So some coarse Country Wench, almost decay'd,
Trudges to Town, and first turns Chambermaid;
Awkward and supple, each Devoir to pay,
She flatters her good Lady twice a Day;
Thought wond'rous honest, tho' of mean Degree,
And strangely lik'd for her Simplicity:

In a translated Suit, then tries the Town,
With borrow'd Pins, and Patches not her own;
But just endur'd the Winter she began,

And in four Months, a batter'd Harridan,
Now nothing's left, but, wither'd, pale, and shrunk,
To bawd for others, and go Shares with Punk."

GILBERT WEST.

VOL. II.

WEST.

1700?-1756.

Educated at Eton and Oxford-Marries, and retires to Wickham in Kent-Translates Pindar, and publishes 'Observations on the Resurrection,-His Friendship with Lyttelton and Pitt -Death and Burial at Wickham-Works and Character.

GILBERT WEST is one of the writers of whom I regret my inability to give a sufficient account; the intelligence which my inquiries have obtained is general and scanty.

He was the son of the Reverend Dr. West; perhaps him who published 'Pindar,' at Oxford about the beginning of this century His mother was sister to Sir Richard Temple, afterwards Lord Cobham. His father purposing to educate him for the Church, sent him first to Eton, and afterwards to Oxford; but he was seduced to a more airy mode of life, by a commission in a troop of horse procured him by his uncle.

He continued some time in the army; though it is reasonable to suppose that he never sunk into a mere soldier, nor ever lost the love or much neglected the pursuit of learning; and afterwards, finding himself more inclined to civil employment, he laid down his commission, and engaged in business under the Lord Townshend, then Secretary of State, with whom he attended the King to Hanover.

His adherence to Lord Townshend ended in nothing but a nomination (May, 1729) to be Clerk-Extraordinary of the Privy Council, which produced no immediate profit; for it only placed him in a state of expectation and right of succession, and it was very long before a vacancy admitted him to profit.

1 His father, Richard West (d. 1716), was with Robert Welsted the joint editor of an edition of Pindar, published at Oxford in 1697, folio. The same Richard West, I suspect, described by Wood as the son of Richard West, of Creiton, in Northamptonshire, Clerk. His mother was living in 1749 with his sister Hetty, at Meres-Ashby, in Northamptonshire. His brother, Admiral Temple West, has a monument in Westminster Abbey.