17 With speeches kinde, he gan the virgin deare But yet her gestures and her lookes (I gesse) 18 Not those rude garments could obscure, and hide, And milke her goates, and in their folds them place, POMFRET. OF F Mr. JOHN POMFRET nothing is known but from a slight and confused account prefixed to his poems by a nameless friend; who relates, that he was the son of the Rev. Mr. Pomfret, rector of Luton in Bedfordshire; that he was bred at Cambridge*; entered into orders, and was rector of Malden in Bedfordshire, and might have risen in the Church; but that when he applied to Dr. Compton, bishop of London, for institution to a living of considerable value, to which he had been presented, he found a troublesome obstruction raised by a malicious interpretation of some passage in his Choice; from which it was inferred, that he considered happiness as more likely to be found in the company of a mistress than of a wife. This reproach was easily obliterated: for it had happened to Pomfret as to all other men who plan schemes of life; he had departed from his purpose, and was then married. The malice of his enemies had however a very fatal consequence: the delay constrained his attendance in London, where he caught the small-pox, and died 1703, in the thirty-sixth year of his age. . He published his poems in 1699; and has been always the favourite of that class of readers, who, without vanity or criticism, seek only their own amusement. His Choice exhibits a system of life adapted to common notions, and equal to common expectations; such a state as affords plenty and tranquillity, without exclusion of intellectual pleasures. Perhaps no composition in our language has been oftener perused than Pomfret's Choice. In his other poems there is an easy volubility; the pleasure of smooth metre is afforded to the ear, and the mind is not oppressed with ponderous or entangled with intricate sentiment. He pleases many, and he who pleases many must have some species of merit. Vol. I. U DORSET. *He was of Queen's College there, and, by the University register, appears to have taken his Bachelor's degree in 1684, and his Master's in 1698. H. DORS E T. F the Earl of Dorset the character has been drawn so largely and so elegantly by Prior, to whom he was familiarly known, that nothing can be added by a casual hand; and as its author is so generally read, it would be useless officiousness to transcribe it. CHARLES SACKVILLE was born January 24, 1637. Having been educated under a private tutor, he travelled into Italy, and returned a little before the Restoration. He was chosen into the first parliament that was called, for East Grinstead in Sussex, and soon became a favourite of Charles the Second; but undertook no publick employment, being too eager of the riotous and licentious pleasures which young men of high rank, who aspired to be thought wits, at that time imagined themselves intitled to indulge. One of these frolicks has, by the industry of Wood, come down to posterity. Sackville, who was then Lord Buckhurst, with Sir Charles Sedley and Sir Thomas Ogle, got drunk at the Cock in Bow-street by Coventgarden, and, going into the balcony, exposed themselves to the populace in very indecent postures. At last as they grew warmer, Sedley stood forth naked, and harangued the populace in such profane language, that the public indignation was awakened; the crowd attempted to force the door, and, being repulsed, drove in the performers with stones, and broke the windows of the house. For this misdemeanor they were indicted, and Sedley was fined five hundred pounds: what was the sentence of the others is not known. Sedley employed Killigrew and another to procure a remission from the king; but (mark the friendship of the dissolute !) they begged the fine for themselves, and exacted it to the last groat. In 1665, Lord Buckhurst attended the Duke of York as a volunteer in the Dutch war; and was in the battle of June 3, when eighteen great Dutch ships were |