ur fleets been seen in triumph at
Spithead? Did not Hosier visit the Bastimentos, and is not Haddock now
stationed at Port Mahon?

"En quoque quod mirum,
Quod dicas denique dirum,
Sanguinem equus sugit,
Neque bellua victa remugit!"

"And, yet more strange! his veins a horse shall drain,
Nor shall the passive coward once complain!"

It is farther asserted, in the concluding lines, that the horse shall
suck the lion's blood. This is still more obscure than any of the rest;
and, indeed, the difficulties I have met with, ever since the first
mention of the lion, are so many and great, that I had, in utter despair
of surmounting them, once desisted from my design of publishing any
thing upon this subject; but was prevailed upon by the importunity of
some friends, to whom I can deny nothing, to resume my design; and I
must own, that nothing animated me so much as the hope, they flattered
me with, that my essay might be inserted in the Gazetteer, and, so,
become of service to my country.

That a weaker animal should suck the blood of a stronger, without
resistance, is wholly improbable, and inconsistent with the regard for
self-preservation, so observable in every order and species of beings.
We must, therefore, necessarily endeavour after some figurative sense,
not liable to so insuperable an objection.

Were I to proceed in the same tenour of interpretation, by which I
explained the moon and the lilies, I might observe, that a horse is the
arms of H----. But how, then, does the horse suck the lion's blood!
Money is the blood of the body politick.--But my zeal for the present
happy establishment will not suffer me to pursue a train of thought,
that leads to such shocking conclusions. The idea is detestable, and
such as, it ought to be hoped, can enter into the mind of none but a
virulent republican, or bloody jacobite. There is not one honest man in
the nation unconvinced, how weak an attempt it would be to endeavour to
confute this insinuation; an insinuation which no party will dare to
abet, and of so fatal and destructive a tendency, that it may prove
equally dangerous to the author, whether true or false.

As, therefore, I can form no hypothesis, on which a consistent
interpretation may be built, I must leave these loose and unconnected
hints entirely to the candour of the reader, and confess, that I do not
think my scheme of explication just, since I cannot apply it, throughout
the whole, without inv