Poems :: :: University of Virginia Library

The 139th PSALM PARAPHRASED.

ÆTAT. 14.

O dread Jehovah! thy all piercing eyes
Explore the motions of this mortal frame,
This tenement of dust: thy stretching sight
Surveys the harmonious principles, that move
In beauteous rank and order, to inform
This cask, and animated mass of clay.
Nor are the prospects of thy wond'rous sight
To this terrestial part of man confin'd;
But shoot into his soul, and there discern
The first materials of unfashion'd thought,
Yet dim and undigested, till the mind,
Big with the tender images, expands,
And, swelling, labours with th' ideal birth.

Wheree'er I move thy cares pursue my feet
Attendant. When I drink the dews of sleep,
Stretch'd on my downy bed, and there enjoy
A sweet forgetfulness of all my toils;
Unseen thy sovereign presence guards my sleep,
Drives all the terrors of my dreams away,
Sooths all my soul, and softens my repose.

Before conception can employ the tongue,
And mould the ductile images to sound;
Before imagination stands display'd,
Thine eye the future eloquence can read,
Yet unarray'd with speech. Thou, mighty Lord!
Hast moulded man from his congenial dust,
And spoke him into being; while the clay,
Beneath thy forming hand, leap'd forth, inspir'd,
And started into life: through ev'ry part,
At thy command, the wheels of motion play'd.

But such exalted knowledge leaves below,
And drops weak man from its superior sphere:

In vain, with reason's ballast, would he try
To stem th' unfathomable deep. His bark
O'ersets, and founders in the vast abyss.
Then whither shall the rapid fancy run,
Though in its full career, to speed my flight
From thy unbounded presence? which, alone,
Fills all the regions of extended space,
Beyond the bounds of Nature. Whither, Lord!
Shall my unrein'd imagination rove
To leave behind thy spirit, and outfly
Its influence, which, with brooding wings outspread,
Hatch'd unfledg'd nature from the dark profound?

If, mounted on my tow'ring thoughts, I climb
Into the heav'n of heav'ns; I there behold
The blaze of thy unclouded majesty.
In the pure empyrean thee I view
High-thron'd above all height—thy radiant shrine
Throng'd with the prostrate seraphs, who receive
Beatitude past utterance. If I plunge

Down to the gloomy mansions of the damn'd;
I find thee there, and read thee in the scenes
Of complicated wrath—I see thee clad
In all the majesty of darkness there.
If, on the ruddy morning's purple wings
Upborn, with indefatigable course,
I seek the glowing borders of the east,
Where the bright sun, emerging from the deeps,
With his first glories gilds the sparkling seas,
And trembles o'er the waves: e'en there thy hand
Shall thro' the wat'ry desart guide my course,
And o'er the broken surges pave my way;
While on the dreadful whirls I hang secure,
And mock the warring ocean. If, with hopes,
As fond as false, the darkness I expect
To hide and wrap me in its mantling shade
Vain were the thought; for thy unbounded ken
Darts thro' the thickning gloom, and pries thro' all
The palpable obscure. Before thine eyes
The vanquish'd night throws off her dusky shroud,

And kindles into day. The shade and light,
To man still various, but to thee the same.

On thee is all the structure of my frame
Dependent. Lock'd within the silent womb
Sleeping I lay, and rip'ning to my birth:
Yet, Lord! thy outstretch'd arm preserv'd me there,
Before I mov'd to entity, and trod
The verge of being. To thy hallowed name
I'll pay due honours: for thy mighty hand
Built this corporeal fabrick, when it laid
The groundwork of existence. Hence I read
The wonders of thy art. This frame I view
With terror and delight: and, wrapp'd in both,
I startle at myself. My bones, unform'd
As yet, nor hardning from the viscous parts,
But blended with th' unanimated mass,
Thine eye distinctly view'd: and, while I lay
Within the earth imperfect, nor perceiv'd
The first faint dawn of life, with ease survey'd

The vital glimmerings of the active seed
Just kindling to existence; and beheld
My substance scarce material. In thy book
Was the fair model of this structure drawn:
Where ev'ry part, in just connection join'd,
Compos'd and perfected th' harmonious piece,
E'er the dim speck of being learn'd to stretch
Its ductile form, or entity had known
To range and wanton in an ample space.

How dear, how rooted in my inmost soul
Are all thy counsels, and the various ways
Of thy eternal providence! the sum
So boundless and immense, it leaves behind
The low account of numbers, and outflies
All that imagination e'er conceiv'd:
Less num'rous are the sands that croud the shore!
The barriers of the ocean. When I rise
From my soft bed, and softer joys of sleep,
I rise to thee. Yet, lo! the impious slight

Thy mighty wonders. Shall the sons of vice
Elude the vengeance of thy wrathful hand,
And mock thy lingring thunder, which withholds
Its forked terrors from their guilty heads!
Thou great tremendous God!—Avaunt, and fly
All ye that thirst for blood—for, swoln with pride,
Each haughty wretch blasphemes thy sacred name,
And bellows his reproaches to affront
Thy glorious majesty. Explore my soul,
See if a flaw or stain of sin infects
My inmost thoughts. Then lead me in the way
That guides my feet to thine own heav'n and thee.

POVERTY and POETRY.

A SATIRE.

ÆTAT. 15.

'T was sung of old how one Amphion
Could, by his verses, tame a lion,
And, by his strange unchanting tunes,
Make bears and wolves dance rigadoons:
His songs could call the timber down,
And form it into house or town.
But it is plain now in these times,
No house is rais'd by poets' rhimes.
They for themselves can only rear
A few wild castles in the air.

Poor are the brethren of the bays
Down from high strains to ekes and ayes.

The muses too are virgins yet,
And may be, till they portions get.
Yet still the doating rhimer dreams,
And sings of Helicon's bright streams.
But Helicon, for all his clatter,
Yields nothing but insipid water.
Yet, ev'n a-thirst, he sweetly sings
Of nectar, and elysian springs.

The grave physician, who, by physick,
Like death, dispatches him that is sick;
Pursues a sure and thriving trade:
Tho' patients die the doctor's paid.
Licens'd to kill, he gains a palace
For what another mounts a gallows.

In shady groves the muses play,
And love in flow'ry meads to stray:
Pleas'd with a bleaky barren ground,
Where rip'ning fruits are never found.

But then some say you purchase fame,
And gain a never-dying name.
Great recompence for real trouble!
To be rewarded with a bubble.

Thus soldiers who, in many battles,
Get bangs, and blows, and god knows what else,
Are paid with fame, and wooden leg,
And gain a pass with leave to beg.

The 9th ODE of ANACREON.

ÆTAT. 15.

This rapid flight, through realms above,
Whence, whence, tak'st thou? O lovely dove!
Whence so much fragrance from thy bill
Dost breathe, and from thy wings distil,
Perfuming all the air around?—
And prithee whither art thou bound?

To Venus once I did belong,
Who sold me for a pretty song:
And now my office is, in brief,
Anacreon's messenger in chief.
Here from my neck, exposed to view,
Depends, thou seest, his billet-doux.
He said, when I set out, that he,
At my return, would set me free.

But should he then dismiss me straight,
Yet I will still upon him wait:
For what would it avail, that I
O'er mountains and o'er fields should fly:
And, on thick trees sublimely plac'd,
Take daily some poor wild repast?
Since now, by fond Anacreon fed,
From his own hand I pick my bread:
And of that wine delicious sip
Which just before had wet his lip.
My thirst then quench'd, my wings I spread,
And hover round my master's head:
And, when with sleep my eyelids close,
Upon his lyre I perch'd repose.
I've told thee all. Begone—I vow
Thou mak'st me prattle like a chough.

An ELEGY

To the Memory of Captain HUGHES, a particular Friend of the Author's.

Vain were the task to give the soul to glow,
The nerve to kindle, and the verse to flow;
When the fond mourner, hid from ev'ry eye,
Bleeds in the anguish of too keen a sigh:
And, lost to glory, lost to all his fire,
Forgets the port before he grasps the lyre.

Nature! 'tis thine with manly warmth to mourn
Expiring virtue, and the closing urn;
To teach, dear Seraph! o'er the good and wise
The dirge to murmur, and the bust to rise,
Come then, O guiltless of the tear of art!
Sprung from the sky, and thron'd within the heart!
O come, in all the pomp of grief array'd,
And weep the warrior, whilst I grace the shade.

'Tis o'er—the bright delusive scene is o'er,
And war's proud visions mock the soul no more;
The laurel fades, th' imperial car retires,
All youth enobles, and all worth admires.

Alas! my Hughes! and must this mourning verse
Resign thy triumph to attend thy hearse!
Was it for this that friendship's genial flame
Woke all my wishes from the trance of fame?
Was it for this I left the hallow'd page,
Where ev'ry science beams of ev'ry age;
On thought's strong pinion rang'd the martial scene
From Rome's first Cæsar to the great Eugene:
Explor'd th' embattled van, the deep'ning line,
Th' enambush'd Phalanx, and the springing mine;
Then, pale with horror, bent the suppliant knee,
And heav'd the sigh, and dropp'd the tear for thee!

What boots it now, that when, with hideous roar,
The gath'ring tempest howl'd from ev'ry shore,

Some pitying angel, vigilant to save,
Spread all his plumes, and snatch'd thee from the wave?
Preserv'd thee sacred from the fell disease
When the blue plague had fir'd th' autumnal breeze!
Ah! when my hero panted to engage
Where all the battle burst in all its rage;
Where dreadful flew the missive deaths around,
And the mad faulchion blush'd from wound to wound:
Was he deny'd the privilege to bleed,
Sav'd on the main to fall upon the Tweed?

Ye graces! tell with what address he stole
The list'ning ear, and opened all the soul.
What, tho' rough winter bade his whirlwinds rise,
Hid his pale suns, and frown'd along his skies;
Pour'd the big, deluge on the face of day:
My Hughes was here to smile the glooms away,
With all the luxuries of sound to move
The pulse of glory, or the sigh of love;

And, spite of winter, lassitude, or pain,
Taught life and joy to throb in ev'ry vein.
Fancy! dear artist of the mental pow'r!
Fly,—fetch my genius to the social hour,
Give me again his glowing sense to warm,
His song to warble, and his wit to charm.
Alas! alas! how impotently true
Th' aerial pencil forms the scene anew!

E'en now, when all the vision beams around,
And my ear kindles with th' ideal sound—
Just as the smiles, the graces live imprest,
And all his image takes up all my breast—
Some gloomy phantom brings the awful bier,
And the short rapture melts into a tear.

Thus in the lake's clear chrystal we descry
The bright diffusion of a radiant sky—
Reflected nature sheds a milder green;
While half her forests float into the scene.

Ah! as we gaze the luckless zephyr flies,
The surface trembles, and the picture dies.

O blest with all that youth can give to please,
The form majestic, and the mien of ease,
Alike empower'd by nature, and by art,
To storm the rampart, and to win the heart;
Correct of manners, delicate of mind,
With spirit humble, and with truth refin'd;
For public life's meridian sunshine made
Yet known to ev'ry virtue of the shade;
In war while all the trumps of fame inspire,
Each passion raving, and each wish on fire;
At home, without or vanity, or rage;
As soft as pity, and as cool as age.

These were thy virtues—these will still be just,
Light all their beams, and blaze upon thy dust;
While pride, in vain solemnity bequeaths
To pow'r her statues, and to guilt her wreaths:

Or, warm'd by faction, impudently flings
The price of nations on the urns of kings.

The Equality of Human Conditions,

A POETICAL DIALOGUE;

[_]

Spoken at the Annual Visitation of Tunbridge School, 1746, By Messrs. M--- and A---

M---

While airy Belville, guiltless of a school,
Shines out a French edition of a fool,
Studies his learned taylor once a week,
But curses ev'ry syllable of Greek:
I sit, and think o'er all that Sparta fir'd,
That Athens boasted, and that Rome admir'd.
Enraptur'd fancy, busied with the theme,
Forms ev'ry bright idea to a dream,
Paints all the charming pageantry anew;
And brings at once each classic to my view.

Now, fondly wild, I thunder in the war,
Shake the keen spear, and mount th' imperial car,
With daring Regulus to Carthage run,
Or nobly bleed with Brutus in a son:
Seize, Casca-like, on Cæsar's gorgeous vest,
And boldly plant a dagger in his breast.
Now, softly-breathing all the muse's fire,
I drop the faulchion, and I grasp the lyre;
With Pindar's pinion skim the blest abode,
Or strive to charm Augustus with an ode.

Come then, my Lelius! come, my joy and pride!
Whose friendship sooths me, while thy precepts guide;
Thou, whose quick eye has glanc'd thro' ev'ry age,
View'd ev'ry scene, and studied ev'ry page;
Teach me, like thee, with ev'ry virtue blest,
To catch each eye, and steal to ev'ry breast,
To rise to all that in each patriot shone,
And make each hero's happiness my own.

Say, shall I, with a triumph in my view,
Fame's air-dress'd goddess thro' each scene pursue;
Ambitious court her in the pomp of war,
And number ev'ry trophy by a scar?
Shall I, with Solon, form the moral plan,
And aim to mould a savage to a man?
Or, pleas'd to rival ev'ry Grecian sage,
Glean Plato's sense and copy Homer's rage?

A---

You ask me, Sir! what few would care to give,
Some grave instructions how you ought to live.
You wish that envied blissful scene to find
That charms the taste, and dignifies the mind;
That nobly mingles ev'ry art to please,
And joins the majesty of life to ease.

Hear then, my friend! the doctrine I disclose,
As true as if display'd in pompous prose;

As if Locke's sacred hand the page had wrote,
And ev'ry doctor stamp'd it with a vote.

All lots are equal, and all states the same,
Alike in merit, tho' unlike in name.
In reason's eye no diff'rence lies between
Life's noon-day lustres or her milder scene.
'Tis not the plate that dignifies the board,
Nor all the titles blazing round a lord.
'Tis not the splendid plume, th' embroider'd vest,
The gorgeous sword-knot, or the martial crest,
That lends to life the smile, the jest, the glee:
Or makes his honour happier than me.

When Florio's acres stretch'd o'er half the land,
A gilded chariot roll'd him thro' the strand:
Reduced at last with humbler scenes to mix,
He smoak'd a speculative pipe at Dick's.
The same great genius, in or out of pow'r—
Ease smooth'd his brow, and soften'd ev'ry hour:

Taught him to live as happy in a shed
As when a dutchess grac'd his nuptial bed.

Content's the port all mortals wish to hail:
She points the compass, and she guides the sail.
To her alone our leaky vessels roll
Thro' all the seas that rage from pole to pole.
What boots it then, when gath'ring storms behind
Rise black in air, and howl in ev'ry wind,
That thy rich ship a pomp of pride display'd
Her masts all cedar, and her sails brocade!
Say, canst thou think the tempest will discern
A silken cable, or a painted stern!
Hush the wild tumult that tornados bring,
And kindly spare the yatcht that holds a king?
No, no, my friend! if skilful pilots guide,
And heav'n auspicious calms the whirling tide,
No winds distress you, and no storm destroys,
Whether you sail in gondolas or hoys.

M---

What, has just heav'n no slight distinction made
Betwixt a life of sunshine and of shade?
Must I, in silence, this wild system own,
And think a cottage equal to a throne?
Sure if I did, my friends would soon bestow
A few stout cords, and send me to Monro.

Your taylor, skill'd in fashion's ev'ry grace,
Decks you in all the pageantry of lace:
Lives in a cell, and eats, from week to week,
An homely meal of cabbage and ox-cheek.
You walk majestic in a nobler scene,
Guiltless of ev'ry anguish, but the spleen:
With all the luxury of statesmen dine
On daily feasts of ortolans and wine.
Then tell me, sir! if this description's true,
Is not your taylor less at ease than you?

Hardwicke, great patriot! envy'd, lov'd, carest,
Mark'd by each eye, and hugg'd to ev'ry breast,
Whose bright example learns us to admire
All Cooper's graces, and all Talbot's fire—
Firm to his trust whatever bribes assail;
Truth guides his sword, and justice holds his scale.
Say, is not he more happy than the throng
Of beardless Templars melting o'er a song?
Than him, who, buried in a country-town,
Engrosses half a folio for a crown?

Heroic glory in the martial scene
Spread ev'ry plume to dignify Eugene—
On Marlbro's helmet sat, in all her pride
And proudly frown'd at all the world beside.
And sure, you'd think it a most sad disgrace,
If ensigns liv'd as easy as his grace.

A---

Dear sir! restrain the prejudice of youth,
And calmly listen to the voice of truth,

When first th' Almighty sire his work began
And spoke the mingling atoms into man:
To all the race with gracious hand was giv'n,
One common forest, and one equal heav'n;
They shar'd alike this universal ball,
The sons of freedom, and the lords of all.
The poets too this sacred truth display'd,
From cloud-topt Pindus to the Latian shade.
They sung that e'er Pandora, fond of strife,
Let loose each embrio-misery of life,
All nature brighten'd in one golden age,
Each sire a monarch, and each son a sage:
Eternal blessings flow'd to all the race,
Alike in riches, as alike in place.

Suppose then, sir! that new distinctions since
Have plac'd a slave some leagues below a prince:
Yet ease and joy, dispassion'd reason owns,
As often visit cottages as thrones.

See! in yon valley, while the mellowing grain
Embrowns the slope, and nods along the plain,
A croud of rustics, doom'd to daily toil,
Disarm the forest, or enrich the soil:
Not in that elegance of dress array'd
That charm'd Arcadia's hills, and Tempe's shade;
Where Thyrsis, shelter'd in some happier grove,
The lonely scene of solitude, and love,
His breast all rapture, and his soul on fire,
Now wove the garland, and now swept the lyre.
No,—'tis plain Colin, Hobbinol, and Ned,
Unskill'd in numbers as in books unread,
Who scorn the winter's deadly blast to shun,
But face the storm, and drudge thro' ev'ry sun:
Then seek the cottage, where the homely bowl
Smooths ev'ry brow, and opens ev'ry soul;
Speeds the same social warmth from breast to breast,
And bids them laugh at Verres, and his crest.

When honest Colin sees the shining all
That gilds the Change, and dignifies Whitehall;
Lost in the scenes of turbulence and strife,
The farce of grandeur, and the pomp of life,
He steals impatient to his native shade,
And longs to grasp his waggon and his spade:
Heedless of ev'ry charm, of ev'ry grace,
That forms the goddess in Fitzwalter's face,
That lends to Finch her majesty of mien—
He would not change his Susan for a queen.

Believe me, sir! distinction, pomp, and noise,
Corrupt our tempers, as they cloud our joys:
And surely, when the social spirit's broke
A star's a gewgaw, and a lord's a joke;
Without those robes, those gorgeous bagatelles,
That deck our nobles, and that charm our belles;
Without a crane-neck'd chariot's smooth career,
Without the wealth of Indus in your ear;

Without a group of pictures dearly bought,
Where Titian's colours vie with Guido's thought;
Without the fruits of Spain, the wines of France,
Without an opera, and without a dance,
You may live happy, as grave doctors tell,
At Rome, at Tunbridge, in a grot, or cell.

From sky to sky th' imperial bird of Jove
Spreads his broad wing, and thund'ring grasps his love;
The mighty bull, by genial Zephyr sway'd,
Enraptur'd courts his heifer to the shade;
The feather'd warblers pair on ev'ry spray,
The grove re-echoing with the sprightly lay;
While the gay tribe of insects blissful share
The joys of love, and people all the air.
All, all that in the depths of ocean lie,
Graze on the plain, or skim along the sky,
Fondly pursue the end by nature giv'n,
Life all their aim, and quiet all their heav'n.

If then no songsters grudge the bear his thigh,
The hound his nostril, or the lynx his eye;
Nor feel a pang tho' Afric's shaggy brood.
Majestic stalk the monarchs of the wood:
Why should you think your solitude a tomb,
If Pultney has a title and a plumb?

M---

But soft—restrain this turbulence of war,
This mimic image of the wordy bar:
Lest you should seem to copy Henly's lore,
Who gravely kills objections by the score.

Behold that wretch, by ev'ry woe distress'd,
Want in his eye, and horror in his breast;
A thousand nameless agonies of pain
Rack ev'ry nerve, and burn thro' ev'ry vein;
He lives to suffer, and but speaks to moan,
And numbers every minute by a groan.

Is he then happy? blest with every joy
That glows on Cecil's cheek, or Dorset's eye?
Shall we proclaim him blest, without rebuke,
And rank a martyr'd beggar with a duke?

A---

Believe me, sir! each mortal has his fear,
Each soul an anguish, and each eye a tear;
Aches, pains, and fevers every breast assail,
And haunt alike the city and the vale.

What tho' in pomp your painted vessels roll,
Fraught with the gems that glare from pole to pole,—
Tho' health auspicious gilds your every grace,
Nerves the strong limb, and blushes o'er the face;
Tho' grac'd with all that dignity of wit
That charm'd in Villars, and now charms in Pitt:
Possess'd of all the eloquence that hung
On Tully's lip, and drops from Murray's tongue;
Tho' all the titles, coronets, and stars,
That statesmen aim at, and that Malton bears,

Enrich your 'scutcheon, dignify your crest,
Beam on your coach, and blaze upon your breast:
Can they forbid the secret ill to glow,
The pang to torture, or the tear to flow?

Confess we then that all the ills of life,
Diseases, grief, vexations, follies, strife,
Without distinction every soul perplex,
Haunt ev'ry scene, and prey on all the sex.
Yet let us own that every pleasure too
That glads the active, and that wings the slow,
Alike indulgent to the rich and poor,
Glides thro' the land, and knocks at ev'ry door.

Hear then, without the specious pride of art,
A truth that strikes the moral to the heart;
A truth that liv'd in Cato's patriot-breast,
And bade a dying Socrates be blest.
All, all, but virtue, is a school-boy's theme,
The air-dress'd phantom of a virgin's dream:

A gilded toy, that homebred fools desire,
That coxcombs boast of, and that mobs admire.

Her radiant graces every bliss unfold,
And turn whate'er she touches into gold.

The Birth and Education of GENIUS.

A TALE.

Yes, Harriet! say whate'er you can,
'Tis education makes the man:
Whate'er of Genius we inherit,
Exalted sense, and lively spirit,
Must all be disciplin'd by rules,
And take their colour from the schools.

'Twas nature gave that cheek to glow,
That breast to rise in hills of snow,

Those sweetly-temper'd eyes to shine
Above the sapphires of the mine.
But all your more majestic charms,
Where grace presides, where spirit warms,
That shape which falls by just degrees,
And flows into the pomp of ease;
That step, whose motion seems to swim,
That melting harmony of limb,
Were form'd by Glover's skilful glance,
At Chelsea, when you learnt to dance.

'Tis so with man.—His talents rest
Misshapen embrios in his breast;
Till education's eye explores
The sleeping intellectual pow'rs,
Awakes the dawn of wit and sense,
And lights them into excellence.
On this depends the patriot-flame,
The fine ingenuous feel of fame,

The manly spirit, brave, and bold,
Superior to the taint of gold,
The dread of infamy, the zeal
Of honour, and the public weal,
And all those virtues which presage
The glories of a rising age.

But, leaving all these graver things
To statesmen, moralists, and kings,
Whose business 'tis such points to settle—
Ring—and bid Robin bring the kettle.
Mean while the muse, whose sportive strain
Flows like her voluntary vein,
And impudently dares aspire
To share the wreath with Swift and Prior,
Shall tell an allegoric tale,
Where truth lies hid beneath the veil.

One April-morn as Phœbus play'd
His carols in the delphic shade,

A nymph, call'd Fancy, blithe, and free,
The fav'rite child of liberty,
Heard, as she rov'd about the plain,
The bold enthusiastic strain;
She heard, and, led by warm desire,
To know the artist of the lyre,
Crept softly to a sweet alcove,
Hid in the umbrage of the grove,
And, peeping thro' the myrtle, saw
A handsome, young, celestial beau,
On nature's sopha stretch'd along,
Awaking harmony, and song.

Struck with his fine majestic mien,
As certain to be lov'd as seen,
Long e'er the melting air was o'er
She cry'd, in extacy, encore:
And, what a prude will think but odd,
Popp'd out, and curtsied to the God.

Phœbus, gallant, polite, and keen as
Each earth-born votary of Venus,
Rose up, and with a graceful air,
Address'd the visionary fair;
Excus'd his morning-dishabille,
Complain'd of late he had been ill.
In short, he gaz'd, he bow'd, he sigh'd,
He sung, he flatter'd, press'd, and ly'd,
With such a witchery of art,
That Fancy gave him all her heart;
Her catechism quite forgot,
And waited on him to his grot.

In length of time she bore a son,
As brilliant as his sire the sun.
Pure Æther was the vital ray
That lighted up his finer clay;
The nymphs, the rosy-finger'd hours,
The dryads of the woods and bow'rs,

The graces with their loosen'd zones,
The muses with their harps and crowns,
Young zephyrs of the softest wing,
The loves that wait upon the spring,
Wit with his gay associate mirth,
Attended at the infant's birth,
And said, let Genius be his name,
And his the fairest wreath of fame.

The gossips gone, the christning o'er,
And Genius now 'twixt three and four,
Phœbus, according to the rule,
Resolv'd to send his son to school:
And, knowing well the tricks of youth,
Resign'd him to the matron Truth,
Whose hut, unknown to pride and pelf, was
Near his own oracle at Delphos.
The rev'rend dame, who found the child
A little mischievous, and wild,

Taught him at first to spell and read,
To say his prayers, and get his creed—
Wou'd often tell him of the sky,
And what a crime it is to lye.
She chid him when he did amiss,
When well, she bless'd him with a kiss.
Her sister Temp'rance, sage, and quiet,
Presided at his meals and diet:
She watch'd him with religious care,
And fed him with the simplest fare;
Wou'd never let the urchin eat
Of pickled pork, or butcher's meat.
But what of aliment earth yields
In gardens, orchards, woods, and fields;
Whate'er of vegetable wealth
Was cultured by the hand of health,
She cropp'd and dress'd it, as she knew well,
In many a mess of soup and gruel:
And now and then, to cheer his heart,
Indulg'd him with a Sunday's tart.

A lusty peasant chanc'd to dwell
Hard by the solitary cell:
His name was Labour.—E'er the dawn
Had broke upon the upland-lawn
He hied him to his daily toil,
To turn the glebe, or mend the soil.
With him young Genius oft wou'd go
O'er dreary wastes of ice and snow,
With rapture climb the cloud-topt hill,
Or wade across the shallow rill:
Or thro' th' entangled wood pursue
The footsteps of a straggling ewe.
By these fatigues he got at length
Robustness, and athletic strength
Spirits as light as flies the gale
Along the lilly-silver'd vale.
The cherub health, of dimple sleek,
Sat radiant on his rosy cheek,
And gave each nerve's elastic spring
The vigour of an eaglet's wing.

Time now had roll'd, with smooth career,
Our hero thro' his seventh year.
Tho' in a rustic cottage bred,
The busy imp had thought and read:
He knew th' adventures, one by one,
Of Robin Hood and Little John;
Cou'd sing with spirit, warmth, and grace,
The woeful hunt of Chevy Chace;
And how St. George, his fiery nag on,
Destroy'd the vast Egyptian dragon.
Chief he admir'd that learned piece
Wrote by the fabulist of Greece,
Where wisdom speaks in crows and cocks,
And cunning sneaks into a fox.
In short, as now his op'ning parts,
Ripe for the culture of the arts,
Became in ev'ry hour acuter,
Apollo look'd out for a tutor:
But had a world of pains to find
This artist of the human mind.

For, in good truth, full many an ass was
Among the doctors of Parnassus,
Who scarce had skill enough to teach
Old Lilly's elements of speech:
And knew as much of men and morals
As doctor Rock of ores and corals.
At length, with much of thought and care,
He found a master for his heir;
A learned man, adroit to speak
Pure Latin, and your attic Greek:
Well known in all the courts of fame,
And Criticism was his name.

Beneath a tutor keen and fine as
Or Aristotle, or Longinus,
Beneath a lynx's eye that saw
The slightest literary flaw,
Young Genius trod the path of knowledge,
And grew the wonder of the college.

Old authors were his bosom friends—
He had them at his fingers-ends—
Became an acc'rate imitator
Of truth, propriety, and nature;
Display'd in every just remark
The strong sagacity of Clark;
And pointed out the false and true
With all the sunbeams of Bossu.

But tho' this critic-sage refin'd
His pupil's intellectual mind,
And gave him all that keen discerning,
Which marks the character of learning:
Yet, as he read with much of glee,
The trifles of antiquity,
And Bently-like would write epistles,
About the origin of whistles;
The scholar took his master's trim,
And grew identically him:

Employ'd a world of pains to teach us
What nation first invented breeches;
Asserted that the Roman socks
Were broider'd with a pair of clocks;
That Capua serv'd up with her victuals
An oglio of Venafran pickles;
That Sisygambis dress'd in blue,
And wore her tresses in a queue.
In short, he knew what Paulus Jovius,
Salmasius, Grævius, and Gronovius,
Have said in fifty folio volumes,
Printed by Elzevir in columns.

Apollo saw, with pride and joy,
The vast improvement of his boy;
But yet had more than slight suspicion,
That all this load of erudition,
Might overlay his parts at once,
And turn him out a letter'd dunce.

He saw the lad had fill'd his sense
With things of little consequence;
That tho' he read, with application,
The wits of every age and nation,
And could, with nice precision, reach
The boldest metaphors of speech:
Yet warp'd too much, in truth's defiance,
From real to fictitious science,
He was, with all his pride and parts,
A mere mechanic in the arts,
That measures with a rule and line
What nature meant for great and fine.

Phoebus, who saw it right and wise was,
To counteract this fatal byas,
Took home his son with mighty haste,
And sent him to the school of taste.
This school was built by wealth and peace,
Some ages since, in elder Greece,

Just when the Stagyrite had writ
His lectures on the pow'rs of wit.
Here, flush'd in all the bloom of youth,
Sat beauty in the shrine of truth.
Here, all the finer arts were seen,
Assembled round their virgin queen.
Here, sculpture on a bolder plan,
Enobled marble into man.
Here, music, with a soul on fire,
Impassion'd, breath'd along the lyre:
And here, the painter-muse display'd
Diviner forms of light and shade.

But, such the fate, as Hesiod sings,
Of all our sublunary things,
When now the Turk, with sword and halters,
Had drove religion from her altars,
And delug'd with a sea of blood
The academic dome and wood;

Affrighted Taste, with wings unfurl'd,
Took refuge in the western world;
And settled on the Tuscan main,
With all the muses in his train.

In this calm scene, where Taste withdrew,
And Science trimm'd her lamp anew;
Young Genius rang'd in every part
The visionary worlds of art,
And from their finish'd forms refin'd
His own congenial warmth of mind,
And learnt with happy skill to trace
The magic powers of ease and grace:
His style grew delicately fine,
His numbers flow'd along his line,
His periods manly, full, and strong,
Had all the harmony of song.
Whene'er his images betray'd
Too strong a light, too weak a shade;

Or in the graceful and the grand
Confess'd inelegance of hand,
His noble master, who cou'd spy
The slightest fault with half an eye,
Set right by one ethereal touch,
What seem'd too little or too much;
Till every attitude and air
Arose supremely full and fair.

Genius was now among his betters
Distinguish'd as a man of letters.
There wanted still, to make him please,
The splendor of address and ease,
The soul enchanting mien and air,
Such as we see in Grosvenor Square,
When Lady Charlotte speaks and moves,
Attended by a swarm of loves.

Genius had got, to say the truth,
A manner aukward and uncouth;

Sure fate of all who love to dwell
In wisdom's solitary cell:
So much a clown in gait, and laugh,
He wanted but a scrip and staff;
And such a beard as hung in candles
Down to Diogenes's sandals,
And planted all his chin thick,
To be like him a dirty cynic.

Apollo, who, to do him right,
Was always perfectly polite,
Chagrin'd to see his son and heir
Dishonour'd by his gape and stare,
Resolv'd to send him to Versailles,
To learn a minuet of Marseilles:
But Venus, who had deeper reading
In all the mysteries of breeding,
Observ'd to Phœbus that the name
Of fop and Frenchman was the same.

French manners were, she said, a thing which
Those grave misguided fools, the English,
Had, in despite of common sense,
Mistook for manly excellence;
By which their nation strangely sunk is,
And half their nobles turn'd to monkies.
She thought it better, as the case was,
To send young Genius to the graces:
Those sweet divinities, she said,
Wou'd form him in the myrtle shade;
And teach him more, in half an hour,
Than Lewis or his Pompadour.

Phoebus agreed—the graces took
Their noble pupil from his book,
Allow'd him at their side to rove
Along their own domestic grove,
Amidst the sound of melting lyres,
Soft-wreathing smiles, and young desires:

And when confin'd by winds or show'rs,
Within their Amaranthine bow'rs,
They taught him with address and skill
To shine at ombre and quadrille;
Or let him read an ode or play
To wing the gloomy hour away.

Genius was charm'd—divinely plac'd
'Midst beauty, wit, politeness, taste;
And, having every hour before him,
The finest models of decorum,
His manners took a fairer ply,
Expression kindled in his eye;
His gesture, disengag'd, and clean,
Set off a fine-majestic mien;
And gave his happy pow'r to please
The noblest elegance of ease.

Thus, by the discipline of art,
Genius shone out in head and heart.

Form'd from his first fair bloom of youth,
By Temp'rance and her sister Truth,
He knew the scientific page
Of every clime, and every age;
Had learnt with critic-skill to rein
The wildness of his native vein:
That critic-skill, tho' cool and chaste,
Refin'd beneath the eye of taste;
His unforbidding mien and air,
His aukward gait, his haughty stare,
And every stain that wit debases,
Were melted off among the graces:
And Genius rose, in form and mind,
The first, the greatest of mankind.

ABELARD to ELOISA.

Argument.

Abelard and Eloisa flourished in the twelfth century: they were two of the most distinguished persons of their age in learning and beauty, but for nothing more famous than for their unfortunate passion. After a long course of calamities, they retired each to a several convent, and consecrated the remainder of their days to religion. It was many years after this separation that a letter of Abelard's to a friend, which contained the history of his misfortunes, fell into the hands of Eloisa: this occasioned those celebrated letters (out of which the following is partly extracted) which give so lively a picture of the struggles of Grace and Nature, Virtue and Passion.

Mr. POPE.

Ah! why this boding start? this sudden pain,
That wings my pulse, and shoots from vein to vein!
What mean, regardless of yon midnight bell,
These earthborn visions saddening o'er my cell!
What strange disorder prompts these thoughts to glow,
These sighs to murmur, and these tears to flow?
'Tis she, 'tis Eloisa's form restor'd,
Once a pure saint, and more than saints ador'd:
She comes in all her killing charms confess'd,
Glares thro' the gloom, and pours upon my breast,

Bids heav'n's bright guard from Paraclete remove,
And drags me back to misery and love.

Enjoy thy triumphs, dear illusion! see
This sad apostate from his God to thee;
See, at thy call, my guilty warmths return,
Flame thro' my blood, and steal me from my urn.
Yet, yet, frail Abelard! one effort try,
Ere the last lingering spark of virtue die;
The deadly charming sorceress controul,
And, spite of nature, tear her from thy soul.

Long has that soul, in these unsocial woods,
Where anguish muses, and where sorrow broods,
From love's wild visionary wishes stray'd,
And sought to lose thy beauties in the shade.
Faith dropp'd a smile, devotion lent her fire,
Woke the keen pang, and sanctified desire;
Led me enraptur'd to the blest abode,
And taught my heart to glow with all its God.

But, O! how weak fair faith and virtue prove
When Eloisa melts away in love!
When her fond soul, impassion'd, rapt, unveil'd,
No joy forgotten, and no wish conceal'd,
Flows thro' her pen as infant-softness free,
And fiercely springs in ecstacies to me!
Ye heav'ns! as walking in yon sacred fane
With every seraph warm in every vein,
Just as remorse had rous'd an aching sigh,
And my torn soul hung trembling in my eye,
In that kind hour thy fatal letter came,
I saw, I gaz'd, I shiver'd at the name;
The conscious lamps at once forgot to shine,
Prophetic tremors shook the hallow'd shrine;
Priests, censers, altars, from thy genius fled,
And heav'n itself shut on me while I read.

Dear smiling mischief! art thou still the same,
The still pale victim of too soft a flame?

Warm as when first, with more than mortal shine,
Each melting eye-ball mix'd thy soul with mine?
Have not thy tears, for ever taught to flow,
The glooms of absence, and the pangs of woe,
The pomp of sacrifice, the whisper'd tale,
The dreadful vow yet hov'ring o'er thy veil,
Drove this bewitching fondness from thy breast,
Curb'd the loose wish, and form'd each pulse to rest?
And canst thou still, still bend the suppliant knee
To love's dread shrine, and weep and sigh for me?
Then take me, take me, lock me in thy arms,
Spring to my lips, and give me all thy charms.
No—fly me, fly me, spread th' impatient sail,
Steal the lark's wing, and mount the swiftest gale;
Skim the last ocean, freeze beneath the pole,
Renounce me, curse me, root me from thy soul;
Fly, fly, for justice bares the arm of God,
And the grasp'd vengeance only waits his nod.

Are these thy wishes? can they thus aspire?
Does phrenzy form them, or does grace inspire?
Can Abelard, in hurricanes of zeal,
Betray his heart, and teach thee not to feel?
Teach thy enamour'd spirit to disown
Each human warmth, and chill thee into stone?
Ah! rather let my tenderest accents move
The last wild accents of unholy love;
On that dear bosom trembling let me lie,
Pour out my soul, and in fierce raptures die,
Rouse all my passions, act my joys anew;
Farewell, ye cells! ye martyr'd saints! adieu:
Sleep, conscience! sleep, each awful thought be drown'd,
And seven-fold darkness veil the scene around.

What means this pause, this agonizing start,
This glimpse of heav'n quick rushing thro' my heart?
Methinks I see a radiant cross display'd—
A wounded Saviour bleeds along the shade:

Around th' expiring God bright angels fly,
Swell the loud hymn, and open all the sky.
O save me, save me, ere the thunders roll,
And hell's black caverns swallow up my soul.

Return, ye hours! when, guiltless of a stain,
My strong-plum'd genius throbb'd in every vein,
When, warm'd with all th' Egyptian fanes inspir'd,
All Athens boasted, and all Rome admir'd;
My merit in its full meridian shone,
Each rival blushing, and each heart my own.
Return, ye scenes!—Ah, no, from fancy fly,
On time's stretch'd wing, till each idea die,
Eternal fly; since all that learning gave,
Too weak to conquer, and too fond to save,
To love's soft empire every wish betray'd,
And left my laurels with'ring in the shade.
Let me forget that, while deceitful fame
Grasp'd her shrill trump, and fill'd it with my name,

Thy stronger charms, impower'd by heav'n to move
Each saint, each blest insensible to love,
At once my soul from bright ambition won,
I hugg'd the dart, I wish'd to be undone;
No more pale science durst my thoughts engage,
Insipid dullness hung on every page;
The midnight-lamp no more enjoy'd its blaze,
No more my spirit flew from maze to maze:
Thy glances bade philosophy resign
Her throne to thee, and every sense was thine.

But what could all the frosts of wisdom do,
Oppos'd to beauty, when it melts in you?
Since these dark, cheerless, solitary caves,
Death-breathing woods, and daily-opening graves,
Mishapen rocks, wild images of woe,
For ever howling to the deeps below;
Ungenial deserts, where no vernal show'r
Wakes the green herb, or paints th' unfolding flow'r;

Th' embrowning glooms these holy mansions shed,
The night-born horrors brooding o'er my bed,
The dismal scenes black melancholy pours
O'er the sad visions of enanguish'd hours;
Lean abstinence, wan grief, low thoughted care,
Distracting guilt, and, hell's worst fiend, despair,
Conspire in vain, with all the aids of art,
To blot thy dear idea from my heart.

Delusive, sightless God of warm desire!
Why would'st thou wish to set a wretch on fire?
Why lives thy soft divinity where woe
Heaves the pale sigh, and anguish loves to glow!
Fly to the mead, the daisy-painted vale,
Breathe in its sweets, and melt along the gale;
Fly where gay scenes luxurious youths employ,
Where ev'ry moment steals the wing of joy:
There may'st thou see, low prostrate at thy throne,
Devoted slaves, and victims all thy own;

Each village-swain the turf-built shrine shall raise,
And kings command whole hecatombs to blaze.

O memory! ingenious to revive
Each fleeting hour, and teach the past to live,
Witness what conflicts this frail bosom tore!
What griefs I suffer'd! and what pangs I bore!
How long I struggled, labour'd, strove to save
An heart that panted to be still a slave!
When youth, warmth, rapture, spirit, love and flame,
Seiz'd every fense, and burnt thro' all my frame;
From youth, warmth, rapture, to these wilds I fled,
My food the herbage, and the rock my bed.
There, while these venerable cloisters rise
O'er the bleak surge, and gain upon the skies,
My wounded soul indulg'd the tear to flow
O'er all her sad vicissitudes of woe;
Profuse of life, and yet afraid to die,
Guilt in my heart, and horror in my eye,

With ceaseless pray'rs, the whole artill'ry giv'n
To win the mercies of offended heav'n,
Each hill, made vocal, echoed all around,
While my torn breast knock'd bleeding on the ground.
Yet, yet, alas! though all my moments fly,
Stain'd by a tear, and darken'd in a sigh,
Tho' meagre fasts have on my cheeks display'd
The dusk of death, and sunk me to a shade,
Spite of myself the still-empoisoning dart
Shoots thro' my blood, and drinks up all my heart:
My vows and wishes wildly disagree,
And grace itself mistakes my God for thee.

Athwart the glooms that wrap the midnight-sky
My Eloisa steals upon my eye;
For ever rises in the solar ray
A phantom brighter than the blaze of day.
Where e'er I go, the visionary guest
Pants on my lip, or sinks upon my breast;

Unfolds her sweets, and, throbbing to destroy,
Winds round my heart in luxury of joy;
While loud Hosannas shake the shrines around
I hear her softer accents in the sound;
Her idol-beauties on each altar glare,
And heav'n much-injured has but half my pray'r:
No tears can drive her hence, no pangs controul,
For ev'ry object brings her to my soul.

Last night, reclining on yon airy steep,
My busy eyes hung brooding o'er the deep;
The breathless whirlwinds slept in ev'ry cave,
And the soft moon-beam danc'd from wave to wave;
Each former bliss in this bright mirror seen,
With all my glories, dawn'd upon the scene,
Recall'd the dear auspicious hour anew
When my fond soul to Eloisa flew:
When, with keen speechless agonies opprest,
Thy frantic lover snatch'd thee to his breast,

Gaz'd on thy blushes, arm'd with ev'ry grace,
And saw the goddess beaming in thy face;
Saw thy wild, trembling, ardent wishes move
Each pulse to rapture, and each glance to love.
But, lo! the winds descend, the billows roar,
Foam to the clouds, and burst upon the shore,
Vast peals of thunder o'er the ocean roll,
The flame-wing'd lightning gleams from pole to pole.
At once the pleasing images withdrew,
And more than horrors crouded on my view;
Thy uncle's form, in all his ire array'd,
Serenely dreadful, stalk'd along the shade;
Pierc'd by his sword I sunk upon the ground,
The spectre ghastly smil'd upon the wound;
A group of black infernals round me hung,
And toss'd my infamy from tongue to tongue.

Detested wretch! how impotent thy age!
How weak thy malice! and how kind thy rage!

Spite of thyself, inhuman as thou art,
Thy murdering hand has left me all my heart;
Left me each tender, fond affection warm,
A nerve to tremble, and an eye to charm.
No, cruel, cruel, exquisite in ill!
Thou thought'st it dull barbarity to kill;
My death had robb'd lost vengeance of her toil,
And scarcely warm'd a Scythian to a smile:
Sublimer furies taught thy soul to glow
With all their savage mysteries of woe;
Taught thy unfeeling poniard to destroy
The powers of nature, and the source of joy;
To stretch me on the racks of vain desire,
Each passion throbbing, and each wish on fire;
Mad to enjoy, unable to be blest,
Fiends in my veins, and hell within my breast.

Aid me, fair faith! assist me, grace divine!
Ye martyrs! bless me, and, ye saints! refine,

Ye sacred groves! ye heav'n-devoted walls!
Where folly sickens, and where virtue calls;
Ye vows! ye altars! from this bosom tear
Voluptuous love, and leave no anguish there:
Oblivion! be thy blackest plume display'd
O'er all my griefs, and hide me in the shade;
And thou, too fondly idoliz'd! attend
While awful reason whispers in the friend;
Friend, did I say? immortals! what a name!
Can dull, cold friendship own so wild a flame?
No; let thy lover, whose enkindling eye
Shot all his soul between thee and the sky,
Whose warmths bewitch'd thee, whose unhallow'd song
Call'd thy rapt ear to die upon his tongue,
Now strongly rouze, while heav'n his zeal inspires,
Diviner transports, and more holy fires;
Calm all thy passions, all thy peace restore,
And teach that snowy breast to heave no more.

Torn from the world, within dark cells immur'd,
By angels guarded, and by vows secur'd,
To all that once awoke thy fondness dead,
And hope, pale sorrow's last sad refuge, fled;
Why wilt thou weep, and sigh, and melt in vain,
Brood o'er false joys, and hug th' ideal chain?
Say, canst thou wish that madly wild to fly
From yon bright portal opening in the sky,
Thy Abelard should bid his God adieu,
Pant at thy feet, and taste thy charms anew?
Ye heav'ns! if, to this tender bosom woo'd,
Thy mere idea harrows up my blood;
If one faint glimpse of Eloise can move
The fiercest, wildest agonies of love;
What shall I be, when, dazzling as the light,
Thy whole effulgence flows upon my sight?
Look on thyself, consider who thou art,
And learn to be an abbess in thy heart;
See, while devotion's ever melting strain
Pours the loud organ thro' the trembling fane,

Yon pious maids each earthly wish disown,
Kiss the dread cross, and croud upon the throne:
O let thy soul the sacred charge attend,
Their warmths inspirit, and their virtues mend:
Teach every breast from every hymn to steal
The cherub's meekness, and the seraph's zeal;
To rise to rapture, to dissolve away
In dreams of heav'n, and lead thyself the way;
Till all the glories of the blest abode,
Blaze on the scene, and every thought is God.
While thus thy exemplary cares prevail,
And make each vestal spotless as her veil,
Th' eternal spirit o'er thy cell shall move
In the soft image of the mystic dove;
The longest gleams of heavenly comfort bring,
Peace in his smile, and healing on his wing;
At once remove affliction from thy breast,
Melt o'er thy soul, and hush her pangs to rest.

O that my soul, from love's curst bondage free,
Could catch the transports that I urge to thee!
O that some angel's more than magic art
Would kindly tear the hermit from his heart!
Extinguish every guilty sense, and leave
No pulse to riot, and no sigh to heave.
Vain, fruitless wish! still, still, the vig'rous flame
Bursts, like an earthquake, thro' my shatter'd frame;
Spite of the joys that truth and virtue prove
I feel but thee, and breathe not but to love;
Repent in vain, scarce wish to be forgiven,
Thy form my idol, and thy charms my heav'n.

Yet, yet, my fair! thy nobler efforts try,
Lift me from earth and give me to the sky;
Let my lost soul thy brighter virtues feel,
Warm'd with thy hopes, and wing'd with all thy zeal.
And when, low-bending at the hallow'd shrine,
Thy contrite heart shall Abelard resign;

When pitying heav'n, impatient to forgive,
Unbars the gates of light and bids thee live;
Seize on th' auspicious moment ere it flee,
And ask the same immortal boon for me.

Then when these black terrific scenes are o'er,
And rebel nature chills the soul no more;
When on thy cheek th' expiring roses fade,
And thy last lustres darken in the shade;
When arm'd with quick varieties of pain,
Or creeping dully slow from vein to vein,
Pale death shall set my kindred-spirit free,
And these dead orbs forget to doat on thee;
Some pious friend, whose wild affections glow
Like ours in sad similitude of woe,
Shall drop one tender, sympathizing tear,
Prepare the garland, and adorn the bier;
Our lifeless reliques in one tomb enshrine,
And teach thy genial dust to mix with mine.

Meanwhile, divinely purg'd from every stain,
Our active souls shall climb th' ethereal plain,
To each bright cherub's purity aspire,
Catch all his zeal, and pant with all his fire;
There, where no face the glooms of anguish wears,
No uncle murders, and no passion tears,
Enjoy with heav'n eternity of rest,
For ever blessing, and for ever blest.

A LETTER to a CLERGYMAN

Occasioned by a Report of his Patron's being made one of the Lords Commissioners of the Great Seal, 1756.

If fame, dear Mun! the truth reveals,
Your friend, the baron, has the seals,
With two compeers, his reverend brothers,—
Willes and Sir Eardly are the others.

Justice, who long had seen imprest
Her fairest image on his breast,
Plac'd him her substitute, to awe
The nation on her bench of law!
And now, to make her work complete,
Has thron'd him on her mercy-seat.

I'll hold you, Mun! an honest guinea,
That pest, ambition's busy in you;

You mind no more your little crops,
Nor ever ask the price of hops;
Nor grieve about such idle things
As half the trumps, and all the kings:
But, blest each night with objects brighter,
Behold a visionary mitre;
And see the verger near you stand
Majestic with his silver wand.

Well—if, as matters now foretel it,
It is your fate to be a prelate;
Tho', loth to lose the comic strain,
The song, and ev'ry mirthful vein,
Which oft have made me full of glee,
And kept my spirits up till three:
Yet, fond to see, when pray'rs begin,
E---d, thy heteroclite chin,
With all that venerable bush on,
Reposing on a velvet cushion;

I would the man of humour quit,
And think the bishop worth the wit.

But, hark you, L---r! as you mean
To be a bishop, or a dean,
And must, of course, look grave, and big,
I'd have you get a better wig:
You know full well when, cheek by jole,
We waited on his grace at Knowl;
Tho' that trim artist, barber Jackson,
Spent a whole hour about your caxon,
With irons hot, and fingers plastic,
To make it look ecclesiastic:
With all his pains, and combs, and care,
He scarce cou'd curl a single hair.

It wou'd be right too, let me tell you,
To buy a gown of new prunella;
And bid your maid, the art who knows,
Repair your cassock at the elbows.

Lord! what a sudden alteration,
Will wait on your exalted station!
Cawthorn, too proud a prince to flatter,
Who calls thee nought but Mun and L---r;
Will now put on a softer mien,
And learn to lisp out Mr. Dean;
Or, if you're made a mitred peer,
Humbly intreat your grace's ear.

Poor Adams too, will funk, and stare,
And trembling steal behind your chair:
Or else, with holy zeal addressing,
Drop on his knees, and ask your blessing.

And now, my worthy friend! ere yet
We read it in the next Gazette,
That Tuesday last a royal writ
Was sent by Secretary Pitt,
To all and singular the stalls
Prebendal in the church of Paul's,

Commanding them to choose and name
A bishop of unspotted fame;
And warmly recommending thee
As prelate of the vacant see:
It will not be amiss to know
Before-hand what you have to do.

First, as you'll want a grave divine
To wait upon you when you dine,
To guard your kitchen from disorders
And school the youths who come for orders;
Take not an academic saplin,
But, for your life, make S---n chaplain.
He's tall, and solemn, soft and sleek,
Well read in Latin, and in Greek;
A proper man to tell the clerum
About Eusebius, and St. Jerom:
And wou'd as soon a fiend embrace as
Give up a jot of Athanasius.

Then, as to what a bishop fleeces,
In procurations, fines, and leases,
And hoarding up a world of pelf,
You'll want no steward but yourself:
For, faith! your lordship has great skill in
The virtues of a splendid shilling;
And know, as well as Child and Hoare,
That two and two will make up four.

Two Bankers.

The Regulation of the Passions THE SOURCE OF HUMAN HAPPINESS.

A MORAL ESSAY.

Dunque ne l' Uso per cui fur concesse
L' impieghi il soggio Duce, e le governi:
Et a suo Senno or tepide, or ardenti,
Le faccia: et or le affretti, et or le allenti.
TASSO.

Yes, yes, dear stoic! hide it as you can,
The sphere of pleasure is the sphere of man:
This warms our wishes, animates our toil,
And forms alike a Newton, or an Hoyle;
Gives all the soul to all the soul regards,
Whether she deal in planets, or in cards.

In every human breast there lives enshrin'd
Some atom pregnant with th' ethereal mind,

Some plastic pow'r, some intellectual ray,
Some genial sun-beam from the source of day;
Something that, warm and restless to aspire,
Works the young heart, and sets the soul on fire,
And bids us all our inborn pow'rs employ
To catch the phantom of ideal joy.
Were it not so, the soul, all dead and lost,
Like the tall cliff beneath th' impassive frost,
Form'd for no end, and impotent to please,
Wou'd lie inactive on the couch of ease;
And, heedless of proud fame's immortal lay,
Sleep all her dull divinity away

And yet, let but a zephyr's breath begin
To stir the latent excellence within—
Wak'd in that moment's elemental strife,
Impassion'd genius feels the breath of life;
Th' expanding heart delights to leap and glow,
The pulse to kindle, and the tear to flow:

Strong and more strong the light celestial shines,
Each thought ennobles, and each sense refines,
Till all the soul, full op'ning to the flame,
Exalts to virtue what she felt for fame.
Hence, just as nature points the kindred fire,
One plies the pencil, one awakes the lyre;
This, with an Halley's luxury of soul,
Call's the wild needle back upon the pole,
Maps half the winds, and gives the sail to fly
In ev'ry ocean of the artic sky;
While he whose vast capacious mind explores
All nature's scenes, and nature's God adores,
Skill'd in each drug the varying world provides,
All earth embosoms, and all ocean hides;
Expels, like Heberden, the young disease,
And softens anguish to the smile of ease.

The passions then all human virtue give,
Fill up the soul, and lend her strength to live.

To them we owe fair truth's unspotted page,
The gen'rous patriot, and the moral sage;
The hand that forms the geometric line,
The eye that pierces thro' th' unbowell'd mine,
The tongue that thunders eloquence along,
And the fine ear that melts it into song.

And yet these passions which, on nature's plan,
Call out the hero while they form the man,
Warp'd from the sacred line that nature gave,
As meanly ruin as they nobly save.
Th' ethereal soul that heav'n itself inspires
With all its virtues, and with all its fires,
Led by these syrens to some wild extreme,
Sets in a vapour when it ought to beam;
Like a Dutch sun that in th' autumnal sky
Looks thro' a fog, and rises but to die.
But he whose active, unencumbered mind
Leaves this low earth, and all its mists behind,

Fond in a pure unclouded sky to glow,
Like the bright orb that rises on the Po,
O'er half the globe with steady splendor shines,
And ripens virtues as it ripens mines.

Whoever thinks, must see that man was made
To face the storm, not languish in the shade:
Action's his sphere, and, for that sphere design'd,
Eternal pleasures open on his mind.
For this, fair hope leads on th' impassion'd soul
Thro' life's wild labyrinths to her distant goal:
Paints in each dream, to fan the genial flame,
The pomp of riches, and the pride of fame;
Or fondly gives reflection's cooler eye
A glance, an image of a future sky.

Yet tho' kind heav'n points out th' unerring road,
That leads thro' nature up to bliss and God;
Spite of that God, and all his voice divine,
Speaks in the heart, or teaches from the shrine,

Man, seebly vain, and impotently wise,
Disdains the manna sent him from the skies;
Tasteless of all that virtue gives to please,
For thought too active, and too mad for ease,
From wish to wish in life's mad vortex tost,
For ever struggling, and for ever lost;
He scorns religion tho' her seraphs call,
And lives in rapture, or not lives at all.

And now, let loose to all our hopes and fears,
As pride inspirits, or ambition tears,
From ev'ry tie, from ev'ry duty freed,
Without a balance, and without a creed,
Dead ev'ry sense, each particle divine,
And all the man embruted in the swine;
These drench in luxury's ambrosial bowl,
Reason's last spark, and drain off all the soul.
Those for vain wealth fly on from pole to pole,
Where winds can waft them, and where seas can roll.

While others, wearied with the farce of pow'r,
Or mad with riot in the midnight hour,
With Spain's proud monarch to a cell retire,
Or Nero like, set half the globe on fire.

Stretch'd on high tow'ring Dover's sandy bed,
Without a coffin, and without a head;
A dirty sail-cloth o'er his body thrown,
By marks of misery almost unknown,
Without a friend to pity, or to save,
Without a dirge to consecrate the grave,
Great Suffolk lies—he who for years had shone,
England's sixth Henry! nearest to thy throne.
What boots it now, that list'ning senates hung
All ear, all rapture on his angel-tongue?
Ah! what avails th' enormous blaze between
His dawn of glory, and his closing scene!
When haughty France his heav'n-born pow'rs ador'd,
And Anjou's princess sheath'd Britannia's sword!

Ask ye what bold conspiracy opprest
A chief so honour'd, and a chief so blest
Why, lust of power that wreck'd his rising fame
On court's vain shallows, and the gulph of shame
A Glo'ster's murder, and a nation's wrongs,
Call'd loud for vengeance with ten thousand tongues;
And hasten'd death, on Albion's chalky strand,
To end the exile by a pirate's hand.

Pleasure, my friend! on this side folly lies;
It may be vig'rous, but it must be wise:
And when our organs once that end attain,
Each step beyond it is a step to pain.
For ask the man whose appetites pursue
Each loose Roxana of the stew,
Who cannot eat till luxury refine
His taste, and teach him how to dine;
Who cannot drink till Spain's rich vintage flow,
Mix'd with the coolness of December's snow:

Ask him, if all those ectasies that move
The pulse of rapture, and the rage of love,
When wine, wit, woman, all their pow'rs employ,
And ev'ry sense is lost in ev'ry joy,
E'er fill'd his heart, and beam'd upon his breast
Content's full sunshine, with the calm of rest?
No—virtue only gives fair peace to shine,
And health, O sacred temperance! is thine.
Hence the poor peasant, whose laborious spade,
Rids the rough crag of half its heath and shade,
Feels in the quiet of his genial nights
A bliss more genuine than the club at White's:
And has in full exchange for fame and wealth
Herculean vigour, and eternal health.

Of blooming genius, judgement, wit, possess'd,
By poets envied, and by peers caress'd;
By royal mercy sav'd from legal doom,
With royal favour crown'd for years to come,

Or hadst thou, Savage! known thy lot to prize,
And sacred held fair friendship's gen'rous ties;
Hadst thou, sincere to wisdom, virtue, truth,
Curb'd the wild sallies of impetuous youth;
Had but thy life been equal to thy lays,
In vain had envy strove to blast thy bays,
In vain thy mother's unrelenting pride
Had strove to push thee helpless from her side;
Fair competence had lent her genial dow'r,
And smiling peace adorn'd thy evening-hour:
True pleasure would have led thee to her shrine,
And every friend to merit had been thine.
Bless'd with the choicest boon that heav'n can give,
Thou then hadst learnt with dignity to live,
The scorn of wealth, the threats of want to brave,
Nor sought from prison a refuge in the grave.

Th' immortal Rembrant all his pictures made
Soft as their union into light and shade:

Whene'er his colours wore too bright an air,
A kindred shadow took off all the glare;
Whene'er that shadow, carelessly embrown'd,
Stole on the tints, and breath'd a gloom around,
Th' attentive artist threw a warmer dye,
Or call'd a glory from a pictur'd sky;
Till both th' opposing powers mix'd in one,
Cool as the night, and brilliant as the sun.

Passions, like colours, have their strength and ease,
Those too insipid, and too gaudy these:
Some on the heart, like Spagnoletti's, throw
Fictitious horrors, and a weight of woe;
Some, like Albano's, catch from ev'ry ray
Too strong a sunshine, and too rich a day;
Others, with Carlo's Magdalens, require
A quicker spirit, and a touch of fire,
Or want, perhaps, tho' of celestial race,
Corregio's softness, and a Guido's grace.

Wou'dst thou then reach what Rembrant's genius knew,
And live the model that his pencil drew,
Form all thy life with all his warmth divine,
Great as his plan, and faultless as his line;
Let all thy passions, like his colours, play,
Strong without harshness, without glaring gay:
Contrast them, curb them, spread them, or confine,
Ennoble these, and those forbid to shine;
With cooler shades ambition's fire allay,
And mildly melt the pomp of pride away;
Her rainbow-robe from vanity remove,
And soften malice with the smile of love;
Bid o'er revenge the charities prevail,
Nor let a grace be seen without a vail:
So shalt thou live as heav'n itself design'd,
Each pulse congenial with th' informing mind,
Each action station'd in its proper place,
Each virtue blooming with its native grace,
Each passion vig'rous to its just degree,
And the fair whole a perfect symmetry.

The LOTTERY.

Inscribed to Miss H---.

Cawthorn had once a mind to fix
His carcase in a coach and six,
And live, if his estate wou'd bear it,
On turtle, ortolans, and claret:
For this he went, at fortune's call,
To wait upon her at Guildhall;
That is, like many other thick wits,
He bought a score of Lottery Tickets,
And saw them rise in dreadful ranks
Converted to a score of blanks.

Amaz'd, and vex'd to find his scheme
Delusive as a midnight dream,
He curs'd the goddess o'er and o'er,
Call'd her a mercenary whore,

Swore that her dull capricious sense
Was always dup'd by impudence,
That men of wit were but her tools,
And all her favours were for fools.

He said, and, with an angry gripe,
Snatch'd up his speculative pipe;
And, that he might his grief allay,
Read half a page in Seneca.

When, lo! a phantom, tall, and thin,
Knock'd at the door, and enter'd in:
She wore a partycolour'd robe,
And seem'd to tread upon a globe—
Whisk'd round the room with haughty air,
And toss'd into an elbow chair.
Then, with a bold terrific look,
Which made the doctor drop his book,
Address'd him thus, “Thou wicked varlet!
Art not asham'd to call me harlot?

Why, what's thy consequence and parts,
Thy skill in letters, or in arts,
That I, poor Fortune! must be lectur'd,
Kick'd, bully'd, curs'd, abus'd, and hector'd;
Because, forsooth,—A fever roast thee,—
Thou'rt not so wealthy as Da Costa?

However, as thou hast some virtues,
And know'st my fav'rite Tom Curteis,
I'll point thee out a way to be
Almost as rich a man as he.

Send to the bank this day and buy
Ten Tickets in the Lottery;
And bid your honest friend, the broker,
Endorse the name of M--- H---;
The sacred numbers then consign
Devoutly to the fair one's shrine:
That is, in humbler rhetoric,
Present them by your footman Dick,

And tell her, in a billet-doux,
“My dear these Tickets are for you,
“An offering from an heart that's split
“Asunder by your sense and wit,
“Yet has the grace, to tell you true,
“To keep its own dear ends in view,
“And therefore hopes you'll not forget
“To give me half of what you get.”

My life on't Jemmy thou'lt be great—
Five thousand pounds!—a good estate:
For be assured that, tho' the poets,
The small philosophers, and no-wits,
Pretend that i'm to worth unkind,
And impudently paint me blind,
I yet can see thy charmer's merit,
Her taste, her dignity, and spirit;
Have often listen'd to her song,
And stole persuasion from her tongue:

And am resolv'd, tho' all the shrews,
Stock-jobbers, brokers, pimps, and jews,
Frown, curse, expostulate, and rally,
With all the tongues of all the Alley,
To give her, out of love and zeal,
The richest number in the wheel.”

Lady Jane Grey to Lord Guilford Dudley.

An Epistle. In the Manner of Ovid.

From these dark cells, in sable pomp array'd,
Where night's black horrors breathe a deeper shade,
Where ev'ry hour some awful vision brings
Of pale assassins, and the shrouds of kings,
What comforts can a wretched wife afford
The last sad moments of her dying Lord?
With what fond tear, what love-impassion'd sigh,
Sooth the dear mourner e'er he reach the sky?

Ye pow'rs of song that ev'ry chord inspire
When Rome's soft Ovid weeps along his lyre,
Ye angel-sounds that Troy's great Hector mourn
When his lost consort bleeds upon his urn!
Teach me, ye warblers! teach this strain of woe
Like you to kindle, and like you to flow.

Alas! in vain ye bid your warmths divine
Wake all the string, and live thro' all the line.
Spite of those warmths, th' immortal numbers roll
Cool from my hand, and faithless to my soul;
Too faint a wish, too calm a sigh impart,
Hide half my grief, and tell but half my heart,
Lose the fond anguish of this flowing tear,
And the keen pang that tears and tortures there.

'Tis said that souls, to love's soft union wrought,
Converse by silent sympathy of thought:
O! then with that mysterious art divine
The fierce impatience of my breast by thine:

And when some tender, recollecting sigh,
Pours the big passion from each weeping eye,
When rapt, and wild, thy fond ideas roll,
And all my image takes up all thy soul;
Think that my breast the same dear tumults move,
As keen an anguish, and as soft a love:
Think that I hear thy pray'rs, explore thy fears,
Sigh to thy sighs, and weep with all thy tears,
Form all thy wishes, all thy phrenzies see,
And feel for Guilford all he feels for me.

Ah! where are now the joys my fancy drew
For ever blooming, and for ever new!
Where the dear scenes that meditation aid,
The rill's soft mumur, and th' embow'ring shade;
Where all the heartfelt charities that move
The warmths of rapture in the pulse of love?
Lost, lost for ever, like th' ethereal fire
Shot thro' the sky to glitter and expire.

100

Hide it, ye pow'rs! the sad, the solemn day
That gave a Dudley to the house of Grey:
For, O! when to the altar's foot we came,
And each fond eye confess'd the kindling flame;
Just as the priest had join'd my hand to thine
An awful tremor shook the hallow'd shrine,
A sudden gloom the sacred walls array'd,
And round the tapers threw an azure shade;
The winds blew hollow with the voice of pain,
Aerial echoes sigh'd thro' all the fane:
'Twas God himself that, from th' empyreal sky,
Look'd inauspicious on the nuptial tie,
And pitying taught, as prophecies of woe,
The shrines to tremble, and the wind to blow.

O! had thy blood drunk in some fell disease,
From each chill pinion of th' autumnal breeze,
Had yon keen sun, with all the rage of pain,
Wing'd every pulse, and scorch'd up every vein,

101

Extinguish'd Guilford e'er he liv'd his span,
It had been nature, and the fate of man.
Heav'ns! had my cares but eas'd thy parting breath,
In life's last moment, and the gasp of death,
Explor'd the dear imperfect sounds that hung
Loose on each fibre of the fault'ring tongue.
Cool'd the fond phrenzies of thy parting sigh,
Wip'd the warm drop from each expiring eye;
I had but known what many a virtuous pair
Are doom'd to suffer, and are doom'd to bear:
But, O! in thought's wild images to see
My glories fall, proud infamy! like thee,
See, 'midst the murmur of a million sighs,
The fabre glitter, and the scaffold rise;
To see my Guilford moving sadly slow
Thro' ranks of warriors, and the pomps of woe;
See him, while bending o'er his awful bier,
Shed the keen anguish of too warm a tear,
A tear that from the warmths of love proceeds,
And melts the husband, while the hero bleeds—

102

Bleed, did I say?—Tear, tear, ye pow'rs of art!
Sense, nature, memory, from my tortur'd heart:
And thou,—beneath the pole's black umbrage laid,
Oblivion! daughter of the midnight shade!
With all thy glooms, and all thy mists, remove
Each sweet idea of connubial love:
Hide the dear man whose virtues first imprest
Too fond an image on my virgin breast;
From all the softness of my soul efface,
His every beauty, and his every grace;
And force that soul with patience to resign
All the dear ties that bound her fast to thine.

Alas! vain effort of misguided zeal!
What pow'r can force affliction not to feel?
What saint forbid this throbbing breast to glow,
This sigh to murmur, and this tear to flow?
Still honest nature lives her anguish o'er,
Still the fond woman bleeds at every pore.

103

Ah! when my soul, all panting to aspire,
Each sense enraptur'd, and each wish on fire,
On all the wings of heav'n-born virtue flies
To yon bright sunshine, yon unclouded skies;
Spite of the joys that heav'n and bliss impart,
A softer image heaves within my heart;
Impassions nature in the springs of life,
And calls the seraph back into the wife.

Yet say, my Guilford! say, why wilt thou move
These idle visions of despairing love?
Why wilt thou still, with every grace and art,
Spread thro' my veins, and kindle in my heart?
O let my soul far other transports feel,
Wing'd with thy hopes, and warm'd with all thy zeal.
And thou, in yon imperial heav'n enshrin'd,
Eternal effluence of th' eternal mind!
O grace divine! on this frail bosom ray
One gleam of comfort from the source of day.—

104

She comes, and all my opening breast inspires
With holy ardors, and seraphic fires:
Rapt, and sublime, my kindling wishes roll,
A brighter sunshine breaks upon my soul;
Strong, and more strong the light celestial shines,
Each thought ennobles, and each sense refines:
Each human pang, each human bliss retires,
All earth-born wishes, and all low desires;
The pomps of empire, grandeur, wealth decay,
And all the world's vain phantoms fade away.

Rise, ye sad scenes! ye black ideas! rise,
Rise, and dispute the empire of the skies:
Ye horrors! come, and o'er my senses throw
Terrific visions, and a pomp of woe;
Call up the scaffold in its dread parade,
Bid the knell eccho thro' the midnight shade;
Full in my sight the robe funereal wave,
Swell the loud dirge, and open all my grave:

105

Yet shall my soul, all conscious of her God,
Resign'd, and sainted for the blest abode,
The last sad horrors of her exit eye,
Without a tremor, and without a sigh.

Ah, no—while heav'n shall leave one pulse of life
I still am woman, and am still a wife;
My hov'ring soul, tho' rais'd to heav'n by pray'r,
Still bends to earth, and finds one sorrow there:
There, there, alas! the voice of nature calls,
A nation trembles, and a husband falls.

O! wou'd to heav'n, I cou'd, like Zeno boast,
A breast of marble, and a soul of frost,
Calm as old Chaos e'er his waves begun
To know a zephyr, or to feel a sun.
Romantic wish! for O, ye pow'rs divine!
Was ever misery, ever grief, like mine?
For ever round me glares a tragic scene,
And now the woman bleeds, and now the queen:

106

Now, back to Edward's recent grave conveyed,
Talk with fond phrenzy to his spotless shade;
Now wildly image all his sister's rage,
The baleful fury of the rising age,
Behold her sanguinary banners fly
Loose to the breezes of a British sky;
See England's genius quit th' imperial dome
To Spain's proud tyrant, and the slaves of Rome;
See all the land the last sad horrors feel
Of cruel creeds, and visionary zeal.
Mad bigotry her ev'ry son inspires,
Breathes all her plagues, and blows up all her fires,
Points the keen falchion, waves th' avenging rod,
And murders virtue in the name of God.

May he, who first the light of heav'n display'd,
The deer Redeemer of a world in shade,
He who to man the bliss of Angels gave,
Who bled to triumph, and who died to save,

107

Beam all his gospel, sacred and divine,
On ev'ry bosom, and on ev'ry shrine,
Relieve th' expiring eye, and gasping breath,
And rescue nature from the arm of death.

And now resign'd, my bosom lighter grows,
And hope soft beaming brightens all my woes.
Hark! or delusion charms, a Seraph sings,
And choirs to waft us spread their silver wings,
Th' immortals call, heav'n opens at the sound,
And glories blaze, and mercy streams around.
Away—e'er nature wake her pangs anew,
Friend, father, lover, husband, saint, adieu!
Yet when thy spirit, taught from earth to fly,
Spreads her full plume, and gains upon the sky,
One moment pause till these dead orbs resign
Their last saint beam, and speed my soul to thine:
Then, while the priest, in hallow'd robes array'd,
Pays the last honours to each parting shade,

108

While o'er our ashes weeps th' attending train,
And the sad requiem flows along the fane,
Our kindred souls shall wing th' ethereal way,
From earth and anguish to the source of day,—
To all the bliss of all the skies aspire,
And add new raptures to th' angelic choir.

And, O! if ought we knew, or left behind,
Can wake one image in the sainted mind,
If yet a friend, a parent, child, can move
Departed spirits to a sense of love,
Still shall our souls a kind connection feel
With England's senate, and with England's weal:
And drive from all its shores, with watchful care,
The flame of discord, and the rage of war.

Perhaps, when these sad scenes of blood are o'er,
And Rome's proud tyrant awes the soul no more;
When anguish throws off all the veils of art,
Bares all her wounds, and opens all her heart,

109

Our hapless loves shall grace th' historic page,
And charm the nations of a future age.
Perhaps some bard, whose tears have learn't to flow
For injur'd nature, and to feel for woe,
Shall tell the tender melancholy tale
To the soft zephyrs of the western vale:
Fair truth shall bless him, virtue guard his cause,
And every widow'd matron weep applause.

110

Of TASTE.

An Essay.

Well—tho' our passions riot, fret, and rave,
Wild and capricious as the wind and wave,
One common folly, say whate'er we can,
Has fix'd at last the mercury of man;
And rules, as sacred as his father's creed,
O'er every native of the Thames, and Tweed.

Ask ye what pow'r it is that dares to claim
So vast an empire, and so wide a fame?
What God unshrin'd in all the ages past?
I'll tell you, friend! in one short word—'tis Taste;
Taste that, without or head, or ear, or heart,
One gift of nature, or one grace of art,
Ennobles riches, sanctifies expence,
And takes the place of spirit, worth, and sense.

111

In elder time, e'er yet our fathers knew
Rome's idle arts, or panted for Virtú,
Or sat whole nights Italian songs to hear,
Without a genius, and without an ear;
Exalted sense, to warmer climes unknown,
And manly wit was nature's, and our own.
But when our virtues, warp'd by wealth, and peace,
Began to slumber in the lap of ease,—
When Charles return'd to his paternal reign,
With more than fifty taylors in his train,
We felt for Taste—for then obliging France
Taught the rough Briton how to dress, and dance:
Politely told him all were brutes, and fools,
But the gay coxcombs of her happier schools;
That all perfection in her language lay,
And the best author was her own Rablais.
Hence, by some strange malignity of fate,
We take our fashions from the land we hate;
Still slaves to her, howe'er her Taste inclines,
We wear her ribbands, and we drink her wines;

112

Eat as she eats, no matter which or what,
A roasted lobster, or a roasted cat;
And fill our houses with an hungry train
Of more than half the scoundrels of the Seine.

Time was, a wealthy Englishman would join
A rich plumb-pudding to a fat sirloin;
Or bake a pasty, whose enormous wall,
Took up almost the area of his hall:
But now, as art improves, and life refines,
The dæmon Taste attends him when he dines,
Serves on his board an elegant regale,
Where three stew'd mushrooms flank a larded quail;
Where infant turkeys, half a month resign'd
To the soft breathings of a southern wind,
And smother'd in a rich ragout of snails,
Outstink a lenten supper at Versailles.
Is there a saint that would not laugh to see
The good man pidling with his fricassee;

113

Forc'd by the luxury of taste to drain
A flask of poison, which he calls champagne!
While he, poor ideot! tho' he dare not speak,
Pines all the while for porter, and ox-cheek.

Sure 'tis enough to starve for pomp and show,
To drink, and curse the clarets of Bourdeaux:
Yet such our humour, such our skill to hit
Excess of folly through excess of wit,
We plant the garden, and we build the seat,
Just as absurdly as we drink and eat.
For is there ought that nature's hand has sown
To bloom and ripen in her hottest zone?
Is there a shrub which, ere its verdures blow,
Asks all the suns that beam upon the Po?
Is there a flowret whose vermilion hue
Can only catch its beauty in Peru?
Is there a portal, colonnade, or dome,
The pride of Naples, or the boast of Rome?

114

We raise it here, in storms of wind and hail,
On the bleak bosom of a sunless vale;
Careless alike of climate, soil, and place,
The cast of nature, and the smiles of grace.

Hence all our stucco'd walls, Mosaic floors,
Palladian windows, and Venetian doors,
Our Gothic fronts, whose Attic wings unfold
Fluted pilasters tipp'd with leaves of gold,
Our massy cielings, grac'd with gay festoons,
The weeping marbles of our damp salons,
Lawns fring'd with citrons, amaranthine bow'rs,
Expiring myrtles, and unop'ning flow'rs.
Hence the good Scotsman bids th' anana blow
In rocks of crystal, or in Alps of snow;
On Orcus' steep extends his wide arcade,
And kills his scanty sunshine in a shade.

One might expect a sanctity of style,
August and manly in an holy pile,

115

And think an architect extremely odd
To build a playhouse for the church of God:
Yet half our churches, such the mode that reigns,
Are Roman theatres, or Grecian fanes;
Where broad arch'd windows to the eye convey
The keen diffusion of too strong a day;
Where, in the luxury of wanton pride,
Corinthian columns languish side by side,
Clos'd by an altar, exquisitely fine,
Loose and lascivious as a Cyprian shrine.

Of late, tis true, quite sick of Rome, and Greece,
We fetch our models from the wise Chinese:
European artists are too cool, and chaste,
For Mand'rin only is the man of taste;
Whose bolder genius, fondly wild to see
His grove a forest, and his pond a sea,
Breaks out—and, whimsically great, designs
Without the shackles or of rules, or lines:

116

Form'd on his plans, our farms and seats begin
To match the boasted villas of Pekin.
On every hill a spire-crown'd temple swells,
Hung round with serpents, and a fringe of bells:
Junks and balons along our waters sail,
With each a guilded cockboat at his tail;
Our choice exotics to the breeze exhale,
Within th' inclosure of a zigzag rail;
In Tartar huts our cows and horses lie,
Our hogs are fatted in an Indian stye,
On ev'ry shelf a Joss divinely stares,
Nymphs laid on chintzes sprawl upon our chairs;
While o'er our cabinets Confucius nods,
'Midst Porcelain elephants, and China gods.

Peace to all such—but you whose chaster fires
True greatness kindles, and true sense inspires,
Or ere you lay a stone, or plant a shade,
Bend the proud arch, or roll the broad cascade,

117

Ere all your wealth in mean profusion waste,
Examine nature with the eye of Taste:
Mark where she spreads the lawn, or pours the rill,
Falls in the vale, or breaks upon the hill;
Plan as she plans, and where her genius calls,
There sink your grottos, and there raise your walls.
Without this Taste, beneath whose magic wand
Truth and correctness guide the artist's hand,
Woods, lakes, and palaces are idle things,
The shame of nations, and the blush of kings.
Expence, and Vanbrugh, vanity, and show,
May build a Blenheim, but not make a Stowe.

But what is Taste, you ask, this heav'n-born fire
We all pretend to, and we all admire?
Is it a casual grace? or lucky hit?
Or the cool effort of reflecting wit?
Has it no law but mere misguided will?
No just criterion fix'd to good and ill?

118

It has—true Taste, when delicately fine,
Is the pure sunshine of a soul divine,
The full perfection of each mental pow'r—
'Tis sense, 'tis nature, and 'tis something more.
Twin-born with Genius of one common bed,
One parent bore them, and one master bred.
It gives the lyre with happier sounds to flow,
With purer blushes bids fair beauty glow,
From Raphael's pencil calls a nobler line,
And warms, Corregio! every touch of thine.

And yet, tho' sprung from one paternal flame,
Genius and Taste are different as their name:
Genius, all sunbeam, where he throws a smile
Impregnates nature faster than the Nile;
Wild, and impetuous, high as heav'n aspires,
All science animates, all virtue fires,
Creates ideal worlds, and there convenes
Aerial forms, and visionary scenes.

119

But Taste corrects, by one ethereal touch,
What seems too little, and what seems too much,
Marks the fine point where each consenting part
Slides into beauty with the ease of art;
This bids to rise, and that with grace to fall,
And bounds, unites, refines, and heightens all.

Life unhappy, because we use it improperly.

A Moral Essay.

I own it, Belmour! say whate'er we can,
The lot of sorrow seems the lot of man;
Affliction feeds with all her keenest rage
On youth's fair blossoms, and the fruits of age:
And wraps alike beneath her harpy wings
The cells of peasants, and the courts of kings.

120

Yet sure unjustly we ascribe to fate
Those ills, those mischiefs, we ourselves create,
Vainly lament that all the joys we know
Are more than number'd by the pangs of woe;
And yet those joys in mean profusion waste,
Without reflexion, and without a taste;
Careless of all that virtue gives to please,
For thought too active, and too mad for ease,
We give each appetite too loose a rein,
Push ev'ry pleasure to the verge of pain,
Impetuous follow where the passions call,
And live in rapture, or not live at all.

Hence half the plagues that fill with pain and strife,
Each softer moment of domestic life,
The palsied hand, the visionary brain,
Th' infected fluid, and the torpid vein,
The ruin'd appetite that loathing slights
The richest oglio of the cook at White's,

121

The aching impotence of loose desire,
A nerveless body with a soul on fire,
Th' eternal blush that lights the cheek of shame
For wasted riches, and unheeded fame,
Unhallow'd reveries, low thoughted cares,
The wish that riots, and the pang that tears,
Each awful tear that weeps the night away,
Each heartfelt sigh of each reflecting day,
All that around the low'ring eye of spleen
Throws the pale phantom, and terrific scene,
Or, direr still, calls from th' abyss below
Despair's dread genius to the couch of woe,
Where, lost to health, and hope's all cheering ray,
As the dead eye-ball to the orb of day,
Pale riot bleeds for all his mad expence
In each rack'd organ, or acuter sense;
Where sad remorse beholds in every shade
The murder'd friend, or violated maid;
And, stung to madness in his inmost soul,
Grasps the keen dagger, or empoison'd bowl.

122

Impious it were to think th' eternal mind
Is but the scourge and tyrant of mankind.
Sure he who gives us sunshine, dew, and show'r,
The vine ambrosial, and the blooming flow'r,
Whose own bright image lives on man imprest
Meant that that being shou'd be wise and blest,
And taught each instinct in his heart enshrin'd
To feel for bliss, to search it, and to find.

But where's this bliss, you ask, this heav'n-born fire
We all pretend to, and we all admire?
Breathes it in Ceylon's aromatic isle?
Flows it along the waters of the Nile?
Lives it in India's animated mold,
In rocks of crystal, or in veins of gold?
Not there alone, but, boundless, unconfin'd,
Spreads thro all life, and flows to all mankind;
Waits on the winds that blow, the waves that roll,
And warms alike th' Equator and the Pole.

123

For as kind nature thro' the globe inspires
Her parent warmths, and elemental fires,
Forms the bright gem in earth's unfathom'd caves,
Bids the rich coral blush beneath the waves,
And with the same prolific virtue glows
In the rough bramble, as the damask rose:
So, in the union of her moral plan,
The ray of bliss shines on from man to man,
Whether in purples, or in skins array'd,
He wields the scepter, or he plies the spade,
Slaves on the Ganges, triumphs on the Rhone,
Hides in a cell, or beams upon a throne.

In vain the man whose soul ambition fires,
Whom birth ennobles, and whom wealth inspires,
Insists that happiness for courts was made,
And laughs at every genius of the shade.
As much mistakes the sage who fain wou'd prove
Fair pleasure lives but in his grot and grove.

124

Each scene of life, or open, or confin'd,
Alike congenial to its kindred mind,
Alike ordain'd by heav'n to charm or please,
The man of spirit, and the man of ease;
Just as our taste is better or is worse,
Becomes a blessing, or becomes a curse.
When lust and envy share the soul by turns,
When fear unnerves her, or mad vengeance burns,
When luxury brutes her in the wanton bow'r,
And guilt's black phantoms haunt her midnight hour,
Not all the wealth each warmer sun provides,
All earth embosoms, and all ocean hides,
Not all the pomps that round proud greatness shine,
When suppliant nations bow before her shrine,
Can ease the heart, or ray upon the breast
Content's full sunshine, and the calm of rest.
No—all the bliss that nature feels, or knows,
Of heartfelt rapture, or of cool repose,
Howe'er improv'd by wisdom, and by art,
Lives in ourselves, and beams but from the heart,

125

Quite independent of those alien things,
Applauding senates, and the smiles of kings,
Of empty purses, or of wealthy bags,
A robe of ermines, or a coat in rags.

Conclude we then that heav'ns supreme decree
Gives ease and joy to monarchs and to me;
Yet, such the fate of all that man obtains,
Our pleasures must be purchas'd by our pains,
And cost us every hour some small expence,
A little labour, and a little sense.
That heav'n-born bliss, that soul-illumin'd joy,
Which madmen squander, and which fools destroy,
To half the nations of the globe unknown,
Reflecting wisdom makes it all her own;
Coolly explores, in every scene and sphere,
What nature wants, what life inherits there,
What lenient arts can teach the soul to know
A purer rapture, and a softer woe,

126

What melt her idle vanities away,
And make to-morrow happier than to-day.
Without this cheap, this œconomic art,
This cool philosophy of head and heart;
A peer's proud bosom, rack'd by pangs and cares,
Feels not the splendor of the star he wears:
With it the wretch whom want has forc'd to dwell
In the last corner of her cheerless cell,
In spite of hunger, labour, cold, disease,
Lies, laughs, and slumbers on the couch of ease.

A coxcomb once in Handel's parlour found
A Grecian lyre, and try'd to make it sound;
O'er the fine stops his awkward fist he flings,
And rudely presses on th' elastic strings:
Awaken'd discord shrieks, and scolds, and raves,
Wild as the dissonance of winds and waves,
Loud as a Wapping mob at midnight bawls,
Harsh as ten chariots rolling round St. Paul's,

127

And hoarser far than all th' ecstatic race
Whose drunken orgies stunn'd the wilds of Thrace.

Friend! quoth the sage, that fine machine contains
Exacter numbers, and diviner strains,
Strains such as once could build the Theban wall,
And stop the mountain torrent in its fall:
But yet, to wake them, rouze them, and inspire,
Asks a fine finger, and a touch of fire,
A feeling soul whose all expressive pow'rs
Can copy nature as she sinks or soars;
And, just alike to passion, time, and place,
Refine correctness into ease and grace.
He said—and, flying o'er each quiv'ring wire,
Spread his light hand, and swept it on the lyre.
Quick to his touch the lyre began to glow,
The sound to kindle, and the air to flow,
Deep as the murmurs of the falling floods,
Sweet as the warbles of the vocal woods:

128

The list'ning passions hear, and sink, and rise,
As the rich harmony or swells, or dies;
The pulse of avarice forgets to move,
A purer rapture fills the breast of love;
Devotion lifts to heav'n a holier eye,
And bleeding pity heaves a softer sigh.

Life has its ease, amusement, joy, and fire,
Hid in itself, as music in the lyre;
And, like the lyre, will all its pow'rs impart
When touch'd and manag'd by the hand of art:
But half mankind, like Handel's fool, destroy,
Thro' rage and ignorance, the strain of joy,
Irregularly will their passions roll
Thro' nature's finest instrument, the soul:
While men of sense, with Handel's happier skill,
Correct the taste, and harmonize the will,
Teach their affections like his notes to flow,
Not rais'd too high, nor ever sunk too low;

129

Till every virtue, measur'd and refin'd,
As fits the concert of the master-mind,
Melts in its kindred sounds, and pours along
Th' according music of the moral song.

PRUSSIA.

A Poem.

Awake, Voltaire! with warmth, with rapture raise
Th' applauding Pœan, and the song of praise:
Again thy Fred'ric mounts the victor's car,
Again he thunders in the front of war;
Back to the desart flies the routed Gaul,
And proud Vienna shakes from wall to wall.

He hears me not—thy genius, France! prevails;
The poet feels but for his own Versailles;

130

With secret curses eyes the hero's sword,
And hates that virtue which he once ador'd.

And shall a king whose triumphs far exceed,
The boasted glories of the Greek, and Swede,
Who more than Cæsar, with a brighter ray
Ascends, and shines imperial Rome away,—
Shall he thro' ages spread his mighty name
Without a verse to wait upon his fame?
Has Britain lost her spirit, soul, and fire?
Has she no patriot who dare touch the lyre?
Yes—while I live, thy virtues, prince! shall be
For ever sacred to the muse, and me.
What tho' I herd but with the vulgar throng,
The last, the lowest of the sons of song,
Thy bold exploits shall give my soul to glow,
My pulse to kindle, and my vein to flow;
Exalt my spirit, animate my line,
And lend my numbers all the strength of thine.

131

Now had pale fury drove her iron car
From fields of slaughter, and from wastes of war;
Returning peace led on the vernal year,
Sheath'd the keen sword, and broke the lifted spear,
Wide o'er the world her olive branch display'd,
And call'd the nations to its hallow'd shade.
And now the arts, inflam'd with gen'rous strife,
Rose in the softness of domestic life,
Exulting labour tam'd the stubborn plain,
The sail of commerce took up all the main,
With bolder wings th' immortal muses flew,
And science trimm'd her faded wreath anew.

Ambition sigh'd—for now she heard no more
The war's loud thunder break from shore to shore;
No more beheld proud monarchs, meanly vain,
Rank'd in her files, or number'd in her train;
Lost to the glare of life she lay unblest
In the lone cell of solitary rest,

132

Where spleen's pale visions round her slumbers throw
Eternal sadness, and a pomp of woe.
In vain kind nature pours upon her eye
A softer sunshine, and a richer sky,
Spreads the wild forest, heaves the cloud-topt hill,
Waves in the wood, and flows along the rill:
Woods, wilds, and waters to her sense decay,
The warblers languish on the vocal spray,
Unclouded suns in heav'ns clear azure fade,
And night's black horrors wear a deeper shade.

At length arous'd she feels her wonted flame,
Revives, and opens to the voice of fame:
She sees new triumphs rising to her view,
And, wing'd by rapture, to Vienna flew.
'Twas night—lull'd softly by the western breeze
Fair Austria slumber'd on the couch of ease,
When, as of old the first infernal pow'r
Stole on the sweets of Eden's nuptial bow'r,

133

And skill'd alike to flatter and deceive,
Crept in a reptile to the ear of Eve;
So now ambition, with a nobler mien,
Approach'd, and whisper'd thus the sleeping queen.

“Canst thou, O princess! thou, whose glory springs
From heav'n-born heroes, and a race of kings,
Resign'd, and cool, to yonder Prussian yield
Silesia's sceptre, and her fruitful field?
Rise to thy wrongs, assert thy injur'd reign,
And bid the sword of vengeance rage again:
Tear from his hand the empire he has won,
This moment crush him, or thou art undone.
Secret, and strong, beneath his native fires,
The haughty genius of his soul aspires;
His realms enlarge, his sails begin to fly
O'er ev'ry ocean of the Polar sky.
Rich harvests rise upon his barren waste,
His crowded cities are the seats of taste;

134

Another year's autumnal sun shall see
His broad dominions stretch from sea to sea,
Perhaps shall see him on th' imperial throne,
Europe enslav'd, and half the world his own.”

Thus spoke the fiend, and, with delusive art,
Breath'd her black spirit through Teresa's heart:
Rapt into future scenes she minds no more
The faith she plighted, and the oath she swore;
Strong, and more strong, the vision lives imprest,
Conquest's dread genius takes up all her breast,
Paints on her soul, in luxury of thought,
Th' ideal glories of a war unfought,
The laurel-wreath, the military show,
The car of triumph, and the captive foe.
And now the queen, unfeeling, false, and vain,
Plans the wide ruin of a bold campaign,
Thro' all the North with all her spirit raves,
And wakes the nations in their huts, and caves,

135

With wild barbarians crouds her wanton war,
The savage croat, and the fierce hussar;
Fires the proud Saxon's sanguinary vein,
And rouzes all the dæmon of the Seine,
Leagues kings with kings, fills Europe with alarms,
Shakes heav'n and earth, and sets the world in arms.

O curst ambition! to each vice allied,
Begot by mischief in the womb of pride,
What ills, dread fury! from thy genius flow!
What awful scenes of unimagin'd woe!
Before thy footsteps, wrapp'd in flames of fire,
Sinks the tall column, and majestic spire.
Close at thy side her sword fell slaughter waves,
Midst bleeding piles, and ever-op'ning graves:
The plague behind thee, with her tainted breath,
Sweeps thro' the nations on the wing of death;
Neglected genius in his cell expires,
To other worlds fair liberty retires,

136

The patriot muse forgets her voice divine,
Religion leaves her violated shrine,
And ev'ry meek-ey'd virtue pines and mourns,
Midst falling temples, and sepulchral urns.

The Prussian saw at one keen glance from far
The gath'ring tempest, and impending war:
He saw, and instant bids his armies form,
Heads the bold march, and bears upon the storm.
In vain the forest big with death extends,
The rampart thunders, and the flood descends;
In vain the foe each open field declines,
Hides in the trench, or lurks within his lines:
He storms the rampart, fords the rapid flood,
Leaps the broad trench, and clears th' enambush'd wood;
Now presses on, now reins his dread career,
Pours on the van, or steals upon the rear,
Marks ev'ry crisis, shines in ev'ry scene,
And is at once a Marlbro', and Eugene.

137

At length, in all the pomp of war, advance
Th' imperial eagles with the arms of France,
A mighty host, whose awful files contain
The vet'ran warriors of the Marne and Maine.
And will he yet, when nations round him close,
And his thin ranks scarce number half his foes,
Will he, ye heav'ns! th' unequal conflict try,
And brave his fate when glory bids him fly?
Ah! ought avails it that immortal fame
Fill'd her fond Clarion with her Fred'ric's name?
Avails it ought that justice learnt to awe
Misguided nature from his code of law?
That warm'd, and foster'd by his genial eye,
Transplanted science own'd the Polar sky?
That Greece and Taste upon the Baltic smil'd,
And new Lyceums open'd in the wild?
Alas! one moment—the bright scene is o'er:
He falls—he dies—and Prussia is no more.

138

Yet shall not France, in this her blissful hour,
Her dream of empire, and her pride of pow'r,
An easy, cheap, unbleeding conquest know,
Or rear her trophies o'er a flying foe:
For now the monarch, e'er he gives the sign,
Serenely dreadful moves along the line:
The legions, far as each keen glance can fly,
Mark his firm step, and hang upon his eye;
That eye whose lightning terror round him flings,
That step which seems to tread on thrones, and kings.
At every look thro' all th' embattled van
The pulse of glory beats from man to man:
The soldier kindling at his prince aspires,
Swells with his hopes, and burns with all his fires;
Yet, 'midst his ardors, owns a softer flame,
And feels for Fred'ric while he feels for fame.

And now the sun, whose orb shall set in blood,
Faints on the umbrage of the western wood;

139

The distant hills in each horizon fade,
And night comes on in all her gloom and shade:
And now the trumpet's animating sound
Peals on the ear, and shakes the field around,
When, as the whirlwind tears its rapid way,
Roots up the rock, and sweeps the plain away;
Fierce on his foe th' intrepid Prussian springs,
Drives thro' his van, and breaks into his wings,
Wraps his whole war in one tremendous fire,
And sees the prowess of his host expire.
Th' imperial chiefs no more the shock sustain,
Their fainting battle bleeds in ev'ry vein;
France flies impetuous on the wings of fear,
And hungry slaughter feeds upon his rear.

Yet stay thee, prince! all conqueror as thou art,
Indulge the milder virtues of thy heart,
Restrain fierce vengeance in her rage of ire,
And let us love the monarch we admire.

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All that on earth proud conquest gives to shine,
All the dread glories of the sword are thine:
The victor-wreath applauding states decree,
The sacred Pœan only swells for thee.
Another toil remains e'er yet thy name
Bears the full splendor of unclouded fame.
Enjoy that nobler fame—bid discord cease,
And lay pale Europe in the lap of peace:
Then shall the muse, who now thy triumph sings
O'er routed nations, and repenting kings,
With rapture wait thee to thy sylvan bow'r,
And watch the glories of thy softer hour,
When Rome's fine arts beneath thy shield shall win
A fairer laurel in thy own Berlin.
There fix the school of beauty, and adorn
Worlds unexplor'd, and empires yet unborn.

141

NOBILITY.

A MORAL ESSAY.

[_]

Spoken at the Visitation of Tunbridge School, 1752.

'Tis said that ere fair virtue learnt to sigh,
The crest to libel, and the star to lye,
The poet glow'd with all his sacred fire,
And bade each virtue live along the lyre,
Led humble science to the blest abode,
And rais'd the hero till he shone a god.

Our modern bards, by some unhappy fate,
Condemn'd to flatter ev'ry fool of state,
Have oft, regardless of their heav'n-born flame,
Enthron'd proud greatness in the shrine of fame,
Bestow'd on vice the wreaths that virtue wove,
And paid to Nero what was due to Jove.

142

Yet hear, ye great! whom birth and titles crown
With alien worth, and glories not your own;
Hear me affirm, that all the vain can show,
All Anstis boasts of, and all kings bestow,
All envy wishes, all ambition hails,
All that supports St. James's, and Versailles,
Can never give distinction to a knave,
Or make a lord whom vice has made a slave.

In elder times, ere heralds yet enroll'd
The bleeding ruby in a field of gold,
Or infant language pain'd the tender ear
With fess, bend, argent, chev'ron, and saltier;
'Twas he alone the bay's bright verdure wore,
Whose strength subdu'd the lion or the boar,
Whose art from rocks could call the mellowing grain,
And give the vine to laugh along the plain;
Or, tracing nature in her moral plan,
Explor'd the savage till he found the man.

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For him the rustic hind, and village maid,
Stripp'd the gay spring of half its bloom and shade:
With annual dances grac'd the daisy-mead,
And sung his triumphs on the oaten reed;
Or, fond to think him sprung from yonder sky,
Rear'd the turf fane, and bade the victim die.

In Turkey, sacred as the Koran's page,
These simple manners live thro' ev'ry age;
The humblest swain, if virtue warms the man,
May rise the genius of the grave Divan:
And all, but Othman's race, the only proud,
Fall with their sires, and mingle with the croud.

For three campaigns Caprouli's hand display'd
The Turkish crescent on thy walls, Belgrade!
Imperial Egypt own'd him for her lord,
And Austria trembled if he touch'd the sword:
Yet all his glories set within his grave,
One son a Janizary, one a slave.

144

Politer courts, ingenious to extend
The father's glories, bid his pomps descend;
With strange good nature give his worthless son,
The very laurels that his virtue won:
And with the same appellatives adorn
A living hero, and a sot unborn.

Hence, without blushing (say whate'er we can)
We more regard th' escutcheon than the man:
Yet, true to nature and her instincts, prize
The hound or spaniel as his talent lies;
Careless from what paternal blood he rose,
We value Bowman only for his nose.

Say, should you see a gen'rous steed outfly
The swiftest zephyr of th' autumnal sky,
Wou'd you at once his ardent wishes kill,
Give him the dogs, or chain him to a mill,
Because his humbler fathers, grave, and slow,
Clean'd half the jakes of Houndsditch or Soho?

145

In spite of all that in his grandsire shone,
An horse's worth is, like a king's, his own.
If in the race, when length'ning shouts inspire
His bold compeers, and set their hearts on fire,
He seems regardless of th' exulting sound,
And scarcely drags his legs along the ground:
What will't avail that, sprung from heav'nly seed,
His great forefathers swept th' Arabian mead;
Or, dress'd in half an empire's purple, bore
The weight of Xerxes on the Caspian shôre?

I grant, my lord! your ancestors outshone
All that e'er grac'd the Ganges, or the Rhone,
Born to protect, to rouze those godlike fires
That genius kindles, or fair fame inspires,
O'er humble life to spread indulgent ease,
To give the veins to flow without disease,
From proud oppression injur'd worth to screen,
And shake alike the senate and the scene.

146

And see, to save them from the wrecks of age,
Exulting science fills her every page,
Fame grasps her trump, the Epic muse attends,
The lyre re-ecchoes, and the song ascends,
The sculptor's chissel with the pencil vies,
Rocks leap, and animated marbles rise:
All arts, all pow'rs, the virtuous chiefs adorn,
And spread their pomps to ages yet unborn.

All this we own—but if, amidst the shine,
Th' enormous blaze that beams along the line,
Some scoundrel peer, regardless of his sires,
Pursues each folly, and each vice admires:
Shall we enrol his prostituted name
In honour's zenith, and the lists of fame?

Exalted titles, like a beacon, rise
To tell the wretched where protection lies.
He then who hears unmov'd affliction's cry,
His birth's a phantom, and his name's a lye.

147

The Egyptians thus on Cairo's sacred plain,
Saw half their marbles move into a fane;
The glorious work unnumber'd artists ply,
Now turn the dome, now lift it to the sky:
But when they enter'd the sublime abode,
They found a serpent where they hop'd a god.

Anstis observes that, when a thousand years
Roll thro' a race of princes, or of peers,
Obliging virtue sheds her ev'ry beam
From son to son, and waits upon the stream.
Yet say, ye great! who boast another's scars,
And think your lineage ends but in the stars,
What is this boon of heav'n? dependent still
On woman's weakness, and on woman's will;
Dare ye affirm that no exotic blood
Has stain'd your glories ever since the flood?
Might not some brawny slave, from Afric fled,
Stamp his base image in the nuptial bed?

148

Might not, in Pagan days, your mothers prove
The fire of Phœbus, and the strength of Jove?
Or, more politely to their vows untrue,
Love, and elope, as modern ladies do?

But grant that all your gentle grandames shone
Clear, and unsullied as the noon-day sun;
Tho' nature form'd them of her chastest mold,
Say, was their birth illustrious as their gold?
Full many a lord, we know, has chose to range
Among the wealthy beauties of the change;
Or sigh'd, still humbler, to the midnight gale
For some fair peasant of th' Arcadian vale:
Then blame us not if backward to adore
A name polluted by a slave or whore;
Since, spite of patents, and of king's decrees,
And blooming coronets on parchment-trees,
Some alien stain may darken all the line,
And Norfolk's blood descend as mean as mine.

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You boast, my lord! a race with laurels crown'd,
By senates honour'd, and in war renown'd;
Shew then the martial soul to danger bred
When Poitiers thunder'd, and when Cressy bled,
Shew us those deeds, those heav'n-directed fires,
That ages past saw beaming on your sires,
That freeborn pride no tyrant durst enslave,
That godlike zeal that only liv'd to save.

Dare you, tho' faction bawl thro' all her tribe,
Tho' monarchs threaten, and tho' statesmen bribe,
Feel for mankind, and gallantly approve
All virtue teaches, and all angels love?
Know you the tear that flows o'er worth distrest,
The joy that rises when a people's blest?
Then, if you please, immortalize your line,
With all that's great, heroic and divine:
Explore with curious eye th' historic page,
The rolls of fame, the monuments of age,

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Adopt each chief immortal Homer sings,
All Greece's heroes, and all Asia's kings:
If earth's too scanty, search the blest abode,
And make your first progenitor a god.
We grant your claim, whate'er you wish to prove,
The son of Priam, or the son of Jove.

Statesmen and patriots thus to glory rise,
The self-born fun that gilds them never dies:
While he ennobled by those gewgaw things,
The pride of patents, and the breath of kings,
Glares the pale meteor of a little hour,
Fed by court sunshine, and poetic show'r,
Then sinks at once, unpitied, and unblest,
A nation's scandal, and a nation's jest.

Nobility had something in her blood,
When to be great was only to be good:
Sublime she sat in virtue's sacred fane,
With all the sister graces in her train.

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She still exists, 'tis true, in Grosvenor Square,
And leads a life, a kind of—as it were—
And see! self-shelter'd from the world's alarms,
The dying goddess sleeps in Fortune's arms:
Fond luxury attends her soft retreats,
The modest Frazi warbles while she eats,
Arabia's sweets distil at ev'ry pore,
Her flatt'rers sooth her, and her slaves adore;
Indulg'd by all our senates to forget,
Those worst of plagues, a promise and a debt.

Not but there are, amidst the titled crew,
Unknown to all but Collins, and the stew,
Men who improve their heav'n-descended fires,
Rise on their blood, and beam upon their sires;
Men who, like diamonds from Golconda's mine,
Call from themselves the ray that makes them shine.

Pleas'd let me view a Cecil's soul array'd
With all that Plato gather'd in the shade;

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Reflect how nobly Radnor can descend
To lose his title in the name of friend;
At Dorset look, and bid Hibernia own
Her viceroy form'd to sit upon a throne;
Admire how innocence can lend to truth
Each grace of virtue, and each charm of youth:
And then enraptur'd bend the suppliant knee
To heav'n's high throne, O Rockingham! for thee.

Let then vain fools their proud escutcheons view,
Allied to half the Yncas of Peru,
With every vice those lineal glories stain
That rose in Pharamond, or Charlemagne:
But ye, dear youths! whom chance or genius calls
To court pale wisdom in these hallow'd walls,
Scorn ye to hang upon a blasted name
Another's virtue, and another's fame.
In two short precepts all your business lies—
Wou'd you be great?—be Virtuous and be Wise.

153

The Temple of HYMEN.

A TALE.

In elder time when men were chaste,
And women had not got a taste,
It was ordain'd, to ease their cares,
The sexes should be link'd in pairs,
And pass the various scenes of life
Known by the names of Man and Wife.

To aid this scheme, so just and wise,
The male had vigour, strength and size:
Undaunted, active, bold, and brave,
And fearless or of wind or wave,
He scal'd the cliff's enormous steep,
He plung'd into the pathless deep,
And dar'd in open war engage
The lion's sanguinary rage.

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Woman, as form'd to charm, and please,
Had more of elegance, and ease,
A finer shape, a fofter mien,
A heart more gentle, and serene.
Her smile was sunshine—in her face
Sat sweetness on the throne of grace:
The accents melted from her tongue
In all the harmony of song;
And every glance that left her eye
Was milder than a vernal sky.

As nature now had done her best,
She left to accident the rest.
To accident—you cry—Why, yes.
Yet think not that she acts by guess.
Events may baffle man's endeavour,
But nature is extremely clever,
And works with so exact a care,
She ne'er miscarries in a hair.

155

For now, when on a festal day
The sexes met, alert, and gay,
And, in their pastimes, sports, and dances,
Had interchang'd some tender glances,
Th' impassion'd heart began to own
A set of instincts yet unknown,
To throb with momentary fires,
And melt away in young desires.
In short, the men began to bow,
To sooth, to ogle, whine, and vow;
To haunt the solitary shade,
And whisper to the village maid.
The village maid, who knew not yet
The breeding of a sly coquette,
And could not, with an artful sigh,
Like modern ladies, smile, and lye,
Indulgent heard her lover's flame,
Frankly confest she felt the same,
And e'er the rosy-finger'd morn
Dried up the pearls upon the thorn,

156

Went with him, 'midst her virgin train,
In flow'rets drest, to Hymen's fane.

This mild divinity, so sung
By half the poets old, and young,
The patron of connubial truth,
Was now in all the bloom of youth;
Roses, fresh gather'd from the bush,
Sweet emblems of the female blush,
Wove in a wreath supremely fair,
Sat graceful on his auburn hair:
One hand sustain'd a torch on fire,
Significant of soft desire,
The other held in mystic shew
A broider'd veil of saffron hue:
Majestic flow'd his azure vest,
And rubies bled upon his breast.

The meek-ey'd God an age or so
Succeeded, and had much to do;

157

In crowds his eager vot'ries came,
His altars never ceas'd to flame:
Besides an off'ring, frank, and free,
First paid him as the marriage fee,
Some pretty toys of shells, and corals,
With sprigs of ever-blooming laurels,
And bowls of consecrated wine
Were yearly plac'd upon his shrine,
The gifts of many a grateful pair
Made happy by his guardian care.

It chanc'd three demons, fiends, or witches,
Ambition, vanity, and riches,
Walk'd out one evening bright, and fair,
To breathe a little country air;
And, as old Nick would have it, found
This soul enchanting spot of ground,
Where happy husbands, happy wives,
Enjoy'd the most delicious lives:

158

And resolv'd to buy, or hire
A vacant cottage of the squire.

They came, they settled; sooth'd, carest,
Politely treated every guest,
And, with a world of pains and labours,
Lectur'd their simple minded neighbours.
“My worthy friends! says Wealth, behold
The splendor of almighty gold;
These guineas here, these brilliant things,
Which bear the images of kings,
Within their little orbs contain
Fair pleasure's ever-smiling train,
And can to ev'ry swain dispense
Wit, spirit, virtue, taste, and sense.
Who but a fool, wou'd wed a Phillis
Whose only portion is her lillies?
For ever doom'd, in life's low shade,
To ply the mercenary spade,

159

Till some disease, whose nature such is
To set us on a pair of crutches,
Force you to plunder, beg, or steal
From charity an humble meal;
And send your age, for want of vittle,
To a poor alms-house, or the spittle.
Be wise, and, when you mean to wed,
Scorn the fair forms of white and red;
And court the nymph whose genial charms,
Rich as the fruits upon her farms,
Will pour upon your daily toil
Abundant floods of wine and oil.”

He said—Ambition then began
About the dignity of man,
He rallied all their groves, and springs,
And finely talk'd of queens, and kings:
It was, he thought, a want of grace
To mingle with the vulgar race;

160

For souls made up of heav'nly fire
Are form'd by nature to aspire.
He told them that a well-born wife
Ennobled every joy of life,
Without a patent gave her dear
Th' importance of a British peer;
Perhaps might to a prince ally him,
And make him cousin to old Priam.

While thus the fiends, with wily art,
Adroitly stole upon the heart,
And with their complaisance, and tales,
Had ruin'd more than half the males,
Gay Vanity, with smiles, and kisses,
Was busy 'mongst the maids, and misses.
“My dears! says she, those pretty faces
Speak you the sisters of the graces:
Immortal Venus wou'd be vain
To have you in her court, and train.

161

But sure, methinks, it something odd is,
That beauties who can match a goddess
Shou'd give their more than mortal charms
To a dull rustic's joyless arms,
A meer unanimated clod,
As much a lover as a God.
O let those eyes, which far outshine
The brightest sapphires of the mine,
Their precious orbs no longer roll
On fellows without wealth, or soul:
But fly, my charmers! fly the wretches,
Dame nature's first mishapen sketches,
Fly to the world where lords and squires
Are warm'd with more ethereal fires;
Where pleasure each gay moment wings,
Where the divine Mingotti sings:
So shall each all-commanding fair
Have her two pages, and a chair,
Fine Indian tissues, Mecklin laces,
Rich essences in china vases,

162

And rise on life's exalted scene
With all the splendor of a queen.

She spoke, and in a trice possest
The empire of the female breast:
And now the visionary maids
Disdain'd their Shepherds, and their shades;
In every dream with rapture saw
Three footmen, and a gilt landau,
Assum'd a fine majestic air,
And learnt to ogle, swim, and stare.
No longer beam'd the modest eye,
No longer heav'd the melting sigh.
Neglected love, whose blunted dart
Scarce once a year could wound a heart,
Hung up his quiver on a yew,
And, sighing, from the world withdrew.

However, as the wheel of life
Subsisted still in man and wife,

163

Th' aforesaid fiends, for reasons good,
Coupled the sexes as they cou'd.
For instance—Women made for thrones
Were match'd with ideots, sots, and drones;
And wits were every day disgrac'd
By honeys without sense, or taste:
Gay libertines of sixty-five,
With scarce a single limb alive,
Had young coquettes just in their teens,
As wanton as Circassia's queens;
And youths, whose years were scarce a score,
Were pair'd with nymphs of sixty-four.
Matters, in short, were so contrived,
The men were most divinely wiv'd;
The women too, to grace their houses,
Were blest with most accomplish'd spouses.

In two short months, perhaps in one,
Both sexes found themselves undone,

164

And came in crouds, with each an halter,
To hang poor Hymen on his altar.
The God, tho' arm'd but with his torch,
Intrepid met them in the porch:
And, while they hector, brawl, and bully,
Harangu'd them with the ease of Tully.

“Good folks! say he, it gives me pain
To hear you murmer, and complain,
When every barber in the town
Knows that the fault is all your own.
Seduc'd by show, misled by wealth,
Regardless of your peace, and health,
Panting for feathers, whims, and fashions,
You left plain nature's genuine passions,
And gave up all your real joys,
As indians sell their gold for toys.
You, madam! who was pleased to fix
Your wishes on a coach and six,

165

Obtain'd your end, and now you find
Your husband ought to ride behind;
You might have had, without offence,
A man of spirit, soul, and sense,
Wou'd you have stoop'd to take the air
In a plain chariot and a pair.
You too, my venerable sage!
Had you reflected on your age,
Wou'd scarce have took, to be undone,
A sprightly girl of twenty-one.
Your ladyship disdain'd to hear
Of any husband but a peer;
Was pleas'd your angel-form to barter
For a blue ribbon, and a garter:
And now, magnificently great,
You feel the wretchedness of state;
Neglected, injur'd, spurn'd, and poor,
The victim of an opera whore.
Your neighbour there, the wealthy cit,
Lke you is miserably bit:

166

Too proud to drag the nuptial chain
With the grave nymphs of Foster-lane,
He married, such his fatal aim was,
A lady Charlotte from St. James's:
And now supports, by scores, and dozens,
His very honourable cousins,
And entertains, with wine and cards,
Half the gay colonels of the guards.
Away, ye triflers! bear, endure
Afflictions which ye cannot cure:
At least with decency conceal
The pangs your follies make you feel,
In hopes that some obliging fever
Will ease you of your dears for ever.”

The crowd dismiss'd—the God began
To muse upon a better plan:
He saw that things grew worse and worse,
That marriage was become a curse;

167

And therefore thought it just and wise was
To rectify this fatal byas,
And in a tasteless world excite
Due rev'rence for his holy rite.
Full of his scheme he went one day
To a lone cottage in a shaw,
Where dwelt a nymph of strong and shrewd sense
Known by the name of Gammer Prudence,
Whom Hymen, with a bow and buss,
Address'd most eloquently thus.

“Goody! I've order'd Love to go
This evening to the world below;
He travels in a coach and sparrows,
With a new set of bows and arrows:
But yet the rogue's so much a child,
So very whimsical, and wild,
His head has such strange fancies in it,
I cannot trust him half a minute.

168

Were I to let the little wanton
Rove as he lists thro' every canton,
Without a check, without a rein,
The world would be undone again—
We soon shou'd see the lawns and groves
Quite fill'd with zephyrs, sighs, and doves,
With am'rous ditties, fairy dances,
Such as we read of in romances;
Where princes haunt the lonely rocks,
And dutchesses are feeding flocks.
Go then, my venerable dame!
And qualify his idle flame,
Instruct those hearts his arrows hit,
To pause, and have a little wit:
Bid them reflect, amidst their heat,
'Tis necessary Love should eat;
That in his most ecstatic billing
He possibly may want a shilling.
Persuade them, ere they first engage,
To study temper, rank, and age,

169

To march beneath my holy banners,
Congenial in their tastes and manners,
Completing just as heav'n design'd,
An union both of sex and mind.

He said—he press'd—the matron maid
Benevolent of heart obey'd,
Forsook her solitary grove,
And, waiting in the train of love,
Watch'd with the sober eye of truth
The workings of misguided youth:
And when the heart began to sigh,
To melt, to heave, to bleed, to die,
She whisper'd many a wise remark
With all the dignity of Clark—
She hop'd the ladies, in their choice:
Would listen to her awful voice:
She begg'd the men, while yet their lives
Were free from fevers, plagues, and wives,

170

Ere yet the chariot was bespoke,
To pause before they took the yoke.—
In short, when Cupid's lucky darts
Had pierc'd a pair of kindred hearts,
And Goody Prudence lik'd the houses,
Estates, and minds of both the spouses,
And found, exact to form and law,
The settlement without a flaw,
She frankly gave them leave to wed,
And sanctified the nuptial bed.

Th' event was such, the God became
Successful in his trade, and fame;
For both the parties, on their marriage,
Improv'd in temper, sense, and carriage;
Fair friendship ray'd on either breast
The sunshine of content, and rest;
Studious each other's will to please,
And bless'd with affluence and ease,

171

Without vexation, words or strife,
They calmly walk'd the road of life;
And, happy in their fondest joys,
Left a fine group of girls and boys,
Reflecting, lively, cool, and sage,
To shine upon a future age.

172

THE Vanity of Human Enjoyments.

AN ETHIC EPISTLE.

To the Right Hon. George Lyttleton, Esq; One of the Lords of His Majesty's Treasury, 1749.

I grant it, Lyttleton! that ease, or joy,
Forms ev'ry wish that glows beneath the sky;
That when, 'mid nature's elemental strife,
Th' Almighty spoke the Chaos into life,
He meant that man of ev'ry good possest,
Shou'd, like his Seraphs, live but to be blest.

Yet, spite of heav'n, and heav'n's supreme decree;
We fondly wander, truth! from bliss, and thee;

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Tasteless of all that virtue gives to please,
For thought too active, and too mad for ease;
Of feeling exquisite, alive all o'er,
With ev'ry passion wing'd at ev'ry pore,
To each soft breeze, or vig'rous blast resign'd,
That sweeps the ocean of the human mind,
We slip our anchors, spread the impatient sail,
Ply all our oars, and drive before the gale.

Hence, as opinion wakes our hopes or fears,
As pride inspirits, or as anger tears,
These on the wings of moonstruck madness fly
To catch the meteors of ambition's sky;
Those, in pale wisdom's humbler garb array'd,
Court the soft genius of the myrtle shade;
While others, as the plastic atoms pour
More brilliant visions on each killing hour,
From scepter'd life, and all its pomps retire,
Or set, like Phaeton, the world on fire.

174

Oft the same man, in one revolving sun,
Is all he aims at, all he longs to shun,
Each gay delusion shares his breast by turns,
With av'rice chills him, or with grandeur burns:
To-day the gilded shrines of honour move,
To-morrow yields his ev'ry pulse to love;
Now mad for wisdom, now for wit, and sport,
This hour at Oxford, and the next at court:
Then, all for purity, he bids adieu
To each loose goddess of the midnight stew,
Enraptur'd hangs o'er Sherlock's labour'd page,
Drinks all his sense, and glows with all his rage,
Till some enormous crimes, unknown before,
From Rome imported, or the Caspian shore,
Nurs'd by thy hand, great Heidegger! attend,
And sink him to a mohock, or a fiend.
In one short space thus wanton, sober, grave,
A friend to virtue, yet to vice a slave,
From wish to wish in life's mad vortex tost,
For ever struggling, yet for ever lost,

175

The fickle wand'rer lives in ev'ry scene,
A Clark, a Charters, or an Aretine.

There are, 'tis true, Plebeian souls array'd
In one thick crust of apathy, and shade,
Whose dull sensoriums feel not once an age
A spirit brighten, or a passion rage.
As the swift arrow skims the viewless wind,
No path indented, and no mark behind,
So these, without or infamy, or praise,
Tread the dull circle of a length of days,
To some poor sepulchre in silence glide,
And scarcely tell us that they liv'd, or died.

Peace to all such—but he whose warm desires
Or genius kindles, or ambition fires,
Who, like a comet, sweeps th' aerial void
Of wit and fame, too fine to be enjoy'd:
For him the muse shall wake her ev'ry art,
Exhibit truth, and open all the heart,

176

Display th' unnumber'd ills that hourly wait
The cells of wisdom, or the rooms of state:
Then, as o'er life's unfolding scenes we fly,
Bid all his wishes pant but for the sky.

Heroic glory in the martial scene,
From Rome's first Cæsar to the great Eugene,
Has long engross'd the poet's heav'n-born flame,
And pour'd her triumphs thro' the trump of fame:
She mounts the neighing steed, th' imperial car,
Grasps the pale spear, and rushes to the war;
Beneath her steps earth's trembling orb recedes,
A Poitiers thunders, and a Cressy bleeds;
The battle raves—around her sabre flow
Terrific pleasures, and a pomp of woe,
Pomps ever lost in peace, and but ador'd
When half a nation smokes upon her sword.

Fly then, ye Genii! from the tumult fly,
To all that opens in a rural sky:

177

There, as the vale, the grove, the zephyrs pour
Each purer rapture on the guiltless hour,
From ev'ry shrub content's soft foliage glean;
And rise the Platos of the vernal scene.

And is it so? does science then possess
Alone the godlike privilege to bless?
Will fame her wreaths to moral wisdom yield,
And give the pen to blaze above the shield?
Say, does fair bliss delight in Maudlin's grove,
In Stanhope's villa, or in Young's alcove?
Deigns she on Secker's modest page to shine?
Or beams the goddess, Lyttleton! on thine?

Ask at yon tomb, where Cudworth's mighty name
Weeps o'er the ruins of his wit, and fame;
Cudworth, whose spirit flew, with sails unfurl'd,
Thro' each vast empire of th' ideal world,
Pierc'd thro' the mystic shades o'er nature thrown,
And made the soul's immensity his own.

178

Yet tho' his system wit and science fir'd;
Tho' Wilmot trembled, and tho' Hobbs expir'd,
Mistaken zeal, mad bigotry conspire,
All Turner's dullness, and all Oxford's fire,
All envy's poisons, all a nation's rage,
And all hell's imps to blast th' unfinish'd page.

Much injur'd shade! to truth, to virtue dear,—
Be calm, ye witlings! and, ye zealots! hear:
And, while this bright intelligence pervades
Th' ideal world, and rises o'er the shades,
His mines of wisdom, if you can, explore,
Then shut the volume, and be vain no more.

Genius, and Taste, alas! too often prove
The worst of mischiefs to the wretch they love;
Born but to vex, to torture, to destroy,
Too wild for use, too exquisite for joy:
By some mysterious curse ordain'd to know
Each wit a rival, and each fool a foe.

179

For it's a crime too great to be forgiv'n,
A giant sin that bars the gate of heav'n,
If these meridian suns but dare to shine
In the same orb with Cibber's muse and mine.

Yet, spite of envy, science might be great,
Could science but allow her sons to eat:
Could he, whose name along the stream of time
Expanded flies, and lives in ev'ry clime,
Exalt his spirits with some nobler fare
Than the thin breezes of St. James's air.

Immortal Halley! thy unwearied soul
On wisdom's pinion flew from pole to pole,
Th' uncertain compass to its task restor'd,
Each ocean fathom'd, and each wind explor'd.
Commanded trade with ev'ry breeze to fly,
And gave to Britain half the zemblian sky.

180

And see, he comes, distinguish'd, lov'd, carest,
Mark'd by each eye, and hugg'd to ev'ry breast;
His godlike labours wit and science fire,
All factions court him, and all seets admire:
While Britain, with a gratitude unknown
To ev'ry age but Nero's and our own,
A gratitude that will for ever shame
The Spartan glory, and th' Athenian name—
Tell it, ye winds! that all the world may hear—
Blest his old age with—ninety pounds a year.
Are these our triumphs? these the sums we give
To ripen genius, and to bid it live?
Can Britain, in her fits of madness pour
One half her Indies on a Roman whore,
And still permit the weeping muse to tell
How poor neglected Desaguliers fell?
How he, who taught two gracious kings to view
All Boyle ennobled, and all Bacon knew,
Died in a cell, without a friend to save,
Without a guinea, and without a grave?

181

Posterity, perhaps, may pay the debt
That senates cancel, and that courts forget:
Yet, ah! what boots it when our bards expire
That earth's last ages hang upon the lyre?
Can Middleton the dust of Tully raise?
Does Pompey listen in his urn to praise?
Tell me if Philip's son enjoy to-day
Th' applauding Pæn, or the loud huzza,
That shook pale Asia thro' her ev'ry shore
When Porus fell, and freedom was no more?
Yet tho' content's fantastic image flies
From the bright mirrors of the learn'd and wise,
Perhaps the fair, too partial to the great,
Lives but amid'st the luxuries of state:
Fond to instruct ambition how to please,
She joins the pomps of majesty with ease,
Forsakes the cottage to adorn the court,
Alike at Rome, Vienna, or the Porte.

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Tell me, O Visier! if th' imperial robe
That gives a slave to nod o'er half the globe,
Say, if yon cresent, by each Turk ador'd,
The plume's proud sables, and the hallow'd sword,
Expand the heart, the gleams of bliss refine,
And make the virtues of the bosom thine?

Ill-fated wretch! to ev'ry storm a slave
That caprice wings, or madness bids to rave;
Forever jealous of a woman's pow'r,
Forever trembling at the midnight hour,
Thro' life's wild eddies toss'd by hope and fear,
Rais'd by a smile, and murder'd by a tear!
At length, each wish destroy'd, each vision fled,
The black seraglio steals upon his bed:
And he, whose glories mingled with the skies,
Adores the bowstring, licks the dust, and dies.

O! could a king in heav'n's bright pomps appear,
And make an angel as he makes a peer,

183

Could he command the heart to beam as far,
As the soft radiance of the ducal star;
Forbid one sad anxiety to glow,
One pang to torture, and one tear to flow:
Fly then, on all the whirlwind's rapid wing,
To steal a title, or to bribe a string;
In the full blaze of glory be display'd,
And leave affliction to the vale and shade.
Yet, ere you go, ere proud ambition call,
Each yielding wish to Marli, or Whitehall,
O pause—lest virtue ev'ry guard resign,
And the sad fate of Ripperda be thine.

This glorious wretch, indulg'd at once to move
A nation's wonder, and a monarch's love,
Blest with each charm politer courts admire,
The grace to soften, and the soul to fire,
Forsook his native bogs with proud disdain,
And, tho' a Dutchman, rose the pride of Spain.

184

This hour the pageant waves th' imperial rod,
All Philip's empire trembling at his nod;
The next disgrac'd he flies to Britain's isle,
And courts the sunshine of a Walpole's smile:
Unheard, despis'd, to southern climes he steers,
And shines again at Sallé, and Algiers,
Bids pale Morocco all his schemes adore,
And pours her thunder on th' Hesperian shore;
All nature's ties, all virtue's creeds belied,
Each church abandon'd, and each God denied,
Without a friend, a sepulchre to shield
His carcass from the vultures of the field,
He dies, of all ambition's sons the worst,
By Afric hated, and by Europe curst.

“He earns his fate who will for phantoms toil,”
Exclaims the goddess of the mirthful smile,
From wild ambition, with her every care,
The scenes of grandeur, and the pomps of war,

185

From all a court's proud pageantry admires,
All science wishes, and all glory fires,
Fly to my arms, from fame, from anguish free,
And taste a luxury of bliss with me.
For me the genial spring, the vernal show'r,
Wake the bright verdure, and th' unfolding flow'r;
Arabia's sweets in all my moments fly,
The zephyr's plumage, and the wing of joy,
Each richer viand that the air provides,
That earth unbosoms, or that ocean hides,
All that can nature's finer organs move,
The pow'rs of music, and the folds of love,
To my keen senses are indulgent giv'n,
In one wild extasy of life and heav'n.

Yet, yet, dear youth! the fair enchantress shun,
To yield a moment is to be undone:
All Etna's poisons mingle with her breath.
The seeds of sickness, and the gales of death,

186

She aims to ruin, lives but to beguile,
And all hell's horrors brood beneath her smile.

'Tis thus, my Lyttleton! that men pursue
Each varied mode of pleasure but the true,
To ev'ry vice, each luxury a prey,
That murders bliss, and hurries life away:
Their headstrong passions after phantoms run,
And still mistake a meteor for a sun.

Yet hear, ye wand'rers! hear, while we impart
A light that sheds fair peace on ev'ry heart;
Which, Aristides! beam'd on thy exile,
And made a Regulus 'mid tortures smile.

Virtue, immortal virtue! born to please,
The child of heaven, and the source of ease,
Bids ev'ry bliss on human life attend,
To ev'ry rank a kind, a faithful friend;

187

Inspirits nature 'midst the scenes of toil,
Smooths languor's cheek, and bids fell want recoil,
Shines from the mitre with unsullied rays,
Glares on the crest, and gives the star to blaze,
Supports distinction, spreads ambition's wings,
Forms saints of queens, and demigods of kings;
O'er grief, oppression, envy, scorn prevails,
And makes a cottage greater than Versailles.

188

WIT AND LEARNING.

AN ALLEGORY.

Whoever looks on life will see
How strangely mortals disagree:
This reprobates what that approves,
And Tom dislikes what Harry loves;
The soldier's witty on the sailor,
The barber drolls upon the taylor,
And he who makes the nation's wills,
Laughs at the doctor and his pills.

Yet this antipathy we find
Not to the sons of earth confin'd;
Each school-boy sees, with half an eye,
The quarrels of the Pagan sky:
For all the poets fairly tell us
That gods themselves are proud and jealous,

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And will, like mortals, swear, and hector,
When mellow'd with a cup of nectar.

But waving these, and such like fancies,
We meet with in the Greek romances,
Say, shall th' historic muse retail
A little allegoric tale?
Nor stole from Plato's mystic of tome, nor
Translated from the verse of Homer,
But copied, in a modern age,
From nature, and her fairest page.

Olympian Jove, whose idle trade is
Employ'd too much among the ladies,
Tho' not of manners mighty chaste,
Was certainly a god of taste,
Would often to his feasts admit
A deity, whose name was Wit;
And, to amuse the more discerning,
Would ask the company of Learning.

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Learning was born, as all agree,
Of Truth's half-sister, Memory,
A nymph who rounded in her shape was
By that great artist Esculapius.

Euphrosine, the younger grace,
Matchless in feature, mien, and face,
Who, like the beauties of these late days,
Was fond of operas, and cantatas,
Would often to a grot retire
To listen to Apollo's lyre:
And thence became, so Ovid writ,
A mother to the god of Wit.

Wit was a strange unlucky child,
Exceeding sly, and very wild;
Too volatile for truth, or law,
He minded but his top, or taw;
And, ere he reach'd the age of six,
Had play'd a thousand waggish tricks—

191

He drill'd a hole in Vulcan's kettles,
He strew'd Minerva's bed with nettles,
Climb'd up the solar car to ride in't,
Broke off a prong: from Neptune's trident,
Stole Amphitrite's fav'rite sea-knot,
And urin'd in Astrea's tea-pot.

Learning, a lad of sober mien,
And half a pedant at fifteen,
Had early thrown away his corals
To study nature, and her morals;
Was always, let who would oppose it,
Fast by Minerva in her closet:
And, while gay Wit, as black as soot all,
Was kicking up and down a foot-ball,
Learning, with philosophic eye,
Rang'd ev'ry corner of the sky,
Spent many a play-day to unriddle
The music of Apollo's fiddle;

192

And, if he ever chanc'd to meet
His uncle Merc'ry in the street,
Or on his flight, th' audacious brat
Stopp'd him to ask of this or that:
As how the moon was evanescent,
Was now an orb, and now a crescent?
Why of the graces each undrest was?
Why Pallas never wore a cestus?
Why Ceres reign'd o'er corn and sallads?
And why the Muses dealt in ballads?

With these discordant tastes and manners,
And listed under diff'rent banners,
Learning and wit, as says the fable,
Appear'd at Jove's imperial table,
And threw out all their force and fire
Obedient to th' ethereal sire.

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Wit, with his sly satyric vein,
Was always sure to entertain:
He rallied with a tongue as keen,
As Rab'lais, or the Irish dean;
And told his tale with such a grace,
With such an eye, and such a face,
As made the nectar flow each cup o'er,
And set the Synod in an uproar.

Learning had not the skill to hit
The comic cast, and life of Wit;
With look morose, and aukward air,
He sat ungraceful in his chair:
With diffidence and blushes spoke,
And had no relish for a joke;
So that the little urchin, Cupid,
Thought him insensible, and stupid;
And Hebe, tho' a well-bred lass,
Would scarcely offer him his glass.

194

However, when the sprightly bowl
Had thaw'd the ice about his soul,
He then, with majesty, began
To talk of letters, and of man;
Correct, sententious, cool, severe,
He gain'd upon the attentive ear,
Charm'd all the Gods, but Wit, and Comus,
And that abusive cynic, Momus.

In length of time, as oft the case is,
In many sublunary places,
These demigods with jealous eye
Began to look a little shy;
And oft, to wound each other's breast,
Let off a keen sarcastic jest.
Learning, with many a stroke, wou'd hit
The pert vivacity of Wit:
And Wit threw all his keenest satire
On Learning's slow, pedantic nature.

195

It happen'd once when Jove had made
A feast in Ida's holy shade,
And all the Gods, whose heads could bear it,
Had emptied each a flask of claret;
Wit, who from his celestial liquor
Wagg'd his free tongue a little quicker,
Began, with many a bitter scoff,
To play his brother Learning off;
Ask'd him if yet his pains and care
Had learnt to make the circle square?
If all his visionary ravings
Cou'd weave brocade from walnut shavings?
If his mechanic skill cou'd catch
Perpetual motion in a watch?
Or forge a pendulum endued
With power to tell the longitude?

Learning had much ado to sit,
And hear the petulance of Wit:

196

A ghastly paleness spread his look,
His nerves with quick convulsions shook:
At length, in accents, loud, and high,
Vesuvius flaming in his eye,
He burst,—“And dar'st thou, wayward chit!
Thou ideot God of ideot Wit!
Untaught as yet to know thy letters,
Affront, thou insolent! thy betters?
Here, puppy! with this penny get
A hornbook, or an alphabet;
And see if that licentious eye
Can tell a great A from an I?
Throw but another jest on me
I'll lay thee, miscreant! on my knee,
And print such welks thy naked seat on
As never truant felt at Eaton.

Wit, with resentment raving wild,
Thus call'd an ideot and a child,

197

Without preambles, or excuses,
Seiz'd upon Mercury's caduceus,
And with such force the weapon throws
It flatted half his rival's nose.
While he, Minerva's boast, and care,
Pluck'd a large bodkin from her hair,
And aim'd the steely pointed dart
With such dexterity of art
That, had not beauty's lovely queen,
Fair Venus, spread her fan between,
And taught the flying death to fix
Guiltless among the iv'ry sticks,
Wit's future triumphs had been o'er,
And Europe heard his name no more.

Jove, who had no supreme delight in
Domestic brawls, or civil fighting,
Since first he heard the nuptial tune flow
So sweetly from the tongue of Juno,

198

Vex'd that these two illiberal guests
Should dare to violate his feasts,
In a tremendous fit of choler,
Seiz'd both their worships by the collar,
And, minding not their meek submitting,
Kick'd them from Ida down to Britain.

Poor Learning had the luck to fall
Plump in the area of Clare-hall,
Just as old Wilcox, from a slope,
Was gazing thro' his telescope,
To find a comet whose bright tail is
Eccentric from the time of Thales,
Pleas'd with his scientific look
He sent him first to Sam the cook:
And having fill'd his empty belly
With mutton-broth, and meagre Jelly,
Gave him a robe of sleek prunella,
And very wisely made him fellow.

199

Wit, as his destiny decrees,
Dropp'd in the court of Common-Pleas,
Upon a truss of briefs and bills,
And took the shape of justice Willes:
But soon observing round the columns
Reports in half a thousand volumes;
And, finding all those earth-worm souls
Who hold th' exchequer, or the rolls,
He left the law, and all its drudges,
With curses, to my lords the judges,
Call'd for a coach, and went to dwell
At Robin Dodsley's in Pall-Mall.

'Twas right—for now where-e'er he came
He busied all the tongues of fame,
Was welcome to the festal board,
And had his footman, and his lord:
Would often visit in a chair
The noble Stanhope in May-fair;

220

Or dine, when business would permit,
With that great statesman William Pitt
'Tis said too he was sometimes seen
On G---s visionary seene:
But G---, who prefers a guinea
To all the eloquence of Pliny,
Observing this unlucky railer
Was neither mechanist, nor taylor,
That half the audience of the day
Came not to hear, but see, a play,
That many a squire, and many a cit,
Were pleas'd with any thing but Wit;
Shut out, with much indecent rage,
The genius of the comic stage,
And open'd his theatric inn
To Scaramouch, and Harlequin.

Learning would sometimes drop his gown,
And take a winter-jaunt to town;

201

Often call'd in at Hitch's shop,
And din'd at Dolly's on a chop:
On Thursday met the grave resort
Of spider merchants in Crane-court,
To rack a cockle, or to see
The nice dissection of a flea;
But having never chanc'd to wear
A bag-wig or a solitaire,
And dressing in a kersey, thicker
Than that which cloaths a Cornish vicar.
He seldom had the luck to eat
In Berkeley-square, or Grosvenor-street.

'Twas written in the book of fate
These rivals should each other hate,
No wonder then that each proud imp was
As wayward here as on Olympus.
Wit look'd on Learning, as he grew great,
Just as a felon looks on Newgate:

202

While Learning, who could never hide
His haughty academic pride,
Had such a keen contempt for Wit
He call'd him nothing but the chit;
And, if he met him at noon-day,
Would turn his face another way.

However on some festal nights
By chance they both dropp'd in at White's
With learned lords, and noble bards,
Who had no appetite for cards,
And could decide whene'er they met
Momentous truths without a bett.
Wit with vivacity of tongue
First led th' admiring ear along,
His fancy active, wild, and free as
Conception when she breeds ideas,
Flew o'er each undiscover'd part
Of nature, and the worlds of art,

203

And brought, with such a nice decorum
A group of images before him,
So genuine, yet so uncommon,
With such a glow of tints upon 'em,
That all was spirit, force, and sense,
Loose as the zone of negligence,
Simple as truth's fair handmaid nature,
And deadly as the sting of satire.
Dejected Learning sat oppress'd;
Around him flew the taunt and jest:
Whatever just remarks he made,
Or to demonstrate, or persuade,
Wit, by some sly malicious comment,
Took off, or routed in a moment.
However, when a pause appear'd,
And sober reason could be hear'd,
He then in all his thunder rises,
Strips off his rival's thin disguises,
Shews where his misconceiving sense
Led to a groundless consequence,

204

Mistook an error for a wonder,
A demonstration for a blunder,
Or, having a delusive scent got,
Affirm'd the very thing he meant not.

Yet after all, since mirth and drinking
Are priz'd above sedater thinking,
Tho' Learning got a world of praise,
And added splendor to his bays,
Their lordships: frighten'd at th' expence
Of list'ning to exalted sense,
And deeming that the taint of knowledge
Would make the coffee-house a college,
Determin'd in a full committee
That man's great end was to be witty:
And therefore order'd, every soul,
Wit shou'd be enter'd on the roll,
And be allow'd, to raise his vein,
A weekly present of champaigne:

205

That if proud Learning should presume
To set his foot within the room,
Arthur should shew him to the door,
And bid the pedant come no more.

Learning thus kick'd from ev'ry palace,
And left a victim to the gallows,
Began to see that skill in letters
Would ne'er advance him with his betters;
That tho' he led them thro' the dark
With all the lights of Locke, and Clarke,
And made his heart, and head, and eyes ach
With reading nature, and Sir Isaac,
Yet all that wisdom could not be
Priz'd like a lively repartee:
He therefore, in a gloomy fit,
Resolv'd to set up for a Wit,
But found, alas! howe'er he drest her,
That science was a wretched jester;

206

That tho' he jok'd from moon to moon
He made a very dull buffoon;
For all his jocular narrations
Smelt of his algebra equations,
And came upon the tortur'd ear
Stiff as the periods of Dacier.
Wit, too, whose excellence and merit
Was meer vivacity of spirit,
Observing that your graver folk
Had little value for a joke,
Wou'd needs, in nature's bold defiance,
Mount the tremendous chair of science:
And dar'd to argue pro and con
As gravely as the grave Sorbonne;
But wanting all that fine discerning
Which marks the character of Learning,
And all the elemental rules
Of erudition, and the schools,
The gay professor oft mistook
Alike his question and his book;

207

Dropp'd a conundrum out of season,
And jested when he ought to reason.

Thus on the world's wild billows tost,
And half their moments idly lost,
Tir'd of applause, and sick of strife,
They each resolv'd to take a wife.
Learning who often went to see
Lady Anne Bentinck at her tea,
Met there a maid as fair as chaste,
In life's full bloom, whose name was Taste.
'Twas then his heart began to move
With the first tender throb of love,
And often heav'd, it knew not why,
With something softer than a sigh;
He gaz'd, he blush'd, he courted, prest,
And was at length completely blest:
For she, who had not learnt to doat
On folly in a scarlet coat,

208

To Learning's blissful arms resign'd
Her graceful form, and lovely mind.
Wit too, when past the fire of youth,
Was married to the vestal, Truth,
A nymph whose awful air and mien
Display'd the beauty, and the queen.

Tradition tells us Hymen swore
That, till this bright auspicious hour,
There never in his holy house was
So fine a group of noble spouses;
For both the bridegrooms, on their marriage,
Improv'd in temper, sense, and carriage.
Learning, his charming wife to please,
Assum'd her elegance and ease;
And Wit, to humour Truth, agreed
To pause, to doubt, reflect, and read.
In short they led delicious lives,
Belov'd, and honour'd by their wives;

209

And, happy in their nuptial duties,
Each had a progeny of beauties,
Matchless in feature, form, and parts,
Distinguish'd by the name of Arts.

A Father's extempore Consolation ON THE DEATH OF Two Daughters, who lived only Two Days.

Let vulgar souls endure the body's chain,
Till life's dull current ebbs in ev'ry vein,
Dream out a tedious age ere, wide display'd,
Death's blackest pinion wraps them in the shade.

These happy infants, early taught to shun
All that the world admires beneath the sun,

210

Scorn'd the weak bands mortality cou'd tie,
And fled impatient to their native sky.

Dear precious babes!—Alas! when, fondly wild,
A mother's heart hung melting o'er her child,
When my charm'd eye a flood of joy express'd,
And all the father kindled in my breast,
A sudden paleness seiz'd each guiltless face,
And death, tho' smiling, crept o'er ev'ry grace.

Nature! be calm—heave not th' impassion'd sigh,
Nor teach one tear to tremble in my eye.
A few unspotted moments pass'd between
Their dawn of being, and their closing scene:
And sure no nobler blessing can be giv'n
When one short anguish is the price of heav'n.

211

THE ANTIQUARIANS.

A TALE.

Some Antiquarians, grave, and loyal,
Incorporate by charter royal,
Last winter, on a Thursday night, were
Met in full senate at the Mitre.
The president, like Mr. Mayor,
Majestic took the elbow chair,
And gravely sat in due decorum
With a fine gilded mace before him.
Upon the table were display'd
A British knife without a blade,
A comb of Anglo Saxon seal,
A patent with king Alfred's seal,
Two rusted mutilated prongs,
Suppos'd to be St. Dunstan's tongs,

212

With which he, as the story goes,
Once took the devil by the nose.

Awhile they talk'd of antient modes,
Of manuscripts, and gothic codes,
Of Roman altars, camps, and urns,
Of Caledonian shields, and churns,
Whether the druid slipt, or broke
The misletoe upon the oak?
If Hector's spear was made of ash?
Or Agamemnon wore a sash?
If Cleopatra dress'd in blue,
And wore her tresses in a queue?

At length a dean who understood
All that had pass'd before the flood,
And could in half a minute shew ye
A pedigree as high as Noah,
Got up, and with a solemn air
(First humbly bowing to the chair)

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“If ought, says he, deserves a name
Immortal as the roll of fame,
This venerable group of sages
Shall flourish in the latest ages,
And wear an Amaranthine crown
When kings and empires are unknown.
Perhaps e'en I, whose humbler knowledge
Ranks me the lowest of your college,
May catch from your meridian day
At least a transitory ray:
For I, like you, thro' ev'ry clime,
Have trac'd the step of hoary Time,
And gather'd up his sacred spoils
With more than half a cent'ry's toils.
Whatever virtue, deed, or name,
Antiquity has left to fame.
In every age, and every zone,
In copper, marble, wood, or stone,
In vases, flow'r-pots, lamps, and sconces,
Intaglios, cameos, gems, and bronzes:

214

These eyes have read thro' many a crust
Of lacker, varnish, grease, and dust;
And now, as glory fondly draws
My soul to win your just applause,
I here exhibit to your view
A medal farely worth Peru,
Found, as tradition says, at Rome,
Near the quirinal catacomb.

He said, and from a purse of satin,
Wrapp'd in a leaf of monkish Latin,
And taught by many a clasp to join,
Drew out a dirty copper coin.
Still as pale midnight when she throws
On heav'n and earth a deep repose;
Lost in a trance too big to speak,
The synod ey'd the fine antique,
Examin'd ev'ry point, and part,
With all the critic skill of art,

215

Rung it alternate on the ground
In hopes to know it by the sound;
Applied the tongue's acuter sense
To taste its genuine excellence,
And with an animated gust
Lick'd up the consecrated rust:
Nor yet content with what the eye
By its own sun-beams cou'd descry,
To ev'ry corner of the brass
They clapp'd a microscopic glass,
And view'd in raptures o'er and o'er
The ruins of the learned ore,

Pythagoras, the learned sage,
As you may read in Pliny's page,
With much of thought, and pains, and care,
Found the proportions of a square,
Which threw him in such frantic fits
As almost robb'd him of his wits,

216

And made him, awful as his name was,
Run naked thro' the streets of Samos.
With the same spirits doctor Romans,
A keen civilian of the Commons,
Fond as Pythagoras to claim
The wreath of literary fame,
Sprung in a phrenzy from his place
Across the table and the mace,
And swore by Varro's shade that he
Conceiv'd the medal to a T.
It rings, says he, so pure, and chaste,
And has so classical a taste,
That we may fix its native home
Securely in imperial Rome.
That rascal, Time, whose hand purloins
From science half her kings and coins,
Has eat, you see, one half the tale,
And hid the other in a veil:
But if, thro' cankers, rust, and fetters,
Misshapen forms, and broken letters,

217

The critic's eye may dare to trace
An evanescent name, and face,
This injur'd medal will appear,
As midday sunshine, bright, and clear.
The female figure on a throne
Of rustic work in Tibur' stone;
Without a sandal, zone, or boddice,
Is liberty's immortal goddess;
Whose sacred fingers seem to hold
A taper wand, perhaps of gold,
Which has, if I mistake not, on it
The Pileus, or Roman bonnet:
By this the medallist would mean
To paint that fine domestic scene,
When the first Brutus nobly gave
His freedom to the worthy slave.

When a spectator's got the jaundice,
Each object, or by sea, or land, is

218

Discolour'd by a yellow hue,
Tho' naturally red, or blue.
This was the case with 'squire Thynne,
A barrister of Lincoln's Inn,
Who never lov'd to think or speak
Of any thing but antient Greek.
In all disputes his sacred guide was
The very venerable Suidas:
And tho' he never deign'd to look
In Salkeld, Littleton, or Coke,
And liv'd a stranger to the fees
And practice of the Common Pleas;
He studied with such warmth, and awe,
The volumes of Athenian law,
That Solon's self not better knew
The legislative plan he drew:
Nor cou'd Demosthenes withstand
The rhet'ric of his wig, and band;
When, full of zeal, and Aristotle,
And flustered by a second bottle,

219

He taught the orator to speak
His periods in correcter Greek.

Methinks, quoth he, this little piece
Is certainly a child of Greece:
Th' Ærugo has a tinge of blue
Exactly of the attic hue;
And, if the taste's acuter feel,
May judge of medals as of veal,
I'll take my oath the mould and rust
Are made of attic dew, and dust.
Critics may talk, and rave, and foam,
Of Brutus, and imperial Rome;
But Rome, in all her pomp, and bliss,
Ne'er struck so fine a coin as this.
Besides, tho' Time, as is his way,
Has eat th' inscription quite away,
My eye can trace, divinely true,
In this dark curve a little Mu:

220

And here, you see, there seems to lie
The ruins of a Doric Xi.
Perhaps, as Athens thought, and writ
With all the pow'rs of style, and wit,
The nymph upon a couch of mallows
Was meant to represent a Pallas:
And the baton upon the ore
Is but the olive-branch she bore.

He said—but Swinton, full of fire,
Asserted that it came from Tyre,
A most divine antique he thought it,
And with an empire wou'd have bought it.
He swore the head in full profile was
Undoubtedly the head of Belus;
And the reverse, tho' hid in shade,
Appear'd a young Sidonian maid,
Whose tresses, buskins, shape, and mien,
Mark'd her for Dido at sixteen;

221

Perhaps the very year when she was
First married to the rich Sichæus.
The rod, as he cou'd make it clear,
Was nothing but a hunting-spear,
Which all the Tyrian ladies bore
To guard them when they chac'd the boar.
A learned friend, he cou'd confide on,
Who liv'd full thirty years at Sidon,
Once shew'd him, 'midst the seals and rings
Of more than thirty Syrian kings,
A copper piece, in shape, and size,
Exactly that before their eyes,
On which, in high relief, was seen
The image of a Tyrian queen:
Which made him think this other dame
A true Phenician, and the same.

The next, a critic, grave, and big,
Hid in a most enormous wig,

222

Who in his manner, mien, and shape was
A genuine son of Esculapius,
Wondered that men of such discerning
In all th' abstruser parts of learning
Cou'd err, thro' want of wit, or grace,
So strangely in so plain a case.

It came, says he, or I will be whipt,
From Memphis in the lower Egypt.
Soon as the Nile's prolific flood
Has fill'd the plains with slime and mud,
All Egypt in a moment swarms
With myriads of abortive worms,
Whose appetites wou'd soon devour
Each cabbage, artichoke, and flow'r,
Did not some birds, with active zeal,
Eat up whole millions at a meal,
And check the pest while yet the year
Is ripening into stalk, and ear.

223

This blessing, visibly divine,
Is finely pourtrayed on the coin;
For here this line, so faint and weak,
Is certainly a bill, or beak;
Which bill, or beak, upon my word,
In Hieroglyphics means a bird,
The very bird whose num'rous tribe is
Distinguished by the name of Ibis.
Besides, the figure with the wand,
Mark'd by a sistrum in her hand,
Appears, the moment she is seen,
An Isis, Egypt's boasted queen.
Sir, I'm as sure, as if my eye
Had seen the artist cut the die,
That these two curves, which wave, and float thus,
Are but the tendrils of the Lotus,
Which, as Herodotus has said,
Th' Egyptians always eat for bread.

224

He spoke, and heard, without a pause,
The rising murmur of applause;
The voice of admiration rung
On ev'ry ear from ev'ry tongue:
Astonish'd at the lucky hit
They star'd, they deify'd his wit.

But, ah! what arts by fate are tried
To vex, and humble human pride!
To pull down poets from Parnassus,
And turn grave doctors into asses!
For whilst the band their voices raise
To celebrate the Sage's praise,
And echo thro' the house convey'd
Their pæans loud to man and maid;
Tom, a pert waiter, smart, and clever,
A droit pretence who wanted never,
Curious to see what caus'd this rout,
And what the doctors were about,

225

Slyly stepp'd in to snuff the candles,
And ask whate'er they pleas'd to want else.
Soon as the Synod he came near
Loud dissonance assail'd his ear,
Strange mingled sounds, in pompous style,
Of Isis, Ibis, Lotus, Nile:
And soon in Roman's hand he spies
The coin, the cause of all their noise.
Quick to his side he flies amain,
And peeps, and snuffs, and peeps again.
And tho' antiques he had no skill in,
He knew a sixpence from a shilling;
And, spite of rust, or rub, cou'd trace
On humble brass Britannia's face.
Soon her fair image he descries,
And, big with laughter, and surprize,
He burst—“And is this group of learning
So short of sense, and plain discerning,
That a mere halfpenny can be
To them a curiosity?

226

If this is your best proof of science
With wisdom Tom claims no alliance:
Content with nature's artless knowledge
He scorns alike both school and college.”

More had he said—but, lo! around
A storm in ev'ry face he found:
On Roman's brow black thunders hung,
And whirlwinds rush'd from Swinton's tongue;
Thynne lightning flash'd from ev'ry pore,
And reason's voice was heard no more.

The tempest ey'd, Tom speeds his flight,
And, sneering, bids 'em all good night:
Convinc'd that pedantry's allies
May be too learned to be wise.

THE END.