Yet such the fate of all that man obtains,
Our pleasures must be purchas❜d by our pains,
And cost us every hour some small expense,
A little labour, and a little sense.
That heaven-born bliss, that soul-illumin'd joy,
Which madmen squander, and which fools destroy,
To half the nations of the globe unknown,
Reflecting wisdom makes it all her own;
Coolly explores in every scene and sphere,
What nature wants, what life inherits there;
What lenient arts can teach the soul to know
A purer rapture, and a softer woe:
What melt her idle vanities away,
And make to-morrow happier than to-day.
Without this cheap, this economic art,
This cool philosophy of head and heart,
A peer's proud bosom rack'd by pangs and cares,
Feels not the splendour of the star he wears:
With it the wretch whom want has forc'd to dwell
In the last corner of her cheerless cell,
In spite of hunger, labour, cold, disease,
Lies, laughs, and slumbers on the couch of ease.
A coxcomb once in Handel's parlour found
A Grecian lyre; and tried to make it sound;
O'er the fine stops his awkward fist he flings,
And rudely presses on the' elastic strings:
Awaken'd Discord shrieks, and scolds, and raves,
Wild as the dissonance of winds and waves,
Loud as a Wapping mob at midnight bawls,
Harsh as ten chariots rolling round Saint Paul's,
And hoarser far than all the' ecstatic race
Whose drunken orgies stun'd the wilds of Thrace.
'Friend! (quoth the sage) that fine machine con-
Exacter numbers, and diviner strains;
Strains such as once could build the Theban wall,
And stop the mountain torrent in its fall:
But yet to wake them, rouse them, and inspire,
Asks a fine finger, and a touch of fire,
A feeling soul, whose all-expressive pow'rs
Can copy nature as she sinks or soars;
And, just alike to passion, time, and place,
Refine correctness into ease and grace.'
He said-and, flying o'er each quivering wire,
Spread his light hand, and swept it on the lyre.
Quick to his touch the lyre began to glow,
The sound to kindle, and the air to flow,
Deep as the murmurs of the falling floods,
Sweet as the warbles of the vocal woods :
The listening passions hear, and sink, and rise,
As the rich harmony or swells or dies;
The pulse of avarice forgets to move,
A purer rapture fills the breast of love;
Devotion lifts to heaven a holier eye,
And bleeding pity heaves a softer sigh.
Life has its ease, amusement, joy, and fire,
Hid in itself, as music in the lyre;
And, like the lyre, with all its powers impart,
When touch'd and manag'd by the hand of art.
But half mankind, like Handel's fool destroy,
Through rage and ignorance, the strain of joy;
Irregularly will their passions roll
Through nature's finest instrument, the soul:
While men of sense, with Handel's happier skill,
Correct the taste, and harmonize the will;
Teach their affections like his notes to flow,
Not rais'd too high, nor ever sunk too low;
Till every virtue, measur'd and refin'd,
As fits the concert of the master-mind,
Melts in its kindred sounds and pours along
The' according music of the moral song.
(Spoken at the Visitation of Tunbridge-Sohool, 1752-)
'Tis said, that ere fair virtue learn'd to sigh,
The crest to libel, and the star to lie,
The poet glow'd with all his sacred fire,
And bade each virtue live along the lyre;
Led humble science to the blest abode,
And rais'd the hero till he shone a god.
Our modern bards by some unhappy fate,
Condemn'd to flatter every fool of state,
Have oft, regardless of their heaven born flame,
Enthron'd proud greatness in the shrine of fame;
Bestow'd on vice the wreaths that virtue wove,
And paid to Nero what was due to Jove.
Yet hear, ye great! whom birth and titles crown
With alien worth, and glories not your own;
Hear me affirm, that all the vain can show,
All Anstis boasts of, and all kings bestow,
All envy wishes, all ambition hails,
All that supports Saint James's and Versailles,
Can never give distinction to a knave,
Or make a lord whom vice has made a slave.
In elder times, ere heralds yet enroll'd
The bleeding ruby in a field of gold,
Or infant language pain’d the tender ear
With fess, bend, argent, cheveron, and saltier;
'Twas he alone the bay's bright verdure wore,
Whose strength subdued the lion or the boar;
Whose art from rocks could call the mellowing grain,
And give the vine to laugh along the plain;
Or, tracing nature to her moral plan,
Explor'd the savage till he found the man.
For him the rustic hind, and village maid,
Strip'd the gay spring of half its bloom and shade;
With annual dances grac❜d the daisy-mead,
And sung his triumphs on the oaten reed;
Or, fond to think him sprung from yonder sky,
Rear'd the turf fane, and bade the victim die.
In Turkey, sacred as the Koran's page,
These simple manners live through every age:
The humblest swain, if virtue warms the man,
May rise the genius of the grave Divan;
And all but Othman's race, the only proud,
Fall with their sires, and mingle with the crowd
For three campaigns Caprouli's hand display'd
The Turkish crescent on thy walls, Belgrade!
Imperial Egypt own'd him for her lord,
And Austria trembled if he touch'd the sword:
Yet all his glories set within his grave,
One son a janisary, one a slave.
Politer courts, ingenious to extend
The father's glories, bid his pomps descend;
With strange good-nature give his worthless son
The very laurels that his virtue won;
And with the same appellatives adorn
A living hero, and a sot unborn.
Hence, without blushing, (say whate'er we can} We more regard the' escutcheon than the man;
Yet, true to nature and her instincts, prize
The hound or spaniel as his talent lies:
Careless from what paternal blood he rose,
We value Bowman only for his nose.
Say, should you see a generous steed outfly
The swiftest zephyr of the' autumnal sky,
Would you at once his ardent wishes kill,
Give him the dogs, or chain him to a mill,
Because his humbler fathers, grave and slow,
Clean'd half the jakes of Houndsditch or Soho?
In spite of all that in his grandsire shone,
An horse's worth is, like a king's, his own.
If in the race, when lengthening shouts inspire
His bold compeers, and set their hearts on fire,
He seems regardless of the' exulting sound,
And scarcely drags his legs along the ground;
What will❜t avail, that, sprung from heavenly seed,
His great forefathers swept the' Arabian mead:
Or, dress'd in half an empire's purple, bore
The weight of Xerxes on the Caspian shore?
I grant, my lord! your ancestor's outshone
All that e'er grac'd the Ganges, or the Rhone;
Born to protect, to rouse those godlike fires
That genius kindles, or fair fame inspires;
O'er humble life to spread indulgent ease,
To give the veins to flow without disease;
From proud oppression injur'd worth to screen,
And shake alike the senate and the scene.
And see, to save them from the wrecks of age,
Exulting science fills her every page;
Fae grasps her trump, the epic muse attends,
The lyre re-echoes, and the song ascends;
The sculptor's chissel with the pencil vies,
Rocks leap, and animated marbles rise:
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