This poet is generally known as 'Scott of Amwell.' This arises from the fact that his father, a draper in Southwark, where John was born in 1730, retired ten years afterwards to Amwell. He had never been inoculated with the small-pox, and such was his dread of the disease, and that of his family, that for twenty years, although within twenty miles of London, he never visited it. His parents, who belonged to the amiable sect of Quakers, sent him to a day-school at Ware, but that too he left upon the first alarm of infection. At seventeen, although his education was much neglected, he began to relish reading, and was materially assisted in his studies by a neighbour of the name of Frogley, a master bricklayer, who, though somewhat illiterate, admired poetry. Scott sent his first essays to the Gentleman's Magazine, and in his thirtieth year published four elegies, which met with a kind reception, although Dr Johnson said only of them, 'They are very well, but such as twenty people might write.' He produced afterwards 'The Garden,' 'Amwell,' and other poems, besides some rather narrow 'Critical Essays on the English Poets.' When thirty-six years of age, he submitted to inoculation, and henceforward visited London frequently, and became acquainted with Dr Johnson, Sir William Jones, Mrs Montague, and other eminent characters. He was a very active promoter of local improvements, and diligent in cultivating his grounds and garden. He was twice married, his first wife being a daughter of his friend Frogley. He died in 1783, not of that disease which he so 'greatly feared,' but of a putrid fever, at Radcliff. One note of his, entitled 'Ode on Hearing the Drum,' still reverberates on the ear of poetic readers. Wordsworth has imitated it in his 'Andrew Jones.' Sir Walter makes Rachel Geddes say, in 'Redgauntlet,' alluding to books of verse, 'Some of our people do indeed hold that every writer who is not with us is against us, but brother Joshua is mitigated in his opinions, and correspondeth with our friend John Scott of Amwell, who hath himself constructed verses well approved of even in the world.'

ODE ON HEARING THE DRUM.

1 I hate that drum's discordant sound,
Parading round, and round, and round:
To thoughtless youth it pleasure yields,
And lures from cities and from fields,
To sell their liberty for charms
Of tawdry lace, and glittering arms;
And when ambition's voice commands,
To march, and fight, and fall, in foreign lands.

2 I hate that drum's discordant sound,
Parading round, and round, and round:
To me it talks of ravaged plains,
And burning towns, and ruined swains,
And mangled limbs, and dying groans,
And widows' tears, and orphans' moans;
And all that misery's hand bestows,
To fill the catalogue of human woes.

THE TEMPESTUOUS EVENING.

AN ODE.

1 There's grandeur in this sounding storm,
That drives the hurrying clouds along,
That on each other seem to throng,
And mix in many a varied form;
While, bursting now and then between,
The moon's dim misty orb is seen,
And casts faint glimpses on the green.

2 Beneath the blast the forests bend,
And thick the branchy ruin lies,
And wide the shower of foliage flies;
The lake's black waves in tumult blend,
Revolving o'er and o'er and o'er,
And foaming on the rocky shore,
Whose caverns echo to their roar.

3 The sight sublime enrapts my thought,
And swift along the past it strays,
And much of strange event surveys,
What history's faithful tongue has taught,
Or fancy formed, whose plastic skill
The page with fabled change can fill
Of ill to good, or good to ill.

4 But can my soul the scene enjoy,
That rends another's breast with pain?
O hapless he, who, near the main,
Now sees its billowy rage destroy!
Beholds the foundering bark descend,
Nor knows but what its fate may end
The moments of his dearest friend!