one provides the long cloak, black ftaff, and mourning coach, the other produces the paftoral or elegy, the monody or apotheofis. The nobility need be under no apprehenfions, but die as faft as they think proper, the poet and undertaker are ready to fupply them; thefe can find metaphorical tears and family efcutcheons at half an hour's warning; and when the one has foberly laid the body in the grave, the other is ready to fix it figuratively among the ftars.

There are feveral ways of being poetically forrowful on fuch occafions. The bard is now fome penfive youth of fcience, who fits deploring among the tombs; again he is Thyrfis complaining in a circle of harmless fheep. Now Britannia fits upon her own fhore, and gives a loose to maternal tendernefs; at another time, Parnaffus, even the mountain Parnaffus, gives way to forrow, and is bathed in tears of diftrefs.

But the moft ufual manner is this: Damon meets Menalcas, who has got a moft gloomy countenance. The hepherd afks his friend, whence that look of diftrefs? to which the other replies, that Pollio is no more. If that be the cafe then, cries Damon, let us retire to yonder bower at fome diftance off, where the cyprefs and the jeffamine add fragrance to the breeze; and let us weep alternately for Pollio, the friend of fhepherds, and the patron of every muse. Ah, returns his fellow fhepherd, what think you rather of that grotto by the fountain fide; the murmuring ftream will help to affift our complaints, and a nightingale on a neighbouring tree will join her voice to the concert. When the place is thus fettled, they begin: the brook ftands still to hear their lamentations; the cows forget to graze; and the very tygers ftart from the foreft with fympathe tic concern. By the tombs of our ancestors, my

dear

dear Fum, I am quite unaffected in all this diftrefs : the whole is liquid laudanum to my fpirits; and a tyger of common fenfibility has twenty times more tenderness than I.

But though I could never weep with the complaining thepherd, yet I am fometimes induced to pity the poet, whofe trade is thus to make demigods and heroes for a dinner. There is not in nature a more difmal figure than a man who fits down to premeditated flattery; every ftanza he writes tacitly reproaches the meannefs of his occupation, till at laft his ftupidity becomes more stupid, and his dulness more diminutive.

I am amazed therefore that none have yet found out the secret of flattering the worthless, and yet of preferving a fafe confcience. I have often wifhed for fome method by which a man might do himself and his deceased patron juftice, without being under the hateful reproach of felf-conviction. After long lucubration, I have hit upon fuch an expedient; and fend you the fpecimen of a poem upon the decease of a great man, in which the flattery is perfectly fine, and yet the poet perfectly innocent.

On the Death of the Right Honourable ***.

Ye mufes, pour the pitying tear

For Pollio fnatch'd away:

O had he liv'd another year!

-He had not died to day.

O, were he born to blefs mankind

In virtuous times of yore,

Heroes themselves had fallen behind!

Whene'er he went before.

How fad the groves and plains appear,

And fympathetic fheep;

Ev'n pitying hills would drop a tear!
-If hills could learn to weep.

His

IT is the moft ufual method in every report, first to examine its probability, and then act as the conjuncture may require. The English, however, exert a different fpirit in fuch circumftances; they firft act, and when too late begin to examine. From a knowledge of this difpofition, there are feveral here who make it their bufinefs to frame new reports at every convenient interval, all tending to denounce ruin both on their contemporaries and their pofterity. This denunciation is eagerly caught up by the public; away they fling to propagate the diftrefs; fell out at one place, buy in at another, grumble at their governors, fhout in mobs, and when they have thus for fome time behaved like fools, fit down coolly to argue and talk wisdom, to puzzle each other with fyllogifmi, and prepare for the next report that prevails, which is always attended with the fame fuccefs.

Thus are they ever rifing above one report only to fink into another. They refemble a dog in a wel pawing to get free. When he has raised his uppe:

parts above water, and every fpectator imagines him difengaged, his lower parts drag him down again and fink him to the nose; he makes new efforts to emerge, and every effort increafing his weakness, only tends to fink him the deeper.

There are some here who, I am told, make a tolerable fubfiftence by the credulity of their countrymen as they find the publick fond of blood, wounds and death, they contrive political ruins fuited to every month in the year; this month the people are to be eaten up by the French in flat-bottomed boats; the next by the foldiers, defigned to beat the French back; now the people are going to jump down the gulph of luxury; and now nothing but an herring fubfcription can fifh them up again. Time paffes on; the report proves falfe; new circumftances produce new changes, but the people never change, they are perfevering in folly.

In other countries thofe boding politicians would be left to fret over their own fchemes alone, and grow fplenetic without hopes of infecting others: but England feems to be the very region where fpleen delights to dwell; a man not only can give an unbouuded scope to the disorder in himself, but may, if he pleases, propagate it over the whole kingdom, with a certainty of fuccefs. He has only to cry out, that the government, the government is all wrong, that their fchemes are leading to ruin, that Britons are no more; every good member of the commonwealth thinks it his duty, in fuch a cafe, to deplore the univerfal decadence with fympathetic forrow, and, by fancying the conftitution in a decay, abfolutely to impair its vigour.

This people would laugh at my fimplicity, fhould I advise them to be lefs fanguine in harbouring gloomy predictions, and examine coolly before they attempted to complain. I have just heard a story,

which, though tranfacted in a private family, ferves very well to describe the behaviour of the whole nation, in cafes of threatened calamity. As there are public, fo there are private incendiaries here, One of the laft, either for the amufement of his friends, or to divert a fit of the fpleen, lately fent a threatening letter to a worthy family in my neighbourhood, to this effect.

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"SIR, Knowing you to be very rich, and find"ing myself to be very poor, I think proper to in"form you, that I have learned the fecret of poi"foning man, woman, and child, without danger "of detection. Do not be uneafy, Sir, you may "take your choice of being poifoned in a fortnight, or poisoned in a month, or poifoned in fix weeks; 66 you fhall have full time to fettle all your affairs. "Though I am poor, I love to do things like a gen"tleman. But, Sir, you muft die; I have deter"mined it within my own breaft that you muft die. "Blood, Sir, blood is my trade; so I could wish you would this day fix weeks take leave of your friends, wife, and family, for I cannot poffibly "allow you longer time. To convince you more "certainly of the power of my art, by which you may know I fpeak truth, take this letter; when you have read it, tear off the feal, fold it up, "and give it to your favourite Dutch mastiff that "fits by the fire; he will swallow it, Sir, like a but"tered toaft; in three hours four minutes after he

66

has taken it, he will attempt to bite off his own 66 tongue, and half an hour after burft afunder in

twenty pieces. Blood, blood, blood; fo no more "at prefent from, Sir, your most obedient, moft "devoted humble fervant to command till death."

You may eafily imagine the confternation into which this letter threw the whole good-natured family. The poor man, to whom it was addreffed,

was