Or mead for cooling drink prepares,
Of virgin honey in the jars.

Or, in the now declining year,

When bounteous Autumn rears his head, He joys to pull the ripen'd pear,

And clust'ring grapes with purple spread. The fairest of his fruit he serves,

Priapus, thy rewards:

Sylvanus too his part deserves,
Whose care the fences guards.
Sometimes beneath an ancient oak,
Or on the matted grass he lies:
No god of Sleep he need invoke ;
The stream, that o'er the pebbles flies,
With gentle slumber crowns his eyes.
The wind, that whistles through the sprays,
Maintains the consort of the song;

And hidden birds, with native lays,

The golden sleep prolong.

But when the blast of winter blows,
And hoary frost inverts the year,
Into the naked woods he goes,

And seeks the tusky boar to rear,

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With well-mouth'd hounds and pointed spear!
Or spreads his subtle nets from sight,
With twinkling glasses, to betray

The larks that in the meshes light,
Or makes the fearful hare his prey.
Amidst his harmless easy joys
No anxious care invades his health,

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Nor love his peace of mind destroys,
Nor wicked avarice of wealth.
But if a chaste and pleasing wife,
To ease the business of his life,
Divides with him his household care,
Such as the Sabine matrons were,
Such as the swift Apulian's bride,
Sun-burnt and swarthy though she be,
Will fire for winter nights provide,
And without noise will oversee
His children and his family;
And order all things till he come,
Sweaty and overlabour'd, home;
If she in pens his flocks will fold,
And then produce her dairy store,
With wine to drive away the cold,

And unbought dainties of the poor;
Not oysters of the Lucrine lake
My sober appetite would wish,

Nor turbot, or the foreign fish
That rolling tempests overtake,

And hither waft the costly dish. Not heathpout, or the rarer bird,

Which Phasis or Ionia yields, More pleasing morsels would afford Than the fat olives of my fields; Than shards or mallows for the pot,

That keep the loosen'd body sound, Or than the lamb, that falls by lot

To the just guardian of my ground.

Amidst these feasts of happy swains,
The jolly shepherd smiles to see
His flock returning from the plains;
The farmer is as pleas'd as he,
To view his oxen sweating smoke,
Bear on their necks the loosen'd yoke :

To look upon his menial crew,

That sit around his cheerful hearth,

And bodies spent in toil renew

With wholesome food and country mirth.

This Morecraft said within himself,

Resolv'd to leave the wicked town;

And live retir'd upon his own,

He call'd his money in ;

But the prevailing love of pelf

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Soon split him on the former shelf,

He put it out again.

VOL. III.

N

TO HIS GRACE THE DUKE OF ORMOND.

MY LORD,

Anno 1699.

SOME estates are held in England by paying a fine at the change of every lord. I have enjoyed the patronage of your family, from the time of your excellent grandfather to this present day. I have dedicated the translation of the Lives of Plutarch to the first Duke; and have celebrated the memory of your heroic father. Though I am very short of the age of Nestor, yet I have lived to a third generation of your house; and by your Grace's favour am admitted still to hold from you by the same tenure.

I am not vain enough to boast that I have deserved the value of so illustrious a line; but my fortune is the greater, that for three descents they have been pleased to distinguish my poems from those of other men; and have accordingly made me their peculiar care. May it be permitted me to say, that as your grandfather and father were cherished and adorned with honours by two successive monarchs, so I have been esteemed and patronized by the grandfather, the father, and the son, descended from one of the most ancient, most conspicuous, and most deserving families in Europe.

It is true, that by delaying the payment of my last fine, when it was due by your Grace's accession to the titles and patrimonies of your house, I may seem, in rigour of law, to have made a forfeiture of my claim; yet my heart has always been devoted to your service; and since you have been graciously pleased, by your permission of this address, to accept the tender of my duty, it is not yet too late to lay these poems at your feet.

The world is sensible that you worthily succeed not only to the honours of your ancestors, but also to their virtues. The long chain of magnanimity, courage, easiness of access, and desire of doing good, even to the prejudice of your fortune, is so far from being broken in your Grace, that the precious metal yet runs pure to the newest link of it; which I will not call the last, because I hope and pray it may descend to late posterity; and your flourishing youth, and that of your excellent Duchess, are happy omens of my wish.

It is observed by Livy and by others, that some of the noblest Roman families retained a resemblance of their ancestry, not only in their shapes and features, but also in their manners, their qualities, and the distinguishing characters of their minds. Some lines were noted for a stern, rigid virtue, savage, haughty, parsimonious, and unpopular: others were more sweet and affable, made of a more pliant paste, humble, courteous, and obliging; studious of doing charitable offices, and diffusive of the goods which they enjoyed. The last of these is the proper and indelible character of your Grace's family. God Almighty has endued you with a softness, a beneficence, an attractive behaviour winning on the hearts of others; and so sensible of their misery, that the wounds of fortune seem not inflicted on them, but on yourself. You are so ready to redress, that you almost prevent their wishes, and always exceed their expectations; as if what was yours was not your own, and not given you to possess, but to bestow on wanting merit. But this is a topic which I must cast in shades, lest I offend your modesty, which is so far from being ostentatious of the good you do, that it blushes even to have it known; and therefore I must leave you to the satisfaction and testimony of your own conscience, which, though it be a silent panegyric, is yet the best.

You are so easy of access, that Poplicola was not more, whose doors were opened on the outside to save the people even the common civility of asking entrance; where all were equally admitted; where nothing that was reasonable was denied; where misfortune was a powerful recommendation, and where I can scarce forbear saying that want itself was a powerful mediator, and was next to merit.

The history of Peru assures us, that their Incas, above all their titles, esteemed that the highest, which called them Lovers of the Poor; a name more glorious than the Felix, Pius, and Augustus of the Roman Emperors; which were epithets of flattery, deserved by few of them, and not running in a blood like the perpetual gentleness and inherent goodness of the Ormond family.

Gold, as it is the purest, so it is the softest and most ductile of all metals. Iron, which is the hardest, gathers rust, corrodes itself, and is therefore subject to corruption: it was never intended for coins and medals, or to bear the faces and inscriptions of the great. Indeed it is fit for armour, to bear off insults, and preserve the wearer in the day of battle; but the danger once repelled, it is laid aside by the brave, as a