And I so ravish'd with her heavenly note, At length I waked, and, looking round the bower, For still methought she sung not far away; On the green bank I sat, and listen'd long, My sight, and smell, and hearing, were employ'd, Thus while I sat intent to see and hear, I pass their form, and every charming grace, High on their heads, with jewels richly set, Of laurel some, of woodbine many more, Appear'd in higher honour than the rest. By stature and by beauty mark'd their sovereign queen. She in the midst began with sober grace; Her servants' eyes were fix'd upon her face, And, as she moved or turn'd, her motions view'd, Her measures kept, and step by step pursued. Methought she trod the ground with greater grace, With more of godhead shining in her face; She raised her voice on high, and sung so clear, The fawns came scudding from the groves to hear: And all the bending forest lent an ear. UPON THE EARL OF DUNDEE. FROM THE LATIN OF DR. PITCAIRN. O LAST and best of Scots! who didst maintain SIR CHARLES SEDLEY. [Born, 1639, Died, 1701.] SIR CHARLES SEDLEY in his riper years made some atonement for the disgraces of a licentious youth, by his political conduct in opposing the arbitrary measures of James, and promoting the Revolution. King James had seduced his daughter, and made her Countess of Dorchester. "For making my daughter a countess," said Sedley, "I have helped to make his daughter a queen." When his comedy of Bellamira was played, the roof fell in, and he was one of the very few that were hurt by the accident. A flatterer told him that the fire of the play had blown up the poet, house, and all. 66 No," he replied, "the play was so heavy that it broke down the house, and buried the poet in his own rubbish." SONG IN "BELLAMIRA, OR THE MISTRESS." And tax my tender heart You may be handsome and have wit, The person love must to us fit, He only can succeed. Some die, yet never are believed; Others we trust too soon, Helping ourselves to be deceived, And proud to be undone. TO A VERY YOUNG LADY. And praised the coming day; Must take my rest away. Your charms in harmless childhood lay, [From "the Mulberry Garden, a comedy written by the Honourable Sir Charles Sedley," 4to, 1668. This song is commonly printed as the production of "the Right Honourable Duncan Forbes, Lord President of the Court of Session," and is said to have been composed in 1710. See Motherwell's Ancient Minstrelsy, p. 65; and another Editor of Old Songs has said that these "tender and pathetic stanzas were addressed to Miss Mary Rose, the elegant and accomplished daughter of Hugh Rose, Esq. of But as your charms insensibly My passion with your beauty grew, Each gloried in their wanton part, Though now I slowly bend to love If your fair self my chains approve I shall my freedom hate. Lovers, like dying men, may well Since none alive can truly tell SONG. LOVE still has something of the sea, They are becalm'd in clearest days, Kilravock." Ritson commences his collection of English Songs with Sedley's verses; both Ritson and Park were ignorant of their Author; and Mr. Chambers, in his Scottish Songs, starts with it as a genuine production of old Scotland! Burns has ascribed it to Sir Peter Halket, of Pitferran. Forbes was born in 1685, seventeen years after the appearance of Sedley's comedy.-See Songs of England and Scotland, vol. i. p. 122.] One while they seem to touch the port, At first Disdain and Pride they fear, By such degrees to joy they come, And are so long withstood; So slowly they receive the sum, It hardly does them good. "Tis cruel to prolong a pain; And to defer a joy, Believe me, gentle Celemene, Offends the wingéd boy, An hundred thousand oaths your fears, And if I gazed a thousand years, SONG. PHILLIS, you have enough enjoy'd The pleasures of disdain; Methinks your pride should now be cloy'd, And grow itself again: Open to love your long-shut breast, JOHN POMFRET. [Born, 1667. Died, 1703.] JOHN POMFRET was minister of Malden, in Bedfordshire. He died of the small-pox, in his thirty-sixth year. It is asked, in Mr. Southey's Specimens of English Poetry, why Pomfret's Choice is the most popular poem in the English language: it might have been demanded with equal propriety, why London bridge is built of Parian marble.* FROM "REASON. A POEM." CUSTOM, the world's great idol, we adore; [* Why is Pomfret the most popular of the English Poets? The fact is certain, and the solution would be useful.-Southey's Specimens, vol. i. p. 91. Pomfret's Choice" exhibits a system of life adapted to common notions, and equal to common expectations; such a state as affords plenty and tranquillity, without exclusion of intellectual pleasures. Perhaps no composition in When education more than truth prevails, our language has been oftener perused than Pomfret's Choice. JOHNSON. Johnson and Southey have written of what was; Mr. Campbell of what is. Pomfret's “Choice" is certainly not now perused oftener than any other composition in our language, nor is Pomfret now the most popular of English poets.] Better the mind no notions had retain'd, The dear-bought purchase of the trading mind, Does not that foolish deference we pay Errors indeed! for real knowledge staid Suppose those many dreadful dangers past, The tedious search of long inquiring minds: How do we know that what we know is true? This is the easy purchase of the mind, THOMAS BROWN. [Died, 1704.] THOMAS, usually called Tom Brown, the son of a farmer at Shipnel, in Shropshire, was for some time a schoolmaster at Kingston-uponThames, but left the ungenial vocation for the life of a wit and author, in London. He was a good linguist, and seems rather to have wasted than wanted talent. SONG.* To charming Celia's arms I flew, Lost in sweet tumultuous joy And bless'd beyond expressing, "Tis all too poor a bribe by far, To purchase so much pleasure. She blushing cried, My life, my dear, [To this song Burns gave what Mrs. Burns emphatically called a brushing.-See Songs of England and Scot land, vol. 1. p. 149.] Give her but 'tis too much I fearA rundlet of right Nantzy. SONG. WINE, wine in a morning, Makes us frolic and gay, When by noon we're at height; Boy, fill all the glasses, Fill them up now he shines; The higher he rises The more he refines, For wine and wit fall As their maker declines. CHARLES SACKVILLE, EARL OF DORSET. [Born, 1637. Died, 1706.] CHARLES SACKVILLE was the direct descendant of the great Thomas Lord Buckhurst. Of his youth it is disgraceful enough to say, that he was the companion of Rochester and Sedley; but his maturer life, like that of Sedley, was illustrated by public spirit, and his fortune enabled him to be a beneficent friend to men of genius. In 1665, while Earl of Buckhurst, he attended the Duke of York as a volunteer in the Dutch war, and finished his well-known song, " To all you ladies now at land," on the day before the sea-fight in which Opdam, the Dutch admiral, was blown up, with all his crew. He was soon after made a gentleman of the bedchamber to Charles II., and sent on short embassies to France. From James II. he also received some favourable notice, but joined in the opposition to his innovations, and, with some other lords, appeared at Westminster Hall to countenance the bishops upon their trial. Before this period he had succeeded to the estate and title of the Earl of Middlesex, his uncle, as well as to those of his father, the Earl of Dorset. Having concurred in the Revolution, he was rewarded by William with the office of lord-chamberlain of the household, and with the Order of the Garter; but his attendance on the king eventually hastened his death, for being exposed in an open boat with his majesty, during sixteen hours of severe weather, on the coast of Holland, his health was irrecoverably injured. The point and sprightliness of Dorset's pieces entitle him to some remembrance, though they leave not a slender apology for the grovelling adulation that was shown to him by Dryden in his dedications. SONG. WRITTEN AT SEA, IN THE FIRST DUTCH WAR, 1665, THE NIGHT To all you ladies now at land, But first would have you understand The Muses now, and Neptune too, With a fa, la, la, la, la. For though the Muses should prove kind, Yet if rough Neptune rouse the wind, With a fa, &c. Then if we write not by each post, By Dutchmen, or by wind: With a fa, &c. The king, with wonder and surprise, With a fa, &c. Should foggy Opdam chance to know For what resistance can they find From men who've left their hearts behind? With a fa, &c. Let wind and weather do its worst, Be you to us but kind; Let Dutchmen vapour, Spaniards curse, "Tis then no matter how things go, Or who's our friend, or who's our foe. To pass our tedious hours away, But why should we in vain But now our fears tempestuous grow, When any mournful tune you hear, As if it sigh'd with each man's care, Think how often love we've made In justice you cannot refuse |