ption at Rome.

In conjunction with Nicholas Brady, he prepared that version of the
Psalms still appended to the English Book of Common Prayer. In
conjunction with Dryden and others, he translated Juvenal. In
conjunction with Lord Dorset, he edited a praiseworthy edition of the
poems of Sir John Davies, which might otherwise have been lost or
forgotten. In conjunction with Garth, he translated the
"Metamorphoses" of Ovid. And in conjunction with Dr. Blow, he prepared
those Pindaric flights which set King William asleep, and made
Godolphin ashamed that the deeds of Marlborough should be so
unworthily sung.

So long as he continued to enjoy the patronage of his liberal
Maecenas, Tate, with his aid, and these labors, and the income of his
office, contrived to maintain the state of a gentleman. But Dorset
died in 1706; the Laureate's dull heroics found no vent; and ere the
death of Queen Anne,--an event which he bewailed in the least
contemptible of his odes,--his revenues were contracted to the
official stipend. The accession of the house of Hanover, in 1714, was
the downfall of Toryism; and Tate was a Tory. His ruin was complete.
The Elector spared not the house of Pindar. The Laureate was stripped
of the wreath; his only income confiscated; and after struggling
feebly with fate in the form of implacable creditors, he took refuge
in the Old Mint, the resort of thieves and debtors, where in 1715 he
died,--it is said, of starvation. Alas, that the common lot of Grub
Street should have precedent in the person of laurelled royalty
itself!

The coronation of Laureate Rowe was simultaneous with that of George
I. His immediate claim to the honor dated back to the year 1702, when
his play of "Tamerlane" had caught the popular fancy, and proved of
vast service to the ministry at a critical moment in stimulating the
national antipathy to France. The effect was certainly not due to
artistic nicety or refinement. King William, as _Tamerlane_, was
invested with all virtues conceivable of a Tartar conqueror, united
with the graces of a primitive saint; while King Louis, as _Bajazet_,
fell little short of the perfections of Satan. These coarse daubs,
executed in the broadest style of the sign-post school of Art, so
gratified the mob, that for half a century their exhibition was called
for on the night of November the fifth. Rowe, moreover, belonged to
the straitest sect of Whiggery,--was so bigoted, indeed, as to decline
the acquai