Which fetters eloquence to scantiest bounds, And maims the cadence of poetic sounds? Say; does your humble admiration choose The gentle prattle of her Comic Muse, While wits, plain-dealers, fops, and fools appear, Charg’d to say nought but what the king may hear? Or rather melt your sympathising hearts, Won by her tragic scene’s romantic arts, Where old and young declaim on soft desire, And heroes never, but for love, expire? No. Though the charms of novelty, awhile, Perhaps too fondly win your thoughtless smile, Yet not for you design’d indulgent fate The modes or manners of the Bourbon state. And ill your minds my partial judgment reads, And many an augury my soul misleads, If the fair maids of yonder blooming train To their light courtship would an audience deign, Or those chaste matrons a Parisian wife Choose for the model of domestic life; Or if one youth of all that generous band, The strength and splendour of their native land, Would yield his portion of his country’s fame, And quit old freedom’s patrimonial claim, With lying smiles oppressions pomp to see, And judge of glory by a king’s decree. O blest at home with justly-envied laws, O long the chiefs of Europe’s general cause, Whom Heaven hath chosen at each dangerous hour To check the inroads of barbaric power, The rights of trampled nations to reclaim, And guard the social world from bonds and shame; Oh, let not luxury’s fantastic charms Thus give the lie to your heroic arms: Nor for the ornaments of life embrace Dishonest lessons from that vaunting race, Whom fate’s dread laws (for, in eternal fate Despotic rule was heir to freedom’s hate,) Whom in each warlike, each commercial part, In civil counsel, and in pleasing art, The judge of earth predestin’d for your foes, And made it fame and virtue to oppose. _Odes on Several Subjects._ Book II., ode i. _Poetical Works._ Aldine edition, 1835, p. 199. ROBERT LLOYD, 1751 (1733-1764) There stood an ancient mount, yclept Parnass, (The fair domain of sacred poesy,) Which, with fresh odours ever-blooming, was Besprinkled with the dew of Castaly; Which now in soothing murmurs whisp’ring glides Wat’ring with genial waves the fragrant soil, Now rolls adown the mountain’s steepy sides, Teaching the vales full beauteously to smile, Dame Nature’s handiwork, not form’d by lab’ring toil.