sense! 
  The fairer soil gives them the nobler hue
      Her breath perfumes them too: 
  Rooted i’ th’ heart they seem to spring from thence,
  Tell, tell me why, thou fruitful virgin breast,
  Why should so good a soil lie unpossest?

Brown’s humour partook of the coarseness of most of the writers of his times, and scandalized the more religious and decent muse of Sir Richard Blackmore, who endeavoured to correct this general failing in his “Satire upon Wit.”  This called forth many sarcastic replies, and critiques on Blackmore’s works; such as Brown’s “Epigram occasioned by the news that Sir R——­d B——­e’s paraphrase upon Job was in the Press—­”

  “When Job contending with the devil I saw
   It did my wonder, not my pity draw;
   For I concluded that without some trick,
   A saint at any time could match old Nick. 
   Next came a fiercer fiend upon his back,
   I mean his spouse, stunning him with her clack,
   But still I could not pity him, as knowing
   A crab tree cudgel soon would send her going. 
   But when the quack engaged with Job I spy’d,
   The Lord have mercy on poor Job I cry’d. 
   What spouse and Satan did attempt in vain
   The quack will compass with his murdering pen,
   And on a dunghill leave poor Job again,
   With impious doggrel he’ll pollute his theme,
   And make the saint against his will blaspheme.”

Upon the knighting of Sir R——­d B——­e.

  “Be not puffed up with knighthood, friend of mine,
   A merry prince once knighted a Sir-loin,
   And if to make comparisons were safe
   An ox deserves it better then a calf. 
   Thy pride and state I value not a rush
   Thou that art now Knight Phyz, wast once King Ush.”

Blackmore, who was successively physician to William III. and Queen Anne, had been once a schoolmaster.

Tom Brown died at the early age of forty.  His life was full of misfortunes, but we can scarcely say that he was unhappy, for nothing could conquer his buoyant spirit.  At one time he was actually in prison, for what was deemed a libellous attack, but we are told that he obtained his “enlargement” from it, upon his writing the following Pindaric Petition to the Lords in Council.

“Should you order Tho’ Brown
To be whipped thro’ the town
For scurvy lampoon,
Grave Southern and Crown
Their pens wou’d lay down;
Even D’Urfey himself, and such merry fellows
That put their whole trust in tunes and trangdillioes
May hang up their harps and themselves on the willows;
For if poets are punished for libelling trash
John Dryden, tho’ sixty, may yet fear the lash. 
No pension, no praise,
Much birch without bays,
These are not right ways
Our fancy to raise,
To the writing of plays
And prologues so witty
That jirk at the city,
And now and then hit
Some spark in the pit,