Oldalképek
PDF
ePub

THE POET'S CHORUS TO FOOLS.

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

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,
Cum subeant animos auctoribus.

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,
And yield to shameful conversation;

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,
Beware, nor let thy faults appear in view;
Such conduct will their dawning ills efface,
And they'll prove virtuous, finding worth in

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,
Crowds flock to man my Stultifera Navis.

tion, and that the conduct of modern wives was not an escort to these lines from Butler.

When o'er the breeches greedy women,
Fight to extend their vast dominion;
When wives their sexes shift like hares,
And ride their husbands, like night mares;

For when men by their wives are cow'd,
Their horns of course are understood.

SECTION LIII.

OF THE ENVIOUS FOOL.

Invidus alterius macrescit rebus opimis

CAN you no worth in others see,
That you will nourish jealousy,
And from just praise refrain?
What reason, fool, have you to care,
Although your face be not so fair,

Should that give cause for pain?*

Or, will you cherish rancour's probe?
Because you see another's robe

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
Out of the teeth of emulation."

« ElőzőTovább »