ON THE MUSIC BELLS PLAYING YESTERDAY FORENOON, PRIOR TO BROWN AND WILSON'S EXECUTION, ON THE DEACONS BE

ING PRESENTED TO COUNCIL.

["Yesterday afternoon, John Brown and James Wilson were executed in the Grass-market, pursuant to the sentence of the high court of justiciary, for the murder of Adam Thomson in Carnwathmuir, and their bodies delivered to the professor of anatomy for dissection.-They were both only about 26 years of age: Brown was upwards of six foot high, and remarkably strong, and both of them were well-made. They had made several efforts to escape from prison, in which they were as often detected; but when they found every attempt vain, they seemed reconciled to their fate, and at last, by the assiduity and persuasive influence of the clergyman who attended them, they were brought to a sense of their guilt, and a confession of the crime for which they were condemned. At the place of execution Brown addressed the audience in a short but pathetic speech, and both of them behaved in a manner suitable to their unhappy circumstances."]

HAPPY the folks that rule the roast!
Our council men are cheerful;
To mirth they now devote each toast,
And bells fill ev'ry ear full.

When man's condemn'd to suffer death
For his unlicens'd crimes,

Instead of psalms they quit their breath
To merry-making chimes.

TO SIR JOHN FIELDING,

ON HIS ATTEMPT TO SUPPRESS THE BEGGAR'S OPERA.

[Sir John Fielding was a half-brother of the immortal novelist, and succeeded him at Bow Street. Although blind from infancy, he was a most active and energetic magistrate. His attempt to suppress the piquant Opera of good-natured Gay called forth a host of pamphlets, squibs, &c. &c. all long ago somnolent. Fergusson's admiration of Gay blinded his judgment. Sir John was a benevolent promoter of the Magdalen Hospital, the Asylum and Marine Society, and was in every respect an estimable and well-meaning man. He died in 1780.]

When you censure the age,

Be cautious and sage,

Lest the courtiers offended should be;

When you mention vice or bribe,

'Tis so pat to all the tribe,

Each cries, it was levell'd at me.

[BEGGAR'S OPERA. ACT II. Sc. x.] GAY.

'Tis woman that seduces all mankind.

[Ibid. ACT I. Sc. 11.] FILCH.

BENEATH What cheerful region of the sky
Shall wit, shall humour and the muses fly?
For ours, a cold, inhospitable clime,
Refuses quarter to the muse and rhyme.`
If on her brows an envy'd laurel springs,
They shake its foliage, crop her growing wings,
That with the plumes of virtue wisely soar,
And all the follies of the age explore;

But should old Grub her rankest venom pour,
And ev'ry virtue with a vice deflower,
Her verse is sacred, Justices agree;

Even Justice Fielding signs the wise decree.
Let fortune-dealers, wise predictors! tell
From what bright planet Justice Fielding fell;

Augusta trembles at the awful name;
The darling tongue of liberty is tame,
Basely confined by him in Newgate chains,
Nor dare exclaim how harshly Fielding reigns.
In days when every mercer has his scale,
To tell what pieces lack, how few prevail,
I wonder not the low-born menial trade,
By partial Justice has aside been laid:
For she gives no discount for virtue worn,
Her aged joints are without mercy torn.

In vain, O Gay! thy muse explored the way
Of yore to banish the Italian lay,

Gave homely numbers sweet, though warmly strong;
The British chorus bless'd the happy song:

Thy manly voice and Albion's then were heard,
Felt by her sons, and by her sons revered:
Eunuchs, not men, now bear aloft the palin,
And o'er our senses pour lethargic balm.
The stage the truest mirror is of life;
Our passions there revolve in active strife;
Each character is there display'd to view;
Each hates his own, though well assured 'tis true.
No marvel then, that all the world should own,
In Peachum's treach'ry Justice Fielding's known,
Since thieves so common are, and Justice, you
Thieves to the gallows for reward pursue.
Had Gay by writing roused the stealing trade,
You'd been less active to suppress your bread;
For, trust me, when a robber loses ground,
You lose your living with your forty pound.

'Twas woman first that snatch'd the luring bait, The tempter taught her to transgress and eat; Though wrong the deed, her quick compunction told; She banish'd Adam from an age of gold.

When women now transgress fair virtue's rules,
Men are their pupils, and the stews their schools;
From simple wh-d-m greater sins began
To shoot, to bloom, to centre all in man;
Footpads on Hounslow flourish here to day,
The next old Tyburn sweeps them all away;
For woman's falls, the cause of every wrong!
Men robb'd and murder'd, thieves at Tyburn strurg.
In panting breasts to raise the fond alarm,
Make females in the cause of virtue warm,
Gay has compared them to the summer flower,
The boast and glory of an idle hour;

When cropp'd, it falls, shrinks, withers, and decays,
And to oblivion dark consigns its days.

Hath this a power to win the female heart
Back from its vice, from virtue ne'er to part?
If so, the wayward virgin will restore,
And murders, rapes, and plunders be no more.
These were the lays of him who virtue knew,
Revered her dictates, and practised them too;
No idle theorist in her stainless ways,

He

gave the parent goddess all his days.

O Queensberry!1 his best and earliest friend, All that his wit or learning could commend; Best of patrons! the Muse's only pride!

Still in her pageant shalt thou first preside.

1 Charles, the proverbially good Duke of Queensberry, the Patron of Gay, was then [1773] alive with the weight of many summers on his honoured head.

EPIGRAM

ON SEEING SCALES USED IN A MASON LODGE.

WHY should the Brethren, met in Lodge,
Adopt such awkward measures,
To set their scales and weights to judge
The value of their treasures?

The law laid down from age to age
How can they well o'ercome it?

For it forbids them to engage

With aught but line and plummet.

TO DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON:

FOOD FOR A NEW EDITION OF HIS DICTIONARY.

Let Wilkes and Churchill rage no more,
Tho' scarce provision, learning's good;
What can these hungry's next implore,
Even Samuel Johnson loves our food.

GREAT Pedagogue! whose literarian lore,
With syllable and syllable conjoin'd,
To transmutate and varify, has learn'd
The whole revolving scientific names
That in the alphabetic columns lie,
Far from the knowledge of mortalic shapes,
As we, who never can peroculate

The miracles by thee miraculiz'd,

The Muse, silential long, with mouth apart
Would give vibration to stagnatic tongue,
And loud encomiate thy puissant name,

RODONDO.