With added years, if Life bring nothing new, Let Joy or Eafe, let Affluence or Content, To Mr. THOMAS SOUTHERN, on his BIRTH-DAY, 1742. RESIGN'D to live, prepar❜d to die, With not one fin, but poetry, This day Tom's fair Account has run 5 10 • He was invited to dine on his birth-day with this Nobleman, who had prepared for him the entertainment of which the bill of fare is here fet down. etc. ↑ The harp is generally wove on the Irish Linen; fuch as Table-cloths, The The mushrooms fhew his wit was fudden! And for his judgment, lo a pudden ! Roast beef, tho' old, proclaims him ftout, And grace, altho' a bard, devout. May Toм, whom Heav'n fent down to raise 15 20 *This alludes to a story Mr. Southern told of Dryden, about the fame time, to Mr. P. and Mr. W. When Southern firft wrote for the stage, Dryden was fo famous for his Frologues, that the players would act nothing without that decoration. His ufual price till then had been four guineas: But when Southern came to him for the Prologue he had bespoke, Dryden told him he must have fix guineas for it; "which (faid he) young man, "is out of no difrefpect to you; but the players have had my goods too "cheap."-We now look upon thefe Prologues with the fame admiration that the Virtuosi do on the Apothecaries pots painted by Raphael. VOL. III. H EPITAPHS. DORSET, the Grace of Courts, the Mufe's Pride, *Thefe little compofitions far exceed any thing we have of the fame kind from other hands; yet, if we except the Epitaph on the young Duke of Buckingham, and perhaps one or two more, they are not of equal force with the reft of our Author's writings. The nature of the Composition itself is deliCate; and generally it was a task imposed on him; though he rarely complied with requests of this nature, as we may fee by the fmall number of these poems, but where the subject was worthy of his pen. For random praise the Work would ne'er be done: Each Mother afks it for ber booby Son: Each Widow afks it for the beft of Men; For bim fhe weeps, for him she weds again. Yet when these elegiac movements came freely from the heart, he mourns in fuch ftrains as fhew he was equally a mafter of this kind of Compofition with every other he undertook, as the following lines in the Epistle to Jervas may witness; which would have made the fineft Epitaph in the world: Call round her Tomb each object of defire, Yet Yet foft his Nature, tho' fevere his Lay, Where other BUCKHURSTS, other DORSETS fhine, II. On Sir WILLIAM TRUMBA L, One of the principal Secretaries of State to King WILLIAM III. who, having refigned his place, died in his Retirement at Easthamfted, in Berkshire, 1716. A Pleafing Form; a firm, yet cautious Mind ; Honour unchang'd, a Principle profest, Fix'd to one fide, but mod'rate to the reft; A love to Peace, and hate of Tyranny; Such this Man was; who now, from Earth remov'd, III. On the Hon. SIMON HARCOURT, Only Son of the Lord Chancellor HARCOURT, at the Church of Stanton-Harcourt in Oxfordshire, 1720. T O this fad fhrine, whoe'er thou art! draw near, Here lies the Friend moft lov'd, the Son moft dear: How vain is Reason, Eloquence how weak! On IV. JAMES CRAGGS, Efq; In WESTMINSTER-ABBEY, JACOBUS CRAGGS REGI MAGNE BRITANNIE A SECRETIS PRINCIPIS PARITER AC POPULI AMOR ET DELICIÆ; ANNOS, HEU PAUCOS, XXXV. OB. FEB. XVI. MDCCXX. Statefman, yet Friend to Truth! of Soul fincere, Intended |