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L'ENVOY OF THE POET.

And does the summer's radiance quite dispel
All thought of winter's chilling blast from thee?
Go brainless dolt, and banish famine fell:
Thy lesson learn from the industrious bee.

THE POET'S CHORUS TO FOOLS.

Come, trim the boat, row on each Rara Avis,
Crowds flock to man my Stultifera Navis.

SECTION XXXVII.

OF FOOLS WHO ARE IN LOVE.

Amare et sapere vix Deo conceduntur.

THESE stand indeed confess'd for fools in mind,
Since they select for guide a child* that's blind;

* How shall I find words to convey a just idea of the matchless power and folly of this little blind urchin? what kingdoms has he not overthrown, what mighty men have not been subjugated to his will! Alexander for his Thais burned the famed city of Persepolis. Marc Antony for Cleopatra, bartered the dominion of the world. Love can transform wisdom into folly, and turn reason into madness: it will make the hundred eyes of Argus as blind as their resemblance on the peacock's tail; or lead in rosy bands the fierce and strong Cyclops famed workmen of the Lemnian Isle; it will burn as fierce in Friezeland as under the line, and animate the breast of stone: it is the unquenchable furnace of the brain, a firebrand in the blood-Woe be unto the man that cherisheth it: for it will engender naught but folly.

And sigh and pine and mope like idiots stupid, Talking of flames and darts, and cruel Cupid. These are your mad folks that will hang and drown,

If either* should requite a smile with frown; Who boast pure passions, such as angels cherish, Passions which sated† soon are found to perish.

For, what my fools, is this celestial fire,
This boasted ray, save animal desire;
For when in youthful vigour full it rages,
While time's chill torpid hand the flame assuages,

* As to the whims of lovers, they are innumerable, being as capricious in fancy as the winds of March, or the showers of April; their bickerings, however, prove of no very serious consequence, for Terence has emphatically said,

Amantium iræ amoris redintegratio est.

† In the above line, and throughout the following stanza, the poet very suddenly humiliates the celestial properties of love, and makes him but a dependent on carnal gratification: but as there seems a degree of impiety in his remark, I beg leave to be excused from venturing any opinions upon the subject.

*

A pretty face, or well turn'd shape will raise,
These idiots' passions, and create a blaze

More raging far than furnace,* which they tell us, The Cyclops kindled when they blew their bellows.

Then naught is heard but sighs and vows, till

soon,

Marriage brings on the billing honey moon;t

Speaking of the power of this divinity over all humankind, Voltaire thus expressed himself in two lines to be graven under the Statue of Love.

Qui que tu soit, voici ton maître,

Il est, le fut ou le doit etre.

And Butler makes his Hudibras conclude the heroical Epistle to his Lady in these words.

Subscrib'd his name, but at a fit
And humble distance, to his wit;
And dated it with wondrous art,
Giv'n from the bottom of his heart.
Then seal'd it with his coat of love,
A smoking faggot-and above,
Upon a scroll-I burn and weep,

And near it-For her Ladyship.

In order to cool a little this connubial phrenzy, we will quote an anecdote of Rosso the Italian Poet, who in the

Which pass'd, no more is heard of oaths and

dying,

Love* shakes his wings, and forth from window's flying.

memoirs of his life, written by himself, states, that he was extremely happy in two marriages: for his first wife was dumb, and his second blind; but, adds the bard, my third is neither one nor t'other!

Neither should be omitted the following remark of a very observant and clever man.

Louis XIV. one day asked the Marshal Uxelles why he did not marry?" Why," said the blunt soldier, "Sire, I have not yet found the woman of whom I would wish to be the husband, nor the child of whom I would wish to be the father."

* There is most assuredly, infinite force in this line of the poet, which obviously alludes to the third stanza of the present section, and if indeed, we consider the point minutely, and measure the whole by the standard of the conduct of married people in general, there certainly appears something like reason in the conclusion drawn by the poetaster, who seems to indicate, that love is no other than desire, notwithstanding all its votaries swear to their mistresses point blank to the contrary.

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