foul but small increases or decays. From fifty to clining. The blaze is not so fierce as at the first, threescore the balance generally holds even, in our but the smoke is wholly vanished; and your colder climates: for he loses not much in fancy; | friends who stand about you are not only sensible and judgment, which is the effect of observation, of a cheerful warmth, but are kept at an awful still increases his succeeding years afford him lit- distance by its force. In my small observations of tle more than the stubble of his own harvest: yet mankind, I have ever found, that such as are if his constitution be healthful, his mind may still not rather too full of spirit when they are young, retain a decent vigour; and the gleanings of that degenerate to dulness in their age. Sobriety in Ephraim, in comparison with others, will surpass our riper years is the effect of a well-concocted the vintage of Abiezer. I have called this some- warmth; but where the principles are only phlegm, where, by a bold metaphor, a green old age, but what can be expected from the waterish matter, Virgil has given me his authority for the figure. but an insipid manhood, and a stupid old infancy; discretion in leading strings, and a confirmed Jam senior; sed cruda Deo, viridisque senectus. ignorance on crutches? Virgil, in his third Among those few who enjoy the advantage of a Georgic, when he describes a colt, who promises latter spring, your lordship is a rare example: a courser for the race, or for the field of battle, who being now arrived at your great climacteric, shows him the first to pass the bridge, which yet give no proof of the least decay of your ex- trembles under him, and to stem the torrent of cellent judgment, and comprehension of all things the flood. His beginnings must be in rashness; a which are within the compass of human under- noble fault: but time and experience will correct standing. Your conversation is as easy as it is that errour, and tame it into a deliberate and wellinstructive, and I could never observe the least weighed courage; which knows both to be cautious vanity or the least assuming in any thing you and to dare, as occasion offers. Your lordship said: but a natural unaffected modesty, full of is a man of honour, not only so unstained, but so good sense, and well digested. A clearness of unquestioned, that you are the living standard of notion, expressed in ready and unstudied words. that heroic virtue: so truly such, that if I would No man has complained, or ever can, that you flatter you, I could not. It takes not from you, have discoursed too long on any subject; for you that you were born with principles of generosity leave in us an eagerness of learning more; pleased and probity; but it adds to you, that you have with what we hear, but not satisfied, because you cultivated nature, and made those principles the will not speak so much as we could wish. I dare rule and measure of all your actions. The world not excuse your lordship from this fault; for knows this, without my telling; yet poets have though it is none in you, it is one to all who have a right of recording it to all posterity. the happiness of being known to you. I must confess the critics make it one of Virgil's beauties, that having said what he thought convenient, he always left somewhat for the imagination of his readers to supply: that they might gratify their fancies, by finding more in what he had written, than at first they could, and think they had added to his thoughts when it was all there beforehand, and he only saved himself the expense of words. However it was, I never went from your lordship, but with a longing to return, or without a hearty curse to him who invented ceremonies in the world, and put me on the necessity of withdrawing, when it was my interest, as well To be nobly born, and of an ancient family, is as my desire, to have given you a much longer in the extremes of fortune, either good or bad; trouble. I cannot imagine (if your lordship will for virtue and descent are no inheritance. A long give me leave to speak my thoughts) but you series of ancestors shows the native with great have had a more than ordinary vigour in your advantage at the first; but if he any way deyouth. For too much of heat is required at first, generate from his line, the least spot is visible on that there may not too little be left at last. A ermine. But to preserve this whiteness in its prodigal fire is only capable of large remains original purity, you, my lord, have, like that and yours, my lord, still burns the clearer in de-ermine, forsaken the common track of business,

Dignum laude virum, Musa vetat mori. Epaminondas, Lucullus, and the two first Cæsars, were not esteemed the worse commanders, for

having made philosophy and the liberal arts their study. Cicero might have been their equal, but that he wanted courage. To have both these virtues, and to have improved them both, with a softness of manners, and a sweetness of conversation, few of our nobility can fill that character: one there is, and so conspicuous by his own light, that he needs not

Digito monstrari, et dicier hic est.

respect and love which was paid you, not only in the province where you live, but generally by all who had the happiness to know you, was a wise exchange for the honours of the court: a place of forgetfulness, at the best, for well-deservers. It is necessary for the polishing of manners, to have breathed that air; but it is infectious even to the best morals to live always in it. It is a dangerous

of being cheated; and he recovers not his losses, but by learning to cheat others. The undermining smile becomes at length habitual; and the drift of his plausible conversation, is only to flatter one, that he may betray another. Yet it is good to have been a looker-on, without venturing to play; that a man may know false dice another time, though he never means to use them. I commend not him who never knew a court, but him who forsakes it because he knows it. A young man deserves no praise, who out of melancholy zeal leaves the world before he has well tried it, and runs headlong into religion. He who carries a maidenhead into a cloister, is sometimes apt to lose it there, and to repent of his repentance. He only is like to endure austerities, who has already found the inconvenience of pleasures. For almost every man will be making experiments in one part or another of his life; and the danger is the less when we are young; for, having tried it early, we shall not be apt to repeat it afterwards. Your lordship therefore may properly be said to have chosen a retreat, and not to have chosen it until you had maturely weighed the advantages of rising

which is not always clean: you have chosen for yourself a private greatness, and will not be polluted with ambition. It has been observed in former times, that none have been so greedy of employments, and of managing the public, as they who have least deserved their stations. But such only merit to be called patriots, under whom we see their country flourish. I have laughed sometimes (for who would always be an Hera-commerce, where an honest man is sure at the first clitus?) when I have reflected on those men, who from time to time have shot themselves into the world. I have seen many successions of them some bolting out upon the stage with vast applause, and others hissed off, and quitting it with disgrace. But while they were in action, I have constantly observed, that they seemed desirous to retreat from business: greatness they said was nauseous, and a crowd was troublesome; a quiet privacy was their ambition. Some few of them I believe said this in earnest, and were making a provision against future want, that they might enjoy their age with ease: they saw the happiness of a private life, and promised to themselves a blessing, which every day it was in their power to possess. But they deferred it, and lingered still at court, because they thought they had not yet enough to make them happy: they would have more, and laid in to make their solitude luxurious. A wretched philosophy, which Epicurus never taught them in his garden: they loved the prospect of this quiet in reversion, but were not willing to have it in possession, they would first be old, and made as sure of health and life, as if both of them were at their dispose.higher with the hazards of the fall. Res non But put them to the necessity of present choice, and they preferred continuance in power: like the wretch who called Death to his assistance, but refused him when he came. The great Scipio was not of their opinion, who indeed sought honours in his youth, and endured the fatigues with which he purchased them. He served his country when it was in need of his courage and conduct until he thought it was time to serve himself: but dismounted from the saddle when he found the beast which bore him began to grow restiff and ungovernable. But your lordship has given us a better example of moderation. You saw betimes that ingratitude is not confined to commonwealths; and therefore though you were formed alike, for the greatest of civil employments, and military com mands, yet you pushed not your fortune to rise in either; but contented yourself with being capable, as much as any whosoever, of defending your country with your sword, or assisting it with your counsel, when you were called. For the rest, the

parta labore, sed relicta, was thought by a poet to be one of the requisites to a happy life. Why should a reasonable man put it in the power of fortune to make him miserable, when his ancestors have taken care to release him from her? let him venture, says Horace, qui zonam perdidit. He who has nothing, plays securely; for we may win, and cannot be poorer if he loses. But he who is born to a plentiful estate, and is ambitious of offices at court, sets a stake to fortune, which she can seldom answer: if he gains nothing, he loses all, or part of what was once his own; and if he gets, he cannot be certain but he may refund.

In short, however he succeeds, it is covetousness that induced him first to play, and covetous. ness is the undoubted sign of ill sense at bottom. The odds are against him, that he loses; and one loss may be of more consequence to him than all his former winnings. It is like the present war of the Christians against the Turk;

Or wilt thou bless our summers with thy rays,
And seated near the Balance, poise the days:
Where in the void of Heaven a space is free,
Betwixt the Scorpion and the Maid, for thee.
The Scorpion, ready to receive thy laws,
Yields half his region, and contracts his claws.
Whatever part of Heaven thou shalt obtain,
For let not Hell presume of such a reign;
Nor let so dire a thirst of empire move
Thy mind, to leave thy kindred gods above.
Though Greece admires Elysium's blest retreat,
Though Proserpine affects her silent seat,
And, importun'd by Ceres to remove,
Prefers the fields below to those above.
But thon, propitious Cæsar! guide my course,
And, to my bold endeavours, add thy force.
Pity the poet's and the ploughman's cares,
Interest thy greatness in our mean affairs,

And use thyself betimes to hear and grant our
prayers.

While yet the spring is young, while earth un-
Her frozen bosom to the western winds; [binds
While mountain-snows dissolve against the Sun,
And streams, yet new, from precipices run;
Ev'n in this early dawning of the year,
Produce the plough, and yoke the sturdy steer,
And goad him till he groans beneath his toil,
Till the bright share is bury'd in the soil.
That crop rewards the greedy peasant's pains,
Which twice the Sun, and twice the cold sustains,
And bursts the crowded barns, with more than

mis'd gains.

But ere we stir the yet unbroken ground,
The various course of seasons must be found;
The weather, and the setting of the winds,
The culture suiting to the several kinds

Th' ensuing season, in return, may bear
The bearded product of the golden year.
For flax and oats will burn the tender field,
And sleepy poppies barmful harvests yield.
But sweet vicissitudes of rest and toil
Make easy labour, and renew the soil.
Yet sprinkle sordid ashes all around,
And load with fattening dung thy fallow ground.
Thus change of seeds for meagre soils is best;
And earth manur'd, not idle, though at rest.

Long practice has a sure improvement found,
With kindled fires to burn the barren ground;
When the light stubble, to the flames resign'd,
Is driven along, and crackles in the wind.
Whether from hence the hollow womb of Earth
Is warm'd with secret strength for better birth;
Or, when the latent vice is cur'd by fire,
Redundant humours through the pores expire;
Or that the warmth distends the chinks, and makes
New breathings, whence new nourishment she
takes;

Or that the heat the gaping ground constrains,
New knits the surface, and new strings the veins,
Lest soking showers should pierce her secret seat,
Or freezing Boreas chiil her genial heat;
Or scorching suns too violently beat.

Nor is the profit small, the peasant makes,
Who smooths with harrows, or who pounds with
rakes

The crumbling clods: nor Ceres from on high pro-Regards his labours with a grudging eye;

Nor his, who ploughs across the furrow'd grounds,
And on the back of earth inflicts new wounds;
For he with frequent exercise commands
Th' unwilling soil, and tames the stubborn lands.
Ye swains, invoke the powers who rule the sky,

Of seeds and plants, and what will thrive and rise, For a moist summer, and a winter dry:
And what the genius of the soil denies.

This ground with Bacchus, that with Ceres suits;
That other loads the trees with happy fruits;
A fourth with grass, unbidden, decks the ground:
Thus Tmolus is with yellow saffron crown'd;
India, black ebon and white ivory bears;
And soft Idume weeps her odorous tears.
Thus Pontus sends her beaver stones from far;
And naked Spaniards temper steel for war.
Epirus for th' Elean chariot breeds

(In hopes of palms) a race of running steeds.
This is th' original contract; these the laws
Impos'd by Nature, and by Nature's cause,
On sundry places, when Deucalion hurl'd
His mother's entrails on the desert world:
Whence men, a hard laborious kind, were born.
Then borrow part of winter for thy corn:

And early with thy team the glebe in furrows

turn.

That, while the turf lies open and unbound,
Succeeding suns may bake the mellow ground.
But if the soil be barren, only scar
The surface, and but lightly print the share,
When cold Arcturus rises with the Sun:
Lest wicked weeds the corn should over-run
In watery soils; or lest the barren sand
Should suck the moisture from the thirsty land.
Both these unhappy soils the swain forbears,
And keeps a sabbath of alternate years:
That the spent earth may gather heat again;
And, better'd by cessation, bear the grain.
At least, where vetches, pulse, and tares have stood,
And stalks of lupines grew, (a stubborn wood)

For winter drought rewards the peasant's pain,
And broods indulgent on the bury'd grain.
Hence Mysia boasts her harvests, and the tops
Of Gargarus admire their happy crops.
When first the soil receives the fruitful seed,
Make no delay, but cover it with speed:
So fenc'd from cold; the pliant furrows break,
Before the surly clod resists the rake.
And call the floods from high, to rush amain
With pregnant streams, to swell the teeming grain.
Then, when the fiery suns too fiercely play,
And shrivell'd herbs on withering stems decay,
The wary ploughman, on the mountain's brow,
Undams his watery stores, huge torrents flow;
And, rattling down the rocks, large moisture
yield,

Tempering the thirsty fever of the field.
And lest the stem, too feeble for the freight,
Should scarce sustain the head's unwieldy weight,
Sends in his feeding flocks betimes t' invade
The rising bulk of the luxuriant blade;
Ere yet th' aspiring offspring of the grain
O'ertops the ridges of the furrow'd plain:
And drains the standing waters, when they yield
Too large a beverage to the drunken field.
But most in autumn, and the showery spring,
When dubious months uncertain weather bring:
When fountains open, when impetuous rain
Swells hasty brooks, and pours upon the plain;
When earth with slime and mud is cover'd o'er,
Or hollow places spue their watery store.
Nor yet the ploughman, nor the labouring steer,
Sustain alone the hazards of the year;