To those who are giving to contemporaries some mention of an age that is past, and of names well-nigh forgotten, it is a hard task to judge how much it may be worth a struggle to save from the wreck of oblivion. If heroes have perished, because no song of poet hymned their daring deeds, has not the fame of poets themselves been oftentimes perilled by their biographers? William Mason, the author of "Caractacus," wrote a memoir of his friend Whitehead, which has been condemned by Boswell as a mere dry narrative of facts. The world has been content to forget the book and its subject; and but for the brief biographical notice of Mr. Campbell, how few would know anything of Colley Cibber's immediate successor. And yet the author of "The Roman Father," and of "Creusa" has much in his writings more worthy of perusal, much in his literary history more deserving of record, than many of the poetasters whose names the genius of Johnson has saved from that silent sentence of forgetfulness which time so sternly passes upon mediocrity.
It is as difficult not to regret, as it is easy to account
