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Sometimes she bids the deep-embattled host,
Above the vulgar reach, resistless form'd,
March to sure conquest-never gain'd before!*
Nor on the treacherous seas of giddy state
Unskilful she when the triumphant tide
Of high-swoln empire wears one boundless smile,
And the gale tempts to new pursuits of fame,
Sometimes, with Scipio, she collects her sail,
And seeks the blissful shore of rural ease,
Where, but th' Aonian maids, no syrens sing;
Or should the deep-brew'd tempest muttering rise,
While rocks and shoals perfidious lurk around,
With Tully she her wide-reviving light
To senates holds, a Catiline confounds,
And saves awhile from Cæsar sinking Rome.
Such the kind power, whose piercing eye dissolves
Each mental fetter, and sets reason free;
For me inspiring an enlighten'd zeal,
The more tenacious as the more convinc'd
How happy freemen, and how wretched slaves.
To Britons not unknown, to Britons full
The goddess spreads her stores, the secret soul
That quickens trade, the breath unseen that wafts
To them the treasures of a balanc'd world.
But finer arts (save what the Muse has sung
In daring flight, above all modern wing)
Neglected droop the head; and public works,
Broke by corruption into private gain,
Not ornament, disgrace; not serve, destroy.
"Shall Britons, by their own joint wisdom rul'd
Beneath one royal head, whose vital power
Connects, enlivens, and exerts the whole;
In finer arts, and public works, shall they
To Gallia yield? yield to a land that bends,
Deprest, and broke, beneath the will of one?
Of one who, should th' unkingly thirst of gold,
Of tyrant passions, or ambition, prompt,
Calls locust armies o'er the blasted land:

The flood-compelling arch; the long canal,
Through mountains piercing, and uniting seas;
The dome resounding sweet with infant joy,
From famine sav'd, or cruel-handed shame.
And that where valor counts his noble scan;
The land where social pleasure loves to dwell,
Of the fierce demon, Gothic duel, freed;
The robber from his farthest forest chas'd;
The turbid city clear'd, and, by degrees,
Into sure peace the best police refin'd,
Magnificence, and grace, and decent joy.
Let Gallic bards record, how honor'd arts,
And science, by despotic bounty bless'd,
At distance flourish'd from my parent-eye,
Restoring ancient taste, how Boileau rose,
How the big Roman soul shook, in Corneille,
The trembling stage. In elegant Racine,
How the more powerful, though more humble var
Of nature-painting Greece, resistless, breath'd
The whole awaken'd heart. How Moliere's some
Chastis'd and regular, with well-judg'd wit
Not scatter'd wild, and native humor, grac'd,
Was life itself. To public honors rais'd.
How learning in warm seminaries spread
And, more for glory than the small reward,
How emulation strove. How their pure tongue
Almost obtain'd what was denied their arms.
From Rome, awhile, how Painting, courted long,
With Poussin came: ancient design, that lifts
A fairer front, and looks another soul.
How the kind art, that, of unvalued price,
The fam'd and only picture, easy, gives,
Refin'd her touch, and, through the shadow'd pe
All the live spirit of the painter pour'd.
Coyest of arts, how Sculpture northward deign'd
A look, and bade her Girardon arise.
How lavish grandeur blaz'd; the barren waste,
Astonish'd, saw the sudden palace swell,

Drains from its thirsty bounds the springs of wealth, And fountains spout amid its arid shades. His own insatiate reservoir to fill:

To the lone desert patriot merit frowns,

Or into dungeons arts, when they, their chains,
Indignant, bursting, for their nobler works
All other license scorn but Truth's and mine.
Oh, shame to think! shall Britons, in the field
Unconquer'd still, the better laurel lose?
Ev'n in that monarch'st reign, who vainly dreamt,
By giddy power betray'd, and flatter'd pride,
To grasp unbounded sway; while, swarming round,
His armies dar'd all Europe to the field;
To hostile hands while treasure flow'd profuse,
And, that great source of treasure, subjects' blood,
Inhuman squander'd, sicken'd every land;
From Britain, chief, while my superior sons,
In vengeance rushing, dash'd his idle hopes,
And bade his agonizing heart be low:
Ev'n then, as in the golden calm of peace!
What public works at home! what arts arose !
What various science shone! what genius glow'd!
""Tis not for me to paint, diffusive shot
O'er fair extents of land, the shining road;

For leagues, bright vistas opening to the view,
How forests in majestic gardens smil'd.
How menial arts, by their gay sisters taught,
Wove the deep flow'r, the blooming foliage traat
In joyous figures o'er the silky lawn,
The palace cheer'd, illum'd the storied wall.
And with the pencil vied the glowing loom

"These laurels, Louis, by the droppings rais'd
Of thy profusion, its dishonor'd shade,
And, green through future times, shall bind thy brow
While the vain honors of perfidious war
Wither abhorr'd, or in oblivion lost.
With what prevailing vigor had they shot,
And stole a deeper root, by the full tide
Of war-sunk millions fed? Superior still,
How had they branch'd luxuriant to the skies,
In Britain planted, by the potent juice
Of freedom swell'd? Forc'd is the bloom of arts,
A false uncertain spring, when bounty gives,
Weak without me, a transitory gleam.
Fair shine the slippery days, enticing skies
Of favor smile, and courtly breezes blow;
Till arts, betray'd, trust to the flattering air
Their tender blossom: then malignant rise

*The canal of Languedoc.

* Epaminondas, after having beat the Lacedæmonians and their allies, in the battle of Leuctra, made an incur. sion at the head of a powerful army into Laconia. It was now six hundred years since the Dorians had possessed this country, and in all that time the face of an enemy had not been seen within their territories.-Plu- of Painting. tarch in Agesilaus.

† Lewis XIV.

†The hospitals for foundlings and invalids. The academies of Science, of the Belles Lettres,

§ Engraving.

The tapestry of the Gobelins.

The blights of envy, of those insect-clouds,
That, blasting merit, often cover courts:
Nay, should, perchance, some kind Mæcenas aid
The doubtful beamings of his prince's soul,
His wavering ardor fix, and unconfin'd
Diffuse his warm beneficence around;
Yet death, at last, and wintry tyrants come,
Each sprig of genius killing at the root.
But when with me imperial bounty joins,
Wide o'er the public blows eternal Spring:
While mingled Autumn every harvest pours
Of every land: whate'er invention, art,
Creating toil and Nature can produce."

Till moral, public, graceful action crowns
The whole. Behold! the fair contention glows,
In all that mind or body can adorn,

And form to life. Instead of barren heads,
Barbarian pedants, wrangling sons of pride,
And truth-perplexing metaphysic wits,
Men, patriots, chiefs, and citizens are form'd.
"Lo! Justice, like the liberal light of Heaven,
Unpurchas'd shines on all, and from her beam,
Appalling guilt, retire the savage crew,

That prowl amid the darkness they themselves
Have thrown around the laws. Oppression grieves:
See! how her legal furies bite the lip,

And seize swift justice through the clouds they raise.

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See! social Labor lifts his guarded head,

Here ceas'd the goddess; and her ardent wings, While Yorks and Talbots their deep snares detect, Dipt in the colors of the heavenly bow, Stood waving radiance round, for sudden flight Prepar'd, when thus, impatient, burst my prayer. "Oh, forming light of life! O, better Sun! Sun of mankind! by whom the cloudy north, Sublim'd, not envies Languedocian skies, That, unstain'd ether all, diffusive smile: When shall we call these ancient laurels ours?

And men not yield to government in vain.
From the sure land is rooted ruffian force,
And, the lewd nurse of villains, idle waste; [bowl,
Lo! raz'd their haunts, down dash'd their maddening
A nation's poison! beauteous order reigns!
Manly submission, unimposing toil,

And when thy work complete?" Straight with her Trade without guile, civility that marks

hand,

Celestial red, she touch'd my darken'd eyes.
As at the touch of day the shades dissolve,
So quick, methought, the misty circle clear'd,
That dims the dawn of being here below:
The future shone disclos'd, and, in long view,
Bright rising eras instant rush'd to light.

"They come! great goddess! I the times behold!
The times our fathers, in the bloody field,
Have earn'd so dear, and, not with less renown,
In the warm struggles of the Senate fight.
The times I see! whose glory to supply,
For toiling ages, commerce round the world
Has wing'd unnumber'd sails, and from each land
Materials heap'd, that, well-employ'd, with Rome
Might vie our grandeur, and with Greece our art.
"Lo! princes I behold! contriving still,
And still conducting firm some brave design;
Kings! that the narrow joyless circle scorn,
Burst the blockade of false designing men,
Of treacherous smiles, of adulation fell,

And of the blinding clouds around them thrown:
Their court rejoicing millions; worth alone,
And virtue dear to them; their best delight,
In just proportion to give general joy :
Their jealous care thy kingdom to maintain;
The public glory theirs; unsparing love
Their endless treasure; and their deeds their praise.
With thee they work. Nought can resist your force:
Life feels it quickening in her dark retreats;
Strong spread the blooms of genius, science, art;
His bashful bounds disclosing merit breaks;
And, big with fruits of glory, virtue blows
Expansive o'er the land. Another race
Of generous youth, of patriot-sires, I see!
Not those vain insects fluttering in the blaze
Of court, and ball, and play; those venal souls,
Corruption's veteran unrelenting bands,
That, to their vices slaves, can ne'er be free.

"I see the fountain's purg'd; whence life derives
A clear or turbid flow; see the young mind
Not fed impure by chance, by flattery fool'd,
Or by scholastic jargon bloated proud,
But fill'd and nourish'd by the light of truth.
Then, beam'd through fancy the refining ray,
And pouring on the heart, the passions feel
At once informing light and moving flame;

From the foul herd of brutal slaves thy sons,
And fearless peace. Or should affronting war
To slow but dreadful vengeance rouse the just,
Unfailing fields of freemen I behold!
That know, with their own proper arm, to guard
Their own blest isle against a leaguing world.
Despairing Gaul her boiling youth restrains,
Dissolv'd her dream of universal sway:
The winds and seas are Britain's wide domain;
And not a sail, but by permission, spreads.

"Lo! swarming southward on rejoicing sons,
Gay colonies extend; the calm retreat
Of undeserv'd distress, the better home
Of those whom bigots chase from foreign lands,
Not built on rapine, servitude, and woe,
And in their turn some petty tyrant's prey;
But, bound by social freedom, firm they rise;
Such as, of late, an Oglethorpe has form'd,
And, crowding round, the charm'd Savannah sees.
"Horrid with want and misery, no more
Our streets the tender passenger afflict.
Nor shivering age, nor sickness without friend,
Or home, or bed to bear his burning load,
Nor agonizing infant, that ne'er earn'd
Its guiltless pangs, I see! The stores, profuse,
Which British bounty has to these assign'd,
No more the sacrilegious riot swell
Of cannibal devourers! Right applied,
No starving wretch the land of freedom stains.
If poor, employment finds; if old, demands;
If sick, if maim'd, his miserable due;
And will, if young, repay the fondest care.
Sweet sets the sun of stormy life, and sweet
The morning shines, in mercy's dews array'd.
Lo! how they rise! these families of Heaven!
That!* chief, (but why-ye bigots!-why so late?)
Where blooms and warbles glad a rising age:
What smiles of praise! and while their song ascends,
The listening seraph lays his lute aside.

"Hark! the gay Muses raise a nobler strain, With active nature, warm impassion'd truth, Engaging fable, lucid order, notes

Of various string, and heart-felt image fill'd.
Behold! I see the dread delightful school
Of temper'd passions, and of polish'd life,

* An hospital for foundlings.

Restor'd behold! the well-dissembled scene
Calls from embellish'd eyes the lovely tear,
Or lights up mirth in modest cheeks again.
Lo! vanish'd monster-land. Lo! driven away
Those that Apollo's sacred walls profane;
Their wild creation scatter'd, where a world
Unknown to Nature, chaos more confus'd,
O'er the brute scene its ouran-outangs* pours;
Detested forms! that, on the mind imprest,
Corrupt, confound, and barbarize an age.

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Behold! all thine again the sister-arts,
Thy graces they, knit in harmonious dance.
Nurs'd by the treasure from a nation drain'd
Their works to purchase, they to nobler rouse
Their untam'd genius, their unfetter'd thought;
Of pompous tyrants, and of dreaming monks,
The gaudy tools, and prisoners, no more.

"Lo! numerous domes a Burlington confess :
For kings and senates fit, the palace see!
The temple breathing a religious awe;
Ev'n fram'd with elegance the plain retreat,
The private dwelling. Certain in his aim,
Taste, never idly working, saves expense.
"See! Sylvan scenes, where, Art, alone, pretends
To dress her mistress, and disclose her charms:
Such as a Pope in miniature has shown;

A Bathurst o'er the widening forestt spreads; And such as form a Richmond, Chiswick, Stowe.

August, around, what public works I see! Lo! stately streets, lo! squares that court the breeze, In spite of those to whom pertains the care, Ingulfing more than founded Roman ways. Lo! ray'd from cities o'er the brighten'd land, Connecting sea to sea, the solid road. Lo! the proud arch (no vile exactor's stand) With easy sweep bestrides the chafing flood. See! long canals, and deepen'd rivers, join Each part with each, and with the circling main The whole enliven'd isle. Lo! ports expand, Free as the winds and waves, their sheltering arms. Lo! streaming comfort o'er the troubled deep, On every pointed coast the light-house towers; And, by the broad imperious mole repell'd, Hark! how the baffled storm indignant roars." As thick to view these varied wonders rose, Shook all my soul with transport, unassur'd, The vision broke; and, on my waking eye, Rush'd the still ruins of dejected Rome.

ODE.

TELL me, thou soul of her I love,
Ah! tell me, whither art thou fled;
To what delightful world above,
Appointed for the happy dead?

Or dost thou, free, at pleasure, roam,
And sometimes share thy lover's woe;
Where, void of thee, his cheerless home
Can now, alas! no comfort know?

* A creature which, of all brutes, most resembles man. -See Dr. Tyson's treatise on this animal.

Okely woods, near Cirencester.

Oh! if thou hover'st round my walk, While under every well-known tree, I to thy fancied shadow talk,

And every tear is full of thee;

Should then the weary eye of grief,
Beside some sympathetic stream,
In slumber find a short relief,
O visit thou my soothing dream!

THE HAPPY MAN.

HE's not the Happy Man, to whom is given
A plenteous fortune by indulgent Heaven;
Whose gilded roofs on shining columns rise,
And painted walls enchant the gazer's eyes;
Whose table flows with hospitable cheer,
And all the various bounty of the year;
Whose valleys smile, whose gardens breathe the
Spring,

Whose carved mountains bleat, and forests sing;
For whom the cooling shade in Summer twines
While his full cellars give their generous wiDes;
From whose wide fields unbounded Autumn pous
A golden tide into his swelling stores:
Whose Winter laughs; for whom the liberal gales
Stretch the big sheet, and toiling commerce sila;
When yielding crowds attend, and pleasure serves,
While youth, and health, and vigor string his nerves
Ev'n not at all these, in one rich lot combin'd,
Can make the Happy Man, without the mind;
Where Judgment sits clear-sighted, and surveys
The chain of Reason with unerring gaze;
Where Fancy lives, and to the brightening eyes
His fairer scenes, and bolder figures rise;
Where social Love exerts her soft command,
And plays the passions with a tender hand,
Whence every virtue flows, in rival strife,
And all the moral harmony of life.

SONG.

HARD is the fate of him who loves, Yet dares not tell his trembling pain, But to the sympathetic groves,

But to the lonely listening plain.

Oh! when she blesses next your shade,
Oh! when her footsteps next are seen
In flowery tracts along the mead,
In fresher mazes o'er the green,

Ye gentle spirits of the vale,

To whom the tears of love are dear, From dying lilies waft a gale,

And sigh my sorrows in her ear.

O, tell her what she cannot blame,
Though fear my tongue must ever bind
O, tell her that my virtuous flame
Is as her spotless soul refin'd.

Not her own guardian angel eyes
With chaster tenderness his care,
Not purer her own wishes rise,

Not holier her own sighs in prayer.

But if, at first, her virgin fear

Should start at love's suspected name, With that of friendship soothe her earTrue love and friendship are the same.

SONG.

FOR ever, Fortune, wilt thou prove
An unrelenting foe to love,
And when we meet a mutual heart,
Come in between, and bid us part?

Bid us sigh on from day to day,
And wish, and wish the soul away;
Till youth and genial years are flown,
And all the life of life is gone?

But busy, busy, still art thou,
To bind the loveless joyless vow,
The heart from pleasure to delude,
To join the gentle to the rude.

For once, O Fortune, hear my prayer,
And I absolve thy future care;
All other blessings I resign,
Make but the dear Amanda mine.

ODE.

O NIGHTINGALE, best poet of the grove,
That plaintive strain can ne'er belong to thee
Blest in the full possession of thy love:

O lend that strain, sweet nightingale, to me!

"Tis mine, alas! to mourn my wretched fate:
I love a maid, who all my bosom charms,
Yet lose my days without this lovely mate;
Inhuman Fortune keeps her from my arms.

You, happy birds! by Nature's simple laws
Lead your soft lives, sustain'd by Nature's fare;
You dwell wherever roving fancy draws,

And love and song is all your pleasing care:

But we, vain slaves of interest and of pride,
Dare not be blest lest envious tongues should
blame :

And hence, in vain I languish for my bride;
O mourn with me, sweet bird, my hapless flame.

HYMN ON SOLITUDE. HAIL, mildly-pleasing Solitude, Companion of the wise and good, But, from whose holy, piercing eye, The herd of fools and villains fly.

Oh how I love with thee to walk, And listen to thy whisper'd talk, Which innocence and truth imparts, And melts the most obdurate hearts.

A thousand shapes you wear with ease,
And still in every shape you please.
Now wrapt in some mysterious dream,
A lone philosopher you seem;

Now quick from hill to vale you fly,
And now you sweep the vaulted sky;
A shepherd next, you haunt the plain,
And warble forth your oaten strain.
A lover now, with all the grace
Of that sweet passion in your face;
Then, calm'd to friendship, you assume
The gentle-looking Hartford's bloom,
As, with her Musidora, she
(Her Musidora fond of thee)
Amid the long withdrawing vale,
Awakes the rival'd nightingale.

Thine is the balmy breath of morn,
Just as the dew-bent rose is born;
And while meridian fervors beat,
Thine is the woodland dumb retreat;
But chief, when evening scenes decay,
And the faint landscape swims away,
Thine is the doubtful soft decline,
And that best hour of musing thine.

Descending angels bless thy train,
The virtues of the sage, and swain;
Plain Innocence, in white array'd,
Before thee lifts her fearless head:
Religion's beams around thee shine,
And cheer thy glooms with light divine:
About thee sports sweet Liberty;
And rapt Urania sings to thee.

Oh, let me pierce thy secret cell!
And in thy deep recesses dwell;
Perhaps from Norwood's oak-clad hill,
When Meditation has her fill,

I just may cast my careless eyes
Where London's spiry turrets rise,
Think of its crimes, its cares, its pain,
Then shield me in the woods again.

TO THE

REV. MR. MURDOCH,

RECTOR OF STRADDISHALL, IN SUFFOLK, 1738.

THUS safely low, my friend, thou canst not fall :
Here reigns a deep tranquillity o'er all;
No noise, no care, no vanity, no strife;
Men, woods, and fields, all breathe untroubled life
Then keep each passion down, however dear;
Trust me the tender are the most severe.
Guard, while 'tis thine, thy philosophic ease,
And ask no joy but that of virtuous peace;
That bids defiance to the storms of Fate,
High bliss is only for a higher state.

AMBROSE PHILIPS.

AMBROSE PHILIPS, a poet and miscellaneous | who found his own juvenile pastorals undervalued writer, was born in 1671, claiming his descent from sent to the same paper a comparison between ba an ancient Leicestershire family. He received his and those of Philips, in which he ironically gave a education at St. John's College, Cambridge; and, the preference to the latter. The irony was at attaching himself to the Whig party, he published, detected till it encountered the critical eye of in 1700, an epitome of Hacket's life of Archbishop dison; and the consequence was, that it ruined the Williams, by which he obtained an introduction to reputation of Philips as a composer of pastoral Addison and Steele. Soon after, he made an at- When the accession of George I. brought the tempt in pastoral poetry, which, for a time, brought Whigs again into power, Philips was made a Wes him into celebrity. In 1709, being then at Copen-minster justice, and, soon after, a commissioner ir hagen, he addressed to the earl of Dorset some the lottery. In 1718, he was the editor of a perverses, descriptive of that capital, which are re-odical paper, called "The Freethinker." In 1724 garded as his best performance; and these, together he accompanied to Ireland his friend Dr. Ber with two translations from Sappho's writings, created archbishop of Armagh, to whom he acted stand pre-eminent in his works of this class. In as secretary. He afterwards represented the county 1712 he made his appearance as a dramatic writer, of Armagh in parliament; and the places of secte in the tragedy of "The Distrest Mother," acted at Drury-lane with great applause, and still considered as a stock play. It cannot, indeed, claim the merit of originality, being closely copied from Racine's "Andromacque;" but it is well written, and skilfully adapted to the English stage.

tary to the Lord Chancellor, and Judge of the Pr rogative Court, were also conferred upon him. He returned to England in 1748, and died in the fi lowing year, at the age of seventy-eight.

The verses which he composed, not only young ladies in the nursery, but to Walpole when Minister of State, and which became known by the ludicrous appellation of namby-pamby, are easy and sprightly, but with a kind of infantile air, which

A storm now fell upon him relatively to his pastorals, owing to an exaggerated compliment from Tickell, who, in a paper of the Guardian, had made the true pastoral pipe descend in succession from fixed upon them the above name. Theocritus to Virgil, Spenser, and Philips. Pope,

TO THE EARL OF DORSET.

Copenhagen, March 9, 1709.

FROM frozen climes, and endless tracts of snow,
From streams which northern winds forbid to flow,
What present shall the Muse to Dorset bring,
Or how, so near the Pole, attempt to sing?
The hoary winter here conceals from sight
All pleasing objects which to verse invite.
The hills and dales, and the delightful woods,
The flowery plains, and silver-streaming floods,
By snow disguis'd, in bright confusion lie,
And with one dazzling waste fatigue the eye.
No gentle breathing breeze prepares the spring,
No birds within the desert region sing.
The ships, unmov'd, the boisterous winds defy,
While rattling chariots o'er the ocean fly.
The vast Leviathan wants room to play,
And spout his waters in the face of day.

The starving wolves along the main sea prowl,
And to the Moon in icy valleys howl.
O'er many a shining league the level main
Here spreads itself into a glassy plain:
There solid billows of enormous size,
Alps of green ice, in wild disorder rise.

And yet but lately have I seen, ev'n here,
The winter in a lovely dress appear.
Ere yet the clouds let fall the treasur'd snow,
Or winds begun through hazy skies to blow,
At evening a keen eastern breeze arose,
And the descending rain unsullied froze.
Soon as the silent shades of night withdrew
The ruddy morn disclos'd at once to view
The face of Nature in a rich disguise,
And brighten'd every object to my eyes:
For every shrub, and every blade of grass,

And every pointed thorn, seem'd wrought in glass:

In pearls and rubies rich the hawthorns show,
While through the ice the crimson berries glow

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