Lucilius, then, by her alone impellid,
To guilty. Rome the blazing mirror held; 10
Took his firm stand by humble Virtue's side,
And stretch'd his arm 'twixt Poverty and Pride.
With soft, yet poignant vein, next Horace rose,
Hurling her shafts against a host of foes,
And, hapless he, whose name or fault agreed, 15
Nor broke the verse, that endless shame decreed.

PARAPHRASE.

Horace à cette aigreur mèla son enjouement.
On ne fut plus ni fat ni sot impunement:
Et, malheur à tout nom, qui propre à la censure
Pât entrer dans un vers, sans rompre la mesure.
Perse en ses vers obscurs, mais serrés et pressans,
Affecta d'enfermer moins de mots que de sens.
Juvenal, elevé dans les cris de l'Ecole,
Poussa jusqu'à l'excès sa mordante lıyperbole.
Ses ouvrages tout pleins d'affreuses verités

BOILEAU, L'Art Poétique, Chant 2.

A Persius, too, endued with all her fire,
Swept, though with hand uncouth, his angry lyre;
Compress’d the efforts of his manly pow'rs,
And gave the thorns, but cast away the flow'rs. 20
Nor less that pupil of the sterner school,
Fraught with hyperbole, and harsh by rule,
Dark deeds of infamy to light exposed,
And frowning Satire's ancient phalanx closed.

1, too, like these, might brand a guilty age, 25 And stamp

the crimes of Princes on my page; Might paint the times, when B-j—can clear The price of shame,“ three hundred pounds a year;"When loose adult’ry*, licensed, stalks sublime, Ev’n froin thc Bench pronounced "a venial crimc;"

NOTES.

1

vitio ...

potens Regnat adulter

SENICA: Hyppolitis, Act S.

When C-m-rs pleads an“ injur'd murd'rer's ”

cause,

Defends the guilty, and insults the laws;-
But no!- Uncalled, 'tis not for me to stand
The public Censor of a tainted band;
To place the guilty in a nation's view,

35
Or taunt the many with the worthless few.
These, and ten thousand such (too few to prove
How wide, and ah! how high the vices rove!)
Require, than mine, a bolder, firmer hand,

“ the pestilence from out the land ;” 40 A louder voice, a more effectual rod *, To smite the foes of Justice, and of God. Mine be an humbler task; along the road That Pope for Dulness and for Dunces trode,

To sweep

When high the Goddess on her throne he rais’d, 45
And, struck with rapture, crowds admiring gaz’d,
There let me tread; and paint, in easy rhymes,
The Henleys, Cibbers, Ralphs of modern times.
Him let me emulate, the “ unknown Bard*,"
Who sought no praise, who sighed for no reward, 50
Save that, which consciousness of right can give
To those, who for the Muse and Virtue strive :

Him, too, whos mightier arm bath swept away
The airy flutt'rers of a summer's day,
That, floating round the dim poetic scene, 55
Sank ’neath the blow, and never more have been.

To thee, - whose lay in rising youth contemn'd
The venal critics t, and the current stemm'd,
That, rushing wildly as their native " stream,
Had smother'd Genius in its early dream:

60

by the “ indignant words of Apuleius,” printed on imperial paper, price five guineus in extra boards ; for,

“ To this complexion is it coine at last!” * Of the Baviad and Mæviad it is needless to make an observation, as to its excellence. It would not have been rendered less valuable by omitting to annex the virulent epistle to Peter Pindar, or the tedious" procès verbal" of Anthony Pasquin.