THE comic poets, in its earliest age,

Who formed the manners of the Grecian stage-
Was there a villain who might justly claim
A better right of being damned to fame,
Rake, cut-throat, thief, whatever was his crime,
They boldly stigmatized the wretch in rhyme.

HOR.

WITH passions not my own who fires my heart,
Who with unreal terrors fills my breast,
As with a magic influence possessed.

HOR.

BUT God and man, and lettered post denies
That poets ever are of middling size.

POETS would profit, or delight mankind,

And with the amusing show the instructive joined.

PROFIT and pleasure, mingled thus with art,
To soothe the fancy, and improve the heart.

AT ease reclined beneath the verdant shade,
No more shall I behold my happy flock
Aloft, hang browzing on the tufted rock.

VIRG.

THESE on the mountain billows hung: to those The yawning waves the yellow sand disclose.

VIRG.

THE Woes of Troy once more she begged to hear, Once more the mournful tale employed his tongue, While in fond rapture on his lips she hung.

VIRG.

IN shrill-toned murmurs sang the twanging bow.

HOM.

WHATE'ER when Phoebus blessed the Arcadian

plain,

Eurotas heard, and taught his boys the strain.
The senior sung-

VIRG.

SAY, heavenly muse, their youthful frays rehearse,
Begin, ye daughters of immortal verse;
Exulting rocks have owned the power of song,
And rivers listened as they flowed along.

VIDA.

THE wave that bore him, backward shrank appalled.

RACINE.

BUT Turnus, chief amidst the warrior train,

In armour towers the tallest on the plain.
The Ganges thus, by seven rich streams supplied,
A mighty mass, devolves in silent pride.

Thus Nilus pours from his prolific urn,

When from the fields o'erflowed, his vagrant streams

return.

So Philomela from the umbrageous wood

VIRG.

In strains melodious mourns her tender brood.

Snatched from the nest by some rude Phrygian's

hand,

On some lone bough the warbler takes her stand; The livelong nights she mourns the cruel wrong, And hill and dale resound the plaintive song.

For as a watchman, from some rock on high,
O'er the wide main extends his boundless eye,
Through such a space of air with thundering sound,
At every leap the immortal coursers bound.

HOM.

So joys the lion, if a branching deer,
Or mountain goat, his bulky prize appear.
In vain the youths oppose, the mastiffs bay,
The lordly savage rends the panting prey.
Thus fond of vengeance, with a furious bound,
In clanging arms he leaps upon the ground.1

HOM.

EAST, west, and south engage with furious sweep, And from its lowest bed upturn the foaming deep.

VIRG.

THE sail then Boreas rends with hideous cry,
And whirls the maddening billows to the sky.

1 These lines altered from Pope.

VIRG.

康

VERSES.1

HE window, patched with paper, lent a ray,

That feebly showed the state in which

he lay.

The sanded floor that grits beneath the tread,
The humid wall with paltry pictures spread;
The game of goose was there exposed to view,
And the twelve rules the royal martyr drew;
The seasons framed with listing, found a place,
And Prussia's monarch showed his lamp-black face.
The morn was cold, he views with keen desire
A rusty grate, unconscious of a fire:

An unpaid reckoning on the frieze was scored,
And five cracked teacups dressed the chimney board

Not with that face, so servile, and so gay,
That welcomes every stranger that can pay;
With sulky eye he smoked the patient man,
Then pulled his breeches tight, and thus began:

"Of all the fish that graze beneath the flood, He only ruminates his former food."

See Goldsmith's Life, p. 64. ed. 1821. 2 See Goldsm. Anim. Nat. vol. iii. p. 6.

Addison, in some beautiful Latin lines inserted in the Spectator, is entirely of opinion that birds observe a strict chastity of manners, and never admit the caresses of a different tribe. -(v. Spectator, No. 412.)

HASTE are their instincts, faithful is their fire,

No foreign beauty tempts to false desire;1
The snow-white vesture, and the glitter-
ing crown,

The simple plumage, or the glossy down
Prompt not their loves the patriot bird pursues
His well acquainted tints, and kindred hues.
Hence through their tribes no mixed polluted flame,
No monster breed to mark the groves with shame;
But the chaste blackbird, to its partner true,
Thinks black alone is beauty's favourite hue.
The nightingale, with mutual passion blest,
Sings to its mate, and nightly charms the rest.

While the dark owl to court its partner flies,

And owns its offspring in their yellow eyes.

"See Goldsm. Anim. Nat, vol. v. p. 212.