O generous warmth! O fanctity divine!
To emulate his worth, my friend, be thine:
Learn from his life the duties of the gown;
Learn, not to flatter, nor infult the crown;
Nor, bafely fervile, court the guilty great,
Nor raise the church a rival to the state:
To error mild, to vice alone severe,
Seek not to spread the law of love by fear.
The priest who plagues the world can never mend :
No foe to man was e'er to God a friend.
Let reafon and let virtue faith maintain;
All force but theirs is impious, weak, and vain,
Me other cares in other climes engage,
Cares that become my birth, and fuit my age;
In various knowledge to improve my youth,
And conquer prejudice, worft foe to truth;
By foreign arts domeftic faults to mend,
Enlarge my notions, and my views extend;
The ufeful fcience of the world to know,
Which books can never teach, or pedants show.
A nation here I pity and admire,
Whom nobleft fentiments of glory fire,
Yet taught, by cuftom's force and bigot fear,
To ferve with pride, and boast the yoke they bear:
Whofe nobles, born to cringe and to command,
(In courts a mean, in camps a generous band,)
From each low tool of power, content receive
Thofe laws, their dreaded arms to Europe give.
Whofe people (vain in want, in bondage bleft;
Though plunder'd, gay; induftrious, though oppreft)
T 2
With
With happy follies rife above their fate,
The jeft and envy of each wifer state.
Yet here the Mufes deign'd a while to sport
In the fhort fun-fhine of a favouring court:
Here Boileau, ftrong in fense and sharp in wit,
Who, from the ancients, like the ancients writ,
Permiffion gain'd inferior vice to blame,
By flattering incenfe to his mafter's fame.
Here Moliere, firft of comic wits, excell'd
Whate'er Athenian theatres beheld;
By keen, yet decent, fatire fkill'd to pleafe,
With morals mirth uniting, ftrength with ease.
Now, charm'd, I hear the bold Corneille inspire
Heroic thoughts, with Shakespeare's force and fire!
Now fweet Racine, with milder influence, move
The foften'd heart to pity and to love.
With mingled pain and pleasure, I furvey
The pompous works of arbitrary sway;
Proud palaces, that drain'd the fubjects' store,
Rais'd on the ruins of th' oppreft and poor;
Where ev'n mute walls are taught to flatter state,
And painted triumphs ftyle Ambition GREAT*.
With more delight those pleafing fhades I view,
Where Condé from an envious court withdrew t;
Where, fick of glory, faction, power, and pride,
Sure judge how empty all, who all had tried!)
The victories of Louis the Fourteenth, painted in the galle gies of Versailles,
Beneath his palms the weary chief repos'd,
And life's great fcene in quiet virtue clos'd.
With fhame that other fam'd retreat I fee,.
Adorn'd by art, difgrac'd by luxury *:
Where Orleans wafted every vacant hour,
In the wild riot of unbounded power;
Where feverish debauch and impious love
Stain'd the mad table and the guilty grove.
With these amufements is thy friend detain'd,
Pleas'd and inftructed in a foreign land;
Yet oft a tender with recals my mind
From prefent joys to dearer left behind?
O native ifle, fair Freedom's happieft feat!"
At thought of thee, my bounding pulfes beat;
At thought of thee, my heart impatient burns,
And all my country on my foul returns.
When fhall I fee thy fields, whofe plenteous grain
No power can ravish from th' industrious swain ?
When kifs, with pious love, the facred earth
That gave a Burleigh or a Ruffel birth?
When, in the shade of laws, that long have ftood,,
Propt by their care, or ftrengthen'd by their blood,
Of fearless independence wifely vain,
The proudest flave of Bourbon's race difdain?
Yet, oh! what doubt, what fad prefaging voice,
Whispers within, and bids me not rejoice;
Bids me contemplate every ftate around,
From fultry Spain to Norway's icy bound;
Bids their loft rights, their ruin'd glories fee;
And tells me, Thefe, like England, once were free!
THOU, whofe friendship is my joy and pride,
Whofe virtues warm me, and whose precepts
guide;
Thou to whom greatness, rightly understood,
Is but a larger power of being good;
Say, Poyntz, amidft the toil of anxious ftate,
Does not thy fecret foul defire retreat?
Doft thou not wish (the task of glory done)
Thy bufy life at length might be thy own;
That, to thy lov'd philofophy refign'd,
No care might ruffle thy unbended mind ?
Juft is the wifh. For fure the happiest meed,
To favour'd man by fmiling Heaven decreed,
Is, to reflect at eafe on glorious pains,
And calmly to enjoy what virtue gains.
Not him I praife, who, from the world retir'd,
By no enlivening generous paffion fir'd,
On flowery couches flumbers life away,
And gently bids his active powers decay;
Who fears bright Glory's awful face to fee,
And fhuns renown as much as infamy.
But bleft is he, who, exercis'd in cares,
To private leisure public virtue bears;
Who tranquil ends the race he nobly run,
And decks repofe with trophies Labour won.
Him Honour follows to the secret shade,
And crowns propitious his declining head;
In his retreats their harps the Muses string,
For him in lays unbought fpontaneous fing;
Friendship and Truth on all his moments wait,
Pleas'd with retirement better than with state;
And round the bower, where humbly great he lies,
Fair olives bloom, or verdant laurels rife.
So when thy country fhall no more demand
The needful aid of thy fuftaining hand;
When peace reftor'd fhall, on her downy wing.
Secure repofe and careless leisure bring;
Then, to the shades of learned eafe retir'd,
The world forgetting, by the world admir'd,
Among thy books and friends, thou shalt poffefs
Contemplative and quiet happiness :
Pleas'd to review a life in honour spent,
And painful merit paid with fweet content.
Yet, though thy hours unclogg'd with forrow roll,
Though wisdom calm, and fcience feed thy foul,
One dearer blifs remains to be poffest,
That only can improve and crown the reft.-
Permit thy friend this fecret to reveal,
Which thy own heart perhaps would better tell; .
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