Mock'd with deluding looks and smiles,
When on her pity I depend;
My airy hope she soon beguiles,

And laughs to see my torments end.
So up the steepy hill with pain,
The weighty stone is roll'd in vain,

Which having touch'd the top recoils,
And leaves the labourer to renew his toils."

"LOVE.

"To love, is to be doom'd on earth to feel
What after death the tortur'd meet in hell.
The vulture dipping in Prometheus' side
His bloody beak, with his torn liver dy'd,
Is love the stone that labours up the hill
Mocking the labourer's toil, returning still,
Is love those streams where Tantalus is curst
To sit, and never drink, with endless thirst;
Those loaden boughs that with their burden bend
To court his taste, and yet escape his hand,
All this is love; that to dissembled joys
Invites vain man, with real grief destroys."

TO MR. JOHN DRYDEN, ON HIS SEVERAL TRANSLATIONS FROM THE ANCIENT POETS.

"As Britain in rich soil abounding wide,
Furnish'd for use, for luxury, and pride,
Yet spreads her wanton sails on every shore
For foreign wealth, insatiate still for more;
To her own wool the silks of Asia joins
And to her plenteous harvests Indian mines:

So Dryden, not contented with the fame
Of his own works, though an immortal name!
To lands remote sends forth his learned muse
The noblest seeds of foreign wit to choose;
Feasting our sense so many various ways;
Say, is 't thy bounty or thy thirst of praise,
That by comparing others, all might see

Who most excell'd are yet excell'd by thee?"]

CHARLES MORDAUNT,

THIRD EARL OF PETERBOROUGH,

ONE of those men of careless wit and negligent grace, who scatter a thousand bon-mots and idle verses, which we painful compilers gather and hoard, till the owners stare to find themselves authors. Such was this lord: of an advantageous figure, and enterprising spirit; as gallant as Amadis and as brave, but a little more expeditious in his journeys; for he is said "to have seen more kings and more postillions than any man in Europe." His enmity to the duke of Marlborough, and his friendship with Pope, will preserve his name, when his genius, too romantic to have laid a solid foundation for fame; and his politics, too disinterested for his age and country, shall be equally forgotten." "He was a man," as his poet said, "who would

2 [Lord Lansdown addressed an inflated copy of verses to the earl of Peterborough, on his happy accomplishment of the marriage between the duke of York and the princess Mary d'Esté, wherein he indulges a wild conceit, that the indebted nation would repay its obligation, by raising to the genius of the noble earl" Statues, with palm adorn'd, on every threshold."]

3 See Pope's Letters to Swift, let. 76. [Mr. Capel Lofft speaks of "that finished general and hero," the earl of Peterborough, in his notes to Eudosia, p. 229.]

neither live nor die like any other mortal." Yet even particularities were becoming in him, as he had a natural ease that immediately adopted and saved them from the air of affectation. He wrote

"La Muse de Cavalier; or, an Apology for such Gentlemen as make Poetry their Diversion, not their Business ;"

in a letter from a scholar of Mars to one of Apollo; printed in the Public Register, or Weekly Magazine, No. 3. p. 88. published by Dodsley, 1741.

"A severe Copy of Verses on the Duchess. of Marlborough; addressed to Mr. Harley, after his removal from court."

He was author too of those well-known lines which conclude

"Who'd have thought Mrs. Howard ne'er dreamt it was she!"

Four very genteel letters of his are printed among Pope's.1

The account of the earl's conduct in Spain",

[In the supplemental volume to Pope, recently published, is an interesting letter of the poet, regarding this witty earl of Peterborough.]

5 [In his lordship's travels through different parts of Spain, he was so often constrained to dress his food for himself, that he became a good cook; and such was the force of habit, that, till

taken from his original letters and papers, was drawn up by Dr. Freind, and published in 1707, 8vo.

[This nobleman in his youth served under the admirals Torrington and Narborough in the Mediterranean, against the state of Algiers; and distinguished himself at Tangiers, in Africa, when it was besieged by the Moors. Disliking the proceedings of the court in the reign of James the second, he was among the first of the English nobility who engaged in the prince of Orange's service, and was one of those, as bishop Burnet relates, whom that prince chiefly trusted, and by whose advice he was principally directed. Being instrumental therefore in promoting the Revolution, on the accession of king William he was appointed one of the lords of the bedchamber, first lord-commissioner of the treasury, and in 1689 had the additional dignity of earl of Monmouth. In 1692 he served under that monarch during the campaign in Flanders. By queen Anne, in 1705, his lordship was

disabled by age, his dinner was constantly of his own dressing. Those who visited him at Parson's Green have reported, that he used to retire from his company an hour before dinner-time, when he equipped himself in the garb of a tavern-cook; and having dispatched his culinary affairs, would return properly apparelled, and take his place at the table. Univ. Mag. vol. lx. p. 20. This may be only a Magazine bon-bon.]