HISTORY AND POETRY. FROM THE GREEK OF LUCIAN. do not mean by this that in history we are not to praise sometimes, but it must be done at proper seasons and in a proper degree, that HISTORY will not admit the least it may not offend the readers of future ages; degree of falsehood. Poetry has its particular rules and precepts; history is governed by others directly opposite. With regard to the former the license is immoderate, and there is scarce any law but what the poet prescribes to himself. When he is full of the deity, and possessed, as it were, by the Muses, if he has a mind to put winged horses to his chariot and drive some through the waters and others over the tops of unbending corn, there is no offence taken; neither if his Jupiter hangs the earth and sea at the end of a chain are we afraid that it for future ages must be considered in this affair. In history nothing fabulous can be agreeable, and flattery is disgusting to all readers except the very dregs of the people; good judges look with the eyes of Argus on every part, reject everything that is false and adulterated, and will admit nothing but what is true, clear and well expressed. Translation of THOMAS FRANCKLIN. BEWARE, YE DEBTORS. should break and destroy us all. If he BEWARE, ye debtors! when wants to extol Agamemnon, who shall forbid his bestowing on him the head and eyes of Jupiter, the breast of his brother Neptune and the belt of Mars? The son of Atreus and Erope must be a composition of all the gods; nor are Jupiter, Mars and Neptune sufficient, perhaps, of themselves to give us an idea of his perfection. But if history admits any adulation of this kind, it becomes a sort of prosaic poetry without its numbers or magnificence, a heap of monstrous stories only more conspicuous by their incredibility. He is unpardonable, therefore, who cannot distinguish one from the other, but lays on history the paint of poetry, its flattery, fable and hyperbole; it is just as ridiculous as it would be to clothe one of our robust wrestlers, who is as hard as an oak, in fine purple or some such meretricious garb, and put paint on his cheeks. How would such ornaments debase and degrade him! I beware, ye walk, Be circumspect: oft with insidious ken JOHN PHILIPS. I rose; I leaned through woodbines o'er the Shows thee the beauty of the days gone by. Wild bird and dewy flower and tuneful Shines on his brow and in his heart sub Make drunk my sense, and let me dream Through charmèd light he sees the illumined that I Am just new-born in some lost isle of joy, spring, With his own joy he hears the skylark sing, And the young airs that ripple the treetops Have got their wings from his enchanted hopes; The dazzling dews that on the roses lie, The sunlit streams, are kindled at his eye. With heedless heart he looks across the land. And far as he can see on either hand The jocund bells are pealing fast and sweet; Softly they come and go like lovers' sighs; In one glad thought the young and old are met, The simple and the wise. They reach the woodman in the morning air, Greenwood and garden, and the wealth that They reach the baron in his carven chair, fills The teeming vales and robes the summer hills, Are his; but from his tower he only sees One mossy roof half hid among the trees: There is the priceless treasure that outweighs The dark-eyed damsel bending o'er the spring, The scholar in dim cloister murmuring; All hopes and memories, all delights and The marriage-bells ring merrily; hark! they praise. ring. And if his heart is plumed with sudden The sun is kissing off from wood-nymphs' Mine are the sires whom bards have sung, Swift shadows stream away, and wood-notes |