What follows, taken out of Mr. Charles Hopkins's Verses to the Earl of Dorset, is of the agreeable Kind:
As Nature does in new-born Infants frame
With their first Speech their careful Forstrer's Name,
Whose needful Hands their daily Food provide,
And by whose Aid they have their Wants supply'd:
You are, my Lord, the Poet's earliest Theme,
And the first Word he speaks is Dorset's Name.
Were not the next Verses written on a Tomb Stone, they wou'd be very agreeable. They are Ben Johnson's:
Underneath this Stone doth lie
As much Virtue as cou'd die:
Which when alive did Vigour give
To as much Beauty as cou'd live.
Is not this Picture of Venus in Palamon and Arcite of the same Kind:
The Goddess self some noble Hand had wrought,
Smiling she seem'd, and full of pleasing Thought,
From Ocean, as she first began to rise,
And smooth'd the ruffled Waves, and clear'd the Skies.
She trod the Brine, all bare below the Breast,
And the green Waves, but ill conceal'd the Rest:
A Lute she held, and on her Head was seen
A Wreath of Roses red, and Myrtles green:
Her Turtles fan'd the buxom Air above,
And by his Mother stood an Infant Love
With Wings display'd.————
These Verses out of Dryden's St. Cecilia's Ode are very agreeable:
Softly sweet in Lydian Measures
Soon he sooth'd his Soul to Pleasures,
War, he sung, is Toil and Trouble,
Honour but an empty Bubble.
Never ending, still beginning,
Fighting still, and still destroying;
If the World is worth thy Winning,
Think, Oh think, it worth enjoying.
But as the finest Meats are most apt to surfeit, so too many agreeable Thoughts together may flatten upon the Palate: And I shall only add an Instance in Prose, taken out of Mr. Waller's Letter to the Lady Lucy Sydney, on the Marriage of her Sister the Lady Dorothy, who was his Sacharissa.