"For her own breakfast she'll project a scheme,
Nor take her tea without a stratagem. "
Of "Lyce," the old painted coquette:
"In vain the cock has summoned sprites away;
She walks at noon and blasts the bloom of day."
Of the nymph, who, "gratis, clears religious mysteries:"
"'Tis hard, too, she who makes no use but chat
Of her religion, should be barr'd in that."
The description of the literary belle, "Daphne," well prefaces that of "Stella," admired by Johnson:
"With legs toss'd high, on her sophee she sits,
Vouchsafing audience to contending wits:
Of each performance she's the final test;
One act read o'er, she prophecies the rest;
And then, pronouncing with decisive air,
Fully convinces all the town—she's fair.
Had lonely Daphne Hecatessa's face,
How would her elegance of taste decrease!
Some ladies' judgment in their features lies,
And all their genius sparkles in their eyes.
But hold, she cries, lampooner! have a care;
Must I want common sense because I'm fair?
O no; see Stella: her eyes shine as bright
As if her tongue was never in the right;
And yet what real learning, judgment, fire!
She seems inspir'd, and can herself inspire.
How then (if malice ruled not all the fair)
Could Daphne publish, and could she forbear?"
After all, when we have gone through Young's seven Satires, we seem to have made but an indifferent meal. They are a sort of fricassee, with some little solid meat in them, and yet the flavor is not always piquant. It is curious to find him, when he pauses a moment from his satiric sketching, recurring to his old platitudes:
"Can gold calm passion, or make reason shine?
Can we dig peace or wisdom from the mine?
Wisdom to gold prefer;"—
platitudes which he seems inevitably to fall into, for the same reason that some men are constantly asserting their contempt for criticism—because he felt the opposite so keenly.
