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In beauty's prime, and fadden'd all the year:

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Nor could her virtues, nor repeated vows

reign, afterwards Secretary of State and Viscount Bolingbroke, the particular friend and patron of our Author, married for his first wife, in the year 1700, Frances, fifter to the lady mentioned in the preceding note, and co-heirefs of Sir Henry Winchcomb. Philips pays her fome elegant compliments, in his beautiful and moft claffical ODE to Mr. St. John, written in return for a present of wine and tobacco.

-Quin precor Optima

Ut ufque Conjux fopitetur
Perpetus recreans amore
Te confulentem Militiæ fuper

Rebus Togatum. Macte! Tori decus
Formofa cui FRANCISCA ceffit

Crine placens, niveoque Collo;

Quam Gratiarum cura Decentium
Ornat; labellis cui Venus infidet.
Tu forte felix.-

The tranflation of this part of the Ode, in the version published with Philips's works, is too diffuse to give the English reader any idea of the original. Another attempt is therefore offered.

Health too I wish that peerless fair
Whofe fond affection foothes your care,
While worn with toils of ftate you prove
The healing balm of tend'reft love.
O be my friend thus ever bleft,
Of his lov'd FANNY's charms poffeft,
Adown whofe neck of pureft fnow
Luxuriant treffes wildly flow,

While virtue, with the graces join'd,
Pours its rich luftre o'er her mind,
Propriety her actions guides,

And on her lips ev'n Venus' self abides!
What bleffings fate on thee has shed,
While fuch the partner of thy bed!.

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Our Poet was probably indebted to Horace's JUNCTE NYMPHIS GRATIE DECENTES. Ode iv. L. 1. for his GRATIARUM CURA DECENTIUM; or it might have been suggested by the following moft beautiful paffage, in the eighth book of the PARADISE LOST, where Adam, fpeaking of the motives of his affection for Eve, mentions

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Thofe thousand DECENCIES that daily flow

From all her words and actions, mix'd with love
And fweet compliance.

Dr.

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Of thousand lovers, the relentless hand
Of Death arreft; fhe with the vulgar fell,
Only distinguish'd by this humble verse.

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165

But, if it please the Sun's intemp'rate force To know, attend; whilft I of ancient fame The annals trace, and image to thy mind, How our forefathers (lucklefs men!) ingulf'd 170 By the wide-yawning earth, to Stygian shades Went quick, in one fad fepulchre enclos'd.

In elder days, ere yet the Roman bands, Victorious, this our other world subdu'd, A fpacious city ftood, with firmeft walls Sure mounded, and with num'rous turrets crown'd, Aërial fpires, and citadels, the feat

175

Dr. Johnson, in his life of Philips, where he mentions this Ode, fuggefts the reading ORNAT, in the laft line but one of the paffage cited above, inftead of O! O! as it is in most of the printed copies, and as he believed it to have stood in all; adding, that "he thought it most probable Philips wrote ORNAT," This conjecture is established by copy in the third volume of the MUSE ANGLICANE, printed at the Clarendon Press in 1717, where it is written as above cited.

the

174. Our other world.]

Britain was quite unknown to the Romans until the conqueft of Gaul by Julius Cæfar; at which time, it appears, the Britons were little known, even to their neighbours on the oppofite coaft, as Cæfar could procure but little information refpecting them from thence. It was at first, therefore, called by the Romans the other, or new discovered, world. Paterculus L. ii. C. 46, fpeaking of Cæfar's expedition against Britain, fays, "In Britanniam transjeciffet exercitum, ALTERUM PANE imperio "noftro ac fuo quærens OR BEM.

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So Claudian, CONS. STIL. L. iii. V. 149,

Vincendos ALIQ quæfivit in OR BE Britannos.

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Of kings, and heroes refolute in war,

Fam'd Ariconium; uncontrol'd, and free,
Till all-fubduing Latian arms prevail'd.
Then also, tho' to foreign yoke submiss,
She undemolifh'd ftood, and ev'n till now
Perhaps had ftood, of ancient British art
A pleafing monument, not lefs admir'd

180

Of kings

the feat -]

178.

A certain tract of land, which lies towards the eastern part of Herefordshire, and which is called the Irchinfield, or Archenfield, is faid to have been governed by kings of its own. How far the Archenfield extended has been much questioned by Antiquaries, fome of whom have fuppofed it to comprehend the greater part of Herefordshire. Camden derives the name of Archenfield from Ariconium; we might therefore fuppofe the whole county to have been fo called from its principal city, and to have formed one of those small British kingdoms into which our ifland was once divided.We can, however, have little doubt that Philips made Ariconium "the feat of kings," from the tradition of Kings of Irchinfield.

179. Fam'd Ariconium.]

Although Ariconium has generally been fuppofed, by Camden and other learned antiquaries, to have been fituated at Kenchefter, upon the banks of the Wye, four miles above Hereford; yet what Mr. Horsley has fuggefted, from an accurate examination of the diftances of the country applied to Antoninus's Itinerary, that Kenchester was the Magna, or Magna Caftra, of the Romans, has been much confirmed by later enquiries. (See Horfley's BRITANNIA ROMANA.)

By the fame mode of inveftigation Mr. Horfley was alfo led to fuppofe that Ariconium must have stood fomewhere near Rofs; accordingly fome Antiquaries have inclined to place it at, or near, Walford in that neighbourhood. But a more probable fite, and one which exactly anfwers the diftances fpecified in the Itinerary, has lately been difcovered at Bolitree, in the parish of Wefton under Penyard, the adjoining parish to Rofs, where, for a very confiderable space, the ground is fingularly difcoloured, being of a dark or blackish colour, very different from the natural foil, which inclines to a dusky red. Fibula, Images, and other Roman Antiquities, dug up, and fometimes antient British Coins.. lor's map of Herefordshire, is named Rose, and ftation.

Here Roman Coins, have been frequently -The place, in Tayis marked as a Roman

Than

razen enginry, that ceaseless storm

89.

Sirius parch'd with heat

Solftitial the green berb-]

Thus Virgil, GEORG. iv. 425.

Jam rapidus torrens fitientes Sirios Indos
Ardebat cœlo; et medium foligneus orbem
Hauferat; arebant herbæ-

Now rabid Sirius fcorch'd the gasping plains,
And burn'd intense the panting Indian fwains;
In his mid course the fun all fiery food,
Parch'd was the grass-

191.

Tartarean dregs,

Sulphur and nitrous fpume·

Thefe combuftibles are collected from Milton.
TARTAREAN SULPHUR and strange fire.

Deep under-ground materials dark and crude,
Of fpiritous and fiery SPUME

In a moment up they turn'd

Wide the celeftial foil, and faw beneath

Th' originals of nature in their crude

WARTON,

P. L. ii. 69.

P. L. vi. 478.

Conceptions; SULPHUROUS AND NITROUS foam

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P. L. vi. 519.

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The bastion of a well-built city, deem'd
Impregnable: th' infernal winds, till now
Clofely imprifon'd, by Titanian warmth
Dilating, and with unctuous vapours fed,

Difdain'd their narrow cells, and, their full ftrength Collecting, from beneath the folid mass

Upheav'd, and all her castles, rooted deep,

201

Shook from their lowest feat: old Vaga's ftream, Forc'd by the fudden shock, her wonted track Forfook, and drew her humid train aflope,

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Crankling her banks: and now the low'ring sky,

The baftion of a well-built city, deem'd
Impregnable- -]

Compare Milton, P. L. ii. 920.

Nor was his ear lefs peal'd

With noifes loud and ruinous (to compare

Great things with fmall) than when Bellona ftorms,

With all her batt'ring engines bent to raze,

Some capital city

197. Th' infernal winds, till now

Clofely imprifon'd, by Titanian warmth

Dilating, and with unctuous vapours fed,

Difdain'd their narrow cells.]

Our Author fuppofes, according to the Theory of his time, that earthquakes were caufed by the fudden explofion of vapours confined within the bowels of the earth.

UNCTUOUS VAPOUR is from Milton, P. L. ix. 624.

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Forc'd by the fudden fhock, her wanted track
Forfook, and drew her humid train aflope,
Crankling her banks- -]

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The river Wye, or Gwye, has its fource in the Plinlimmon mountain in North Wales, from whence, having divided Breconshire and Radnorfhire, it paffes through Herefordshire, and, again feparating Monmouthshire from Gloucestershire, falls into the Severn Sea below Chepftow, having adorned a rich variety of picturefque fcenes. "Its banks,' fays the late Mr. Gray, in a fort of poetical rapture, "exhibit a fuc

" ceffion

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