Lady Mary Wortley Montagu was the eldest daughter of Evelyn, Duke of Kingston, and was born about 1690 at Thoresby in Nottinghamshire. In 1712 she married Edward Wortley Montagu, some time ambassador at Constantinople. Whilst in the East, she wrote many of her celebrated letters describing the manners and customs of the people with whom she was brought into contact. A life marked by variety of incident was closed in 1762. Dear Colin, Prevent DEAR Colin, prevent my warm blushes, My passion would lose by expression, Since yours is the province of speaking, Then quickly why don't you discover? Did your heart feel such tortures as mine, I need not tell over and over What I in my bosom confine. Colin's Answer GOOD Madam, when ladies are willing, At least you should wait for our offers, You should leave us to guess at your blushing And not speak the matter too plain; 'Tis ours to be forward and pushing; 'Tis yours to affect a disdain. That you're in a terrible taking From all your fond oglings I see ! But the fruit that will fall without shaking Richard Savage was born in London in 1697, and died a debtor in jail at Bristol in 1743. He devoted too much energy to an effort to be regarded as a son or Earl Rivers. Discarded by his mother, his father dead, poverty dogged his footsteps. He found a generous friend in Sir Richard Steele, and a companion in Johnson, who, too, tasted much of the bitter cup of neglect. In 1744, Johnson wrote his Life of Savage, which of all his Lives of the Poets is perhaps the best, in the sense of being the most intensely sympathetic. A life such as that of Savage, full of the strangest vicissitudes, has furnished material to the novelist and the dramatist. Charles Whitehead, an early contemporary of Dickens, wrote a story. Whitehead himself was something of a neglected genius, but he too has found a Johnson in Mr. Mackenzie Bell (Charles Whitehead: A Forgotten Genius, 1885), who speaks of Richard Savage: A Romance o Real Life, as having the merit of vivifying in a marvellously realistic manner the historical character of the story. Still more recently a play entitled 'Richard Savage,' by Mr. J. M. Barrie and Mr. H. M. B. Watson, was produced in London. Verses to a Young Lady POLLY, from me, though now a love-sick youth, Reproach'd for absence, yet your sight deny'd ; How would you praise me, should your sex defame! You scorn; yet should my passion change, or fail, Such, Polly, are your sex-part truth, part fiction, Robert Dodsley who was born at Mansfield in Nottinghamshire in 1703 was a footman in the service of the Hon. Mrs. Lowther when his first book, The Muse in Livery, was published. He next wrote a dramatic piece entitled 'The Toy Shop,' and, Pope standing as his friend, its production at Covent Garden followed with great success in 1735. In this same year he entered upon a business career, opening a bookseller's shop in Pall Mall, and numbered Chesterfield, Lyttelton, Shenstone, and Johnson among his active friends. He was the author of a moral treatise, The Economy of Human Life, which was attributed to Chesterfield. He rendered an important service to dramatic literature by the publication of a collection of old English plays. The Annual Register, a work upon which Burke was engaged during many successive years, was started by him in 1758. He died in 1764. He was the author of such verses as these :Come, my fairest! learn of me, Learn to give and take the bliss! Throw thy lovely twining arms Round my neck, or round my waist; To my breast with rapture cling! Kiss me, press me! everything To endear the fond embrace. Yet why did a master so accomplished in the art of love The Parting Kiss ONE kind kiss before we part, |