ADDITION, EXTEMPORE,

BY EARL HARDWICKE.

FAME heard with pleasure-straight replied,
"First on my roll stands Wyndham's bride;
My trumpet oft I 've rais'd, to sound
Her modest praise the world around!
But notes were wanting-Canst thou find
A Muse to sing her face, her mind?
Believe me, I can name but one,
A friend of yours-'tis Lyttelton."

LETTER TO EARL HARDWICKE:

OCCASIONED BY THE FOREGOING VERSES.

MY LORD,

A THOUSAND thanks to your lordship for your addition to my verses. If you can write such extempore, it is well for other poets, that you chose to be lord chancellor, rather than laureat. They explain to me a vision I had the night before.

Methought I saw before my feet,
With countenance serene and sweet,
The Muse, who, in my youthful days,
Had oft inspir'd my careless lays.

She smil'd, and said, "Once more I see
My fugitive returns to me;

Long had I lost you from my bower,
You scorn'd to own my gentle power;
With me no more your genius sported,
The grave historic Muse you courted;

Or, rais'd from Earth, with straining eyes;
Pursued Urania through the skies;
But now, to my forsaken track,
Fair Egremont has brought you back:
Nor blush, by her and Virtue led,
That soft, that pleasing path, to tread;
For there, beneath to morrow's ray,
Ev'n Wisdom's self shall deign to play..
Lo! to my flowery groves and springs
Her favourite son the goddess brings,
The council's and the senate's guide,
Law's oracle, the nation's pride:
He comes, he joys with thee to join,
In singing Wyndham's charms divine:
To thine he adds his nobler lays;
Ev'n thee, my friend, he deigns to praise.
Enjoy that praise, nor envy Pitt
His fame with burgess or with cit;
For sure one line from such a bard,
Virtue would think her best reward."

HYMEN TO ELIZA.

MADAM, before your feet I lay
This ode upon your wedding-day,

The first indeed I ever made,
For writing odes is not my trade:
My head is full of household cares,
And necessary dull affairs;
Besides that sometimes jealous frumps
Will put me into doleful dumps.
And then no clown beneath the sky
Was e'er more ungallant than I;

For you alone I now think fit
To turn a poet and a wit-

For you whose charms, I know not how,
Have power to smooth my wrinkled brow,
And make me, though by nature stupid,
As vrisk, and as alert, as Cupid.
These obligations to repay,
Whene'er your happy nuptial day
Shall with the circling years return,
For you my torch shall brighter burn
Than when you first my power ador'd,
Nor will I call myself your lord,
But am, (as witness this my hand)
Your humble servant at command.

SUCH were the notes that struck the wondering ear
Of silent Night, when, on the verdant banks
Of Siloe's hallow'd brook, celestial harps,
According to seraphic voices, sung
Glory to God on high, and on the earth
Peace and good-will to men !-Resume the lyre,
Chauntress divine, and every Briton call
Its melody to hear-so shall thy strains,
More powerful than the song of Orpheus, tame
The savage heart of brutal Vice, and bend
At pure Religion's shrine the stubborn knees
Of bold Impiety.-Greece shall no more
Of Lesbian Sappho boast, whose wanton Muse,
Like a false Syren, while she charm'd, seduc'd
To guilt and ruin. For the sacred head
Of Britain's poetess, the Virtues twine
A nobler wreath, by them from Eden's grove
Unfading gather'd, and direct the hand
Of
to fix it on her brows.

MOUNT EDGECUMBE. THE gods, on thrones celestial seated, By Jove, with bowls of nectar heated, All on Mount Edgecumbe turn'd their eyes; "That place is mine," great Neptune cries: "Behold! how proud o'er all the main Those stately turrets seem to reign! No views so grand on Earth you see! The master too belongs to me:

I grant him my domain to share,

I bid his hand my trident bear."

"The sea is your's, but mind the land," Pallas replies; "by me were plann'd Those towers, that hospital, those docks, That fort, which crowns those island rocks: The lady too is of my choir,

I taught her band to touch the lyre;

With every charm her mind I grac'd,
I gave her prudence, knowledge, taste."

66

Hold, madam," interrupted Venus,

"The lady must be shard between us:
And surely mine is yonder grove,
So fine, so dark, so fit for love;
Trees, such as in th' Idalian glade,
Or Cyprian lawn, my palace shade."

Then Oreads, Dryads, Naiads, came;
Each nymph alleg'd her lawful claim.
But Jove, to finish the debate,
Thus spoke, and what he speaks is fate:
"Nor god nor goddess, great or small,
That dwelling his or her's may call;
I made Mount Edgecumbe for you all."

INVITATION.

TO THE DOWAGER DUTCHESS D'AIGUILLON.

WHEN Peace shall, on her downy wing,
To France and England Friendship bring,
Come, Aiguillon, and here receive
That homage we delight to give
To foreign talents, foreign charms,
To worth which Envy's self disarms
Of jealous hatred: come and love
That nation which you now approve.
So shall by France amends be made
(If such a debt can e'er be paid)
For having with seducing art
From Britain stol'n her Hervey's heart.

185

EPITAPH ON CAPTAIN GRENVILLE';

KILLED IN LORD ANSON'S ENGAGEMENT IN 1747.

ΤΟ

COLONEL DRUMGOLD.

DRUMGOLD, whose ancestors from Albion's shore
Their conquering standards to Hibernia bore,
Though now thy valour, to thy country lost,
Shines in the foremost ranks of Gallia's host,
Think not that France shall borrow all thy fame-
From British sires deriv'd thy genius came:
Its force, its energy, to these it ow'd,
But the fair polish Gallia's clime bestow'd:
The Graces there each ruder thought refin'd,
And liveliest wit with soundest sense combin'd.
They taught in sportive Fancy's gay attire
To dress the gravest of th' Aonian choir,
And gave to sober Wisdom's wrinkled cheek
The smile that dwells in Hebe's dimple sleek.
Pay to each realm the debt that each may ask:
Be thine, and thine alone, the pleasing task,
In purest elegance of Gallic phrase
To clothe the spirit of the British lays.
Thus every flower which every Muse's hand
Has rais'd profuse in Britain's favourite land,
By thee transplanted to the banks of Seine,
Its sweetest native odours shall retain.
And when thy noble friend, with olive crown'd,
la Concord's golden chain has firmly bound
The rival nations, thou for both shalt raise
The grateful song to his immortal praise.
Albion shall think she hears her Prior sing;
And France, that Boileau strikes the tuneful string,

ON GOOD-HUMOUR.

WRITTEN AT ETON-SCHOOL, 1729.

TELL me, ye sons of Phoebus, what is this
Which all admire, but few, too few, possess?
A virtue 'tis to ancient maids unknown,
And prudes, who spy all faults except their own.
Lov'd and defended by the brave and wise,
Though knaves abuse it, and like fools despise.
Say, Wyndham, if 'tis possible to tell,
What is the thing in which you most excel?
Hard is the question, for in all you please;
Yet sure good-nature is your noblest praise;
Secur'd by this, your parts no envy move,
For none can envy him whom all must love.
This magic power can make ev'n folly please,
This to Pitt's genius adds a brighter grace,
And sweetens every charm in Cælia's face.

'These verses having been originally written when the author was in opposition, concluded thus, (much better, perhaps, than at present):

But nobler far, and greater is the praise
So bright to shine in these degenerate days:
An age of heroes kindled Sidney's fire;

His inborn worth alone could Grenville's deeds inspire.

But some years after, when his lordship was See with ministry, be erased these four lines. Gent. Mag. vol. xlix. p. 601. N.

TO A YOUNG LADY.

WITH THE TRAGEDY OF VENICE PRESERVED.

In tender Otway's moving scenes we find
What power the gods have to your sex assign'd:
Venice was lost, if on the brink of fate
A woman had not propt her sinking state:
In the dark danger of that dreadful hour,
Vain was her senate's wisdom, vain its power;
But, sav'd by Belvidera's charming tears,
Still o'er the subject main her towers she rears,
And stands a great example to mankind,
With what a boundless sway you rule the mind,
Skilful the worst or noblest ends to serve,
And strong alike to ruin or preserve.

In wretched Jaffier, we with pity view
A mind, to honour false, to virtue true,
In the wild storm of struggling passions tost,
Yet saving innocence, though fame was lost;
Greatly forgetting what he ow'd his friend-
His country, which had wrong'd him, to defend.
But she, who urg'd him to that pious deed,
Who knew so well the patriot's cause to plead,
Whose conquering love her country's safety won,
Was, by that fatal love, herself undone.

"Hence may we learn, what passion fain would hide,

That Hymen's bands by prudence should be tied,
Venus in vain the wedded pair would crown,
If angry Fortune on their union frown:
Soon will the flattering dreams of joys be o'er,
And cloy'd imagination cheat no more;
Then, waking to the sense of lasting pain,
With mutual tears the bridal couch they stain:
And that fond love, which should afford relief,
Does but augment the anguish of their grief:
While both could easier their own sorrows bear,
Than the sad knowledge of each other's care."

May all the joys in Love and Fortune's power
Kindly combine to grace your nuptial hour!
On each glad day may plenty shower delight,
And warmest rapture bless each welcome night!
May Heaven, that gave you Belvidera's charms,
Destine some happier Jaffier to your arms,
Whose bliss misfortune never may allay,
Whose fondness never may through care decay;
Whose wealth may place you in the fairest light,
And force each modest beauty into sight!
So shall no anxious want your peace destroy,
No tempest crush the tender buds of joy;
But all your hours in one gay circle move,
Nor Reason ever disagree with Love!

ELEGY.

TELL me, my heart, fond slave of hopeless love,

And doom'd its woes, without its joys to prove,
Canst thou endure thus calmly to erase
The dear, dear image of thy Delia's face?

'The twelve following lines, with some small variations, already have been printed in Advice to a Lady, p. 175; but, as lord Lyttelton chose to introduce them here, it was thought more eligible to repeat these few lines, than to suppress the rest of the poem.

Canst thou exclude that habitant divine,
To place some meaner idol in her shrine ?
O task, for feeble reason too severe !

O lesson, nought could teach me but despair!
Must I forbid my eyes that heavenly sight,
They 've view'd so oft with languishing delight?
Must my ears shun that voice, whose charming sound
Seem'd to relieve, while it increas'd, my wound?
O Waller! Petrarch! you who tun'd the lyre
To the soft notes of elegant desire;
Though Sidney to a rival gave her charms,
Though Laura dying left her lover's arms,
Yet were your pains less exquisite than mine,
'Tis easier far to lose, than to resign!

INSCRIPTION

FOR A BUST OF LADY SUFFOLK;

DESIGNED TO BE SET UP IN A WOOD AT STOWE. 1752.

HER wit and beauty for a court were made: But truth and goodness fit her for a shade.

Fix'd in my heart these constant truths I bear,
And Ammon cannot write them deeper there.
Our souls, allied to God, within them feel
The secret dictates of the almighty will:
This is his voice, be this our oracle.
When first his breath the seeds of life instill'd,
All that we ought to know was then reveal'd.
Nor can we think the omnipresent mind
Has truth to Libya's desert sands confin'd,
There, known to few, obscur'd, and lost, to lie→→
Is there a temple of the Deity,

Except carth, sea, and air, yon azure pole;
And chief, his holiest shrine, the virtuous soul?
Where'er the eye can pierce, the feet can move,
This wide, this boundless universe is Jove.
Let abject minds, that doubt because they fear,
With pious awe to juggling priests repair;
I credit not what lying prophets tell-
Death is the only certain oracle.

Cowards and brave must die one destin'd hour-
This Jove has told; he needs not tell us more.

SULPICIA TO CERINTHUS,

IN HER SICKNESS.

FROM TIBULLUS.

(SENT TO A FRIEND, IN A LADY'S NAME.) SAY, my Cerinthus, does thy tender breast Feel the same feverish heats that mine molest? Alas! I only wish for health again, Because I think my lover shares my pain: For what would health avail to wretched me, If you could, unconcern'd, my illness see?

CATO'S SPEECH TO LABIENUS,

IN THE NINTH BOOK OF LUCAN.

(Quid quæri, Labiene, jubes, &c.)
WHAT, Labienus, would thy fond desire,
Of horned Jove's prophetic shrine inquire?
Whether to seck in arms a glorious doom,
Or basely live, and be a king in Rome?
If life be nothing more than death's delay;
If impious force can honest minds dismay,
Or probity may Fortune's frown disdain;
If well to mean is all that virtue can;
And right, dependant on itself alone,

Gains no addition from success?-Tis known;

TO MR. GLOVER;

ON HIS POEM OF LEONIDAS.

WRITTEN IN THE YEAR 1734.

Go on, my friend, the noble task pursue,
And think thy genius is thy country's due;
To vulgar wits inferior themes belong,
But liberty and virtue claim thy song.
Yet cease to hope, though grac'd with every charm,
The patriot verse will cold Britannia warm ;
Vainly thou striv'st our languid hearts to raise,
By great examples drawn from better days:
No longer we to Sparta's fame aspire,
What Sparta scorn'd, instructed to admire;
Nurs'd in the love of wealth, and form'd to bend
Our narrow thoughts to that inglorious end:
No generous purpose can enlarge the mind,
No social care, no labour for mankind,
Where mean self-interest every action guides,
In camps commands, in cabinets presides;
Where Luxury consumes the guilty store,
And bids the villain be a slave for more.

Hence, wretched nation, all thy woes arise,
Avow'd corruption, licens'd perjuries,
Eternal taxes, treaties for a day,
Servants that rule, and senates that obey.

O people, far unlike the Grecian race,
That deems a virtuous poverty disgrace,
That suffers public wrongs and public shame,
In council insolent, in action tame!
Say, what is now th' ambition of the great?
Is it to raise their country's sinking state;
Her load of debt to ease by frugal care,
Her trade to guard, her harass'd poor to spare?
Is it, like honest Somers, to inspire

The love of laws, and freedom's sacred fire?

Is it, like wise Godolphin, to sustain

The balanc'd world, and boundless power restrain?
Or is the mighty aim of all their toil,
Only to aid the wreck, and share the spoil?
On each relation, friend, dependant, pour,
With partial wantonness, the golden shower,
And, fenc'd by strong corruption, to despise
An injur'd nation's unavailing cries!

Rouze, Britons, rouze! if sense of shame be weak,
Let the loud voice of threatening danger speak.
Lo! France, as Persia once, o'er every land
Prepares to stretch her all-oppressing hand.
Shall England sit regardless and sedate,
A calm spectatress of the general fate;
Or call forth all her virtue, and oppose,
Like valiant Greece, her own and Europe's foes?
O let us seize the moment in our power,
Our follies now have reach'd the fatal hour;
No later term the angry gods ordain;
This crisis lost, we shall be wise in vain.

And thou, great poet, in whose nervous lines
The native majesty of freedom shines,
Accept this friendly praise; and let me prove
My heart not wholly void of public love;
Though not like thee I strike the sounding string
To notes which Sparta might have deign'd to sing,
But, idly sporting in the secret shade,
With tender trifles soothe some artless maid.

TO WILLIAM PITT, ESQUIRE,

ON HIS LOSING HIS COMMISSION,

IN THE YEAR 1736.

LONG had thy virtues mark'd thee out for fame,
Far, far superior to a cornet's name;
This generous Walpole saw, and griev'd to find
So mean a post disgrace that noble mind.
The servile standard from thy freeborn hand
He took, and bade thee lead the patriot band.

Yet, if to those whom most on Earth he lov'd,
From whom his pious care is now remov'd,
With whom his liberal hand, and bounteous heart,
Shar'd all his little fortune could impart;
If to those friends your kind regard shall give
What they no longer can from his receive;
That, that, ev'n now, above yon starry pole,
May touch with pleasure his immortal soul.

EPILOGUE TO LILLO'S ELMERICK.
You, who, supreme o'er every work of wit,
In judgment here, unaw'd, unbiass'd, sit,
The palatines and guardians of the pit;
If to your minds this merely modern play
If fustian here, through each unnatural scene,
No useful sense, no generous warmth convey;
In strain'd conceits sound high, and nothing mean;
If lofty dullness for your vengeance call:
Like Elmerick judge, and let the guilty fall.
But if simplicity, with force and fire,
Unlabour'd thoughts and artless words inspire:
If, like the action which these scenes relate,
The whole appear irregularly great;

If master-strokes the nobler passions move;
Then, like the king, acquit us, and approve.

INSCRIPTIONS AT HAGLEY.

PROLOGUE TO THOMSON'S CORIOLANUS.

SPOKEN BY MR. QUIN.

I COME not here your candour to implore
For scenes, whose author is, alas! no more;
He wants no advocate his cause to plead;
You will yourselves be patrons of the dead.
No party his benevolence confin'd,
No sect-alike it flow'd to all mankind.
He lov'd his friends (forgive this gushing tear:
Alas! I feel I am no actor here)

He lov'd his friends with such a warmth of heart,
So clear of interest, so devoid of art,
Such generous friendship, such unshaken zeal,
No words can speak it: but our tears may tell.—

O candid truth, O faith without a stain,

O manners gently firm, and nobly plain,.
O sympathizing love of others' bliss,
Where will you find another breast like his?
Such was the man-the poet well you know:
Oft has he touch'd your hearts with tender woe:
Oft in this crowded house, with just applause,
You heard him teach fair Virtue's purest laws;
For his chaste Muse employ'd her heaven-taught lyre
None but the noblest passions to inspire,
Not one immoral, one corrupted thought,
One line, which dying he could wish to blot.

Oh! may to-night your favourable doom
Another laurel add, to grace his tomb:
Whilst he, superior now to praise or blame,
Hears not the feeble voice of human fame.