heads of the university (unfairly it was thought) required from the bachelors of King's college. Anstey, as senior of the order of bachelors, had to deliver the first oration. He contrived to begin his speech with a rhapsody of adverbs, which, with no direct meaning, hinted a ridicule on the arbitrary injunction of the university rulers. They soon ordered him to dismount from the rostrum, and called upon him for a new declamation, which, as might be expected, only gave him an opportunity of pointing finer irony in the shape of an apology. This affront was not forgot by his superiors; and when he applied for his degree it was refused to him. In the year 1756 he married Miss Calvert, sister to his oldest and most intimate friend John Calvert, Esq. of Albury Hall, in Hertfordshire, and sat in several successive parliaments for the borough of Hertford. Having succeeded, after his marriage, to his father's estate, he retired to the family seat in Cambridgeshire, and seems to have spent his days in that smooth happiness which gives life few remarkable eras. He was addicted to the sports of the field and the amusements of the country, undisturbed by ambition, and happy in the possession of friends and fortune. His first literary effort which was published, was his translation of Gray's Elegy in a Churchyard into Latin verse, in which he was assisted by Dr. Roberts, author of "Judah Restored." He was personally acquainted with Gray, and derived from him the benefit of some remarks on his translation. His first publication in English verse was "The New Bath Guide," which appeared in 1766. The droll and familiar manner of the poem is original; but its leading characters are evidently borrowed from Smollett. Anstey gave the copy price of the piece, which was £200, as a charitable donation to the hospital of Bath; and Dodsley, to whom it had been sold, with remarkable generosity restored the copyright to its author, after it had been eleven years published. His other works hardly require the investigation of their date. In the decline of life he meditated a collection of his letters and poems; but letters recovered from the repositories of dead friends are but melancholy readings; and, probably overcome by the sensations which they excited, he desisted from his collection. After a happy enjoyment of life (during fifty years of which he had never been confined to bed, except one day, by an accidental hurt upon his leg), he quietly resigned his existence, at the house of his son-in-law, Mr. Bosanquet, in his eighty-first year, surrounded by his family, and retaining his faculties to the last. FROM THE NEW BATH GUIDE. LETTER XIII. Mr. SIMKIN B-N-R-D to Lady B-N-R-D, at Hall, North. A Public Breakfast-Motives for the same-A List of the Company-A tender Scene-An unfortunate Incident. WHAT blessings attend, my dear mother, all those All the people at Bath to a general breakfast. You've heard of my Lady Bunbutter, no doubt, How she loves an assembly, fandango, or rout; No lady in London is half so expert At a snug private party her friends to divert; town, And often to Bath condescends to come down : Her ladyship's fav'rite house is the Bear: Her chariot, and servants, and horses are there; My Lady declares that retiring is good; If Hymen no longer his fingers will scorch, To In hopes he her Ladyship's favour might win, I'm sure he's a person of great resolution, Was bowing, and handing the ladies a-shore: To moisten their pinions like ducks when it rains; And 'twas pretty to see how, like birds of a feather, And Madam Van-Twister, Her Ladyship's sister. Lord Cram, and Lord Vulture, Sir Brandish O'Culter, With Marshal Carouzer, And old Lady Mouzer, And the great Hanoverian Baron Pansmowzer: Sweet were the strains, as od❜rous gales that blow |