waving her torch, and painting her spear, shall at last submit to the chain, with a smooth counte
Omnia me tua delectant; sed maxime, maxima cum fides in amicitia, consilium, gravitas, constantia; tum lepos, humanitas, literæ.
CICERO, Ep. xxvii. Lib. xi.
SLOW though I am to wake the sleeping lyre,
Yet should the muse some happy song inspire,
Fit for a friend to give, and worthy thee,
That favourite verse to Lambard I decree:
Such may the muse inspire, and make it prove
A pledge and monument of lasting love!
Meantime, intent the fairest plan to find,
To form the manners, and improve the mind;
Me the fam'd wits of Rome and Athens please,
By Orrery's indulgence wrapt in ease;
Whom all the rival muses strive to grace
With wreaths familiar to his letter'd race.
Now truth's bright charms employ my serious thought,
In flowing eloquence by Tully taught:
Then from the shades of Tusculum I rove,
And studious wander in the Grecian grove ;
While wonder and delight the soul engage
To sound the depths of Plato's sacred page;
Where science in attractive fable lies,
And, veil'd, the more invites her lover's eyes.
Transported thence, the flowery heights I gain
Of Pindus, and admire the warbling train,
Whose wings the muse in better ages prun'd,
And their sweet harps to moral airs attun'd.
As night is tedious while, in love betray'd,
The wakeful youth expects the faithless maid;
As wearied hinds accuse the lingering sun,
And heirs impatient wish for twenty-one :
So dull to Horace* did the moments glide,
Till his free Muse her sprightly force employ'd
To combat vice, and follies to expose,
In easy numbers near allied to prose:
Guilt blush'd and trembled, when she heard him sing;
He smil❜d reproof, and tickled with his sting.
With such a graceful negligence express'd,
Wit, thus applied, will ever stand the test:
But he, who blindly led by whimsy strays,
And from gross images would merit praise,
When nature sets the noblest stores in view,
Affects to polish copper in Peru:
So while the seas on barren sands are cast,
The saltness of their waves offend the taste:
But when to heaven exhal'd, in fruitful rain,
In fragrant dews they fall, to cheer the swain,
Revive the fainting flowers, and swell the meagre
Be this their care, who, studious of renown,
Toil up the' Aonian steep to reach the crown;
Suffice it me, that (having spent my prime
In picking epithets, and yoking rhyme)
To steadier rule my thoughts I now compose,
And prize ideas clad in honest prose.
Old Dryden, emulous of Cæsar's praise,
Cover'd his baldness with immortal bays;
And death, perhaps, to spoil poetic sport,
Unkindly cut an Alexandrine short:
His ear had a more lasting itch than mine,
For the smooth cadence of a golden line:
Should lust of verse prevail, and urge the man
To run the trifling race the boy began,
Mellow'd with sixty winters, you might see
My circle end in second infancy.
I might ere long an awkward humour have,
To wear my bells and coral to the grave,
Or round my room alternate take a course,
Now mount my hobby, then the muses' horse:
Let others wither gay, but I'd appear
With sage decorum in my easy chair;
Grave as Libanius, slumbering o'er the laws,
Whilst gold and party-zeal decide the cause,
A nobler task our riper age affords
Than scanning syllables, and weighing words.
To make his hours in even measures flow,
Nor think some fleet too fast, and some too slow;
Still equal in himself, and free to taste
The now, without repining at the past;
Nor the vain prescience of the spleen to' employ,
To pall the flavour of a promis'd joy ;
To live tenacious of the golden mean,
In all events of various fate serene;
Ll
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