Page:The lives of the poets of Great Britain and Ireland to the time of Dean Swift - Volume 4.djvu/357

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HIS gentleman was the ſon of a Stonecutter in Scotland, and was born about the year 1684. He received an univerſity education while he remained in that kingdom, and having ſome views of improving his fortune, repaired to the metropolis. We are not able to recover many particulars concerning this poet, who was never ſufficiently eminent to excite much curioſity concerning him. By a diſſipated imprudent behaviour he rendered thoſe, who were more intimately acquainted with him, leſs ſollicitous to preſerve the circumſtances of his life, which were ſo little to his advantage. We find him enjoying the favour of the earl of Stair, and Sir Robert Walpole, to whom he addreſſes ſome of his poems. He received ſo many obligations from the latter, and was ſo warm in his intereſt, that he obtained the epithet of Sir Robert Walpole’s Poet, and for a great part of his life had an entire dependence on the bounty of that munificent ſtateſman. Mr. Mitchel, who was a ſlave to his pleaſures, and governed by every guſt of irregular appetite, had many opportunities of experiencing the dangerous folly of extravagance, and the many uneaſy moments which it occaſions. Notwithſtanding this, his conduct was never corrected, even when the means of doing it were in his power. At a time when Mr. Mitchel laboured under ſevere neceſſities, by the death of his wife’s uncle ſeveral thouſand pounds devolved to him, of