THE Man to Jove his suit preferr'd;
He begg'd a wife: his prayer was heard.
Jove wonder'd at his bold addressing;
For how precarious is the blessing!
A wife he takes: and now for heirs Again he worries Heaven with prayers. Jove nods assent: two hopeful boys And a fine girl reward his joys.
Now more solicitous he grew,
And set their future lives in view;
He saw that all respect and duty
Were paid to wealth, to power, and beauty.
"Once more," he cries, "accept my prayer;
Make my loved progeny thy care:
Let my first hope, my favourite boy,
All Fortune's richest gifts enjoy.
My next with strong ambition fire;
May favour teach him to aspire,
Till he the step of power ascend,
And courtiers to their idol, bend.
With every grace, with every charm,
My daughter's perfect features arm.
If Heaven approve, a Father's bless'd."
Jove smiles, and grants his full request.
The first, a miser at the heart,
Studious of every griping art,
Heaps hoards on hoards with anxious pain,
And all his life devotes to gain.
He feels no joy, his cares increase,
He neither wakes, nor sleeps, in peace;
In fancied want (a wretch complete)
He starves, and yet he dares not eat.1
The next to sudden honours grew;
The thriving art of courts he knew;
He reach'd the height of power and place,
Then fell, the victim of disgrace.2
"Like a miser midst his store
Who grasps and grasps till he can hold no more;
And when his strength is wanting to his mind,
Looks back and sighs on what he left behind."-DRYDEN.
(2) See the fall of Sejanus magnificently described in the Tenth Satire of Juvenal; and Johnson's Vanity of Human Wishes.
Beauty with early bloom supplies
His daughter's cheek, and points her eyes.
The vain coquette each suit disdains,
And glories in her lovers' pains.
With age she fades, each lover flies;
Contemn'd, forlorn, she pines and dies.1
When Jove the Father's grief survey'd,
And heard him Heaven and Fate upbraid,
Thus spoke the God: "By outward show,
Men judge of happiness and woe.
Shall ignorance of good and ill
Dare to direct th' eternal will?
Seek virtue; and, of that possess'd,
To Providence resign the rest.”2
(1) Vide dissection of a coquette's heart, Spectator, No. 281.
(2) Whilst the direction of the Christian religion to its professors is "in every thing by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, to let their requests be made known unto God," we are in no wise authorized to dictate blessings to the Almighty will; for,
"If heaven should always grant what we think best,
We should be ruin'd by our own request."
Like the silly fly, which, walking over the lamp glass, and dazzled with the glare, longs to reach that, which, if attained, would destroy it, so man wildly invokes or madly upbraids heaven for results as unforeseen as illusory.
The Tenth Satire of Juvenal is an admirable exponent of this subject, and Virgil gives advice which may serve as a moral to the fable, We append
Dryden's translation of the part.
"What then remains? are we deprived of will?
Must we not wish, for fear of wishing ill?
Receive my counsel and securely move;
Entrust thy fortune to the pow'rs above;
Leave them to manage for thee and to grant
What their unerring wisdom sees thee want.
In goodness, as in greatness, they excel :
Oh! that we loved ourselves but half so well."
THE learned, full of inward pride,
The fops of outward show deride;
The fop, with learning at defiance,
Scoffs at the pedant and the science:
The Don, a formal solemn strutter,
Despises Monsieur's airs and flutter;
While Monsieur mocks the formal fool,
Who looks, and speaks, and walks, by rule.
Britain, a medley of the twain,
As pert as France, as grave as Spain,
In fancy wiser than the rest,
Laughs at them both, of both the jest.
Is not the Poet's chiming close,
Censured by all the sons of Prose?
While bards of quick imagination
Despise the sleepy prose narration.
Men laugh at apes, they men contemn;
For what are we, but apes to them?1
Two Monkeys went to Southwark fair,
No critics had a sourer air:
They forced their way through draggled folks,
Who gaped to catch Jack Pudding's jokes;
Then took their tickets for the show,
And got by chance, the foremost row.
To see their grave observing face
Provok'd a laugh throughout the place.
"Brother," says Pug, and turn'd his head,
"The rabble's monstrously ill-bred."
Now through the booth loud hisses ran,
Nor ended till the show began.
The tumbler whirls the flip-flap round,
With sommersets he shakes the ground;2
The cord beneath the dancer springs;
Aloft in air the vaulter swings;
Distorted now, now prone depends,
Now through his twisted arms ascends;
(1) "Criticism is like a shuttlecock, and every one is furnished with a racket to pass it off from himself to his neighbour."-SWIFT.
(2) The word "sommerset' is derived from "soubresaut;" it is sometimes written "summersalt."
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