mind of the load of gratitude which oppressed it, and to decline any farther pecuniary aid from his patrons.

For the purpose, however, of making himself more fit to compete with the candidates for University honours, he retired for a year to Winteringham, and put himself under the tuition of the Rev. Mr. Grainger, the curate.. Upon returning to Cambridge, Henry was much patronized by his tutors, and sat for the University prize, but was persuaded to decline the contest. His abilities were much talked of in his own circle; his college tempted his ambitious mind with promises of support, and with hopes of honours, and offered him a tutor during the vacation. The ambition of particular colleges to reflect honour on their own establishments, sometimes excites the members to sacrifices of time and health, which lead them to a literary suicide. Henry could not resist the tempting offers of his college. He read and studied, and took strong medicines: but it had been more kindness to have transplanted this overthriving plant into a quiet and open soil for a time, than thus to have forced it, in the hot-house of proffered honours, to grow beyond its strength till it was exhausted.

Thus patronized and celebrated, and spurred on by the desire of approving himself to his friends, and justifying their hopes and wishes, he felt himself tied down to his studies with bands which he could not break, and resisted all the importunities of his friends to leave the University to visit them. His mother was particularly urgent with him to quit his college for the purpose of coming to Nottingham, to receive the benefit of his native air, and maternal nursing; but no arguments could prevail. He had already been to London, where he had spent a week, and he would not absent himself

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again. His mind had been much excited by the various novelties of the metropolis, and the literary and religious disputes in which he had been involved; so that, instead of that calm repose which the state of his health and spirits required, he had been thrown into a sea of agitation, and returned to Cambridge almost in a fever. A cold he caught on the road accelerated its advance; and it made such rapid progress over his frame, that in a few -days he was delirious. Messrs. Campbell and Leeson sat up with him some nights, and contributed to calm his troubled spirit, and allay the fears which depressed his mind. What seemed principally to distress him was, the inattention he had lately paid to his religious concerns, while absorbed in classical pursuits, and carried forward by literary ambition. The promises of the gospel, however, and the readiness of our Almighty Father to receive his children who seek him with their whole heart through his beloved Son, brought consolation to his mind, and gave him peace. He expressed his hopes and his satisfaction to his friends, and departed without a struggle; so that those who waited his last moments, saw his eyes closed, and his hands clasped as in devotion, and could scarcely distinguish the last sigh which preceded the departure of his spirit to the world of light and life immortal. He died the 19th of Octo

ber, 1806.

His early death, in the attainment of celebrity beyond his years, should act as a caution to other youths not to indulge an ambitious spirit at the expense of health and life; but to use moderation, even in the laudable pursuit of language and science, and to believe that perseverance, with health, will, in the end, better secure the objects which they have in view.

The fame of Henry was high in his own college: and yet scarcely was he heard of out of it till his death, when his writings rendered him so celebrated. The eulogies of the University of Cambridge and the unequalled extent of his abilities, which his biographers have panegyrized, were smiled at as a romantic tale by almost all the Cambridge men of his time.

The chief excellencies of H. K. White were not the high honours which his classical or mathematical knowledge acquired him, nor the superiority of his acquisitions in language and science, but his true piety, his persevering labours, and his exalted poetical genius, displayed at so early a period of life. His unexpected and lamented death also, at the age of twenty-one, with the bright prospect of fame and honours glittering before him, has given an interest to his character. All these circumstances, combined, have drawn forth an attention to his writings, and given them an effect on the manners and principles of the rising generation; and they have produced more good than his improved abilities might have achieved, had he been spared to the age of threescore years and ten.

Henry felt the force of truth, and obeyed her dictates. Henry found the cordials of divine truth supporting him in his death, and now reaps her glorious reward in that world where knowledge opens to his untired eye its boundless stores, and satisfies his holy ambition with her unfading and eternal honours. May these be the high glories to which all students may direct their best and their most ardent expectations!

PREFACE.

THE following attempts in Verse are laid before the public with extreme diffidence.. The Author is very conscious that the juvenile efforts of a youth, who has not received the polish of academical discipline, and who has been but sparingly blessed with opportunities for the prosecution of scholastic pursuits, must necessarily be defective in the accuracy and finished elegance which mark the works of the man who has passed his life in the retirement of his study, furnishing his mind with images, and at the same time attaining the power of disposing those images to the best advantage.

The unpremeditated effusions of a Boy, from his thirteenth year, employed, not in the acquisition of literary information, but in the more active business of life, must not be expected to exhibit any considerable portion of the correctness of a Virgil, or the vigorous compression of a Horace. Men are not, I believe, frequently known to bestow much labour on their amusements: and these Poems were most of them written merely to beguile a leisure hour, or to fill up the languid intervals of studies of a severer nature.

Πας το οικειος εργον αγαπαω, ‘Every one loves his own work,' says the Stagyrite; but it was no overweening affection of this kind which induced this publication. Had the author relied on his own judgment only, these Poems would not, in all probability, ever have seen the light.

Perhaps it may be asked of him, what are his motives for this publication? He answers-simply these: The

facilitation, through its means, of those studies which, from his earliest infancy, have been the principal objects of his ambition; and the increase of the capacity to pursue those inclinations which may one day place him in an honourable station in the scale of society.

The principal Poem in this little collection, Clifton Grove,' is, he fears, deficient in numbers and harmonious coherency of parts. It is, however, merely to be regarded as a description of a nocturnal ramble in that charming retreat, accompanied with such reflections as the scene naturally suggested. It was written twelve months ago, when the author was in his sixteenth year. -The Miscellanies are some of them the productions of a very early age. Of the Odes, that 'To an early Primrose,' was written at thirteen-the others are of a later date. The Sonnets are chiefly irregular; they have, perhaps, no other claim to that specific denomination, than that they consist only of fourteen lines.

Such are the Poems towards which I entreat the lenity of the public. The critic will doubtless find in them much to condemn; he may likewise possibly discover something to commend. Let him scan my faults with an indulgent eye, and in the work of that correction which I invite, let him remember he is holding the iron mace of Criticism over the flimsy superstructure of a youth of seventeen, and, remembering that, may he forbear from crushing, by too much rigour, the painted butterfly whose transient colours may otherwise be capable of affording a moment's innocent amusement.

Nottingham.

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H. K. WHITE.