shocked Mr. Sherlock, who has a good heart and much simplicity, and sent him in dudgeon last year to Ireland, determined to write no more; yet I am persuaded he will, so strong Is his propensity to being an author; and if he does, correction may make him more attentive to what he says and writes.  He has no gall; on the contrary, too much benevolence in his indiscriminate praise; but he has made many ingenious criticisms.  He is a just, a due enthusiast to Shakspeare:  but, alas! he scarce likes Richardson less.

(467) George Vertue, the engraver, was born in London in 1684, and died in 1756.  Walpole has given a short sketch of his active life in his Anecdotes of Painting in England; a work, for the materials of which he was in a great measure, indebted to the collections of Vertue, which he bought of his widow.  “These collections,” he says, “amounted to nearly forty volumes, large and small:  in one of his pocket-books I found a note of his first intention of compiling such a work; it was in 1713, and he continued it assiduously to his death."-E.

(468) This eccentric and original writer had published a book at Rome in Italian, and two others at Paris, in French.  The first volume of his “Letters from an English Traveller,” translated by the Rev. John Duncombe, appeared in London in 1779, the author’s return from the Continent, and before it was known he was in holy orders.  The Letters were dedicated to the Hon. and Rev. Frederick Augustus Hervey, Bishop of Derry, and afterwards Earl of Bristol. (See ant`e, p. 236, letter 182.) This volume was republished, revised and corrected by the author, in 1780, and was soon followed by “New Letters of an English Traveller.”  In 1781, Mr. Sherlock had a strong inclination to revisit the Continent, and actually caused the following article to be inserted in a public journal:—­“It is now generally supposed, that, whoever may be honoured with the negotiation at Vienna, Mr. Sherlock, the celebrated English traveller and chaplain to the Earl of Bristol, will be appointed secretary to his embassy.  His great literary and political accomplishments, are in high estimation throughout the Continent; and he is, perhaps, the only Englishman who can boast of having familiarly conversed with the high potentates whose alliance at this important juncture it would be desirable to obtain.  His being in orders is an objection which will vanish, when it is recollected that the very same important office was, in 1708, intended for Dr. Swift:  a name which, however deservedly revered in Great Britain and Ireland, must, in every other kingdom of Europe, give precedence to those of Sherlock, Rousseau, and Sterne, the luminaries of the present century.”  In June of the same year he was presented, by the Bishop of Killala, with a living of 200 pounds a-year.  Upon which occasion he wrote to his publisher, “I think it may be of use to our sale to let the world know it in the newspaper; and I am persuaded that doubling the value of the living will make the books sell better.  The world (God bless it!) is very apt to value a man’s writing according to his rank and fortune.  I am sure they will think more highly of my Letters, if they believe I have 400 a-year, than if they think I have only two.  Pope, you know, says something like this—­