beams;
Now in short gasps his lab'ring spirit heaves,
And weakly flutters on his falt'ring tongue,
And struggles into sound. Hear, monster hear,
With his last breath, he curses purjured Phaedra:
He summons Phaedra to the bar of Minos;
Thou too shalt there appear; to torture thee
Whole Hell shall be employ'd, and suff'ring Phaedra
Shall find some care to see thee still more wretched.

No man had a juster notion of the difficulty of composing, than Mr.
Smith, and he sometimes would create greater difficulties than he
had reason to apprehend. Mr. Smith had, indeed, some defects in his
conduct, which those are more apt to remember, who could imitate him
in nothing else. Amongst the blemishes of an innocent kind, which
attended Mr. Smith, was his extreme carelessness in the particular of
dress; this oddity procured him the name of Captain Ragg. His person
was so well formed, and he possessed so much natural gracefulness,
that notwithstanding the disadvantage of his appearance, he was
called, by the Ladies, the Handsome Sloven.

It is to be wondered at (says Mr. Oldisworth) that a man under
poverty, calamities, and disappointments, could make so many friends,
and those so truly valuable. He had, indeed, a noble idea of the
passion of friendship, in the success of which, consisted the
greatest, if not the only happiness of his Life. He was serene and
chearful under the dispensations of providence; he avoided having any
dealings with mankind in which he could not be just, and therefore
refused to embrace some opportunities of amending his fortune.

Upon Mr. Smith's coming to town, no man was more surrounded by all
those who really had, or pretended to wit, or more courted by the
great men, who had then a power and opportunity of encouraging arts
and sciences. Mr. Smith's character grew upon his friends by intimacy,
and exceeded the strongest prepossessions which had been conceived in
his favour. A few years before his death, Mr. Smith engaged in some
considerable Undertakings; in all which he raised expectations in the
world, which he lived not to gratify. Mr. Oldisworth observes, that he
had seen about ten sheets of Pindar translated into English, which, he
says, exceeded any thing of that kind, he could ever hope for in our
language. He had drawn out a plan for a tragedy of Lady Jane Grey, and
had written several scenes of it: a subject afterwards nobly executed
by Mr. Rowe. His greatest undertaking was L