LOVESY, PRINTER,

PROMENADE, CHELTENHAM.

SELECTIONS FOR COMPOSITION.

WEDNESDAY, February 4.

Into Latin Elegiacs.

Ar Mary's tomb, sad sacred place,
The Virtues shall their vigils keep;
And every Muse, and every Grace
In solemn state shall ever weep.
The future, pious, mournful fair,
Oft as the rolling years return,
With fragrant wreaths and flowing hair
Shall visit her distinguished urn.
For her the wise and great shall mourn,
When late records her deeds repeat;
Ages to come, and men unborn,

Shall bless her name, and sigh her fate.
Fair Albion shall, with faithful trust,
Her holy Queen's sad relics guard;
Till Heaven awakes the precious dust,

And gives the Saint her full reward.—Prior.

FRIDAY, February 6.

Into Latin Hexameters.

Through the large convex of the azure sky,
(For thither nature casts our common eye,)
Fierce meteors shoot their arbitrary light;
And comets march with lawless horror bright:
Those hear no rule, no righteous order own;
Their influence dreaded, as their ways unknown:
Thro' threatened lands they wild destruction throw,
Till ardent prayer averts the public woe :
But the bright orb that blesses all above,
The sacred fire, the real Son of Jove,

Rules not his actions by capricious will;
Nor by ungoverned power declines to ill:
Fixed by just laws he goes for ever right:

Man knows his course, and thence adores his light.
Prior, Carmen Seculare.

MONDAY, February 9.

Into Latin Prose.

The birth of Marius was obscure, though some call it equestrian, and his education wholly in camps; where he learnt the first rudiments of war, under the greatest master of that age, the younger Scipio, who destroyed Carthage; till by long service, distinguished valour, and a peculiar hardiness and patience of discipline, he advanced himself gradually through all the steps of military honour, with the reputation of a brave and complete soldier. The obscurity of his extraction, which depressed him with the nobility, made him the greater favourite of the people, who, on all occasions of danger, thought him the only man fit to be trusted with their lives and fortunes; or to have the command of a difficult and desperate war: and in truth he twice delivered them from the most desperate with which they had ever been threatened by a foreign enemy. Scipio, from the observation of his martial talents, while he had yet but an inferior command in the army, gave a kind of prophetic testimony of his future glory; for being asked by some of his officers who were supping with him at Numantia, what general the republic would have, in case of any accident to himself? That man," replied he, pointing to Marius at the bottom of the table.-Middleton.

WEDNESDAY, February 11.

Into Greek Iambics.

PHŒDRA. Now all the spirits of my godlike race
Enflame my soul, and urge me on to vengeance.
Jove first, and then my sire, the avenging Sun,
Inspire my fury, and demand my justice.

Oh! you shall have it; thou Minos shalt applaud it;
Yes, thou shalt copy it in their pains below.
God of revenge. He comes, he comes;

And shoots himself through all my kindling blood.
I have it here. Now, base perfidious wretch,
Now sigh, and weep, and tremble in thy turn.
Yes, your Ismena shall appease my vengeance,
Ismena dies; and thou her pitying lover

Doom'st her to death;-Thou too shalt see her bleed.
Smith's Phoedra and Hippolytus.

FRIDAY, February 13.

Into Greek Prose (Demosthenes).

But he begs me to believe that he measures the integrity of men by their conduct, not by their professions. Sure this man must imagine his readers as void of understanding as he is of modesty! Where shall we find the standard of his integrity? By what are we to measure the conduct of this lurking assassin ? And he says this to me, whose conduct has been as direct, and open, and public as my words. I have not, like him, concealed myself in my chamber, to shoot my arrows out of the window; nor contented myself to view the battle from afar; but publicly mixed in the engagement, and shared the danger. In the infinite variety of business in which I have been concerned, where it is not so easy to be faultless, which of my actions can he arraign? To what danger has any man been exposed, which I have not faced?

Letters of Junius.

MONDAY, February 16.

Into Latin Elegiacs.

But let the King dismiss his woes,
Reflecting on her fair renown;
And take the cypress from his brows,
To put his wonted laurels on.
If prest by grief our monarch stoops,
În vain the British lions roar:

If he, whose hand sustained them, droops,

The Belgic darts will wound no more.

Embattled princes wait the chief,

Whose voice should rule, whose arm should lead;

And in kind murmurs chide that grief,

Which hinders Europe being freed.

The great example they demand,
Who still to conquest led the way;
Wishing him present to command,
As they stand ready to obey.-Prior.

WEDNESDAY, February 18.

Into Latin Hexameters.

The Fury heard, while on Cocytus' brink
Her snakes unty'd, sulphureous waters drink;
But at the summons, rolled her eyes around,
And snatch'd the starting serpents from the ground.
Not half so swiftly shoots along in air,

The gliding lightning, or descending star,
Thro' crowds of airy shades she wing'd her flight,
And dark dominions of the silent night;
Swift as she pass'd the flitting ghosts withdrew,
And the pale spectres trembled at her view:
To th' iron gates of Tænarus she flies,
There spreads her dusky pinions to the skies:
The day beheld, and sickening at the sight,
Veil'd her fair glories in the shades of night.

Pope.-A Translation.

FRIDAY, February 20.

Into Latin Prose.

Who has sent me into the world I know not; what the world is I know not, nor what I am myself. I am under an astonishing and terrifying ignorance of all things. I know not what my body is, what my senses, or my soul. This very part of me which thinks what I speak, which reflects upon every thing else, and even upon itself, yet is as a mere stranger to its own nature. I behold these spaces of the universe with which I am encompassed, and I find myself chained to one little corner of the vast extent, without understanding why I am placed in this seat rather than in any other; or why this moment of time given me to live in was assigned rather at such a point than at any other of the whole eternity which was before me, or of all that which is to come after me. The sum of my knowledge is, that I must shortly die; but that which I am most ignorant of is this very death, which I feel unable to decline.-Pascal.-Thoughts.