Our author is also reported to possess a complete translation of Pindar, those few odes excepted which have been translated by West. He is said to have kept these performances by him more than double the time prescribed by Horace. All these exhibit more or less of real genius, taste, and learning; and there is a spirit of goodness, as well as of good writing, which pervades the whole. In a word, Mr. Pye is at once an able writer, and an amiable man; nor has the laurel at any time bound the temples of a more genuine votary of the muses, or of a more worthy member of the community. Before we conclude this article, it may not be unacceptable to say something respecting one of the public situations occupied by Mr. Pye. The office of Poct-laureat is said to have been first conferred by the Caesars of Germany, perpetuated by custom or by vanity in the English court, and bestowed at different times on the various and unequal merits of a Gower, a Skelton, a Dryden, a Cibber, a Whitehead, and a Warton. From Augustus to George III. the muse has too often been flattering and venal; but it will be difficult to produce in any age or country, a similar establishment of a stipendiary poet, who is bound to furnish twice a year a measure of praise and verse, such as may be sung in the presence of the Sovereign and his court. It is fortunate when truth sanctions the happiest effusions of the muse, as she does in the present reign. The Delphic-laurel, in the mythology of the Greeks, consecrated to Apollo, and celebrated by the enthusiastic enthusiastic imagination of poets, and the garland of oak-leaves distributed to victors in the Roman Capitoline games, probably first suggested a literary distinction, which with some variation of ceremonies, was continued to the reign of Theodosius, who abolished it as a remnant of pagan superstition. After ages of desolation and barbarism, when few could write, and still fewer enjoy, the pleasures of good writing, this title, on due consideration, was renewed with considerable splendour, in the tender and accomplished Petrarch, whose name, though his works have been consigned to oblivion by certain modern critics, has a strong and just claim to gratitude and praise, for reviving, by precept, as well as example, the spirit and studies of the age of Augustus. The distinction of Poet-laurcat, which Petrarch deserved and enjoyed, was conferred on Philelphus, a satirical, generous, but distressed poet of the fifteenth century, whose decades and prose epistles are not without entertaining anecdotes of his times. It next devolved on Tasso, who took refuge from calamity under the patronage of Cardinal Alobrandini; then on Quezno the buffoon of Leo X. and on Æneas Sylvius Piccolomini. Pope Pius III. on being presented with a panegyric in verse by a poet who expected pecuniary recompence, gave him the following impromptu : "Pro numeris numeros vobis Sperate Poeta Mutare est animus carmina, non emere." To which the writer, with great spirit, and perhaps with no less justice, replied: "Si tibi pro numeris numeros fortuna dedisset The succession of English poets to the laurel is accurately stated in the following list : 1. John Skelton, by some called, but believed not to have been, Poet-laureat, died in 1529. 2. Edmund Spenser. However, see Malone's Dryden's Life, vol. I. Spenser died in 1598-9. 3. Sam. Daniel, P. L. 1598-9. Died in 1619, aged 57. 4. Ben Jonson, P. L. 1619. Died in 1637, aged 63. 5. Sir W. Davenant, P. L. 1637. Died in 1668, aged 63. 6. John Dryden, P. L. 1668, dismissed, as being a papist, in 1689. 7. Died in 1692, aged 52. 12. W. Whitehead, P. L. 1757. Died in April 1785. 13. T. Warton, P. L. 1785. Died in May 1790. And 14. H. J. Pye, P. L. 1790, who, though last, is certainly not least in the estimation of the Muses. EARL OF WESTMORELAND. JOHN FANE, Earl of Westmoreland, was born in the year 1759. The family of Fane, or as it is written in the ancient records, Vane, is of Welsh origin, and if credit may be given to ancient documents, existed there in considerable splendour at the period of the Conquest. It was not, however, much known in England until the reign of James I. It must be well remembered that this prince, coming from the throne of Scotland to to that of England, and having to reward the zeal of those of the English nobility who had supported his interest, was compelled to exert his prerogative in the liberal distribution of honours, and thus pay that debt in titles, to which his treasury was insufficient. It was at this period that the family of Fane was ennobled and became Earls of Westmoreland. It is only, however, by the collateral line that these honours have descended upon the present peer. It is mentioned in the annals of those times, that the grandfather of this nobleman, Francis Fane, Esq. had no small difficulty to prove his descent; but this has been lately denied, and it is not within the scope of our intentions to controvert it. By the premature death of his father, in the year 1774, the present earl arrived early at the honours of his house, being at this period in his fifteenth year. The care of his youth, and his education, devolved upon his mother, and fortunately for the young nobleman, no one was better suited to the proper discharge of such an office. She was one of those women who being equally averse to the dissipation of fashionable life, and the busy idleness of a court, considered her family as her proper sphere, and descending even into the minute detail of domestic management, thought nothing mean, the end of which was honourable. Among those who, being of a different taste, knew not how to value this species of virtue, she exposed herself to much ridicule, and was actually satirized a poem, attributed to Sir Hanbury Williams, under the ludicrous name of Lady Catherine Candle-snuff. in a The The Earl of Westmoreland, like most of the illustrious men of his age, received his education at a public school. Upon the death of his father he was sent by his mother to the Charter-house, an institution which, if less splendid than those of Westminster, Winchester, and Eton, still possesses every advantage of a public school, and therefore weli merits to be considered as such. It was here that his mind was so well formed for the future destination of his life; it was here that he imbibed those sound principles of religion and government, and that orthodoxy, the support of church and state, which are the almost invariable consequences of a public education. It was here also, that he contracted a contempt for the philosophers of the day; and was formed to that generous ardour and enthusiasm against their fatal principles, which in the general moderation of his character, must be considered as a proof of no ordinary hatred. While residing in the Charter-house, the young earl obtained much celebrity by his early proficiency. It is well known that in this, as in all other public schools, and in public schools alone, the genius of the boys is much cultivated by original composition, and that the most favourite species of this composition is Latin verse. The young peer gained great reputation in these weekly exercises, and added to this facility of Latin versification, what is usually too much neglected, an equal elegance and strength of prose. Indeed, if we may give credit to his contemporaries, the genius of this nobleman for these scholastic exercises, could only be exceeded by his unremitting industry, and |