Nor cherish'd they relations poor; That might decrease their present store: They neither added nor confounded; When bells were rung, and bonfires made, Nor good, nor bad, nor fools, nor wise; They led--a kind of—as it were: Nor wish'd, nor car'd, nor laugh'd, nor cried : And so they liv'd, and so they died. HORACE, LIB. I. EPIST. IX. IMITATED. Septimius, Claudi, nimirum intelligit unus, TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE MR. HARLEY.1 DEAR DICK,2 howe'er it comes into his head, From this wild fancy, Sir, there may proceed 1 Robert Harley, Esq. afterwards Earl of Oxford and Mortimer. 2 This was Richard Shelton, Esq. one of the interlocutors in the poem of Alma. Mr. Prior in his will styles him his dear friend and companion. To shun this censure, I all shame lay by, TO MR. HARLEY, WOUNDED BY GUISCARD.1 ab ipso Ducit opes animumque ferro. HOR. In one great now, superior to an age, The full extremes of Nature's force we find : How heavenly virtue can exalt; or rage Infernal, how degrade the human mind. 1 Antoine De Guiscard had been Abbot De Borly, near the Cevennes in France, but being of a vicious and profligate disposition, he committed offences which obliged him to fly from his country. He afterwards entered into the army, and was made colonel of a regiment of horse, and lieuteuant-general, with pensions both from England and Holland. He afterwards, to make his peace with France, became a spy on the English court; was discovered, and While the fierce monk does at his trial stand, The guilty stroke and torture of the steel Infix'd, our dauntless Briton scarce perceives: The wounds his country from his death must feel, The patriot views; for those alone he grieves. The barbarous rage that durst attempt thy life, Harley, great counsellor, extends thy fame : And the sharp point of cruel Guiscard's knife, In brass and marble carves thy deathless name. Faithful assertor of thy country's cause, Britain with tears shall bathe thy glorious wound: She for thy safety shall enlarge her laws, And in her statutes shall thy worth be found. Yet midst her sighs she triumphs, on the hand No son of hers could meditate this blow. taken before the council to be examined, when in a fit of madness and despair he stabbed Mr. Harley with a penknife which he had secreted. He was immediately secured, but died in Newgate a few days after, of some wounds he received in the scuffle. A very particular account of this transaction by Dean Swift and Mrs. Manley is printed in the Supplement to the former's works. Meantime thy pain is gracious Anna's care: Our queen, our saint, with sacrificing breath, Softens thy anguish : in her powerful prayer She pleads thy service, and forbids thy death. Great as thou art, thou canst demand no more, Enough to thee of grief, and fame is given. AN EXTEMPORE INVITATION ΤΟ THE EARL OF OXFORD LORD HIGH TREASURER, MDCCXII. MY LORD, OUR weekly friends to-morrow meet Crown with thy health the sprightly bowl: |