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(The playthings of the child.)-O, be it mine,
To bring, whene'er I tread the courts divine,
What, great Messala! thy degenerate heir,
From his great charger, cannot offer there,
Justice to man, essentially combined
With piety to god, in the pure mind;

The heart's devout recesses; the clear breast,
With generous honour's glowing stamp imprest,
And Heaven will hear the humble prayer I make,
Though all my offering be a barley cake.

It is pleasing to observe with what judgment Horace has adapted a similar thought to the plain understanding of his village maid:

“Immunis aram si tetigit manus

"Non sumptuosa blandior hostia
"Mollibit aversos penates

"Farre pio et saliente mica."

Seneca too says well, and Persius probably had it in his thoughts, "Nec in victimis, licet opimæ sint, auroque præfulgeant, deorum est honos; sed piá et rectâ voluntate venerantium: itaque boni etiam farre ac fictili religiosi sunt." &c.

VER. 122. From his great charger, &c.] It is extraordinary that Brewster should confound the lanx with the acerra, and translate it censer. "The lanx," he 66 says, was a large censer, appropriated to the rich-sometimes the rich made use of the acerra also, a little censer belonging more particularly to the poor." As many mistakes as words; but Brewster seems to have rarely looked beyond Bayle for his criticism; and sometimes contents himself with Dryden.

"The masnihers close of the 2 satire, tole Sigad 4 Lord Chatham, which one how in tit.

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SATIRE III.

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SATIRE III.

Argument.

This Satire opens not unhappily. A professor of the Stoick school abruptly enters the bed-room of his pupils, whom he finds asleep at mid-day. Their confusion at this detection, their real indolence amidst an affected ardour for study, are laid open, and the fatal consequences of such thoughtless conduct beautifully illustrated by apt allusions to the favourite topicks of the Forch.

The whole of this Satire manifests an earnest desire to reclaim the youthful nobility from their idle and vicious habits.

The preceptor, after a brief ebullition of contempt, points out the evils to which the neglect of philosophy (i. e. the study of virtue) will expose them, and overthrows the objections which they raise against the necessity of severe application, on account of their birth and fortune. In a sublime and terrible apostrophe, he pourtrays the horrors of that late remorse which must afflict the vicious when they contemplate the fallen state to which the neglect of wisdom has consigned them. He then describes, in a lighter tone, the defects of his own education, and shews that the persons whom he addresses are without this apology for their errors; he points out with admirable brevity and force, the proper pursuits of a well-regulated mind, and teaches them to despise the scorn of the vulgar, and the rude buffoonery of those who make their wantonness their ignorance : lastly, he introduces a lively apologue of a glutton, who, in spite of advice, perseveres in his intemperance till he becomes its victim: concluding with an apposite application of the fable (more Stoicorum) to a diseased mind. The Satire and its moral may be fitly summed up in the solemn injunction of a wiser man than the Schools ever produced :-" But WISDOM is above all; therefore get WISDOM."

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