We open our readings this evening with a long poem called The Complaint, written in pleasant, easy, gossiping verse, very proper for tale telling and conversation. It proves what we know very well without it, that a certain lady that for certain reasons shall be nameless, had not only caused much weeping and wailing in her own country, but has spread much distress among the fair damsels in London. We most seriously advise her to put a stop to all the sorrow, by making one of her numerous admirers happy, and all the rest hopeless, and thus restore the stolen hearts to their rightful owners. Mnemosyne who the story says had met with one of the forsaken fair ones, after hearting her tale gravely advises her to think no more of that naughty creature man, but to follow the example of the Muses, and live and die in single blessedness. The good lady is somewhat prolix in her sermonizing but as her advice abounds in good sense, and is accompanied with useful admonition we seriously recommend it to all those whom it may concern. This Complaint will be followed by another entitled The Lamentation of the Alderman, signed Phagophilus, who feelingly laments the alteration which hath taken place in the style of City feasting where temperance at the last Lord Mayor’s dinner made a desperate attack on the spirit of Gormandizing.
The Unhappy Soldier’s Last Watch is a poem of a more pathetic turn, which we have had by us some time, but it has given way to pieces of a more temporary nature which would not otherwise have obtained the preference.
Annie’s Bower is a beautiful Scotch Song and the correspondence between Moth and Stella is marked with that ease and fancy which have before distinguished these celebrated writers. The distress of Venus for want of her handmaids the Graces is an elegant jeu d’esprit and the compliment at the close is well turned.
The reading will conclude with the second Book of the Restoration, and part of the third is there is sufficient time for it.