SONG,

BY A PERSON OF QUALITY.

WRITTEN IN THE YEAR 1733.

I.

FLUTT'RING spread thy purple Pinions,
Gentle Cupid, o'er my Heart;
I a Slave in thy Dominions;
Nature must give way to Art.

II.
Mild Arcadians, ever blooming,
Nightly nodding o'er your Flocks,
See my weary Days confuming,
All beneath yon flow'ry Rocks.

III.

Thus the Cyprian Goddess weeping,

Mourn'd Adonis, darling Youth: Him the Boar, in Silence creeping, Gor'd with unrelenting Tooth.

IV.

:

Cynthia, tune harmonious Numbers;
Fair Difcretion, string the Lyre;
Sooth my ever-waking Slumbers;
Bright Apollo, lend thy Choir.

V. Gloomy

V.

Gloomy Pluto, King of Terrors,
Arm'd in adamantine Chains,
Lead me to the Crystal Mirrors,
Wat'ring foft Elysian plains.

VI.

Mournful Cypress, verdant Willow,
Gilding my Aurelia's Brows,
Morpheus hov❜ring o'er my Pillow,
Hear me pay my dying Vows.

VII. Melancholy smooth Maander, Swiftly purling in a Round, On thy Margin Lovers wander, With thy flow'ry Chaplets crown'd.

VIII.

Thus when Philomela, drooping,
Softly feeks her filent Mate,
See the Bird of Juno stooping;
Melody refigns to Fate.

THE above is a pleafant burlefque on the gawdy, glittering, florid ftyle and manner of certain defcriptive poets. I think the reader will pardon me for laying before him part of a piece of ridicule on the fame fubject, and of equal merit, which made its firft appearance many years ago in the Oxford Student, and is thus entitled, "Ode to Horror, in the Allegoric, Descriptive, Alli. terative, Epithetical, Fantastic, Hyperbolical, and Diabolical Style of our Modern Ode- Writers and Monody-Mongers."

"Ferreus ingruit Horror." VIRG.

"O Goddefs of the gloomy scene,

Of fhadowy shapes, thou black-brow'd Queen ;
Thy treffes dark with ivy crown'd,
On yonder mould'ring abbey found;
Oft wont from charnels damp and dim,
To call the sheeted fpe&re grim,
While as his loofe chains loudly clink,
Thou add'st a length to ev'ry link:
O thou, that lov'ft at eve to feek
The penfive pacing pilgrim meek,
And fett'it before his fhudd'ring eyes
Strange forms, and fiends of giant-fize,
As wildly works thy wizzard will,
Till fear-ftruck fancy has her fill:
Dark pow'r, whofe magic-might prevails
O'er hermit-rocks and fairy-vales;
O Goddefs, erft by Spenfer view'd,
What time th' Enchanter vile embru'd
His hands in Florimel's
pure heart,
Till loos'd by fteel-clad Britomart :
O thou that erft on fancy's wing
Didft terror-trembling Taffo bring,
To groves where kept damn'd Furies dire
Their blue-tipt battlements of fire;
Thou that thro' many a darksome pine,
O'er the rugged rock recline,

Did'ft

Did'ft wake the hollow-whifp'ring breeze

With care-confumed Eloife:
O thou, with whom in cheerless cell,
The midnight clock pale pris'ners tell;
O hafte thee, mild Miltonic maid,
From yonder yews fequefter'd shade;
More bright than all the fabled nine,
Teach me to breathe the folemn line :
O bid my well-rang'd numbers rife,
Pervious to none but Attic eyes;
O give the strain that madness moves,
Till every starting sense approves.

What felt the Gallic Traveller,
When far in Arab-defert drear,
He found within the Catacomb,
Alive, the terrors of a tomb?
While many a mummy thro' the fhade,
In hieroglyphic ftole array'd,
Seem'd to uprear the myftic head,

And trace the gloom with ghoftly tread;
Thou heard'ft him pour the ftifled groan,
Horror! his foul was all thy own!"

The author was himself a defcriptive poet of the first class. Mr. William Collins thought himself aimed at by this piece of ridicule. His odes had been just published; and the last lines seemed to refer to a particular paffage in them. WARTON.

The author was Thomas Warton; and it is a curious fact, that it was ridicule which at first led him to the very studies, in which he afterwards fo eminently fhone. He began by ridiculing Hearne*, and afterwards became an antiquarian of the most accurate, as well as elegant character; and from laughing at Collins, he wrote odes of the fame defcription. The humour of this ode (which I had doubts whether I should preferve) is not half so obvious as the humour of Pope's ballad. It might pafs for a ferious DeJeriptive Ode of the eighteenth century, with a certain class of poetical readers.

The famous antiquarian

ON A CERTAIN LADY AT COURT.

I KNOW the thing that's most uncommon; (Envy be filent, and attend!)

I know a reasonable Woman,

Handsome and witty, yet a Friend.

Not warp'd by Paffion, aw'd by Rumour,
Not
grave through Pride, or gay through Folly,
An equal Mixture of good Humour,
And fenfible foft Melancholy.

"Has fhe no faults then, (Envy fays,) Sir?"
Yes, fhe has one, I must aver;

When all the World confpires to praise her,
The Woman's deaf, and does not hear,

NOTES.

LADY AT COURT.] HENRIETTA, fifter of John, the firft Eart of Buckinghamshire, was eldest daughter of Sir Henry Hobart, of Blickling in Norfolk, and efpoufed Charles Howard, younger fon of Henry, fifth Earl of Suffolk, whom fhe accompanied to Hanover, before the death of Queen Ann. She came to England with Caroline, then Electoral Princess, and became her bed-chamber woman. Mr. Coxe remarks, that "if we were to draw an eftimate of the understanding and character of Mrs. Howard, from the reprefentations of Pope, Swift, and Gay, during the time of her favour, we might suppose she poffeffed every accomplishment and good quality," &c.

"The real truth is," he adds, "that she was more remarkable for beauty than for understanding, and the paffion which the King en

tertained