And from the powerful arms of Sloth get free Fis rising from the dead-alas!—it cannot be ! 'Would you then learn to dissipate the band Here to mankind indulg'd; control desire; Let godlike Reason, from her sovereign throne, Speak the commanding word, I will!—and it is done. "Heavens! can you then thus waste, in shameful wise, Your few important days of trial here? Heirs of eternity! yborn to rise Through endless states of being, still more near Can you renounce a fortune so sublime? Such glorious hopes, your backward steps to steer, And roll, with vilest brutes, through mud and slime? No! no! your heaven-touch'd hearts disdain the sordid crime !" "Enough! enough!" they cried. Strait from the crowd Glad warbling through the vales, in their new being gay. But far the greater part with rage inflam'd, Your barbarous hearts? Is happiness a crime? "Ye impious wretches!" (quoth the knight in wrath), The pure quick streams are marshy puddles found; Snakes, adders, toads, each loathsome creature crawls around And here and there, on trees by lightning scath'd, Or in fresh gore and recent murder bath'd, These by distemper'd blood to madness stung, Had doom'd themselves; whence oft, when night con troll'd The world, returning hither their sad spirits howl'd. Attended by a glad acclaiming train Of those he rescued had from gaping hell, Then turn'd the knight, and to his hall again There left through delves and deserts dire to yell; But, ah! their scornèd day of grace was past; Before them stretch'd, bare, comfortless, and vast, There nor trim field nor lively culture smil'd, Nor waving shade was seen, nor mountain fair; But sands abrupt on sands lay loosely pil'd, Thro' which they floundering toil'd with painful care, Whilst Phoebus smote, them sore, and fir'd the cloudless air. Then, varying to a joyless land of bogs, The sadden'd country a gray waste appear'd, Or else the ground by piercing Caurus sear'd, Was jagg'd with frost, or heap'd with glazed snow: Gaunt Beggary, and Scorn, with many hell-hounds moe Direful to see! an heart-appalling sight! Meantime foul scurf and blotches him defile, And dogs, where'er he went, still barked all the while. The other was a fell despightful fiend: Hell holds none worse in baleful bower below; Such were the twain that off drove this ungodly fry. E'en so thro' Brentford town, a town of mud, The filthy beasts, that never chew the cud, Still grunt, and squeak, and sing their troublous song Ne ever find they rest from their unresting foue. Stories by Sir Richard Steele. NOW FIRST COLLECTED. THESE stories, with the exception of two, compose the entire set contributed by this great master of character and sentiment to the Tatler, Spectator, and Guardian. They are remarkable for going to the heart of their subjects with a comprehensive brevity; and are just such stories as a man might tell over his wine to a party of friends. Addison's stories are of a more fanciful sort, and more elegant in the style; some of them are charming; but they are pieces of writing-these are relations. They have all the warmth as well as brevity of unpremeditated accounts, given as occasion called them forth. Steele, indeed, may be said to have always talked, rather than written; and hence the beauties as well as defects of his style, which is apt to be too carelessly colloquial. Steele, like Fielding, Smollett, Goldsmith-in fact, like almost all our most entertaining wits and novelists, not excepting (on a great scale) Sir Walter Scott himself-was an impulsive and imprudent man, not attentive enough to his outlays, and too sanguine about his income. He warranted, perhaps, the remonstrances of his staider friend Addison; and was more touched than comforted by them, from feeling that they were useless. The remonstrances (if they were of the harsh and practical nature they are said to have been), would have come with less ungraciousness from a more genial and generous man; that is to say, supposing such a man would have thought them advisable. Objections to men like Steele come indeed with grace from none but |