"The blushes of morn, and the freshness of May,
Are charms that no art can procure;

O be but yourselves, and our homage we pay,
And your empire is solid and sure.

But if, Amazon like, you attack your gallants,
And put us in fear of our lives,

You may do very well for sisters and aunts,
But, believe me, you'll never be wives."

He is here alluding to the very reprehensible practice of ladies appearing in male costume at the Ranelagh masquerades, which, although only attended by fashionable society, were conducted in such a lax manner, that the guards placed in the rooms were found of little service in maintaining order and decorum.

Whitehead's last poetical work, except indeed the official odes, was a fable called The Goat's Beard, published in 1777. This peculiarly feeble poem is founded on some lines of Phaedrus, which relate that when the she goats had, by their entreaties, obtained from Jupiter the privilege of having beards, as well as the males, the he goats grew angry, and complained that the god had degraded their dignity, by admitting females to equal honours with themselves.

To which Jove replied:

“That if they would take care to preserve the real and essential advantages which their sex gave them over the other, they would have no reason to be dissatisfied with letting them participate in what was merely ornamental."

This slender plot Whitehead treated as an allegory, changing the goats into men and women, for whose benefit he enlarges the eight pithy lines of Phaedrus into about 800 dull ones of his own.

The Goat's Beard was answered by an attack entitled,

Asses' Ears, a Fable, in which the office of laureat is denied to men of genius, and judged worthy to be held only by such men as the present possessor, a Cibber, or a Shadwell.

Whitehead, in addition to the laureatship, held the office of Registrar and Secretary to the Most Honourable Order of the Bath. He died April 14, 1785, at the age of seventy, and was buried in South Audley Street chapel.

AN EPITAPH ON W. WHITEHEAD, ESQ.

Intended for His Monument in Westminster Abbey.

"BENEATH this stone a Poet Laureat lies,

Nor great, nor good, nor foolish, nor yet wise;
Not meanly humble, nor yet swell'd with pride.
He simply liv'd-and just as simply died :
Each year his Muse produced a Birth Day Ode,
Compos'd with flattery in the usual mode:
For this, and but for this, to George's praise,
The Bard was pension'd, and receiv'd the Bays."

THE LAUREAT.

An Ode.

"THAT Laurel, once by Dryden worn,
But since by many dunces borne,
Each rival dunce cry'd fie on!
The boasted laurel was, they said,
No more than a poor

At Court call'd Dann-de-Lion.

"For scenes of comedy renown'd,
And justly for his acting crown'd,
The prince of fops and folly;
For kings, nor poetry regarding,
And writing odes not worth one farthing,
Long liv'd the Laureat Colly.

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Him, Pope assail'd by legions backed
And often to his couplets tack'd
The name of idle Cibber;

Yet Coll, unskill'd in long and short,
Made in plain prose a smart retort
To Pope a damn'd Grim Gribber.*
"Will. Whitehead bade the reign commence
Of Birth-day odes and common sense;
And there his efforts rested;
True poetry, by genius fir'd,
Billy's cold bosom ne'er inspir'd;
For Bill was chicken-breasted.

"Warton, on Greek and Roman base,
Rescued the laurels from disgrace,

With fame no foes shall hinder.
Blest with the gift of ev'ry tongue,
Themes Royal royally he sung,
A HORACE, and a PINDAR!"

“Warton, I know you'll ne'er repine
That witlings carp at ev'ry line,
And with your lyricks quarrel.
Alas! from party, spite, or whim,
Such ever is the fate of him

Who boasts the Royal laurel.

* See Sir R. Steele's Conscious Lovers. (Tom.) I pinched him to the quick about Grim Grimmer. ACT 3.

"WILL WHITEHEAD, Sire, hath wish'd the world good night, Pray who shall fabricate your next year's Ode?

As I most laudably can read and write,

Let me the line with GEORGE's virtues load!

Sire, if you'll make me LAUREAT, I declare
I'll chaunt you, if you do but take the air;
And if it should your Royal humour suit,
I'll sing your horse to boot.

"But Sire, perchance you've been be-rhym'd so long,
Your Royal Ear is sick of BIRTH-DAY SONG!

In this case, you'll be better serv'd by NONE;
For, order me the SALARY and WINE,
I'll whisper to APOLLO and the NINE,

And so contrive to let the ODE ALONE."

PINDAR'S ODE ON THE DEATH OF WHITEHEAD.

THE father of Thomas Warton was vicar of Basingstoke, in which town the future laureate was born in 1728. It has been said that he was educated at Winchester school, probably because his brother afterwards became head master of that establishment. This was not however the case; he remained under his father's tuition until he was

admitted a commoner of Trinity College, Oxford, on the 16th March, 1743.

He early displayed a great attachment to poetry, and when only seventeen years of age wrote The Pleasures of Melancholy, which was published anonymously in 1747. The following year he published The Triumph of Isis, a poem in defence of Oxford, as an answer to Mason's attack upon that seat of learning in his Isis, an Elegy. About the time of the 1745 Rebellion, Oxford men were suspected of favouring the Stuart party; it is doubtful how far the suspicion was well founded; but some drunken brawls occurred, and after an inquiry into the circumstances, considerable blame was thrown upon the ViceChancellor, and the heads of several of the Colleges.

The following epigram, said to have been written by the father of Thomas Warton, was current at the time :

"The King observing with judicious eyes

The state of his two universities;

To Oxford sent a troop of horse; for why?
That learned body wanted loyalty.

To Cambridge he sent books, as well discerning
How much that loyal body wanted learning."

Mason seized the opportunity to sing the praises of Cambridge, adverting in his poem to the above circumstances, and decrying the university of Oxford. Warton replied in his Triumph, by enumerating the distinguished men who had studied at Oxford, and, in a tone of mild expostulation, accuses Cambridge of venality and servility:

"Still sing, O CAM, your fav'rite Freedom's cause;

Still boast of Freedom, while you break her laws."

The finest passage in this poem is that descriptive of