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Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Volume 3

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Title: Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Volume 3

Editor: George Gilfillan


        
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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!'

In such a case, they talk in tropes,
And by their fears express their hopes.
Some great misfortune to portend,
No enemy can match a friend.
With all the kindness they profess,
The merit of a lucky guess
(When daily how-d'ye's come of course,
And servants answer, 'Worse and worse!')
Would please them better, than to tell,
That, 'God be praised, the Dean is well.'
Then he who prophesied the best,
Approves his foresight to the rest:
'You know I always feared the worst,
And often told you so at first.'
He'd rather choose that I should die,
Than his predictions prove a lie.
Not one foretells I shall recover;
But all agree to give me over.

Yet, should some neighbour feel a pain
Just in the parts where I complain;
How many a message would he send!
What hearty prayers that I should mend!
Inquire what regimen I kept;
What gave me ease, and how I slept;
And more lament when I was dead,
Than all the snivellers round my bed.

My good companions, never fear;
For, though you may mistake a year,
Though your prognostics run too fast,
They must be verified at last.

Behold the fatal day arrive!
'How is the Dean?'--'He's just alive.'
Now the departing prayer is read;
He hardly breathes--The Dean is dead.

Before the passing-bell begun,
The news through half the town is run.
'Oh! may we all for death prepare!
What has he left? and who's his heir?'
'I know no more than what the news is;
'Tis all bequeathed to public uses.'
'To public uses! there's a whim!
What had the public done for him?
Mere envy, avarice, and pride:
He gave it all--but first he died.
And had the Dean, in all the nation,
No worthy friend, no poor relation?
So ready to do strangers good,
Forgetting his own flesh and blood!'

Now Grub-Street wits are all employed;
With elegies the town is cloyed:
Some paragraph in every paper,
To curse the Dean, or bless the Drapier.
The doctors, tender of their fame,
Wisely on me lay all the blame.
'We must confess, his case was nice;
But he would never take advice.
Had he been ruled, for aught appears,
He might have lived these twenty years:
For, when we opened him, we found
That all his vital parts were sound.'

From Dublin soon to London spread,
'Tis told at court, 'The Dean is dead.'
And Lady Suffolk, in the spleen,
Runs laughing up to tell the queen.
The queen, so gracious, mild, and good,
Cries, 'Is he gone!'tis time he should.
He's dead, you say; then let him rot.
I'm glad the medals were forgot.
I promised him, I own; but when?
I only was the princess then;
But now, as consort of the king,
You know,'tis quite another thing.'

Now Chartres, at Sir Robert's levee,
Tells with a sneer the tidings heavy:
'Why, if he died without his shoes,'
Cries Bob, 'I'm sorry for the news:
Oh, were the wretch but living still,
And in his place my good friend Will!
Or had a mitre on his head,
Provided Bolingbroke were dead!'

Now Curll his shop from rubbish drains:
Three genuine tomes of Swift's remains!
And then, to make them pass the glibber,
Revised by Tibbalds, Moore, and Cibber.
He'll treat me as he does my betters,
Publish my will, my life, my letters;
Revive the libels born to die:
Which Pope must bear, as well as I.

Here shift the scene, to represent
How those I love my death lament.
Poor Pope will grieve a month, and Gay
A week, and Arbuthnot a day.

St John himself will scarce forbear
To bite his pen, and drop a tear.
The rest will give a shrug, and cry,
'I'm sorry--but we all must die!'

Indifference, clad in Wisdom's guise,
All fortitude of mind supplies:
For how can stony bowels melt
In those who never pity felt!
When we are lashed, they kiss the rod,
Resigning to the will of God.

The fools, my juniors by a year,
Are tortured with suspense and fear;
Who wisely thought my age a screen,
When death approached, to stand between:
The screen removed, their hearts are trembling;
They mourn for me without dissembling.

My female friends, whose tender hearts
Have better learned to act their parts,
Receive the news in doleful dumps:
'The Dean is dead: (Pray, what is trumps?)
Then, Lord have mercy on his soul!
(Ladies, I'll venture for the vole.)
Six Deans, they say, must bear the pall:
(I wish I knew what king to call.)
Madam, your husband will attend
The funeral of so good a friend.'
'No, madam, 'tis a shocking sight;
And he's engaged to-morrow night:
My Lady Club will take it ill,
If he should fail her at quadrille.
He loved the Dean--(I lead a heart)--
But dearest friends, they say, must part.
His time was come; he ran his race;
We hope he's in a better place.'

Why do we grieve that friends should die?
No loss more easy to supply.
One year is past; a different scene!
No further mention of the Dean,
Who now, alas! no more is missed,
Than if he never did exist.
Where's now the favourite of Apollo?
Departed:--and his works must follow;
Must undergo the common fate;
His kind of wit is out of date.

Some country squire to Lintot goes,
Inquires for Swift in verse and prose.
Says Lintot, 'I have heard the name;
He died a year ago.'--'The same.'
He searches all the shop in vain.
'Sir, you may find them in Duck Lane:
I sent them, with a load of books,
Last Monday, to the pastry-cook's.
To fancy they could live a year!
I find you're but a stranger here.
The Dean was famous in his time,
And had a kind of knack at rhyme.
His way of writing now is past:
The town has got a better taste.
I keep no antiquated stuff;
But spick and span I have enough.
Pray, do but give me leave to show 'em:
Here's Colley Cibber's birthday poem.
This ode you never yet have seen,
By Stephen Duck, upon the queen.
Then here's a letter finely penned
Against the Craftsman and his friend:
It clearly shows that all reflection
On ministers is disaffection.
Next, here's Sir Robert's vindication,
And Mr Henley's last oration.
The hawkers have not got them yet;
Your honour please to buy a set?

'Here's Wolston's tracts, the twelfth edition;
'Tis read by every politician:
The country-members, when in town,
To all their boroughs send them down:
You never met a thing so smart;
The courtiers have them all by heart:
Those maids of honour who can read,
Are taught to use them for their creed.
The reverend author's good intention
Hath been rewarded with a pension:
He doth an honour to his gown,
By bravely running priestcraft down:
He shows, as sure as God's in Gloucester,
That Moses was a grand impostor;
That all his miracles were cheats,
Performed as jugglers do their feats:
The church had never such a writer;
A shame he hath not got a mitre!'

Suppose me dead; and then suppose
A club assembled at the Rose;
Where, from discourse of this and that,
I grow the subject of their chat.
And while they toss my name about,
With favour some, and some without;
One, quite indifferent in the cause,
My character impartial draws:

'The Dean, if we believe report,
Was never ill received at court,
Although, ironically grave,
He shamed the fool, and lashed the knave;
To steal a hint was never known,
But what he writ was all his own.'

'Sir, I have heard another story;
He was a most confounded Tory,
And grew, or he is much belied,
Extremely dull, before he died.'

'Can we the Drapier then forget?
Is not our nation in his debt?
'Twas he that writ the Drapier's letters!'--

'He should have left them for his betters;
We had a hundred abler men,
Nor need depend upon his pen.--
Say what you will about his reading,
You never can defend his breeding;
Who, in his satires running riot,
Could never leave the world in quiet;
Attacking, when he took the whim,
Court, city, camp,--all one to him.--
But why would he, except he slobbered,
Offend our patriot, great Sir Robert,
Whose counsels aid the sovereign power
To save the nation every hour!
What scenes of evil he unravels
In satires, libels, lying travels,
Not sparing his own clergy cloth,
But eats into it, like a moth!'

'Perhaps I may allow the Dean
Had too much satire in his vein,
And seemed determined not to starve it,
Because no age could more deserve it.
Yet malice never was his aim;
He lashed the vice, but spared the name.

No individual could resent,
Where thousands equally were meant:
His satire points at no defect,
But what all mortals may correct;
For he abhorred the senseless tribe
Who call it humour when they gibe:
He spared a hump or crooked nose,
Whose owners set not up for beaux.
True genuine dulness moved his pity,
Unless it offered to be witty.
Those who their ignorance confessed
He ne'er offended with a jest;
But laughed to hear an idiot quote
A verse from Horace learned by rote.
Vice, if it e'er can be abashed,
Must be or ridiculed, or lashed.
If you resent it, who's to blame?
He neither knows you, nor your name.
Should vice expect to 'scape rebuke,
Because its owner is a dukel?
His friendships, still to few confined,
Were always of the middling kind;
No fools of rank, or mongrel breed,
Who fain would pass for lords indeed:
Where titles give no right or power,
And peerage is a withered flower;
He would have deemed it a disgrace,
If such a wretch had known his face.
On rural squires, that kingdom's bane,
He vented oft his wrath in vain:
* * * * * * * squires to market brought,
Who sell their souls and * * * * for nought.
The * * * * * * * *  go joyful back,
To rob the church, their tenants rack;
Go snacks with * * * * * justices,
And keep the peace to pick up fees;
In every job to have a share,
A gaol or turnpike to repair;
And turn * * * * * * * to public roads
Commodious to their own abodes.

'He never thought an honour done him,
Because a peer was proud to own him;
Would rather slip aside, and choose
To talk with wits in dirty shoes;
And scorn the tools with stars and garters,
So often seen caressing Chartres.
He never courted men in station,
Nor persons held in admiration;
Of no man's greatness was afraid,
Because he sought for no man's aid.
Though trusted long in great affairs,
He gave himself no haughty airs:
Without regarding private ends,
Spent all his credit for his friends;
And only chose the wise and good;
No flatterers; no allies in blood:
But succoured virtue in distress,
And seldom failed of good success;
As numbers in their hearts must own,
Who, but for him, had been unknown.

'He kept with princes due decorum;
Yet never stood in awe before 'em.
He followed David's lesson just,
In princes never put his trust:
And, would you make him truly sour,
Provoke him with a slave in power.
The Irish senate if you named,
With what impatience he declaimed!
Fair LIBERTY was all his cry;
For her he stood prepared to die;
For her he boldly stood alone;
For her he oft exposed his own.
Two kingdoms, just as faction led,
Had set a price upon his head;
But not a traitor could be found,
To sell him for six hundred pound.

'Had he but spared his tongue and pen,
He might have rose like other men:
But power was never in his thought,
And wealth he valued not a groat:
Ingratitude he often found,
And pitied those who meant to wound;
But kept the tenor of his mind,
To merit well of human-kind;
Nor made a sacrifice of those
Who still were true, to please his foes.
He laboured many a fruitless hour,
To reconcile his friends in power;
Saw mischief by a faction brewing,
While they pursued each other's ruin.
But, finding vain was all his care,
He left the court in mere despair.

'And, oh! how short are human schemes!
Here ended all our golden dreams.
What St John's skill in state affairs,
What Ormond's valour, Oxford's cares,
To save their sinking country lent,
Was all destroyed by one event.
Too soon that precious life was ended,
On which alone our weal depended.
When up a dangerous faction starts,
With wrath and vengeance in their hearts;
By solemn league and covenant bound,
To ruin, slaughter, and confound;
To turn religion to a fable,
And make the government a Babel;
Pervert the laws, disgrace the gown,
Corrupt the senate, rob the crown;
To sacrifice old England's glory,
And make her infamous in story:
When such a tempest shook the land,
How could unguarded virtue stand!

'With horror, grief, despair, the Dean
Beheld the dire destructive scene:
His friends in exile, or the Tower,
Himself within the frown of power;
Pursued by base envenomed pens,
Far to the land of S---- and fens;
A servile race in folly nursed,
Who truckle most, when treated worst.

'By innocence and resolution,
He bore continual persecution;
While numbers to preferment rose,
Whose merit was to be his foes;
When even his own familiar friends,
Intent upon their private ends,
Like renegadoes now he feels,
Against him lifting up their heels.

'The Dean did, by his pen, defeat
An infamous destructive cheat;
Taught fools their interest how to know,
And gave them arms to ward the blow.
Envy hath owned it was his doing,
To save that hapless land from ruin;
While they who at the steerage stood,
And reaped the profit, sought his blood.

'To save them from their evil fate,
In him was held a crime of state.
A wicked monster on the bench,
Whose fury blood could never quench;
As vile and profligate a villain,
As modern Scroggs, or old Tressilian;
Who long all justice had discarded,
Nor feared he God, nor man regarded;
Vowed on the Dean his rage to vent,
And make him of his zeal repent:
But Heaven his innocence defends,
The grateful people stand his friends;
Not strains of law, nor judges' frown,
Nor topics brought to please the crown,
Nor witness hired, nor jury picked,
Prevail to bring him in convict.

'In exile, with a steady heart,
He spent his life's declining part;
Where folly, pride, and faction sway,
Remote from St John, Pope, and Gay.'

'Alas, poor Dean! his only scope
Was to be held a misanthrope.
This into general odium drew him,
Which if he liked, much good may't do him.
His zeal was not to lash our crimes,
But discontent against the times:
For, had we made him timely offers
To raise his post, or fill his coffers,
Perhaps he might have truckled down,
Like other brethren of his gown;
For party he would scarce have bled:--
I say no more--because he's dead.--
What writings has he left behind?'

'I hear they're of a different kind:
A few in verse; but most in prose--'

'Some high-flown pamphlets, I suppose:--
All scribbled in the worst of times,
To palliate his friend Oxford's crimes;
To praise Queen Anne, nay more, defend her,
As never favouring the Pretender:
Or libels yet concealed from sight,
Against the court to show his spite:
Perhaps his travels, part the third;
A lie at every second word--
Offensive to a loyal ear:--
But--not one sermon, you may swear.'

'He knew an hundred pleasing stories,
With all the turns of Whigs and Tories:
Was cheerful to his dying-day;
And friends would let him have his way.

'As for his works in verse or prose,
I own myself no judge of those.
Nor can I tell what critics thought them;
But this I know, all people bought them,
As with a moral view designed,
To please and to reform mankind:
And, if he often missed his aim,
The world must own it to their shame,
The praise is his, and theirs the blame.
He gave the little wealth he had
To build a house for fools and mad;
To show, by one satiric touch,
No nation wanted it so much.
That kingdom he hath left his debtor,
I wish it soon may have a better.
And, since you dread no further lashes,
Methinks you may forgive his ashes.'


A CHARACTER, PANEGYRIC, AND DESCRIPTION OF THE
LEGION-CLUB. 1736.

As I stroll the city, oft I
See a building large and lofty,
Not a bow-shot from the college;
Half the globe from sense and knowledge:
By the prudent architect,
Placed against the church direct,
Making good thy grandame's jest,
'Near the church'--you know the rest.

Tell us what the pile contains?
Many a head that holds no brains.
These demoniacs let me dub
With the name of Legion-Club.
Such assemblies, you might swear,
Meet when butchers bait a bear;
Such a noise, and such haranguing,
When a brother thief is hanging:
Such a rout and such a rabble
Run to hear Jack-pudden gabble;
Such a crowd their ordure throws
On a far less villain's nose.

Could I from the building's top
Hear the rattling thunder drop,
While the devil upon the roof
(If the devil be thunder-proof)
Should with poker fiery red
Crack the stones, and melt the lead;
Drive them down on every skull,
While the den of thieves is full;
Quite destroy the harpies' nest;
How might then our isle be blest!
For divines allow that God
Sometimes makes the devil his rod;
And the gospel will inform us,
He can punish sins enormous.

Yet should Swift endow the schools,
For his lunatics and fools,
With a rood or two of land,
I allow the pile may stand.
You perhaps will ask me, Why so?
But it is with this proviso:
Since the house is like to last,
Let the royal grant be passed,
That the club have right to dwell
Each within his proper cell,
With a passage left to creep in,
And a hole above for peeping.
Let them when they once get in,
Sell the nation for a pin;
While they sit a-picking straws,
Let them rave at making laws;
While they never hold their tongue,
Let them dabble in their dung;
Let them form a grand committee,
How to plague and starve the city;
Let them stare, and storm, and frown,
When they see a clergy gown;
Let them, ere they crack a louse,
Call for the orders of the house;
Let them, with their gosling quills,
Scribble senseless heads of bills.
We may, while they strain their throats,
Wipe our a--s with their votes.
Let Sir Tom[1] that rampant ass,
Stuff his guts with flax and grass;
But, before the priest he fleeces,
Tear the Bible all to pieces:
At the parsons, Tom, halloo, boy,
Worthy offspring of a shoe-boy,
Footman, traitor, vile seducer,
Perjured rebel, bribed accuser,
Lay thy privilege aside,
Sprung from Papist regicide;
Fall a-working like a mole,
Raise the dirt about your hole.

Come, assist me, muse obedient!
Let us try some new expedient;
Shift the scene for half an hour,
Time and place are in thy power.
Thither, gentle muse, conduct me;
I shall ask, and you instruct me.

See the muse unbars the gate!
Hark, the monkeys, how they prate!

All ye gods who rule the soul!
Styx, through hell whose waters roll!
Let me be allowed to tell
What I heard in yonder cell.

Near the door an entrance gapes,
Crowded round with antic shapes,
Poverty, and Grief, and Care,
Causeless Joy, and true Despair;
Discord periwigged with snakes,
See the dreadful strides she takes!

By this odious crew beset,
I began to rage and fret,
And resolved to break their pates,
Ere we entered at the gates;
Had not Clio in the nick
Whispered me, 'Lay down your stick.'
What, said I, is this the mad-house?
These, she answered, are but shadows,
Phantoms bodiless and vain,
Empty visions of the brain.'

In the porch Briareus stands,
Shows a bribe in all his hands;
Briareus, the secretary,
But we mortals call him Carey.
When the rogues their country fleece,
They may hope for pence a-piece.

Clio, who had been so wise
To put on a fool's disguise,
To bespeak some approbation,
And be thought a near relation,
When she saw three hundred brutes
All involved in wild disputes,
Roaring till their lungs were spent,
'Privilege of Parliament.'
Now a new misfortune feels,
Dreading to be laid by the heels.
Never durst the muse before
Enter that infernal door;
Clio, stifled with the smell,
Into spleen and vapours fell,
By the Stygian steams that flew
From the dire infectious crew.
Not the stench of Lake Avernus
Could have more offended her nose;
Had she flown but o'er the top,
She had felt her pinions drop,
And by exhalations dire,
Though a goddess, must expire.
In a fright she crept away;
Bravely I resolved to stay.

When I saw the keeper frown,
Tipping him with half-a-crown,
Now, said I, we are alone,
Name your heroes one by one.

Who is that hell-featured brawler?
Is it Satan? No,'tis Waller.
In what figure can a bard dress
Jack the grandson of Sir Hardress?
Honest keeper, drive him further,
In his looks are hell and murther;
See the scowling visage drop,
Just as when he murdered T----p.
Keeper, show me where to fix
On the puppy pair of Dicks;
By their lantern jaws and leathern,
You might swear they both are brethren:
Dick Fitzbaker, Dick the player,
Old acquaintance, are you there?
Dear companions, hug and kiss,
Toast Old Glorious in your piss:
Tie them, keeper, in a tether,
Let them starve and stink together;
Both are apt to be unruly,
Lash them daily, lash them duly;
Though 'tis hopeless to reclaim them,
Scorpion rods perhaps may tame them.

Keeper, yon old dotard smoke,
Sweetly snoring in his cloak;
Who is he? 'Tis humdrum Wynne,
Half encompassed by his kin:
There observe the tribe of Bingham,
For he never fails to bring 'em;
While he sleeps the whole debate,
They submissive round him wait;
Yet would gladly see the hunks
In his grave, and search his trunks.
See, they gently twitch his coat,
Just to yawn and give his vote,
Always firm in his vocation,
For the court, against the nation.

Those are A----s Jack and Bob,
First in every wicked job,
Son and brother to a queer
Brain-sick brute, they call a peer.
We must give them better quarter,
For their ancestor trod mortar,
And at H----th, to boast his fame,
On a chimney cut his name.

There sit Clements, D----ks, and Harrison,
How they swagger from their garrison!
Such a triplet could you tell
Where to find on this side hell?
Harrison, D----ks, and Clements,
Keeper, see they have their payments;
Every mischief's in their hearts;
If they fail, 'tis want of parts.

Bless us, Morgan! art thou there, man!
Bless mine eyes! art thou the chairman!
Chairman to yon damned committee!
Yet I look on thee with pity.
Dreadful sight! what! learned Morgan
Metamorphosed to a Gorgon?
For thy horrid looks I own,
Half convert me to a stone,
Hast thou been so long at school,
Now to turn a factious tool?
Alma Mater was thy mother,
Every young divine thy brother.
Thou a disobedient varlet,
Treat thy mother like a harlot!
Thou ungrateful to thy teachers,
Who are all grown reverend preachers!
Morgan, would it not surprise one!
Turn thy nourishment to poison!
When you walk among your books,
They reproach you with your looks.
Bind them fast, or from their shelves
They will come and right themselves;
Homer, Plutarch, Virgil, Flaccus,
All in arms prepare to back us.
Soon repent, or put to slaughter
Every Greek and Roman author.
Will you, in your faction's phrase,
Send the clergy all to graze,
And, to make your project pass,
Leave them not a blade of grass?
How I want thee, humorous Hogarth!
Thou, I hear, a pleasing rogue art,
Were but you and I acquainted,
Every monster should be painted:
You should try your graving-tools
On this odious group of fools:
Draw the beasts as I describe them
From their features, while I gibe them;
Draw them like; for I assure you,
You will need no _car'catura;_
Draw them so, that we may trace
All the soul in every face.
Keeper, I must now retire,
You have done what I desire:
But I feel my spirits spent
With the noise, the sight, the scent.

'Pray be patient; you shall find
Half the best are still behind:
You have hardly seen a score;
I can show two hundred more.'
Keeper, I have seen enough.--
Taking then a pinch of snuff,
I concluded, looking round them,
'May their god, the devil, confound them.
Take them, Satan, as your due,
All except the Fifty-two.'

[1] 'Sir Tom:' Sir Thomas Prendergrast, a privy councillor.




ISAAC WATTS.


We feel relieved, and so doubtless do our readers, in passing from the
dark tragic story of Swift, and his dubious and unhappy character, to
contemplate the useful career of a much smaller, but a much better man,
Isaac Watts. This admirable person was born at Southampton on the 17th
of July 1674. His father, of the same name, kept a boarding-school for
young gentlemen, and was a man of intelligence and piety. Isaac was the
eldest of nine children, and began early to display precocity of genius.
At four he commenced to study Latin at home, and afterwards, under one
Pinhorn, a clergyman, who kept the free-school at Southampton, he
learned Latin, Hebrew, and Greek. A subscription was proposed for
sending him to one of the great universities, but he preferred casting
in his lot with the Dissenters. He repaired accordingly, in 1690, to
an academy kept by the Rev. Thomas Rowe, whose son, we believe, became
the husband of the celebrated Elizabeth Rowe, the once popular author
of 'Letters from the Dead to the Living.' The Rowes belonged to the
Independent body. At this academy Watts began to write poetry, chiefly
in the Latin language, and in the then popular Pindaric measure. At the
age of twenty, he returned to his father's house, and spent two quiet
years in devotion, meditation, and study. He became next a tutor in the
family of Sir John Hartopp for five years. He was afterwards chosen
assistant to Dr Chauncey, and, after the Doctor's death, became his
successor. His health, however, failed, and, after getting an assistant
for a while, he was compelled to resign. In 1712, Sir Thomas Abney, a
benevolent gentleman of the neighbourhood, received Watts into his
house, where he continued during the rest of his life--all his wants
attended to, and his feeble frame so tenderly cared for that he lived
to the age of seventy-five. Sir Thomas died eight years after Dr Watts
entered his establishment, but the widow and daughters continued
unwearied in their attentions. Abney House was a mansion surrounded by
fine gardens and pleasure-grounds, where the Doctor became thoroughly
at home, and was wont to refresh his body and mind in the intervals
of study. He preached regularly to a congregation, and in the pulpit,
although his stature was low, not exceeding five feet, the excellence
of his matter, the easy flow of his language, and the propriety of his
pronunciation, rendered him very popular. In private he was exceedingly
kind to the poor and to children, giving to the former a third part
of his small income of £100 a-year, and writing for the other his
inimitable hymns. Besides these, he published a well-known treatise
on Logic, another on 'The Improvement of the Mind,' besides various
theological productions, amongst which his 'World to Come' has been
preeminently popular. In 1728, he received from Edinburgh and Aberdeen
an unsolicited diploma of Doctor of Divinity. As age advanced, he found
himself unable to discharge his ministerial duties, and offered to remit
his salary, but his congregation refused to accept his demission. On the
25th November 1748, quite worn out, but without suffering, this able and
worthy man expired.

If to be eminently useful is to fulfil the highest purpose of humanity,
it was certainly fulfilled by Isaac Watts. His logical and other
treatises have served to brace the intellects, methodise the studies,
and concentrate the activities of thousands--we had nearly said of
millions of minds. This has given him an enviable distinction, but he
shone still more in that other province he so felicitously chose and
so successfully occupied--that of the hearts of the young. One of his
detractors called him 'Mother Watts.' He might have taken up this
epithet, and bound it as a crown unto him. We have heard of a pious
foreigner, possessed of imperfect English, who, in an agony of
supplication to God for some sick friend, said, 'O Fader, hear me!
O Mudder, hear me!' It struck us as one of the finest of stories, and
containing one of the most beautiful tributes to the Deity we ever
heard, recognising in Him a pity which not even a father, which only
a mother can feel. Like a tender mother does good Watts bend over the
little children, and secure that their first words of song shall be
those of simple, heartfelt trust in God, and of faith in their Elder
Brother. To create a little heaven in the nursery by hymns, and these
not mawkish or twaddling, but beautifully natural and exquisitely simple
breathings of piety and praise, was the high task to which Watts
consecrated, and by which he has immortalised, his genius.


FEW HAPPY MATCHES.

1   Stay, mighty Love, and teach my song,
    To whom thy sweetest joys belong,
      And who the happy pairs,
    Whose yielding hearts, and joining hands,
    Find blessings twisted with their bands,
      To soften all their cares.

2   Not the wild herds of nymphs and swains
    That thoughtless fly into thy chains,
      As custom leads the way:
    If there be bliss without design,
    Ivies and oaks may grow and twine,
      And be as blest as they.

3   Not sordid souls of earthly mould
    Who, drawn by kindred charms of gold,
      To dull embraces move:
    So two rich mountains of Peru
    May rush to wealthy marriage too,
      And make a world of love.

4   Not the mad tribe that hell inspires
    With wanton flames; those raging fires
      The purer bliss destroy:
    On Aetna's top let furies wed,
    And sheets of lightning dress the bed,
      To improve the burning joy.

5   Nor the dull pairs whose marble forms
    None of the melting passions warms
      Can mingle hearts and hands:
    Logs of green wood that quench the coals
    Are married just like stoic souls,
      With osiers for their bands.

6   Not minds of melancholy strain,
    Still silent, or that still complain,
      Can the dear bondage bless:
    As well may heavenly concerts spring
    From two old lutes with ne'er a string,
      Or none besides the bass.

7   Nor can the soft enchantments hold
    Two jarring souls of angry mould,
      The rugged and the keen:
    Samson's young foxes might as well
    In bonds of cheerful wedlock dwell,
      With firebrands tied between.

8   Nor let the cruel fetters bind
    A gentle to a savage mind,
      For love abhors the sight:
    Loose the fierce tiger from the deer,
    For native rage and native fear
      Rise and forbid delight.

9  Two kindest souls alone must meet;
   'Tis friendship makes the bondage sweet,
     And feeds their mutual loves:
   Bright Venus on her rolling throne
   Is drawn by gentlest birds alone,
     And Cupids yoke the doves.


THE SLUGGARD.

1 'Tis the voice of the sluggard; I heard him complain,
  'You have waked me too soon, I must slumber again.'
  As the door on its hinges, so he on his bed,
  Turns his sides, and his shoulders, and his heavy head.

2 'A little more sleep, and a little more slumber;'
  Thus he wastes half his days, and his hours without number;
  And when he gets up, he sits folding his hands,
  Or walks about sauntering, or trifling he stands.

3 I passed by his garden, and saw the wild brier,
  The thorn and thistle grew broader and higher;
  The clothes that hang on him are turning to rags,
  And his money still wastes till he starves or he begs.

4 I made him a visit, still hoping to find
  He had took better care for improving his mind;
  He told me his dreams, talked of eating and drinking,
  But he scarce reads his Bible, and never loves thinking.

5 Said I then to my heart, 'Here's a lesson for me:
  That man's but a picture of what I might be;
  But thanks to my friends for their care in my breeding,
  Who taught me betimes to love working and reading.'


THE ROSE.

1 How fair is the rose! what a beautiful flower!
    The glory of April and May!
  But the leaves are beginning to fade in an hour,
    And they wither and die in a day.

2 Yet the rose has one powerful virtue to boast,
    Above all the flowers of the field:
  When its leaves are all dead, and fine colours are lost,
    Still how sweet a perfume it will yield!

3 So frail is the youth and the beauty of men,
    Though they bloom and look gay like the rose:
  But all our fond care to preserve them is vain;
    Time kills them as fast as he goes.

4 Then I'll not be proud of my youth or my beauty,
    Since both of them wither and fade:
  But gain a good name by well doing my duty;
    This will scent, like a rose, when I'm dead.


A CRADLE HYMN.

1  Hush! my dear, lie still and slumber,
     Holy angels guard thy bed!
   Heavenly blessings without number
     Gently falling on thy head.

2  Sleep, my babe; thy food and raiment,
     House and home, thy friends provide;
   All without thy care or payment,
     All thy wants are well supplied.

3  How much better thou'rt attended
     Than the Son of God could be,
   When from heaven he descended,
     And became a child like thee!

4  Soft and easy in thy cradle:
     Coarse and hard thy Saviour lay,
   When his birthplace was a stable,
     And his softest bed was hay.

5  Blessed babe! what glorious features,
     Spotless fair, divinely bright!
   Must he dwell with brutal creatures?
     How could angels bear the sight?

6  Was there nothing but a manger
     Cursed sinners could afford,
   To receive the heavenly Stranger!
     Did they thus affront their Lord?

7  Soft, my child, I did not chide thee,
     Though my song might sound too hard;
   This thy { mother[1]  } sits beside thee,
            { nurse that }
     And her arms shall be thy guard.

8  Yet to read the shameful story,
     How the Jews abused their King,
   How they served the Lord of glory,
     Makes me angry while I sing.

9  See the kinder shepherds round him,
     Telling wonders from the sky!
   Where they sought him, where they found him,
     With his virgin mother by.

10 See the lovely babe a-dressing;
     Lovely infant, how he smiled!
   When he wept, the mother's blessing
     Soothed and hushed the holy child.

11 Lo! he slumbers in his manger,
     Where the horned oxen fed:
   Peace, my darling, here's no danger,
     Here's no ox a-near thy bed.

12 'Twas to save thee, child, from dying,
     Save my dear from burning flame,
   Bitter groans, and endless crying,
     That thy blest Redeemer came.

13 Mayst thou live to know and fear him,
     Trust and love him, all thy days;
   Then go dwell for ever near him,
     See his face, and sing his praise!

14 I could give thee thousand kisses,
     Hoping what I most desire;
   Not a mother's fondest wishes
     Can to greater joys aspire.

[1] Here you may use the words, brother, sister, neighbour, friend.


BREATHING TOWARD THE HEAVENLY COUNTRY.

    The beauty of my native land
        Immortal love inspires;
      I burn, I burn with strong desires,
      And sigh and wait the high command.
      There glides the moon her shining way,
  And shoots my heart through with a silver ray.
        Upward my heart aspires:
      A thousand lamps of golden light,
  Hung high in vaulted azure, charm my sight,
  And wink and beckon with their amorous fires.
  O ye fair glories of my heavenly home,
  Bright sentinels who guard my Father's court,
      Where all the happy minds resort!
      When will my Father's chariot come?
  Must ye for ever walk the ethereal round,
      For ever see the mourner lie
        An exile of the sky,
        A prisoner of the ground?
  Descend, some shining servants from on high,
        Build me a hasty tomb;
      A grassy turf will raise my head;
      The neighbouring lilies dress my bed,
        And shed a sweet perfume.
      Here I put off the chains of death,
        My soul too long has worn:
      Friends, I forbid one groaning breath,
        Or tear to wet my urn.
      Raphael, behold me all undressed;
      Here gently lay this flesh to rest,
      Then mount and lead the path unknown.
Swift I pursue thee, flaming guide, on pinions of my own.


TO THE REV. MR JOHN HOWE.

  Great man, permit the muse to climb,
    And seat her at thy feet;
  Bid her attempt a thought sublime,
    And consecrate her wit.
  I feel, I feel the attractive force
    Of thy superior soul:
  My chariot flies her upward course,
    The wheels divinely roll.
  Now let me chide the mean affairs
    And mighty toil of men:
  How they grow gray in trifling cares,
  Or waste the motion of the spheres
    Upon delights as vain!
  A puff of honour fills the mind,
  And yellow dust is solid good;

  Thus, like the ass of savage kind,
  We snuff the breezes of the wind,
    Or steal the serpent's food.
      Could all the choirs
      That charm the poles
    But strike one doleful sound,
  'Twould be employed to mourn our souls,
  Souls that were framed of sprightly fires,
      In floods of folly drowned.
Souls made for glory seek a brutal joy;
How they disclaim their heavenly birth,
Melt their bright substance down to drossy earth,
And hate to be refined from that impure alloy.

  Oft has thy genius roused us hence
    With elevated song,
  Bid us renounce this world of sense,
  Bid us divide the immortal prize
    With the seraphic throng:
  'Knowledge and love make spirits blest,
  Knowledge their food, and love their rest;'
  But flesh, the unmanageable beast,
  Resists the pity of thine eyes,
    And music of thy tongue.
  Then let the worms of grovelling mind
  Round the short joys of earthly kind
    In restless windings roam;
  Howe hath an ample orb of soul,
  Where shining worlds of knowledge roll,
  Where love, the centre and the pole,
    Completes the heaven at home.




AMBROSE PHILIPS.


This gentleman--remembered now chiefly as Pope's temporary rival--was
born in 1671, in Leicestershire; studied at Cambridge; and, being
a great Whig, was appointed by the government of George I. to be
Commissioner of the Collieries, and afterwards to some lucrative
appointments in Ireland. He was also made one of the Commissioners of
the Lottery. He was elected member for Armagh in the Irish House of
Commons. He returned home in 1748, and died the next year in his
lodgings at Vauxhall.

His works are 'The Distressed Mother,' a tragedy translated from Racine,
and greatly praised in the _Spectator_; two deservedly forgotten plays,
'The Briton,' and 'Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester;' some miscellaneous
pieces, of which an epistle to the Earl of Dorset, dated Copenhagen, has
some very vivid lines; his Pastorals, which were commended by Tickell at
the expense of those of Pope, who took his revenge by damning them, not
with 'faint' but with fulsome and ironical praise, in the _Guardian_;
and the subjoined fragment from Sappho, which is, particularly in the
first stanza, melody itself. Some conjecture that it was touched up by
Addison.


A FRAGMENT OF SAPPHO.

1 Blessed as the immortal gods is he,
  The youth who fondly sits by thee,
  And hears and sees thee all the while
  Softly speak, and sweetly smile.

2 'Twas this deprived my soul of rest,
  And raised such tumults in my breast;
  For while I gazed, in transport tossed,
  My breath was gone, my voice was lost.

3 My bosom glowed: the subtle flame
  Ran quickly through my vital frame;
  O'er my dim eyes a darkness hung,
  My ears with hollow murmurs rung.

4 In dewy damps my limbs were chilled,
  My blood with gentle horrors thrilled;
  My feeble pulse forgot to play,
  I fainted, sunk, and died away.




WILLIAM HAMILTON.


William Hamilton, of Bangour, was born in Ayrshire in 1704. He was of
an ancient family, and mingled from the first in the most fashionable
circles. Ere he was twenty he wrote verses in Ramsay's 'Tea-Table
Miscellany.' In 1745, to the surprise of many, he joined the standard
of Prince Charles, and wrote a poem on the battle of Gladsmuir, or
Prestonpans. When the reverse of his party came, after many wanderings
and hair's-breadth escapes in the Highlands, he found refuge in France.
As he was a general favourite, and as much allowance was made for his
poetical temperament, a pardon was soon procured for him by his friends,
and he returned to his native country. His health, however, originally
delicate, had suffered by his Highland privations, and he was compelled
to seek the milder clime of Lyons, where he died in 1754.

Hamilton was what is called a ladies'-man, but his attachments were not
deep, and he rather flirted than loved. A Scotch lady, who was annoyed
at his addresses, asked John Home how she could get rid of them. He,
knowing Hamilton well, advised her to appear to favour him. She acted on
the advice, and he immediately withdrew his suit. And yet his best poem
is a tale of love, and a tale, too, told with great simplicity and
pathos. We refer to his 'Braes of Yarrow,' the beauty of which we never
felt fully till we saw some time ago that lovely region, with its 'dowie
dens,'--its clear living stream,--Newark Castle, with its woods and
memories,--and the green wildernesses of silent hills which stretch on
all sides around; saw it, too, in that aspect of which Wordsworth sung
in the words--

  'The grace of forest charms decayed
  And pastoral melancholy.'

It is the highest praise we can bestow upon Hamilton's ballad that it
ranks in merit near Wordsworth's fine trinity of poems, 'Yarrow
Unvisited,' 'Yarrow Visited,' and 'Yarrow Revisited.'


THE BRAES OF YARROW.

1  A. Busk ye, busk ye, my bonny bonny bride,
     Busk ye, busk ye, my winsome marrow!
   Busk ye, busk ye, my bonny bonny bride,
     And think nae mair on the Braes of Yarrow.

2  B. Where gat ye that bonny bonny bride?
     Where gat ye that winsome marrow?
   A. I gat her where I darena weil be seen,
     Pouing the birks on the Braes of Yarrow.

3  Weep not, weep not, my bonny bonny bride,
     Weep not, weep not, my winsome marrow!
   Nor let thy heart lament to leave
     Pouing the birks on the Braes of Yarrow.

4  B. Why does she weep, thy bonny bonny bride?
     Why does she weep, thy winsome marrow?
   And why dare ye nae mair weil be seen,
     Pouing the birks on the Braes of Yarrow?

5  A. Lang maun she weep, lang maun she, maun she weep,
     Lang maun she weep with dule and sorrow,
   And lang maun I nae mair weil be seen
     Pouing the birks on the Braes of Yarrow.

6  For she has tint her lover lover dear,
     Her lover dear, the cause of sorrow,
   And I hae slain the comeliest swain
     That e'er poued birks on the Braes of Yarrow.

7  Why runs thy stream, O Yarrow, Yarrow, red?
     Why on thy braes heard the voice of sorrow?
   And why yon melancholious weeds
     Hung on the bonny birks of Yarrow?

8  What's yonder floats on the rueful rueful flude?
     What's yonder floats?  O dule and sorrow!
   Tis he, the comely swain I slew
     Upon the duleful Braes of Yarrow.

9  Wash, oh wash his wounds his wounds in tears,
     His wounds in tears with dule and sorrow,
   And wrap his limbs in mourning weeds,
     And lay him on the Braes of Yarrow.

10 Then build, then build, ye sisters sisters sad,
     Ye sisters sad, his tomb with sorrow,
   And weep around in waeful wise,
     His helpless fate on the Braes of Yarrow.

11 Curse ye, curse ye, his useless useless shield,
     My arm that wrought the deed of sorrow,
   The fatal spear that pierced his breast,
     His comely breast, on the Braes of Yarrow.

12 Did I not warn thee not to lue,
     And warn from fight, but to my sorrow;
   O'er rashly bauld a stronger arm
     Thou met'st, and fell on the Braes of Yarrow.

13 Sweet smells the birk, green grows, green grows the grass,
     Yellow on Yarrow bank the gowan,
   Fair hangs the apple frae the rock,
     Sweet the wave of Yarrow flowan.

14 Flows Yarrow sweet? as sweet, as sweet flows Tweed,
     As green its grass, its gowan as yellow,
   As sweet smells on its braes the birk,
     The apple frae the rock as mellow.

15 Fair was thy love, fair fair indeed thy love
     In flowery bands thou him didst fetter;
   Though he was fair and weil beloved again,
     Than me he never lued thee better.

16 Busk ye then, busk, my bonny bonny bride,
     Busk ye, busk ye, my winsome marrow,
   Busk ye, and lue me on the banks of Tweed,
     And think nae mair on the Braes of Yarrow.

17 C. How can I busk a bonny bonny bride,
     How can I busk a winsome marrow,
   How lue him on the banks of Tweed,
     That slew my love on the Braes of Yarrow?

18 O Yarrow fields! may never never rain
     Nor dew thy tender blossoms cover,
   For there was basely slain my love,
     My love, as he had not been a lover.

19 The boy put on his robes, his robes of green,
     His purple vest, 'twas my ain sewin',
   Ah! wretched me! I little little kenned
     He was in these to meet his ruin.

20 The boy took out his milk-white milk-white steed,
     Unheedful of my dule and sorrow,
   But e'er the to-fall of the night
     He lay a corpse on the Braes of Yarrow.

21 Much I rejoiced that waeful waeful day;
     I sang, my voice the woods returning,
   But lang ere night the spear was flown
     That slew my love, and left me mourning.

22 What can my barbarous barbarous father do,
     But with his cruel rage pursue me?
   My lover's blood is on thy spear,
     How canst thou, barbarous man, then woo me?

23 My happy sisters may be may be proud;
     With cruel and ungentle scoffin',
   May bid me seek on Yarrow Braes
     My lover nailed in his coffin.

24 My brother Douglas may upbraid, upbraid,
     And strive with threatening words to move me;
   My lover's blood is on thy spear,
     How canst thou ever bid me love thee?

25 Yes, yes, prepare the bed, the bed of love,
     With bridal sheets my body cover,
   Unbar, ye bridal maids, the door,
     Let in the expected husband lover.

26 But who the expected husband husband is?
     His hands, methinks, are bathed in slaughter.
   Ah me! what ghastly spectre's yon,
     Comes, in his pale shroud, bleeding after?

27 Pale as he is, here lay him lay him down,
     Oh, lay his cold head on my pillow!
   Take aff take aff these bridal weeds,
     And crown my careful head with willow.

28 Pale though thou art, yet best yet best beloved;
     Oh, could my warmth to life restore thee,
   Ye'd lie all night between my breasts!
     No youth lay ever there before thee.

29 Pale pale, indeed, O lovely lovely youth;
     Forgive, forgive so foul a slaughter,
   And lie all night between my breasts;
     No youth shall ever lie there after.

30 A. Return, return, O mournful mournful bride,
     Return and dry thy useless sorrow:
   Thy lover heeds nought of thy sighs,
     He lies a corpse on the Braes of Yarrow.




ALLAN RAMSAY.


Crawford Muir, in Lanarkshire, was the birthplace of this true poet. His
father was manager of the Earl of Hopetoun's lead-mines. Allan was born
in 1686. His mother was Alice Bower, the daughter of an Englishman who
had emigrated from Derbyshire. His father died while his son was yet in
infancy; his mother married again in the same district; and young Allan
was educated at the parish school of Leadhills. At the age of fifteen,
he was sent to Edinburgh, and bound apprentice to a wig-maker there.
This trade, however, he left after finishing his term. He displayed
rather early a passion for literature, and made a little reputation by
some pieces of verse,--such as 'An Address to the Easy Club,' a convivial
society with which he was connected,--and a considerable time after by
a capital continuation of King James' 'Christis Kirk on the Green.'
In 1712, he married a writer's daughter, Christiana Ross, who was his
affectionate companion for thirty years. Soon after, he set up a
bookseller's shop opposite Niddry's Wynd, and in this capacity edited
and published two collections,--the one of songs, some of them his own,
entitled 'The Tea-Table Miscellany,' and the other of early Scottish
poems, entitled 'The Evergreen.' In 1725, he published 'The Gentle
Shepherd.' It was the expansion of one or two pastoral scenes which he
ad shewn to his delighted friends. The poem became instantly popular,
and was republished in London and Dublin, and widely circulated in the
colonies. Pope admired it. Gay, then in Scotland with his patrons the
Queensberry family, used to lounge into Ramsay's shop to get explanations
of its Scotch phrases to transmit to Twickenham, and to watch from the
window the notable characters whom Allan pointed out to him in the
Edinburgh Exchange. He now removed to a better shop, and set up for his
sign the heads of Ben Jonson and Drummond, who agreed better in figure
than they had done in reality at Hawthornden. He established the first
circulating library in Scotland. His shop became a centre of intelligence,
and Ramsay sat a Triton among the minnows of that rather mediocre day
--giving his little senate laws, and inditing verses, songs, and fables.
At forty-five--an age when Sir Walter Scott had scarcely commenced his
Waverley novels, and Dryden had by far his greatest works to produce
--honest Allan imagined his vein exhausted, and ceased to write, although
he lived and enjoyed life for nearly thirty years more. At last, after
having lost money and gained obloquy, in a vain attempt to found the
first theatre in Edinburgh, and after building for himself a curious
octagon-shaped house on the north side of the Castle Hill, which, while
he called it Ramsay Lodge, his enemies nicknamed 'The Goose-pie,' and
which, though altered, still, we believe, stands, under the name of
Ramsay Garden, the author of 'The Gentle Shepherd' breathed his last on
the 7th of January 1758. He died of a scurvy in the gums. His son became
a distinguished painter, intimate with Johnson, Burke, and the rest of
that splendid set, although now chiefly remembered from his connexion
with them and with his father.

Allan Ramsay was a poet with very few of the usual poetical faults. He
had an eye for nature, but he had also an eye for the main chance. He
'kept his shop, and his shop kept him.' He might sing of intrigues, and
revels, and houses of indifferent reputation; but he was himself a
quiet, _canny_, domestic man, seen regularly at kirk and market. He had
a great reverence for the gentry, with whom he fancied himself, and
perhaps was, through the Dalhousie family, connected. He had a vast
opinion of himself; and between pride of blood, pride of genius, and
plenty of means, he was tolerably happy. How different from poor maudlin
Fergusson, or from that dark-browed, dark-eyed, impetuous being who was,
within a year of Ramsay's death, to appear upon the banks of Doon,
coming into the world to sing divinely, to act insanely, and prematurely
to die!

A bard, in the highest use of the word, in which it approaches the
meaning of prophet, Ramsay was not, else he would not have ceased so
soon to sing. Whatever lyrical impulse was in him speedily wore itself
out, and left him to his milder mission as a broad reflector of Scottish
life--in its humbler, gentler, and better aspects. His 'Gentle Shepherd'
is a chapter of Scottish still-life; and, since the pastoral is
essentially the poetry of peace, the 'Gentle Shepherd' is the finest
pastoral in the world. No thunders roll among these solitary crags; no
lightnings affright these lasses among their _claes_ at Habbie's Howe;
the air is still and soft; the plaintive bleating of the sheep upon the
hills, the echoes of the city are distant and faintly heard, so that the
very sounds seem in unison and in league with silence. One thinks of
Shelley's isle 'mid the Aegean deep:--

  'It is an isle under Ionian skies,
  Beautiful as the wreck of Paradise;
  And for the harbours are not safe and good,
  The land would have remained a solitude,
  But for some pastoral people, native there,
  Who from the Elysian clear and sunny air
  Draw the last spirit of the age of gold,
  Simple and generous, innocent and bold.

       *       *       *       *       *

  The winged storms, chanting their thunder psalm
  To other lands, leave azure chasms of calm
  Over this isle, or weep themselves in dew,
  From whence the fields and woods ever renew
  Their green and golden immortality.'

Yet in the little circle of calm carved out by the magician of 'The
Gentle Shepherd' there is no insipidity. Lust is sternly excluded, but
love of the purest and warmest kind there breathes. The parade of
learning is not there; but strong common sense thinks, and robust and
manly eloquence declaims. Humour too is there, and many have laughed at
Mause and Baldy, whom all the frigid wit of 'Love for Love' and the
'School for Scandal' could only move to contempt or pity. A _dénouement_
of great skill is not wanting to stir the calm surface of the story by
the wind of surprise; the curtain falls over a group of innocent,
guileless, and happy hearts, and as we gaze at them we breathe the
prayer, that Scotland's peerage and Scotland's peasantry may always thus
be blended into one bond of mutual esteem, endearment, and excellence.
Well might Campbell say--'Like the poetry of Tasso and Ariosto, that of
the "Gentle Shepherd" is engraven on the memory of its native country.
Its verses have passed into proverbs, and it continues to be the delight
and solace of the peasantry whom it describes.'

Ramsay has very slightly touched on the religion of his countrymen. This
is to be regretted; but if he had no sympathy with that, he, at least,
disdained to counterfeit it, and its poetical aspects have since been
adequately sung by other minstrels.


LOCHABER NO MORE.

1 Farewell to Lochaber, and farewell, my Jean,
Where heartsome with thee I've mony day been;
For Lochaber no more, Lochaber no more,
We'll maybe return to Lochaber no more.
These tears that I shed they are a' for my dear,
And no for the dangers attending on weir;
Though borne on rough seas to a far bloody shore,
Maybe to return to Lochaber no more.

2 Though hurricanes rise, and rise every wind,
They'll ne'er make a tempest like that in my mind;
Though loudest of thunder on louder waves roar,
That's naething like leaving my love on the shore.
To leave thee behind me my heart is sair pained;
By ease that's inglorious no fame can be gained;
And beauty and love's the reward of the brave,
And I must deserve it before I can crave.

3 Then glory, my Jeany, maun plead my excuse;
Since honour commands me, how can I refuse?
Without it I ne'er can have merit for thee,
And without thy favour I'd better not be.
I gae then, my lass, to win honour and fame,
And if I should luck to come gloriously hame,
I'll bring a heart to thee with love running o'er,
And then I'll leave thee and Lochaber no more.


THE LAST TIME I CAME O'ER THE MOOR.

1 The last time I came o'er the moor,
    I left my love behind me;
  Ye powers! what pain do I endure,
    When soft ideas mind me!
  Soon as the ruddy morn displayed
    The beaming day ensuing,
  I met betimes my lovely maid,
    In fit retreats for wooing.

2 Beneath the cooling shade we lay,
    Gazing and chastely sporting;
  We kissed and promised time away,
    Till night spread her black curtain.
  I pitied all beneath the skies,
    E'en kings, when she was nigh me;
  In raptures I beheld her eyes,
    Which could but ill deny me.

3 Should I be called where cannons roar,
    Where mortal steel may wound me;
  Or cast upon some foreign shore,
    Where dangers may surround me;
  Yet hopes again to see my love,
    To feast on glowing kisses,
  Shall make my cares at distance move,
    In prospect of such blisses.

4 In all my soul there's not one place
    To let a rival enter;
  Since she excels in every grace,
    In her my love shall centre.
  Sooner the seas shall cease to flow,
    Their waves the Alps shall cover,
  On Greenland ice shall roses grow,
    Before I cease to love her.

5 The next time I go o'er the moor,
    She shall a lover find me;
  And that my faith is firm and pure,
    Though I left her behind me:
  Then Hymen's sacred bonds shall chain
    My heart to her fair bosom;
  There, while my being does remain,
    My love more fresh shall blossom.


FROM 'THE GENTLE SHEPHERD.'

ACT I.--SCENE II.

PROLOGUE.

A flowrie howm[1] between twa verdant braes,
Where lasses used to wash and spread their claes,[2]
A trotting burnie wimpling through the ground,
Its channel peebles shining smooth and round:
Here view twa barefoot beauties clean and clear;
First please your eye, then gratify your ear;
While Jenny what she wishes discommends,
And Meg with better sense true love defends.

PEGGY AND JENNY.

_Jenny_. Come, Meg, let's fa' to wark upon this green,
This shining day will bleach our linen clean;
The water's clear, the lift[3] unclouded blue,
Will mak them like a lily wet with dew.

_Peggy_. Gae farrer up the burn to Habbie's How,
Where a' that's sweet in spring and simmer grow:
Between twa birks, out o'er a little linn,[4]
The water fa's, and maks a singin' din:
A pool breast-deep, beneath as clear as glass,
Kisses with easy whirls the bordering grass.
We'll end our washing while the morning's cool,
And when the day grows het we'll to the pool,
There wash oursells; 'tis healthfu' now in May,
And sweetly caller on sae warm a day.

_Jenny_. Daft lassie, when we're naked, what'll ye say,
Giff our twa herds come brattling down the brae,
And see us sae?--that jeering fellow, Pate,
Wad taunting say, 'Haith, lasses, ye're no blate.'[5]

_Peggy_. We're far frae ony road, and out of sight;
The lads they're feeding far beyont the height;
But tell me now, dear Jenny, we're our lane,
What gars ye plague your wooer with disdain?
The neighbours a' tent this as well as I;
That Roger lo'es ye, yet ye carena by.
What ails ye at him? Troth, between us twa,
He's wordy you the best day e'er ye saw.

_Jenny_. I dinna like him, Peggy, there's an end;
A herd mair sheepish yet I never kenn'd.
He kames his hair, indeed, and gaes right snug,
With ribbon-knots at his blue bonnet lug;
Whilk pensylie[6] he wears a thought a-jee,[7]
And spreads his garters diced beneath his knee.
He falds his owrelay[8] down his breast with care,
And few gangs trigger to the kirk or fair;
For a' that, he can neither sing nor say,
Except, 'How d'ye?--or, 'There's a bonny day.'

_Peggy_. Ye dash the lad with constant slighting pride,
Hatred for love is unco sair to bide:
But ye'll repent ye, if his love grow cauld;--
What like's a dorty[9] maiden when she's auld?
Like dawted wean[10] that tarrows at its meat,[11]
That for some feckless[12] whim will orp[13] and greet:
The lave laugh at it till the dinner's past,
And syne the fool thing is obliged to fast,
Or scart anither's leavings at the last.
Fy, Jenny! think, and dinna sit your time.

_Jenny_. I never thought a single life a crime.

_Peggy_. Nor I: but love in whispers lets us ken
That men were made for us, and we for men.

_Jenny_. If Roger is my jo, he kens himsell,
For sic a tale I never heard him tell.
He glowers[14] and sighs, and I can guess the cause:
But wha's obliged to spell his hums and haws?
Whene'er he likes to tell his mind mair plain,
I'se tell him frankly ne'er to do't again.
They're fools that slavery like, and may be free;
The chiels may a' knit up themselves for me.

_Peggy_. Be doing your ways: for me, I have a mind
To be as yielding as my Patie's kind.

_Jenny_. Heh! lass, how can ye lo'e that rattleskull?
A very deil, that aye maun have his will!
We soon will hear what a poor fechtin' life
You twa will lead, sae soon's ye're man and wife.

_Peggy_. I'll rin the risk; nor have I ony fear,
But rather think ilk langsome day a year,
Till I with pleasure mount my bridal-bed,
Where on my Patie's breast I'll lay my head.
There he may kiss as lang as kissing's good,
And what we do there's nane dare call it rude.
He's get his will; why no? 'tis good my part
To give him that, and he'll give me his heart.

_Jenny_. He may indeed for ten or fifteen days
Mak meikle o' ye, with an unco fraise,
And daut ye baith afore fowk and your lane:
But soon as your newfangleness is gane,
He'll look upon you as his tether-stake,
And think he's tint his freedom for your sake.
Instead then of lang days of sweet delight,
Ae day be dumb, and a' the neist he'll flyte:
And maybe, in his barlichood's,[15] ne'er stick
To lend his loving wife a loundering lick.

_Peggy_. Sic coarse-spun thoughts as that want pith to move
My settled mind; I'm o'er far gane in love.
Patie to me is dearer than my breath,
But want of him, I dread nae other skaith.[16]
There's nane of a' the herds that tread the green
Has sic a smile, or sic twa glancing een.
And then he speaks with sic a taking art,
His words they thirl like music through my heart.
How blithely can he sport, and gently rave,
And jest at little fears that fright the lave.
Ilk day that he's alane upon the hill,
He reads feil[17] books that teach him meikle skill;
He is--but what need I say that or this,
I'd spend a month to tell you what he is!
In a' he says or does there's sic a gate,
The rest seem coofs compared with my dear Pate;
His better sense will lang his love secure:
Ill-nature hefts in sauls are weak and poor.

_Jenny._ Hey, 'bonnylass of Branksome!' or't be lang,
Your witty Pate will put you in a sang.
Oh, 'tis a pleasant thing to be a bride!
Syne whinging gets about your ingle-side,
Yelping for this or that with fasheous[18] din:
To mak them brats then ye maun toil and spin.
Ae wean fa's sick, and scads itself wi' brue,[19]
Ane breaks his shin, anither tines his shoe:
The 'Deil gaes o'er John Wabster:'[20] hame grows hell,
When Pate misca's ye waur than tongue can tell.

_Peggy._ Yes, it's a heartsome thing to be a wife,
When round the ingle-edge young sprouts are rife.
Gif I'm sae happy, I shall have delight
To hear their little plaints, and keep them right.
Wow, Jenny! can there greater pleasure be,
Than see sic wee tots toolying at your knee;
When a' they ettle at, their greatest wish,
Is to be made of, and obtain a kiss?
Can there be toil in tenting day and night
The like of them, when loves makes care delight?

_Jenny_. But poortith, Peggy, is the warst of a',
Gif o'er your heads ill chance should beggary draw:
There little love or canty cheer can come
Frae duddy doublets, and a pantry toom.[21]
Your nowt may die; the speat[22] may bear away
Frae aff the howms your dainty rucks of hay;
The thick-blawn wreaths of snaw, or blashy thows,
May smoor your wethers, and may rot your ewes;
A dyvour[23] buys your butter, woo', and cheese,
But, or the day of payment, breaks and flees;
With gloomin' brow the laird seeks in his rent,
'Tis no to gie, your merchant's to the bent;
His honour maunna want, he poinds your gear;
Syne driven frae house and hald, where will ye steer?--
Dear Meg, be wise, and lead a single life;
Troth, it's nae mows[24] to be a married wife.

_Peggy_. May sic ill luck befa' that silly she,
Wha has sic fears, for that was never me.
Let fowk bode weel, and strive to do their best;
Nae mair's required--let Heaven make out the rest.
I've heard my honest uncle aften say,
That lads should a' for wives that's vertuous pray;
For the maist thrifty man could never get
A well-stored room, unless his wife wad let:
Wherefore nocht shall be wanting on my part
To gather wealth to raise my shepherd's heart.
Whate'er he wins, I'll guide with canny care,
And win the vogue at market, tron, or fair,
For healsome, clean, cheap, and sufficient ware.
A flock of lambs, cheese, butter, and some woo',
Shall first be sald to pay the laird his due;
Syne a' behind's our ain.--Thus without fear,
With love and rowth[25] we through the warld will steer;
And when my Pate in bairns and gear grows rife,
He'll bless the day he gat me for his wife.

_Jenny_. But what if some young giglet on the green,
With dimpled cheeks, and twa bewitching een,
Should gar your Patie think his half-worn Meg,
And her kenn'd kisses, hardly worth a feg?

_Peggy_. Nae mair of that:--dear Jenny, to be free,
There's some men constanter in love than we:
Nor is the ferly great, when Nature kind
Has blest them with solidity of mind;
They'll reason calmly, and with kindness smile,
When our short passions wad our peace beguile:
Sae, whensoe'er they slight their maiks[26]at hame,
'Tis ten to ane their wives are maist to blame.
Then I'll employ with pleasure a' my art
To keep him cheerfu', and secure his heart.
At even, when he comes weary frae the hill,
I'll have a' things made ready to his will:
In winter, when he toils through wind and rain,
A bleezing ingle, and a clean hearth-stane:
And soon as he flings by his plaid and staff,
The seething-pot's be ready to take aff;
Clean hag-abag[27] I'll spread upon his board,
And serve him with the best we can afford:
Good-humour and white bigonets[28] shall be
Guards to my face, to keep his love for me.

_Jenny_. A dish of married love right soon grows cauld,
And dozins[29] down to nane, as fowk grow auld.

_Peggy_. But we'll grow auld together, and ne'er find
The loss of youth, when love grows on the mind.
Bairns and their bairns make sure a firmer tie,
Than aught in love the like of us can spy.
See yon twa elms that grow up side by side,
Suppose them some years syne bridegroom and bride;
Nearer and nearer ilka year they've pressed,
Till wide their spreading branches are increased,
And in their mixture now are fully blessed:
This shields the other frae the eastlin' blast;
That in return defends it frae the wast.
Sic as stand single, (a state sae liked by you,)
Beneath ilk storm frae every airt[30] maun bow.

_Jenny_. I've done,--I yield, dear lassie; I maun yield,
Your better sense has fairly won the field.
With the assistance of a little fae
Lies dern'd within my breast this mony a day.

_Peggy_. Alake, poor pris'ner!--Jenny, that's no fair,
That ye'll no let the wee thing take the air:
Haste, let him out; we'll tent as well's we can,
Gif he be Bauldy's, or poor Roger's man.

_Jenny_. Anither time's as good; for see the sun
Is right far up, and we're not yet begun
To freath the graith: if canker'd Madge, our aunt,
Come up the burn, she'll gie's a wicked rant;
But when we've done, I'll tell you a' my mind;
For this seems true--nae lass can be unkind.

[_Exeunt_.

[1] Howm: holm.
[2] Claes: clothes.
[3] 'Lift:' sky.
[4] 'Linn:' a waterfall.
[5] 'Blate:' bashful.
[6] 'Pensylie:' sprucely.
[7] 'A-jee:' to one side.
[8] 'Owrelay:' cravat.
[9] 'Dorty:' pettish.
[10] 'Dawted wean:' spoiled child.
[11] 'Tarrows at its meat:' refuses its food.
[12] 'Feckless:' silly.
[13] 'Orp:' fret.
[14] 'Glowers:' stares.
[15] 'Barlichoods:' cross-moods.
[16] 'Skaith:' harm.
[17] 'Feil:' many.
[18] 'Fasheous:' troublesome.
[19] 'Scads itself wi' brue:' scalds itself with broth.
[20] 'Deil gaes o'er John Wabster:' all goes wrong.
[21] 'Toom:' empty.
[22] 'Speat:' land-flood.
[23] 'A dyvour:' bankrupt.
[24] 'Mows:' jest.
[25] 'Rowth:' plenty.
[26] 'Maiks:' mates.
[27] 'Hag-abag:' huckaback.
[28] 'White bigonets:' linen caps or coifs.
[29] 'Dozins:' dwindles.
[30] 'Airt:' quarter.




We come now to another cluster of minor poets,--such as Robert Dodsley,
who rose, partly through Pope's influence, from a footman to be a
respectable bookseller, and who, by the verses entitled 'The Parting
Kiss,'--

  'One fond kiss before we part,
    Drop a tear and bid adieu;
  Though we sever, my fond heart,
    Till we meet, shall pant for you,' &c.--

seems to have suggested to Burns his 'Ae fond kiss, and then we sever;'
--John Brown, author of certain tragedies and other works, including the
once famous 'Estimate of the Manners and Principles of Modern Times,' of
which Cowper says--

  'The inestimable Estimate of Brown
  Rose like a paper kite and charmed the town;
  But measures planned and executed well
  Shifted the wind that raised it, and it fell:'

and who went mad and died by his own hands;--John Gilbert Cooper, author
of a fine song to his wife, one stanza of which has often been quoted:--

  'And when with envy Time transported
    Shall think to rob us of our joys;
  You'll in your girls again be courted,
    And I'll go wooing in my boys;'--

Cuthbert Shaw, an unfortunate author of the Savage type, who wrote an
affecting monody on the death of his wife;--Thomas Scott, author of
'Lyric Poems, Devotional and Moral: London, 1773;'--Edward Thompson, a
native of Hull, and author of some tolerable sea-songs;--Henry Headley,
a young man of uncommon talents, a pupil of Dr Parr in Norwich, who,
when only twenty-one, published 'Select Beauties of the Ancient English
Poets,' accompanied by critical remarks discovering rare ripeness of mind
for his years, who wrote poetry too, but was seized with consumption, and
died at twenty-two;--Nathaniel Cotton, the physician, under whose care,
at St Alban's, Cowper for a time was;--William Hayward Roberts, author of
'Judah Restored,' a poem of much ambition and considerable merit;--John
Bampfylde, who went mad, and died in that state, after having published,
when young, some sweet sonnets, of which the following is one:--

  'Cold is the senseless heart that never strove
  With the mild tumult of a real flame;
  Rugged the breast that music cannot tame,
  Nor youth's enlivening graces teach to love
  The pathless vale, the long-forsaken grove,
  The rocky cave that bears the fair one's name,
  With ivy mantled o'er. For empty fame
  Let him amidst the rabble toil, or rove
  In search of plunder far to western clime.
  Give me to waste the hours in amorous play
  With Delia, beauteous maid, and build the rhyme,
  Praising her flowing hair, her snowy arms,
  And all that prodigality of charms,
  Formed to enslave my heart, and grace my lay;'--

Lord Chesterfield, who wrote some lines on 'Beau Nash's Picture at full
length, between the Busts of Newton and Pope at Bath,' of which this is
the last stanza--

  'The picture placed the busts between,
    Adds to the thought much strength;
  Wisdom and Wit are little seen,
    But Folly's at full length;'--

Thomas Penrose, who is more memorable as a warrior than as a poet,
having fought against Buenos Ayres, as well as having written some
elegant war-verses;--Edward Moore, a contributor to the _World_;--Sir
John Henry Moore, a youth of promise, who died in his twenty-fifth year,
leaving behind him such songs as the following:--

  'Cease to blame my melancholy,
  Though with sighs and folded arms
  I muse with silence on her charms;
  Censure not--I know 'tis folly;
  Yet these mournful thoughts possessing,
  Such delights I find in grief
  That, could heaven afford relief,
  My fond heart would scorn the blessing;'--

the Rev. Richard Jago, a friend of Shenstone's, and author of a pleasing
fable entitled 'Labour and Genius;'--Henry Brooke, better known for a
novel, once much in vogue, called 'The Fool of Quality,' than for his
elaborate poem entitled 'Universal Beauty,' which formed a prototype of
Darwin's 'Botanic Garden,' but did not enjoy that poem's fame;--George
Alexander Stevens, a comic actor, lecturer on 'heads,' and writer of
some poems, novels, and Bacchanalian songs:--and, in fine, Mrs Greville,
whose 'Prayer for Indifference' displays considerable genius. We quote
some stanzas:--

  'I ask no kind return in love,
    No tempting charm to please;
  Far from the heart such gifts remove
    That sighs for peace and ease.

  'Nor ease, nor peace, that heart can know
    That, like the needle true,
  Turns at the touch of joy and woe,
    But, turning, trembles too.

  'Far as distress the soul can wound,
    'Tis pain in each degree;
  'Tis bliss but to a certain bound--
    Beyond, is agony.

  'Then take this treacherous sense of mine,
    Which dooms me still to smart,
  Which pleasure can to pain refine,
    To pain new pangs impart.

  'Oh, haste to shed the sovereign balm,
    My shattered nerves new string,
  And for my guest, serenely calm,
    The nymph Indifference bring.'




ISAAC HAWKINS BROWNE.


This writer was born at Burton-on-Trent, in 1705. He was educated at
Westminster and Cambridge, and studied law at Lincoln's Inn. He was a
man of fortune, and sat in two parliaments for Wenlock, in Shropshire.
He died in 1760. His imitations of authors are clever and amusing, and
seem to have got their hint from 'The Splendid Shilling,' and to have
given it to the 'Rejected Addresses.'


IMITATION OF THOMSON.

----Prorumpit ad aethera nubem
Turbine, fumantem piceo.       VIRG.


O thou, matured by glad Hesperian suns,
Tobacco, fountain pure of limpid truth,
That looks the very soul; whence pouring thought
Swarms all the mind; absorpt is yellow care,
And at each puff imagination burns:
Flash on thy bard, and with exalting fires
Touch the mysterious lip that chants thy praise
In strains to mortal sons of earth unknown.
Behold an engine, wrought from tawny mines
Of ductile clay, with plastic virtue formed,
And glazed magnific o'er, I grasp, I fill.
From Paetotheke with pungent powers perfumed,
Itself one tortoise all, where shines imbibed
Each parent ray; then rudely rammed, illume
With the red touch of zeal-enkindling sheet,
Marked with Gibsonian lore; forth issue clouds
Thought-thrilling, thirst-inciting clouds around,
And many-mining fires; I all the while,
Lolling at ease, inhale the breezy balm.
But chief, when Bacchus wont with thee to join,
In genial strife and orthodoxal ale,
Stream life and joy into the Muse's bowl.
Oh, be thou still my great inspirer, thou
My Muse; oh, fan me with thy zephyrs boon,
While I, in clouded tabernacle shrined,
Burst forth all oracle and mystic song.


IMITATION OF POPE.

             --Solis ad ortus
Vanescit fumus.                 LUCAN.

Blest leaf! whose aromatic gales dispense
To Templars modesty, to parsons sense:
So raptured priests, at famed Dodona's shrine,
Drank inspiration from the steam divine.
Poison that cures, a vapour that affords
Content, more solid than the smile of lords:
Rest to the weary, to the hungry food,
The last kind refuge of the wise and good.
Inspired by thee, dull cits adjust the scale
Of Europe's peace, when other statesmen fail.
By thee protected, and thy sister, beer,
Poets rejoice, nor think the bailiff near.
Nor less the critic owns thy genial aid,
While supperless he plies the piddling trade.
What though to love and soft delights a foe,
By ladies hated, hated by the beau,
Yet social freedom, long to courts unknown,
Fair health, fair truth, and virtue are thy own.
Come to thy poet, come with healing wings,
And let me taste thee unexcised by kings.


IMITATION OF SWIFT.

Ex fumo dare lucem.--HOR.

Boy! bring an ounce of Freeman's best,
And bid the vicar be my guest:
Let all be placed in manner due,
A pot wherein to spit or spew,
And London Journal, and Free-Briton,
Of use to light a pipe or * *

       *       *       *       *       *

This village, unmolested yet
By troopers, shall be my retreat:
Who cannot flatter, bribe, betray;
Who cannot write or vote for * * *
Far from the vermin of the town,
Here let me rather live, my own,
Doze o'er a pipe, whose vapour bland
In sweet oblivion lulls the land;
Of all which at Vienna passes,
As ignorant as * * Brass is:
And scorning rascals to caress,
Extol the days of good Queen Bess,
When first tobacco blessed our isle,
Then think of other queens--and smile.

Come, jovial pipe, and bring along
Midnight revelry and song;
The merry catch, the madrigal,
That echoes sweet in City Hall;
The parson's pun, the smutty tale
Of country justice o'er his ale.
I ask not what the French are doing,
Or Spain, to compass Britain's ruin:
  Britons, if undone, can go
  Where tobacco loves to grow.




WILLIAM OLDYS.


Oldys was born in 1696, and died in 1761. He was a very diligent
collector of antiquarian materials, and the author of a Life of Raleigh.
He was intimate with Captain Grose, Burns' friend, who used to rally him
on his inordinate thirst for ale, although, if we believe Burns, it was
paralleled by Grose's liking for port. The following Anacreontic is
characteristic:--


SONG, OCCASIONED BY A FLY DRINKING OUT OF A CUP OF ALE.

Busy, curious, thirsty fly,
Drink with me, and drink as I;
Freely welcome to my cup,
Couldst thou sip and sip it up.
Make the most of life you may--
Life is short, and wears away.

Both alike are, mine and thine,
Hastening quick to their decline:
Thine's a summer, mine no more,
Though repeated to threescore;
Threescore summers, when they're gone,
Will appear as short as one.




ROBERT LLOYD.


Robert Lloyd was born in London in 1733. He was the son of one of the
under-masters of Westminster School. He went to Cambridge, where he
became distinguished for his talents and notorious for his dissipation.
He became an usher under his father, but soon tired of the drudgery, and
commenced professional author. He published a poem called 'The Actor,'
which attracted attention, and was the precursor of 'The Rosciad.' He
wrote for periodicals, produced some theatrical pieces of no great
merit, and edited the _St James' Magazine_. This failed, and Lloyd,
involved in pecuniary distresses, was cast into the Fleet. Here he was
deserted by all his boon companions except Churchill, to whose sister he
was attached, and who allowed him a guinea a-week and a servant, besides
promoting a subscription for his benefit. When the news of Churchill's
death arrived, Lloyd was seated at dinner; he became instantly sick,
cried out 'Poor Charles! I shall follow him soon,' and died in a few
weeks. Churchill's sister, a woman of excellent abilities, waited on
Lloyd during his illness, and died soon after him of a broken heart.
This was in 1764.

Lloyd was a minor Churchill. He had not his brawny force, but he had
more than his liveliness of wit, and was a much better-conditioned man,
and more temperate in his satire. Cowper knew, loved, admired, and in
some of his verses imitated, Robert Lloyd.


THE MISERIES OF A POET'S LIFE.

The harlot Muse, so passing gay,
Bewitches only to betray.
Though for a while with easy air
She smooths the rugged brow of care,
And laps the mind in flowery dreams,
With Fancy's transitory gleams;
Fond of the nothings she bestows,
We wake at last to real woes.
Through every age, in every place,
Consider well the poet's case;
By turns protected and caressed,
Defamed, dependent, and distressed.
The joke of wits, the bane of slaves,
The curse of fools, the butt of knaves;
Too proud to stoop for servile ends,
To lacquey rogues or flatter friends;
With prodigality to give,
Too careless of the means to live;
The bubble fame intent to gain,
And yet too lazy to maintain;
He quits the world he never prized,
Pitied by few, by more despised,
And, lost to friends, oppressed by foes,
Sinks to the nothing whence he rose.

O glorious trade! for wit's a trade,
Where men are ruined more than made!
Let crazy Lee, neglected Gay,
The shabby Otway, Dryden gray,
Those tuneful servants of the Nine,
(Not that I blend their names with mine,)
Repeat their lives, their works, their fame.
And teach the world some useful shame.




HENRY CAREY.


Of Carey, the author of the popular song, 'Sally in our Alley,' we know
only that he was a professional musician, composing the air as well as
the words of 'Sally,' and that in 1763 he died by his own hands.


SALLY IN OUR ALLEY.

1 Of all the girls that are so smart,
    There's none like pretty Sally;
  She is the darling of my heart,
    And she lives in our alley.
  There is no lady in the land
    Is half so sweet as Sally:
  She is the darling of my heart,
    And she lives in our alley.

2 Her father he makes cabbage-nets,
    And through the streets does cry 'em;
  Her mother she sells laces long,
    To such as please to buy 'em:
  But sure such folks could ne'er beget
    So sweet a girl as Sally!
  She is the darling of my heart,
    And she lives in our alley.

3 When she is by, I leave my work,
    (I love her so sincerely,)
  My master comes like any Turk,
    And bangs me most severely:
  But, let him bang his belly full,
    I'll bear it all for Sally;
  She is the darling of my heart,
    And she lives in our alley.

4 Of all the days that's in the week,
    I dearly love but one day;
  And that's the day that comes betwixt
    A Saturday and Monday;
  For then I'm dressed all in my best,
    To walk abroad with Sally;
  She is the darling of my heart,
    And she lives in our alley.

5 My master carries me to church,
    And often am I blamed,
  Because I leave him in the lurch,
    As soon as text is named:
  I leave the church in sermon time,
    And slink away to Sally;
  She is the darling of my heart,
    And she lives in our alley.

6 When Christmas comes about again,
    O then I shall have money;
  I'll hoard it up, and box it all,
    I'll give it to my honey:
  I would it were ten thousand pounds,
    I'd give it all to Sally;
  She is the darling of my heart,
    And she lives in our alley.

7 My master, and the neighbours all,
    Make game of me and Sally;
  And, but for her, I'd better be
    A slave, and row a galley:
  But when my seven long years are out,
    O then I'll marry Sally,
  O then we'll wed, and then we'll bed,
    But not in our alley.




DAVID MALLETT.


David Mallett was the son of a small innkeeper in Crieff, Perthshire,
where he was born in the year 1700. Crieff, as many of our readers know,
is situated on the western side of a hill, and commands a most varied and
beautiful prospect, including Drummond Castle, with its solemn shadowy
woods, and the Ochils, on the south,--Ochtertyre, one of the loveliest
spots in Scotland, and the gorge of Glenturrett, on the north,--and the
bold dark hills which surround the romantic village of Comrie, on the
west. Crieff is now a place of considerable note, and forms a centre
of summer attraction to multitudes; but at the commencement of the
eighteenth century it must have been a miserable hamlet. _Malloch_ was
originally the name of the poet, and the name is still common in that
part of Perthshire. David attended the college of Aberdeen, and became,
afterwards, an unsalaried tutor in the family of Mr Home of Dreghorn,
near Edinburgh. We find him next in the Duke of Montrose's family, with
a salary of £30 per annum. In 1723, he accompanied his pupils to London,
and changed his name to Mallett, as more euphonious. Next year, he
produced his pretty ballad of 'William and Margaret,' and published it
in Aaron Hill's 'Plain Dealer.' This served as an introduction to the
literary society of the metropolis, including such names as Young and
Pope. In 1733, he disgraced himself by a satire on the greatest man then
living, the venerable Richard Bentley. Mallett was one of those mean
creatures who always worship a rising, and turn their backs on a setting
sun. By his very considerable talents, his management, and his address,
he soon rose in the world. He was appointed under-secretary to the Prince
of Wales, with a salary of £200 a-year. In conjunction with Thomson, to
whom he was really kind, he wrote in 1740, 'The Masque of Alfred,' in
honour of the birthday of the Princess Augusta. His first wife, of whom
nothing is recorded, having died, he married the daughter of Lord
Carlisle's steward, who brought him a fortune of £10,000. Both she and
Mallett himself gave themselves out as Deists. This was partly owing to
his intimacy with Bolingbroke, to gratify whom, he heaped abuse upon Pope
in a preface to 'The Patriot-King,' and was rewarded by Bolingbroke
leaving him the whole of his works and MSS. These he afterwards
published, and exposed himself to the vengeful sarcasm of Johnson, who
said that Bolingbroke was a scoundrel and a coward;--a scoundrel, to
charge a blunderbuss against Christianity; and a coward, because he durst
not fire it himself, but left a shilling to a beggarly Scotsman to draw
the trigger after his death. Mallett ranked himself among the
calumniators and, as it proved, murderers of Admiral Byng. He wrote a
Life of Lord Bacon, in which, it was said, he forgot that Bacon was a
philosopher, and would probably, when he came to write the Life of
Marlborough, forget that he was a general. This Life of Bacon is now
utterly forgotten. We happened to read it in our early days, and thought
it a very contemptible performance. The Duchess of Marlborough left £1000
in her will between Glover and Mallett to write a Life of her husband.
Glover threw up his share of the work, and Mallett engaged to perform the
whole, to which, besides, he was stimulated by a pension from the second
Duke of Marlborough. He got the money, but when he died it was found that
he had not written a line of the work. In his latter days he held the
lucrative office of Keeper of the Book of Entries for the port of London.
He died on the 2lst April 1765.

Mallett is, on the whole, no credit to Scotland. He was a bad, mean,
insincere, and unprincipled man, whose success was procured by despicable
and dastardly arts. He had doubtless some genius, and his 'Birks of
Invermay,' and 'William and Margaret,' shall preserve his name after his
clumsy imitation of Thomson, called 'The Excursion,' and his long,
rambling 'Amyntor and Theodora;' have been forgotten.


WILLIAM AND MARGARET.

1  'Twas at the silent, solemn hour
     When night and morning meet;
   In glided Margaret's grimly ghost,
     And stood at William's feet.

2  Her face was like an April-morn,
     Clad in a wintry cloud;
   And clay-cold was her lily hand,
     That held her sable shroud.

3  So shall the fairest face appear,
     When youth and years are flown:
   Such is the robe that kings must wear,
     When death has reft their crown.

4  Her bloom was like the springing flower,
     That sips the silver dew;
   The rose was budded in her cheek,
     Just opening to the view.

5  But love had, like the canker-worm,
     Consumed her early prime:
   The rose grew pale, and left her cheek;
     She died before her time.

6  'Awake!' she cried, 'thy true love calls,
     Come from her midnight-grave;
   Now let thy pity hear the maid,
     Thy love refused to save.

7  'This is the dumb and dreary hour,
     When injured ghosts complain;
   When yawning graves give up their dead,
     To haunt the faithless swain.

8  'Bethink thee, William, of thy fault,
     Thy pledge and broken oath!
   And give me back my maiden-vow,
     And give me back my troth.

9  'Why did you promise love to me,
     And not that promise keep?
   Why did you swear my eyes were bright,
     Yet leave those eyes to weep?

10 'How could you say my face was fair,
     And yet that face forsake?
   How could you win my virgin-heart,
     Yet leave that heart to break?

11 'Why did you say my lip was sweet,
     And made the scarlet pale?
   And why did I, young witless maid!
     Believe the flattering tale?

12 'That face, alas! no more is fair,
     Those lips no longer red:
   Dark are my eyes, now closed in death,
     And every charm is fled.

13 'The hungry worm my sister is;
     This winding-sheet I wear:
   And cold and weary lasts our night,
     Till that last morn appear.

14 'But, hark! the cock has warned me hence;
     A long and late adieu!
   Come, see, false man, how low she lies,
     Who died for love of you.'

15 The lark sung loud; the morning smiled,
     With beams of rosy red:
   Pale William quaked in every limb,
     And raving left his bed.

16 He hied him to the fatal place
     Where Margaret's body lay;
   And stretched him on the green-grass turf,
     That wrapped her breathless clay.

17 And thrice he called on Margaret's name.
     And thrice he wept full sore;
   Then laid his cheek to her cold grave,
     And word spake never more!



THE BIRKS OF INVERMAY.

The smiling morn, the breathing spring,
Invite the tunefu' birds to sing;
And, while they warble from the spray,
Love melts the universal lay.
Let us, Amanda, timely wise,
Like them, improve the hour that flies;
And in soft raptures waste the day,
Among the birks of Invermay.

For soon the winter of the year,
And age, life's winter, will appear;
At this thy living bloom will fade,
As that will strip the verdant shade.
Our taste of pleasure then is o'er,
The feathered songsters are no more;
And when they drop and we decay,
Adieu the birks of Invermay!




JAMES MERRICK.


Merrick was a clergyman, as well as a writer of verse. He was born in
1720, and became a Fellow of Trinity College, Oxford, where Lord North
was one of his pupils. He took orders, but owing to incessant pains in
the head, could not perform duty. He died in 1769. His works are a
translation of Tryphiodorus, done at twenty, a version of the Psalms, a
collection of Hymns, and a few miscellaneous pieces, one good specimen
of which we subjoin.


THE CHAMELEON.

Oft has it been my lot to mark
A proud, conceited, talking spark,
With eyes that hardly served at most
To guard their master 'gainst a post;
Yet round the world the blade has been,
To see whatever could be seen.
Returning from his finished tour,
Grown ten times perter than before;
Whatever word you chance to drop,
The travelled fool your mouth will stop:
'Sir, if my judgment you'll allow--
I've seen--and sure I ought to know.'--
So begs you'd pay a due submission,
And acquiesce in his decision.

Two travellers of such a cast,
As o'er Arabia's wilds they passed,
And on their way, in friendly chat,
Now talked of this, and then of that;
Discoursed a while, 'mongst other matter,
Of the chameleon's form and nature.
'A stranger animal,' cries one,
'Sure never lived beneath the sun:
A lizard's body lean and long,
A fish's head, a serpent's tongue,
Its foot with triple claw disjoined;
And what a length of tail behind!
How slow its pace! and then its hue--
Who ever saw so fine a blue?'

'Hold there,' the other quick replies,
''Tis green, I saw it with these eyes,
As late with open mouth it lay,
And warmed it in the sunny ray;
Stretched at its ease the beast I viewed,
And saw it eat the air for food.'

'I've seen it, sir, as well as you,
And must again affirm it blue;
At leisure I the beast surveyed
Extended in the cooling shade.'

''Tis green, 'tis green, sir, I assure ye.'
'Green!' cries the other in a fury:
'Why, sir, d' ye think I've lost my eyes?'
''Twere no great loss,' the friend replies;
'For if they always serve you thus,
You'll find them but of little use.'

So high at last the contest rose,
From words they almost came to blows:
When luckily came by a third;
To him the question they referred:
And begged he'd tell them, if he knew,
Whether the thing was green or blue.

'Sirs,' cries the umpire, 'cease your pother;
The creature's neither one nor t' other.
I caught the animal last night,
And viewed it o'er by candle-light:
I marked it well, 'twas black as jet--
You stare--but sirs, I've got it yet,
And can produce it.'--'Pray, sir, do;
I'll lay my life the thing is blue.'
'And I'll be sworn, that when you've seen
The reptile, you'll pronounce him green.'

'Well, then, at once to ease the doubt,'
Replies the man, 'I'll turn him out:
And when before your eyes I've set him,
If you don't find him black, I'll eat him.'

He said; and full before their sight
Produced the beast, and lo!--'twas white.
Both stared, the man looked wondrous wise--
'My children,' the chameleon cries,
(Then first the creature found a tongue,)
'You all are right, and all are wrong:
When next you talk of what you view,
Think others see as well as you:
Nor wonder if you find that none
Prefers your eyesight to his own.'




DR JAMES GRAINGER.


This writer possessed some true imagination, although his claim to
immortality lies in the narrow compass of one poem--his 'Ode to
Solitude.' Little is known of his personal history. He was born in 1721
--belonging to a gentleman's family in Cumberland. He studied medicine,
and was for some time a surgeon connected with the army. When the peace
came, he established himself in London as a medical practitioner. In
1755, he published his 'Solitude,' which found many admirers, including
Dr Johnson, who pronounced its opening lines 'very noble.' He afterwards
indited several other pieces, wrote a translation of Tibullus, and
became one of the critical staff of the _Monthly Review_. He was unable,
however, through all these labours to secure a competence, and, in 1759,
he sought the West Indies. In St Christopher's he commenced practising
as a physician, and married the Governor's daughter, who brought him a
fortune. He wrote a poem entitled 'The Sugar-cane.' This was sent over
to London in MS., and was read at Sir Joshua Reynold's table to a
literary coterie, who, according to Boswell, all burst out into a laugh
when, after much blank-verse pomp, the poet began a new paragraph thus--

  'Now, Muse, let's sing of _rats_!

And what increased the ridicule was, that one of the company, slily
overlooking the reader, found that the word had been originally 'mice,'
but had been changed to rats as more dignified.

Boswell goes on to record Johnson's opinion of Grainger. He said, 'He
was an agreeable man, a man that would do any good that was in his
power.' His translation of Tibullus was very well done, but 'The Sugar-
cane, a Poem,' did not please him. 'What could he make of a Sugar-cane?
one might as well write "The Parsley-bed, a Poem," or "The Cabbage
Garden, a Poem."' Boswell--'You must then _pickle_ your cabbage with the
_sal Atticum_.' Johnson--'One could say a great deal about cabbage. The
poem might begin with the advantages of civilised society over a rude
state, exemplified by the Scotch, who had no cabbages till Oliver
Cromwell's soldiers introduced them, and one might thus shew how arts
are propagated by conquest, as they were by the Roman arms.' Cabbage, by
the way, in a metaphorical sense, might furnish a very good subject for
a literary _satire_.

Grainger died of the fever of the country in 1767. Bishop Percy
corroborates Johnson's character of him as a man. He says, 'He was not
only a man of genius and learning, but had many excellent virtues, being
one of the most generous, friendly, benevolent men I ever knew.'

Grainger in some points reminds us of Dyer. Dyer staked his reputation
on 'The Fleece;' but it is his lesser poem, 'Grongar Hill,' which
preserves his name; that fine effusion has survived the laboured work.
And so Grainger's 'Solitude' has supplanted the stately 'Sugar-cane.'
The scenery of the West Indies had to wait till its real poet appeared
in the author of 'Paul and Virginia.' Grainger was hardly able to cope
with the strange and gorgeous contrasts it presents of cliffs and crags,
like those of Iceland, with vegetation rich as that of the fairest parts
of India, and of splendid sunshine, with tempests of such tremendous
fury that, but for their brief continuance, no property could be secure,
and no life could be safe.

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