A PARAPHRASE FROM THE FRENCH. N grey-hair'd Celia's wither'd arms She cried, "If I have any charms, For you, my love, is all my fear, For danger's his diversion; Not to expose your person: Nor vex your thoughts how to repair You ought to leave so mean a care They know how heroes may be made Let Boufflers, to secure your fame, 10 20 FROM THE GREEK. REAT Bacchus, born in thunder and in fire, He to the nymphs avows his amorous flames. EPIGRAM. RANK carves very ill, yet will palm all the meats: He eats more than six; and drinks more than he eats. Four pipes after dinner he constantly smokes; And seasons his whiffs with impertinent jokes. Yet sighing, he says, we must certainly break; And my cruel unkindness compells him to speak; For of late I invite him-but four times a week. ANOTHER. O John I ow'd great obligation; ANOTHER. ES, every poet is a fool : By demonstration Ned can show it: Happy, could Ned's inverted rule Prove every fool to be a poet. ANOTHER. HY nags, (the leanest things alive) TO A PERSON WHO WROTE ILL, AND SPOKE WORSE AGAINST ME. IE, Philo, untouch'd on my peaceable shelf; thee: I've no envy to thee, and some love to myself: Then why should I answer; since first I must read thee? Drunk with Helicon's waters and double brew'd bub, Be a linguist, a poet, a critic, a wag; To the solid delight of thy well-judging club, swear. 10 ON THE SAME PERSON. HILE, faster than his costive brain indites, W Philo's quick hand in flowing letters His case appears to me like honest Teague's, "QUID SIT FUTURUM CRAS FUGE OR what to-morrow shall disclose, B A BALLAD OF THE NOTBROWNE MAYDE.*: A. E it ryght, or wrong, these men among on women do complayne; Affyrmynge this-how that it is a labour spent in vayne To love them wele; for never a dele they love a man agayne: For late a man do what he can, theyr favour to attayne, This ancient poem was originally printed in an old black letter book, intitled, The Customes of London or Arnolde's Chronicle, which Mr. Capell supposes appeared about the year 1521. According to that gentleman's opinion-"It was certainly written in the beginning of the sixteenth century, and not sooner: the curious in these matters, who shall conceive a doubt of what is here asserted through remembrance of what he has seen advanced by a poet of late days, is desired to look into the works of the great Sir Thomas More, and particularly into a poem that stands at the head of them, and from thence receive conviction; if sameness of rhymes, sameness of orthography, and a very near affinity of words and phrases be capable of giving it." The 'poet of late days' mentioned above, is certainly Mr. Prior, who in the edition of his poems published in 1718, had asserted it to have been written three hundred years since. What led him to that mistaken notion, was probably a writer in the Muses' Mercury for June 1707, who conjectures that it was written about the year 1472. The same writer says, and the ballad seems to confirm it, that the persons represented are a young Lord, the Earl of Westmoreland's son, and a lady of equal quality. The copy from which this poem hath hitherto been printed being very inaccurate, it is here given according to that published by Mr. Capell. |