Thou say'st not only skill is gained,
But genius, too, may be attained,
By studious imitation;
Thy temper mild, thy genius fine,
I'll study till I make them mine
By constant meditation.
The art of pleasing teach me, Garrick,
Thou who reversest odes Pindaric
A second time read o'er ;
Oh could we read thee backwards too,
Last thirty years thou shouldst review,
And charm us thirty more.
If I have thoughts and can't express 'em,
Gibbon shall teach me how to dress 'em
In terms select and terse;
Jones, teach me modesty and Greek ;
Smith, how to think; Burke, how to speak;
And Beauclerk, to converse.
Let Johnson teach me how to place
In fairest light each borrowed grace.
From him I'll learn to write :
Copy his free and easy style,
And, from the roughness of his file,
Grow, like himself, polite.
THOMAS WARTON (JUNR.)
[Born at Basingstoke in 1728; died in Oxford in 1790.
author of the History of English Poetry. He took holy orders; and held the appointment of Professor of Poetry in Oxford, and afterwards of Camden Professor of History, and succeeded Whitehead as Poet Laureate, 1785].
THE PROGRESS OF DISCONTENT.
WHEN, now mature in classic knowledge,
The joyful youth is sent to college,
His father comes, a vicar plain,
At Oxford bred in Anna's reign,
And thus, in form of humble suitor,
Bowing accosts a reverend tutor :
"Sir, I'm a Glostershire divine,
And this my eldest son of nine.
My wife's ambition and my own
Was that this child should wear a gown.
I'll warrant that his good behaviour
Will justify your future favour;
And, for his parts, to tell the truth,
My son's a very forward youth;
Has Horace all by heart-you'd wonder
And mouths out Homer's Greek like thunder.
If you'd examine and admit him,
A scholarship would nicely fit him ;
That he succeeds, 'tis ten to one;
Your vote and interest, Sir!"-'Tis done.
Our pupil's hopes, though twice defeated,
Are with a scholarship completed :
A scholarship but half maintains,
And college rules are heavy chains :
In garret dark he smokes and puns,
A prey to discipline and duns;
And, now intent on new designs,
Sighs for a fellowship-and fines.
When nine full tedious winters passed,
That utmost wish is crowned at last :
But, the rich prize no sooner got,
Again he quarrels with his lot:
"These fellowships are pretty things,-
We live indeed like petty kings:
But who can bear to waste his whole age
Amid the dulness of a college,
Debarred the common joys of life,
And that prime bliss, a loving wife?
Oh! what's a table richly spread,
Without a woman at its head?
Would some snug benefice but fall,
Ye feasts, ye dinners! farewell all !
To offices I'd bid adieu,
Of Dean, Vice-Proes, of Bursar too;
Come, joys that rural quiet yields,
Come, tithes, and house, and fruitful fields!"
Too fond of freedom and of ease
A patron's vanity to please,
Long time he watches, and by stealth,
Each frail incumbent's doubtful health.
At length, and in his fortieth year,
A living drops-two hundred clear!
With breast elate beyond expression,
He hurries down to take possession,
With raptures views the sweet retreat.
"What a convenient house! how neat!
For fuel here's sufficient wood :
Pray God the cellars may be good!
The garden-that must be new planned-
Shall these old-fashioned yew-trees stand?
O'er yonder vacant plot shall rise
The flowery shrub of thousand dyes
Yon wall, that feels the southern ray,
Shall blush with ruddy fruitage gay :
While thick beneath its aspect warm
O'er well-ranged hives the bees shall swarm,
From which, ere long, of golden gleam
Metheglin's luscious juice shall stream.
This awkward hut, o'ergrown with ivy,
We'll alter to a modern privy.
Up yon green slope of hazels trim,
An avenue so cool and dim
Shall to an arbour at the end,
In spite of gout, entice a friend.
My predecessor loved devotion-
But of a garden had no notion."
Continuing this fantastic farce on,
He now commences country parson.
To make his character entire,
He weds a cousin of the squire:
Not over-weighty in the purse,
But many doctors have done worse:
And, though she boasts no charms divine,
Yet she can carye and make birch wine.
Thus fixed, content he taps his barrel,
Exhorts his neighbours not to quarrel;
Finds his churchwardens have discerning
Both in good liquor and good learning;
With tithes his barns replete he sees,
And chuckles o'er his surplice-fees;
Studies to find out latent dues,
And regulates the state of pews;
Rides a sleek mare with purple housing,
To share the monthly club's carousing;
Of Oxford pranks facetious tells,
And-but on Sundays-hears no bells;
Sends presents of his choicest fruit,
And prunes himself each sapless shoot;
Plants cauliflowers, and boasts to rear
The earliest melons of the year;
Thinks alteration charming work is,
Keeps bantam cocks, and feeds his turkeys:
Builds in his copse a favourite bench,
And stores the pond with carp and tench.
But ah! too soon his thoughtless breast
By cares domestic is oppressed;
And a third butcher's bill and brewing
Threaten inevitable ruin :
For children fresh expenses get,
And Dicky now for school is fit.
"Why did I sell my college life,"
He cries, "for benefice and wife?
Return, ye days when endless pleasure
I found in reading, or in leisure!
When calm around the common room
I puffed my daily pipe's perfume;
Rode for a stomach, and inspected,
At annual bottlings, corks selected :
And dined untaxed, untroubled, under
The portrait of our pious Founder !
When impositions were supplied
To light my pipe or soothe my pride!
No cares were then for forward peas,
A yearly-longing wife to please;
My thoughts no christ'ning dinners crossed,
No children cried for buttered toast;
And every night I went to bed
Without a modus in my head!"
Oh! trifling head, and fickle heart!
Chagrined at whatsoe'er thou art;
A dupe to follies yet untried,
And sick of pleasures, scarce enjoyed!
Each prize possessed, thy transport ceases,
And in pursuit alone it pleases.
[Born on 10th November 1728, at Pallas, Ireland, son of a clergyman; died in London, 4 April 1774].
DESCRIPTION OF AN AUTHOR'S BEDCHAMBER.
WHERE the Red Lion, staring o'er the way,
Invites each passing stranger that can pay;
Where Calvert's butt, and Parson's black champagne,
Regale the drabs and bloods of Drury Lane;
There, in a lonely room, from bailiffs snug,
The Muse found Scroggen stretched beneath a rug.
A window patched with paper lent a ray,
That dimly showed the state in which he lay.
The sanded floor that grits beneath the tread,
The humid wall with paltry pictures spread,
The royal game of goose was there in view,
And the twelve rules the royal martyr drew;
The Seasons, framed with listing, found a place,
And brave Prince William showed his lamp-black face.
The morn was cold. He views with keen desire
The rusty grate unconscious of a fire:
With beer and milk arrears the frieze was scored,
And five cracked tea-cups dressed the chimney-board;
A night-cap decked his brows instead of bay,
A cap by night-a stocking all the day.
[Born in Dublin in 1729; died in 1773. Was an actor by profession; com→ posed a farce named Love in a Mist, and various miscellaneous poems].
THE FOX AND THE CAT.
THE fox and the cat, as they travelled one day,
With moral discourses cut shorter the way.
"'Tis great," says the Fox, "to make justice our guide!
"How god-like is mercy!" Grimalkin replied.
Whilst thus they proceeded, a wolf from the wood,
Impatient of hunger, and thirsting for blood,
Rushed forth- -as he saw the dull shepherd asleep--
And seized for his supper an innocent sheep.
"In vain, wretched victim, for mercy you bleat;
When mutton's at hand," says the wolf, "I must eat."
Grimalkin's astonished-the fox stood aghast-
To see the fell beast at his bloody repast.
"What a wretch !" says the cat, "'tis the vilest of brutes
Does he feed upon flesh when there's herbage and roots?
Cries the fox, "While our oaks give us acorns so good,
What a tyrant is this to spill innocent blood!"
Well, onward they marched, and they moralized still,
Till they came where some poultry picked chaff by a mill.
Sly Reynard surveyed them with gluttonous eyes,
And made, spite of morals, a pullet his prize.
A mouse, too, that chanced from her covert to stray,
The greedy Grimalkin secured as her prey.
A spider, that sat in her web on the wall,
Perceived the poor victims, and pitied their fall.
She cried, "Of such murders how guiltless am I !"
So ran to regale on a new-taken fly.
[Born in London, 1731; died at Boulogne, 4 November 1764. He entered the church, with very few qualifications for supporting the clerical character. His extreme liking for the theatre prompted his first published poem, The Ros ciad, which excited great public attention and applause. Another popular topic, the English prejudice against Scotchmen, was embodied in a later satire, The Prophecy of Famine, a Scots Pastoral. Soon afterwards he discarded the clerical habit; and figured as a strong party-politician on the side of Wilkes, and as a man of pleasure. It was in visiting Wilkes in France that he caught the illness which brought him to an early grave. Churchill was a man of much generous impulse; and the reader can still enjoy the vigour of many passages in his poems, although their obsolete subject-matter, combined with their length, is a bar to general perusal now-a-days.]
THE JOURNEY.
(A FRAGMENT.)
SOME of my friends (for friends I must suppose
All who, not daring to appear my foes,
Feign great good-will, and, not more full of spite
Than full of craft, under false colours fight)
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