Ye ladies, too, draw forth your pen;
I pray, where can the hurt lie?
Since you have brains as well as men,
As witness Lady Wortley.

Now, Tonson, list thy forces all,

Review them and tell noses:
For to poor Ovid shall befal
A strange metamorphosis;

A metamorphosis more strange

Than all his books can vapour—
"To what (quoth 'squire) shall Ovid change?
Quoth Sandys, "To waste paper."

UMBRA.

[Curll says this character was intended to ridicule a very worthy gentleman, probably Ambrose Philips.]

CLOSE to the best known author UMBRA sits,
The constant index to old Button's wits.

"Who's here?" cries Umbra: "Only Johnson'."—“O!

Your slave," and exit; but returns with Rowe: "Dear Rowe, let's sit and talk of tragedies:"

gone,

Ere long Pope enters, and to Pope he flies.
Then up comes Steele: he turns upon his heel,
And in a moment fastens upon Steele;
But cries as soon, "Dear Dick, I must be
For, if I know his tread, here's Addison."
Says Addison to Steele, ""Tis time to go:"
Pope to the closet steps aside with Rowe.
Poor Umbra, left in this abandon'd pickle,
E'en sits him down, and writes to honest Tickell.
Fool! 'tis in vain from wit to wit to roam;
Know, sense like charity "begins at home."

1 Charles Johnson, a second-rate dramatist, and great frequenter of Button's. Pope elsewhere classes him with Philips :

"Lean Philips and fat Johnson." Farewell to London.-Bowles.

SYLVIA, A FRAGMENT.

SYLVIA my heart in wondrous wise alarm'd,
Awed without sense, and without beauty charm'd :
But some odd graces and some flights she had,
Was just not ugly, and was just not mad:
Her tongue still ran on credit from her eyes,
More pert than witty, more a wit than wise:
Good-nature, she declared it, was her scorn,
Though, 'twas by that alone she could be borne:
Affronting all, yet fond of a good name;
A fool to pleasure, yet a slave to fame :
Now coy, and studious in no point to fall,
Now all agog for D-y at a ball:

Now deep in Taylor, and the Book of Martyrs,
Now drinking citron with his Grace and Chartres.
Men, some to business, some to pleasure take;
But every woman's in her soul a rake.

Frail, feverish sex; their fit now chills, now burns:
Atheism and superstition rule by turns;

And a mere heathen in the carnal part,
Is still a sad good Christian at her heart'.

IMPROMPTU,

TO LADY WINCHELSEA.

OCCASIONED BY FOUR SATIRICAL VERSES ON WOMEN WITS, IN THE
RAPE OF THE LOCK.

In vain you boast poetic names of yore,
And cite those Sapphos we admire no more:
Fate doom'd the fall of every female wit;

But doom'd it then, when first Ardelia writ.

1 I have been informed, on good authority, that this character was designed for the then Duchess of Hamilton.-Warton.

Swift describes this lady as handsome, airy, and violent tempered, with abundance of wit and spirit. See Swift's Works, vol. iii. p. 118.—Sir W. Scott.

Of all examples by the world confess'd,
I knew Ardelia could not quote the best;
Who, like her mistress on Britannia's throne,
Fights and subdues in quarrels not her own.
To write their praise you but in vain essay;
Even while you write, you take that praise away:
Light to the stars the sun does thus restore,
But shines himself till they are seen no more.

EPIGRAM.

A BISHOP by his neighbours hated
Has cause to wish himself translated;
But why should Hough desire translation,
Loved and esteemed by all the nation?
Yet, if it be the old man's case,

I'll lay my life I know the place :

'Tis where God sent some that adore him,
And whither Enoch went before him.

EPIGRAM,

ON THE FEUDS ABOUT HANDEL AND BONONCINI.

STRANGE! all this difference should be
"Twixt Tweedle-DUM and Tweedle-DEE!

ON MRS. TOFTS,

A CELEBRATED OPERA-SINGER.

So bright is thy beauty, so charming thy song,

As had drawn both the beasts and their Orpheus

along:

But such is thy avarice, and such is thy pride,

That the beasts must have starved, and the poet have

died.

VOL. V.

K

THE BALANCE OF EUROPE.

Now Europe balanced, neither side prevails; For nothing's left in either of the scales.

APPLIED TO F. C.

HERE Francis Chartres lies'-be civil!
The rest God knows—perhaps the Devil.

EPIGRAM.

You beat your pate, and fancy wit will come : Knock as you please, there's nobody at home.

EPIGRAM FROM THE FRENCH.

PRIOR.

SIR, I admit your general rule,

That every poet is a fool:

But you yourself may serve to show it,

That every fool is not a poet.

EPITAPH.

WELL then, poor G▬▬ lies under ground! So there's an end of honest Jack.

So little justice here he found,

"Tis ten to one he'll ne'er come back.

1 Thus applied by Mr. Pope: "Here lies Lord Coningsby."

EPIGRAM,

ON THE TOASTS OF THE KIT-CAT CLUB, ANNO 1716'.

WHENCE deathless KIT-CAT took its name,

Few critics can unriddle:

Some say from PASTRYCOOK it came,
And some, from CAT and fiddle.

From no trim beaux its name it boasts,
Gray statesmen, or green wits;
But from this pellmell pack of toasts
Of old CATS and young KITS.

TO A LADY,

WITH THE TEMPLE OF FAME.

WHAT'S fame with men, by custom of the nation,
Is call'd, in women, only reputation :

About them both why keep we such a pother?
Part you with one, and I'll renounce the other.

ON THE COUNTESS OF BURLINGTON
CUTTING PAPER.

PALLAS grew vapourish once and odd;
She would not do the least right thing,
Either for goddess or for god,

Nor work, nor play, nor paint, nor sing.

The Kit-cat Club, which was the point of convivial union among the friends of the Hanoverian succession, was sometimes said to have derived its name from Christopher Kat, a pastry-cook, remarkable for the excellence of his twopenny pies. Others supposed it was from a cat and fiddle, the sign of the tavern. But the epigrammatist, with no very pregnant humour, derives it from their toasts, upon each of whom they wrote verses, which were engraved upon the glasses consecrated to the health proposed.-Sir W. Scott.