207. French-English.
It is curious to observe how the English Catholicks of the 17th century wrote English like men who habitually spoke French. Corps is sometimes used for the living body, . . and when they attempt to versify, their rhymes are only rhymes according to a French pronunciation.
This path most fair I walking winde
By shadow of my pilgrimage,
Wherein at every step I find
An heavenly draught and image
Of my fraile mortality,
Tending to eternity.
***The tree that bringeth nothing else
But leaves and breathing verdure
Is fit for fire, and not for fruit
And doth great wrong to Nature.
***
But the finest specimen of French-English verse is certainly the inscription which M. Girardin placed at Ermenonville to the memory of Shenstone.
This plain stone,
To William Shenstone.
In his writings he display'd
A mind natural.
At Leasowes he laid
Arcadian greens rural.
Shenstone used to thank God that his name was not liable to a pun. He little thought that it was liable to such a rhyme as this.