INSCRIPTION IX.

ON A TRIPOD TO THE MEMORY OF

WILLIAM WHITEHEAD, ESQ. P. L.

IN THE PLEASURE GROUND OF EARL HARCOURT,

NEWNAM, OXFORDSHIRE.

HARCOURT and Friendship this memorial rais'd
Near to the oak, where Whitehead oft reclin'd;
Where all that Nature, rob'd by Art, displays
With charms congenial sooth'd his polish'd mind.
Let Fashion's votaries, let the Sons of Fire *
The genius of that modest Bard despise,
Who bad Discretion regulate his lyre,

Studious to please, yet scorning to surprise.
Enough for him if those, who shar'd his love

Through life, who virtue more than verse revere, Here pensive pause, when circling round the grove, And drop the heart-paid tribute of a tear.

NOTE.

* Alluding to an expression of his in his Charge to the Poets, which excited the rancour of CHURCHILL, LLOYD, &c. See Memoirs of his Life, page 108.

INSCRIPTION X.

UNDER A PICTURE OF THE EDITOR OF

SHAKSPEARE'S MANUSCRIPTS,

1796.

PARODY.

FOUR

OUR Forgers, born in one prolific age,

Much critical acumen did engage.

The first was soon by doughty Douglas scar'd,

Though Johnson would have screen'd him, had he dar'd;* ↑ The next had all the cunning of a Scot

The third invention, genius-nay, what not? FRAUD, now exhausted, only could dispense To her fourth son, their three-fold impudence.

NOTES.

* When LAUDER first produced his forgery respecting MILTON, Dr. JOHNSON ushered it into the world by a preface, and afterwards writ LAUDER'S recantation. Some of his numerous biographers have endeavoured to prove the Doctor no party concerned; however this be, the virulence he afterwards shewed to MILTON in the Life which he writ of him for the booksellers, leads fairly to support my assertion, that he would have defended LAUDER, had he been in any sort defensible.

+ The translator of Fingal, Temora, &c.

The discoverer and transcriber of ROWLEY'S Poems.

THE

BIRTH OF FASHION:

AN EPISTOLARY TALE.

WRITTEN IN THE YEAR 1746, AND SENT TO A LADY WITH HOLLAR'S HABITS OF ENGLISH WOMEN, PUBLISHED

IN THE FORMER CENTURY 1650.

WISH this verse may chance to come
Just as you dress for rout, or drum;
If so, while Betty at your back

Or pins your gown,* or folds your sacque,
Dear Madam, let me beg you place
These prints between yourself and glass,
To see the change in female dress

Made in a hundred years, or less.

NOTE.

* The phrase at the time was pinning a lady's tail; but the young Author was then too delicate to use it: and happy it was he did not; for the present nicer age would have thought him as indelicate as Lord MONBODDO. However an excellent anecdote related of Mrs. RUSSEL, bedchamber-woman to the late Princess AMELIA, which is by many remembered (though not here related) will vindicate the authenticity of what was then the usual phrase to express the adjustment of a most material part of a lady's dress.