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WILLIAM SOMERVILE.

quite captivated the town. His biographer gives him an amiable character, which his countenance fully confirms. It is pleasant, and like that of a gentleman.

From an original Picture by Kneller, in the Hall of Queen's College, Oxford. THIS is but a poor countenance for TICKELL, the friend of Addison. It is gentle, indeed, but full of timidity, with a petit mouth and a lack-lustre eye. Not much can be said of (or for) his verses. His elegy has been admired; but we cannot detect anything in it beyond the mild common-place which is usually seen in that kind of poem. The best lines are—

"What new employments please the unbody'd mind?

A winged virtue, through the eternal sky,

From world to world unwearied does he fly?"

But there is nothing else to challenge the attention.

No. 95. WILLIAM SOMERVILE.

From an original Picture in the possession of Christopher Wren, Esq. SOMERVILE has a bluff important look, and a somewhat shrewd eye. He is said to have been, like Nimrod, a great hunter; and indeed he has celebrated the sports of the field in his long and well-known poem of the "Chase." We never could account for the great popularity of that work of Somervile, seeing that we may not reckon many fox-hunters among our literati, and that but few others would feel tempted to read it. We ourselves have assuredly once achieved the task; but we cannot recommend it very strongly to the reader, though it may lighten the weight of a rainy day in the country.

ALEXANDER POPE.

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No. 96. ALEXANDER POPE.

From a Picture by Hudson in the Collection of the Duke of Buckingham.

:

WE esteem this portrait as one of the very finest in our collection. Every line and feature of the face are pregnant with meaning. It is like the aspect of Voltaire, shrewd, sensitive, satiric, and observing; but it has a finer expression about the eye, which is large and serious, and capable, as it seems, as much of the romance of poetry as the piquancy of rhyme. Pope was, in his way, a delightful writer. His "Rape of the Lock," and some of his Epistles, are unequalled; but he wanted, if we may venture to say so, the loftier spirit of imagination. His tendency was to diminish, rather than to elevate; and accordingly, in his serious writings, finding little in his own mind to raise or enlarge, he often went to the common-places of poetry for his images but in his familiar, and more particularly in his wittiest writings, he is at once piquant, original, and refined. Dryden was stronger, but coarser ; his cuts, although perhaps as deep, were not so fine as those of Pope. The former seems better adapted to correct the vices of mankind, and the latter to pare down the follies of individuals. There is a sterner kind of satire about Dryden. His characters come out of the furnace of his indignation, hideous, vicious, and mishapen: but under the laughing or biting wit of Pope, writhe lords, and critics, and poets, all in their own natural shape, and encumbered only with Midas ears. The victims of the one, in short, we hate; and of the other we scorn. Occasionally there may be a closer resemblance between the two, and the above distinction may not hold; but, generally speaking, there was as much difference between the styles of the two poets and their weapons of attack, as there existed in their several constitutions. The bodily infirmities of Pope had, as may be supposed, a decided effect upon his poetry. Had he lived more in

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JONATHAN SWIFT.

the world and on the town, we might have had his satires, his translations, his epigrams, but scarcely the delightful history of Belinda and her "lock." As some confirmation of this, look only at the manner in which Dryden and Swift wrote on the subject of women; and then at the want of sensuality apparent in the Rape of the Lock, and the airy wit which flutters throughout the whole of that exquisite story.

No. 97. JONATHAN SWIFT.

From an original Picture in the Collection of the Earl of Besborough. THIS is a fine head of the satirical dean What an undaunted eye he has; and what a face, full of shrewd humour! There is a look in this portrait, not unlike the glance of Sir Walter Scott, except that SWIFT has more fierté, with less, perhaps, of the curious or inquiring character than what is distinguishable in the living novelist. We think we can trace the features of "Flimnap❞ and "Glumdalclitch," and all the adventures of Mr.Lemuel Gulliver, in the single square inch (the face) which now lies open before us. It is a fine and complete index to the twenty-four volumes of "Swift's Works," which we see in every library in London. No owner of those books should be without it. Here are the jokes, the rebusses, the fables, the voyages, the satires, the polite conversation, the directions to the servants, the imitations, the epistles, the perverse humour, and all the quiddities which shine out like the lights of his renown; and here, too, is the manly sense, the stout argument, the caustic and bitter spirit which animated, and have given perpetual life to his more serious labours. We are not sure that other traits might not also be found, confirming certain events in his life, equally remarkable, although not so scrupulously recorded as his sentiments of his friends and

JAMES THOMSON.

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enemies. We are unfeigned admirers of Swift's writings in general; but his incessant hunting after place and pension, his cruel treatment of his female friends, his coarse ribaldry, and brutal malignity, are utterly indefensible and disgusting. We have an utter aversion to his character and conduct; nor do we choose to place our approbation on record, without some intimation that we are fully sensible of his glaring defects.

No. 98. JAMES THOMSON.

From an original Picture in the lid of the Poet's Snuff-Box, in the possession of Mrs. Hamilton.

THIS full face in a medallion represents the poet THOMSON. It is a personification of the Castle of Indolence, without its romance. It is the face of the lazy eater of peaches, who ate that blushing fruit with his hands in his pockets: it may even pass for the writer of Tancred and Sigismunda; but not for the author of "The Seasons." This last, which is the most celebrated work of Thomson, contains, perhaps, finer passages than any other; but we look oftener, we confess, upon the Castle of Indolence, aud, as an entire poem, give it the preference to the more famous "Seasons." Thomson assuredly was a benefactor to poetry. His blank verse (though often swollen and heavy) has frequently fine passages, and good modulation; and his fresh natural images must have been a great relief to the thirsty imaginations of the readers who lived amongst so much of the dust and rubbish of poetry fifty years ago. His" Castle of Indolence," which begins in the manner of Spenser, and proceeds in his own scarcely inferior style, is a rich piece of poetry. There is a fine indolent air about it, which tempts a sluggard into the midst of its bewildering stanzas, till he is lost

amongst silken couches and stately hangings, statues and pictures of all subjects and colours,

"Whate'er Lorraine light touch'd with softening hue,

Or savage Rosa dash'd, or learned Poussin drew"

pillars of porphyry, and magnificent saloons, quiet lawns whereon the murmuring winds lay sleeping, placid lakes and dreaming woods, the glittering glancing river which ran away in music, till the eye and ear were soothed to slumber; and, in short, amongst all the wonders of enchantment which that fine magician, the poet, can conjure up at will from the inexhaustible caverns of his brain.

No. 99. DOCTOR WATTS.

From a Picture by Gainsborough, in Dr. Williams's Library.

THIS is the head of, if not a fine poet, at least of a most sensible, useful, and exemplary man. Dr. WATTS is well known amongst youthful readers, as the author of some popular books on education, and his "Logic" is, we believe, upheld at Oxford, in preference to the more elaborate and extensive work of Locke. Some of his hymns make an impression on us that we never lose. We have heard a witty friend of ours recite (with an emphasis on the second word) –

"How doth the little busy bee," &c.

in a way to satisfy us that his industry might be traced with little trouble to the poem of Dr. Watts. Whether our friend's humour, his shrewdness, his fine talent for depicting the drolleries of our nature, may be ascribed to the same influence, we know not. The portrait here given of Watts wears a very intelligent character. The mouth is not pleasing, perhaps, but the eye makes rich amends for any small defect.