Not that their pleasures caused her discontent,
She sighed not that they stayed, but that she went.'
She went to plain-work, and to purling brooks,
Old-fashioned halls, dull aunts, and croaking rooks;
She went from Opera, Park, Assembly, Play,
To morning walks, and prayers three hours a day;
To part her time 'twixt reading and bohea,
To muse, and spill her solitary tea,

Or o'er cold coffee trifle with the spoon,
Count the slow clock, and dine exact at noon;
Divert her eyes with pictures in the fire,
Hum half a tune, tell stories to the squire;
Up to her godly garret after seven,

There starve and pray, for that's the way to Heaven.
Some squire, perhaps, you take delight to rack,
Whose game is whisk,' whose treat a toast in sack;
Who visits with a gun, presents you birds,

Then gives a smacking buss, and cries-No words!
Or with his hounds comes hallooing from the stable,
Makes love with nods and knees beneath a table;
Whose laughs are hearty, though his jests are coarse,
And loves you best of all things-but his horse.

In some fair evening, on your elbow laid,
You dream of triumphs in the rural shade;
In pensive thought recall the fancied scene,
See coronations rise on every green ;
Before you pass the imaginary sights

Of lords, and earls, and dukes, and gartered knights,
While the spread fan o'ershades your closing eyes;

Then give one flirt, and all the vision flies.
Thus vanish sceptres, coronets, and balls,
And leave you in lone woods or empty walls.

1 Martha Blount seems to have borne the disappointment better than Teresa. Pope says to her in one of his letters: "That face must needs

be irresistible, which was adorned with smiles, even when it could not see the Coronation."

2 Whisk, i.e., of course, whist.

So when your slave, at some dear idle time,

(Not plagued with head-aches, or the want of rhyme,)
Stands in the streets, abstracted from the crew,
And while he seems to study, thinks of you;
Just when his fancy points your sprightly eyes,
Or sees the blush of soft Parthenia rise,'
Gay' pats my shoulder, and you vanish quite,
Streets, chairs, and coxcombs rush upon my sight;
Vex'd to be still in town, I knit my brow,
Look sour, and hum a tune, as you may now.

In the original it is "the blush of Parthenissa," which was the fanciful designation of Martha Blount in the correspondence of the sisters with James Moore.-CARRUTHERS. The first edition has also "the blush

of Parthenissa." Martha Blount is spoken of under this name by Lord Chesterfield in one of his letters from Bath to Lady Suffolk. See Suffolk Correspondence, vol. ii. 84.

2 In the first edition: "G-y."

EPISTLE TO DR. ARBUTHNOT,

BEING THE

PROLOGUE TO THE SATIRES.