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Benighted in a wilderness of woe?

That false Lothario! Turn from the deceiver;
Turn, and behold where gentle Altamont,
Kind as the softest virgin of our sex,
And faithful as the simple village swain,
That never knew the courtly vice of changing,
Sighs at your feet, and woos you to be happy.

Cal. Away, I think not of him. My sad soul
Has formed a dismal, melancholy scene,
Such a retreat as I would wish to find;
An unfrequented vale, o'ergrown with trees
Mossy and old, within whose lonesome shade
Ravens and birds ill-omened only dwell :
No sound to break the silence but a brook

That bubbling winds among the weeds: no mark

Of any human shape that had been there,

Unless a skeleton of some poor wretch
Who had long since, like me, by love undone,
Sought that sad place out to despair and die in.
Luc. Alas! for pity.

Cal.

There I fain would hide me From the base world, from malice, and from shame;

For 'tis the solemn counsel of my soul

Never to live with public loss of honour :

'Tis fixed to die, rather than bear the insolence

Of each affected she that tells my story,
And blesses her good stars that she is virtuous.
To be a tale for fools, scorned by the women,
And pitied by the men! Oh insupportable!

Luc. Can you perceive the manifest destruction,
The gaping gulf that opens just before you,
And yet rush on, though conscious of the danger?
Oh! hear me, hear your ever-faithful creature ;
By all the good I wish you, by all the ill
My trembling heart forebodes, let me entreat you
Never to see this faithless man again :

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Rage is the shortest passion of our souls;

Like narrow brooks that rise with sudden showers,
It swells in haste, and falls again as soon ;
Still as it ebbs the softer thoughts flow in,
And the deceiver, Love, supplies its place.

Cal. I have been wronged enough to arm my temper Against the smooth delusion; but, alas!

(Chide not my weakness, gentle maid, but pity me)
A woman's softness hangs about me still;
Then let me blush, and tell thee all my folly.

I swear I could not see the dear betrayer
Kneel at my feet and sigh to be forgiven,
But my relenting heart would pardon all,

And quite forget 'twas he that had undone me.

Luc. Ye sacred powers whose gracious providence

Is watchful for our good, guard me from men,

From their deceitful tongues, their vows and flatteries. Still let me pass neglected by their eyes,

Let my bloom wither and my form decay

That none may think it worth his while to ruin me,
And fatal love may never be my bane.

Cal. Ha! Altamont! Calista, now be wary,
And guard thy soul's excesses with dissembling :
Nor let this hostile husband's eyes explore
The warring passions and tumultuous thoughts
That rage within thee, and deform thy reason.

The style of the translation of Lucan's Pharsalia may be illustrated by such sententious passages as:

The vulgar falls and none laments his fate;
Sorrow has hardly leisure for the great.

Laws in great rebellions lose their end,
And all go free when multitudes offend.

To strictest justice many ills belong,
And honesty is often in the wrong.

When fair occasion calls, 'tis fatal to delay.

More sprightly is (from an occasional poem):
Thus some who have the stars surveyed

Are ignorantly led

To think those glorious lamps were made To light Tom Fool to bed.

Colin's Complaint: a Song. Despairing beside a clear stream, A shepherd forsaken was laid; And while a false nymph was his theme, A willow supported his head. The wind that blew over the plain,

To his sighs with a sigh did reply; And the brook, in return to his pain,

Ran mournfully murmuring by.

'Alas, silly swain that I was !'

Thus sadly complaining he cried; 'When first I beheld that fair face 'Twere better by far I had died.

She talked, and I blessed the dear tongue; When she smiled 'twas a pleasure too great :

I listened and cried when she sung, "Was nightingale ever so sweet?

"How foolish was I to believe

She could dote on so lowly a clown,
Or that her fond heart would not grieve
To forsake the fine folk of the town.
To think that a beauty so gay,

So kind and so constant would prove,
Or go clad like our maidens in gray,
Or live in a cottage on love.

'What though I have skill to complain,

Though the Muses my temples have crowned? What though, when they hear my soft strain, The virgins sit weeping around? Ah, Colin, thy hopes are in vain ;

Thy pipe and thy laurel resign; Thy false one inclines to a swain Whose music is sweeter than thine.

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Though through the wide world I should range, 'Tis in vain from my fortune to fly; "Twas hers to be false and to change, 'Tis mine to be constant and die.

If while my hard fate I sustain,

In her breast any pity is found,

Let her come with the nymph of the plain,
And see me laid low in the ground.
The last humble boon that I crave,

Is to shade me with cypress and yew;
And when she looks down on my grave,
Let her own that her shepherd was true.

'Then to her new love let her go,

And deck her in golden array,

Be finest at every fine show,

And frolic it all the long day;
While Colin, forgotten and gone,
No more shall be talked of or seen,
Unless when beneath the pale moon

His ghost shall glide over the green.'

Six editions of Rowe's works appeared between 1727 and 1792.

Susannah Centlivre (c. 1667–1723), dramatist, is said to have been born in Ireland, her surname either Freeman or Rawkins; her father according to one account having fled to Ireland after the Restoration, when his religious or political opinions made him obnoxious to the authorities. She had already been the wife or mistress of two or three gentlemen, when in 1700 she produced a tragedy, The Perjured Husband, and not long after she appeared on the stage at Bath. In 1706 she married Joseph Centlivre, head-cook to Queen Anne, with whom she lived happily till the end. Her nineteen plays (with Life, 3 vols. 1761; new ed. 1872) include The Perjured Husband (1700); The Gamester (1705); The Platonick Lady (1707); The Busybody (Marplot' its leading character, 1709); A Bickerstaff's Burial, ultimately called The Custom of the Country (1710); The Wonder! A Woman Keeps a Secret (1714); and A Bold Stroke for a Wife (1717), her most original playfor many of them are adaptations of French and other plays or stories. Some of her plays, on the other hand, were translated into French and into German. She was a strong Whig. In the Wonder, the scene of which is laid in Lisbon, the principal characters, except Spanish Dons and Donnas, are Colonel Briton, ‘a Scotchman,' who has for three years held a command in Spain, and Gibby, his footman, who wears full Highland costume and speaks a dialect absolutely unknown to Highlanders, compounded of Aberdeenshire and south-country Scots, and English or disguised English, with a large element of a sort of Volapük concocted on hypothetical analogies. Much is genuine Scotch (as in Tatham's plays, vol. i. p. 786), often very oddly spelt; and, as in the former case, one wonders how many persons in a London audience in 1714-the year the play was produced-would understand that carich (i.e. carritch) meant catechism, speer ask, kenspeckle

conspicuous and recognisable, and sculdudrie what Allan Ramsay referred to by that name. The institution, if not the word, figures largely in Mrs Centlivre's plays. When Gibby in full fig enters to Colonel Briton and a Spanish gentleman, the latter not unnaturally exclaims, 'What have we here?' and Colonel Briton explains: 'My footman; this is our country dress, you must know, which for the honour of Scotland I make all my servants wear.' But to the London auditory, who must have been at least as much nonplussed by Gibby's 'Doric,' no such explanation is vouchsafed of an utterance of the footman so esoteric as the following:

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Mary de la Riviere Manley (1672?-1724), novelist, dramatist, and political writer, enjoyed some celebrity among the wits of the Queen Anne period, though neither her life nor writings will bear a close scrutiny. She was the daughter of a respected royalist officer, Sir Roger Manley, who, an exile in 1646-60, became in 1667 commander-inchief (not governor) in Jersey. (He is wrongly credited by his daughter with being part-author of the famous Letters writ by a Turkish Spy, the first notable example of a description of European things by a feigned Oriental. The Letters are largely based on L'Espion Turc of the Genoese G. P. Marana, and are probably his work, translated and edited.) Sir Roger died while his daughter was young, and she fell to the charge of a Mr Manley, her cousin, who drew her into a mock marriage-he had a wife living-and in about three years basely deserted her. Her life henceforward was that of an author by profession and a woman of intrigue. The next notable woman after Mrs Aphra Behn to make a livelihood by literature, she wrote three plays, the Royal Mischief, the Lost Lover, and Lucius-the last being honoured by a prologue from the pen of Steele and an epilogue by Prior. Her most famous work appeared in 1709—Secret Memoirs and Manners of several Persons of Quality, of both Sexes. From the New Atalantis-a political romance or satire, full of court and party scandal, directed against the Whig statesmen and public characters connected with the Revolution of 1688. This work was honoured with a State prosecution; author, printer, and publisher were arrested, but released in a few days. She met with some favour from a succeeding Tory Ministry; and Memoirs of Europe (1710) and Court Intrigues (1711) were reprinted as third and fourth volumes of the New Atalantis. Swift, in his Journal to Steila (January 28, 1711-12), says of Mrs Manley: 'She

has very generous principles for one of her sort, and a great deal of good sense and invention : she is about forty, very homely, and very fat.' She found favour, moreover, with Swift's friend, Alderman Barbour, in whose house she lived for many years, and there she died. When Swift relinquished the Examiner, Mrs Manley conducted it for some time, the Dean supplying hints, and she appears to have been a ready and effective political writer. All her works, however, have sunk into oblivion. Her novels are worthless, extravagant productions, and the Atalantis is chiefly remembered from a line in Pope. Baron, in the Rape of the Lock, says:

As long as Atalantis shall be read . .

The

So long my honour, name, and praise shall live! Atalantis for Atlantis does no undue dishonour to Mrs Manley's scholarship. Spite of her cleverness and reading, she had a fatal incapacity to apprehend classical names aright, and refers familiarly to Paulus Diaconius, Cataline, and Isaac Commenus; and quotes 'Baron Annal' apparently without knowing that she was citing the Annales of Baronius. Even such spellings as strick (for strict), comparitively, and hipperboly hyperbole !) occur. Swift said of Mrs Manley's writing that it seemed as if she had about two thousand epithets and fine words packed up in a bag, and that she pulled them out by handfuls, and strewed them on her paper, where once in five hundred times they happen to be right.' Yet he and his Tory allies willingly co-operated or collaborated with Mrs Manley; he was not above accepting hints from the New Atalantis, as Smollett also did; and in the unfortunate woman's last dark days Swift supported a petition from her to the Government for some reward for her services to the Tory cause, the writing of the Atalantis and her prosecution for it being accounted amongst her claims.

The Memoirs of Europe towards the Close of the Eighth Century she described on the title-page as 'written by Eginardus, secretary and favourite to Charlemagne, and done into English by the translator of the New Atalantis. Though in some

library catalogues it appears under the head of Eginhard, after his Life of Charlemagne (!), this miscellany was sufficiently like the New Atalantis to appear subsequently as a continuation of that work-contemporary persons being freely dealt with under eighth-century names. It was ironically dedicated to Isaac Bickerstaff in the following characteristic dedication, here reproduced with her own spelling and punctuation, italics, and long f's:

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As a Dedication is of neceffity towards the Ornament of a Work of this Kind, I cou'd not hesitate upon my Choice, becaufe Experience (and the Example of the Indians, who in the Worship of their Demons, confult only Fear, which feems to be their strongest Passion) has

taught me to secure any One that might have been my Hero, from the well-bred, further Reflections, of so polite a Pen as yours. Tho' your Worship, in the TATLER of November the Tenth, has been pleased to call a Patron the Filthieft Creature in the Street, &c. yet I cannot but obferve, in innumerable Inftances, you are so delighted with fuch Addresses, as even to make 'em to your felf: I hope therefore, a corroborating Evidence of your Perfections, may not be unacceptable.

I HAVE learnt from your Worship's Lucubrations, to have all the Moral Virtues in Efteem; and therefore take this Opportunity of doing Juftice, and asking a certain worthy Gentleman, one Capt. Steele, pardon; for ever mistaking him for your Worship; for if I perfever'd in that Accufation, I muft believe him not in Earneft, when he makes me these following Affurances in a Letter, which according to your Example, Sir, who feem prodigiously fond of fuch Infertions, I venture to Transcribe Verbatim.

Madam,

To Mrs. Manley.

'I HAVE receiv'd a letter from you, wherein you tax me ' as if I were Bickerstaff, with falling upon you as Author ' of the Atalantis, and the Perfon who honour'd me with a Character in that Celebrated Piece. I folemnly affure 'you, you wrong me in this, as much as you know you 'do in all elfe you have been pleased to say of me. I 'had the greatest Senfe imaginable of the kind Notice 'you gave me when I was going on to my Ruin, and am fo far from retaining an Inclination to revenge the Inhumanity with which you have treated Me, that I give my felf a Satisfaction in that you have cancell'd, 'with Injuries, a friendship I fhould never have been able

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SOON after, two moft mighty Tatlers came out, levell'd directly at Me; but That I could have forgiven, had they not aim'd to asperse one too Great to name. Vain! ridiculous Endeavour! as well the Sun may be cover'd with a Hand, as fuch Merit fullied by the Attempts of the moft malicious, moft witty Pen.

SINCE Mr. Steele's reconcil'd Friendship (promifed after my Application to him when under Confinement) could never be guilty of fo barbarous a Breach, fince he could not commit the Treacherouseft! the Bafeft! the moft Abject thing upon the Earth! fo contrary to his Assurances! It must be you, Sir, to whom my Thanks are due; making me a Perfon of fuch Confideration, as to be worthy your important War. A weak unlearned Woman's Writings, to employ fo great a Pen! Heavens!

how valuable am I! How fond of that Immortality, even of Infamy, that you have promised! I am ravish'd at the Thoughts of living a thoufand Years hence in your indelible Lines, tho' to give Offence. He that burnt the Temple of Diana was Ambitious after much such a fort of Fame, as what your Worship feems to have in store for me! Nay, (juft tho' you are) you even ftrain a Point to oblige me, as to the Fate of my Atalantis, calling that prefent State Oblivion, which was Suppreffion. I doubt your Worship must be forced to make many as bold Attempts, elfe in my frail Woman's Life there will be little of Heroick Ills worth recording: Nor would I for the World (as your Worship feems to fear) by feign'd Names or none at all, put you to your Criticisms upon the Style of all your Contemporaries, though to give you an Opportunity to fhow your profound Judgment. No, Sir, I will not hazard lofing my Title to fo promising a Favour. Draw what Lengths you please; I shall be proud of furnishing Matter towards your inexhaustible Tatler, and of being a perpetual Monument of Mr. Bickerstaff's Gallantry and Morality.

As to the following Work (for which I humbly implore your Worship's All-fufficient Protection) I refer you to it felf and the Preface: But could I have found you in your Sheer-Lane, in which Attempt I have wander'd many Hours in vain, I fhould have fubmitted it, with that Humility due to fo Omnipotent a Cenfor. Receive then, Sir, with your ufual Goodness, with the fame intent with which it is directed, this Address of,

SIR,

Your moft Oblig'd

Moft humble Servant,

D. M.

The letter from Steele is a true letter, and acknowledged a real service rendered. D. M. stands, of course, for De la Riviere Manley. The attack referred to is in Tatler No. 92. Sheer Lane (spelt also Shear Lane) was Shire Lane near Temple Bar-afterwards called Lower Serle's Place-in which stood a public-house called the Trumpet,' where the Tatler was said to meet his club. The lane has many other literary associations-with Sir Charles Sedley, Elias Ashmcle, the Kit-Cat Club, Theodore Hook, and Dr Maginn.

Walter Pope, born at Fawsley in Northamptonshire, was a half-brother of Bishop Wilkins. He entered Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1645, but graduated from Wadham College, Oxford, in which college he became dean. Having succeeded Sir Christopher Wren as professor of Astronomy in Gresham College, he died in London a very old man in 1714. Besides scientific papers, he wrote ironical Memoires of M. Du Vall and an ode on Claude Duval, translated Select Novels from Cervantes and Petrarch, wrote Moral and Political Fables, and was author of The Old Man's Wish,' sung a thousand times' by Benjamin Franklin in his youth, and done into Latin by Vincent Bourne. It is curiously irregular in rhythm, with many extra syllables. is repeated after each of the twenty verses.

From 'The Old Man's Wish.'

If I live to be old, for I find I go down,
Let this be my fate. In a country town

The chorus

May I have a warm house, with a stone at my gate, And a cleanly young girl to rub my bald pate.

May I govern my passions with an absolute sway,
And grow wiser and better as my strength wears
Without gout or stone, by a gentle decay. [away,

May my little house stand on the side of a hill
With an easy descent to a mead and a mill,
That when I've a mind I may hear my boy read
In the mill if it rains, if it's dry in the mead.

Near a shady grove, and a murmuring brook,
With the ocean at distance whereon I may look,
With a spacious plain without hedge or stile,
And an easy pad nag to ride out a mile.

With Horace and Petrarch, and two or three more
Of the best wits that reigned in the ages before ;
With roast-mutton rather than ven'son or teal,
And clean though coarse linen at every meal.

With a pudding on Sunday, with stout humming liquor,
And remnants of Latin to welcome the vicar;
With Monte-Fiascone or Burgundy wine

To drink the king's health as oft as I dine. ..
With a courage undaunted may I face my last day,
And when I am dead may the better sort say,
In the morning when sober, in the evening when mellow,
'He's gone and left not behind him his fellow.' . .
May I govern, &c.

Thomas Wharton (1648–1715), first Marquis of Wharton, escaped from the Presbyterian and Puritan régime of his father, the third Baron Wharton, to become the greatest rake in England. Famous at Newmarket before he became a keen Whig partisan, he made himself highly obnoxious to the Duke of York, and finally boasted that by his ballad of Lillibulero (1688)—so the word is usually now spelt-set to music by Purcell, he had sung a king out of three kingdoms. He joined the Prince of Orange, but though made Privy Councillor and Master of the Household, did not realise his ambitions under William III. He was, without doubt, the astutest of the Whig managers. He was abhorred by Tories and Churchmen, and described by Lady Mary Wortley Montagu as the 'most profligate, impious, and shameless of men.' Swift reviled him as an atheist grafted on a dissenter;' Queen Anne disliked him, but in 1710 he was made Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, when he had Joseph Addison as his secretary. As a great Whig leader he naturally attained to a marquisate and other honours, which he enjoyed but for a few months. That very little ingenuity, the most rudimentary wit, and a plentiful lack of poetry sufficed to produce an epoch-making rhyme will be plain from a verse or two of his early and poor prophetic counterblast to 'The Wearing of the Green' (which oddly enough begins with a precisely similar question):

Ho! broder Teague, dost hear de decree ?
Lilli burlero, bullen a la.

Dat we shall have a new deputie?

Lilli burlero, bullen a la.
Lero lero, lilli burlero, lero lero, bullen a la,
Lero lero, lilli burlero, lero lero, bullen a la.

Ho! by Shaint Tyburn, it is de Talbote :

Lilli, &c.

And he will cut de Englishmen's troate.
Lilli, &c.

Dough by my shoul de English do praat
De laws on dare side and Creist knows what.

But if dispence do come from de Pope,
We'll hang Magna Charta and dem in a rope.

Now, now de hereticks all go down

By Christ and Shaint Patrick the nation's our own.
Dare was an old prophecy found in a bog,
Ireland shall be ruled by an ass and a dog.
And now dis prophecy is come to pass,

For Talbot 's de dog and Ja**s is de ass-

the ridiculous-looking refrain being repeated to satiety with each verse as with the first. Lilli burlero and bullen a la were understood to have been Irish watchwords in the rising against the English and Protestants in 1641.

Samuel Johnson (1649–1703), Whig divine, was humbly born in Staffordshire or Warwickshire, was educated at St Paul's School and Trinity College, Cambridge, became chaplain to Lord William Russell, and was soon noted for his polemical tracts and sermons. In Julian the Apostate (1682) he gave an unflattering portrait of the Duke of York, and continued the controversy in Julian's Arts, which led to arrest, prosecution, and imprisonment. He continued to write pamphlets against popery and for the Revolution cause, was stripped of his robes and pilloried, received three hundred and seventeen lashes and was imprisoned again in 1686, and was said by Calamy, who called him 'that truly glorious person,' to have done more than any man in England besides towards paving the way for King William's revolution. He scornfully rejected the usual pretexts by which the Whigs salved their consciences, insisting that William's title was solely the free gift of the people. Soured by lack of gratitude on the part of the court (for he expected much), he wrote bitterly against Burnet and other favourites, but was ultimately pensioned. Dryden reviled him as Ben-Jochanan in Absalom and Achitophel, and Swift sneered at 'Julian Johnson.' Coleridge ranked him high amongst controversial writers. His works were published in a folio in 1710, and reprinted in 1713.-Another Samuel Johnson (1691-1773), a Manchester dancing-master and fiddler, produced in 1729 an absurd burlesque called Hurlothrumbo, followed by a series of poor comedies and comic operas.

In the Julian pamphlet the Whig Samuel Johnson makes no secret of his design to institute a practical parallel between the Roman Emperor and the heirapparent to the British crown (as Strauss afterwards did with Frederick William IV. of Prussia), and to promote the policy of the exclusion bill by insisting on Christian ill-will to Julian. Of the

Roman Catholics he says: 'No doubt they would bestow more good words on us if we would all be Passive Protestants; for then the fewer Active Papists would serve to despatch us;' and of passive obedience in Charles I.'s time says:

And yet the arbitrary doctrine of those times did not bring any great terror along with it: it was then but a rake, and serv'd only to scrape up a little paltry passive mony from the subject; but now it is become a murdering piece, loaden with no body knows how many bullets. And that the patrons of it may not complain that it is an exploded doctrine, as if men only hooted at it, but cou'd not answer it, I shall stay to speak a little more to it.

From Julian the Apostate.'

In reading many of the late addresses [against the exclusion of the Duke of York from succeeding to the crown], I cou'd not forbear thinking of those angels which Mahomet saw, whose horns were half fire and half snow: those contrarietys which they wore on the outside of their heads, methought, many of our addressers had got on. the inside of theirs. For with a brave and warm zeal for the Protestant religion and a Protestant prince, they generously offer'd their lives and fortunes, and the last drop of blood, in defence of his Majesty and the religion now establish'd by law; and by and by the same lives and fortunes, and last drop of blood, are promis'd over again to a popish successor. What is this but clapping cold snow upon the head of all their Protestant zeal? For he that offers his service to both of these together, lifts himself under two the most adverse partys in the world, and is Guelph and Gibeline at once. What benefit a popish successor can reap from lives and fortunes spent in defence of the Protestant religion, he may put in his eye and what the Protestant religion gets by lives and fortunes spent in the service of a popish successor, will be over the left shoulder.

But this contradictious zeal was nothing near so surprizing as that of our friends of Rippon, who beseech his Majesty, and are very sollicitous, lest he shou'd agree to a bill of exclusion (for plain English is as well understood on this side the Trent as on the other), and seem to be very much afraid of losing the great blessing of a popish successor. All the sober men that I have met with, who remain unsatisfy'd as to a bill of exclusion, do nevertheless acknowledg, that a popish successor will be a heavy judgment of God to this nation; to which we must patiently submit, as we do to all other calamitys. But did ever men pray for a judgment, and make it their humble request, that they might be sure of it? Do they not, on the other hand, when it begins to threaten them, heartily deprecate the evil, and are they not earnest with God to avert it? Nay, do they not moreover use all lawful human means to prevent it? There is no judgment represented in scripture to be so immediately the stroke of God as the plague. David, in his great strait, made choice of it under that notion, when he desir'd rather to fall into the hands of God than into the hands of men: and yet men do constantly make use of all lawful means to prevent it. For, besides their using Hippocrates's receipt of Citò, longè, tardè, and running away from it, they make no scruple of antidoting and fortifying themselves against it. They strive with an infected air; and with fires, and fumes of pitch and tar, &c., they endeavour to correct it. Nay, they

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