At his death in 1715, a year after the accession of George the First, the withering laurel recovered a little lustre on the brow of Nicholas Rowe, the translator of Lucan, and the pathetic dramatist of "The Fair Penitent," and "Jane Shore." His occasional verses were, of course, very respectable; and his only signal failure was when he attempted comedy. After the banter he incurred for his play of "The Biter," he was so sensible that he was the biter bit, that he excluded it from his works, and made no second venture of the kind. Yet the man who could move an audience to tears, and who had so little command of their sympathies when he tried his powers of wit on them, was any thing but a lachrymist by temperament. When Spence observed that he should have thought "the tragic Rowe too grave to write such things." Pope answered, "He! why, he would laugh all the day long! He would do nothing but laugh!" He survived the acquisition of the laurel only three years, dying at the age of forty-five. Laurence Eusden, "a parson much bemused in beer," stumbled into his place, just in time to elaborate, _singultu laborare_, the Coronation Ode for George the Second. A specimen or two of his loyal suspirations may be as welcome as a hundred. "Hail, mighty Monarch! whose desert alone Would, without birthright, raise thee to a throne! _Thy virtues shine peculiarly nice. Ungloom'd with a confinity to vice._" Lord Hervey's "Memoirs of the Court of George the Second," recently made public, are an edifying exposition of the "peculiarly nice" virtues here extolled. "What strains shall equal to thy glories rise, First to the world, and borderer on the skies?" The conjuror who can make out the meaning of the last line may be able to answer the question. In his joy for a George the Second, the inspired bard dries up his tears for George the First:-- "How exquisitely great! who canst inspire Such joy that Albion _mourns no more thy sire_! A dull, fat, thoughtless heir unheeded springs From a long _slothful_ line of _restive_ kings: But when a stem, with fruitful branches crown'd, Has flourish'd, in each various branch renown'd, His great forerunners when the last outshone, Who could a brighter hope, or even as bright a son?" He ends with a kick at the Stuarts: "Avaunt, degenerate _grafts_, or spurious breed! 'Tis a George only can a George succeed." If Charles Edward had known that, he might have saved himself a good deal of trouble.