Fly to her bosom; she thy absence mourns : Her sighs, her prayers, her tears, unceasing flow, Life's quivering lamp will then, rekindled, burn: She now but breathes, and soon will breathe no more. SOAME JENYNS. London, 1740-1787. The elegant and characteristick pen of Mr. Cumberland has offered to the world the following sketch of Soame Jenyns, which presents itself to be opportunely for this work, not to be inserted in it. "He was a man who bore his part in all societies with the most even temper and undisturbed hilarity of all the good companions whom I ever knew. - He came into your house at the very moment you had put upon your card; he dressed himself to do your party honour in all the colours of the jay; his lace indeed had long since lost its lussre, but his coat had faithfully retained its cut since the days when gentlemen embroidered figured velvets with short sleeves, boot cuffs, and buckram skirts; as nature had cast him in the exact mould of an ill made pair of stiff stays, he followed her so close in the fashion of his coat, that it was doubted if he did not wear them; because he had a protuberant wen just under his poll, he wore a wig that did not cover above half his head. His eyes were protruded like the eyes of the lobster, who wears them at the end of his feelers, and yet there was room between one of these and his nose for another wen, that added nothing to his beauty; yet I heard this good man very innocently remark, when Gibbon published his history, that he "wondered any body so ugly could write a book." "Such was the exterior of a man, who was the charm of the circle, and gave a zest to every company he came into; his pleasantry was of a sort poculiar to himself; it harmonized with every thing; it was like the bread to our dinner; you did not perhaps make it the whole, or principal part of your meal, but it was an admirable and wholesome auxiliary to your other viands. Soame Jenyns told you no long stories, engrossed not much of your attention, and was not angry with those that did; his thoughts were original, and were apt to have a very whimsical affinity to the paradox in them: he wrote verses upon dancing, and prose upon the origin of evil, yet he was a very indifferent metaphysician and a worse dancer ill nature and personality, with the single exception of his lines upon Johnson, I never heard fall from his lips; these lines I have forgotten, though I believe I was the first person to whom he recited them; they were very bad, but he had been told that Johnson ridiculed his metaphysicks, and some of us had just then been making extemporary epitaphs upon each other; though his wit was harmless, yet the general cast of it was ironical; there was a terseness in his repartee that had a play of words as well as of thought; as, when speaking of the difference between laying out money upon land, or purchasing into the funds, he said, 'One was principal without interest, and the other interest without principal.' Certain it is, he had a brevity of expression, that never hung upon the ear, and you felt the point in the very moment that he made the push." THE 'SQUIRE AND THE PARSON, AN ECLOGUE. Written on the Conclusion of the Peace, 1748. By his hall chimney, where in rusty grate A pipe just fill'd, upon a table near, Lay by the London-Evening, stain'd with beer With half a Bible, on whose remnants torn PARSON. " Why sitt'st thou thus forlorn and dull, my friend, SQUIRE. What's peace, alas! in foreign parts to me? tax; My oaks, though young, must groan beneath the axe; |