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he paid a visit on foot with his friend Sprat to a gentleman in the neighbourhood of Chertsey, which they prolonged and feafted too much, till midnight. On their return home they mistook their way, and were obliged to pafs the whole night exposed under a hedge, where Cowley caught a fevere cold, attended with a fever, that terminated in his death.

THE Verses on Silence are a fenfible imitation of the Earl of Rochefter's on No

OTWAY had an intimate friend who was murdered in the ftreet. One may guess at his forrow, who has fo feelingly described true affection in his Venice Preserved. He pursued the murderer on foot who fled to France, as far as Dover, where he was seized with a fever, occafioned by the fatigue, which afterwards carried him to his grave in London.

Sir JOHN SUCKLING was robbed by his Valet-deChambre; the moment he discovered it, he clapped on his boots in a passionate hurry, and perceived not a large rusty nail that was concealed at the bottom which pierced his heel, and brought on a mortification.

LII had been fome time confined for lunacy, to a very low diet, but one night he escaped from his phyfician, and drank fo immoderately, that he fell down in the Strand, was run over by a hackney-coach, and killed on the spot. These three facts are from Mr. Spence: though OTWAY'S death has been differently related.

thing;

thing; which piece, together with his Satire on Man from the fourth of Boileau, and the tenth Satire of Horace, are the only pieces of this profligate nobleman, which modefty or common fenfe will allow any man to read. Rochefter had much energy in his thoughts and diction, and though the ancient satirifts often ufe great liberty in their expreffions; yet, as the ingenious hiftorian * observes, " their freedom no more resembles the licence of Rochefter, than the nakednefs of an Indian does that of a common prostitute."

POPE in this imitation has difcovered a fund of folid fenfe, and juft obfervation upon vice and folly, that are very remark able in a perfon fo extremely young as he was, at the time he compofed it. I believe on a fair comparison with Rochefter's lines, it will be found, that although the turn of the fatire be copied, yet it is excelled That Rochefter should write a fatire on

Hume's Hiftory of Great-Britain.: Vol. II. pag. 434i

Man,

Man, I am not furprized; it is the bufinefs of the Libertine to degrade his fpecies, and debase the dignity of human nature, and thereby deftroy the most efficacious incitements to lovely and laudable actions: but that a writer of Boileau's pu. rity of manners, fhould reprefent his kind in the dark and disagreeable colours he has done, with all the malignity of a difcontented HOBBIST, is a lamentable perversion of fine talents, and is a real injury to society. It is a fact worthy the attention of those who study the hiftory of learning, that the gross licentiousness and applauded debauchery of Charles the Second's court, proved almost as pernicious to the progress of polite literature and the fine arts that began to revive after the Grand Rebellion, as the gloomy superstition, the absurd cant, and formal hypocrify that disgraced this nation, during the ufurpation of Cromwell*.

ARTEMISIA

• Lord Bolingbroke used to relate, that his Great Grandfather Ireton, and Fleetwood, being one day engaged in a private drinking party with Cromwell, and wanting VOL. II.

E

ARTEMISIA and PHRYNE are two characters in the manner of the Earl of Dorfet, an elegant writer, and amiable man, equally noted for the feverity of his fatire, and the sweetness of his manners, and who gave the fairest proof that these two qualities are by no means incompatible. The greatest wits, fays Addison, I have ever conversed with, were perfons of the best tempers. Dorfet poffeffed the rare fecret of uniting energy with ease, in his striking compofitions. His verses to Mr. Edward Howard, to Sir Thomas St. Serfe, his epilogue to the Tartuffe, his fong written at fea in the firft Dutch war, his ballad on knotting, and on Lewis XIV. may be named as examples of this happy talent, and as confutations of a fentiment of the

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to uncork a bottle, they could not find their bottle-fcrew, which was fallen under the tables - Just at that inftant, an officer entered to inform the protector, that a deputation "Tell from the prefbyterian minifters attended without. them, fays Cromwell, with a countenance inftantly compofed, that I am retired, that I cannot be difturbed, for I am Seeking the Lord," and turning afterwards to his companions, he added, "Thefe fcoundrels think we are fucking the Lord, and we are only looking for our bottle-screw."

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judicious

judicious M. de Montefquieu, who in his noble chapter on the English Constitution, Book 19, speaks thus of our writers. “As fociety and the mixing in company, gives to men a quicker sense of ridicule, fo retirement more difpofes men to reflect on the heinousness of vice; the fatirical writings therefore of fuch a nation are sharp and fevere, and we shall find among them many Juvenals, without difcovering one Horace.

THE DESCRIPTION of the LIFE of a Country Parfon is a lively imitation of Swift*, and is full of humour. The point of the likeness confifts in defcribing the objects

• See a Pipe of Tobacco, p. 282, vol. 2. Dodsley's Mifcell where Mr. Hawkins Brown has imitated, from a hint of Dr. John Hoadly, fix later English poets with fuccefs, viz. Swift, POPE, Thomfon, Young, Phillips, Cibber. Some of thefe writers thinking themselves burlesqued, are faid to have been mortified. But POPE obferved on the occafion, "Brown is an excellent copyist, and those who take his imitations amifs, are much in the wrong; they are very strongly mannered, and few perhaps could write fo well if they were not fo."In Port's imitation of the Mach epistle of Horace, there were two remarkable lines,

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