SIR CHARLES SEDLEY in his riper years made some atonement for the disgraces of a licentious youth, by his political conduct in opposing the arbitrary measures of James, and promoting the Revolution. King James had seduced his daughter, and made her Countess of Dorchester. "For making my daughter a countess," said Sedley, "I have helped to make his daughter a

A

queen." When his comedy of Bellamira was played, the roof fell in, and he was one of the very few that were hurt by the accident. flatterer told him that the fire of the play had blown up the poet, house, and all. "No," he replied, "the play was so heavy that it broke down the house, and buried the poet in his own rubbish."

SONG IN " BELLAMIRA, OR THE MISTRESS."

THYRSIS, unjustly you complain,
And tax my tender heart
With want of pity for your pain,
Or sense of your desert.

By secret and mysterious springs,
Alas! our passions move;
We women are fantastic things,
That like before we love.

You may be handsome and have wit,
Be secret and well bred :
The person love must to us fit,
He only can succeed.

Some die, yet never are believed;

Others we trust too soon, Helping ourselves to be deceived, And proud to be undone.

TO A VERY YOUNG LADY.

An Chloris! that I now could sit
As unconcern'd, as when
Your infant beauty could beget
No pleasure, nor no pain.

When I the dawn used to admire,

And praised the coming day; I little thought the growing fire Must take my rest away.

Your charms in harmless childhood lay,
Like metals in the mine,

Age from no face took more away,
Than youth conceal'd in thine.

But as your charms insensibly

To their perfection prest,

Fond Love, as unperceived did fly,
And in my bosom rest.

My passion with your beauty grew,
And Cupid at my heart,
Still as his mother favour'd you,
Threw a new flaming dart.

Each gloried in their wanton part,
To make a lover, he
Employ'd the utmost of his art,
To make a Beauty, she.

Though now I slowly bend to love
Uncertain of my fate,

If your fair self my chains approve, I shall my freedom hate.

Lovers, like dying men, may well

At first disorder'd be,
Since none alive can truly tell
What fortune they must see*.

SONG.

LOVE still has something of the sea,
From whence his mother rose;
No time his slaves from doubt can free,
Nor give their thoughts repose.

They are becalm'd in clearest days,
And in rough weather toss'd;
They wither under cold delays,

Or are in tempests lost.

This song

[* From the Mulberry Garden, a comedy written by the Honourable Sir Charles Sidley," 4to, 1668. is commonly printed as the production of "the Right Honourable Duncan Forbes, Lord President of the Court of Session," and is said to have been composed in 1710. See Motherwell's Ancient Minstrelsy, p. 65; and another Editor of Old Songs has said that these "tender and pathetic stanzas were addressed to Miss Mary Rose, the elegant and accomplished daughter of Hugh Rose, Esq. of Kilravock." Ritson commences his Collection of English Songs with Sedley's verses; both Ritson and Park were ignorant of their Author; and Mr. Chambers, in his Scottish Songs, starts with it as a genuine production of old Scotland! Burns has ascribed it to Sir Peter Halket of Pitferran. Forbes was born in 1685, seventeen years after the appearance of Sedley's comedy.-See Songs of England and Scotland, vol. i. p. 122.]

One while they seem to touch the port,
Then straight into the main
Some angry wind, in cruel sport,
The vessel drives again.

At first Disdain and Pride they fear,
Which if they chance to 'scape,
Rivals and Falsehood soon appear,
In a more cruel shape.

By such degrees to joy they come,
And are so long withstood;
So slowly they receive the sum,
It hardly does them good.

"Tis cruel to prolong a pain ;
And to defer a joy,
Believe me, gentle Celemene,
Offends the winged boy.

An hundred thousand oaths your fears,
Perhaps, would not remove;
And if I gazed a thousand years,
I could not deeper love.

SONG.

PHILLIS, you have enough enjoy'd
The pleasures of disdain ;

Methinks your pride should now be cloy'd,

And grow itself again :

Open to love your long-shut breast,
And entertain its sweetest guest.

Love heals the wound that Beauty gives,
And can ill usage slight;

He laughs at all that Fate contrives,
Full of his own delight:

We in his chains are happier far,
Than kings themselves without 'em are.

Leave, then, to tame philosophy

The joys of quietness ;

With me into love's empire fly,
And taste my happiness,

Where even tears and sighs can show
Pleasures the cruel never know.

COSMELIA'S charms inspire my lays, Who, fair in Nature's scorn, Blooms in the winter of her days, Like Glastenbury thorn.

Cosmelia's cruel at threescore; Like bards in modern plays, Four acts of life pass guiltless o'er, But in the fifth she slays.

If e'er, in eager hopes of bliss,
Within her arms you fall,
The plaster'd fair returns the kiss,
Like Thisbe-through a wall.

JOHN POMFRET was minister of Malden, in Bedfordshire. He died of the small-pox in his thirty-sixth year. It is asked, in Mr. Southey's Specimens of English Poetry, why Pomfret's

Choice is the most popular poem in the English language it might have been demanded with equal propriety, why London bridge is built of Parian marble.

CUSTOM, the world's great idol, we adore ;
And knowing this, we seek to know no more.
What education did at first receive,
Our ripen'd age confirms us to believe.
The careful nurse, and priest, are all we need,
To learn opinions, and our country's creed :
The parent's precepts early are instill'd,
And spoil'd the man, while they instruct the child.
To what hard fate is human kind betray'd,
When thus implicit faith a virtue made;
When education more than truth prevails,
And nought is current but what custom seals!
Thus, from the time we first began to know,
We live and learn, but not the wiser grow.

A POEM."

We seldom use our liberty aright, Nor judge of things by universal light :

[* Why is Pomfret the most popular of the English Poets? The fact is certain, and the solution would be useful.-Southey's Specimens, vol. i. p. 91.

Pomfret's Choice" exhibits a system of life adapted to common notions, and equal to common expectations; such a state as affords plenty and tranquillity, without exelusion of intellectual pleasures. Perhaps no composition in our language has been oftener perused than Pomfrels Choice. JOHNSON.

Johnson and Southey have written of what was; Mr. Campbell of what is. Pomfret's " Choice" is certainly not now perused oftener than any other composition in our language, nor is Pomfret now the most popular of English poets.]

Our prepossessions and affections bind
The soul in chains, and lord it o'er the mind;
And if self interest be but in the case,
Our unexamined principles may pass !

Good Heavens! that man should thus himself
To learn on credit, and on trust believe! [deceive,
Better the mind no notions had retain'd,
But still a fair, unwritten blank remain'd :
For now, who truth from falsehood would discern,
Must first disrobe the mind, and all unlearn.
Errors, contracted in unmindful youth,
When once removed, will smooth the way to truth:
To dispossess the child the mortal lives,
But death approaches ere the man arrives. [find,
Those who would learning's glorious kingdom
The dear-bought purchase of the trading mind,
From many dangers must themselves acquit,
And more than Scylla and Charybdis meet.
Oh! what an ocean must be voyaged o'er,
To gain a prospect of the shining shore!
Resisting rocks oppose th' inquiring soul,
And adverse waves retard it as they roll.

Does not that foolish deference we pay
To men that lived long since, our passage stay?
What odd, preposterous paths at first we tread,
And learn to walk by stumbling on the dead!
First we a blessing from the grave implore,
Worship old urns, and monuments adore!
The reverend sage with vast esteem we prize:
He lived long since, and must be wondrous wise!

Thus are we debtors to the famous dead,
For all those errors which their fancies bred;
Errors indeed! for real knowledge staid
With those first times, not farther was convey'd:
While light opinions are much lower brought,
For on the waves of ignorance they float:
But solid truth scarce ever gains the shore,
So soon it sinks, and ne'er emerges more.

Suppose those many dreadful dangers past,
Will knowledge dawn, and bless the mind at last?
Ah! no, 'tis now environ'd from our eyes,
Hides all its charms, and undiscover'd lies!
Truth, like a single point, escapes the sight,
And claims attention to perceive it right!
But what resembles truth is soon descried,
Spreads like a surface, and expanded wide!
The first man rarely, very rarely finds
The tedious search of long inquiring minds:
But yet what's worse, we know not what we err;
What mark does truth, what bright distinction
bear?

How do we know that what we know is true?
How shall we falsehood fly, and truth pursue?
Let none then here his certain knowledge boast;
'Tis all but probability at most :

This is the easy purchase of the mind,
The vulgar's treasure, which we soon may find!
But truth lies hid, and ere we can explore

The glittering gem, our fleeting life is o'er.

CHARLES SACKVILLE was the direct descendant of the great Thomas Lord Buckhurst. Of his youth it is disgraceful enough to say, that he was the companion of Rochester and Sedley; but his maturer life, like that of Sedley, was illustrated by public spirit, and his fortune enabled him to be a beneficent friend to men of genius. In 1665, while Earl of Buckhurst, he attended the Duke of York as a volunteer in the Dutch war, and finished his well-known song, “To all you ladies now at land," on the day before the sea-fight in which Opdam, the Dutch admiral, was blown up, with all his crew. He was soon after made a gentleman of the bedchamber to Charles II., and sent on short embassies to France. From James II. he also received some favourable notice, but joined in the opposition to his innovations, and,

with some other lords, appeared at Westminster Hall to countenance the bishops upon their trial. Before this period he had succeeded to the estate and title of the Earl of Middlesex, his uncle, as well as to those of his father, the Earl of Dorset. Having concurred in the Revolution, he was rewarded by William with the office of lord-chamberlain of the household, and with the order of the garter; but his attendance on the king even. tually hastened his death, for being exposed in an open boat with his majesty, during sixteen hours of severe weather, on the coast of Holland, his health was irrecoverably injured. The point and sprightliness of Dorset's pieces entitle him to some remembrance, though they leave not a slender apology for the grovelling adulation that was shown to him by Dryden in his dedications.

To all you ladies now at land,

We men at sea indite;

But first would have you understand

How hard it is to write:

The Muses now, and Neptune too,

We must implore to write to you,

With a fa, la, la, la, la.

For though the Muses should prove kind,
And fill our empty brain;
Yet if rough Neptune rouse the wind,
To wave the azure main,
Our paper, pen, and ink, and we,
Roll up and down our ships at sea.

With a fa, &c.

Then if we write not by each post,
Think not we are unkind;
Nor yet conclude our ships are lost,
By Dutchmen, or by wind:
Our tears we'll send a speedier way,
The tide shall bring them twice a-day.
With a fa, &c.

The king, with wonder and surprise,

Will swear the seas grow bold ; Because the tides will higher rise,

Than e'er they used of old : But let him know, it is our tears Bring floods of grief to Whitehall stairs. With a fa, &c.

Should foggy Opdam chance to know

Our sad and dismal story;

The Dutch would scorn so weak a foe,

And quit their fort at Goree :

For what resistance can they find

From men who've left their hearts behind! With a fa, &c.

Let wind and weather do its worst,

Be you to us but kind;

Let Dutchmen vapour, Spaniards curse, No sorrow we shall find:

'Tis then no matter how things go,

Or who's our friend, or who's our foe.

With a fa, &c.