RICHARD CUMBERLAND, dramatist, novelist, and author of the essays collected in the Observer, was born at Cambridge, England, February 19th, 1732. He was a grandson of the famous Richard Bentley, to whom he owed his taste for the classics and also, as it is said, much of the material he drew on in illustrating it. He wrote poems, comedies, novels, tracts, and biographies, as well as essays. Among his best-known miscellaneous works are “Anecdotes of Eminent Painters in Spain.” He died May 7th, 1811.