Th' infernal serpent; he it was, whose guile,

Stirr'd up

with envy

and revenge,

deceiv'd

The mother of mankind. Milton's Paradise Lost, b. 1.

SEXTON.

See yonder maker of the dead man's bed,
The sexton, hoary-headed chronicle !

Of hard unmeaning face, down which ne'er stole
A gentle tear; with mattock in his hand,

Digs thro' whole rows of kindred and acquaintance
By far his juniors!
Scarce a scull's cast up
But well he knew its owner, and can tell
Some passage of his life. Thus, hand in hand,
The sot has walk'd with death twice twenty years;
And yet ne'er younker on the green laughs louder,
Or clubs a smuttier tale; when drunkards meet,
None sings a merrier catch, or lends a hand
More willing to his cup. Poor wretch; he minds not
That soon some trusty brother of the trade

Shall do for him what he has done for thousands.

Blair's Grave.

SHAME.

For often vice provok'd to shame, Borrows the colour of a virtuous deed.

Thus libertines are chaste, and misers good,

A coward valiant, and a priest sincere.

Sewell's Sir Walter Raleigh.

I can bear scorpion's stings, tread fields of fire,
In frozen gulphs of cold eternal lie,

Be toss'd aloft through tracks of endless void,
But cannot live in shame.

Joanna Baillie's Basil, a. 5, s. 2.

SHEPHERD.

The homely villager, the drudge of life,

Who eats but as he toils, is happier far :
No self-division, bosom anarchy,

Disturbs his hours; thoughtless he labours on,
Nor is at leisure to be wretched. Havard's Scanderbeg.
And leads me to the mountain-brow,
Where sits the shepherd on the grassy turf,
Inhaling, healthful, the descending sun.
Around him feeds his many-bleating flock,
Of various cadence; and his sportive lambs,
This way and that convolv'd, in friskful glee,
Their frolics play.
The housewife waits to roll her fleecy stores,
With all her gay-dress'd maids attending round.
One, chief, in gracious dignity enthron'd,
Shines o'er the rest, the pastoral queen, and
Her smiles, sweet-beaming, on her shepherd king;
While the glad circle round them yield their souls
To festive mirth, and wit that knows no gall.

Thomson's Seasons.-Spring.

rays

Ibid.-Summer.

Frequent in the sounding hall, they wake The rural gambol. Rustic mirth goes round; The simple joke that takes the shepherd's heart, Easily pleas'd; the long loud laugh, sincere ; The kiss, snatch'd hasty from the side-long maid, On purpose guardless, or pretending sleep : The leap, the slap, the haul; and, shook to notes Of native music, the respondent dance. Thus jocund fleets with them the winter night. Ibid.-Winter.

SHIPWRECK.

All, all, the storm

Devour'd; and now, o'er his late envy'd fortune,
The dolphins bound, and wat'ry mountains roar,
Young's Revenge, a. 2.

Triumphant in his ruin.

Wave high your torches on each crag and cliff-
Let many lights blaze on our battlements-
Shout to them in the pauses of the storm,
And tell them there is hope-

And let our deep-toned bell its loudest peal
Send cheerly o'er the deep-

'Twill be a comfort to the wretched souls
In their extremity-All things are possible;

Fresh hope may give them strength, and strength de-
liverance. Maturin's Bertram, a. 1, s. 1.
It is too late;
For many a fathom doth the beetling rock

Rise o'er the breaker's surge that dashes o'er them;
No help of human hand can reach them there--
One hour will hush their cries-and by the morn
Thou wilt behold the ruin-wreck and corse
Float on the weltering wave.

A piteous, fearful sight—
A noble vessel labouring with the storm
Hath struck upon the rocks beneath our walls,
And by the quivering gleams of livid blue
Her deck is crowded with despairing souls,
And in the hollow pauses of the storm
We heard their perishing cries.

Ibid.

Ibid.

On Scylla, or Charybdis (dangerous rocks!)
She strikes rebounding; whence the shatter'd oak,
So fierce a shock unable to withstand,

Admits the sea in at the gaping side

The crowding waves gush with impetuous rage,
Resistless, overwhelming; horrors seize

The mariners; death in their eyes appears,

They stare, they rave, they pump, they swear, they

pray;

(Vain efforts!) still the battering waves rush in,

Implacable, till, delug'd by the foam,

The ship sinks foundering in the vast abyss.

Philip's Splendid Shilling.

SHOOTING.

Thick around

Thunders the sport of those, who with the gun,
And dog impatient bounding at the shot,
Worse than the season, desolate the fields;
And, adding to the ruins of the year,
Distress the footed or the feather'd game.

Thomson's Seasons-Winter.

SLANDER.

Where may a maiden live securely free,
Keeping her honour safe? not with the living;
They feed upon opinions, errors, dreams,
And make them truths; they draw a nourishment
Out of defamings; grow upon disgraces;
And when they see a virtue fortified

:

Strongly above the battery of their tongues;
Oh! how they cast to sink it and defeated
(Soul sick wish poison) strike the monuments
Where noble names lie sleeping, till they sweat,
And the cold marble melt.

Beaumont and Fletcher's Philaster.

It is a busy talking world,

That with licentious breath blows like the wind

As freely on the palace, as the cottage.

Rowe's Fair Penitent.

Slander meets no regard from noble minds;

Only the base believe, what the base only utter.

Beller's Injured Innocence.

Those who murder fame

Kill more than life destroyers.

Savage's Sir Thomas Overbury.

'Tis false! 'tis basely false !

What wretch could drop from his envenom'd tongue A tale so damn'd? It chokes my breath

Joanna Baillie's De Monfort, a. 4, s. 2.

When I am cold, when my pale sheeted corse
Sleeps the dark sleep no venomed tongue can wake,
List not to evil thoughts of her whose lips
Have then no voice to plead.

Maturin's Bertram, a. 4, s. 2.

He threw his sting into a poisonous libel,
And on the honour of-Oh God! my wife,
The nearest, dearest part of all men's honour,
Left a base slur to pass from mouth to mouth
Of loose mechanics, with all coarse foul comments,
And villanous jests, and blasphemies obscene;
While sneering nobles, in more polish'd guise,
Whisper'd the tale, and smiled upon the lie.

Byron's Doge of Venice, a. 1, s. 2.

Does not the law of Heaven say blood for blood?
And he who taints kills more than he who shed it.
Is it the pain of blows, or shame of blows,
That make such deadly to the sense of man?
Ibid. a. 2, s. 1.

The whisper'd tale,

That, like the fabling Nile, no fountain knows.
Fair-faced deceit, whose wily conscious eye
Ne'er looks direct. The tongue that licks the dust,
But, when it safely dares, as prompt to sting.
Thomson's Liberty.

Soft-buzzing slander; silky moths, that eat
An honest name.

The strife of little tongues,

And coward insults of the base-born crowd.

Ibid.

Blair.