m that which they very much wanted, viz. money, he
shews Welsted as unsuccessful.

But Welsted most the poet's healing balm,
Strives to extract from his soft giving palm;
Unlucky Welsted! thy unfeeling master,
The more thou ticklest, gripes his fist the faster.

Mr. Welsted was likewise characterised in the Treatise of the Art of
Sinking, as a Didapper, and after as an Eel. He was likewise described
under the character of another animal, a Mole, by the author of the
following simile, which was handed about at the same time.

Dear Welsted, mark in dirty hole
That painful animal a Mole:
Above ground never born to go,
What mighty stir it keeps below?
To make a molehill all this strife!
It digs, pukes, undermines for life.
How proud a little dirt to spread!
Conscious of nothing o'er its head.
'Till lab'ring on, for want of eyes,
It blunders into light--and dies.

But mentioning him once was not enough for Mr. Pope. He is again
celebrated in the third book, in that famous Parody upon Benham's
Cooper's Hill,

O could I flow like thee, and make thy stream
My great example, as it is my theme;
Tho' deep, yet clear; tho' gentle, yet not dull;
Strong without rage; without o'er flowing full.

Denham.

Which Mr. Pope has thus parodied;

Flow Welsted, flow; like thine inspirer, beer,
Tho' stale, not ripe; tho' thin, yet never clear;
So sweetly mawkish, and so smoothly dull;
Heady, not strong; and foaming, tho' not full.

How far Mr. Pope's insinuation is true, that Mr. Welsted owed his
inspiration to beer, they who read his works may determine for
themselves. Poets who write satire often strain hard for ridiculous
circumstances, in order to expose their antagonists, and it will be
no violence to truth to say, that in search of ridicule, candour is
frequently lost.

In the year 1726 Mr. Welsted brought upon the stage a comedy called
The Dissembled Wantons or My Son get Money. He met with the patronage
of the duke of Newcastle, who was a great encourager of polite
learning; and we find that our author had a very competent place in
the Ordnance-Office.

His poetical works are chiefly these,

The Duke of Marlborough's Arrival, a Poem printed in fol. 1709,
inscribed to the Right Hon the Earl of Dorset and Middlesex.

A Poem to the Memory of Mr. Philips, inscribed to Lord Bolingbroke,
printed in fol. 1710.

A Discourse to the Right Hon. Sir Robert Walpole; to which