Her coach the curate and the tradesmen meet,
Great-coated tenants her arrival greet,

And boys with ftubble bonfires light the street,
While bells her ears with tongues difcordant grate,
Types of the nuptial tyes they celebrate :
But no rejoicings can unbend her brow,

Nor deigns fhe to return one awkward bow,
But bounces in, difdaining once to speak,

And wipes the trickling tear from off her cheek.
Now fee her in the fad decline of life,

A peevish mistress, and a fulky wife ;

Her nerves unbrac'd, her faded cheek grown pale

With many a real, many a fancy'd ail;

Of cards, admirers, equipage bereft,

Her infolence, and title only left;
Severely humbled to her one-horfe chair,
And the low paftimes of a country fair:
Too wretched to endure one lonely day,
Too proud one friendly visit to repay,

Too indolent to read, too criminal to pray.

At length half dead, half mad, and quite confin'd,
Shunning, and shun'd by all of human kind,

Ev'n

Ev'n robb'd of the last comfort of her life,

Infulting the poor curate's callous wife,

Pride, disappointed pride, now ftops her breath,
And with true fcorpion rage she stings herself to death.

Horatii

Horatii Ep. I. Lib. II. ad Auguftum.

THE

FIRST EPISTLE

O F THE

SECOND BOOK OF HORACE,

IMITATE D.

TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE

PHILIP, LORD HARDWICKE,

Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain.

WRITTEN IN THE YEAR 1748.

ADVERTISEMENT.

TH

HE following piece is a burlesque imitation: a fpecies of poetry, whofe chief excellence confifts in a lucky and humorous application of the words and fentiments of any author to a new fubject totally dif ferent from the original. This is what is ufually forgot both by the writers and readers of these kind of compofitions; the first of whom are apt to ftrike out new and independent thoughts of their own, and the latter to admire fuch injudicious excrefcences: these immediately lose fight of their original, and those scarce ever cast an eye towards him at all. It is thought proper therefore to advertise the reader, that in the following epiftle he is to expect nothing more than an appofite converfion of the ferious fentiments of Horace on the Roman poetry, into more ludicrous ones on the fubject of English politics; and if he thinks it not worth while to compare it line for line with the original, he will find in it neither wit, humour, nor even common fenfe; all the little merit it can pretend to confifting solely in the closeness of so long, and uninterrupted an imitation.

VOL. I.

G

HORATII