CONCLUSION

TO

TALES OF THE DRAMA.

Now Rumour, with her many hundred tongues,
Floats on the passing breeze.

So farewell—Brutus—Cassius—Antony,
Kings, queens, and princes-train imperial-
Heroes and common men, knights and fair dames
Lovers, coquettes and prudes, husbands and wives,
And all those groupes of varied characters
Who have my numerous pages graced—Perchance
By me ungraced-For a brief space-farewell!

Brief ! if my novel enterprise succeed
If else !—Why else ?-Why press the mind wich

doubt ?
" Orir doubts are traitors,
“ And make us lose the good we oft might win,
" By fearing to attempt.”
Hope lures us on from day to day;—but yet
Unequal is the fate of humankind :
The sport of Fortune in her wayward mood,
Or favourite of her uncertain smiles,
Just as her gay capricious fancy wills !

Shakspeare ! thy muse did playfully display
The seven ages of thy fellow man:
Passing from Infancy to peevish Age;
Digressing thence to Infancy again-
(To infant weakness without infant charms.)
Most strange declension, yet most true effec
And portraiture of frail mortality.
And may we not portray the sons of song
Even thus;-bewildered in a labyrinth
Of strange variety—eventful cares?
First lassitude, resembling Infancy,

Nurs'd in the fost’ring arms of Education;
And by the careful nymph, Instruction, tended.
Grave Apprehension next, with schoolboy pace,

Unwilling to advance from very fear;
Looking at danger with a timid heart,
But not surmounting—then fell Cowardice steals
Athwart the mind-like sighs and tears athwart
The lover's soul.

then droops the child of song, Pensive, forlorn, as if by hope forsaken ! Next Inspiration comes, with godlike zeal, And dangers seem as trifies in the scale Of “vaulting bold ambition.”-A warrior now.

Th' aspiring ardent son of poesy
In armour clad, mounts the Olympian hill,
To snatch the wreath, which binds Apollo's brow
And there is oft in bravery a charm,
Which gains the laurel crown from virtue's self
So Valour gains—“the bubble reputation!"
And now the happy child of poesy
Basks in the sunny beam of Fashion ! Fame'
And Fortune !-height of mimic greatness !
Next Vanity appears—that dangerous guest,
To swell the mind, with grandeur, pomp and
And wisdom, and reproof, and gravity;
As fame could sanction arrogance and scorn.
Then Envy comes, and dashes in the cup
Some bitter drops of baneful tendency,
Pois'nous to the taste of gay prosperity,
Which onward brings the age of peevishness,

Vexation, disappointment, petulance,
And premature old ageventing its spleen
An others in itself dissatisfied i