Fierce as a startled adder, swell'd, and said,
Rattling an ancient sistrum at his head:

Speak'st thou of Syrian princes? Traitor base!
Mine, goddess! mine is all the horned race.
True, he had wit, to make their value rise;
From foolish Greeks to steal them, was as wise:
More glorious yet, from barbarous hands to keep,
When Sallee rovers chas'd him on the deep.
Then taught by Hermes, and divinely bold,
Down his own throat he risqu'd the Grecian gold.

REMARKS.

380

ty, which agrees exactly, saith he, with the time of the theft above mentioned. But he omits to observe that Herodotus tells the same thing of it in his time.

Ver. 375. Speak'st thou of Syrian prinees? &c.] The strange story following, which may be taken for a fiction of the poet, is justified by a true relation in Spon's Voyages. Vaillaut (who wrote the history of the Syrian kings as it is to be found on medals) coming from the Levant, where he had been collect ing various coins, and being pursued by a corsair of Sallee, swallowed down twenty gold medals. A sudden bourasque freed him from the rover, and he got to land with them in his belly. On his road to Avignon he met two physicians, of whom he demanded assistance. One advised purgations, the other vomits. In this uncertainty he took neither, but pursued his way to Lyons, where he found his ancient friend the famous physician and antiquary Dufour, to whom he related his adventure. Dufour, without staying to inquire about the uneasy symp. toms of the burthen be carried, first asked him, whe ther the medals were of the higher empire? He assured him they were. Dufour was ravished with the hope of possessing so rare a treasure; he bargained with him on the spot for the most curious of them, and was to recover them at his own expense.

Receiv'd each demi-god, with pious care,
Deep in his entrails-I rever'd them there.
I bought them, shrouded in that living shrine,
And, at their second birth, they issue mine.'
'Witness great Ammon! by whose horns I swore,'
Replied soft Annius this our paunch before
Still bears them, faithful; and that thus I eat,
Is to refund the medals with the meat.
To prove me, goddess! clear of all design,
Bid me with Pollio sup, as well as dine :
There all the learn'd shall at the labour stand,
And Douglas lend his soft, obstetric hand.'

The goddess, smiling, seem'd to give consent;
So back to Pollio, hand in hand, they went.

390

Then thick as locusts black'ning all the ground,
A tribe, with weeds and shells fantastic crown'd,
Each with some wondrous gift approach'd the power,
A nest, a toad, a fungus, or a flower.

But far the foremost, two, with earnest zeal,
And aspect ardent, to the throne appeal.

400

The first thus open'd: Hear thy suppliant's call,
Great queen, and common mother of us all!
Fair from its humble bed I rear'd this flower,

Suckl'd, and cheer'd, with air, and sun, and shower:
Soft on the paper ruff its leaves I spread,
Bright with the gilded button tipt its head.

REMARKS.

Ver. 387. Witness great Ammon!] Jupiter Ammon is called to wituess, as the father of Alexander, to whom those kings succeeded in the division of the Macedonian empire, and whose horns they wore on their medals.

Ver. 394. Douglas] A physician of great learning and no less taste; above all, curious in what related to Horace, of whom he collected every edition, translation, and comment, to the number of seve ral hundred volumes.

411

Then thron'd in glass and nam'd it Caroline:
Each maid cried, charming! and each youth, divine!
Did nature's pencil ever blend such rays,
Such varied light in one promiscuous blaze!
Now prostrate! dead! behold that Caroline :
No maid cries, charming! and no youth, divine!
And lo the wretch; whose vile, whose insect lust
Laid this gay daughter of the spring in dust.
Oh punish him, or to th' Elysian shades
Dismiss my soul, where no carnation fades.'

He ceas'd and wept. With innocence of mien,
Th' accus'd stood forth, and thus address'd the
queen :

· Of all th' enamell'd race, whose silv'ry wing
Waves to the tepid zephyrs of the spring,
Or swims along the fluid atmosphere,

Once brightest shin'd this child of heat and air.
I saw, and started from its vernal bower

420

The rising game, and chas'd from flower to flower.
It fled, I follow'd; now in hope, now pain;
It stopt, I stopt; it mov'd, I mov'd again.
At last it fix'd, 'twas on what plant it pleas'd,
And where it fix'd, the beauteous bird I seiz'd: 430
Rose or carnation was below my care;
I meddle, goddess! only in my sphere.
I tell the naked fact without disguise,
And, to excuse it, need but show the prize;
Whose spoils this paper offers to your eye,
Fair ev'n in death! this peerless butterfly.'

REMARKS.

Ver. 409. and nam'd it Caroline:] It is a compliment which the florists usually pay to princes and great persons, to give their names to the most cu rious flowers of their raising: some have been very jealous of vindicating this honour, but none more than that ambitious gardener, at Hammersmith, who caused his favourite to be painted on his sign, with this inscription: This is my Queen Caroline.

'My sons!' she answer'd, both have done your

parts:

440

Live happy both, and long promote our arts.
But hear a mother, when she recommends
To your fraternal care our sleeping friends.
The common soul, of Heaven's more frugal make,
Serves but to keep fools pert and knaves awake;
A drowsy watchman, that just gives a knock,
And breaks our rest, to tell us what's a clock.
Yet by some object ev'ry brain is stirr'd;
The dull may waken to a humming bird;
The most recluse, discreetly open'd, find
Congenial matter in the cockle kind;
The mind in metaphysics at a loss,
May wander in a wilderness of moss;
The head that turns at superlunar things,

Pois'd with a tail, may steer on Wilkins' wings.

450

O! would the sons of men once think their eyes And reason giv'n them but to study flies! See nature in some partial narrow shape, And let the Author of the whole escape; Learn but to trifle; or, who most observe, To wonder at their Maker, not to serve.'

Be that my task,' replies a gloomy clerk, Sworn foe to mystery, yet divinely dark; Whose pious hope aspires to see the day When moral evidence shall quite decay,

REMARKS.

460

Ver. 452. Wilkins' wings.] One of the first projectors of the Royal Society, who, among many enlarged and useful notions, entertained the extravagant hope of a possibility to fly to the moon; which has put some volatile geniuses upon making wings for that purpose.

Ver. 462. When moral evidence shall quite decay,] Alluding to a ridiculous and absurd way of some mathematicians, in calculating the gradual decay of moral evidence by mathematical proportions: ac

And damns implicit faith, and holy lies,
Prompt to impose, and fond to dogmatize:
Let others creep by timid steps and slow,
On plain experience lay foundation low,

By common sense to common knowledge bred,
And last, to nature's Cause through nature led.
All-seeing in thy mists, we want no guide,
Mother of arrogance, and source of pride!
We nobly take the high priori road,

And reason downward, till we doubt of God:
Make nature still encroach upon his plan,
And shove him off as far as e'er we can:
Thrust some mechanic cause into his place,
Or bind in matter, or diffuse in space.
Or, at one bound o'erleaping all his laws,
Make God man's image, man the final cause,
Find virtue local, all relation scorn,

See all in self, and but for self be born:
Of nought so certain as our reason still,
Of nought so doubtful as of soul and will.

Oh hide the God still more! and make us see
Such as Lucretius drew, a god like thee:

Wrapt up in self, a god without a thought,
Regardless of our merit or default.

Or that bright image to our fancy draw,
Which Theocles in raptur'd vision saw,

REMARKS.

470

480

cording to which calculation, in about fifty years it will be no longer probable that Julius Cæsar was in Gaul, or died in the senate house. See Craig's Theologiæ Christianæ Principia Mathematica. But as it seems evident, that facts of a thousand years old, for instance, are now as probable as they were five hundred years ago; it is plain, that if in fifty more they quite disappear, it must be owing, not to their arguments, but to the extraordinary power of our goddess; for whose help, therefore, they have reason to pray.