WHAT Whispers must the Beauty bear!
What hourly nonsense haunts her ear!
Where'er her eyes dispense their charms,
Impertinence around her swarms.
Did not the tender nonsense strike,
Contempt and scorn might look dislike;
Forbidding airs might thin the place,
The slightest flap a fly can chase:

But who can drive the num'rous breed?-
Chase one, another will succeed.

Who knows a fool, must know his brother;
One fop will recommend another:

And with this plague she's rightly curst,
Because she listen'd to the first.1

As Doris, at her toilette's duty,
Sate meditating on her beauty,
She now was pensive, now was gay,
And loll'd the sultry hours away.
As thus in indolence she lies,
A giddy Wasp around her flies;
He now advances, now retires,
Now to her neck and cheek aspires.
Her fan in vain defends her charms,
Swift he returns, again alarms;
For by repulse he bolder grew,

Perch'd on her lip, and sipt the dew.

She frowns, she frets. "Good gods!" she cries, "Protect me from these teazing flies:

Of all the plagues that heaven hath sent,

A Wasp is most impertinent."

The hovering insect thus complain'd,-
"Am I then slighted, scorn'd, disdain'd?
Can such offence your anger wake?
'Twas beauty caused the bold mistake.
Those cherry lips that breathe perfume,
That cheek so ripe with youthful bloom,
Made me with strong desire pursue
The fairest peach that ever grew."

"Strike him not, Jenny!" Doris cries,
"Nor murder Wasps like vulgar flies;

(1) Flattery, like strife, is as when one letteth out water; the first drop soon becomes the stealthy stream, which undermines the judgment, and prostrates the reputation!

(1)

For though he's free, (to do him right,)
The creature's civil and polite."

1

In ecstasies, away he posts;
Where'er he came, the favour boasts;
Brags, how her sweetest tea he sips,
And shows the sugar on his lips.
The hint alarm'd the forward crew;
Sure of success, away they flew :
They share the dainties of the day,
Round her with airy music play:
And now they flutter, now they rest,
Now soar again, and skim her breast.
Nor were they banish'd till she found

That Wasps have stings, and felt the wound.2

"For women, born to be controll'd,
Stoop to the forward and the bold,
Affect the haughty and the proud,

The gay, the frolick and the loud."-HUDIBRAS.

(2) What begins in falsehood and treachery, must end in shame and discontent. "There are two sorts of persons," says Charron, "who lie open to flattery, and as they never want fawning people who are always ready to offer them this trash, so they, for the most part, as greedily swallow it; these are princes, and women." But as the old Latin adage has it, "Meliora vulnera diligentis quam oscula blandientis ;" and Solomon warns us that "a flattering mouth worketh ruin." Prov. xxvi. 28.

SEEK

you to train your favourite boy?
Each caution, every care employ;
And ere you venture to confide,
Let his preceptor's heart be tried:
Weigh well his manners, life, and scope;
On these depends thy future hope.

As on a time, in peaceful reign,
A Bull enjoy'd the flowery plain,
A Mastiff pass'd; inflamed with ire,
His eyeballs shot indignant fire;

He foam'd, he raged with thirst of blood,—

-Spurning the ground, the monarch stood,

And roar'd aloud: "Suspend the fight;
In a whole skin go sleep to-night;
Or tell me, ere the battle rage,
What wrongs provoke thee to engage?
Is it ambition fires thy breast,
Or avarice, that ne'er can rest?
From these alone unjustly springs
The world-destroying wrath of kings."
The surly Mastiff thus returns :
"Within my bosom, glory burns.
Like heroes of eternal name,
Whom poets sing, I fight for fame.
The butcher's spirit-stirring mind
To daily war my youth inclined;
He train❜d me to heroic deed,
Taught me to conquer or to bleed."

"Curs'd Dog," the Bull replied, "no more

I wonder at thy thirst of gore;

For thou beneath a butcher train'd,
Whose hands with cruelty are stain'd,

His daily murders in thy view

Must, like thy tutor, blood pursue.

Take, then, thy fate!" With goring wound

At once he lifts him from the ground:
Aloft the sprawling hero flies,

Mangled he falls, he howls, and dies.1

(1) The following lines from Dryden's translation of Juvenal, illustrate the application of the above fable:

"Children like tender osiers take the bow,

And as they first are fashion'd, always grow,
For what we learn in youth, to that alone

In age, we are by second nature, prone."

It is similar to the fable in Esop, where the man about to be executed for a crime, bites his mother's ear off, when pretending to kiss her, because she had not corrected him for a theft when a boy. Compare also Aristotle's Ethics, book ii. Cowper's Tirocinium, and Montaigne's Essays, ch. 25.