HORACE IN LONDON.

BOOK I. ODE XXII.

Integer vitæ, scelerisque purus, &c.

THE pauper poet, pure in zeal,
Who aims the Muse's crown to steal,
Needs steal no crown of baser sort,
To buy a goose, or pay for Port.

He needs not Fortune's poison'd source,
Nor guard the House of Commons yields,
Whether by Newgate lie his course,

The Fleet, King's Bench, or Cold Bath Fields. For I, whom late, impransus, walking,

The Muse beyond the Rules had led;

Beheld a huge bum-bailiff stalking,

Who star'd, but touch'd me not, and fled! A bailiff black and big like him, So scowling, desperate and grim, No lock-up house, the gloomy den Of all his tribe, shall spawn again. Place me beyond the Rules afar, While alleys blind the flight debar; Or bid me fascinated lie, Beneath the catchpole's flashing eye:

Place me where spunging-houses round,
Attest that bail is never found;

Where poets starve who write for bread,
And writs are more than poems read,
O Muse, I'll still thy charms indite,
Till Pegasus, exhausted, tumbles,
Still will I rhyme in Reason's spite,
And sing, altho' my belly grumbles.

H.

HORACE IN LONDON.

BOOK I. ODE XXIV.

TO MR. HARRIS.

Quis desiderio sit pudor, aut modus &c.

WHAT handkerchief our tears can hide?
See Vulcan scale on every side,

The Muses' habitation:

Vain all our elegies of woe,

For numbers in their liquid flow,
Won't quell a conflagration.

Melpomene, thou Queen of Art,
Teach me thy strut and measur'd start,
I'll thro' the ruins wander-
First wail in lullabies of love,
Then bully all the Gods above,

Like NAT LEE's Alexander.

My favourite theatre's destroy'd,
Its crowded pit an empty void,
Its golden egg is addled;
Its pantominic crew let loose,
And forth to COLMAN'S Mother Goose
Has like a lame duck waddled.

Authors and Actors fume and fret,
But none the accident regret,

So much as thou, my HARRIS:
To tell this truth there needs no ghost,
He most laments who suffers most,
Whene'er a scheme miscarries.

Tho' Jove had arm'd the mighty mind,
With wit to bottle up the wind,
As once he arm'd Ulysses;

Vain all the puffs the flame to quell,
Theatric property farewel,

When angry Vulcan hisses.

"Tis hard-but see where Brunswick's heir,
Approaches-prithee banish care,
And put a better face on:
very stones with tell tale ring
Prate of his whereabout and sing,

The

"Long live the Royal Mason!"

The Muses in their aprons white,
Sing Io Pæan at the sight,

And call his Highness "Mother."
With journeymen like these at work,
Laughing Thalia, with a Smirke,
Shall soon erect another.

J.

HORACE IN LONDON,

BOOK I. ODE XXIX.

Icci, beatis nunc Arabum invides, &c,

TO LUCY.

An! Lucy, how chang'd are my prospects in life,
Since first you awaken'd love's flame:
So humble a bride, such a petulant wife!
Gadzooks! I scarce think you the same.

That badge which the husband's ascendance secures
(Tho' the poor san culottes never wore 'em,)
You arrogate now as prescriptively yours,
In spite of all sense and decorum.

No longer your smile like the sun-beam appears,
But clouds your fair visage deform,

Which quickly find vent in a deluge of tears,
Or burst into thunder and storm.

Where, where are the graces that rais'd, to betray,
My hopes of connubial joy?

And where is the Syren's melodious lay?
Enchanting, alas! to destroy!

Your temper is chang'd from serene to perverse,
Your tongue from endearment to clatter;

I took you, I trusted, for "better and worse,"
But find you are wholly the latter.

O! who will now question that Venus's dove,
Transform'd to a vulture, may feed

On the sensitive heart of the victim of love,
Condemn'd in close fetters to bleed.

Since you, whom so lately an angel I thought,
Now acting the termagant's part,

Exult o'er the fetters which wedlock has wrought,
And tear without mercy my heart.

HORACE IN LONDON.

BOOK I. ODE XXX.

THE COURTESAN.

O Venus, &c.

O VENUS, queen of every heart,
From thy lov'd Cyprus now depart,
And to Maria's lodgings pass,
Where she with colours red and white,
With scents and washes (such a sight!)
Invokes thy presence at her glass.
With thee transport thy glowing boy,
The Grace's too loose-zoned employ
To join thy escort on the wing;
Leave not the nymphs as pure as truth,
Nor, without thee, unpolish'd Youth,

And Mercury* be sure to bring!

*

* Dr. Warburton said that he never understood Horace so well as in Pope's Imitations. Had the Doctor lived to read the above verse, and its application, he would probably have confessed, that he never till now comprehended the full force and point of the Roman poet's concluding adonic," Mercuriusque." Though the Commentators have always stupidly classed this piece among the Odes, I have no doubt that Horace meant it for an Epigram. He, who translated it, "And Maia's son," was like the man, who, repeating the jest about the short coat, (it will be long enough before I have another,) said, "It will be some time before I have a new one." Perhaps "nymphæ," means simply, as in Statins, (dulcis Nympha) fresh or river water.