er," says he, "was a Shakespeare,
descended from a brother of every body's Shakespeare;" by her, in 1756,
he had a son and three daughters living.

His ecclesiastical provision was, for a long time, but slender. His
first patron, Mr. Harper, gave him, in 1741, Calthorp, in
Leicestershire, of eighty pounds a year, on which he lived ten years,
and then exchanged it for Belchford, in Lincolnshire, of seventy-five.
His condition now began to mend. In 1751, sir John Heathcote gave him
Coningsby, of one hundred and forty pounds a year; and, in 1755, the
chancellor added Kirkby, of one hundred and ten. He complains that the
repair of the house at Coningsby, and other expenses, took away the
profit. In 1757 he published the Fleece, his greatest poetical work; of
which I will not suppress a ludicrous story. Dodsley, the bookseller,
was one day mentioning it to a critical visiter, with more expectation
of success than the other could easily admit. In the conversation the
author's age was asked; and being represented as advanced in life, "He
will," said the critick, "be buried in woollen."

He did not, indeed, long survive that publication, nor long enjoy the
increase of his preferments; for in 1758 (July 24th,) he died.

Dyer is not a poet of bulk or dignity sufficient to require an elaborate
criticism. Grongar Hill is the happiest of his productions: it is not,
indeed, very accurately written; but the scenes which it displays are so
pleasing, the images which they raise are so welcome to the mind, and
the reflections of the writer so consonant to the general sense or
experience of mankind, that when it is once read, it will be read again.

The idea of the Ruins of Rome strikes more but pleases less, and the
title raises greater expectation than the performance gratifies. Some
passages, however, are conceived with the mind of a poet; as when, in
the neighbourhood of dilapidating edifices, he says,

The pilgrim oft
At dead of night, mid his orison hears
Aghast the voice of time, disparting tow'rs,
Tumbling all precip'tate down, dash'd,
Rattling around, loud thund'ring to the moon.

Of the Fleece, which never became popular, and is now universally
neglected, I can say little that is likely to recall it to attention.
The woolcomber and the poet appear to me such discordant natures, that
an attempt to bring them together is to _couple the serpent with the
fowl_. When Dyer, whose mind was not unpoetical, h