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.

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 ev'n thee.

Our Fate thou only canst adjourn
Some few short years, no more!
Ev'n Button's Wits to Worms shall turn,
Who Maggots were before.

SONG,

BY A PERSON OF QUALITY.

WRITTEN IN THE YEAR 1733.

I.

FLUTT'RING Spread thy purple pinions,
Gentle Cupid, o'er my Heart;
I a Slave in thy dominions;
Nature must give way to Art.

II.

Mild Arcadians, ever blooming,
Nightly nodding o'er your flocks,
See my weary days consuming,
All beneath yon flow'ry rocks.

III.

Thus the Cyprian Goddess weeping,
Mourn'd Adonis, darling youth:
Him the Boar, in Silence creeping,
Gor'd with unrelenting tooth.

IV.

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

V.

Gloomy Pluto, King of Terrors,
Arm'd in adamantine chains,
Lead me to the crystal mirrors,
Wat'ring soft Elysian plains.

VI.

Mournful Cypress, verdant Willow,
Gilding my Aurelia's brows,
Morpheus, hov'ring o'er my pillow,
Hear me pay my dying vows.

VII.

Melancholy, smooth Meander,
Swiftly purling in a round,
On thy margin Lovers wander,

With thy flow'ry chaplets crown'd.

VIII.

Thus when Philomela, drooping,
Softly seeks her silent mate,
See the Bird of Juno stooping;
Melody resigns to Fate.

"what is

It is remarkable, that this song imposed upon one of Pope's professed Commentators, the late learned Gilbert Wakefield, who took it for a serious composition: "It appears," he says, "disjointed and obscure," and asks, in reference to the fourth verse, the propriety of this observation? and what its application to the present subject?" On this occasion Mr. Toulmin, a friend of Mr. Wakefield's, addressed to him a copy of verses, which Mr. Wakefield,

with a good-humoured confession of his mistake, has printed in the subsequent volume of his Observations on Pope, 8vo. 1769, conceiving that " they will form an agreeable termination of his Preface."

"Watchful Wakefield, late and early
Slumbering o'er the page of Pope,

Wit has caught her critic fairly,

Twisting sand into a rope," &c.

But perhaps the most solemn and successful imposition that ever was practised on an inconsiderate reader, is the Ode on Science; printed (as is also the Love Song by a person of quality) in Pope and Swift's Miscellanies; and which, like that, to judge from the style, is not unlikely to have been the work of Pope.

ODE ON SCIENCE.

O, Heavenly born! in deepest dells
If fairest Science ever dwells

Beneath the mossy cave;

Indulge the verdure of the woods,
With azure beauty gild the floods,
And flow'ry carpets lave.

For melancholy ever reigns
Delighted in the sylvan scenes

With scientific light;

While Dian, huntress of the vales,
Seeks lulling sounds and fanning gales,
Though wrapt from mortal sight.

Yet, Goddess, yet the way explore
With magic rites and heathen lore
Obstructed and depress'd;
Till Wisdom give the sacred Nine,
Untaught, not uninspir'd, to shine
By reason's power redress'd.

When Solon and Lycurgus taught
To moralize the human thought

Of mad opinion's maze,

To erring zeal they gave new laws,
Thy charms, O Liberty, the cause
That blends congenial rays.

Bid bright Astræa gild the morn,
Or bid a hundred suns be born,

To hecatomb the year;

Without thy aid, in vain the poles,
In vain the zodiac system rolls
In vain the lunar sphere.

Come, fairest princess of the throng, Bring sweet philosophy along

In metaphysic dreams;

While raptur'd bards no more behold

A vernal age of purer gold,

In Heliconian streams.

Drive Thraldom with malignant hand,

To curse some other destin'd land,

By Folly led astray;

Iërne bear on azure wing,

Energic let her soar, and sing
Thy universal sway.

So when Amphion bade the lyre
To more majestic sound aspire,
Behold the madding throng,
In wonder and oblivion drown'd,
To sculpture turn'd by magic sound
And petrifying song!