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| author | Roger Frank <rfrank@pglaf.org> | 2025-10-15 05:25:02 -0700 |
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| committer | Roger Frank <rfrank@pglaf.org> | 2025-10-15 05:25:02 -0700 |
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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/5203-0.txt b/5203-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..a8ae836 --- /dev/null +++ b/5203-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,1124 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 5203 *** +The Village and The Newspaper by George Crabbe (1754-1832) + + + + +Contents + The Village + Book 1 + Book 2 + The Newspaper + + + + +THE VILLAGE + + + + +BOOK I.--THE ARGUMENT. + + + +The Subject proposed--Remarks upon Pastoral Poetry--A Tract of +Country near the Coast described--An Impoverished Borough--Smugglers +and their Assistants--Rude Manners of the Inhabitants--Ruinous +Effects of the High Tide--The Village Life more generally +considered: Evils of it--The Youthful Labourer--The Old Man: his +Soliloquy--The Parish Workhouse: its Inhabitants--The sick Poor: +their Apothecary--The dying Pauper--The Village Priest. + + +The Village Life, and every care that reigns +O'er youthful peasants and declining swains; +What labour yields, and what, that labour past, +Age, in its hour of languor, finds at last; +What form the real Picture of the Poor, +Demand a song--the Muse can give no more. + Fled are those times, when, in harmonious strains, +The rustic poet praised his native plains: +No Shepherds now, in smooth alternate verse, +Their country's beauty or their nymphs rehearse; +Yet still for these we frame the tender strain, +Still in our lays fond Corydons complain, +And shepherds' boys their amorous pains reveal, +The only pains, alas! they never feel. + On Mincio's banks, in Caesar's bounteous reign, +If Tityrus found the Golden Age again, +Must sleepy bards the nattering dream prolong, +Mechanic echoes of the Mantuan song? +From Truth and Nature shall we widely stray, +Where Virgil, not where Fancy, leads the way? + Yes, thus the Muses sing of happy swains, +Because the Muses never knew their pains: +They boast their peasant's pipes; but peasants now +Resign their pipes and plod behind the plough; +And few, amid the rural tribe, have time +To number syllables and play with rhyme; +Save honest DUCK, what son of verse could share +The poet's rapture and the peasant's care? +Or the great labours of the field degrade, +With the new peril of a poorer trade? + From this chief cause these idle praises spring, +That themes so easy few forbear to sing; +For no deep thought the trifling subjects ask; +To sing of shepherds is an easy task: +The happy youth assumes the common strain, +A nymph his mistress, and himself a swain; +With no sad scenes he clouds his tuneful prayer, +But all, to look like her, is painted fair. + I grant indeed that fields and flocks have charms +For him that grazes or for him that farms; +But when amid such pleasing scenes I trace +The poor laborious natives of the place, +And see the mid-day sun, with fervid ray, +On their bare heads and dewy temples play; +While some, with feebler heads and fainter hearts, +Deplore their fortune, yet sustain their parts +Then shall I dare these real ills to hide +In tinsel trappings of poetic pride? + No; cast by Fortune on a frowning coast, +Which neither groves nor happy valleys boast; +Where other cares than those the Muse relates, +And other shepherds dwell with other mates; +By such examples taught, I paint the Cot, +As Truth will paint it, and as Bards will not: +Nor you, ye Poor, of letter'd scorn complain, +To you the smoothest song is smooth in vain; +O'ercome by labour, and bow'd down by time, +Feel you the barren flattery of a rhyme? +Can poets soothe you, when you pine for bread, +By winding myrtles round your ruin'd shed? +Can their light tales your weighty griefs o'erpower, +Or glad with airy mirth the toilsome hour? + Lo! where the heath, with withering brake grown o'er, +Lends the light turf that warms the neighbouring poor; +From thence a length of burning sand appears, +Where the thin harvest waves its wither'd ears; +Rank weeds, that every art and care defy, +Reign o'er the land, and rob the blighted rye. +There thistles stretch their prickly arms afar, +And to the ragged infant threaten war; +There poppies nodding, mock the hope of toil, +There the blue bugloss paints the sterile soil; +Hardy and high, above the slender sheaf, +The slimy mallow waves her silky leaf; +O'er the young shoot the charlock throws a shade, +And clasping tares cling round the sickly blade. +With mingled tints the rocky coasts abound, +And a sad splendour vainly shines around. +So looks the nymph whom wretched arts adorn, +Betray'd by man, then left for man to scorn; +Whose cheek in vain assumes the mimic rose, +While her sad eyes the troubled breast disclose; +Whose outward splendour is but folly's dress, +Exposing most, when most it gilds distress. + Here joyless roam a wild amphibious race, +With sullen woe display'd in every face; +Who, far from civil arts and social fly, +And scowl at strangers with suspicious eye. + Here too the lawless merchant of the main +Draws from his plough th' intoxicated swain; +Want only claim'd the labour of the day, +But vice now steals his nightly rest away. + Where are the swains, who, daily labour done, +With rural games play'd down the setting sun; +Who struck with matchless force the bounding ball, +Or made the pond'rous quoit obliquely fall; +While some huge Ajax, terrible and strong, +Engaged some artful stripling of the throng. +And fell beneath him, foil'd, while far around +Hoarse triumph rose, and rocks return'd the sound? +Where now are these?--Beneath yon cliff they stand, +To show the freighted pinnace where to land; +To load the ready steed with guilty haste, +To fly in terror o'er the pathless waste, +Or, when detected, in their straggling course, +To foil their foes by cunning or by force; +Or, yielding part (which equal knaves demand), +To gain a lawless passport through the land. + Here, wand'ring long, amid these frowning fields, +I sought the simple life that Nature yields; +Rapine and Wrong and Fear usurp'd her place, +And a bold, artful, surly, savage race; +Who, only skill'd to take the finny tribe, +The yearly dinner, or septennial bribe, +Wait on the shore, and, as the waves run high, +On the tost vessel bend their eager eye, +Which to their coast directs its vent'rous way; +Theirs or the ocean's miserable prey. + As on their neighbouring beach yon swallows stand, +And wait for favouring winds to leave the land; +While still for flight the ready wing is spread: +So waited I the favouring hour, and fled; +Fled from these shores where guilt and famine reign, +And cried, Ah! hapless they who still remain; +Who still remain to hear the ocean roar, +Whose greedy waves devour the lessening shore; +Till some fierce tide, with more imperious sway, +Sweeps the low hut and all it holds away; +When the sad tenant weeps from door to door; +And begs a poor protection from the poor! + But these are scenes where Nature's niggard hand +Gave a spare portion to the famish'd land; +Hers is the fault, if here mankind complain +Of fruitless toil and labour spent in vain; +But yet in other scenes more fair in view, +When Plenty smiles--alas! she smiles for few - +And those who taste not, yet behold her store, +Are as the slaves that dig the golden ore - +The wealth around them makes them doubly poor. +Or will you deem them amply paid in health, +Labour's fair child, that languishes with wealth? +Go then! and see them rising with the sun, +Through a long course of daily toil to run; +See them beneath the Dog-star's raging heat, +When the knees tremble and the temples beat; +Behold them, leaning on their scythes, look o'er +The labour past, and toils to come explore; +See them alternate suns and showers engage, +And hoard up aches and anguish for their age; +Through fens and marshy moors their steps pursue, +When their warm pores imbibe the evening dew; +Then own that labour may as fatal be +To these thy slaves, as thine excess to thee. + Amid this tribe too oft a manly pride +Strives in strong toil the fainting heart to hide; +There may you see the youth of slender frame +Contend with weakness, weariness, and shame; +Yet, urged along, and proudly loth to yield, +He strives to join his fellows of the field: +Till long-contending nature droops at last, +Declining health rejects his poor repast, +His cheerless spouse the coming danger sees, +And mutual murmurs urge the slow disease. + Yet grant them health, 'tis not for us to tell, +Though the head droops not, that the heart is well; +Or will you praise that homely, healthy fare, +Plenteous and plain, that happy peasants share? +Oh! trifle not with wants you cannot feel, +Nor mock the misery of a stinted meal; +Homely, not wholesome, plain, not plenteous, such +As you who praise would never deign to touch. + Ye gentle souls, who dream of rural ease, +Whom the smooth stream and smoother sonnet please; +Go! if the peaceful cot your praises share, +Go look within, and ask if peace be there; +If peace be his, that drooping weary sire; +Or theirs, that offspring round their feeble fire; +Or hers, that matron pale, whose trembling hand +Turns on the wretched hearth th' expiring brand! + Nor yet can Time itself obtain for these +Life's latest comforts, due respect and ease; +For yonder see that hoary swain, whose age +Can with no cares except its own engage; +Who, propt on that rude staff, looks up to see +The bare arms broken from the withering tree, +On which, a boy, he climb'd the loftiest bough, +Then his first joy, but his sad emblem now. + He once was chief in all the rustic trade; +His steady hand the straightest furrow made; +Full many a prize he won, and still is proud +To find the triumphs of his youth allow'd; +A transient pleasure sparkles in his eyes, +He hears and smiles, then thinks again and sighs: +For now he journeys to his grave in pain; +The rich disdain him; nay the poor disdain: +Alternate masters now their slave command, +Urge the weak efforts of his feeble hand, +And, when his age attempts its task in vain, +With ruthless taunts, of lazy poor complain. + Oft may you see him, when he tends the sheep, +His winter charge, beneath the hillock weep; +Oft hear him murmur to the winds that blow +O'er his white locks and bury them in snow, +When, rous'd by rage and muttering in the morn, +He mends the broken hedge with icy thorn: - + "Why do I live, when I desire to be +At once from life and life's long labour free? +Like leaves in spring, the young are blown away, +Without the sorrows of a slow decay; +I, like yon withered leaf remain behind, +Nipt by the frost, and shivering in the wind; +There it abides till younger buds come on +As I, now all my fellow-swains are gone, +Then from the rising generation thrust, +It falls, like me, unnoticed to the dust. + "These fruitful fields, these numerous flocks I see, +Are others' gain, but killing cares to me; +To me the children of my youth are lords, +Cool in their looks, but hasty in their words: +Wants of their own demand their care; and who +Feels his own want and succours others too? +A lonely, wretched man, in pain I go, +None need my help, and none relieve my woe; +Then let my bones beneath the turf be laid, +And men forget the wretch they would not aid." + Thus groan the old, till by disease oppress'd, +They taste a final woe, and then they rest. + Theirs is yon House that holds the parish poor, +Whose walls of mud scarce bear the broken door; +There, where the putrid vapours, flagging, play, +And the dull wheel hums doleful through the day;- +There children dwell who know no parents' care; +Parents, who know no children's love, dwell there! +Heart-broken matrons on their joyless bed, +Forsaken wives, and mothers never wed; +Dejected widows with unheeded tears, +And crippled age with more than childhood fears; +The lame, the blind, and, far the happiest they! +The moping idiot, and the madman gay. + Here too the sick their final doom receive, +Here brought, amid the scenes of grief, to grieve, +Where the loud groans from some sad chamber flow, +Mixt with the clamours of the crowd below; +Here, sorrowing, they each kindred sorrow scan, +And the cold charities of man to man: +Whose laws indeed for ruin'd age provide, +And strong compulsion plucks the scrap from pride; +But still that scrap is bought with many a sigh, +And pride embitters what it can't deny. +Say, ye, opprest by some fantastic woes, +Some jarring nerve that baffles your repose; +Who press the downy couch, while slaves advance +With timid eye to read the distant glance; +Who with sad prayers the weary doctor tease, +To name the nameless ever new disease; +Who with mock patience dire complaints endure, +Which real pain and that alone can cure; +How would ye bear in real pain to lie, +Despised, neglected, left alone to die? +How would ye bear to draw your latest breath +Where all that's wretched paves the way for death? + Such is that room which one rude beam divides, +And naked rafters form the sloping sides; +Where the vile bands that bind the thatch are seen, +And lath and mud are all that lie between; +Save one dull pane, that, coarsely patch'd, gives way +To the rude tempest, yet excludes the day: +Here, on a matted flock, with dust o'erspread, +The drooping wretch reclines his languid head; +For him no hand the cordial cup applies, +Or wipes the tear that stagnates in his eyes; +No friends with soft discourse his pain beguile, +Or promise hope, till sickness wears a smile. + But soon a loud and hasty summons calls, +Shakes the thin roof, and echoes round the walls; +Anon, a figure enters, quaintly neat, +All pride and business, bustle and conceit; +With looks unalter'd by these scenes of woe, +With speed that, entering, speaks his haste to go, +He bids the gazing throng around him fly, +And carries fate and physic in his eye: +A potent quack, long versed in human ills, +Who first insults the victim whom he kills; +Whose murd'rous hand a drowsy Bench protect, +And whose most tender mercy is neglect. + Paid by the parish for attendance here, +He wears contempt upon his sapient sneer; +In haste he seeks the bed where Misery lies, +Impatience mark'd in his averted eyes; +And, some habitual queries hurried o'er, +Without reply, he rushes on the door: +His drooping patient, long inured to pain, +And long unheeded, knows remonstrance vain; +He ceases now the feeble help to crave +Of man; and silent sinks into the grave. + But ere his death some pious doubts arise, +Some simple fears, which "bold bad" men despise; +Fain would he ask the parish priest to prove +His title certain to the joys above: +For this he sends the murmuring nurse, who calls +The holy stranger to these dismal walls: +And doth not he, the pious man, appear, +He, "passing rich, with forty pounds a year?" +Ah!no; a shepherd of a different stock, +And far unlike him, feeds this little flock: +A jovial youth, who thinks his Sunday's task +As much as God or man can fairly ask; +The rest he gives to loves and labours light, +To fields the morning, and to feasts the night; +None better skill'd the noisy pack to guide, +To urge their chase, to cheer them or to chide; +A sportsman keen, he shoots through half the day, +And, skill'd at whist, devotes the night to play: +Then, while such honours bloom around his head, +Shall he sit sadly by the sick man's bed, +To raise the hope he feels not, or with zeal +To combat fears that e'en the pious, feel? + Now once again the gloomy scene explore, +Less gloomy now; the bitter hour is o'er, +The man of many sorrows sighs no more. - +Up yonder hill, behold how sadly slow +The bier moves winding from the vale below: +There lie the happy dead, from trouble free, +And the glad parish pays the frugal fee: +No more, O Death! thy victim starts to hear +Churchwarden stern, or kingly overseer; +No more the farmer claims his humble bow, +Thou art his lord, the best of tyrants thou! + Now to the church behold the mourners come, +Sedately torpid and devoutly dumb; +The village children now their games suspend, +To see the bier that bears their ancient friend: +For he was one in all their idle sport, +And like a monarch ruled their little court; +The pliant bow he form'd, the flying ball, +The bat, the wicket, were his labours all; +Him now they follow to his grave, and stand, +Silent and sad, and gazing hand in hand; +While bending low, their eager eyes explore +The mingled relics of the parish poor. +The bell tolls late, the moping owl flies round, +Fear marks the flight and magnifies the sound; +The busy priest, detain'd by weightier care, +Defers his duty till the day of prayer; +And, waiting long, the crowd retire distrest, +To think a poor man's bones should lie unblest. + + + +BOOK II--THE ARGUMENT. + + + +There are found, amid the Evils of a laborious Life, some Views of +Tranquillity and Happiness--The Repose and Pleasure of a Summer +Sabbath: interrupted by Intoxication and Dispute--Village +Detraction--Complaints of the 'Squire--The Evening Riots--Justice-- +Reasons for this unpleasant View of Rustic Life: the Effect it +should have upon the Lower Classes; and the Higher--These last have +their peculiar Distresses: Exemplified in the Life and heroic Death +of Lord Robert Manners--Concluding Address to His Grace the Duke of +Rutland. + +No longer truth, though shown in verse, disdain, +But own the Village Life a life of pain: +I too must yield, that oft amid those woes +Are gleams of transient mirth and hours of sweet repose, +Such as you find on yonder sportive Green, +The 'squire's tall gate and churchway-walk between; +Where loitering stray a little tribe of friends, +On a fair Sunday when the sermon ends: +Then rural beaux their best attire put on, +To win their nymphs, as other nymphs are won: +While those long wed go plain, and by degrees, +Like other husbands, quit their care to please. +Some of the sermon talk, a sober crowd, +And loudly praise, if it were preach'd aloud; +Some on the labours of the week look round, +Feel their own worth, and think their toil renown'd; +While some, whose hopes to no renown extend, +Are only pleased to find their labours end. + Thus, as their hours glide on, with pleasure fraught +Their careful masters brood the painful thought; +Much in their mind they murmur and lament, +That one fair day should be so idly spent; +And think that Heaven deals hard, to tithe their store +And tax their time for preachers and the poor. + Yet still, ye humbler friends, enjoy your hour, +This is your portion, yet unclaim'd of power; +This is Heaven's gift to weary men oppress'd, +And seems the type of their expected rest: +But yours, alas! are joys that soon decay; +Frail joys, begun and ended with the day; +Or yet, while day permits those joys to reign, +The village vices drive them from the plain. + See the stout churl, in drunken fury great, +Strike the bare bosom of his teeming mate! +His naked vices, rude and unrefined, +Exert their open empire o'er the mind; +But can we less the senseless rage despise, +Because the savage acts without disguise? + Yet here Disguise, the city's vice, is seen, +And Slander steals along and taints the Green: +At her approach domestic peace is gone, +Domestic broils at her approach come on; +She to the wife the husband's crime conveys, +She tells the husband when his consort strays; +Her busy tongue, through all the little state, +Diffuses doubt, suspicion, and debate; +Peace, tim'rous goddess! quits her old domain, +In sentiment and song content to reign. + Nor are the nymphs that breathe the rural air +So fair as Cynthia's, nor so chaste as fair: +These to the town afford each fresher face, +And the clown's trull receives the peer's embrace; +From whom, should chance again convey her down, +The peer's disease in turn attacks the clown. + Here too the 'squire, or 'squire-like farmer, talk, +How round their regions nightly pilferers walk; +How from their ponds the fish are borne, and all +The rip'ning treasures from their lofty wall; +How meaner rivals in their sports delight, +Just right enough to claim a doubtful right; +Who take a licence round their fields to stray, +A mongrel race! the poachers of the day. + And hark! the riots of the Green begin, +That sprang at first from yonder noisy inn; +What time the weekly pay was vanish'd all, +And the slow hostess scored the threat'ning wall; +What time they ask'd, their friendly feast to close, +A final cup, and that will make them foes; +When blows ensue that break the arm of toil, +And rustic battle ends the boobies' broil. + Save when to yonder Hall they bend their way, +Where the grave Justice ends the grievous fray; +He who recites, to keep the poor in awe, +The law's vast volume--for he knows the law: - +To him with anger or with shame repair +The injured peasant and deluded fair. + Lo! at his throne the silent nymph appears, +Frail by her shape, but modest in her tears; +And while she stands abash'd, with conscious eye, +Some favourite female of her judge glides by, +Who views with scornful glance the strumpet's fate, +And thanks the stars that made her keeper great: +Near her the swain, about to bear for life +One certain evil, doubts 'twixt war and wife; +But, while the faltering damsel takes her oath, +Consents to wed, and so secures them both. + Yet why, you ask, these humble crimes relate, +Why make the Poor as guilty as the Great? +To show the great, those mightier sons of pride, +How near in vice the lowest are allied; +Such are their natures and their passions such, +But these disguise too little, those too much: +So shall the man of power and pleasure see +In his own slave as vile a wretch as he; +In his luxurious lord the servant find +His own low pleasures and degenerate mind: +And each in all the kindred vices trace, +Of a poor, blind, bewilder'd erring race, +Who, a short time in varied fortune past, +Die, and are equal in the dust at last. + And you, ye Poor, who still lament your fate, +Forbear to envy those you call the Great; +And know, amid those blessings they possess, +They are, like you, the victims of distress; +While Sloth, with many a pang torments her slave, +Fear waits on guilt, and Danger shakes the brave. + Oh! if in life one noble chief appears, +Great in his name, while blooming in his years; +Born to enjoy whate'er delights mankind, +And yet to all you feel or fear resign'd; +Who gave up joys and hopes to you unknown, +For pains and dangers greater than your own: +If such there be, then let your murmurs cease, +Think, think of him, and take your lot in peace. +And such there was:--Oh! grief, that checks our pride, +Weeping we say there was, for MANNERS {1} died: +Beloved of Heaven, these humble lines forgive +That sing of Thee, and thus aspire to live. + As the tall oak, whose vigorous branches form +An ample shade, and brave the wildest storm, +High o'er the subject wood is seen to grow, +The guard and glory of the trees below; +Till on its head the fiery bolt descends, +And o'er the plain the shattered trunk extends; +Yet then it lies, all wond'rous as before, +And still the glory, though the guard no more: + So THOU, when every virtue, every grace, +Rose in thy soul, or shone within thy face; +When, though the son of GRANBY, thou wert known +Less by thy father's glory than thy own; +When Honour loved and gave thee every charm, +Fire to thy eye and vigour to thy arm; +Then from our lofty hopes and longing eyes, +Fate and thy virtues call'd thee to the skies; +Yet still we wonder at thy tow'ring fame, +And, losing thee, still dwell upon thy name. + Oh! ever honour'd, ever valued! say, +What verse can praise thee, or what work repay? +Yet verse (in all we can) thy worth repays, +Nor trusts the tardy zeal of future days: - +Honours for thee thy country shall prepare, +Thee in their hearts, the good, the brave shall bear; +To deeds like thine shall noblest chiefs aspire, +The Muse shall mourn thee, and the world admire. + In future times, when smit with Glory's charms, +The untried youth first quits a father's arms; - +"Oh! be like him," the weeping sire shall say; +"Like MANNERS walk, who walk'd in Honour's way; +In danger foremost, yet in death sedate, +Oh! be like him in all things, but his fate!" + If for that fate such public tears be shed, +That Victory seems to die now THOU art dead; +How shall a friend his nearer hope resign, +That friend a brother, and whose soul was thine? +By what bold lines shall we his grief express, +Or by what soothing numbers make it less? + 'Tis not, I know, the chiming of a song, +Nor all the powers that to the Muse belong, +Words aptly cull'd, and meaning well express'd, +Can calm the sorrows of a wounded breast; +But Virtue, soother of the fiercest pains, +Shall heal that bosom, RUTLAND, where she reigns. + Yet hard the task to heal the bleeding heart, +To bid the still-recurring thoughts depart, +Tame the fierce grief and stem the rising sigh, +And curb rebellious passion, with reply; +Calmly to dwell on all that pleased before, +And yet to know that all shall please no more; - +Oh! glorious labour of the soul, to save +Her captive powers, and bravely mourn the brave. + To such these thoughts will lasting comfort give - +Life is not measured by the time we live: +'Tis not an even course of threescore years, - +A life of narrow views and paltry fears, +Gray hairs and wrinkles, and the cares they bring, +That take from Death the terrors or the sting; +But 'tis the gen'rous spirit, mounting high +Above the world, that native of the sky; +The noble spirit, that, in dangers brave +Calmly looks on, or looks beyond the grave: - +Such MANNERS was, so he resign'd his breath, +If in a glorious, then a timely death. + Cease, then, that grief, and let those tears subside; +If Passion rule us, be that passion pride; +If Reason, reason bids us strive to raise +Our fallen hearts, and be like him we praise; +Or if Affection still the soul subdue, +Bring all his virtues, all his worth in view, +And let Affection find its comfort too: +For how can Grief so deeply wound the heart, +When Admiration claims so large a part? + Grief is a foe--expel him then thy soul; +Let nobler thoughts the nearer views control! +Oh! make the age to come thy better care, +See other RUTLANDS, other GRANBYS there! +And, as thy thoughts through streaming ages glide, +See other heroes die as MANNERS died: +And from their fate, thy race shall nobler grow, +As trees shoot upwards that are pruned below; +Or as old Thames, borne down with decent pride, +Sees his young streams run warbling at his side; +Though some, by art cut off, no longer run, +And some are lost beneath the summer sun - +Yet the pure stream moves on, and, as it moves, +Its power increases and its use improves; +While plenty round its spacious waves bestow, +Still it flows on, and shall for ever flow. + + + + + +THE NEWSPAPER + + + +E quibus, hi vacuas implent sermonibus aures: +Hi narrata ferunt alio; mensuraque ficti +Crescit, et auditis aliquid novus adjicit auctor: +Illic Credulitas, illic temerarius Error, +Vanaque Laetitia est, consternatique Timores, +Seditioque repens, dubioque auctore Susurri. + OVID, Metamorphoses + + +THE ARGUMENT + +This not a Time favourable to Poetical Composition: and why-- +Newspapers enemies to Literature, and their general Influence--Their +Numbers--The Sunday Monitor--Their general Character--Their Effect +upon Individuals--upon Society--in the Country--The Village +Freeholder--What Kind of Composition a Newspaper is; and the +Amusement it affords--Of what Parts it is chiefly composed--Articles +of Intelligence: Advertisements: The Stage: Quacks: Puffing--The +Correspondents to a Newspaper, political and poetical--Advice to the +latter--Conclusion. + +A time like this, a busy, bustling time, +Suits ill with writers, very ill with rhyme: +Unheard we sing, when party-rage runs strong, +And mightier madness checks the flowing song: +Or, should we force the peaceful Muse to wield +Her feeble arms amid the furious field, +Where party-pens a wordy war maintain, +Poor is her anger, and her friendship vain; +And oft the foes who feel her sting, combine, +Till serious vengeance pays an idle line: +For party-poets are like wasps, who dart +Death to themselves, and to their foes but smart. + Hard then our fate: if general themes we choose, +Neglect awaits the song, and chills the Muse; +Or should we sing the subject of the day, +To-morrow's wonder puffs our praise away. +More blest the bards of that poetic time, +When all found readers who could find a rhyme; +Green grew the bays on every teeming head, +And Cibber was enthroned, and Settle read. +Sing, drooping Muse, the cause of thy decline; +Why reign no more the once-triumphant Nine? +Alas! new charms the wavering many gain, +And rival sheets the reader's eye detain; +A daily swarm, that banish every Muse, +Come flying forth, and mortals call them NEWS: +For these, unread, the noblest volumes lie; +For these, in sheets unsoil'd, the Muses die; +Unbought, unblest, the virgin copies wait +In vain for fame, and sink, unseen, to fate. + Since, then, the Town forsakes us for our foes, +The smoothest numbers for the harshest prose; +Let us, with generous scorn, the taste deride, +And sing our rivals with a rival's pride. + Ye gentle poets, who so oft complain +That foul neglect is all your labours gain; +That pity only checks your growing spite +To erring man, and prompts you still to write; +That your choice works on humble stalls are laid, +Or vainly grace the windows of the trade; +Be ye my friends, if friendship e'er can warm +Those rival bosoms whom the Muses charm; +Think of the common cause wherein we go, +Like gallant Greeks against the Trojan foe; +Nor let one peevish chief his leader blame, +Till, crown'd with conquest, we regain our fame; +And let us join our forces to subdue +This bold assuming but successful crew. + I sing of NEWS, and all those vapid sheets +The rattling hawker vends through gaping streets; +Whate'er their name, whate'er the time they fly, +Damp from the press, to charm the reader's eye: +For soon as Morning dawns with roseate hue, +The HERALD of the morn arises too; +POST after POST succeeds, and, all day long, +GAZETTES and LEDGERS swarm, a noisy throng. +When evening comes, she comes with all her train; +Of LEDGERS, CHRONICLES, and POSTS again. +Like bats, appearing when the sun goes down, +From holes obscure and corners of the town. +Of all these triflers, all like these, I write; +Oh! like my subject could my song delight, +The crowd at Lloyd's one poet's name should raise, +And all the Alley echo to his praise. + In shoals the hours their constant numbers bring, +Like insects waking to th' advancing spring; +Which take their rise from grubs obscene that lie +In shallow pools, or thence ascend the sky: +Such are these base ephemeras, so born +To die before the next revolving morn. +Yet thus they differ: insect-tribes are lost +In the first visit of a winters frost; +While these remain, a base but constant breed, +Whose swarming sons their short-lived sires succeed; +No changing season makes their number less, +Nor Sunday shines a sabbath on the press! + Then lo! the sainted MONITOR is born, +Whose pious face some sacred texts adorn: +As artful sinners cloak the secret sin, +To veil with seeming grace the guile within; +So moral Essays on his front appear, +But all is carnal business in the rear; +The fresh-coin'd lie, the secret whisper'd last, +And all the gleanings of the six days past. + With these retired through half the Sabbath-day, +The London lounger yawns his hours away: +Not so, my little flock! your preacher fly, +Nor waste the time no worldly wealth can buy; +But let the decent maid and sober clown +Pray for these idlers of the sinful town: +This day, at least, on nobler themes bestow, +Nor give to WOODFALL, or the world below. + But, Sunday past, what numbers flourish then, +What wondrous labours of the press and pen; +Diurnal most, some thrice each week affords, +Some only once,--O avarice of words! +When thousand starving minds such manna seek, +To drop the precious food but once a week. + Endless it were to sing the powers of all, +Their names, their numbers; how they rise and fall: +Like baneful herbs the gazer's eye they seize, +Rush to the head, and poison where they please: +Like idle flies, a busy, buzzing train, +They drop their maggots in the trifler's brain: +That genia soil receives the fruitful store, +And there they grow, and breed a thousand more. + Now be their arts display'd, how first they choose +A cause and party, as the bard his Muse; +Inspired by these, with clamorous zeal they cry, +And through the town their dreams and omens fly; +So the Sibylline leaves were blown about, +Disjointed scraps of fate involved in doubt; +So idle dreams, the journals of the night, +Are right and wrong by turns, and mingle wrong with right.- +Some champions for the rights that prop the crown, +Some sturdy patriots, sworn to pull them down; +Some neutral powers, with secret forces fraught, +Wishing for war, but willing to be bought: +While some to every side and party go, +Shift every friend, and join with every foe; +Like sturdy rogues in privateers, they strike +This side and that, the foes of both alike; +A traitor-crew, who thrive in troubled times, +Fear'd for their force, and courted for their crimes. + Chief to the prosperous side the numbers sail, +Fickle and false, they veer with every gale; +As birds that migrate from a freezing shore +In search of warmer climes, come skimming o'er, +Some bold adventurers first prepare to try +The doubtful sunshine of the distant sky; +But soon the growing Summer's certain sun +Wins more and more, till all at last are won: +So, on the early prospect of disgrace, +Fly in vast troops this apprehensive race; +Instinctive tribes! their failing food they dread, +And buy, with timely change, their future bread. + Such are our guides; how many a peaceful head, +Born to be still, have they to wrangling led! +How many an honest zealot stol'n from trade, +And factious tools of pious pastors made! +With clews like these they thread the maze of state, +These oracles explore, to learn our fate; +Pleased with the guides who can so well deceive, +Who cannot lie so fast as they believe. + Oft lend I, loth, to some sage friend an ear, +(For we who will not speak are doom'd to hear); +While he, bewilder'd, tells his anxious thought, +Infectious fear from tainted scribblers caught, +Or idiot hope; for each his mind assails, +As LLOYD'S court-light or STOCKDALE'S gloom prevails. +Yet stand I patient while but one declaims, +Or gives dull comments on the speech he maims: +But oh! ye Muses, keep your votary's feet +From tavern-haunts where politicians meet; +Where rector, doctor, and attorney pause, +First on each parish, then each public cause: +Indited roads, and rates that still increase; +The murmuring poor, who will not fast in peace; +Election zeal and friendship, since declined; +A tax commuted, or a tithe in kind; +The Dutch and Germans kindling into strife; +Dull port and poachers vile; the serious ills of life. + Here comes the neighbouring Justice, pleased to guide +His little club, and in the chair preside. +In private business his commands prevail, +On public themes his reasoning turns the scale; +Assenting silence soothes his happy ear, +And, in or out, his party triumphs here. + Nor here th' infectious rage for party stops, +But flits along from palaces to shops; +Our weekly journals o'er the land abound, +And spread their plague and influenzas round; +The village, too, the peaceful, pleasant plain, +Breeds the Whig farmer and the Tory swain; +Brookes' and St Alban's boasts not, but, instead, +Stares the Red Ram, and swings the Rodney's Head:- +Hither, with all a patriot's care, comes he +Who owns the little hut that makes him free; +Whose yearly forty shillings buy the smile +Of mightier men, and never waste the while; +Who feels his freehold's worth, and looks elate, +A little prop and pillar of the state. + Here he delights the weekly news to con, +And mingle comments as he blunders on; +To swallow all their varying authors teach, +To spell a title, and confound a speech: +Till with a muddled mind he quits the news, +And claims his nation's licence to abuse; +Then joins the cry, "That all the courtly race +Are venal candidates for power and place;" +Yet feels some joy, amid the general vice, +That his own vote will bring its wonted price. + These are the ills the teeming Press supplies, +The pois'nous springs from learning's fountain rise; +Not there the wise alone their entrance find, +Imparting useful light to mortals blind; +But, blind themselves, these erring guides hold out +Alluring lights to lead us far about; +Screen'd by such means, here Scandal whets her quill, +Here Slander shoots unseen, whene'er she will; +Here Fraud and Falsehood labour to deceive, +And Folly aids them both, impatient to believe. +Such, sons of Britain! are the guides ye trust; +So wise their counsel, their reports so just!- +Yet, though we cannot call their morals pure, +Their judgment nice, or their decisions sure; +Merit they have to mightier works unknown, +A style, a manner, and a fate their own. + We, who for longer fame with labour strive, +Are pain'd to keep our sickly works alive; +Studious we toil, with patient care refine, +Nor let our love protect one languid line. +Severe ourselves, at last our works appear, +When, ah! we find our readers more severe; +For, after all our care and pains, how few +Acquire applause, or keep it if they do! +Not so these sheets, ordain'd to happier fate, +Praised through their day, and but that day their date; +Their careless authors only strive to join +As many words as make an even line; +As many lines as fill a row complete; +As many rows as furnish up a sheet: +From side to side, with ready types they run, +The measure's ended, and the work is done; +Oh, born with ease, how envied and how blest! +Your fate to-day and your to-morrow's rest, +To you all readers turn, and they can look +Pleased on a paper, who abhor a book; +Those who ne'er deign'd their Bible to peruse, +Would think it hard to be denied their News; +Sinners and saints, the wisest with the weak, +Here mingle tastes, and one amusement seek; +This, like the public inn, provides a treat, +Where each promiscuous guest sits down to eat; +And such this mental food, as we may call +Something to all men, and to some men all. + Next, in what rare production shall we trace +Such various subjects in so small a space? +As the first ship upon the waters bore +Incongruous kinds who never met before; +Or as some curious virtuoso joins +In one small room, moths, minerals, and coins, +Birds, beasts, and fishes; nor refuses place +To serpents, toads, and all the reptile race; +So here compress'd within a single sheet, +Great things and small, the mean and mighty meet. +'Tis this which makes all Europe's business known, +Yet here a private man may place his own: +And, where he reads of Lords and Commons, he +May tell their honours that he sells rappee. + Add next th' amusement which the motley page +Affords to either sex and every age: +Lo! where it comes before the cheerful fire,- +Damps from the press in smoky curls aspire +(As from the earth the sun exhales the dew), +Ere we can read the wonders that ensue: +Then eager every eye surveys the part +That brings its favourite subject to the heart; +Grave politicians look for facts alone, +And gravely add conjectures of their own: +The sprightly nymph, who never broke her rest +For tottering crowns or mighty lands oppress'd, +Finds broils and battles, but neglects them all +For songs and suits, a birth-day, or a ball: +The keen warm man o'erlooks each idle tale +For "Monies wanted," and "Estates on Sale;" +While some with equal minds to all attend, +Pleased with each part, and grieved to find an end. + So charm the news; but we who, far from town, +Wait till the postman brings the packet down, +Once in the week, a vacant day behold, +And stay for tidings, till they're three days old: +That day arrives; no welcome post appears, +But the dull morn a sullen aspect wears: +We meet, but ah! without our wonted smile, +To talk of headaches, and complain of bile; +Sullen we ponder o'er a dull repast, +Nor feast the body while the mind must fast. + A master passion is the love of news, +Not music so commands, nor so the Muse: +Give poets claret, they grow idle soon; +Feed the musician and he's out of tune; +But the sick mind, of this disease possess'd, +Flies from all cure, and sickens when at rest. + Now sing, my Muse, what various parts compose +These rival sheets of politics and prose. + First, from each brother's hoard a part they draw, +A mutual theft that never feared a law; +Whate'er they gain, to each man's portion fall, +And read it once, you read it through them all: +For this their runners ramble day and night, +To drag each lurking deed to open light; +For daily bread the dirty trade they ply, +Coin their fresh tales, and live upon the lie: +Like bees for honey, forth for news they spring,- +Industrious creatures! ever on the wing; +Home to their several cells they bear the store, +Cull'd of all kinds, then roam abroad for more. + No anxious virgin flies to "fair Tweed-side;" +No injured husband mourns his faithless bride; +No duel dooms the fiery youth to bleed; +But through the town transpires each vent'rous deed. +Should some fair frail one drive her prancing pair +Where rival peers contend to please the fair; +When, with new force, she aids her conquering eyes, +And beauty decks, with all that beauty buys: +Quickly we learn whose heart her influence feels, +Whose acres melt before her glowing wheels. + To these a thousand idle themes succeed, +Deeds of all kinds, and comments to each deed. +Here stocks, the state barometers, we view, +That rise or fall by causes known to few; +Promotion's ladder who goes up or down; +Who wed, or who seduced, amuse the town; +What new-born heir has made his father blest; +What heir exults, his father now at rest; +That ample list the Tyburn-herald gives, +And each known knave, who still for Tyburn lives. + So grows the work, and now the printer tries +His powers no more, but leans on his allies. + When lo! the advertising tribe succeed, +Pay to be read, yet find but few will read; +And chief th' illustrious race, whose drops and pills +Have patent powers to vanquish human ills: +These, with their cures, a constant aid remain, +To bless the pale composer's fertile brain; +Fertile it is, but still the noblest soil +Requires some pause, some intervals from toil; +And they at least a certain ease obtain +From Katterfelto's skill, and Graham's glowing strain. + I too must aid, and pay to see my name +Hung in these dirty avenues to fame; +Nor pay in vain, if aught the Muse has seen, +And sung, could make these avenues more clean; +Could stop one slander ere it found its way, +And give to public scorn its helpless prey. +By the same aid, the Stage invites her friends, +And kindly tells the banquet she intends; +Thither from real life the many run, +With Siddons weep, or laugh with Abingdon; +Pleased in fictitious joy or grief, to see +The mimic passion with their own agree; +To steal a few enchanted hours away +From self, and drop the curtain on the day. + But who can steal from self that wretched wight +Whose darling work is tried some fatal night? +Most wretched man! when, bane to every bliss, +He hears the serpent-critic's rising hiss; +Then groans succeed; nor traitors on the wheel +Can feel like him, or have such pangs to feel. +Nor end they here: next day he reads his fall +In every paper; critics are they all: +He sees his branded name with wild affright, +And hears again the cat-calls of the night. + Such help the STAGE affords: a larger space +Is fill'd by PUFFS and all the puffing race. +Physic had once alone the lofty style, +The well-known boast, that ceased to raise a smile: +Now all the province of that tribe invade, +And we abound in quacks of every trade. + The simple barber, once an honest name, +Cervantes founded, Fielding raised his fame: +Barber no more--a gay perfumer comes, +On whose soft cheek his own cosmetic blooms; +Here he appears, each simple mind to move, +And advertises beauty, grace, and love. +"Come, faded belles, who would your youth renew, +And learn the wonders of Olympian dew; +Restore the roses that begin to faint, +Nor think celestial washes vulgar paint; +Your former features, airs, and arts assume, +Circassian virtues, with Circassian bloom. +Come, battered beaux, whose locks are turned to gray, +And crop Discretion's lying badge away; +Read where they vend these smart engaging things, +These flaxen frontlets with elastic springs; +No female eye the fair deception sees, +Not Nature's self so natural as these." + Such are their arts, but not confined to them, +The muse impartial most her sons condemn: +For they, degenerate! join the venal throng, +And puff a lazy Pegasus along: +More guilty these, by Nature less design'd +For little arts that suit the vulgar kind. +That barbers' boys, who would to trade advance, +Wish us to call them smart Friseurs from France: +That he who builds a chop-house, on his door +Paints "The true old original Blue Boar!"- + These are the arts by which a thousand live, +Where Truth may smile, and Justice may forgive:- +But when, amidst this rabble rout, we find +A puffing poet to his honour blind; +Who slily drops quotations all about +Packet or post, and points their merit out; +Who advertises what reviewers say, +With sham editions every second day; +Who dares not trust his praises out of sight, +But hurries into fame with all his might; +Although the verse some transient praise obtains, +Contempt is all the anxious poet gains. + Now Puffs exhausted, Advertisements past, +Their Correspondents stand exposed at last; +These are a numerous tribe, to fame unknown, +Who for the public good forego their own; +Who volunteers in paper-war engage, +With double portion of their party's rage: +Such are the Bruti, Decii, who appear +Wooing the printer for admission here; +Whose generous souls can condescend to pray +For leave to throw their precious time away. + Oh! cruel WOODFALL! when a patriot draws +His gray-goose quill in his dear country's cause, +To vex and maul a ministerial race, +Can thy stern soul refuse the champion place? +Alas! thou know'st not with what anxious heart +He longs his best-loved labours to impart; +How he has sent them to thy brethren round, +And still the same unkind reception found: +At length indignant will he damn the state, +Turn to his trade, and leave us to our fate. + These Roman souls, like Rome's great sons, are known +To live in cells on labours of their own. +Thus Milo, could we see the noble chief, +Feeds, for his country's good, on legs of beef: +Camillus copies deeds for sordid pay, +Yet fights the public battles twice a-day: +E'en now the godlike Brutus views his score +Scroll'd on the bar-board, swinging with the door: +Where, tippling punch, grave Cato's self you'll see, +And Amor Patriae vending smuggled tea. + Last in these ranks, and least, their art's disgrace, +Neglected stand the Muses' meanest race; +Scribblers who court contempt, whose verse the eye +Disdainful views, and glances swiftly by: +This Poet's Corner is the place they choose, +A fatal nursery for an infant Muse; +Unlike that Corner where true Poets lie, +These cannot live, and they shall never die; +Hapless the lad whose mind such dreams invade, +And win to verse the talents due to trade. + Curb then, O youth! these raptures as they rise, +Keep down the evil spirit and be wise; +Follow your calling, think the Muses foes, +Nor lean upon the pestle and compose. + I know your day-dreams, and I know the snare +Hid in your flow'ry path, and cry "Beware!" +Thoughtless of ill, and to the future blind, +A sudden couplet rushes on your mind; +Here you may nameless print your idle rhymes, +And read your first-born work a thousand times; +Th'infection spreads, your couplet grows apace, +Stanzas to Delia's dog or Celia's face: +You take a name; Philander's odes are seen, +Printed, and praised, in every magazine: +Diarian sages greet their brother sage, +And your dark pages please th' enlightened age.- +Alas! what years you thus consume in vain, +Ruled by this wretched bias of the brain! + Go! to your desks and counters all return; +Your sonnets scatter, your acrostics burn; +Trade, and be rich; or, should your careful sires +Bequeath your wealth, indulge the nobler fires; +Should love of fame your youthful heart betray, +Pursue fair fame, but in a glorious way, +Nor in the idle scenes of Fancy's painting stray. + Of all the good that mortal men pursue, +The Muse has least to give, and gives to few; +Like some coquettish fair, she leads us on, +With smiles and hopes, till youth and peace are gone. +Then, wed for life, the restless wrangling pair +Forget how constant one, and one how fair: +Meanwhile Ambition, like a blooming bride, +Brings power and wealth to grace her lover's side; +And though she smiles not with such flattering charms, +The brave will sooner win her to their arms. + Then wed to her, if Virtue tie the bands, +Go spread your country's fame in hostile lands; +Her court, her senate, or her arms adorn, +And let her foes lament that you were born: +Or weigh her laws, their ancient rights defend, +Though hosts oppose, be theirs and Reason's friend; +Arm'd with strong powers, in their defence engage, +And rise the THURLOW of the future age. + + + +Footnotes: + +{1} Lord Robert Manners, killed in battle April 1782. + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 5203 *** diff --git a/5203-h/5203-h.htm b/5203-h/5203-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..38a7868 --- /dev/null +++ b/5203-h/5203-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,1145 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" +"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> +<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> +<head> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=utf-8" /> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Style-Type" content="text/css" /> +<title>The Village and The Newspaper | Project Gutenberg</title> +</head> +<body> +<div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 5203 ***</div> + +The Village and The Newspaper by George Crabbe (1754-1832)<br/> +<br/> +<br/> +<br/> +<br/> +Contents<br/> + The Village<br/> + Book 1<br/> + Book 2<br/> + The Newspaper<br/> +<br/> +<br/> +<br/> +<br/> +THE VILLAGE<br/> +<br/> +<br/> +<br/> +<br/> +BOOK I. - THE ARGUMENT.<br/> +<br/> +<br/> +<br/> +The Subject proposed - Remarks upon Pastoral Poetry - A Tract of Country +near the Coast described - An Impoverished Borough - Smugglers and their +Assistants - Rude Manners of the Inhabitants - Ruinous Effects of the +High Tide - The Village Life more generally considered: Evils of it +- The Youthful Labourer - The Old Man: his Soliloquy - The Parish Workhouse: +its Inhabitants - The sick Poor: their Apothecary - The dying Pauper +- The Village Priest.<br/> +<br/> +<br/> +The Village Life, and every care that reigns<br/> +O’er youthful peasants and declining swains;<br/> +What labour yields, and what, that labour past,<br/> +Age, in its hour of languor, finds at last;<br/> +What form the real Picture of the Poor,<br/> +Demand a song - the Muse can give no more.<br/> + Fled are those times, when, in harmonious strains,<br/> +The rustic poet praised his native plains:<br/> +No Shepherds now, in smooth alternate verse,<br/> +Their country’s beauty or their nymphs rehearse;<br/> +Yet still for these we frame the tender strain,<br/> +Still in our lays fond Corydons complain,<br/> +And shepherds’ boys their amorous pains reveal,<br/> +The only pains, alas! they never feel.<br/> + On Mincio’s banks, in Caesar’s bounteous +reign,<br/> +If Tityrus found the Golden Age again,<br/> +Must sleepy bards the nattering dream prolong,<br/> +Mechanic echoes of the Mantuan song?<br/> +From Truth and Nature shall we widely stray,<br/> +Where Virgil, not where Fancy, leads the way?<br/> + Yes, thus the Muses sing of happy swains,<br/> +Because the Muses never knew their pains:<br/> +They boast their peasant’s pipes; but peasants now<br/> +Resign their pipes and plod behind the plough;<br/> +And few, amid the rural tribe, have time<br/> +To number syllables and play with rhyme;<br/> +Save honest DUCK, what son of verse could share<br/> +The poet’s rapture and the peasant’s care?<br/> +Or the great labours of the field degrade,<br/> +With the new peril of a poorer trade?<br/> + From this chief cause these idle praises spring,<br/> +That themes so easy few forbear to sing;<br/> +For no deep thought the trifling subjects ask;<br/> +To sing of shepherds is an easy task:<br/> +The happy youth assumes the common strain,<br/> +A nymph his mistress, and himself a swain;<br/> +With no sad scenes he clouds his tuneful prayer,<br/> +But all, to look like her, is painted fair.<br/> + I grant indeed that fields and flocks have charms<br/> +For him that grazes or for him that farms;<br/> +But when amid such pleasing scenes I trace<br/> +The poor laborious natives of the place,<br/> +And see the mid-day sun, with fervid ray,<br/> +On their bare heads and dewy temples play;<br/> +While some, with feebler heads and fainter hearts,<br/> +Deplore their fortune, yet sustain their parts<br/> +Then shall I dare these real ills to hide<br/> +In tinsel trappings of poetic pride?<br/> + No; cast by Fortune on a frowning coast,<br/> +Which neither groves nor happy valleys boast;<br/> +Where other cares than those the Muse relates,<br/> +And other shepherds dwell with other mates;<br/> +By such examples taught, I paint the Cot,<br/> +As Truth will paint it, and as Bards will not:<br/> +Nor you, ye Poor, of letter’d scorn complain,<br/> +To you the smoothest song is smooth in vain;<br/> +O’ercome by labour, and bow’d down by time,<br/> +Feel you the barren flattery of a rhyme?<br/> +Can poets soothe you, when you pine for bread,<br/> +By winding myrtles round your ruin’d shed?<br/> +Can their light tales your weighty griefs o’erpower,<br/> +Or glad with airy mirth the toilsome hour?<br/> + Lo! where the heath, with withering brake grown o’er,<br/> +Lends the light turf that warms the neighbouring poor;<br/> +From thence a length of burning sand appears,<br/> +Where the thin harvest waves its wither’d ears;<br/> +Rank weeds, that every art and care defy,<br/> +Reign o’er the land, and rob the blighted rye.<br/> +There thistles stretch their prickly arms afar,<br/> +And to the ragged infant threaten war;<br/> +There poppies nodding, mock the hope of toil,<br/> +There the blue bugloss paints the sterile soil;<br/> +Hardy and high, above the slender sheaf,<br/> +The slimy mallow waves her silky leaf;<br/> +O’er the young shoot the charlock throws a shade,<br/> +And clasping tares cling round the sickly blade.<br/> +With mingled tints the rocky coasts abound,<br/> +And a sad splendour vainly shines around.<br/> +So looks the nymph whom wretched arts adorn,<br/> +Betray’d by man, then left for man to scorn;<br/> +Whose cheek in vain assumes the mimic rose,<br/> +While her sad eyes the troubled breast disclose;<br/> +Whose outward splendour is but folly’s dress,<br/> +Exposing most, when most it gilds distress.<br/> + Here joyless roam a wild amphibious race,<br/> +With sullen woe display’d in every face;<br/> +Who, far from civil arts and social fly,<br/> +And scowl at strangers with suspicious eye.<br/> + Here too the lawless merchant of the main<br/> +Draws from his plough th’ intoxicated swain;<br/> +Want only claim’d the labour of the day,<br/> +But vice now steals his nightly rest away.<br/> + Where are the swains, who, daily labour done,<br/> +With rural games play’d down the setting sun;<br/> +Who struck with matchless force the bounding ball,<br/> +Or made the pond’rous quoit obliquely fall;<br/> +While some huge Ajax, terrible and strong,<br/> +Engaged some artful stripling of the throng.<br/> +And fell beneath him, foil’d, while far around<br/> +Hoarse triumph rose, and rocks return’d the sound?<br/> +Where now are these? - Beneath yon cliff they stand,<br/> +To show the freighted pinnace where to land;<br/> +To load the ready steed with guilty haste,<br/> +To fly in terror o’er the pathless waste,<br/> +Or, when detected, in their straggling course,<br/> +To foil their foes by cunning or by force;<br/> +Or, yielding part (which equal knaves demand),<br/> +To gain a lawless passport through the land.<br/> + Here, wand’ring long, amid these frowning fields,<br/> +I sought the simple life that Nature yields;<br/> +Rapine and Wrong and Fear usurp’d her place,<br/> +And a bold, artful, surly, savage race;<br/> +Who, only skill’d to take the finny tribe,<br/> +The yearly dinner, or septennial bribe,<br/> +Wait on the shore, and, as the waves run high,<br/> +On the tost vessel bend their eager eye,<br/> +Which to their coast directs its vent’rous way;<br/> +Theirs or the ocean’s miserable prey.<br/> + As on their neighbouring beach yon swallows stand,<br/> +And wait for favouring winds to leave the land;<br/> +While still for flight the ready wing is spread:<br/> +So waited I the favouring hour, and fled;<br/> +Fled from these shores where guilt and famine reign,<br/> +And cried, Ah! hapless they who still remain;<br/> +Who still remain to hear the ocean roar,<br/> +Whose greedy waves devour the lessening shore;<br/> +Till some fierce tide, with more imperious sway,<br/> +Sweeps the low hut and all it holds away;<br/> +When the sad tenant weeps from door to door;<br/> +And begs a poor protection from the poor!<br/> + But these are scenes where Nature’s niggard +hand<br/> +Gave a spare portion to the famish’d land;<br/> +Hers is the fault, if here mankind complain<br/> +Of fruitless toil and labour spent in vain;<br/> +But yet in other scenes more fair in view,<br/> +When Plenty smiles - alas! she smiles for few -<br/> +And those who taste not, yet behold her store,<br/> +Are as the slaves that dig the golden ore -<br/> +The wealth around them makes them doubly poor.<br/> +Or will you deem them amply paid in health,<br/> +Labour’s fair child, that languishes with wealth?<br/> +Go then! and see them rising with the sun,<br/> +Through a long course of daily toil to run;<br/> +See them beneath the Dog-star’s raging heat,<br/> +When the knees tremble and the temples beat;<br/> +Behold them, leaning on their scythes, look o’er<br/> +The labour past, and toils to come explore;<br/> +See them alternate suns and showers engage,<br/> +And hoard up aches and anguish for their age;<br/> +Through fens and marshy moors their steps pursue,<br/> +When their warm pores imbibe the evening dew;<br/> +Then own that labour may as fatal be<br/> +To these thy slaves, as thine excess to thee.<br/> + Amid this tribe too oft a manly pride<br/> +Strives in strong toil the fainting heart to hide;<br/> +There may you see the youth of slender frame<br/> +Contend with weakness, weariness, and shame;<br/> +Yet, urged along, and proudly loth to yield,<br/> +He strives to join his fellows of the field:<br/> +Till long-contending nature droops at last,<br/> +Declining health rejects his poor repast,<br/> +His cheerless spouse the coming danger sees,<br/> +And mutual murmurs urge the slow disease.<br/> + Yet grant them health, ’tis not for us to tell,<br/> +Though the head droops not, that the heart is well;<br/> +Or will you praise that homely, healthy fare,<br/> +Plenteous and plain, that happy peasants share?<br/> +Oh! trifle not with wants you cannot feel,<br/> +Nor mock the misery of a stinted meal;<br/> +Homely, not wholesome, plain, not plenteous, such<br/> +As you who praise would never deign to touch.<br/> + Ye gentle souls, who dream of rural ease,<br/> +Whom the smooth stream and smoother sonnet please;<br/> +Go! if the peaceful cot your praises share,<br/> +Go look within, and ask if peace be there;<br/> +If peace be his, that drooping weary sire;<br/> +Or theirs, that offspring round their feeble fire;<br/> +Or hers, that matron pale, whose trembling hand<br/> +Turns on the wretched hearth th’ expiring brand!<br/> + Nor yet can Time itself obtain for these<br/> +Life’s latest comforts, due respect and ease;<br/> +For yonder see that hoary swain, whose age<br/> +Can with no cares except its own engage;<br/> +Who, propt on that rude staff, looks up to see<br/> +The bare arms broken from the withering tree,<br/> +On which, a boy, he climb’d the loftiest bough,<br/> +Then his first joy, but his sad emblem now.<br/> + He once was chief in all the rustic trade;<br/> +His steady hand the straightest furrow made;<br/> +Full many a prize he won, and still is proud<br/> +To find the triumphs of his youth allow’d;<br/> +A transient pleasure sparkles in his eyes,<br/> +He hears and smiles, then thinks again and sighs:<br/> +For now he journeys to his grave in pain;<br/> +The rich disdain him; nay the poor disdain:<br/> +Alternate masters now their slave command,<br/> +Urge the weak efforts of his feeble hand,<br/> +And, when his age attempts its task in vain,<br/> +With ruthless taunts, of lazy poor complain.<br/> + Oft may you see him, when he tends the sheep,<br/> +His winter charge, beneath the hillock weep;<br/> +Oft hear him murmur to the winds that blow<br/> +O’er his white locks and bury them in snow,<br/> +When, rous’d by rage and muttering in the morn,<br/> +He mends the broken hedge with icy thorn: -<br/> + “Why do I live, when I desire to be<br/> +At once from life and life’s long labour free?<br/> +Like leaves in spring, the young are blown away,<br/> +Without the sorrows of a slow decay;<br/> +I, like yon withered leaf remain behind,<br/> +Nipt by the frost, and shivering in the wind;<br/> +There it abides till younger buds come on<br/> +As I, now all my fellow-swains are gone,<br/> +Then from the rising generation thrust,<br/> +It falls, like me, unnoticed to the dust.<br/> + “These fruitful fields, these numerous flocks I see,<br/> +Are others’ gain, but killing cares to me;<br/> +To me the children of my youth are lords,<br/> +Cool in their looks, but hasty in their words:<br/> +Wants of their own demand their care; and who<br/> +Feels his own want and succours others too?<br/> +A lonely, wretched man, in pain I go,<br/> +None need my help, and none relieve my woe;<br/> +Then let my bones beneath the turf be laid,<br/> +And men forget the wretch they would not aid.”<br/> + Thus groan the old, till by disease oppress’d,<br/> +They taste a final woe, and then they rest.<br/> + Theirs is yon House that holds the parish poor,<br/> +Whose walls of mud scarce bear the broken door;<br/> +There, where the putrid vapours, flagging, play,<br/> +And the dull wheel hums doleful through the day;-<br/> +There children dwell who know no parents’ care;<br/> +Parents, who know no children’s love, dwell there!<br/> +Heart-broken matrons on their joyless bed,<br/> +Forsaken wives, and mothers never wed;<br/> +Dejected widows with unheeded tears,<br/> +And crippled age with more than childhood fears;<br/> +The lame, the blind, and, far the happiest they!<br/> +The moping idiot, and the madman gay.<br/> + Here too the sick their final doom receive,<br/> +Here brought, amid the scenes of grief, to grieve,<br/> +Where the loud groans from some sad chamber flow,<br/> +Mixt with the clamours of the crowd below;<br/> +Here, sorrowing, they each kindred sorrow scan,<br/> +And the cold charities of man to man:<br/> +Whose laws indeed for ruin’d age provide,<br/> +And strong compulsion plucks the scrap from pride;<br/> +But still that scrap is bought with many a sigh,<br/> +And pride embitters what it can’t deny.<br/> +Say, ye, opprest by some fantastic woes,<br/> +Some jarring nerve that baffles your repose;<br/> +Who press the downy couch, while slaves advance<br/> +With timid eye to read the distant glance;<br/> +Who with sad prayers the weary doctor tease,<br/> +To name the nameless ever new disease;<br/> +Who with mock patience dire complaints endure,<br/> +Which real pain and that alone can cure;<br/> +How would ye bear in real pain to lie,<br/> +Despised, neglected, left alone to die?<br/> +How would ye bear to draw your latest breath<br/> +Where all that’s wretched paves the way for death?<br/> + Such is that room which one rude beam divides,<br/> +And naked rafters form the sloping sides;<br/> +Where the vile bands that bind the thatch are seen,<br/> +And lath and mud are all that lie between;<br/> +Save one dull pane, that, coarsely patch’d, gives way<br/> +To the rude tempest, yet excludes the day:<br/> +Here, on a matted flock, with dust o’erspread,<br/> +The drooping wretch reclines his languid head;<br/> +For him no hand the cordial cup applies,<br/> +Or wipes the tear that stagnates in his eyes;<br/> +No friends with soft discourse his pain beguile,<br/> +Or promise hope, till sickness wears a smile.<br/> + But soon a loud and hasty summons calls,<br/> +Shakes the thin roof, and echoes round the walls;<br/> +Anon, a figure enters, quaintly neat,<br/> +All pride and business, bustle and conceit;<br/> +With looks unalter’d by these scenes of woe,<br/> +With speed that, entering, speaks his haste to go,<br/> +He bids the gazing throng around him fly,<br/> +And carries fate and physic in his eye:<br/> +A potent quack, long versed in human ills,<br/> +Who first insults the victim whom he kills;<br/> +Whose murd’rous hand a drowsy Bench protect,<br/> +And whose most tender mercy is neglect.<br/> + Paid by the parish for attendance here,<br/> +He wears contempt upon his sapient sneer;<br/> +In haste he seeks the bed where Misery lies,<br/> +Impatience mark’d in his averted eyes;<br/> +And, some habitual queries hurried o’er,<br/> +Without reply, he rushes on the door:<br/> +His drooping patient, long inured to pain,<br/> +And long unheeded, knows remonstrance vain;<br/> +He ceases now the feeble help to crave<br/> +Of man; and silent sinks into the grave.<br/> + But ere his death some pious doubts arise,<br/> +Some simple fears, which “bold bad” men despise;<br/> +Fain would he ask the parish priest to prove<br/> +His title certain to the joys above:<br/> +For this he sends the murmuring nurse, who calls<br/> +The holy stranger to these dismal walls:<br/> +And doth not he, the pious man, appear,<br/> +He, “passing rich, with forty pounds a year?”<br/> +Ah!no; a shepherd of a different stock,<br/> +And far unlike him, feeds this little flock:<br/> +A jovial youth, who thinks his Sunday’s task<br/> +As much as God or man can fairly ask;<br/> +The rest he gives to loves and labours light,<br/> +To fields the morning, and to feasts the night;<br/> +None better skill’d the noisy pack to guide,<br/> +To urge their chase, to cheer them or to chide;<br/> +A sportsman keen, he shoots through half the day,<br/> +And, skill’d at whist, devotes the night to play:<br/> +Then, while such honours bloom around his head,<br/> +Shall he sit sadly by the sick man’s bed,<br/> +To raise the hope he feels not, or with zeal<br/> +To combat fears that e’en the pious, feel?<br/> + Now once again the gloomy scene explore,<br/> +Less gloomy now; the bitter hour is o’er,<br/> +The man of many sorrows sighs no more. -<br/> +Up yonder hill, behold how sadly slow<br/> +The bier moves winding from the vale below:<br/> +There lie the happy dead, from trouble free,<br/> +And the glad parish pays the frugal fee:<br/> +No more, O Death! thy victim starts to hear<br/> +Churchwarden stern, or kingly overseer;<br/> +No more the farmer claims his humble bow,<br/> +Thou art his lord, the best of tyrants thou!<br/> + Now to the church behold the mourners come,<br/> +Sedately torpid and devoutly dumb;<br/> +The village children now their games suspend,<br/> +To see the bier that bears their ancient friend:<br/> +For he was one in all their idle sport,<br/> +And like a monarch ruled their little court;<br/> +The pliant bow he form’d, the flying ball,<br/> +The bat, the wicket, were his labours all;<br/> +Him now they follow to his grave, and stand,<br/> +Silent and sad, and gazing hand in hand;<br/> +While bending low, their eager eyes explore<br/> +The mingled relics of the parish poor.<br/> +The bell tolls late, the moping owl flies round,<br/> +Fear marks the flight and magnifies the sound;<br/> +The busy priest, detain’d by weightier care,<br/> +Defers his duty till the day of prayer;<br/> +And, waiting long, the crowd retire distrest,<br/> +To think a poor man’s bones should lie unblest.<br/> +<br/> +<br/> +<br/> +BOOK II - THE ARGUMENT.<br/> +<br/> +<br/> +<br/> +There are found, amid the Evils of a laborious Life, some Views of Tranquillity +and Happiness - The Repose and Pleasure of a Summer Sabbath: interrupted +by Intoxication and Dispute - Village Detraction - Complaints of the +’Squire - The Evening Riots - Justice - Reasons for this unpleasant +View of Rustic Life: the Effect it should have upon the Lower Classes; +and the Higher - These last have their peculiar Distresses: Exemplified +in the Life and heroic Death of Lord Robert Manners - Concluding Address +to His Grace the Duke of Rutland.<br/> +<br/> +No longer truth, though shown in verse, disdain,<br/> +But own the Village Life a life of pain:<br/> +I too must yield, that oft amid those woes<br/> +Are gleams of transient mirth and hours of sweet repose,<br/> +Such as you find on yonder sportive Green,<br/> +The ’squire’s tall gate and churchway-walk between;<br/> +Where loitering stray a little tribe of friends,<br/> +On a fair Sunday when the sermon ends:<br/> +Then rural beaux their best attire put on,<br/> +To win their nymphs, as other nymphs are won:<br/> +While those long wed go plain, and by degrees,<br/> +Like other husbands, quit their care to please.<br/> +Some of the sermon talk, a sober crowd,<br/> +And loudly praise, if it were preach’d aloud;<br/> +Some on the labours of the week look round,<br/> +Feel their own worth, and think their toil renown’d;<br/> +While some, whose hopes to no renown extend,<br/> +Are only pleased to find their labours end.<br/> + Thus, as their hours glide on, with pleasure fraught<br/> +Their careful masters brood the painful thought;<br/> +Much in their mind they murmur and lament,<br/> +That one fair day should be so idly spent;<br/> +And think that Heaven deals hard, to tithe their store<br/> +And tax their time for preachers and the poor.<br/> + Yet still, ye humbler friends, enjoy your hour,<br/> +This is your portion, yet unclaim’d of power;<br/> +This is Heaven’s gift to weary men oppress’d,<br/> +And seems the type of their expected rest:<br/> +But yours, alas! are joys that soon decay;<br/> +Frail joys, begun and ended with the day;<br/> +Or yet, while day permits those joys to reign,<br/> +The village vices drive them from the plain.<br/> + See the stout churl, in drunken fury great,<br/> +Strike the bare bosom of his teeming mate!<br/> +His naked vices, rude and unrefined,<br/> +Exert their open empire o’er the mind;<br/> +But can we less the senseless rage despise,<br/> +Because the savage acts without disguise?<br/> + Yet here Disguise, the city’s vice, is seen,<br/> +And Slander steals along and taints the Green:<br/> +At her approach domestic peace is gone,<br/> +Domestic broils at her approach come on;<br/> +She to the wife the husband’s crime conveys,<br/> +She tells the husband when his consort strays;<br/> +Her busy tongue, through all the little state,<br/> +Diffuses doubt, suspicion, and debate;<br/> +Peace, tim’rous goddess! quits her old domain,<br/> +In sentiment and song content to reign.<br/> + Nor are the nymphs that breathe the rural air<br/> +So fair as Cynthia’s, nor so chaste as fair:<br/> +These to the town afford each fresher face,<br/> +And the clown’s trull receives the peer’s embrace;<br/> +From whom, should chance again convey her down,<br/> +The peer’s disease in turn attacks the clown.<br/> + Here too the ’squire, or ’squire-like +farmer, talk,<br/> +How round their regions nightly pilferers walk;<br/> +How from their ponds the fish are borne, and all<br/> +The rip’ning treasures from their lofty wall;<br/> +How meaner rivals in their sports delight,<br/> +Just right enough to claim a doubtful right;<br/> +Who take a licence round their fields to stray,<br/> +A mongrel race! the poachers of the day.<br/> + And hark! the riots of the Green begin,<br/> +That sprang at first from yonder noisy inn;<br/> +What time the weekly pay was vanish’d all,<br/> +And the slow hostess scored the threat’ning wall;<br/> +What time they ask’d, their friendly feast to close,<br/> +A final cup, and that will make them foes;<br/> +When blows ensue that break the arm of toil,<br/> +And rustic battle ends the boobies’ broil.<br/> + Save when to yonder Hall they bend their way,<br/> +Where the grave Justice ends the grievous fray;<br/> +He who recites, to keep the poor in awe,<br/> +The law’s vast volume - for he knows the law: -<br/> +To him with anger or with shame repair<br/> +The injured peasant and deluded fair.<br/> + Lo! at his throne the silent nymph appears,<br/> +Frail by her shape, but modest in her tears;<br/> +And while she stands abash’d, with conscious eye,<br/> +Some favourite female of her judge glides by,<br/> +Who views with scornful glance the strumpet’s fate,<br/> +And thanks the stars that made her keeper great:<br/> +Near her the swain, about to bear for life<br/> +One certain evil, doubts ’twixt war and wife;<br/> +But, while the faltering damsel takes her oath,<br/> +Consents to wed, and so secures them both.<br/> + Yet why, you ask, these humble crimes relate,<br/> +Why make the Poor as guilty as the Great?<br/> +To show the great, those mightier sons of pride,<br/> +How near in vice the lowest are allied;<br/> +Such are their natures and their passions such,<br/> +But these disguise too little, those too much:<br/> +So shall the man of power and pleasure see<br/> +In his own slave as vile a wretch as he;<br/> +In his luxurious lord the servant find<br/> +His own low pleasures and degenerate mind:<br/> +And each in all the kindred vices trace,<br/> +Of a poor, blind, bewilder’d erring race,<br/> +Who, a short time in varied fortune past,<br/> +Die, and are equal in the dust at last.<br/> + And you, ye Poor, who still lament your fate,<br/> +Forbear to envy those you call the Great;<br/> +And know, amid those blessings they possess,<br/> +They are, like you, the victims of distress;<br/> +While Sloth, with many a pang torments her slave,<br/> +Fear waits on guilt, and Danger shakes the brave.<br/> + Oh! if in life one noble chief appears,<br/> +Great in his name, while blooming in his years;<br/> +Born to enjoy whate’er delights mankind,<br/> +And yet to all you feel or fear resign’d;<br/> +Who gave up joys and hopes to you unknown,<br/> +For pains and dangers greater than your own:<br/> +If such there be, then let your murmurs cease,<br/> +Think, think of him, and take your lot in peace.<br/> +And such there was: - Oh! grief, that checks our pride,<br/> +Weeping we say there was, for MANNERS <a name="citation1"></a><a href="#footnote1">{1}</a> +died:<br/> +Beloved of Heaven, these humble lines forgive<br/> +That sing of Thee, and thus aspire to live.<br/> + As the tall oak, whose vigorous branches form<br/> +An ample shade, and brave the wildest storm,<br/> +High o’er the subject wood is seen to grow,<br/> +The guard and glory of the trees below;<br/> +Till on its head the fiery bolt descends,<br/> +And o’er the plain the shattered trunk extends;<br/> +Yet then it lies, all wond’rous as before,<br/> +And still the glory, though the guard no more:<br/> + So THOU, when every virtue, every grace,<br/> +Rose in thy soul, or shone within thy face;<br/> +When, though the son of GRANBY, thou wert known<br/> +Less by thy father’s glory than thy own;<br/> +When Honour loved and gave thee every charm,<br/> +Fire to thy eye and vigour to thy arm;<br/> +Then from our lofty hopes and longing eyes,<br/> +Fate and thy virtues call’d thee to the skies;<br/> +Yet still we wonder at thy tow’ring fame,<br/> +And, losing thee, still dwell upon thy name.<br/> + Oh! ever honour’d, ever valued! say,<br/> +What verse can praise thee, or what work repay?<br/> +Yet verse (in all we can) thy worth repays,<br/> +Nor trusts the tardy zeal of future days: -<br/> +Honours for thee thy country shall prepare,<br/> +Thee in their hearts, the good, the brave shall bear;<br/> +To deeds like thine shall noblest chiefs aspire,<br/> +The Muse shall mourn thee, and the world admire.<br/> + In future times, when smit with Glory’s charms,<br/> +The untried youth first quits a father’s arms; -<br/> +“Oh! be like him,” the weeping sire shall say;<br/> +“Like MANNERS walk, who walk’d in Honour’s way;<br/> +In danger foremost, yet in death sedate,<br/> +Oh! be like him in all things, but his fate!”<br/> + If for that fate such public tears be shed,<br/> +That Victory seems to die now THOU art dead;<br/> +How shall a friend his nearer hope resign,<br/> +That friend a brother, and whose soul was thine?<br/> +By what bold lines shall we his grief express,<br/> +Or by what soothing numbers make it less?<br/> + ’Tis not, I know, the chiming of a song,<br/> +Nor all the powers that to the Muse belong,<br/> +Words aptly cull’d, and meaning well express’d,<br/> +Can calm the sorrows of a wounded breast;<br/> +But Virtue, soother of the fiercest pains,<br/> +Shall heal that bosom, RUTLAND, where she reigns.<br/> + Yet hard the task to heal the bleeding heart,<br/> +To bid the still-recurring thoughts depart,<br/> +Tame the fierce grief and stem the rising sigh,<br/> +And curb rebellious passion, with reply;<br/> +Calmly to dwell on all that pleased before,<br/> +And yet to know that all shall please no more; -<br/> +Oh! glorious labour of the soul, to save<br/> +Her captive powers, and bravely mourn the brave.<br/> + To such these thoughts will lasting comfort give -<br/> +Life is not measured by the time we live:<br/> +’Tis not an even course of threescore years, -<br/> +A life of narrow views and paltry fears,<br/> +Gray hairs and wrinkles, and the cares they bring,<br/> +That take from Death the terrors or the sting;<br/> +But ’tis the gen’rous spirit, mounting high<br/> +Above the world, that native of the sky;<br/> +The noble spirit, that, in dangers brave<br/> +Calmly looks on, or looks beyond the grave: -<br/> +Such MANNERS was, so he resign’d his breath,<br/> +If in a glorious, then a timely death.<br/> + Cease, then, that grief, and let those tears subside;<br/> +If Passion rule us, be that passion pride;<br/> +If Reason, reason bids us strive to raise<br/> +Our fallen hearts, and be like him we praise;<br/> +Or if Affection still the soul subdue,<br/> +Bring all his virtues, all his worth in view,<br/> +And let Affection find its comfort too:<br/> +For how can Grief so deeply wound the heart,<br/> +When Admiration claims so large a part?<br/> + Grief is a foe - expel him then thy soul;<br/> +Let nobler thoughts the nearer views control!<br/> +Oh! make the age to come thy better care,<br/> +See other RUTLANDS, other GRANBYS there!<br/> +And, as thy thoughts through streaming ages glide,<br/> +See other heroes die as MANNERS died:<br/> +And from their fate, thy race shall nobler grow,<br/> +As trees shoot upwards that are pruned below;<br/> +Or as old Thames, borne down with decent pride,<br/> +Sees his young streams run warbling at his side;<br/> +Though some, by art cut off, no longer run,<br/> +And some are lost beneath the summer sun -<br/> +Yet the pure stream moves on, and, as it moves,<br/> +Its power increases and its use improves;<br/> +While plenty round its spacious waves bestow,<br/> +Still it flows on, and shall for ever flow.<br/> +<br/> +<br/> +<br/> +<br/> +<br/> +THE NEWSPAPER<br/> +<br/> +<br/> +<br/> +E quibus, hi vacuas implent sermonibus aures:<br/> +Hi narrata ferunt alio; mensuraque ficti<br/> +Crescit, et auditis aliquid novus adjicit auctor:<br/> +Illic Credulitas, illic temerarius Error,<br/> +Vanaque Laetitia est, consternatique Timores,<br/> +Seditioque repens, dubioque auctore Susurri.<br/> + OVID, +Metamorphoses<br/> +<br/> +<br/> +THE ARGUMENT<br/> +<br/> +This not a Time favourable to Poetical Composition: and why - Newspapers +enemies to Literature, and their general Influence - Their Numbers - +The Sunday Monitor - Their general Character - Their Effect upon Individuals +- upon Society - in the Country - The Village Freeholder - What Kind +of Composition a Newspaper is; and the Amusement it affords - Of what +Parts it is chiefly composed - Articles of Intelligence: Advertisements: +The Stage: Quacks: Puffing - The Correspondents to a Newspaper, political +and poetical - Advice to the latter - Conclusion.<br/> +<br/> +A time like this, a busy, bustling time,<br/> +Suits ill with writers, very ill with rhyme:<br/> +Unheard we sing, when party-rage runs strong,<br/> +And mightier madness checks the flowing song:<br/> +Or, should we force the peaceful Muse to wield<br/> +Her feeble arms amid the furious field,<br/> +Where party-pens a wordy war maintain,<br/> +Poor is her anger, and her friendship vain;<br/> +And oft the foes who feel her sting, combine,<br/> +Till serious vengeance pays an idle line:<br/> +For party-poets are like wasps, who dart<br/> +Death to themselves, and to their foes but smart.<br/> + Hard then our fate: if general themes we choose,<br/> +Neglect awaits the song, and chills the Muse;<br/> +Or should we sing the subject of the day,<br/> +To-morrow’s wonder puffs our praise away.<br/> +More blest the bards of that poetic time,<br/> +When all found readers who could find a rhyme;<br/> +Green grew the bays on every teeming head,<br/> +And Cibber was enthroned, and Settle read.<br/> +Sing, drooping Muse, the cause of thy decline;<br/> +Why reign no more the once-triumphant Nine?<br/> +Alas! new charms the wavering many gain,<br/> +And rival sheets the reader’s eye detain;<br/> +A daily swarm, that banish every Muse,<br/> +Come flying forth, and mortals call them NEWS:<br/> +For these, unread, the noblest volumes lie;<br/> +For these, in sheets unsoil’d, the Muses die;<br/> +Unbought, unblest, the virgin copies wait<br/> +In vain for fame, and sink, unseen, to fate.<br/> + Since, then, the Town forsakes us for our foes,<br/> +The smoothest numbers for the harshest prose;<br/> +Let us, with generous scorn, the taste deride,<br/> +And sing our rivals with a rival’s pride.<br/> + Ye gentle poets, who so oft complain<br/> +That foul neglect is all your labours gain;<br/> +That pity only checks your growing spite<br/> +To erring man, and prompts you still to write;<br/> +That your choice works on humble stalls are laid,<br/> +Or vainly grace the windows of the trade;<br/> +Be ye my friends, if friendship e’er can warm<br/> +Those rival bosoms whom the Muses charm;<br/> +Think of the common cause wherein we go,<br/> +Like gallant Greeks against the Trojan foe;<br/> +Nor let one peevish chief his leader blame,<br/> +Till, crown’d with conquest, we regain our fame;<br/> +And let us join our forces to subdue<br/> +This bold assuming but successful crew.<br/> + I sing of NEWS, and all those vapid sheets<br/> +The rattling hawker vends through gaping streets;<br/> +Whate’er their name, whate’er the time they fly,<br/> +Damp from the press, to charm the reader’s eye:<br/> +For soon as Morning dawns with roseate hue,<br/> +The HERALD of the morn arises too;<br/> +POST after POST succeeds, and, all day long,<br/> +GAZETTES and LEDGERS swarm, a noisy throng.<br/> +When evening comes, she comes with all her train;<br/> +Of LEDGERS, CHRONICLES, and POSTS again.<br/> +Like bats, appearing when the sun goes down,<br/> +From holes obscure and corners of the town.<br/> +Of all these triflers, all like these, I write;<br/> +Oh! like my subject could my song delight,<br/> +The crowd at Lloyd’s one poet’s name should raise,<br/> +And all the Alley echo to his praise.<br/> + In shoals the hours their constant numbers bring,<br/> +Like insects waking to th’ advancing spring;<br/> +Which take their rise from grubs obscene that lie<br/> +In shallow pools, or thence ascend the sky:<br/> +Such are these base ephemeras, so born<br/> +To die before the next revolving morn.<br/> +Yet thus they differ: insect-tribes are lost<br/> +In the first visit of a winters frost;<br/> +While these remain, a base but constant breed,<br/> +Whose swarming sons their short-lived sires succeed;<br/> +No changing season makes their number less,<br/> +Nor Sunday shines a sabbath on the press!<br/> + Then lo! the sainted MONITOR is born,<br/> +Whose pious face some sacred texts adorn:<br/> +As artful sinners cloak the secret sin,<br/> +To veil with seeming grace the guile within;<br/> +So moral Essays on his front appear,<br/> +But all is carnal business in the rear;<br/> +The fresh-coin’d lie, the secret whisper’d last,<br/> +And all the gleanings of the six days past.<br/> + With these retired through half the Sabbath-day,<br/> +The London lounger yawns his hours away:<br/> +Not so, my little flock! your preacher fly,<br/> +Nor waste the time no worldly wealth can buy;<br/> +But let the decent maid and sober clown<br/> +Pray for these idlers of the sinful town:<br/> +This day, at least, on nobler themes bestow,<br/> +Nor give to WOODFALL, or the world below.<br/> + But, Sunday past, what numbers flourish then,<br/> +What wondrous labours of the press and pen;<br/> +Diurnal most, some thrice each week affords,<br/> +Some only once, - O avarice of words!<br/> +When thousand starving minds such manna seek,<br/> +To drop the precious food but once a week.<br/> + Endless it were to sing the powers of all,<br/> +Their names, their numbers; how they rise and fall:<br/> +Like baneful herbs the gazer’s eye they seize,<br/> +Rush to the head, and poison where they please:<br/> +Like idle flies, a busy, buzzing train,<br/> +They drop their maggots in the trifler’s brain:<br/> +That genia soil receives the fruitful store,<br/> +And there they grow, and breed a thousand more.<br/> + Now be their arts display’d, how first they +choose<br/> +A cause and party, as the bard his Muse;<br/> +Inspired by these, with clamorous zeal they cry,<br/> +And through the town their dreams and omens fly;<br/> +So the Sibylline leaves were blown about,<br/> +Disjointed scraps of fate involved in doubt;<br/> +So idle dreams, the journals of the night,<br/> +Are right and wrong by turns, and mingle wrong with right.-<br/> +Some champions for the rights that prop the crown,<br/> +Some sturdy patriots, sworn to pull them down;<br/> +Some neutral powers, with secret forces fraught,<br/> +Wishing for war, but willing to be bought:<br/> +While some to every side and party go,<br/> +Shift every friend, and join with every foe;<br/> +Like sturdy rogues in privateers, they strike<br/> +This side and that, the foes of both alike;<br/> +A traitor-crew, who thrive in troubled times,<br/> +Fear’d for their force, and courted for their crimes.<br/> + Chief to the prosperous side the numbers sail,<br/> +Fickle and false, they veer with every gale;<br/> +As birds that migrate from a freezing shore<br/> +In search of warmer climes, come skimming o’er,<br/> +Some bold adventurers first prepare to try<br/> +The doubtful sunshine of the distant sky;<br/> +But soon the growing Summer’s certain sun<br/> +Wins more and more, till all at last are won:<br/> +So, on the early prospect of disgrace,<br/> +Fly in vast troops this apprehensive race;<br/> +Instinctive tribes! their failing food they dread,<br/> +And buy, with timely change, their future bread.<br/> + Such are our guides; how many a peaceful head,<br/> +Born to be still, have they to wrangling led!<br/> +How many an honest zealot stol’n from trade,<br/> +And factious tools of pious pastors made!<br/> +With clews like these they thread the maze of state,<br/> +These oracles explore, to learn our fate;<br/> +Pleased with the guides who can so well deceive,<br/> +Who cannot lie so fast as they believe.<br/> + Oft lend I, loth, to some sage friend an ear,<br/> +(For we who will not speak are doom’d to hear);<br/> +While he, bewilder’d, tells his anxious thought,<br/> +Infectious fear from tainted scribblers caught,<br/> +Or idiot hope; for each his mind assails,<br/> +As LLOYD’S court-light or STOCKDALE’S gloom prevails.<br/> +Yet stand I patient while but one declaims,<br/> +Or gives dull comments on the speech he maims:<br/> +But oh! ye Muses, keep your votary’s feet<br/> +From tavern-haunts where politicians meet;<br/> +Where rector, doctor, and attorney pause,<br/> +First on each parish, then each public cause:<br/> +Indited roads, and rates that still increase;<br/> +The murmuring poor, who will not fast in peace;<br/> +Election zeal and friendship, since declined;<br/> +A tax commuted, or a tithe in kind;<br/> +The Dutch and Germans kindling into strife;<br/> +Dull port and poachers vile; the serious ills of life.<br/> + Here comes the neighbouring Justice, pleased to guide<br/> +His little club, and in the chair preside.<br/> +In private business his commands prevail,<br/> +On public themes his reasoning turns the scale;<br/> +Assenting silence soothes his happy ear,<br/> +And, in or out, his party triumphs here.<br/> + Nor here th’ infectious rage for party stops,<br/> +But flits along from palaces to shops;<br/> +Our weekly journals o’er the land abound,<br/> +And spread their plague and influenzas round;<br/> +The village, too, the peaceful, pleasant plain,<br/> +Breeds the Whig farmer and the Tory swain;<br/> +Brookes’ and St Alban’s boasts not, but, instead,<br/> +Stares the Red Ram, and swings the Rodney’s Head:-<br/> +Hither, with all a patriot’s care, comes he<br/> +Who owns the little hut that makes him free;<br/> +Whose yearly forty shillings buy the smile<br/> +Of mightier men, and never waste the while;<br/> +Who feels his freehold’s worth, and looks elate,<br/> +A little prop and pillar of the state.<br/> + Here he delights the weekly news to con,<br/> +And mingle comments as he blunders on;<br/> +To swallow all their varying authors teach,<br/> +To spell a title, and confound a speech:<br/> +Till with a muddled mind he quits the news,<br/> +And claims his nation’s licence to abuse;<br/> +Then joins the cry, “That all the courtly race<br/> +Are venal candidates for power and place;”<br/> +Yet feels some joy, amid the general vice,<br/> +That his own vote will bring its wonted price.<br/> + These are the ills the teeming Press supplies,<br/> +The pois’nous springs from learning’s fountain rise;<br/> +Not there the wise alone their entrance find,<br/> +Imparting useful light to mortals blind;<br/> +But, blind themselves, these erring guides hold out<br/> +Alluring lights to lead us far about;<br/> +Screen’d by such means, here Scandal whets her quill,<br/> +Here Slander shoots unseen, whene’er she will;<br/> +Here Fraud and Falsehood labour to deceive,<br/> +And Folly aids them both, impatient to believe.<br/> +Such, sons of Britain! are the guides ye trust;<br/> +So wise their counsel, their reports so just!-<br/> +Yet, though we cannot call their morals pure,<br/> +Their judgment nice, or their decisions sure;<br/> +Merit they have to mightier works unknown,<br/> +A style, a manner, and a fate their own.<br/> + We, who for longer fame with labour strive,<br/> +Are pain’d to keep our sickly works alive;<br/> +Studious we toil, with patient care refine,<br/> +Nor let our love protect one languid line.<br/> +Severe ourselves, at last our works appear,<br/> +When, ah! we find our readers more severe;<br/> +For, after all our care and pains, how few<br/> +Acquire applause, or keep it if they do!<br/> +Not so these sheets, ordain’d to happier fate,<br/> +Praised through their day, and but that day their date;<br/> +Their careless authors only strive to join<br/> +As many words as make an even line;<br/> +As many lines as fill a row complete;<br/> +As many rows as furnish up a sheet:<br/> +From side to side, with ready types they run,<br/> +The measure’s ended, and the work is done;<br/> +Oh, born with ease, how envied and how blest!<br/> +Your fate to-day and your to-morrow’s rest,<br/> +To you all readers turn, and they can look<br/> +Pleased on a paper, who abhor a book;<br/> +Those who ne’er deign’d their Bible to peruse,<br/> +Would think it hard to be denied their News;<br/> +Sinners and saints, the wisest with the weak,<br/> +Here mingle tastes, and one amusement seek;<br/> +This, like the public inn, provides a treat,<br/> +Where each promiscuous guest sits down to eat;<br/> +And such this mental food, as we may call<br/> +Something to all men, and to some men all.<br/> + Next, in what rare production shall we trace<br/> +Such various subjects in so small a space?<br/> +As the first ship upon the waters bore<br/> +Incongruous kinds who never met before;<br/> +Or as some curious virtuoso joins<br/> +In one small room, moths, minerals, and coins,<br/> +Birds, beasts, and fishes; nor refuses place<br/> +To serpents, toads, and all the reptile race;<br/> +So here compress’d within a single sheet,<br/> +Great things and small, the mean and mighty meet.<br/> +’Tis this which makes all Europe’s business known,<br/> +Yet here a private man may place his own:<br/> +And, where he reads of Lords and Commons, he<br/> +May tell their honours that he sells rappee.<br/> + Add next th’ amusement which the motley page<br/> +Affords to either sex and every age:<br/> +Lo! where it comes before the cheerful fire,-<br/> +Damps from the press in smoky curls aspire<br/> +(As from the earth the sun exhales the dew),<br/> +Ere we can read the wonders that ensue:<br/> +Then eager every eye surveys the part<br/> +That brings its favourite subject to the heart;<br/> +Grave politicians look for facts alone,<br/> +And gravely add conjectures of their own:<br/> +The sprightly nymph, who never broke her rest<br/> +For tottering crowns or mighty lands oppress’d,<br/> +Finds broils and battles, but neglects them all<br/> +For songs and suits, a birth-day, or a ball:<br/> +The keen warm man o’erlooks each idle tale<br/> +For “Monies wanted,” and “Estates on Sale;”<br/> +While some with equal minds to all attend,<br/> +Pleased with each part, and grieved to find an end.<br/> + So charm the news; but we who, far from town,<br/> +Wait till the postman brings the packet down,<br/> +Once in the week, a vacant day behold,<br/> +And stay for tidings, till they’re three days old:<br/> +That day arrives; no welcome post appears,<br/> +But the dull morn a sullen aspect wears:<br/> +We meet, but ah! without our wonted smile,<br/> +To talk of headaches, and complain of bile;<br/> +Sullen we ponder o’er a dull repast,<br/> +Nor feast the body while the mind must fast.<br/> + A master passion is the love of news,<br/> +Not music so commands, nor so the Muse:<br/> +Give poets claret, they grow idle soon;<br/> +Feed the musician and he’s out of tune;<br/> +But the sick mind, of this disease possess’d,<br/> +Flies from all cure, and sickens when at rest.<br/> + Now sing, my Muse, what various parts compose<br/> +These rival sheets of politics and prose.<br/> + First, from each brother’s hoard a part they +draw,<br/> +A mutual theft that never feared a law;<br/> +Whate’er they gain, to each man’s portion fall,<br/> +And read it once, you read it through them all:<br/> +For this their runners ramble day and night,<br/> +To drag each lurking deed to open light;<br/> +For daily bread the dirty trade they ply,<br/> +Coin their fresh tales, and live upon the lie:<br/> +Like bees for honey, forth for news they spring,-<br/> +Industrious creatures! ever on the wing;<br/> +Home to their several cells they bear the store,<br/> +Cull’d of all kinds, then roam abroad for more.<br/> + No anxious virgin flies to “fair Tweed-side;”<br/> +No injured husband mourns his faithless bride;<br/> +No duel dooms the fiery youth to bleed;<br/> +But through the town transpires each vent’rous deed.<br/> +Should some fair frail one drive her prancing pair<br/> +Where rival peers contend to please the fair;<br/> +When, with new force, she aids her conquering eyes,<br/> +And beauty decks, with all that beauty buys:<br/> +Quickly we learn whose heart her influence feels,<br/> +Whose acres melt before her glowing wheels.<br/> + To these a thousand idle themes succeed,<br/> +Deeds of all kinds, and comments to each deed. <br/> +Here stocks, the state barometers, we view,<br/> +That rise or fall by causes known to few;<br/> +Promotion’s ladder who goes up or down;<br/> +Who wed, or who seduced, amuse the town;<br/> +What new-born heir has made his father blest;<br/> +What heir exults, his father now at rest;<br/> +That ample list the Tyburn-herald gives,<br/> +And each known knave, who still for Tyburn lives.<br/> + So grows the work, and now the printer tries<br/> +His powers no more, but leans on his allies.<br/> + When lo! the advertising tribe succeed,<br/> +Pay to be read, yet find but few will read;<br/> +And chief th’ illustrious race, whose drops and pills<br/> +Have patent powers to vanquish human ills:<br/> +These, with their cures, a constant aid remain,<br/> +To bless the pale composer’s fertile brain;<br/> +Fertile it is, but still the noblest soil<br/> +Requires some pause, some intervals from toil;<br/> +And they at least a certain ease obtain<br/> +From Katterfelto’s skill, and Graham’s glowing strain.<br/> + I too must aid, and pay to see my name<br/> +Hung in these dirty avenues to fame;<br/> +Nor pay in vain, if aught the Muse has seen,<br/> +And sung, could make these avenues more clean;<br/> +Could stop one slander ere it found its way,<br/> +And give to public scorn its helpless prey.<br/> +By the same aid, the Stage invites her friends,<br/> +And kindly tells the banquet she intends;<br/> +Thither from real life the many run,<br/> +With Siddons weep, or laugh with Abingdon;<br/> +Pleased in fictitious joy or grief, to see<br/> +The mimic passion with their own agree;<br/> +To steal a few enchanted hours away<br/> +From self, and drop the curtain on the day.<br/> + But who can steal from self that wretched wight<br/> +Whose darling work is tried some fatal night?<br/> +Most wretched man! when, bane to every bliss,<br/> +He hears the serpent-critic’s rising hiss;<br/> +Then groans succeed; nor traitors on the wheel<br/> +Can feel like him, or have such pangs to feel.<br/> +Nor end they here: next day he reads his fall<br/> +In every paper; critics are they all:<br/> +He sees his branded name with wild affright,<br/> +And hears again the cat-calls of the night.<br/> + Such help the STAGE affords: a larger space<br/> +Is fill’d by PUFFS and all the puffing race.<br/> +Physic had once alone the lofty style,<br/> +The well-known boast, that ceased to raise a smile:<br/> +Now all the province of that tribe invade,<br/> +And we abound in quacks of every trade.<br/> + The simple barber, once an honest name,<br/> +Cervantes founded, Fielding raised his fame:<br/> +Barber no more - a gay perfumer comes,<br/> +On whose soft cheek his own cosmetic blooms;<br/> +Here he appears, each simple mind to move,<br/> +And advertises beauty, grace, and love.<br/> +“Come, faded belles, who would your youth renew,<br/> +And learn the wonders of Olympian dew;<br/> +Restore the roses that begin to faint,<br/> +Nor think celestial washes vulgar paint;<br/> +Your former features, airs, and arts assume,<br/> +Circassian virtues, with Circassian bloom.<br/> +Come, battered beaux, whose locks are turned to gray,<br/> +And crop Discretion’s lying badge away;<br/> +Read where they vend these smart engaging things,<br/> +These flaxen frontlets with elastic springs;<br/> +No female eye the fair deception sees,<br/> +Not Nature’s self so natural as these.”<br/> + Such are their arts, but not confined to them,<br/> +The muse impartial most her sons condemn:<br/> +For they, degenerate! join the venal throng,<br/> +And puff a lazy Pegasus along:<br/> +More guilty these, by Nature less design’d<br/> +For little arts that suit the vulgar kind.<br/> +That barbers’ boys, who would to trade advance,<br/> +Wish us to call them smart Friseurs from France:<br/> +That he who builds a chop-house, on his door<br/> +Paints “The true old original Blue Boar!”-<br/> + These are the arts by which a thousand live,<br/> +Where Truth may smile, and Justice may forgive:-<br/> +But when, amidst this rabble rout, we find<br/> +A puffing poet to his honour blind;<br/> +Who slily drops quotations all about<br/> +Packet or post, and points their merit out;<br/> +Who advertises what reviewers say,<br/> +With sham editions every second day;<br/> +Who dares not trust his praises out of sight,<br/> +But hurries into fame with all his might;<br/> +Although the verse some transient praise obtains,<br/> +Contempt is all the anxious poet gains.<br/> + Now Puffs exhausted, Advertisements past,<br/> +Their Correspondents stand exposed at last;<br/> +These are a numerous tribe, to fame unknown,<br/> +Who for the public good forego their own;<br/> +Who volunteers in paper-war engage,<br/> +With double portion of their party’s rage:<br/> +Such are the Bruti, Decii, who appear<br/> +Wooing the printer for admission here;<br/> +Whose generous souls can condescend to pray<br/> +For leave to throw their precious time away.<br/> + Oh! cruel WOODFALL! when a patriot draws<br/> +His gray-goose quill in his dear country’s cause,<br/> +To vex and maul a ministerial race,<br/> +Can thy stern soul refuse the champion place?<br/> +Alas! thou know’st not with what anxious heart<br/> +He longs his best-loved labours to impart;<br/> +How he has sent them to thy brethren round,<br/> +And still the same unkind reception found:<br/> +At length indignant will he damn the state,<br/> +Turn to his trade, and leave us to our fate.<br/> + These Roman souls, like Rome’s great sons, are +known<br/> +To live in cells on labours of their own.<br/> +Thus Milo, could we see the noble chief,<br/> +Feeds, for his country’s good, on legs of beef:<br/> +Camillus copies deeds for sordid pay,<br/> +Yet fights the public battles twice a-day:<br/> +E’en now the godlike Brutus views his score<br/> +Scroll’d on the bar-board, swinging with the door:<br/> +Where, tippling punch, grave Cato’s self you’ll see,<br/> +And <i>Amor Patriæ</i> vending smuggled tea.<br/> + Last in these ranks, and least, their art’s +disgrace,<br/> +Neglected stand the Muses’ meanest race;<br/> +Scribblers who court contempt, whose verse the eye<br/> +Disdainful views, and glances swiftly by:<br/> +This Poet’s Corner is the place they choose,<br/> +A fatal nursery for an infant Muse;<br/> +Unlike that Corner where true Poets lie,<br/> +These cannot live, and they shall never die;<br/> +Hapless the lad whose mind such dreams invade,<br/> +And win to verse the talents due to trade.<br/> + Curb then, O youth! these raptures as they rise,<br/> +Keep down the evil spirit and be wise;<br/> +Follow your calling, think the Muses foes,<br/> +Nor lean upon the pestle and compose.<br/> + I know your day-dreams, and I know the snare<br/> +Hid in your flow’ry path, and cry “Beware!”<br/> +Thoughtless of ill, and to the future blind,<br/> +A sudden couplet rushes on your mind;<br/> +Here you may nameless print your idle rhymes,<br/> +And read your first-born work a thousand times;<br/> +Th’infection spreads, your couplet grows apace,<br/> +Stanzas to Delia’s dog or Celia’s face:<br/> +You take a name; Philander’s odes are seen,<br/> +Printed, and praised, in every magazine:<br/> +Diarian sages greet their brother sage,<br/> +And your dark pages please th’ enlightened age.-<br/> +Alas! what years you thus consume in vain,<br/> +Ruled by this wretched bias of the brain!<br/> + Go! to your desks and counters all return;<br/> +Your sonnets scatter, your acrostics burn;<br/> +Trade, and be rich; or, should your careful sires<br/> +Bequeath your wealth, indulge the nobler fires;<br/> +Should love of fame your youthful heart betray,<br/> +Pursue fair fame, but in a glorious way,<br/> +Nor in the idle scenes of Fancy’s painting stray.<br/> + Of all the good that mortal men pursue,<br/> +The Muse has least to give, and gives to few;<br/> +Like some coquettish fair, she leads us on,<br/> +With smiles and hopes, till youth and peace are gone.<br/> +Then, wed for life, the restless wrangling pair<br/> +Forget how constant one, and one how fair:<br/> +Meanwhile Ambition, like a blooming bride,<br/> +Brings power and wealth to grace her lover’s side;<br/> +And though she smiles not with such flattering charms,<br/> +The brave will sooner win her to their arms.<br/> + Then wed to her, if Virtue tie the bands,<br/> +Go spread your country’s fame in hostile lands;<br/> +Her court, her senate, or her arms adorn,<br/> +And let her foes lament that you were born:<br/> +Or weigh her laws, their ancient rights defend,<br/> +Though hosts oppose, be theirs and Reason’s friend;<br/> +Arm’d with strong powers, in their defence engage,<br/> +And rise the THURLOW of the future age.<br/> +<br/> +<br/> +<br/> +Footnotes:<br/> +<br/> +<a name="footnote1"></a><a href="#citation1">{1}</a> Lord Robert +Manners, killed in battle April 1782. + +<div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 5203 ***</div> +</body> +</html> + diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 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