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Specimens of the later English poets (1807)
Specimens of the later English poets - 1807 Author:Robert Southey Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: JAMES MILLER. 170S—1744. When Miller was in embarrassed circumstances, theMinistrjr tempted him by very liberal offers to forsake his own high, church prin... more »ciples, and write in their defence. It staggered him, for he was a married man, with a family, and tenderly attached to a wife, who indeed, deseived the ten- derest attachment. He hinted to her on what terms pre. ferment might be purchased, and she rejected them with an indignation which almost abashed him. He would have bargained for silence, but that did not satisfy the Ministry. This ?ood man died just when his affairs were becoming prosperous. His admirable wile devoted the whole profit of a benefit play, which was given her, and of a large subscription for a volume of his Sermons to the payment of his debts, though by so doing she left herself and her children, almost destitute of the common necessaries of life. He was author of several dramatick Pieces. The Humours of Oxford, his first play, surmounted the opposition that was made to it; his second attempt was the Mother-in. Law, which from fear of ill success, came out under the name of his friend Henry Baker, and ran between twenty and thirty nights. For his third play, he justly feared ;for the best Pieces in our language, were at the time of its appearance, performed to empty benches, while the taste of the town was led captive, by the quaverings of Farinelli, and nonsense reigned in full glory at the Opera. The play however, which was called, The Man of Taste, was represented for thirty nights successively to crowded houses, and was looked on as a seasonable satire. He was also successful, notwithstanding the attempts of his persona! enemies in a fourth play, called The Universal Passion. The Harlequin Horace, and the Poem " Of Politeness," are ingenious a...« less