That certain feafts are inftituted now,
Where Venus hears the lover's tender vow;
That all Olympus through the country roves,
To confecrate our few remaining groves,
And echo learns politely to repeat
The praise of names for ages obsolete ;
That having prov'd the weakness, it should seem,
Of revelation's ineffectual beam,
To bring the paffions under fober fway,
And give the moral fprings their proper play,
They mean to try what may at last be done,
By ftout fubftantial gods of wood and stone,
And whether Roman rites may not produce
The virtues of old Rome for English use.
May fuch fuccefs attend the pious plan,
May Mercury once more embellish man,
Grace him again with long forgotten arts,
Reclaim his tafte and brighten up his parts,
Make him athletic as in days of old,.
Learn'd at the bar, in the palæstra bold,
Diveft the rougher fex of female airs,
And teach the fofter not to copy their's:
The change fhall please, nor fhall it matter aught
Who works the wonder, if it be but wrought,
'Tis time, however, if the cafe ftands thus,
For us plain folks, and all who fide with us,
To build our altar, confident and bold,
And fay as ftern Elijah faid of old-
The ftrife now ftands upon a fair award,
If Ifr'el's Lord be God, then serve the Lord:
If he be filent, faith is all a whim,
Then Baal is the God, and worship him.
Digreffion is fo much in modern use,
Thought is fo rare, and fancy fo profuse,
Some never seem so wide of their intent,
As when returning to the theme they meant;
As mendicants, whose business is to roam,
Make ev'ry parifh, but their own, their home.
Though fuch continual zigzags in a book,
Such drunken reelings have an awkward look,
And I had rather creep to what is true,
Than rove and flagger with no mark in view;
Yet to confult a little, feem'd no crime,
The freakish humour of the present time:
But now to gather up what seems difpers'd,
And touch the fubject I defign'd at first,
May prove, though much befide the rules of art,
Beft for the public, and my wifeft part.
And first, let no man charge me that I mean
To clothe in fable every focial scene,
And give good company a face fevere,
As if they met around a father's bier;
For tell fome men, that pleasure all their bent,
And laughter all their work, is life mifpent,
Their wifdom burfts into this fage reply,
Then mirth is fin, and we should always cry.
To find the medium asks some share of wit,
And therefore 'tis a mark fools never hit.
But though life's valley be a vale of tears,
A brighter fcene beyond that vale appears,
Whose glory, with a light that never fades,
Shoots between scatter'd rocks and op'ning fhades,
And, while it shows the land the foul defires,
The language of the land fhe feeks, infpires.
Thus touch'd, the tongue receives a facred cure,
Of all that was abfurd, profane, impure;
Held within modeft bounds, the tide of speech
Purfues the course that truth and nature teach;
No longer labours merely to produce
The pomp of found, or tinkle without use:
Where'er it winds, the falutary stream,
Sprightly and fresh, enriches ev'ry theme,
While all the happy man poffefs'd before,
The gift of nature, or the claffic store,
Is made fubfervient to the grand defign,
For which heav'n form'd the faculty divine.
So, fhould an idiot, while at large he ftrays,
Find the sweet lyre on which an artist plays,
With rash and awkward force the chords he shakes,
And grins with wonder at the jar he makes;
But let the wife and well-inftructed hand
Once take the shell beneath his just command,
In gentle founds it seems as it complain'd
Of the rude injuries it late sustain'd,
Till, tun'd at length to fome immortal fong,
It founds Jehovah's name, and pours his praife along.
-ftudiis florens ignobilis oti. VIRG. Geor. Lib. 4.
HACKNEY'D in bufinefs, wearied at that oar
Which thousands, once faft chain'd to, quit no more,
But which, when life at ebb runs weak and low,
All wish, or feem to wifh, they could forego;
The statesman, lawyer, merchant, man of trade,
Pants for the refuge of fome rural shade,
Where, all his long anxieties forgot
Amid the charms of a fequefter'd spot,
Or recollected only to gild o'er
And add a fimile to what was sweet before,
He may poffefs the joys he thinks he fees,
Lay his old age upon the lap of ease,
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