JOHN OSWALD:-SYLVESTER OTWAY.

AMONG the literary idlers who, about the years 1788 and 1789, occasionally illuminated the columns of the London newspapers with their poetical effusions, the name of Sylvester Otway holds a conspicuous place. He evinced merit enough to be admired by Burns; and of one whom so great a poet esteemed as of a kindred spirit, it cannot be uninteresting to know some particulars.

SYLVESTER OTWAY was the assumed name of a Mr. Oswald, who had been an officer in the army, but was then living loosely about town. Report has said, with little appearance of truth, that he was cashiered for cowardice. With the regiment in which he was an officer, he served some time in India; and there he left it, but certainly not from any cause injurious to his honor. In some lines, called his Farewell to Bombay, a couplet occurs, which intimates something directly the reverse.

Cruel destiny demands me,

HONOUR drags me from thine arms.

And the writer has been told by a gentleman who knew Oswald well, that he once saw him saluted in London as an old acquaintance, by a Highland colo

* See Life of Burns.

nel of distinguished gallantry, with a degree of hearty warmth which forbids the suspicion of any thing disgraceful attaching to his character. It was at the theatre they met, and the two friends were so rejoiced at recognizing each other, that they leapt across several intervening boxes to shake hands.

Mr. Oswald was a native of Edinburgh, and either his father or mother kept a coffee-house, well known of old as a place for public business, by the name of John's Coffee House. He served an apprenticeship to be a jeweller, and followed that occupation for some years, till, by the death of a relation, he succeeded to a considerable legacy, which he employed in purchasing a commission in a Highland regiment, which went shortly after to the East Indies. To the price of this commission he would, of course, be entitled when he quitted the army, and it was probably on the reversion of this fund that he subsisted after his return from India.

Soon after his appearance in London, Mr. Oswald took an active part in the proceedings of that party of Reformers, who, in those days, arrogated to themselves the title of "Friends of the people;" and in a pamphlet which he wrote, entitled "Remarks on the Constitution of Great Britain," endeavoured to assist their cause, by shewing, that we had, in fact, no constitution at all, but were a prey to a venal and corrupt oligarchy, who despised our rights, and did with our resources what they pleased. The work shewed some ability in writing, but was full of crude notions, absurd principles, and dangerous speculation.

Mr. Oswald went farther than most of his sect in his ideas of the wrong which had crept into the sys

tem of society. He thought not only that an audacious few of his own species had usurped dominion over their fellows, but that the human race were as that audacious few, in respect to all the rest of the animal tribe. The right to subdue the horse to our use stood in this philosopher's opinion on no better ground, than the right of the great proprietor to have his land cultivated for him by the labour of others, for so he was pleased to call paying rent for land; and to kill a sheep, that we may make a savoury dish of its flesh, was in his mind only a type of that savage voraciousness which leads tyrant man to sacrifice, in various ways, his own species to his inordinate appetites, Hence the phrase swinish, as applied to the multitude, he used to reprobate as shockingly inappropriate. The aristocrats, he would say, are as the swine, and the people are but as the litter of helpless young, whom the swine, at times, gobbleth up. Nor did Mr. Oswald omit the consistency of illustrating, by his own practice, his regard to the singular principles which he taught. No Pythagorean ever more rigidly abstained from animal food; he lived on fruits and the juice of fruits alone; and, when dining in company, eat the potatoes and left the chop behind.

In the devotions which Mr. Oswald, under the poetic title of Silvester Otway, occasionally paid to the muses, he mingled nothing of politics or strange philosophy. His effusions were all of love; a circumstance the more remarkable, that he was at this period

* A genuine radical reformer.

A. S.

a married man, and the father of three children, one a daughter, and the others two fine grown-up lads. It is probable that these pieces may have been written in his earlier years, and were now only reproduced.

On the breaking out of the revolution in France, Mr. Oswald's principles naturally led him to view that struggle with more than ordinary interest. He was not content with waiting the result at a distance, but hastened over to Paris, to witness, and, if occasion offered, to assist in the work of French regeneration, and, doubtless, not without some view of personally benefiting by the field which this remarkable revolution presented to military adventurers from all countries. In order to recommend himself to the notice of the French republicans, he published, on his arrival in Paris, a second edition (it is believed in French) of. his "Remarks on the Constitution of Great Britain." It served at once as his passport to admission into the Jacobin Club. He met there with some other English adventurers who had already acquired considerable influence in the counsels of this pandemonium; but Oswald soon rose above all his countrymen in importance, and was acknowledged as the first of AngloJacobins. He entered with unrivalled enthusiasm into all their schemes of desperation, quieting the natural aversion of his disposition to violence and bloodshed, by a reflection which he thought philosophical, that where the liberty of a whole people is to be consolidated, the sacrifice of some thousands of individuals is not to be regretted, since the cause of humanity must be benefited in the end. It was the common opinion of the English, then resident in Paris, that after Mr. Oswald had acquired consideration in

the Jacobin Club, there was not a transaction of any note emanating from that body in which he had not a leading part. He was particularly blamed by them for the decree which sent to the prisons such of his countrymen as were not of the number of the affiliated, but had been imprudent enough to remain in France after the declaration of war against Britain. That the decree may have had his approbation is extremely probable; but that he ought to be more severely reprobated for this, than any other part of his conduct, may be doubted, when it is admitted at the same time that with other Englishmen of the Jacobin Club he warned his countrymen of the measure, and impressed on many of them the danger they incurred by remaining in the country. In this at least there was no want of national or friendly feeling.

The influence which Mr. Oswald had acquired in the Jacobin Club, gave him a corresponding influence with the government of the day, over which that club, as every body knows, exercised for some time a most pernicious controul. The first of Anglo-Jacobins was not to be requited by any inferior appointment; they at once nominated him to the command of a regiment of infantry. The corps is said, however, not to have been of the best description, being composed of the refuse of Paris and the departments.

Mr. Oswald had, previously to this appointment, been joined by his two sons; but true to the principle of equality, which he professed, he only made them drummers in the regiment of which he was colonel.

The bad character of the men whom Colonel Oswald commanded, obliged him to have recourse to a system of severity in disciplining them, which, while it made