If one, through Nature's bounty or his lord's,
Has what the frugal dirty soil affords,

From him the next receives it, thick or thin,
As pure a mess almost as it came in ;
The blessed benefit, not there confined,

Drops to the third, who nuzzles close behind;
From tail to mouth they feed and they carouse :
The last full fairly gives it to the House.

F. This filthy simile, this beastly line,
Quite turns my stomach-

P. So does flattery mine; And all your courtly civet-cats can vent, Perfume, to you, to me is excrement. But hear me further-Japhet, 'tis agreed, Writ not, and Chartres scarce could write or read; In all the courts of Pindus guiltless quite; But pens can forge, my friend, that cannot write; And must no egg in Japhet's face be thrown, Because the deed he forged was not my own? Must never patriot, then, declaim at gin, Unless, good man! he has been fairly in? No zealous pastor blame a failing spouse, Without a staring reason on his brows? And each blasphemer quite escape the rod, Because the insult's not on man, but God? Ask you what provocation I have had? The strong antipathy of good to bad.

When truth or virtue and affront endures,

The affront is mine, my friend, and should be yours.

Mine, as a foe profess'd to false pretence,

Who think a coxcomb's honour like his sense;

Mine, as a friend to every worthy mind;

And mine as man, who feel for all mankind.

F. You're strangely proud.

P. So proud, I am no slave:

So impudent, I own myself no knave:
So odd, my country's ruin makes me grave.
Yes, I am proud; I must be proud to see

Men, not afraid of God, afraid of me:
Safe from the bar, the pulpit, and the throne,
Yet touched and shamed by ridicule alone.

O sacred weapon! left for truth's defence,
Sole dread of folly, vice, and insolence!
To all but Heaven-directed hands denied,
The muse may give thee, but the gods must guide :
Reverent I touch thee! but with honest zeal;
To rouse the watchman of the public weal,
To virtue's work provoke the tardy hall,
And goad the prelate slumbering in his stall.
Ye tinsel insects! whom a court maintains,
That counts your beauties only by your stains,
Spin all your cobwebs o'er the eye of day!
The MUSE's wing shall brush you all away:
All his grace preaches, all his lordship sings,
All that makes saints of queens, and gods of kings;
All, all but truth, drops dead-born from the press,
Like the last gazette, or the last address.

When black ambition stains a public cause,
A monarch's sword when mad vainglory draws,
Not Waller's wreath can hide the nation's scar,
Nor Boileau turn the feather to a star.

Not so, when diadem'd with rays divine,

Touch'd with the flame that breaks from Virtue's shrine,
Her priestess Muse forbids the good to die,
And opes the temple of Eternity.

There, other trophies deck the truly brave,
Than such as ANSTIS* casts into the grave;
Far other stars than * and ** wear,
And may descend to Mordington from STAIR,+
(Such as on HoUGH'st unsullied mitre shine,
Or beam, good DIGBY, from a heart like thine;
Let Envy howl, while heaven's whole chorus sings,

And bark at honour not conferr'd by kings;

The chief herald at arms. It is the custom, at the funerals of great men, to cast into the grave the broken staves and ensigns of honour. John Dalrymple, Earl of Stair.

Dr John Hough, Bishop of Worcester, and the Lord Digby.

Let Flattery sickening see the incense rise,
Sweet to the world, and grateful to the skies:
Truth guards the poet, sanctifies the line,
And makes immortal, verse as mean as mine.

Yes, the last pen for freedom let me draw,
When Truth stands trembling on the edge of law;
Here, last of Britons! let your names be read;
Are none, none living? let me praise the dead,
And for that cause which made your fathers shine,
Fall by the votes of their degenerate line.

F. Alas! alas! pray end what you began,

And write next winter more Essays on Man.

THE FIRST BOOK

OF

STATIUS'S THEBAI S.

TRANSLATED IN THE YEAR MDCCIII.

ARGUMENT.

EDIPUS, King of Thebes, having by mistake slain his father Laius, and married his mother Jocasta, put out his own eyes, and resigned his realm to his sons, Eteocles and Polynices. Being neglected by them, he makes his prayer to the fury Tisiphone, to sow debate betwixt the brothers. They agree at last to reign singly, each a year by turns, and the first lot is obtained by Eteocles. Jupiter, in a council of the gods, declares his resolution of punishing the Thebans, and Argives also, by means of a marriage betwixt Polynices and one of the daughters of Adrastus, King of Argos. Juno opposes, but to no effect; and Mercury is sent on a message to the Shades, to the ghost of Laius, who is to appear to Eteocles, and provoke him to break the agreement. Polynices in the meantime departs from Thebes by night, is overtaken by a storm, and arrives at Argos; where he meets with Tydeus, who had fled from Calydon, having killed his brother. Adrastus entertains them, having received an oracle from Apollo that his daughters should be married to a boar and a lion, which he understands to be meant of these strangers, by whom the hides of those beasts were worn, and who arrived at the time when he kept an annual feast in honour of that god. The rise of this solemnity he relates to his guests, the loves of Phoebus and Psamathe, and the story of Chorobus. He inquires, and is made acquainted with their descent and quality. The sacrifice is renewed, and the book concludes with a hymn to Apollo.

The translator hopes he need not apologise for his choice of this piece, which was made almost in his childhood. But finding the version better than he expected, he gave it some correction a few years afterwards.

FRATERNAL rage, the guilty Thebes' alarms,
The alternate reign destroy'd by impious arms,
Demand our song; a sacred fury fires
My ravish'd breast, and all the muse inspires.
O goddess, say, shall I deduce my rhymes
From the dire nation in its early times,