Page:The English humourists of the eighteenth century. A series of lectures, delivered in England, Scotland, and the United States of America (IA englishhumourist00thacrich).pdf/195

 of breath, sunk on a haycock; and John (who never separated from her) sat by her side, having raked two or three heaps together, to secure her. Immediately, there was heard so loud a crash, as if heaven had burst asunder. The labourers, all solicitous for each other's safety, called to one another; those that were nearest our lovers, hearing no answer, stepped to the place where they lay: they first saw a little smoke, and after, this faithful pair—John, with one arm about his Sarah's neck, and the other held over her face, as if to screen her from the lightning. They were struck dead, and already grown stiff and cold in this tender posture. There was no mark or discolouring on their bodies—only that Sarah's eyebrow was a little singed, and a small spot between her breasts. They were buried the next day in one grave!"

And the proof that this description is delightful and beautiful is, that the great My. Pope admired it so much that he thought proper to steal it and to send it off to a certain lady and wit, with whom he pretended to be in love in those days—my Lord Duke of Kingston's daughter, and married to Mr. Wortley Montagu, then his Majesty's Ambassador at Constantinople.

We are now come to the greatest name on our list— the highest among the poets, the highest among the English wits and humourists with whom we have to rank him. If the author of the "Dunciad" be not a humourist, if the poet of the "Rape of the Lock" be not a wit, who deserves to be called so? Besides that brilliant genius, and immense fame, for both of which we should respect him, men of letters should admire him as being the greatest Literary artist that England has seen. He polished, he refined, he thought; he took thoughts from other works to adorn and complete his own; borrowing an idea or a cadence from another