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FROM THE SAME.

Blessedness of the son of foresight.

WHERE shall I find him? Angels! tell me where.
You know him: He is near you: Point him out:
Shall I see glories beaming from his brow?
Or trace his footsteps by the rising flowers!
Your golden wings, now hovering o'er him, shed
Protection: now, are waving in applause
To that blest son of foresight! lord of fate!
That awful independent on to-morrow!
Whose work is done; who triumphs in the past;
Whose yesterdays look backwards with a smile;
Nor, like the Parthian, wound him as they fly;
That common, but opprobrious lot! past hours,
If not by guilt, yet wound us by their flight;
If folly bounds our prospect by the grave,
All feeling of futurity benumb'd ;
All god-like passion for eternals quench'd;
All relish of realities expired;

Renounced all correspondence with the skies:
Our freedom chain'd; quite wingless our desire;
In sense dark-prison'd all that ought to soar;
Prone to the centre; crawling in the dust;
Dismounted every great and glorious aim;
Embruted every faculty divine;

Heart-buried in the rubbish of the world.
The world, that gulf of souls, immortal souls,
Souls elevate, angelic, wing'd with fire

To reach the distant skies, and triumph there
On thrones, which shall not mourn their masters
changed;

Though we from earth; ethereal they that fell.

FROM THE SAME. Society necessary to happiness.

WISDOM, though richer than Peruvian mines,
And sweeter than the sweet ambrosial hive,
What is she but the means of happiness?
That unobtain'd, than folly more a fool;
A melancholy fool, without her bells.
Friendship, the means of wisdom, richly gives
The precious end which makes our wisdom wise.
Nature, in zeal for human amity,
Denies, or damps, an undivided joy.
Joy is an import, joy is an exchange;
Joy flies monopolists: it calls for two;
Rich fruit! heaven-planted! never pluck'd by one.
Needful auxiliars are our friends, to give
To social man true relish of himself.
Full on ourselves, descending in a line,
Pleasure's bright beam is feeble in delight:
Delight intense is taken by rebound;
Reverberated pleasures fire the breast.

FROM NIGHT III. Complaint for Narcissa.

O PHILANDER !

What was thy fate? A double fate to me;
Portent and pain, a menace and a blow,
Like the black raven hovering o'er my peace,
Not less a bird of omen than of prey.
It call'd Narcissa long before her hour;
It call'd her tender soul by break of bliss,
From the first blossom, from the buds of joy;
Those few our noxious fate unblasted leaves
In this inclement clime of human life.

Sweet harmonist! and beautiful as sweet!
And young as beautiful! and soft as young!
And gay as soft! and innocent as gay!
And happy (if aught happy here) as good!
For fortune fond had built her nest on high.
Like birds quite exquisite of note and plume,
Transfix'd by fate (who loves a lofty mark),
How from the summit of the grove she fell,
And left it unharmonious. All its charms
Extinguish'd in the wonders of her song!
Her song still vibrates in my ravish'd ear,
Still melting there, and with voluptuous pain
(0 to forget her!) thrilling through my heart!
Song, beauty, youth, love, virtue, joy; this group
Of bright ideas, flowers of paradise,

As yet unforfeit! in one blaze we bind,
Kneel, and present it to the skies as all
We guess of heaven: and these were all her own.
And she was mine; and I was-was!-most blest-
Gay title of the deepest misery!

As bodies grow more ponderous robb'd of life,
Good lost weighs more in grief than gain'd in joy,
Like blossom'd trees o'erturn'd by vernal storm,
Lovely in death the beauteous ruin lay;
And if in death still lovely, lovelier there,
Far lovelier! pity swells the tide of love.
And will not the severe excuse a sigh?
Scorn the proud man that is ashamed to weep;
Our tears indulged indeed deserve our shame.
Ye that e'er lost an angel, pity me!

Soon as the lustre languish'd in her eye,
Dawning a dimmer day on human sight,
And on her cheek, the residence of spring,
Pale omen sat, and scatter'd fears around
On all that saw (and who would cease to gaze
That once had seen?) with haste, parental haste,
I flew, I snatch'd her from the rigid north,
Her native bed, on which bleak Boreas blew,
And bore her nearer to the sun: the sun
(As if the sun could envy) check'd his beam,
Denied his wonted succour; nor with more
Regret beheld her drooping than the bells
Of lilies; fairest lilies not so fair!

So man is made; nought ministers delight By what his glowing passions can engage; And glowing passions, bent on aught below,

Must, soon or late, with anguish turn the scale;
And anguish after rapture, how severe ?
Rapture! Bold man! who tempt'st the wrath
divine,

By plucking fruit denied to mortal taste,
While here, presuming on the rights of heaven.
For transport dost thou call on every hour,
Lorenzo? At thy friend's expense be wise;
Lean not on earth; 'twill pierce thee to the heart;
A broken reed at best, but oft a spear;

On its sharp point peace bleeds, and hope expires.

Turn, hopeless thought! turn from her:-thought repell'd

Resenting rallies, and wakes every woe.

Snatch'd ere thy prime! and in thy bridal hour!
And when kind fortune, with thy lover, smiled!
And when high-flavour'd thy fresh opening joys!
And when blind man pronounced thy bliss com-
plete!

And on a foreign shore, where strangers wept !
Strangers to thee; and, more surprising still,
Strangers to kindness, wept their eyes let fall
Inhuman tears! strange tears! that trickled down
From marble hearts! obdurate tenderness!
A tenderness that call'd them more severe ;
In spite of nature's soft persuasion steel'd;
While nature melted, superstition raved;
That mourn'd the dead, and this denied a grave.
Their sighs incensed; sighs foreign to the
will!

Their will the tiger suck'd, outraged the storm.
For, oh! the curst ungodliness of zeal!
While sinful flesh relented, spirit nurst
In blind infallibility's embrace,

The sainted spirit, petrified the breast;
Denied the charity of dust to spread
O'er dust! a charity their dogs enjoy.

What could I do? What succour? What resource?

With pious sacrilege, a grave I stole ;
With impious piety, that grave I wrong'd;
Short in my duty; coward in my grief!
More like her murderer, than friend, I crept,
With soft-suspended step, and muffled deep
In midnight darkness, whisper'd my last sigh.
I whisper'd what should echo through their
realms;

Nor writ her name, whose tomb should pierce the skies.

Presumptuous fear! How durst I dread her foes,
While nature's loudest dictates I obey'd?
Pardon necessity, bless'd shade of grief
And indignation rival bursts I pour'd ;
Half execration mingled with my prayer;
Kindled at man while I his God adored;
Sore grudged the savage land her sacred dust;
Stamp'd the cursed soil; and with humanity
(Denied Narcissa) wish'd them all a grave.

FROM NIGHT IV.

Comparison of the soul viewing the prospects of immortality to the prisoner enlarged from a dungeon.

As when a wretch, from thick, polluted air,
Darkness, and stench, and suffocating damps,
And dungeon horrors, by kind fate discharged,
Climbs some fair eminence, where ether pure
Surrounds him, and Elysian prospects rise,
His heart exults, his spirits cast their load;
As if new-born, he triumphs in the change;
So joys the soul when from inglorious aims,
And sordid sweets, from feculence and froth
Of ties terrestrial, set at large, she mounts
To Reason's region, her own element,
Breathes hope immortal, and affects the skies.

FROM NIGHT V.

The danger to virtue of infection from the world. VIRTUE, for ever frail, as fair, below, Her tender nature suffers in the crowd, Nor touches on the world without a stain: The world's infectious; few bring back at eve, Immaculate, the manners of the morn. Something, we thought, is blotted; we resolved, Is shaken; we renounced, returns again. Each salutation may slide in a sin Unthought before, or fix a former flaw.

Nor is it strange : light, motion, concourse, noise,
All scatter us abroad; thought, outward-bound,
Neglectful of our home affairs, flies off

In fume and dissipation; quits her charge,
And leaves the breast unguarded to the foe.

FROM NIGHT VI.

Insufficiency of genius without virtue.

GENIUS and Art, ambition's boasted wings,
Our boast but ill deserve. A feeble aid!
Dedalian enginery! If these alone
Assist our flight, Fame's flight is glory's fall.
Heart merit wanting, mount we ne'er so high,
Our height is but the gibbet of our name.
A celebrated wretch, when I behold;
When I behold a genius bright and base,
Of towering talents and terrestrial aims;
Methinks I see, as thrown from her high sphere,
The glorious fragments of a soul immortal,
With rubbish mix'd, and glittering in the dust.
Struck at the splendid melancholy sight,
At once compassion soft and envy rise-
But wherefore envy? Talents angel-bright,
If wanting worth, are shining instruments
In false ambition's hand, to finish faults
Illustrious, and give infamy renown.

FROM NIGHT VIII.

Description of the man whose thoughts are not of this world.

SOME angel guide my pencil, while I draw
What nothing less than angel can exceed !
A man on earth devoted to the skies;
Like ships in seas, while in, above the world.
With aspect mild, and elevated eye,
Behold him seated on a mount serene,
Above the fogs of sense, and passion's storm;
All the black cares and tumults of this life,
Like harmless thunders breaking at his feet,
Excite his pity, not impair his peace.
Earth's genuine sons, the scepter'd and the slave,
A mingled mob! a wandering herd! he sees
Bewilder'd in the vale; in all unlike!
His full reverse in all! what higher praise ?
What stronger demonstration of the right?

The present all their care, the future his.
When public welfare calls, or private want,
They give to fame, his bounty he conceals.
Their virtues varnish nature, his exalt.
Mankind's esteem they court, and he his own.
Theirs, the wild chase of false felicities,
His, the composed possession of the true.
Alike throughout is his consistent peace,
All of one colour, and an even thread;
While party-colour'd shreds of happiness,
With hideous gaps between, patch up for them
A madman's robe; each puff of fortune blows
The tatters by, and shows their nakedness.

He sees with other eyes than theirs; where they Behold a sun, he spies a Deity;

What makes them only smile, makes him adore.
Where they see mountains, he but atoms sees;
An empire in his balance weighs a grain.
They things terrestrial worship as divine;
His hopes immortal blow them by as dust,
That dims his sight, and shortens his survey,
Which longs in infinite to lose all bound.
Titles and honours (if they prove his fate)
He lays aside to find his dignity;
No dignity they find in aught besides.
They triumph in externals, (which conceal
Man's real glory,) proud of an eclipse.
Himself too much he prizes to be proud,
And nothing thinks so great in man as man.
Too dear he holds his interest, to neglect
Another's welfare, or his right invade;
Their interest, like a lion, lives on prey.
They kindle at the shadow of a wrong;
Wrong he sustains with temper, looks on heaven,
Nor stoops to think his injurer his foe;

Nought but what wounds his virtue wounds his

peace.

A cover'd heart their character defends ;
A cover'd heart denies him half his praise.
With nakedness his innocence agrees;
While their broad foliage testifies their fall.
Their no joys end, where his full feast begins :

His joys create, theirs murder, future bliss.
To triumph in existence, his alone;
And his alone, triumphantly to think
His true existence is not yet begun.

His glorious course was, yesterday, complete;
Death, then, was welcome; yet life still is sweet.

FROM HIS SATIRES.

SATIRE I.

The love of praise.

WHAT will not men attempt for sacred praise!
The love of praise, howe'er conceal'd by art,
Reigns, more or less, and glows, in every heart:
The proud, to gain it, toils on toils endure ;
The modest shun it, but to make it sure.
O'er globes, and sceptres, now on thrones it swells;
Now trims the midnight lamp in college cells:
'Tis Tory, Whig; it plots, prays, preaches, pleads,
Harangues in senates, squeaks in masquerades.
Here, to Steele's humour makes a bold pretence ;
There, bolder, aims at Pulteney's eloquence.
It aids the dancer's heel, the writer's head,
And heaps the plain with mountains of the dead :
Nor ends with life; but nods in sable plumes,
Adorns our hearse, and flatters on our tombs.

SATIRE V.

Propensity of man to false and fantastic joys.

MAN's rich with little, were his judgment true;
Nature is frugal, and her wants are few;
Those few wants answer'd, bring sincere delights;
But fools create themselves new appetites :
Fancy and pride seek things at vast expense,
Which relish not to reason, nor to sense.
When surfeit, or unthankfulness, destroys,
In nature's narrow sphere, our solid joys,
In fancy's airy land of noise and show,
Where nought but dreams, no real pleasures

grow;

Like cats in air-pumps, to subsist we strive On joys too thin to keep the soul alive.

Such blessings nature pours, O'erstock'd mankind enjoy but half her stores : In distant wilds, by human eyes unseen, She rears her flowers, and spreads her velvet

green:

Pure gurgling rills the lonely desert trace,
And waste their music on the savage race.
Is nature then a niggard of her bliss?
Repine we guiltless in a world like this!
But our lewd tastes her lawful charms refuse,
And painted art's depraved allurements choose.

CHARACTERS OF WOMEN-THE WEDDED WIT.

FROM THE SAME,

NOUGHT but a genius can a genius fit :
A wit herself, Amelia weds a wit:

Both wits! though miracles are said to cease,
Three days, three wondrous days! they lived in
With the fourth sun a warm dispute arose, [peace;
On D'Urfey's poesy, and Bunyan's prose:
The learned war both wage with equal force,
And the fifth morn concluded the divorce.

THE ASTRONOMICAL LADY.
FROM THE SAME.

SOME nymphs prefer astronomy to love;
Elope from mortal man, and range above.
The fair philosopher to Rowley flies,
Where in a box the whole creation lies:
She sees the planets in their turns advance,
And scorns, Poitier, thy sublunary dance!
Of Desaguliers she bespeaks fresh air;
And Whiston has engagements with the fair.
What vain experiments Sophronia tries!
'Tis not in air-pumps the gay colonel dies.
But though to-day this rage of science reigns,
(O fickle sex !) soon end her learned pains.
Lo! Pug from Jupiter her heart has got,
Turns out the stars, and Newton is a sot.

THE LANGUID LADY. FROM THE SAME.

THE languid lady next appears in state,
Who was not born to carry her own weight;
She lolls, reels, staggers, till some foreign aid
To her own stature lifts the feeble maid,
Then, if ordain'd to so severe a doom,
She, by just stages, journeys round the room:

But, knowing her own weakness, she despairs
To scale the Alps-that is, ascend the stairs.
My fan! let others say, who laugh at toil;
Fan! hood! glove! scarf! is her laconic style;
And that is spoke with such a dying fall,
That Betty rather sees, than hears the call:
The motion of her lips, and meaning eye,
Piece out th' idea her faint words deny.
O listen with attention most profound!
Her voice is but the shadow of a sound.
And help, oh help! her spirits are so dead,
One hand scarce lifts the other to her head.
If there a stubborn pin it triumphs o'er,
She pants! she sinks away! and is no more.
Let the robust and the gigantic carve,
Life is not worth so much, she'd rather starve:
But chew she must herself! ah cruel fate!
That Rosalinda can't by proxy eat.

THE SWEARER.

FROM THE SAME.

THALESTRIS triumphs in a manly mien ;
Loud is her accent, and her phrase obscene.
In fair and open dealing where's the shame ?
What nature dares to give, she dares to name.
This honest fellow is sincere and plain,
And justly gives the jealous husband pain.
(Vain is the task to petticoats assign'd,
If wanton language shows a naked mind.)
And now and then, to grace her eloquence,
An oath supplies the vacancies of sense.
Hark! the shrill notes transpierce the yielding air,
And teach the neighbouring echoes how to swear.
By Jove, is faint, and for the simple swain ;
She on the Christian system is profane.
But though the volley rattles in your ear,
Believe her dress, she's not a grenadier.
If thunder's awful, how much more our dread,
When Jove deputes a lady in his stead?
A lady? pardon my mistaken pen,
A shameless woman is the worst of men.

JOHN BROWN.

[Born, 1715. Died, 1765.]

DR. BROWN, author of the tragedies of Athelstan and Barbarossa, and of several other works, was born at Rothbury, in Northumberland, where his father was curate. He studied at Cambridge, obtained a minor canonry and lectureship in the cathedral of Carlisle, and was afterwards preferred to the living of Morland, in Westmorland. The latter office he resigned in disgust at being rebuked for an accidental omission of the Athanasian creed. He remained for some years in obscurity at Carlisle, till the year of the Rebellion,

when he distinguished himself by his intrepidity as a volunteer at the siege of the castle. His Essay on Satire introduced him to Warburton, who exhorted him to write his Remarks on Shaftesbury's Characteristics, as well as to attempt an epic poem on the plan which Pope had sketched. Through Warburton's influence he obtained the rectory of Horkesly, near Colchester; but his fate was to be embroiled with his patrons, and having quarrelled with those who had given him the living in Essex, he was obliged to retire

upon the vicarage of St. Nicholas, at Newcastle. A latent taint of derangement had certainly made him vain and capricious; but Warburton seems not to have been a delicate doctor to his mind's disease. In one of his letters he says, "Brown is here, rather perter than ordinary, but no wiser. You cannot imagine how tender they are all of his tender places, and with how unfeeling a hand I probe them." The writer of this humane sentence was one whom Brown had praised in his Estimate as the Gulliver and Colossus of a degenerate age. When his Barbarossa came out, it appears that some friends, equally tender with the Bishop of Gloucester, reproved him for having any connexion with players. The players were not much kinder to his sore feelings. Garrick offended him deeply

by a line in the prologue which he composed for his Barbarossa, alluding to its author, "Let the poor devil eat-allow him that."

His poetry never obtained, or indeed deserved much attention; but his "Estimate of the Manners and Principles of the Times" passed through seven editions, and threw the nation into a temporary ferment. Voltaire alleges that it roused the English from lethargy by the imputation of degeneracy, and made them put forth a vigour that proved victorious in the war with France. Dr. Brown was preparing to accept of an invitation from the Empress of Russia to superintend her public plans of education, when he was seized with a fit of lunacy, and put a period to his own existence.

FROM THE TRAGEDY OF "BARBAROSSA."

ACT II.

Selim, the son of the deceased Prince of Algiers, admitted in disguise into the palace of the usurper Barbarossa, and meeting with Othman, his secret friend.

Persons-BARBAROSSA, SELIM, OTHMAN.

Bar. Most welcome, Othman. Behold this gallant stranger. He hath done The state good service. Let some high reward Await him, such as may o'erpay his zeal. Conduct him to the queen: for he hath news Worthy her ear, from her departed son; Such as may win her love-Come, Aladin ! The banquet waits our presence: festal joy Laughs in the mantling goblet; and the night, Illumined by the taper's dazzling beam, Rivals departed day.

[Exeunt BAR, and ALA.

Selim. What anxious thought

Rolls in thine eye, and heaves thy labouring breast?
Why join'st thou not the loud excess of joy,
That riots through the palace?

Oth. Darest thou tell me

On what dark errand thou art here?
Selim. I dare.

Dost not perceive the savage lines of blood
Deform my visage? Read'st not in mine eye
Remorseless fury?—I am Selim's murderer.
Oth. Selim's murderer!
Selim. Start not from me.

My dagger thirsts not but for regal blood——
Why this amazement?
[should be-

Oth. Amazement !-No-Tis well-Tis as it He was, indeed, a foe to Barbarossa.

Selim. And therefore to Algiers:-Was it not so? Why dost thou pause? What passion shakes thy frame?

Oth. Fate, do thy worst! I can no more dissemble!-

Can I, unmoved, behold the murdering ruffian, Smear'd with my prince's blood!-Go, tell the

tyrant,

[blocks in formation]

Thou might'st as well bring the devoted lamb
Into the tiger's den.

Selim. But I'll bring him

Hid in such deep disguise as shall deride
Suspicion, though she wear the lynx's eyes.

Not even thyself could'st know him.

Oth. Yes, sure: too sure to hazard such an awful Trial!

Selim. Yet seven revolving years, worn out In tedious exile, may have wrought such change Of voice and feature in the state of youth,

As might clude thine eye.

Oth. No time can blot
The memory of his sweet majestic mien,
The lustre of his eye! besides, he wears
A mark indelible, a beauteous scar,
Made on his forehead by a furious pard,
Which rushing on his mother, Selim slew.
Selim. A scar!

Oth. Ay, on his forehead.

Selim. What! like this? [Lifting his turdan. Oth. Whom do I see!-am Iawake?-my prince! My honour'd, honour'd king! [Kneels. !

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