When surfeit, or unthankfulness, destroys,
In nature's narrow sphere, our solid joys,
In fancy's airy land of noise and show,
Where nought but dreams, no real pleasures grow;
Like cats in air-pumps, to subsist we strive
On joys too thin to keep the soul alive.

Such blessings nature pours,

O'erstock'd mankind enjoy but half her stores:
In distant wilds, by human eyes unseen,

She rears her flowers, and spreads her velvet green:

Pure gurgling rills the lonely desert trace,
And waste their music on the savage race.
Is nature then a niggard of her bliss ?
Repine we guiltless in a world like this?
But our lewd tastes her lawful charms refuse,
And painted art's deprav'd allurements choose.

CHARACTERS OF WOMEN-THE WEDDED WIT.

FROM THE SAME.

NOUGHT but a genius can a genius fit;

A wit herself, Amelia weds a wit:

Both wits! though miracles are said to cease,

Three days, three wondrous days! they liv'd in

peace;

With the fourth sun a warm dispute arose,

On Durfey's poesy, and Bunyan's prose:
The learned war both wage with equal force,
And the fifth morn concluded the divorce.

THE ASTRONOMICAL LADY,

FROM THE SAME.

SOME nymphs prefer astronomy to love;
Elope from mortal man, and range above.
The fair philosopher to Rowley flies,
Where in a box the whole creation lies:
She sees the planets in their turns advance,
And scorns, Poitier, thy sublunary dance:
Of Desaguliers she bespeaks fresh air;
And Whiston has engagements with the fair.
What vain experiments Sophronia tries!
'Tis not in air-pumps the gay colonel dies.
But though to-day this rage of science reigns,
(O fickle sex!) soon end her learned pains.
Lo! Pug from Jupiter her heart has got,
Turns out the stars, and Newton is a sot.

THE LANGUID LADY.

FROM THE SAME.

THE languid lady next appears in state,
Who was not born to carry her own weight;
She lolls, reels, staggers, till some foreign aid
To her own stature lifts the feeble maid.
Then, if ordain'❜d to so severe a doom,
She, by just stages, journeys round the room:
But, knowing her own weakness, she despairs
To scale the Alps that is, ascend the stairs.

My fan! let others say, who laugh at toil;
Fan! hood! glove! scarf! is her laconic style;
And that is spoke with such a dying fall,
That Betty rather sees, than hears the call:
The motion of her lips, and meaning eye,

Piece out th' idea her faint words deny.
O listen with attention most profound!
Her voice is but the shadow of a sound.
And help, oh help! her spirits are so dead,
One hand scarce lifts the other to her head.
If there a stubborn pin it triumphs o'er,
She pants! she sinks away! and is no more.
Let the robust and the gigantic carve,

Life is not worth so much, she'd rather starve:
But chew she must herself! ah cruel fate!
That Rosalinda can't by proxy eat.

THE SWEARER.

FROM THE SAME.

THALESTRIS triumphs in a manly mien;
Loud is her accent, and her phrase obscene.
In fair and open dealing where's the shame ?
What nature dares to give, she dares to name.
This honest fellow is sincere and plain,
And justly gives the jealous husband pain.
(Vain is the task to petticoats assign'd,
If wanton language shows a naked mind.)
And now and then, to grace her eloquence,
An oath supplies the vacancies of sense.

Hark! the shrill notes transpierce the yielding air,
And teach the neighbouring echoes how to swear.
By Jove, is faint, and for the simple swain ;
She, on the Christian system, is profane.
But though the volley rattles in your ear,
Believe her dress, she's not a grenadier.

If thunder's awful, how much more our dread,
When Jove deputes a lady in his stead?
A lady? pardon my mistaken pen,
A shameless woman is the worst of men.

JOHN BROWN.
BORN 1715. DIED 1765.

DR. BROWN, author of the tragedies of Athelstan and Barbarossa, and of several other works, was born at Rothbury, in Northumberland, where his father was curate. He studied at Cambridge, obtained a minor canonry and lectureship in the cathedral of Carlisle, and was afterwards preferred to the living of Morland, in Westmorland. The latter office he resigned in disgust at being rebuked for an accidental omission of the Athanasian creed. He remained for some years in obscurity at Carlisle, till the year of the rebellion, when he distinguished himself by his intrepidity as a volunteer at the siege of the castle. His Essay on Satire introduced him to Warburton, who exhorted him to write his Remarks on Shaftesbury's Characteristics, as well as to at

tempt an epic poem on the plan which Pope had sketched. Through Warburton's influence he obtained the rectory of Horkesly, near Colchester; but his fate was to be embroiled with his patrons, and having quarrelled with those who had given him the living in Essex, he was obliged to retire upon the vicarage of St. Nicholas, at Newcastle. A latent taint of derangement had certainly made him vain and capricious; but Warburton seems not to have been a delicate doctor to his mind's disease. In one of his letters he says, "Brown is here, "rather perter than ordinary, but no wiser. You "cannot imagine how tender they are all of his "tender places, and with how unfeeling a hand I "probe them." The writer of this humane sentence was one whom Brown had praised in his Estimate as the Gulliver and Colossus of a degenerate age. When his Barbarossa came out, it appears that some friends, equally tender with the Bishop of Gloucester, reproved him for having any connexion with players. The players were not much kinder to his sore feelings. Garrick offended him deeply by a line in the prologue which he composed for his Barbarossa, alluding to its author, "Let the poor devil eat-allow him that.”

His poetry never obtained, nor indeed deserved much attention; but his "Estimate of the Manners and Principles of the Times" passed through seven editions, and threw the nation into a temporary ferment. Voltaire alleges that it roused the English from lethargy by the imputation of degeneracy,