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HOURS OF IDLENESS.
Thus Pope by Curl and Dennis was destroyed,
Thus Gray and Mason yield to furious Loyd;[1]
From Dryden, Milbourne[2] tears the palm away,
And thus I fall, though meaner far than they.
As in the field of combat, side by side,
A Fabius and some noble Roman died.
Dec. 1806.
L'AMITÉ EST L'AMOUR SANS AILES.[3]
1.
Why should my anxious breast repine,
Because my youth is fled?
Days of delight may still be mine;
Affection is not dead.
In tracing back the years of youth,
One firm record, one lasting truth
Celestial consolation brings;
Bear it, ye breezes, to the seat,
Where first my heart responsive beat,—
"Friendship is Love without his wings!"
- ↑ [Robert Lloyd (1733-1764). The following lines occur in the first of two odes to Obscurity and Oblivion—parodies of the odes of Gray and Mason:—
"Heard ye the din of modern rhymers bray?
It was cool M——n and warm G——y,
Involv'd in tenfold smoke."] - ↑ [The Rev. Luke Milbourne (died 1720) published, in 1698, his Notes on Dryden's Virgil, containing a venomous attack on Dryden. They are alluded to in The Dunciad, and also by Dr. Johnson, who wrote (Life of Dryden), "His outrages seem to be the ebullitions of a mind agitated by stronger resentment than bad poetry can excite."]
- ↑ [The MS. is preserved at Newstead.]
