How many a message would he send!
What hearty prayers that I should mend!
Inquire what regimen I kept:

What gave me ease, and how I slept?
And more lament when I was dead,
Than all the snivellers round my bed.
My good companions, never fear;
For, though you may mistake a year,
Though your prognostics run too fast,
They must be verify'd at last.

Behold the fatal day arrive!

"How is the Dean ?"-" He's just alive."
Now the departing prayer is read;
He hardly breathes-The Dean is dead.
Before the passing bell's begun,
The news through half the town is run.
"Oh! may we all for death prepare!
What has he left? and who's his heir?
I know no more than what the news is;
'Tis all bequeath'd to public uses.
To public uses! there's a whim!
What had the public done for him?
Mere envy, avarice, and pride:
He gave it all-but first he died.
And had the Dean in all the nation,
No worthy friend, no poor relation?
So ready to do strangers good,
Forgetting his own flesh and blood!"

Now Grub-street wits are all employ'd;
With elegies the town is cloy'd:
Some paragraph in every paper,

To curse the Dean, or bless the Draper.*
The doctors, tender of their fame,
Wisely on me lay all the blame.
"We must confess, his case was nice;
But he would never take advice.
Had he been rul'd, for aught appears,
He might have liv'd these twenty years:
For, when we open'd him, we found
That all his vital parts were sound."

From Dublin soon to London spread,

"Tis told at court, "The Dean is dead;"

And Lady Suffolk, in the spleen,

Runs laughing up to tell the Queen.

*For the papers which he wrote on Irish affairs, under that title.

The Queen so gracious, mild, and good,
Cries, "Is he gone! 'tis time he should
He's dead you say; then let him rot.
I'm glad the medals* were forgot.
I promis'd him, I own; but when?
I only was the princess then ;
But now, as consort of the king,
You know, 'tis quite another thing.”

Now, Chartres, at Sir Robert's levee,
Tells with a sneer, the tidings heavy;

66

Why, if he died without his shoes,"
Cries Bob, "I'm sorry for the news:
Oh were the wretch but living still,
And in his place my good friend Will!†
Or had a mitre on his head,
Provided Bolingbroke were dead!"

Now Curll his shop from rubbish drains:
Three genuine tomes of Swift's remains!
And then, to make them pass the glibber,
Revis'd by Tibbald, Moore, and Cibber.
He'll treat me as he does my betters,
Publish my will, my life, my letters;
Revive the libels born to die:
Which Pope must bear as well as I.

Here shift the scene, to represent

How those I love my death lament.
Poor Pope will grieve a month, and Gay
A week, and Arbuthnot a day.

St. John himself will scarce forbear

To bite his pen, and drop a tear.
The rest will give a shrug, and cry,
"I'm sorry-but we all must die!"
Indifference clad in Wisdom's guise,
All fortitude of mind supplies:
For how can stony bowels melt,
In those who never pity felt!
When we are lash'd, they kiss the rod,
Resigning to the will of God.

The fools, my juniors by a year,
Are tortur'd with suspense and fear;
Who wisely thought my age a screen,

When death approach'd to stand between :

"Which the Dean (he says) in vain expected, in return for a small present he had sent to the Princess."

† Sir Robert Walpole's antagonist, Pulteney.

The screen remov'd their hearts are trembling;
They mourn for me without dissembling.

My female friends, whose tender hearts
Have better learn'd to act their parts,
Receive the news in doleful dumps :
"The Dean is dead: (Pray what is trumps ?)
Then, Lord have mercy on his soul !
(Ladies, I'll venture for the vole.)
Six Deans, they say, must bear the pall:
(I wish I knew what king to call.)
Madam, your husband will attend
The funeral of so good a friend.
No, madam, 'tis a shocking sight;
And he's engag'd to-morrow night:
My Lady Club will take it ill,
If he should fail her at quadrille,
He lov'd the Dean-(I lead a heart)
But dearest friends, they say, must part,
His time was come; he ran his race;
We hope he's in a better place."

Why do we grieve that friends should die?
No loss more easy to supply.

One year is past; a different scene!
No farther mention of the Dean,

Who now, alas! no more is miss'd,
Than if he never did exist.

Where's now the favorite of Apollo?

Departed:-and his works must follow.

Verses on the Death of Dr. Swift.-I give these verses (which comprise about half the original) as a true specimen of Swiftian wit and humor, but not at all (some obvious banter excepted) as agreeing with the spirit of them, or counting them among the evidences of his wisdom. The Dean's prodigious discovery, assisted by his brother wit Rochefoucault, just amounts to this:— that Nature in her kindly wisdom has prevented mankind from feeling as much for the pangs of others as for their own; and that when a misfortune happens to a neighbor, they cannot, in spite of their condolence, help congratulating themselves on having escaped it. There are exceptions,-many,-even to these conclusions; and what do the conclusions prove? Why, simply, that existence would be nothing but misery if human beings were otherwise constituted; that the best people would have the power

neither to receive nor to give enjoyment; and that meantime (by the same kind providence of nature against worse consequences) they do suffer and sympathize greatly on occasion, often to a far greater degree than the author chooses to think. The sick neighbor feeling for the dying man endures but half the anguish of many (I do not say of all) who are here called "snivellers round a bed," and who would sometimes gladly die instead of the sufferer? What? Have not millions of lives been thrown away for less things than love; and are we to be told by a loveless misanthrope, girding his own friends, that affection never grieves for a death beyond a "month" or a 66 day?" Nonsense. I mourn with, and admire Swift, who was a great man, notwithstanding what was little in him; but (wit excepted) he fell to the level of the vulgar when he "sunk in the spleen,"

Yet how handsome the opportunity he takes of complimenting Pope and others at his own expense, and how pleasantly it tells both against him and for him!

▾ Refin'd it first, and show'd its use.-A bold claim, after Butler and all the other wits and poets who excelled in it! and, indeed, quite unfounded,

12

GREEN.

BORN, 1696-DIED, 1737.

THE author of the Spleen, a poem admired by Pope, and quoted by Johnson, was a clerk in the custom-house, and had been bred a quaker. He was subject to low spirits, and warded them off by wit and good sense. Something of the quaker may be ob servable in the stiffness of his versification, and its excessive endeavors to be succinct. His style has also the fault of being occasionally obscure; and his wit is sometimes more labored than finished. But all that he says is worth attending to. His thoughts are the result of his own feeling and experience; his opinions rational and cheerful, if not very lofty; his warnings against meddling with superhuman mysteries admirable; and he is remarkable for the brevity and originality of his similes. He is of the school of Butler; and it may be affirmed of him as a rare honor, that no man since Butler has put so much wit and reflection into the same compass of lines.

There is an edition of Green's poems by Dr. Aikin, which deserves to be the companion of all who suffer as the author did, and who have sense enough to wish to relieve their sufferings by the like exercise of their reason.

In printing the following extracts I have not adopted the asterisks commonly employed for the purpose of implying omission. I always use them unwillingly, on account of the fragmentary air they give to the passages; and the paragraphs closed up so well together in the present instance, that I was tempted to waive them. But the circumstance is mentioned in order to prevent a false conclusion.