Redeems the audacious folly of the rest,

Truth sacrific'd, and history made a jest.

Let this, Ye Cruscans,* if your heads be made "Of penetrable stuff," let this persuade

Your husky tribes their wanderings to restrain;
Nor hope what taste and Mason fail'd to gain.

70

(e) Then let your style be brief, your meaning clear, Nor, like Lorenzo,† tire the labouring ear

IMITATIONS.

(e) Est brevitate opus, ut currat sententia, neu se Impediat verbis lassas onerantibus aures;

Et sermone opus est modo tristi, sæpe jocoso.

Ye Cruscans!

NOTES.

O voi, che della CRUSCA vi chiamate
Come quei che farina non avendo

DI QUELLA a tutto pasto vi saziate !—

+ Lorenzo. "A lamentable tragedy by Della "Crusca, mixed full of pleasant mirth.” The house laughed a-good at it; but Mr. Harris cried sadly. Here is another instance, if it were wanted, of the bad effects of prostitute applause. Could Mr. Harris, if his mind had not been previously warped by the eternal puffs of Bell and his followers, have supposed, for

With a wild waste of words; sound without sense, 75
And all the florid glare of impotence.

Still with your characters your language change,
From grave to gay, as nature dictates range;
Now droop in all the plaintiveness of woe,

Now in glad numbers light and airy flow;
Now shake the stage with guilt's alarming tone,
And make the aching bosom all your own;

Now

But I sing in vain; from first to last,
Your joy is fustian, and your grief bombast:
Rhetoric has banish'd reason; kings and queens

Vent in hyperboles their royal spleens ;
Guardsmen in metaphors express their hopes,
And maidens in white linen howl in tropes.

80

85

(f) Reverent I greet the bards of other days; Blest be your names! and lasting be your praise! 90

IMITATIONS.

(f) Illi scripta quibus comoedia prisca viris est Hoc stabant, hoc sunt imitandi

NOTES.

a moment, that a knack of stringing together "hoar "hills" and "ripling rills," and "red skies glare” and “thin, thin air," qualified a man for writing tragedy!

From nature's varied face ye wisely drew,

And following ages own'd the copies true.

O! had our sots, who rhyme with headlong haste,
And think reflection still a foe to taste,

But brains your pregnant scenes to understand, 95

And give us truth, tho' but at second hand,
'Twere something yet! But no; they never look-
Shall souls of fire, they cry, a tutor brook?
Forbid it inspiration! Thus your pain

Is void, and ye have liv'd for them in vain ;
(g) In vain for Crusca, and his skipping school,
Cobbe, Reynolds, Andrews, and that Nobler Fool;
Who nought but Laura's* tinkling trash admire,
And the mad jangle of Matilda's* lyre.

100

Hermogenes unquam legit, nec simius iste,

Nil præter Calvum doctus cantare Catullum.

NOTES.

* Laura's tinkling trash, &c.-I had amassed a world of this " tinkling trash” for the behoof of the reader; but having fortunately for him, mislaid it, and not being disposed to undertake again the drudg

(h) But Crusca still has merit, and may claim No humble station in the ranks of fame;

105

IMITATIONS.

(h) At magnum fecit, quod verbis Græca Latinis Miscuit.

NOTES.

ery of wading through Mr. Bell's collections, I can only offer him the little that occurs to my memory. Of this little, the merits must be shared among Mrs. Robinson, Mrs. Cowley, and Mr. Merry.

"Et vos, O Lauri, carpam, et te proxima Myrte, "Sic positæ quoniam suaves miscetis odores.'

"O let me fly

"Where Greenland darkness drinks the beamy "sky!"

"But oh! beware how thou dost fling
"Thy hot pulse o'er the quivering string!!!"

"Pluck from their dark and rocky bed
"The yelling demons of the deep,
"Who soaring o'er the comet's head,

"The bosom of the welkin sweep.'

He taught us first the language to refine,

To crowd with beauties every sparkling line;

NOTES.

"And when the jolly full moon laughs, "In her clear zenith to behold

"The envious stars withdraw their gleams of gold, "'Tis to thy health she stooping quaffs

"The sapphire cup that fairy zephyrs bring!!!" On considering these and the preceding lines, I was tempted to indulge a wish that the Blue Stocking club would issue an immediate order to Mr. Bell to examine the cells of Bedlam. Certainly, if an accurate transcript were made from the "darken'd walls" once or twice a quarter, an ALBUM might be presented to the fashionable world, more poetical, and far more rational, than any they have lately honoured with their applause.

<< Why does thy stream of sweetest song
"Foam on the mountain's murmuring side,
"Or through the vocal covert glide!

"I heard a tuneful phantom in the wind,
"I saw it watch the rising moon afar,
"Wet with the weeping of the twilight star.

"The pilgrim who with tearful eye shall view
"The moon's wan lustre in the midnight dew,
"Sooth'd by her light.-