Mine, as a foe profess'd to false pretence,
Who think a coxcomb's honour like his sense;
Mine, as a friend to every worthy mind;
And mine as man, who feel for all mankind.
F. You're strangely proud.
P. So proud, I am no slave:
So impudent, I own myself no knave:
So odd, my country's ruin makes me grave.
Yes, I am proud; I must be proud to see
Men, not afraid of God, afraid of me:
Safe from the bar, the pulpit, and the throne,
Yet touch'd and shamed by ridicule alone.
O sacred weapon! left for truth's defence,
Sole dread of folly, vice, and insolence!
To all but Heaven-directed hands denied,
The muse may give thee, but the gods must guide:
Reverent I touch thee! but with honest zeal;
To rouse the watchman of the public weal,
To virtue's work provoke the tardy hall,
And goad the prelate slumbering in his stall.
Ye tinsel insects! whom a court maintains,
That counts your beauties only by your stains,
Spin all your cobwebs o'er the eye of day!
The MUSE's wing shall brush you all away:
All his grace preaches, all his lordship sings,
All that makes saints of queens, and gods of kings;
All, all but truth, drops dead-born from the press,
Like the last gazette, or the last address.
When black ambition stains a public cause,
A monarch's sword when mad vainglory draws,
Not Waller's wreath can hide the nation's scar,
Nor Boileau turn the feather to a star.
Not so, when diadem'd with rays divine,
Touch'd with the flame that breaks from Virtue's shrine,
Her priestess Muse forbids the good to die,
And opes the temple of Eternity.
There, other trophies deck the truly brave,
Than such as ANSTIS* casts into the grave;
Far other stars than * and ** wear,
And may descend to Mordington from STAIR, †
(Such as on HOUGH's unsullied mitre shine,
Or beam, good DIGBY, from a heart like thine;
Let Envy howl, while heaven's whole chorus sings,
And bark at honour not conferr'd by kings;
Let Flattery sickening see the incense rise,
*The chief herald at arms. It is the custom, at the funerals of great men, to cast into the grave the broken staves and ensigns of honour.
† John Dalrymple, Earl of Stair.
Dr John Hough, Bishop of Worcester, and the Lord Digby.
Sweet to the world, and grateful to the skice:
Truth guards the poet, sanctifies the line,
And makes immortal, verse as mean as mine.
Yes, the last pen for freedom let me draw,
When Truth stands trembling on the edge of law;
Here, last of Britons! let your names be read;
Are none, none living? let me praise the dead,
And for that cause which made your fathers shine,
Fall by the votes of their degenerate line.
F. Alas! alas! pray end what you began, And write next winter more Essays on Man
TRANSLATED IN THE YEAR MDOCIII.
Edipus, King of Thebes, having by mistake slain his father Laius, and mar ried his mother Jocasta, put out his own eyes, and resigned his realm to his sons, Eteocles and Polynices. Being neglected by them, he makes his prayer to the fury Tisiphone, to sow debate betwixt the brothers. They agree at last to reign singly, each a year by turns, and the first lot is obtained by Eteocles. Jupiter, in a council of the gods, declares his resolution of punishing the Thebans, and Argives also, by means of a marriage betwixt Polynices and one of the daughters of Adrastus, King of Argos. Juno opposes, but to no effect; and Mercury is sent on a message to the Shades, to the ghost of Laius, who is to appear to Eteocles, and provoke him to break the agreement. Polynices in the meantime departs from Thebes by night, is overtaken by a storm, and arrives at Argos; where he meets with Tydeus, who had fled from Calydon, having killed his brother. Adrastus entertains them, having received an oracle from Apollo that his daughters should be married to a boar and a lion, which he understands to be meant of these strangers, by whom the hides of those beasts were worn, and who arrived at the time when he kept an annual feast in honour of that god. The rise of this solemnity he relates to his guests, the loves of Phoebus and Psamathe, and the story of Chorobus. He inquires, and is made acquainted with their descent and quality. The sacrifice is renewed, and the book concludes with a hymn to Apollo.
The translator hopes he need not apologise for his choice of this piece, which was made almost in his childhood. But finding the version better than he expected, he gave it some correction a few years afterwards.
FRATERNAL rage, the guilty Thebes' alarms,
The alternate reign destroy'd by impious arms,
Demand our song; a sacred fury fires
My ravish'd breast, and all the muse inspires.
O goddess, say, shall I deduce my rhymes
From the dire nation in its early times,
Europa's rape, Agenor's stern decree,
And Cadmus searching round the spacious sea?
How with the serpent's teeth he sow'd the soil,
And reap'd an iron harvest of his toil?
Or how from joining stones the city sprung,
While to his harp divine Amphion sung?
Or shall I Juno's hate to Thebes resound,
Whose fatal rage the unhappy monarch found?
The sire against the son his arrows drew,
O'er the wide fields the furious mother flew,
And while her arms a second hope contain,
Sprung from the rocks and plunged into the main.
But waive whate'er to Cadmus may belong,
And fix, O Muse! the barrier of thy song
At Edipus-from his disasters trace
The long confusions of his guilty race:
Nor yet attempt to stretch thy bolder wing,
And mighty Caesar's conquering eagles sing;
How twice he tamed proud Ister's rapid flood,
While Dacian mountains stream'd with barbarous blood;
Twice taught the Rhine beneath his laws to roll,
And stretch'd his empire to the frozen pole,
Or long before, with early valour strove,
In youthful arms to assert the cause of Jove.
And thou, great heir of all thy father's fame,
Increase of glory to the Latian name,
Oh! bless thy Rome with an eternal reign,
Nor let desiring worlds entreat in vain.
What though the stars contract their heavenly space,
And crowd their shining ranks to yield thee place;
Though all the skies, ambitious of thy sway,
Conspire to court thee from our world away;
Though Phoebus long to mix his rays with thine,
And in thy glories more serenely shine;
Though Jove himself no less content would be
To part his throne and share his heaven with thee;
Yet stay, great Cæsar! and vouchsafe to reign
O'er the wide earth, and o'er the watery main;
Resign to Jove his empire of the skies,
And people heaven with Roman deities.
The time will come, when a diviner flame
Shall warm my breast to sing of Cæsar's fame:
Meanwhile permit, that my preluding muse
In Theban wars an humbler theme may chuse :
Of furious hate surviving death, she sings,
A fatal throne to two contending kings,
And funeral flames, that, parting wide in air,
Express the discords of the souls they bear:
Of towns dispeopled, and the wandering ghosts
Of kings unburied in the wasted coasts;
When Dirce's fountain blush'd with Grecian blood,
And Thetis, near Ismenos' swelling flood,
With dread beheld the rolling surges sweep,
In heaps, his slaughter'd sons into the deep.
What, Hero, Clio! wilt thou first relate
The rage of Tydeus, or the Prophet's fate?
Or how, with hills of slain on every side,
Hippomedon repell'd the hostile tide?
Or how the youth with every grace adorn'd,
Untimely fell, to be for ever mourn'd?
Then to fierce Capaneus thy verse extend,
And sing with horror his prodigious end.
Now wretch'd Edipus, deprived of sight,
Led a long death in everlasting night;
But while he dwells where not a cheerful ray
Can pierce the darkness, and abhors the day:
The clear reflecting mind presents his sin
In frightful views, and makes it day within;
Returning thoughts in endless circles roll,
And thousand furies haunt his guilty soul.
The wretch then lifted to the unpitying skies
Those empty orbs from whence he tore his eyes,
Whose wounds, yet fresh, with bloody hands he strook,
While from his breast these dreadful accents broke:
Ye gods! that o'er the gloomy regions reign,
Where guilty spirits feel eternal pain;
Thou, sable Styx! whose livid streams are roll'd Through dreary coasts, which I though blind behold: Tisiphone, that oft hast heard my prayer,
Assist, if Edipus deserve thy care!
If you received me from Jocasta's womb,
And nursed the hope of mischiefs yet to come:
If, leaving Polybus, I took my way,
To Cyrrha's temple on that fatal day,
When by the son the trembling father died,
Where the three roads the Phocian fields divide:
If I the Sphynx's riddles durst explain,
Taught by thyself to win the promised reign:
If wretched I, by baleful furies FLAME,
With monstrous CRIMES HAVE stain'd my mother's NAME, For hell and thee begot an impious brood,
And with full lust those horrid SCENES renew'd:
Then, self-condemn'd to shades of endless night,
Forced from these orbs the bleeding balls of sight;
Oh hear and aid the vengeance I require,
If worthy thee, and what thou mightst inspire.
My sons their old, unhappy sire despise,
Spoil'd of his kingdom, and deprived of eyes;
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