some gross reflections * on four Scottish gentlemen lately appointed to governments in North America, one of them, giving too much way to resentment, resolved to have some talk with his anonymous libeller. On inquiry he learnt that the gentleman's name was Brooke. Mr. Johnstone therefore invited Mr. Brooke to an interview, who considered this invitation as a challenge, and only laughed the more in a subsequent paper at Mr. Johnstone; who, thus provoked to still greater lengths of resentment, repaired to the house of the political champion, and inflicted personal chastisement upon him at once summary and severe. A scuffle ensued, and Mr. Brooke's friends coming to the rescue, the enraged Governor reluctantly retired from the conflict.

* These reflections were founded on a quotation of the four following appointments, which appeared in the same Gazette:

The King has been pleased to constitute and appoint the Hon. James Murray to be his Majesty's Captain-General and Governor-in-Chief in and over his Majesty's province of Quebec in America.

The King has been pleased to constitute and appoint James Grant, Esq. to be his Majesty's Captain-General and Governor-in-Chief in and over his Majesty's province of East Florida in America.

The King has been pleased to constitute and appoint George Johnstone, Esq. to be his Majesty's Captain-General and Governor-in-Chief in and over his Majesty's province of West Florida in America.

The King has been pleased to constitute and appoint Robert Melvill, Esq. to be his Majesty's Captain-General and Governor-in-Chief in and over his Majesty's islands of Granada, the Grenadines, Dominica, St. Vincent, and Tobago, in America, and of all other islands and territories adjacent thereto, and which now are or heretofore have been dependent thereupon.

GOTHA M.

IN THREE BOOKS.

HE first book of this poem was published in February,

ΤΗ 1764, and the whimsical nature of its contents gave

scarcely any intimation of the shape it might in its progress assume. The publication of the third book, however, developed the author's plan, by his drawing in his own person, the portrait of a perfect sovereign; and expatiating on the qualifications requisite for an adequate fulfilment of the functions of that high office. The poem abounds with many exquisite passages, and just delineations of character, and affords the only specimen of our author's powers in the walk of rural imagery; but notwithstanding these and the many other beauties it contains, the plan is in itself so defective, and the vein of egotism that pervades it so disgusting, as, together with its tedious digressions, to have prevented its acquiring that degree of popularity which all Churchill's former productions had obtained.

Gotham contains less personal satire than any other of our author's poems, and probably for that reason, and from the general nature of its subject, may now excite more interest than it did on its first appearance. The name of the author prepared his readers to expect that direct censure of individuals in which he had hitherto indulged, and the consequent disappointment they experienced may have contributed to class this poem in a lower scale of merit than it otherwise deserved.

The first book, as the author acknowledges in the last lines, has but little connexion with the real subject. In it he gives ample indulgence to the warmth and luxuriance of his imagination, and represents the animate and inanimate creation as rejoicing at his accession to the throne of Gotham.

In the second book he enters on his subject, and draws the characters of the Stuarts with a discriminating pencil.

The third book inculcates precepts for a monarch to observe in order to render him great, sagacious, and beloved. Whether our poetical Mentor, when he assumed the office of preceptor, had a Telemachus in view, or whether when he described the characters of the dead in such strong and striking colours, he had any reference to the living, the reader has ample opportunity of determining for himself.

The same apprehension of the Bute influence over the youthful king is alluded to in Canning's Epistle from Lord W. Russell to Lord Cavendish, published the preceding year 1763.

But should some upstart, train'd in slavery's school,
Learn'd in the maxims of despotic rule,

Full fraught with forms and grave pedantic pride,
(Mysterious cloke! the mind's defects to hide ;)
Sordid in small things, prodigal in great,
Saving for minions, squandering for the state,
Should such a miscreant, born for England's bane,
Obscure the glories of a prosperous reign,
Gain by the semblance of each praiseful art,
A pious prince's unsuspecting heart;
Envious of worth and talents not his own,
Clears all experienced merit from the throne,
To guide the helm a motley crew compose,
Servile to him, the king and country's foes,
Meanly descend each paltry place to fill,
With tools of power and pandars to his will,
Brandishing high the scorpion scourge o'er all,
Except such slaves as bow the knee to Baal,
Should Albion's fate decree the baleful hour,
Short be the date of his detested power,
Soon may his sovereign break his iron rod,
And hear his people for their voice is god.

FA

GOTHAM.

BOOK I.

5

AR off (no matter whether east or west, A real country, or one made in jest, Not yet by modern Mandevilles disgraced, Nor by map-jobbers wretchedly misplaced) There lies an island, neither great nor small Which, for distinction sake, I Gotham call. The man who finds an unknown country out, By giving it a name, acquires, no doubt, A Gospel title, though the people there The pious Christian thinks not worth his care; 10 Bar this pretence, and into air is hurl'd The claim of Europe to the Western world.

3] Sir John Mandeville, a traveller of the 14th century, notorious for the little attention to veracity, observed by him in the narration of his thirty-four years wanderings. He first discovered the "Anthropophagi, or men whose heads do grow beneath their shoulders ;" and in a high northern latitude observed the singular phenomenon of the congelation of words, as they issued from the mouth, and the strange medley of sounds that ensued upon a thaw.

In the 254th number of the Tatler, with the appropriate motto of Splendide mendax, Addison has given a very amusing version of Sir John Mandeville's "Words congealed in Northern Air" in the shape of an extract from a manuscript journal of our English rival of that liar of first rate magnitude Ferdinand Mendez Pinto.

15

Cast by a tempest on the savage coast,
Some roving buccaneer set up a post;
A beam, in proper form transversely laid,
Of his Redeemer's cross the figure made,
Of that Redeemer, with whose laws his life,
From first to last, had been one scene of strife;
His royal master's name thereon engraved,
Without more process, the whole race enslaved,
Cut off that charter they from Nature drew,
And made them slaves to men they never knew.
Search ancient histories, consult records,

Under this title the most Christian lords
Hold (thanks to conscience) more than half the

ball;

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O'erthrow this title, they have none at all;
For never yet might any monarch dare,
Who lived to truth, and breathed a Christian air,
Pretend that Christ, (who came, we all agree,
To bless his people, and to set them free)
To make a convert ever one law gave
By which converters made him first a slave.
Spite of the glosses of a canting priest,
Who talks of charity, but means a feast,
Who recommends it (whilst he seems to feel
The holy glowings of a real zeal)

To all his hearers, as a deed of worth,

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To give them heaven, whom they have robb'd of earth,

Never shall one, one truly honest man,

Who, bless'd with Liberty, reveres her plan,
Allow one moment, that a savage sire

40