Without affected pomp and noife he warms;
Without the gaudy dress of beauty charms.
Love, the old fubject of the buskin'd Muse,
Returns, but fuch as Roman virgins use.
A virtuous love, chaftis'd by pureft thought,
Not from the fancy, but from nature wrought.
Britons, with leffen'd wonder, now behold
Your former wits, and all your bards of old;
Jonfon out-vy'd in his own way confefs;
And own that Shakespeare's, felf now pleafes lefs.
While Phoebus binds the laurel on his brow,
Rife up, ye Mufes; and, ye Poets, bow:
Superior worth with admiration greet,
And place him neareft to his Phoebus' feat.
OCCASIONED BY MR. ADDISON'S TRAGEDY
BY MR. COPPING.
IS ancient Rome by party-factions rent,
Long fince the generous Cato did lament;
Himfelf united with his country's cause,
Bravely refus'd to live, 'midst dying laws.
Pleas'd with returning liberty to come,
With joy the hero rises from his tomb;
And in Britannia finds a fecond Rome.
Till by repeated rage, and civil fires,
Th' unhappy patriot again expires;
Weeps o'er her fate, and to the gods retires.
The verfes of Dr. YOUNG, Mr. TICKELL, and Mr. HUGHES, on this tragedy, are among the poems of their refpective authors.
O wake the foul by tender strokes of art,
To raise the genius, and to mend the heart, To make mankind in conscious virtue bold, Live o'er each scene, and be what they behold: For this the Tragic-Muse first trod the stage, Commanding tears to stream through every age ; Tyrants no more their favage nature kept, And foes to virtue wonder'd how they wept. Our author fhuns by vulgar springs to move The hero's glory, or the virgin's love; In pitying love we but our weakness show, And wild ambition well deferves its woe. Here tears fhall flow from a more generous caufe, Such tears as patriots fhed for dying laws : He bids your breafts with ancient ardor rife, And calls forth Roman drops from British eyes. Virtue confefs'd in human shape he draws, What Plato thought, and god-like Cato was : No common object to your fight displays, But what with pleasure heaven itself surveys; A brave man ftruggling in the storms of fate, And greatly falling with a falling state: While Cato gives his little fenate laws, What bofom beats not in his country's caufe? Who fees him act, but envies every deed? Who hears him groan, and does not wish to bleed?
Ev'n when proud Cæfar 'midft triumphal cars,
The spoils of nations, and the pomp of wars,
Ignobly vain, and impotently great,
Show'd Rome her Cato's figure drawn in state;
As her dead father's reverend image past,
The pomp was darken'd, and the day o'er-cast,
The triumph ceas'd—tears gush'd from every eye;
The world's great victor past unheeded by ;
Her laft good man dejected Rome ador'd,
And honour'd Cæfar's lefs than Cato's fword.
Britons, attend: be worth like this approv'd,
And show you have the virtue to be mov'd.
With honeft fcorn the first fam'd Cato view'd
Rome learning arts from Greece, whom she subdued ;
Our scene precarioufly fubfifts too long
On French tranflation, and Italian fong.
Dare to have sense yourselves; affert the stage;
Be juftly warm'd with your own native rage.
Such plays alone should please a British ear,
As Cato's felf had not difdain'd to hear.
SCENE, a large Hall in the Governor's Palace of Utica.
|