with all the ardor of precipitation, to the fign of the man arrayed in vernal livery. Replete with pecuniary impudence, from having withheld the change of a quarter image of our most amiable sovereign, which I had yesterday given him in order to acquire a sausageary refection, with an intention of refuscitating and invigorating my powers which were languid and debilitated with fedulity of application in abstracting an octavo from my folio dictionary, he fat down on a bench fuccumbing under lassitude and indigestion, called for beer with all the vociferation of impatience, and thus began :

T' inebriate at brisk porter's fountain head, And reeling thro' the wilderness of joy; Where sense runs favage, broke from reafon's chain,

And fang false peace.

Night Thoughts.

"For, behold, on a vicinary bench, fate a plunder-fed * foldier, between whom and

* Blackwe'l, court of Augustus.

Orconoko, Oroonoko, in the course of the vivacious loquacity of their evening compotationst, arose an unextinguishable feud, a mutual vigilance to entrap, and eagerness to destroy, a continual exacerbation of hatred, and incessant reciprocation of mischief‡. This Thrafo assuming a faftidious tumour of dignity, with negative rudeness and obJiquities of infult, effused his invidious sarcafms and descants on the negro darkness of Oroonoko, who now verging towards a state of inebriation, his intellects became distorted with argumental delirium, the controverfy was foon inflamed to the highest pinnacle of exacerbation, and then he bestowed reiterated percussions on the intellectual regions of this plunder-fed foldier. Thus commenced a circulatory war*. The foldier efsfayed to resist, but in vain, for he was foon neceffitated to fuccumb, if not under the mental, at least under the manual fuperiority of Oroonoko. The breast of this discomfited militant was now corroded with envy, for which, when it has

attained its height, perhaps, no remedy will be found in the gardens of philofophy: however she may boast her physick of mind, her catharticks of vice, or lenitives of paffiont. He willingly fuffered the corrofions of inveterate hatred, and gave up his thoughts to the gloom of malice, and the perturbations of stratagem. In curt, he delated Croonoko to a press-gang then in the vicinity, and got him conveyed into a tender, from which I relieved him not, till after frequent folicitations and many frustraneous applications of interest.

"Thus was I constrained to take a folitary excurfion. Moreover my palfrey was spavinated, so that being compelled to flog and calcitrate with all the ardour of impatience, he agitated me with fuch severe and desultory commotions, that I fuffered a total perineal excoriation, which not emollients could medicate, the powers of medicine alleviate, nor the skill of physicians elude. But this my fole misfortune at that time was not*. The spavination of

1

+ Ram. No. 2. * War at that time there was none. the first affected author, who seems

my

Thus Gordon, to have met with my steed being now meliorated by the warmth of exercitation; and by the due alternate application of the curbing, flogging and spurring powers, having reduced him to an equable and moderate equitation, I continued tollutating along with the most placid tranquillity, meditating the fubject of a vernal speculation. But all of a sudden, my powers of attention were arrouzed, my meditations fufpended, and my concatenation of feminal ideas totally dissipated by a violent conquassation of the umbrageous foliage above, and a manifest concussion of the earth below. 'Tis, indeed, wonderful, as, with all the powers of descriptive poetry, the British Lucretius * expresses it,

With what accumulated force, Th' impetuous nerve of passion urges on The native weight and energy of THINGS!

Pleaf. of Imagination.

"The cause of this convulfive motion in nature, was a congress between a bard of signal celebrity, and one of those nymphs who enjoy a perpetual fufceptibility of occasional delight. They were in the height of the complicated joy, eagerly co-operating and mutually accelerating the intend. ed event *, just as I happened to be ambling along. My steed alarmed and terri fied at these tumultuary phenomena, alternately plunged down his head, reared

'Tis a fufficient warrant for me, if some authors of note in the world have praised Ak-----e, and stiled him our Lucretius. Besides, I have not that despicable notion of Mr. J-----n's taste, especially in poetry, fome people affect to have. If we may judge of it, from what he hath himself done in that way, he must despise the other as heartily as I do. His imitations of Juvenal are truly excellent, and as much fuperior to the Pleasures of Imagination, as the Ramblers are inferior to the Tatlers and Spectators. The truth is, Mr. J-----n has too much good sense to admire, and too great skill in the politicks of literature to applaud any body's nonsense but his own.

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* Effay on Pope. Elem. of Criticifm.

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