"Be not puffed up with knighthood, friend of mine, A merry prince once knighted a Sir-loin, And if to make comparisons were safe An ox deserves it better then a calf. Thy pride and state I value not a rush Thou that art now Knight Phyz, wast once King Ush." Blackmore, who was successively physician to William III. and Queen Anne, had been once a schoolmaster. Tom Brown died at the early age of forty. His life was full of misfortunes, but we can scarcely say that he was unhappy, for nothing could conquer his buoyant spirit. At one time he was actually in prison, for what was deemed a libellous attack, but we are told that he obtained his "enlargement" from it, upon his writing the following Pindaric Petition to the Lords in Council. "Should you order Tho' Brown To be whipped thro' the town For scurvy lampoon, Grave _Southern_ and _Crown_ Their pens wou'd lay down; Even D'Urfey himself, and such merry fellows That put their whole trust in tunes and trangdillioes May hang up their harps and themselves on the willows; For if poets are punished for libelling trash John Dryden, tho' sixty, may yet fear the lash. No pension, no praise, Much birch without bays, These are not right ways Our fancy to raise, To the writing of plays And prologues so witty That jirk at the city, And now and then hit Some spark in the pit, So hard and so pat Till he hides with his hat His monstrous cravat. The pulpit alone Can never preach down The fops of the town Then pardon Tho' Brown And let him write on; But if you had rather convert the poor sinner His foul writing mouth may be stopped with a dinner. Give him clothes to his back, some meat and some drink Then clap him close prisoner without pen and ink And your petitioner shall neither pray, write, or think." Unfortunately his pecuniary difficulties were not removed, but accompanied him through life. What a strange mixture of gaiety, learning and destitution is brought before us, when on a clamorons dun vowing she would not leave him until she had her money, he exclaimed in an extempore version of two lines of Martial-- "Sextus, thou nothing ow'st, nothing I say! He something owes, that something has to pay." In an imitation of another epigram of Martial he gives an account of the unpromising position of his affairs:--