A postscript to the new Bath guide :: :: University of Virginia Library

“Oh! wearisome condition of humanity,
“Born to one law, and to another bound:
“Vainly begotten, yet forbidden vanity,
“Created sick—commanded to be sound.”

Thus sang Sir Fulke Greville—and chaunted most truly,
Tho' his retrograde Faith call'd his Reason unruly.

I was knit (as they tell me) for excellent ends,
Tho' the future and I have not yet been good friends;
And thrown on this planet of woe nine months after,
The inmate of Guilt, and the subject of Laughter:
Where, from infantine rev'llings to blithe juvenility,
To keep myself safe employ'd all my agility;
When the Tempests of life assail Meekness to kill her,
Like an atom, I'm blown from a post to a pillar;
And I surely had sunk the fell victim of Sorrow,
Had not Hope's brilliant pencil pourtray'd sweet To-Morrow.
But that morrow, like many a fraud in society,
Fled my mental embraces as Peace flies Impiety:
Or could I receive her as Hope's promis'd pattern,
She came, like a Beauty besmear'd as a slattern.
Yet strange as this wond'rous hypothesis seems,
I adore the false nymph, tho' she cheat me with dreams.—

Of dreams apropos, for I lately have had one,
Which perhaps Scotia's elders would solve as a bad one:
Methought I saw Error, array'd as a Spider!
Whose circles progressive spread wider and wider;
With no barrier to stop the wild progress of Action,
Tho' every fibre seem'd touch'd by Attraction:
Thus the mighty Arachne tremendously reign'd,
While Ruin and Scorn the frail fabrick sustain'd:
Round her lime-fraught domain both the worthless and wise
Curvetted and swarm'd like rash—overgrown flies!
And some, who perchance flew too close to the snare,
Were caught, like weak Martyrs, and poiz'd in the air;
Each skain of the web was oppress'd with a hundred,
Who had run after Fame, but in running had blunder'd:
On this hung a row of wild Mathematicians;
On the next gasp'd a synod of Metaphysicians;

On the third, Epicurean dull humaniz'd beasts;
On the fourth, a vast herd of polemical Priests:
And so thick and remote their base bodies extended,
That the dolts to the sight seem'd with vacuum blended.

But think not, dear Bob, that this apt visitation
Left nought on my Judgment for man's reformation:
For this lesson I drew from the ideal spinner,
That the end of the Proud's to give—Reptiles a dinner!
Who buzz, singe their pinions at Novelty's fire,
Taint the viands of Truth, become blind, and expire.

Tho' I know you're no Daniel at clearing a mystery,
There are, from this vision, would make out a history:
As I've read in old writ that the Deities deign
To reveal unborn deeds by the sports of the brain:

Get some of the Sophs to interpret its meaning,
As the fruit of the soil may be well worth the gleaning:
For e'en we, so the children of Obloquy tell us,
Have College-bred Dreamers who're comical Fellows!

HORACE PEERY.

York Hotel, Bath, 1789.