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copies no favourite expreffions; he feems to have laid up no ftores of thought or diction, but to owe all to the fortuitous fuggeftions of the prefent moment. Yet I have reason to believe that, when once he had formed a new defign, he then laboured it with very patient industry, and that he compofed with great labour,. and frequent revifions.

His verfes are formed by no certain model; for he is no more like himself in his different productions than he is like others. He feems never to have ftudied profody, nor to have had any direction but from his own car. But,. with all his defects, he was a man of genius and a poet.

H

DYE R.

JOHN

OHN DYER, of whom I have no other account to give than his own Letters, published with Hughes's correfpondence, and the notes added by the editor, have afforded me, was born in 1700, the fecond fon of Robert Dyer of Aberglafney in Caermarthenshire, a folicitor of great capacity and note.

He paffed through Westminster-school under the care of Dr. Freind, and was then called home to be inftructed in his father's profeffion. But his father died

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foon, and he took no delight in the study of the law, but, having always amused himself with drawing, refolved to turn painter, and became pupil to Mr. Richardfon, an artist then of high reputation, but now better known by his books than by his pic

tures.

Having ftudied awhile under his mafter, he became, as he tells his friend, an itinerant painter, and wandered about South Wales and the parts adjacent; but he mingled poetry with painting; and about 1727 printed Grongar Hill in Lewis's Mifcellany.

Being, probably, unfatisfied with his own proficiency, he, like other painters,

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after the usual education at a grammarschool, was at the age of thirteen admitted into the College, where, in 1700, he became mafter of arts; and was the fame year ordained a deacon, though under the canonical age, by a difpenfation from the bishop of Derry.

About three years afterwards he was made a priest; and in 1705 Dr. Afhe, the bishop of Clogher, conferred upon him the archdeaconry of Clogher. About the fame time he married Mrs. AnneMinchin, an amiable lady, by whom he had two fons who died young, and a daughter who long furvived him.

At the ejection of the Whigs, in the end of queen Anne's reign, Parnell was

perfuaded to change his party, not with

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