Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets Part 109

Nor less the critic owns thy genial aid, While supperless he plies the piddling trade.

What though to love and soft delights a foe, By ladies hated, hated by the beau, Yet social freedom, long to courts unknown, Fair health, fair truth, and virtue are thy own.

Come to thy poet, come with healing wings, And let me taste thee unexcised by kings.

IMITATION OF SWIFT.

Ex fumo dare lucem.--HOR.

Boy! bring an ounce of Freeman's best, And bid the vicar be my guest: Let all be placed in manner due, A pot wherein to spit or spew, And London Journal, and Free-Briton, Of use to light a pipe or * *

This village, unmolested yet By troopers, shall be my retreat: Who cannot flatter, bribe, betray; Who cannot write or vote for * * *

Far from the vermin of the town, Here let me rather live, my own, Doze o'er a pipe, whose vapour bland In sweet oblivion lulls the land; Of all which at Vienna pa.s.ses, As ignorant as * * Bra.s.s is: And scorning rascals to caress, Extol the days of good Queen Bess, When first tobacco blessed our isle, Then think of other queens--and smile.

Come, jovial pipe, and bring along Midnight revelry and song; The merry catch, the madrigal, That echoes sweet in City Hall; The parson's pun, the s.m.u.tty tale Of country justice o'er his ale.

I ask not what the French are doing, Or Spain, to compa.s.s Britain's ruin: Britons, if undone, can go Where tobacco loves to grow.

WILLIAM OLDYS.

Oldys was born in 1696, and died in 1761. He was a very diligent collector of antiquarian materials, and the author of a Life of Raleigh.

He was intimate with Captain Grose, Burns' friend, who used to rally him on his inordinate thirst for ale, although, if we believe Burns, it was paralleled by Grose's liking for port. The following Anacreontic is characteristic:--

SONG, OCCASIONED BY A FLY DRINKING OUT OF A CUP OF ALE.

Busy, curious, thirsty fly, Drink with me, and drink as I; Freely welcome to my cup, Couldst thou sip and sip it up.

Make the most of life you may-- Life is short, and wears away.

Both alike are, mine and thine, Hastening quick to their decline: Thine's a summer, mine no more, Though repeated to threescore; Threescore summers, when they're gone, Will appear as short as one.

ROBERT LLOYD.

Robert Lloyd was born in London in 1733. He was the son of one of the under-masters of Westminster School. He went to Cambridge, where he became distinguished for his talents and notorious for his dissipation.

He became an usher under his father, but soon tired of the drudgery, and commenced professional author. He published a poem called 'The Actor,'

which attracted attention, and was the precursor of 'The Rosciad.' He wrote for periodicals, produced some theatrical pieces of no great merit, and edited the _St James' Magazine_. This failed, and Lloyd, involved in pecuniary distresses, was cast into the Fleet. Here he was deserted by all his boon companions except Churchill, to whose sister he was attached, and who allowed him a guinea a-week and a servant, besides promoting a subscription for his benefit. When the news of Churchill's death arrived, Lloyd was seated at dinner; he became instantly sick, cried out 'Poor Charles! I shall follow him soon,' and died in a few weeks. Churchill's sister, a woman of excellent abilities, waited on Lloyd during his illness, and died soon after him of a broken heart.

This was in 1764.

Lloyd was a minor Churchill. He had not his brawny force, but he had more than his liveliness of wit, and was a much better-conditioned man, and more temperate in his satire. Cowper knew, loved, admired, and in some of his verses imitated, Robert Lloyd.

THE MISERIES OF A POET'S LIFE.

The harlot Muse, so pa.s.sing gay, Bewitches only to betray.

Though for a while with easy air She smooths the rugged brow of care, And laps the mind in flowery dreams, With Fancy's transitory gleams; Fond of the nothings she bestows, We wake at last to real woes.

Through every age, in every place, Consider well the poet's case; By turns protected and caressed, Defamed, dependent, and distressed.

The joke of wits, the bane of slaves, The curse of fools, the b.u.t.t of knaves; Too proud to stoop for servile ends, To lacquey rogues or flatter friends; With prodigality to give, Too careless of the means to live; The bubble fame intent to gain, And yet too lazy to maintain; He quits the world he never prized, Pitied by few, by more despised, And, lost to friends, oppressed by foes, Sinks to the nothing whence he rose.

O glorious trade! for wit's a trade, Where men are ruined more than made!

Let crazy Lee, neglected Gay, The shabby Otway, Dryden gray, Those tuneful servants of the Nine, (Not that I blend their names with mine,) Repeat their lives, their works, their fame.

And teach the world some useful shame.

HENRY CAREY.

Of Carey, the author of the popular song, 'Sally in our Alley,' we know only that he was a professional musician, composing the air as well as the words of 'Sally,' and that in 1763 he died by his own hands.

SALLY IN OUR ALLEY.

1 Of all the girls that are so smart, There's none like pretty Sally; She is the darling of my heart, And she lives in our alley.

There is no lady in the land Is half so sweet as Sally: She is the darling of my heart, And she lives in our alley.

2 Her father he makes cabbage-nets, And through the streets does cry 'em; Her mother she sells laces long, To such as please to buy 'em: But sure such folks could ne'er beget So sweet a girl as Sally!

She is the darling of my heart, And she lives in our alley.

3 When she is by, I leave my work, (I love her so sincerely,) My master comes like any Turk, And bangs me most severely: But, let him bang his belly full, I'll bear it all for Sally; She is the darling of my heart, And she lives in our alley.

4 Of all the days that's in the week, I dearly love but one day; And that's the day that comes betwixt A Sat.u.r.day and Monday; For then I'm dressed all in my best, To walk abroad with Sally; She is the darling of my heart, And she lives in our alley.

5 My master carries me to church, And often am I blamed, Because I leave him in the lurch, As soon as text is named: I leave the church in sermon time, And slink away to Sally; She is the darling of my heart, And she lives in our alley.

6 When Christmas comes about again, O then I shall have money; I'll h.o.a.rd it up, and box it all, I'll give it to my honey: I would it were ten thousand pounds, I'd give it all to Sally; She is the darling of my heart, And she lives in our alley.

7 My master, and the neighbours all, Make game of me and Sally; And, but for her, I'd better be A slave, and row a galley: But when my seven long years are out, O then I'll marry Sally, O then we'll wed, and then we'll bed, But not in our alley.

DAVID MALLETT.

David Mallett was the son of a small innkeeper in Crieff, Perths.h.i.+re, where he was born in the year 1700. Crieff, as many of our readers know, is situated on the western side of a hill, and commands a most varied and beautiful prospect, including Drummond Castle, with its solemn shadowy woods, and the Ochils, on the south,--Ochtertyre, one of the loveliest spots in Scotland, and the gorge of Glenturrett, on the north,--and the bold dark hills which surround the romantic village of Comrie, on the west. Crieff is now a place of considerable note, and forms a centre of summer attraction to mult.i.tudes; but at the commencement of the eighteenth century it must have been a miserable hamlet. _Malloch_ was originally the name of the poet, and the name is still common in that part of Perths.h.i.+re. David attended the college of Aberdeen, and became, afterwards, an unsalaried tutor in the family of Mr Home of Dreghorn, near Edinburgh. We find him next in the Duke of Montrose's family, with a salary of 30 per annum. In 1723, he accompanied his pupils to London, and changed his name to Mallett, as more euphonious. Next year, he produced his pretty ballad of 'William and Margaret,' and published it in Aaron Hill's 'Plain Dealer.' This served as an introduction to the literary society of the metropolis, including such names as Young and Pope. In 1733, he disgraced himself by a satire on the greatest man then living, the venerable Richard Bentley. Mallett was one of those mean creatures who always wors.h.i.+p a rising, and turn their backs on a setting sun. By his very considerable talents, his management, and his address, he soon rose in the world. He was appointed under-secretary to the Prince of Wales, with a salary of 200 a-year. In conjunction with Thomson, to whom he was really kind, he wrote in 1740, 'The Masque of Alfred,' in honour of the birthday of the Princess Augusta. His first wife, of whom nothing is recorded, having died, he married the daughter of Lord Carlisle's steward, who brought him a fortune of 10,000. Both she and Mallett himself gave themselves out as Deists. This was partly owing to his intimacy with Bolingbroke, to gratify whom, he heaped abuse upon Pope in a preface to 'The Patriot-King,' and was rewarded by Bolingbroke leaving him the whole of his works and MSS. These he afterwards published, and exposed himself to the vengeful sarcasm of Johnson, who said that Bolingbroke was a scoundrel and a coward;--a scoundrel, to charge a blunderbuss against Christianity; and a coward, because he durst not fire it himself, but left a s.h.i.+lling to a beggarly Scotsman to draw the trigger after his death. Mallett ranked himself among the calumniators and, as it proved, murderers of Admiral Byng. He wrote a Life of Lord Bacon, in which, it was said, he forgot that Bacon was a philosopher, and would probably, when he came to write the Life of Marlborough, forget that he was a general. This Life of Bacon is now utterly forgotten. We happened to read it in our early days, and thought it a very contemptible performance. The d.u.c.h.ess of Marlborough left 1000 in her will between Glover and Mallett to write a Life of her husband.

Glover threw up his share of the work, and Mallett engaged to perform the whole, to which, besides, he was stimulated by a pension from the second Duke of Marlborough. He got the money, but when he died it was found that he had not written a line of the work. In his latter days he held the lucrative office of Keeper of the Book of Entries for the port of London.

He died on the 2lst April 1765.

Mallett is, on the whole, no credit to Scotland. He was a bad, mean, insincere, and unprincipled man, whose success was procured by despicable and dastardly arts. He had doubtless some genius, and his 'Birks of Invermay,' and 'William and Margaret,' shall preserve his name after his clumsy imitation of Thomson, called 'The Excursion,' and his long, rambling 'Amyntor and Theodora;' have been forgotten.