to see themselves humanised by some sort of fellowship with their kind.  Indeed, it may be said that the moral of the piece is to shew the vulgarity of vice; or that the same violations of integrity and decorum, the same habitual sophistry in palliating their want of principle, are common to the great and powerful, with the meanest and most contemptible of the species.  What can be more convincing than the arguments used by these would-be politicians, to shew that in hypocrisy, selfishness, and treachery, they do not come up to many of their betters?  The exclamation of Mrs. Peachum, when her daughter marries Macheath, “Hussy, hussy, you will be as ill used, and as much neglected, as if you had married a lord,” is worth all Miss Hannah More’s laboured invectives on the laxity of the manners of high life!

I shall conclude this account of Gay with his verses on Sir Richard Blackmore, which may serve at once as a specimen of his own manner, and as a character of a voluminous contemporary poet, who was admired by Mr. Locke, and knighted by King William III.

        “See who ne’er was nor will be half-read,
      Who first sung Arthur, then sung Alfred;
      Praised great Eliza in God’s anger,
      Till all true Englishmen cried, ’Hang her!’—­
      Maul’d human wit in one thick satire;
      Next in three books spoil’d human nature: 
      Undid Creation at a jerk,
      And of Redemption made damn’d work. 
      Then took his Muse at once, and dipt her
      Full in the middle of the Scripture. 
      What wonders there the man, grown old, did? 
      Sternhold himself he out Sternholded. 
      Made David seem so mad and freakish,
      All thought him just what thought King Achish. 
      No mortal read his Solomon
      But judg’d Re’boam his own son. 
      Moses he serv’d as Moses Pharaoh,
      And Deborah as she Siserah,
      Made Jeremy full sore to cry,
      And Job himself curse God and die. 
      What punishment all this must follow? 
      Shall Arthur use him like King Tollo? 
      Shall David as Uriah slay him? 
      Or dextrous Deborah Siserah him? 
      No!—­none of these!  Heaven spare his life! 
      But send him, honest Job, thy wife!”

Gay’s Trivia, or Art of Walking the Streets, is as pleasant as walking the streets must have been at the time when it was written.  His ballad of Black Eyed Susan is one of the most delightful that can be imagined; nor do I see that it is a bit the worse for Mr. Jekyll’s parody on it.