[Footnote A:  These two lines are taken from Dryden, who addressed them to Congreve, when he recommended to him the care of his works.]

* * * * *

Colonel Codrington,

This gentleman was of the first rank of wit and gallantry.  He received his education at All Souls College in the university of Oxford, to which he left a donation of 30,000 l. by his will, part of which was to be appropriated for building a new library[A].  He was many years governour of the Leeward Islands, where he died, but was buried at Oxford.  He is mentioned here, on account of some small pieces of poetry, which he wrote with much elegance and politeness.  Amongst these pieces is an epilogue to Mr. Southern’s tragedy called The Fate of Capua, in which are the following verses;

  Wives still are wives, and he that will be billing,
  Must not think cuckoldom deserves a killing. 
  What if the gentle creature had been kissing,
  Nothing the good man married for was missing. 
  Had he the secret of her birth-right known,
  ’Tis odds the faithful Annals would have shewn
  The wives of half his race more lucky than his own.

[Footnote A:  Jacob.]

* * * * *

EDWARD WARD,

A man of low extraction, and who never received any regular education.  He was an imitator of the famous Butler, and wrote his Reformation, a poem, with an aim at the same kind of humour which has so remarkably distinguished Hudibras.  ’Of late years, says Mr. Jacob, he has kept a public house in the city, but in a genteel way.’  Ward was, in his own droll manner, a violent antagonist to the Low Church Whigs and in consequence, of this, drew to his house such people as had a mind to indulge their spleen against the government, by retailing little stories of treason.  He was thought to be a man of strong natural parts, and possessed a very agreeable pleasantry of temper.  Ward was much affronted when he read Mr. Jacob’s account, in which he mentions his keeping a public house in the city, and in a book called Apollo’s Maggot, declared this account to be a great falsity, protesting that his public house was not in the City, but in Moorfields[A].

The chief of this author’s pieces are,

Hudibras Redivivus, a political Poem.

Don Quixote, translated into Hudibrastic Verse.

Ecclesiae & Fastio, a Dialogue between Bow-steeple Dragon, and the Exchange Grasshopper.  A Ramble through the Heavens, or The Revels of the Gods.

The Cavalcade, a Poem.

Marriage Dialogues, or A Poetical Peep into the State of Matrimony.

A Trip to Jamaica.

The Sots Paradise, or The Humours of a Derby Alehouse.

A Battle without Bloodshed, or Military Discipline Buffoon’d.

All Men Mad, or England a Great Bedlam, 4to. 1704.