In Numb. 29.  Vol.  I. speaking of the advantages of laughing, he thus mentions D’Urfey.  ’A judicious author, some years since published a collection of Sonnets, which he very successfully called Laugh and be Fat; or Pills to purge Melancholy:  I cannot sufficiently admire the facetious title of these volumes, and must censure the world of ingratitude, while they are so negligent in rewarding the jocose labours of my friend Mr. D’Urfey, who was so large a contributor to this Treatise, and to whose humorous productions, so many rural squires in the remotest parts of this island are obliged, for the dignity and state which corpulency gives them.  It is my opinion, that the above pills would be extremely proper to be taken with Asses milk, and might contribute towards the renewing and restoring decayed lungs.’

Numb. 67.  He thus speaks of his old friend.—­’It has been remarked, by curious observers, that poets are generally long lived, and run beyond the usual age of man, if not cut off by some accident, or excess, as Anacreon, in the midst of a very merry old age, was choaked with a grape stone.  The same redundancy of spirits that produces the poetical flame, keeps up the vital warmth, and administers uncommon fuel to life.  I question not but several instances will occur to my reader’s memory, from Homer down to Mr. Dryden; I shall only take notice of two who have excelled in Lyrics, the one an antient, the other a modern.  The first gained an immortal reputation by celebrating several jockeys in the Olympic Games; the last has signalized himself on the same occasion, by the Ode that begins with——­To horse brave boys, to New-market, to horse.  The reader will by this time know, that the two poets I have mentioned are Pindar, and Mr. D’Urfey.  The former of these is long since laid in his urn, after having many years together endeared himself to all Greece, by his tuneful compositions.  Our countryman is still living, and in a blooming old age, that still promises many musical productions; for if I am not mistaken our British Swan will sing to the last.  The best judges, who have perused his last Song on the moderate Man, do not discover any decay in his parts; but think it deserves a place among the finest of those works, with which he obliged the world in his more early years.

’I am led into this subject, by a visit which I lately received from my good old friend and cotemporary.  As we both flourished together in king Charles the IId’s reign, we diverted ourselves with the remembrance of several particulars that pass’d in the world, before the greatest part of my readers were born; and could not but smile to think how insensibly we were grown into a couple of venerable old gentlemen.  Tom observed to me, that after having written more Odes than Horace, and about four times as many Comedies as Terence; he was reduced to great difficulties, by the importunities of a set of men, who of late years had furnished him with the accommodations of life,