Dear Kenyon, move a moral bill,
Founded on woman's claims-free will,
That fympathetic dames

On genial rites their thoughts may turn,
And throbbing hearts no longer mourn,
But melt in mutual flames.

Good David Hume, and fage Fontaine *,
Philofophize ideal pain,

And balm a cuckold's fmart;

As bounteous wives bestow a blifs
The fondeft ipoufe can never mifs,

Why fhould it grieve his heart?
Thus Sparta rofe on reafon's plan ;"
No jealous freaks chagrin'd the man,
No fpoufe gallants could fue;
Our barb'rous code, mild Lloyd, refine,
Though you a Rhadamanthus fhine,
Revive Lycurgus + too.

LADY FOLLY'S ROUT AND MASQUERADE

WERE laft night diftinguished by an affemblage of company, the moft fplendid that has this year been brought together at any fashionable rendezvous

at the court end of the town.

The lady of the house prefided with admirable spirit and addrefs over the amufements of the evening! Her drefs was prettily fantaftic, and charmingly tranf

* Inftances of license daily multiplying, will weaken the feanda with one fex, and teach the other, by degrees, to adopt the famous maxim of La Fontaine, with regard to female infidelity. "Quand on le fçait, c'eft peu de chofe: quand on l'ignore, ce n'eft rich.' Hume's Effays, vol. i. p. 230.

t." When he had thus eftablifhed a proper regard to modefty and decorum with refpect to marriage, he was equally ftudious to drive from that ftate the vain and womanish paffion of jealousy, by making it quite as reputable to have children in common with perfons of merit, as to avoid all offenfive freedom in their own behaviour to their wives."-Plutarch's Life of Lycurgus.

.parent

parent and loofe. There was a freedom and a gaiety, fomewhat between artleffnefs and affectation, in her manners, which encouraged the unbounded good-humour of her guefts. Though not in a mafk, the affumed, at times, the action of many different characters. Every gay eccentricity of drefs, every enlivening boldness and ambiguity of language, every fantaflic levity of movement, every free convivial indulgence, met her approving fmile.

Among the mafks, there was none more diftinguifhed than the Hon. Mrs. Fathion. She affumed, fucceffively, in the courfe of the evening, a variety of characters. She was now a dafhing young woman of quality, juft accoutred for a morning ride in Hyde Park; now a dowager, fat, fair, and forty, opening her rout, or betting deep at the gaming-table; now a milliner exhibiting new dreffes to a mob of pretty women; and now, in the very guife of Signora Vinci, with beau Peers fimpering round her, and contending to fhare her fmiles. She affumed, in the latter part of the evening, the drefs of a beauifh horfe-jockey.— Some faid he looked in this drefs, not unlike to Sir H-V-T~~. Others thought her appearance more like to that of Mr. B-r Drs. The beft adges, however, declared her to refemble neither the ne nor the other. In frolic, fhe put on for a moent, the drefs and afpect of his Grace of Picca"ly; but the no fooner fhewed herself in them, than the fpir company affirmed, with one voice, they did not the wit her. So fhe retired, and changed them for the faceguife of a young foldier of rank, juft arrived from Egypt, with a patch on his cheek, and his arm in a fling.

*

of wine

Vice fat for a while, as a gambler, at the first cardtable. She concealed cards from time to time in her fleeve; overlooked her companion's game; betted with unexampled boldness; writhed her features, and muttered

3

muttered curfes as fhe loft: then, after lofing all her ready money, and staking her credit as far as it would go, threw down her cards in a rage, and flung away, to put on the guife of fome different character. She returned in the guife of Wantonnefs, and caft looks of eager allurement efpecially on all the married men in the room. At laft fhe was fuddenly miffed. And one faid this Marquis, another faid that Viscount, and a third faid a little goatish Baronet had been feen to go off with her.

Mifs Scandal's prefence greatly enlivened the party. She wore a train fantaftically made of newfpapers fresh from the prefs. She was diftinguifhed by a rare volubility of fpeech. She fometimes tripped about from table to table, and whispered fomething into every ear, as the paffed on. Sometimes the fpoke loudly and openly, with a wit which gave a charm to malignity, in abufe of the perfons fhe wifhed to defame.

Affectation was there, in a drefs in which the most remarkable novelties of the fashions of Paris and London were fantastically united. From her feathers to her toe, there was not about her an article of drefs, an attitude or feature, but with powerful expreffion befpoke her character.

Divorce came in, out of humour, and complained, that, in fpite of all the pains of her gay mother, Crim.. Con. he was hooted away in difgrace from courts both fpiritual and temporal, nor in cither Houfe of Parliament could find other than a moft ungracious reception.

Oracle, June 19.

LAW v. JEKYLL.

[From the True Briton.]

JOE Jekyll has plenty of wit cut and dried;
Now he pertly difplays it, now lays it aside:

Like

Like the ale-wife's new cap that the bought at the fair,
'Tis too fire to be fullied with ev'ry day's wear.
This fame holyday wit, which oft iparkles and blazes,
With his periwig oft'ner lock'd up in a cafe is;
And there, as no helyday 't was and no high day,
This great lawyer unluckily left it on Friday *:
So his cronies concluded, when little Joe Jekyll
Ravd of fcriptural hathes, and prophet Ezekiel † ;
But when "Maidstone" efcap'd him, whate'er fuccedaneum
For wit he might boaft, there was none in his cranium:
Yet, though wit he fhew'd none, 't was a compliment kind
To his friends of the Shakspeare to put us in mind
Of the scene where they took fo much pains, upon oath,
To prove themselves traitors, or blockheads, or both.
Then he chatter'd away, fpite of reafon and rules,
About minifters' guilt, ay and minifters' tools-
"But foft," cried Sir Edward ‡ : a truce with your
fcandal !

Prigs prate about tools they 're unable to handle:

If

you take us for tools, I would have you to know

You fall ferve us, at leaft, for a whetstone, friend
Joe §!"

Then he took him in hand, and with sarcasm and gibe,
In abundance regal'd little Joe and his tribe,

*Friday, June the 5th, when the House of Commons were difcuffing the Indemnity bill a fecond time.

+"The Report was a hath made up of quotations from the prophet Ezekiel, &c."Mr. Jekyll's fpeech.

Sir Edward Law, the Attorney General, who did not fail properly to employ the opportunity Mr. Jekyll gave him (by adverting to the Maidftone trials), in bestowing a plentiful flagellation upon that learned lawyer, as well as on his coadjutors, the other illuftrious friends and fworn advocates of the traitor O'Connor.

§ Mr. Jekyll may juftly take for his motto, "Fungar vice cotis," fince, like Shakspeare's bulky knight, he is "not only witty in himself, but the cause that wit is in other men;" but if the companion of Mr. Jekyll with Sir John Falftaff himself appear fomewhat prepofterous, we may, perhaps, with lefs impropriety, take for our diminutive counfellor's counterpart, Sir John Faiftaff's page, of whom he fays, "Ide here walk before thee like a fow that hath overwhelmed all her litter but ore. --2 Henry IV. A. 1. S. 2.

Till "Obe! jam fatis !" they cried; but no lefs
Could he do than treat Jofeph with Benjamin's mess.
Though of moft kinds of tools you may venture' to speak
ill,

Have a care how you meddle with edge tools, Joe Jekyll!
And perhaps, after all, you had better difpofe
Of ftale wit and invective, like lots of old clothes,
If an Hebrew exifts who will give you a fhekel *
Of filver for all the bon mots of Joe Jekyll.

June 10.

MR.

BON MOT OF THE BAR.

R. Erskine, being indifpofed in the Court of King's Bench, told Mr. Jekyll that he had a pain in his bowels, for which he could get no relief."" I'll give you an infallible fpecific," replied the humorous Barrifter. "Get made Attorney General, my friend, and then you 'll have no bowels at all!"

EPIGRAM.

QUOTH Tierney, "Folks fay (I don't vouch it is true)
That Pitt is a juggler, and Addington toot:

But fhould rumour myfelf and my colleagues arraign
For politic juggle and legerdemain,

I can fwear with fafe confcience, not one of our fet
Mankind ever took for a conjurer yet.

June 16.

The worth of a filver fhekel is as two fhillings and three penc three farthings; which, though it exceeds the price of Joe Miller's Jefts by the fum of three pence three farthings, may be thought, by certain perfons, to fall fhort of the precife worth of Joe Jekyll's; they will therefore be pleafed to correct this eftimate by the addition of twopence farthing, and this, it is hoped, will be regarded as an unex ceptionable admiffion, as, by analogous reafoning, it attributes half a crown's worth of wit to every Member of the Houfe.

+ See Mr. Tierney's fpeech on the Indemnity Bill, May 27, 1801. į VOL. V.

M

THE