p. 138 _Groves appear’d_. Martinus Scriblerus (Pope) #PERI BATHOUS;# _or, The Art of Sinking in Poetry: written in the Year_ MDCCXXVII, chap. xii, has: ‘1. The Florid Style than which none is more proper to the Bathos, as flowers, which are the lowest of vegetables, are most gaudy, and do many times grow in great plenty at the bottom of ponds and ditches. A fine writer in this kind presents you with the following posie: The groves appear all drest with wreaths of flowers, And from their leaves drop aromatic showers, Whose fragrant heads in mystic twines above Exchange their sweets, and mix’d with thousand kisses As if the willing branches strove To beautify and shade the grove,-- (which, indeed, most branches do).’ Pope, as often, is not a little unfair in his critique. p. 144 _Eternal Night_. Soles occidere, et redire possunt: Nobis, cum semel occidit brevis lux, Nox est perpetua una dormienda. --Catullus, _Ad Lesbiam_. p. 148 _On a Juniper-Tree_. This poem is also to be found in the following editions of Rochester’s Works: _Poems on Several Occasions by the Rt. Hon. the Earl of R----. Printed at Antwerpen_. [London.] 1680? In _The Works of the Earls of Rochester, Roscommon, Dorset_, 1712; 1718; 1731; 1739 (in which year there were two several and slightly divergent editions); 1752; 1800? It must not, however, be for a moment supposed that the Earl of Rochester has any claim to the authorship of this piece. Unscrupulous booksellers collected songs, poems, satires of every kind under his name and included them amongst his oft-reprinted works without explanation or discrimination. With the opening lines of this poem cf. Horace, _Sermonum_, i, viii:-- Olim truncus eram ficulnus, inutile lignum, cum faber, incertus scammum faceretne Priapum, maluit esse deum. p. 148 _Busks_. A Busk is ‘A strip of wood, whalebone, steel, or other rigid material passed down the front of a corset and used to stiffen and support it’. _N.E.D._ which quotes, inter alia, 1688, R. Holme, _Armoury_, in, 94/2: ‘A Busk ... is a strong peece of Wood, or Whalebone thrust down the middle of the Stomacker.’