————————Blackmore, in spite
Of me and nature, still presumes to write;
Heavy and dozed, crawls out the tedious length;
Unfit to soar, drags on with peasant strength
The weight he cannot raise.
The poem concludes,
———————————Now you who aim,
With fading power, at bright immortal fame;
Ambitious monarchs, all whom glory warms,
Cease your vain toil, throw down your conquering arms;
Your active souls confine, since you must die
Like vulgar men, your names and actions lie
Where Trojan heroes, had not Homer lived,
Had lain forgot, nor ruined Troy survived;
No more their glories I can e’er retrieve,
For nature can no second Dryden give.
Terpsichore, a Lyric Muse, by Mrs L. D. ex tempore. Albeit a lyric muse, Terpsichore laments in hexameters:
Just as the gods were listening to my strains,
And thousand loves danced o’er the etherial plains,
With my own radiant hair my harp I strung,
And in glad concert all my sisters sung:
An universal harmony above
Inspired us all with gaiety and love;
A horrid sound dashed our immortal mirth,
Wafted by sighs from the unlucky earth,
Et cætera, et cætera.
Polyhymnia, the Muse of Rhetoric, by Mrs D. E. This lady concludes the volume thus:
Incessant groans be all my rhetoric now!
My immortality I would forego,
Rather than drag this chain of endless woe.
O mighty Father, hear a daughter’s prayer,
Cure me by death from deathless sad despair!
These extracts are taken from the presentation copy of this rare book, in the library of Mr Bindley, of Somerset-House, whose liberality I have had already repeated occasion to acknowledge.