1286. A lecturer on the history of chemistry, thus described the celebrated Mr. Boyle: He was a great man, a very great man; he was father of modern chemistry, and brother of the Earl of Cork. _A Receipt to make an Epigram._ BY LORD HERVEY. A pleasing subject first with care provide; Your matter must with nature be supplied; Nervous your diction, be your measure long, Nor fear your verse too stiff if sense be strong: In proper places proper numbers use, And now the quicker, now the slower chuse: Too soon the dactyl the performance ends, But the slow spondee coming thoughts suspends; Your last attention on the sting bestow, To that your good or ill success you’ll owe; For there, not wit alone must shine, but humour flow. Observing these, your epigram’s completed; Nor fear ’twill tire, though seven times repeated. _On Ben Jonson’s Bust set up in Westminster Abbey, with the buttons on the wrong side of his coat._ BY THE REV. SAMUEL WESLEY. O rare Ben Jonson! What, a turn-coat grown! Thou ne’er wert such till thou wert clad in stone. When time thy coat, thy only coat, impairs, Thou’lt find a patron in a hundred years: Then let not this mistake disturb thy sprite, Another age shall set thy buttons right. _On Quin’s comparing Garrick to Whitfield, and complaining, that the people were madding it after him._ BY G―CK. Pope Quin, who damns all churches but his own, Complains that heresy misleads the town, That Whitfield-Garrick does corrupt the age, And taints the sound religion of the stage. ―Thou great infallible! forbear to roar; Thy bulls and errors are revered no more: Where doctrines meet with general approbation, It is not heresy, but reformation. _On Miss Biddy Floyd._ BY DEAN SWIFT. When Cupid did his grandsire Jove intreat, To form some beauty by a new receipt, Jove sent and found, far in a country scene, Truth, innocence, good-nature, looks serene; From which ingredients first the dextrous boy Picked the demure, the awkward, and the coy: The Graces from the court did next provide Breeding, and wit, and air, and decent pride; These Venus cleansed from every spurious grain Of nice, coquet, affected, pert, and vain: Jove mixed up all, and his best clay employed, Then called the happy composition, Floyd. _On the Gravestone of a Blacksmith, buried in Chester Church-yard._ My sledge and hammer lie reclined, My bellows too have lost their wind; My fire’s extinct, my forge decayed, And in the dust my vice is laid; My coal is spent, my iron’s gone, My nails are drove, my work is done; My fire-dried corpse lies here at rest, My soul, smoke like, is soaring to be blest. _On a Monument intended to be erected for Mr. Rowe, by his Widow._ _Written before Mr. Dryden’s was set up._ BY MR. POPE.