ject,

70

Precise in style, and cautious to select;
Nor slight applause will candid pens afford
To him who furnishes a wanting word.
Then fear not, if 't is needful, to produce
Some term unknown or obsolete in use
(As Pitt has furnish'd us a word or two,
Which lexicographers declined to do);
So you indeed, with care (but be content
To take this license rarely), -
may invent.
New words find credit in these latter days,
If neatly grafted on a Gallic phrase;
What Chaucer, Spenser did, we scarce re-

fuse

80

And we and ours, alas! are due to fate, 91 And works and words but dwindle to a date.

Though as a monarch nods, and commerce calls,

Impetuous rivers stagnate in canals; Though swamps subdued, and marshes drain'd, sustain

The heavy ploughshare and the yellow grain,

And rising ports along the busy shore Protect the vessel from old Ocean's roar, All, all must perish; but, surviving last, The love of letters half preserves the past. True, some decay, yet not a few revive; 101 Though those shall sink, which now appear to thrive,

As custom arbitrates, whose shifting sway Our life and language must alike obey.

The immortal wars which gods and angels wage,

Are they not shown in Milton's sacred page?

His strain will teach what numbers best belong

To themes celestial told in epic song.

He sinks to Southey's level in a trice,
Whose epic mountains never fail in mice!
Not so of yore awoke your mighty sire 199
The temper'd warblings of his master-lyre;
Soft as the gentler breathing of the lute,
'Of man's first disobedience and the fruit'
He speaks, but, as his subject swells along,
Earth, heaven, and Hades echo with the
song.

Still to the midst of things' he hastens on,
As if we witness'd all already done;
Leaves on his path whatever seems too

Though woman weep, and hardest hearts are stirr'd,

When what is done is rather seen than heard,

Yet many deeds preserved in history's page
Are better told than acted on the stage;
The ear sustains what shocks the timid
eye,

And horror thus subsides to sympathy. 270
True Briton all beside, I here am French-
Bloodshed 't is surely better to retrench:
The gladiatorial gore we teach to flow
In tragic scene disgusts, though but in show;
We hate the carnage while we see the trick,
And find small sympathy in being sick.
Not on the stage the regicide Macbeth
Appals an audience with a monarch's death;
To gaze when sable Hubert threats to sear
Young Arthur's eyes, can ours or nature
bear?

280

A halter'd heroine Johnson sought to slay We saved Irene, but half damn'd the play, And (Heaven be praised!) our tolerating

times