Full as an egg was I with glee,

And happy as a king:

Good Lord! how all men envied me!
She loved like anything.

But false as hell, she, like the wind,
Changed, as her sex must do :
Though seeming as the turtle kind,
And like the gospel true.

If I and Molly could agree,
Let who would take Peru!
Great as an Emperor should I be,
And richer than a Jew.

Till you grow tender as a chick,
I'm dull as any post;

Let us like curs together stick,
And warm as any toast.

You'll know me truer than a die,
And wish me better speed,-

Flat as a flounder when I lie,
And as a herring dead.

Sure as a gun she'll drop a tear,

And sigh, perhaps, and wish,
When I am rotten as a pear,
And mute as any fish.

LISLE.1

EURYDICE.

WHEN Orpheus went down to the regions below,

Which men are forbidden to see;

He tuned up his lyre, as old histories show,

To set his Eurydice free.

All hell was astonished a person so wise

Should rashly endanger his life,

And venture so far; but how vast their surprise
When they heard that he came for his wife!

To find out a punishment due for his fault
Old Pluto long puzzled his brain;

But hell had not torments sufficient, he thought,—

So he gave him his wife back again.

1 I have looked in various books for any particulars about this writer, but without success. His Eurydice is given in Aikin's Collection of English Songs (edition 1810): the first edition of which book was published in 1772. From a peculiarity of rhyming common at one time-"fault" with "thought"-I pre sume the poem may have been written at some such date as 1720 to 1750.

But pity succeeding soon vanquished his heart;
And, pleased with his playing so well,

He took her again in reward of his art,-
Such merit had music in hell.

SAMUEL WESLEY (JUNR.)

[See Samuel Wesley (Sen.), p. 154. The Rev. Samuel Wesley, Jun., was born towards 1692, and died in 1739. He was for many years an usher in Westminster School, and afterwards Head Master of Tiverton School. He was an extreme high Tory, and strongly disapproved of the religious movement promoted by his brother John].

ON THE SETTING-UP MR. BUTLER'S1 MONUMENT IN

WESTMINSTER ABBEY.

WHILE Butler, needy wretch, was yet alive,
No generous patron would a dinner give:

See him, when starved to death and turned to dust,
Presented with a monumental bust !

The poet's fate is here in emblem shown;

He asked for bread, and he received a stonę.

ADVICE TO ONE WHO WAS ABOUT TO WRITE, TO AVOID THE IMMORALITIES OF THE ANCIENT AND

MODERN POETS.

IF e'er to writing you pretend,
Your utmost aim and study bend
The paths of virtue to befriend,
However mean your ditty;

That, while your verse the reader draws
To reason's and religion's laws,

None e'er hereafter may have cause

To curse your being witty.

No gods or weak or wicked feign;
Where foolish blasphemy is plain,
But good to wire-draw from the strain
The critic's art perplexes.

Make not a pious chief forego
A Princess he betrayed to woe,
Nor shepherd, unplatonic, show
His fondness for Alexis.

With partial blindness to a side,
Extol not surly stoic pride,
When wild ambition's rapid tide
Bursts nature's bonds asunder:

1 Butler, the author of Hudibras.

Nor let a hero loud blaspheme,
Rave like a madman in a dream,
Till Jove himself affrighted seem,
Not trusting to his thunder.

Nor choose the wanton Ode, to praise
Unbridled loves or thoughtless days,
In soft Epicurean lays;

A numerous melting lyric:
Nor satire that would lust chastise
With angry warmth and maxim wise,
Yet, loosely painting naked vice,
Becomes its panegyric.

Nor jumbled atoms entertain
In the void spaces of your brain,—
Deny all gods, while Venus vain

Stands without vesture painted:
Nor show the foul nocturnal scene
Of courts and revellings unclean,
Where never libertine had been

Worse than the poet tainted.
Nor let luxuriant fancy rove
Through nature, and through art of love,
Skilled in smooth Elegy to move,
Youth unexperienced firing:
Nor gods as brutes expose to view,
Nor monstrous crimes, nor lend a clue
To guide the guilty lover through
The mazes of desiring.

Nor sparrow mourn, nor sue to kiss;
Nor draw your fine-spun wit so nice
That thin-spread sense like nothing is,
Or worse than nothing showing:
Nor spite in Epigram declare,
Pleasing the mob with lewdness bare,
Or flattery's pestilential air

In ears of princes blowing.

Through modern Italy pass down (In crimes inferior she to none),

Through France, her thoughts in lust alone Without reserve proclaiming :

Stay there who count it worth the while!
Let us deduce our useful style

To note the poets of our isle,
And only spare the naming.

Sing not loose stories for the nonce,
Where mirth for bawdry ill atones,
Nor long-tongued wife of Bath, at once

On earth and heaven jesting:
Nor, while the main at virtue aims,
Insert, to soothe forbidden flames,
In a chaste work, a squire of dames,
Or Paridell a-feasting.

Nor comic licence let us see,
Where all things sacred outraged be,
Where plots of mere adultery
Fill the lascivious pages.

One only step can yet remain,
More frankly, shamelessly unclean. –
To bring it from behind the scene,
And act it on the stages.

Nor make your tragic hero bold
Out-bully Capaneus of old,
While justling gods his rage behold,
And tremble at his frowning.
Nor need'st thou vulgar wit display,
Acknowledged in dramatic way
Greatest and best; Oh spare the lay
Of poor Ophelia drowning!

Nor dress your shame in courtly phrase,
Where artful breaks the fancy raise,
And ribaldry unnamed the lays
Transparently is seen in:

Nor make it your peculiar pride
To strive to show what others hide,
To throw the fig-leaf quite aside;
And scorn a double meaning.

Nor ever prostitute the Muse,
Malicious, mercenary, Icose,
All faith, all parties, to abuse;
Still changing, still to evil:

Make Maximin with heaven engage,
Blaspheming Sigismonda rage,
Draw scenes of lust in latest age,

Apostle of the Devil.

Detest profaning holy writ,—

A rock where heathens could not split.

Old Jove more harmless charmed the pit,

Of Plautus's creation,

Than when the adulterer was showed

With attributes of real God

But fools the means of grace allowed
Pervert to their damnation.

Mingle not wit with treason rude,
To please the rebel multitude:

From poison intermixed with food
What caution e'er can screen us?
Ne'er stoop to court a wanton smile;
Thy pious strains and lofty style,
Too light, let nor an Alma soil,
Nor paltry dove of Venus.

Such plots deform the tuneful train,
Whilst they false glory would attain,
Or present mirth, or present gain,
Unmindful of hereafter.

Do you mistaken ends despise,
Nor fear to fall, nor seek to rise,
Nor taint the good, nor grieve the wise,
To tickle fools with laughter.

What though with ease you could aspire
To Virgil's art or Homer's fire,

If vice and lewdness breathes the lyre,
If virtue it asperses?

Better with honest Quarles compose
Emblem that good intention shows,
Better be Bunyan in his prose,

Or Sternhold in his verses.

MATTHEW GREEN.

[Born in 1696, died in 1737. An official in the London Custom-House, and author of the poem named The Spleen-which, like the rest of his compositions, was only published after his death].

AN EPIGRAM

ON THE REV. MR. LAURENCE EACHARD'S AND BISHOP GILBERT BURNET'S

HISTORIES.

GIL's history appears to me

Political anatomy;

A case of skeletons well done,
And malefactors every one.

His sharp and strong incision-pen
Historically cuts-up men,

And does with lucid skill impart
Their inward ails of head and heart.
Laurence proceeds another way,
And well-dressed figures does display?
His characters are all in flesh,
Their hands are fair, their faces fresh ;
And from his sweetening art derive
A better scent than when alive.
He wax-work made to please the sons
Whose fathers were Gil's skeletons.