The works, in verse and prose, of the late Robert Treat Paine, Jun. Esq ::

So intimate is the analogy between the physical and moral kingdoms, that man is not unfrequently styled a microcosm. To define every feature of the resemblance, would fill volumes; and were the natural history of this “Biped without feathers,’ in all his affections, seasons, and properties, written with the greatest perspicacity, it would demand more talent and labour, than the philosophical or botanical researches of a Linnæus, or a Darwin.

The Sage's study, which but few improve;
Religion's mystery, which none remove;
Reason's proud toy; in his machine unite
Powers, dense as earth; conceptions, rare as light;
Its wheels more complex, than the central sphere,
Which guides a comet, while it moulds a tear;
Its springs more subtle, than the secret soul,
Which bids a world cohere, an atom roll.

Less by himself, than others, understood;
More led by sense, yet more with mind endued;
His nature oftener sets our world at odds,
Than Jove, in Ovid's “Green-Room” of the gods.

There is a Magazine of theatrical biography published annually in London, called “The Green-Room;” which is not only replete with sketches of the dramatick characters of the actors and actresses, but is sometimes enlivened with the tender anecdote of private amour.

Ovid, who “took a peep behind the curtain” of Olympus, has Pasquin-ized the intrigues of Jupiter's court in the same figurative style of elegant “tete à tete!”

Since, then, the wisest are as dull, as we,
In one grave maxim let us all agree;
Nature ne'er meant her secrets should be found,
And man's a riddle, which man can't expound!

178

Then let us shun the rapt seer's loftier flight,
For paths more pervious to our ken of sight;
Vain were our pride, like Icarus of yore,
In realms of fire, on wings of wax, to soar;
Ours be the Muse, who humbler tracts essays;
Descends from theory, and life portrays.
On what man is, the schools may disagree,
We only know him, as he seems to be.

In beings, formed their own pursuits to guide,
No wonder moves it, and excites no pride,
When bards, less curious than Lavater, find
Some spring of action ruling every mind.

Like Egypt's gods, man's various passions sway;
Some prowl the earth, and some ascend the day:
This charms the fancy, that the palate feasts;
A motley Pantheon of birds and beasts!

The Egyptian mythology was so heterogeneous and absurd, that, not confined to the extensive regions of animated nature, that hieroglypical nation stupidity descended to the vegetable world, to fill the niches of their temples. “In Egypt,” says a learned writer, “it was more difficult to find a man, than a God.”

Were the wild brood, who dwell in glade and brake,
Some kindred character of man to take;
In the base jackall's, or gay leopard's mien,
The servile pimp, or gay coquette, were seen;
The patient camel, long inured to dine
But once a fortnight, would a poet shine;
The stag, a cit, with antlered brows content;
The rake, a pointer, always on the scent;
The snake, a statesman; and the wit, a gnat;
The ass, an alderman; the scold, a cat;
The wife, a ring-dove, on the myrtle's top;
The wolf, a lawyer; the baboon, a fop!

179

Life is a print-shop, where the eye may trace
A different outline, marked in every face;
From chiefs, who laurels reap in fields of blood,
Down to the hind, who tills those fields for food;
From the lorn nymph, in cloistered abbey pent,
Whose friars teach to love, and to repent,
To the young captive in the Haram's bower,
Blest for a night, and empress of an hour;
From ink's retailers, perched in garret high,
Cobwebbed around with many a mouldy lie;
Down to the pauper's brat, who, luckless wight!
Deep in the cellar first received the light;
All, all impelled, as various passions move,
To write, to starve, to conquer, or to love!
All join to shift Life's versicoloured scenes,
Priests, poets, fiddlers, courtesans and queens;
And be it pride, or dress, or wealth, or fame,
The acting principle is ne'er the same.
Each takes a different rout, o'er hill, or vale,
The tangled forest, or the greensward dale.
But they, who chiefly crowd the field, are those,
Who live by fashion—constables and beaus.
The first, I ween, are men of high report,
The law's staff-officers, and known at court.
The last, sweet elves, whose rival graces vie,
To wield the snuff-box, or enact a sigh:
To Fashion's gossamer their lives devote,
The frieze, the cane, the cravat and the coat
In taste unpolished, yet in ton precise,
They sleep at theatres, and wake at dice;
While, like the pilgrim's scrip, or soldier's pack,
They carry all their fortune on their back.

180

From fops, we turn to pedants, deep and dull;
Grave, without sense; “o'erflowing, yet not full.”

A parody on part of the last line in the following passage of Denham's “Cooper's Hill.”

Though deep, yet clear; though gentle, yet not dull;
Strong, without rage; without o'erflowing, full.”

See, the lank book-worm, piled with lumbering lore,
Wrinkled in Latin, and in Greek fourscore,
With toil incessant, thumbs the ancient page,
Now blots a hero, now turns down a sage!
O'er Learning's field, with leaden eye he strays,
Mid busts of fame, and monuments of praise.
With Gothick foot, he treads on flowers of taste,
Yet stoops to pick the pebbles from the waste.
Profound in trifles, he can tell, how short
Were Æsop's legs, how large was Tully's wart;

Æsop, the Phrygian, the most celebrated fabulist of antiquity, was not only disfigured in his legs, but was deformed in almost every other part of his body.

Marcus Tullius Cicero, the father of Roman oratory, is said to have received his last appellation, from an uncommon excrescence on his cheek, resembling a Cicer, or vetch.

And, scaled by Gunter, marks, with joy absurd,
The cut of Homer's cloak, and Euclid's beard!

Thus through the weary watch of sleepless night,
This learned ploughman plods in piteous plight;
'Till the dim taper takes French leave to doze,
And the fat folio tumbles on his toes.

Born in the fens of Dulness, dank and mute,
Where lynx might sleep, and half-starved owlet hoot;
With head of adamant, and nerves of steel;
Without or pulse to throb, or soul to feel;
Not Warren's glory could one bliss supply,
Nor Trenck's captivity excite a sigh.
Should Beauty's queen, in all her charms disclosed,
As when to Paris' wondering eyes exposed,
She loosed her cestus, and unyoked her doves,
And stood unveiled 'mid Ida's conscious groves,
Attempt, with lovliest attitude of Art,
To warm the polar current of his heart;

181

Vain were the toil, as Alexander's plan,
To carve mount Athos to the form of man!

Next in the group, a love-lorn maid we trace,
Whose heart was virtue, and whose form is grace.
In Life's gay prime, when passion, pure as truth,
Bids the blood frolick through the veins of youth;
The plighted vow her easy ear received,
The proffered faith her glowing heart believed.
Artless herself, she thought the world so too,
Nor feared those vices, which she never knew.
Ill-fated girl, thy erring steps declare,
Truth should suspect, and Innocence beware!

Ere, ripe for bliss, consenting hearts unite;
Ere retrospection chill the young delight;
The airy web of Fancy's dreams to prove,
Unbind the bandeau from the brow of Love!

Sad be the hour, in Memory's page forlorn;
The cypress shade it, and the willow mourn;
When the fond maid, subdued in Reason's trance,
Child of Desire, and pupil of Romance,
Beneath the pensile palm, or aloed grove,
Like Cleopatra, yields the world for love.
Poor is the trophy of seductive Art,
Which, but to triumph, subjugates the heart;
Or, Tarquin-like, with more licentious flame,
Stains manly truth to plunder female fame.
Life's deepest penace never can atone,
For Hope deluded, or for Virtue flown.

182

Yet such there are, whose smooth, perfidious smile
Might cheat the tempting crocodile in guile.
Thorns be their pillow; agony their sleep;
Nor e'en the mercy given, to “wake and weep!”
May screaming night-fiends, hot in recreant gore,
Rive their strained fibres to their heart's rank core,
Till startled Conscience heap, in wild dismay,
Convulsive curses on the source of day!

But, see, what form, so sprigged, behooped, and sleek,
With modern head-dress on a block antique,
Trips through the croud, and, ogling all who pass,
Stares most demurely, through an Op'ra glass!
Sunk in the wane, she courts the gay parade;
A belle of Plato's age, a sweet old maid.
While lived her beauty, (for 'tis now a ghost!)
The fair one's envy, and the fopling's toast;
What slaughtered hearts by her fierce eye-beams fell,
Let Fiction's brokers, bards and tombstones, tell.
Fled are the charms, which graced that ivory brow;
Where smiled a dimple, gapes a wrinkle now:
And e'en that pouting lip, where whilom grew
The mellow peach-down, and the ruby's hue,
No more can trance the ear with sweeter sounds,
Than fairies warble on enchanted grounds!

Now, hapless nymph, she wakes from dreams of bliss,
The knee adoring, and the stolen kiss;
And for the Persian worship of the eye,
Meets the arch simper of the mimick sigh.
Still she resolves her empire to regain,
And rifles Fashion, tortures Art, to reign.

183

Oft at the ball, she flaunts, in flowers so gay,
She seems December in the robes of May;
And oft, more coy, coquettes behind her fan
That odious monster—dear, sweet creature, man!

At length, grown ugly, past the aid of gold;
And, spite of essences and rouge, grown old;
Each softer passion yields to Pride's controul,
And sour Misanthropy usurps her soul.
Now, first on man, the spleeny gossip rails,
Arraigns his justice, and his taste assails;
Till, as her tea's exhausted fragrance flies,
Her wit evaporates, her scandal dies.
Yet still invidious of the art to bless,
She blasts the joys, she lingers to possess;
And, while on Hymen's bridal rites she sneers,
Her pillow trickles with repentant tears.
While thus, to all her sex's pleasures dead,
She vents her rage on Adam's guilty head,
Who rather chose, than lose his rib for life,
To have the crooked member made a wife;
From waking woe to visioned bliss she flies,
And dreams of raptures, which her fate denies.
The tender flame, which warmed her youthful mind,
By affectation's mawkish rules confined,
Though quenched its heat, illumes with many a ray,
The tedious evening of her fading day;
And though unknown, unnoticed, and unblest,
Still suns the impassive winter of her breast.

Next comes the miser, palsied, jealous, lean,
He looks the very skeleton of Spleen!

184

'Mid forests drear, he haunts, in spectred gloom,
Some desert abbey, or some druid's tomb;
Where, hersed in earth, his occult riches lay,
Fleeced from the world, and buried from the day.
With crutch in hand, he points his mineral rod,
Limps to the spot, and turns the well-known sod;
While there, involved in night, he counts his store,
By the soft tinklings of the golden ore;
He shakes with terror, lest the moon should spy,
And the breeze whisper, where his treasures lie.

This wretch, who, dying, would not take one pill,
If living, he must pay a doctor's bill,
Still clings to life, of every joy bereft;
His god is gold, and his religion theft!
And, as of yore, when modern vice was strange,
Could leathern money current pass on 'change,
His reptile soul, whose reasoning powers are pent
Within the logick bounds of cent per cent,
Would sooner coin his ears, than stocks should fall,
And cheat the pillory, than not cheat at all!

To fame unknown, to happier fortune born,
The blithe Savoyard hails the peep of morn;
And while the fluid gold his eye surveys,
The hoary Glaciers fling their diamond blaze;
Geneva's broad lake rushes from its shores,
Arve gently murmurs, and the rough Rhone roars.
'Mid the cleft Alps, his cabin peers from high,
Hangs o'er the clouds, and perches on the sky.
O'er fields of ice, across the headlong flood,
From cliff to cliff he bounds in fearless mood.

185

While, far beneath, a night of tempest lies,
Deep thunder mutters, harmless light'ning flies;
While, far above, from battlements of snow,
Loud torrents tumble on the world below;
On rustick reed he wakes a merrier tune,
Than the lark warbles on the “Ides of June.”
Far off, let Glory's clarion shrilly swell;
He loves the musick of his pipe as well.
Let shouting millions crown the hero's head,
And Pride her tesselated pavement tread;
More happy far, this denizen of air
Enjoys what Nature condescends to spare:
His days are jocund, undisturbed his nights;
His spouse contents him, and his mule delights!

All hail, sweet Poesy! transcendent maid!
To whom my fond youth's earliest vows were paid;
Who, dressed in sapphire robes, with eye of fire,
Didst first my unambitious rhyme inspire;
Lured by whose charms, I left, in passioned hope,
My Watts's Logick for the page of Pope;
If e'er regardful of thy wildered sons,
For whom so gingerly Life's current runs;
Who, like the slaves, beneath the iron sway
Of cursed Mezentius lingering, loath the day,
Doomed, horrid Fate! the living Muse to see,
Bound to the mouldering corpse of Penury;

Mezentius, a prince of the Tyrrhenes, a contemner of the gods, was the inventor of the savage punishment of binding the devoted offender to the putrescent body of some victim, sacrificed to his barbarity.

Descend, like Jove, suffused in golden shower,
And on our garret-roofs the rain drops pour!
But if the current of Castalia's waves
No Wicklow mine, no Georgian acre, laves;

186

If still bleak Want must chill thy votaries' fire—
Their taste extinguish, and take back thy lyre.

Where you send genius, send a fortune too;
Dunces by instinct thrive, as oysters woo!
For ne'er were veins of ore by chymist found,
Except, like Hebrew roots, in barren ground!

Those spots of earth, which are impregnated by mineral strata, are generally distinguished by the desolate aridity of their surface, which is totally insufficient to support the vegetation even of graminous productions.

Each scribbling wight, who pens a birth-day card,
Was born, as grannams say, to be a bard!
Which is, in prose, if rightly understood,
To chum with spiders, and catch flies for food.

In Youth's gay flush, when first the sportive Muse
Each bright ephemera of the brain pursues;
Ere sobered Fancy, touched by Reason's ray,
Sees all her frost-work castles melt away;
Were, then, the enthusiast bard, like Moses, led
To Pisgah's top, and life in vision spread;
There, while he blessed the promised land, were told,
The Canaan, he must ne'er possess, was gold;
How many minstrels of the classick lay
Had left the Appian, for the Indian way!
How few would lumber, negligent of pelf,
The Printer's garret, or the Grocer's shelf!

Fame, that bright phantom, flitting, vain, and coy,
Is all the meed, which poets e'er enjoy;
Nor e'en her fickle, short embrace possess,
'Till all her charms have lost the power to bless.

187

Heroes and bards, who nobler flights have won,
Than Cesar's eagles, or the Mantuan swan,
From eldest era, share the common doom;
The sun of Glory shines but on the tomb.
Firm, as the Mede, the stern decree subdues
The brightest pageant of the proudest Muse.
Man's noblest powers could ne'er the law revoke,
Though Handel harmonized what Chatham spoke;
Though tuneful Morton's magick genius graced
The Hyblean melody of Merry's taste!

Robert Merry, esquire, the only pupil in the school of Collins, who possesses the genius of his master, is the author of those elegant poems in the British Album, signed Della Crusca, of Paulina— the Pains of Memory, and several dramatick pieces. In the summer of 1791, he married Miss Brunton, a celebrated actress in Covent-Garden theatre, and no less admired for her pre-eminent talents as a daughter of the Buskin, than esteemed as a woman of unblemished principles, and polished accomplishments.

Mrs. Morton, of Dorchester, the reputed authoress of an heroick Poem, of much merit, entitled “Beacon-Hill,” may, without hesitation, be announced the American Sappho.

Time, the stern censor, talisman of fame,
With rigid justice, portions praise and shame:
And, while his laurels, reared where Genius grew,
'Mid wide Oblivion's lava bloom anew;

It is a fact, that, in countries, subject to volcanick inundation, the subsiding lava super-induces a fertility of soil, not to be equalled by the most exuberant luxuriance of the tropical climates.

Oft will his chymick fire, in distant age,
Elicit spots, unseen on ancient page.

So the famed sage, who plunged in Etna's flame,
'Mid pagan deities enshrined his name;
'Till from the iliack mountain's crater thrown,
The Martyr's sandal cost the God his crown.

Empedocles is recorded, in fabulous history, to have leaped into the flames of Ætna, to obtain, in the dark ages of paganism, an apotheosis for his memory; but the brass slipper, which he had worn during his hermitage in a cave of the mountain, was soon after thrown up by the volcano, and exposed the impostor to the world.

So too Italia's victor paused, of late,
While the red war beleagured Mantua's gate,
And bade his myrmidons the village spare,
Where Virgil first inhaled his natal air.

This event, so honourary to the character of Buonaparte, took place soon after the capitulation of Mantua. The village, which boasts the nativity of this immortal bard, lies in the suburbs of that city.

While thus of chequered life our motley lay
Has sketched a various, though a crude survey,
Say, shall Columbia's sons the theme prolong?
Their “Ruling Passion” claims our noblest song.

188

Theirs is the pride, bequeathed by glorious sires,
To guard their Lares, and protect their fires;
To rear a race, enlightened, brave and free,
Heirs of the soil, and tenants of the sea;
Whose breasts the Union shield, its laws revere,
As country sacred, and as freedom dear.

Long as our hardy yeomanry command
The rich fee-simple of their native land;
While, mid the labours of the ripening plain,
They form the phalanx, and the courser train;
While, in our martial school, are chiefs enrolled,
As Lincoln prudent, and as Putnam bold;
While, Catiline expelled, our senate prize
Hearts, just as Russell's; heads, as Bowdoin's, wise;
While guides our realm a patriot sage, who first,
When Power's volcano o'er our nation burst,
Unawed, like Pliny, saw the flame aspire,
And cities sink in cataracts of fire;
Undaunted heard the rocking of the spheres,
While all Vesuvius thundered in his ears:

The first eruption of this mountain happened in the 79th year of the Christian era. Pliny, the elder, a man no less renowned for forensick than military powers, was at that time commander of a fleet in the bay of Misenum. Unintimidated by the terrible phenomenon, he hastened with his ships to the relief of the nobility and peasants, whose villas and farms had been ingulphed in the flames. In this benevolent and heroick attempt, he died by suffocation. This eruption destroyed the cities of Herculaneum, and Pompeii. To support the poetick allusion, it may be necessary to add, that the burning of the towns of Charlestown and Fairfield, in the revolutionary war, affords but too prominent a trait in the similitude.

No longer dread Columbia's gallant host,
The fierce invader, lowering on their coast;
Nor wiles of traitors, nor Corruption's power;
Nor Blount's conspiracy, nor Randolph's “flour!”

Of late, in Gorgon's hall, from Anarch's tub,
What Rhetorick graced the orgies of the Club?
But now, an injured people, wiser grown,
Taught dear Experience, by the wrongs they've known;
This maxim hold, which much fine spouting saves,
Ex-clusive patriots are con-clusive knaves!

189

Stern power of justice, whose uplifted hand
Would sweep from earth Sedition's wayward band;
Scourged by their crimes, redeem the scattered host,
Nor let the remnant of her tribe be lost;
With arm relenting, to their morbid gaze,
The mystick serpent of thy mercy raise:
The sins of Faction, now deceased, forgive,
While her repenting sons look up and live!

From foreign feud, and civil discord free,
As is Columbia, may she ever be!
May Europe's storms ne'er damp the generous flame,
Which warms each bosom for his country's fame!
Long roll between our shores the Atlantick tide;
Wide as our hemispheres, our laws divide!
And should some earthquake, with more powerful vent,
Than that, which Dover's cliffs from Calais rent,
With prisoned force insurging Neptune's reign,
Convulse the deep foundations of the main,
Till both the continents, in Nature's fright,
Cleft from their bases, totter to unite;
May Fate the closing empires intervene,
And raise, when Ocean sinks, and Alps between!

In realms, where Law and Liberty unite,
In the broad charter of co-equal right,
Where publick Will invests the civil sway,
Where those, who govern, must in turn obey;
From Party's chrysalis, unseen to rise,
The buzzing beetle of Ambition flies.
What time, those fiends accursed no longer draw
The People's sanction from the People's law;

190

What time, the choral hymn of Union flows,
And Concord's temple hears a nation's vows;
When every sect supports, with patriot zeal,
One universal creed, the publick weal:
Then, blest Columbia, shall thy spotless fame
Shine, like the vestal lamp's perennial flame!
Then shall thy car disperse, thy Trident awe
The hovering hordes of predatory war;
Thy neutral flag protect its wealthy sail,
Freight every tide, and charter every gale;
The deep Patowmac's sea-like breast sustain
The keels of fleets, the commerce of the main:
And, while their giant shades project from high,
The walls of Washington shall lift the sky;
And see, expanding round thy Civick Dome,
The bay of Naples, and the towers of Rome!

When Asian kingdoms, whelmed in moral guilt,
By Terror governed, as on rapine built,
Like lost Palmyra, only shall be known,
By sculptured fragments of Colossal stone;
When thou, as musing Tully paused and wept,
Where Syracuse and Archimedes slept,
With solemn Sorrow and with pilgrim feet,
Shalt trace the shades of Vernon's still retreat,
And, as the votive marble's faithful page
Inscribes to Fame the Saviour of his age,
Shalt dew the knee-worn turf, with streaming eyes,
Where, urned in dust, the mighty Fabius lies:
Thy realm, maturing 'mid the feathery flight
Of ages, trackless as the plumes of light,

191

In vigorous youth, the vital power shall prove
Of private Virtue ripening publick Love;
Which, Ægis-like, shall more thy foes appal,
Than China's fence, or Albion's floating wall;
Shall bid thy empire flourish and endure,
Thy people happy, and thy laws secure;
Thy Phœnix-Glory renovate its prime,
Extend with Ocean, and exist with Time.

University of Virginia Library

THE RULING PASSION;

AN OCCASIONAL POEM, WRITTEN BY THE APPOINTMENT OF THE SOCIETY OF THE PHI BETA KAPPA; AND SPOKEN, ON THEIR ANNIVERSARY, IN THE CHAPEL OF THE UNIVERSITY, CAMBRIDGE, JULY 20, 1797.