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His breath-doors of life on a sudden were shut,
And he died full as big as a Dorchester butt.
His body, when long in the ground it had lain,
And time into clay had resolv'd it again,
A potter found out in its covert so snug,

And with part of fat Toby he form'd this brown jug,

[ale, Now sacred to friendship, and mirth, and mild So here's to my lovely sweet Nan of the Vale.

A PAIR OF SPECTACLES.

FROM BOURNE.

Or all the spectacles to mend the sight
Devis'd by art for viewing objects right,
Those are most useful, which the prudent place
High on the handle of the human face.
Some on the temples fix 'em, I suppose,
Lest they should seem to snuffle through the nose:
Some in one hand the single-convex hold,
But these are prigs asham'd of being old,
None are in news or politics so wise,
As he whose nose is saddled with his eyes;
And if the taper tube regale his snout,
There's nought so secret but he'll smell it out.
Should gammer Gurton leave these helps at home,
To church with Bible 'tis in vain to come;
The plainest sermon is the most perplext,
Unless with care she double down the text.
Lo! how the parish clerk, with many a hum,
By turns now fits 'em to his nose or thumb,
Methodically regular, as need

By turns requires him, or to sing, or read:
His thumb then held them, if report says true,
When on the lovely lass he leer'd askew;
With snow-white bosom bare, sweet-slumbering

in her pew.

Those who see dimly may their eyes restore
By adding two to what they had before;

And he who would be deem'd profoundly wise
Must carry in his head, and in his pocket-eyes.

THE STAGE COACH.

FROM THE SAME.

To
o pay my duty to sweet Mrs. Page,
A place was taken in the Stamford stage.
Our coachman Dick, the shades of night to shun,
Had yok'd his horses long before the Sun:
Disturb'd I start; and drowsy all the while,
Rise to be jolted may a weary mile;
On both sides squeez'd, how highly was I bless'd!
Between two plump old women to be press'd!
A corporal fierce, a nurse and child that cried,
And a fat landlord fill'd the other side.
Scarce dawns the morning, ere the cumberous
Rolls roughly-rumbling o'er the rugged road.
One old wife coughs, and wheezes in my ears,
Loud scolds the other, and the corporal swears;

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Alluding to a picture of Hogarth's, which very humourously describes a slumbering congregation.

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TRANSLATED FROM THE LATIN OF DR. HALLEY.

BEHOLD the regions of the Heavens survey'd !
And this fair system in the balance weigh'd;
Behold the law which (when in ruin hurl'd
God out of Chaos call'd the beauteous world)
Th' Almighty fix'd, when all things good he saw !
Behold the chaste, inviolable law!

Before us now new scenes unfolded lie,
And Heav'n appears expanded to the eye;
Th' illumin'd mind now sees distinctly clear
Thron'd in the centre glows the king of day,
What power impels each planetary sphere.

And rules all nature with unbounded sway;
Through the vast void his subject planets run,
Whirl'd in their orbits by the regal Sun.
What course the dire tremendous comets steer
We know, nor wonder at their prone career;
Why silver Phoebe, meek-ey'd queen of night,
Now slackens, now precipitates her flight;
Why, scan'd by no astronomers of yore,
She yielded not to calculation's power;
Why the nodes' motions retrograde we call,
And why the apsides progressional.
Hence too we learn, with what proportion'd force
The Moon impels, erroneous in her course,
The refluent main: as waves on waves succeed,
On the bleak beach they toss the sea-green weed,
Now bare the dangers of th' engulphing sand,
Now swelling high roll foaming on the strand.
What puzzling schoolmen sought so long in vain,
See cloud-dispelling Mathesis explain!
O highly blest, to whom kind fate has given
Minds to expatiate in the fields of Heaven!
All doubts are clear'd, all errours done away,
And truth breaks on them in a blaze of day.
Awake, ye sons of men, arise! exclude
Far from your breasts all low solicitude;
Learn bence the mind's etherial powers to tracę,
Exalted high above the brutal race.

Ev'n those fam'd chiefs who human life refin'd
By wholesome laws, the fathers of mankind;

Or they who first societies immur'd
In cities, and from violence secur'd;
They who with Ceres' gifts the nations blest,
Or from the grape delicious nectar prest;
They who first taught the hieroglyphic style
On smooth papyrus', native plant of Nile,
(For literary elements renown'd)
And made the eye an arbiter of sound:
All these, though men of deathless fame, we find
Have less advanc'd the good of human-kind :
Their schemes were founded on a narrower plan,
Replete with few emoluments to man.
But now, admitted guests in Heav'n, we rove
Free and familiar in the realms above;
The wonders hidden deep in Earth below,
And nature's laws, before conceal'd, we know.
Lend, lend your aid, ye bright superior powers,
That live embosom'd in Elysian bowers,
Lend your sweet voice to warble Newton's praise,
Who search'd out truth through all her mystic

maze,

Newton, by every favouring Muse inspir'd,
With all Apollo's radiations fir'd:
Newton, that reach'd th' insuperable line,
The nice barrier 'twixt human and divine.

CLAUDIAN'S OLD MAN,

WHO NEVER WENT OUT OF THE SUBURBS OF
VERONA.

BLEST who, content with what the country yields,

Lives in his own hereditary fields;
Who can with pleasure his past life behold;
Whose roof paternal saw him young and old;
And as he tells his long adventures o'er,

A stick supports him where he crawl'd before;
Who ne'er was tempted from his farm to fly,
And drink new streams beneath a foreign sky:
No merchant, he, solicitous of gain, [main :
Dreads not the storms that lash the sounding
Nor soldier, fears the summons to the war;
Nor the hoarse clamours of the noisy bar.
Unskill'd in business, to the world unknown,
He ne'er beheld the next contiguous town;
Yet nobler objects to his views are given,
Fair flowery fields, and star-embellish'd Heaven.
He marks no change of consuls, but computes
Alternate seasons by alternate fruits;
Maturing autumns store of apples bring,
And flowerets are the luxury of spring.
His farm that catches first the Sun's bright ray,
Sees the last lustre of his beams decay:
The passing hours erected columns show,
And are his landmarks and his dials too.
Yon spreading oak a little twig he knew,
And the whole grove in his remembrance grew.
Verona's walls remote as India seem;
Benacus is th' Arabian Gulph to him.
Yet health three ages lengthens out his span,
And grandsons hail the vigorous old man.
Let others vainly sail from shore to shore,
Their joys are fewer, and their labours more.

ARCHIMEDES'S SPHERE:

FROM CLAUDIAN.

JOVE saw the Heav'ns in glassy sphere exprest,
And smiling, thus the pow'rs above addrest:
"At what bold tasks will man's presumption aim!
In this small globe he mocks the worldly frame.
Lo! from my work the rival artist draws
The heavenly motions, and great Nature's laws.
Each star includes an animating soul,
And beauteous order regulates the whole.
Through the bright zodiac yearly rolls the Sun,'
And inimic moons each month their courses run.
Audacious Art thus lifts her crest on high,
And deems she sways the empire of the sky.
Salmoneus once fictitious lightning hurl'd:
But here behold a counterfeited world!"

An Egyptian plant, growing in the marshy places near the banks of the Nile, on the leaves of which the antients used to write.

ON MENANDER.

IMITATED FROM A GREEK EPIGRAM IN THE
ANTHOLOGIA.

Ox thy sweet lips the bees in clusters hung,
And dropp'd Hyblæan honey on thy tongue:
For thee the Muses pluck'd Fierian flowers;
The Graces woo'd thee in sequester'd bowers.
Ages to come shall celebrate thy name,
And Athens gather glory from thy fame.

FRAGMENTS OF MENANDER:

TRANSLATED FROM THE GREEK.

Thou, whom the Nine with Plautus' wit inspire, The art of Terence, with Menander's fire.

POPE.

SOME ACCOUNT OF MENANDER. MENANDER was born at Athens, the third year of the 109th Olympiad, 344 years before Christ, and exhibited his first comedy, according to Meursius, the third of the 114th Olympiad, that is 324 years before our Saviour's time, being then only twenty years of age. His introduction of the new comedy in a short time spread his fame over the world; and his friendship was courted by the kings of Egypt and Macedon. Of his works, which amounted to upwards of an hundred comedies, only a few fragments now remain. Terence borrowed several plays from him; and it is from the character of the Roman, that most men now judge of the merit of the Grecian author. We find the old masters of rhetoric recommending his works as the true standard of beauty, containing every grace of public speaking. Quintilian declares, that a careful imitation of Menander only will satisfy all the rules he has laid down in his institutions. It is in Menander that he would have his orator search for a copiousness of invention, for a happy elegance of expression, and especially for an universal genius, able to accommodate itself naturally to all persons, things, and affections.

His wonderful talent at expressing nature, in every condition, and under every circumstance of lite, has always made the noblest part of his character, which gave occasion to Aristophanes the grammarian to ask this genteel question; Ω Μενανδρε, και Βιε, Ποτερος αρ υμων πότερον zipijunsato? O Menander and Nature, which of you have imitated the other? Julius Casar has left us the noblest, as well as the justcst praise of Menander's works, when addressing himself in a compliment to Terence, he calls him, Dimidiate Menander, Half-Menander. He died in the third year of the 122nd Olympiad, 292 years before Christ, being fifty-two years of age.

WORSHIP DUE TO THE DEITY.

SERVE then the great first cause whence nature springs,

Th' almighty Site, th' eternal King of kings;
Who gave us being, and who gives us food,
Lord of all life, and author of all good.

Page 48.

SUBMISSION.

FIGHT not with God, nor thwart his wiser will,
(Contending serves to aggravate an ill,)
But bravely bear those ills he's pleas'd to send ;
Why should we blame the laws we cannot mend?
Page 70.

THE ACCEPTABLE SACRIFICE.

WHOE'ER approaches to the Lord of all,
And with his offerings desolates the stall;
Who brings an hundred bulls with garlands drest,
The purple mantle, or the golden vest,
Or ivory figures richly wrought around,
Or curious images with emeralds crown'd;
And hopes with these God's favour to obtain,
His thoughts are foolish, and his hopes are vain,
He, only he may trust his pray'rs will rise,
And Heav'n accept his grateful sacrifice,
Who kads beneficent a virtuous life,
Who wrongs no virgin, who corrupts no wife;
No robber he, no murderer of mankind,
No miser, servant to the sordid mind.
Dare to be just, my Pamphilus, disdain
The smallest trifle for the greatest gain:
For God is nigh thee, and his purer sight
In acts of goodness only takes delight:
He feeds the labourer for his honest toil,
And heaps his substance as he turns the soil.
To him then humbly pay the rites divine,
And not in garments, but in goodness shine.
Guiltless of conscience thou may'st safely sleep,
Though thunder bellow through the boundless
deep.

Page 268.

* The figures at the bottom of each fragment refer to the page in Le-Clerc's edition, where the original is to be found.

THE MISERIES OF OLD-AGE.
HIM, Parmeno, I deem the happiest man,
Who having once survey'd great Nature's plan,
This beauteous system, this stupendous frame,
Soon to that place retires from whence he came.
This common Sun, the stars, the streams that flow,
The clouds that darken, and the fires that glow;
These shall be always present to thy view,
Whether thou liv'st an hundred years, or few;
And nobler works, or wrought with better skill,
None ever yet beheld, or ever will.

This life on Earth, these scenes to man assign'd,
Suppose a mighty concourse of mankind,
Where all contrive to trifle time away
In business, bustle, villany, or play:

If first this inn you quit, a transient guest,
You'll pay but little, and you'll fare the best:
Go then equipt, nor fear the stroke of fate,
You'll travel free from envy and from hate.
But lingering guests, who longer being crave,
Must sink at last with sorrow to the grave:
For antient men experience wants and woes
From friends departing or surviving foes.

'The late ingenious and learned 1. Hawkins Browne, esq. has translated and interwoven this fine fragment into his excellent poem De Animi Immortalitate, book the first.

Quocirca ille mihi felix vixisse videtur,

Qui postquam aspexit mundi solenne theatrum Equo animo, hunc solem, et terras, mare, nubila, et ignem ;

Protinus unde abiit, satur ut conviva remigrat.
Nempe hæc, seu centum vivendo conteris annos,
Seu paucos numeras, eadem redeuntia cernes;
Hisque nihil melius,nihil atque recentius unquam
Omne adco in terris agitur quod tempus, habeto
Ut commune forum; peregre vel euntibus am-
plum

Hospitium, temerè fluitans ubi vita moratur,
Mille inter nugas jactata, negotia mille.
Qui prior abscedit, portum prior occupat; Eja!
Collige vela citus, ne fortè viatica desint.
Quid cessas? subeunt morbique et acerba tuorum
Funera, et insidiis circùm undique sapta senec-

tus.

Perhaps the reader will not be displeased to see Mr. Soane Jennyn's stranslation of the above passage quoted from Mr. Browne's Immortality. To me most happy therefore he appears, Who having once, unmov'd by hopes or fears, Survey'd this sun, earth, ocean, clouds, and flame, Well satisfy'd returns from whence he came. Is life a hundred years, or e'er so few, 'Tis repetition all, and nothing new:

A fair, where thousands meet, but none can stay, An inn, where travellers bait, then post away: where man perpetually is tost,

A sea,

Now plung'd business, now in trifles lost :
Who leave it first, the peaceful port first gain;
Hold then! no farther lanch into the main :
Contract your sails; life nothing can bestow
By long continuance, but continued woe:
The wretched privilege daily to deplore
The funerals of our friends, who go
before:
Diseases, pains, anxieties, and cares,
And age surrounded with a thousand snares.
Dodsley's Collection, vol. vi.

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THE OMNIPOTENCE OF GOLD.

An ancient sage', which some perhaps think odd,
Asserts that every element's a god ;
A god this earth, where vivid verdure grows;
A god the fire that burns, the breeze that
blows;

The silver streams that thro' the vallies stray,
The stars that shine by night, the Sun by day.
But I this plain, this certain maxim hold,
"There's no propitious deity but gold :"
Safe in thy house this splendid god inshrine,
And all the blessings of the world are thine;
The grand retinue, and the burnish'd plate,
The pompous villa, and the menial great;
Gold can buy friends, or soften rigid laws,
And bias every witness to your cause:
Spare not expense-give largely, and 'tis odds
But mighty gold will bribe the very gods.
Page 249.

THE MISERY AND FOLLY OF MAN.
LORD of creation, man-come, all things see
Exceed in happiness and wisdom thee.
Behold yon ass, to whom thy partial race
Gives in the world of life the lowest place:
Thou call'st him wretched, and I grant him so,
But not from self his pitied sufferings flow;
Beneath stern nature's load the wretch may
groan,

Yet wisely still adds nothing of his own:
But man, alas! besides his natural share,
Makes half those evils he repines to bear.
Does any sneeze?? grief turns the hearers pale;
We burn with anger if the world should rail:
Unlucky dreams with terrour fill the soul;,
We tremble at the hooting of an owl:
By contests, prejudices, pride, and law,
Unnumber'd evils on ourselves we draw.

'Epicharmus.

Page 244.

MAN UNHAPPY, COMPARED WITH OTHER
CREATURES.

IF to my choice indulgent Heav'n would give,
This life worn out, another life to life,
And say, "Partake what form delights thee best,
Be man again, again with reason blest;
Assume the horse's strength, the sheep's warm
coat,

Bark in the dog, or wanton in the goat;
For this is fate's immutable decree,
And one more being is reserv'd for thee:"
To bounteous Heav'n I'd thus prefer my prayer;
"O let not reason's lamp be lighted here!
Make me not man; his only-partial race
Holds vice in credit, virtue in disgrace.

The steed victorious in the rapid course
Eats food more dainty than the sluggish horse:
Is there a dog, distinguish'd for his smell?
No common dog will ever fare so well:
The gallant cock that boasts heroic blood,
Rakes not in dirty dunghills for his food;
And should he strut among the feather'd crew,
Each conscious brother pays him honour due.
Man, tho' of each accomplishment possest,
Renown'd for valour, and with virtue blest,
Gains from the heedless world no due regard,
His worth no praise, his valour no reward:
While fawning flatterers bask in fortune's ray,
Knaves that detract, and villains that betray.
'Tis better far thro' any form to pass,
To crawl a reptile, or to drudge an ass,
Than see base miscreants, guilt's abandon'd crew,
Enjoy those honours that are virtue's due."
Page 248.

THE ORIGIN OF MAN.

To know the origin from whence you came,
And the frail fashion of this human frame,
Pause o'er those monuments with pensive eye,
Where purpled tyrants, proud oppressors lie;
All who could boast wealth, wisdom, beauty, birth,
Here meet, and mingle with one cominon earth:
Yet these no bright accomplishinents could save
From fate's dread sentence to the gloomy

grave:

There while you read the frailty of your frame,
Learn from what vile original you came.
Page 276.

THE PLEASURES OF SOLITUDE.

How sweet and pleasant to a man endued
With moral goodness, is deep solitude?
Pensive to rove, not meditating harm,
And live in affluence at his country farm.'
For in large cities where the many bide,
Self-cankering envy dwells, and high-blown pride:
There luli'd in all the luxury of ease,
They live at large, licentious as they please;
Yet soon these pleasures pall, and quick decay,
Like the light blaze that crackling dies away.
Page 178.

SORROW FAMILIAR TO ALL MEN.

Sneezing was sometimes reckoned an ill SURE Sorrows are to human-kind ally'd:

omen.

They reign where Fortune pours her golden tide;

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Who live immur'd in citadels and towers? Who think, mistrustful of their menial band, Each slave conceals a dagger in his hand!

WHATE'ER offends thee, care, or grief, or strife, Such chastisements the gods for those ordain

Drive far away beyond the verge of life: For here, alas! we little time posses, And every sorrow makes that little less. Page 158.

Who uncontrol'd despotically reign.

Page 24.

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