But yet her geftures and her lookes (I gele) Not those rude garments could obfcure, and hide, And milke her goates, and in their folds them place, РОМ POMFRET. Ο F Mr. JOHN POMFRET nothing is known but from a flight and confufed account prefixed to his poems by a nameless friend; who relates, that he was the son of the Rev. Mr. Pomfret, rector of Luton in Bedfordshire; that he was bred at Cambridge; entered into orders, and was rector of Malden in Bedfordshire, and might have rifen in the Church; but that, when he applied to Dr. Compton, bishop of London, for inftitution to a living of confiderable value, to which he had been prefented, he found a troublesome obftruction raised by a malicious interpretation of fome paffage in his Choice; from which it was inferred, that he confidered happiness as more likely to be found in the company of a mistress than of a wife †. This * He was of Queen's College there, and, by the University regifter, appears to have taken his Bachelor's degree in 1684, and his Mafter's in 1698. The paffage here meant, is the following: And as I near approach'd the verge of life, Should This reproach was eafily obliterated for it had hap pened to Pomfret as to all other men who plan schemes of life; he had departed from his purpose, and was then married. The malice of his enemies had however a very fatal confequence the delay conftrained his attendance in London, where he caught the finall-pox, and died in 1703, in the thirty-fixth year of his age. He publifhed his poems in 1699; and has been always the favourite of that clafs of readers, who, without vanity or criticifm, feek only their own amusement. His Choice exhibits a fyftem of life adapted to common notions, and equal to common expectations; fuch a flate as affords plenty and tranquillity, without exclution of intellectual pleafures. Perhaps no compofition in our language has been oftener perused than Pomfret's Choice. Should take upon him all my worldly care, * If my memory does not greatly miflead me, in the earlier edi tions the laft line but one above-cited stood thus: Should take upon ber all my worldly care. This has been frequently mentioned as the only paffage in the peem that could obftruct his inftitution, and the interpretation thereof is here, as elfowhere, ftigmatifed as malicious, and the rather, for that at the time of his application to the bishop he was married; a circumftance that revokes the fentiment no otherwise than by fhewing that the author had changed his opinion. 46 But the preceding part of the poem contains a wifh to have near him an "obliging fair one to converte with, conftant to herself and to him, whole converfation fhould infpire him with new joys, and “who fhould be faid, even by envy, to go the leaft of womankind "aftray." The lines are too filly to be worth inferting, but, if not rapable of a bad construction, they must be owned to be at least anbiguous. In his other poems there is an eafy volubility; the pleasure of fmooth metre is afforded to the ear, and the mind is not oppreffed with ponderous or entangled with intricate fentiment. He pleafes many, and he who pleases many must have some fpecies of merit. *Whoever will be at the pains of comparing the most admired of Pomfret's poems, his Choice, with Dr. Pope's With, will be convinced how much the manly fenfe of the latter outweighs the puerile inanity of the former, Of Pomfret's Poems, few have eyet been reiders but the illiterate, and fuch as are delighted with trite fentiments and vulgar imagery; and as these are the most numerous of those that can read at all, it is no wonder that by fuch they have been often perufed. DORSE T F the Earl of Dorfet the character has been drawn OF fo largely and fo elegantly by Prior, to whom he was familiarly known, that nothing can be added by a cafual hand; and, as its author is fo generally read, it would be ufelefs officioufnefs to transcribe it. Charles Sackville was born January 24, 1637. Having been educated under a private tutor, he travelled into Italy, and returned a little before the Reftoration. He was chofen into the first parliament that was called, for Eaft Grinstead in Suffex, and foon became a favourite of Charles the Second; but undertook no publick employment, being too eager of the riotous and licentious pleafures which young men of high rank, who afpired to be thought wits, at that time imagined themfelves intitled to indulge. One of these frolicks has, by the industry of Wood, come down to pofterity. Sackville, who was then Lord Buckhurst, with Sir Charles Sedley and Sir Thomas Ogle, got drunk at the Cock in Bow-street by Covent garden, and, going into the balcony, expofed |