'Tis Liberty that crowns Britannia's isle,

[fmile.

And makes her barren rocks and her bleak mountains
Others with towering piles may please the fight,
And in their proud aspiring domes delight;
A nicer touch to the ftretcht canvas give,
Or teach their animated rocks to live:

'Tis Britain's care to watch o'er Europe's fate,
And hold in balance each contending state,
To threaten bold prefumptuous kings with war,
And anfwer her afflicted neighbour's prayer.
The Dane and Swede, rous'd up by fierce alarms,
Blefs the wife conduct of her pious arms:
Soon as her fleets appear, their terrors cease,
And all the northern world lies hush'd in peace.
Th' ambitious Gaul beholds with fecret dread
Her thunder aim'd at his afpiring head,
And fain her godlike fons would difunite
By foreign gold, or by domestic spite:
But ftrives in vain to conquer or divide,
Whom Naffau's arms defend and counfels guide.
Fir'd with the name, which I so oft have found
The diftant climes and different tongues refound,
I bridle-in my struggling Mufe with pain,
That longs to launch into a bolder strain.

But I've already troubled you too long,
Nor dare attempt a more adventurous fong.
My humble verse demands a fofter theme,
A painted meadow, or a purling ftream;
Unfit for Heroes: whom immortal lays,
And lines like Virgil's, or like yours, should praife.

MILTON's STYLE IMITATED,

IN A TRANSLATION OF

A STORY OUT OF THE THIRD ÆNEID.

LOST in the gloomy horror of the night,

We ftruck upon the coaft where Ætna lies,
Horrid and waste, its entrails fraught with fire,
That now cafts out dark fumes and pitchy clouds,
Vast showers of ashes hovering in the smoke;
Now belches molten ftones and ruddy flame
Incenft, or tears up mountains by the roots,
Or flings a broken rock aloft in air.

The bottom works with fmother'd fire, involv'd
In peftilential vapours, ftench and fmoke.

'Tis faid, that thunder-ftruck Enceladus
Groveling beneath th' incumbent mountain's weight,
Lies ftretch'd fupine, eternal prey of flames;
And when he heaves against the burning load,
Reluctant, to invert his broiling limbs,

A fudden earthquake shoots through all the isle,
And Ætna thunders dreadful under ground,
Then pours out fmoke in wreathing curls convolv'd,
And shades the sun's bright orb, and blots out day.
Here in the shelter of the woods we lodg'd,
And frighted heard strange founds and dismal yells,
Nor faw from whence they came; for all the night
A murky ftorm deep louring o'er our heads
Hung imminent, that with impervious gloom
Oppos'd itself to Cynthia's filver ray,

1

And fhaded all beneath. But now the fun

With orient beams had chac'd the dewy night
From earth and heaven; all nature ftood difclos'd:
When looking on the neighbouring woods we faw
The ghaftly visage of a man unknown,

An uncouth feature, meagre, pale, and wild;
Affliction's foul and terrible dismay

Sat in his looks, his face impair'd and worn
With marks of famine, fpeaking fore distress;
His locks were tangled, and his fhaggy beard
Matted with filth; in all things elfe a Greek.

He firft advanc'd in hafte; but when he faw
Trojans and Trojan arms, in mid career.
Stopt fhort, he back recoil'd as one furpriz'd:
But foon recovering speed, he ran, he flew
Precipitant, and thus with piteous cries
Our ears affail'd: " By heaven's eternal fires,
"By every God that fits inthron'd on high,

By this good light, relieve a wretch forlorn,
"And bear me hence to any distant shore,
"So I may fhun this favage race accurft.
" 'Tis true I fought among the Greeks that late
"With fword and fire o'erturn'd Neptunian Troy,
And laid the labour of the Gods in duft;
"For which, if fo the fad offence deferves,

Plung'd in the deep, for ever let me lie

"Whelm'd under feas; if death must be my doom,
"Let man inflict it, and I die well pleas'd."

He ended here, and now profuse of tears
In fuppliant mood fell proftrate at our feet;
We bade him speak from whence, and what he was,

And how by stress of fortune funk thus low;
Anchifes too with friendly afpect mild
Gave him his hand, fure pledge of amity,
When, thus encourag'd, he began his tale.
I'm one, fays he, of poor defcent, my name
Is Achæmenides, my country Greece,
Ulyffes' fad compeer, who, whilst he fled
The raging Cyclops, left me here behind
Difconfolate, forlorn; within the cave
He left me, giant Polypheme's dark cave;
A dungeon wide and horrible, the walls

On all fides furr'd with mouldy damps, and hung
With clots of ropy gore, and human limbs,
His dire repaft: himself of mighty fize,
Hoarfe in his voice, and in his visage grim,
Intractable, that riots on the flesh

Of mortal men, and fwills the vital blood.
Him did I fee fnatch up with horrid grasp
Two fprawling Greeks, in either hand a man:
I faw him when with huge tempeftuous sway
He dasht and broke them on the grundfil edge;
The pavement fwam in blood, the walls around
Were fpatter'd o'er with brains. He lapt the blood,
And chew'd the tender flesh ftill warm with life,
That fwell'd and heav'd itself amidst his teeth
As fenfible of pain. Not lefs mean while
Our chief incens'd, and ftudious of revenge,
Plots his deftruction, which he thus effects:
The giant, gorg'd with flesh, and wine, and blood,
Lay ftretcht at length and fnoring in his den,
Belching raw gobbets from his maw, o'ercharg'd

With purple wine and cruddled gore confus'd.
We gather'd round, and to his fingle eye,
The fingle eye that in his forehead glar'd
Like a full moon, or a broad burnish'd shield,
A forky staff we dextrously apply'd,
Which, in the spacious focket turning round,
Scoopt out the big round jelly from its orb.
But let me not thus interpofe delays:
Fly, mortals, fly this curft detefted race :
A hundred of the fame ftupendous size,
A hundred Cyclops live among the hills,
Gigantic brotherhood, that stalk along
With horrid ftrides o'er the high mountains tops,
Enormous in their gait; I oft have heard

Their voice and tread; oft feen them as they past,
Sculking and scouring down, half dead with fear.
Thrice has the moon wash'd all her orb in light,
Thrice travel'd o'er in her obfcure fojourn,
The realms of night inglorious, fince I've liv'd
Amidst these woods, gleaning from thorns and shrubs
A wretched sustenance. As thus he spoke,
We faw descending from a neighbouring hill
Blind Polypheme; by weary fteps and flow
The groping giant with a trunk of pine
Explor'd his way around his woolly flocks
Attended grazing: to the well-known shore
He bent his courfe, and on the margin stood,
A hideous monfter, terrible, deform'd;
Full in the midst of his high front there gap'd
The spacious hollow where his eye-ball roll'd,