She, at whose name I shed these spiteful tears,
She owes to me the very charms she wears.
An awkward thing when first she came to town?
Her shape unfashion'd, and her face unknown:
She was my friend; I taught her first to spread
Upon her sallow cheeks enlivening red:
I introduced her to the park and plays;
And by my interest, Cozens made her stays.
Ungrateful wretch, with mimic airs grown pert,
She dares to steal my favourite lover's heart!

CARDELIA.

Wretch that I was! how often have I swore, When Winnall tallied, I would punt no more! I know the bite, yet to my ruin run; And see the folly, which I cannot shun.

SMILINDA.

How many maids have Sharper's vows deceived! How many cursed the moment they believed! Yet his known falsehoods could no warning prove: Ah! what is warning to a maid in love?

CARDELIA.

But of what marble must that breast be form'd, To gaze on Bas set, and remain unwarm'd? When kings, queens, knaves, are set in decent rank; Exposed in glorious heaps the tempting bank, Guineas, half-guineas, all the shining train; The winner's pleasure, and the loser's pain: In bright confusion open rouleaus lie, They strike the soul, and glitter in the eye. Fired by the sight, all reason I disdain ; My passions rise, and will not, bear the rein. Look upon Basset, you who reason boast; And see if reason must not there be lost.

SMILINDA.

What more than marble must that heart compose, Can hearken coldly to my Sharper's vows? Then, when he trembles! when his blushes rise ! When awful love seems melting in his eyes! With eager beats his Mechlin cravat moves: He loves, I whisper to myself, ' He loves!' Such unfeign'd passion in his looks appears, I lose all memory of my former fears; My panting heart confesses all his charms, I yield at once, and sink into his arms. Think of that moment, you who prudence boast; For such a moment, prudence well were lost.

CARDELIA.

At the Groom-porter's batter'd bullies play, Some dukes at Marybone bowl time away. But who the bowl, or rattling dice compares To Basset's heavenly joys, and pleasing cares? SMILINDA.

Soft Simplicetta dotes upon a beau; Prudina likes a man, and laughs at show. Their several graces in my Sharper meet; Strong as the footman, as the master sweet.

LOVET.

Cease your contention, which has been too long; I grow impatient, and the tea's too strong. Attend, and yield to what I now decide; The equipage shall grace Smilinda's side: The snuff box to Cardelia I decree ; Now leave complaining, and begin your tea.

VERBATIM FROM BOILEAU. Un jour, dit un auteur, &c. ONCE (says an author, where I need not say) Two travellers found an oyster in their way; Both fierce, both hungry, the dispute grew strong, While, scale in hand, dame Justice pass'd along., Before her each with clamour pleads the laws; Explain'd the matter, and would win the cause. Dame Justice weighing long the doubtful right, Takes, opens, swallows it, before their sight. The cause of strife removed so rarely well, 'There, take,' says Justice, take you each a shell. We thrive at Westminster on fools like you: Twas a fat oyster-Live in peace-Adieu."

As when the hero, who in each campaign
Had braved the Goth, and many a Vandal slain,
Lay fortune-struck, a spectacle of woe!
Wept by each friend, forgiven by every foe:
Was there a generous, a reflecting mind,
But pitied Belisarius old and blind?
Was there a chief but melted at the sight?
A common soldier, but who clubb'd his mite?
Such, such emotions should in Britons rise,
When press'd by want and weakness Dennis lies.
Dennis, who long had warr'd with modern Huns,
Their quibbles routed, and defied their puns;
A desperate bulwalk, sturdy, firm, and fierce,
Against the Gothic sons of frozen verse:
How changed from him who made the boxes groan,
And shook the stage with thunder all his own'
Stood up to dash each vain pretender's hope,
Maul the French tyrant, or pull down the pope!
If there's a Briton then, true bred and born,
Who holds dragoons and wooden shoes in scorn;
If there's a critic of distinguish'd rage;
If there's a senior, who contemns this age;
Let him to-night his just assistance lend,
And be the critic's, Briton's, old man's friend.

PROLOGUE TO SOPHONISBA.
By Pope and Mallet,*
WHEN learning, after the long Gothic night,
Fair, o'er the western world renew'd its light,
With arts arising, Sophonisba rose :

The tragic muse, returning, wept her woes.
With her the Italian scene first learn'd to glow;
And the first tears for her were taught to flow.
Her charms the Gallic muses next inspired:
Corneille himself saw, wonder'd, and was fired.
What foreign theatres with pride have shewn,
Britain, by juster title, makes her own.
When freedom is the cause, 'tis hers to fight;
And hers, when freedom is the theme, to write
For this a British author bids again
The heroine rise, to grace the British scene.
Here, as in life, she breathes her genuine flame
She asks what bosom has not felt the same?

I have been told by Savage, that of the_Prologue to Sophonisba, the first part was written by Pope, who could not be persuaded to finish it; and that the concluding lines were written by Mallet.

Dr. Johnson.

Ask of the British youth-Is silence there?
She dares to ask it of the British fair.

To night our home-spun author would be truc, At once to nature, history, and you.

Well-pleased to give our neighbours due applause,
He owns their learning, but disdains their laws.
Not to his patient touch, or happy flame,
"Tis to his British heart he trusts for fame.
If France excel him in one free. born thought,
The man, as well as poet, is in fault.

Nature informer of the poet's art,
Whose force alone can raise or melt the heart,
Thou art his guide; each passion, every line,
Whate'er he draws to please, must all be thine.
Be thou his judge: in every candid breast,
Thy silent whisper is the sacred test.

Ah, Moore! thy skill were well employ'd,
And greater gain would rise,

If thou couldst make the courtier void
The worm that never dies.

O learned friend of Abchurch-lane, Who sett'st our entrails free; Vain is thy art, thy powder vain, Since worms shall eat e'en thee.

Our fate thou only canst adjourn

Some few short years, no more! E'en Button's wits to worms shall turn, Who maggots were before.

MACER :-A CHARACTER.

WHEN Simple Macer, now of high renown
First sought a poet's fortune in the town,
'Twas all the ambition his high soul could feel,
To wear red stockings, and to dine with Steele.
Some ends of verse his betters might afford;
And gave the harmless fellow a good word.
Set up with these, he ventured on the town,
And with a borrow'd play outdid poor Crown.
There he stopp'd short, nor since has writ a tittle,
But has the wit to make the most of little :
Like stunted hide bound trees, that just have got
Sufficient sap at once to bear and rot.
Now he begs verse, and what he gets commends,
Not of the wits his foes, but fools his friends.

So some coarse country-wench, almost decay'd,
Trudges to town, and first turns chambermaid;
Awkward and supple, each devoir to pay,
She flatters her good lady twice a-day;
Thought wondrous honest, though of mean degree,
And strangely liked for her simplicity:
In a translated suit, then tries the town,
With borrow'd pins, and patches not her own:
But just endured the winter she began,
And in four months a batter'd harridan.
Now nothing left, but wither'd, pale, and shrunk,
To bawd for others, and go shares with punk.

TO MR. JOHN MOORE,

Author of the celebrated Worm-Powder.

How much, egregious Moore, are we Deceived by shows and forms! Whate'er we think, whate'er we see, All human kind are worms.

Man is a very worm by birth,
Vile, reptile, weak, and vain!
A while he crawls upon the earth,
Then shrinks to earth again.

That woman is a worm, we find

E'er since our grandame's evil;

She first conversed with her own kind,
That ancient worm, the devil.

The learn'd themselves we book-worms name;
The blockhead is a slow-worm ;

The nymph whose tail is all on flame,
Is aptly term'd a glow worm.

The fops are painted butterflies,
That flutter for a day;

First from a worm they take their rise,
And in a worm decay.

The flatterer an earwig grows;
Thus worms suit all conditions:
Misers are muck-worms, silk-worms beaus,
And death-watches physicians.

That statesmen have the worm, is seen
By all their winding play;

Their conscience is a worm within,
That gnaws them night and day

SONG BY A PERSON OF QUALITY;

Written in the Year 1733.

FLUTTERING spread thy purple pinions,
Gentle Cupid, o'er my heart;

I a slave in thy dominions;
Nature must give way to art.

Mild Arcadians, ever blooming,
Nightly nodding o'er your flocks,
See my weary days consuming,

All beneath you flowerv rocks.

Thus the Cyprian goddess weeping,
Mourn'd Adonis, darling youth;
Him the boar, in silence creeping,
Gored with unrelenting tooth.

Cynthia, tune harmonious numbers;
Fair discretion, string the lyre;
Soothe my ever-waking slumbers:
Bright Apollo, lend thy choir.

Gloomy Pluto, king of terrors,

Arm'd in adamantine chains,
Lead me to the crystal mirrors,
Watering soft Elysian plains.

Mournful cypress, verdant willow,
Gilding my Aurelia's brows,
Morpheus hovering o'er my pillow,
Hear me pay my dying vows.

Melancholy smooth Maauder,
Swiftly purling in a round,
On thy margin lovers wander,
With thy flowery chaplets erown'd.

Thus when Philomela drooping,
Softly seeks her silent mate,
See the bird of Juno stooping:
Melody resigns to fate.

ON A CERTAIN LADY AT COURT,

I KNOW the thing that's most uncommon;

(Envy, be silent and attend!)

I know a reasonable woman,

Handsome and witty, yet a friend.

Not warp'd by passion, awed by rumour,

Not grave through pride, nor gay through folly; An equal mixture of good-humour,

And sensible soft melancholy.

Has she no faults, then, Envy says, ' sir? Yes, she has one, I must aver: When all the world conspires to praise her, The woman's deaf, and does not hear

ON HIS GROTTO AT TWICKENHAM, Composed of Marble, Spars, Gems, Ores, and Minerals.

THOU who shalt drop, where Thames' translucent wave.
Shines a broad mirror through the shadowy cave:
Where lingering drops from mineral roofs distil,
And pointed crystals break the sparkling rill,

On, be thou bless'd with all that Heaven can send,
Long health, long youth, long pleasure, and a friend!
Not with those toys the female world admire,
Riches that vex, and vanities that tire.
With added years, if life bring nothing new,
But like a sieve let every blessing through,
Some joy still lost, as each vain year runs o'er,
And all we gain, some sad reflection more;'
Is that a birth-day? 'tis, alas ! too clear,
"Tis but the funeral of the former year.

Let joy or ease, let affluence or content,
And the gay conscience of a life well spent,
Calm every thought, inspirit every grace,
Glow in thy heart, and smile upon thy face.
Let day improve on day, and year on year,
Without a pain, a trouble, or a fear;
Till death unfelt that tender frame destroy,
In some soft dream, or ecstasy of joy.
Peaceful sleep out the sabbath of the tomb
And wake to raptures in a life to come.

TO MR. THOMAS SOUTHERN,

On his Birthday, 1742.

RESIGN'D to live, prepared to die,
With not one sin, but poetry,
This day Tom's fair account has run
(Without a blot) to eighty-one.
Kind Boyle, before his poet, lays
A table, with a cloth of bays;

And Ireland, mother of sweet singers,
Presents her harp still to his fingers.
The feast, his towering genius marks
In yonder wild-goose and the larks!
The mushrooms shew his wit was sudden!
And for his judgment, lo a pudden!

Roast beef, though old, proclaims him stout,
And grace, although a bard, devout..

May Tom, whom heaven sent down to raise
The price of prologues and of plays,
Be every birth-day more a winner,
Digest his thirty-thousandth dinner;
Walk to his grave without reproach,
And scorn a rascal and a coach.

TO

LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGUE.*

IN beauty or wit,

No mortal as yet,

To question your empire has dared;

But men of discerning

Have thought that in learning,

To yield to a lady was hard.

* This panegyric on Lady Mary Wortley Montague might have been suppressed by Mr. Pope, on account of her having satirized him in her verses to the imitator of Horace; which abuse he returned in the first satire of the second book of Horace.

From furious Sappho, scarce a milder fate,
P-'d by her love, or libell'd by her hate.

Impertinent schools,
With musty dull rules,

Have reading to females denied:
So papists refuse

The Bible to use,

Lest flocks should be wise as their guide.

"Twas a woman at first
(Indeed she was cursed,

In knowledge that tasted delight,
And sages agree

The laws should decree

To the first of possessors the right,

Then bravely, fair dame,
Resume the old claim,

Which to your whole sex does belong;
And let men receive,

From a second bright Eve,
The knowledge of right and of wrong.

But if the first Eve
Hard doom did receive,

When only one apple had she,

What a punishment new Shall be found out for you, Who tasting, havo robb'd the whole tree!

THE FOURTH EPISTLE OF THE FIRST BOOK OF HORACE'S EPISTLES.*

A modern Imitation.

Say, St. John, who alone peruse
With candid eye, the mimic muse,
What schemes of politics, or laws,
In Gallic lands the patriot draws!
Is then a greater work in hand,
Than all the tomes of Haines's band?
Or shoots he folly as it flies?
Or catches manners as they rise ?
Or, urged by unquench'd native heat,
§ Does St. John Greenwich sports repeat?
Where (emulous of Chartres' fame)
E'en Chartres' self is scarce a name,

To you (the all-envied gift of heaven)
The indulgent gods, unask'd, have given
A form complete in every part,
And, to enjoy that gift, the art.
**What could a tender mother's care
Wish better to her favourite heir,
Than wit, and fame, and lucky hours,
A stock of health, and golden showers,
And graceful fluency of speech,
Precepts before unknown to teach?

Amidst thy various ebbs of fear,
And gleaning hope, and black despair;
Yet let thy friend this truth impart;
A truth I tell with bleeding heart
(In justice for your labours past),

That every day shall be your last;
That every hour you life renew

Is to your injured country due.

This satire on Lord Bolingbroke, and the praise be. stowed on him in a letter to Mr. Richardson, where Mr. Pope says,

The sons shall blush their fathers were his foes: being so contradictory, probably occasioned the former to be suppressed. S.

DEAR, damn'd distracting town, farewell!
Thy fools no more I'll tease:

This year in peace, ye critics, dwell,
Ye harlots, sleep at ease.

Soft B*** and rough C*****' adieu!
Earl Warwick make your moan,

The lively H*****k and you

May knock up whores alone.

To drink and droll be Rowe allow'd
Till the third watchman toll;
Let Jervis gratis paint, and Frowde
Save three-pence and his soul.

Farewell Arbuthnot's raillery
On every learned sot,

And Garth, the best good christain he,
Although he knows it not.

Lintot, farewell; thy bard must go!
Farewell, unhappy Tonson!

Heaven gives thee, for thy loss of Rowe,
Lean Philips, and fat Johnson.

*This epigram, first printed anonymously in Steele's Collection, and copied in the Miscellanies of Swift and Pope, is ascribed to Pope by sir John Hawkins, in his History of Music-Mrs. Tofts, who was the daughter of a person in the family of Bishop Burnet, is celebrated as a singer little inferior, either for her voice or manner, to the best Italian women. She lived at the introduction of the opera into this kingdom, and sung in company with Nicolini; but, being ignorant of Italian, chanted her recitative in English, in answer to his Italian; yet the charms of their voices overcame the absurdity.

It is not generally known that the person here meant was Dr. Robert Freind, head master of Westminster-school.

A FRAGMENT.

WHAT are the falling rills, the pendent shades,
The morning bowers, the evening colonnades,
But soft recesses for the uneasy mind
fo sigh unheard in, to the passing wind!
So the struck deer, in some sequester'd part,
Lies down to die (the arrow in his heart);
There hid in shades, and wasting day by day,
Inly he bleeds, and pants his soul away,

VERSES LEFT BY MR POPE

On his lying in the same Bed which Wilmot the celebrated Earl of Rochester slept in, at Adderbury, then belonging to the Duke of Argyle, July 9th, 1739.

WITH no poetic ardour fired

I press'd the bed where Wilmot lay; That here he loved, or here expired, Begets no numbers grave or gay

But in thy roof, Argyle, are bred

Such thoughts as prompt the brave to lie Stretch'd out in honour's noble bed, Beneath a nobler roof-the sky.

Such flames as high in patriots burn, Yet stoop to bless a child or wife; And such as wicked king's may mourn, When freedom is more dear than life.

ON SIR WILLIAM TRUMBALL,

One of the principal Secretaries of State to King William the Third, who, having resigned his place, died in his Retirement at Easthamsted, in Berkshire, 1716.

A PLEASING form; a firm, yet cautious mind;
Sincere, though prudent; constant, yet resign'd;
Honour unchanged, a principle profess'd,
Fix'd to one side, but moderate to the rest:
An honest courtier, yet a patriot too;
Just to his prince, and to his country true:
Fill'd with the sense of age, the fire of youth
A scorn of wrangling, yet a zeal for truth: .
A love to peace, and hate of tyranny:
A generous faith, from superstition free;
Such this man was; who now from earth removed,
At length enjoys that liberty he loved.

ON THE HON. SIMON HARCOURT

Only Son of the Lord Chancellor Harcourt, at the
Church of Stanton-Harcourt, in Oxfordshire, 1720.

To this sad shrine, whoe'er thou art, draw near;
Here lies the friend most loved, the son most dear;
Who ne'er knew joy but friendship might divide,
Or gave his father grief but when he died.

How vain is reason, eloquence how weak!
If Pope must tell what Harcourt cannot speak.
Oh let thy once-loved friend inscribe thy stone,
And with a father's sorrows mix his own!

ON CHARLES EARL OF DORSET,

In the Church of Withyam, in Sussex.

DORSET, the grace of courts, the Muses' pride,
Patron of arts, and judge of nature, died.
The scourge of pride, though sanctified or great,
Of fops in learning, and of knaves in state:
Yet soft his nature, though severe his lay,
His anger moral, and his wisdom gay.
Bless'd satirist! who touch'd the mean so true,
As shew'd vice had his hate and pity too.

Bless'd courtier! who could king and country please,
Yet sacred keep his friendships, and his ease.
Bless'd peer! his great forefathers' every grace
Reflecting, and reflected in his race;

Where other Buckhursts, other Dorsets shine,
And patrons still, or poets, deck the line.

INTENDED FOR MR. ROWE,
In Westminster Abbey.

THY reliques, Rowe, to this fair urn we trust,
And, sacred, place by Dryden's awful dust:
Beneath a rude and nameless stone he lies,
To which thy tomb shall guide inquiring eyes,
Peace to thy gentle shade, and endless rest!
Bless'd in thy genius, in thy love too bless'd!
One grateful woman to thy fame supplies
What a whole thankless land to his denies.

ON MRS. CORBET,

Who died of a Cancer in her Breast.

HERE rests a woman, good without pretence,
Bless'd with plain reason, and with sober sense;
No conquests she, but o'er herself, desired,
No arts essay'd, but not to be admired.
Passion and pride were to her soul unknown,
Convinced that virtue only is our own.

N