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"Twas one of those facetious nights That Grammont gave this forfeit ring For breaking grave conundrum-rites,

Or punning ill, or some such thing:

From whence it can be fairly traced,
Through many a branch and many a bough,
From twig to twig, until it graced

The snowy hand that wears it now.

All this I'll prove, and then, to you,
Oh Tunbridge! and your springs ironical,
I swear by Heathcote's eye of blue

To dedicate the important chronicle.
Long may your ancient inmates give

Their mantles to your modern lodgers, And Charles's loves in Heathcote live, And Charles's bards revive in Rogers.

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BUT, whither have these gentle ones,
These rosy nymphs and black-eyed nuns,
With all of Cupid's wild romancing,

1 Mamurra, a dogmatic philosopher, who never doubted about any thing, except who was his father.-" Nullâ de re unquam præterquam de patre dubitavit."-In Vit. He was very learned-" Là-dedans, (that is, in his head when it was opened.) le Punique heurte le Persan, l'Hébreu choque l'Arabique, pour ne point parler de la mauvaise intelligence da Latin avec le Grec," &c.-See L'Histoire de Montmaur, tom. ii. p. 91.

Led my truant brains a dancing?
Instead of studying tomes scholastic,
Ecclesiastic, or monastic,

Off I fly, careering far

In chase of Pollys, prettier far
Than any of their namesakes are,-
The Polymaths and Polyhistors,
Polyglots and all their sisters.

So have I known a hopeful youth
Sit down in quest of lore and truth,
With tomes sufficient to confound him,
Like Tohu Bohu, heap'd around him,-
Mamurra' stuck to Theophrastus,
And Galen tumbling o'er Bombastus.2
When lo! while all that's learn'd and wise
Absorbs the boy, he lifts his eyes,
And through the window of his study
Beholds some damsel fair and ruddy,
With eyes, as brightly turn'd upon him as
The angel's were on Hieronymus.
Quick fly the folios, widely scatter'd,
Old Homer's laurell'd brow is batter'd,
And Sappho, headlong sent, flies just in
The reverend eye of St. Augustin.
Raptured he quits each dozing sage,
Oh woman, for thy lovelier page:
Sweet book!-unlike the books of art,—
Whose errors are thy fairest part;
In whom the dear errata column
Is the best page in all the volume!"

But to begin my subject rhyme—
"Twas just about this devilish time,
When scarce there happen'd any frolics
That were not done by Diabolics,

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Canonum," and says, that for this reason bishops were not allowed to read the Classics: Episcopus Gentilium libros non legat."-Distinct. 37. But Gratian is notorious for lying -besides, angels, as the illustrious pupil of Pantenus assures us, have got no tongues. Ουχ' ὡς ἡμῖν τα ώτα, ούτως εκεί νοις ὴ γλώττα· ουδ' αν οργανα τις δωη φωνης αγγελοις.

Clem. Alexand. Stromat.

4 The idea of the Rabbins, respecting the origin of woman, is not a little singular. They think that man was originally formed with a tail, like a monkey, but that the Deity cut off

Bombastus was one of the names of that great scholar and quack Paracelsus." Philippns Bombastus latet sub splendido tegmine Aureoli Theophrasti Paracelsi," says Sta-this appendage, and made woman of it. Upon this extradelius de circumforaneâ Literatorum vanitate.-He used to fight the devil every night with a broadsword, to the no small terror of his pupil Oporinus, who has recorded the circumstance. (Vide Oporin. Vit. apud Christian. Gryph. Vit. Select. quorundam Eruditissimorum, &c.) Paracelsus had but a poor opinion of Galen :-"My very beard (says he in his Paragrænum) has more learning in it than either Galen or Avicenna."

The angel, who scolded St. Jerom for reading Cicero, as Gratian tells the story in his "Concordantia discordantium

ordinary supposition the following reflection is founded:-
If such is the tie between women and men,
The ninny who weds is a pitiful elf,
For he takes to his tail like an idiot again,
And thus makes a deplorable ape of himself.
Yet. if we may judge as the fashions prevail,
Every husband remembers th' original plan,
And, knowing his wife is no more than his tail,
Why he leaves her behind him as much as he can.

Is a dispute that vastly better is
Referr'd to Scaliger1 et cæteris,)
Finding that, in this cage of fools,
The wisest sots adorn the schools,
Took it at once his head Satanic in,
To grow a great scholastic manikin,—
A doctor, quite as learn'd and fine as
Scotus John or Tom Aquinas,2
Lully, Hales Irrefragabilis,
Or any doctor of the rabble is.
In languages, the Polyglots,
Compared to him, were Babel sots;
He chatter'd more than ever Jew did,
Sanhedrim and Priest included;-
Priest and holy Sanhedrim
Were one-and-seventy fools to him
But chief the learned demon felt a
Zeal so strong for gamma, delta,
That, all for Greek and learning's glory,'
He nightly tippled "Græco moré,"
And never paid a bill or balance
Except upon the Grecian Kalends :-

From whence your scholars, when they want tick,

Say, to be Attic's to be on tick,

In logics he was quite Ho Panu ;5
Knew as much as ever man knew.
He fought the combat syllogistic
With so much skill and art eristic,

1 Scaliger. de Emendat. Tempor.-Dagon was thought by others to be a certain sea-monster, who came every day out of the Red Sea to teach the Syrians husbandry.-See Jacques Gaffarel, (Curiosités Inouïes, chap. i.,) who says he thinks this story of the sea-monster" carries little show of probability with it."

2 I wish it were known with any degree of certainty whether the Commentary on Boethius attributed to Thomas Aquinas be really the work of this Angelic Doctor. There are some bold assertions hazarded in it: for instance, he says that Plato kept school in a town called Academia, and that Alcibiades was a very beautiful woman whom some of Aristotle's pupils fell in love with :-" Alcibiades mulier fuit plucherrima, quam videntes quidam discipuli Aristotelis," &c.-See Freytag Adparat. Litterar. art. 86, tom. i.

3 The following compliment was paid to Laurentius Valla, upon his accurate knowledge of the Latin language:Nunc postquam manes defunctus Valla petivit, Non audet Pluto verba Latina loqui. Since Val arrived in Pluto's shade,

His nouns and pronouns all so pat in,

Pluto himself would be afraid

To say his soul's his own, in Latin!

See for these lines the "Auctorum Censio" of Du Verdier (page 29.)

4 It is much to be regretted that Martin Luther, with all his talents for reforming, should yet be vulgar enough to laugh at Camerarius for writing to him in Greek. "Master Joachim (says he) has sent me some dates and some raisins, and has also written me two letters in Greek. As soon as I am recovered, I shall answer them in Turkish, that he too may have the pleasure of reading what he does not under

That though you were the learn'd Stagirite,
At once upon the hip he had you right.
In music, though he had no ears
Except for that among the spheres,
(Which most of all, as he averr'd it,
He dearly loved, 'cause no one heard it,)
Yet aptly he, at sight, could read
Each tuneful diagram in Bede,

And find, by Euclid's corollaria,

The ratios of a jig or aria.

But, as for all your warbling Delias,
Orpheuses and Saint Cecilias,

He own'd he thought them much surpass'd
By that redoubted Hyaloclast

Who still contrived by dint of throttle,
Where'er he went to crack a hottle.

Likewise to show his mighty nowledge, he,
On things unknown in physiology,
Wrote many a chapter to divert us,
(Like that great little man Albertus,)
Wherein he show'd the reason why,
When children first are heard to cry,

If boy the baby chance to be,
He cries O A!-if girl, O E!—
Which are, quoth he, exceeding fair hints
Respecting their first sinful parents;
"Oh Eve!" exclaimeth little madam,
While little master cries, "Oh Adam!””

stand." "Græca sunt, legi non possunt," is the ignorant speech attributed to Accursius; but very unjustly-for, far from asserting that Greek could not be read, that worthy juris-consult upon the Law 6. D. de Bonor. Possess. expressly says, "Græcæ literæ possunt intelligi et legi." (Vide Nov. Libror. Rarior. Collection. Fascic. IV.)-Scipio Carteromachus seems to have been of opinion that there is no salvation out of the pale of Greek Literature: "Via prima salutis Graiâ pandetur ab urbe :" and the zeal of Laurentius Rhodomannus cannot be sufficiently admired, when he exhorts his countrymen, "per gloriam Christi, per salutem patriæ, per reipublicæ decus et emolumentum," to study the Greek language. Nor must we forget Phavorinus, the excellent Bishop of Nocera, who, careless of all the usual commendations of a Christian, required no further eulogium on his tomb than "Here lieth a Greek Lexicographer."

'O avv.-The introduction of this language into English poetry has a good effect, and ought to be more universally adopted. A word or two of Greek in a stanza would serve as ballast to the most "light o'love" verses. Ausonius, among the ancients, may serve as a model:

Ου γαρ μοι θεμις εστιν in hac regione μενοντι
Αξιον ab nostris επιδευεα esse καμήναις.

Ronsard, the French poet, has enriched his sonnets and odes with many an excellent morsel from the Lexicon. His "chère Entelechie," in addressing his mistress, can only be equalled by Cowley's "Antiperistasis."

Or Glass-Breaker-Morhofins has given an account of this extraordinary man, in a work, published 1682,-" De vitreo scypho fracto," &c.

7 Translated almost literally from a passage in Albertus de Secretis, &c.

But 'twas in Optics and Dioptrics,
Our dæmon play'd his first and top tricks.
He held that sunshine passes quicker
Through wine than any other liquor;
And though he saw no great objection
To steady light and clear reflection,
He thought the aberrating rays,
Which play about a bumper's blaze,

Were by the doctors look'd, in common, on,
As a more rare and rich phenomenon.
He wisely said that the sensorium

Is for the eyes a great emporium,
To which these noted picture-stealers
Send all they can and meet with dea.ers.
In many an optical proceeding

The brain, he said, show'd great good-breeding:
For instance, when we ogle women
(A trick which Barbara tutor'd him in,)
Although the dears are apt to get in a
Strange position on the retina
Yet instantly the modest brain
Doth set them on their legs again!'

Our doctor thus, with "stuff"d sufficiency" Of all omnigenous omnisciency,

1 Alluding to that habitual act of the judgment, by which, notwithstanding the inversion of the image upon the retina, a correct impression of the object is conveyed to the sensorium.

* Under this description, I believe “the Devil among the Scholars" may be included. Yet Leibnitz found out the uses of incomprehensibility, when he was appointed secretary to a society of philosophers at Nuremberg, chiefly for his ingenuity in writing a cabalistical letter, not one word of which either they or himself could interpret See the Eloge

Began (as who would not begin
That had, like him, so much within?)
To let it out in books of all sorts,
Folios, quartos, large and small sorts;
Poems, so very deep and sensible
That they were quite incomprehensible;"
Prose, which had been at learning's Fair,
And bought up all the trumpery there,
The tatter'd rags of every vest,

In which the Greeks and Romans dress'd,
And o'er her figure swoll'n and antic
Scatter'd them all with airs so frantic,
That those, who saw what fits she had,
Declared unhappy Prose was mad!
Epics he wrote and scores of rebuses,
All as neat as old Turnebus's;
Eggs and altars, cyclopædias,

Grammars, prayer-books-oh! 'twere tedious,
Did I but tell the half, to follow .ne:
Not the scribbling bard of Ptolemy,
No-nor the hoary Trismegistus,

(Whose writings all, thank heaven! have miss'd us,) E'er fill'd with lumber such a wareroom As this great "porcus literarum!"

Historique de M. de Leibnitz l'Europe Savante.-People in all ages have loved to be puzzled. We find Cicero thank ing Atticus for having sent him a work of Serapion 'ex quo (says he) quidem ego (quod inter nos liceat dicere) millesimam partem vix intelligo." Lib. ii. epist. 4. And we know that Avicenna, the learned Arabian, read Aristotle's Metaphysics forty times over for the mere pleasure of being able to inform the world that he could not comprehend one syllable throughout them. (Nicolas Massa in Vit Avicen.`

POEMS RELATING TO AMERICA.

ΤΟ

FRANCIS, EARL OF MOIRA,

GENERAL IN HIS MAJESTY'S FORCES, MASTER-GENERAL OF
THE ORDNANCE, CONSTABLE OF THE TOWER, ETC.

MY LORD,

It is impossible to think of addressing a Dedication to your Lordship without calling to mind the well-known reply of the Spartan to a rhetorician, who proposed to pronounce an eulogium on Hercules. "On Hercules!" said the honest Spartan, "who ever thought of blaming Hercules?" In a similar manner the concurrence of public opinion has left to the panegyrist of your Lordship a very superfluous task. I shall, therefore, be silent on the bject, and merely entreat your indulgence to the very humble tribute of gratitude which I have here the honor to pre

sent.

I am, my Lord,

With every feeling of attachment
and respect,
Your Lordship's very devoted Servant,
THOMAS MOORE.

27 Bury Street, St. James's,
April 10, 1806.

PREFACE.1

period of time which my plan of return to Europe afforded me, in travelling through a few of the States, and acquiring some knowledge of the inhabitants.

The impression which my mind received from the character and manners of these republicans, suggested the Epistles which are written from the city of Washington and Lake Erie. How far I was right, in thus assuming the tone of a satirist against a people whom I viewed but as a stranger and a visiter, is a doubt which my feelings did not allow me time to investigate. All I presume to answer for is the fidelity of the picture which I have given; and though prudence might have dictated gentler language, truth, I think, would have justified severer.

I went to America with prepossessions by no means unfavorable, and indeed rather indulged in many of those illusive ideas, with respect to the purity of the government and the primitive happiness of the people, which I had early imbibed in my native country, where, unfortunately, discontent at home enhances every distant temptation, and the western world has long been looked to as a retreat from real or imaginary oppression; as, in short, the elysian Atlantis, where persecuted patriots might find their visions realized, and be welcomed by kinared spirits to liberty and repose. In all thes flattering expectations I found myself completely disappointed, and felt inclined to say to America, as Horace says to his mistress, "intentata nites." Brissot, in the preface to his travels, observes, that "freedom in that country is carried to so high a degree as to border upon a state of nature;" and there certainly is a close approx

THE principal poems in the following collection were written during an absence of fourteen months from Europe. Though curiosity was certainly not the motive of my voyage to America, yet it hap-imation to savage life, not only in the liberty pened that the gratification of curiosity was the only advantage which I derived from it. Finding myself in the country of a new people, whose infancy had promised so much, and whose progress to maturity has been an object of such interesting speculation, I determined to employ the short

1 This Preface, as well as the Dedication which precedes it, were prefixed originally to the miscellaneous volume en

which they enjoy, but in the violence of party spirit and of private animosity which results from it. This illiberal zeal imbitters all social intercourse; and, though I scarcely could hesitate in selecting the party whose views appeared to me the more pure and rational, yet I am sorry to ob

titled "Odes and Epistles," of which, hitherto, the poems
relating to my American tour have formed a part.
9 Epistles VI., VII., and VIII.

serve that, in asserting their opinions, they both assume an equal share of intolerance; the Demo

crats, consistently with their principles, exhibiting POEMS RELATING TO AMERICA a vulgarity of rancor, which the Federalists too often are so forgetful of their cause as to imitate.

The rude familiarity of the lower orders, and indeed the unpolished state of society in general, would neither surprise nor disgust if they seemed to flow from that simplicity of character, that honest ignorance of the gloss of refinement, which may be looked for in a new and inexperienced people. But, when we find them arrived at maturity in most of the vices, and all the pride of civilization, while they are still so far removed from its higher and better characteristics, it is impossible not to feel that this youthful decay, this crude anticipation of the natural period of corruption, must repress every sanguine hope of the future energy and greatness of America.

I am conscious that, in venturing these few remarks, I have said just enough to offend, and by no means sufficient to convince; for the limits of a preface prevent me from entering into a justification of my opinions, and I am committed on the subject as effectually as if I had written volumes in their defence. My reader, however, is apprized of the very cursory observation upon which these opinions are founded, and can easily decide for himself upon the degree of attention or confidence which they merit.

With respect to the poems in general, which occupy the following pages, I know not in what manner to apologize to the public for intruding upon their notice such a mass of unconnected trifles, such a world of epicurean atoms as I have here brought in conflict together. To say that I have been tempted by the liberal offers of my bookseller, is an excuse which can hope for but little indulgence from the critic; yet I own that, without this seasonable inducement, these poems very possibly would never have been submitted to the world. The glare of publication is too strong for such imperfect productions: they should be shown but to the eye of friendship, in that dim light of privacy which is as favorable to poetical as to female beauty, and serves as a veil for faults, while it enhances every eharm which it displays. Besides, this is not a period for the idle occupations of poetry, and times like the present require talents more active and more useful. Few have now the leisure to read such trifles, and I most sincerely regret that I have had the leisure to write them.

ΤΟ

LORD VISCOUNT STRANGFORD. ABOARD THE PHAETON FRIGATE, OFF THE AZORES, M MOONLIGHT.

SWEET Moon! if, like Crotona's sage,2
By any spell my hand could dare
To make thy disk its ample page,

And write my thoughts, my wishes there;
How many a friend, whose careless eye
Now wanders o'er that starry sky,
Should smile, upon thy orb to meet
The recollection, kind and sweet,
The reveries of fond regret,
The promise, never to forget,
And all my heart and soul would send
To many a dear-loved, distant friend.

How little, when we parted last,

I thought those pleasant times were past,
Forever past, when brilliant joy
Was all my vacant heart's employ :
When, fresh from mirth to mirth again,
We thought the rapid hours too few ;
Our only use for knowledge then

To gather bliss from all we knew.
Delicious days of whim and soul !

When, iningling lore and laugh together,
We lean'd the book on Pleasure's bowl,

And turn'd the leaf with Folly's feather.
Little I thought that all were fled,
That, ere that summer's bloom was shed,
My eye should see the sail unfurl'd
That wafts me to the western world.

And yet, 'twas time;-in youth's sweet days,
To cool that season's glowing rays,
The heart awhile, with wanton wing,
May dip and dive in Pleasure's spring;
But, if it wait for winter's breeze,
The spring will chill, the heart will freeze
And then, that Hope, that fairy Hope,-

Oh! she awaked such happy dreams,
And gave my soul such tempting scope
For all its dearest, fondest schemes,

1 See the foregoing Note, p. 160.

writing upon the Moon by the means of a magic mirror.—

Pythagoras; who was supposed to have a power of See BAYLE, art. Pythag.

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