to be pleading for an exemption from criticifm; I would only have it circumfcribed within the rules of candour and humanity: writers may be told of their errors, provided it be with the decency and tenderness of a friend, not the malice and paffion of an enemy; boys may be whipped into fenfe, but men are to be guided with reason. If we grant the malicious critic all that he claims, and allow him to have proved his adverfary's dulness, and his own acuteness, yet, as long as there is virtue in the world, modeft dulnefs will be preferable to learned arrogance: Dulness may be a misfortune, but arrogance is a crime; and where is the mighty advantage, if, while he discovers more learning, he is found to have lefs virtue than his adverfary? And though he be a better critic, yet proves himself to be a worse man? Besides, no one is to be envied the skill in finding fuch faults as others are fo dull as to mistake for beauties. What advantage is such a quickfightedness even to the poffeffors of it? It makes them difficult to be pleased, and gives them pain, while others receive a pleasure : they resemble the fecond-fighted people in Scotland, who are fabled to fee more than other perfons; but all the benefit they reap from this privilege, is to discover objects of horror, ghofts, and apparitions. But it is time to end, though I have too much reafon to enlarge the argument for candour in criticism, through a confeioufnefs of my own deficiency: I have in reality been pleading my own caufe, that if I appear too guilty to obtain a pardon, I may find so much mercy mercy from my judges, as to be condemned to fuffer without inhumanity: But whatever be the fate of these works, they have proved of use to me, and been an agreeable amusement in a constant folitude. Providence has been pleased to lead me out of the great roads of life, into a private path; where, though we have leifure to chufe the fmootheft way, yet we are all fure to meet many obstacles in the journey: I have found poetry an innocent companion, and fupport from the fatigues of it; how long, or how fhort, the future stages of it are to be, as it is uncertain, fo it is a folly to be over-folicitous about it; he that lives the longeft, has but the finall privilege of creeping more leisurely than others to his grave; what we call living, is in reality but a longer time of dying and if thefe verfes prove as fhort-lived as their author, it is a lofs not worth regretting: They only die, as they were born, in obfcurity, : POEMS BY DR. BROOM E. HABBAKKUK, Chap. III. Paraphrafed. An ODE, written in 1710, as an Exercife. WHEN in a glorious terrible array, From Paran's towering height th' Almighty took his Borne on a cherub's wings he rode, Could his effulgent brightness shroud : Behind, a grim and meagre train, Pining fickness, frantic pain, [way; Stalk'd widely on! with all the dismal band, Which heaven in anger fends to scourge a guilty land. With terror cloath'd, he downward flew, And wither'd half the nations with a view; Through half the nations of th' astonish'd earth He scatter'd war, and plagues, and dearth! And And when he spoke, The everlasting hills from their foundations shook; The rains pour down, the lightnings play, When through the mighty flood, He led the murmuring croud, What ail'd the rivers that they backward filed? VARIATION. * I fee his fword wave with redoubled ire. The The flood beheld from far, The deity in all his equipage of war ; And lo! at once it burfts! in diverfe falls -Arabia's fands Lonely, uncomfortable lands! Void of fountain, void of rain, He ftrikes the stubborn rock, and lo! The ftubborn rock feels the Almighty blow; His ftony entrails burft, and rushing torrents flow. * Then did the fun his fiery courfers stay, VARIATION. Ah, what new fcenes unfold, what voice I hear; Sun, ftand thou ftill; thou moon, the courfe forbear: Ah, . . . . fun, thy wheels obedient fay, .... Doubling the fplendors of the wondrous day. |