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I would not wish to live another day,

If my recovery did not charm my love: For what were life, and health, and bloem to me, Were they difpleasing, beauteous youth! to thee.

POEM V.

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WITH feafts I'll ever grace the facred morn, When my Cerinthus, lovely youth was born. At birth, to you th' unerring fifters fung Unbounded empire o'er the gay and young: But I, chief I! (if you my love repay), With rapture own your ever-pleating fway. This I conjure you, by your charming eyes, Where love's foft god in wanton ambush lies! This by your genius, and the joys we stole, Whose sweet remembrance ftill enchants my Great natal genius! grant my heart's defire, So fhall I heap with coftly gums your fire! Whenever fancy paints me to the boy, Let his breaft pant with an impatient joy: But if the libertine for others figh (Which love forbid!) O love! your aid deny. Nor, love! be partial, let us both confefs The pleafing pain, or make my paffion lefs. But O! much rather 'tis my foul's de fire, That both may feel an equal, endless fire.

In fecret my Cerinthus begs the fame, But the youth blushes to confefs his flame : Affent, thou god to whom his heart is known, Whether he public afk, or fecret own.

POEM VI.

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ACCEPT, O natal queen! with placent air, The incenfe offer'd by the learned fair. She's rob'd in cheerful pomp, O power divine! She's rob'd to decorate your matron-fhrine; Such her pretence: but well her lover knows Whence her gay look, and whence her finery flows. Thou, who doft o'er the nuptial bed preside, O! let not envious night their joys divide, But make the bridegroom amorous as the bride!S So fhall they tally, matchless lovely pair! A youth all tranfport, and a melting fair? Then let no fpies their fecret haunts explore, Teach them thy wiles, O love! and guard the door. Affent, chafte queen! in purple pomp appear; Thrice wine is pour'd and cakes await you, here. Her mother tells her for what boon to pray; Her heart denies it, though her lips obey. She burns, that altar as the flames devour; She burns, and flights the fafety in her power. 19 So may the boy, whofe chains you proudly wear, Through youth the foft indulgent anguish bear; And when old age has chill'd his every vein, The dear remembrance may he still retain :

POEM VII.

1.

At laft the natal odious morn draws nigh, When to your cold, cold villa I must go; There, far, too far from my Cerinthus figh: Oh why, Meffala! will you plague me fo?

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But ftop, my hand! beware what loofe you ferawl, | Know, with a youth of worth, the night I

Left into curious hands the billet fall.

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spent,

No-the remembrance charms-begone, gri. And cannot, cannot, for my soul repent!
Matrons! be yours formality of face. {mace!

NOTES ON SULPICIA'S POEMS.

POEM I.

Ver. 4. One of the critics has observed upon this paffage, that Venus muft either have had great confidence in her own charms; or have been little folicitous what became of her paramour Mars, to indulge him in this interview.

Ver. 6. When Euryclea, in the Odyffey (lib. xix) difcovers Ulyffes (whom the was bathing) by the fcar in his leg, her joyful furprife is finely imagined, by her being ready to faint, and her dropping the jar of water. Nor lefs beautiful is the furprife teftified by Paris, when by chance he beheld the fair bofom of Helen:

Dum ftupeo vifis (nam pocula forte tenebam)
Tortilis e digitis excidit anfa meis.

Ep. Her. lin. 251. Menage, in his Bird. Catcher and Adonis, gives a no lefs fine inftance of aftonishment; but Milton has furpassed them all, ia the picture he has drawn of Adam's confternation and horror, upon being told by Eve that he had eaten of the forbidden fruit, which is a beautiful contraft to the joy which the fhowed in narrating the fact :

Thus Eve, with count'nance blithe, her story told,
But in her cheek distemper flushing glow'd.
On th' other fide, Adam, foon as he heard
The fatal trefpals done by Eve, amaz`u̸,
Aftoned ftood, and blank; while horror dull
Ran through his veins, and all his joints relax'd;
From his flack hand the garland, wreath'd for Eve,
Down dropt, and all the faded rofcs shed:
Speechlefs he ftood, and pale; till thus at length
First to himself he inward filence broke.

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which the late Mr. Weft has thus poetically ren. dered:

Hail, golden lyre! whofe heaven-invented ftring To Phabus and the black hair'd nine belongs, Who, in fweet chorus, round their tuneful king, Mix with thy founding chords their facred fongs. The dar ce, gay queen of pleature! thee attends;

Thy jocund ftrains her liftening feet inspire: And each melodious tongue its veice fufpends,

Till thou, great leader of the heavenly choir! With wanton art preluding, giv't the fignSwells the full concert then with harmony divine.

DECADE II.

Then, of their ftreaming lightnings all difarm'd,
The fmouldering thunderbolts of Jove expire:
Then, by the mufic of thy numbers charm'd,
The birds fierce monarch drops his vengeful ire;
Perch'd on the fceptre of th' Olympian king,
The thrilling darts of harmony he feels;
And indolently hangs his rapid wing,

While gentle fleep his clofing eye-lid feals;
And o'er his heaving limbs in loofe array,
To every balmy gale, the ruffling feathers play.

But what gave rife to this quotation follows De

cade III.

Ev'n Mars, ftern god of violence and war,

Sooths with thy lulling ftrains his furious breast,
And, driving from his heart each bloody care,
His pointed lance configns to peaceful reft.
Which image, as well as that of the eagle, are thus
imitated by two excellent poets of our own days.

O fovereign of the willing foul
Parent of fweet and folemn-breathing airs,
Enchanting hell! the fullen cares

On Thracia's hills the lord of war
And frantic paflions hear thy foft controul.
Has curb'd the fury of his car,

And dropp'd his thirsty lance at thy command.
Perching on the icepter'd hand

Of Jove, thy magic lulls the feather'd king
With ruffled plumes and flagging wing;
Quench'd in dark clouds of lumber lie
The terror of his beak, and lightning of his eye.
Ode by Gray!

What follows, is from Dr. Akenfide's Hymn to the Naiads:

With emulation all the founding choir,
And bright Apollo, leader of the fong,
Their voices through the liquid air exalt,
And sweep their lofty wings: thofe awful strings,
That charm the mind of gods; that fill the courts
Of wide Olympus with oblivion sweet
Of evils, with immortal reft from cares;
Affuage the terrors of the throne of Jove;
And quench the formidable thunderbolt
Of unrelenting fire, with flacken'd wings,
While now the folemn concert breathes around,
Incumbent o'er the fceptre of his lord

Sleeps the ftern eagle, by the number'd notes
Poffefs'd, and fatiate with the melting tone;
Sovereign of birds. The furious god of war,
His darts forgetting, and the rapid wheels

That bear him vengeful o'er th' embattled plain Relents, and fooths his own fierce heart to ease. Dodley's Collect. vol. vi. While fuch imitations make it doubtful to whom the palm of preference should be given, all complaints of decay of poetical genius among us, muft be imputed, either to ignorance or malice.

Ver. 8. Andreas Schottus makes our authorefs indebted to Euripides for this thought; and yet what he quotes from that excellent tragic poet, has little or no reference to the text. The words

are,

Ερως έρως, ὁ κατ' ομμάτων

Hippol. ver. 525.

Στάξεις πόθον, εισάγων γλυκείαν Ψυχα χαριν, ως επισράβευση. Broekhufius has collected moft of the paffages from the ancient and modern (Latin) poets, where love is either faid to lurk in the eye, or bafk in the cheek of a fine woman, but gives juftly the preference to the text. Thoughts of this kind, however, are now-a-days too threadbare even to please a chambermaid.

Ver. 9. Cardinal Bembow and Count Caftiglione have both imitated this paffage. The latter inferted his imitation in a poem he addressed to his wife Elizabeth Gonzaga, on her finging, and is as follows:

Quidquid agit, certant pariter componere furtim Et Decor & charitis, & pudor ingenuus. Elizabeth had a fine genius for poetry.

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Ver. 13. "Comæ," uro ry ROOM, Capilli aliqua cura compofiti; tefte Fefto." And Servius adds, that " coma" belongs to women's, as "cæfariis" does to men's hair: but this diftinction is too refined; Tibullus himself applies" coma" to the hair of a boy. Vide Book i. El. 10. Ver. 17. Lord Lanfdown has fome thoughts analogous to thefe of our poctefs.

When Myra walks, fo charming is her mien,
In every motion every grace is feen.

And again,

With charms fo numerous Myra can furprise
The gazer knows not by what darts he dies;
So thick the volley, and the wound fo fure,
No flight can fave, no remedy can cure.

Ovid's Vertumnus is a masterpiece. See Metamorphofis, lib. 14.

Ver. 21. This and the remainder of the poem are alfo imitated by Caftiglione; and though he hath well performed, yet Francius, who has alfo adopted the fentiments of our author, hath furpaffed the Count in a poem addreffed to that great fcholar, but middling poet, Monf. Menage.

Ver. 23. It was to commonly believed, in the time of Auguftus, that Arabia, befides fpices, contained immenfe quantities of gold, that the emperor marched thither a confiderable army, A U. C. 729. which perifhed by fickness. A like fate attend every army, which invades any country

on fuch an account.

POEM II.

Ver. 3. The Cerinthus whom Horace ma tions, was a beautiful flave from Chalcis; and der this name, applied only to the handsome, S picia probably veiled her regard for fome you perfon of tathion.

Ver. 4. Mr. Gay, in his fine ballad, intin William and Sufan, has the following pretty i true thought,

Love will ward off the bullets as they fly, Left precious drops fhould fall from Sufan's eye.

Ver. 11. However disagreeable field-sports wer to the amiable Sulpicia, yet to have the plea Cerinthus's company, the was willing to und all the fatigues and dangers of boar-hunting, Sat is the nature of love:

Had Guarini our Sulpicia in his mind, whet made Dorinda thus addrefs Sylvio ?

Te feguiro compagna

Del tuo fido, Melampo affai piu fida:
E quando farai ftanco
Taufchiugerò la fronte:
E fovra quefto fianco,

Che per ti mai non pofa, havrai ripofo.

It is thus that Prior defcribes the difguifes wh Henry affumed, in order to obtain the affe of the beautiful Emma:

When Emma hunts, in huntsman's habit dref,
Henry on foot purfues the bounding beall;
In his right hand his beachen pole he bears,
And graceful at his fide his horn he weary, &
Again,

A falc'ner Henry is, when Emma hawks;
With her of tarfels and of lures he talks;
Upon his wrift the towering merlin ftans,
Practis'd to run, and floop, at her commas

Again,

A fhepherd now along the plain he roves,
And with his jolly pipe delights the groves!
The neighbouring fwains around the frag
throng,

Or to admire, or emulate his fong, &c.
And lastly,

A frantic gypfy, now, the houfe he haunts,
And in wild phrates speaks diffembled wants.
With the fond maids in palmeftry he deals;
They tell the secret first, which he reveals, &

POEM III.

Ver. 1. Would not a long enumeration of her epithets of Apollo have been extremely impregat here? and does not his immediate call for ance fhow the greatness of the writer's concers!

When Laura was at the point of death, b very coldly does Petrarch place her next to Jap ter, inftead of breaking forth into palate clamations? and how poorly confolitary is h fion? Prim. Part. Canzon. 12, 13, 14, &

Ver. 9. Hence Apollo, from the Greeks, had appellation of Dros adižsxanos, (deus malorum ulfor), bestowed on him; as the Latins called a Averruncus.

Jer. 10. All expiations and " purgamenta" e, by the ancients, performed either on the k of a river, or on the fea fhore this practice tinued long after the introduction of Chriia7, for we are informed by Petrarch, that he the women of Cologne, with garlands on ir heads, wash their arms in the Rhine, while y muttered fome foreign charm. The poet, adering both at the crowd and the action, aired the reafon, and was told, that it was a ancient rite, the common people believing all the calamities of the enfuing year were ented by the folemn ablution of that day. e lib. i. Ep. 4.

etrarch flourished in the fourteenth century, was no lefs eminent for his Latin (infomuch he obtained the appellation of the reftorer of language), than for his Italian compofitions. ropriety, exactness, elegance, and melody he affed all his poetic predeceffors; and fo much he cfteemed, that a man, for having fhot, out wantonnefs, at his ftatue in Padua, and broke hofe, was hanged by the Venetians. VindeSpira published the first edition of his Rime, 'enice, A. D. 1470.

er. 18. Some editions read " fedula ;" and ind the epithet is more confonant to the intertation which Broekhufius and the tranflator e given of the paffage. Vulpius explains the edula turba" to be thofe, who, either about icia's bed, or in the temples of the gods, put petitions for her recovery.

er. 27. This is an elegant compliment on the effors of medicine.

POEM V.

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er. 19. In this manner he prayed, left any of auditors fhould envy him, fay the commenta; or left a fascinating tongue (lingua fafciix)" fhould prevent the completion of his yers. None, add they, chofe in an audible e to lay open their real wants to the gods, the bystanders fhould overhear them; and refore, all thofe, who defired of the gods what extravagant, or what was immodest, or in rt what they did not choose to own, either ttered their vows, or whispered them in the of their deity. And thus the ancients, as Sea expreffes it, told that to God, which they -re afhamed a mortal fhould be made privy to. Quanta dementia eft hominum? turpiffima vota s infufurrant : fi quis admoverit aurem conefcent; et quod fcire hominem nolunt, Deo rant." Ep. 1o. See this impiety feverely treatby Perfius, in his fecond fatire.

POEM VI.

Ver. 2. Sulpicia had a good title to that epit; for in the following line, the faid no more

of her poetical endowments, than the modeftly might,

Primaque Romanos docui contendere graiis. That the Romans fhould have produced not one poetefs before Sulpicia, to put them more upon a level with the Greeks, is matter of no fmall astonifhment; fince, as Cato obferved, the Romans governed the world, but the women governed the Romans. How many fair poeteffes has this island produced? and in particular, how many does Britain at prefent boatt of, whofe writings, both in profe and verfe, may be compared, much to their advantage, with all the female productions of antiquity?

Befides Sulpicia, the poets mention Perilla and Theophila. Perilla lived in the Auguftan age. and is praised by Ovid, Trift. lib. iii, el. 7. The other was a cotemporary of Martial's, who celebrates her, lib. 7. ep. 68. Their works, if ever they published any, are now loft. But we have a Virgilian canto on the life of our Saviour, written in the reign of Theodofius and Honorius, by Proba Falconia. This poetefs, who was married to a perfon of proconfular dignity, is accufed by fome of having betrayed Rome into the hands of Alaric the Goth; but Cæfar Baronius has fully cleared her from that difloyal imputation.

Juvenal, Boileau, and others, have expreffed, in their writings, a vast aversion to learned women; and indeed were all of the fex, who have learn ing, to be fuch as they reprefent them, the tranflator would heartily join with the fatirifs: but how can he do it, whilft he has the honour to know fome ladies, who poffefs as great a fund of erudition, as moft men are enriched with, and who, nevertheless, are entirely free from all those difagreeable concomitants, with which thofe poets have loaded their armed women? In short, when we confider in what manner the welfare of fociety depends upon the fair fex, we cannot but own, that their understandings ought to be cultivated with much affiduity: a fine woman, with a good heart, and an improved head, is the loveliest object

in the creation.

Ver. 9. The word componere, in the original, is a metaphor taken from gladiators, who were then faid componi, when they fought together, and were well matched.

Ver. 3.

VULPIUS.

-in purple pomp appear.] That is, in a palla of purple; which not only Apollo and his votaries, with Oliris, wore, but in which allo Bacchus, Mercury, Pallas, Night, the Furies, Difcord, and even rivers were habited. "Adeo femper," fays Macrobius," ita fe et fciri et coli numina maluerunt, qualiter in vulgus antiquitas fabulata cft; quæ et imagines et fimulacra formarum talium prorfus alienis, et ætates tam incrementi quam diminutionis ignaris, et amictus ornatufque varios corpus non habentibus adfignavit." BROEKH.

Ver. 16. Vulpius retains the old reading,

jam fua mente rogat, and explains it, as if Sulpicia were now "fui juris

et arbitrii," of age, and fit to make vows for herfelf; but had that ingenious commentator attended to the words" clam et tacita" in the same line, he would have seen that the true reading was that which is retained in the text.

Ver. 17. Menage obferves of the original of this paffage, that an active fhould not follow a paffive verb; and therefore contends that the urunt" fhould be "uruntur:" and yet we know that the contrary practice is warranted by fome of the pureft writers of the Auguftan age; and, if the tranflator is not mistaken, that learned grammarian himself has, in his Latin poems, fallen into the mode of expreffion, which he here condemns in Sulpicia.

POEM VII.

Ver. 2. The villa, mentioned in the original, is Eretum, now Monte Ritondo It was fituated upon a high hill, not far from the banks of the Tiber, and was therefore cool, even in the midft of fummer. Cluverius places it at the distance of fourteen miles from Rome; but Holftenius, in his Annot. Geogr. on the authority of Antoninus's Itinerary, and Ferrarius removes it four miles farther off.

POEM IX.

Ver. 1. From the original, the commentar conclude, that Sulpicia was the daughter of t famous Servius Sulpicius, who died at Mode whilft he was engaged in an embaffy to Anto which he had undertaken at the request of the co fuls Hirtius and Panfa, and of the fenate: but the they feem to forgot that Servius was a praten: common to all the males of the Sulpician fam and therefore not diftinguishingly characterifica any one of them. Thofe who fuppofe that Tib lus wrote thefe poems, and believe he was br in 710, make him a poet before his birth, fays Brockhufius, Sulpicia fpeaks of her part if both were alive. Although the tra perfuaded that the pieces in this book are T bullus's, yet he can fee nothing in the pent fupport this affertion. Sure Sulpicia mig herself the daughter of Servius Sulpicius, standing her father's death; and the two lan of the original may be applied to her neareft> tions or guardians, with as much proprieyaz her parents.

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