Read here, in softest sounds the sweetest satire,
  A pen dipt deep in gall, a heart good-nature;
  An English Ovid, from his birth he seems,
  Inspired alike with strong poetic dreams;
  The Roman, rants of heroes, gods, and Jove,
  The Briton, purely paints the art of love.

As a specimen of our author’s versification, we shall select a Poem of his called, the Art of making Puddings; published in his Miscellanies.

  I sing of food, by British nurse design’d,
  To make the stripling brave, and maiden kind. 
  Delay not muse in numbers to rehearse
  The pleasures of our life, and sinews of our verse. 
  Let pudding’s dish, most wholsome, be thy theme,
  And dip thy swelling plumes in fragrant cream. 
  Sing then that dim so fitting to improve
  A tender modesty, and trembling love;
  Swimming in butter of a golden hue,
  Garnish’d with drops of Rose’s spicy dew. 
  Sometimes the frugal matron seems in haste,
  Nor cares to beat her pudding into paste: 
  Yet milk in proper skillet she will place,
  And gently spice it with a blade of mace;
  Then set some careful damsel to look to’t;
  And still to stir away the bishop’s-foot;
  For if burnt milk shou’d to the bottom stick,
  Like over-heated-zeal, ’twould make folks sick. 
  Into the Milk her flow’r she gently throws,
  As valets now wou’d powder tender beaus: 
  The liquid forms in hasty mass unite,
  Both equally delicious as they’re white. 
  In mining dish the hasty mass is thrown,
  And seems to want no graces but its own. 
  Yet still the housewife brings in fresh supplies,
  To gratify the taste, and please the eyes. 
  She on the surface lumps of butter lays,
  Which, melting with the heat, its beams displays;
  From whence it causes wonder to behold
  A silver soil bedeck’d with streams of gold!

[Footnote 1:  The design of this work, was to ridicule Sir Hans Sloan’s writings, in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal-Society; of which Dr. Sloan was secretary.  This work, of Dr. King’s, which is now become very scarce, is one of the severest and merriest Satires that ever was written in Prose.]

* * * * *

THOMAS SPRAT (Bishop of ROCHESTER)

Was descended from a very worthy, though obscure family, being the son of a private country minister; but his great merit raised him to that eminent station in the church, wherein he long presided, and was deservedly accounted one of the most considerable prelates of his time.  The Oxford antiquary informs us, that on the 16th of January 1654, he was entered in Wadham-College, where he pursued his studies with the closest application, and distinguished himself by his prudent and courteous behaviour.