Fled to some eminence, the husbandman, And, oh, be mindful of that sparing board Makes your glass sparkle, and your sense rejoice! Nor cruelly demand what the deep rains FROM THE CASTLE OF INDOLENCE ΙΟ In lowly dale, fast by a river's side With woody hill o'er hill encompassed round, A most enchanting wizard did abide, It was, A listless climate made, where, sooth to say, No living wight could work, ne cared for play. Was nought around but images of rest: Sleep-soothing groves, and quiet lawns between; 20 And flowery beds, that slumbrous influence kest,2 From poppies breathed; and beds of pleasant green, Where never yet was creeping creature seen. Meantime unnumbered glittering streamlets played, And hurled everywhere their waters sheen; That, as they bickered through the sunny glade, Though restless still themselves, a lulling murmur made. For, as they chanced to breathe on neigh- "Come, ye who still the cumbrous load of bouring hill, "Behold! ye pilgrims of this earth, behold! What youthful bride can equal her array? From flower to flower on balmy gales to Is all she has to do beneath the radiant sky. "Behold the merry minstrels of the morn, The swarming songsters of the careless1 grove; Ten thousand throats that, from the flowering thorn, Hymn their good God, and carol sweet of love, Such grateful kindly raptures them emove !" They neither plough, nor sow; ne,3 fit for flail, E'er to the barn the nodding sheaves they drove: Yet theirs each harvest dancing in the gale, Whatever crowns the hill, or smiles along the vale. 90 life Push hard up-hill; but as the farthest steep You trust to gain, and put an end to strife, Down thunders back the stone with mighty sweep, And hurls your labours to the valley deep, Your cares, your toils; will steep you in a sea Of Sybarite of old, all Nature, and all Art. Still more majestic shalt thou rise, More dreadful from each foreign stroke; As the loud blast that tears the skies, Serves but to root thy native oak. Rule, Britannia, etc. Thee haughty tyrants ne'er shall tame; To thee belongs the rural reign; Thy cities shall with commerce shine; All thine shall be the subject main,1 And every shore it circles thine. Rule, Britannia, etc. The Muses, still with freedom found, Blest isle, with matchless beauty crowned, JOHN DYER (1700?-1758) FROM GRONGAR HILL3 Silent Nymph, with curious eye, 20 30 10 20 always 3 a hill in southwest Wales 4 peak cf. L'Allegro, 1. 70 While strayed my eyes o'er Towy's1 flood, Over mead, and over wood, From house to house, from hill to hill, About his chequered sides I wind, Now, I gain the mountain's brow, Old castles on the cliffs arise, Below me trees unnumbered rise, The sturdy oak with broad-spread boughs; And beyond the purple grove, Haunt of Phillis, queen of love, Lies a long and level lawn On which a dark hill, steep and high, His sides are cloth'd with waving wood, 1 a river that flows into Carmarthen Bay in southwest Wales 36 "How could you say my face was fair, And yet that face forsake? William Congreve descended from a family in Staffordshire, of so great antiquity that it claims a place among the few that extend their line beyond the Norman Conquest; and was the son of William Congreve, second son of Richard Congreve, of Congreve and Stratton. He visited, once at least, the residence of his ancestors; and, I believe, more places than one are still shown, in groves and gardens, where he is related to have written his "Old Bachelor." Neither the time nor place of his birth are certainly known; if the inscription upon his monument be true, he was born in 1672. For the place; it was said by himself, that he owed his nativity to England, and by every body else that he was born in Ireland. Southern mentioned him with sharp censure, as a man that meanly disowned his native country. The biographers assign his nativity to Bardsa, near Leeds in Yorkshire, from the account given by himself, as they suppose, to Jacob.1 To doubt whether a man of eminence has told the truth about his own birth, is, in appearance, to be very deficient in candour; yet nobody can live long without knowing that falsehoods of convenience or vanity, falsehoods from which no evil immediately visible ensues, except the general degradation of human testimony, are very lightly uttered, and once uttered are sullenly supported. Boileau, who desired to be thought a rigorous and steady moralist, having told a petty lie to Lewis XIV, continued it afterwards by false dates; "thinking himself obliged in honour,” says his admirer, "to maintain what, when he said it, was so well received." Wherever Congreve was born, he was educated first at Kilkenny, and afterwards at Dublin, his father having some military employment that stationed him in Ireland: but, after having passed through the usual preparatory studies, as may be reasonably supposed, with great celerity and success, his father thought it proper to assign him a profession, by which something might be gotten; and about the time of the Revolution sent him, at the age of sixteen, to study law in the Middle Temple,2 where he lived for several years, but with very little attention to Statutes or Reports. His disposition to become an author appeared very early, as he very early felt that force of imagination, and possessed that copiousness of sentiment, by which intellectual pleasure can be given. His first performance was a novel, called "Incognita, or Love and Duty reconciled:" it is praised by the biographers, who quote some part of the Preface, that is, indeed, for such a time of life, uncommonly judicious. I would rather praise it than read it. His first dramatic labour was "The Old Bachelor;" of which he says, in his defence 1 Giles Jacob, compiler of the Poetical Register, an account of poets 2 in London |