to be the best commentary on those dramatic poets which has appeared; and that from the lucid ability of Mr. Seward's readings and notes. Strange, that dramas, so entirely of the Shaksperian school, in the business and interest of their plots; in the strength and variety of their characters; and which, in their sentiments and language, possess so much of Shakspeare's fire, should be coldly and stupidly neglected in the present day, which has not yet forgotten to proclaim the Bard of Avon to be, what he surely is, the first poet the world has produced. Shakspeare has had few more spirited eulogists than Mr. Seward, in the following lines, written about the year 1740, and published, together with other little poems of his, in Dodsley's Miscellany:

Great Homer's birth seven rival cities claim
Too mighty such monopoly of fame! ·
Yet not to birth alone did Homer owe

His wond'rous worth, what Egypt could bestow,
With all the schools of Greece, and Asia join'd
Enlarg'd th' immense expansion of his mind.

Nor yet unrivall'd the Meonian strain,

The British Eagle and the Mantuan Swan

Tower equal heights; but happier, Stratford, thou

With uncontested laurels deck thy brow!

Thy Bard was thine unschool'd, and from thee brought

More than all Egypt, Greece, or Asia taught;

Not Homer's self such peerless honours won,

The Greek has rivals, but thy Shakspeare none!

In the later editions of Dodsley's Miscellany, the word Swan, in the fourth couplet, is most absurdly changed to swain, because it chimed more completely to the foregoing rhyme, strain, at the expense of every thing like sense and accuracy in the apposite terms; at the expense of making a bird and a man fly equal heights ere balloons were dreamed of. Mr. Seward was often heard to laugh at this instance of editorial presumption and stupidity*.

Another of the Lichfield literati, overlooked by the arrogant Johnson, was the Reverend ArchDeacon Vyse, the amiable the excellent father of the present ingenious Dr. Vyse of Lambeth, and his gallant brother General Vyse. Mr. Vyse was not only a man of learning, but of Prioric talents in the metrical impromptu. Gentle reader, behold an instance! and if thou hatest not rhyme, as does many an ungentle reader, "worse than toad or asp," thou wilt not think it intrusive.

Mrs. Vyse, herself a beautiful woman, had a fair friend whose name was Charlotte Lynes. At a convivial meeting of Lichfield gentlemen, most

* This gentleman was father of the writer of these memoirs.

of whom could make agreeable verses, it was proposed that every person in company should give a ballad or epigram on the lady whose health he drank. Mr. Vyse toasted Miss Lynes, and, taking out his pencil, wrote the following stanzas extempore:

Shall Pope sing his flames

With quality dames,

And duchesses toast when he dines;

Shall Swift verses compose

On the Girl at the Rose,

While unsung is my fair Charlotte Lynes?

O! were Phœbus my friend,

Or would Bacchus but lend

The spirit that flows from his vines,

The lass of the mill,

Molly Mogg, and Lepell,

Should be dowdies to fair Charlotte Lynes.

Any porter may serve,

For a copy, to carve

An Alcides, with muscular chines;

But a Venus to draw,

Bright as sun ever saw,

Let him copy my fair Charlotte Lynes.

In the midst of gay sights,

And foreign delights,

For his country the banish'd man pines;

Thus, from her when away,

Though my glances may stray,

Yet my heart is with fair Charlotte Lynes.

It is Atropus' sport,

With her sheers to cut short

The thread, which dame Lachesis twines;

But forbear, you curst jade,

Or cut mine, not the thead

That was spun for my fair Charlotte Lynes!

For quadrille when the fair

Cards and counters prepare,

They cast out the tens, eights, and nines,

And in love 'tis my fear

The like fate I shall share,

Discarded by fair Charlotte Lynes.

With hearts full of rapture

Our good dean and chapter Count over, and finger their fines; But I'd give their estate,

Were it ten times as great,

For one kiss of my fair Charlotte Lynes.

The young pair, for a crown,.

On the book laid him down,

The sacrist obsequiously joins,

Were I bishop I sware

I'd resign him my chair,

To unite me with fair Charlotte Lynes

For my first night I'd go

To those regions of snow,

Where the sun, for six months, never shines, And O! there should complain

He too soon came again

To disturb me with fair Charlotte Lynes !

These verses were much read, admired, and copied. Mr. Vyse thought his fair Charlotte growing too vain in consequence, and once, when she was complimented on the subject in a large company, he said smilingly,

"Charlotte the power of song can tell,

"For 'twas the ballad made the belle."

The late Reverend William Robinson was also a choice spirit amongst those Lichfieldians, whose talents illuminated the little city at that period. Too indolent for authorism, he was, by wit and learning, fully empowered to have shone in that sphere. More of him hereafter.

These were the men whose intellectual existence passed unnoticed by Dr. Johnson in his depreciating estimate of Lichfield talents. But Johnson liked only worshippers. Arch-deacon Vyse, Mr. Seward and Mr. Robinson, paid all the respect and attention to Dr. Johnson, on these his visits to their town, due to his great abilities, his high reputation, and to whatever was estimable in his mixed character; but they were not in the herd that "paged his heels," and sunk, in servile silence, under the force of his dogmas, when their hearts and their judgments bore contrary testimony.