The learned Madame D’Acier in her notes upon Homer contends it should be called Nepenthes.  She gives many reasons why it certainly is that very plant, whose fruits the Egyptian queen recommended to Helen, as a certain cure for pain and grief of all sorts, and which She ever after kept by her as her most precious jewel, and made use of as a Panacaea upon all occasions.

The great Dr. Bentley calls it more than once Machaera Herculis, having proved out of the fragments of a Greek Poet, that of this tree was made that club with which the hero is said to have overcome the fifty wild daughters of Thespius, but which Queen Omphale afterwards reduced to a distaff.  Others have thought the celebrated Hesperian trees were of this sort; and the very name of Poma Veneris, frequently given by Authors to the fruits of this tree, is a sufficient proof these were really the Apples for which three Goddesses contended in so warm a manner, and to which the Queen of beauty had undoubtedly the strongest title.

The vertues are so many, a large volume might be wrote of them.  The juice taken inwardly cures the green-sickness and other infirmities of the like sort, and is a true specific in most disorders of the fair sex.  It indeed often causes tumours in the umbilical region; but even those being really of no ill consequence, disperse of themselves in a few Months.

It chears the heart, and exhilarates the mind, quiets jars, feuds and discontents, making the most churlish tempers surprizingly kind and loving.  Nor have private persons only been the better for this reconciling vertue, but whole states and kingdoms, nay, the greatest empires in the world have often received the benefit of it; the most destructive wars have been ended, and the most friendly treaties been produced, by a right application of this universal medicine among the chief of the contending parties.

If any person is desirous to see this excellent and wonderful plant in good perfection, he may meet with it at the aforementioned Mr Bowen’s garden at Lambeth, who calls it The Silver-Spoon Tree; and is at all times ready to oblige his friends with the sight of it.

THE Ridotto al’ Fresco, A POEM.

  What various Arts attempts the am’rous Swain,
  To force the Fair, or her Consent to gain—­
  Now Balls, now Masquerades his Care employ,
  And Play and Park alternately give Joy—­
  Industrious H——­gg——­r, whose magick Brains
  Still in their Shell the Recipe retains
  Like some good Midwife brings the Plot to light
  And helps the lab’ring Swain to Celia’s Sight;
  For this his Eunuchs in high Buskins tread—­
  And chaunt harmonious Lays for this,—­and Bread;
  For this the Assembly’s fix’d; and the huge Dome
  Swells with the Lady’s Vows, when the Stake’s gone.—­
  For this he forms the vicious Masquerade,
  Where Damsels may securely drive their Trade,
  For which the Salesman, Chandler, Chairmen loudly pray,
  And Pickpockets too, hail the joyful Day—­