6 I, by twenty sail attended,

Did this Spanish town affright:
Nothing then its wealth defended
But my orders not to fight:
Oh! that in this rolling ocean

I had cast them with disdain,

And obeyed my heart's warm motion,
To have quelled the pride of Spain.

7 For resistance I could fear none,
But with twenty ships had done
What thou, brave and happy Vernon,
Hast achieved with six alone.
Then the Bastimentos never

Had our foul dishonour seen,

Nor the sea the sad receiver

Of this gallant train had been.`

8 Thus, like thee, proud Spain dismaying,

And her galleons leading home,
Though condemned for disobeying,
I had met a traitor's doom;
To have fallen, my country crying,
He has played an English part,
Had been better far than dying
Of a grieved and broken heart.

9 Unrepining at thy glory,

VOL. III.

Thy successful arms we hail;
But remember our sad story,

And let Hosier's wrongs prevail.
Sent in this foul clime to languish,
Think what thousands fell in vain,
Wasted with disease and anguish,
Not in glorious battle slain.

10 Hence, with all my train attending
From their oozy tombs below,
Through the hoary foam ascending,
Here I feed my constant woe:
Here the Bastimentos viewing,

We recall our shameful doom,
And our plaintive cries renewing,
Wander through the midnight gloom.

11 O'er these waves for ever mourning
Shall we roam deprived of rest,
If to Britain's shores returning,
You neglect my just request.
After this proud foe subduing,
When your patriot friends you see,
Think on vengeance for my ruin,
And for England shamed in me.'

WILLIAM WHITEHEAD.

THERE was also a Paul Whitehead, who wrote a satire entitled 'Manners,' which is highly praised by Boswell, and mentioned contemptuously by Campbell, and who lives in the couplet of Churchill

'May I (can worse disgrace on manhood fall?)
Be born a Whitehead, and baptized a Paul.'

William Whitehead was the son of a baker in Cambridge, was born in 1715, and studied first at Winchester, and then in Clare Hall, in his own city. He became tutor to the son of the Earl of Jersey, wrote one or two poor plays, and in 1757, on the death of Colley Cibber, was appointed Poet-Laureate-the office having previously been refused by Gray. This roused against him a large class of those 'beings capable of envying even a poet-laureate,' to use Gray's expression, and especially

the wrath of Churchill, then the man-mountain of satiric literature, who, in his 'Ghost,' says

'But he who in the laureate chair,
By grace, not merit, planted there,
In awkward pomp is seen to sit,

And by his patent proves his wit,' &c.

To these attacks Whitehead, who was a good-natured and modest man, made no reply. In his latter years the Laureate resided in the family of Lord Jersey, and died in 1785. His poem called 'Variety' is light and pleasant, and deserves a niche in our 'Specimens.'

VARIETY.

A TALE FOR MARRIED PEOPLE.

A gentle maid, of rural breeding,
By Nature first, and then by reading,
Was filled with all those soft sensations
Which we restrain in near relations,
Lest future husbands should be jealous,
And think their wives too fond of fellows.
The morning sun beheld her rove
A nymph, or goddess of the grove!
At eve she paced the dewy lawn,

And called each clown she saw, a faun!
Then, scudding homeward, locked her door,
And turned some copious volume o'er.
For much she read; and chiefly those
Great authors, who in verse, or prose,
Or something betwixt both, unwind
The secret springs which move the mind.
These much she read; and thought she knew

The human heart's minutest clue;

Yet shrewd observers still declare,

(To show how shrewd observers are,)

Though plays, which breathed heroic flame,

And novels, in profusion, came, Imported fresh-and-fresh from France, She only read the heart's romance.

The world, no doubt, was well enough To smooth the manners of the rough; Might please the giddy and the vain, Those tinselled slaves of folly's train: But, for her part, the truest taste She found was in retirement placed, Where, as in verse it sweetly flows, 'On every thorn instruction grows.'

Not that she wished to be alone,' As some affected prudes have done; She knew it was decreed on high We should increase and multiply;' And therefore, if kind Fate would grant Her fondest wish, her only want, A cottage with the man she loved Was what her gentle heart approved; In some delightful solitude

Where step profane might ne'er intrude; But Hymen guard the sacred ground, And virtuous Cupids hover round.

Not such as flutter on a fan

Round Crete's vile bull, or Leda's swan,
(Who scatter myrtles, scatter roses,
And hold their fingers to their noses,)
But simpering, mild, and innocent,
As angels on a monument.

Fate heard her prayer: a lover came, Who felt, like her, the innoxious flame; One who had trod, as well as she,

The flowery paths of

poesy;

Had warmed himself with Milton's heat,

Could every line of Pope repeat,

Or chant in Shenstone's tender strains,
The lover's hopes,' the lover's pains.'
Attentive to the charmer's tongue,
With him she thought no evening long;
With him she sauntered half the day;
And sometimes, in a laughing way,
Ran o'er the catalogue by rote
Of who might marry, and who not;
'Consider, sir, we're near relations-'
I hope so in our inclinations.'-

'In short, she looked, she blushed consent; He grasped her hand, to church they went; And every matron that was there,

With tongue so voluble and supple,
Said for her part, she must declare,
She never saw a finer couple.

O halcyon days! 'Twas Nature's reign,
'Twas Tempe's vale, and Enna's plain,
The fields assumed unusual bloom,
And every zephyr breathed perfume,
The laughing sun with genial beams
Danced lightly on the exulting streams;
And the pale regent of the night
In dewy softness shed delight.
'Twas transport not to be expressed;
"Twas Paradise!-But mark the rest.

Two smiling springs had waked the flowers
That paint the meads, or fringe the bowers,
(Ye lovers, lend your wondering ears,
Who count by months, and not by years,)
Two smiling springs had chaplets wove
To crown their solitude, and love:
When lo, they find, they can't tell how,