ft his nature, tho severe his lay,
His anger moral, and his wisdom gay.
Blest satyrist, who touch'd the mean so true,
As shew'd vice had his hate and pity too.
Blest courtier! who could King and Country please,
Yet sacred keep his friendship, and his ease.
Blest peer! his great forefathers ev'ry grace
Reflecting, and reflected in his race;
Where other Buckhursts, other Dorsets thine.
And patriots still, or poets deck the line

[Footnote 1: History of his own times; p. 264.]

[Footnote 2: Collin's Peerage, p. 575. vol. I.]

[Footnote 3: Burnet's Hist. of his own times.]

* * * * *

Mr. GEORGE FARQUHAR

Was descended of a Family of no mean rank in the North of Ireland; we
have been informed that his father was dean of Armagh, but we have not
met with a proper confirmation of this circumstance; but it is on
all hands agreed, that he was the son of a clergyman, and born at
London-Derry in that kingdom, in the year 1678, as appears from Sir
James Ware's account of him. There he received the rudiments of
education, and discovered a genius early devoted to the Muses; Before he
was ten years of age he gave specimens of his poetry, in which, force of
thinking, and elegance of turn and expression are manifest; and if
the author, who has wrote Memoirs of his life, may be credited, the
following stanza's were written by him at that age,

The pliant soul of erring youth,
Is like soft wax, or moisten'd clay;
Apt to receive all heavenly truth
Or yield to tyrant ill the sway.

Slight folly in your early years,
At manhood may to virtue rise;
But he who in his youth appears
A fool, in age will ne'er be wise.

His parents, it is said, had a numerous family, so could bestow no
fortune upon him, further than a genteel education. When he was
qualified for the university, he was, in 1694, sent to Trinity College
in Dublin: here, by the progress he made in his studies, he acquired a
considerable reputation[1], but it does not appear, that he there took
his degree of bachelor of arts; for his disposition being volatile and
giddy, he soon grew weary of a dull collegiate life; and his own opinion
of it, in that sense, he afterwards freely enough displayed in several
parts of his comedies, and other writings. Besides, the expence of it,
without any immediate prospect of returns, might be inconsistent with
his circumstances. The polite entertainments of the