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16

I am the wind to blow him to the bursting:

choak'd, strangled? I can do't and save a halter: would you break down his doors? Behold an earthquake:

open and enter them? A battering ram:

will you sit down to supper? I'm your guest,

your very Fly to enter without bidding:

would you move off? You'll move a well as soon:
I'm for all work, and though the job were stabbing,
betraying, false-accusing, only say,

Do this! and it is done: I stick at nothing;
they call me Thunder-bolt for my dispatch;
friend of my friends am I let actions speak me;
I'm much too modest to commend myself.

R. CUMBERLAND

THE RIGHT USE OF RICHES

WEAK is the vanity, that boasts of riches,

for they are fleeting things; were they not such, could they be yours to all succeeding time, 'twere wise to let none share in the possession: but if whate'er you have is held of fortune, and not of right inherent, why, my father, why with such niggard jealousy engross what the next hour may ravish from your grasp, and cast into some worthless favourite's lap ? Snatch then the swift occasion while 'tis yours; put this unstable boon to nobler uses;

foster the wants of men, impart your wealth

and purchase friends; 'twill be more lasting treasure, and, when misfortune comes, your best resource.

R. CUMBERLAND

17

HOMO ES

F you, O Trophimus, and you alone

IF

of all your mother's sons have Nature's charter for privilege of pleasures uncontrolled,

with full exemption from the strokes of fortune,
and that some god hath ratified the grant,

you then with cause may vent your loud reproach,
for he hath broke your charter and betrayed you;

18

19

but, if you live and breathe the common air
on the same terms as we do, then I tell you,
and tell it in the tragic poet's words-
of your philosophy you make no use,
if you give place to accidental evils.
The sum of which philosophy is this-
you are a man, and therefore Fortune's sport,
this hour exalted and the next abased:
you are a man, and, though by nature weak,
by nature arrogant, climbing to heights
that mock your reach and crush you in the fall:
nor was the blessing you have lost the best
of all life's blessings, nor is your misfortune
the worst of its afflictions; therefore, Trophimus,
make it not such by overstrained complaints,
but to your disappointment suit your sorrow.

R. CUMBERLAND

PEACE-THE SOVEREIGN GOOD

PHILO

HILOSOPHERS consume much time and pain,
to seek the sovereign good; nor is there one
who yet hath struck upon it: Virtue some,
and prudence some contend for, whilst the knot
grows harder by their struggle to untie it.

I, a mere clown, in turning up the soil
have dug the secret forth:-All-gracious Jove!
tis Peace, most lovely and of all beloved;
peace is the bounteous goddess, who bestows
weddings and holidays and joyous feasts,
relations, friends, wealth, plenty, social comforts
and pleasures, which alone make life a blessing.

R. CUMBERLAND

RETORT FROM A MAN OF LOW BIRTH TO AN OLD
WOMAN PRATING ABOUT HER ANCESTRY

'OOD gossip, if you love me, prate no more;

GOOD if you love is, plate?

Away to those, who have more need of them!
let the degenerate wretches, if they can,
dig up dead honour from their fathers' tombs,
and boast it for their own-Vain empty boast!
when every common fellow, that they meet,
if accident have not cut off the scroll,
can shew a list of ancestry as long.

You call the Scythians barbarous, and despise them; yet Anacharsis was a Scythian born;

and every man of a like noble nature,

tho' he were moulded from an Ethiop's loins,
is nobler than your pedigrees can make him.

R. CUMBERLAND

20

VIRTUE ALONE IS TRUE NOBILITY

IS only title thou disdain'st in her, the which

of colour, weight and heat, poured all together,
would quite confound distinction, yet stand off
in differences so mighty: if she be

all that is virtuous, (save what thou dislik'st
a poor physician's daughter) thou dislik'st
of virtue for the name: but do not so:

from lowest place where virtuous things proceed,
the place is dignified by the doer's deed:
where great additions swell, and virtue none,
it is a dropsied honour: good alone

is good, without a name: vileness is so:
the property by what it is should go

not by the title. She is young, wise, fair;

in these to nature she's immediate heir;

and these breed honour: that is honour's scorn,
which challenges itself as honour's born,
and is not like the sire: Honours best thrive,
when rather from our acts we them derive
than our fore-goers: the mere word's a slave,
deboshed on every tomb, on every grave;
a lying trophy, and as oft is dumb,

where dust and damned oblivion is the tomb
of honoured bones indeed.

W. SHAKESPEARE

NOTES

§ 9 two stanzas from the Fountain, a Conversation.

§ 10 from Old Mortality.

§ 13 from lines composed at Grasmere; the Author having just read of the dissolution of Fox being hourly expected.

19 from Heart of Mid Lothian: 1. 4, comp. Minucius Felix Apolog. 1. 36, § 6: ut qui viam terit, eo felicior, quo levior incedit, ita beatior in hoc itinere vivendi qui paupertate se sublevat, non sub divitiarum onere suspirat: Lactantius, Div. Inst. VII. 1, § 20.

§ 29 written by Queen Elizabeth, while prisoner at Woodstock, with charcoal on a shutter: See Percy's Reliques.

$35 Scripseram prius hoc de poesi morali caput,' says Sir William Jones in his Lectures on Asiatic poetry, p. 350, ‘quam scirem unde fabulam hanc quæ ab Addisono nostro etiam citatur sumsisset Chardinus: sed legi eam nuperrime in Sadii opere perfectissimo, quod Bustan seu Hortus inscribitur, et a Sadio ipso, poeta, si quis alius, ingenioso, inventam puto: ipsius itaque elegantes versus citabo cum mea qualiscunque sit versione: and after quoting the original with a literal Latin translation, he paraphrases thus:

Rigante molles imbre campos Persidis

e nube in æquor lapsa pluvia guttula est,
quæ, cum modestus eloqui sineret pudor,

"Quid hoc loci, inquit, quid rei misella sum?
quo me repente, ah! quo redactam sentio?'
Cum se verecundanti animula sperneret,
illam recepit gemmeo concha in sinu;
tandemque tenuis aquula facta est unio:
nunc in corona læta Regis emicat

docens, sit humili quanta laus modestia,

$70 from the Saint's Tragedy.

§ 92 from the Cresphontes.

§ 94 1. 3, an πείθει ποτὶ πλόον? 1. 4, πολλὸς βυθοῖ Ahrens.

§ 98 1. 3, comp. Eurip. Fr. apud Stobæum, p. 185:

ὅταν δ ̓ ἴδῃς πρὸς ὕψος ᾐρμένον τινὰ,

λαμπρῷ τε πλούτῳ καὶ γένει γαυρούμενον
τούτου ταχεῖαν νέμεσιν εὐθὺς προσδόκα·
ἐπαίρεται γὰρ μεῖζον, ἵνα μείζον πέσῃ.

§ 106 1. 3, the trew fayre, the true beauty: comp. PART 1, § 203, 1. 10: The indiscriminate use of substantives and adjectives was common in the older poetry: traces of it may be found

in such colloquial expressions as the dark for darkness.

§ 107 1. 1, culver, dove.

§ 112 1. 8, fondly, foolishly: prevent, forestall.

§ 114 1. 6, bill, voice, note: 1. 9, bird of hate, cuckoo.

§ 115 1. 10, Emathian conqueror: the story is told of Alexander the Great by Ælian Var. Hist. XIII. 7; and by Pliny Nat.

Hist. VII. 29.

§ 119 1. 12, to poison, compared to poison.

§ 174 1. 3, nae gowans glint, no daisies peep out: 1. 4, cleeding, clothing: 1. 8, burnie, little rivulet: 1. 9, brae, declivity: 1. 12, cranreuch, hoar-frost.

§ 196 1. 1, bravery, finery.

§ 200 1. 17, lightning-gem, the precious stone, ceraunium, so called because it was supposed to be found where thunder

had fallen.

$210 1. I, jo, sweetheart: 1. 4, brent, smooth :

7, pow, head:

1. 10, thegither, together: 1. 11, cantie, cheerful.

§ 215 on the Lady Mary Villiers, compare § 80.

$220 1. 3, birks, birches: 1. 7, siller saughs, silver willows: 1. 10, breckans, ferns: 1. 13, jouks, runs low.

§ 224 1. 7, maunds, baskets.

$ 225. 1. 15, wonned, lived.

$ 249 1. 11, eild, eld, old age: buss, bush: bield, shelter.

§ 280 Mrs Elizabeth Tollet, daughter of George Tollet, commissioner of the Navy in the reigns of King William and Queen Anne, and friend of Sir Isaac Newton, was authoress of a volume of poems, English and Latin, which were not published till after her death in 1754. See Nichols' Select Collection, vol. VI. p. 64.

$ 323 from the Secular Masque: 1. 4, wexing, waxing.

$ 325 1.9, leal, faithful: 1. 23, fain, happy.

$ 327 the second stanza has been suppressed in the later editions of Wordsworth's poems. The first four verses in the earlier

editions ran thus:

Though by a sickly taste betrayed
some may dispraise the lovely maid,
with fearless pride say

that she is healthful, fleet and strong.

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