(John), a dramatic writer, was bred to the law, and belonged to the society of Gray's Inn; but this profession not suiting his natural disposition, he quitted it for the service of the mules. Here, however, he found his rewards by no means adequate to his deserts. His emoluments at the best were precarious, and the various successes of his pieces too feebly convinced him of the error in his choice. This, however, did not prevent him from pursuing with cheerfulness the path he had taken; his thirst of fame, and warmth of poetic enthusiasm, alleviating to his imagination many disagreeable circumstances into which indigence, the too frequent attendant on poetical pursuits, frequently threw him. His turn was entirely to tragedy. His merit in which is of a peculiar kind. For at the same time that his language must be confessed to be extremely unpoetical, and his numbers uncouth and unharmonious; nay, even his characters very far from being strongly marked or distinguished, and his episodes extremely irregular: yet it is impossible to avoid being deeply affected at the representation, and even at the reading, of his tragic pieces. This is owing, in the general, to an happy choice of his subjects; which are all borrowed from history, either real or romantic; and indeed the most of them from circumstances in the annals of our own country, which, not only from their being familiar to our continual recollection, but even from their having some degree of relation to ourselves, we are apt to receive with a kind of partial prepossession, and a pre-determination to be pleased. He has constantly chosen as the basis of his plays such tales as were in themselves and their well-known catastrophes most truly adapted to the purposes of the drama. He has indeed but little varied from the strictness of historical facts; yet he seems to have made it his constant rule to keep the scene perpetually alive, and never suffer his characters to droop. His verse is not poetry, but prose run mad. Yet will the false gem sometimes approach so near in glitter to the true one, at least in the eyes of all but the real connoisseurs, (and how small a part of an audience are to be ranked in this class will need no ghost to inform us), that bombast will frequently pass for the true sublime; and where it is rendered the vehicle of incidents in themselves affecting, and in which the heart is apt to interest itself, it will perhaps be found to have a stronger power on the human passions than even that property to which it is in reality no more than a bare faccedanum. And from these principles it is that we must account for Mr Banks's writings having in the general drawn more tears from, and excited more terror in, even judicious audiences, than those of much more correct and more truly poetical authors. The tragedies he has left behind are, 1. Albion Queens. 2. Cyrus the Great. 3. Destruction of Troy. 4. Innocent Usurper. 5. Island Queens. This is only the Albion Queens altered. 6. Rival Kings. 7. Virtue betrayed. 8. Unhappy Favorite. The Albion Queens was rejected by the managers in 1684; but was acted by Queen Anne's command in 1706, with great applause, and has been several times revived. The Unhappy Favorite continued till very lately a stock-tragedy at the theatres; but gives way at present to the latter tragedies from the same story, by Jones and Brooke—Neither the time of the birth, nor that of the death, of this author, are ascertained. His remains, however, lie interred in the church of St James's, Westminster.

BANKS'S ISLAND, a small island in the South Sea, discovered by Captain Cook in 1775, in S. Lat. 53° 32' W. Long. 186° 30'. It is of a circular figure, and about 24 leagues in compass: it is sufficiently high to be seen at the distance of 21 or 15 leagues; and the land has a broken irregular surface, with the appearance of barrenness rather than fertility. It is, however, inhabited, as some straggling savages were observed upon it.