VERSES, WRITTEN FOR THE TOASTING-GLASSES OF THE Dutchess of St. ALBANS. THE line of Vere, so long renown'd in arms, Dutchess of BEAUFORT. Offspring of a tuneful sire, Blest with more than mortal fire; Blest with more than mortal grace; Lady MARY CHURCHILL. [face; Fairest and latest of the beauteous race, Dutchess of RICHMOND. Of two fair Richmonds different ages boast, Lady SUNDERLAND. All Nature's charms in Sunderland appear, Mademoiselle SPANHEIME. Admir'd in Germany, ador'd in France, Which she, accepting with a nice disdain, VERSES BY LORD HALIFAX. Of beauty and desire, In a fair woman's goodly frame No brightness is without a flame, No flame without a fire. Then tell me what those creatures are, That would be thought both chaste and fair? Go ask but thy philosophy What gives her lips the balm, What makes her breasts to heave so high, Ah Cælia, then, be not so nice, For that betrays thy thoughts and thee; ON THE COUNTESS DOWAGER OF COURAGE, dear Moll, and drive away despair. THE LIFE OF PARNELL. BY DR. JOHNSON. THE life of doctor Parnell is a task which I should very willingly decline, since it has been lately written by Goldsmith, a man of such variety of powers, and such felicity of performance, that he always seemed to do best that which he was doing; a man who had the art of being minute without tediousness, and general without confusion; whose language was copious without exuberance, exact without constraint, and easy without weakness. What such an author has told, who would tell again? I have made an abstract from his larger narrative; and have this gratification from my attempt, that it gives me an opportunity of paying due tribute to the memory of Goldsmith. Τὸ γὰρ γέρας ἔσι θανόντων THOMAS PARNELL was the son of a commonwealthsman of the same name, who, at the Restoration, left Congleton in Cheshire, where the family had been established for several centuries, and, settling in Ireland, purchased an estate, which, with his lands in Cheshire, descended to the poet, who was born at Dublin in 1679; and, after the usual education at a grammar-school, was, at the age of thirteen, admitted into the college, where, in 1700, he became master of arts; and was the same year ordained a deacon, though under the canonical age, by a dispensation from the bishop of Derry. About three years afterwards he was made a priest; and in 1705 Dr. Ashe, the bishop of Clogher, conferred upon him the archdeaconry of Cloglier. About the same year he married Mrs. Anne Minchin, an amiable lady, by whom he had two sons, who died young, and a daughter who long survived him. At the ejection of the Whigs, in the end of queen Anne's reign, Parnell was persuaded to change his party, not without much censure from those whom he forsook, and was received by the new ministry as a valuable reinforcement. When the earl of Oxford was told that Dr. Parnell waited among the crowd in the outer room, he went, by the |