Like gnats, which too much heat of fummer brings; But cares do fwarm there, too, and those have stings: As, when the honey does too open lie,

A thousand wafps about it fly :

Nor will the mafter ev'n to fhare admit;

The master stands aloof, and dares not taste of it.

'Tis morning; well; I fain would yet fleep on;
You cannot now; you must be gone

To court, or to the noisy hall:
Befides, the rooms without are crowded all;
The stream of business does begin,

And a spring-tide of clients is come in.
Ah cruel guards, which this poor prisoner keep!
Will they not fuffer him to sleep?

Make an escape; out at the postern flee,
And get fome bleffed hours of liberty:
With a few friends, and a few dishes, dine,
And much of mirth and moderate wine.
To thy bent mind some relaxation give,
And steal one day out of thy life to live.
Oh happy man (he cries) to whom kind Heaven
Has fuch a freedom always given !

Why, mighty madman, what should hinder thee
From being every day as free?

In all the freeborn nations of the air,
Never did bird a spirit fo mean and fordid bear,
As to exchange his native liberty

Of foaring boldly, up into the sky,
His liberty to fing, to perch, or fly,

When,

When, and wherever he thought good, And all his innocent pleasures of the wood, For a more plentiful or conftant food.

Nor ever did ambitious

rage

Make him into a painted cage,

Or the false forest of a well-hung room,
For honour and preferment, come.
Now, bleffings on you all, ye heroic race,
Who keep your primitive powers and rights fo well,
Though men and angels fell.

› Of all material lives the highest place

To you is justly given;

And ways and walks the nearest heaven.
Whilft wretched we, yet vain and proud, think fit
To boast, that we look up to it.
Ev'n to the univerfal tyrant, Love,
You homage pay but once a year:
None fo degenerous and unbirdly prove,
As his perpetual yoke to bear;
None, but a few unhappy houshold fowl,
Whom human lordship does control;
Who from their birth corrupted were
By bondage, and by man's example here.

He's no fmall prince, who every day

Thus to himfelf can say;

Now will I fleep, now eat, now fit, now walk,

Now meditate alone, now with acquaintance talk ;

This I will do, here I will stay,

Or, if my fancy call me away,

My

My man and I will presently go ride
(For we, before, have nothing to provide,
Nor, after, are to render an account)
To Dover, Berwick, or the Cornish mount.
If thou but a short journey take,

As if thy laft thou wert to make,
Bufinefs must be dispatch'd, ere thou canst part,
Nor canst thou ftir, unlefs there be

A hundred horfe and men to wait on thee,
And many a mule, and many a cart;

What an unwieldy man thou art!

The Rhodian Coloffus fo

A journey, too, might go.

Where honour, or where confcience, does not bind,

No other law fhall fhackle me;

Slave to myself I will not be,

Nor fhall my future actions be confin'd

By my own present mind.

Who by refolves and vows engag'd does stand
For days, that yet belong to Fate,

Does, like an unthrift, mortgage his estate,

Before it falls into his hand :.

The bondman of the cloister fo,

All that he does receive, does always owe;
And ftill, as time comes in, it goes away
Not to enjoy, but debts to pay.

Unhappy flave, and pupil to a bell,

Which his hours-work, as well as hours, does tell!
Unhappy, till the last, the kind releafing knefl.

If

If life fhould a well-order'd poem be
(In which he only hits the white

Who joins true profit with the best delight),
The more heroic strain let others take,
Mine the Pindaric way I'll make ;

The matter shall be grave, the numbers loose and free.

It fhall not keep one settled pace of time,

In the fame tune it shall not always chime,

Nor fhall each day just to his neighbour rhyme;

A thousand liberties it shall dispense,

And yet fhall manage all without offence

Or to the sweetness of the found, or greatness of the

fense;

Nor fhall it never from one fubje&t start,

Nor feek transitions to depart,

Nor its fet way o'er ftiles and bridges make,
Nor thorough lanes a compafs take,

As if it fear'd fome trefpafs to commit,

When the wide air 's a road for it.

So the imperial eagle does not stay

Till the whole carcafe he devour,
That's fallen into its power:

As if his generous hunger understood
That he can never want plenty of food,,
He only fucks the tasteful blood;

And to fresh game flies chearfully away;

To kites, and meaner birds, he leaves the mangled

prey.

II.

OF SOLITUDE,

"NUNQU

JAM minus folus,

, quam cum folus,"

is now become a very vulgar saying. Every man, and almost every boy, for these seventeen hundred years, has had it in his mouth. But it was at first spoken by the excellent Scipio, who was without question a moft eloquent and witty perfon, as well as the most wife, most worthy, most happy, and the greatest of all mankind. His meaning, no doubt, was this, that he found more fatisfaction to his mind, and more improvement of it, by folitude than by company; and, to fhew that he spoke not this loosely or out of vanity, after he had made Rome mistress of almost the whole world, he retired himself from it by a voluntary · exile, and at a private house, in the middle of a wood, near Linternum *, paffed the remainder of his glorious life no less gloriously. This house Seneca went to fee fo long after with great veneration; and, among other things, defcribes his baths to have been of fo mean a ftructure, that now, fays he, the bafeft of the people would despise them, and cry out, "Poor Scipio understood not how to live." What an authority is here for the credit of retreat! and happy had it been for Hannibal, if adversity could have taught him as > much wifdom as was learnt by Scipio from the highest

* Seneca Epist, Ixxxvi.

profperities.