behold Jove's now resolv'd to please you all. by Jove I'd cudgel this rebellious race: but 't is with a design only to gain what may their age with plenteous ease maintain. the little drudge does trot about and sweat, Fond Man! what good or beauty can be found in heaps of treasure bury'd under ground? In thy vast barns millions of quarters store, than mine does. Ev'ry baker makes much bread; what then? he's with no more than others fed. Do you within the bounds of nature live, and to agument your own you need not strive. One hundred acres will no less for you your life's whole bus'ness than ten thousand do, But pleasant 't is to take from a great store. What, man! through you're resolved to take no more than I do from a small one? If your will be but a pitcher or a pot to fill. To some great river for it must you go, and of the rapid stream itself, which may th' abundance still, and still the wants does last. The treasures of the gods thou wouldst not spare, but when they're made thine own, they sacred are, and must be kept with rev'rence, as if thou no other use of precious gold didst know, but that of curious pictures, to delight, with the fair stamp, thy virtuoso sight. The only true and genuine use is this, to buy the things which Nature cannot miss without discomfort; oil, and vital bread, and wine, by which the life of Life is fed, and all those few things else by which we live; all that remains is giv'n for thee to give. If cares and troubles, envy, grief, and fear, the bitter fruits be which fair Riches bear, if a new poverty grow out of store, the old plain way, ye Gods! let me be poor. THE DANGER OF PROCASTINATION. incipe, vivendi recte qui prorogat horam, [gone, till the whole stream, which stopp'd him, should be that runs, and as it runs, for ever will run on. Jam cras hesternum consumpsimus, ecce aliud cras egerit hos annos. Our yesterday's to-morrow now is gone, and still a new to-morrow does come on. We by to-morrows draw up all our store, till the exhausted well can yield no more. CLAUDIAN'S OLD MAN OF VERONA. Happy the man who his whole time doth bound within th' enclosure of his little ground: happy the man whom the same humble place (th' hereditary cottage of his race) from his first rising infancy has known, and by degrees sees gently bending down, with natural propension to that earth which both preserv'd his life and gave him birth, Him no false distant lights, by Fortune set, could ever into foolish wand'rings get; he never dangers either saw or fear'd; the dreadful storms at sea he never heard: he never heard the shrill alarms of war, or the worse noises of the lawyer's bar; no change of Consuls marks to him the year; the change of seasons is his calendar: the cold and heat winter and summer shews, a neighb'ring wood, born with himself, he sees, thus health and strength he to' a third age enjoys, and sees a long posterity of boys. About the spacious world let others roam, the voyage, life, is longest made at home. THE AUTHOR'S EPITAPH, UPON HIMSELF, YET ALIVE, BUT WITHDRAWN FROM THE BU- Here, Passenger! beneath this shade, Can you not say he has resign'd Strew roses here, as on his herse, Latin Epitaph on the Author's Tomb in Westminster Abbey. ABRAHAMUS COULEIUS, Anglorum, Pindarus, Flaccus, Maro, Aurea dum volitant latè tua scripta per orbem, |