GRAINGER, JAMES, was born at Dunso about the year 1723. Having been educated for a surgeon, he served in the army in that capacity, first during the rebellion of 1743, and afterwards in Germany. Having resigned his commission, he practised for a short time in Lon don, and then accepted a situation at St. Christopher's. On his arrival there, ha married the daughter of a lady whom he had cured of small pox during the voyage. Ha continued, with a abort exception, to reside at St. Christopher's until his death, which took place Dec. 24, 1767.
Ilia only claims to celebrity rest on his Ode to Solitude,' and his poem entitled the 'Sugar-Cane.' Of the first we can only say that it contains sundry false quantities, much nonsense, and a few good lines; and of the second, that it is ono of those numerous instances afforded, wherever we turn In the literature of the last century, which evince that the principles of poetry had been utterly lost sight of by a large proportion of those who called themselves, and whom others called, poets. Virgil has shown what difficulties didactic poetry presents;
but when a man of but moderate powers of versification, and very little taste, site down to write a treatise on sugar plantations, and thinks It an improvement on. 'rats' to call them 'the whiskered vermin race,' little indeed of true poetical imagery can we expect to find amongst his descriptions. The absurdity of hanging classical trappings round a subject like our author's is too evident to need notice, and perhaps the poem is too much forgotten to make it worth while to censure its principles; but we cannot dismiss the subject without remarking that Grainger shows himself to have been almost entirely callous to the barbarities practised on the slaves