THE LIFE

OF

JOHN LANGHORNE.

JOHN LANGHORNE, the son of a clergyman beneficed in Lincolnshire, was born at Kirkby Steven, in Westmoreland, in the month of March, 1735. His father dying when he was only four years of age, the care of his education devolved on his mo. ther, who initiated him in the first principles of knowledge with such tender anxiety as left a pleasing and indelible impression on his memory. He celebrated her virtues on her tomb, and more particularly by a beautiful Monody inserted among his poems. When of sufficient age, he was placed at a school at Winton, and afterwards at Appleby, where he recommended himself to the good opinion of Mr. Yates, his master, not only by speedily despatching the usual school tasks, but by performing voluntary exercises which he submitted to his revisal. He did not leave this school until his eighteenth year, when, having no means of defraying the expenses of an university education, he engaged himself as a private tutor in a family near Ripon. He had attained a thorough knowledge of the classical languages, and during his residence in this neighbourhood, began to write verses, the greater part of which his more mature judgment led him to destroy. His next occupation was that of an assistant at the free-school of Wakefield, then superintended by Mr. Clarke, and while here he

took deacon's orders, and became, it is said, 'a popular preacher.' In the year 1759, Mr. Clarke recommended him as preceptor to the sons of Robert Cracroft, Esq. of Hackthorn, near Lincoln. Mr. Cracroft had nine sons, and Mr. Langhorne must have been fully employed in the family, yet he added to theirs the tuition of Mr. Edmund Cartwright, a young gentleman of a poetical turn, who afterwards wrote an elegy, entitled Constantia, on the death of his preceptor's wife.

During his residence at Hackthorn, Langhorne published a volume of poems for the relief of a gentleman in distress, and in the same year a poem entitled The Death of Adonis, from the Greek of Bion. Public opinion gave him no encouragement to reprint this last, but he derived from it the advantage of being noticed as a critic of considerable acumen in Greek poetry. In 1760, he entered his name at Clarehall, Cambridge, in order to take the degree of bachelor of divinity, but in this it is probable he did not succeed, as his name is not to be found among the Cambridge graduates. At this time he wrote a poem on the King's Accession, and another on the Royal Nuptials, which he afterwards inserted in Solyman and Almena. In the same year, he published The Tears of the Muses, a poem to the memory of Handel, with an Ode to the River Eden, 4to. While employed in the education of the sons of Mr. Cracroft, he became enamoured of Miss Anne Cracroft, one of that gentleman's daughters. He had given her some instructions in the Italian language, and was often delighted by her skill in music, for which he had a very correct ear. A mutual attachment was the consequence of these many opportunities, and coincidences in polite accomplishments, and Mr. Langhorne was eager to seal his happiness by marriage. But the lady, who knew that a match so disproportioned as to fortune, would be opposed by her family, gave him a denial

as firm and as gentle as her good sense and secret attachment would permit. For this, however, Mr. Langhorne was not prepared, and immediately left his situation, in hopes of recovering a more tranquil tone of mind in distant scenes and different employment.

In 1761, he officiated as curate to the Rev. Abraham Blackburn of Dagenham, and obtained the friendship of the Gilmans, a very amiable family in that place. While endeavouring to forget his heart's disappointment, he found some relief in penning a hymn to Hope, which he published this year in London, 4to. and in the course of the next, he gave farther vent to his thoughts in The Visions of Fancy, four elegies, 4to. Letters on Religious Retirement 8vo; and Solyman and Almena, a fiction in the manner of the eastern tales, but not much to be praised for invention. The letters are of a sentimental, melancholy cast, with a considerable mixture of lighter and more entertaining matter. His Letters on Religious Retirement, were dedicated with success to Bishop Warburton, who returned a complimentary letter, in which he encouraged Langhorne to make some attempt in the cause of religion. This is supposed to have produced, in 1763, the letters that passed between Theodosius and Constantia, founded on a well known story in the Spectator. The style of these letters is in general elegant, but in some parts too florid. The letter on Prayer is very equivocal in its tendency. This year he also gave birth to a poem, meant to be philosophical, entitled The Enlargement of the Mind, (part first,) in which we find some noble sentiments expressed in glowing and elevated language. His next publication about the same time, called Effusions of Friendship and Fancy, 2 vols. 12mo. was a work of considerable popularity: it is indeed a very pleasing miscellany of humour, fancy, and criticism, but the style is often flippant and ir

regular, and causes him to be classed among the imitators of Sterne, whom it was the fashion at that time to read and to admire. In the year 1764, having obtained the curacy and lectureship of St. John's, Clerkenwell, he was enabled to reside in London, where he was ranked among the elegant and pleasing poets of the day. His first publication this year, was the continuation of Theodosius and Constantia, of much the same character as the former work, but enlivened by more variety. As he appears to have aspired to promotion through the popularity of his talents in the pulpit, he now gave a specimen of what had pleased his congregation, in two volumes of Sermons. His biographer has taken some pains to defend these against the censure of the late Mr. Mainwaring, of St. John's, Cambridge, in his dissertation prefixed to his Sermons, (1780.) But they abound in false pathos, and the reasoning, where any occurs, is very superficial. They have, however, this advantage to those who dislike sermons of every kind, that they are perhaps the shortest ever published. About this time, his son informs us, he engaged with Mr. Griffiths as a writer in the Monthly Review, and this engagement, with scarcely any intermission, continued to his death. His employment as a critic, we are told, procured him many acquaintances among literary men, while the vein of ridicule which he indulged in treating several of the subjects that fell under his consideration, created him many enemies, who, in their turn, endeavoured to depreciate his performances. In 1765, his productions were, The second Epistle on the Enlargement of the Mind; an edition of the poems of the elegant and tender Collins, with a criticism and some memoirs; and letters on that difficult subject, the Eloquence of the Pulpit. He had now occasion to exert his own talents before a more enlightened auditory than he had ever yet addressed, having

been appointed by Dr. Hurd (the venerable bishop of Winchester) to the office of assistant preacher at Lincoln's Inn Chapel. In the following year, we do not find that any thing original came from his pen; he prepared for the press, however, an enlarged edition of his Effusions of Friendship and Fancy, and a collection of his poems, in two vols. 12mo. The principal article of these, not before published, is a dramatic poem, or Tragedy, entitled The Fatal Prophecy. This was his only attempt in this species of poetry, and was universally accounted unsuccessful. He had the good sense to acquiesce in the decision, and neither attempted the drama again, nor reprinted this specimen.

During Churchill's career, Langhorne endeavoured to counteract the scurrility he had thrown out against Scotland in his Prophecy of Famine, by an elegant poem, entitled 'Genius and Valour." This poem produced him a very flattering letter, in the year 1766, from Dr. Robertson, the celebrated historian, and principal of the university of Edinburgh, requesting him to accept a diploma for the degree of doctor in divinity. He was farther consoled by the approbation of every wise and loyal man who contemplated the miseries of disunion, and the glaring absurdity of perpetuating national prejudices.

In 1767, after a courtship of five years, Dr. Langhorne obtained the hand of Miss Cracroft, to whom he had ever been tenderly attached, and with whom he had kept up a correspondence since his departure from Hackthorn. By what means her family were reconciled to the match, we are not told; but some fortune accompanied it, as the living of Blagden in Somersetshire was purchased for him, and there he went immediately to reside. His happiness, however, with this lady was of short duration, as she died in child-birth of a son, May 4, 1768. She was interred in the chancel of Blagden church,