Soon afterwards he married, and settled himself in a very pleasant house at Wickham, in Kent, where he devoted himself to learning and to piety. Of his learning the late Collection' exhibits evidence, which would have been yet fuller, if the dissertations which accompany his version of 'Pindar' had not been improperly omitted. Of his piety the influence has, I hope, been extended far by his 'Observations on the Resurrection,' published in 1747, for which the University of Oxford created him a Doctor of Laws by Diploma (March 30, 1748), and would doubtless have reached yet further had he lived to complete what he had for some time meditated, the Evidences of the Truth of the New Testament. Perhaps it may not be without effect to tell that he read the prayers of the public liturgy every morning to his family, and that on Sunday evening he called his servants into the parlour, and read to them first a sermon, and then prayers. Crashaw is now not the only maker of verses to whom may be given the two venerable names of Poet and Saint.* He was very often visited by Lyttelton and Pitt, who, when they were weary of faction and debates, used at Wickham to find books and quiet, a decent table, and literary conversation. There is at Wickham a walk made by Pitt; and, what is of far more impor tance, at Wickham Lyttelton received that conviction which produced [1748] his 'Observations on St. Paul.' These two illustrious friends had for a while listened to the blandishments of infidelity; and when West's book was published, it was bought by some who did not know his change of opinion, in expectation of new objections against Christianity; and as infidels do not want malignity, they revenged the disappointment by calling him a Methodist. Mr. West's income was not large; and his friends endeavoured, but without success, to obtain an augmentation. It is reported that * His wife's Christian name was Catherine. Who she was I know not, • Of English Poets, for which Johnson's 'Prefaces' or 'Lives' were written. • Poet and Saint! to thee alone are given The two most sacred names of Earth and Heaven. • Who was his first cousin. COWLEY: On the Death of Mr. Crashaw. • Observations on the Conversion and Apostleship of St. Paul. In a letter to Gilbert West, Esq. Dodsley, 1748, 8vo. It was written to convince the poet of 'The Seasons.' the education of the young Prince' was offered to him, but that he required a more extensive power of superintendence than it was thought proper to allow him." In time, however, his revenue was improved; he lived to have one of the lucrative clerkships of the Privy Council (1752); and Mr. Pitt at last had it in his power to make him treasurer of Chelsea Hospital.' He was now sufficiently rich; but wealth came too late to be long enjoyed; nor could it secure him from the calamities of life: he lost (1755) his only son; and the year after (March 26) a stroke of the palsy brought to the grave one of the few poets to whom the grave might be without its terrors." Of his translations" I have only compared the first Olympic ode with the original, and found my expectation surpassed both by its 7 Afterwards George III. Pope left him 200/., and 57. “to buy a ring or any memorial of me." • West was Under Treasurer. The Paymaster of the Forces was Treasurer. 10 He had long suffered from the gout. He was buried at West Wickham, by his request in his will, in the same grave with his son. His brother Admiral West, was his executor. His wife survived him, enjoyed a pension from the Crown, after his death, of 2007, a year, and died 29th Sept., 1757. Mrs. Montagu has left a charming account of her in her Letters' (II.. 105). There is a good portrait of West at Hagley, artist unknown. He was handsome. 11 Odes of Pindar, with several other Poems, in prose and verse, translated from the Greek; to which is prefixed a Dissertation on the Olympick Games, by Gilbert West, LL.D.' Dodsley [May], 1749. 4to. Other Editions, 2 vols. 12mo. 1753; 8 vols. 12mo. 1766. The dedk cation is particularly elegant : To The Right Honourable Paymaster General of His Majesty's Forces, SIR GEORGE LYTTELTON, BART. One of the Lords Commissioners of the Treasury, Are Inscribed by the Author, who is desirous that the Friendship, With which they have for many years honoured him, Wherever the Publication of the ensuing pieces Shall make known the name of GILBERT WEST. elegance and its exactness. He does not confine himself to his author's train of stanzas; for he saw that the difference of the languages required a different mode of versification. The first strophe is eminently happy; in the second he has a little strayed from Pindar's meaning, who says, "If thou, my soul, wishest to speak of games, look not in the desert sky for a planet hotter than the sun, nor shall we tell of nobler games than those of Olympia." He is sometimes too paraphrastical. Pindar bestows upon Hiero an epithet, which, in one word, signifies delighting in horses; a word which, in the translation, generates these lines: "Hiero's royal brows, whose care Tends the courser's noble breed, Pleas'd to train the youthful steed. Pindar says of Pelops, that "he came alone in the dark to the White Sea;" and West, which, however, is less exuberant than the former passage. A work of this kind must, in a minute examination, discover many imperfections; but West's version, so far as I have considered it, appears to be the product of great labour and great abilities. His 'Institution of the Garter' (1742)" is written with sufficient knowledge of the manners that prevailed in the age to which it is referred, and with great elegance of diction; but for want of a process of events, neither knowledge nor elegance preserves the reader from weariness. His Imitations of Spenser'" are very successfully performed, 12 The Institution of the Order of the Garter. A Dramatick Poem.' [Anonymous.] Dodsley [February], 1742. 4to. 13 Such as his 'Canto of the Fairy Queen,' 1789, folio, and his Education, a Poem, in two Cantos,' of which the first appeared in March, 1751. "Now I talk of verses, Mr. Walpole and I have frequently wondered you should never mention a certain imitation of Spenser, published last year [May, 1789], by a namesake both with respect to the metre, the language, and the fiction; and being engaged at once by the excellence of the sentiments and the artifice of the copy, the mind has two amusements together. But such compositions are not to be reckoned among the great achievements of intellect, because their effect is local and temporary; they appeal not to reason or passion, but to memory, and pre-suppose an accidental or artificial state of mind. An imitation of Spenser is nothing to a reader, however acute, by whom Spenser has never been perused. Works of this kind may deserve praise, as proofs of great industry and great nicety of observation, but the highest praise, the praise of genius, they cannot claim, The noblest beauties of art are those of which the effect is co-extended with rational nature, or at least with the whole circle of polished life; what is less than this can be only pretty, the plaything of fashion and the amusement of a day." There is in 'The Adventurer' a paper of verses given to one of the authors as Mr. West's, and supposed to have been written by It should not be concealed, however, that it is printed with Mr. Jago's name in Dodsley's Collection, and is mentioned as his in a letter of Shenstone's. Perhaps West gave it without naming the author, and Hawkesworth, receiving it from him, thought it his; for his he thought it, as he told me, and as he tells the public. of yours, with which we are all enraptured and enmarvalled."-GRAY to Richard West, July 16, 1740. 14 With all bis faults, no poet enlarges the imagination more than Spenser. Cowley was formed into poetry by reading him; and many of our modern writers, such as Gray, Akenside and others, seem to have studied his manner with the utmost attention: from him their compounded epithets, and solemn flow of numbers, seem evidently borrowed; and the verses of Spenser may, perhaps, one day be considered the standard of English poetry. It were happy indeed if his beauties were the only objects of modern imitation; but many of his words, justly fallen into disuse among his successors, have been of late revived, and a language already too copious has been augmented by an unnecessary reinforcement. Learning and language are ever fluctuating, either rising to perfection or retiring into primeval barbarity: perhaps the point of English perfection is already passed, and every intended improvement may now be only deviation. This at least 's certain, that posterity will perceive a strong similitude between the poets of the sixteenth and those of the latter end of the eighteenth cen tury.-GOLDSMITH: Works by Cunningham, iv, 203. |