himself so desperately for the King in the engagement, that he loft his life on the field of battle. To descend from this to an inferior subject: Who does not love Tom Jones preferably to Sir Charles Grandifon? Many a man even who tells you he does not, will unknowingly contradict himself by the involuntary smile of approbation while he tells it you.

Attend, (the Goddess feems to fay;) Nor let thy fancy run astray;

There is a point;'-oh! could thy cloud
Spread open to my eye, unshroud

Thy heav'nly prefence, whence to learn,
From thy great self, my thoughts to turn
To wisdom's knowledge, and to view
That wond'rous point, exact and true,
The point that does to truth belong,
The point precife 'twixt right and wrong!-

"See how the final touch shall give,
The canvass dead, to breathe and live!
See how SCARLATTI's magic ftrain
Shall bring you to the edge of pain!
Beyond it, e'en a hair, would give
Sad grating diffonance to live

Within that breast, to which are giv'n

Sounds that waft the foul to heav'n!*

210

* There is a something so peculiar and original in the harpsichord lessons of Scarlatti, that this writer has often wondered they were not more noticed; but, perhaps, he gives the cause in the excellency; I mean that, like other works of genius, it must have genius

for

Nay, mark how poifon's baneful weed
Knows in deftruction to fucceed;

And, yes, (though poifon) knows the art,

Dear health and gladnefs to impart,
When the perfective point you know
In just proportion to bestow;

Mark too the chifel's hair-breadth ftroke,
That forms, as if it thought and spoke,
The marble block.-Oh! foft, beware;
And be the point of truth your care!

220

for its judges, which are ever rare. But Scarlatti seems to have been in musical ideas what Newton was in those of aftronomy, &c.; abfolutely unlike every thing else-original and new; and I own, that I have been fometimes led to think the man must have had in him an elevation of foul and fentiment that could conceive fuch combinations of thoughts with found; for after all, thofe thoughts must come from the mind, and the rich extent of his was truly wonderful; for though all the leffons had the fame character, yet is there no fimilarity of paffage through the amazing number of them. I well know, that musicians, capable of expreffing all forts of sensations of the mind by musical sounds, have often been even deficient in ideas of things, though the analogy fhould feem to hold in the two effufions of the mind. In hearers, at least of good mufical ears, the mind and character (I do not mean of reasoning, but feeling) regulate very much the taste in mufic, from the most refined and elegant, or pathetic, up perhaps to martial mufic; and, as in poetry, and every thing else, few circles are ample enough to take in all files. When a musical perfon tells me he does not like Scarlatti, which I have met from fome called judges, it is as faying he did not like Don Quixote, (which I believe I have met with too) I judge not of either from the man, but of him from them.

Your

Your Rubicon is there; and fee,
Once pafs'd, confufion, mifery,
Disgrace, attend thy work and thee!'

And thus in friendship and in life, With right and wrong so oft at strife, Who will not own, the licence giv'n, When once furpass'd,-no gift of heav'n?*

And you, who Truth's fair liv'ry wear,
Lov'd Nature's children! you declare,
No;-party-men, Efprits de Corps,—
And with you join lov'd friendship's lore;'
Your practice, when combin'd with pow'r,
What is it, tell; let Wisdom hear:

She whom all Nature's fons revere!

Oh, no!-Thou Morpheus, poppy-crown'd,
Tread foftly thy own myftic ground;
Thy kindred-god too with thee bring,
Who covers with his dufky wing,

Evils to man, fo not unknown,

Evils of others or our own,

230

240

Oblivion:

* See Canto I. l. 251.

Oblivion:-yes, conjointly go,

And give the practice-not to know!*

250

* As I have stumbled on party, as alfo fet up for a preacher, (what! in these great and grave matters; yet, pray gentlemen, cannot common fenfe "caft up a fum in pounds as well as in fhillings?") let me (" Ridentem dicere verum-Quid vetat?”) once be allowed to declare my idea, that all ministries are on an average equal in this country; are almost always right, (as how the devil should they not) and have been fo in my prolonged time: I say on an average, as that all oppositions are also the fame there or thereabouts; and as I am now, I think, got full as eccentric with my reader as I promised to be, (and feel comfortably upon it even as when formerly rambling free as air) I will beg leave (and take it) to give the entire general creed of my party ideas, in an odd conveyance indeed,—and if it makes any one laugh (as it has a little done one reader, enlarged enough so to do, while he was no inconfiderable object of the subject) no small point is gained in the midst of the philofophic niceties put forth :-it is this, viz.

And many a true word spoken in jeft, adds Mr. Poet, or the Lord have mercy on poor old England!

* The Blues.