While clouds of incense half divine
Involve thy disappearing shrine ;
And so may smoke-inhaling Bull
Be always filling, never full.

MONUMENTAL INSCRIPTION TO WILLIAM

NORTHCOT.

HIC sepultus est

Inter suorum lacrymas

GULIELMUS NORTHCOT,

GULIELMI et MARIÆ filius

Unicus, unicè dilectus,

Qui floris ritu succisus est semihiantis,
Aprilis die septimo,

1780, Æt. 10.

Care, vale! Sed non æternùm, care, valeto! Namque iterùm, tecum, sim modò dignus, ero. Tum nihil amplexus poterit divellere nostros, Nec tu marcesces, nec lacrymabor ego.

TRANSLATION.

FAREWELL! "But not for ever," Hope replies, Trace but his steps and meet him in the skies! There nothing shall renew our parting pain, Thou shalt not wither, nor I weep again.

EPITAPH ON MRS. M. HIGGINS, OF WESTON.

LAURELS may flourish round the conqueror's

tomb,

But happiest they who win the world to come:
Believers have a silent field to fight,

And their exploits are veil'd from human sight.
They in some nook, where little known they dwell,
Kneel, pray in faith, and rout the hosts of hell;
Eternal triumphs crown their toils divine,
And all those triumphs, Mary, now are thine.

1791.

A RIDDLE.

I AM just two and two, I am warm, I am cold, And the parent of numbers that cannot be told. I am lawful, unlawful-a duty, a fault,

I am often sold dear, good for nothing when bought; An extraordinary boon, and a matter of course, And yielded with pleasure when taken by force.

ANSWER.

FROM THE GENTLEMAN'S MAGAZINE, VOL. LXXVI. p. 1224. A RIDDLE by Cowper

Made me swear like a trooper;

But my anger, alas! was in vain ;
For, remembering the bliss

Of beauty's soft Kiss,

I now long for such riddles again.

J. T.

COWPER had sinn'd with some excuse,
If, bound in rhyming tethers,
He had committed this abuse

Of changing ewes for wethers;

But, male for female is a trope,

Or rather bold misnomer,

1

That would have startled even Pope,
When he translated Homer.

IN SEDITIONEM HORRENDAM,

CORRUPTELIS GALLICIS, UT FERTUR, LONDINI NUPER
EXORTAM.

PERFIDA, crudelis, victa et lymphata furore,
Non armis, laurum Gallia fraude petit.
Venalem pretio plebem conducit, et urit
Undique privatas patriciasque domos.
Nequicquàm conata suâ, fœdissima sperat

Posse tamen nastrâ nos superare manu.
Gallia, vana struis! Precibus nunc utere! Vinces,
Nam mites timidis, supplicibusque sumus.

1I have heard about my wether mutton from various quarters. It was a blunder hardly pardonable in a man who has lived amid fields and meadows, grazed by sheep, almost these thirty years. I have accordingly satirized myself in two stanzas which I composed last night, while I lay awake, tormented with pain, and well dosed with laudanum. If you find them not very brilliant, therefore, you will know how to account for it.-Letter to Joseph Hill, Esq. dated April 15,

1792.

TRANSLATION.

FALSE, cruel, disappointed, stung to the heart,
France quits the warrior's for the assassin's part,
To dirty hands a dirty bribe conveys,

Bids the low street and lofty palace blaze.
Her sons, too weak to vanquish us alone,
She hires the worst and. basest of our own.
Kneel, France! a suppliant conquers us with ease,
We always spare a coward on his knees.

TRANSLATIONS OF GREEK VERSES.

FROM THE GREEK OF JULIANUS.

A SPARTAN, his companion slain,

Alone from battle fled;

His mother, kindling with disdain

That she had borne him, struck him dead;

For courage, and not birth alone,

In Sparta, testifies a son!

ON THE SAME BY PALAADAS.

A SPARTAN 'scaping from the fight,
His mother met him in his flight,
Upheld a falchion to his breast,
And thus the fugitive address'd:

"Thou canst but live to blot with shame
Indelible thy mother's name,

While every breath that thou shalt draw
Offends against thy country's law;
But, if thou perish by this hand,
Myself indeed throughout the land,
To my dishonour, shall be known
The mother still of such a son;
But Sparta will be safe, and free,
And that shall serve to comfort me."

AN EPITAPH.

My name—my country-what are they to thee?
What, whether base or proud my pedigree?
Perhaps I far surpass'd all other men—
Perhaps I fell below them all-what then?
Suffice it, stranger! that thou seest a tomb-
Thou know'st its use-it hides-no matter whom.

ANOTHER.

TAKE to thy bosom, gentle earth, a swain
With much hard labour in thy service worn!
He set the vines that clothe yon ample plain,
And he these olives that the vale adorn.
He fill'd with grain the glebe; the rills he led
Through this green herbage, and those fruitful

bowers;

Thou, therefore earth! lie lightly on his head,

His hoary head, and deck his grave with flowers