BRITANNIA'S LAMENTATION

AND

PETITION.

IN hostile fields, why lives my lord,
Now furrow'd bis fair front appears;
Ah! 'tis too late to wield that sword
That sheath'd hath been near forty years.
The damps and colds, and endless toils,
That ever wait on martial deeds;
Are they to be repaid with spoils,

Or Fame that fond Ambition breeds?
Return and bless my longing arms,
And let the German strumpet languish;
Oh, flee from dangers and alarms,
And ease my wasted inbred anguish.

Thou, too, my lovely, darling lad,*
With plumpy cheeks and sides so round;
Put up thy courage with thy dad,
Nor longer lie on the hard ground.

* The Duke of Cumberland.

One wound 's enough so well receiv'd,

Not in the heel, nor yet in trenches;
By men thy bravery's believed,

Thou hast the heart of all the wenches.
My tears are streaming for ye both,
Return, while yet my heart is tender;
Let Stair go back, send Argyle over,
'Tis sure too much for poor Hanover.
To counsel all and act her part;
With foreign chiefs, no artful dress
Can lead the Britons on to Fame,
They love their country to excess,
And place it second to no name.

Account of the Embassy of the RIGHT HON. SIR CHARLES HANBURY WILLIAMS, K. B..

SIR Charles Hanbury Williams was appointed envoy to Dresden, in 1747; was commissioned, in July 1749, along with Mr. Anstis, Garter at Arms, to carry the blue ribband to the Margrave of Anspach; and, on Mr. Fox waving, at the request of the King, his pretensions to the Treasurership of the Navy, was, with a view of gratifying that gentleman, who was his intimate friend, named envoy extraordinary at Berlin. He set out for that court in May 1750, and passed through Hanover when the King was there. From thence he was sent to the King of Poland, who was holding the diet at Warsaw, to engage his vote for the Archduke Joseph to

to be King of the Romans. On this progress he wrote a celebrated letter to the Duke of Newcastle at Hanover, which was sent over to England and much admired, as his ministerial letters generally were. About this time, he met the ministers of the two Empresses of Germany and Russia; reconciled those two Princesses, and set out for Berlin, where he was very coldly received, and soon grew so offensive to the King, that he was, as he predicted, recalled at his request, and sent back to Dresden in February 1751. Sir Charles had detected the Saxon minister at Berlin, in betraying his master's and Russia's secrets to the Court of Prussia, and had also exposed an artifice of the King of Prussia in making a Tartar, sent to release a countryman, who had enlisted in the Prussian army, pass for a deputy, or minister, from the disaffected in Russian Tartary. These circumstances and his satirical tongue, and, yet more, his satirical pen, combined to exasperate the King of Prussia. "It was," he

said, in his private letters, "in vain to contend with so mighty a Prince; and he became the sacrifice." However, in 1753, he was sent to Vienna to demand the assistance of that court in case Prussia should proceed to extremities after stopping the Silesian Loan; and, in his triple capacity of Minister, Courtier, and Poet, he composed the following distich on the Empress Queen :

"Oh Regina orbis prima et pulcherrima! ridens
Es Venus, incedens Juno, Minerva loquens."

The general style of his poetry was far from being so complimentary; and that of his prose, though not so well known, and often too licentious for publication, was to the full as easy, lively, and humourous, as his verse. After returning to England, he was again appointed to Dresden, and attended the King of Poland to Warsaw in 1754, where, upon espousing very warmly the interests of the Poniatowskys in an affair called, the Disposition of the Ostrog, he came to an open rupture with Count Bruhl. He shortly afterwards concluded a subsidiary