A tomb amidst the learned may
The western abbey give!
Like theirs, his ashes must decay,
Like theirs, his fame shall live.
9.
Close, carver, by some well cut books,
Let a thin busto tell,
In spite of plump and pamper'd looks,
How scantly sense can dwell!
10.
No epitaph of tedious length
Should overcharge the stone;
Since loftiest verse would lose its strength,
In mentioning his own.
11.
At once! and not verbosely tame,
Some brave Laconic pen
Should smartly touch his ample name,
In form of—O rare Ben!
* * * * *
Mrs. SUSANNA CENTLIVRE,
This lady was daughter of one Mr. Freeman, of Holbeack in Lincolnshire. There was formerly an estate in the family of her father, but being a Dissenter, and a zealous parliamentarian, he was so very much persecuted at the restoration, that he was laid under a necessity to fly into Ireland, and his estate was confiscated; nor was the family of our authoress's mother free from the severity of those times, they being likewise parliamentarians. Her education was in the country, and her father dying when she was but three years of age, and her mother not living 'till she was twelve, the improvements our poetess made were merely by her own industry and application. She was married before the age of fifteen, to a nephew of Sir Stephen Fox. This gentleman living with her but a year, she afterwards married Mr. Carrol, an officer in the army, and survived him likewise in the space of a year and a half. She afterwards married Mr. Joseph Centlivre, yeoman of the mouth to his late Majesty. She gave early discoveries of a genius for poetry, and Mr. Jacob in his Lives of the Poets tells us, that she composed a song before she was seven years old. She is the author of fifteen plays; her talent is comedy, particularly the contrivance of the plots, and incidents. Sir Richard Steele, in one of his Tatlers, speaking of the Busy Body, thus recommends it. 'The plot, and incidents of the play, are laid with that subtilty, and spirit, which is peculiar to females of wit, and is very seldom well performed by those of the other sex, in whom craft in love is an act of invention, and not as with women, the effect of nature, and instinct'.
She died December 1, 1723; the author of the Political State thus characterizes her. 'Mrs. Centlivre, from a mean parentage and education, after several gay adventures (over which we shall draw a veil) she had, at last, so well improved her natural genius by reading, and good conversation, as to attempt to write for the stage, in which sh had as good success as any of her sex before her. Her first dramatic performance was a Tragi-Comedy, called The Perjured Husband, but the plays which gained her most reputation were, two Comedies, the Gamester, and the Busy Body. She wrote also several copies of verses on divers subjects, and occasions, and many ingenious letters, entitled Letters of Wit, Politics, and Morality, which I collected, and published about 21 years ago[A].'