14. While thus he fpake, Erminia hufht and still To turne her home to her defired Lord. 15. She faid therefore, O fhepherd fortunate! In thepherds life, which I admire and loue; 16. If gold or wealth of moft efteemed deare, Two chriftall ftreames fell from her watrie eies; 17. With fpeeches kinde, he gan the virgin deare But But yet her geftures and her lookes (I geffe) 18. Not those rude garments could obfcure, and hide, And milke her goates, and in their folds them place, POM POMFRET. F Mr. JOHN POMFRET nothing is known but from a flight and confufed account prefixed to his poems by a nameless friend; who relates, that he was the fon of the Rev. Mr. Pomfret, recor of Luton in Bedfordfhire; that he was bred at Cambridge *; entered into orders, and was rector of Malden in Bedfordshire, and might have rifen in the Church; but that, when he applied to Dr. Compton, bishop of London, for inftitution to a living of confiderable value, to which he had been prefented, he found a troublesome obstruction raised by a malicious interpretation of fome paffage in his Choice; from which it was inferred, that he confidered happiness as more likely to be found in the company of a mistress than of a wife . This * He was of Queen's College there, and, by the University regifter, appears to have taken his Bachelor's degree in 1684, and his Master's in 1698. The paflage here meant, is the following: And as I near approach'd the verge of life, This reproach was eafily obliterated for it had happened to Pomfret as to all other men who plan schemes of life; he had departed from his purpose, and was then married. The malice of his enemies had however a very fatal confequence the delay conftrained his attendance in London, where he caught the fmall-pox, and died in 1703, in the thirty-fixth year of his age. He published his poems in 1699; and has been always the favourite of that clafs of readers, who, without vanity or criticism, feek only their own amufement. His Choice exhibits a fyftem of life adapted to common notions, and equal to common expectations; such a state as affords plenty and tranquillity, without exclufion of intellectual pleafures. Perhaps no compofition in our language has been oftener perufed than Pomfret's Choice. Should take upon him all my worldly care, * If my memory does not greatly mislead me, in the earlier editions the last line but one above-cited flood thus: Should take upon her all my worldly care. This has been frequently mentioned as the only paffage in the poem that could obftruct his inflitution, and the interpretation thereof is here, as elsewhere, ftigmatifed as malicious, and the rather, for that at the time of his application to the bishop he was married; a circumftance that revokes the fentiment no otherwife than by fhewing that the author had changed his opinion. .. But the preceding part of the poem contains a wish to have near him an "obliging fair one to converfe with, conftant to herself and "to him, whofe converfation fhould infpire him with new joys, and. who fhould be said, even by envy, to go the leaft of womankind aftray." The lines are too filly to be worth inferting, but, if not capable of a bad conftruction, they must be owned to be at least biguous. In his other poems there is an eafy volubility; the pleasure of finooth metre is afforded to the ear, and the mind is not oppreffed with ponderous or entangled with intricate fentiment. He pleases many, and he who pleases many must have some species of merit. *Whoever will be at the pains of comparing the most admired of Pomfret's poems, his Choice, with Dr. Pope's Wish, will be convinced how much the manly fenfe of the latter out weighs the puerile inanity of the former: Of Pomfret's Poems, few have ever been readers but the illiterate, and fuch as are delighted with trite fentiments and vulgar imagery; and as these are the most numerous of those that can read at all, it is no wonder that by fuch they have been often perufed. |