No spies were paid, no special juries known,
Blest age! but ah! how different from our own!
Much could I add, but see the boat at hand,
The tide retiring, calls me from the land :
Farewell!-When youth, and health, and fortune
spent,
Thou fly'st for refuge to the wilds of Kent;
And tir'd like me with follies and with crimes,
In angry numbers warn'st succeeding times;
Then shall thy friend, nor thou refuse his aid, zb
Still foe to vice, forsake his Cambrian shade;
In virtue's cause once more exert his rage,
Thy satire point, and animate thy page.
THE REV. T. WARTON, F. S. A.
Πολυπονος ἱππεια,
Ως εμόλες αιανη
Tade ya.
His Country's hope, when now the blooming heir
Has lost the parent's, or the guardian's care;
Fond to possess, yet eager to destroy,
Of each vain youth, say, what's the darling joy?
Of each rash frolic what the source and end,
His sole and first ambition what?—to spend.
Some Squires, to Gallia's cooks devoted dupes,
Whole manors melt in sauce, or drown in soups:
Another doats on fidlers, till he sees
His hills no longer crown'd with towering trees;
Convinc'd too late, that modern strains can move,
Like those of ancient Greece, th' obedient grove.
In headless statues rich, and useless urns,
Marmoreo from the classic tour returns.-
But would ye learn, ye leisure-loving Squires,
How best ye may disgrace your prudent sires;
How soonest soar to fashionable shame,
Be damn'd at once to ruin-and to fame;
By hands of grooms ambitious to be crown'd,
O greatly dare to tread Olympic ground!
What dreams of conquest flush'd Hilario's breast
When the good knight at last retir❜d to rest!
Behold the youth with new-felt rapture mark
Each pleasing prospect of the spacious park,
That park, where beauties undisguis'd engage,
Those beauties less the work of art than age;
In simple state where genuine Nature wears
Her venerable dress of ancient years;
Where all the charms of Chance with Order meet,
The rude, the gay, the graceful, and the great.36
Here aged oaks uprear their branches hoar,
And form dark groves, which Druids might adore ;
With meeting boughs, and deepening to the view,
Here shoots the broad umbrageous avenue:
Here various trees compose a chequer'd scene,
Glowing in gay diversities of
green :
There the full stream through intermingling glades,
Shines a broad lake, or falls in deep cascades:
Nor wants there hazle copse, or beechen lawn,
To cheer with sun or shade the bounding fawn. 40
And see the good old seat, whose Gothic towers Awful emerge from yonder tufted bowers;
Whose rafter'd hall the crowding tenants fed,
And dealt to Age and Want their daily bread :
Where crested knights, with peerless damsels join'd,_
At high and solemn festivals have din'd;
Presenting oft fair Virtue's shining task,
In mystic pageantries, and moral masque.
But vain all ancient praise, or boast of birth,
Vain all the palms of old heroic worth!
At once a bankrupt, and a prosperous heir,
Hilario bets-park, house, dissolve in air.
With antique armor hung, his trophied rooms
Descend to gamesters, prostitutes, and grooms.
He sees his steel-clad sires, and mothers mild,
Who bravely shook the lance, or sweetly smil'd,
All the fair series of the whisker'd race,
Whose pictur'd forms the stately gallery grace,
Debas'd, abus'd, the price of ill-got gold,
To deck some tavern vile, at auctions sold,
The parish wonders at th' unopening door,
The chimnies blaze, the tables groan no more.
Thick weeds around th' untrodden courts arise,
And all the social scene in silence lies.
Himself, the loss politely to repair,
Turns atheist, fidler, highwayman, or player.
At length, the scorn, the shame of Man and God,
Is doom'd to rub the steeds that once he rode.
Ye rival Youths, your golden hopes how vain, Your dreams of thousands on the listed plain | __/
Not more fantastic Sancho's airy course,
When, madly mounted on the magic horse,
He pierc'd heaven's opening sphere with dazzled eyes, And seem'd to soar in visionary skies.
Nor less, I ween, precarious is the meed
Of young adventurers on the Muse's steed;
For Poets have, like you, their destin'd round,
And ours is but a race on classic ground.
Long time, the child of patrimonial ease,
Hippolitus had carv'd sirloins in peace: 6
Had quaff'd secure, unvex'd by toil or wife,
The mild October of a private life:
Long liv'd with calm domestic conquests crown'd,
And kill'd his game on safe paternal ground:
And, deaf to honor's or ambition's call,
With rural spoils adorn'd his hoary hall.
As bland he puff'd the pipe o'er weekly news,
His bosom kindles with sublimer views.
Lo there thy triumphs, Taaffe! thy palms, Portmore!
Tempt him to stake his lands and treasur'd store.
Like a new bruiser on Broughtonic sand,
Amid the lists our hero takes his stand;
Suck'd by the sharper, to the peer a prey,
He rolls his eyes that "witness huge dismay;"
When lo! the chance of one inglorious heat,
Strips him of genial cheer, and snug retreat.
How aukward now he bears disgrace and dirt,
Nor knows the poor's last refuge, to be pert.-
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