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Where early reft makes early rising sure,
Disease or comes not, or finds eafy cure,
Prevented much by diet neat and plain;
Or, if it enter, foon starved out again:
Where all the attention of his faithful hoft,
Difcreetly limited to two at moft,

May raise fuch fruits as fhall reward his care,
And not at laft evaporate in air:

Where, ftillness aiding study, and his mind
Serene, and to his duties much inclined,
Not occupied in day-dreams, as at home,
Of pleasures paft, or follies yet to come,
His virtuous toil may terminate at laft
In fettled habit and decided tafte.-
But whom do I advife? the fashion-led,
The incorrigibly wrong, the deaf, the dead,
Whom care and cool deliberation fuit

Not better much than spectacles a brute;
Who, if their fons fome flight tuition share,
Deem it of no great moment whofe, or where;
Too proud to adopt the thoughts of one unknown,
And much too gay to have any of their own.
But courage, man! methought the muse replied,
Mankind are various, and the world is wide:
The oftrich, fillieft of the feathered kind,
And formed of God without a parent's mind,

Commits her eggs, incautious, to the duft,
Forgetful that the foot may crush the truft;
And, while on public nurseries they rely,
Not knowing, and too oft not caring, why,
Irrational in what they thus prefer,

No few, that would feem wife, refemble her.
But all are not alike. Thy warning voice
May here and there prevent erroneous choice;
And fome perhaps, who, bufy as they are,
Yet make their progeny their dearest care,
(Whofe hearts will ache, once told what ills may reach
Their offspring, left upon fo wild a beach)
Will need no ftrefs of argument to enforce
The expedience of a lefs adventurous courfe:
The reft will flight thy counsel, or condemn;
But they have human feelings-turn to them.

To you then, tenants of life's middle ftate,
Securely placed between the small and great,
Whose character, yet undebauched, retains
Two thirds of all the virtue that remains,
Who, wife yourselves, defire your fon fhould learn
Your wisdom and your ways-to you I turn.
Look round you on a world perversely blind;
See what contempt is fallen on human kind;

See wealth abused, and dignities misplaced,
Great titles, offices and trufts disgraced,
Long lines of ancestry, renowned of old,
Their noble qualities all quenched and cold;
See Bedlam's closetted and hand-cuffed charge
Surpaffed in frenzy by the mad at large;
See great commanders making war a trade, .
Great lawyers, lawyers without ftudy made;
Churchmen, in whose esteem their blest employ
Is odious, and their wages all their joy,
Who, far enough from furnishing their shelves
With gospel lore, turn infidels themselves;
See womanhood despised, and manhood shamed
With infamy too naufeous to be named,
Fops at all corners, lady-like in mien,

Civetted fellows, fmelt ere they are seen,

Elfe coarse and rude in manners, and their tongue

On fire with curses, and with nonsense hung,
Now flushed with drunk'nefs,now with whoredom pale,
Their breath a sample of last night's regale;
See volunteers in all the vileft arts,

Men well endowed, of honourable parts,

Defigned by nature wise, but self-made fools;
All these, and more like these, were bred at schools.
And if it chance, as fometimes chance it will,
That though school-bred the boy be virtuous ftill;

Such rare exceptions, fhining in the dark,
Prove, rather than impeach, the juft remark:
As here and there a twinkling ftar descried
Serves but to show how black is all befide.
Now look on him, whose very voice in tone
Juft echoes thine, whose features are thine own,
And ftroke his polished cheek of pureft red,
And lay thine hand upon his flaxen head,
And say, My boy, the unwelcome hour is come,
When thou, transplanted from thy genial home,
Muft find a colder foil and bleaker air,
And truft for fafety to a stranger's care;

What character, what turn thou wilt affume
From conftant converse with I know not whom;
Who there will court thy friendship, with what views,
And, artless as thou art, whom thou wilt choose;
Though much depends on what thy choice shall be,
Is all chance-medley, and unknown to me.
Can'ft thou, the tear just trembling on thy lids,
And while the dreadful rifque foreseen forbids;
Free too, and under no conftraining force,
Unless the sway of cuftom warp thy courfe;
Lay such a stake upon the losing fide,
Merely to gratify so blind a guide?

Thou can'ft not! Nature, pulling at thine heart,
Condemns the unfatherly, the imprudent part.

Thou wouldeft not, deaf to Nature's tendereft plea,
Turn him adrift upon a rolling fea,

Nor fay, Go thither, conscious that there lay
A brood of afps, or quickfands in his way;
Then, only governed by the self-fame rule
Of natural pity, fend him not to school.
No-guard him better. Is he not thine own,
Thyself in miniature, thy flesh, thy bone?
And hopeft thou not ('tis every father's hope)
That, fince thy ftrength muft with thy years elope,
And thou wilt need fome comfort to affuage
Health's laft farewell, a staff of thine old age,
That then, in recompense of all thy cares,
Thy child shall show respect to thy gray hairs,
Befriend thee, of all other friends bereft,
And give thy life its only cordial left?
Aware then how much danger intervenes,
To compass that good end, forecast the means.
His heart, now paffive, yields to thy command;
Secure it thine, its key is in thine hand.
If thou defert thy charge, and throw it wide,
Nor heed what guests there enter and abide,
Complain not if attachments lewd and base
Supplant thee in it, and ufurp thy place.
But, if thou guard its facred chambers fure
From vicious inmates and delights impure,

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