Let Majesty your first attention summon, ADDRESS, SPOKEN BY MISS FONTENELLE, ON HER BENEfit-night, decEMBER 4, 1795, AT THE THEATRE, DUMFRIES. STILL anxious to secure your partial favor, Calling the storms to bear him o'er a guilty land!" I could no more- askance the creature eyeing, D'ye think, said I, this face was made for crying? I'll laugh, that's poz-nay more, the world shall know it; And so, your servant! gloomy Master poet! Firm as my creed, Sir, 'tis my fix'd belief, That so much laughter's so much life enjoy'd. Thou man of crazy care and ceaseless sigh, Thou other man of care, the wretch in love, Who long with jiltish arts and airs hast strove: Who, as the boughs all temptingly project, Measur'st in desperate thought-a rope-thy neckOr, where the bleeting cliff o'erhangs the deep, Peerest to meditate the healing leap; Would'st thou be cur'd, thou silly, moping elf? To sum up all, be merry, I advise ; FRAGMENT, INSCRIBED TO THE RIGHT HON. C. J. FOX. How wisdom and folly meet, mix, and unite; How virtue and vice blend their black and their white, How genius, th' illustrious father of fiction, Confounds rule and law, reconciles contradiction I sing: If these mortals, the critics, should bustle, I care not, not I, let the critics go whistle. But now for a Patron, whose name and whose glory At once may illustrate and honor my story. Thou first of our orators, first of our wits; Yet whose parts and acquirements seem mere lucky bits; With knowledge so vast, and with judgment so strong, No man with the half of 'em e'er went far wrong; For using thy name offers fifty excuses. Good L-d, what is man! for simple as he looks, All in all he's a problem must puzzle the devil. On his one ruling passion sir Pope hugely labors, That, like th' old Hebrew walking-switch, eats up its neighbors: Mankind are his show-box-a friend, would you know him? Pull the string-ruling passion the picture will show him. What pity, in rearing so beauteous a system, One trifling particular, truth should have miss'd him; VOL. IL-L Some sort all our qualities each to its tribe, And think human nature they truly describe; Have you found this, or t' other? there's more in the wind, As by one drunken fellow his comrades you'll find. INSCRIPTION FOR AN ALTAR TO INDEPENDENCE, AT KERROUGHTRY, THE SEAT OF MR. HERON, WRITTEN IN SUMMER, 1795. Thou of an independent mind, Virtue alone who dost revere, Thy own reproach alone dost fear, Edina! Scotia's darling seat! All hail thy palaces and tow'rs, Where once beneath a monarch's feet Sat legislation's sov'reign pow'rs! From marking wildly-scatter'd flow'rs, As on the banks of Ayr I stray'd, And singing, lone, the ing'ring hours, I shelter in thy honor'd shade. II. Here wealth still swells the golden tide, III. Thy sons, Edina, social, kind Or modest merit's silent claim; |