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 with 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 effect
And portraiture of frail mortality.
And may we not pourtray the sons of song
Even thus;-bewildered in a labyrinth
Of strange variety-eventful cares?
First lassitude, resembling Infancy,
Nursed 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 trifles in the scale Of" vaulting bold ambition."-A warrior now:
Th' aspiring ardent son of
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,
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
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