ized tradition, and to represent Helen as spotless, he surely
violated no sanction of moral truth; and in the instance of Mary, Mickle
might have pleaded some uncertainty which a poet was at liberty to
interpret to the better part.

During his courtship of Lyttelton he was fed at one time by hopes of
being recommended in the West Indies; and, at another, of being served
in the East; till by degrees the great man waxed so cold, that he wisely
relinquished his suit. His next project was to go out as a merchant's
clerk to Carolina; but some unexpected occurrences defeating this plan
also, he engaged himself as corrector of the Clarendon press, at Oxford.
Here he published (in 1767) the Concubine, a poem, in the manner of
Spenser, to which, when it was printed, ten years after, having in the
meantime passed through several editions, he gave the title of Syr
Martyn.

Early in life, his zeal for religion had shewn itself in some remarks on
an impious book termed the History of the Man after God's own Heart; and
in 1767, the same feelings induced him to publish A Vindication of the
Divinity of Jesus Christ, in a Letter to Dr. Harwood; and, in the year
following, Voltaire in the Shades, or Dialogues on the Deistical
Controversy.

He was now willing to try his fortune with a tragedy, and sent his Siege
of Marseilles to Garrick, who observed to him, that though abounding in
beautiful passages, it was deficient in dramatic art, and advised him to
model it anew; in which task, having been assisted by the author of
Douglas, and having submitted the rifacciamento of his play to the two
Wartons, by whom he was much regarded, he promised himself better
success; but had the mortification to meet with a second rebuff. An
appeal from the manager to the public was his unquestioned privilege;
but not contented with seeking redress by these means, he threatened
Garrick with a new Dunciad. The rejection which his drama afterwards
underwent at each of the playhouses, from the respective managers,
Harris and Sheridan, perhaps taught him at least to suspect his own
judgment.

In 1772, being employed to edit Pearch's Collection of Poems, he
inserted amongst them his Hengist and Mey, and the Elegy on Mary. About
the same time he wrote for the Whitehall Evening Post. But his mind was
now attracted to a more splendid project. This was a translation of the
great Epic Poem of Portugal, the Lusiad of Camoens, which had as yet
been represented to t