The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) Volume IV.Cibber, Theophilus
General
The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) Volume IV.
Cibber, Theophilus
Poets, English -- Biography -- Early works to 1800; Poets, Irish -- Biography -- Early works to 1800
When his father removed to London, he accompanied him, and was placed
under the famous Dr. Walker, master of the Charter-House-School. His
exercises here never failed of being distinguished even among those
who had the approbation of that excellent master, who would fain have
persuaded his father to place him at one of our English universities;
but how honourably soever Mr. Rowe might think of the learning of
those noble feats of the Muses, yet not having the same advantageous
notions of their political principles, he chose to enter him in a
private academy in London, and some time before his death sent him to
Leyden: Here he studied Jeuriel's Antiquities, civil law, the Belles
Lettres, and experimental philosophy; and established a reputation
for capacity, application, and an obliging deportment, both among
the professors and students. He returned from that celebrated seat of
literature, with a great accession of knowledge, entirely incorrupt in
his morals, which he had preferred as inviolate, as he could have done
under the most vigilant eye, though left without any restraints but
those of his own virtue and prudence.
The love of liberty had always been one of Mr. Rowe's darling
passions. He was very much confirmed therein, by his familiar
acquaintance with the history and noble authors of Greece and Rome,
whose very spirit was transferred into him: By residing so long at
a Republic, he had continual examples of the inestimable value of
freedom, as the parent of industry, and the universal source of social
happiness. Tyranny of every kind he sincerely detested; but most of
all ecclesiastical tyranny, deeming the slavery of the mind the most
abject and ignominious, and in its consequences more pernicious than
any other.
He was a perfect matter of the Greek, Latin and French languages; and,
which is seldom known to happen, had at once such a prodigious memory,
and unexhaustible fund of wit, as would have singly been admired, and
much more united. These qualities, with an easy fluency of speech, a
frankness, and benevolence of disposition, and a communicative temper,
made his company much sollicited by all who knew him. He animated the
conversation, and instructed his companions by the acuteness of his
observations.
He had formed a design to compile the lives of all the illustrious
persons of antiquity, omitted by Plutarch; and for this purpose
read the antient historians with great care. This design he in part
executed. Eight lives were published since his decease, in octavo, by
way of Supplement to that admired Biographer; in which though so young
a guide, he strikes out a way like one well acquainted with the dark
and intricate paths of antiquity. The stile is perfectly easy, yet
concise, and nervous: The reflections just, and such as might be
expected from a lover of truth and of mankind.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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