THE LOOKING-GLASS.

ON MRS. PULTENEY.1

FITH scornful mien, and various toss

Fantastic, vain, and insolently fair,
Grandeur intoxicates her giddy brain,

She looks ambition, and she moves disdain.
Far other carriage graced her virgin life,
But charming G――y's lost in P——y's wife.
Not greater arrogance in him we find,
And this conjunction swells at least her mind:
O could the sire renowned in glass, produce
One faithful mirror for his daughter's use!
Wherein she might her haughty errors trace,
And by reflection learn to mend her face:
The wonted sweetness to her form restore,
Be what she was, and charm mankind once
more !

ON RECEIVING FROM THE

RIGHT HON. THE LADY FRANCES SHIRLEY

A STANDISH AND TWO PENS.2

ES, I beheld the Athenian Queen Descend in all her sober charms; "And take (she said, and smiled serene),

"Take at this hand celestial arms:

1 Mrs. Pulteney was the daughter of John Gumley, a glass manufacturer at Isleworth.

To enter into the spirit of this address, it is neces

"Secure the radiant weapons wield; This golden lance shall guard Desert, And if a Vice dares keep the field,

This steel shall stab it to the heart."

Awed, on my bended knees I fell,
Received the weapons of the sky;
And dipped them in the sable well,
The fount of fame or infamy.

"What well? what weapons?" (Flavia cries)
"A standish, steel and golden pen!
It came from Bertrand's,' not the skies;
I gave it you to write again.

"But, friend, take heed whom you attack;
You'll bring a House (I mean of Peers),
Red, blue, and green, nay white and black,
L.
and all about your ears.2

sary to premise that the poet was threatened with a prosecution in the House of Lords for the two poems entitled the Epilogue to the Satires; on which, with great resentment against his enemies for not being willing to distinguish between

"Grave Epistles bringing vice to light,”

and licentious libels, he began a Third Dialogue, more severe and sublime than the first and second, which being no secret, matters were soon compromised. His enemies agreed to drop the prosecution, and he promised to leave the Third Dialogue unfinished and suppressed. This affair occasioned this little beautiful poem, to which it alludes throughout, but more especially in the four last stanzas.-Warburton. Lady Frances Shirley was a daughter of Earl Ferrers, who had at that time a house at Twickenham. She died unmarried in 1762.—Bowles. 1 A toy-shop at Bath.

2 Lambeth would seem to be here meant. In the Epilogue to the Satires, Dial. i. 120, Pope had

'You'd write as smooth again on glass,
And run, on ivory, so glib,
As not to stick at fool or ass,
Nor stop at flattery or fib.

"Athenian Queen! and sober charms!
I tell ye, fool, there's nothing in't:
'Tis Venus, Venus gives these arms;
In Dryden's Virgil see the print.

"Come, if you'll be a quiet soul,

That dares tell neither truth nor lies, I'll list you in the harmless roll,

Of those that sing of these poor eyes."

VERSES LEFT BY MR. POPE,

ON HIS LYING IN THE SAME BED WHICH WILMOT, THE CELEBRATED EARL OF ROCHESTER, SLEPT IN AT ADDERBURY, THEN BELONGING TO THE DUKE OF ARGYLL, JULY 9, 1739.

ITH no poetic ardour fired

W

I press the bed where Wilmot lay; That here he loved, or here expired, Begets no numbers grave or gay.

Beneath thy roof, Argyll, are bred

Such thoughts as prompt the brave to lie Stretched out in honour's nobler bed,

Beneath a nobler roof-the sky.

hazarded an allusion to a scandal, that the Archbishop of Canterbury had "pocketed" the will of George I.-Carruthers.

Such flames as high in patriots burn,
Yet stoop to bless a child or wife;
And such as wicked kings may mourn,

When freedom is more dear than life.

ON SEEING THE LADIES AT CRUXEASTON WALK IN THE WOODS BY THE GROTTO.1

EXTEMPORE BY MR. POPE.

UTHORS the world and their dull brains have traced

To fix the ground where Paradise was placed;

Mind not their learned whims and idle talk ; Here, here's the place where these bright angels walk.

INSCRIPTION ON A GROTTO, THE WORK OF NINE LADIES.2

ERE, shunning idleness at once and praise,

This radiant pile nine rural sisters

raise;

The glittering emblem of each spotless dame,
Clear as her soul and shining as her frame;
Beauty which nature only can impart,
And such a polish as disgraces art;

But fate disposed them in this humble sort,
And hid in deserts what would charm a Court.

1 From "The Student," Oxford Miscellany, 1750. 2 From Dodsley's Miscellany. The nine ladies were sisters of Dr. Lisle, chaplain to the Factory at Smyrna.

IMITATION OF TIBULLUS.1

Hic jacet immiti consumptus morte Tibullus,
Messalam, terra, dum sèquiturque mari.

ERE, stopped by hasty death, Alexis
lies,

Who crossed half Europe, led by
Wortley's eyes.

IMITATION OF MARTIAL.2

T length my friend, while Time with still career

Wafts on his gentle wing his eightieth

year,

Sees his past days safe out of Fortune's power,
Nor dreads approaching Fate's uncertain hour;
Reviews his life, and in the strict survey
Finds not one moment he could wish away,
Pleased with the series of each happy day.

Pope, in a letter to Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Nov. 10, 1716, expressed a desire to travel abroad to meet her; "But if my fate be such," he says, "that this body of mine be left behind in the journey, let this epitaph of Tibullus be set over it." (Tibullus i. 4, 55-6).

2 Sir William Trumbull, Jan. 19, 1716, writes to Pope : "On occasion of my being obliged to congratulate the birthday of a friend of mine, finding I had no materials of my own, I very frankly sent him your imitation of Martial's epigram on Antonius Primus, Jam numerat placido felix Antonius ævo, &c." (Martial x. 23.)