Sure in thy breast the ancient Hebrew fire
    Reviv’d, glows hot, and blazes forth,
  How strong, how fierce the flames aspire! 
    Of thy interior worth,
  When burning worlds thou sett’st before our eyes[B],
  And draw’st tremendous judgment from the flues! 
    O bear me on thy seraph wing,
  And teach my weak obsequious muse to sing. 
  To thee I owe the little art I boast;
  Thy heat first melted my co-genial frost. 
      Preserve the sparks thy breath did fan,
  And by thy likeness form me into true poetic man.

Mr. Mitchel died in the year 1738.  He seems to have been a poet of the third rate; he has seldom reached the sublime; his humour, in which he more succeeded, is not strong enough to last; his verification holds a state of mediocrity; he possessed but little invention, and if he was not a bad rhimester, he cannot be denominated a fine poet, for there are but few marks of genius in his writings.  His poems were printed in two vol. 8vo. in the year 1729.

He wrote also, The Union of the Clans; or the Highland-Fair.  A Scot’s Opera.  ’Twas acted at the Theatre-Royal in Drury-Lane, about the year 1730; but did not succeed.

[Footnote A:  An epic poem by Aaron Hill, esq;]

[Footnote B:  See The Judgment, a poem by Aaron Hill, esq;]

* * * * *

Mr. John Ozell,

This gentleman added considerably to the republic of letters by his numerous translations.  He received the rudiments of his education from Mr. Shaw, an excellent grammarian, master of the free school at Ashby De la Zouch in Leicestershire:  he finished his grammatical learning under the revd.  Mr. Mountford of Christ’s Hospital, where having attained the Latin, Greek, and Hebrew tongues, he was designed to be sent to the university of Cambridge, to be trained up for holy Orders.  But Mr. Ozell, who was averse to that confinement which he must expect in a college life, chose to be sooner settled in the world, and be placed in a public office of accounts, having previously qualified himself by attaining a knowledge of arithmetic, and writing the necessary hands.  This choice of an occupation in our author, could no other reasons be adduced, are sufficient to denominate him a little tinctured with dulness, for no man of genius ever yet made choice of spending his life behind a desk in a compting-house.

He still retained, however, an inclination to erudition, contrary to what might have been expected, and by much conversation with travellers from abroad, made himself matter of most of the living languages, especially the French, Italian, and Spanish, from all which, as well as from the Latin and Greek, he has favoured the world with a great[A] many translations, amongst which are the following French plays;

1.  Britannicus and Alexander the Great, Two Tragedies from Racine.

2.  The Litigant, a Comedy of 3 Acts; Mandated from the French of M. Racine, who took it from the Wasps of Aristophanes, 8vo. 1715.  Scene in a city of Lower Normandy.