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SPECIMENS WITH MEMOIRS OF THE LESS-KNOWN BRITISH POETS.

With an Introductory Essay,

By

THE REV. GEORGE GILFILLAN.

IN THREE VOLS.

VOL. III.

CONTENTS.

THIRD PERIOD—FROM DRYDEN TO COWPER.

SIR CHARLES SEDLEY
To a very young Lady
Song

JOHN POMFRET
The Choice

THE EARL OF DORSET
Song

JOHN PHILIPS
The Splendid Shilling

WALSH, GOULD, &c.

SIR SAMUEL GARTH
The Dispensary

SIR RICHARD BLACKMORE
Creation

ELIJAH FENTON
An Ode to the Right Hon. John Lord Gower

ROBERT CRAWFORD
The Bush aboon Traquair

THOMAS TICKELL
To the Earl of Warwick, on the death of Mr Addison

JAMES HAMMOND
Elegy XIII

SEWELL, VANBRUGH, &c.

RICHARD SAVAGE
The Bastard

THOMAS WARTON THE ELDER
An American Love Ode

JONATHAN SWIFT
Baucis and Philemon
On Poetry
On the Death of Dr Swift
A Character, Panegyric, and Description of the Legion-Club,1736

ISAAC WATTS
Few Happy Matches
The Sluggard
The Rose
A Cradle Hymn
Breathing toward the Heavenly Country
To the Rev. Mr John Howe

AMBROSE PHILIPS
A Fragment of Sappho

WILLIAM HAMILTON
The Braes of Yarrow

ALLAN RAMSAY
Lochaber no more
Tho Last Time I came o'er the Moor
From 'The Gentle Shepherd'—Act I., Scene II.

DODSLEY, BROWN, &c

ISAAC HAWKINS BROWNE
Imitation of Thomson
Imitation of Pope
Imitation of Swift

WILLIAM OLDYS
Song, occasioned by a Fly drinking out of a Cup of Ale

ROBERT LLOYD
The Miseries of a Poet's Life

HENRY CAREY
Sally in our Alley

DAVID MALLETT
William and Margaret
The Birks of Invermay

JAMES MERRICK
The Chameleon

DR JAMES GRAINGER
Ode to Solitude

MICHAEL BRUCE
To the Cuckoo
Elegy, written in Spring

CHRISTOPHER SMART
Song to David

THOMAS CHATTERTON
Bristowe Tragedy
Minstrel's Song
The Story of William Canynge
Kenrick
February, an Elegy

LORD LYTTELTON
From the 'Monody'

JOHN CUNNINGHAM
May-eve; or, Kate of Aberdeen

ROBERT FERGUSSON
The Farmer's Ingle

DR WALTER HARTE

EDWARD LOVIBOND
The Tears of Old May-Day

FRANCIS FAWKES
The Brown Jug

JOHN LANGHORNE
From 'The Country Justice'
Gipsies
A Case where Mercy should have mitigated Justice

SIR WILLIAM BLACKSTONE
The Lawyer's Farewell to his Muse

JOHN SCOTT
Ode on hearing the Drum
The Tempestuous Evening

ALEXANDER ROSS
Woo'd, and Married, and a'
The Rock an' the wee pickle Tow

RICHARD GLOVER
From 'Leonidas,' Book XII
Admiral Hosier's Ghost

WILLIAM WHITEHEAD
Variety

WILLIAM JULIUS MICKLE
Cumnor Hall
The Mariner's Wife

LORD NUGENT
Ode to Mankind

JOHN LOGAN
The Lovers
Written in a Visit to the Country in Autumn
Complaint of Nature

THOMAS BLACKLOCK
The Author's Picture
Ode to Aurora, on Melissa's Birthday

MISS ELLIOT AND MRS COCKBURN
The Flowers of the Forest
The Same

SIR WILLIAM JONES
A Persian Song of Hafiz

SAMUEL BISHOP
To Mrs Bishop
To the Same

SUSANNA BLAMIRE
The Nabob
What Ails this Heart o' mine?

JAMES MACPHERSON
Ossian's Address to the Sun
Desolation of Balclutha
Fingal and the Spirit of Loda
Address to the Moon
Fingal's Spirit-home
The Cave

WILLIAM MASON
Epitaph on Mrs Mason
An Heroic Epistle to Sir William Chambers

JOHN LOWE
Mary's Dream

JOSEPH WARTON
Ode to Fancy

MISCELLANEOUS
Song
Verses, copied from the Window of an obscure Lodging-house, in the
neighbourhood of London
The Old Bachelor
Careless Content
A Pastoral
Ode to a Tobacco-pipe
Away! let nought to Love displeasing
Richard Bentley's sole Poetical Composition
Lines addressed to Pope

INDEX

SPECIMENS, WITH MEMOIRS, OF THE LESS-KNOWN BRITISH POETS.

* * * * *

THIRD PERIOD.

FROM DRYDEN TO COWPER.

* * * * *

SIR CHARLES SEDLEY.

Sedley was one of those characters who exert a personal fascination over their own age without leaving any works behind them to perpetuate the charm to posterity. He was the son of Sir John Sedley of Aylesford, in Kent, and was born in 1639. When the Restoration took place he repaired to London, and plunged into all the licence of the time, shedding, however, over the putrid pool the sheen of his wit, manners, and genius. Charles was so delighted with him, that he is said to have asked him whether he had not obtained a patent from Nature to be Apollo's viceroy. He cracked jests, issued lampoons, wrote poems and plays, and, despite some great blunders, was universally admired and loved. When his comedy of 'Bellamira' was acted, the roof fell in, and a few, including the author, were slightly injured. When a parasite told him that the fire of the play had blown up the poet, house and all, Sedley replied, 'No; the play was so heavy that it broke down the house, and buried the poet in his own rubbish.' Latterly he sobered down, entered parliament, attended closely to public business, and became a determined opponent of the arbitrary measures of James II. To this he was stimulated by a personal reason. James had seduced Sedley's daughter, and made her Countess of Dorchester. 'For making my daughter a countess,' the father said, 'I have helped to make his daughter' (Mary, Princess of Orange,) 'a queen.' Sedley, thus talking, acting, and writing, lived on till he was sixty- two years of age. He died in 1701.

He has left nothing that the world can cherish, except such light and graceful songs, sparkling rather with point than with poetry, as we quote below.

TO A VERY YOUNG LADY.

1 Ah, Chloris! that I now could sit
As unconcerned, as when
Your infant beauty could beget
No pleasure, nor no pain.

2 When I the dawn used to admire,
And praised the coming day;
I little thought the growing fire
Must take my rest away.

3 Your charms in harmless childhood lay,
Like metals in the mine,
Age from no face took more away,
Than youth concealed in thine.

4 But as your charms insensibly
To their perfection pressed,
Fond Love as unperceived did fly,
And in my bosom rest.

5 My passion with your beauty grew,
And Cupid at my heart,
Still as his mother favoured you,
Threw a new flaming dart.

6 Each gloried in their wanton part,
To make a lover, he
Employed the utmost of his art,
To make a Beauty, she.

7 Though now I slowly bend to love,
Uncertain of my fate,
If your fair self my chains approve,
I shall my freedom hate.

8 Lovers, like dying men, may well
At first disordered be,
Since none alive can truly tell
What fortune they must see.

SONG.

1 Love still has something of the sea,
From whence his mother rose;
No time his slaves from doubt can free,
Nor give their thoughts repose.

2 They are becalmed in clearest days,
And in rough weather tossed;
They wither under cold delays,
Or are in tempests lost.

3 One while they seem to touch the port,
Then straight into the main
Some angry wind, in cruel sport,
The vessel drives again.

4 At first Disdain and Pride they fear,
Which if they chance to 'scape,
Rivals and Falsehood soon appear,
In a more cruel shape.

5 By such degrees to joy they come,
And are so long withstood;
So slowly they receive the sum,
It hardly does them good.

6 'Tis cruel to prolong a pain;
And to defer a joy,
Believe me, gentle Celemene,
Offends the winged boy.

7 An hundred thousand oaths your fears,
Perhaps, would not remove;
And if I gazed a thousand years,
I could not deeper love.

JOHN POMFRET,

The author of the once popular 'Choice,' was born in 1667. He was the son of the rector of Luton, in Bedfordshire, and, after attending Queen's College, Cambridge, himself entered the Church. He became minister of Malden, which is also situated in Bedfordshire, and there he wrote and, in 1699, published a volume of poems, including some Pindaric essays, in the style of Cowley and 'The Choice.' He might have risen higher in his profession, but Dr Compton, Bishop of London, was prejudiced against him on account of the following lines in the 'Choice:'—

'And as I near approached the verge of life,
Some kind relation (for I'd have no wife)
Should take upon him all my worldly care,
Whilst I did for a better state prepare.'

The words in the second line, coupled with a glowing description, in a previous part of the poem, of his ideal of an 'obliging modest fair' one, near whom he wished to live, led to the suspicion that he preferred a mistress to a wife. In vain did he plead that he was actually a married man. His suit for a better living made no progress, and while dancing attendance on his patron in London he caught small-pox, and died in 1703, in the thirty-sixth year of his age.

His Pindaric odes, &c., are feeble spasms, and need not detain us. His 'Reason' shews considerable capacity and common sense. His 'Choice' opens up a pleasing vista, down which our quiet ancestors delighted to look, but by which few now can be attracted. We quote a portion of what a biographer calls a 'modest' preface, which Pomfret prefixed to his poems:—'To please every one would be a new thing, and to write so as to please nobody would be as new; for even Quarles and Withers have their admirers. It is not the multitude of applauses, but the good sense of the applauders which establishes a valuable reputation; and if a Rymer or a Congreve say it is well, he will not be at all solicitous how great the majority be to the contrary.' How strangely are opinions now altered! Rymer was some time ago characterised by Macaulay as the worst critic that ever lived, and Quarles and Withers have now many admirers, while 'The Choice' and its ill-fated author are nearly forgotten.

THE CHOICE.

If Heaven the grateful liberty would give,
That I might choose my method how to live,
And all those hours propitious fate should lend,
In blissful ease and satisfaction spend,
Near some fair town I'd have a private seat,
Built uniform, not little, nor too great:
Better, if on a rising ground it stood,
On this side fields, on that a neighbouring wood.
It should within no other things contain,
But what are useful, necessary, plain:
Methinks 'tis nauseous, and I'd ne'er endure,
The needless pomp of gaudy furniture.
A little garden, grateful to the eye;
And a cool rivulet run murmuring by,
On whose delicious banks, a stately row
Of shady limes or sycamores should grow.
At the end of which a silent study placed,
Should be with all the noblest authors graced:
Horace and Virgil, in whose mighty lines
Immortal wit and solid learning shines;
Sharp Juvenal, and amorous Ovid too,
Who all the turns of love's soft passion knew;
He that with judgment reads his charming lines,
In which strong art with stronger nature joins,
Must grant his fancy does the best excel;
His thoughts so tender, and expressed so well;
With all those moderns, men of steady sense,
Esteemed for learning and for eloquence.
In some of these, as fancy should advise,
I'd always take my morning exercise;
For sure no minutes bring us more content,
Than those in pleasing, useful studies spent.
I'd have a clear and competent estate,
That I might live genteelly, but not great;
As much as I could moderately spend,
A little more sometimes t' oblige a friend.
Nor should the sons of poverty repine
Too much at fortune; they should taste of mine;
And all that objects of true pity were,
Should be relieved with what my wants could spare;
For that our Maker has too largely given,
Should be returned in gratitude to Heaven.

THE EARL OF DORSET.

This noble earl was rather a patron of poets than a poet, and possessed more wit than genius. Charles Sackville was born on the 24th January 1637. He was descended directly from the famous Thomas, Lord Buckhurst. He was educated under a private tutor, travelled in Italy, and returned in time to witness the Restoration. In the first parliament thereafter, he sat for East Grinstead, in Surrey, and might have distinguished himself, had he not determined, in common with almost all the wits of the time, to run a preliminary career of dissipation. What a proof of the licentiousness of these times is to be found in the fact, that young Lord Buckhurst, Sir Charles Sedley, and Sir Thomas Ogle were fined for exposing themselves, drunk and naked, in indecent postures on the public street! In 1665, the erratic energies of Buckhurst found a more legitimate vent in the Dutch war. He attended the Duke of York in the great sea-fight of the 3d June, in which Opdam, the Dutch admiral, was, with all his crew, blown up. He is said to have composed the song, quoted afterwards, 'To all you ladies now at land,' on the evening before the battle, although Dr Johnson (who observes that seldom any splendid story is wholly true) maintains that its composition cost him a whole week, and that he only retouched it on that remarkable evening. Buckhurst was soon after made a gentleman of the bed-chamber, and despatched on short embassies to France. In 1674, his uncle, James Cranfield, the Earl of Middlesex, died, and left him his estate, and the next year the title, too, was conferred on him. In 1677, he became, by the death of his father, Earl of Dorset, and inherited the family estate. In 1684, his wife, whose name was Bagot, and by whom he had no children, died, and he soon after married a daughter of the Earl of Northampton, who is said to have been celebrated both for understanding and beauty. Dorset was courted by James, but found it impossible to coincide with his violent measures, and when the bishops were tried at Westminster Hall, he, along with some other lords, appeared to countenance them. He concurred with the Revolution settlement, and, after William's accession, was created lord chamberlain of the household, and received the Order of the Garter. His attendance on the king, however, eventually cost him his life, for having been tossed with him in an open boat on the coast of Holland for sixteen hours, in very rough weather, he caught an illness from which he never recovered. On 19th January 1705-6, he died at Bath.

During his life, Dorset was munificent in his kindness to such men of genius as Prior and Dryden, who repaid him in the current coin of the poor Parnassus of their day—gross adulation. He is now remembered mainly for his spirited war-song, and for such pointed lines in his satire on Edward Howard, the notorious author of 'British Princes,' as the following:—

'They lie, dear Ned, who say thy brain is barren,
When deep conceits, like maggots, breed in carrion;
Thy stumbling, foundered jade can trot as high
As any other Pegasus can fly.
So the dull eel moves nimbler in the mud
Than all the swift-finned racers of the flood.
As skilful divers to the bottom fall
Sooner than those who cannot swim at all,
So in this way of writing without thinking,
Thou hast a strange alacrity in sinking.'

This last line has not only become proverbial, but forms the distinct germ of 'The Dunciad.'

SONG.

WRITTEN AT SEA, IN THE FIRST DUTCH WAR, 1665, THE NIGHT BEFORE AN ENGAGEMENT.

1 To all you ladies now at land,
We men at sea indite;
But first would have you understand
How hard it is to write;
The Muses now, and Neptune too,
We must implore to write to you,
With a fa, la, la, la, la.

2 For though the Muses should prove kind,
And fill our empty brain;
Yet if rough Neptune rouse the wind,
To wave the azure main,
Our paper, pen, and ink, and we,
Roll up and down our ships at sea.
With a fa, &c.

3 Then if we write not by each post,
Think not we are unkind;
Nor yet conclude our ships are lost,
By Dutchmen, or by wind;
Our tears we'll send a speedier way,
The tide shall bring them twice a-day.
With a fa, &c.

4 The king, with wonder and surprise,
Will swear the seas grow bold;
Because the tides will higher rise
Than e'er they used of old:
But let him know, it is our tears
Bring floods of grief to Whitehall stairs.
With a fa, &c.

5 Should foggy Opdam chance to know
Our sad and dismal story,
The Dutch would scorn so weak a foe,
And quit their fort at Goree:
For what resistance can they find
From men who've left their hearts behind?
With a fa, &c.

6 Let wind and weather do its worst,
Be you to us but kind;
Let Dutchmen vapour, Spaniards curse,
No sorrow we shall find:
'Tis then no matter how things go,
Or who's our friend, or who's our foe.
With a fa, &c.

7 To pass our tedious hours away,
We throw a merry main;
Or else at serious ombre play:
But why should we in vain
Each other's ruin thus pursue?
We were undone when we left you.
With a fa, &c.

8 But now our fears tempestuous grow,
And cast our hopes away;
Whilst you, regardless of our woe,
Sit careless at a play:
Perhaps, permit some happier man
To kiss your hand, or flirt your fan.
With a fa, &c.

9 When any mournful tune you hear,
That dies in every note,
As if it sighed with each man's care,
For being so remote,
Think how often love we've made
To you, when all those tunes were played.
With a fa, &c.

10 In justice you can not refuse
To think of our distress,
When we for hopes of honour lose
Our certain happiness;
All those designs are but to prove
Ourselves more worthy of your love.
With a fa, &c.

11 And now we've told you all our loves,
And likewise all our fears,
In hopes this declaration moves
Some pity from your tears;
Let's hear of no inconstancy,
We have too much of that at sea.
With a fa, la, la, la, la.

JOHN PHILIPS.

Bampton in Oxfordshire was the birthplace of this poet. He was born on the 30th of December 1676. His father, Dr Stephen Philips, was archdeacon of Salop, as well as minister of Bampton. John, after some preliminary training at home, was sent to Winchester, where he distinguished himself by diligence and good-nature, and enjoyed two great luxuries,—the reading of Milton, and the having his head combed by some one while he sat still and in rapture for hours together. This pleasure he shared with Vossius, and with humbler persons of our acquaintance; the combing of whose hair, they tell us,

'Dissolves them into ecstasies,
And brings all heaven before their eyes.'

In 1694, he entered Christ Church, Cambridge. His intention was to prosecute the study of medicine, and he took great delight in the cognate pursuits of natural history and botany. His chief friend was Edmund Smith, (Rag Smith, as he was generally called,) a kind of minor Savage, well known in these times as the author of 'Phaedra and Hippolytus,' and for his cureless dissipation. In 1703, Philips produced 'The Splendid Shilling,' which proved a hit, and seems to have diverted his aspirations from the domains of Aesculapius to those of Apollo. Bolingbroke sought him out, and employed him, after the battle of Blenheim, to sing it in opposition to Addison, the laureate of the Whigs. At the house of the magnificent but unprincipled St John, Philips wrote his 'Blenheim,' which was published in 1705. The year after, his 'Cider,' a poem in two books, appeared, and was received with great applause. Encouraged by this, he projected a poem on the Last Day, which all who are aware of the difficulties of the subject, and the limitations of the author's genius, must rejoice that he never wrote. Consumption and asthma removed him prematurely on the 15th of February 1708, ere he had completed his thirty-third year. He was buried in Hereford Cathedral, and Sir Simon Harcourt, afterwards Lord Chancellor, erected a monument to his memory in Westminster Abbey.

Bulwer somewhere records a story of John Martin in his early days. He was, on one occasion, reduced to his last shilling. He had kept it, out of a heap, from a partiality to its appearance. It was very bright. He was compelled, at last, to part with it. He went out to a baker's shop to purchase a loaf with his favourite shilling. He had got the loaf into his hands, when the baker discovered that the shilling was a bad one, and poor Martin had to resign the loaf, and take back his dear, bright, bad shilling once more. Length of time and cold criticism in like manner have reduced John Philips to his solitary 'Splendid Shilling.' But, though bright, it is far from bad. It is one of the cleverest of parodies, and is perpetrated against one of those colossal works which the smiles of a thousand caricatures were unable to injure. No great or good poem was ever hurt by its parody:—the 'Paradise Lost' was not by 'The Splendid Shilling'—'The Last Man' of Campbell was not by 'The Last Man' of Hood—nor the 'Lines on the Burial of Sir John Moore' by their witty, well-known caricature; and if 'The Vision of Judgment' by Southey was laughed into oblivion by Byron's poem with the same title, it was because Southey's original was neither good nor great. Philip's poem, too, is the first of the kind; and surely we should be thankful to the author of the earliest effort in a style which has created so much innocent amusement. Dr Johnson speaks as if the pleasure arising from such productions implied a malignant 'momentary triumph over that grandeur which had hitherto held its captives in admiration.' We think, on the contrary, that it springs from our deep interest in the original production, making us alive to the strange resemblance the caricature bears to it. It is our love that provokes our laughter, and hence the admirers of the parodied poem are more delighted than its enemies. At all events, it is by 'The Splendid Shilling' alone—and that principally from its connexion with Milton's great work—that Philips is memorable. His 'Cider' has soured with age, and the loud echo of his Blenheim battle-piece has long since died away.

THE SPLENDID SHILLING.

"… Sing, heavenly Muse!
Things unattempted yet, in prose or rhyme,"
A Shilling, Breeches, and Chimeras dire.

Happy the man who, void of cares and strife,
In silken or in leathern purse retains
A Splendid Shilling: he nor hears with pain
New oysters cried, nor sighs for cheerful ale;
But with his friends, when nightly mists arise,
To Juniper's Magpie or Town-Hall[1] repairs:
Where, mindful of the nymph whose wanton eye
Transfixed his soul and kindled amorous flames,
Chloe, or Phillis, he each circling glass
Wisheth her health, and joy, and equal love.
Meanwhile, he smokes, and laughs at merry tale,
Or pun ambiguous, or conundrum quaint.
But I, whom griping Penury surrounds,
And Hunger, sure attendant upon Want,
With scanty offals, and small acid tiff,
(Wretched repast!) my meagre corpse sustain:
Then solitary walk, or doze at home
In garret vile, and with a warming puff
Regale chilled fingers; or from tube as black
As winter-chimney, or well-polished jet,
Exhale mundungus, ill-perfuming scent!
Not blacker tube, nor of a shorter size,
Smokes Cambro-Briton (versed in pedigree,
Sprung from Cadwallader and Arthur, kings
Full famous in romantic tale) when he
O'er many a craggy hill and barren cliff,
Upon a cargo of famed Cestrian cheese,
High over-shadowing rides, with a design
To vend his wares, or at the Arvonian mart,
Or Maridunum, or the ancient town
Ycleped Brechinia, or where Vaga's stream
Encircles Ariconium, fruitful soil!
Whence flow nectareous wines, that well may vie
With Massic, Setin, or renowned Falern.

Thus while my joyless minutes tedious flow,
With looks demure, and silent pace, a Dun,
Horrible monster! hated by gods and men,
To my aërial citadel ascends,
With vocal heel thrice thundering at my gate,
With hideous accent thrice he calls; I know
The voice ill-boding, and the solemn sound.
What should I do? or whither turn? Amazed,
Confounded, to the dark recess I fly
Of wood-hole; straight my bristling hairs erect
Through sudden fear; a chilly sweat bedews
My shuddering limbs, and, wonderful to tell!
My tongue forgets her faculty of speech;
So horrible he seems! His faded brow,
Entrenched with many a frown, and conic beard,
And spreading band, admired by modern saints,
Disastrous acts forebode; in his right hand
Long scrolls of paper solemnly he waves,
With characters and figures dire inscribed,
Grievous to mortal eyes; ye gods, avert
Such plagues from righteous men! Behind him stalks
Another monster, not unlike himself,
Sullen of aspect, by the vulgar called
A Catchpole, whose polluted hands the gods,
With force incredible, and magic charms,
Erst have endued; if he his ample palm
Should haply on ill-fated shoulder lay
Of debtor, straight his body, to the touch
Obsequious, as whilom knights were wont,
To some enchanted castle is conveyed,
Where gates impregnable, and coercive chains,
In durance strict detain him, till, in form
Of money, Pallas sets the captive free.

Beware, ye Debtors! when ye walk, beware,
Be circumspect; oft with insidious ken
The caitiff eyes your steps aloof, and oft
Lies perdue in a nook or gloomy cave,
Prompt to enchant some inadvertent wretch
With his unhallowed touch. So (poets sing)
Grimalkin, to domestic vermin sworn
An everlasting foe, with watchful eye
Lies nightly brooding o'er a chinky gap,
Protending her fell claws, to thoughtless mice
Sure ruin. So her disembowelled web
Arachne, in a hall or kitchen, spreads
Obvious to vagrant flies: she secret stands
Within her woven cell; the humming prey,
Regardless of their fate, rush on the toils
Inextricable, nor will aught avail
Their arts, or arms, or shapes of lovely hue;
The wasp insidious, and the buzzing drone,
And butterfly, proud of expanded wings
Distinct with gold, entangled in her snares,
Useless resistance make: with eager strides,
She towering flies to her expected spoils;
Then, with envenomed jaws, the vital blood
Drinks of reluctant foes, and to her cave
Their bulky carcasses triumphant drags.

So pass my days. But, when nocturnal shades
This world envelop, and the inclement air
Persuades men to repel benumbing frosts
With pleasant wines, and crackling blaze of wood;
Me lonely sitting, nor the glimmering light
Of make-weight candle, nor the joyous talk
Of loving friend, delights; distressed, forlorn,
Amidst the horrors of the tedious night,
Darkling I sigh, and feed with dismal thoughts
My anxious mind; or sometimes mournful verse
Indite, and sing of groves and myrtle shades,
Or desperate lady near a purling stream,
Or lover pendent on a willow-tree.
Meanwhile I labour with eternal drought,
And restless wish, and rave; my parched throat
Finds no relief, nor heavy eyes repose:
But if a slumber haply does invade
My weary limbs, my fancy's still awake,
Thoughtful of drink, and, eager, in a dream,
Tipples imaginary pots of ale,
In vain; awake I find the settled thirst
Still gnawing, and the pleasant phantom curse.

Thus do I live, from pleasure quite debarred,
Nor taste the fruits that the sun's genial rays
Mature, john-apple, nor the downy peach,
Nor walnut in rough-furrowed coat secure,
Nor medlar, fruit delicious in decay;
Afflictions great! yet greater still remain:
My galligaskins, that have long withstood
The winter's fury, and encroaching frosts,
By time subdued (what will not time subdue!)
An horrid chasm disclosed with orifice
Wide, discontinuous; at which the winds
Eurus and Auster, and the dreadful force
Of Boreas, that congeals the Cronian waves,
Tumultuous enter with dire chilling blasts,
Portending agues. Thus a well-fraught ship,
Long sailed secure, or through the Aegean deep,
Or the Ionian, till cruising near
The Lilybean shore, with hideous crush
On Scylla, or Charybdis (dangerous rocks!)
She strikes rebounding; whence the shattered oak,
So fierce a shock unable to withstand,
Admits the sea; in at the gaping side
The crowding waves gush with impetuous rage,
Resistless, overwhelming; horrors seize
The mariners; Death in their eyes appears,
They stare, they lave, they pump, they swear, they pray;
Vain efforts! still the battering waves rush in,
Implacable, till, deluged by the foam,
The ship sinks foundering in the vast abyss.

[1]'Magpie or Town-hall:' two noted alehouses at Oxford in 1700.

We may here mention a name or two of poets from whose verses we can afford no extracts,—such as Walsh, called by Pope 'knowing Walsh,' a man of some critical discernment, if not of much genius; Gould, a domestic of the Earl of Dorset, and afterwards a schoolmaster, from whom Campbell quotes one or two tolerable songs; and Dr Walter Pope, a man of wit and knowledge, who was junior proctor of Oxford, one of the first chosen fellows of the Royal Society, and who succeeded Sir Christopher Wren as professor of astronomy in Gresham College. He is the author of a comico-serious song of some merit, entitled 'The Old Man's Wish.'

SIR SAMUEL GARTH.

Of Garth little is known, save that he was an eminent physician, a scholar, a man of benevolence, a keen Whig, and yet an admirer of old Dryden, and a patron of young Pope—a friend of Addison, and the author of the 'Dispensary.' The College of Physicians had instituted a dispensary, for the purpose of furnishing the poor with medicines gratis. This measure was opposed by the apothecaries, who had an obvious interest in the sale of drugs; and to ridicule their selfishness Garth wrote his poem, which is mock-heroic, in six cantos, copied in form from the 'Lutrin,' and which, though ingenious and elaborate, seems now tedious, and on the whole uninteresting. It appeared in 1696, and the author died in 1718. We extract some of the opening lines of the first canto of the poem.

THE DISPENSARY.

Speak, goddess! since 'tis thou that best canst tell
How ancient leagues to modern discord fell;
And why physicans were so cautious grown
Of others' lives, and lavish of their own;
How by a journey to the Elysian plain
Peace triumphed, and old Time returned again.
Not far from that most celebrated place,
Where angry Justice shows her awful face;
Where little villains must submit to fate,
That great ones may enjoy the world in state;
There stands a dome, majestic to the sight,
And sumptuous arches bear its oval height;
A golden globe, placed high with artful skill,
Seems, to the distant sight, a gilded pill:
This pile was, by the pious patron's aim,
Raised for a use as noble as its frame;
Nor did the learn'd society decline
The propagation of that great design;
In all her mazes, nature's face they viewed,
And, as she disappeared, their search pursued.
Wrapped in the shade of night the goddess lies,
Yet to the learn'd unveils her dark disguise,
But shuns the gross access of vulgar eyes.
Now she unfolds the faint and dawning strife
Of infant atoms kindling into life;
How ductile matter new meanders takes,
And slender trains of twisting fibres makes;
And how the viscous seeks a closer tone,
By just degrees to harden into bone;
While the more loose flow from the vital urn,
And in full tides of purple streams return;
How lambent flames from life's bright lamps arise,
And dart in emanations through the eyes;
How from each sluice a gentle torrent pours,
To slake a feverish heat with ambient showers;
Whence their mechanic powers the spirits claim;
How great their force, how delicate their frame;
How the same nerves are fashioned to sustain
The greatest pleasure and the greatest pain;
Why bilious juice a golden light puts on,
And floods of chyle in silver currents run;
How the dim speck of entity began
To extend its recent form, and stretch to man;
To how minute an origin we owe
Young Ammon, Caesar, and the great Nassau;
Why paler looks impetuous rage proclaim,
And why chill virgins redden into flame;
Why envy oft transforms with wan disguise,
And why gay mirth sits smiling in the eyes;
All ice, why Lucrece; or Sempronia, fire;
Why Scarsdale rages to survive desire;
When Milo's vigour at the Olympic's shown,
Whence tropes to Finch, or impudence to Sloane;
How matter, by the varied shape of pores,
Or idiots frames, or solemn senators.

Hence 'tis we wait the wondrous cause to find,
How body acts upon impassive mind;
How fumes of wine the thinking part can fire,
Past hopes revive, and present joys inspire;
Why our complexions oft our soul declare,
And how the passions in the features are;
How touch and harmony arise between
Corporeal figure, and a form unseen;
How quick their faculties the limbs fulfil,
And act at every summons of the will.
With mighty truths, mysterious to descry,
Which in the womb of distant causes lie.

But now no grand inquiries are descried,
Mean faction reigns where knowledge should preside,
Feuds are increased, and learning laid aside.
Thus synods oft concern for faith conceal,
And for important nothings show a zeal:
The drooping sciences neglected pine,
And Paean's beams with fading lustre shine.
No readers here with hectic looks are found,
Nor eyes in rheum, through midnight watching, drowned;
The lonely edifice in sweats complains
That nothing there but sullen silence reigns.

This place, so fit for undisturbed repose,
The god of sloth for his asylum chose;
Upon a couch of down in these abodes,
Supine with folded arms he thoughtless nods;
Indulging dreams his godhead lull to ease,
With murmurs of soft rills and whispering trees:
The poppy and each numbing plant dispense
Their drowsy virtue, and dull indolence;
No passions interrupt his easy reign,
No problems puzzle his lethargic brain;
But dark oblivion guards his peaceful bed,
And lazy fogs hang lingering o'er his head.

SIR RICHARD BLACKMORE.

Our next name is that of one who, like the former, was a knight, a physician, and (in a manner) a poet. Blackmore was the son of Robert Blackmore of Corsham, in Wiltshire, who is styled by Wood gentleman, and is believed to have been an attorney. He took his degree of M.A. at Oxford, in June 1676. He afterwards travelled, was made Doctor of Physic at Padua, and, when he returned home, began to practise in London with great success. In 1695, he tried his hand at poetry, producing an epic entitled 'King Arthur,' which was followed by a series on 'King Alfred,' 'Queen Elizabeth,' 'Redemption,' 'The Creation,' &c. Some of these productions were popular; one, 'The Creation,' has been highly praised by Dr Johnson; but most of them were heavy. Matthew Henry has preserved portions in his valuable Commentary. Blackmore, a man of excellent character and of extensive medical practice, was yet the laughingstock of the wits, perhaps as much for his piety as for his prosiness. Old, rich, and highly respected, he died on the 8th of October 1729, while some of his poetic persecutors came to a disgraceful or an early end.

We quote the satire of John Gay, as one of the cleverest and best conditioned, although one of the coarsest of the attacks made on poor Sir Richard:—

VERSES TO BE PLACED UNDER THE PICTURE OF SIR R. BLACKMORE, CONTAINING A COMPLETE CATALOGUE OF HIS WORKS.

See who ne'er was, nor will be half read,
Who first sang Arthur, then sang Alfred;
Praised great Eliza in God's anger,
Till all true Englishmen cried, Hang her;
Mauled human wit in one thick satire,
Next in three books spoiled human nature;
Undid Creation at a jerk,
And of Redemption made —— work;
Then took his Muse at once, and dipt her
Full in the middle of the Scripture;
What wonders there the man grown old did,
Sternhold himself he out Sternholded;
Made David seem so mad and freakish,
All thought him just what thought King Achish;
No mortal read his Solomon
But judged Reboam his own son;
Moses he served as Moses Pharaoh,
And Deborah as she Sisera;
Made Jeremy full sore to cry,
And Job himself curse God and die.

What punishment all this must follow?
Shall Arthur use him like King Tollo?
Shall David as Uriah slay him?
Or dext'rous Deborah Sisera him?
Or shall Eliza lay a plot
To treat him like her sister Scot?
No, none of these; Heaven save his life,
But send him, honest Job, thy wife!

CREATION.

No more of courts, of triumphs, or of arms,
No more of valour's force, or beauty's charms;
The themes of vulgar lays, with just disdain,
I leave unsung, the flocks, the amorous swain,
The pleasures of the land, and terrors of the main.
How abject, how inglorious 'tis to lie
Grovelling in dust and darkness, when on high
Empires immense and rolling worlds of light,
To range their heavenly scenes the muse invite;
I meditate to soar above the skies,
To heights unknown, through ways untried, to rise;
I would the Eternal from his works assert,
And sing the wonders of creating art.
While I this unexampled task essay,
Pass awful gulfs, and beat my painful way,
Celestial Dove! divine assistance bring,
Sustain me on thy strong extended wing,
That I may reach the Almighty's sacred throne,
And make his causeless power, the cause of all things, known.
Thou dost the full extent of nature see,
And the wide realms of vast immensity;
Eternal Wisdom thou dost comprehend,
Rise to her heights, and to her depths descend;
The Father's sacred counsels thou canst tell,
Who in his bosom didst for ever dwell;
Thou on the deep's dark face, immortal Dove!
Thou with Almighty energy didst move
On the wild waves, incumbent didst display
Thy genial wings, and hatch primeval day.
Order from thee, from thee distinction came,
And all the beauties of the wondrous frame.
Hence stamped on nature we perfection find,
Fair as the idea in the Eternal Mind.
See, through this vast extended theatre
Of skill divine, what shining marks appear!
Creating power is all around expressed,
The God discovered, and his care confessed.
Nature's high birth her heavenly beauties show;
By every feature we the parent know.
The expanded spheres, amazing to the sight!
Magnificent with stars and globes of light,
The glorious orbs which heaven's bright host compose,
The imprisoned sea, that restless ebbs and flows,
The fluctuating fields of liquid air,
With all the curious meteors hovering there,
And the wide regions of the land, proclaim
The Power Divine, that raised the mighty frame.
What things soe'er are to an end referred,
And in their motions still that end regard,
Always the fitness of the means respect,
These as conducive choose, and those reject,
Must by a judgment foreign and unknown
Be guided to their end, or by their own;
For to design an end, and to pursue
That end by means, and have it still in view,
Demands a conscious, wise, reflecting cause,
Which freely moves, and acts by reason's laws;
That can deliberate, means elect, and find
Their due connexion with the end designed.
And since the world's wide frame does not include
A cause with such capacities endued,
Some other cause o'er nature must preside,
Which gave her birth, and does her motions guide;
And here behold the cause, which God we name,
The source of beings, and the mind supreme;
Whose perfect wisdom, and whose prudent care,
With one confederate voice unnumbered worlds declare.

ELIJAH FENTON.

This author, who was very much respected by his contemporaries, and who translated a portion of the Odyssey in conjunction with Pope, was born May 20, 1683, at Newcastle, in Staffordshire; studied at Cambridge, which, owing to his nonjuring principles, he had to leave without a degree; and passed part of his life as a schoolmaster, and part of it as secretary to Charles, Earl of Orrery. By his tragedy of 'Mariamne' he secured a moderate competence; and during his latter years, spent his life comfortably as tutor in the house of Lady Trumbull. He died in 1730. His accomplishments were superior, and his character excellent. Pope, who was indebted to him for the first, fourth, nineteenth, and twentieth of the books of the Odyssey, mourns his loss in one of his most sincere-seeming letters. Fenton edited Waller and Milton, wrote a brief life of the latter poet,—with which most of our readers are acquainted,—and indited some respectable verse.

AN ODE TO THE RIGHT HON. JOHN LORD GOWER.

WRITTEN IN THE SPRING OF 1716.

1 O'er Winter's long inclement sway,
At length the lusty Spring prevails;
And swift to meet the smiling May,
Is wafted by the western gales.
Around him dance the rosy Hours,
And damasking the ground with flowers,
With ambient sweets perfume the morn;
With shadowy verdure flourished high,
A sudden youth the groves enjoy;
Where Philomel laments forlorn.

2 By her awaked, the woodland choir
To hail the coming god prepares;
And tempts me to resume the lyre,
Soft warbling to the vernal airs.
Yet once more, O ye Muses! deign
For me, the meanest of your train,
Unblamed to approach your blest retreat:
Where Horace wantons at your spring,
And Pindar sweeps a bolder string;
Whose notes the Aonian hills repeat.

3 Or if invoked, where Thames's fruitful tides,
Slow through the vale in silver volumes play;
Now your own Phoebus o'er the month presides,
Gives love the night, and doubly gilds the day;
Thither, indulgent to my prayer,
Ye bright harmonious nymphs, repair,
To swell the notes I feebly raise:
So with aspiring ardours warmed
May Gower's propitious ear be charmed
To listen to my lays.

4 Beneath the Pole on hills of snow,
Like Thracian Mars, the undaunted Swede[1]
To dint of sword defies the foe;
In fight unknowing to recede:
From Volga's banks, the imperious Czar
Leads forth his furry troops to war;
Fond of the softer southern sky:
The Soldan galls the Illyrian coast;
But soon, the miscreant Moony host
Before the Victor-Cross shall fly.

5 But here, no clarion's shrilling note
The Muse's green retreat can pierce;
The grove, from noisy camps remote,
Is only vocal with my verse:
Here, winged with innocence and joy,
Let the soft hours that o'er me fly
Drop freedom, health, and gay desires:
While the bright Seine, to exalt the soul,
With sparkling plenty crowns the bowl,
And wit and social mirth inspires.

6 Enamoured of the Seine, celestial fair,
(The blooming pride of Thetis' azure train,)
Bacchus, to win the nymph who caused his care,
Lashed his swift tigers to the Celtic plain:
There secret in her sapphire cell,
He with the Nais wont to dwell;
Leaving the nectared feasts of Jove:
And where her mazy waters flow
He gave the mantling vine to grow,
A trophy to his love.

7 Shall man from Nature's sanction stray,
With blind opinion for his guide;
And, rebel to her rightful sway,
Leave all her beauties unenjoyed?
Fool! Time no change of motion knows;
With equal speed the torrent flows,
To sweep Fame, Power, and Wealth away:
The past is all by death possessed;
And frugal fate that guards the rest,
By giving, bids him live To-Day.

8 O Gower! through all the destined space,
What breath the Powers allot to me
Shall sing the virtues of thy race,
United and complete in thee.
O flower of ancient English faith!
Pursue the unbeaten Patriot-path,
In which confirmed thy father shone:
The light his fair example gives,
Already from thy dawn receives
A lustre equal to its own.

9 Honour's bright dome, on lasting columns reared,
Nor envy rusts, nor rolling years consume;
Loud Paeans echoing round the roof are heard
And clouds of incense all the void perfume.
There Phocion, Laelius, Capel, Hyde,
With Falkland seated near his side,
Fixed by the Muse, the temple grace;
Prophetic of thy happier fame,
She, to receive thy radiant name,
Selects a whiter space.

[1] Charles XII.

ROBERT CRAWFORD.

Robert Crawford, a Scotchman, is our next poet. Of him we know only that he was the brother of Colonel Crawford of Achinames; that he assisted Allan Ramsay in the 'Tea-Table Miscellany;' and was drowned when coming from France in 1733. Besides the popular song, 'The Bush aboon Traquair,' which we quote, Crawford wrote also a lyric, called 'Tweedside,' and some verses, mentioned by Burns, to the old tune of 'Cowdenknowes.'

THE BUSH ABOON TRAQUAIR.

1 Hear me, ye nymphs, and every swain,
I'll tell how Peggy grieves me;
Though thus I languish and complain,
Alas! she ne'er believes me.
My vows and sighs, like silent air,
Unheeded, never move her;
At the bonnie Bush aboon Traquair,
'Twas there I first did love her.

2 That day she smiled and made me glad,
No maid seemed ever kinder;
I thought myself the luckiest lad,
So sweetly there to find her;
I tried to soothe my amorous flame,
In words that I thought tender;
If more there passed, I'm not to blame—
I meant not to offend her.

3 Yet now she scornful flies the plain,
The fields we then frequented;
If e'er we meet she shows disdain,
She looks as ne'er acquainted.
The bonnie bush bloomed fair in May,
Its sweets I'll aye remember;
But now her frowns make it decay—
It fades as in December.

4 Ye rural powers, who hear my strains,
Why thus should Peggy grieve me?
Oh, make her partner in my pains,
Then let her smiles relieve me!
If not, my love will turn despair,
My passion no more tender;
I'll leave the Bush aboon Traquair—
To lonely wilds I'll wander.

THOMAS TICKELL.

Tickell is now chiefly remembered from his connexion with Addison. He was born in 1686, at Bridekirk, near Carlisle. In April 1701, he became a member of Queen's College in Oxford. In 1708, he was made M.A., and two years after was chosen Fellow. He held his Fellowship till 1726, when, marrying in Dublin, he necessarily vacated it. He attracted Addison's attention first by some elegant lines in praise of Rosamond, and then by the 'Prospect of Peace,' a poem in which Tickell, although called by Swift Whiggissimus, for once took the Tory side. This poem Addison, in spite of its politics, praised highly in the Spectator, which led to a lifelong friendship between them. Tickell commenced contributing to the Spectator, among other things publishing there a poem entitled the 'Royal Progress.' Some time after, he produced a translation of the first book of the Iliad, which Addison declared to be superior to Pope's. This led the latter to imagine that it was Addison's own, although it is now, we believe, certain, from the MS., which still exists, that it was a veritable production of Tickell's. When Addison went to Ireland, as secretary to Lord Sunderland, Tickell accompanied him, and was employed in public business. When Addison became Secretary of State, he made Tickell Under-Secretary; and when he died, he left him the charge of publishing his works, with an earnest recommendation to the care of Craggs. Tickell faithfully performed the task, prefixing to them an elegy on his departed friend, which is now his own chief title to fame. In 1725, he was made secretary to the Lords-Justices of Ireland, a place of great trust and honour, and which he retained till his death. This event happened at Bath, in the year 1740.

His genius was not strong, but elegant and refined, and appears, as we have just stated, to best advantage in his lines on Addison's death, which are warm with genuine love, tremulous with sincere sorrow, and shine with a sober splendour, such as Addison's own exquisite taste would have approved.

TO THE EARL OF WARWICK, ON THE DEATH OF MR ADDISON.

If, dumb too long, the drooping muse hath stayed,
And left her debt to Addison unpaid,
Blame not her silence, Warwick, but bemoan,
And judge, oh judge, my bosom by your own.
What mourner ever felt poetic fires!
Slow comes the verse that real woe inspires:
Grief unaffected suits but ill with art,
Or flowing numbers with a bleeding heart.

Can I forget the dismal night that gave
My soul's best part for ever to the grave?
How silent did his old companions tread,
By midnight lamps, the mansions of the dead,
Through breathing statues, then unheeded things,
Through rows of warriors, and through walks of kings!
What awe did the slow solemn knell inspire;
The pealing organ, and the pausing choir;
The duties by the lawn-robed prelate paid:
And the last words that dust to dust conveyed!
While speechless o'er thy closing grave we bend,
Accept these tears, thou dear departed friend.
Oh, gone for ever! take this long adieu;
And sleep in peace, next thy loved Montague.
To strew fresh laurels, let the task be mine,
A frequent pilgrim at thy sacred shrine;
Mine with true sighs thy absence to bemoan,
And grave with faithful epitaphs thy stone.
If e'er from me thy loved memorial part,
May shame afflict this alienated heart;
Of thee forgetful if I form a song,
My lyre be broken, and untuned my tongue,
My grief be doubled from thy image free,
And mirth a torment, unchastised by thee!

Oft let me range the gloomy aisles alone,
Sad luxury! to vulgar minds unknown,
Along the walls where speaking marbles show
What worthies form the hallowed mould belew;
Proud names, who once the reins of empire held;
In arms who triumphed, or in arts excelled;
Chiefs, graced with scars, and prodigal of blood;
Stern patriots, who for sacred freedom stood;
Just men, by whom impartial laws were given;
And saints, who taught and led the way to heaven;
Ne'er to these chambers, where the mighty rest,
Since their foundation came a nobler guest;
Nor e'er was to the bowers of bliss conveyed
A fairer spirit or more welcome shade.

In what new region, to the just assigned,
What new employments please the embodied mind?
A winged Virtue, through the ethereal sky,
From world to world unwearied does he fly?
Or curious trace the long laborious maze
Of Heaven's decrees, where wondering angels gaze?
Does he delight to hear bold seraphs tell
How Michael battled, and the dragon fell;
Or, mixed with milder cherubim, to glow
In hymns of love, not ill essayed below?
Or dost thou warn poor mortals left behind,
A task well suited to thy gentle mind?
Oh! if sometimes thy spotless form descend,
To me thy aid, thou guardian genius, lend!
When rage misguides me, or when fear alarms,
When pain distresses, or when pleasure charms,
In silent whisperings purer thoughts impart,
And turn from ill a frail and feeble heart;
Lead through the paths thy virtue trod before,
Till bliss shall join, nor death can part us more.

That awful form, which, so the heavens decree,
Must still be loved and still deplored by me,
In nightly visions seldom fails to rise,
Or, roused by fancy, meets my waking eyes.
If business calls, or crowded courts invite,
The unblemished statesman seems to strike my sight;
If in the stage I seek to soothe my care,
I meet his soul which breathes in Cato there;
If pensive to the rural shades I rove,
His shape o'ertakes me in the lonely grove;
'Twas there of just and good he reasoned strong,
Cleared some great truth, or raised some serious song:
There patient showed us the wise course to steer,
A candid censor, and a friend severe;
There taught us how to live; and (oh! too high
The price for knowledge,) taught us how to die.

Thou hill, whose brow the antique structures grace,
Reared by bold chiefs of Warwick's noble race,
Why, once so loved, whene'er thy bower appears,
O'er my dim eyeballs glance the sudden tears?
How sweet were once thy prospects fresh and fair,
Thy sloping walks, and unpolluted air!
How sweet the glooms beneath thy aged trees,
Thy noontide shadow, and thy evening breeze!
His image thy forsaken bowers restore;
Thy walks and airy prospects charm no more;
No more the summer in thy glooms allayed,
Thy evening breezes, and thy noon-day shade.

From other ills, however fortune frowned,
Some refuge in the Muse's art I found;
Reluctant now I touch the trembling string,
Bereft of him who taught me how to sing;
And these sad accents, murmured o'er his urn,
Betray that absence they attempt to mourn.
Oh! must I then (now fresh my bosom bleeds,
And Craggs in death to Addison succeeds,)
The verse, begun to one lost friend, prolong,
And weep a second in the unfinished song!

These works divine, which, on his death-bed laid,
To thee, O Craggs! the expiring sage conveyed,
Great, but ill-omened, monument of fame,
Nor he survived to give, nor thou to claim.
Swift after him thy social spirit flies,
And close to his, how soon! thy coffin lies.
Blest pair! whose union future bards shall tell
In future tongues: each other's boast! farewell!
Farewell! whom, joined in fame, in friendship tried,
No chance could sever, nor the grave divide.

JAMES HAMMOND.

This elegiast was the second son of Anthony Hammond, a brother-in-law of Sir Robert Walpole, and a man of some note in his day. He was born in 1710; educated at Westminster school; became equerry to the Prince of Wales; fell in love with a lady named Dashwood, who rejected him, and drove him to temporary derangement, and then to elegy-writing; entered parliament for Truro, in Cornwall, in 1741; and died the next year. His elegies were published after his death, and, although abounding in pedantic allusions and frigid conceits, became very popular.

ELEGY XIII.

He imagines himself married to Delia, and that, content with each other, they are retired into the country.

1 Let others boast their heaps of shining gold,
And view their fields, with waving plenty crowned,
Whom neighbouring foes in constant terror hold,
And trumpets break their slumbers, never sound:

2 While calmly poor I trifle life away,
Enjoy sweet leisure by my cheerful fire,
No wanton hope my quiet shall betray,
But, cheaply blessed, I'll scorn each vain desire.

3 With timely care I'll sow my little field,
And plant my orchard with its master's hand,
Nor blush to spread the hay, the hook to wield,
Or range my sheaves along the sunny land.

4 If late at dusk, while carelessly I roam,
I meet a strolling kid, or bleating lamb,
Under my arm I'll bring the wanderer home,
And not a little chide its thoughtless dam.

5 What joy to hear the tempest howl in vain,
And clasp a fearful mistress to my breast!
Or, lulled to slumber by the beating rain,
Secure and happy, sink at last to rest!

6 Or, if the sun in flaming Leo ride,
By shady rivers indolently stray,
And with my Delia, walking side by side,
Hear how they murmur as they glide away!

7 What joy to wind along the cool retreat,
To stop and gaze on Delia as I go!
To mingle sweet discourse with kisses sweet,
And teach my lovely scholar all I know!

8 Thus pleased at heart, and not with fancy's dream,
In silent happiness I rest unknown;
Content with what I am, not what I seem,
I live for Delia and myself alone.

* * * * *

9 Hers be the care of all my little train,
While I with tender indolence am blest,
The favourite subject of her gentle reign,
By love alone distinguished from the rest.

10 For her I'll yoke my oxen to the plough,
In gloomy forests tend my lonely flock;
For her, a goat-herd, climb the mountain's brow,
And sleep extended on the naked rock:

11 Ah, what avails to press the stately bed,
And far from her 'midst tasteless grandeur weep,
By marble fountains lay the pensive head,
And, while they murmur, strive in vain to sleep!

12 Delia alone can please, and never tire,
Exceed the paint of thought in true delight;
With her, enjoyment wakens new desire,
And equal rapture glows through every night:

13 Beauty and worth in her alike contend,
To charm the fancy, and to fix the mind;
In her, my wife, my mistress, and my friend,
I taste the joys of sense and reason joined.

14 On her I'll gaze, when others' loves are o'er,
And dying press her with my clay-cold hand—
Thou weep'st already, as I were no more,
Nor can that gentle breast the thought withstand.

15 Oh, when I die, my latest moments spare,
Nor let thy grief with sharper torments kill,
Wound not thy cheeks, nor hurt that flowing hair,
Though I am dead, my soul shall love thee still:

16 Oh, quit the room, oh, quit the deathful bed,
Or thou wilt die, so tender is thy heart;
Oh, leave me, Delia, ere thou see me dead,
These weeping friends will do thy mournful part:

17 Let them, extended on the decent bier,
Convey the corse in melancholy state,
Through all the village spread the tender tear,
While pitying maids our wondrous loves relate.

We may here mention Dr George Sewell, author of a Life of Sir Walter Haleigh, a few papers in the Spectator, and some rather affecting verses written on consumption, where he says, in reference to his garden—

'Thy narrow pride, thy fancied green,
(For vanity's in little seen,)
All must be left when death appears,
In spite of wishes, groans, and tears;
Not one of all thy plants that grow,
But rosemary, will with thee go;'—

Sir John Vanbrugh, best known as an architect, but who also wrote poetry;—Edward Ward (more commonly called Ned Ward), a poetical publican, who wrote ten thick volumes, chiefly in Hudibrastic verse, displaying a good deal of coarse cleverness;—Barton Booth, the famous actor, author of a song which closes thus—

'Love, and his sister fair, the Soul,
Twin-born, from heaven together came;
Love will the universe control,
When dying seasons lose their name.
Divine abodes shall own his power,
When time and death shall be no more;'—

Oldmixon, one of the heroes of the 'Dunciad,' famous in his day as a party historian;—Richard West, a youth of high promise, the friend of Gray, and who died in his twenty-sixth year;—James Eyre Weekes, an Irishman, author of a clever copy of love verses, called 'The Five Traitors;'—Bramston, an Oxford man, who wrote a poem called 'The Man of Taste;'—and William Meston, an Aberdonian, author of a set of burlesque poems entitled 'Mother Grim's Tales.'

RICHARD SAVAGE.

The extreme excellence, fulness, and popularity of Johnson's Life of Savage must excuse our doing more than mentioning the leading dates of his history. He was the son of the Earl of Rivers and the Countess of Macclesfield, and was born in London, 1698. His mother, who had begot him in adultery after having openly avowed her criminality, in order to obtain a divorce from her husband, placed the boy under the care of a poor woman, who brought him up as her son. His maternal grandmother, Lady Mason, however, took an interest him and placed him at a grammar school at St Alban's. He was afterwards apprenticed to a shoemaker. On the death of his nurse, he found some letters which led to the discovery of his real parent. He applied to her, accordingly, to be acknowledged as her son; but she repulsed his every advance, and persecuted him with unrelenting barbarity. He found, however, some influential friends, such as Steele, Fielding, Aaron Hill, Pope, and Lord Tyrconnell. He was, however, his own worst enemy, and contracted habits of the most irregular description. In a tavern brawl he killed one James Sinclair, and was condemned to die; but, notwithstanding his mother's interference to prevent the exercise of the royal clemency, he was pardoned by the queen, who afterwards gave him a pension of £50 a-year. He supported himself in a precarious way by writing poetical pieces. Lord Tyrconnell took him for a while into his house, and allowed him £200 a-year, but he soon quarrelled with him, and left. When the queen died he lost his pension, but his friends made it up by an annuity to the same amount. He went away to reside at Swansea, but on occasion of a visit he made to Bristol he was arrested for a small debt, and in the prison he sickened, and died on the 1st of August 1743. He was only forty-five years of age.

After all, Savage, in Johnson's Life, is just a dung-fly preserved in amber. His 'Bastard,' indeed, displays considerable powers, stung by a consciousness of wrong into convulsive action; but his other works are nearly worthless, and his life was that of a proud, passionate, selfish, and infatuated fool, unredeemed by scarcely one trait of genuine excellence in character. We love and admire, even while we deeply blame, such men as Burns; but for Savage our feeling is a curious compost of sympathy with his misfortunes, contempt for his folly, and abhorrence for the ingratitude, licentiousness, and other coarse and savage sins which characterised and prematurely destroyed him.

THE BASTARD.

INSCRIBED, WITH ALL DUE REVERENCE, TO MRS BRETT, ONCE COUNTESS OF MACCLESFIELD.

In gayer hours, when high my fancy ran,
The Muse exulting, thus her lay began:
'Blest be the Bastard's birth! through wondrous ways,
He shines eccentric like a comet's blaze!
No sickly fruit of faint compliance he!
He! stamped in nature's mint of ecstasy!
He lives to build, not boast a generous race:
No tenth transmitter of a foolish face:
His daring hope no sire's example bounds;
His first-born lights no prejudice confounds.
He, kindling from within, requires no flame;
He glories in a Bastard's glowing name.

'Born to himself, by no possession led,
In freedom fostered, and by fortune fed;
Nor guides, nor rules his sovereign choice control,
His body independent as his soul;
Loosed to the world's wide range, enjoined no aim,
Prescribed no duty, and assigned no name:
Nature's unbounded son, he stands alone,
His heart unbiased, and his mind his own.

'O mother, yet no mother! 'tis to you
My thanks for such distinguished claims are due;
You, unenslaved to Nature's narrow laws,
Warm championess for freedom's sacred cause,
From all the dry devoirs of blood and line,
From ties maternal, moral, and divine,
Discharged my grasping soul; pushed me from shore,
And launched me into life without an oar.

'What had I lost, if, conjugally kind,
By nature hating, yet by vows confined,
Untaught the matrimonial bonds to slight,
And coldly conscious of a husband's right,
You had faint-drawn me with a form alone,
A lawful lump of life by force your own!
Then, while your backward will retrenched desire,
And unconcurring spirits lent no fire,
I had been born your dull, domestic heir,
Load of your life, and motive of your care;
Perhaps been poorly rich, and meanly great,
The slave of pomp, a cipher in the state;
Lordly neglectful of a worth unknown,
And slumbering in a seat by chance my own.

'Far nobler blessings wait the bastard's lot;
Conceived in rapture, and with fire begot!
Strong as necessity, he starts away,
Climbs against wrongs, and brightens into day.'
Thus unprophetic, lately misinspired,
I sung: gay fluttering hope my fancy fired:
Inly secure, through conscious scorn of ill,
Nor taught by wisdom how to balance will,
Rashly deceived, I saw no pits to shun,
But thought to purpose and to act were one;
Heedless what pointed cares pervert his way,
Whom caution arms not, and whom woes betray;
But now exposed, and shrinking from distress,
I fly to shelter while the tempests press;
My Muse to grief resigns the varying tone,
The raptures languish, and the numbers groan.

O Memory! thou soul of joy and pain!
Thou actor of our passions o'er again!
Why didst thou aggravate the wretch's woe?
Why add continuous smart to every blow?
Few are my joys; alas! how soon forgot!
On that kind quarter thou invad'st me not;
While sharp and numberless my sorrows fall,
Yet thou repeat'st and multipli'st them all.

Is chance a guilt? that my disastrous heart,
For mischief never meant; must ever smart?
Can self-defence be sin?—Ah, plead no more!
What though no purposed malice stained thee o'er?
Had Heaven befriended thy unhappy side,
Thou hadst not been provoked—or thou hadst died.

Far be the guilt of homeshed blood from all
On whom, unsought, embroiling dangers fall!
Still the pale dead revives, and lives to me,
To me! through Pity's eye condemned to see.
Remembrance veils his rage, but swells his fate;
Grieved I forgive, and am grown cool too late.
Young, and unthoughtful then; who knows, one day,
What ripening virtues might have made their way?
He might have lived till folly died in shame,
Till kindling wisdom felt a thirst for fame.
He might perhaps his country's friend have proved;
Both happy, generous, candid, and beloved,
He might have saved some worth, now doomed to fall;
And I, perchance, in him, have murdered all.

O fate of late repentance! always vain:
Thy remedies but lull undying pain.
Where shall my hope find rest?—No mother's care
Shielded my infant innocence with prayer:
No father's guardian hand my youth maintained,
Called forth my virtues, or from vice restrained.
Is it not thine to snatch some powerful arm,
First to advance, then screen from future harm?
Am I returned from death to live in pain?
Or would imperial Pity save in vain?
Distrust it not—What blame can mercy find,
Which gives at once a life, and rears a mind?

Mother, miscalled, farewell—of soul severe,
This sad reflection yet may force one tear:
All I was wretched by to you I owed,
Alone from strangers every comfort flowed!

Lost to the life you gave, your son no more,
And now adopted, who was doomed before;
New-born, I may a nobler mother claim,
But dare not whisper her immortal name;
Supremely lovely, and serenely great!
Majestic mother of a kneeling state!
Queen of a people's heart, who ne'er before
Agreed—yet now with one consent adore!
One contest yet remains in this desire,
Who most shall give applause, where all admire.

THOMAS WARTON THE ELDER.

The Wartons were a poetical race. The father of Thomas and Joseph, names so intimately associated with English poetry, was himself a poet. He was of Magdalene College in Oxford, vicar of Basingstoke and Cobham, and twice chosen poetry professor. He was born in 1687, and died in 1745. Besides the little American ode quoted below, we are tempted to give the following

VERSES WRITTEN AFTER SEEING WINDSOR CASTLE.

From beauteous Windsor's high and storied halls,
Where Edward's chiefs start from the glowing walls,
To my low cot, from ivory beds of state,
Pleased I return, unenvious of the great.
So the bee ranges o'er the varied scenes
Of corn, of heaths, of fallows, and of greens;
Pervades the thicket, soars above the hill,
Or murmurs to the meadow's murmuring rill;
Now haunts old hollowed oaks, deserted cells,
Now seeks the low vale-lily's silver bells;
Sips the warm fragrance of the greenhouse bowers,
And tastes the myrtle and the citron flowers;—
At length returning to the wonted comb,
Prefers to all his little straw-built home.

This seems sweet and simple poetry.

AN AMERICAN LOVE ODE.

FROM THE SECOND VOLUME OF MONTAIGNE'S ESSAYS.

Stay, stay, thou lovely, fearful snake,
Nor hide thee in yon darksome brake:
But let me oft thy charms review,
Thy glittering scales, and golden hue;
From these a chaplet shall be wove,
To grace the youth I dearest love.

Then ages hence, when thou no more
Shalt creep along the sunny shore,
Thy copied beauties shall be seen;
Thy red and azure mixed with green,
In mimic folds thou shalt display;—
Stay, lovely, fearful adder, stay.

JONATHAN SWIFT.

In contemplating the lives and works of the preceding poets in this third volume of 'Specimens,' we have been impressed with a sense, if not of their absolute, yet of their comparative mediocrity. Beside such neglected giants as Henry More, Joseph Beaumont, and Andrew Marvell, the Pomfrets, Sedleys, Blackmores, and Savages sink into insignificance. But when we come to the name of Swift, we feel ourselves again approaching an Alpine region. The air of a stern mountain-summit breathes chill around our temples, and we feel that if we have no amiability to melt, we have altitude at least to measure, and strange profound secrets of nature, like the ravines of lofty hills, to explore. The men of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries may be compared to Lebanon, or Snowdown, or Benlomond towering grandly over fertile valleys, on which they smile—Swift to the tremendous Romsdale Horn in Norway, shedding abroad, from a brow of four thousand feet high, what seems a scowl of settled indignation, as if resolved not to rejoice even over the wide- stretching deserts which, and nothing but which, it everlastingly beholds. Mountains all of them, but what a difference between such a mountain as Shakspeare, and such a mountain as Swift!

Instead of going minutely over a path so long since trodden to mire as the life of Swift, let us expend a page or two in seeking to form some estimate of his character and genius. It is refreshing to come upon a new thing in the world, even though it be a strange or even a bad thing; and certainly, in any age and country, such a being as Swift must have appeared an anomaly, not for his transcendent goodness, not for his utter badness, but because the elements of good and evil were mixed in him into a medley so astounding, and in proportions respectively so large, yet unequal, that the analysis of the two seemed to many competent only to the Great Chymist, Death, and that a sense of the disproportion seems to have moved the man himself to inextinguishable laughter,—a laughter which, radiating out of his own singular heart as a centre, swept over the circumference of all beings within his reach, and returned crying, 'Give, give,' as if he were demanding a universal sphere for the exercise of the savage scorn which dwelt within him, and as if he laughed not more 'consumedly' at others than he did at himself.

Ere speaking of Swift as a man, let us say something about his genius. That, like his character, was intensely peculiar. It was a compound of infinite ingenuity, with very little poetical imagination—of gigantic strength, with a propensity to incessant trifling—of passionate purpose, with the clearest and coldest expression, as though a furnace were fuelled with snow. A Brobdignagian by size, he was for ever toying with Lilliputian slings and small craft. One of the most violent of party men, and often fierce as a demoniac in temper, his favourite motto was Vive la bagatelle. The creator of entire new worlds, we doubt if his works contain more than two or three lines of genuine poetry. He may be compared to one of the locusts of the Apocalypse, in that he had a tail like unto a scorpion, and a sting in his tail; but his 'face is not as the face of man, his hair is not as the hair of women, and on his head there is no crown like gold.' All Swift's creations are more or less disgusting. Not one of them is beautiful. His Lilliputians are amazingly life-like, but compare them to Shakspeare's fairies, such as Peaseblossom, Cobweb, and Mustardseed; his Brobdignagians are excrescences like enormous warts; and his Yahoos might have been spawned in the nightmare of a drunken butcher. The same coarseness characterises his poems and his 'Tale of a Tub.' He might well, however, in his old age, exclaim, in reference to the latter, 'Good God! what a genius I had when I wrote that book!' It is the wildest, wittiest, wickedest, wealthiest book of its size in the English language. Thoughts and figures swarm in every corner of its pages, till you think of a disturbed nest of angry ants, for all the figures and thoughts are black and bitter. One would imagine the book to have issued from a mind that had been gathering gall as well as sense in an antenatal state of being.

Swift, in all his writings—sermons, political tracts, poems, and fictions—is essentially a satirist. He consisted originally of three principal parts,—sense, an intense feeling of the ludicrous, and selfish passion; and these were sure, in certain circumstances, to ferment into a spirit of satire, 'strong as death, and cruel as the grave.' Born with not very much natural benevolence, with little purely poetic feeling, with furious passions and unbounded ambition, he was entirely dependent for his peace of mind upon success. Had he become, as by his talents he was entitled to be, the prime minister of his day, he would have figured as a greater tyrant in the cabinet than even Chatham. But as he was prevented from being the first statesman, he became the first satirist of his time. From vain efforts to grasp supremacy for himself and his party, he retired growling to his Dublin den; and there, as Haman thought scorn to lay his hand on Mordecai, but extended his murderous purpose to all the people of the Jews,—and as Nero wished that Rome had one neck, that he might destroy it at a blow,—so Swift was stung by his personal disappointment to hurl out scorn at man and suspicion at his Maker. It was not, it must be noticed, the evil which was in man which excited his hatred and contempt; it was man himself. He was not merely, as many are, disgusted with the selfish and malignant elements which are mingled in man's nature and character, and disposed to trace them to any cause save a Divine will, but he believed man to be, as a whole, the work and child of the devil; and he told the imaginary creator and creature to their face, what he thought the truth,—'The devil is an ass.' His was the very madness of Manichaeism. That heresy held that the devil was one of two aboriginal creative powers, but Swift seemed to believe at times that he was the only God. From a Yahoo man, it was difficult to avoid the inference of a demon deity. It is very laughable to find writers in Blackwood and elsewhere striving to prove Swift a Christian, as if, whatever were his professions, and however sincere he might be often in these, the whole tendency of his writings, his perpetual and unlimited abuse of man's body and soul, his denial of every human virtue, the filth he pours upon every phase of human nature, and the doctrine he insinuates—that man has fallen indeed, but fallen, not from the angel, but from the animal, or, rather, is just a bungled brute,—were not enough to shew that either his notions were grossly erroneous and perverted, or that he himself deserved, like another Nebuchadnezzar, to be driven from men, and to have a beast's heart given unto him. Sometimes he reminds us of an impure angel, who has surprised man naked and asleep, looked at him with microscopic eyes, ignored all his peculiar marks of fallen dignity and incipient godhood, and in heartless rhymes reported accordingly.

Swift belonged to the same school as Pope, although the feminine element which was in the latter modified and mellowed his feelings. Pope was a more successful and a happier man than Swift. He was much smaller, too, in soul as well as in body, and his gall-organ was proportionably less. Pope's feeling to humanity was a tiny malice; Swift's became, at length, a black malignity. Pope always reminds us of an injured and pouting hero of Lilliput, 'doing well to be angry' under the gourd of a pocket-flap, or squealing out his griefs from the centre of an empty snuff-box; Swift is a man, nay, monster of misanthropy. In minute and microscopic vision of human infirmities, Pope excels even Swift; but then you always conceive Swift leaning down a giant, though gnarled, stature to behold them, while Pope is on their level, and has only to look straight before him. Pope's wrath is always measured; Swift's, as in the 'Legion-Club' is a whirlwind of 'black fire and horror,' in the breath of which no flesh can live, and against which genius and virtue themselves furnish no shield.

After all, Swift might, perhaps, have put in the plea of Byron—

'All my faults perchance thou knowest,
All my madness none can know.'

There was a black spot of madness in his brain, and another black spot in his heart; and the two at last met, and closed up his destiny in night. Let human nature forgive its most determined and systematic reviler, for the sake of the wretchedness in which he was involved all his life long. He was born (in 1667) a posthumous child; he was brought up an object of charity; he spent much of his youth in dependence; he had to leave his Irish college without a degree; he was flattered with hopes from King William and the Whigs, which were not fulfilled; he was condemned to spend a great part of his life in Ireland, a country he detested; he was involved—partly, no doubt, through his own blame—in a succession of fruitless and miserable intrigues, alike of love and politics; he was soured by want of success in England, and spoiled by enormous popularity in Ireland; he was tried by a kind of religious doubts, which would not go out to prayer or fasting; he was haunted by the fear of the dreadful calamity which at last befell him; his senses and his soul left him one by one; he became first giddy, then deaf, and then mad; his madness was of the most terrible sort—it was a 'silent rage;' for a year or two he lay dumb; and at last, on the 19th of October 1745,

'Swift expired, a driveller and a show,'

leaving his money to found a lunatic asylum, and his works as a many- volumed legacy of curse to mankind.

[Note: It has been asserted that there were circumstances in extenuation of Swift's conduct, particularly in reference to the ladies whose names were connected with his, which cannot be publicly brought forward.]

BAUCIS AND PHILEMON.

In ancient times, as story tells,
The saints would often leave their cells,
And stroll about, but hide their quality,
To try good people's hospitality.

It happened on a winter night,
As authors of the legend write,
Two brother-hermits, saints by trade,
Taking their tour in masquerade,
Disguised in tattered habits went
To a small village down in Kent,
Where, in the strollers' canting strain,
They begged from door to door in vain,
Tried every tone might pity win;
But not a soul would let them in.
Our wandering saints, in woful state,
Treated at this ungodly rate,
Having through all the village passed,
To a small cottage came at last,
Where dwelt a good old honest yeoman,
Called in the neighbourhood Philemon;
Who kindly did these saints invite
In his poor hut to pass the night;
And then the hospitable sire
Bid Goody Baucis mend the fire;
While he from out the chimney took
A flitch of bacon off the hook,
And freely from the fattest side
Cut out large slices to be fried;
Then stepped aside to fetch them drink,
Filled a large jug up to the brink,
And saw it fairly twice go round;
Yet (what is wonderful!) they found
'Twas still replenished to the top,
As if they ne'er had touched a drop.
The good old couple were amazed,
And often on each other gazed;
For both were frightened to the heart,
And just began to cry,—'What art!'
Then softly turned aside to view
Whether the lights were burning blue.
The gentle pilgrims, soon aware on 't,
Told them their calling, and their errand:
'Good folks, you need not be afraid,
We are but saints,' the hermits said;
'No hurt shall come to you or yours:
But for that pack of churlish boors,
Not fit to live on Christian ground,
They and their houses shall be drowned;
Whilst you shall see your cottage rise,
And grow a church before your eyes.'

They scarce had spoke, when fair and soft
The roof began to mount aloft;
Aloft rose every beam and rafter;
The heavy wall climbed slowly after.

The chimney widened, and grew higher,
Became a steeple with a spire.

The kettle to the top was hoist,
And there stood fastened to a joist;
But with the upside down, to show
Its inclination for below;
In vain; for a superior force,
Applied at bottom, stops its course:
Doomed ever in suspense to dwell,
'Tis now no kettle, but a bell.

A wooden jack, which had almost
Lost by disuse the art to roast,
A sudden alteration feels,
Increased by new intestine wheels;
And, what exalts the wonder more
The number made the motion slower;
The flier, though't had leaden feet,
Turned round so quick, you scarce could see 't;
But, slackened by some secret power,
Now hardly moves an inch an hour.
The jack and chimney, near allied,
Had never left each other's side:
The chimney to a steeple grown,
The jack would not be left alone;
But up against the steeple reared,
Became a clock, and still adhered;
And still its love to household cares,
By a shrill voice at noon declares,
Warning the cook-maid not to burn
That roast meat which it cannot turn.

The groaning-chair began to crawl,
Like a huge snail, along the wall;
There stuck aloft in public view,
And with small change a pulpit grew.

The porringers, that in a row
Hung high, and made a glittering show,
To a less noble substance changed,
Were now but leathern buckets ranged.

The ballads, pasted on the wall,
Of Joan of France, and English Moll,
Fair Rosamond, and Robin Hood,
The little Children in the Wood,
Now seemed to look abundance better,
Improved in picture, size, and letter;
And, high in order placed, describe
The heraldry of every tribe.

A bedstead, of the antique mode,
Compact of timber many a load,
Such as our ancestors did use,
Was metamorphosed into pews;
Which still their ancient nature keep,
By lodging folks disposed to sleep.

The cottage, by such feats as these,
Grown to a church by just degrees;
The hermits then desired their host
To ask for what he fancied most.
Philemon, having paused a while,
Returned them thanks in homely style;
Then said, 'My house is grown so fine,
Methinks I still would call it mine;
I'm old, and fain would live at ease;
Make me the parson, if you please.'

He spoke, and presently he feels
His grazier's coat fall down his heels:
He sees, yet hardly can believe,
About each arm a pudding-sleeve;
His waistcoat to a cassock grew,
And both assumed a sable hue;
But, being old, continued just
As threadbare, and as full of dust.
His talk was now of tithes and dues;
He smoked his pipe, and read the news;
Knew how to preach old sermons next,
Vamped in the preface and the text;
At christenings well could act his part,
And had the service all by heart;
Wished women might have children fast,
And thought whose sow had farrowed last;
Against Dissenters would repine,
And stood up firm for right divine;
Found his head filled with many a system;
But classic authors,—he ne'er missed 'em.

Thus, having furbished up a parson,
Dame Baucis next they played their farce on;
Instead of home-spun coifs, were seen
Good pinners edged with colberteen;
Her petticoat, transformed apace,
Became black satin flounced with lace.
Plain 'Goody' would no longer down;
'Twas 'Madam' in her grogram gown.
Philemon was in great surprise,
And hardly could believe his eyes,
Amazed to see her look so prim;
And she admired as much at him.

Thus happy in their change of life
Were several years this man and wife:
When on a day, which proved their last,
Discoursing on old stories past,
They went by chance, amidst their talk,
To the churchyard to take a walk;
When Baucis hastily cried out,
'My dear, I see your forehead sprout!'
'Sprout!' quoth the man; 'what's this you tell
I hope you don't believe me jealous!
But yet, methinks, I feel it true;
And, really, yours is budding too;
Nay, now I cannot stir my foot—
It feels as if 'twere taking root.'

Description would but tire my Muse;
In short, they both were turned to yews.

Old Goodman Dobson of the green
Remembers he the trees has seen;
He'll talk of them from noon till night,
And goes with folks to show the sight;
On Sundays, after evening-prayer,
He gathers all the parish there,
Points out the place of either yew:
'Here Baucis, there Philemon grew;
Till once a parson of our town,
To mend his barn cut Baucis down.
At which 'tis hard to be believed
How much the other tree was grieved,
Grew scrubby, died atop, was stunted;
So the next parson stubbed and burnt it.'

ON POETRY.

All human race would fain be wits,
And millions miss for one that hits.
Young's Universal Passion, pride,
Was never known to spread so wide.
Say, Britain, could you ever boast
Three poets in an age at most?
Our chilling climate hardly bears
A sprig of bays in fifty years;
While every fool his claim alleges,
As if it grew in common hedges.
What reason can there be assigned
For this perverseness in the mind?
Brutes find out where their talents lie:
A bear will not attempt to fly;
A foundered horse will oft debate
Before he tries a five-barred gate;
A dog by instinct turns aside,
Who sees the ditch too deep and wide;—
But man we find the only creature,
Who, led by folly, combats nature;
Who, when she loudly cries, Forbear,
With obstinacy fixes there;
And, where his genius least inclines,
Absurdly bends his whole designs.

Not empire to the rising sun
By valour, conduct, fortune won;
Not highest wisdom in debates
For framing laws to govern states;
Not skill in sciences profound
So large to grasp the circle round,
Such heavenly influence require,
As how to strike the Muse's lyre.

Not beggar's brat on bulk begot;
Not bastard of a pedlar Scot;
Not boy brought up to cleaning shoes,
The spawn of Bridewell or the stews;
Not infants dropped, the spurious pledges
Of gipsies littering under hedges,
Are so disqualified by fate
To rise in church, or law, or state,
As he whom Phoebus in his ire
Hath blasted with poetic fire.
What hope of custom in the fair,
While not a soul demands your ware?
Where you have nothing to produce
For private life or public use?
Court, city, country, want you not;
You cannot bribe, betray, or plot.
For poets, law makes no provision;
The wealthy have you in derision;
Of state affairs you cannot smatter,
Are awkward when you try to flatter;
Your portion, taking Britain round,
Was just one annual hundred pound;
Now not so much as in remainder,
Since Gibber brought in an attainder,
For ever fixed by right divine,
(A monarch's right,) on Grub Street line.

Poor starveling bard, how small thy gains!
How unproportioned to thy pains!
And here a simile comes pat in:
Though chickens take a month to fatten,
The guests in less than half an hour
Will more than half a score devour.
So, after toiling twenty days
To earn a stock of pence and praise,
Thy labours, grown the critic's prey,
Are swallowed o'er a dish of tea;
Gone to be never heard of more,
Gone where the chickens went before.
How shall a new attempter learn
Of different spirits to discern,
And how distinguish which is which,
The poet's vein, or scribbling itch?
Then hear an old experienced sinner
Instructing thus a young beginner:
Consult yourself; and if you find
A powerful impulse urge your mind,
Impartial judge within your breast
What subject you can manage best;
Whether your genius most inclines
To satire, praise, or humorous lines,
To elegies in mournful tone,
Or prologues sent from hand unknown;
Then, rising with Aurora's light,
The Muse invoked, sit down to write;
Blot out, correct, insert, refine,
Enlarge, diminish, interline;
Be mindful, when invention fails,
To scratch your head, and bite your nails.

Your poem finished, next your care
Is needful to transcribe it fair.
In modern wit, all printed trash is
Set off with numerous breaks and dashes.

To statesmen would you give a wipe,
You print it in italic type;
When letters are in vulgar shapes,
'Tis ten to one the wit escapes;
But when in capitals expressed,
The dullest reader smokes the jest;
Or else, perhaps, he may invent
A better than the poet meant;
As learned commentators view
In Homer, more than Homer knew.

Your poem in its modish dress,
Correctly fitted for the press,
Convey by penny-post to Lintot;
But let no friend alive look into 't.
If Lintot thinks 'twill quit the cost,
You need not fear your labour lost:
And how agreeably surprised
Are you to see it advertised!
The hawker shows you one in print,
As fresh as farthings from a mint:
The product of your toil and sweating,
A bastard of your own begetting.

Be sure at Will's the following day,
Lie snug, and hear what critics say;
And if you find the general vogue
Pronounces you a stupid rogue,
Damns all your thoughts as low and little,
Sit still, and swallow down your spittle;
Be silent as a politician,
For talking may beget suspicion;
Or praise the judgment of the town,
And help yourself to run it down;
Give up your fond paternal pride,
Nor argue on the weaker side;
For poems read without a name
We justly praise, or justly blame;
And critics have no partial views,
Except they know whom they abuse;
And since you ne'er provoked their spite,
Depend upon 't, their judgment's right.
But if you blab, you are undone:
Consider what a risk you run:
You lose your credit all at once;
The town will mark you for a dunce;
The vilest doggrel Grub Street sends
Will pass for yours with foes and friends;
And you must bear the whole disgrace,
Till some fresh blockhead takes your place.

Your secret kept, your poem sunk,
And sent in quires to line a trunk,
If still you be disposed to rhyme,
Go try your hand a second time.
Again you fail: yet safe's the word;
Take courage, and attempt a third.
But just with care employ your thoughts,
Where critics marked your former faults;
The trivial turns, the borrowed wit,
The similes that nothing fit;
The cant which every fool repeats,
Town jests and coffee-house conceits;
Descriptions tedious, flat, and dry,
And introduced the Lord knows why:
Or where we find your fury set
Against the harmless alphabet;
On A's and B's your malice vent,
While readers wonder what you meant:
A public or a private robber,
A statesman, or a South-Sea jobber;
A prelate who no God believes;
A parliament, or den of thieves;
A pick-purse at the bar or bench;
A duchess, or a suburb wench:
Or oft, when epithets you link
In gaping lines to fill a chink;
Like stepping-stones to save a stride,
In streets where kennels are too wide;
Or like a heel-piece, to support
A cripple with one foot too short;
Or like a bridge, that joins a marish
To moorland of a different parish;
So have I seen ill-coupled hounds
Drag different ways in miry grounds;
So geographers in Afric maps
With savage pictures fill their gaps,
And o'er unhabitable downs
Place elephants, for want of towns.

But though you miss your third essay,
You need not throw your pen away.
Lay now aside all thoughts of fame,
To spring more profitable game.
From party-merit seek support—
The vilest verse thrives best at court.
And may you ever have the luck,
To rhyme almost as ill as Duck;
And though you never learnt to scan verse,
Come out with some lampoon on D'Anvers.
A pamphlet in Sir Bob's defence
Will never fail to bring in pence:
Nor be concerned about the sale—
He pays his workmen on the nail.
Display the blessings of the nation,
And praise the whole administration:
Extol the bench of Bishops round;
Who at them rail, bid——confound:
To Bishop-haters answer thus,
(The only logic used by us,)
'What though they don't believe in——,
Deny them Protestants,—thou liest.'

A prince, the moment he is crowned,
Inherits every virtue round,
As emblems of the sovereign power,
Like other baubles in the Tower;
Is generous, valiant, just, and wise,
And so continues till he dies:
His humble senate this professes
In all their speeches, votes, addresses.
But once you fix him in a tomb,
His virtues fade, his vices bloom,
And each perfection, wrong imputed,
Is fully at his death confuted.
The loads of poems in his praise
Ascending, make one funeral blaze.
As soon as you can hear his knell
This god on earth turns devil in hell;
And lo! his ministers of state,
Transformed to imps, his levee wait,
Where, in the scenes of endless woe,
They ply their former arts below;
And as they sail in Charon's boat,
Contrive to bribe the judge's vote;
To Cerberus they give a sop,
His triple-barking mouth to stop;
Or in the ivory gate of dreams
Project Excise and South-Sea schemes,
Or hire their party pamphleteers
To set Elysium by the ears.

Then, poet, if you mean to thrive,
Employ your Muse on kings alive;
With prudence gather up a cluster
Of all the virtues you can muster,
Which, formed into a garland sweet,
Lay humbly at your monarch's feet,
Who, as the odours reach his throne,
Will smile and think them all his own;
For law and gospel both determine
All virtues lodge in royal ermine,
(I mean the oracles of both,
Who shall depose it upon oath.)
Your garland in the following reign,
Change but the names, will do again.

But, if you think this trade too base,
(Which seldom is the dunce's case,)
Put on the critic's brow, and sit
At Will's the puny judge of wit.
A nod, a shrug, a scornful smile,
With caution used, may serve a while.
Proceed on further in your part,
Before you learn the terms of art;
For you can never be too far gone
In all our modern critics' jargon;
Then talk with more authentic face
Of unities, in time, and place;
Get scraps of Horace from your friends,
And have them at your fingers' ends;
Learn Aristotle's rules by rote,
And at all hazards boldly quote;
Judicious Rymer oft review,
Wise Dennis, and profound Bossu;
Read all the prefaces of Dryden—
For these our critics much confide in,
(Though merely writ at first for filling,
To raise the volume's price a shilling.)

A forward critic often dupes us
With sham quotations Peri Hupsous.
And if we have not read Longinus,
Will magisterially outshine us.
Then, lest with Greek he overrun ye,
Procure the book for love or money,
Translated from Boileau's translation,
And quote quotation on quotation.

At Will's you hear a poem read,
Where Battus from the table-head,
Reclining on his elbow-chair,
Gives judgment with decisive air;
To whom the tribes of circling wits
As to an oracle submits.
He gives directions to the town,
To cry it up, or run it down;
Like courtiers, when they send a note,
Instructing members how to vote.
He sets the stamp of bad and good,
Though not a word he understood.
Your lesson learned, you'll be secure
To get the name of connoisseur:
And, when your merits once are known,
Procure disciples of your own.
For poets, (you can never want 'em,)
Spread through Augusta Trinobantum,
Computing by their pecks of coals,
Amount to just nine thousand souls.
These o'er their proper districts govern,
Of wit and humour judges sovereign.
In every street a city-bard
Rules, like an alderman, his ward;
His undisputed rights extend
Through all the lane, from end to end;
The neighbours round admire his shrewdness
For songs of loyalty and lewdness;
Outdone by none in rhyming well,
Although he never learned to spell.
Two bordering wits contend for glory;
And one is Whig, and one is Tory:
And this for epics claims the bays,
And that for elegiac lays:
Some famed for numbers soft and smooth,
By lovers spoke in Punch's booth;
And some as justly Fame extols
For lofty lines in Smithfield drolls.
Bavius in Wapping gains renown,
And Mavius reigns o'er Kentish-town;
Tigellius, placed in Phoebus' car,
From Ludgate shines to Temple-bar:
Harmonious Cibber entertains
The court with annual birth-day strains;
Whence Gay was banished in disgrace;
Where Pope will never show his face;
Where Young must torture his invention
To flatter knaves, or lose his pension.

But these are not a thousandth part
Of jobbers in the poet's art;
Attending each his proper station,
And all in due subordination,
Through every alley to be found,
In garrets high, or under ground;
And when they join their pericranies,
Out skips a book of miscellanies.
Hobbes clearly proves that every creature
Lives in a state of war by nature;
The greater for the smallest watch,
But meddle seldom with their match.
A whale of moderate size will draw
A shoal of herrings down his maw;
A fox with geese his belly crams;
A wolf destroys a thousand lambs:
But search among the rhyming race,
The brave are worried by the base.
If on Parnassus' top you sit,
You rarely bite, are always bit.
Each poet of inferior size
On you shall rail and criticise,
And strive to tear you limb from limb;
While others do as much for him.

The vermin only tease and pinch
Their foes superior by an inch:
So, naturalists observe, a flea
Hath smaller fleas that on him prey;
And these have smaller still to bite 'em,
And so proceed ad infinitum.
Thus every poet in his kind
Is bit by him that comes behind:
Who, though too little to be seen,
Can tease, and gall, and give the spleen;
Call dunces fools and sons of whores,
Lay Grub Street at each other's doors;
Extol the Greek and Roman masters,
And curse our modern poetasters;
Complain, as many an ancient bard did,
How genius is no more rewarded;
How wrong a taste prevails among us;
How much our ancestors out-sung us;
Can personate an awkward scorn
For those who are not poets born;
And all their brother-dunces lash,
Who crowd the press with hourly trash.

O Grub Street! how do I bemoan thee,
Whose graceless children scorn to own thee!
Their filial piety forgot,
Deny their country like a Scot;
Though by their idiom and grimace,
They soon betray their native place.
Yet thou hast greater cause to be
Ashamed of them, than they of thee,
Degenerate from their ancient brood
Since first the court allowed them food.

Remains a difficulty still,
To purchase fame by writing ill.
From Flecknoe down to Howard's time,
How few have reached the low sublime!
For when our high-born Howard died,
Blackmore alone his place supplied;
And lest a chasm should intervene,
When death had finished Blackmore's reign,
The leaden crown devolved to thee,
Great poet of the Hollow Tree.
But ah! how unsecure thy throne!
A thousand bards thy right disown;
They plot to turn, in factious zeal,
Duncenia to a commonweal;
And with rebellious arms pretend
An equal privilege to defend.

In bulk there are not more degrees
From elephants to mites in cheese,
Than what a curious eye may trace
In creatures of the rhyming race.
From bad to worse, and worse, they fall;
But who can reach the worst of all?
For though in nature, depth and height
Are equally held infinite;
In poetry, the height we know;
'Tis only infinite below.
For instance, when you rashly think
No rhymer can like Welsted sink,
His merits balanced, you shall find
The laureate leaves him far behind;
Concannen, more aspiring bard,
Soars downwards deeper by a yard;
Smart Jemmy Moor with vigour drops;
The rest pursue as thick as hops.
With heads to point, the gulf they enter,
Linked perpendicular to the centre;
And, as their heels elated rise,
Their heads attempt the nether skies.

Oh, what indignity and shame,
To prostitute the Muse's name,
By flattering kings, whom Heaven designed
The plagues and scourges of mankind;
Bred up in ignorance and sloth,
And every vice that nurses both.

Fair Britain, in thy monarch blest,
Whose virtues bear the strictest test;
Whom never faction could bespatter,
Nor minister nor poet flatter;
What justice in rewarding merit!
What magnanimity of spirit!
What lineaments divine we trace
Through all his figure, mien, and face!
Though peace with olive bind his hands,
Confessed the conquering hero stands.
Hydaspes, Indus, and the Ganges,
Dread from his hand impending changes;
From him the Tartar and the Chinese,
Short by the knees, entreat for peace.
The comfort of his throne and bed,
A perfect goddess born and bred;
Appointed sovereign judge to sit
On learning, eloquence and wit.
Our eldest hope, divine Iülus,
(Late, very late, oh, may he rule us!)
What early manhood has he shown,
Before his downy beard was grown!
Then think what wonders will be done,
By going on as he begun,
An heir for Britain to secure
As long as sun and moon endure.

The remnant of the royal blood
Comes pouring on me like a flood:
Bright goddesses, in number five;
Duke William, sweetest prince alive!

Now sings the minister of state,
Who shines alone without a mate.
Observe with what majestic port
This Atlas stands to prop the court,
Intent the public debts to pay,
Like prudent Fabius, by delay.
Thou great vicegerent of the king,
Thy praises every Muse shall sing!
In all affairs thou sole director,
Of wit and learning chief protector;
Though small the time thou hast to spare,
The church is thy peculiar care.
Of pious prelates what a stock
You choose, to rule the sable flock!
You raise the honour of your peerage,
Proud to attend you at the steerage;
You dignify the noble race,
Content yourself with humbler place.
Now learning, valour, virtue, sense,
To titles give the sole pretence.
St George beheld thee with delight
Vouchsafe to be an azure knight,
When on thy breasts and sides herculean
He fixed the star and string cerulean.

Say, poet, in what other nation,
Shone ever such a constellation!
Attend, ye Popes, and Youngs, and Gays,
And tune your harps, and strew your bays:
Your panegyrics here provide;
You cannot err on flattery's side.
Above the stars exalt your style,
You still are low ten thousand mile.
On Louis all his bards bestowed
Of incense many a thousand load;
But Europe mortified his pride,
And swore the fawning rascals lied.
Yet what the world refused to Louis,
Applied to George, exactly true is.
Exactly true! invidious poet!
'Tis fifty thousand times below it.

Translate me now some lines, if you can,
From Virgil, Martial, Ovid, Lucan.
They could all power in heaven divide,
And do no wrong on either side;
They teach you how to split a hair,
Give George and Jove an equal share.
Yet why should we be laced so strait?
I'll give my monarch butter weight;
And reason good, for many a year
Jove never intermeddled here:
Nor, though his priests be duly paid,
Did ever we desire his aid:
We now can better do without him,
Since Woolston gave us arms to rout him.

ON THE DEATH OF DR SWIFT.

Occasioned by reading the following maxim in Rochefoucault, 'Dans l'adversité de nos meilleurs amis, nous trouvons toujours quelque chose qui ne nous déplaît pas;'—'In the adversity of our best friends, we always find something that doth not displease us.'

As Rochefoucault his maxims drew
From nature, I believe them true:

They argue no corrupted mind
In him; the fault is in mankind.

This maxim more than all the rest
Is thought too base for human breast:
'In all distresses of our friends,
We first consult our private ends;
While nature, kindly bent to ease us,
Points out some circumstance to please us.'

If this perhaps your patience move,
Let reason and experience prove.

We all behold with envious eyes
Our equals raised above our size.
Who would not at a crowded show
Stand high himself, keep others low?
I love my friend as well as you:
But why should he obstruct my view?
Then let me have the higher post;
Suppose it but an inch at most.
If in a battle you should find
One, whom you love of all mankind,
Had some heroic action done,
A champion killed, or trophy won;
Rather than thus be over-topped,
Would you not wish his laurels cropped?
Dear honest Ned is in the gout,
Lies racked with pain, and you without:
How patiently you hear him groan!
How glad the case is not your own!

What poet would not grieve to see
His brother write as well as he?
But, rather than they should excel,
Would wish his rivals all in hell?

Her end when emulation misses,
She turns to envy, stings, and hisses:
The strongest friendship yields to pride,
Unless the odds be on our side.
Vain human-kind! fantastic race!
Thy various follies who can trace?
Self-love, ambition, envy, pride,
Their empire in our hearts divide.
Give others riches, power, and station,
'Tis all on me an usurpation.
I have no title to aspire;
Yet, when you sink, I seem the higher.
In Pope I cannot read a line,
But, with a sigh, I wish it mine:
When he can in one couplet fix
More sense than I can do in six,
It gives me such a jealous fit,
I cry, 'Pox take him and his wit!'
I grieve to be outdone by Gay
In my own humorous, biting way.
Arbuthnot is no more my friend,
Who dares to irony pretend,
Which I was born to introduce,
Refined at first, and showed its use.
St John, as well as Pultney, knows
That I had some repute for prose;
And, till they drove me out of date,
Could maul a minister of state.
If they have mortified my pride,
And made me throw my pen aside;
If with such talents Heaven hath blest 'em,
Have I not reason to detest 'em?

To all my foes, dear Fortune, send
Thy gifts; but never to my friend:
I tamely can endure the first;
But this with envy makes me burst.

Thus much may serve by way of proem;
Proceed we therefore to our poem.

The time is not remote when I
Must by the course of nature die;
When, I foresee, my special friends
Will try to find their private ends:
And, though 'tis hardly understood
Which way my death can do them good,
Yet thus, methinks, I hear them speak:
'See how the Dean begins to break!
Poor gentleman, he droops apace!
You plainly find it in his face.
That old vertigo in his head
Will never leave him, till he's dead.
Besides, his memory decays:
He recollects not what he says;
He cannot call his friends to mind;
Forgets the place where last he dined;
Plies you with stories o'er and o'er;
He told them fifty times before.
How does he fancy we can sit
To hear his out-of-fashion wit?
But he takes up with younger folks,
Who for his wine will bear his jokes.
Faith! he must make his stories shorter,
Or change his comrades once a quarter:
In half the time he talks them round,
There must another set be found.

'For poetry, he's past his prime:
He takes an hour to find a rhyme;
His fire is out, his wit decayed,
His fancy sunk, his Muse a jade.
I'd have him throw away his pen;—
But there's no talking to some men!'

And then their tenderness appears
By adding largely to my years:
'He's older than he would be reckoned,
And well remembers Charles the Second.
He hardly drinks a pint of wine;
And that, I doubt, is no good sign.
His stomach too begins to fail:
Last year we thought him strong and hale;
But now he's quite another thing:
I wish he may hold out till spring!'
They hug themselves, and reason thus:
'It is not yet so bad with us!'