[p. 2] Το you 1 TO THE TUNE of, Fair Ladies now at Land. YE Ladies Fair, of Britain's Isles, in Country, Town or Court; That deal in reciprocal Smiles, At places of Resort: Sir R 5 Business lay aside For half a dozen Hours, Leaves Brother C-the H-lm to guide, Soft Beauteous Dames, when Virtue fails, Devested of his Trusty Jack,? Beware of peeping Abigails.1 With a Fal la, la. 7 Slides cross the Park in Curtain'd Hack. 6 When Nation, State, and Great Debate, 35 1 There may be a special allusion to Abigail Hill, one of Queen Anne's dressers, a relation of the Duchess of Marlborough: she became Mrs. Masham, the rival of her kinswoman and introducer. It may refer to waiting-women in general. 2 Sir Robert Walpole, leaving Secretary Craggs to guide the helm. "trusty Jack" be the reckless Jack Hill? Can 3 William Pulteney, afterwards Earl of Bath, 1742. The dotted words are probably "Groom-Chamber'd." This lady is perhaps "the sweet-tongued Murray," who in 1710 had married Alexander Murray (afterwards Sir Alex.), of Stanhope. She is also known by her maiden name, as Grizel Baillie, daughter of Baillie of Jerviswood. Her mother's song "There was ance a may, and she lo'ed na men," is one of the loveliest of the time; prized and quoted, sadly, by Robert Burns, with its burden, "And were na my heart light I should die." She was sufficiently beautiful to inspire a mad passion in the footman Arthur Gray-for yielding to which he was transported. The subject was indelicately chosen by Lady Mary Wortley Montague, for a poem, and by others (if not by her) for a licentious ballad. Lady Mary outraged propriety in her own Eclogues, and when she joined Lord Hervey, 1733, in satirizing Pope. 5 Swift inventories the Furniture of a Woman's Mind, including "A set of phrases learnt by rote, A passion for a scarlet coat." 1 Polly probably represents Lavinia Fenton: whom the Duke of Bolton carried off from the stage, where she was the idol of the audience as Polly Peachum, in the Beggars' Opera, in 1727. When the Duchess died, conveniently, the Duke married his mistress Lavinia, who was as generous and charitable as she had been beautiful. 2 The "Fairest Duchess" of Sunderland: Marlborough's daughter. 3 Colonel Francis Chartres, notorious for profligacy, is represented by Hogarth in his first picture of the Harlot's Progress, in this very year 1730, delightedly watching the procuress ensnaring the innocent maiden who has arrived from the country. He was tried for his life on the charge of rape, the prosecutrix being one Ann Bond, Feb. 25, 1730, and narrowly escaped. Arbuthnot wrote an epitaph on him, with his pen dipped in vitriol, "Here continueth to rot," etc. Also, in this same year, 1730, in "an Excellent New Ballad, or the True English Dean" [of Fernes, Dr. Thos. Sawbridge] he wrote: Ah, dost thou not envy the brave Colonel Chartres, 4 Lady Hervey, the beautiful Mary Lepell, whom everybody loved, except the Duchess of Marlborough. Gay tells of her, beside her future husband : Poor Sappho's Tears are quite dryd up From wealthy L.. Street and M.rk.l.ne For her Departed Spouse, Of Sorrow's and affliction's Cup, Did heartilly Carouse. She tire will the greatest Turk, 18 119 Mark well what I do say; Two wanton Dames of buxom Fame, 20 133 From thence with Ribbons of all Hues, FINIS. [In White-letter: a four-paged 4to. pamphlet. Date, 1730.] Now Hervey, fair of face, I mark full well, With thee, Youth's youngest daughter, sweet Lepell. 140 John, Lord. Hervey, has been gibbeted by Pope as "Lord Fanny," "Sporus, that thing of silk; Sporus, that mere white curd of ass's milk" (alluding to his valetudinarianism and prescribed diet); 1734. We have learnt to take such descriptions cum grano. At the date of our ballad Lord Hervey's health failed and he went to Italy; his wife to France. True affection united them. Voltaire wrote English verses in her praise :— Hervey, would you know the passion That by words can be express'd. In my silence see the Lover; True Love is by silence known; Sir Robert Walpole had courted her, and his son Horace lamented her death, which happened so late as 1768. 1 The Duke of Marlborough died in 1722. The widowed Duchess was still accounted beautiful, and Charles Duke of Somerset proposed marriage to her, but was rejected. He then asked her advice, as to whom he should marry, if he married at all. "Ask Lady Charlotte Finch!" was the reply. He did so, and was accepted. Fame reports that when this second wife once tapped him with her fan, he indignantly rebuked her, saying, "My first Duchess was a Percy, but she never presumed to do as much." Dean Swift wrote verses to another of the "five Finches," "Apollo Outwitted: To the Honble. Mrs. Finch, under her name of Ardelia." Anne became Countess of Winchelsea, of Eastwell Park, Kent. Gay mentions her "still meditating song." 2 Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, whose love of money and of tittle-tattling scandal "nobody can deny." She died in Oct., 1744, aged 84. Allibone says "1660-1774." She would thus have been 114 years old! ་ Colley Cibber's" Dde. "In merry Old England it once was a rule, The King had his Poet, and also his Fool; But now, we're so stupid, I'd have you to know it, That CIBBER can serve both for Fool and for Poet." Variorum Notes to the Dunciad, Bk. i. THAT Colley Cibber did not write the following "Ode for the New Year," although it unblushingly bears his name, requires no demonstration. He possessed many enemies, among the actors and pamphleteers, at whom he laughed in turn. his unfailing Gayeté du Cœur, on which he justly compliments himself in his 66 Apology," he reviewed some of the events that had provoked their envious malignity. A true man-ofthe-world was he, the ingenious author of "Love's Last Shift" (which a French translator unluckily "traduced" into La dernière Chemise d'Amour). He had been successful, and willingly paid the price for having distanced his competitors, in being decried by them, and parodied.' It was a blunder in Alexander Pope to select Cibber as the representative of the Son of Dullness. Scarcely less unhappy had been his earlier choice of Theobald for the post, in 1728. Whatever faults Colley Cibber may have possessed, the town knew that he was certainly no dunce. Nothing written by him can be fairly accounted dull, except his Laureate Odes. Some of these, for Royal Birthdays and New-Years, are in the first and second volumes of The Gentleman's Magazine, 1731-32. On similar verses the ensuing parody is founded. 1 Thus he himself writes, nine years after the occasion, "In the year 1730. there were many Authors whose Merit wanted nothing but Interest to recommend them to the vacant Laurel, and who took it ill, to see it at last conferred upon a Comedian, to shew specimens of their superior Pretensions, and accordingly enliven'd the publick Papers with ingenious Epigrams, and satyrical Flirts, at the unworthy Successor. These Papers, my Friends, with a wicked smile, would often put into my hands, and desire me to read them fairly in Company. This was a challenge which I never declined, and, to do my doughty Antagonists justice, I always read them with as much impartial spirit, as if I had writ them myself." (Apology for the Life of Mr. Colley Cibber, Comedian, written by Himself, 2nd edit. 1740, p. 40.) He gives a specimen of the satirical verses, written against him, printed in the Whitehall Evening-Post in Jan. 1731, ending thus:Thunder, 'tis said, the Laurel spares, Nought but thy Brows could blast it: (Ibid. p. 43.) No wonder is it, that with such easy gaiety he lived to enjoy a happy old age, and died without a struggle or a murmur at 84. A left-handed connexion exists between Buckingham's Rehearsal (see our p. 643) and Pope's Dunciad; their link being Colley Cibber. |