Volume IV Part 19 (1/2)

To the reverend doctor Bentley, on the opening of Trinity-College Chapel, Cambridge.

On a Lady, who is the most beautiful and witty when she is angry.

This poem begins with these lines.

Long had I known the soft, inchanting wiles, Which Cupid practised in Aurelia's smiles.

'Till by degrees, like the fam'd Asian taught, Safely I drank the sweet, tho' pois'nous draught.

Love vex'd to see his favours vainly shown, The peevish Urchin murthered with a frown.

Verses at the last public commencement at Cambridge, spoken by the author.

The Court of Venus, from Claudian.

The Speech of Pluto to Proserpine.

Hero and Leander, translated from the Greek of Musaeus.

This Piece begins thus,

Sing Muse, the conscious torch, whose mighty flame, (The s.h.i.+ning signal of a brighter dame) Thro' trackless waves, the bold Leander led, To taste the dang'rous joys of Hero's bed: Sing the stol'n bliss, in gloomy shades conceal'd, And never to the blus.h.i.+ng morn reveal'd.

A Poem on the Marriage of his grace the duke of Newcastle to the right honourable Henrietta G.o.dolphin, which procured him, as we have observed already, the place of laureat. The lord Roscommon's Essay on translated verse, rendered into Latin.

An Epistle to Sir Robert Walpole.

Three Poems; I. On the death of the late king; II. On the Accession of his present majesty. III. On the Queen.

On the arrival of Prince Frederic.

The origin of the Knights of the Bath, inscribed to the Duke of c.u.mberland.

An Ode for the Birth-Day, in Latin and English, printed at Cambridge.

He died at his rectory at Conesby in Lincolns.h.i.+re, the 27th of September, 1730.

The Revd. MR. LAWRENCE EACHARD,

This Gentleman, who has been more distinguished as an historian than a poet, was the son of a clergyman, who by the death of his elder brother, became master of a good estate in Suffolk.

He received his education at the university of Cambridge, entered into holy-orders, and was presented to the living of Welton and Elkington in Lincolns.h.i.+re, where he spent above twenty years of his life; and acquired a name by his writings, especially the History of England.

This history was attacked by Dr. Edmund Calamy, in a letter to the author; in which, according to the Dr. the true principles of the Revolution, the Whigs and the Dissenters are vindicated; and many persons of distinction cleared from Mr. Eachard's aspersions.

Mr. John Oldmixon, who was of very opposite principles to Eachard, severely animadverted upon him in his Critical History of England, during the reigns of the Stuarts; but as Oldmixon was a hireling, and a man strongly bia.s.sed by party prejudices, little credit is due to his testimony: Which is moreover accompanied with a perpetual torrent of abuse. Mr. Eachard's general Ecclesiastical History, from the nativity of Christ to the first establishment of Christianity by human laws, under the emperor Constantine the Great, has been much esteemed.

Our author was in the year 1712 installed archdeacon of Stowe, and prebend of Lincoln. He published a translation of Terence's Comedies, translated by himself and others; but all revised and corrected by him and Sir Roger L'Estrange: To which is prefixed the life of Terence.

Besides these, Mr. Eachard has translated three Comedies from Plautus, viz.