There they are privileged; and he that hunts
Or harms them there is guilty of a wrong,
Disturbs the economy of nature's realm,
Who, when the formed, defigned them an abode.
The fum is this. If man's convenience, health,
Or safety, interfere, his rights and claims
Are paramount, and muft extinguish their's.
Elfe they are all-the meaneft things that are,
As free to live, and to enjoy that life,

As God was free to form them at the first,
Who in his fovereign wisdom made them all.
Ye therefore, who love mercy, teach

your

fons

To love it too. The fpring-time of our years

Is foon difhonoured and defiled in moft

By budding ills, that ask a prudent hand

To check them. But alas! none fooner fhoots,
If unrestrained, into luxuriant growth,

Than cruelty, most devilish of them all.'
Mercy to him, that shows it, is the rule
And righteous limitation of its act,

By which Heaven moves in pardoning guilty man;
And he that shows none, being ripe in years,
And conscious of the outrage he commits,

Shall feek it, and not find it, in his turn.

Diftinguished much by reason, and still more By our capacity of grace divine,

From creatures, that exift but for our fake,
Which, having ferved us, perifh, we are held
Accountable; and God fome future day
Will reckon with us roundly for the abuse
Of what he deems no mean or trivial truft.
Superior as we are, they yet depend

Not more on human help than we on their's.
Their ftrength, or speed, or vigilance, were given
In aid of our defects. In fome are found
Such teachable and apprehenfive parts,

That man's attainments in his own concerns,
Matched with the expertnefs of the brutes in their's,
Are oft-times vanquished and thrown far behind.
Some show that nice fagacity of smell,
And read with fuch difcernment, in the port
And figure of the man, his fecret aim,
That oft we owe our safety to a skill

We could not teach, and must despair to learn.
But learn we might, if not too proud to stoop
To quadruped infiructors, many a good

And useful quality, and virtue too,

Rarely exemplified among ourfelves.

Attachment never to be weaned, or changed
By any change of fortune; proof alike
Against unkindness, abfence, and neglect,
Fidelity, that neither bribe nor threat
Can move or warp; and gratitude for small
And trivial favours, lafting as the life,
And gliftening even in the dying eye.

Man praises inan. Desert in arts or arms
Wins public honour; and ten thousand fit
Patiently prefent at a facred fong,
Commemoration-mad; content to hear
(Oh wonderful effect of mufic's power!)
Meffiah's eulogy for Handel's fake.

But lefs, methinks, than facrilege might ferve-
(For was it less, what heathen would have dared
To ftrip Jove's ftatue of his oaken wreath,
And hang it up in honour of a man?

Much less might ferve, when all that we defign
Is but to gratify an itching ear,

And give the day to a musician's praise. Remember Handel? Who, that was not born Deaf as the dead to harmony, forgets,

Or can, the more than Homer of his age?

Yes we remember him; and while we praise
A talent fo divine, remember too

That His most holy book, from whom it came,
Was never meant, was never used before,
To buckram out the memory of a man.
But hufh!-the mufe perhaps is too fevere;
And with a gravity beyond the fize

And measure of the offence, rebukes a deed
Lefs impious than abfurd, and owing more
To want of judgment than to wrong defign,
So in the chapel of old Ely House,

When wanderingCharles, who meant to be the third,
Had fled from William, and the news was fresh,
The fimple clerk, but loyal, did announce,
And eke did rear right merrily, two ftaves,
Sung to the praise and glory of King George!
Man praises man; and Garrick's memory next,
When time hath fomewhat mellowed it, and made
The idol of our worfhip while he lived
The God of our idolatry once more,

Shall have its altar; and the world shall go
In pilgrimage to bow before his fhrine.
The theatre too fmall fhall fuffocate

Its fqueezed contents, and more than it admits

Shall figh at their exclufion, and return
Ungratified. For there fome noble lord

Shall ftuff his fhoulders with king Richard's bunch, himself in Hamlet's inky cloak,

wrap

Or
And ftrut, and ftorm, and ftraddle, ftamp and stare,
To fhow the world how Garrick did not act,
For Garrick was a worshipper himself;

He drew the liturgy, and framed the rites
And folemn ceremonial of the day,

And called the world to worship on the banks
Of Avon, famed in fong. Ah, pleasant proof
That piety has still in human hearts

Some place, a fpark or two not yet extinct.

The mulberry-tree was hung with blooming wreaths; The mulberry-tree ftood centre of the dance;

The mulberry-tree was hymned with dulcet airs;
And from his touchwood trunk the mulberry-tree
Supplied fuch relics as devotion holds

Still facred, and preferves with pious care.
So 'twas an hallowed time: decorum reigned,
And mirth without offence. No few returned,
Doubtlefs, much edified, and all refreshed.

-Man praises man. The rabble all alive
From tippling benches, cellars, ftalls, and ftyes,