. Now, says the gentleman,
this arrogant editor would have been more just, both to the public, and
to the earl of Roscommon's memory, in telling us what things had been
published under his lordship's name by others, than by concealing the
authors of any such gross impositions. Instead of which, he is so much a
stranger to impartiality, that he has been guilty of the very crime he
exclaims against; for he has not only attributed the prospect of death
to the earl of Roscommon, which was wrote by Mr. Pomfret, after the
decease of that lord; but likewise another piece entitled the Prayer of
Jeremy Paraphrased, prophetically representing the passionate grief of
the Jewish people, for the loss of their town, and sanctuary, written by
Mr. Southcot, a gentleman who published it in the year 1717, so that it
is to be hoped, in a future edition of the earl of Roscommon's, and Mr.
Duke's poems, the same care will be taken to do these gentlemen justice,
as to prevent any other person from hereafter injuring the memory of his
lordship.'

Mr. Pomfret published his poems in the year 1690, to which he has
prefixed a very modest and sensible preface, 'I am not so fond of fame,
says he, as to desire it from the injudicious many; nor as so mortified
a temper as not to wish it from the discerning few. 'Tis not the
multitude of applauders, but the good fame of the applauders, which
establishes a valuable reputation.'

His poetical compositions consist chiefly of

1. The Choice, which we shall insert as a specimen.

2. Cruelty and Lust, an Epistolary Essay, founded upon the famous
Story which happened in the reign of King James II. Kirk, who was that
Prince's general against the duke of Monmouth. was sollicited by a
beautiful lady in behalf of her husband, who then lay under sentence of
death. The inhuman general consented to grant his fair petitioner her
request; but at no less a price than that of her innocence. The lady
doated on her husband, and maintained a hard struggle between virtue,
and affection, the latter of which at last prevailed, and she yielded to
his guilty embraces. The next morning Kirk, with unparalleled brutality,
desired the lady to look out at the window of his bedchamber, when she
was struck with the horrid sight of her husband upon a scaffold, ready
to receive the blow of the executioner; and before she could reach the
place where he was, in order to take a last embrace, her husband was no
more.

How far the lad