THE POET'S CHORUS TO FOOLS. Come, trim the boat, row on each Rara Avis, wich-road, on the score of precedence, affords a true specimen of this species of ignorant and overbearing pride. He that's proud eats up himself. Pride is his own glass, his own trumpet, his own chronicle: and whatever praises itself but in the deed, devours the deed i'the praise. SECTION LII. OF FOOLS WHO IN AGE GIVE BAD EXAMPLES TO YOUTH. Velocius ac citius nos, Corrumpunt vitiorum exempla domestica, magnis, Ir old fools are to eating prone, And will indulge when at the table; "Tis little wonder sense must own, That youths should guttle while they're able. If gray hairs will get drunk with wines, No wonder youth that way inclines, And wafts to lewdness his oblation. * * If we are to judge of our ancestors, by the conduct of the rising generation, they must indeed have been very expert practitioners in every species of debauchery and iniquity; as we may well exclaim to ninety-nine out of the hundred of both sexes in the present era, Ecce signum! If dotards will be fops and game, And 'spite of impotence be wenching;* Why feel surprise? youth doth the same, Whose raging fuel needs some quenching. If mothers will give bad advice, 'Tis little wonder that the daughter Is not in virtue over nice, When we reflect the parent taught her.† L'ENVOY OF THE POET. If moral thou wouldet see the rising race, you. * We certainly have a sufficiency of old fools, both with and without titles, to corrupt any youthful race that has flourished since the period of our great progenitor Adam, and on the score of conversation, they certainly verify the Latin proverb, Corrumpunt bonos mores, colloquia prava. † Would to Heaven that the string of divorces, which has of late years contaminated the page of female morality in high life, did not avouch the truth of our Poet's asser Y THE POET'S CHORUS TO FOOLS. Come, trim the boat, row on each Rara Avis, tion, and that the conduct of modern wives was not an escort to these lines from Butler. When o'er the breeches greedy women, For when men by their wives are cow'd, SECTION LIII. OF THE ENVIOUS FOOL. Invidus alterius macrescit rebus opimis CAN you no worth in others see, Should that give cause for pain?* Or, will you cherish rancour's probe? More costly to the view? *The female sex is proverbial for envy; and particularly that part whom Nature has not arrayed in such external fascinations as others can boast; as if the human countenance was everlasting; and that the mind and manners did not possess more sterling fascinations than those of the body. "My heart laments that virtue cannot live |