GAY. VERSES TO BE PLACED UNDER THE PICTURE OF SIR CONTAINING A COMPLETE CATALOGUE OF HIS WORKS.1 SEE who ne'er was nor will be half read, Till all true Englishmen cried " Hang her!" And of Redemption made damned work; What wonders there the man grown old did! All thought him just what thought King Achish; But judged Rebo am his own son ; And Job himself curse God and die. What punishment all this must follow? Shall Arthur use him like King Tollo? Or dexterous Deborah Siserà him? Or shall Eliza lay a plot To treat him like her sister Scot? No, none of these; Heaven save his life,— A NEW SONG OF NEW SIMILES. Drunk as a piper all day long, Or like a March-hare mad. Round as a hoop the bumpers flow; For, though as drunk as David's sow, I love her still the better. Pert as a pear-monger I'd be, The rest of womankind. 195 1 Blackmore, a versifier now remembered only by name, was the author of King Arthur (an epic), The Creation, &c. &c. Like a stuck pig, I gaping stare, Lean as a rake, with sighs and care,— Plump as a partridge was I known, I, melancholy as a cat, Hard is her heart as flint or stone, The god of love, at her approach, Hearts, sound as any bell or roach, Ah me! as thick as hops or hail Straight as my leg her shape appears : As fine as fivepence is her mien, As soft as pap her kisses are,- As smooth as glass, as white as curds, Brisk as a body-louse she trips, Clean as a penny dressed; Sweet as a rose her breath and lips, Round as the globe her breast. Full as an egg was I with glee, Good Lord! how all men envied me! But false as hell, she, like the wind, If I and Molly could agree, Till you grow tender as a chick, You'll know me truer than a die, Sure as a gun she'll drop a tear, And sigh, perhaps, and wish, 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 To find out a punishment due for his fault 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; 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 WHILE Butler, needy wretch, was yet alive, See him, when starved to death and turned to dust, 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, That, while your verse the reader draws To curse your being witty. No gods or weak or wicked feign; Make not a pious chief forego With partial blindness to a side, 1 Butler, the author of Hudibras. Nor let a hero loud blaspheme, Nor choose the wanton Ode, to praise A numerous melting lyric: Nor jumbled atoms entertain Stands without vesture painted: Worse than the poet tainted. Through nature, and through art of love, Nor sparrow mourn, nor sue to kiss; In ears of princes blowing. Through modern Italy pass down Stay there who count it worth the while! To note the poets of our isle, And only spare the naming. Sing not loose stories for the nonce,} Nor long-tongued wife of Bath, at once |