Volume III Part 18 (2/2)
For my part, I could not but contemplate on his s.h.a.ggy locks, his wither'd sun-burnt countenance, together with the mightiness and sanct.i.ty of his beard; but above all, his brawny chopt knuckles employed my attention: In short, having satisfied the cormorant in his guts, he had time to ask me what country-man I was? to which I submissively answered, an English-man: O, says he, those English-men are merry rogues, and love mischief; I have sometimes a diverting story from thence: What news have you brought with you? truly I told his highness I came away a little dissatisfied, and had not made any remarks on the world for some time before my death; and for news I had not leisure to bring any thing of moment. But ere we had talked much more, we saw two other pa.s.sengers approach us, who, by their often turning to one another, and their laying down arguments with their hands, seemed to be in warm debate together; which was as we conjectured; for when they drew nearer to us, they proved to be a termagant High-Flyer, and a puritanical Scripturian, a fiery Scotchman: Occasional Conformity was their subject; for I heard the Scot tell him 'twas all popery, downright popery, and that the inquisition in Spain was christianity to it, by r.e.t.a.r.ding the sons of grace from partaking of the gifts of the Lord; he said it was the building of Babel, and they were confounded in the works of their hands by the confusion of tongues; such crys, says he, went forth before the desolation of the great city.
Thou the son of grace, says the other, thou art a son of Satan, and hast preached up iniquity; ye are the evil tares, and the land can never prosper 'till ye are rooted out from among the good corn.
Thou art an inventer of lies, said the disciple of John Calvin, and the truth is not in thee; ye are b.l.o.o.d.y minded wretches, and your fury is the only sign of your religion, as the steeple is to the church; your organs are the prophane tinkling of the cimbals of Satan, that tickle the ears with vanity.
Thus the dispute lasted till they came to us, and getting into the boat, they jostled for preeminence, which might have proved a sharp conflict, had not the old fellow took up a stretcher and parted them. After which we parted peaceably over to the other side: being-landed, the Scot and I took our way together, and left the furious churchman to vent his spleen by himself. We had not travelled long before we came to a populous village, where, from the various mult.i.tude, our eyes encountered at a distance, we might easily conjecture that something more than ordinary had gathered them together in that manner; it resembled (as near as I can describe it) that famous place called Sherrick-fair, or a Staffords.h.i.+re-Wake. While we were applying our admiration that way, we arrived at a small hut erected for that purpose, where Nero the tyrant, like a blind fiddler, was surrounded by a confused tribe of all sorts and s.e.xes, like another Orpheus among the beasts.
The various remarks I made (some dancing, some prancing; some clapping, some knapping; some drinking, some winking; some kissing, some p.i.s.sing; some reeling, some stealing) urged my curiosity to enquire for what it was possible those n.o.ble sports might be ordained, and was soon satisfied it was the Anniversary Feast of their Great Lady Proserpine's birth-day. But these things that I took to be diverting, so elevated the spleen of my Puritan companion, that he began loudly to exclaim against those prophane exercises: he said, they were impure, and lifted up the mind to lewdness; that those that followed them, were the sons of Belial, and wore the mark of the beast in their foreheads. I endeavoured to pacify the sanctified brother, by putting him in mind where we were, and that his rashness might draw us into danger, being in a strange place; but all was in vain, I but stirred up his fury more; for, turning his rebukes upon me, he told me, I was myself one of the wicked, and did rejoice in my heart at the deeds of darkness: no, says he, I will not be pacified, I will roar aloud to drown their incantations; yea, I will set out a throat even as the beast that belloweth! so that perceiving the mob gather about him, I thought it prudence to steal off, and leave him to the fury of those, whose displeasure he was about to incur.
I had not gone far, but I 'spied two brawney champions at a rubbers of cuffs, which by the dexterity of their head's, hands, and heels, I judged could be no other than Englishmen: nor were my sentiments groundless, for presently I heard the mob cry out, O! rare Jo! O! rare Jo! and attentively Surveying the combatants, I found it to be the merry Jo Haynes, fallen out with Plowden the famous Lawyer, about a game at Nine-holes; and that shout had proclaimed Joe victorious. I was something scrupulous of renewing my acquaintance, not knowing how the conqueror, in the midst of his success, might use me for making bold with his character in my letters from the read; though I felt a secret desire to discover myself, yet prudence withstood my inclination, 'till a more convenient season might so that I brushed off to a place where I saw a concourse of the better sort of people; there I found Millington the famous Auctioneer, among a crowd of Lawyers, Physicians, Scholars, Poets, Critics, Booksellers, &c. exercising his old faculty; for which, gentlemen, he is as particularly famed in these parts, as Herostratus for firing the famous Temple, or Barthol Swarts, for the invention of Gunpowder. He is head journey-man to Ptolemy, who keeps a Bookseller's shop here, and rivals even Jacob Tonson in reputation among the great wits.
But most of all I was obliged to admire my friend Millington, who, by his powerful knack of eloquence, to the wonder of the whole company, sold Cave's Lives of the Fathers to Solomon the Magnificent, and the Scotch Directory to the Priests of the Sun; nay, he sold-Archbishop Laud's Life to Hugh Peters, Hob's Leviathan to Pope Boniface, and pop'd Bunyan's Works upon Bellarmine for a piece of unrevealed Divinity; After the sale was over, I took an opportunity of making myself known to him, who caressed me with all the freedom imaginable, asking me, how long I had been in these parts? and what news from the other world? and a thousand particular questions about his old friends; to all which I responded as well as I could: and having given me a caution to avoid some people, by whom I was threatened, for exposing them in my letters, we went to take a bottle together.
Now I presume, gentlemen, you will conclude it high time for me to take my leave; nor shall I tire your patience much longer, only permit me to give ye the trouble of some particular services to those honest gentlemen whose generosity gave me the reputation of a funeral above what I e'er expected, especially to Dr. S----t for bestowing the ground I never frequented, to Dr. Garth and the rest for the charge of a hea.r.s.e and mourning coaches, which I could not have desired, and to Dr. D----ke for designing me a monument I know the world will reflect I never deserved; but for that, let my works testify for me. And though ye are satisfied my genius was never over-fruitful in the product of verse, yet knowing these favours require something a little uncommon to make a suitable return, I shall take my leave in metre, and, if contrary to my opinion, it meets with a kind acceptance from the town, honest Sam. may clap it in the next edition of the State Poems, with Buckingham's name to it.
When a scurvy disease had lain hold of my carcase, And death to my chamber was mounting the stair-case.
I call'd to remembrance the sins I'd committed, Repented, and thought I'd for Heaven been fitted; But alas! there is still an old proverb to cross us, I found there no room for the sons of Parna.s.sus; And therefore contented like others to fare, To the shades of Elizium I strait did repair; Where Dryden and other great wits o' the town, To reward all their labours, are d.a.m.n'd to write on.
Here Johnson may boast of his judgment and plot, And Otway of all the applause that he got; Loose Eth'ridge presume on his stile and his wit, And Shadwell of all the dull plays he e'r writ; Nat. Lee here may boast of his bombast and rapture, And Buckingham rail to the end of the chapter; Lewd Rochester lampoon the King and the court, And Sidley and others may cry him up for't; Soft Waller and Suckling, chaste Cowley and others, With Beaumont and Fletcher, poetical brothers, May here scribble on with pretence to the bays, E'en Shakespear himself may produce all his plays, And not get for whole pages one mouth full of praise.
To avoid this disaster, while Congreve reforms, His muse and his morals fly to Bracegirdle's arms; Let Vanbrugh no more plotless plays e'er impose, Stuft with satire and s.m.u.t to ruin the house; Let Rowe, if he means to maintain his applause, Write no more such lewd plays as his Penitent was.
O Satire! from errors instruct the wild bard, Bestow thy advice to reclaim each lewd bard; Bid the Laureat sincerely reflect on the matter; Bid Dennis drink less, but bid him write better; Bid Durfey cease scribbling, that libelling song-ster; Bid Gildon and C----n be Deists no longer; Bid B----t and C----r, those wits of the age, Ne'er expose a dull c.o.xcomb, but just on the stage; Bid Farquhar (tho' bit) to his consort be just, And Motteux in his office be true to his trust; Bid Duffet and Cowper no longer be mad, But Parsons and Lawyers mind each their own trade.
To Grubster and others, bold satire advance; Bid Ayliffe talk little, and P----s talk sense; Bid K----n leave stealing as well as the rest; When this can be done, they may hope to be blest.
The Revd. Mr. JOHN POMFRET.
This Gentleman's works are held in very great esteem by the common readers of poetry; it is thought as unfas.h.i.+onable amongst people of inferior life, not to be possessed of the poems of Pomfret, as amongst persons of taste not to have the works of Pope in their libraries. The subjects upon which Pomfret wrote were popular, his versification is far from being unmusical, and as there is little force of thinking in his writings, they are level to the capacities of those who admire them.
Our author was son of the rev. Mr. Pomfret, rector of Luton in Bedfords.h.i.+re, and he himself was preferred to the living of Malden in the same county. He was liberally educated at an eminent grammar school in the country, from whence he was sent to the university of Cambridge, but to what college is not certain. There he wrote most of his poetical pieces, took the degree of master of arts, and very early accomplished himself in most kinds of polite literature. A gentleman who writes under the name of Philalethes, and who was an intimate friend of Pomfret's, has cleared his reputation from the charge of fanaticism, which some of his malicious enemies brought against him. It was shortly after his leaving the university, that he was preferred to the living of Malden abovementioned, and was, says that gentleman, so far from being tinctured with fanaticism, that I have often heard him express his abhorrence of the destructive tenets maintained by that people, both against our religious and civil rights. This imputation it seems was cast on him by there having been one of his sur-name, though not any way related to him, a dissenting teacher, and who published some rhimes upon spiritual subjects, as he called them, and which sufficiently proved him an enthusiast.
About the year 1703 Mr. Pomfret came up to London, for inst.i.tution and induction, into a very considerable living, but was r.e.t.a.r.ded for some time by a disgust taken by dr. Henry Compton, then bishop of London, at these four lines, in the close of his poem ent.i.tled The Choice.
And as I near approach'd the verge of life, Some kind relation (for I'd have no wife) Should take upon him all my worldly care, While I did for a better state prepare.
The parenthesis in these verses was so maliciously represented to the bishop, that his lords.h.i.+p was given to understand, it could bear no other construction than that Mr. Pomfret preferred a mistress before a wife; though the words may as well admit of another meaning, and import no more, than the preference of a single life to marriage; unless the gentlemen in orders will a.s.sert, that an unmarried Clergyman cannot live without a mistress. But the bishop was soon convinced that this aspersion against him, was no more than an effort of malice, as Mr.
Pomfret at that time was really married. The opposition which his enemies made to him, had, in some measure, its effect; for by the obstructions he met with, he was obliged to stay longer in London than he intended, and as the Small-pox then raged in the metropolis, he sickened them, and died in London in the 36th year of his age.
The above-mentioned friend of Mr. Pomfret, has likewise shewn the ungenerous treatment he met with in regard to his poetical compositions, in a book ent.i.tled Poems by the Earl of Roscommon, and Mr. Duke, printed 1717, in the preface to which, the publisher has peremptorily inserted the following paragraph. 'In this collection says he, of my lord Roscommon's poems, care has been taken to insert all I possibly could procure, that are truly genuine, there having been several things published under his name, which were written by others, the authors of which I could set down if it were material. Now, says the gentleman, this arrogant editor would have been more just, both to the public, and to the earl of Roscommon's memory, in telling us what things had been published under his lords.h.i.+p's name by others, than by concealing the authors of any such gross impositions. Instead of which, he is so much a stranger to impartiality, that he has been guilty of the very crime he exclaims against; for he has not only attributed the prospect of death to the earl of Roscommon, which was wrote by Mr. Pomfret, after the decease of that lord; but likewise another piece ent.i.tled the Prayer of Jeremy Paraphrased, prophetically representing the pa.s.sionate grief of the Jewish people, for the loss of their town, and sanctuary, written by Mr. Southcot, a gentleman who published it in the year 1717, so that it is to be hoped, in a future edition of the earl of Roscommon's, and Mr.
Duke's poems, the same care will be taken to do these gentlemen justice, as to prevent any other person from hereafter injuring the memory of his lords.h.i.+p.'
Mr. Pomfret published his poems in the year 1690, to which he has prefixed a very modest and sensible preface, 'I am not so fond of fame, says he, as to desire it from the injudicious many; nor as so mortified a temper as not to wish it from the discerning few. 'Tis not the mult.i.tude of applauders, but the good fame of the applauders, which establishes a valuable reputation.'
His poetical compositions consist chiefly of
1. The Choice, which we shall insert as a specimen.
2. Cruelty and l.u.s.t, an Epistolary Essay, founded upon the famous Story which happened in the reign of King James II. Kirk, who was that Prince's general against the duke of Monmouth. was sollicited by a beautiful lady in behalf of her husband, who then lay under sentence of death. The inhuman general consented to grant his fair pet.i.tioner her request; but at no less a price than that of her innocence. The lady doated on her husband, and maintained a hard struggle between virtue, and affection, the latter of which at last prevailed, and she yielded to his guilty embraces. The next morning Kirk, with unparalleled brutality, desired the lady to look out at the window of his bedchamber, when she was struck with the horrid sight of her husband upon a scaffold, ready to receive the blow of the executioner; and before she could reach the place where he was, in order to take a last embrace, her husband was no more.
How far the lady may be justified in this conduct, is not our business to discuss: if it is called by the name of guilt, none ever had more pressing motives; and if such a crime could admit of an excuse, it must be upon such an occasion.
<script>