Wharton, the scorn and wonder of our days, Whose darling passion was the lust of praise: Born with whate'er could win it from the wise, Women and fools must like him, or he dies; Tho' wond'ring senates hung on all he spoke, The club must hail him master of the joke. Shall parts so various aim at nothing new? He'll shine a Tully and a Wilmot too; Then turns repentant, and his God adores, With the same spirit that he drinks and whores; Enough if all around him but admire, And now the Punk applaud, and now the Friar. Thus with each gift of nature and of art, And wanting nothing but an honest heart; Grown all to all, from no one vice exempt; And most contemptible, to shun contempt; His passion still to covet gen'ral praise, His life, to forfeit it a thousand ways; A constant bounty which no friend has made; An angel tongue which no man can persuade; A fool, with more of wit than half mankind, Too rash for thought, for action too refin'd: A tyrant to the wife his heart approves; A rebel to the very King he loves; He dies, sad out-cast of each church and state, And, harder still! flagitious, yet not great. Ask you why Wharton broke thro' ev'ry rule? 'Twas all for fear the Knaves should call him Fool. Pope's Works, Vol. III. The duke is author of two volumes of poems, of which we shall select the following as a specimen. The FEAR of DEATH. Say, sov'reign queen of awful night, Dread tyrant say! Why parting throes this lab'ring frame distend, Why dire convulsions rend, And teeming horrors wreck th' astonish'd sight? Why shrinks the trembling soul, Why with amazement full Pines at thy rule, and sickens at thy sway? Why low'r the thunder of thy brow, Why livid angers glow, Mistaken phantom, say? Far hence exert thy awful reign, Where tutelary shrines and solemn busts Inclose the hallow'd dust: Where feeble tapers shed a gloomy ray, And statues pity feign; Where pale-ey'd griefs their wasting vigils keep, There brood with sullen state, and nod with downy sleep. Advance ye lurid ministers of death! And swell the annals of her reign: Crack every nerve, sluice every vein; And choak the avenues of breath. Freeze, freeze, ye purple tides! Or scorch with seering flames, Æra's nature flows in tepid streams, And life's meanders glide. Let keen despair her icy progress make, And slacken'd nerves their talk forsake; Years damp the vital fire. Yawn all ye horrors of the flood; And curl your swelling surges higher. Survey the road! Where desolating storms, and vengeful fates, The gawdy scene deface; Ambition in its widest havock trace Thro' widow'd cities, and unpeopl'd states. And is this all! Are these the threaten'd terrors of your reign? O dream of fancy'd power!