CARDELIA. Alas far lesser losses than I bear, Have made a soldier sigh, a lover swear. And oh what makes the disappointment hard, "Twas my own lord that drew the fatal card. In complaisance I took the queen he gave; Though my own secret wish was for the knave. The knave won sonica, which I had chose; And the next puli, my septleva I lose. SMILINDA. But ah! what aggravates the killing smart, The cruel thought, that stabs me to the heart; This curs'd Ombrolia, this undoing fair,, By whose vile arts this heavy grief I bear; She, at whose name I shed these spiteful tears, She owes to me the very charms she wears. An aukward 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 introduc'd 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 tally'd, 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 deceiv'd! How many curs'd the moment they believ'd! 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 Basset, and remain unwarm'd ? When kings, queens, knaves, are set in decent rank; Expos'd 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. Fir'd by the sight, all reason I disdain ; My passions rise, and will not bear the rein. Iook 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 my 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 doats upon a bean; Prudiua likes a man, and laughs at show. Their several graces in my Sharper meet; Strong as the footinan, as the master sweet. LOVET. Cease your contention, which has been too long; I grow inpatient, 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 remov'd 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-Adicu." Lay fortune-struck, a spectacle of woe! How chang'd from him who made the boxes WH PROLOGUE TO SOPHONISBA. BY POPE AND MALLET. HEN 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 th' Italian scene first learn'd to glow; And the first tears for her were taught to flow. Her charms the Gallic Muses next inspir'd: Corneille himself saw, wonder'd, and was fir'd. What foreign theatres with pride have shown, The heroine rise, to grace the British scene. To-night our home-spun author would be true, He owns their learning, but disdains their laws. Nature informer of the poet's art, MACER: A CHARACTER. WHEN Simple Macer, now of high renown, So some coarse country wench, almost decay'd, TO MR. JOHN MOORE, AUTHOR OF THE CELEBRATED WORM-POWDER How much, egregious Moore, are we Vile, reptile, weak, and vain? E'er since our grandame's evil; She first convers'd 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, 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, If thou could'st make the courtier void And greater gain would rise, The worm that never dies! O learned friend of Abchurch-lane, SONG, BY A PERSON OF QUALITY. FLUTTERING Spread thy purple pinions, Nature must give way to art. All beneath yon flowery rocks. Thus the Cyprian goddess weeping, Mourn'd Adonis, darling youth; Him the boar, in silence creeping, Gor'd with unrelenting tooth. Cynthia, tune harmonious numbers Fair Discretion, string the lyre; Sooth my ever-waking slumbers: Bright Apollo, lend thy choir, Watering soft Elysian plains, With thy flowery chaplets crown'd, 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 grave through pride, nor gay through folly; An equal mixture of good-humour, And sensible soft melancholy. ON HIS GROTTO AT TWICKENHAM. COMPOSED OF MARBLE, SPARS, GEMS, ORES, AND MINERALS. THOU who shalt stop, where Thames' translucent wave Shines a broad mirrour through the shadowy cave; TO MRS, M. B, ON HER BIRTH-DAY. Let joy or ease, let affluence or content, TO MR. THOMAS SOUTHERN, ON HIS BIRTH-DAY, 1742, RESIGN'D to live, prepar'd 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 show his wit was sudden And for his judgment, lo a pudden ! VARIATION. Ver. 15. Originally thus in the MS. 13 And oh, since Death must that fair frame destroy, Roast beef, though old, proclaims him stout, What schemes of politics, or laws, To you (th' all-envy'd gift of Heaven) TO LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGUE'. Th' indulgent gods, unask'd, have given IN beauty or wit, No mortal as yet To question your empire has dar'd; But men of discerning Have thought that in learning, To yield to a lady was hard. Impertinent schools, Have reading to females deny'd: The Bible to use, Lest flocks should be wise as their guide, 'Twas a woman at first, (Indeed she was curst) In knowledge that tasted delight, The laws should decree To the first of possessors the right. Which to your whole sex does belong; From a second bright Eve, The knowledge of right, and of wrong, Hard doom did receive, When only one apple had she, What a punishment new Shall he found out for you, Who tasting, have robb'd the whole tree? THE FOURTH EPISTLE OF THE FIRST BOOK OF HORACE'S EPISTLES2, A MODERN IMITATION, SAY, St. John, who alone peruse 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 libel'd by her hate. S. 2 This satire on Lord Bolingbroke, and the praise bestowed 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. Ad ALBIUM TIBULLUM. A form complete in every part, 3 Albi, nostrorum sermonum candide judex, Quid nunc te dicam facere in regione Pedana? Scribere, quod Cassi Parmensis opuscula vincat?' 3 Amidst thy various ebbs of fear, In spite of fears, of mercy spite, EPIGRAM ON MRS. TOFTS. A HANDSOME WOMAN WITH A FINE VOICE, BUT VERY COVETOUS AND PROUD. 10 So bright is thy beauty, so charming thy song, As had drawn both the beasts and their Orpheus along; But such is thy avarice, and such is thy pride, That the beasts must have starv'd, and the poet have died. The lines here quoted occur in the Essay on Man. 6 'An tacitam silvas inter reptare salubres? Di tibi formam Di tibi divitias dederant, artemque fruendi. "Quid voveat dulci nutricula majus alumno, Quam sapere, et fari posset quæ sentiat, et cui Gratia, fama, valetudo contingat abunde, - non deficiente crumena? * Inter spem, curamque, timores inter et iras, • Omnem crede diem tibi diluxisse supremum, Me pinguem, et nitidum bene curata cute vises, Cum ridere voles Epicuri de grege porcum. 10 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 in Why make I friendships with the great, Or follow girls seven hours in eight ?- Still idle, with a busy air, Most thinking rake alive. Whose soul sincere and free, A FAREWELL TO LONDON, IN THE YEAR 1715. DEAR, damn'd, distracting town, farewell! Thy fools no more I'll teaze : This year in peace, ye critics, dwell, Soft B and rough C, adieu! Earl Warwick make your moan, The lively Hk and you May knock up whores alone. To drink and droll be Rowe allow'd On every learned sot, And Garth, the best good Christian he, Lintot, farewell! thy bard must go; Heaven gives thee, for thy loss of Rowe, Why should I stay? Both parties rage; My vixen mistress squalls; And not one Muse of all he fed, Has yet the grace to mourn. My friends, by turns, my friends confound, Betray, and are betray'd: Poor Y-r's sold for fifty pound, And Bll is a jade. ferior, 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. 1 It is not generally known that the person here meant was Dr. Robert Freind, head master of Westminster-school. |