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,
So hard and so pat
Till he hides with his hat
His monstrous cravat.
The pulpit alone
Can never preach down
The fops of the town
Then pardon Tho' Brown
And let him write on;
But if you had rather convert the poor sinner
His foul writing mouth may be stopped with a dinner.
Give him clothes to his back, some meat and some drink
Then clap him close prisoner without pen and ink
And your petitioner shall neither pray, write, or think."

Unfortunately his pecuniary difficulties were not removed, but
accompanied him through life. What a strange mixture of gaiety, learning
and destitution is brought before us, when on a clamorons dun vowing she
would not leave him until she had her money, he exclaimed in an
extempore version of two lines of Martial--

"Sextus, thou nothing ow'st, nothing I say!
He something owe