Page images
PDF
EPUB

At Leicester Fields, a house full high,
With door all painted green,
Where ribbons wave upon the tie,
(A milliner I mean ;)

There may you meet us three to three,
For Gay can well make two of Me.
With a fa, la, la.

But should you catch the prudish itch
And each become a coward,
Bring sometimes with you lady Rich,
And sometimes mistress Howard;
For virgins to keep chaste must go
Abroad with such as are not so.
With a fa, la, la.

And thus, fair maids, my ballad ends;
God send the king safe landing;6
And make all honest ladies friends
To armies that are standing;
Preserve the limits of those nations,
And take off ladies limitations.

With a fa, la, la.

This Ballad was written anno 1717.

THE THREE GENTLE SHEPHERDS.

Or gentle Philips 1 will I ever sing,
With gentle Philips shall the valleys ring.
My numbers too for ever will I vary,

With gentle Budgell, and with gentle Carey.3
Or if in ranging of the names I judge ill,
With gentle Carey and with gentle Budgell,
Oh! may all gentle bards together place ye,
Men of good hearts, and men of delicacy.
May satire ne'er befool ye or beknave ye,
And from all wits that have a knack, God save ye.

EPIGRAM,

ENGRAVED ON THE COLLAR OF A DOG WHICH I GAVE

TO HIS ROYAL HIGHNESS.

I AM his highness's dog at Kew;
Pray tell me, sir, whose dog are you?

1 Ambrose Philips.

3 Henry Carey.

2 Eustace Budgell.

* Curll said, that in prose he was equal to Pope, but that

in verse Pope had merely a particular knack.

THE TRANSLATOR.

OZELL,1 at Sanger's call, invoked his Muse
For who to sing for Sanger could refuse?
His numbers such as Sanger's self might use.
Reviving Perrault, murdering Boileau, he
Slander'd the ancients first, then Wycherley;
Which yet not much that old bard's anger rais'd,
Since those were slander'd most whom Ozell prais'd.
Nor had the gentle satire caus'd complaining,
Had not sage Rowe pronounc'd it entertaining;
How great must be the judgment of that writer,
Who the Plain Dealer 2 damns,and prints the Biter."

THE LOOKINGGLASS.

ON MRS. PULTENEY.4

WITH Scornful mien, and various toss of air,
Fantastic, vain, and insolently fair,

Grandeur intoxicates her giddy brain,

She looks ambition, and she moves disdain.

1 Egbert Sanger was apprentice to Jacob Tonson, and successor to Bernard Lintot. Lintot published Ozell's translation of Perrault's Characters, and Sanger his translation of Boileau's Lutrin, commended by Rowe.

2 A comedy by Wycherley.

A comedy by Rowe.

• The daughter of John Gumley of Isleworth, who acquired his fortune by a glass manufactory.

Far other carriage grac'd her virgin life,
But charming Gumley's lost in Pulteney's wife.
Not greater arrogance in him we find,

And this conjunction swells at least her mind:
O could the sire, renown'd in glass, produce
One faithful mirror for his daughter's use!
Wherein she might her haughty errors trace,
And by reflection learn to mend her face:
The wonted sweetness to her form restore,

Be what she was, and charm mankind once more!

AN EPISTLE TO HENRY CROMWELL, ESQ.1

DEAR MR. CROMWELL,

May it please ye,

Sit still a moment; pray, be easy-
Faith, 'tis not five; no play's begun ;
No game at ombre lost or won.
Read something of a different nature,
Than Evening Post or Observator;
And pardon me a little fooling,

Just while your coffee stands a cooling.
Since your acquaintance with one Brocas,
Who needs will back the Muses' cockhorse,
I know you dread all those who write,
And both with mouth and hand recite;

See an account of him in Memoir prefixed to these volumes, p. xxi.

2 Commonly called Beau Brocas.

Who slow and leisurely rehearse,

As loath t'enrich you with their verse;
Just as a still, with simples in it,
Betwixt each drop stays half a minute.
(That simile is not my own,

But lawfully belongs to Donne;
You see how well I can contrive a

Interpolatio furtiva)

To Brocas' lays no more you listen
Than to the wicked Works of Whiston;
In vain he strains to reach your ear
With what it wisely will not hear:

You bless the Powers who made that organ
Deaf to the voice of such a Gorgon,

For so one sure may call that head,
Which does not look, but read men dead.
I hope you think me none of those
Who show their parts, as Pentlow3 does ;
I but lug out to one or two,

Such friends, if such there are, as you,
Such, who read Heinsius and Masson,
And as you please to pass their doom,
(Who are to me both Smith and Johnson)*
So seize them flames, or take them 5 Tonson.
But, sir, from Brocas, Fowler, me,
In vain you think to 'scape rhyme-free;
When was it known one bard did follow
Whig maxims, and abjure Apollo?

3 A gamester.
$ Pope's Pastorals.

4

Bays's two friends in The Rehearsal.

« EelmineJätka »