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.

400

But far the foremost, two, with earnest zeal,

THE QUEEN.

Great queen, and common mother of us all!
Fair from its humble bed I rear'd this flower,

The first thus open'd: "Hear thy suppliants call,

405

Suckled, and cheer'd, with air, and sun, and shower;
Soft on the paper ruff its leaves I spread,
Bright with the gilded button tipp'd its head;

Then, throned in glass, and named 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 the Elysian shades
Dismiss my soul, where no carnation fades."

72

410

73

415

He ceased and wept. With innocence of mien,

The accused stood forth, and thus address'd the Queen: 420 "Of all the enamell'd race, whose silvery wing 74

Waves to the tepid zephyrs of the spring,

Or swims along the fluid atmosphere,

Once brightest shined this child of heat and air.

I saw, and started, from its vernal bower,

425

The rising game, and chased from flower to flower.
It fled, I follow'd; now in hope, now pain;
It stopp'd, I stopp'd; it moved, I moved again.75
At last it fix'd, 'twas on what plant it pleased,
And where it fix'd, the beauteous bird I seized:
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;

430

72 It is a compliment which the florists usually pay to princes and great personages, to give their names to the most curious 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." 78 These verses are translated from Catullus, Epith.

"Ut flos in septis secretus nascitur hortis,

Quam mulcent auræ, firmat Sol, educat imber,
Multi illum pueri, multæ optavere puellæ :

Idem quum tenui carptus defloruit ungui,

Nulli illum pueri, nullæ optavere puellæ," &c.

74 The poet seems to have an eye to Spenser, Muiopotmos. "Of all the race of silver-winged flies

Which do possess the empire of the air."

"I started back,

It started back; but pleased I soon return'd,
Pleased it return'd as soon."-Milton.

Whose spoils this paper offers to your eye,

Fair ever in death! this peerless butterfly."

435

440

'My sons (she answer'd) both have done your parts: 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 o'clock. Yet by some object every 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;

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450

The head, that turns at superlunar things,

Poised with a tail may steer on Wilkins' wings.76

"O! would the sons of men once think their eyes 77

And reason given them but to study flies!

See nature in some partial narrow shape,

455

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,78

Sworn foe to mystery, yet divinely dark;

460

76 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.

77 This is the third speech of the goddess to her supplicants, and completes the whole of what she had to give in instruction on this important occasion, concerning learning, civil society, and religion. In the first speech, ver. 119, to her editors and conceited critics, she directs how to deprave wit and discredit fine writers. In her second, ver. 175, to the educators of youth, she shows them how all civil duties may be extinguished, in that one doctrine of Divine hereditary right. And in this third, she charges the investigators of nature to amuse themselves in trifles, and rest in second causes, with a total disregard of the first. This being all that Dulness can wish, is all she needs to say; and we may apply to her (as the poet hath managed it) what hath been said of true wit, that she neither says too little, nor too much.

78 The epithet gloomy in this line may seem the same with that of dark in the next. But gloomy relates to the uncomfortable and disastrous condition

Whose pious hope aspires to see the day
When moral evidence shall quite decay,79
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 foundations 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,80

And reason downward, till we doubt of God:
Make Nature still encroach upon his plan;81
And shove him off as far as e'er we can:

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470

of an irreligious sceptic; whereas dark alludes only to his puzzled and embroiled systems.

79 Alluding to a ridiculous and absurd way of some mathematicians, in calculating the gradual decay of moral evidence by mathematical proportions: according 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 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 are bound to pray.

80 Those who, from the effects in this visible world, deduce the eternal power and Godhead of the First Cause, though they cannot attain to an adequate idea of the Deity, yet discover so much of him, as enables them to see the end of their creation, and the means of their happiness: whereas they who take this high priori road, (such as Hobbes, Spinosa, Des Cartes, and some better reasoners,) for one that goes right, ten lose themselves in mists, or ramble after visions, which deprive them of all sight of their end, and mislead them in the choice of the means. [Wakefield characterizes this as "An oblique censure of Dr. S. Clarke's celebrated Demonstration of the Being and Attributes of God à priori; after the example of his 'guide, philosopher, and friend,' who is perpetually attacking Clarke in his fragments of Essays, and thus expresses himself in his letters to our poet: 'Rather than creep up slowly, à posteriori, to a little general knowledge, they soar at once as far and as high as imagination can carry them. From thence they descend again, armed with systems and arguments, à priori; and, regardless how these agree, or class with the phenomena of nature, they impose them on mankind.'"]

81 This relates to such as, being ashamed to assert a mere mechanic cause, and yet unwilling to forsake it entirely, have had recourse to a certain plastic nature, elastic fluid, subtile matter, &c.

Thrust some mechanic cause into his place; 82
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,

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480

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: 83
Wrapt up in self, a God without a thought,
Regardless of our merit or default.

485

Or that bright image to our fancy draw,
Which Theocles in raptured vision saw,

While through poetic scenes the Genius roves,
Or wanders wild in academic groves;
That Nature our society adores,

490

Where Tindal dictates, and Silenus snores.' "984
Roused at his name, up rose the bowsy sire,
And shook from out his pipe the seeds of fire;85
Then snapt his box, and stroked his belly down:
Rosy and reverend, though without a gown.
Bland and familiar to the throne he came,
Led up the youth, and call'd the goddess dame.
Then thus: "From priest-craft happily set free,
Lo! every finish'd son returns to thee:

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500

82 The first of these follies is that of Des Cartes; the second of Hobbes ; the third of some succeeding philosophers.

83 Lib. i. ver. 57:

"Omnis enim per se Divam natura necesse est
Immortali ævo summa cum pace fruatur,
Semota ab nostris rebus, summotaque longe-

Nec bene pro meritis capitur, nec tangitur ira; "

from whence the two verses following are translated, and wonderfully agree with the character of our goddess.-Scriblerus.

84 Mr. Thomas Gordon.-Silenus was an Epicurean philosopher, as appears from Virgil, Eclog. vi., where he sings the principles of that philosophy in his drink.

[Gordon, the translator of Tacitus, and publisher of the Independent Whig.]

85 The Epicurean language: Semina rerum, or atoms. Virg. Eclog. vi.: Semina ignis-semina flammæ.