which perhaps they are not always eafily difcerned. It is too exuberant, and fometimes may be charged with filling the ear more than the mind.

I

Thefe Poems, with which I was acquainted at their first appearance, have fince found altered and enlarged by fubfequent revifals, as the author fuppofed his judgement to grow more exact, and as books or converfation extended his knowledge and opened his profpects. They are, I think, improved in general; yet I know not whether they have not loft part of what Temple calls their race; a word which, applied to wines, in its primitive fenfe, means the flavour of the foil.

Liberty, when it first appeared, I tried to read, and foon defifted. I have never tried again, and therefore will not hazard either praise or cenfure.

PRO

PROLOGUE TO SOPHONIS BA,

BY POPE AND MALLET.

WHEN Learning, after the long Gothic night, Fair, o'er the Western world, renew'd its light, With arts arifing, Sophonifba rofe:

The Tragic Mufe, returning, wept her woes. With her th' Italian fcene first learn'd to glow; And the first tears for her were taught to flow. Her charms the Gallic Mufes next inspir❜d : Corneille himself faw, wonder'd, and was fir'd.

What foreign theatres with pride have fhewn, Britain, by jufler title, makes her own. When Freedom is the caufe, 'tis hers to fight; And hers, when Freedom is the theme, to write. For this a British Author bids again

The heroine rife, to grace the British scene.

Here,

Here, as in life, fhe breathes her genuine flame :
She afks, what bofom has not felt the fame ?
Asks of the British Youth-Is filence there?
She dares to ask it of the British Fair.

To-night, our home-fpun author would be true,
At once, to nature, hiftory, and you.
Well-pleas'd to give our neighbours due applaufe,
He owns their learning, but difdains their laws.
Not to his patient touch, or happy flame,
'Tis to his British heart he trufts for fame.
If France excel him in one free-born thought,
The man, as well as poet, is in fault.

Nature! informer of the poet's art,

Whofe force alone can raife or melt the heart,
Thou art his guide; each paffion, every line,
Whate'er he draws to please, muft all be thine.
Be thou his judge: in every candid breaft,
Thy filent whisper is the facred teft.

[1]

HAMMON D..

F Mr. HAMMOND, though he be well remembered as a man

efteemed and careffed by the elegant and great, I was at firft able to obtain no other memorials than fuch as are fup-plied by a book called Cibber's Lives of the Poets; of which I take this opportu nity to testify that it was not written, nor, I believe, ever feen, by either of the Cibbers; but was the work of Robert Shiels, a native of Scotland, a man of very acute understanding, though with