'T will be enough to give ye just a taste, From Delphin here, of criticising haste; "Mæcenas, setting on some journey out, Sent Horace word, before he took his route, As Cruquius, Lubin, Codex too pretend, That he would sup with his assured friend."

Horace writes back-and this, it seems, the
ode-

"'Tis mighty kind to take me in your road;
But you must be content with slender fare,
Such as my poor tenuity can spare:
Vile potabis-Sabine wine the best-"
As learnedly Theod. Marcil. has guest.

So far, so good-but why should Horace, slap,
Say you shall drink the wines of richest tap?
That is, quoth margin of the Delphin tome,
Domi potabis-you shall drink at home;
Hæc vina quidem bibes apud te,
Says note, non ita vero apud me.

Certè, it adds, as Pliny understood,

The knight's own wine was exquisitely good-
Good, to be sure, tho' Pliny had been dumb;
But how does all that has been said o'ercome
The contradiction?-Why, with this assistance,
'Tis plain they supp'd together-at a distance.

One easy hint, without such awkward stirs,
Dissolves at once the difficulty, sirs:
Let Horace drink himself of his own vinum→→→
Vile POTABO modicis Sabinum

Canth'ris-and Mæcenas do so too-
Tu bibes Cacubum-and all is true.

No verbal hissing spoils poetic grace,
Nor contradiction stares ye in the face;
But verse intention, without farther tours:
I'll drink my wine, Mæcenas, and you yours.
Should not all judges of Horatian letter
Or take this reading, or propose a better?

A GRACEFUL manner, and a friendly ease Will give a no, and not at all displease; And an ill-natur'd, or ungraceful yes, When it is giv'n, is taken much amiss.

BUT small the diff'rence, if Tertullian's right, To do an injury, or to requite;

"He is," said he," who does it to the other, But somewhat sooner wicked than his brother."

My reason is I, and your reason is you,
And, if we shall differ, both cannot be true:
If reason must judge, and we two must agree,
Another third reason must give the decree,
Superior to our's; and to which, it is fit,
That both, being weaker, should freely submit:
Now in reason, submitting, is plainly imply'd
That it does not pretend, of itself, to decide.

In truths that nobody can miss,
It is the quid that makes the quis;
In such as lie more deeply hid,
It is the quis that makes the quid.

A QUERY.

SHOULD a good angel and a bad-between
Th' Infirmary and Theatre be seen;
One going to be present at the play,
The other, where the sick and wounded lay;
Quere Were your conjecture to be had-
Which would the good one go to, which the bad?

VERSES DESIGNED FOR A WATCH-CASE.

COULD but our tempers move like this machine,
Not urg'd by passion, nor delay'd by spleen;
But, true to Nature's regulating pow'r,
By virtuous acts distinguish ev'ry hour;
Then health and joy would follow, as they ought,
The laws of motion, and the laws of thought;
Sweet health, to pass the present moments o'er;
And everlasting joy, when time shall be no more.

AN ADMONITION AGAINST SWEARING, ADDRESSED
TO AN OFFICER IN THE ARMY.

O THAT the Muse might call, without offence,
The gallant soldier back to his good sense!
His temp'ral field so cautious not to lose;
So careless quite of his eternal foes.
Soldier! so tender of thy prince's fame,
Why so profuse of a superior name?
For the king's sake the brunt of battles bear;
But for the King of King's sake-do not swear.

TO THE SAME, EXTEMPORE; INTENDED TO ALLAY
THE VIOLENCE OF PARTY-SPIRIT.
GOD bless the king, I mean the faith's defender;
God bless-no harm in blessing-the pretender;
But who pretender is, or who is king,
God bless us all-that's quite another thing.

ON THE NATURALIZATION BILL

COME all ye foreign strolling gentry,
Into Great Britain make your entry;

'HE French ambassador had been to wait
On James the First, in equipage of state:
acon was by; to whom the king began―[man?"
Well now, my lord, what think you of the
He's a tail proper person, sir," said he-
Ay," said the king, "that any one may see;
ut what d'ye think of head-piece in the case?
she a proper person for his place?"

My lord, who thought he was not, I suppose,
lave him this answer, as the story goes—
Tall men are oft like houses that are tall;
The
upper rooms are furnish'd worst of all."

A LETTER TO R. L. ES2.

If Senesino do but rift

O caro caro! that flat fifth!
I'd hang if e're an opera witling
Could tell Cuzzoni from a kitling.

DEAR Peter, if thou canst descend
From Rodelind to hear a friend,

And if those ravish'd ears of thine
Can quit the shrill celestial whine
Of gentle eunuchs, and sustain
Thy native English without pain,
I would, if't en't too great a burden,
Thy ravish'd ears intrude a word in.

To Richard's and to Tom's full oft
Have I stept forth, O 'squire of Toft,
In hopes that I might win, perchance,
A sight of thy sweet countenance;
Forth have I stept, but still, alas!
Richard's, or Tom's, 't was all a case;
Still met I with the same reply-
"Saw you sir Peter?"" No, not I."

Being at length no longer able
To bear the dismal trissyllable,
Home I retir'd in saunt'ring wise,
And inward turning all my eyes,
To seek thee in the friendly breast,
Where thou hast made a kind of nest,
The gentle Muse 1 'gan invoke,
And thus the neck of silence broke.

"Muse!" quoth I, treading on her toes,
"Thou sweet companion of my woes,
That whilom wont to ease my care,
And get me now and then-a hare-
Why am I thus depriv'd the sight
Both of the alderman and knight?
Tell me, O tell me, gentle Muse,
Where is sir Peter, where is Clowes?"

"Where your friend Joseph is, or goes,"
Reply'd Melpomene, "Lord knows;
And what place is the fairest bidder
For the knight's presence-let's consider-
Your wandering steps you must refer to
Rehearsal, op'ra, or concerto;

At one or other of the three
You'll find him most undoubtedly."

Now Peter, if the Muse says true,
To all my hopes I bid adieu;
Adieu my hopes, if op'ramany
Has seiz❜d on Peter's pericranie.
Drunk with Italian syren's cup!

Nay then, in troth, I give him up:
The man's a quack, whoe'er pretends he
Can cure him of that fiddling phrenzy.

Then snutting it close, he takes hold of his pen, And the subject not starting he snuffs it again;

the compilers of his works.

C.

For all his wise looks, will come forth as it ought,

With a bumper of wine he emboldens his blood,
And prepares to receive it, whenever it should,

Videlicet, first he invokes the nine Muses,
Or some of their tribe for his patroness chooses;
The girl, to be sure, that, of all the long nomine,
Best suits with his rhyine-as for instance, Mel-
pomene.

And what signifies then this old bard-beaten whim? What's he to the Muses, or th' Muses to him? Why, the bus'ness is this-the poor man, lack-aday,

At first setting out, don't know well what to say. Then he thinks of Parnassus, and Helicon streams,

And of old musty bards mumbles over the names;
Talks much to himself of one Phoebus Apollo,
And a parcel of folk that in 's retinue follow;
Of a horse named Pegasus, that had two wings,
Of mountains, and nymphs, and a hundred fine
things;
[of Parnass,
Tho' with mountains and streams, and his nymphs
The man, after all, is but just where he was.

TO HENRY WRIGHT, OF MOBBERLY, ES2.
ON BUYING THE PICTURE OF FATHER MALE-
BRANCHE.

WELL, dear Mr. Wright, I must send you a line;
The purchase is made, father Malcbranche is mine.
The adventure is past, which I long'd to achieve,
And I'm so overjoy'd, you will hardly believe.
If you will have but patience, I'll tell you, dear
friend,

The whole history out from beginning to end.
Excuse the long tale: I could talk, Mr. Wright,
About this same picture from morning till night.

The morning it lower'd like the morning in Cato,

[too;

And brought on, methought, as important a day
But about ten o'clock it began to be clear:
And the fate of our capital piece drawing near,
Having supp'd off to breakfast some common de-
coction,

Away trudges I in all haste to the auction: Should have call'd upon you, but the weaver committee

Forbad me that pleasure:the more was the pity.

The clock struck eleven as I enter'd the room, Where Rembrant and Guido stood waiting their doom,

With Holbein, and Rubens, Van Dyck, Tintoret, Jordano, Poussin, Carlo Dolci, et cet,

When at length in the corner perceiving the Pere, "Ha," quoth I to his face," my old friend, are you there?" [would say, And methought the face smil'd, just as though it "What you're come, Mr. Byrom, to fetch me away,"

Now before I had time to return it an answer, Comes a short-hander by, Jemmy Ord was the man, sir;

"So, doctor, good morrow:" " So, Jemmy, bon jour: [sure: Some rare pictures here:"" So there are to be

Shall we look at some of them?" "With all my heart, Jemmy;"

So I walk'd up and down, and my old pupil wi' me, Making still such remarks as our wisdom thought [copper. proper, Where things were hit off in wood, canvas, or

When at length about noon Mr. Auctioneer Cox, With his book and his hammer, mounts into his box: [upholder "Lot the first-number one"-then advanced his With Malebranche: so Atlas bore Heaven on bis shoulder. [sooth, Then my heart, sir, it went pit-a-pat, in good To see the sweet face of the searcher of truth: Ha, thought I to myself, if it cost me a million, "This right honest head shall then grace my pavilion."

Thus stood lot the first both in number and worth,

If pictures were priz'd for the men they set forth: I'm sure, to my thinking, compar'd to this number, Most lots in the room seem'd to be but mere lumber.

The head then appearing, Cox left us to see't, And fell to discoursing concerning the feet, "So long and so broad-tis a very fine headPlease to enter it, gentlemen"-was all that he said.

Had I been in his place, not a stroke of a ham

mer

thine:

[grammar: Till the force had been tried both of rhetoric and "A very fine head"-had thy head been as fine. All the heads in the house had veil'd bonnets to (headNot a word whose it was-but in short 'twas an "Put it up what you please”—and so somebody said, [a crown; "Half a piece"-and so on-for three pounds and To sum up my good fortune, I fetch'd me him

down.

"Who bought it?" quoth Cox. "Here's the money," quoth I,

Still willing to make the securest reply. And the safest receipt that a body can trust For preventing disputes, is-down with your dust! So I bought it, and paid for't, and boldly I say, 'Twas the best purchase made at Cadogan's that day:

The works the man wrote are the finest in nature, And a most clever piece is his genuine portraiture.

For the rest of the pictures and how they were To others there present, I leave to be told: [sold,

They seem'd to go off, as at most other sales,
Just as folks, money, judgment, or fancy prevails:
Some cheap, and some dear: such an image as this
Comes a trifle to me: and an odd wooden Swiss

Wench's head, God knows who forty-eight gui

neas-if her

Grace of Marlborough likes it-so fancy will differ.

When the business was over, and the crowd somewhat gone,

Whip into a coach I convey number one. [pin:" "Drive along, honest friend, fast as e'er you can So he did, and 'tis now safe and sound at Graysinn:

Done at Paris, it says, from the life by one Gery, Who that was I can't tell, but I wish his heart merry:

[birth In the year ninety-eight; sixty just from the Of the greatest divine, that e'er liv'd upon Earth.

Nor give us fairly, in its full extent,
The scripture doctrine of that dire event.
When tempted, Adam, yielding to deceit,
Presum'd of the forbidden tree to eat,

The bishop tells us, that he did not die:
Pray will you ask him, sir, the reason why?
Why he would contradict the sacred text,
Where death to sin so surely is annext?
"The day thou eatest"-are the words you know;
And yet, by his account, it was not so:
Death did not follow, tho' it surely wou'd:
How will he make this hardy comment good?
"Sentence," says he, "was respited."-But
pray,

Where does the scripture such a saying say?
What word that means to respite or revoke
Appears in all that God or Moses spoke?

It will be said, perhaps, that it appears,
That Adam liv'd above nine hundred years
After his fall-True-but what life was that?
The very death, sir, which his fall begat.
The life, that Adam was created in,
Was lost the day, the instant, of his sin.
Just as the rebel angels, when they fell,
Were dead to Heav'n, altho' alive to Hell:
So man, no longer breathing heav'nly breath,
Fell to this life, and dy'd the scripture death.
While in the state of innocence he stood,
He was all living, beautiful, and good:
But when he fed on the forbidden fruit,
Whereof corruption was the latent root,
He dy'd to Paradise, and, by a birth [Earth;
That should not have been rais'd, he liv'd to
Fell into bestial flesh, and blood, and bones,
Amongst the thorns and briars, rocks and stones.
That which had cloth'd him, when a child of light,
With all its lustre, was extinguish'd quite;
Naked, asham'd, confounded, and amaz'd,
With other eyes, on other scenes he gáz'd.
All sensibility of heav'nly bliss
Departing from him-what a death was this!!
His soul, indeed, as an immortal fire,
Could never die, could never not desire:
But, sir, he had what glorious angels claim,
An heav'nly spirit, and an heav'nly frame;
Form'd in the likeness of the sacred Three,
He stood immortal, powerful, and free;
Image of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost,
The destin'd sire of a new heav'nly host;
Partner of their communicated breath,
A living soul, unsubjected to death.
Since then he fell from this sublime estate,
Could less than death have been his real fate?
No; as in life he chose not to abide,
It must be said, that Adam surely dy’d.

Say, that he dy'd not, as it was foretold,
But when nine hundred years and thirty old,
And then, if death be sentence for a fall,
How proves the bishop that he dy'd at all?
For if the death he talks of be this last,
How does that answer to the sentence past?
Was his departure from this world the time
That our first father suffer'd for his crime?
One rather should believe, or hope at least,
That (so be it!) his sufferings then ceas'd;
And that the life, which had been lost at first,
Was then regain'd, and he no longer curst.

If on the bishop's 'scutcheon, when he dies, (Long be the time deferr'd) the mourning eyes Should read Mors Vitae Janua, in paint,

What must they think him, sinner, then, or saint?

Must not these words direct them to suppose
An end of all a Christian bishop's woes?
Who, like to Adam, father of mankind,
Had pass'd his time of penitence injoin'd;
Who, like to Christ, the second Adam too,
Had always had redemption in his view;
Had taught himself and others to revive
From dead in Adam to in Christ alive;
Had been as true a shepherd to his flock,
As the poor hind that really wears a frock;
So trod this earthly passage, that, in sum,
Death was to him the gate of life become.

Gate of what life? Undoubtedly the same
That Adam fell from, when he first became
A creature of this world; when first he fell,
Thanks to divine foregoodness! not to Hell,
But to this Earth-this state of time and place,
Where, dead by nature, man revives by grace;
Where, tho' his outward system must decay,
His inward ripens to eternal day;

Puts off th' old Adam, and puts on the new;
And having found the first sad sentence true,
Now finds the truth of what the second said,
"The woman's seed shall bruise the serpent's head."
Again to urge the instance that I gave,
Attend we this good bishop to his grave:
The priest comes forth to meet the sable hearse,
And then repeats the well-appointed verse;
-Verse, one would think, that might decide the
"I am the resurrection and the life." [strife:

What life is that which Jesus is, and gives,
In and by which the true believer lives?
That of this world? Then were it most absurd
To a dead bishop to apply the word.
'Tis that which human nature had before;
Which, being Christ's, Christ only can restore.
What meaning is there, touching the deceas'd,
Now from the "burthen of the flesh" releas'd,
But that his soul is going to be clad
With heav'nly flesh and blood; which Adam had,
Before he enter'd into that which Paul
"Body of death" might very justly call?
A flesh and blood, that, as he bints elsewhere,
Not born from Heav'n, can never enter there:
Mass of this world, whose kingdom Christ dis-
The life whereof is but a life so nam'd; [claim'd,
A life of animal and insect breath,
That, in a man, is rightly styl'd a death.

Thus, sir, throughout the burial office run,
You'll find that it proceeds as it begun.
Read any office,baptism if you will-
From first to last, you'll find the reason still,
Why any, or why all of them are read;
Reason of all that's either sung or said,
Is by this one great solemn truth explain'd,
Of life in Adam lost, in Christ regain'd:
Lost at the fall-not at the end of years
That Adam labour'd in this vale of tears,
When death thro' Christ was happy, 'tis pre-
sum'd,

And vanquish'd that to which he first was doom'd.
Doom'd not by any act of wrath in God;
(A point wherein the bishop seems to nod)
No death of pure, of tainted life no pain,
Did his severe inflicting will ordain:
He is all glory, goodness, light, and love,
Life that from him no creature can remove;
But from itself it may, as Adam did,

If it will choose what light and love forbid:
Truly forewarn'd of what would truly be,
His life was poison'd by the mortal tree:

He eat-he fell-he dy'd-'Tis all the same;
One loss of life under a triple name.

No test was made by positive command,
Merely to try if he would fall or stand,
Like that, the serpentine Satanic snare,
Of which the man was bidden to beware.
"Eat not thereof, or thou wilt surely die,"
Was spoken to prevent, and not to try;
To guard the man against his subtle foe, [know,
Who sought to teach him what 't was death to
Death to his pristine, spirit-life divine,
And separation from its sacred shrine;
The pure, unmix'd, incorruptible throne,
Wherein God's image first embody'd shone:
Tho' form'd to rule the new created scene,
Built from the chaos of a former reign;
To bring the wonders of this world to view,
And ancient glories to an orb renew;
He also had, as being to command,
See, and be seen, in this new-formed land,
This intermediate temporary life,
Where, only, good and evil are at strife,
Outward corporeal form, whereby he saw,
And heard, and spoke, and gave to all things law;
They none to him. His far superior mind
Was, as he pleas'd, united or disjoin'd:
So far united, that all good was gain'd;
So far disjoin'd, that evil was restrain❜d:
It could not reach him-for, before his fall,
Nothing could hurt this human lord of all,
No more than Satan, or the Serpent, cou'd,
If in his first creation he had stood.

Such was his blest estate-wherein is found
Of Adam's happy ignorance the ground.
His outward body, and each outward thing,
From whence alone both good and ill could
spring,

Could not affect, while he was free from sin,
The life of the celestial man within.
Glorious condition! which, howe'er imply'd,
That man, at first plac'd in it, must be try'd:
Not from God's will, or arbitrary voice;
His trial follow'd from his pow'r of choice:
God will'd him that, himself was to re-will,
And the divine intentions to fulfil;
To use his outward body as a means,
Whereby to raise in time and place the scenes
That should restore the once angelic orb,
And all its evil introduc'd absorb.

Evil, that, prior to the fall of man,
From him, whose name in Heav'n is lost, began,
Moses has plainly hinted at the fiend;
Whose malice in a borrow'd shape was screen'd:
Who, under reason's plausible disguise,
Taught our first parents to be worldly wise:
Succeeding lights have risen up to show
Of God and man, more openly, the foe.

He, once a thron'd archangel, had the sway Far as this orb of our created day; Where, then, no Sun was wanted to give light, No Moon to cheer yet undiscover'd night; Immensely luminous his total sphere, All glory, beauty, brightness, ev'ry where: Ocean of bliss, a limpid crystal sea, Whose height and depth its angels might survey; Call forth its wonders, and enjoy the trance Of joys perpetual thro' its whole expanse: Ravishing forms arising without end Would, in obedience to their wills, ascend; Change, and unfold fresh glories to their view, And tune the hallelujah song anew.