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Yes, to my Country I my pen consign, Yes, from this moment, mighty Mist! am thine, And rival, Curtius! of thy fame and zeal, O’er head and ears plunge for the publick weal. Adieu my children! better thus expire Unstall’d, unsold, thus glorious mount in fire

Remarks.

antithesis of auratis and argenteus to be unworthy the Virgilian majesty? and what absurdity to say a goose sings? canebat. Virgil gives a contrary cha­racter of the voice of this silly bird in Ecl. 9.

―― argutos interstrepere anser olores.

Read it therefore adesse strepebat. And why auratis porticibus? does not the very verse preceding this inform us,

Romuleo recens horrebat regia culmo.

Is this thatch in one line, and gold in another, con­sistent? I scruple not (repugnantibus omnibus manu­scriptis) to correct it, auritis. Horace uses the same epithet in the same sense,

―― Auritas fidibus canoris Ducere quercus.

And to say that walls have ears is common even to a proverb. Scribl.

V. 194. Mighty Mist!] Nathaniel Mist was pub­lisher of a famous Tory paper (see notes on l. 3.) in which this Author was sometimes permitted to have a part.

V. 197. Adieu my children!] This is a tender and passionate apostrophe to his own works which he is

Imitations.

V. 197. Adieu my children! &c.] Virg. Aen. 3.

―― Felix Priameïa virgo! Jussa mori: quae sortitus non pertulit ullos, Nec victoris heri tetigit captiva cubile! Nos patriâ incensâ, diversa per aequora vectae, &c.
Fair without spot; than greas’d by grocer’s hands, Or shipp’d with Ward to ape and monkey lands, Or wafting ginger, round the streets to go, And visit alehouse where ye first did grow. With that, he lifted thrice the sparkling brand, And thrice he dropt it from his quiv’ring hand: Then lights the structure, with averted eyes; The rowling smokes involve the sacrifice.

Remarks.

going to sacrifice, agreeable to the nature of man in great affliction, and reflecting like a parent on the many miserable fates to which they would otherwise be subject.

V. 200. Or shipp’d with Ward to ape and monkey land.] Edward Ward, a very voluminous poet in hu­dibrastick verse, but best known by the London Spy, in prose. He has of late years kept a publick house in the City (but in a genteel way) and with his wit, hu­mour, and good liquor (Ale) afforded his guests a pleasurable entertainment, especially those of the high­church party. Jacob Lives of Poets, vol. 2. p. 225. Great numbers of his works were yearly sold into the Plantations.

Imitations.

V. 202. And visit alehouse.] Waller on the Navy,

Those towers of oak o’er fertile plains may go, And visit mountains where they once did grow.

V. 203. ―― He lifted thrice the sparkling brand, And thrice he dropt it ―― ]

Ovid of Althaea on the like occasion, burning her off­spring,

Tum conata quater flammis imponere torrem, Caepta quater tenuit. ―― Met. 8.