HAIR, wax, rouge, honey, teeth, you buy
A multifarious store!
A mask at once would all supply,
Nor would it cost you more.
WHEN Aulus, the nocturnal thief, made prize
Of Hermes, swift-winged envoy of the skies,
Hermes, Arcadia's king, the thief divine,
Who, when an infant, stole Apollo's kine,
And whom, as arbiter and overseer
Of our gymnastic sports we planted here,
Hermes! He cried, you meet no new disaster;
Oftimes the pupil goes beyond his master,
On Pedigree, from Epicharmus.
My mother! if thou love me, name no more
My noble birth! Sounding at every breath
My noble birth thou kill'st me.
As to their only refuge, all from whom
Nature withholds all good besides; they boast
Their noble birth, conduct us to the tombs
Of their forefathers, and from age to age
Ascending, trumpet their illustrious race:
But whom hast thou beheld, or canst thou name
Deriv'd from no forefathers? Such a man
Lives not; for how could such be born at all?
And if it chance, that native of a land
Far distant, or in infancy depriv'd
Of all his kindred, one, who cannot trace
His origin, exist, why deem him sprung
From baser ancestry than theirs, who can?
My mother! He whom nature at his birth
Endow'd with virtuous qualities, although
An Æthiop and a slave, is nobly born.
PITY, says the Theban Bard,
From my wishes I discard
Envy let me rather be
Rather far a theme for thee!
Pity to distress is shewn:
Envy to the great alone―
So the Theban-But to shine
Less conspicuous be mine!
I prefer the golden mean
Pomp and penury between.
For alarm and peril wait
Ever on the loftiest state,
And the lowest, to the end,
Obloquy and scorn attend.
OFT we enhance our ills by discontent,
And give them bulk beyond what nature meant.
A parent, brother, friend deceas'd, to cry—
"He's dead indeed, but he was born to die."
Such temperate grief is suited to the size,
And burthen of the loss, is just, and wise.
But to exclaim, "Ah! wherefore was I born,
Thus to be left, for ever thus forlorn?"
Who thus laments his loss, invites distrees,
And magnifies a woe that might be less,
Through dull despondence to his lot resigned,
And leaving reason's remedy behind.
Slept, when Venus enter'd: To my bed A Cupid in her beauteous hand she led,
A bashful-seeming boy, and thus she said :
Shepherd receive my little one! I bring
"An untaught love, whom thou must teach to sing."
She said, and left him. I suspecting nought
Many' a sweet strain my subtle pupil taught,
How reed to reed Pan first with ozier bound
How Pallas form'd the pipe of softest sound,
How Hermes gave the lute, and how the quire
Of Phoebus owe to Phœbus' self the lyre.
Such were my themes; my themes nought heeded he,
But ditties sang of am'rous sort to me,
The pangs that mortals and immortals prove
From Venus' influence, and the darts of love.
Thus was the teacher by the pupil taught
His lessons I retain'd, and mine forgot.
TRANSLATIONS from HORACE and VIRGIL.
(Printed in Duncombe's Horace.)
A humourous Description of the Author's Journey from Rome to Brudusium.
'TWAS a long journey lay before us,
When I, and honest Heliodorus,
Who far in point of rhetoric,
Surpasses ev'ry living Greek,
Each leaving our respective home,
Together sally'd forth from Rome.
First at Aricia we alight,
And there refresh, and pass the night,
Our entertainment rather coarse
Than sumptuous, but I've met with worse.
Thence o'er the causeway soft and fair
To Appiiforum we repair.
But as this road is well supply'd
(Temptation strong!) on either side
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