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It was no perfunctory tickling that Amasia administered: While round his sides your nimble Fingers played, With pleasing softness did they swiftly rove, While, at each touch, they made his Heart-strings move. As round his Breast, his ravish'd Breast they crowd, We hear their Musick when he laughs aloud.
We have a poem on the circumstance that Amasia, "having prick'd me with a Pin, accidentally scratched herself with it;" and another on her "asking me if I slept well after so tempestuous a night." But perhaps the most intimate of all is a poem "To Amasia, tickling a Gentleman."
John Hopkins, alias Sylvius, set out with all the artillery of ornament to storm the heart of Amasia. Notice his embroidered silken coat, his splendid lace cravat, the languishment of his large foolish eyes, the indubitable touch of Spanish red on those smooth cheeks. But, above all contemplate the wonders of his vast peruke. He has a name, be sure, for every portion of that killing structure.
When Amasia died there was no reason why Sylvius should continue to exist, and he fades out of our vision like a ghost. LOVE AND BUSINESS: in a Collection of occasionary Verse and epistolary Prose not hitherto published. By Mr. George Farquhar. En Orenge il n'y a point d'oranges. London, printed for B. Lintott, at the Post-House, in the Middle Temple-Gate, Fleet Street. 1702.
So far as I can discover, nothing whatever is known of him save what he reveals of himself, and no one, I think, has ever searched his three uninviting volumes. In the following paragraphs I have put together his story as it is to be found in the pages of Amasia.
He writes like a youth who has always been petted; the frou-frou of fine ladies' petticoats is heard in all his verses. But he had no fortune and no prospects; he was utterly, he confesses, without ambition. The stern papa of Amasia had no notion of bestowing her on the penniless Sylvius, and when the latter began to court her in earnest, she rebuffed him.
But to John Hopkins I have discovered scarcely an allusion. He does not seem to have moved in his brother's circle, and his society was probably more courtly than literary. If we may trust his own account the author of Amasia was born, doubtless at Londonderry, on the 1st of January, 1675.
Let us take a more specific glance at their accomplishments. The earliest of these workers in point of time is Strabo. This most famous of ancient geographers was born in Amasia, Pontus, about 63 B.C., and lived to the year 24 A.D., living, therefore, in the age of Caesar and Augustus, during which the final transformation in the political position of the kingdom of Egypt was effected.
To him ecstatic verses are inscribed: O Martin! Martin! let the grateful sound Reach to that Heav'n which has our Friendship crown'd, And, like our endless Friendship, meet no bound. But alas! one day Martin came back, after a long absence, and, although he still With generous, kind, continu'd Friendship burn'd, he found Sylvius entirely absorbed by Amasia.
Martin knew better than to show temper; he accepted the situation, and the lov'd Amasia's Health flew round, Amasia's Health the Golden Goblets crown'd. Now began the first and happiest portion of the story. Amasia had no suspicion of the feelings of the poet, and he was only too happy to be permitted to watch her movements. He records, in successive copies of verses, the various things she did.
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