How far the lady may be justified in this conduct, is not our business to discuss:  if it is called by the name of guilt, none ever had more pressing motives; and if such a crime could admit of an excuse, it must be upon such an occasion.

3.  Several Epistles to his Friends under affliction.

4.  Upon the Divine Attributes.

5.  A Prospect of Death.

5.  Upon the General Conflagration, and the ensuing Judgment.  There were two pieces of our author’s, published after his death by his friend Philalethes; the first of these entitled Reason, was wrote by him in the year 1700, when the debates concerning the doctrine of the Trinity were carried on with so much heat by the Clergy one against another, that the royal authority was interposed in order to put an end to a controversy, which could never be settled, and which was pernicious in its consequences.  This is a severe satire, upon one of the parties engaged in that dispute, but his not inserting it amongst his other poems when he collected them into a volume, was, on account of his having received very particular favours, from some of the persons therein mentioned.  The other is entitled Dies Novissima, or the Last Epiphany, a Pindaric Ode on Christ’s second Appearance to judge the World.  In this piece the poet expresses much heart-felt piety:  It is animated, if not with a poetical, at least with so devout a warmth, that as the Guardian has observed of Divine Poetry, ’We shall find a kind of refuge in our pleasure, and our diversion will become our safety.’

This is all the account we are favoured with of the life and writings of Mr. Pomfret:  A man not destitute either of erudition or genius, of unexceptionable morals, though exposed to the malice of antagonists.  As he was a prudent man, and educated to a profession, he was not subject to the usual necessities of the poets, but his sphere being somewhat obscure, and his life unactive, there are few incidents recorded concerning him.  If he had not fortune sufficient to render him conspicuous, he had enough to keep his life innocent, which he seems to have spent in ease and tranquillity, a situation much more to be envied than the highest blaze of fame, attended with racking cares, and innumerable sollicitudes.

The choice.

  If Heav’n the grateful liberty would give,
  That I might chuse my method how to live. 
  And all those hours propitious fate should lend,
  In blissful ease and satisfaction spend,

    Near some fair town I’d have a private seat,
  Built uniform; not little, nor too great: 
  Better if on a rising ground it flood
  On this side fields, on that a neighb’ring wood. 
  It should within no other things contain,
  But what were useful, necessary, plain: 
  Methinks ’tis nauseous, and I’d ne’r endure
  The needless pomp of gawdy furniture. 
  A little garden, grateful to the eye,
  And a cool rivulet run murm’ring