Deem not that time's oblivious hand From memory's page has raz'd the days, By Lee's green verge we wont to ftand, And on his crystal current gaze. Our author was now to experience the most severe stroke he had ever met with: after having loft his father, who died in February 1768, in the 84th year of his age, he was deprived of his wife, who died in child- bed, in the fame year, leaving behind her a child of which she had been delivered, that died the following Auguft. The reader will imagine what must have been the feelings of such a mind as Scott's on the trying occafion of fuch complicated affliction. Till the death of his mother, his life feems to have run in one even tenor, calm and unruffled; but he was now called to an exertion of that philosophy which made no inconfiderable part of his character. For fome time after the death of his wife, he he retired to the house of his friend Cockfield, at Upton, that, removed from those scenes which perpetually awakened every tender idea, his mind might, by degrees, recover its tranquillity of this circumftance he speaks in his Ode addreffed to that gentleman. 'Twas when Misfortune's ftroke fevere, Ode XII. Poetical Works, page 198. When the first violence of his grief began to fettle into a fedate and gentle forrow, he folaced his lonely hours by compofing an Elegy to the memory of one who had been fo dear to him; and perhaps the genuine ftate of his mind. cannot be fo well painted as in that pa thetic performance on his domeftic afflictions. The ftation and qualities of his deceased wife are delicately touched in this Elegy. upon Foe to the futile manners of the proud, He chose an humble virgin for his own; With wit accomplish'd, and with virtue bleft, The poem was written at Amwell, in the year 1768: a few copies were printed and diftributed amongst his friends; but though the work was often inquired after, the author would never fuffer it to be published for fale. At his defire, I presented a copy to the late elegant author of the Adventurer;* who spoke of it in the highest terms of commendation: he profeffed himself particularly ftruck with the following stanza. * Dr. HAWKESWORTH. O human O human life! how mutable, how vain! A spot of azure in a cloudy sky!* In the fame month that proved fatal to this amiable perfon, died alfo, in childbed, the first wife of the late Dr. Langhorne: this gentleman, to whom a copy of Mr. Scott's poem had been sent, writing to a friend, fpeaks of it in these words: "Mr. Scott's poem came fo near "my own feelings, that it hurt my peace of mind; and while I admired "the writer, and pitied the man, I saw my own miferies in the strongest point "of view." This fimilarity of circumstance, and congenial affliction, gave rife to a friendship between these two poets, which, though they rarely correfponded, and more rarely met, continued without abatement till the death of Dr. Langhorne. A fun-beam in a winter's day DYER. In 1769 Mr. Scott met with another lofs in the death of his friend Turner, the companion and affociate of his early studies with Frogley. This ingenious man died, univerfally lamented, on the 30th of June, in the thirty-fifth year his age, at Colliton, in Devonshire, at which place he was buried. of He poffeffed confiderable natural abilities, and much acquired knowledge, with a candid difpofition and elegant tafte; and by the general tenor of his correfpondence with Scott, appears to have been always a young man of a religious and ftudious turn. A pathetic tribute is paid to his memory by our author, in his Poem of Amwell, speaking of the feveral loffes which he had experienced in the death of friends. From general fate To private woes then oft has memory pass'd; Of |