I have a thousand thanks to giveMy lord alone knows how to live." No sooner said, but from the hall Rush chaplain, butler, dogs and all: "A rat, a rat! clap to the door!". The cat comes bouncing on the floor. Oh for the heart of Homer's mice, Or gods to save them in a trice! (It was by Providence they think, For your d-d stucco has no chink.) "An't please your honour," quoth the peasant,

"This same desert is not so pleasant: Give me again my hollow tree,

A crust of bread and liberty!"

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ALEXANDER POPE.

1688-1744.

POWER OF SATIRE.

F. YOU'RE strangely proud. P. So proud, I am no slave; So impudent, I own myself no knave; So odd, my country's ruin makes me grave. Yes, I am proud; I must be proud to see Men not afraid of God, afraid of me : Safe from the bar, the pulpit, and the throne,

Yet touched and shamed by ridicule alone. O sacred weapon! left for Truth's defence,

Sole dread of folly, vice, and insolence! To all but Heaven-directed hands denied, The Muse may give thee, but the gods must guide.

Rev'rent I touch thee! but with honest zeal,

To rouse the watchmen of the public weal; To virtue's work provoke the tardy Hall, And goad the prelate slumbering in his stall.

Ye tinsel insects! whom a court maintains, That counts your beauties only by your stains,

Spin all your cobwebs o'er the eye of day! The Muse's wing shall brush you all away: All his grace preaches, all his lordship sings,

All that makes saints of queens, and gods of kings,

All, all but truth, drops dead-born from the press,

Like the last gàzette, or the last address.

IN vain sedate reflections we would make, When half our knowledge we must snatch, not take.

Oft, in the passions' wild rotation tost, Our spring of action to ourselves is lost: Tired, not determined, to the last we yield, And what comes then is master of the field, As the last image of that troubled heap, When sense subsides, and fancy sports in sleep

(Though past the recollection of the thought),

Becomes the stuff of which our dream is wrought:

Something as dim to our internal view,
Is thus, perhaps, the cause of most we do.

True, some are open, and to all men known;

Others so very close, they're hid from

none.

(So darkness strikes the sense no less than light.)

Thus gracious Chandos* is beloved at sight;

And every child hates Shylock, though his soul

Still sits at squat, and peeps not from his hole.

At half mankind when generous Manly raves, +

All know 'tis virtue, for he thinks them knaves.

When universal homage Umbra pays,‡ All see 'tis vice and itch of vulgar praise. When flattery glares, all hate it in a queen,§ While one there is who charms us with his spleen.||

But these plain characters we rarely find. Though strong the bent, yet quick the turns of mind:

Or puzzling contraries confound the whole,
Or affectations quite reverse the soul.
The dull, flat falsehood serves for policy;
And in the cunning, truth itself's a lie:
Unthought-of frailties cheat us in the wise;
The fool lies hid in inconsistencies.

See the same man, in vigour, in the gout; Alone, in company; in place or out; Early at business, and at hazard late; Mad at a fox-chase, wise at a debate; Drunk at a borough, civil at a ball; Friendly at Hackney, faithless at Whitehall.

Catius is ever moral, ever grave, Thinks who endures a knave is next a knave;

Save just at dinner-then prefers, no doubt,

A rogue with venison to a saint without,

* "Chandos." James Brydges, first Duke of Chandos.

"Manly." The principal character in Wycherly's "Plain Dealer," a comedy taken from Molière's "Misanthrope."

"Umbra " was supposed to be Bubb Doddington, the favourite adviser of Augusta, Princess of Wales, mother of George III. For political subserviency to Sir Robert Walpole he was created Lord Melcombe-Regis.

§ Meaning Queen Caroline, Consort of George II., whom he disliked.

Dean Swift.

Who would not praise Patritio's ¶ high

desert,

His hand unstained, his uncorrupted heart, His comprehensive head! all interests weighed,

All Europe saved, yet Britain not betrayed. He thanks you not, his pride is in piquet, Newmarket fame, and judgment at a bet.

What made (say, Montagne, ** or more sage Charron)

Otho a warrior, Cromwell a buffoon?
A perjured prince a leaden saint revere,++
A godless regent tremble at a star?
The throne a bigot keep, a genius quit, §§
Faithless through piety, and duped through
wit?

Europe a woman, child, or dotard rule,||||
And just her wisest monarch made a fool?

Know, God and Nature only are the

same:

In man, the judgment shoots at flying game,

A bird of passage! gone as soon as found, Now in the moon, perhaps, now underground,

THE RULING PASSION.

SEARCH then the Ruling Passion: there, alone,

The wild are constant, and the cunning known;

The fool consistent, and the false sincere; Priests, princes, women, no dissemblers here.

¶ Lord Godolphin; "though he was a great gamester," says Warton, "yet he was an able and honest minister.'

** Montaigne, the celebrated French essayist -his name was often thus spelt in Pope's time. He lived between 1533 and 1592. Peter Charron was his dearest friend; he permitted Charron to bear the Montaigne arms.

tt Louis XI. of France wore in his hat a leaden image of the Virgin Mary, which, when he swore by, he feared to break his oath.Pope.

The Regent Duke of Orleans, who, though an infidel, believed in astrology,

§§ Philip V. of Spain, who, after renouncing the throne for religion, resumed it to gratify his Queen; and Victor Amadeus II., King of Sardinia, who resigned the crown, and, trying to resume it, was imprisoned till his death.Pope.

The Czarina Catherine II., the King of France, then a child, the Pope, and the King of Sardinia.

This clue once found, unravels all the rest, The prospect clears, and Wharton stands confest.*

Wharton, the scorn and wonder of our days,

Whose ruling passion was the lust of praise: Born with whate'er could win it from the wise,

Women and fools must him like, or he dies; Though wond'ring senates hung on all he spoke,

The club must hail him master of the joke. Shall parts so various aim at nothing new? He'll shine a Tully and a Wilmot too.

Thus with each gift of nature and of art,
And wanting nothing but an honest heart;
Grown all to all, from no one vice exempt;
And most contemptible, to shun contempt:
His passion still, to covet general praise,
His life, to forfeit it a thousand ways;
A constant bounty which no friend has
made;

An angel tongue, which no man can persuade;

A fool, with more of wit than half mankind;

Toorash for thought, for action too refined; A tyrant to the wife his heart approves; A rebel to the very king he loves;

He dies, sad outcast of each church and state,

And, harder still! flagitious, yet not great. Ask you why Wharton broke through every rule?

'Twas all for fear the knaves should call

him fool.

Nature well known no prodigies remain, Comets are regular, and Wharton plain.

The frugal crone, whom praying priests attend,

Still tries to save the hallowed taper's end, Collects her breath, as ebbing life retires, For one puff more, and in that puff expires.

"Odious! in woollen! 'twould a saint provoke,"

(Were the last words that poor Narcissa spoke).

* Philip, Duke of Wharton, born 1698; died a monk in Spain, 1731. His eccentric and dissipated career rendered him remarkable. He was, towards the end of his life. attached o the Court of the Pretender.

"No, let a charming chintz and Brussels lace fless face: Wrap my cold limbs, and shade my lifeOne would not, sure, be frightful when one's dead

And-Betty-give this a cheek little red."

The courtier smooth, who forty years had shined

An humble servant to all human kind, Just brought out this, when scarce his tongue could stir, [sir?" "If-where I'm going-I could serve you,

"I give and I devise" (old Euclio said, And sighed) "my lands and tenements to Ned."

"Your money, sir?" "My money, sir! what, all?

Why, if I must" (then wept) "I give it Paul."

"The manor, sir?”—“The manor! hold," he cried, [and died.* "Not that, I cannot part with that,"

And you, brave Cobham! to the latest breath

[death: Shall feel your ruling passion strong in Such in those moments as in all the past, "Oh, save my country, Heaven!" shall be your last.

CHARACTERISTICS OF WOMAN.

BUT grant, in public men sometimes are shown,

A woman's seen in private life alone:
Our bolder talents in full light displayed;
Your virtues open fairest in the shade.
Bred to disguise, in public 'tis you hide;
There, none distinguish 'twixt your shame
or pride,

Weakness or delicacy; all so nice,
That each may seem a virtue, or a vice.

In men, we various ruling passions find; In women, two almost divide the kind; Those, only fixed, they first or last obey, The love of pleasure, and the love of sway. That, nature gives; and where the lesson taught

Is but to please, can pleasure seem a fault? Experience, this; by man's oppression

curst,

They seek the second not to lose the first. • Sir William Bateman used those very words on his death-bed.-Warton.

Men, some to bus'ness, some to pleasure take,

But ev'ry woman is at heart a rake:

Men, some to quiet, some to public strife; But ev'ry lady would be queen for life. Yet mark the fate of a whole sex of queens! Pow'r all their end, but beauty all the

means:

In youth they conquer with so wild a rage
As leaves them scarce a subject in their age:
For foreign glory, foreign joy, they roam;
No thought of peace or happiness at home.
But wisdom's triumph is well-timed retreat,
As hard a science to the fair as great!
Beauties, like tyrants, old and friendless
grown,

Yet hate repose, and dread to be alone;
Worn out in public, weary ev'ry eye,
Nor leave one sigh behind them when they
die.

*

See how the world its veterans rewards! A youth of frolics, an old age of cards; Fair to no purpose, artful to no end, Young without lovers, old without a friend; A fop their passion, but their prize a sot; Alive ridiculous, and dead, forgot!

Ah, friend! to dazzle let the vain design; To raise the thought, and touch the heart be thine:

That charm shall grow, while what fatigues the Ring, [thing: Flaunts and goes down, an unregarded So when the sun's broad beam has tired

[light,

the sight, All mild ascends the moon's more sober Serene in virgin modesty she shines, And unobserved the glaring orb declines.

Oh! blest with temper, whose unclouded ray

Can make to-morrow cheerful as to-day; She, who can love a sister's charms, or hear; Sighs for a daughter with unwounded ear; She, who ne'er answers till a husband cools, Or, if she rules him, never shows she rules; Charms by accepting, by submitting sways, Yet has her humour most when she obeys; Let fops or fortune fly which way they will; Disdains all loss of tickets or codille; [all, Spleen, vapours, or small-pox, above them And mistress of herself, though china fall.

And yet, believe me, good as well as ill, Woman's at best a contradiction still.

Heav'n, when it strives to polish all it can Its last best work, but forms a softer man; Picks from each sex, to make the fav'rite blest,

Your love of pleasure, our desire of rest; Blends, in exception to all gen'ral rules, Your taste of follies with our scorn of fools: Reserve with frankness, art with truth allied,

Courage with softness, modesty with pride; Fixed principles, with fancy ever new; Shakes all together, and produces-you.

Be this a woman's fame: with this unblest, [jest. Toasts live a scorn, and queens may die a This Phoebus promised (I forget the year) When those blue eyes first opened on the sphere;

Ascendent Phoebus watched that hour with care,

Averted half your parents' simple pray'r, And gave you beauty, but denied the pelf That buys your sex a tyrant o'er itself. The generous God, who wit and gold refines,

And ripens spirits as He ripens mines, Kept dross for duchesses, the world shall

know it,

To you gave sense, good-humour, and a poet.

-:0:

MATTHEW PRIOR.

1664-1721.

EPIGRAM.

I LOVED thee, beautiful and kind,
And plighted an eternal vow;
So altered are thy face and mind-
'Twere perjury to love thee now.

OLIVER GOLDSMITH.

1728-1774.

AN ELEGY ON THE GLORY OF HER SEX, MRS. MARY BLAIZE.

GOOD people all, with one accord

Lament for Madam Blaize, Who never wanted a good word

From those who spoke her praise.

The needy seldom passed her door,
And always found her kind;
She freely lent to all the poor-
Who left a pledge behind.

She strove the neighbourhood to please
With manners wondrous winning;
And never followed wicked ways—
Unless when she was sinning.

At church, in silks and satins new,
With hoop of monstrous size,
She never slumbered in her pew-
But when she shut her eyes.

Her love was sought, I do aver,

By twenty beaux and more;
The king himself has followed her-
When she has walked before.

But now her wealth and finery fled,
Her hangers-on cut short all;

The doctors found, when she was dead-
Her last disorder mortal.

Let us lament in sorrow sore,

For Kent Street well may say That had she lived a twelvemonth moreShe had not died to-day.

BURLESQUE ELEGY.

YE muses, pour the pitying tear
For Pollio snatched away;
Oh, had he lived another year-
He had not died to-day.

Oh, were he born to bless mankind
In virtuous times of yore,
Heroes themselves had fall'n behind-
Whene'er he went before.

How sad the groves and plains appear, And sympathetic sheep:

Ev'n pitying hills would drop a tearIf hills could learn to weep.

His bounty in exalted strain

Each bard may well display, Since none implored relief in vainThat went relieved away.

And hark! I hear the tuneful throng His obsequies forbid :

He still shall live, shall live as longAs ever dead man did.

AN ELEGY ON THE DEATH OF A MAD DOG.

GOOD people all, of every sort,

Give ear unto my song,

And if you find it wondrous short, It cannot hold you long.

In Islington there was a man, Of whom the world might say That still a godly race he ran— Whene'er he went to pray.

A kind and gentle heart he had
To comfort friends and foes;
The naked every day he clad-
When he put on his clothes.

And in that town a dog was found,
As many dogs there be,

Both mongrel, puppy, whelp, and hound,
And curs of low degree.

This dog and man at first were friends;
But when a pique began,

The dog, to gain some private ends,
Went mad, and bit the man.

Around from all the neighbouring streets
The wond'ring neighbours ran,
And swore the dog had lost his wits,
To bite so good a man.

The wound it seemed both sore and sad
To every Christian eye;

And while they swore the dog was mad,
They swore the man would die.

But soon a wonder came to light,

That showed the rogues they lied,-
The man recovered of the bite,
The dog it was that died!

:0:

WILLIAM COWPER.

1731-1800.

THE DIVERTING HISTORY OF JOHN GILPIN. Showing how he went farther than he intended, and came safe home again.

The story of John Gilpin's ride was related to Cowper by his friend, Lady Austen, who had heard it as a child. It caused the poet a sleepless night, we are told, as he was kept