_Thalia_, the Comic Muse, by Mrs Manley. A pastoral dialogue betwixt Alexis, Daphne, Aminta, and Thalia. After the usual questions concerning the cause of sorrow, Thalia, invoked by the nymphs and swains, sings a ditty, bearing the following burden: Bring here the spring, and throw fresh garlands on, With all the flowers that wait the rising sun; These ever-greens, true emblems of his soul, Take, Daphne, these, and scatter through the whole, While the eternal Dryden’s worth I tell, My lovely bard, that so lamented fell. _Clio_, or the Historic Muse, by Mrs Pix, the authoress of a tragedy called “Queen Catharine, or the Ruins of Love.” Stop here, my muse, no more thy office boast, This drop of praise is in an ocean lost; His works alone are trumpets of his fame, And every line will chronicle his name. _Calliope_, the Heroic Muse, by Mrs C. Trotter. This is the best of these pieces. Calliope complains, that she is more unhappy than her sisters of the sock and buskin, still worshipped successfully by Vanburgh and Granville, in the epic province: ----------------------Blackmore, in spite Of me and nature, still presumes to write; Heavy and dozed, crawls out the tedious length; Unfit to soar, drags on with peasant strength The weight he cannot raise. The poem concludes, --------------------------Now you who aim, With fading power, at bright immortal fame; Ambitious monarchs, all whom glory warms, Cease your vain toil, throw down your conquering arms; Your active souls confine, since you must die Like vulgar men, your names and actions lie Where Trojan heroes, had not Homer lived, Had lain forgot, nor ruined Troy survived; No more their glories I can e’er retrieve, For nature can no second Dryden give. _Terpsichore_, a Lyric Muse, by Mrs L. D. _ex tempore_. Albeit a lyric muse, Terpsichore laments in hexameters: Just as the gods were listening to my strains, And thousand loves danced o’er the etherial plains, With my own radiant hair my harp I strung, And in glad concert all my sisters sung: An universal harmony above Inspired us all with gaiety and love; A horrid sound dashed our immortal mirth, Wafted by sighs from the unlucky earth, _Et cætera, et cætera._ _Polyhymnia_, the Muse of Rhetoric, by Mrs D. E. This lady concludes the volume thus: Incessant groans be all my rhetoric now! My immortality I would forego, Rather than drag this chain of endless woe. O mighty Father, hear a daughter’s prayer, Cure me by death from deathless sad despair! These extracts are taken from the presentation copy of this rare book, in the library of Mr Bindley, of Somerset-House, whose liberality I have had already repeated occasion to acknowledge. No. XIII. VERSES IN PRAISE OF MR DRYDEN. _To Mr_ DRYDEN, _by_ JO. ADDISON, _Esq._