Nor is it for my solitude unfit,

For I am with my friend alone,

As if we were but one;

'Tis the polluted love that multiplies,

But friendship does two souls in one comprise.

Here in a full and constant tide doth flow
All blessings men can hope to know;
Here in a deep recess of thought we find
Pleasures which entertain and which exalt the
mind,

And with strict discipline instructed right,
Have learned to use your arms before you fight.
But since the press, the pulpit, and the stage,
Conspire to censure and expose our age,
Provok'd too far, we resolutely must,

To the few virtues that we have, be just,

For who have longed, or who have laboured more
To search the treasures of the Roman store;

Or dig in Grecian mines for purer ore? . . .
The first great work (a task perform'd by few)
Is, that yourself may to yourself be true:

Pleasures which do from friendship and from No mask, no tricks, no favour, no reserve;

knowledge rise,

Which make us happy, as they make us wise;
Here may I always on this downy grass
Unknown, unseen, my easy minutes pass:
Till with a gentle force victorious death
My solitude invade,

And, stopping for a while my breath,
With ease convey me to a better shade.

IMITATION OF THE TWENTY-SECOND
ODE OF FIRST BOOK OF HORACE.

Virtue (dear friend) needs no defence,
No arms but its own innocence:
Quivers and bows, and poison'd darts,
Are only used by guilty hearts.

An honest mind safely alone
May travel through the burning zone;
Or through the deepest Scythian snows,
Or where the fam'd Hydaspes flows.
While, ruled by a resistless fire,
Our great Orinda I admire.
The hungry wolves, that see me stray,
Unarm'd and single, run away.
Set me in the remotest place
That ever Neptune did embrace;
When there her image fills my breast,
Helicon is not half so blest.

Leave me upon some Libyan plain,
So she my fancy entertain,
And when the thirsty monsters meet
They'll all pay homage to my feet.

The magic of Orinda's name,
Not only can their fierceness tame,
But, if that mighty word I once rehearse,
They seem submissively to war in verse.

ESSAY ON TRANSLATED VERSE.

Happy that author, whose correct essay
Repairs so well our old Horatian way:
And happy you, who (by propitious fate)
On great Apollo's sacred standard wait,

Dissect your mind, examine every nerve.
Whoever vainly on his strength depends,
Begins like Virgil, but like Mævius ends.
That wretch (in spite of his forgotten rhymes),
Condemned to live to all succeeding times,
With pompous nonsense and a bellowing sound
Sung lofty Ilium trembling to the ground,
And (if my Muse can through past ages see),
That noisy, nauseous, gaping fool was he;
Exploded, when with universal scorn,
The mountain labour'd and a mouse was born.

Each poet with a different talent writes,
One praises, one instructs, another bites.
Horace did ne'er aspire to epic bays,
Nor lofty Maro stoop to lyric lays.
Examine how your humour is inclin'd,
And which the ruling passion of your mind;
Then seek a poet who your way does bend,
And choose an author as you choose a friend.
United by this sympathetic bond,

You grow familiar, intimate, and fond;
Your thoughts, your words, your styles, your souls

agree,

No longer his interpreter, but he

Immodest words admit of no defence;
For want of decency is want of sense.

Yet 'tis not all to have a subject good,
It must delight as when 'tis understood.
He that brings fulsome objects to my view
(As many old have done and many new),
With nauseous images my fancy fills,
And all goes down like oxymel of squills.

On sure foundations let your fabric rise,
And with attractive majesty surprise,
Not by affected meretricious arts,
But strict harmonious symmetry of parts;
Which through the whole insensibly must pass,
With vital heat to animate the mass.

Pride (of all others the most dangerous fault)
Proceeds from want of sense or want of thought.
The men who labour and digest things most,
Will be much apter to despond than boast;
For if your author be profoundly good,
'Twill cost you dear before he's understood.
How many ages since has Virgil writ!

How few there are who understand him yet!

Words in one language elegantly us'd,

Will hardly in another be excus'd.

...

And some that Rome admir'd in Cæsar's time,
May neither suit our genius nor our clime.
The genuine sense, intelligibly told,
Shows a translator both discreet and bold. . .
I pity from my soul, unhappy men,
Compell'd by want to prostitute their pen;
Who must, like lawyers, either starve or plead,
And follow, right or wrong, where guineas lead!
But you, Pompilian, wealthy, pamper'd heirs,
Who to your country owe your swords and cares,
Let no vain hope your easy mind seduce,
For rich ill poets are without excuse.

Of many faults rhyme is perhaps the cause;
Too strict to rhyme we slight more useful laws,
For that, in Greece or Rome, was never known,
Till by barbarian deluges o'erflown:
Subdued, undone, they did at last obey,
And change their own for their invaders' way.
Oh may I live to hail the glorious day,
And sing loud pæans through the crowded way,
When in triumphant state the British Muse,
True to herself, shall barbarous aid refuse,
And in the Roman majesty appear,

Which none know better, and none come so near.

THE HON. ROBERT BOYLE.

BORN 1626-DIED 1691.

history and acquiring the language. After a sight of Rome he and his brother visited several other places, and in May, 1642, they reached Marseilles. Here they had letters from their father, telling of the outbreak of the Irish rebellion, and saying how hard put to he had been to procure the £250 he sent to carry them home. The money never reached their hands, and they were forced to accompany their tutor to Geneva, where, after a time, some money was raised on jewels, by means of which they continued their journey to England. When they arrived in 1644 they found their father dead.

[Robert Boyle, "a most distinguished philo- | where he spent his time in reading Italian sopher and chemist, and an exceedingly good man," was seventh son of Richard, "the great Earl of Cork," and brother of Roger Boyle, Earl of Orrery, of whom we have already spoken. He was born at Lismore, in the south of Ireland, on the 25th January, 1626, and was early committed to the care of a country nurse, with instructions to bring him up as hardy as if he had been her own son. When about three years old he lost his mother, and shortly after had a narrow escape from being drowned. A little later, while in his fourth year, he was sent to Eton, and placed in charge of the provost, Sir Henry Wootton, an old friend and intimate acquaintance of his father. In 1646 Boyle retired to his manor of StalAt Eton he remained for three or four years, bridge, left him by his father, and there apwhen his father took him to his own house at plied himself with great industry to studies of Stalbridge in Dorsetshire, where he had for various kinds, but chiefly to those of chemistry tutor the minister of the place. In 1638 he and natural philosophy. About this time, too, went with his father to London, and at the he formed one of the little band of men who end of October in the same year he and his held weekly meetings for the promotion of brother Francis were sent abroad on their philosophy and science under the title of the travels under the charge of a Mr. Marcombes. Philosophical College, which, on the RestoraAt Geneva, where their tutor had his family, tion, burst into full bloom as the Royal Society. they halted and pursued their studies quietly | In 1652 he went over to Ireland to look after for a time, and there Robert renewed and made more perfect his acquaintance with mathematics. A writer in the National Encyclopædia says, "At Geneva the occurrence of an awful thunderstorm awakened religious feelings which actuated him greatly in after life."

his property, and after a second visit in 1654 he went to live at Oxford, where he stayed chiefly till 1668. At Oxford he found most of the members of the Philosophical College, and while there he invented the air-pump.

After the Restoration he was treated with great respect by the king and those in authorTowards the end of 1641 he quitted Geneva, ity; but he resolutely refused their request and passing through Switzerland visited most that he should enter into holy orders, thinking of the principal cities and towns in Italy. that he could be of more benefit to religion as During the winter he stayed at Florence, | a layman. In 1660 he published his New Ex