Fitz Maurice, Earl of Kerry; Sir William Petty another Daughter; and the grandfather of the Duke of Leinster another. My father lived on Millbank, Westminster, and for a few Years rented a house at Bellfont. He never had but one Wife, and I am the only surviving Child; he is yet living, and is now 97 Years old, and when young was a very handsome Man. He has published many political and religious Tracts, Poems, and Songs. I cannot comprehend any Sense in your calling him an "Unitarian to a romantic degree." He worships one God through the Mediation of Jesus Christ. I cannot see any Romance in that. He will not see any Company, nor ever comes out of his Room. I remain, Sir, Your humble Servant, ROBERT AMORY, M.D.

'WAKEFIELD, Nov. 19, 1788.

We are

'P.S.-I have practised Physic here 27 years. lineally descended from Amory de Montford, who married the sister of Henry II., and was created Earl of Leicester. I have three sons, all in the army. My eldest son, Robert, is a miserable Cripple, from an Injury received in the Action under Lord Rodney on the 12th of April; my second Son is a lieutenant in the 71st, and my third an Ensign in the 57th.'

In January 1789, a Mr. Louis Renas, writing in the Gentleman's Magazine, gave reasons for doubting Dr. Amory's genealogy; whereupon the irate doctor wrote to Mr. Urban,' that his account was taken from his grandfather's papers, and had been confirmed by his father; that the Ignorance and Low Abuse of Renas were beneath contempt, and that this person 'should sign his name Mr. Louis the Ass,

C

and then the Herald's Office might easily have found out his connections.' In this letter he incidentally mentions that his aged father had died in November of the previous year; but the correspondence is chiefly interesting as showing that Dr. Amory, though without any of his father's literary faculty, at any rate 'carried on the succession' in respect of eccentricity. Buncle desired to be remembered as an odd man'; and, so far as Amory is remembered at all, it will only be as an odd writer. His books have not even the interest of marking any transition stage in the evolution of the English novel; for Richardson's Pamela, Clarissa, and Sir Charles Grandison, Fielding's Joseph Andrews and Tom Jones, and Smollett's Roderick Random had all appeared before the Memoirs and John Buncle. In neither book is there either plot, or analysis of motives, or delineation of feelings, or discrimination of character. A large proportion of Buncle's adventures are as preposterous as those of Baron Munchausen; and as for the philosophical, scientific, and theological dissertations with which these are interspersed, all that need be said of them is, that they are not above the level of a Sunday orator in Hyde Park. Some books, says the wise Bacon, may be read by deputy; and in this class we may unhesitatingly place Amory's Memoirs of illustrious' ladies, and the Life of John Buncle.

THE AUTHOR OF SANDFORD

AND MERTON.'

THE present generation of children are not so familiar with The History of Sandford and Merton as were their grandfathers and grandmothers. And even the latter, though they may have some hazy recollection of the judicious instruction which good Mr. Barlow imparted to his two pupils, and of the very excellent stories with which he enlivened his moral discourses, have probably no idea whatever of the curious personality of the remarkable author of this once popular children's book. Unfortunately, the authorised biography of Thomas Day, which appeared in 1805, in spite of certain undeniable merits, was a rather dull performance; but its subject was so singular a specimen of ultra-individualistic humanity, that it may be worth while to tell his story anew. Mr. James Keir, an old army captain turned scientist, who was deputed to write Day's Life, had his own notions of the duties of a biographer. He appears to have had some unaccountable objection to Dr. Johnson's methods, as exhibited in that incomparable gallery of half-length portraits, the Lives of the Most Eminent