SIR CHARLES SEDLEY, [Born, 1639. Died, 1701.] SIR CHARLES SEDLEY in his riper years made some atonement for the disgraces of a licentious youth, by his political conduct in opposing the arbitrary measures of James, and promoting the Revolution. King James had seduced his daughter, and made her Countess of Dorchester. "For making my daughter a countess," said Sedley, "I have helped to make his daughter a A queen." When his comedy of Bellamira was played, the roof fell in, and he was one of the very few that were hurt by the accident. flatterer told him that the fire of the play had blown up the poet, house, and all. "No," he replied, "the play was so heavy that it broke down the house, and buried the poet in his own rubbish." SONG IN " BELLAMIRA, OR THE MISTRESS." THYRSIS, unjustly you complain, By secret and mysterious springs, You may be handsome and have wit, Some die, yet never are believed; Others we trust too soon, Helping ourselves to be deceived, And proud to be undone. TO A VERY YOUNG LADY. An Chloris! that I now could sit When I the dawn used to admire, And praised the coming day; I little thought the growing fire Must take my rest away. Your charms in harmless childhood lay, Age from no face took more away, But as your charms insensibly To their perfection prest, Fond Love, as unperceived did fly, My passion with your beauty grew, Each gloried in their wanton part, Though now I slowly bend to love If your fair self my chains approve, I shall my freedom hate. Lovers, like dying men, may well At first disorder'd be, SONG. LOVE still has something of the sea, They are becalm'd in clearest days, Or are in tempests lost. This song [* From the Mulberry Garden, a comedy written by the Honourable Sir Charles Sidley," 4to, 1668. is commonly printed as the production of "the Right Honourable Duncan Forbes, Lord President of the Court of Session," and is said to have been composed in 1710. See Motherwell's Ancient Minstrelsy, p. 65; and another Editor of Old Songs has said that these "tender and pathetic stanzas were addressed to Miss Mary Rose, the elegant and accomplished daughter of Hugh Rose, Esq. of Kilravock." Ritson commences his Collection of English Songs with Sedley's verses; both Ritson and Park were ignorant of their Author; and Mr. Chambers, in his Scottish Songs, starts with it as a genuine production of old Scotland! Burns has ascribed it to Sir Peter Halket of Pitferran. Forbes was born in 1685, seventeen years after the appearance of Sedley's comedy.-See Songs of England and Scotland, vol. i. p. 122.] One while they seem to touch the port, At first Disdain and Pride they fear, By such degrees to joy they come, "Tis cruel to prolong a pain ; An hundred thousand oaths your fears, SONG. PHILLIS, you have enough enjoy'd Methinks your pride should now be cloy'd, And grow itself again : Open to love your long-shut breast, Love heals the wound that Beauty gives, He laughs at all that Fate contrives, We in his chains are happier far, Leave, then, to tame philosophy The joys of quietness ; With me into love's empire fly, Where even tears and sighs can show COSMELIA'S charms inspire my lays, Who, fair in Nature's scorn, Blooms in the winter of her days, Like Glastenbury thorn. Cosmelia's cruel at threescore; Like bards in modern plays, Four acts of life pass guiltless o'er, But in the fifth she slays. If e'er, in eager hopes of bliss, JOHN POMFRET. [Born, 1667. Died, 1703] JOHN POMFRET was minister of Malden, in Bedfordshire. He died of the small-pox in his thirty-sixth year. It is asked, in Mr. Southey's Specimens of English Poetry, why Pomfret's Choice is the most popular poem in the English language it might have been demanded with equal propriety, why London bridge is built of Parian marble. FROM "REASON. CUSTOM, the world's great idol, we adore ; A POEM." We seldom use our liberty aright, Nor judge of things by universal light : [* Why is Pomfret the most popular of the English Poets? The fact is certain, and the solution would be useful.-Southey's Specimens, vol. i. p. 91. Pomfret's Choice" exhibits a system of life adapted to common notions, and equal to common expectations; such a state as affords plenty and tranquillity, without exelusion of intellectual pleasures. Perhaps no composition in our language has been oftener perused than Pomfrels Choice. JOHNSON. Johnson and Southey have written of what was; Mr. Campbell of what is. Pomfret's " Choice" is certainly not now perused oftener than any other composition in our language, nor is Pomfret now the most popular of English poets.] Our prepossessions and affections bind Good Heavens! that man should thus himself Does not that foolish deference we pay Thus are we debtors to the famous dead, Suppose those many dreadful dangers past, How do we know that what we know is true? This is the easy purchase of the mind, The glittering gem, our fleeting life is o'er. CHARLES SACKVILLE was the direct descendant of the great Thomas Lord Buckhurst. Of his youth it is disgraceful enough to say, that he was the companion of Rochester and Sedley; but his maturer life, like that of Sedley, was illustrated by public spirit, and his fortune enabled him to be a beneficent friend to men of genius. In 1665, while Earl of Buckhurst, he attended the Duke of York as a volunteer in the Dutch war, and finished his well-known song, “To all you ladies now at land," on the day before the sea-fight in which Opdam, the Dutch admiral, was blown up, with all his crew. He was soon after made a gentleman of the bedchamber to Charles II., and sent on short embassies to France. From James II. he also received some favourable notice, but joined in the opposition to his innovations, and, with some other lords, appeared at Westminster Hall to countenance the bishops upon their trial. Before this period he had succeeded to the estate and title of the Earl of Middlesex, his uncle, as well as to those of his father, the Earl of Dorset. Having concurred in the Revolution, he was rewarded by William with the office of lord-chamberlain of the household, and with the order of the garter; but his attendance on the king even. tually hastened his death, for being exposed in an open boat with his majesty, during sixteen hours of severe weather, on the coast of Holland, his health was irrecoverably injured. The point and sprightliness of Dorset's pieces entitle him to some remembrance, though they leave not a slender apology for the grovelling adulation that was shown to him by Dryden in his dedications. SONG. WRITTEN AT SEA, IN THE FIRST DUTCH WAR, 1665, THE NIGHT BEFORE AN ENGAGEMENT. To all you ladies now at land, We men at sea indite; But first would have you understand How hard it is to write: The Muses now, and Neptune too, We must implore to write to you, With a fa, la, la, la, la. For though the Muses should prove kind, With a fa, &c. Then if we write not by each post, The king, with wonder and surprise, Will swear the seas grow bold ; Because the tides will higher rise, Than e'er they used of old : But let him know, it is our tears Bring floods of grief to Whitehall stairs. With a fa, &c. Should foggy Opdam chance to know Our sad and dismal story; The Dutch would scorn so weak a foe, And quit their fort at Goree : For what resistance can they find From men who've left their hearts behind! With a fa, &c. Let wind and weather do its worst, Be you to us but kind; Let Dutchmen vapour, Spaniards curse, No sorrow we shall find: 'Tis then no matter how things go, Or who's our friend, or who's our foe. With a fa, &c. To pass our tedious hours away, We throw a merry main; But now our fears tempestuous grow, Sit careless at a play: Perhaps, permit some happier man When any mournful tune you hear, As if it sigh'd with each man's care, Think how often love we've made To you, when all those tunes were play'd. In justice you cannot refuse To think of our distress, Our certain happiness; All those designs are but to prove And now we've told you all our loves, SONG. DORINDA'S sparkling wit and eyes, Love is a calmer gentler joy, Smooth are his looks, and soft his pace; GEORGE STEPNEY. GEORGE STEPNEY was the youthful friend of Montague, Earl of Halifax, and owed his preferments to that nobleman. It appears, from his verses on the burning of Monmouth's picture, that his first attachment was to the Tory interest, but he left them in sufficient time to be rewarded as a partisan by the whigs, and was nominated to several foreign embassies. In this capacity he i went successively to the Imperial Court, to that of Saxony, Poland, and the States General; and in all his negotiations is said to have been successful. Some of his political tracts remain in Lord Somers's collection. As a poet, Dr. Johnson justly characterizes him as equally deficient in the grace of wit and the vigour of nature. TO THE EVENING STAR. ENGLISHED FROM A GREEK IDYLLIUM. BRIGHT Star! by Venus fix'd above, Exert, bright Star, thy friendly light, Defrauded of her beams, the Moon I seek no miser's hoarded gold; To find a nymph I'm forced to stray, [ His diplomatic correspondence is now in the British Museum.] |