was in England he wrote three copies of it without the assistance of any other copy, and without so much as looking to one as his guide in writing the others. He would often laugh at his friend, Mr. Bluett, on hearing him say he had forgotten any thing. He told him, "that he hard ly ever forgot any thing in his life, and wondered that any body should." There was a happy mixture of the grave and cheerful in his natural temper. His gentle mildness was guarded by a proper warmth. To all in distress he was kind and compassionate. He was commonly very pleasant in conversation; and would every now and then divert the company with some witty turn or agreeable story, but never to the prejudice of religion and good manners. It was visible that, notwithstanding his usual mildness, he had on necessary occasions sufficient courage. A story which he told showed this. Passing one day on his way home through the country of the Arabs, with four servants and several negroes which he had bought, he was attacked by fifteen of the wild Arabs, the common banditti or robbers in those parts. On the sight of this gang, Job prepared for defence; and, setting one of his servants to watch the negroes, he, with the other three, stood on his guard. One of his men was killed in the fight, and Job himself was run through the leg with a spear. However, two of the Arabs, together with their captain and two horses being killed, the rest fled, and Job secured his negroes. His aversion to pictures of all sorts was exceedingly great; and with great difficulty was he prevailed on to sit for his own. He was assured that pictures were never worshipped in this country, and his was desired for no other end but to preserve the remembrance of him. He at last consented, and it was drawn by Mr. Hoare, who, when the face was finished, asked in what dress it would be most proper to draw him? Job, de siring to be drawn in his own country dress, the artist replied, that unless he had seen it, or it were described by one who had, he could not draw it. Job remarked upon this: "If you can't draw a dress you never saw, why do some of you painters presume to draw God, whom no one ever saw?" Many of his repartees in company showed him to be a man of wit and humour. He expressed a disapprobation of Christianity as not allowing divorces. It was once observed to him, that a Christian takes a wife for better or for worse. replied: "What, if she prove all worse?" Job Though he was a Mahomedan, he did not believe in a sensual paradise, nor did he adopt many other ridiculous and vain traditions, which pass current among the generality of the Turks. He was very constant in his devotion to God. He called one afternoon on the learned Dr. David Jennings, an eminent dissenting mi nister, after the family had dined. It was found that he had not broken his fast that day. Some pastry was procured and set before him, but he would not partake of it till he had retired into another parlour for devotion. He said, that he never prayed to Mahomed, nor did he think it lawful to address any but God himself in prayer. He was so fixed in the belief of one God, that it was not possible to give him any notion of a Trinity. A New Testament in his own language was put into his hands. When he had read it, he told Mr. Bluett he had "perused it with a great deal of care, but could not find one word in it of three Gods, as some people talk." On all occasions be discovered a singular veneration for the name of God, and never pronounced the word Allah without a peculiar accent, and a remarkable pause. His notions of God, Providence, and a future state, were indeed very just and reasonable. His learning, considering the dis advantages of the place from whence he came, w Job, in his captivity, comforted himself with reflections on the providence of God directing all events; and would, on proper occasions, speak in conversation justly and devoutly of The difference, in Mr. Bluett's opinion, depended only upon the pointing the Arabick, an invention of late date. God's care of all his creatures, and particularly of the remarkable changes in his own circumstances, all of which, he piously ascribed to an unseen hand. He frequently compared himself to Joseph. And when he was informed that the king of Futa had killed a great many of the Mandingoes on his account, he said with a good deal of concern: "If he had been there he would have prevented it; for it was not the Mandingoes, but God, who brought him to a strange land." Job had heard, by vessels from Gambia, that after captain Pike sailed, his father sent down several slaves to purchase his redemption; and that Sambo, king of Futa, made war upon the Mandingoes, and cut off great numbers of them, upon account of the injury they had done to his school-fellow. It was an instance of Job's good sense and foresight, that the reason of his learning from the sailors and writing the names of the headlands on the English coast was, as he told Mr. Bluett: "That if after his return he should meet with any Englishman in his own country, he might be able to convince him that he had been in England." SIR E. BRYDGES, K. J. AND ROBERT BLOOMFIELD, PASTORAL POET." TURNING over, accidentally, the Censura Literaria for February, I happened to stumble, at p. 91, upon some blank verse of Robert Bloomfield's, introduced by a strong encomium of sir E. Brydges, K. J. Of the critical faculties of sir E. Brydges, K. J. I have not a very exalted notion; and I turned, therefore, to the poem itself, there to form my own opinion. It is addressed to a Spindle, once in the possession of Mr. Bloomfield's mother. And much as I may be inclined to praise the motive of the verse, yet I do believe, that any thing more contemptible in the form of ten-syllable lines, cannot be penned by a man of common sense. I will justify this assertion by two or three extracts. "Relick of affection, come; Thou shalt a moral teach to me and mine. The hand that wound thee smooth is cold and spins No more!!!" This last line is as pure prose as ever fell from the pen of sir E. Brydges, K. J. himself; and it is as purely bathos as any thing to be found in English literature. ៨ Debility pressed hard around The seat of life, and terrours filled her brain: Nor causeless terrours: giants grim and Three mighty ones she feared to meet : What the club of poverty is, Mr. Bloomfield, I suppose, can tell me; but, as for the three giants, they are quite new. "When death beheld Her tribulation he fulfilled his task, And to her trembling hand and heart at once Cried, SPIN NO MORE!" Here, then, is the moral; and it appears that dame Bloomfield possessed the rare faculty of spinning with her heart as well as her hand; and that death came to ease them both. How natural that this last mentioned gentleman should find her in the very act of spinning. She, as her son so poetically exclaims, "She who could spin so well!" But she was a mighty spinner; for she spun "through all her days." But now comes the great moral. The spindle was left half full of downy fleece," and so ""Tis the motto of the world! We spin vain threads, and dream, and strive, and die, With sillier things than spindles in our hands!!!" This is, indeed, a pathetick and a sublime moral; and it serves Mr. Bloomfield for a basis whereby to make a transition to his " spinning" of verses. "Proud of a vast extent of flimsy lines." His case seems desperate, and nothing but the same gentleman who stopped his mother's spindle will stop his pen; for thus he says himself: "Then feeling, as I do, resistlessly, The bias set upon my soul for verse, Oh! should old age still find my brain at work, And death, over some poor fragment striding, cry 'Hold! spin no more!!" Grant Heaven; that purity may Of thought and texture assimilate This is unintelligible nonsense in some parts; and in others, it conveys alarming tidings as to the perpetual labours of Mr. Bloomfield's brain.-But now, let us hear sir E. Brydges, K. J. He introduces the above silliness [I have quoted nearly the whole of the piece] by saying: "Every one is acquainted with the pastoral poetry of Bloomfield. It is not generally known, with what wonderful power and pathos he can write blank verse!!"' And he concludes it by adding : "There is no reader of English poetry who does not recollect Cowper's exquisite lines on his mother's picture. This fragment of Bloomfield's forms a noble companion to them!!! It strikes me to be written in a loftier tone, and still more excellent manner than any of his other productions. Let him give new delight and astonishment to the world by a moral and descriptive poem in blank verse!" Let me ask you, sir, who is most pitiable he who receives such glaring adulation, or he who gives it. Perhaps the latter. For whether he bestows it from meanness of spirit, or from a wretched imbecility of intellect which disqualifies him for judging what he writes about, he is equally an object of pity. I do not remember any thing so absurd from Mr. Brydges, till he was made a knight. If any of your readers can give me a new perception, and teach me to find the meanest degree of merit in what I have extracted, I will unfeignedly thank him. But till then, my prayer is, that Mr. Bloomfield may ever have such an admirer, and such an admirer such poets to admire. Sir E. Brydges, K. J. calls Mr. Bloomfield's prosaick inanity a "companion" to Cowper's exquisitely pa claim To quench it) here shines on me still the thetick lines on his Mother's Picture. The art that baffles time's tyrannick I will take Cowper from my shelf, and quote the first dozen linės, and leave your readers to judge : same." Let sir E. Brydges, K. J. confine himself to copying the titles of old books, and giving abstracts of their contents, and he will be suitably employed: but let him reverence himself in future, too much, to write such hyperbolical encomiums on so barren and mean a topick. I am, sir, your's, &c. March 7, 1809. SIR, FROM THE LONDON ATHENEUM. THE following example of escape from apparently inevitable death is so singular, that I think it deserves to be recorded, and cannot but prove acceptable to your readers. In the attack of Manilla by sir William Draper, in the year 1762, captain Richard Bishop, of the marines, greatly distinguished himself by his intrepidity and professional knowledge; in consequence of which, he was by that general made governour of the town and fort of Cavite, the principal port in the island of Luconia. At this time there was in the neighbourhood a Malay of extraordinary bulk and strength, and of the most ferocious disposition, who had formerly worked in the dock yard, but had deserted, and having collected nearly a hundred men of like cha racters with himself, committed every species of lawless violence on the persons and property of the peaceable inhabitants. For the apprehension of this man captain Bishop had long offered considerable rewards, but without effect; when, one day riding out with a brother officer, attended by about forty men, he saw this des perado, armed with a carbine, a brace of pistols, a scymetar, and a dagger, issue out of a wood at a short dis tance, at the head of his troop. Instigated by a sudden emotion of resentment, Bishop determined to inflict on this man the just punishment of his offences; but being himself without weapons, he borrowed a pistol from the holsters of the officer who accompanied him. Thus provided, he galloped up to the Malay, and presented the pistol to his head. The Malay and his followers, confounded at this bold act of a single man, offered no resistance. The pisto missed fire; on which, Bishop, striking the Malay with it a violent blow on the head, knocked him off his horse. In the meanwhile the English troop, hastening to the assist. ance of their leader, and concluding him to be fully equal to cope with his fallen antagonist, pursued the banditti, who immediately fled, and both parties were soon out of sight. All this was the work only of a few. seconds; during which, Bishop see ing the Malay stunned on the ground, alighted in order to secure him; or, if necessary, to kill him with one of his own weapons. No sooner, however, was he off his horse, than the Malay was on his feet, and began a desperate struggle with his rash assailant. It was the business of the former merely to employ his own offensive weapons; the latter had the double necessity of defeating their use, and of applying them to his own advantage. The Malay was singularly strong and active, inured to hard labour, and exerting himself in his native climate: the Englishman of much less muscular force, and that reduced by long privations, and by the influence of excessive heat; but the disparity was in a considerable degree compensated by the energy of an invincible mind. This contest for life continued for almost an hour, when at length Bishop, almost fainting with fatigue, was thrown on his back, and the Malay, kneeling on him, drew his dagger, and with all his force aimed at his breast the fatal blow. At that moment Bishop, exerting his last remains of strength, with both hands averted the point of the dagger as it descended, and changing its direction, drove it upwards into the throat of the Malay, who immediately fell down dead upon him. Bishop, unable to walk, crawled on his hands and knees to his horse, which he found grazing at the distance of a quarter of a mile near the spot where the contest began. He mounted him with difficulty, and was soon afterwards happily joined by his friends, who had chased their opponents into some dangerous passes, and returned, not without solicitude for the fate of their commander, whom they had so long left. The victor carried away the spoils of his enemy, part of which, the scy. metar and fatal dagger, the writer of this letter has more than once seen. The story was first related to him by captain Bishop himself, and afterwards fully confirmed by the late colonel Flint, who at that time served with captain Bishop in the island. Your readers will naturally look with anxiety to the subsequent histo ry of this gallant officer; and they will learn, with deep regret, that he was lost on board his majesty's ship the Thunderer, commanded by commodore Walsingham, in the great hurricane which occurred in the West Indies, in the year 1780. I am, sir, Your obedient Servant, P. H. C. LAW REPORT. THE following case is perhaps unparalleled in the annals of Bow street. On Tuesday, May 16th, Miss Mary York, a young lady, about 24 years of age, was brought by Lavender before Mr. Nares, the sitting magistrate, on a charge under the Black Act, of a most extraordinary nature. Robert Coombes stated, that on Sunday afternoon, about five o'clock, he was passing through Kempton Park, in Sunbury; and as he was looking at some young men playing at cricket, he heard a gun go off, and immediately saw the prisoner, Miss Mary York, in a paddock, divided from the park by a paling, with a gun in her hand. He, in consequence, went up to the paling, and found Henry Parker there speaking to Miss York, and observing to her that, if she fired the gun off again in such a careless manner, he should come over the paling and take the gun from her. He heard her ask |