Or the debating merchants share the prey,
And various limbs to various marts convey?
Thro' his firm skull what steel its way can win?
What forceful engine can fubdue his skin ?
Fly far, and live; tempt not his matchless might ;
The braveft fhrink to cowards in his fight;

* The rafheft dare not roufe him up: Who then
Shall turn on Me, among the fons of men?

Am I a debtor? Haft thou ever heard
Whence come the gifts that are on Me conferr'd?
My lavish fruit a thousand vallies fills,

And Mine the herds, that graze a thousand hills:
Earth, fea, and air, All nature is my own;
And ftars and fun are duft beneath my throne.
And dar'ft Thou with the World's great Father vie,
Thou, who doft tremble at my creature's eye?

At full my huge Leviathan fhall rise,

Boaft all his ftrength, and spread his wond'rous fize.
Who, great in arms, e'er stripp'd his shining mail,
Or crown'd his triumph with a fingle scale?
Whose heart fuftains him to draw near? + Behold,
Destruction yawns; his fpacious jaws unfold,
And, marshal'd round the wide expanfe, disclose
Teeth edg'd with death, and crowding rows on rows:
What hideous fangs on either fide arife!

And what a deep abyfs between them lies!

*This alludes to a custom of this creature, which is, when fated

with fish, to come afhore and fleep among the reeds.

The crocodile's mouth is exceeding wide. When he gapes, fays Pliny, fit totum os. Martial fays to his old woman,

Cùm comparata ritibus tuis ora

Niliacus babet crocodilus angufta.

So that the expreffion there is barely just.

Mete

Mete with thy lance, and with thy plummet found,
The one how long, the other how profound.

His bulk is charg'd with such a furious soul,
That clouds of fmoke from his spread noftrils roll,
As from a furnace; and, when rous'd his ire,
* Fate iffues from his jaws in streams of fire.
The rage of tempefts, and the roar of feas,
Thy terror, this thy great Superior please ;
Strength on his ample shoulder fits in state;
His well-join'd limbs are dreadfully complete ;
His flakes of folid flesh are flow to part;
As fteel his nerves, as adamant his heart,

When, late awak'd, he rears him from the floods,
And, ftretching forth his ftature to the clouds,
Writhes in the fun aloft his fcaly height,
And strikes the distant hills with tranfient light,
Far round are fatal damps of terror spread,
The Mighty fear, nor blush to own their dread.

+ Large is his front; and, when his burnish'd eyes
Lift their broad lids, the morning seems to rise.

In

This too is nearer truth than at first view may be imagined. The crocodile, say the naturalifts, lying long under water, and being there forced to hold its breath, when it emerges, the breath long represt is hot, and bursts out so violently, that it resembles fire and fmoke. The horfe fuppreffes not his breath by any means fo long, neither is he fo fierce and animated; yet the most correct of poets ventures to use the fame metaphor concerning him.

Collecumque premens volvit fub naribus ignem.

By this and the foregoing note I would caution against a falfe opinion of the eastern boldness, from paffages in them ill underftood.

+ His eyes are like the eye-lids of the morning. I think this gives us as great an image of the thing it would exprefs, as can enter the

thought

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In vain may death in various fhapes invade,
The fwift-wing'd arrow, the defcending blade;
His naked breast their impotence defies 3

The dart rebounds, the brittle fauchion flies,
Shut in himself, the war without he hears,
Safe in the tempeft of their rattling spears;
The cumber'd strand their wasted vollies ftrow ;
His fport, the rage and labour of the foe.
His paftimes like a cauldron boil the flood,
And blacken ocean with the rifing mud;
The billows feel him, as he works his way;'
His hoary footsteps shine along the fea;

The foam high-wrought, with white divides the green,
And distant failors point where death has been.

thought of man. It is not improbable that the Egyptians stole their hieroglyphic for the morning, which is the crocodile's eye, from this paffage, though no commentator, I have seen, mentions it. It is easy to conceive how the Egyptians should be both readers and admirers of the writings of Mofes, whom I suppose the author of this poem.

I have obferved already that three or four of the creatures here defcribed are Egyptian; the two last are notoriously so, they are the river-horse and the crocodile, thofe celebrated inhabitants of the Nile; and on these two it is that our author chiefly dwells. It would have been expected from an author more remote from that river than Mofes, in a catalogue of creatures produced to magnify their Creator, to have dwelt on the two largest works of his hand, viz. the elephant and the whale. This is fo natural an expectation, that fome commentators have rendered behemoth and leviathan, the elephant and whale, though the descriptions in our author will not admit of it; but Mofes being, as we may well fuppofe, under an immediate terror of the bippopotamos and crocodile, from their daily mischiefs and ravages around him, it is very accountable why he hould permit them to take place.

His like earth bears not on her fpacious face:
Alone in nature ftands his dauntless race,
For utter ignorance of fear renown'd,
In wrath he rolls his baleful eye around :
Makes ev'ry fwoln, disdainful heart, fubfide,
And holds dominion o'er the fons of pride.

Then the Chaldean eas'd his lab'ring breast,
With full conviction of his crime oppreft.

"Thou can't accomplish All things, Lord of Might: "And ev'ry thought is naked to Thy fight.

"But, oh! Thy ways are wonderful, and lie

Beyond the deepest reach of mortal eye.

"Oft have I heard of Thine Almighty Pow'r;
"But never faw Thee till this dreadful hour.
"O'erwhelm'd with fhame, the Lord of life I fee,
"Abhor myself, and give my
foul to Thee.

"Nor fhall my weakness tempt Thine anger more:
"Man is not made to question, but adore.”

OCEAN.

O CE A N. OCEA

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