If not so quite (as they relate thee) blind,
See both our names, which thus together join'd,
I'd rather share ten thousand pounds, I own,
Than court thee for ten millions alone.

"Thousands and millions, sir, are pompous sounds

For poets, seldom conversant in pounds."—
Yes; but I'm only looking on th' event
As corresponding to a kind intent.

Should it turn out its thousands more or less,
I should be somewhat puzzl'd I profess,
And must upon a case so new, so nice,
Fly to my benefactress for advice.

What shall I do with such a monstrous prize?
But we'll postpone the question-till it rise.-
Let it's to morrow manage that.-To day
Accept the thanks which I am bound to pay;
Enrich'd, if you permit me still to share
Your wish of welfare, and your gen'rous care:
The greatest bliss, if I have any skill,
Of human life, is mutual good-will.

This, without question, has your hand confest; This, without flatt'ry, warms a willing breast: So much good nature shown with so much ease; Bestow your sums, dame Fortune, where you That kind of satisfaction which I feel [please; Comes not within the compass of your wheel; No prize can heighten the unpurchas'd grace, Nor blanks the grateful sentiments efface.

They cannot reconcile to serious thought
God's church and state-with life to come, un
With law or gospel cannot make to suit [taught;
Virgin of Sion sinking down to brute.

Zeuxis the new, they argue, takes a pride
In shapes so incompatible ally'd;
And talks away as if he had pourtray'd
A real creature mixt of mare and maid:
All who deny the existence of th' pad,
He centaurizes into fool and mad2.

If one objected to a maiden hoof; Why, 'tis an animal;"---was all his proof: If to an animal with human head; "O! 'tis a beauteous woman;"-Zeuxis said. "What! auimal and woman both at once?"

Yes, that's essential to the whole, ye dunce."

His primary and secondary sense, Like mare and maid, support his fond pretence: From joining spot he skips to each extreme; Or strides to both, and guards the motley scheme; Solving, with like centauriformal ease,

Law, prophets, gospel, quoted as you please.

Thus both went on, long labour'd volumes thro'

Now what must fair impartial readers do?
Must they not grieve, if either of them treat
On law or grace with rudeness or with heat?
Of either Zeuxis they allow the skill;
But that the Centaur is a fable still.

THE CENTAUR FABULOUS1. ZEUXIS of old a female Centaur drew, To show his art; and then expos'd to view: The human half, with so exact a care, Was join'd to limbs of a Thessalian mare, That seeing from a different point the piece, Some prais'd the maid and some the mare of Greece.

Like to this Centaur, by his own relation, Is doctor Warburton's Divine Legation: Which superficial writers on each hand, Christians and deists did not understand; Because they both observ'd, from partial views, Th' incorporated church and state of Jews.

Th' ingenious artist took the pains to draw,
Full and entire, the compound of the law;
The two societies, the civil kind

And the religious, perfectly combin'd;
With God Almighty, as a temp'ral prince,
Governing both, as all his proofs evince;

Without the doctrine of a future state?-
Here with opponents lies the main debate:

The delicate poignancy of the wit with which this allegorical piece is enlivened, will be obvious to the reader who is acquainted with the writings of the celebrated author of the Divine Legation; and therefore any extracts to illustrate the pithets and allusions which refer to them in the following verses, would only serve to swell the notes into a tedious prolixity: however one quotation is annexed in order to justify a charge, which might be suspected of exaggeration by those who are strangers to the learned writer's manuer of treating his opponents.

THOUGHTS ON THE CONSTITUTION OF HUMAN NATURE,

AS REPRESENTED IN THE SYSTEMS OF MODERN
PHILOSOPHERS.

STRONG passions draw, like horses that are strong,
The body-coach of flesh and blood along;
While subtle reason, with each rein in hand,
Sits on the box and has them at command;
Rais'd up aloft to see and to be seen,
Judges the track, and guides the gay machine.

But was it made for nothing else-beside
Passions to draw, and reason to be guide?
Was so much art employ'd to drag and drive,
Nothing within the vehicle alive?

No seated mind that claims the moving pew,
Master of passions and of reason too?

The grand contrivance why so well equip
With strength of passions rul'd by reason's whip?
Vainly profuse had apparatus been,
Did not a reigning spirit rest within;
Which passions carry, and sound reason means
To render present at pre-order'd scenes.

2 Who has not signalised himself against the Divine Legation? Bigots, Hutchinsonians, methodists, answerers, free-thinkers, and fanatics, have in their turns been all up in arms against it. The scene was opened by a false zealot, and at present seems likely to be closed by a Behmenist. A natural and easy progress from folly to madSee the dedication prefixed to the 1st v. cf the 2d part of the D. L.

ness.

They who are loud in human reason's praise, And celebrate the drivers of our days, Seem to suppose by their continual bawl, That passions, reason, and machine, is all; To them the windows are drawn up, and clear Nothing that does not outwardly appear.

Matter and motion, and superior man

By head and shoulders, form their reas'ning plan;
View'd, and demurely ponder'd, as they roll;
And scoring traces on the pa, er soul,
Blank, shaven white, they fill th' unfurnish'd
plate,

With new ideas, none of them innate,

When these adepts are got upon a box, Away they gallop thro' the gazing flocks; Trappings admir'd, and the high mettl'd brute, And reason balancing its either foot; While seeing eyes discern at their approach, Fulness of skill, and emptiness of coach.

Tis very well that lively passions draw, That sober reason keeps them all in awe; The one to run, the other to control, And drive directly to the destin'd goal: [gin; "What goal?"-Ay, there the question should beWhat spirit drives the willing mind within?

Sense, reason, passions, and the like are still One self-same man, whose action is his will; Whose will, if right, will soon renounce the pride

Of an own reason for an only guide;
As God's unerring spirit shall inspire,
Will still direct the drift of his desire,

ON THE PATRON OF ENGLAND,

IN A LETTER TO LORD WILLOUGHBY, PRESIDENT OF THE ANTIQUARIAN SOCIETY.

Now, my lord, I would ask of the learn'd and laborious,

If Ge-orgious ben't a mistake for Gregorious?

In names so like letter'd it would be no wonder If hasty transcribers had made such a blunder; And mistake in the names, by a slip of their pen, May perhaps have occasion'd inistake in the men. That this has been made, to omit all the rest, Let a champion of yours, your own Selden, attest; See his books upon titles of honour-that quarter Where he treats of St. George, and the knights of the garter.

There he quotes from Froissart, how at first on Of a lady's blue garter, blue order began [the plan In one thousand three hundred and forty and four, But the name of the saint in Froissart is Gregore; So the chronical writer or printed or wrote [note: For George, without doubt, says the marginal Be it there a mistake-but, my lord, I'm afraid That the same, vice versa, was anciently made.

For tho' much has been said by the great antiquarian

Of an orthodox George-Cappadocian-and
Arian;

"How the soldier first came to be patron of old,
I have not," says he, "light enough to behold:"
A soldier-like nation he guesses (for want [saint;
Of a proof that it did so) would choose him for
For in all his old writings no fragment occurr'd
That saluted him patron, till Edward the Third.

His reign he had guess'd to have been the first. time, [rhyme, But for old Saxon prose and for old English Which mention a George, a great martyr and

[want;

Some night when you m t upon ancient record,
Full worthily filling Antiquity's throne,
To propose to your sages a doubt of my own,
A certain moot point of a national kind;
For it touches all England to have it defin'd
With a little more fact, by what kind of a right
Her patron, her saint, is a Cappadox knight?

I know what our songs and our stories advance, That St. George is for England, St. Denys for France;

But the French, tho' uncertain what Denys it was, Ail own he converted and taught 'em their mass; And most other nations, I fancy, remount

To a saint whom they chose upon some such account,

But I never could learn, that for any like notion, The English made choice of a knight Cappadocian.

Their conversion was owing (event one would hope

Worth remembring at least) to a saint and a pope,
To a Gregory known by the First, and the Great,
Who sent, to relieve them from Pagan deceit,
St. Austin the monk; and both sender and sent
Had their days in old Fasti that noted th' event:

The name in French, Latin, and Saxon, 'tis hinted,

[ed; Some three or four times is mis-writ or mis-printHrenders it George-but allowing the hint, And the justice of change both in writing and print,

Some George, by like errour (it adds to the doubt)
Has turn'd our converter St. Gregory out:
He, or Austin the monk, bid the fairest by far
To be patron of England-till garter and star.

In the old Saxon custom of crowning our kings,
As Selden has told us, amongst other things
They nam'd in their pray'rs, which his pages
transplant,

The Virgin-St. Peter-and one other saint; Whose connection with England is also exprest; And yields in this case such a probable test, That a patron suppos'd, we may fairly agree, Such a saint is the person whoever it be.

Now with Mary, and Peter, when monarchs were crown'd,

There is only a Sanctus Gregorious found;
And his title-Anglorum Apostolus-too;
With which a St. George can have nothing to do:

While Scotland, and Ireland, and France and

Spain claims

A St. Andrew, St. Patrick, St. Denys, St. James, Both apostle and patron-for saint so unknown Why should England reject an apostle her own?

This, my lord, is the matter-the plain simple rhymes [times: Lay no fault, you perceive, upon protestant I impute the mistake, if it should be one, solely To the pontiffs saccecding, who christen'd wars holy,

To monarchs, who, madding around their round tables,

Prefer'd to conversion their fighting and fables: When soldiers were many, good Christians but few,

St. George was advanc'd to St. Gregory's due. One may be mistaken-and therefore would beg

That a Willis, a Stukely, an Ames, or a Pegge,
In short, that your lordship, and all the fam'd set
Who are coder your auspices happily met
Ia perfect good humour-which you can inspire,
As I know by experience-would please to en-
quire,

To search this one que-tion, and settle I hope,
Was old England's old patron a knight or a pope?

How rare the case, tho' common the pretence,
To write on subjects from a real sense!
'Tis many a celebrated author's fate,
To print effusions just as parrots prate:
He moulds a matter that be once was taught
In various shapes, and thinks it to be thought.
Words at command be marshals in array,
And proves whatever he is pleas'd to say;
While learning like a torrent pours along,
And sweeps away the subject, right or wrong:
One follows for a while a rolling theme,
Toss'd in the middle of the rapid stream;
Till out of sight, with like impetuous force,
Torn from its roots, another takes the course;
While froth and bubble glaze the flowing mud,
And the man thinks all clear and understood;
A shining surface and a transient view,

Makes the slight-witted reader think so too:
It entertains him, and the book is bought,
Read and admir'd without expense of thought:
No tax impos'd upon his wits, his cash
Paid without scruple, he enjoys the trash.

Till just of late, good English has thought fit
To call me written, or to call me writ;
But what is writ or written, by the vote
Of writers now, hereafter must be wrote:
And what is spoken too, hereafter spoke;
And measures never to be broken, broke.

1 never could be driven, but, in spite
Of grammar, they have drove me from my right.
None could have risen to become my foes;
But what a world of enemies have rose!
Who have not gone, but they have went about,
And, torn as I have been, bave tore me out.

Passive I am, and would be, and implore
That such abuse may be henceforth forbore,
If not forborn, for by all Spelling Book,
If not mistaken, they are all mistook:
And, in plain English, it had been as well
If what had fall'n upon me, had not fell.

Since this attack upon me has began,
Who knows what lengths in language may be ran?
For if it once be grew into a law,

You'll see such work as never has been sav;
Part of our speech and sense, perhaps beside
Shakes when I'm shook, and dies when I am dy'd.

Then let the preter and imperfect tense
Of my own words to me remit the sense;
Or since we two are oft enough agreed,
Let all the learned take some better heed;
Of preter tense, and participle too.
And leave the vulgar to confound the due

THE BEAU AND THE BEDLAMITE.

A PATIENT in Bedlam that did pretty well,
Was permitted sometimes to go out of his cell:
One day, when they gave him that freedom, he
spy'd

A beauish young spark with a sword by his side;
With an buge silver hilt, and a scabbard for steel,
That swung at due length from his hip to his heel.

When he saw him advance on the gallery ground,

The Bedlamite ran, and survey'd him all round; While a waiter supprest the young captain's alarm,

With "You need not to fear, sir, he'll do you no harm."

At the last he broke out-" Aye, a very fine show? May I ask him one question?"-"What's that?" said the beau.

THE noblest object in the works of art,
The brightest scene that Nature can impart,
The well known signal in the time of peace,
The point essential in the tenant's lease,
The farmer's comfort when he holds the plough,
The soldier's duty and the lover's vow,
A contract made before the noptial tie,
A blessing riches never can supply,

A spot that adds new charms to pretty faces,
An engine us'd in fundamental cases,
A planet seen between the Earth and Sun,
A prize which merit never yet has won,
A loss which prudence seldom can retrieve,
The death of Judas and the fault of Eve,
A part between the ancle and the knee,
A patriot's toast and a physician's fee,
A wife's ambition and a parson's dues,
A miser's idol and the badge of Jews.
If now your happy genius can divine
The correspondent words to every line,
By the first letters will be plainly found
An ancient city that is much renown'd.

THE ANSWER.

PAUCIS, friend Aphanus, abhinc diebus,
With no small pleasure I receiv'd a rebus:
Not that the rebus gave it understand,
But old acquaintance Benjamin's own hand:
For all the blessings due to mortal men,
Rebus in omnibus, I wish to Ben.

At his request I sought for ancient city
That lay conceal'd in cabalistic ditty;
So did we all-for when his letter came
Some friends were chair'd around the focal flame;
But rebus out not one of all could make;
Diaphanus himself was quite opake,

Tho' pleas'd with pleasing, when he can do so,
His ingenuity he loves to show;
If such a thing falls out to be his lot;
He is as free to own when it does not:
Here he had none, nor any succedaneum,
That could discover this same Herculaneum.

Altho' it seem'd to ask when it appear'd, No great Herculean labour to be clear'd; So many different wits at work, no doubt The city's name would quickly be found out; But, notwithstanding variorum lecture, The name lay snug without the least detecture.

One thing bowever rose from this occasion, It put an end to fears of French invasion; And wits, quite frighten'd out of dames and men, When rebus came, came into 'em again :' Tho' little skill'd to judge of either matter, Yet the more pleasing puzzle was the latter.

You'll think I'm thinking, upon second thought, That too' we mist of city that was sought, We might have told you somewhat of the guesses Of luckless neighbours and of neighbouresses; So let us try to give you just an item:

For it would take a volume to recite 'em.

"I can't divine," said Chloe," for my part,
What the man means by noblest work of art,'-
From clock to temple, pyramid, and ship,
And twenty diff'rent handyworks you skip;
Now, I dare say, when all your votes are past,
City or work-'tis Dresden at the last."

"Nor I," said Phillis, "what the man can mean
By his next hint of Nature's brightest scene→→
Amongst so many of her scenes so bright,
Who can devise which of 'em is the right?
To name a word where brightest scene must lie,
And speak my own opinion, sirs,—'tis eye."

"Peace," said a third, of I forget what sex, "Has well known signal that may well perplex; It should be olive-branch, to be well known, But rebus, unconfin'd to that alone, May mean abundance, plenty, riches, trade,Who knows the signal that is here display'd?"

Thus they went on-but, tho' I stir its embers, It is not much that memory remembers: Two ladies had a long disputing match, Whether charm-adding spot was mole or patch; While none would venture to decide the voleOne had a patch and t'other had a mole.

So wife's ambition' made a parted school; Some said to please her husband-some to rule.On this moot point too rebus would create, As you may guess, a pretty smart debate; Till one propos'd to end it thus, with ease; "The only way to rule him-is to please."

Hold! I forgot-One said, a parson's dues Was the same thing with rhyming badge of Jews,' And tithe was it but corn, or pig, or goose; What earth or animals of earth produce, From calf and lamb, to turnip and potatoe, Might be the word—which he had nought to say to.

Made for excuse, you see, upon the whole
The too great number of the words that poll
For correspondency to ev'ry line;

And make the meant one tedious to divine:
But we suspect that other points ambiguous,
And eke unfair, contribute to fatigue us,

For first, with due submission to my betters, What ancient city could have eighteen letters?

Or more?-for, in the latter times, the clue
May have one correspondent word, or two:
Clue should have said, if only one occurr'd,
Not correspóndent words to each, but word.

From some suspicions of a bite, we guess
The number of the letters to be less;
And, from expression of a certain cast,
Some joke, unequal to the pains at last:
Could you have said that all was right, and clever,
We should have try'd more fortunate endeavour.

It should contain, should this same jeu de mots, Clean-pointed turn, short, fair, and a-propos; Wit without straining; neatness without starch; Hinted, tho' hid; and decent, tho' 't is arch; No vile idea should disgrace a rebus

Sic dicunt Musæ, sic edicit Phœbus.

This, Aphanus, tho' short of satisfaction, Is what account occurs of the transaction, Impertinent enough but you'll excuse

What your own postscript half enjoin'd the Muse: She, when she took the sudden task upon her, Believe me, did it to oblige your honour.

THOUGHTS ON RHYME AND BLANK
VERSE.

WHAT a deal of impertinent stuff, at this time,
Comes out about verses in blank or in rhyme!
To determine their merits by critical prose,
And treat the two parties, as if they were foes!
It's allotting so gravely, to settle their rank,
All the bondage to rhyme, all the freedom to
blank,
[repress
Has provok'd a few rhymes to step forth, and
The pedantical whim, grown to such an excess:
Not to hinder the dupes of this fanciful wit
From retailing its maxims, whene'er they think
fit;

But to caution young bards, if in danger to waste
Any genius for verse on so partial a taste;
That (allowing to blank all the real pretence
To what freedom it has) if supported by sense,
For words without any, they may not neglect
Of as free flowing rhyme the delightful effect.

Here are two special terms which the sophisters
mingle,

To be sauce for the rest, to wit, fetters, and jingle; And, because a weak writer may chance to expose Very ill-chosen words to such phrases as those, The unthinking reflecters sit down to their rote, And pronounce against rhyme th' undistinguishing Sole original this, in the petulant school, [vote: Of its idle objections to metre, and rule.

For to what other fetters are verses confin'd, Whether made up of blank, or of metrical kind? If a man has not taste for poetical lines, Can't he let them alone; and say what he designs, Upon some other points, in his unfetter'd way; And contemn, if he will, all numerical lay?

But the fashion, forsooth, must affect the sublime, The grand, the pathetic, and rail against rhyme. Blank verse is the thing-tho', whoever tries Will find of its fetters à plentiful growth; [both,

Many chains to be needful to measure his ground, And keep the sublime within requisite bound: If a laudable product in rhyme should, perhaps, Extort an applause from these exquisite chaps, They express it so shily, for fear of a fetter"Had the rhyme been neglected, it would have been better."—

And so they begin with their jingle (or rattle, 'As some of them call it) the delicate battle; "The sense must be cramp'd," they cry out, "to be sure,

By the nature of rhyme, and be render'd obscure:" As if blank, by its grandeur, and magnifi'd pause, Was secure in its freedom from any such flaws; Tho' so apt, in bad hands, to give readers offence, By the rattling of sound, and the darkness of sense.

All the arguments form'd, as they prose it along, And twist them and twine, against metrical song, Presuppose the poor maker to be but a dunce; For, if that be not true, they all vanish at once: If it be, what advantage has blank in the case, From counting bad verses by unit, or brace? Nothing else can result from the critical rout, But, a blockhead 's a blockhead, with rhyme, or without.

It came, as they tell us, from ignorant Moors, And by growth of fine taste will be turn'd out o' doors:

Two insipid conceits, at a venture entwin'd,
And void of al! proof both before and behind:
Too old its reception, to tell of its age;
Its downfall, if taste could but fairly presage,
When the bees of the country make honey no

more,

Will then certainly come-not a moment before.

Till then it will reign, and while, here and there
spread,

Blank verse, like an aloe, rears up its head;
And, fresh from the hot-house, successfully tow'is
To make people stare at the height of its flow'rs;
The variety, sweetness, and smoothness of rhyme
Will flourish, bedeck'd, by its natural clime,
With numberless beauties; and frequently shoot,
If cherish'd aright, into blossom and fruit.

But stuffing their heads, in these classical days,
Full of Homer, and Virgil, and Horace, and plays;
And finding that rhyme is in none of the four,
'Tis enough, the finetasters have gotten their lore:
And away they run on with their words in a string,
Which they throw up at rhyme with a inical fling;
But to reach its full sweetness nor willing, ner able,
They talk about taste, like the fox in the fable.

To the praise of old metre it quitted the stage, In abhorrence of tragical ranting and rage; Which with heights, and with depths of distresses enrich'd, [witch'd;

Verse and prose, art and nature, and morais beAll the native agreements of language disgrac'd, That theatrical pomp might intoxicate taste; Still retaining poor blank, in its fetters held fast, To bemoan its hard fate in romantic bombast.

'T is the subject, in fine, in the matter of song, That makes a blank verse, or a rhyme to be wrong: If unjust, or improper, unchaste or prophane, It disgraces alike all poetical strain: