ving been recommended to Queen Caroline, he, under her patronage, took orders, and was preferred to the living of Byfleet in Surrey. Swift, who, one would have thought, might have overlooked such an object as Duck, but whose spleenetic humour prompted him to be satirical for any reason or none, chose to feel piqued at the generosity displayed by the queen, and under the influence of this feeling wrote the following bitter Epigram "on Stephen Duck the thrasher and favourite poet:"

The thrasher Duck could o'er the queen prevail; The proverb says, "No fence against a flail." From threshing corn he turns to thrash his brains, For which her majesty allows him grains. Though 'tis confessed that those who ever saw His poems, think them all not worth a straw. Thrice happy Duck, employ'd in threshing stubble! Thy toil is lessened, and thy profits double.

Duck's abilities, however, were much more conspicuous in his primitive station than in his advancement, though it is said he was not disliked as a preacher. At length, having fallen into a low-spirited melancholy way, probably owing to his change of life, and the cessation of his usual labour, he in a fit of insanity threw himself from a bridge near Reading, into the Thames, and was drowned. This unhappy accident occurred in the year 1756.plunging in water, a diversion anciently practised among the Goths by way of exercise; but among the Celts, Franks, and ancient Germans, it was a sort of punishment for persons of scandalous lives.

DUGKINSHAHAZPOOR, a large island of Hindustan, in the province of Bengal, situated at the junction of the great river Moyna with the sea, thirty miles in length by fifteen in average breadth. It lies low, and during the rains is almost wholly submerged.