Each virtue kept its proper bound, They paid the church and parish rate; No man's defects sought they to know; They neither added nor confounded; When bells were rung, and bonfires made, If ask'd, they ne'er denied their aid; Nor good, nor bad, nor fools, nor wise; Nor wish'd, nor car'd, nor laugh'd, nor cried : And so they liv'd, and so they died. 60 HORACE, LIB. I. EPIST. IX. IMITATED. Septimius, Claudi, nimirum intelligit unus, TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE MR. HARLEY.* EAR DICK,† howe'er it comes into his head, Believes as firmly as he does his creed, Though I plain Mat, you minister of state: Afterwards Earl of Oxford and Mortimer. This was Richard Shelton, Esq. one of the interlocutors in the poem of Alma. Mr. Prior in his will styles him his dear friend and companion. Would fix his fortune in some little place. From this wild fancy, Sir, there may proceed To shun this censure, I all shame lay by, 10 20 TO MR. HARLEY, WOUNDED BY GUISCARD.* 1711. ab ipso Ducit opes animumque ferro. HOR. N one great now, superior to an age, The full extremes of Nature's force we find: How heavenly virtue can exalt; or rage Infernal, how degrade the human mind. While the fierce monk does at his trial stand, The guilty stroke and torture of the steel Infix'd, our dauntless Briton scarce perceives: 16 Antoine de Guiscard had been Abbot of Borly, near the Cevennes in France, but being of a vicious and profligate disposition, he committed offences which obliged him to fly from his country. He afterwards entered into the army, and was made colonel of a regiment of horse, and lieutenant-general, with pensions both from England and Holland. He afterwards, to make his peace with France, became a spy on the English court, was discovered, and taken before the council to be examined, when in a fit of madness and despair he stabbed Mr. Harley with a penknife which he had secreted. He was immediately secured, but died in Newgate a few days after, of some wounds he received in the scuffle. A very particular account of this transaction by Dean Swift and Mrs. Manley is printed in the Supplement to the Dean's works. The wounds his country from his death must feel, The barbarous rage that durst attempt thy life, Faithful assertor of thy country's cause, Britain with tears shall bathe thy glorious wound: She for thy safety shall enlarge her laws, And in her statutes shall thy worth be found, 20 Yet midst her sighs she triumphs, on the hand No son of hers could meditate this blow. Meantime thy pain is gracious Anna's care: Our queen, our saint, with sacrificing breath, Softens thy anguish in her powerful prayer She pleads thy service, and forbids thy death. Great as thou art, thou canst demand no more, Enough to thee of grief, and fame is given. 31 |