OF PART OF THE EIGHTH SATIRE OF JUVENAL,
*SAY, Orleans, what ayails the blazon'd tree,
Rich in imperial ancestry, to thee?
Why proudly show St. Louis' broken bust,
The sword and crucifix obscur'd with dust?
Why boast the Constable, † whose gilded staff
Time's icy touch has moulder'd to a half?
Or great Navarre, in whom with valour shone
Each milder grace that dignifies a throne?
If with their effigies you hang the hall,
Where pimps, and prostitutes, and traitors bawl;
Where midnight plans of regicide are laid,
To ranks of frowning Capets full displayed;
And where, half drunk, you just begin to doze,
At peep of dawn, when they to battle rose?
If silken C******* boast a martial line,
Whose high achievements on his chariot shine;
Vain of defect, he gives us thus to see
Within what is, without what ought to be:
And vaunts the sires who fought to mark his plate,
Emblaze his curricle, and crown his gate.
C*******, whose feminine and furtive bloom,
Smooth, polished limbs, and hands that drop perfume,
The shaggy portraits of his fathers shame,
Their rusty armour, and Herculean frame.
Verse 1—12. t The Constable Bourbon,
Though countless quarters fill the armorial shield, To virtue still nobility must yield.
Be by desert a Churchill or a Hyde,
Be noble acts, not noble birth, your pride.
Let these, tho' Chancellor, precede your mace;
Let these, not Garter, make the crowd give place,
If just in word and deed, I ask no more,
The patent's clear. My Lord you walk before:
For he, whose virtues earn a nation's thanks,
Beyond a Percy or a Howard ranks.
His country too old Egypt's cry will join,
""Tis found-'tis found-an honest patriot's mine :"
Nobles give way: nor white nor sable rod
Shall dare precede "the noblest work of God."
+ Call we high-born the wretch who shames his birth?
Shall past supply the want of present worth?
Then may a Watson's son his God belie,
A Mansfield's cheat, an Abercromby's fly.
Who but a fool his infant would baptize
Goliah, thus to swell his pigmy size;
With Cupid dream to bleach his negro's face,
Or cure the rickets with the name of Grace?
The mangy pug, Miss Prue's supreme delight,
Whose charm is ugliness, whose spirit spite,
Called Hero, Prince, or something more august,
Creates but more abhorrence and disgust.
Beware lest thus Mahon or Plassy || show
How war-worn titles a burlesque may grow.
§ But whither tends this harsh preceptive vein ? To you, O Q, I suit the strain,
Who through St. James's pace with pompous gait,
As if your own deserts had made you great.
Titles conferred for conquests, and continued to the families
"Hence vulgar crew," indignant you exclaim,
"Who scarcely know the country whence you
“ A D*****s I.” Long, mighty D*****s live,
And taste the joy these precious letters give.
Yet should great D*****s have a cause to plead,
Some low plebeian's talents must be fee'd,
To empty coronets who hires his brains,
And laws they made, to senators explains,
Oft from a cottage springs some powerful mind,
Which all the sophist's cobwebs can unwind;
Or some bold warrior, who, from India's shore
To either pole, bids British thunders roar.
What excellence is your's?" A D*****s' blood !”
Say are you wise?" A D*****s!" brave or good ?
"A D*****s !" Well-but if so great and dull,
How differs then your Grace's noble skull
From your great grandsire's on his bust of stone?
A block of marble his- and your's of bone.
*We act more fairly with the bestial tribes,
Where individual worth their rank prescribes.
The swiftest over is the noblest horse;
Who wins the plate, and triumphs on the course,
Tho' mean his pasture and obscure his breed,
His blood himself ennobles by his speed.
But should the colt of Diamond or Highflyer
Be distanced on the turf, and shame his sire,
Off, off to Tattersall's, conceal his birth,
And on his strength, not swiftness, rest his worth:
He still may serve a brewer's rumbling dray,
Or amble, harness'd, in a tradesman's shay.
Hence that yourself, and not your sires, may plead
Some claim to rank, perform one generous deed,
Which to the lofty titles we may join,
They gain'd by merit-you, my Lord, by line.
*Let this suffice for one whom Fame reports
Vacant, and vain of servitude in courts;
Fruitless the Muse's admonitions there,
Where sense to read, or feel them are so rare,
On borrow'd fame 'tis wretched to repose;
The prop enfeebled, down the fabric goes.
But would you gain a self-supported soul,
Nor, like the yielding hop, require a pole,
Be firmly virtuous; true to every trust;
Brave as a soldier; as an umpire just.
Should you be summon'd by a shameless court,
Where will is law, assassination sport,
Tho' o'er your neck the guillotine they poise,
Point to the criminal, and dictate lies,
Yield not your honour in the jaws of death,
Nor meanly barter happiness for breath.
ON THE DEATH OF GENERAL WOLFE.
THY trembling hills, Quebec, when Victory trod,
Shook her high plume, and waved her banner broad;
Saw Wolfe advance; heard the dire din of war,
And Gallia's genius shrieking from afar,
With fatal haste the astonish'd Goddess flew,
To weave the immortal chaplet for his brow;
Cypress she gather'd with the sacred bays,
And weav'd the asp of Death among the sprays.
They fly! they fly! the expiring hero cried, [died,
Hung his wreath'd head; thank'd the kind gods, and
On a Picture of the Kalmia Angustifolia, or Narrow
HIGH rise the cloud-capp'd hills where Kalmia glows
With dazzling beauty, 'mid a waste of snows,
O'er the wild scene she casts a smiling eye,
The earth her bed, the skies her canopy.-
Thus from the north, in undulating streams,
Glance after glance, the polar radiance gleams,
Or, in expanding glare, at noon of night,
Fills the red zenith with unbounded light.
Quick fly the timid herds in wild amaze,
While arms unseen clash dreadful 'mid the blaze.
Th' affrighted shepherd to his cot retires,
Nor dares to gaze upon the quiv'ring fires :
The crouching dogs their masters' feet surround,
And, fix'd by fear, lie torpid on the ground:
Loud shrieks the screaming owl, and flits away,
Scar'd by the lustre of unlook'd for day :-
E'en the grim wolf his nightly prey forsakes,
And silent in his gloomy cavern quakes,
Till skies serene their starry groupes display,
And each terrific phantom dies away
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