Eton he finally rose to be provost of the college, in the year 1781. He was also chaplain to the King, and rector of Farnham Royal, in Buckinghamshire. In 1771 he published, in three parts, A Poetical Essay on the Attributes and Providence of the Deity ;' two years afterwards, 'A Poetical Epistle to Christopher Anstey,' on the English poets, chiefly those who had written in blank and in 1774 his poem of 'Judah Restored,' a work of no common merit.‡

verse;

† [Blacklock's poetry sleeps secure in undisturbed mediocrity, and Blacklock himself is best remembered from Johnson's reverential look and the influence a letter of his had upon the fate and fortunes of Burns.]

[Dr. Roberts's Judah Restored' was one of the first books that I ever possessed. It was given me by a lady whom I must ever gratefully remember as the kindest friend of my boyhood. I read it often then, and can still recur to it with satisfaction; and perhaps I owe something to the plain dignity of its style, which is suited to the subject, and everywhere bears the stamp of good sense and careful erudition. To acknowledge obligations of this kind is both a pleasure and a duty.—Southey, Life of Cowper, iii. 32. The Editor possesses Southey's copy of the Judah,' with the following inscription in it in the poet's neat handwriting:-" Robert Southey: given me by Mrs. Dolignon, 1784.]

SIR WILLIAM JONES.

[Born, 1746. Died, 1794.]

SIR WILLIAM JONES is not a great poet; but his name recalls such associations of worth, intellect, and accomplishments, that, if these sketches were not necessarily and designedly only miniatures of biography, I should feel it a sort of sacrilege to consign to scanty and inadequate bounds the life of a scholar who, in feeding the lamp of knowledge, may be truly said to have prematurely exhausted the lamp of life.

He was born in London. His father, who it is said could trace his descent from the ancient princes of North Wales, and who, like his son, was no discredit to his lineage, was so eminent a mathematician as to be distinguished by the esteem of Newton and Halley. His first employment had been that of a schoolmaster on board a man-of-war; and in that situation he attracted the notice and friendship of Lord Anson. An anecdote is told of him, that at the siege of Vigo he was one of the party who had the liberty of pillaging the captured town. With no very rapacious views, he selected a bookseller's shop for his share; but, finding no book worth taking away, he carried off a pair of scissors, which he used to show his friends, as a trophy of his military success. On his return to England he established himself as a teacher of mathematics, and published several scientific works, which were remarkable for their neatness of illustration and brevity of style. By his labours as a teacher he acquired a small fortune, but lost it through the failure of a banker. His friend, Lord Macclesfield, however, in some degree indemnified him for the loss, by procuring for him a sinecure place under government. Sir William Jones lost this valuable parent when he was only three years old; so that the care of his first education devolved upon his mother. She also was a person of superior endowments, and cultivated his dawning powers with a sagacious assiduity which undoubtedly contributed to their quick and surprising growth. We may judge of what a pupil she had, when we are told that, at five years of age, one morning, in turning over the leaves of a Bible, he fixed his attention with the strongest admiration on a sublime passage in the Revelation. Human nature perhaps presents no authentic picture of its felicity more

pure or satisfactory than that of such a pupil superintended by a mother capable of directing him.

At the age of seven he went to Harrow school, where his progress was at first interrupted by an accident which he met with in having his thigh-bone broken, and he was obliged to be taken home for about a twelvemonth. But after his return his abilities were so distinguished, that before he left Harrow he was shown to strangers as an ornament to the seminary. Before he had reached this eminence at school, it is a fact, disgraceful to one of his teachers, that, in consequence of the ground which he had lost by the accident already mentioned, he was frequently subjected to punishment for exertions which he could not make, or, to use his own expression, for not being able to soar before he had been taught to fly. The system of severity must have been merciless indeed when it applied to Jones, of whom his master, Dr. Thackery, used to say that he was a boy of so active a spirit, that, if left friendless and naked on Salisbury Plain, he would make his way to fame and fortune. It is related of him, that while at Harrow, his fellow-scholars having determined to act the play of 'The Tempest,' they were at a loss for a copy, and that young Jones wrote out the whole from memory. Such miracles of human recollection are certainly on record, but it is not easy to conceive the boys at Harrow, when permitted by their masters to act a play, to have been at a loss for a copy of Shakspeare, and some mistake or exaggeration may be suspected in the anecdote. He possibly abridged the play for the particular occasion. Before leaving Harrow school he learned the Arabic characters, and studied the Hebrew language so as to enable him to read some of the original Psalms. What would have been labour to others was Jones's amusement. He used to relax his mind with Phillidor's Lessons at Chess,' and with studying botany and fossils.

In his eighteenth year he was entered of University College, Oxford, where his residence was rendered more agreeable by his mother taking up her abode in the town. He was also, fortunately, permitted by his teachers to forsake the study of dialectic logic, which still haunted the college, for that of Oriental literature; and he was so zealous in this pursuit that he brought from London to Oxford a native of Aleppo, whom he maintained at his own expense, for the benefit of his instructions in Arabic.

He also began the study of modern Persic, and found his exertions rewarded with rapid success. His vacations were spent in London, where he attended schools for riding and fencing, and studied Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese. He pursued in theory, and even exceeded in practice, the plan of education projected by Milton; and boasted that with the fortune of a peasant he could give himself the education of a prince. He obtained a fellowship at Oxford; but before he obtained it, whilst he was yet fearful of his success, and of burthening the slender finances of an affectionate mother for his support, he accepted the situation of tutor to Lord Althorp, the son of Earl Spencer. In the summer of 1765 he repaired to Wimbledon Park, to take upon himself the charge of his young pupil. He had not been long in Lord Spencer's family when he was flattered by an offer from the Duke of Grafton of the place of interpreter of Eastern languages. This situation, though it might not have interfered with his other pursuits, he thought fit to decline; but earnestly requested that it might be given to his Syrian teacher, Mirza, whose character he wrote. The solicitation was, however, unnoticed; and the event only gave him an opportunity of regretting his own ignorance of the world in not accepting the proffered office, that he might consign its emoluments to Mirza. At Wimbledon he first formed his acquaintance with the daughter of Dr. Shipley, the Dean of Winchester, to which he owed the future happiness of his life. The ensuing winter, 1766, he removed with Lord Spencer's family to London, where he renewed his pursuit of external as well as intellectual accomplishments, and received lessons from Gallini as well as Angelo. It is amusing to find his biographer add that he took lessons at the broadsword from an old Chelsea pensioner, seamed with scars, to whose military narrations he used to listen with delight.

In 1767 he made a short trip with the family of his pupil to the Continent, where, at Spa, he pursued the study of German, and availed himself of the opportunity of finding an incomparable teacher of dancing, whose name was Janson. In the following year he was requested by the secretary of the Duke of Grafton to undertake a task in which no other scholar in England was found willing to engage, namely, in furnishing a version of an Eastern MS., a life of Nadir Shaw, which the King of Denmark had brought with him to England, and which his Danish Majesty