ld a Cosmo reign'd.
Their wanton lyres the bards of Provence strung,
Sweet flow'd the lays, but love was all they sung.
The gay, &c.

45. But Heaven, still rising in its works, decreed

63. His every strain the Loves and Graces own;

71. Till late Corneille from epick Lucan brought
The full expression, and the Roman thought:

101. O, blest in all that genius gives to charm,
Whose morals mend us, and whose passions warm!
Oft let my youth attend thy various page,
Where rich invention rules the unbounded stage:
There every scene the poet's warmth may raise,
And melting music find the softest lays:
O, might the Muse with equal ease persuade
Expressive Picture to adopt thine aid!
Some powerful Raphael should again appear,
And arts consenting fix their empire here.

111. Methinks e'en now I view some fair design,
Where breathing Nature lives in every line;
Chaste and subdued, the modest colours lie,
In fair proportion to the approving eye:
And see where Anthony lamenting stands,
In fixt distress, and spreads his pleading hands:
O'er the pale corse the warrior seems to bend,

122. A rage impatient, and a fiercer air?
E'en now his thoughts with eager vengeance doom
The last sad ruin of ungrateful Rome.
Till, slow advancing o'er the tented plain,
In sable weeds, appear the kindred train:
The frantic mother leads their wild despair,
Beats her swoln breast, and rends her silver hair;
And see, he yields! the tears unbidden start,
And conscious nature claims the unwilling heart!
O'er all the man conflicting passions rise;

136. Spread the fair tints, or wake the vocal string:

146. Each beauteous image of the tuneful mind;

FOOTNOTES:

[54] The OEdipus of Sophocles.

[55] Julius the Second, the immediate predecessor of Leo the Tenth.

[56] Their characters are thus distinguished by Mr. Dryden.

[57] About the time of Shakespeare, the poet Hardy was in great repute
in France. He wrote, according to Fontenelle, six hundred plays.
The French poets after him applied themselves in general to the
correct improvement of the stage, which was almost totally
disregarded by those of our own country, Jonson excepted.

[58] The favourite author of the elder Corneille.