bled:--

"--Our old friend Somervile is dead! I did not imagine I could have been
so sorry as I find myself on this occasion. Sublatum quaerimus. I can
now excuse all his foibles; impute them to age, and to distress of
circumstances: the last of these considerations wrings my very soul to
think on. For a man of high spirit conscious of having (at least in one
production) generally pleased the world, to be plagued and threatened by
wretches that are low in every sense; to be forced to drink himself into
pains of the body, in order to get rid of the pains of the mind is a
misery."--He died July 19, 1742, and was buried at Wotton, near Henley
on Arden.

His distresses need not be much pitied: his estate is said to be fifteen
hundred a year, which by his death has devolved to Lord Somervile of
Scotland. His mother, indeed, who lived till ninety, had a jointure of
six hundred.

It is with regret that I find myself not better enabled to exhibit
memorials of a writer who at least must be allowed to have set a good
example to men of his own class, by devoting part of his time to elegant
knowledge; and who has shown, by the subjects which his poetry has
adorned, that it is practicable to be at once a skilful sportsman and a
man of letters.

Somervile has tried many modes of poetry; and though perhaps he has not
in any reached such excellence as to raise much envy, it may commonly be
said at least, that "he writes very well for a gentleman." His serious
pieces are sometimes elevated; and his trifles are sometimes elegant. In
his verses to Addison, the couplet which mentions Clio is written with
the most exquisite delicacy of praise; it exhibits one of those happy
strokes that are seldom attained. In his Odes to Marlborough there are
beautiful lines; but in the second Ode he shows that he knew little
of his hero, when he talks of his private virtues. His subjects
are commonly such as require no great depth of thought or energy of
expression. His Fables are generally stale, and therefore excite
no curiosity. Of his favourite, "The Two Springs," the fiction is
unnatural, and the moral inconsequential. In his Tales there is too
much coarseness, with too little care of language, and not sufficient
rapidity of narration. His great work is his Chase, which he undertook
in his maturer age, when his ear was improved to the approbation of
blank verse, of which, however, his two first lines give a bad specimen.
To this poem praise cann