as one not unworthy to sit with guests of whatever rank. The earl and countess were now advanced in years, and his biographer informs us, that Whitehead "willingly devoted the principal part of his time to the amusement of his patron and patroness, which it will not be doubted by those, who know with what unassuming ease, and pleasing sallies of wit, he enlivened his conversation, must have made their hours of sickness or pain pass away with much more serenity." The father of lord Nuneham also gave him a general invitation to his table in town, and to his delightful seat in the country, and the two young lords, during the whole of his life, bestowed upon him every mark of affection and respect. During this placid enjoyment of high life, he produced The School for Lovers, a comedy, which was performed at Drury Lane in the year 1762. In the advertisement prefixed to it, he acknowledges his obligations to a small dramatic piece written by M. de Fontenelle. This comedy was not unsuccessful, but was written on a plan so very different from all that is called comedy, that the critics were at a loss where to place it. Mr. Mason, who will not allow it to be classed among the sentimental, assigns it a very high station among the small list of our genteel comedies. In the same year, he published his Charge to the Poets, in which, as laureat, he humorously assumes the dignified mode of a bishop giving his visitatorial instructions to his clergy. He is said to have designed this as a continuation of The Dangers of writing Verse. There seems, however, no very close connection, while as a poem it is far superior, not only in elegance and harmony of verse, but in the alternation of serious advice and genuine humour, the whole chastened by candour for his brethren, and a kindly wish to protect them from the fastidiousness of criticism, as well as to heal the mutual animosities of the genus irritabile. In this laudable attempt, he had not even the happiness to conciliate those whose cause he pleaded. Churchill, from this time, attacked him whenever he attacked any, but Whitehead disdained to reply, and only adverted to the animosity of that poet in a few lines which he wrote towards the close of his life, and which appear to be part of some longer poem. They have already been noticed in the Life of Churchill, and are now added among the fragments copied from Mr. Mason's Memoirs. One consequence of Churchill's animosity, neither silence nor resentment could avert. Churchill, at this time, had possession of the town, and made some characters unpopular merely by joining them with others who were really so. Garrick was so frightened at the abuse he threw out against Whitehead, that he would not venture to bring out a tragedy which the latter offered to him. Such is Mr. Mason's account, but if it was likely to succeed, why was it not produced when Churchill and his animosities were forgotten? Why amidst all the revolutions of the stage, some of which have not been unfavourable to much worse pieces than Whitehead would have written, does it yet remain in manuscript? The story, however, may be true; for when, in 1770, he offered his Trip to Scotland, a farce, to Mr. Garrick, he conditioned that it should be produced without the name of the author. The secret was accordingly preserved both in acting and publishing, and the farce was performed and read for a considerable time, without a suspicion that the grave author of The School for Lovers had relaxed into the broad mirth and ludicrous improbabilities of farce. In 1774, he collected his poems and dramatic pieces together, with the few exceptions already noticed, and published them in two volumes under the title of Plays and Poems, concluding with the Charge to the Poets, as a farewell to the Muses. He had, however, so much leisure, and so many of those incitements which a poet and a moralist cannot easily resist, that he still continued to employ his pen, and proved that it was by no means worn out. In 1776 he published Variety, a Tale for married People, a light, pleasing poem, in the manner of Gay, which speedily ran through five editions. His Goat's Beard (in 1777) was less familiar and less popular, but is not inferior in moral tendency and just satire on degenerated manners. It produced an attack, entitled Ass's Ears, a Fable, addressed to the Author of the Goat's Beard, in which the office of laureat is denied to men of genius, and judged worthy to be held only by such poets as Shadwell and Cibber. The Goat's Beard was the last of Whitehead's publications. He left in manuscript the tragedy already mentioned, which Garrick was afraid to perform; the name Mr. Mason conceals, but informs us that the characters are noble, and the story domestic. He left also the first act of an Edipus; the beginning, and an imperfect plan of a tragedy founded òn king Edward the Second's resignation of his crown to his son, and of another composed of Spanish and Moorish characters; and a few small poetical pieces, some of which Mr. Mason printed in the volume to which he prefixed his Memoirs, in 1788. They are now before the reader in one series, with a poem which Whitehead published in 1758, but omitted in his edition of 1770. It has the humble title of Verses to the People of England, whom he endeavours to excite to revenge their country's wrongs by a more spirited support of the war. The stanza is perhaps too short for the dignity of the subject, but it gives a rapidity to some glowing and vigorous sentiments. Mr. Mason has not noticed this piece, of which he could not be ignorant, as it was published with the author's name. Perhaps it appeared to disadvantage by a comparison with Akenside's Ode to the Country Gentlemen of England, published at the same time. After he had taken leave of the public as an author, except in his official productions, he continued to enjoy the society of his friends for some years, highly respected for the intelligence of his conversation and the suavity of his manners. His death, which took place on April 14, 1785, was sudden. In the spring of that year he was confined at home for some weeks by a cold and cough which affected his breast, but occasioned so little interruption to his wonted amusements of reading and writing, that when lord Harcourt visited him the morning before he died, he found him revising for the press a paper which his lordship conjectured to be the birth-day ode. At noon finding himself disinclined to taste the dinner his servant brought up, he desired to lean upon his arm from the table to his bed, and in that moment he expired, in the seventieth year of his age. He was interred in South Audley Street chapel. Unless, with Mr. Mason, we conclude that where Whitehead was unsuccessful, the public was to blame, it will not be easy to prove his right to a very high station among English poets. Yet perhaps he did not so often fall short from a defect of genius, as from a timidity which inclined him to listen too frequently to the corrections of his friends, and to believe that what was first written could never be the best. Although destitute neither of invention nor ease, he repressed both by adhering, like his biographer, to certain standards of taste which the age would not accept, and like him too, consoled himself in the hope of some distant era when his superior worth should be acknowledged. As a prose writer he has given proofs of classical taste and reading in his Observations on the Shield of Æneas, originally published in Dodsley's Museum, and afterwards annexed to Warton's Virgil; and of genuine and delicate humour in three papers of The World, No. 12, 19, and 58. These he reprinted in the edition of his works, published in 1774. POEMS OF WILLIAM WHITEHEAD. THE DANGER OF WRITING VERSE. AN EPISTLE. 1741. Quæ poterant unquam satis expurgare Cicutæ, Ni melius dormire putem, quam scribere versus? HOR. OU ask me, sir, why thus by phantoms aw'd, Why, when retirement soothes this idle art, To fame regardless sleeps the youthful heart? "Twould wrong your judgment, should I fairly say Distrust or weakness caus'd the cold delay: Hint the small diff'rence, till we touch the lyre, 'Twixt real genius and too strong desire; The human slips, or seeming slips pretend, Which rouse the critic, but escape the friend; Nay which, though dreadful when the foe pursues, You pass, and smile, and still provoke the Muse. Yet, spite of all you think, or kindly feign, My hand will tremble while it grasps the pen. For not in this, like other arts, we try Our light excursions in a summer sky, No casual flights the dangerous trade admits; But wits, once authors, are for ever wits. The fool in prose, like Earth's unwieldy son, May oft rise vig'rous, though he's oft o'erthrown: One dangerous crisis marks our rise or fall; By all we're courted, or we 're shun'd by all. Will it avail, that, unmatur'd by years, My easy numbers pleas'd your partial ears, If now condemn'd, ev'n where he 's valu'd most, The man must suffer if the poet's lost; For wanting wit, be totally undone, And barr'd all arts for having fail'd in one? When fears like these his serious thoughts engage, No bugbear phantom curbs the poet's rage. 'Tis powerful reason holds the straiten'd rein, While flutt'ring fancy to the distant plain Sends a long look, and spreads her wings in vain. But grant for once, th' officious Muse has shed Her gentlest influence on his infant head, Let fears lie vanquish'd, and resounding Fame Give to the bellowing blast the poet's name. And see! distinguish'd from the crowd he moves, Each finger marks him, and each eye approves! Secure, as halcyons brooding o'er the deep, The waves roll gently, and the thunders sleep, Obsequious Nature binds the tempest's wings, And pleas'd attention listens while he sings! O blissful state, O more than human joy! Oppress'd with real or with fancy'd woe. own, Each folly blazon'd, and each frailty known. One fatal rock on which good authors split- Hurt if they fail, and yet how few succeed! But I forbear-these dreams no longer last, But should the meanest swan that cuts the stream Thus grateful France does Richlieu's worth proclaim, Illustrious all! but sure to merit these, Ill-fated bard! where'er thy name appears, 'Tis true the man of verse, though born to ills, Whom youth might rev'rence and grey hairs ap- prove; Whose Heav'n-taught numbers, now, in thunder Might rouse the virtuous and appal the bold; 4 Perseus, |