_Thoughts on our savage Treatment of Chimney-sweepers_.
_Testimonies in Favour of Sir_ CECIL WRAY, _Bart_.
ALCANDER, thou'rt a God, more than a God! Thou'rt pride of all the Gods--thou mount'st by woes-- Hell squeaks, Eurus and Auster shake the skies-- Yet shall thy barge dance through the hissing wave, And on the foaming billows float to heaven!
_Epistle to Sir Cecil Wray, under the Character of Alcander_.
[1] Author of 58 Tragedies, only one of which, to the disgrace of our Theatres, has yet appeared.
"I was sitting one evening (as indeed I was wont to do when out of cash) astride the ballustrade of Westminster-bridge, with my favourite little dog under my arm. I had that day parted with my diamond windmill.--Life was never very dear to me--but a thousand thoughts then rushed into my heart, to jump this world, and spring into eternity.--I determined that my faithful Pompey should bear me company.--I pressed him close, and actually stretched out, fully resolved to plunge into the stream; when, luckily (ought I to call it so?) that charming fellow (for such he then was), Sir Cecil WRAY, catching hold of Pompey's tail, pulled him back, and with him pulled back me.--In a moment I found myself in a clean hackney-coach, drawn by grey horses, with a remarkable civil coachman, fainting in my Cecil's arms; and though I then lost a little diamond pin, yet (contrary to what I hear has been asserted) I NEVER prosecuted that gallant Baronet; who, in less than a fortnight after, with his usual wit and genius, dispatched me the following extempore poem:
While you prepar'd, dear Anne, on Styx to sail-- Lo! one dog sav'd you by another's tail.
To which, in little more than a month, I penned, and sent the following reply:
You pinch'd my dog, 'tis true, and check'd my sail-- But then my pin--ah, there you squeezed _my_ tail.
_Ninth volume of Mrs. George Anne Bellamy's Apology, now preparing for the press_.
_Testimony of the great Parts of_ CONSTANTINE, LORD MULGRAVE, _and his Brethren_.
"Among those who will vote for continuing the old established number of our Session Justices, may I not count on the tribe of Phipps.--they love good places; and I know Mulgrave is a bit of a poet as well as myself; for I dined in company once, where he dined that very day twelvemonth. My excellent wife, who is a true Montgomery, and whom I like now as well as I did twenty years ago, adores the man who felt for the maternal pangs of a whelpless bear. For my own part, however, there is no action I more constantly ridicule, than his Lordship's preposterous pity for those very sufferings which he himself occasioned, by ordering his sailors to shoot the young bears.----But though _I_ laugh at _him_, how handsome will it be if _he_ votes against Dundas to oblige _me_. My disliking him and his family is no reason for his disliking me--on the contrary, if he opposes us, is it not probable that that great young man, whom I sincerely adore, may say, in his own lofty language, "Mulgrave, Mulgrave, don't vex the Scotch!--don't provoke 'em! God damn your ugly head!--if we don't crouch to Bute, we shall all be turned out; God eternally damn you for a stupid boar! I know we shall! Pardon me, great Sir, for presuming to forge the omnipotent bolts of your Incomparable thunder."