So also is he decyphered by the honourable
"[1]Say, wond'rous youth, what column wilt thou chuse,
"What laurel'd arch, for thy triumphant Muse?
Tho' each great ancient court thee to his shrine,
Tho' ev'ry laurel thro' the dome be thine,
Go to the good and just, an awful train!
Thy soul's delight.
Recorded in like manner for his virtuous disposition, and gentle bearing, by the ingenious
Mr. Walter Hart,
in this apostrophe;
"[2]O' ever worthy, ever crown'd with praise!
Blest in thy life and blest in all thy lays.
Add, that the Sisters ev'ry thought refine,
And ev'n thy life, be faultles; as thy line.
Yet envy still with fiercer rage pursues,
Obscures the virtue, and defames the Muse.
A soul like thine, in pain, in grief, resign'd,
Views with just scorn the malice of mankind."
The witty and moral satyrist
Dr. Edward Young,
wishing some check to the corruption and evil manners of the times, calleth out upon our poet to undertake a task so worthy of his virtue:
"[3]Why slumbers Pope, who leads the Muse's train,
Nor hears that Virtue, which he loves, complain?
In his epistle on Verbal Criticism:
"Whose life, severely scan'd, transcends his lays;
For wit supreme is but his second praise."
That delicate and correct imitator of Tibullus, in his Love Elegies, Elegy xiv.
