Brief! if my novel enterprise succeed

If else! Why else ?-Why press the mind with

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doubt ?

Our 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
Ofvaulting 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
power!

Like the round bellied" Justice,

full of pride

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 age-venting its spleen
An others-in itself dissatisfied I

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CONCLUSION TO TALES OF THE DRAMA. And now the last sad scene, which marks the fall Of Poesy, the loss of fame and vigour,

Speedy decline, from grandeur to decay,
From vanity to imbecility,

No more "the eye in a fine phrenzy rolling,
Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to
heaven."

Now all is sinking into mere oblivion,

"Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans every thing

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THE END.