LEE

LEE, NATHANIEL, a dramatic poet of the eighteenth century, was the son of a clergyman, who gave him a liberal education. He received the rudiments of learning at Westminster School, from which he went to Trinity College, Cambridge. Coming to London, however, his inclination prompted him to appear on the stage; but he was not more successful in representing the thoughts of other men than many a genius besides, who has been equally unfortunate in treading the stage, although he perhaps knew well enough how to write for it. He produced eleven tragedies, all of which contain a very great portion of true poetical enthusiasm. His Rival Queens, his Theodocus, and his Alexander the Great, are those which longest kept possession of the stage. None, perhaps, ever felt the passion of love more truly, nor could any one describe it with more tenderness. Addison commends his genius highly, observing, that none of our English poets had a happier turn for tragedy, although his natural fire and unbridled impetuosity hurried him beyond all bounds of probability, and sometimes were quite out of nature. The truth is, this poet's imagination ran away with his reason; so that he at length became quite crazy, and grew so mad that his friends were obliged to confine him in bedlam. Here he made the famous reply to a coxcomb scribbler, who had the cruelty to jeer him with his misfortune, by observing that it was an easy thing to write like a madman. "No," said Lee, "it is not an easy thing to write like a madman; but it is very easy to write like a fool." Lee had the good fortune to recover the use of his reason so far as to be discharged from his melancholy confinement; but he did not long survive his enlargement, and died at the early age of thirty-four. Cibber, in his Lives of the Poets, states that he perished unfortunately in a night ramble in London streets.