1.

  Mat.  Prior!—­(and we must submit)
    Is at his journey’s end;
  In whom the world has lost a wit,
    And I, what’s more, a friend.

  2.

  Who vainly hopes long here to stay,
    May see with weeping eyes;
  Not only nature posts away,
    But e’en good nature dies!
  3.

  Should grave ones count these praises light,
    To such it may be said: 
  A man, in this lamented wight,
    Of business too is dead.

  4.

  From ancestors, as might a fool! 
    He trac’d no high-fetch’d stem;
  But gloriously revers’d the rule,
    By dignifying them.

  5.

  O! gentle Cambridge! sadly say,
    Why fates are so unkind
  To snatch thy giant sons away,
    Whilst pigmies stay behind?

  6.

  Horace and he were call’d, in haste,
    From this vile earth to heav’n;
  The cruel year not fully past,
    AEtatis, fifty seven.

  7.

  So, on the tops of Lebanon,
    Tall cedars felt the sword,
  To grace, by care of Solomon,
    The temple of the Lord.

  8.

  A tomb amidst the learned may
    The western abbey give! 
  Like theirs, his ashes must decay,
    Like theirs, his fame shall live.
  9.

  Close, carver, by some well cut books,
    Let a thin busto tell,
  In spite of plump and pamper’d looks,
    How scantly sense can dwell!

  10.

  No epitaph of tedious length
    Should overcharge the stone;
  Since loftiest verse would lose its strength,
    In mentioning his own.

  11.

  At once! and not verbosely tame,
    Some brave Laconic pen
  Should smartly touch his ample name,
    In form of—­O rare Ben!

* * * * *

Mrs. Susanna Centlivre,

This lady was daughter of one Mr. Freeman, of Holbeack in Lincolnshire.  There was formerly an estate in the family of her father, but being a Dissenter, and a zealous parliamentarian, he was so very much persecuted at the restoration, that he was laid under a necessity to fly into Ireland, and his estate was confiscated; nor was the family of our authoress’s mother free from the severity of those times, they being likewise parliamentarians.  Her education was in the country, and her father dying when she was but three years of age, and her mother not living ’till she was twelve, the improvements our poetess made were merely by her own industry and application.  She was married before the age of fifteen, to a nephew of Sir Stephen Fox.  This gentleman living with her but a year, she afterwards married Mr. Carrol, an officer in the army, and survived him likewise in the space of a year and a half.  She afterwards married Mr. Joseph Centlivre, yeoman of the mouth to his late Majesty.  She gave early discoveries