Page:Lives of Poets-Laureate.djvu/308

294 It is tolerably well adapted for acting, but we may owe this to Garrick almost as much to the author, for when he accepted the play, he exercised his discretion very freely, and was unsparing in his use of the knife. On the stage it was fairly successful.

The following year, 1750, he published his "Hymn to the Bristol Spring," an imitation of some of the hymns of Homer and Callimachus. It is written in blank verse, and is better than the heroics he had given to the world while at Cambridge.

At the same time appeared "The Sweepers." This is a dismal attempt at a humorous poem in blank verse, into which is introduced a pathetic tale of seduction. A very beautiful maiden, who delights in the name of Lardella (one much better used in "The Rehearsal"), is a sweeper in Seven Dials. She aspires to a crossing in Whitehall, and having attained the object of her ambition, she there attracts the gaze of a licentious lordling, by whom she is ruined, deserted; and we are told that

There are, doubtless, seducers among the aristocracy; but Lardella's sad history, if not ludicrously improbable, is, at any rate, ludicrously told.

In addition to his dramatic and poetic compositions, he appears, at this time, to have written three papers for "The World." This periodical numbered among its contributors, Lord Chesterfield, Lord Bath, Sir Charles Hanbury, Horace Walpole, Soame Jennings, Mr. Cambridge, Mr. Coventry; its editor was Mr. Thomas Moore. The first of Whitehead's is humorous, and in ridicule of the prevalent taste of that day for Chinese articles of every kind. The second is on "Contemporary Romances," which he lashes severely for their shallow pretensions, their