Nobles and heralds, by your leave,

Here lies what once was Matthew Prior ; The son of Adam and of Eve:

Can Bourbon or Nassau claim higher?1 Epitaph on Himself.

Odds life! must one swear to the truth of a song? A Better Answer.

That, if weak women went astray,
Their stars were more in fault than they.

Hans Carvel.

Ibid.

The end must justify the means.

That air and harmony of shape express,
Fine by degrees, and beautifully less.

Henry and Emma.
Our hopes, like tow'ring falcons, aim
At objects in an airy height;
The little pleasure of the game

Is from afar to view the flight.3

To the Hon. Charles Montague.

1 The following epitaph was written long before the time of Prior: —

Johnnie Carnegie lais heer.

Descendit of Adam and Eve,

Gif ony con gang hieher,
Ise willing give him leve.

2 Cf. Pope, Moral Essays, Epistle ii. Line 43.

8 But all the pleasure of the game

Is afar off to view the flight.

Variations in a copy printed 1692.

Prior continued.]

From ignorance our comfort flows.
The only wretched are the wise.1

They never taste who always drink ;
They always talk who never think.

Ibid.

Upon a Passage in the Scaligerana.

HENRY CAREY. 1663-1743.

God save our gracious king,
Long live our noble king,

God save the king. God save the King.

Aldeborontiphoscophornio!

Where left you Chrononhotonthologos? Chronon. Acti. Sc. I.

His cogitative faculties immers'd

In cogibundity of cogitation. Ibid. Act i. Sc. 1.
Let the singing singers
With vocal voices, most vociferous,
In sweet vociferation, out-vociferize
Ev'n sound itself.

Ibid. Acti. Sc. I.

To thee, and gentle Rigdom Funnidos,
Our gratulations flow in streams unbounded.
Ibid. Act i. Sc. 3.

1 Cf. Gray, Eton College, p. 329.

Go call a coach, and let a coach be called,
And let the man who calleth be the caller;
And in his calling let him nothing call,
But Coach! Coach! Coach! O for a coach, ye

gods!

Ibid. Act ii. Sc. 4.

Genteel in personage,
Conduct, and equipage;
Noble by heritage,
Generous and free.

[Carey continued.

The Contrivances. Act i. Sc. 2.

What a monstrous tail our cat has got!
The Dragon of Wantley. Act ii. Sc. 1.
Of all the girls that are so smart,
There's none like pretty Sally.1
Sally in our Alley.

Of all the days that 's in the week
I dearly love but one day,
And that's the day that comes betwixt
A Saturday and Monday.

1 Of all the girls that e'er was seen, There's none so fine as Nelly.

Ibid.

SAMUEL GARTH.

1670-1719.

To die is landing on some silent shore,
Where billows never break, nor tempests roar ;
Ere well we feel the friendly stroke, 't is o'er.
The Dispensary. Canto iii. Line 225.

Swift, Ballad on Miss Nelly Bennet. 2 Thou hast no faults, or I no faults can spy, Thou art all beauty, or all blindness I.

Christopher Codrington, On Garth's Dispensary.

JONATHAN SWIFT. 1667-1745.

I've often wished that I had clear,
For life, six hundred pounds a year,
A handsome house to lodge a friend,
A river at my garden's end.

Imitation of Horace. Book ii. Sat, 6.

So geographers, in Afric maps,1
With savage pictures fill their gaps,
And o'er unhabitable downs
Place elephants for want of towns.

Poetry, a Rhapsody. Where Young must torture his invention To flatter knaves, or lose his pension.

Ibid.

Hobbes clearly proves, that every creature
Lives in a state of war by nature. Ibid.

So, naturalists observe, a flea
Has smaller fleas that on him prey;
And these have smaller still to bite 'em ;
And so proceed ad infinitum.

Ibid.

Libertas et natale solum ;
Fine words! I wonder where you stole 'em.
Verses occasioned by Whitshed's Motto on his Coach.

1 As geographers crowd into the edges of their maps parts of the world which they do not know about, adding notes in the margin to the effect that beyond this lies nothing but sandy deserts full of wild beasts and unapproachable bogs. - Plutarch, Theseus.

A college joke to cure the dumps.

Cassimus and Peter.

'T is an old maxim in the schools,
That flattery's the food of fools;
Yet now and then your men of wit
Will condescend to take a bit.

Cadenus and Vanessa.

The two noblest things, which are sweetness and light. Battle of the Books. And he gave it for his opinion, that whoever could make two ears of corn, or two blades of grass, to grow upon a spot of ground where only one grew before, would deserve better of mankind, and do more essential service to his country, than the whole race of politicians put together. Gulliver's Travels. Partii. Ch. vi. Voyage to Brobdingnag.

He had been eight years upon a project for extracting sunbeams out of cucumbers, which were to be put in phials hermetically sealed, and let out to warm the air in raw inclement summers. Ibid. Part iii. Ch. v. Voyage to Laputa.

Seamen have a custom, when they meet a whale, to fling him out an empty tub by way of amusement, to divert him from laying violent hands upon the ship.1 Tale of a Tub, Preface.

1 In Sebastian Munster's Cosmography, there is a cut of a ship, to which a whale was coming too close for her safety, and of the sailors throwing a tub to the whale evidently to play with. This practice is also mentioned in an old prose translation of the Ship of Fools. — Sir James Mackintosh, Appendix to the Life of Sir Thomas More.