DISTINCTIONS. General desire of.

If at his title T

— had dropt his quill,
T might have pass'd for a great genius still
But T, Alas! (excuse him if you can)
Is now a scribbler, who was once a man.
Imperious, some a classic fame demand,
For heaping up with a laborious hand
A wagon load of meanings for one word,
While A's depos'd, and B with pomp restor❜d.
Some for renown on scraps of learning doat,
And think they grow immortal as they quote.
To patchwork learn'd quotations are allied;
Both strive to make our poverty our pride.

On glass how witty is a noble peer!
Did ever diamond cost a man so dear?

DOEG. Character of.

Doeg, though without knowing how or why,

Made still a blundering kind of melody;

Young.

Spurr'd boldly on, and dash'd through thick and thin,
Through sense and nonsense, never out nor in;
Free from all meaning, whether good or bad,
And, in one word, heroically mad :

He was too warm on picking-work to dwell;
But faggotted his notions as they fell,

And, if they rhym'd and rattled, all was well;
Spiteful he is not, though he wrote a satire,
For still there goes some thinking to ill nature;
He needs no more than birds and beasts to think;
All his occasions are to eat and drink.

If he call rogue and rascal from a garret,
He means you no more mischief than a parrot;
The words for friends and foe alike were made
To fetter them in verse, is all his trade.

For almonds he 'll cry whore to his own mother;
And call young Absalom king David's brother.
Let him be gallows-free by my consent,
And nothing suffer since he nothing meant;
Hanging supposes human soul and reason;
This animal's below committing treason.

DOVER CLIFF. Description of.

Dryden

Come on, Sir; here's the place,-stand still.-How fear

ful

And dizzy 'tis to cast one's eyes so low!

The crows, and coughs, that wing the midway air,
Show scarce so gross as beetles: Half way down
Hangs one that gather's samphire: dreadful trade!
Methinks he seems no bigger than his head:
The fishermen, that walk upon the beach,
Appear like mice; and yon tall anchoring bark,
Diminish'd to her cock; her cock, a buoy
That on the unnumber'd idle pebbles chafes,
Almost too small for sight; the murmuring surge
Cannot be heard so high:-I'll look no more;
Lest my brain turn, and the deficient sight
Topple down headlong.

Shakspeare.

Methought, that I had broken from the Tower,
And was embark'd to cross to Burgundy;
And in my company, my brother Glo'ster,
Who from my cabin tempted me to walk

Upon the hatches; thence we look'd towards England,
And cited up a thousand heavy times,

During the wars of York and Lancaster

That had befall'n us. As we pac'd along

Upon the giddy footing of the hatches,

Methought that Glo'ster stumbled; and, in falling,

Struck me, that thought to stay him, overboard,
Into the tumbling billows of the main.

O Lord; methought what pain it was to drown!
What dreadful noise of waters in mine ears!
What sights of ugly death within mine eyes!
Methought I saw a thousand fearful wrecks;
A thousand men, that fishes gnaw'd upon
Wedges of gold, great anchors, heaps of pearl,
Inestimable stones, unvalued jewels,

All scatter'd in the bottom of the sea.

Some lay in dead men's skulls; and, in those holes
Where eyes did once inhabit, there were crept
(As 'twere in scorn of eyes,) reflecting gems,
That woo'd the slimy bottom of the deep,
And mock'd the dead bones that lay scatter'd by.
-And often did I strive

To yield the ghost; but still the envious flood
Kept in my soul and would not let it forth
To seek the empty, vast, and wand'ring air;
But smother'd it within my panting bulk,
Which almost burst to belch it in the sea.

-My dream was lengthened after life;
O, then began the tempest to my soul!
I pass'd, methought, the melancholy flood,
With that grim ferryman which poets write of,
Unto the kingdom of perpetual night.

The first that there did greet my stranger soul
Was my great father-in-law, renowned Warwick,
Who cry'd aloud,-What scourge for perjury!
Can this dark monarch afford false Clarence?
And so he vanish'd: Then came wand'ring by
A shadow like an angel, with bright hair
Dabbled in blood, and he shriek'd out aloud,—
Clarence is come-false, fleeting, perjur'd Clarence,—

That stabb'd me in the field of Tewksbury ;
Seize on him, furies, take him to your torments!
With that, methought, a legion of foul fiends
Environ'd me, and howled in mine ears
Such hideous cries, that, with the very noise,
I tremblingly wak'd, and, for a season after,
Could not believe but that I was in hell;
Such terrible impression made my dream.

DREAM.

Shakspeare.

While o'er my limbs sleep's soft dominion spread,
What though my soul fantastic measures trod
O'er fairy fields; or mourn'd along the gloom
Of pathless woods; or down the craggy steep
Hurl'd headlong, swam with pain the mantled pool;
Or scal'd the cliff, or danc'd on hollow winds,
With antic shapes wild natives of the brain?
Her ceaseless flight, though devious, speaks her nature
Of subtler essence than the trodden clod ;-

Of human weal, heaven husbands all events,

Dull sleep instructs, nor sport vain dreams in vain. Young.
DREAM. The Soldier's.

Our bugles sang truce for the night cloud had lower'd,
And the sentinel stars set their watch in the sky;
And thousands had sunk on the ground overpower'd,
The weary to sleep, and the wounded to die.
When reposing that night on my pallet of straw,
By the wolf-scaring faggot that guarded the slain;
At the dead of the night a sweet vision I saw,
And thrice e'er the morning I dreamt it again.
Methought from the battle-field's dreadful array
Far, far I had roam'd on a desolate track;
'Twas autumn-and sunshine arose on the way

To the home of my fathers that welcom'd me back.

1 flew to the pleasant fields, travers'd so oft

In life's morning march, when my bosom was young; I heard my own mountain goats bleating aloft,

And knew the sweet strain that the corn-reapers sung. Then pledged we the wine-cup, and fondly I swore, From my home and my weeping friends never to part, My little one's kiss'd me a thousand times o'er,

And my wife sobb'd aloud in her fullness of heart. Stay, stay with us-rest, thou art weary and worn; And fain was their war-broken soldier to stay- « But sorrow return'd with the dawning of morn,

And the voice in my dreaming ear melted away.

DREAMS. Waking.

Our waking dreams are fatal: how I dreamt
Of things impossible! (could sleep do more?)
Of joys perpetual in perpetual change!
Of stable pleasures on the tossing wave!
Eternal sunshine in the storms of life!
How richly were my noon-tide trances hung
With gorgeous tapestries of pictur'd joys!
Joy behind joy, in endless perspective!
Till at Death's toll, whose restless iron tongue
Calls daily for his millions at a meal:
Starting, I woke, and found myself undone !
Where now my frenzy's pompous furniture!
The cobwebb'd cottage with its ragged wall
Of mould'ring mud, is royalty to me!
The spider's thread is cable to man's tie
On earthly bliss; it breaks at every breeze.

DRINKING.

Frequent and full, the dry divan

Close in firm circle, and set, ardent, in

Campbell.

Young.