Unwarp'd by Folly, and by Vice unstain'd,
The prize of Virtue has for ever gain'd!
From life escaped, and safe on that calm shore
Where Sin, and Pain, and Error, are no more;
She now no change, nor you no fear, can feel;
Death to her fame has fix'd the' eternal seal.

A FUNERAL HYMN.

YE midnight shades! o'er Nature spread,
Dumb silence of the dreary hour;
In honour of the' approaching dead
Around your awful terrors pour.
Yes, pour around

On this pale ground,

Through all this deep surrounding gloom,
The sober thought,

The tear untaught,

Those meetest mourners at a tomb.

Lo! as the surpliced train draw near
To this last mansion of mankind,
The slow sad bell, the sable bier,
In holy musings wrap the mind!
And while their beam,
With trembling stream,

Attending tapers faintly dart,

Each mouldering bone,

Each sculptured stone,

Strikes mute instruction to the heart.

Now let the sacred organ blow

With solemn pause and sounding slow;

Now let the voice due measure keep, In strains that sigh and words that weep, Till all the vocal current blended roll, Not to depress, but lift the soaring soul:

To lift it in the Maker's praise!

Who first inform'd our frame with breath, And, after some few stormy days, Now gracious gives us o'er to Death. No king of fears

In him appears,

Who shuts the scene of human woes;
Beneath his shade

Securely laid,

The dead alone find true repose.

Then, while we mingle dust with dust,"
To One supremely good and wise
Raise hallelujahs !-God is just,

And man most happy-when he dies!
His winter pass'd,

Fair Spring at last

Receives him on her flowery shore,
Where pleasure's rose

Immortal blows,

And sin and sorrow are no more.

EPITAPH

ON MR. AIKMAN AND HIS ONLY SON,

WHO WERE BOTH INTERRED IN THE SAME GRAVE.

DEAR to the wise and good, dispraised by none,
Here sleep in peace the father and the son;
By virtue, as by nature, close allied,

The painter's genius, but without the pride;
Worth unambitious, wit afraid to shine,
Honour's clear light, and Friendship's warmth
divine.

The son, fair rising, knew too short a date;
But oh! how more severe the parent's fate!
He saw him torn, untimely, from his side,
Felt all a father's anguish,-wept, and died!

EPITAPH

ON A YOUNG LADY.

THIS humble grave though no proud structures grace,

Yet Truth and Goodness sanctify the place;
Yet blameless virtue, that adorn'd thy bloom,
Lamented maid! now weeps upon thy tomb.
O scaped from life! O safe on that calm shore
Where sin, and pain, and passion, are no more!
What never wealth could buy, nor power decree,
Regard and Pity wait sincere on thee:
Lo! soft Remembrance drops a pious tear,
And holy Friendship stands a mourner here.

EPISTLES.

TO MR. POPE.

ON VERBAL CRITICISM.

Advertisement.

As the design of the following Poem is to rally the abuse of Verbal Criticism, the Author could not, without manifest partiality, overlook the Editor of Milton, and the Restorer of Shakspeare. With regard to the latter, he has read over the many and ample specimens with which that Scholiast has already obliged the public; and of these, and these only, he pretends to give his opinion. But whatever he may think of the critic, not bearing the least ill will to the man, he deferred printing these verses, though written several months ago, till he beard that the subscription for a new edition of Shakspeare was closed.

He begs leave to add, likewise, that this Poem was undertaken and written entirely without the knowledge of the gentleman to whom it is addressed. Only as it is a public testimony of his inviolable esteem for Mr. Pope, on that account, particularly, he wishes it may not be judged to increase the number of mean performances with which the Town is almost daily pestered.

AMONG the numerous fools, by Fate design'd
Oft to disturb, and oft divert, mankind,
The reading Coxcomb is of special note,
By rule a poet, and a judge by rote;
Grave son of idle Industry and Pride,
Whom learning but perverts, and books misguide.
O famed for judging as for writing well,

That rarest science, where so few excel !

Whose life, severely scann'd, transcends thy lays,
For wit supreme is but thy second praise;
'Tis thine, O Pope! who choose the better part,
To tell how false, how vain, the scholiast's art,
Which nor to taste nor genius has pretence,
And, if 'tis learning, is not common sense.
In error obstinate, in wrangling loud,
For trifles eager, positive, and proud;
Deep in the darkness of dull authors bred,
With all their refuse lumber'd in his head,
What every dunce from every dunghill drew
Of literary offals, old or new,

Forth steps at last the self-applauding wight,
Of points and letters, chaff and straws, to write;
Sagely resolved to swell each bulky piece
With venerable toys from Rome and Greece:
How oft in Homer, Paris curl'd his hair?
If Aristotle's cap were round or square!
If in the cave where Dido first was sped,
To Tyre she turn'd her heels, to Troy her head?
Such the choice anecdotes, profound and vain,
That store a Bentley's and a Burman's brain:
Hence, Plato quoted, or the Stagyrite,
To prove that flame ascends, and snow is white;
Hence, much hard study without sense or breeding,
And all the grave impertinence of reading.
If Shakspeare says-the noon-day Sun is bright,
His scholiast will remark, it then was light;
Turn Caxton, Wynkin, each old Goth and Hun,
To rectify the reading of a pun.

Thus nicely trifling, accurately dull,

How one may toil, and toil-to be a fool!

But is there then no honour due to age?

No reverence to great Shakspeare's noble page?