To the Right Hon. HENRY PELHAM, Efq; T HE humble Petition of the worshipful company of Poets and News-writers, SHEWETH, THAT your honour's petitioners (dealers in rhymes, And writers of scandal, for mending the times) By loffes in bus'nefs, and England's well-doing, Are funk in their credit, and verging on ruin. That these, their misfortunes, they humbly conceive, Arife not from dulnefs, as fome folks believe, But from rubs in their way, that your honour has laid, And want of materials to carry on trade. That they always had form'd high conceits of their use, And meant their last breath fhou'd go out in abuse; But now (and they speak it with forrow and tears) Since your honour has fate at the helm of affairs, No party will join 'em, no faction invite To heed what they fay, or to read what they write; Τα To perplex 'em ftill more, and fure famine to bring (Now fatire has loft both its truth and its sting) If, in spite of their natures, they bungle at praise, Your honour regards not, and nobody pays. YOUR Petitioners therefore most humbly entreat By which your petitioners, haply, might thrive, An O DE Performed in the Senate-House at Cambridge July 1, 1749, At the Inftallation of his Grace THOMAS HOLLES Duke of NEWCASTLE, CHANCELLOR of the University. -canit errantem Permessi ad flumina Gallum Aonas in Montes ut duxerit una fororum VIRGIL. By Mr. MASON, Fellow of Pembroke-Hall. Set to Music by Mr. Boyce, Composer to his Majesty. H1 I. ERE all thy active fires diffuse, Thou genuin British Muse; Hither defcend from yonder orient sky, Cloth'd in thy heav'n-wove robe of harmony. Recitative. Come, Air I. Come, imperial queen of fong; Which speaks thee of celeftial line; Daughter of Jove and Liberty. Recitative. The elevated foul, who feels He with impartial justice deals The blooming chaplets of immortal lays : And nobly thron'd in Truth's meridian sphere, Thence, with a bold and heav'n-directed aim, Full on fair Virtue's fhrine he pours the rays of fame. Air II. III. Goddess! thy piercing eye explores The purple in the eastern dawn, Or all those tints, which rang'd in vivid glow IV. But chief fhe lifts her tuneful transports high, Recitative. When to her intellectual eye The mental beauties rife in moral dignity : The facred zeal for Freedom's caufe, With which mild Genius warms the fages heart, Or ftretch to ampler bounds the wide domain of art. From their ambrofial bloom With bee-like skill she draws the rich perfume, In the foft balm of her mellifluous lay. V. Is there a clime, where all these beauties rife Recitative. In one collected radiance to her eyes? Is there a plain, whose genial foil inhales Glory's invigorating gales, Her brightest beams where Emulation spreads, Her kindlieft dews where Science fheds, Where ev'ry stream of Genius flows, |