d th' inclement air
Persuades men to repel benumbing frosts
With pleasant wines, and crackling blaze of wood;
Me, lonely sitting, nor the glimmering light
Of make-weight candle, nor the joyous talk
Of loving friend delights; distressed, forlorn,
Amidst the horrors of the tedious night,
Darkling I sigh, and feed with dismal thoughts
My anxious mind; or sometimes mournful verse
Indite, and sing of groves and myrtle shades,
Or desperate lady near a purling stream,
Or lover pendent on a willow tree.
Meanwhile I labour with eternal drought
And restless wish, and rave; my parched throat
Finds no relief, nor heavy eyes repose.
But if a slumber haply does invade
My weary limbs, my fancy still awake,
Thoughtful of drink, and eager, in a dream
Tipples imaginary pots of ale
In vain; awake I find the settled thirst
Still gnawing, and the pleasant phantom curse.'

'Philips,' says the poet Campbell, 'had the merit of studying and
admiring Milton, but he never could imitate him without ludicrous
effect, either in jest or earnest. His _Splendid Shilling_ is the
earliest and one of the best of our parodies; but _Blenheim_ is as
completely a burlesque upon Milton as _The Splendid Shilling_, though it
was written and read with gravity, ... yet such are the fluctuations of
taste that contemporary criticism bowed with solemn admiration over his
Miltonic cadences.'

[Sidenote: Nicholas Rowe (1673-1718).]

Nicholas Rowe had the honour, if it was one in those days, of being made
Laureate on the accession of George I. His odes, epistles, and songs are
without merit, but he gained reputation as the translator of Lucan's
_Pharsalia_, of which Sir Arthur Gorges had produced a version in 1614,
and his plays entitle him to a place, though not a high one, in our
dramatic literature.

Rowe edited an edition of Shakespeare, and should have known his author,
yet in a prologue he declares that he could not draw women--an amazing
assertion echoed by Collins, who praises Fletcher for his knowledge of
the 'female mind,' and adds that 'stronger Shakespeare felt for man
alone.'

The chronological list of Rowe's dramas runs as follows: _The Ambitious
Step-mother_ (1700); _Tamerlane_ (1702); _The Fair Penitent_ (1703);
_Ulysses_ (1705); _The Royal Convert_ (1707); the _Tragedy of Jane
Shore_ (1714); and the _Tragedy of Lady Jane Grey_ (1715). Measured by
his contemporar