From neighbour's glass, with reeking lip, With teeth a huge bone gnawing; The plate with vary'd meats high pil'd, While meat 'twixt teeth fast sticking, With fork your grinders picking. order to shave his son, whose physiognomy looked as if it had been lathered with pink instead of white suds.-Carving with your own knife and fork; helping to sauce with your own spoon, licking your fingers, and expressing by the greedy look of the eyes, the ravenous propensity of the stomach, may be ranked among those actions which disgrace the table, and it has even come within the knowledge of the writer, to observe a person at his own house lengthen out the grace before meat, in order to fix upon the particular part of the viand most acceptable to his paiate, which he has instantly notified to the company on concluding his benediction in order to prevent any other person present from bearing off the darling prize. Or when you eat, o'er plate to stoop, Since you for others scorn to care, If round the board fair dames you view, If civil you wou'd hand a plate, Your elbow thrust 'gainst neighbour's pate, L'ENVOY OF THE POET. Shun ev'ry act which decency disdains, F If heedless of this caution, ne'er attains, THE POET'S CHORUS TO FOOLS. Come, trim the boat, row on each Rara Avis, Crowds flock to man my Stultifera Navis. For gold he lives-for gold he sighs, The wretch for want of comfort dies, In life no friend, in death no tear, L'ENVOY OF THE POET. Gold is by Avarice misunderstood, THE POET'S CHORUS TO FOOLS. Come, trim the boat, row on each Rara Avis, Crowds flock to man my Stultifera Navis. * Abbraccia tal volta la fortuna coloro, che vuol poi affegare. With doting eyes he counts his store, But ah! his mind's not cheerful! Now coveting one hundred more, Of theft for ever fearful *. What others give, what others spend, No joys his life affording. He never feels that heavenly thrill, * It is the extraordinary feature of avarice, to toil incessantly for the attainment of that, which, when procured, never affords it the smallest gratification, for we may say with Horace; Quærit et inventis miser abstinet, ac timet uti. and in like manner is avarice incessantly punished for the ills which it inflicts on others, for " In nullum avarus bonus est, in se pessimus." In Dodsley's collection is a beautiful Fable of the Sparrow and the Diamond, well calculated to display the extent of this vice; and the moral of which is admirably adapted to the subject of the present Section. |