now a light skirmish out of an epigrammatist, your special good friend; and so, vale.

MARTIAL, LIB. V. EPIG. LIX.

" Cras te victurum," &c.

TO-MORROW you will live, you always cry.
In what far country does this morrow lie,
That 'tis so mighty long ere it arrive?
Beyond the Indies does this morrow live?
"Tis so far fetch'd this morrow, that I fear
'Twill be both very old and very dear.
To-morrow I will live, the fool does say:
To-day itself's too late; the wise lived yesterday.

MARTIAL, LIB. II. EPIG. XC.

"Quintiliane, vagæ," &c.

WONDER not, sir, (you who instruct the town
In the true wisdom of the sacred gown)
That I make haste to live, and cannot hold
Patiently out, till I grow rich and old.

Life for delays and doubts no time does give ;
None ever yet made haste enough to live.
Let him defer it, whose preposterous care
Omits himself, and reaches to his heir:

the action, when the other ranks were defeated or hard pressed, and the success became doubtful. This explanation may not be unacceptable to some readers.-Hurd.

Who does his father's bounded stores despise,
And whom his own too never can suffice.

My humble thoughts no glittering roofs require,
Or rooms, that shine with aught but constant fire.
I will content the avarice of my sight
With the fair gildings of reflected light.*
Pleasures abroad the sport of nature yields;
Her living fountains, and her smiling fields:
And then, at home, what pleasure is't to see
A little, cleanly, cheerful family!

Which if a chaste wife crown, no less in her
'Than fortune, I the golden mean prefer.
Too noble nor too wise she should not be,
No, nor too rich, too fair, too fond of me.
'Thus let my life slide silently away,

With sleep all night, and quiet all the day.

*-reflected light.] He means, light reflected from the objects of nature: but he does not express his meaning; for artificial, as well as natural objects, shine

"With the fair gildings of reflected light"

He might have said

"With the fair gildings of unpurchased light :"

i. e. light, not purchased by the costliness of the materials from which it is reflected. Thus, in another place, [Essay IX. p. 264,] he calls the simple delights of the country, such as those of

"-the garden, painted o'er With nature's hand, not art's-"

unbought sports.-Hurd.

IT is a hard and nice subject for a man to write of himself: it grates his own heart to say any thing of disparagement, and the reader's ears to hear any thing of praise from him. There is no danger from me of offending him in this kind: neither my mind, nor my body, nor my fortune, allow me any materials for that vanity. It is sufficient for my own contentment, that they have preserved me from being scandalous, or remarkable on the defective side. But, besides that, I shall here speak of myself, only in relation to the subject of these precedent discourses, and shall be likelier thereby to fall into the contempt, than rise up to the estimation, of most people.

As far as my memory can return back into my past life, before I knew, or was capable of guessing, what the world, or the glories or business of it were, the natural affections of my soul gave me a secret bent of aversion from them, as some plants are said to turn away from others, by an antipathy imperceptible to themselves, and inscrutable to man's understanding. Even when I was a very young boy at school, instead of running about on holydays,

⚫ hard-for a man to write of himself.] This is commonly said, but against all experience. A man of worth and name is never so sure to please, as when he writes of himself with good faith, and without affectation. Hence our delight in those parts of Horace's, Boileau's, and Pope's works, in which those eminent writers paint themselves: and hence, the supreme charm of COWLEY'S ESSAYS; more especially of this Essay.-Hurd.

and playing with my fellows, I was wont to steal from them, and walk into the fields, either alone with a book, or with some one companion, if I could find any of the same temper. I was then, too, so much an enemy to all constraint, that my masters could never prevail on me, by any persuasions or encouragements, to learn without book the common rules of grammar; in which they dispensed with me alone, because they found I made a shift to do the usual exercise out of my own reading and observation. That I was then of the same mind as I am now, (which, I confess, I wonder at myself) may appear by the latter end of an ode, which I made when I was but thirteen years old, and which was then printed with many other verses. The beginning of it is boyish; but of this part, which I here set down (if a very little were corrected), I should hardly now be much ashamed.

This only grant me; that my means may lie
Too low for envy, for contempt too high.
Some honour I would have,

Not from great deeds, but good alone;
The unknown are better than ill known:

Rumour can ope the grave.

Acquaintance I would have, but when 't depends
Not on the number, but the choice, of friends.

Books should, not business, entertain the light;
And sleep, as undisturb'd as death, the night.
My house a cottage more

Than palace; and should fitting be
For all my use, no luxury.

My garden painted o'er

With Nature's hand, not Art's; and pleasures yield,
Horace might envy in his Sabine field.

Thus would I double my life's fading space;
For he that runs it well, twice runs his race.
And in this true delight,

These unbought sports, this happy state,
I would not fear, nor wish, my fate;
But boldly say each night;

To-morrow let my sun his beams display,
Or in clouds hide them; I have lived to-day.

You may see by it, I was even then acquainted with the poets; (for the conclusion is taken out of Horace,*) and perhaps it was the immature and immoderate love of them, which stamped first, or rather engraved, these characters in me: they were like letters cut into the bark of a young tree, which with the tree still grow proportionably. But how this love came to be produced in me so early, is a hard question. I believe I can tell the particular little chance that filled my head first with such chimes of verse, as have never since left ringing there for I remember, when I began to read, and to take some pleasure in it, there was wont to lie in my mother's parlour (I know not by what accident, for she herself never in her life read any book but of devotion)-but there was wont to lie Spenser's works; this I happened to fall upon, and was infinitely delighted with the stories of the knights,

-ille potens sui,

Lætusque deget, cui licet in diem

Dixisse, Vixi: cras vel atrâ
Nube polum, Pater, occupato,

Vel sole puro."

3 Od. xxix. 41.