Sure fate of all who love to dwell
In wisdom's solitary cell:

So much a clown in gait and laugh,
He wanted but a scrip and staff;
And such a beard as hung in candles
Down to Diogenes's sandals,

And planted all his chin quite thick,
To be like him a dirty cynic.

Apollo, who, to do him right,
Was always perfectly polite,
Chagrin'd to see his son and heir
Dishonor'd by his gape and stare,
Resolved to send him to Versailles,
To learn a minuet of Marseilles :
But Venus, who had deeper reading
In all the mysteries of breeding,
Observed to Phœbus, that the name
Of fop and Frenchman was the same.
French manners, were, she said, a thing which
Those grave misguided fools, the English,
Had, in despite of common sense,
Mistook for manly excellence;

By which their nation strangely sunk is,
And half their nobles turned to monkies.
She thought it better, as the case was,
To send young Genius to the graces:
Those sweet divinities, she said,
Would form him in the myrtle shade;
And teach him more, in half an hour,
Than Lewis or his Pompadour.

Phoebus agreed-the graces took Their noble pupil from his book,

Allow'd him at their side to rove
Along their own domestic grove,.
Amidst the sound of melting lyres,
Soft-wreathing smiles, and young desires :
And when confined by winds or showers
Within their amaranthine bowers,
They taught him with address and skill
To shine at ombre and quadrille ;
Or let him read an ode or play,
To wing the gloomy hour away.

Genius was charm'd-divinely placed
"Midst beauty, wit, politeness, taste;
And, having every hour before him
The finest models of decorum,
His manners took a fairer ply;
Expression kindled in his eye;
His gesture, disengaged, and clean,
Set off a fine majestic mein;
And gave his happy power to please
The noblest elegance of ease.

Thus, by the discipline of art, Genius shone out in head and heart. Form'd from his first fair bloom of youth, By Temperance and her sister Truth, He knew the scientific page

Of

every clime and every age;

And learn'd with critic-skill to rein

The wildness of his native vein;

That critic-skill, though cool and chaste,
Refined beneath the eye of Taste;
His unforbidding mien and air,
His awkward gait, his haughty stare,

Q

And every stain that wit debases,
Were melted off among the graces;
And Genius rose, in form and mind,
The first, the greatest of mankind.

NOBILITY.

A MORAL ESSAY.

BY MR. CAWTHORN.

'TIS said that ere fair virtue learn'd to sigh, The crest to libel, and the star to lie,

The poet glow'd with all his sacred fire,
And bade each virtue live along the lyre:
Led humble science to the blest abode,
And raised the hero till he shone a god.

Our modern bards, by some unhappy fate,
Condemn'd to flatter every fool of state,
Have oft, regardless of their heaven-born flame,
Enthroned proud greatness in the shrine of fame ;
Bestow'd on vice the wreaths that virtue wove,
And paid to Nero what was due to Jove.

Yet hear, ye great! whom birth and titles crown With alien worth, and glories not your own; Hear me affirm, that all the vain can show, All Anstis boasts of, and all kings bestow, All envy wishes, all ambition hails,

All that supports St. James's, and Versailles,

Can never give distinction to a knave,

Or make a lord whom vice has made a slave.

In elder times, ere heralds yet enroll❜d The bleeding ruby in a field of gold, Or infant language pain'd the tender ear With sess, bend, argent, chev'ron, and saltier; "Twas he alone the bay's bright verdure wore, Whose strength subdued the lion or the boar; Whose art from rocks could call the mellowing grain, And give the vine to laugh along the plain; Or, tracing nature in her moral plan, Explored the savage till he found the man. For him the rustic hind, and village maid, Stripp'd the gay spring of half its bloom and shade; With annual dances graced the daisy-mead, And sung his triumphs on the oaten reed; Or, fond to think him sprung from yonder sky, Rear'd the turf fane, and bade the victim die. In Turkey, sacred as the Koran's page, These simple manners live through every age: The humblest swain, if virtue warms the man, May rise the genius of the grave Divan; And all but Othman's race, the only proud, Fall with their sires, and mingle with the crowd.

For three campaigns Kaprouli's hand display'd
The Turkish crescent on thy walls, Belgrade!
Imperial Egypt own'd him for her lord,

And Austria. trembled if he touch'd the sword:
Yet all his glories set within his grave,
One son a janizary, one a slave.
Politer courts, ingenious to extend

The father's glories, bid his pomp desccnd ;

With strange good nature give his worthless son
The very laurels that his virtue won;
And with the same appellatives adorn
A living hero, and a sot unborn.

Hence, without blushing, (say whate'er we can)
We more regard th' escutcheon than the man ;
Yet, true to nature and her instincts, prize
The hound or spaniel as his talent lies:
Careless from what paternal blood he rose,
We value Bowman only for his nose.

Say, should you see a generous steed outfly The swiftest zephyr of th' autumnal sky, Would you at once his ardent wishes kill, Give him the dogs, or chain him to a mill, Because his humbler fathers, grave and slow, Clean'd half the jakes of Houndsditch or Soho ?

In spite of all that in his grandsire shone, An horse's worth is, like a king's, his own. If in the race, when lengthening shouts inspire His bold compeers, and set their hearts on fire, He seems regardless of th' exulting sound, And scarcely drags his legs along the ground; What will 't avail that, sprung from heavenly seed, His great forefathers swept th' Arabian mead; Or, dress'd in half an empire's purple, bore The weight of Xerxes on the Caspian shore? I grant, my lord! your ancestors outshine. All that e'er graced the Ganges, or the Rhine Born to protect, to rouse those godlike fires That genius kindles, or fair fame inspires; O'er humble life to spread indulgent ease, To give the veins to flow without disease;"