To you, ye fair, for patronage he sues;
O last defend, who first inspired his muse!
In your soft service he has past his days,
And gloried to be born for woman's praise:
Deprest at length, and in your cause decayed,
The good old man to beauty bends for aid;
}
Southerne, on his eighty-first birth day, was complimented with a copy of verses by Pope; and on 26th May, 1746, he died at the advanced age of eighty-five and upwards.
EPISTLE THE TENTH.
S ure there's a fate in plays, and 'tis in vain
To write, while these malignant planets reign.
Some very foolish influence rules the pit,
Not always kind to sense, or just to wit;
And whilst it lasts, let buffoonry succeed,
To make us laugh, for never was more need.
Farce, in itself, is of a nasty scent;
But the gain smells not of the excrement.
The Spanish nymph, a wit and beauty too,
With all her charms, bore but a single show;
But let a monster Muscovite appear,
He draws a crowded audience round the year.
}