This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
The original letter is extant and usually available for academic research purposes
Gregorian
This letter is part of the Primary Texts section of the Thomas Gray Archive.
XML created for the Thomas Gray Archive.
This letter is part of the correspondence calendar of the complete correspondence of Thomas Gray. The calendar contains detailed bibliographic records for all known original, copied, or published letters written by or to the poet as well as the full-text, where available. Each record is accompanied by digitised images of the manuscript, where available, or digitised images of the first printed edition.
ADVICE OF Dr OLIVER TO Sr JOHN COPE ON HIS GETTING ST ANTONY'S FIRE BY DRINKING THE BATH WATERS OUT OF MISS MOLLY'S HAND.
BY LORD BATH.
See gentle Cope with gout and love opprest,
Alternate torments raging in his breast,
Tries at his cure, but tampers still in vain;
What lessens one, augments the other pain.
The charming Nymph, who strives to give relief,
Instead of comfort, heightens all his grief:
For health he drinks, then sighs for love, & cries,
Health's in her hand, destruction in her eyes.
She gives us water, but each touch alas!
The wanton Girl electrifies the glass.
To cure the gout, we drink large draughts of Love,
And then, like Ætna, burst in flames above.
The Advice
Sip not, dear Knight, the Daughter's liquid fire,
But take the healing bev'rage from the Sire:
Twill ease thy gout – for Love no cure is known;
The God of physic coud not cure his own.ON LD DARL —'s BEING MADE JOINT PAYMASTER.
Wonders, Newcastle, mark thy ev'ry hour;
But this last Act's a plenitude of pow'r:
Nought but the force of an almighty reign
Coud make aPaymasterof Harry V—.ON SPLITTING THE PAY OFFICE.
Holles, not past his childhood yet, retains
The maxims of his Nurse or Tutor's pains:
Thence did the mighty Babe this truth derive,
Two negatives make one affirmative:
But ah! Two Dunces never made a Wit,
Nor can two Darlingtons compose a Pitt.
To draw poetry from you, I send you these mediocre verses, the only ones in fashion. the first lines indeed are pretty, when one considers they were writ by a Man of seventy, Lord Bath. the first Epigram was a thought of George Selwyn, rhimed; the last is scarce a thought at all.
Ministers, Patriots, Wits, poets, paymasters, all are dispersed & gone out of town. The Changes are made, & all preferments given away: you will be glad to hear that our Colonel Montagu has got a regiment. Lord Waldgrave last night hearing them talk over these histories, said with a melancholy tone, alas! they talk so much of giving places for life, I wish they dont give me mine for life!