For you, my love, is all my fear, Alas, sir! what should you do here You ought to leave so mean a care They know how heroes may be made "Tis best to leave them fairly; Put six good horses in your coach, And carry me to Marly. Let Boufleurs, to secure your fame, Go take some town, or buy it; Whilst you, great sir, at Nostredame, Te Deum sing in quiet!" FROM THE GREEK. GREAT Bacchus, born in thunder and in fire, EPIGRAM. FRANK 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 compels him to speak; For of late I invite him-but four times a week. ANOTHER. To John I ow'd great obligation; To publish it to all the nation: Sure John and I are more than quit. ANOTHER. YES, every poet is a fool: By demonstration Ned can show it : Prove every fool to be a poet. ANOTHER. THY nags, (the leanest things alive) So very hard thou lov'st to drive; I heard thy anxious coachman say, It cost thee more in whips than hay.' TO A PERSON WHO WROTE ILL, AND SPOKE WORSE AGAINST ME. LIE, Philo, untouch'd on my peaceable shelf; Nor take it amiss, that so little I heed 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, To the damage alone of thy bookseller Brag. Pursue me with satire: what harm is there in't? But from all viva voce reflection forbear: There can be no danger from what thou shalt print: There may be a little from what thou may'st swear. ON THE SAME PERSON. WHILE, faster than his costive brain indites, "QUID SIT FUTURUM CRAS FUGE FOR what to-morrow shall disclose, . A BALLAD OF THE NOTBROWNE MAYDE.1 A. Be it ryght, or wrong, these men among on women do complayne; Affyrmynge this-how that it is a labour spent in vayne, 1 This ancient poem was originally printed in an old black-letter book, entitled, 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. |