STANZAS TO MR. BENTLEY.'

A FRAGMENT.

N filent gaze the tuneful choir among,
Half pleased, half blushing, let the Muse

admire,

While Bentley leads her fifter-art along, And bids the pencil answer to the lyre.

See, in their course, each tranfitory thought
Fix'd by his touch a lafting effence take;
Each dream, in fancy's airy colouring wrought
To local fymmetry and life awake!

The tardy rhymes that used to linger on,
To cenfure cold, and negligent of fame,
In fwifter measures animated run,

And catch a luftre from his genuine flame.

Ah! could they catch his strength, his easy grace,
His quick creation, his unerring line;
The energy of Pope they might efface,

And Dryden's harmony submit to mine.

But not to one in this benighted age
Is that diviner inspiration giv'n,

That burns in Shakespeare's or in Milton's page, pomp and prodigality of heav'n.

The

As when confpiring in the diamond's blaze,
The meaner gems that fingly charm the fight,
Together dart their intermingled rays,

And dazzle with a luxury of light.

Enough for

me, if to some feeling breast

My lines a fecret fympathy "impart;"

And as their pleasing influence " flows confest,”

A figh of soft reflection "heaves the heart."

*.

SKETCH OF HIS OWN CHARACTER.

WRITTEN IN 1761, AND FOUND IN ONE OF

HIS POCKET-BOOKS.

No

200 poor for a bribe, and too proud to importune;

He had not the method of making a fortune:

Could love, and could hate, fo was thought

fomewhat odd;

very great wit, he believed in a God:

A post or a pension he did not defire,

But left church and state to Charles Townshend and Squire.

To start from short flumbers, and wifh for the morning

To close my dull eyes when I fee it returning;

Sighs fudden and frequent, looks ever dejected

Words that fteal from my tongue, by no meaning

connected!

Ah! fay, fellow-fwains, how these symptoms befell me? They fmile, but reply not-Sure Delia will tell me!