He cared not what the footman did;
Her maids she neither prais'd nor chid:
So every servant took his course,
And, bad at first, they all grew worse.
Slothful disorder fill'd his stable,

And sluttish plenty deck'd her table.
Their beer was strong, their wine was port;
Their meal was large, their grace was short.
They gave the poor the remnant meat,

Just when it grew not fit to eat.
They paid the church and parish rate,
And took, but read not, the receipt;

For which they claim'd their Sunday's due,
Of slumbering in an upper pew.

No man's defects sought they to know,

So never made themselves a foe,

No man's good deeds did they commend,
So never rais'd themselves a friend.
Nor cherish'd they relations poor,

That might decrease their present store;
Nor barn nor house did they repair,
That might oblige their future heir.
They neither added nor confounded;
They neither wanted nor abounded.
Nor tear nor smile did they employ
At news of public grief or joy,

When bells were rung and bonfires made,
If ask'd, they ne'er denied their aid;
Their jug was to the ringers carried,
Whoever either died or married.
Their billet at the fire was found,
Whoever was depos'd or crown'd.

Nor good, nor bad, nor fools, nor wise,

They would not learn, nor could advise ;

Without love, hatred, joy, or fear,

They led-a kind of-as it were;

Nor wish'd, nor car'd, nor laugh'd, nor cried;

And so they liv'd, and so they died.

FOR MY OWN MONUMENT.

As doctors give physic by way of prevention,

Matt, alive and in health, of his tombstone took care: For delays are unsafe, and his pious intention

May haply be never fulfilled by his heir.

Then take Matt's word for it, the sculptor is paid;
That the figure is fine, pray believe your own eye;
Yet credit but lightly what more may be said,
For we flatter ourselves, and teach marble to lie.

Yet counting as far as to fifty his years,

His virtues and vices were as other men's are;

High hopes he conceiv'd, and he smother'd great fears,

In a life party-colour'd, half pleasure, half care.

Nor to business a drudge, nor to faction a slave,
He strove to make int'rest and freedom agree;
In public employments industrious and grave,
And alone with his friends, Lord! how merry was he.

Now in equipage stately, now humbly on foot,
Both fortunes he tried, but to neither would trust;
And whirl'd in the round as the wheel turn'd about,

He found riches had wings, and knew man was but dust.

This verse, little polish'd, though mighty sincere,
Sets neither his titles nor merit to view;

It says that his relics collected lie here,
And no mortal yet knows if this may be true.

Fierce robbers there are that infest the highway,
So Matt may be kill'd and his bones never found;
False witness at court, and fierce tempests at sea,
So Matt may yet chance to be hang'd or be drown'd.

If his bones lie in earth, roll in sea, fly in air,
To Fate we must yield, and the thing is the same;
And if passing thou giv'st him a smile or a tear,
He cares not-yet prithee, be kind to his fame.

EPITAPH EXTEMPORE,

Nobles and heralds, by your leave,

Here lies what once was Matthew Prior,

The son of Adam and of Eve;

Can Stuart or Nassau claim higher.

JOHN POMFRET, of whom very little is known, was the son of a clergyman, and was born at Luton, Bedfordshire, in 1667. He was educated at Queen's College, Cambridge, where he took his bachelor's degree in 1684, but did not proceed to the degree of master of arts, until 1698. On leaving the university he entered into orders, and became rector of Malden, in Bedfordshire, with an immediate prospect of preferment; but Compton, bishop of London, had conceived unjustly the idea that Pomfret's poem, The Choice, conveyed an immoral sentiment, and refused, therefore, to institute him into a living of considerable value to which he had been presented. Detained for a long time in London by the circumstances connected with this unfortunate affair, Pomfret, in 1703, took the small-pox, and soon after died. The works of this amiable ill-fated author consist of occasional poems, and some Pindaric Essays; but his only production now popular is 'The Choice.' This has always been a favourite with that class of readers whose literary pursuits have no higher object than their own amusement. It exhibits a system of life adapted to common notions and equal to common expectations; and 'The Choice' has, therefore, been perhaps, as frequently read as any other poem in the language. To these brief remarks we add the following extract:

FROM THE CHOICE.

If Heaven the grateful liberty would give

That I might choose my method how to live;
And all those hours propitious fate should lend.
In blissful ease and satisfaction spend;

Near some fair town I'd have a private seat,
Built uniform, not little, nor too great;
Better if on a rising ground it stood;

On this side fields, on that a neighbouring wood.
It should within no other things contain

But what are useful, necessary, plain.
Methinks 'tis nauseous; and I'd ne'er endure
The needless pomp of gaudy furniture.
A little garden grateful to the eye,
And a cool rivulet run murmuring by;
On whose delicious banks a stately row
Of shady limes or sycamores should grow.
At th' end of which a silent study plac'd
Should be with all the noblest authors grac'd:
Horace and Virgil, in whose mighty lines.
Immortal wit and solid learning shines;
Sharp Juvenal, and amorous Ovid too,

Who all the turns of love's soft passion knew:
He that with judgment reads his charming lines,
In which strong art with stronger nature joins,
Must grant his fancy does the best excel;
His thoughts so tender, and express'd so well:
With all those moderns, men of steady sense,
Esteem'd for learning and for eloquence.
In some of these as fancy should advise,
I'd always take my morning exercise;
For sure no minutes bring us more content
Than those in pleasing useful studies spent.
I'd have a clear and competent estate,
That I might live genteelly, but not great;
As much as I could moderately spend ;

A little more, sometimes t'oblige a friend.
Nor should the sons of poverty repine

Too much at fortune; they should taste of mine;

And all that objects of true pity were,

Should be reliev'd with what my wants could spare;
For that our Maker has too largely given
Should be return'd in gratitude to Heaven.
A frugal plenty should my table spread;
With healthy, not luxurious, dishes spread;
Enough to satisfy, and something more,

To feed the stranger, and the neighbouring poor.
Strong meat indulges vice, and pampering food
Creates diseases, and inflames the blood.
But what 's sufficient to make nature strong,
And the bright lamp of life continue long,
I'd freely take, and, as I did possess,
The bounteous Author of my plenty bless.

JONATHAN SWIFT, one of the most remarkable men of his age, was descended from a very ancient family, and was born in the city of Dublin on the thirtieth of November, 1667. His father was steward to the society of the King's Inns, but died in abject poverty before the birth of his distinguished son. His mother, a lady of Leicestershire, possessed no other fortune than a trifling annuity of twenty pounds a year; and the future poet was, therefore, from his infancy, thrown upon the bounty of his uncle, who, though kind and benevolent, had little to bestow upon his destitute nephew. The circumstances of want and dependence with which Swift was early familiar, seemed to have sunk deep into his haughty soul, and contributed much toward the formation of his future character. 'Born a posthumous child,' says Sir Walter Scott, and bred up an object of charity, he early adopted the custom of observing his birthday as a term, not of joy, but of sorrow, and of reading, when it annually occurred, the striking passage of Scripture in which Job laments and execrates the day upon which it was said in his father's house that a man child was born."

When six years of age Swift was sent to the grammar-school of Kilkenney, and in his fourteenth year was admitted a student of Trinity College, Dublin. His mind had now become somewhat awakened to the beauties of history and poetry, and to those objects he devoted himself to the neglect of academic learning, in consequence of which he was, at the expiration of four years, refused his bachelor's degree. Stung with this disgrace, he resolved from that time to study eight hours a day, and he persevered in this resolution for seven years. In 1688, when in the twenty-first year of his age, Swift was, by the death of his uncle Godwin, deprived of the meagre support which that kind uncle had been able to extend to him; in consequence of which he repaired to Leicester, where his mother then resided, to consult her respecting the future course of his life. She recommended him to seek the advice and patronage of Sir William Temple, as that nobleman had married one of her distant relatives. Temple received him with much kindness, and ultimately became so much pleased with his conversation that he detained him in his house two years. Here Swift met King William, and from the kindness and familiarity of the monarch's treatment of him, he was led to indulge hopes of preferment; the fulfillment of which, however, was never realized.

In 1692, Swift repaired to Oxford for the purpose of taking his master's degree; and having obtained this distinction, he resolved to quit the establishment of Sir William, and take orders in the Irish Church. He procured the prebend of Kilroot, in the diocess of Connor, but soon became disgusted with the life of an obscure country clergyman with an income of a hundred pounds a year. He therefore relinquished his living at Kilroot, and returned to the residence of Sir William Temple, at Moor-park. Temple died in 1699, and Swift embraced an opportunity which soon after offered, of accompanying Lord Berkeley into Ireland in the capacity of chaplain. From this nobleman he obtained the rectory of Aghar, and the vicarages of Laracor

and Rathveggan; to which was afterward added the prebend of Dunlavin ; all of which however, made his income only about two hundred pounds per annum. In 1701, Swift became a political writer on the side of the Whigs; and on his subsequent visit to England, he associated intimately with Addison, Steele, and Arbuthnot. In 1710, conceiving, and perhaps justly that he was neglected by the ministry, he quarrelled with the Whigs, and united with Harley and the Tory administration. He was, of course, received with open arms; for he carried with him strong weapons for party warfare-irresistible and unscrupulous satire, steady hate, and a dauntless spirit. From his new allies, he received, in 1713, the deanery of St. Patrick's, in Ireland, which was the highest point in church dignity that he ever attained.

With the return of Swift to Ireland is connected the development of some of the most extraordinary events of his life. During his residence at Moorpark, he had contracted an intimacy with Hester Johnson, daughter of Sir William Temple's steward; and on his settlement in Ireland, that lady, accompanied by another female of middle age, went to reside in his neighborhood. Her future life became, from that period, intimately connected with that of Swift, and he has immortalized her under the name of Stella. All this is poetic, and so far pardonable; but, unfortunately, while residing in London, he had engaged the affections of another young lady, Esther Vanhomrigh, who, under the name of Vanessa, rivalled Stella in poetical celebrity, and in personal misfortune. After the death of her father, this young lady and her sister retired to Ireland where they possessed a small property near Dublin. Human nature has, perhaps, never before or since presented the spectacle of a man of such transcendant powers involved in such a pitiable labyrinth of the affections. His pride or ambition led him to postpone indefinitely his marriage with Stella, to whom he was early and ardently attached; and he dared not afterward, with manly sincerity, declare his situation to Vanessa, when this second victim avowed her passion. He was flattered that a girl of eighteen, of beauty and accomplishments, sighed for 'a gown of forty-four,' and he did not stop to weigh the consequences. The removal of Vanessa to Ireland, as Stella had done before, to be near the presence of Swift-her irrepressible passion, which no coldness or neglect could extinguish-her life of deep seclusion, only chequered by his occasional visits, each of which she commemorated by planting, with her own hand, a laurel in the garden where they met-her agonizing remonstrances, when all her devotion and offerings had failed, are touching beyond expression. "The reason I write to you,' she says, 'is because I can not tell it to you, should I see you. For when I begin to complain, then you are angry ; and there is something in your looks so awful, that it strikes me dumb. O! that you may have so much regard for me left, that this complaint may touch your soul with pity. I say as little as ever I can. Did you but know what I thought, I am sure it would move you to forgive me, and believe that I can not help telling you this, and live.'